Removing Barriers to Drive Engagement

Unlocking the “Hidden Yes”: Removing Barriers to Success

Melina Palmer: Welcome to episode 553 of the Brainy Business. Understanding the Psychology of why People Buy. In today’s episode, I’m excited to introduce you to Matt Sucha, author of the Hidden Yes. Ready? Let’s get started.

Announcer: You are listening to the Brainy Business podcast, where we dig into the psychology of why people buy and help you incorporate behavioral economics into your business, making it more brain friendly. Now, here’s your Melina Palmer.

Melina Palmer: Hello. Hello, everyone. My name is Melina Palmer and I want to welcome you to the Brainy Business Podcast. So often when something isn’t working, whether it’s a campaign, a sales conversation, or a team initiative, our instinct is to add more. More information, more incentives, more motivation. But what if the real answer isn’t in doing more, but in removing what’s getting in the way of a yes? That’s the foundation of the Hidden Yes, the new book from Matt Sucha, CEO of Mindworks and editor in chief of Inside Be, a publication you may have come across in your search for behavioral economics insights. And if not, I highly recommend checking it out. Matt and his team have spent more than a decade helping major organizations across industries including banking and telecommunications, to apply behavioral science to boost sales and improve customer experiences. Today’s conversation shares practical tips and tools to help uncover and remove the hidden barriers that prevent people from saying yes, including his SURF method, which he will break down for us during the chat. As you listen today, consider where hidden no’s might be showing up in your own work moments when a decision could have been easy, but something small created resistance. Before we jump in, a quick reminder that you can find links to my top related past episodes, books, ways to connect and more in the show notes for the episode, which are found within the app you’re listening to and at thebrainybusiness.com553. Now let’s jump right in.

Matt Sucha, welcome back to the Brainy Business podcast.

Matt Sucha: Thank you so much for having me here again.

Melina Palmer: Absolutely. I always love our chats. We of course, did an interview. My goodness, what feels like 100 years ago, I believe, though, when I interviewed you, my first book was about to come out. And now your first book is about to come out. So excited to be able to chat about that.

Before we jump into all the amazing content, though, can you share a little bit about yourself and the work that you do?

Mindworks and the Inspiration for The Hidden Yes

Matt Sucha: Happy to. So I’m in the consumer psychology business, for a decade now. It’s been exactly 10 years since I founded Mineworx. And we are primarily consultancy. We help mainly banks, insurance companies and telco companies, boost their sales, both digital and in person sales through consumer psychology. We also do a lot of training and lately we’ve created a licensing program where we train other trainers. We are now around 20 trainers across four continents in our methodologies, in our training that they can take and deliver to their own clients, their own audiences. So, that’s a little bit about what I do. And as you mentioned, yeah, I’ve been working hard for the past months, on creating my first book where I try to distill the best of my 10 years of experience applying consumer psychology in the wild.

Melina Palmer: Well, I love it. And the book is so applicable, which, you know, I love things that are applicable. And I think that it is just a space that people like as you, they get interested in behavioral economics and behavioral science and start to, you know, read the academic stuff or whatnot and go, okay, yeah, but like, what do I do with it? Right? So that inspiration is a lot of why I started the Brainy Business podcast. And I know with work you’ve done with Inside Be, and just like collecting case studies of the world, really it’s such a foundational space, to be able to then work on making it so people can actually get it like and go do something with it. Right. So, I guess what was the inspiration of turning it into a book? Because I know it’s something that has been on your mind for quite some time, but wanting to wait until it’s like ready for it to be, you know, book worthy of both for your own time, but you know, something that people want to read and they’re going to get value from. So I guess what was it that made it feel like this was it, this was the time, you know, how did you get to from you know, just more articles to the, to the book?

Matt Sucha: You know, for me it all started with a book some 15 years ago. I was at the time, studying actuarial mathematics, so something completely unrelated to consumer psychology, all about numbers. But I somehow by coincidence read Predictably Irrational by Dan Ariely. And the book changed my life. I fell in love with behavior economist, with consumer psychology. And since I kept reading and studying all I could, on the topic until I founded my company. And that’s, that’s also one of the reasons why for me books have been kind of reserved for those who really have something to say and really have something to add. Because I’ve read a lot of books, a lot of great books, but a lot of mediocre books also that just repeat the same stuff that I’ve read in other books elsewhere. And I didn’t want to add just another mediocre book. So, it took me a lot of time. But, kind of the final moment was what I mentioned at the beginning. This licensing program where we started teaching other trainers, sometimes trainers with 20 years of experience in, you know, sales training, in training marketers. And they were so excited about our SURF method, about our training, about our work and case studies. And that really convinced me that now is the time where I can feel quite sure that I have something credible to add. And now as you mentioned, you know, I try to create a book that would be super applicable because this is what we have seen so many times. People get excited by consumer psychology, by behavior economies, because they have read a book, but very quickly they hit a wall because somehow they don’t know how to apply it. Well, I’ve read about anchoring, I’ve read about, I don’t know, uncertainty. I’ve read about a million other principles. But how do I actually take it and apply it in my own business to drive results? And that’s where the biggest hurdle lies in my experience. And this is what I tried to bridge in a way. So this new intention-action gap.

The SURF Method: Shifting from Motivation to Barriers

Melina Palmer: Absolutely. And so you mentioned the SURF method, which is of course really foundational within the book. Can you share a little bit about what that is?

Matt Sucha: Over the past years we’ve tried a lot of frameworks because if you want to do something consistently, you have to have some kind of methodology, some kind of framework, but nothing has rewarded for us. So then we started coming up with our own stuff, and then we started teaching. But we found out that some of it was way too complex to be, for. For others to adopt. Some of it was just too simple. And then, we were playing around with it, really analyzing in detail. So what do we actually do in our projects? And that’s how SURF was born. So basically, SURF, it’s an acronym. And it basically distills our process, our methodology into four steps. And they revolve around three fundamental mistakes that we see people in sales and marketing, do over and over and over again.

The first one is that people have a natural tendency to jump to solutions to start coming up with solutions. Well, I have an email that’s not performing, that’s not converting. Well, how would I change it. So what if we just change the subject? What if, I wrote this instead of that? But what we say is that, well, wait, wait, wait. Hold your horses. Because the very first thing you have to do, you have to be very clear about what you want to achieve with that email, with that phone call, with that conversation with the clients. And, that’s where S comes. Comes in. So S stands for set behavioral goals. Because there are only three things that you can change with with communication. And that’s how the person feels, what they think and what they do. And you have to be crystal clear. What are you trying to achieve? What do you want them to feel, think, and do before you start coming up with solutions?

And so what. Let’s take, say, a phone call for distance. So I should. The very first thing is that I should split the phone call into what we call stages or key moments. And so it can be, you know, the introduction where I just say, you know, who I am, and the why I’m calling. Then it could be the explanation, what I want from you. Then it could be the discussion and then so agreeing on the next steps. Or, now just simplifying it. Ah, a lot. But let’s say we have four stages in a phone call. So the very first thing you have to do, you have to define clear behavioral goals for each of those stages. This is what S stands for.

And then the second fundamental mistake, which I think is, the biggest one and the closest to my heart, it is that again, very naturally, when we think of persuading someone, we think in terms of motivation. So, if I want to persuade you of something to buy from me, to do business with me, what I’ll think about is, well, how can I motivate Melina Palmer to, buy from me? But this is the wrong question. Because very often in our experience and research shows, more often than not, when a customer doesn’t do what you want them to do, the problem is not a lack of motivation. More often than lack of motivation, the problem are some psychological barriers that stand in the way. It might be that you feel like I’m trying to sell you something so you will push back. Maybe you feel some uncertainty or you’re not quite sure, how it works, how you can get rid of it. So you’ll decide to postpone the decision.

And this is the second, letter in our SURF method. The U so uncover the barriers. So first, I clearly define what I’m trying to achieve. So what I want them to think, feel Do. Then I ask myself the question, why not? Why will they not think they’ll do what I want? And I’m trying to come up with the different barriers it might be experiencing.

Then comes R, which is removing barriers. So I’ll tweak my communication, I’ll tweak my copy, I’ll tweak what I’m telling my client so that I have removed the barriers.

And then only at the very end comes F, which stands for focus on motivation. So at the very end I’m trying to increase motivation. But again we try to avoid the usual suspects, discounts and benefits because that costs a lot of money and might not be so effective. And we try to play around with context and changing context so that my offer, my product seems more attractive.

So this is a step by step methodology that you can basically take and apply to any customer interaction. And while we have seen that work, our licensed trainers have seen it, it really works like magic.

Melina Palmer: Yeah, thank you for breaking that down to share. And I know for me the section that I talk about so much is just that understanding the problem. So like that first piece, I’m always very glad when I see that of, you know, don’t jump to the solution. We gotta talk about what’s going on first. And so I think that’s always so great. And I really loved how much time you did dedicate to those barriers and knowing like the difference in increasing motivation, it’s just not really how humans work as much as we would like to think. And so giving all these opportunities to do that. And I love how so many of you, your ah, case studies through the book, whether they’re from your own work or from others that you found. I always love when it’s a small thing. And like you said, you don’t have to resort to a discount or something that’s going to cost the firm a lot of money. But you can make this little adjustment and everything can just click right. It just feels right for the person you’re trying to sell to.

Case Study: Attracting Talent by Removing Job Application Barriers

Melina Palmer: There was an example really early in the book about a, a job description that I really really liked. And so can you share a little bit about what happened here? Because I think this is one of those problems of the, like the default to the wide net, right. Like feeling like we have to be available because anybody might want and we want everyone to feel included. And you make this job description that then no one ends up applying for and you find yourself in a problem and feel like you have to raise the the salary or, or increase benefits, but you don’t have the budget to do so. And so I thought this was just a really great example. Can you share a bit about it?

Matt Sucha: Very happy to. So this is an example that’s I think in the intro chapter in the part on psychological barriers. And this was a case study from a couple of years ago where we were approached by a company and they, they asked us to help them redesign their job ads so that, well, largely attract more people. And the client was a telecommunications company and they were hiring some call center positions. And so we came in and we saw that the job ad actually wasn’t bad. You know, it was average, maybe a little bit better than average. But the mindset that the company had was, was wrong. Because if you take a step back and you think about trying to find a job, it’s a situation where, you know, you not really feeling super comfortable. You’re not at ease because you don’t do it too often. And most importantly, it’s filled with uncertainties. How will the new boss behave? What will my colleagues be like? Will I be able to perform well, in the new job?

So the way the managers at this company were looking at hiring and the job ad was well, please help us make the job ad more attractive. And and, and we have to motivate people to apply. And we thought, well you know what, maybe this is not a problem of motivation. So let’s try to look at it the other way around. So let’s ask ourselves, why not? Why might a person who’s actually reading the job ad decide not to apply? And so we did some research. We spoke with the target group and we identified a couple of barriers that were discouraging people from applying.

And one of them was, for instance, they had some requirements on education. But actually when you looked at the requirements, they allowed for everybody. So that was, you can have a high school degree, you can have a university degree, you can have a PhD degree, but unfortunately for a call center, not many PhDs will apply. But what might, the fact that you have mentioned PhDs cause? Well, a lot of uncertainty. Because if I don’t have a university degree, not even a PhD degree, and I see that it’s a job suitable for PhDs. Well, I think, well, my God, will I be able to actually perform well enough in this job? So we told them, let’s just remove all these requirements about education.

Then we discovered another uncertainty which was related to previous bad experience with bad employer practices. Because very often if you work in a call center, it might not be ah, a corporation with some high standards, when it comes to paying salaries and so on, but it might be a tiny call center where you get just not really be the best employer you can imagine. And so that was another uncertainty we had to address. So instead of describing how amazing the job is, ah, and so on, we clearly stated that you would get a fixed salary that would be paid out on a regular basis. I don’t know, we mentioned how often. So to really be very straightforward and clear about the fact that you don’t have to worry about this at all, then you know there is another psychological barrier because, Called psychological reactance. So if you feel like I’m trying to sell you something, you’ll push back. And the same thing happens in a job ad. If I describe my own company as the best place in the world to work, you know, there would be a ah, natural tendency to try to find flaws in what I’m saying and so on. And one of the remedies to psychological reactance is if it’s not you who’s describing the company, but if you use other people and their testimonials to talk about the positives. And that’s what we did. We spoke to some people working in the company as call center agents and we asked for their experience, their testimonials and that’s what we put in the job app.

So at the end of the day we removed a lot of things, a lot of requirements. We really paid close attention at the uncertainties and removing the uncertainties. And when it was ab tested, the results were just amazing. It attracted three times as many people. And even more surprising that the people were more qualified than those before. Even though we have, we. We. We removed the, the requirements. So and, and this is the power of removing barriers. Because you know, if I, I’m afraid that I won’t get my salary on time. Well, you can add 15 different benefits, but it won’t convince me until you have removed the single barrier. So yeah, I always tell my clients, people sitting in my training. You all know the book. Start with why. Forget about it. Start with why not? That’s the very first question you should ask yourself. Why not? Why isn’t my customer, my client doing what I want Them to do.

Melina Palmer: Yeah, you. I know talking about the, the question that you can ask people and that like, why aren’t they doing what I want them to do already is such a powerful way to consider. Like so many people will think it’s so obvious that anyone who’s qualified should go do this thing. But we don’t. Right. And as you said about intention, action gap, like there’s something that’s holding them back and say you can’t be piling up benefits if you don’t address, you know, their sort of elephant in the room of the thing that really matters to them. I loved in that example as well. Like one, thank you for sharing how, it’s very tangible, I think, for people to see those little things. And we’re sitting and creating the job description again, you feel like, well, I want to say that anybody could apply because they can. I don’t want someone to think they can’t. So we’ll include the PhD. But you don’t think about what that might mean for someone that doesn’t have one that’s actually a better fit and more likely to apply. So if you focus on who you really want, what they care about. I think there was also, that it mentioned, you know, just being able to reframe and there was something about the confidence that your schedule is not going to be changing. You can plan for the weekend and like these times that you always know you’ll be out of here by 5:00 or whatever. That sort of schedule you can plan in advance. And like, that’s a big uncertainty for people when you have kids or other things going on and just having it right there. And like you say, potentially having a testimonial that says, I love that I can always plan for like when I’m going to be leaving and have a set schedule. But that’s something that seems so obvious, like of course it will do that. But like you said, the, the people that are applying have dealt with, other circumstances. And so you have to be able to get out of your own expectations as you’re not the person that you’re trying to sell to. So being able to understand what they really care about, the behavioral aspects and why they’re not doing something is something that just takes practice. Right. You have to pause and think about it and ask some, some good questions.

Matt Sucha: There are actually two things because the first one is that you have to change your own mindset. Because as I said before, we have this natural tendency to first jump to solutions. And the second natural tendency to pile up more motivation. So you need to switch your mindset and start looking for the barriers and the second thing. And that’s what we do in all of our projects. We start by trying to discover the hidden barriers in research. We conduct research anytime it’s possible. We try to uncover what’s holding people back. This is what you need to do. Because sometimes you’re just unable to, figure it out by yourself because you’re just so deep in your own new products and offers and services. And they’re crystal clear to you, but they’re not crystal clear to your customers. And just so many times that has happened to us that, we uncovered barriers that blew our minds.

I’ll give you an example. So we worked with this insurance company and, we were helping them redesign their, online, digital, sales processes and funnels. And this, was a funnel for car insurance. And at one point they were asking people, website visitors if the car was new or used. Well, it sounds like a, very straightforward question, but we discovered that it actually wasn’t because if you had bought your car two months ago, is it new or is it old? And if you simply cannot answer, you will not move, move forward. You’ll just postpone the decision or abandon the process altogether. You know, so. And, and it’s so often these little tiny things that are ruining your conversions and your sales, and you need to uncover, them and remove them.

Melina Palmer: Right? And so in that case, the, the specificity is actually helpful there. Right? So instead of is it new or used, like, I’m in this weird sort of limbo zone, like, I’ve had it for how long? But if it says, have you had your car for more or less than six months, like, or, you know, from. And you’re the first owner or something. Right. You can kind of figure that out. But then say, okay, yes, I. Less than six months that I can proceed. But people also, it’s like, I don’t want to lie or misrepresent. And I’m not sure. How do you define it? I’ll call back later or I’ll deal with this when I have time to make a phone call and ask somebody, which, you know, we all know in businesses basically never. I’ll go try someone else’s form and see if I have better results over there.

I also really liked the example. There were two case studies at the end of the book where you walk through really step by step in that SURF method. One of them being the loan. Like somebody’s going to take their loan to another financial institution. And what I really like about this is so I talk about, you know, you’re talking about the different stages of the interaction of like, like when they open an email, when they do this step, when they do that and that experience. I talk about those finding nudgeable moments, right? Ones that are where we have a little bit more of an opportunity to, change someone’s behavior. And one of the things I tend to say is like, by the time someone has already left, it’s really hard. That’s not nudging anymore. You have a whole other process to bring someone back. But maybe they called and they were upset about something or they started to ask a question, or you notice that the. If you work at a bank or other financial institution, they start moving, you know, money out of a primary account. Like, you can start to see things that might be a trigger. I love how this example is a point where it might feel like, what? Well, there’s no hope of getting this person because they already have funds at another institution and kind of, we’re done. But you showed, you know, a few tweaks by understanding the barriers and the, the language that’s able to be used in those questions, that really help to bring, you know, more people to want to stay with the, that financial institution, even when it might have seemed like they were too far gone.

Case Study: Increasing Loan Retention with Psychological Reactance

Melina Palmer: Can you share a little bit about that story?

Matt Sucha: Sure. So, this was a retention phone call or a retention, call script. And just to, to, to. To talk about the context a little bit, a little bit more. So, that the problem was that by the time the bank called the client, they, already submitted the request to move their loan or to repay their loan. And because by that time they might have already, funds from another bank in their account. So we didn’t really, once again, work with motivation, with making it more attractive and so on. We just changed the flow of the script and the results were, I think there was a double or triple increase in conversions.

And the main thing was that, the main barrier that went throughout the, the, the phone call or the call script was psychological reactance. Because if you just think about it, you know, I’m the client who wants to take their loan away from that bank. And the bank is calling me to persuade me to stay. So, you know, you trying to push me into something and I don’t want to do it. So there Is this resistance? And we knew that if we wanted to be successful with the with the phone call, we had to remove the psychological reactance. And that’s what we started working on from the very, very beginning. So instead of you know, in the first couple of sentences telling them you want to repay, your loan. I’m calling you because I might have a more attractive offer for you. Well, you know, it’s you know, distance to to fail. Because it’s exactly even kind of fueling this this psychological reactant.

So the way we started the call was some. Hi Melina. I’m calling you because we saw that you want to repay your loan. And I’m here to help you, do just that. Yeah, there is absolutely no resistance, no no reactance from, on from, from your behalf because you feel like I’m trying to help you. And this is how we split the phone call into I think five or six different stages. We were absolutely crystal clear about what we were trying to achieve at each stage of the interaction. And then we cleverly designed and tested and redid a couple of times the phone call so that it really performs well and it’s easy to use for the agents.

There was another interesting part towards the end of the phone call. Because your goal was basically for the clients to ah, stay at the bank or to take a bigger loan or to I don’t do something else, so they want to use the opportunity to cross sell. But again, you know, it’s a ah, situation where you will try to resist because I’m trying to sell you something. And another remedy to psychological reactance is what’s called an alternative of choice. So instead of telling you, well Melina, so it’s great that you want to stay, and have you considered taking a refinancing and taking a bigger loan? Like I just told you I want to stay and you’re trying to upsell me. So instead of doing that, we said, well look, I mean the system is showing me some interesting possibilities that I could do for you. Can I tell you about those? So he first asked for permission. Why? Again, that’s deeply rooted in psychology. We’re trying to expand the customer zone of acceptance. And then we I, I, I will tell you with me, there’s of course the opportunity to do just what we have just talked about. Or I see that we could offer you XYZ you know, so I’m giving an alternative of choice and you’re not feeling pressured into anything. I have removed the psychological barrier and there is much better chance that, that you will actually choose to, maybe even to refinance and get a higher load. So, it’s a little bit tough to explain everything with this, on the spot here.

Melina Palmer: But that’s why the book is here, right? So everybody could go read the book to get all the details. And it’s after know all the different barriers. And it’s just such a great example that shows, you know, step by step, I can see why you chose it. One of the other aspects of it that I know really stood out for me that I think is valuable for people to hear is it also ended up still taking the time to thank the person for having been, you know, a customer of the bank for eight years, and really appreciate your loyalty in that. Where there’s a, there’s a line of where you can feel like, okay, you’re just saying that because you have to say that, but that it also asks the question of like, do you remember why you joined, like why you came to us back then? Right. So it’s kind of got that exit interview feel to it, like we want to know. But also as that person now like re identifies with the person they were when they decided to be your customer back then. And like why I liked you and why I chose you, then when you go to offer something, it’s like I’ve been reminded of, of being the type of person that likes this bank. And so I want to continue to be that person because it’s like part of my identity. Right. But it’s such a subtle, easy question to ask, point to be able to make, thank them for the time and just be okay too, is a lot of people will still leave, right? And that’s okay. We, you know, you have to know that you’re not going to have a hundred percent of people that have already obtained funds from a new bank not go along with the journey they’re already on. But, you know, instead of having only 5% stay, you can get, you know, 15% of people that end up staying with you instead of leaving. You know, that’s massive, a huge shift that you can have there. But if you are in that kind of desperate, you know, looking at it in the way of like, I’m trying to break up with you and the, you know, boyfriend or girlfriend is like, so over the top, there’s like nothing you can say to get them to save, especially if you’re really desperate, but when you’re a little bit more open, that goes over a lot better.

Matt Sucha: Yeah. And it wasn’t just a quantitative, result that was interesting, but also the qualitative feedback we got from the call center agents because before the way they handled the calls was very pushy. You know, they were trying to, desperately to save the customer. By trying to coerce and push them into accepting the offer. We completely changed that. You know, we made it much more pleasant for both the agents and the customer. The results were great. But also we had instances where the agents came back to us and they told us, I had a customer thanking him for having this phone call and for paying attention to him, to his situation. And that never happened before. So it was both. And that’s what we actually see so often, not only in retention but also in sales that if you focus first on removing the barriers, it’s not only more effective when it comes to the conversion rates, but it’s much more effective and pleasant from the point of your customer experience. So you’re basically killing two birds with one stone. So you’re making the experience better and you’re making the interaction much more effective from the sales point of view.

Melina Palmer: Definitely. And win, win, win, sort of scenarios are always what we want to look for. Right. Best for everyone.

The Power of Context: The Pizza Defaults Example

Melina Palmer: Well, as we go to close out the conversation, I can’t believe we’re here already. Like I said, I know you and I can chat for days and hours and whatnot. If you were going to pick one more thing to be able to share for people, that’s a key tip or insight, something surprising for them to learn. What would you want to share with the audience?

Matt Sucha: I would say that if you have been hoping to one day stumble across a book that’s, that’s really kind of a step by step guide to how to apply consumer psychology to boost your sales. I’ve tried to create that, and I’ve really tried to steer clear of theory and be very, very practical with the maybe even hundreds of tiny examples and case studies. So, if you want a practical toolkit and a methodology, not just a collection of principles and biases, I think you might enjoy it.

Melina Palmer: Agreed, Agreed. Agreed. It’s a fantastic book. Lots of examples. One of them which, and we have like just a smidge of time, but I was looking through my notes, like, is there anything else I want to make sure to mention? And I wrote pizza defaults and I do love this example if you could share a little bit just of the idea of the type of things in the book.

Matt Sucha: Yeah, so this is in the second part of the book where I talk about the context and how you can make your offers more attractive not by adding more benefits and decreasing the prices, but by changing the context and when. One of the ways to change context is and this is very applicable if you have some, your main product or service and you have some smaller additional services you’re trying to cross sell. So instead of asking the customer, so which of these services would you like to add to your product? You switch the question and you ask them. There is a ah, package of additional services. Which of those services you’re not really interested in. This works like magic. You know, I run this, this experiment so often in my workshops, in my, my keynotes. I ask people in the audience. So I split them into groups and I made the first group scan a QR code and they are supposed to create their favorite pizza. You know, and the first group has tomato base and then they’re supposed to take the ingredients they want to put on top. And the second group is starting with a fully loaded pizza and they should take the ingredients that they want to remove from the pizza. And what we see consistently is that the second group ends up with roughly two to three times as many ingredients. And we tested this while actually one of salespeople who went through our training tested it in the telecommunications industry of selling phones and accessories. And he saw I think it was a 32 or 33% increase in the average value of the accessories package sold with the with new phones just by switching the conversation. So it’s sometimes these tiny little things that just play into how people make decisions into how our subconscious operates. And they don’t require you to change your strategy, to change your product, to change your prices. You’re just playing around with context and you can become so much more effective.

Melina Palmer: Absolutely. No, I loved that example and showing you know, it’s 50 cents for each topping. So add how many you want or take away what you don’t want and you know, changes everything. Whether you end up adding two things or you only take away two things. Right. It changes the context and is meaningfully different for the organization. And the person likely ends up with a pizza they like more because it has more of their favorite toppings. And in that context the extra 50 cents isn’t they’re, they’re feeling better about the value and again, so much to unpack that’s in the book. For everyone who’s going to go get the Hidden Yes.

Final Insights and Resources

Melina Palmer: So for everyone who is now so excited to get their copy and to follow you and learn more, we’ll of course have links in the show notes. But what’s the best way for people to follow you? Get the book, all that good stuff.

Matt Sucha: The book will be on Amazon. So that’s I think the best way to get it all over the world. And the best way to follow me M is either on LinkedIn. You can very easily find my name so it’s Matt with two T’s and S U C H A is my surname. Or you go to thehiddenyes.com and there we can get in touch.

Melina Palmer: Perfect. Like I said, we’ll have links in the show notes, we’ll make it super easy. But thanks again Matt for joining me on the show. It was delightful to chat with you as always again today.

Matt Sucha: Thank you so much for having me.

Melina Palmer: Thank you again to Matt Sucha for joining me on the show today. What got your brain buzzing in today’s conversation? Personally, I really enjoy how the SURF framework simplifies something that can otherwise feel complex, making it easier for teams and organizations to start applying behavioral science in a practical, structured way. This approach helps make the process of identifying and removing barriers before looking for motivation feel intuitive and actionable, which, you know, I love. I especially appreciate the examples he shared in our conversation and throughout the book. You know, I always love when people can show how small changes in clarity, confidence or friction can dramatically shift outcomes. It’s a great reminder that yes is often hiding just beneath the surface. You just need to create the conditions for it to emerge. So as you think about your own work, where might there be a no that’s holding things back with a yes hidden just beneath that surface? What would happen if you made that step or decision just a little easier? Come share your thoughts with me on social media. You’ll find me as the brainy biz pretty much everywhere. And as Melina Palmer on LinkedIn. There are links in the show notes to make it easy along with links for my top related past episodes and books, including the Hidden Yes and more. It’s all waiting for you inside the app you’re listening to and at thebrainybusiness.com553 thank you again to Matt Sucha for joining me on the show today. It’s been a delight to chat and learn from you. Join me next time for another brainy episode of the Brainy Business Podcast. It’s going to be a lot of fun. You don’t want to miss it. Until then, thanks again for listening and and learning with me. And remember to be thoughtful.

Announcer: Thank you for listening to the Brainy Business Podcast. Melina offers virtual strategy sessions, workshops and other services to help businesses be more brain friendly. For more free resources, visit thebrainybusiness.com.