Here's something that should humble every sales leader who's bought the latest tech stack: Aristotle figured out persuasion 2,300 years ago. And his framework still works better than most of what we're teaching today.
I sat down with Frankie Kemp on the Thoughts on Selling podcast to talk about communication—specifically, why most technical people struggle with it and what to do about it. Frankie has an unusual background: acting school, award-winning comedy writing, NLP, and now she coaches technical specialists at major finance, pharma, and energy companies on how to actually connect with other humans.
Her secret weapon? A Greek philosopher and a willingness to tell clients to put their slides away.
The Three Pillars
Aristotle identified three pillars of persuasion: logos, ethos, and pathos.
Logos is your data. Your facts. Your bullet points. This is where most technical people live—and where most of them get stuck.
Ethos is credibility. How much you're believed, liked, and trusted. It's not ethics per se, though ethics plays into it. It's how you come across.
Pathos is emotion. The stories you tell. The feeling you create.
Here's Frankie's observation: "I'll never remember your bullet points. I'll never remember those bullet points. But if you just switch the slides off for a minute and tell a story that I can relate to, that's what I'm gonna walk out the room with."
Most technical specialists lean hard on logos—because that's what they value, and because they don't realize the other two pillars even exist. Salespeople, on the other hand, sometimes lean too hard on pathos and skip the substance entirely.
The best communicators use all three. And they do it in "little drops"—not all at once.
Put Your Slides Away, Mikey
Frankie shared a story about a client—let's call him Mikey—who was pitching a massive bank. He'd been flown over eight times. "Show the slides again, Mikey. Show the slides again."
He was exhausted. And nothing was working.
Frankie's advice? "Put your slides away, Mikey. It's you they want to see."
She made three nonverbal adjustments with him. On the next attempt, he closed the deal.
Three adjustments. Multimillion pounds. That's the power of ethos—of how you come across—when the logos has already been established.
Reading Learning Styles in Real Time
One of the most practical frameworks Frankie shared was around learning styles: visual, auditory, and kinesthetic. The insight isn't just about how people learn—it's about how they communicate and what they respond to.
Auditory people say things like "That sounds great," "We're in tune," "That rings a bell." They process through hearing.
Visual people say "I see what you mean," "I get the picture," "That looks fantastic." They process through seeing.
Kinesthetic people say "That feels right," "Let's walk through it," "I need to get my hands on it." They process through doing and feeling.
Here's the magic: if you match their language, you build rapport almost instantly.
Frankie gave an example of a client she was struggling to connect with. The conversation was civil but flat. No dovetailing. Then she realized: this person worked on the phone all day. Auditory dominant.
So Frankie wrote down three phrases—"It sounds like you were having a really tough time," "What you said really chimed with me"—and used them in the first five minutes of their next call.
The client's response: "Oh my gosh. You absolutely get it."
That's all it took.
Improv for Scientists
Frankie has been bringing improv training into technical organizations—including a major pharma company where she worked with MSLs (medical science liaisons) alongside actual scientists.
Why improv? Because it teaches you to be present, to adapt, to take care of your scene partner. And because it gets people out of their heads and into their bodies.
"We felt it," the scientists told her. "It wasn't theory."
That's the difference between knowing something and being able to do it under pressure.
The Real Purpose of Selling
We got into a riff on the purpose of selling. I mentioned Jeff Thull's line—"The purpose of selling is not selling, it's buying"—and how I eventually pushed back on that.
Because nobody says, "I want to buy a car. Great, I bought the car. I'm done." No—you want to drive it to work or take it to the track.
The purpose of selling is to help the buyer achieve an objective. The transaction is a means, not an end.
Frankie put it differently: "The purpose of selling is to recognize a need and then find a way of fulfilling it—and that might not be what you were selling last week."
People come to you with a solution in mind. Your job is to figure out what problem they're actually trying to solve. And then—maybe—take them somewhere better.
The Bottom Line
Communication isn't about being smooth. It's about being adaptable.
Know who you're talking to. Calibrate your message. Use all three pillars—logos, ethos, pathos—but don't try to dump them all in the first meeting.
Match their language. Watch their cues. And when in doubt, put the slides away.
Because at the end of the day, it's you they want to see.
Listen to the full conversation with Frankie Kemp on the Thoughts on Selling podcast.
