Reclaiming Sales: Recent Episodes
Robert Gillette
You need have to sell your soul to be successful. Listen in for interviews with successful sales professionals who have mastered the ability to balance their own needs with those of the company. Real people who have figured out how to meet their sales goals and still sleep soundly at night. People who have discovered how to do their job with honor, confidence, and integrity.
When it comes to new MRR, every MSP will say they need more leads. They'll say, "When we get the at bat, we usually win... but we need more at bats." While this might be true, it's usually not the whole story. When it comes to sales and marketing, there is a difference between a referral and a marketing lead. Just because you close a lot of referrals, doesn't mean you're going to close your marketing leads... so don't blame the marketing guy until you've listened to this episode.
Derek Marin is the Founder of Simple Selling, a Marketing Firm that can add between 6 & 13 new managed services agreements per year by generating warm pipeline, and consistently converting cold prospects into warm opportunities that close. Derek has been in marketing longer than you've probably been in sales, spend nearly 4 years in Customer Success and Channel Partnerships at HubSpot, and even owned a Juice Bar in Costsa Rica.
Find him here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/marinderek/
"As soon as you hit an objection, you just go back and change a bunch of stuff [in your tech stack], rather than learning how to overcome the objection... You change the external factors as to why you're not selling, rather than addressing the internal factors: which is that you don't know how to sell."
Join us for the second part of our two-part series with Brian Gillette (again, no relation). In this episode we discuss why it's so hard for MSP's to sell their services in a highly competitive market that is often competing at the lowest price possible… To everyone's detriment.
Brian and I are both former salespeople turned MSP Coaches, and holy-moly do we have a lot in common. In this two part episode, we talk about the state of the industry, why people buy and sell stuff, and just exactly what are our options for a "close" that "feels good."
Everyone is in sales, you might as well join The Club: https://club.reclaimingsales.com/join
"You know I had a lot of confidence in you when you started here. That confidence has been dashed. I don't actually believe in you. I don't think you know how to do this. But your sales manager seems to think that you can so I'm gonna let you keep trying." —Company COOBrian knew that this was in his blood, but he'd succeed one month and fail the next. No consistency. Turns out there was something on the inside that was not at peace with the outside. How do you get over that kind of self sabotage?
Brian and I are both former salespeople turned MSP Coaches, and holy-moly do we have a lot in common. In this two part episode, we talk about the state of the industry, why people buy and sell stuff, and just exactly what are our options for a "close" that "feels good."
Everyone is in sales, you might as well join The Club: https://club.reclaimingsales.com/join
Douglas Cole has been working at LinkedIn since 2019. He sold enterprise software, and eventually ended up leading a team of salespeople. We talked about his new book The Sales MBA, and one of my favorite topics of achieving Plausible Objectivity.
Who I am:My career spans consulting, education, and sales. Three interests are at the heart of this journey. I like big picture thinking and analysis. That’s the consultant in me. I like distilling first principles to help others improve. That’s the educator in me. I like driving growth and rallying around a common purpose. That’s the sales leader in me. In essence, I enjoy teasing out hidden sources of meaning in our personal and professional lives.
Find me here:https://www.linkedin.com/in/sholtodouglas/
Join the Book Club!https://club.reclaimingsales.com/join
I started this podcast over a year and a half ago, and it has been an amazing journey so far. Listen to this update episode to get an idea of what's coming next, and where you might be able to get more!
https://club.reclaimingsales.com
Find me at:http://linkedin.com/in/rwgillette/
Matthew Cahill is the President & Principal Consultant at The Percipio Company. He's one of my favorite people, and one of the few people who sells bias advice that cultivates belonging. In this episode, we'll cover the 5 most common biases that salespeople fail to recognize and compensate for. Most insidiously, they serve us well up until the moment they fail us... then they fail us completely.
Who I am:A white, cisgender, middle-aged father of two that's looking to disrupt systemic biases of all types. I do what I can with what I've got where I am. I'm a perfectly fractured human and constantly seeking to explore hidden biases that may be holding me back.
Find me here:https://www.linkedin.com/in/matthewjcahill/
Join the Book Club!https://club.reclaimingsales.com/join
Ray Kim is the Director of IT Strategy, and one of the owners of Simplified IT Consulting. He started his career with what I imagine is one of the hardest sales jobs in the world: selling Encyclopedias door to door, commission only, in the Mid-West at the height (and humidity) of summer.
Who I am:
Born and raised in LA, I’ve been a lifelong computer geek thanks to my dad buying me a computer instead of the dirt bike I wanted when I was a kid. I graduated from San Diego State with a Finance degree but ended up in IT a few years after graduating. I became one of the 3 founders of Simplified IT Consulting six years ago, taking on my first real entrepreneurship adventure in my mid-40s and learning everything the hard way. My other great passions are motorcycles and international travel, and baking the occasional pan of mean cinnamon rolls.
Find me here:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/raykiminla/
Don’t forget to check out the Book Club!
https://club.reclaimingsales.com/join
In a perfect world, every prospect that becomes a client is a perfect client. But since we don’t live in that perfect world, sometimes we end up bringing in clients that aren’t perfect. Listen in as Sean and I discuss that tension.
Who I am:
My name My worldview is that relationships are the most important thing in life. To build relationships, my key core values are integrity and service. Within this context, I am driven to build a successful business that dramatically improves the lives of my employees, customers and partners. Outside of work my passion is teaching and competing in Brazilian Jiu Jitsu.
Find me here:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/seantkline/
Join the Book Club!
https://club.reclaimingsales.com/join
If you’re anything like me, you’re getting a bit tired of influencers and gurus. I’ve sort of lost my appetite for self proclaimed experts who may or may not be successful, but can’t seem to find any humility. That’s why I loved my conversation with Duncan Bruce, an understated success who’s been in sales long enough that if he wasn’t good he’d be unemployed. Enjoy a refreshing, down to earth interview to start off your year.
Who I am:
I’m a hard-working, fun-loving person who loves spending time outside with my kids. I have an insatiable curiosity about how the world works and try to learn something new every day. Coolest job I ever had? Aviation ground services for American Airlines in Jackson Hole, Wyoming.
What I sell:
I sell consulting services to MSPs and SMBs.
Find me here:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/theduncanbruce/
Ask around in any industry, and you’ll find someone who claims they have the toughest sale. I think what I do is hard, but certainly not selling mortgages in the middle of the 2008 financial crisis. For those stories, you’ll have to talk to Arjun…
Who I am:
Am from NV originally, and been in CA for 17 years. I have been in mortgage banking and consulting for 20 years, spending most of the recent years building an online brand and presence to reach more people. Am a martial artist, a co-head coach for Team USA (TaeKwon-Do) and love my #1 job as a father to my 2 year old daughter.
Find me here:
https://www.instagram.com/arjunmortgage/
There are things in our control, and things that are not. Sylvia took a couple things that she could not change and turned them into assets that drive her success.
Who I am:
Sylvia Borek is the Head of Revenue at Lilt. She was born in Poland and immigrated to the US in middle School. Her dream was always to be an international business woman. Right after college she moved to NYC as fast as possible and fell into a career in sales by accident (when Lehman Brothers went under and her dreams of a career in finance were psedo shattered). She’s also a teen mom. It doesn’t define her but has significantly influenced her career.
Find me here:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/sylvia-ananicz-a4872394/
It turns out that no matter how much you go to school, you still might end up in sales. Matt Wheeler is an accomplished CPA and firm manager who learned the hard way that there is more to winning business than just getting the meeting.
Who I am:
Matt Wheeler is the managing partner of Wheeler Accountants and a tax advisor for serial entrepreneurs, individuals with complex equity compensation and general partners of Venture Capital and Private Equity funds. His goal and focus is to minimize the taxes my clients pay over their entire lifetimes. He lives in San Jose with his wife and four(!) children.
Find me here:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/mowcpa/
This is the third episode of a five part miniseries on Building Resilience, you can find episode one here.
A Helpful Work Environment I hate to date this podcast, but as we’re coming to the end of this big COVID-19 pandemic the big IT companies. Apple, Facebook, all these people, they’re spending an incredible amount of energy trying to get their staff to come back into the office. They’ve been working from home for 18 months now, but spent all this money on these big fancy offices.
They filled those offices with perks, like free lunches and transportation to and from, and you can sleep there. They seem like a millennials utopia of a workplace. Why the crap do they spend that much money on these fancy offices and those kinds of perks?
Is 6% Enough? I read a study once that claimed that people that sit by a window are 6.5% more likely to show up to work. I mean 6% that’s that’s not that big a number, but imagine 6% more productivity in your life. Imagine the compounding interest on 6%. When I’m planning for my retirement, they tell me 8% is enough to literally fund my life in perpetuity (if I start saving now).
6% may seem like a small amount but added up over time it’s a lot, especially when you’re talking about something like productivity that makes the company money. So how much of the environment that you work in, do you think affects your success as salespeople? When the amount of money we earn is usually directly tied to our productivity, how much value do you place on the environment where you work?
Does Your Environment Really Matter? At the root of the question is really how much do we believe the environment affects us in general? So I have just a couple of things for you to think about as you, as you ponder the role, your environment and the things around you matter when you’re trying to do anything.
Like how do you drive when you really have to go to the bathroom? When you’re a couple of minutes from home or on a long trip and you really have to pee, how does that affect your driving? When was the last time you tried to sit still when you were cold? I don’t know about you when I’m cold I get really fit. Try standing still without leaning on anything or shifting your weight for 15 minutes. Can you do it? Of course. I mean, especially after I’ve challenged you to, but why would you actively choose to do those things if you don’t have to?
Change Isn’t Always Bad We are constantly making changes to our environment, to suit our needs and to suit our motivation. If you’re hot, you turn on a fan. If you’re cold, you put on a sweater. If you’re hungry, you have some food. If you’re tired, maybe you take a nap. These are all really important things because they affect how much money we make. Not maybe in a day, but compounded over weeks and months and years. It’s important to pay attention to these things, especially now that a lot of us are working from home and might continue to for the rest of our careers.
When this pandemic first started, I actually went out and bought a really, really nice chair. And I got a really, really nice desk. And out of my own pocket (I probably should have made my company pay for it), I got monitor stands and, and beautiful lights so that when I’m in my 50,000 zoom meetings that I was going to do, I would look nice. So I’d be happy with the way I looked Because all those things matter to my productivity. It’s hard to sit on a prospect phone call for me, if I can see that little square of myself in the corner looking ugly.
Get Comfortable So as we round out this resiliency that we’re building, I want to talk about and give a couple of tips around maintaining a good work environment. I know for myself, when I’m thinking about my own workspace, there’s a couple of things that are just really important to me. I want to settle into a place where I feel comfortable.
I mean, physically comfortable. That’s why I got the nice chair. I like having my back to the wall. So I don’t feel like people are sneaking up on me. I like soft, natural light. I like to leave the lights off if I can and have a window open. It’s great for me to have some soft music playing. It keeps my brain from trying to crawl out my ear while I’m maybe making a lot of calls that I’m not super excited about.
It’s great for me to stay hydrated. I once had an office where there was no great place to get a cup of water. And so I would find myself coming up to the kitchen to grab water. And then I would be interrupted constantly by my wife and kids who I love, but are not conducive to staying on task at work.
And then my personal favorite is I like to be just a little bit cold, not a lot of cold, but I’ve found that if I’m cold it actually kicks up my energy almost like caffeine. Those are all things that matter in the physical environment, but your head space is just as important.
Get Your Head on Straight If your Headspace, if the way you’re thinking and what you believe is “off,” people can smell it. They can smell it on you, they can see it on you, they can hear it in the tone of your voice. And if they don’t think something’s right, it’s going to cause distrust and hesitancy that they can’t even put their finger on. It’s just something is off.
I want you to develop a couple of 5 to 10 minute activities or things that you can do to get centered. Things like taking a short walk or doing some squats or some pushups. I love to just sit and look out the window for two or three minutes with the breath app open on my watch. I find something about that just gets me back on task. Five minutes of journaling. If that’s what you’re into, listen to a good song with the iTunes visualizer on.
Avoid Entertainment I recommend stay away from things like YouTube or video games or, or reading a book or something like that. Those, those trigger dopamine centers and they make you want to keep doing it. And it’s hard to pull back after only five minutes because those things are entertainment. And the challenge is that entertainment covers up, it’s a distraction. It doesn’t actually help you work through any of that or calm it down or clear it to the side.
When you’re done with your five or your 10 minute task, then make sure there’s someone there to nudge you back into work. It’s really helpful if this is actually a real person who’s working. This is one of the reasons why we get together in offices and why even average managers can have successful teams. It’s just easier to get back to work when the people around you are working.
Make Restarting Easy The next thing you do is you grease the skids a little bit. And that may sound a little weird, but it’s just, sometimes it’s hard to get started again, once you’ve taken that break. For instance, back when I had to make a hundred calls a day, I’d make sure the very first call on my list was someone like my wife or my Dad. I’d call them and say, “Hey, I’m just starting to call blitz.” They’d say, “Good luck.” And then they’d hang up on me.
And because I’m already on the phone, it’s easier to just make the next phone call that way I’ve at least started. And by the time I’m in my third or fourth or fifth call; stopping doesn’t make sense because I’ve already gotten momentum.
Know Thyself It’s important to know yourself. When we do these things, it’s important to know what keeps you in the groove. Maybe, you like working for 25 minutes and taking a 5 minute break or 50 minutes, and then taking a 10 minute break. It’s incredibly important to gather this data and know yourself so that you can adjust your work environment for maximum potential success.
Get to know yourself, understand what it is that allows you to thrive. If it’s around people or natural light or whatever it is for you. But remember that your environment is nothing more than minor leverage.
It’s not going to make or break a single day. You can’t rely on it for success, and you obviously can’t blame it in that same way for missing your mark, but it can be that last 20%; that last piece that gets you the rest of the way there to day after day after day of success, which leads to lifetime success in the sales job.
I hope you’ve enjoyed this series. If you have any questions, Robert, at reclaiming sales, leave a review on apple podcast, and thank you for listening.
This is the fourth Episode of a five part miniseries on Building Resilience, you can find episode one here.
Please leave us a review and join the mailing list so you don’t miss a thing.
This is the third episode of a five part miniseries on Building Resilience, you can find episode one here.
Your First Sales Meeting Do you remember the first sales call you ever went on? I remember mine, it was terrifying. I was selling advertising to a carpet company, and I just remember sitting down with the store owner: I nearly had a heart attack. I sweat through my shirt. I’m guessing it was just absolutely painful to witness. And it wasn’t that I wasn’t trained. I knew the script, I had my materials with me, but something about it just… it was terrible.
What’s the most dangerous or scary thing you do? I’m guessing it’s not something all that dangerous. It’s certainly not defending your village from a neighboring village who’s coming to kill everyone. I’m guessing you don’t run from wild animals trying to kill you very often, but biologically, we still have all the systems necessary to facilitate those activities. We have this body brain mixture that allows us to survive in those situations. I’ve heard it called unconscious bias and a bunch of other things, but I like the lizard brain.
You and Your Lizard Brain That lizard brain is where our unconscious biases live. It’s that part of your brain that has applications running so that when you walk up to an elevator, you don’t like freak out and have to figure out how to use it. It’s just processing, always in the background. It’s how we get through the day.
It’s how you decide if you like a person or not. It’s how you figure out if it’s safe to be where you are, or if something that you’re going to eat is going to kill you. I don’t think we could survive as humans without that kind of lizard brain, but it does also screw up a lot of stuff in the modern world.
This part of our brain is where racism lives. It’s the part of our brain that makes stupid financial decisions. It’s how we get taken advantage of when you go to carnivals and you can’t do the actual calculation of how likely you are to get the fricking ring over the bottle to win the prize
This part of your brain is what spam messages were invented to exploit. This is why we have so many cybersecurity problems in this country. Or I guess in this world are frigging everywhere right now. There’s a great book called Thinking Fast and S low another fantastic read if you get the chance. This is the fast part of our brain, that thinks very quickly and processes a ton of information. But also makes a lot of mistakes.
Your Lizard Brain Thinks You’re in Danger So chances are the scariest thing you actually do in real life is a sales meeting. You’ve got to talk to strangers, you’re in an unfamiliar location. You have to ask that stranger for money. And if you don’t get that money, your brain, at least your lizard brain is thinking I might lose my job. And maybe my spouse will leave me, and maybe I’ll get evicted or I’ll lose the place where I live. I guess maybe I have to live in a national force somewhere in caves for the rest of my life, which is probably going to be short life because I’m going to get sick and die. And everyone that I know in love will starve to death. Maybe.
Of course this is stupid. You know (in your conscious mind) that this isn’t real, but your lizard brain does not care what your conscious mind says. It’s got its own thing going. And then you add adrenaline to that and you’ve got a real problem. You can’t think. You can’t talk, and your lizard brain thinks you’re going to die. Thinks you’re being attacked by lions or your villages burning to the ground. It’s the scariest thing that’s happened to you all day, maybe all year.
You Need Some Dynamic Range It’s possible to give your lizard brain a greater range to work with and to redefine in a very tactile and physical way, that a sales meeting is not a life or death situation. And the way we do that is by introducing a little bit of actual life and death.
Now hear me. I’m not saying you should become a superhero or take on something that’s actually really dangerous. Me personally, I’m a bit too much of a delicate flower for any kind of extreme sports. I have a healthy fear of my own mortality. I’m pretty much a wuss, but there are a handful of things you can do to gain control and to trick your body into believing you’re in danger.
Trick Your Lizard Brain into Thinking You’re in Danger One, I take ice cold showers. Now, when I first started in my sales career, I had to do it for 30 to 60 days to really break my fear of sales meetings (my biological fear of sales meetings). I would take a regular shower and then as soon as my shower was done, I would turn the hot water completely off. I would grit my teeth and ball up my fists and I would stand under the ice cold shower for 60 seconds (I would count it out loud). And what I wanted to do was stress out my body a little bit. I wanted to introduce danger in a physical sense.
Another thing I did early in my career was I signed up for Brazilian jujitsu. If you know anything about me you know I’m a big guy; I’m not an athlete by any stretch of the imagination. But let me tell you: it’s hard to get stressed out about a sales meeting when earlier in the morning, someone was trying to choke you to death.
I have a friend who will go down to a field and he would stand on one side, and he would run full speed, screaming all the way to the other end. As if there was a lion chasing him. He would literally scream and run as fast as he could sometimes falling down just to simulate that moment of running for your life.
Redefining Scary That danger, that physical fear, it expands your body’s understanding of what’s actually scary. Your brain can’t tell the difference right now between a sales meeting and something that’s dangerous. We’re redefining for your lizard brain what danger really looks like.
Getting an unexpected objection. Just doesn’t dump adrenaline into your system the same way it does when your hand slips off of that edge of the rock. And you experience that brief moment of weightlessness as the rope catches tight and you don’t fall to your death, but your brain doesn’t know the difference the moment you start falling.
Once you can get this physical response under control, you’re going to be sitting in those meetings and you’re still going to have objections. You’re still going to need to sell. You’re still gonna have to do your job. But what we’re doing is we are redefining for our body, what we should actually be afraid of. Chances are, if you’re listening to this podcast, you being bad at your job, doesn’t kill anyone. Nobody dies from it. So it’s really not as stressful as our bodies think it is.
Homework All right. So here’s your homework. I want you to pick two things. One of them has to be at least daily and for the next 30 days, you’re going to go do this. And I want you to compare your first three meetings with your last three meetings over those 30 days. The goal is I want you to be able to see how much improvement you can have over those 30 days as you push your body outside of its comfort zone.
This is the fourth Episode of a five part miniseries on Building Resilience, you can find episode one here.
Please leave us a review and join the mailing list so you don’t miss a thing.
This is the third episode of a five part miniseries on Building Resilience, you can find episode one here. Spinning ’round in Circles You may have heard, it said that those who don’t learn from history are doomed to repeat it. What goes around comes around. The pendulum swings both ways… and obvious cliches. But realistically, we all know that this is true. Humans live and run on cycles: annual holidays, birthdays, new year’s monthly bills, weekly routines work, rest rinse, repeat as salespeople. We live and die by monthly, weekly, or annual sales quotas; but we make money one day at a time.
A day is just the chunk of time can, most meaningfully control. Minutes and hours… they’re just too small, too fleeting; and too subject to the fate and will of another. Weeks are also hard to grasp. You can review a week when the week is over, but on any particular day, you’re just focusing on that day. You’re not thinking about the week in total. Each day seems to be filled with opportunity and purpose. They just seem to be the smallest chunk of time that we can reasonably manage.
Clichés for a Good Reason Every day can be a new day. The sun can rise and it can be the first day of the rest of your life. Today can also be the last day you ever drink, or the first day you stop letting that thing from your past, hold you back. Every moment in history started on a day. Every great victory was won on a day. The greatest events of your life may sweep across many years or weeks building up to that day, but we always measure it back to a day. It’s apropos that I’m releasing this episode right after a holiday weekend, 4th of July.
We blow stuff up. We eat too much. Maybe we drink too much, and then we have a tough week to get through where no one’s really in the office anyways. So we going out our numbers and we trudge through. But now is the week after, and we’re in the middle of the summer, and it’s very tempting to slack off on any one day. One of the greatest challenges we have in sales is that our success feels like powerful highlights in the midst of long gray dullness, a series of wins and losses spread over a lifetime.
The Value of Any Single Day But that’s not what it really looks like. In reality, a successful sales career is a series of performing the right activities over thousands of days. That’s what discipline, and consistency are for. And for a few glorious days, every month or year, you will reap the benefit of that consistent work, that consistent discipline. You’ll close a deal and you’ll celebrate. But you didn’t close the deal just on that day, there was a lot of work that went up to that. It will seem like these wins, fall out of the sky or reward by fate or chance, but that’s not how it works. A successful career can be measured by successful days.
Unfortunately, the opposite is also true. Each day, affords us an opportunity to waste the resources we’ve been given. Each day gives us a chance to be one day further away from success. Every day we waste can be rust gathering on the ball-bearing, which slowly grinds your career to a halt. No single day of sprinting or no single day of laziness will lead to your total success or failure.
It’s a sum total of the efforts spent over time. It is therefore very important to spend your days wisely. One who is wise realizes that there are only so many hours in the day that can be spent working. One must sleep. One must rest. One must be more than a sales person. You have to pay bills, and go to the DMV, and buy groceries, and cook food. Setting aside specific hours for work and protecting those hours is one of the most efficient ways to have a successful day. Protect your working hours by creating bookends around them.
Creating and Using Bookends
Bookends are probably going the way of the Rolodex. But in the same way a bookend can hold books up on the shelf, a morning and evening ritual can keep your hours propped up throughout the day. I don’t know if that’s a clear analogy, email me if it’s not.
What I’m advocating for is something that you start your day with and end your day with every day, so that it’s easier to keep the work hours contained within those two things. So that it’s easier to stop working and do some of this other stuff that’s necessary when the day’s over.
Morning Ritual An effective morning ritual contains just a few elements. First, you do something that puts you in a good mood, a cup of coffee, checking on your investments, reading a comic, whatever lifts your spirits. Try and keep it to about five minutes, maybe 10 in total.
Next to something that puts you in the right frame of mind. If you figured out your why, this is a great time to review it. I have mine written down and I read it out loud every day. I highly encourage you to physically write out your why every morning as part of your ritual, we covered your why last week you should have it dialed in.
Finally make your first task something that’s easy to complete. It can either be something fun or that one thing that you have to do every day and it would be nice to have it over with. The only requirement is that it’s actually work and it can be checked off quickly. Again, we’re talking five minutes or less, because now you’ve started your day.
Evening Ritual Now let’s talk about the evening ritual. I like it to contain only a few things so that it’s not a 30 minute thing I have to do at the end of every day. It should be quick.
First. I’d like to document something good from my day. I actually have a journal where I write down something I’m grateful for or a piece of praise I received. Something that you can look back on in days to come and just think fondly. It doesn’t have to be like in a notebook, but it’s not going to hurt.
Second tie off any loose ends. Now, wait a minute. What I’m afraid you heard me say is do anything you still have outstanding. That’s not what I’m talking about. As salespeople we’re always going to have more work than we have hours in the day . What I’m talking about is tying off embarrassing, loose ends. This is your moment to think over your day, just for a few moments and see if there’s anything you promised anyone that you didn’t do: a recap, email, a PDF, a calendar invite it. Shouldn’t take you more than a couple of minutes. This is not again, your time to do another 30 minutes of tasks. It should just help you get some perspective on the day and make sure you didn’t miss anything mission critical.
Third and most importantly, completely clock out. Look over your calendar, see what time you need to start work the next day. Is anyone expecting anything from you at a certain time? Then I set my alarm for the next morning, before I clock out. And then I clock out for the rest of the day. I don’t check my email. I’m not perusing, LinkedIn, just be done for the day. Put a good day’s work on the shelf and just be done with it. Know that you’ve done enough to be successful over the long-term. If you never stop working, you can never truly start working again. If you just have one big, long 24 hour period, you’re never going to be done with one day and start with the next. You’re going to burn out. You can never truly be done. At some point you just have to stop working. There will always be more to do tomorrow.
Protect Your Work and Personal Hours Once you have a strong morning ritual and you have a strong evening ritual to kind of bookend those work hours, it gets a lot easier to protect them and make them success. Because if you’re only working between the bookends and then you clock out, you can enjoy your life. When you’re clocked out, you can do the things that are personal, that want to encroach on your work day. You can easily pushed to those after work hours, the things that you enjoy doing like playing video games, or watching a movie. If you have those bookends, it doesn’t matter how long your day is or how short your day is, whatever you decide you’re working that day is when you’re working and you work. And then when you’re done, you stop working.
This is incredibly important. If you’re going to do this for your career, you have to find a way to live your life and do your job, not at the same time, but in the same day. And if you can build a series of those successful days over and over and over again, success is at the end of that road. There’s no way to really stop it.
This is the third Episode of a five part miniseries on Building Resilience, you can find episode one here.
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Why You Need Resilience What makes a great athlete, or entrepreneur, or scholar, or spelling bee champ? Is there anything they have in common? Is there a trait they all share?
Angela Duckworth calls it Grit. I’ve always known it as resilience. Call it whatever makes the most sense to you, but you know what I’m talking about. It’s the ability to push through and do the work with a level head regardless of how things are going. It’s the ability to push yourself to make that next dial, or answer that email, or knock on that door regardless of your emotions, your percentage of quota, or activity for the day. Early in my career I would have good days where I was on fire, and bad days where everything sucked… but then I had days where it just didn’t seem to matter. I just did the work. I would get from A to B, and nothing (good or bad) was going to stop me.
You Can Build Up Resilience Abraham Lincoln once said, “Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe.” Sharpening the axe represents training, and Chopping represents the actual work. Resilience is the inclination to get up and complete the task at hand. Grit is the part of you that knows, without saying it out loud, one way or another that tree is coming down.
So much of what separates a top-performing salesperson from an average one is indefinable and nuanced. It’s not just about the product or company, territories and timing, talent and training… there is something more. But when it comes to minimum levels of success, resilience is what separates the salesperson from unemployment. Personal resilience, the ability to do the work in any circumstance, is mandatory for any measure of success in sales.
This is the first episode in a five part miniseries that will help you do just that; develop a resilience (or grit) that will help you be more consistent and reliable. Building up resilience is easy if you start small, be consistent, and have a plan. In following episodes I’ll dive deep into things like motivation and the unconscious mind, but for now I want to simply introduce the idea that this is basically resistance training, like lifting weights. This kind of mental toughness can be trained into you. When one is working out any other muscle, putting pressure on it builds up strength. And just like doing to the gym once won’t make you buff, building up some resiliency is going to take time and discipline.
Discipline as a Tool for Building Resilience When I first started in sales I remember hearing my manager tell the group that to be successful in sales, one needed to be disciplined. That immediately made me nervous, because I am a really big guy… not in a good way either. I’ve struggled with my weight since the fourth grade and as I record this I am just as overweight now as I was then. I’ve always connected my unhealthy habits to a lack of discipline, and there’s no getting around that, but self discipline with food is not the only measure of discipline.
I don’t do drugs, I’m a reliable, loving father and husband. I show up early to my meetings and I don’t miss my deadlines. I have a process for prospecting, selling, and developing referral partners that I apply relentlessly. So what if I struggle to put down the burrito. There is lots of evidence that I am a man of consistency and discipline. I’m not perfect by any measure, but since when was that a reasonable requirement for success?
Homework Step one of building some resilience is to apply some discipline to your life. Even if you consider yourself to be a disciplined person, I want to you stretch yourself this week and find something in your professional life that can use a little resistance training. I recommend it be something small, but inconvenient. Think of that one habit, or process that you don’t do because it just doesn’t fit into your current routine. Maybe it’s sending a summary email at the end of all your meetings this week. Maybe it’s staying 15 minutes after you normally clock out to update your CRM. Maybe it’s checking in with that person on your team that you know probably made more calls than you today.
Whatever that thing is, I challenge you to do it every day this week and see how it feels to be consistent. You might be surprised how much momentum you can pick up with a small change. I’ll see you next week for episode two.
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Have you ever met a person and genuinely felt refreshed, like somehow they were are a glass of cold water on a hot day? I’m not 100% sure how Sean O’Shaughnessey pulls it off but I flat-out enjoyed our conversation about sales.
Since he works with a lot of teams to get their salespeople unstuck, we talked about the top 3 things that hold salespeople back that are 100% within their control.
- Get to know your prospects better, understand how they make and lose money.
- Get curious, and stay that way… even when you’ve heard your 100th prospect tell you the same thing.
- Build your belief, it will keep you company when times get tough.
Who Sean is: I have been in sales for 36 years. After earning a mechanical engineering degree, I decided that I wanted a career in sales. While it has never been a straight line to success, I have had a great career and have sold hundreds of millions of dollars of product. While I have been formally trained in sales, the real training came from the school of hard knocks where I learned what worked and what didn’t work.
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In the high-stakes world of business to business sales, sometimes you have to make tough choices. Those choices are always going to cost something. In this episode I have a wonderful little chat with Chad about some of the tough choices he had to make early in his career, and how it gave him the confidence to make the tough calls so he could find a little more joy in his work.
Chad Van Derrick is a serial entrepreneur and intrapreneur. Born in Hershey, PA though have lived up and down East coast plus Costa Rica, Colorado, and a few years spending 50% of his time in Europe. Now resides in Seattle with his wife, a brilliant artist, two sons in high school, and a little dog with a serious Oedipus complex.Find Him here: linkedin.com/in/vanderrick
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I'm a multigenerational sales professional, so when I connected with Tom Carter it just made sense for us to talk about his more than 20 years experience in sales. What I like about Tom is his pragmatic approach to selling and managing yourself from day to day.
You may have met Colleen for the first time a few months ago when her daughter shared a blistering impression of every working parent over the last 15 months, so I couldn't help but invite her on the show to talk a little about her experience in sales.
Since 2018 she's been at SAP and is currently the Regional Vice President of Sales for Regulated Industries in North America. What I love most about Colleen is her authenticity. Being transparent in a sales job can be incredibly difficult, but is one of the most powerful tools we have at our disposal. If you can find a way talk to your grandpa about your product or service, you can pitch it to your prospect without setting off the smarmy-alarm.
Find her here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/colleen-chulis/
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Burnout is real, and it's coming for you. Working nights and weekends may get you off your PIP, but you can't build a career that way. You just won't make it.
We talk a lot about building trust with our prospects. Whether you're asking for a Million dollar contract, or 15 minutes to demo your product, what you're really asking is for your prospect to trust you. Trust that you won't waste their time, trust that you can deliver on your promises. Once you've lost that trust, it can be very difficult to gain back. One of the easiest ways to lose that trust is to be unreliable.
In this episode, I make a case for why reliability is so important for a successful salesperson. As well as 4 ways that I've been able to bolster my reputation and gain a lot of trust.
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A sales career will always be a stressful one. It doesn't matter how good you get, you will always have some kind of pressure... and you should welcome it.
Mindset is everything. You can have the best training, habits, and opportunities in the world but without the correct mindset it will be difficult to consistently succeed.
Look, cold calling is never easy. We all know know that. Hearing the phone ring and looking at a name I have no idea how to pronounce still sends a cold chill up my spine... but at least I knew they spoke English.
In this episode with Doug we spend a little time talking about the power of listening, and how a few simple tools can help your prospects feel heard.
I've been getting some questions from people who are listening to the show, and thought it would be fun to bring my fabulous wife Kon the show to ask them. We covered a ton in a very short time, but at the very center is this: What does selling your soul look like, and how do I avoid it?
Kurt Nelson, PhD is a Behavior Scientist who spends a lot of his time working with sales people. In this episode we dive into some of the reasons why people seem to hate sales people.
Dave Sagraves is one of the best sales professionals I have ever met. I invited Dave on the show because he helped me be what I am today, and I wanted him to share his thoughts on why so many sales people struggle.
Alay Yajnik is the Founding Partner of Law Firm Success Group learned the hard way that sales is a tough gig.
Alex Dunnam is the Sales Manager at Creative Network Innovations who got into sales because (quite literally) someone's life depended on it. Since then he's discovered how to use some simple tools to help him hit his numbers, and how to keep his head in the game by celebrating the "little victories."
Max Johns is a Commercial Account Executive at Appen who found himself looking for something to save him from a career in restaurants. He talks about his experience recovering from beginners luck and the need to step away from time to time.
Nico Wiborg is an Agent at New York Life who spent the first few years of his career building trust in his community, even if there wasn't much money in it. Since then, he's found a rewarding way to succeed despite the fact that he sucks at sales.
Holly Kraiker is a Sales Consultant at TriNet who fell into sales and LOVES it. She's never felt icky about the job and finds that taking the long view gives her the right perspective.
Ro Puri is the President of ROKO BDS and has been in sales since he started his first job as a bartender. How did he get where he is? Reading certainly helps...
Carolyn Sweeney is a Managing Director at Century Group and actually, truly loves being in sales. She has some great reasons why she's always sought the role wherever she worked.
Pete Ravani is a Vice President at CBIZ Retirement and is one level-headed salesman. Reading is where he gets his sharp edge and recommends you do as well.
Jennifer Matheson is a Senior Sales Executive at CoStar Group and is flat out one of the most positive people I've ever met. She says that positivity has gotten her through some tough times.
Robert Gillette is a Salesman at Endsight who wants to change the way we think and talk about sales people. In this episode he'll talk about why he made this podcast and the mark he hopes it leaves on this world.