The Sales Evangelist

How Leaders Sabotage the Sale Process Sales leaders sometimes make mistakes that compromise deals, so understanding how leaders sabotage the sale process can help us avoid the same mistake.  Erin Pheil is the founder of Mind Fix Group, a company that specializes in helping entrepreneurs, high-achievers, and high-performers eliminate their biggest mental roadblocks that hold them back and keep them from achieving what they're capable of.  Head trash Some sales leaders have very specific definitions of what a sales leader is. For Erin, anybody who is in charge of guiding the people in making the right decisions and who is doing sales for a company is considered a sales leader.  Many sellers read books and work with experts to improve their skills in sales. They keep learning, and then they show up on calls. They often show up to these calls prepared, but also with head trash. They’re showing bits and pieces of their old mental programming and outdated beliefs that aren’t helpful in closing deals. They go to the calls and they try to combine new knowledge and strategies that their coaches have taught them with their old beliefs.  When things go wrong, they don’t blame themselves. They blame the technique and the process, or even the people they hired. They don’t look at their head trash and suspect that they might be the ones sabotaging the process.  Blaming the process, techniques, and tactics instead of examining how they’re screwing things up sabotages the sales process.  Accepting blame It takes courage to accept blame because it’s human nature to blame somebody else. It takes courage to stop, pause, and hold a mirror to yourself and ask how you’re contributing to the challenges that you’re experiencing. It’s much easier to project outward and place the blame.   Head trash commonly appears as the need for approval or the need to be liked. Sellers will show up to a sales call and, instead of focusing on guiding the prospect towards the right decision, they operate from an underlying need to be liked. This goes beyond having a bond and rapport. It's more of wanting to be approved. A person with that need often sabotages calls just to be liked.  They get nervous, they make concessions, and they apologize, which shifts the whole frame of conversation. Being liked becomes the more important outcome.  Self-doubt  Self-doubt can undermine your authenticity and sabotage your sales process because it causes you to question your own effectiveness. Trust your skills and abilities. #SalesSabotage Money block and old programming from a salesperson's childhood also have a negative impact on sales calls.  For example, a client raised to believe that she isn’t supposed to talk about money in the household where degree and certificates are the next big things had a huge block in her sales process. Since this particular client had no degree, she ended up questioning her ability and wouldn’t bring up the pricing until the last minute, or until the prospect asked for the price. This client had old head trash on the concept of pricing and money so that often the price in her head was different from the price that came out of her mouth.  Even with constant reminders here and there, she just couldn’t do it. It just wouldn't come out of her mouth the right way.  This is what head trash is. You show up with a plan and all the right information, but your old pieces of programming, beliefs, and thoughts sabotage and compromise your ability to make a productive call.  Figure your patterns  The first thing to do is to figure your patterns. Knowing your patterns brings awareness to your calls. You must pinpoint where in the process you’re having your patterns of resistance and frustrations.  Create a list of the areas where you keep repeating some patterns that you know do not serve you. It might be telling the same jokes, doing what you’re not supposed to do, or not talking about the money even though you have to.  The buyer might think that you’re hiding something or you have some trick up your sleeves. Before you know it, you have already sabotaged your opportunity. The same is true if you keep talking to your client without giving him the time to speak. It scares the prospect off as well.  Consider a salesperson who can’t even have an intro opportunity because she can’t stop talking. Her problem clearly exists at the beginning of the process.  This is a perfect example of a pattern of people who can’t stop talking. They don’t listen because it has been ingrained in their minds that they should keep talking so that someone will buy from them. They feel the need to show off and prove their expertise in order to be respected.  Changing patterns After listing the patterns that you observe, ask yourself, “What would I have to believe to be true in order to keep acting this way?” What we believe determines how we act.  If you believe that talking about money is wrong, then you’ll probably act in ways in accordance with that belief. A lot of these beliefs are in the back of our heads and most of us might not believe them to be true. But even if a tiny part of us holds true to that belief, then we’ll act according to those beliefs.  What you get from asking that question for each pattern is a list of old pieces of head trash,  programming, and beliefs that you’re still carrying around that are sabotaging your sales process.  Set aside time to implement the two things mentioned here. First, identify the patterns and second, come up with a list of what you’d have to believe to be true. This will open your mind and make you see things that you didn’t realize are impacting your close rate and your success as a sales leader.  “How Leaders Sabotage the Sale Process” episode resource Learn more from Erin and visit her website mindfixgroup.com. Check the hour-long training video that explains how your head trash is impacting your actions and behaviors and causing you to sabotage things. There are also case studies and stories of real people who have overcome their challenges.  If you’re a sales rep looking to hone your craft and learn from the top 1% of sellers, make plans to attend the Sales Success Summit in Austin, Tx, October 14-15. Scheduled on a Monday and Tuesday to limit the impact to the sales week, the Sales Success Summit connects sellers with top-level performers who have appeared on the podcast. Visit Top1Summit.com to learn more and register!  This episode is brought to you in part by TSE Certified Sales Training Program. It’s a tool for salespeople and sales leaders to help them improve their skills and abilities in finding the right customers, creating strategies that work, and asking the right questions to close powerful deals. You can go to The Sales Evangelist and see the first two modules for free.  This episode is brought to you in part by Audible, the awesome library with thousands of books. Try it now to get a 30-day free trial and a free book. Go to audibletrial.com/tse.  If you find this episode helpful, give us a ravishing review and rating on Apple podcast. We are also on Google Podcast, Stitcher, Spotify.  Audio provided by Free SFX and Bensound.Mentioned in this episode:HubSpot and bluëmago | STUDIOSHubSpot and bluëmago | STUDIOS hubpspot.com/marketers bluemangostudios.com

Sales leaders must help their teams perform at peak levels, so they must start by understanding how to effectively coach struggling sellers.    I’ve seen this kind of coaching done badly in the past, and I’ve walked my own team members through these struggles. I’ve developed tips of my own and I’ve learned from Mike Weinberg’s book Sales Management Simplified.  Questions to ask All sales reps and sales leaders endure dark moments where nothing seems to work out. Despite the fact that we’ve been selling for years, we endure periods where we simply can’t close. Very often, when that happens, there are several key things we must address. These situations don’t develop overnight, and they usually result from slippage in certain areas. Begin by answering the following questions as honestly as you can. You’ll never find improvement if you’re dishonest about your situation.  Does the struggling seller have a desire to succeed and thrive in sales? If he doesn’t have the drive to succeed, no amount of training or coaching will help. Why is this particular seller on my sales team? Did you inherit this seller? Did you hire him? How did the seller get into this situation? What signs did you see along the way?  What has been done to fix the problem? What steps has the seller taken? What steps have you taken? One-on-one meetings If you aren’t already holding them, schedule one-on-one meetings with your sellers. I’m a big believer in this method because these leadership meetings offer opportunities to connect with our team members.  One-on-one meetings with sellers provide time to fine-tune and fix micro-problems before they become huge cracks that jeopardize the stability of our organizations. These can be monthly, or weekly, but quarterly isn’t frequent enough.   As you work with a struggling rep, you can determine the things that stopped happening. Did he stop planning his prospecting? Is he failing to manage his time? Does he fail to establish a plan for his activities? If you aren’t engaging in one-on-one coaching, you won’t know what’s happening with your team. When you recognize the problems, you can implement solutions and guide your team members to the right solutions.  These meetings should be knee-to-knee, eye-to-eye if possible.  Conducting one-on-one meetings communicates to your reps that you care about their success. When you take time out of your schedule to share suggestions and guidance with your team members, it’s meaningful to your team.  If something is important to your sales reps, it must be important to you. One-on-one meetings help you determine what’s important to your team members.  If the rep is really struggling, you can increase the frequency of your coaching sessions.  Changing mindset When I was a sales rep selling software, I changed my mindset so that I considered myself the entrepreneur over my territory. Mike Weinberg suggests that you do the same by establishing a business plan for your territory or area. Whether you’re a BDR or an inside sales rep, begin by determining a goal for yourself. For struggling sales reps, help them to create their own goals and then to establish a plan to follow. Including them in the plan gives them accountability.  Begin with small goals over the next three months of the quarter. Consider what your financial goal will be. Then determine exactly how they’ll accomplish that. Identify the existing customers that you’ll engage. Establish a time frame in which your rep will accomplish that goal. Remember to include consequences. Ask your reps what a fair turnaround would be. Then ask your reps what should happen if they don’t meet their stated goals.   Very often your reps will establish tougher consequences for themselves than you might have set.  Desire to improve When you have a sales rep with an obvious desire to improve, bend over backward for that person. Move mountains for her. If she is taking advantage of coaching and she establishes an awesome business plan, reward her efforts. Find other resources that will help her succeed. Get her books or send her links to relevant podcasts. Meet with her when you can, and email her when you can’t meet. Check in through the day and throughout the week.  When your sales reps thrive, your business will improve and your company will grow.  It’s far cheaper to help your sales reps improve than to begin the hiring process over again because you need successful sellers. #SalesTraining On the other hand, if your sellers don’t have a strong desire to succeed, and they won’t dedicate the effort to improve, then it may be time to remove them from your team.  In my own case, I had sales leaders who believed in me and who recognized my drive to improve. They coached me through my struggles and helped me get where I am today.  Re-evaluate Once you’ve worked through the plan over the course of 30-90 days, if your rep still isn’t improving, you must identify why. If you’ve done the one-on-one coaching and you’ve helped her create a sales plan, you may have to put her on probation. It can be an informal program, but you must establish a marker that she will hit within that probation period.  Usually by this point, if the rep truly wants to succeed, she’ll show signs of improvement. Eventually, she’ll have to work on her own and prove that she can hit milestones without other people’s assistance. Without that ability, she’ll eventually have to move on.  The Sales Evangelist Certified Sales Training Program helps sellers improve by identifying problems and developing solutions to address them. Many individual sellers choose our program for themselves because it’s worth the cost of the training to increase their success rate.  “Effectively Coach Struggling Sellers” episode resources Grab a copy of Mike Weinberg’s book Sales Management Simplified.  If you’re a sales rep looking to hone your craft and learn from the top 1% of sellers, make plans to attend the Sales Success Summit in Austin, Tx, October 14-15. Scheduled on a Monday and Tuesday to limit the impact to the sales week, the Sales Success Summit connects sellers with top-level performers who have appeared on the podcast. Visit Top1Summit.com to learn more and register!  You can also connect with me at donald@thesalesevangelist.com or try our first module of  TSE Certified Sales Training Program for free. This episode has been made possible with the help of  TSE Certified Sales Training Program, a training course designed to help sellers in improving their performance. We want you guys to go out each and every single day to find more ideal customers and do big things. I hope you like and learned many things from this episode. If you did, please review us and give us a five-star rating on Apple podcast or in any platform you’re using - Google Podcast, Stitcher, and Spotify.  You can also share this with your friends and colleagues.  Audio provided by Free SFX and Bensound.Mentioned in this episode:HubSpot and bluëmago | STUDIOSHubSpot and bluëmago | STUDIOS hubpspot.com/marketers bluemangostudios.com

Meetings serve an important purpose in business so we must learn how to run better meetings to avoid the feeling that we are wasting our time.  Reshan Richards is a career educator who launched an app — targeted for use in schools — that ultimately became a software business. He has seen a significant intersection between things that are effective in both business practices and the classroom. Together with Steve Valentine, also a career educator, he is collaborating to articulate and pinpoint the specific moves that can be borrowed from the teaching profession and implemented in business. Steve has studied leadership and its application in order to work with young people and help them understand basic leadership.  Meeting mistakes The problems that plague corporate meetings often mirror those of ineffective classrooms. Primarily, the transmission of information isn’t right for the audience who is meant to understand it. People often go back to their defaults or their own experiences to measure what is right. If, for example, you get called into a meeting where one person is doing all the talking or all the work, it isn’t a good use of anyone’s time. It wasn’t likely called for the service of the people who are meant to share the information. In education, a difference exists between the transmission of information and the building of knowledge.  Reshan and Steve believe that the best kinds of meetings are those that leave people feeling like they couldn’t possibly have had the same great experience without the meeting. In other words, there’s no substitute for the meeting, and people are glad they went.  Unfortunately, that’s a rare occurrence in both business and education. If you think about the amount of time and effort it takes to secure a face-to-face meeting with a customer or client, it’s important to be respectful of that person’s time, energy and attention. Never leave him doubting why he was called into that room. #BetterMeetings Bad meetings Reshan’s company, Explain Everything, worked with a Fortune 100 company to help them run better training for new-to-title employees. As he evaluated their structure, he realized that 90 percent of the time during a week-long seminar was spent sitting watching PowerPoint presentations. The other 10 percent of the time was application of what they learned. The following week, those employees were sent into the field.  The meetings were efficient and easy to plan, but retention was low, so he worked with them to rethink their time together. He encouraged the company to think about how it might best utilize the experts in the meetings as well as how the information should be delivered.  They also found that they were teaching concepts on Monday that the employees wouldn’t get to apply until Thursday. The distance between the lesson and the application meant that the employees had to learn the information twice.  For Steve, the very best meetings are those that are allowed to be messy and those that permit people to drop their status. He measures the quality of a meeting by the extent to which people are treated as learners and the extent to which they actually learn something they didn’t know when they walked in.  That information doesn’t have to appear as a revelation. Rather it can simply be the chance to build knowledge together in the temporal context they share.  Internal meetings Planning a great meeting looks exactly the same as planning a great lesson or learning experience. Reshan and Steve think in terms of three motions, or phases.  Before the meeting During the meeting After the meeting These stages parallel the stages of sales, where sellers engage in pre-call, during, and then follow-up.  As the meeting facilitator, you should have a really good awareness of the prior knowledge participants have prior to the meeting.  Meeting prep Often times meetings get scheduled by those who have the authority to do so, but the attendees don’t know the agenda until they arrive. Those that get the agenda ahead of time either get it too far in advance or too close to the meeting time.  Meeting prep also varies greatly among the attendees at meetings. Some people dutifully prepare for the meeting while others never even look at the agenda. The facilitator often has to go to the lowest common denominator because a percentage of people didn’t prepare. In the end, that holds the entire organization back because it means that instead of starting at level 7 in the dialog, you’re starting at zero because there is no ritual around basic procedures. Ask yourself whether it’s necessary to actually have everyone in the same room at the same time in order to achieve your outcome.  Brain breaks If you’re interested in making sure that learning happens in your meetings, build in brain breaks where you provide time for people to synthesize the information you provide. Things often move quickly in meetings, and if you build simple pauses like questions or discussions into the meeting itself, you’ll support learning.  If you don’t give the human brain time to do what it does best, you’ll leave a lot on the table in the meeting.  Consider the intention of the meeting as you’re determining how much information you include. There’s no right or wrong number of agenda items, but you must provide off-ramps so that you can read the room and respond to the audience. Be willing to push some of the information into off-line discussions without disrupting the meeting momentum. Just because it was delivered doesn’t mean it was understood.  Productive chaos Your organization might successfully navigate a meeting with 14 agenda items, but ask yourself what the impact of the meeting was. In schools, this shows up as racing through the content without making sure students understand. The art exists in adjusting your presentation and being able to reshuffle things if necessary.  Steve once had to plan a two-day retreat for a group of leaders, and his approach at that time was to build massive slide decks in an attempt to control every moment. Reshan suggested cutting the number of slides down a bit, and then he cut it from about 100 slides to seven. Steve remembers being terrified because he wasn’t sure what he was going to do or say, but Reshan reminded him that their purpose was to facilitate. They intended to bring ideas out of the leaders so they would have a transformative experience. In short, the leaders were to do more of the work.  Teach themselves The pair structured the meeting loosely, but it wasn’t without structure. As a result, the participants accomplished much more than any of them expected. They still hear from the people who attended that event.  Steve notes, too, that they weren’t being lazy. They were actually being rather rigorous in their preparation because they were removing rather than adding. The result was productive chaos.  In short, they helped the meeting attendees teach themselves because they built so much of the meeting themselves. As a general rule, the content kind varies inversely to the time: the longer the engagement, the less content there should be. You’ll build in more generative time from participants. Think about how you can design your meeting so that the people in the room are doing more of the work and the thinking. That’s what leads them to be able to use the knowledge.  Be clear on the goals and purpose of your meeting, and don’t hold one simply because you believe you should.  Be reasonable based upon people’s schedules.  Set crystal clear goals and prevent diversions and tangents.   Many people work without the need to go to the office every day. If you’re taking someone’s time, hold your meetings to a higher standard. Remember that they are never getting that time back.  “How To Run Better Meetings” episode resources Reshan and Steve launched a book called Make Yourself Clear, and you can connect with them at the website, MakeYourselfClear.xyz.  If you’re a sales rep looking to hone your craft and learn from the top 1% of sellers, make plans to attend the Sales Success Summit in Austin, Tx, October 14-15. Scheduled on a Monday and Tuesday to limit the impact to the sales week, the Sales Success Summit connects sellers with top-level performers who have appeared on the podcast. Visit Top1Summit.com to learn more and register!  You can also connect with me at donald@thesalesevangelist.com or try our first module of  TSE Certified Sales Training Program for free. This episode has been made possible with the help of  TSE Certified Sales Training Program, a training course designed to help sellers in improving their performance. We want you guys to go out each and every single day to find more ideal customers and do big things. I hope you like and learned many things from this episode. If you did, please review us and give us a five-star rating on Apple podcast or in any platform you’re using - Google Podcast, Stitcher, and Spotify.  You can also share this with your friends and colleagues.  Audio provided by Free SFX and Bensound.Mentioned in this episode:HubSpot and bluëmago | STUDIOSHubSpot and bluëmago | STUDIOS hubpspot.com/marketers bluemangostudios.com

Sales is a year-round activity with no off-season and no breaks, so it’s important for sellers to understand how to deal with stress, fatigue, burnout, and a lack of creativity.  Dana Cavalea is the former Director of Strength & Conditioning and Performance for the New York Yankees. Coach Dana, who helps companies optimize performance and productivity, wrote a book called Habits of a Champion: Nobody Becomes a Champion By Accident.   He became a coach after realizing the tremendous difference that coaches made in his own athletic career, and how they helped him overcome bumps in the road.  Opportunity knocks Dana, who originally hails from New York, chose to attend school in Tampa because he knew it was near where the Yankees conducted their spring training. When he got the opportunity to join the team as the guy who handed out towels and cleaned the weight room, he jumped on it.  Within a few years, he earned a paying job as the director of strength and conditioning and performance, and the team won a championship during that time.  He discovered, through that experience, that many executives, CEOs, and sales teams wanted to know how athletes prepare to compete at the highest levels. How do they deal with injuries and fatigue and the obstacles they face during a season? How do they keep showing up every day in the face of fatigue and burnout? Individual protocol People assume that high-level musicians and athletes feel good every time they perform, but that couldn’t be further from the truth. They’re tired a lot, but they don’t tell themselves that. They understand that fatigue is part of life and that you’re going to have days where you don’t feel great. The goal, Dana said, is to have fewer of those days and more of the days where you do feel great.  To do that, Dana coaches people to focus on a couple of simple things that affect performance. Hydration Sleep These factors can inhibit the way you function overall. To address them, you must have an individual routine specific to your needs that helps you perform at your best every single day.  Some players like music that pumps them up, and other players like music that calms them down. Each person must have a routine and protocol that is based around their needs.  But how do you get there? You get there by testing things. If you sleep for six hours but wake feeling tired, that may mean that you need more sleep, or that you need to understand your 90-minute sleep cycles better. We must perform each day and test different things like the food we eat to determine what makes us feel better.  How do I feel? Begin by asking yourself the question, “How do I feel?” Phrased that way, the question takes you out of yourself and gives you a moment in the midst of all that you have going on to consider how you feel. People listen to a million different podcasts and listen to two or three books at a time, and we’re so busy that we don’t take time to think about how we’re feeling.  We’re working to create a self-awareness that is super important to determining the strategies that will help you overcome your struggles.  Sometimes we underestimate the impact of stress on our bodies. Sports are very competitive, as is business. Sales is extremely competitive. You must prepare and train to compete.  Energy wins. You might be a more talented salesperson than I am, but if I have more energy, I’ll continue to show up every day while you take a day off. #SalesSuccess The key is to keep your energy up by hydrating, sleeping, fueling, and training. Then, fill your mind with good stuff to crowd out the doubt and fear.  Sports have a defined starting and ending point, but sales continues all year, quarter after quarter. There’s no break because each year leads into another.  Expectations If we do well this year, what will the people around us expect from us moving forward? They’ll expect us to do better. So now we’re constantly trying to push our threshold. Although what we did last year was good, it’s not good enough for this year. Expectations shift. Some people, though, get comfortable playing things safe, and doing “just enough.” They don’t want to do more than they’re already doing because they know it will simply shift the expectation higher.  People fear success almost as much as they fear failure. Sometimes, they sabotage themselves in order to avoid the pressure of accomplishment.  Leaders can help their sales teams overcome these struggles by being honest. If a salesperson has hit his numbers for the month and he has a pending deal that he could close this month but he’s holding it for the next month, his leader must remove the need for the seller to impress him. Creating clarity Dana heard an interview with Mariano Rivera in which Rivera said his career changed when Yankees manager Joe Torre called him into the office and explained that Mo would always be his guy. As long as Torre was with the Yankees, he wanted Mo by his side. That freed Mo to relax and do what he was best at. He was freed from the need to prove himself.  If you can reduce the need to prove yourself because you’ve validated yourself, you’re in a great position. When a manager does that for his team, it’s like glue for the team.  Dana puts his clients on a morning walk routine that includes a 30-minute walk with no technology. It forces them to be by themselves without the defense of jumping into the phone. Without distractions, they can think about the things they actually want. They get the clarity of evaluating their current situation and their own performance. They have time to ask themselves questions about how things are going.  Taking ownership You may find that you have a leader or manager who isn’t leading in the way you need her to. In that case, it’s up to you to tell her what you’re struggling with, where you need help, and how she can support you. You can also ask for clarity around the work you’re doing.  When you have the conviction to seek clarity without fearing the conversation, you’ll invite more clarity.  Dana often encounters people who exude confidence. He calls it their birthright because it’s so natural to them. They know exactly what must be done in order to succeed. In most cases, though, your team will include really intelligent people who simply haven’t experienced enough success in order to feel confident. Coaches can navigate their sellers to achieve small, frequent wins that stack up and build confidence.  Sellers can acquire confidence even if they don’t naturally have it. On the other hand, Dana sometimes encounters finance people who allow the market shifts and trends to impact how they feel about themselves. He reminds them that the market will do what it will do, so these people must avoid being reactive to the external environment.  Striking out doesn’t make you a loser, and losing doesn’t make you a loser.  Dana got this advice some time back: People can either love it or shove it. Not everyone is meant to work with you and you’re not meant to work with everyone. That’s just the way it is.  Starting point Nobody leaves the gym feeling worse than when they got there. They leave feeling glad that they went. Training is your starting point.  Not all sales are equal. Don’t compromise yourself in the process of making a sale. Some sales aren’t the right ones and they’ll be a death sentence for your company.  Sales is a hustle and a grind, so you must approach every day with a vision of what you’re trying to create. We’re quick to judge ourselves against other people.  Sales is a relationship game. If people know, like, and trust you, they’ll open up to you. If they don’t, they’ll be closed to you. Relationships take time and they aren’t one-sided.  Burnout and stress are perspective-based. Stress is the result of pressures you put on yourself, and stress over time leads to burnout.  If you try to be perfect, you’ll ultimately fail. Hit singles. Don’t try to hit home runs. If you hit a single every day, you’ll get a run on the board and another man on base.  Create a healthy process for yourself and then execute every day.  “How to Deal With Stress, Fatigue, Burnout” episode resources Connect with Coach Dana at danacavalea.com or access his YouTube channel for more content. Grab a copy of his book, Habits of a Champion: Nobody Becomes a Champion By Accident. If you’re a sales rep looking to hone your craft and learn from the top 1% of sellers, make plans to attend the Sales Success Summit in Austin, Tx, October 14-15. Scheduled on a Monday and Tuesday to limit the impact to the sales week, the Sales Success Summit connects sellers with top-level performers who have appeared on the podcast. Visit Top1Summit.com to learn more and register!  You can also connect with me at donald@thesalesevangelist.com or try our first module of  TSE Certified Sales Training Program for free. This episode has been made possible with the help of  TSE Certified Sales Training Program, a training course designed to help sellers in improving their performance. We want you guys to go out each and every single day to find more ideal customers and do big things. I hope you like and learned many things from this episode. If you did, please review us and give us a five-star rating on Apple podcast or in any platform you’re using - Google Podcast, Stitcher, and Spotify.  You can also share this with your friends and colleagues.  Audio provided by Free SFX and Bensound.Mentioned in this episode:HubSpot and bluëmago | STUDIOSHubSpot and bluëmago | STUDIOS hubpspot.com/marketers bluemangostudios.com

While proper mindset is important, the actions high-growth coaches use to motivate their teams allow those teams to succeed in sales. Sarah Wirth works for EcSell Institute and studies sales leadership. Along with her team, they look at the coaches in the organizations they work with knowing that great coaches help teams to achieve better results.  Sarah travels the globe studying different teams and applying the best practices they can teach to sales leaders. Their research-based teachings on best practices are grounded in fact rather than opinion.  Misconceptions about coaching  One of the common misconceptions about coaching relates to the timing of team meetings or sales coaching. Most sales leaders do team meetings weekly thinking that getting everyone together via phone makes the team effective. Based on the study, however, the best sales leaders have their meetings once a month rather than once a week. The monthly meeting is much more interactive and educational than the weekly kind of communication.  Sales reps want an interactive educational team meeting where they can hear what the other departments are doing. They also want to hear and learn the best practices used by others in the company. They don’t want to sit and hear all the updates of what’s going on, because those things can be sent and read via mail.  Instead, sales reps want a certain level of engagement and content to share during meetings. This content is difficult to achieve when you meet every single week. A longer time frame gives birth to more stories and more experiences to share, which results in meaningful and substantive conversations where everyone on the team learns things.  Learning from experience  Sellers like to learn the best practices, so they listen to podcasts. They want to learn from people from different fields who bring radical and neat insights that they’re not aware of.  The interviews and surveys of salespeople reveal that they don’t want to hear the biggest deals. Instead, they want to hear how to get big deals. They want answers to the objections they encounter and tips to make presentations that help them win deals. They want to hear and learn the stories of how others became successful.  It’s more of knowing what they did and how they did it.  Salespeople want to be the best version of themselves. They aren’t into sales because of charity. They are in sales because they want to help their families and their clients.  Most sales leaders are promoted to their position because they were good salespeople. They go from the bottom to the top without getting any formal training, education, and information on how to become good sales leaders. They learn from experience, and that’s why they become successful. Unfortunately, they don’t know how to transfer all these learnings to their peers so their team can be successful and achieve better sales.  Motivate the team There are three actions high-growth sales coaches use to motivate their team:  Team meetings done in the right frequency and format One-on-one meetings with each of the team members Feedback on what they’re doing well and what they can improve These three are effective ways to help salespeople grow and improve their skills.  One-on-one meetings  One-on-one weekly meetings with each team member are as effective as doing one-on-one meetings every other week. Aside from the frequency, it is also important to follow a consistent structure.  The best sales leaders start their meetings with personal updates in the life of the salesperson they are talking to. They talk about how their family is doing, and if they’re working from home, sales leaders ask for updates on their projects. Sales leaders spend a few minutes connecting with their team members as people. They show that they care not only as a sales producer but also as a person.  The coaching and mentoring from one-on-one meetings change a salesperson’s motivation and attitude towards his work. It ignites a fire in him that helps the team meet its sales goals. Even books can’t do this because no matter how good the contents of the books are, the pages can’t hear their ideas or challenge them with questions. There is no substitute for talking through what’s going on in their sales territory or getting their input on the strategies that they’re pursuing.  Asking imploring questions during one-on-one meetings breeds in-depth conversations that are helpful for both parties to grow.  Do one-on-one meetings with your salespeople either weekly or bi-weekly depending on what works best for your team.  Give feedback  Give your team members feedback on their selling skills regularly. After successfully closing an important deal with your salespeople, debrief them, and discuss what you saw in their selling skills. Talk about what aspect they did well in the presentation and point out the things they can improve.  There is no better time to improve your team’s skills than seeing its members in action. When you see them do what they do best, you can talk conceptually around them. You can coach them on how to answer objections and even do roleplays to address different situations.  When you travel with your salespeople and see them in selling situations, you also learn how they interact with their customers, build rapport, present information, answer questions, direct conversations, and figure out the needs of the customers. You have the first-hand experience and you’ll know how to assess them on the things they’re doing well and how they can improve.  This is also a great opportunity for the salespeople to receive coaching from their leaders. They can see the things they need to work on from your perspective. This is beneficial for them and for the business.  Your team members may have the tendency of reporting only the good things that went down on a deal, excluding the challenges and how they addressed them. They may tweak the information they give you. When you are with them, you get to see them and give them the corrections and guidance they need. Sales leaders can also point out the effective things their salespeople did during the sales call. They can then repeat what they did in their future deals.  Career discussion  Career discussion is critical to a salesperson’s motivation as well as his career longevity on the team. Many sales leaders shy away from doing this because they don’t have specific paths for their salespeople.  There often isn’t a specific role that salespeople can be promoted to. Sometimes, salespeople don’t have goals other than being individual performers. They like to be in sales and not in other roles such as managers.  Based on research, a salesperson tends to make progress toward his career development goals and stay with the organization longer if the manager helps him make progress. Aside from that, salespeople tend to be motivated when they receive help from their superiors.  Management often doesn’t talk about things like this to its employees, causing them to feel stuck in whatever position they are in. It kills their motivation to achieve more in their careers.  Ask your salespeople how they feel about their careers or what they potentially want to do. You can’t assume that they’re doing okay; instead, draw the answers from them. Sarah Wirth and Bill Ekstrom’s book The Coaching Effect was the result of a career development discussion that Sarah did with him. He asked Sarah about her longterm big picture goals and she said that she’d like to write a book. It wasn’t anything serious for her at that moment. It was merely an idea. Fast forward to when they started really doing it and it happened.  Go outside your comfort zone  Another effective action that sales leaders can do is to get their team members outside their comfort zones.  Help your sellers be comfortable with discomfort. If you can get them outside of their comfort zones, they’re more likely to learn, grow, and develop. #SalesTeam Most of us want to be on the safe side and gravitate toward what we know but this is not helpful if we want to grow. The same is true for your team members. New roles or situations force your team members to learn, grow, and get better in order to handle the new challenges. Get your team members outside their comfort zones on a regular basis, especially if you see them starting to stagnate and get comfortable in their roles.  “The Actions High-Growth Coaches Use To Motivate Their Teams” episode resources Learn more about connecting with your salespeople today. Visit Ecsell Institute's website to learn more.   If you’re a sales rep looking to hone your craft and learn from the top 1% of sellers, make plans to attend the Sales Success Summit in Austin, Tx, October 14-15. Scheduled on a Monday and Tuesday to limit the impact to the sales week, the Sales Success Summit connects sellers with top-level performers who have appeared on the podcast. Visit Top1Summit.com to learn more and register!  You can also read more books to become a savvy salesperson and sales leader in Audible, your online library that houses over a thousand books. Register now to get a free book and a free 30-day trial by typing in audibletrial.com/tse.  This episode is brought to you in part by TSE Certified Sales Training Program, designed to help sales reps and sales teams improve their skills in finding the right customers, identifying the activities and strategies that work, and asking the right questions to build strong value and close business deals. Get the first two courses for free at thesalesvengelist.com/freecourse.  Which of the three actions have you tried in your team? Tell us about it in the comment section in Apple podcast. Your rating is equally appreciated, too. Share this with your colleagues who are using other podcast platforms as well including Google Podcast, Stitcher, and Spotify.  Audio provided by Free SFX and Bensound.Mentioned in this episode:HubSpot and bluëmago | STUDIOSHubSpot and bluëmago | STUDIOS hubpspot.com/marketers bluemangostudios.com

Sales from the Street - The Unicorn Seller    Jen is the unicorn seller and everyone is enchanted by her rainbow-colored sales skills. She has lots of techniques and strategies which help her close deals. You want Jen, but she’s from the competing company and just in time, you heard that Jen wants to jump ship. This is your dream come true!  You think of Jen and you automatically think of all the clients she’s bringing along. It’s a whole list of clients and deals closed left and right. Your company will be making money and you’re going to hire more people due to expansion. Jen is the answer!  As a top-performing sales rep, I was once Jen, too. I’ve had my fair share of being lured by other companies. I know how it feels to be offered something and to be on the receiving end of the decision whether to hire the top-performing sales rep or not.  Before making that decision, here are some things that you need to consider.   Why are they leaving? We make decisions out of desperation sometimes, especially if money is included in the picture. When your sales aren’t doing too well and you need the pipeline, you want people who can bring the money in. Even if you’re snagging them from the competitor.  You present them with a good 401k plan, you say all the nice things to convince them to jump to your company, and you tell them how fantastic your company’s culture is.  You need to assess the situation seriously before making a hiring decision. These are some of the questions that you can ask yourself:  Why are they leaving the company? Are they a problem in disguise? Are you willing to take that risk? Why would they come to your company when they’re already making tons of money in their current company? The answers to these questions will help you understand their reasons and see if they’re a fit for your company’s values.  What did they do for the competitor? In Mark Weinberg’s book, The Sales Management Simplified, he pointed out the need for sales leaders to consider what the salesperson did for the previous company. You need to consider whether they sold at their last company.  It is important to know the system of how their previous company worked. Find out whether they were tasked to find their opportunities or the opportunities were given to them. You need to be specific about the things they do well.  When hiring a top seller to your organization, be clear about whether his skills are a match to the skills that your company is looking for. You might end up bringing a burden to your company instead of an asset. #TopSeller What if the person you hire hates prospecting? After three months of work, you see no progress because that salesperson never had to prospect before and now she is having a difficult time. This situation is like putting together a jigsaw puzzle that doesn’t fit. It will never work. Be upfront  Many sales leaders and managers are lured into this kind of situation because they focus on the number of opportunities they will generate or the business they can get from their competitors once they’ve hired the top-earning sales rep.  But this isn’t always the case. You must remember that contracts are of two kinds: the long-term and short-term contracts. Jen, the unicorn seller, might be able to sweet-talk some of her clients into coming with her to the new company, but clients with long-term contracts will be staying in the previous company until their contract ends. When it does, you’ll need to coax them into coming to sign with your company. It’s a long process and it takes patience.  If that’s the case, you need to be upfront and figure out how much business Jen can bring over. Ask her how much business she is bringing along.  Talk about the numbers and figure out how you can convince the clients to jump from their current company to yours. Think of the agreement structure and find the solution. Figure out if there’s a non-compete. All of these things must be considered before you bring Jen along.  Take Tom, for example. I worked with Tom before and wherever he went, his clients tagged along with him. But that isn’t always the case for some clients who are in long-term agreements. People love Tom and he would often bring a couple of businesses with him to the current company. He is a great salesperson, but even at his best, he still can’t bring all of his clients along with him.  Culture  The fourth thing to consider is the culture of the company. Will the salesperson fit with the culture of your company? Will your sales team like the new person you’re bringing along? Is there bad blood between them in the past, perhaps like client stealing? It is challenging to fit in and adjust to the ways your company works right away.  The new salesperson you’re hiring must be willing to follow the culture. Have the adult talk and orient the salesperson to the ways of your company and how things work. Give her some time to adjust and if it still doesn’t work, then be ready to cut losses and move on.  Do not toss money on something that doesn’t work.  Contingency plan Have a contingency plan laid out in the event that Jen, or whoever you are hiring, doesn’t work out. You can think of some other way of increasing your sales by bringing somebody else. Maybe instead of the top seller, you hire the most experienced one.  A person with experience may not bring tons of businesses along but they come with an understanding of how to operate the business successfully. Perhaps you can hire someone who may not be Jen but who fits right in the culture of your company with proper coaching.  Interview properly  The last tip is to interview the prospects before hiring them. Grill them to make sure that they can do a great job. Do not cut corners and skip over the interview process. You must listen to the team and to the other executives before making the big decision.  Going back to Jen, even if you really want to hire her, try to disqualify her just as much as you want her. If you see her desire to work for you, that’s when you know that she’s a perfect fit. That’s when you know that you found your unicorn.  In my experience, the unicorn rarely exists. If it does, consider the tips I mentioned above.  “The Unicorn Seller” episode resources This episode is brought to you in part by Sales Success Summit.  If you’re a sales rep looking to hone your craft and learn from the top 1% of sellers, make plans to attend the Sales Success Summit in Austin, Tx, October 14-15. Scheduled on a Monday and Tuesday to limit the impact to the sales week, the Sales Success Summit connects sellers with top-level performers who have appeared on the podcast. Visit Top1Summit.com to learn more and register!  The episode is also brought to you in part by TSE Certified Sales Training Program, a helpful tool for sales leaders and sales reps to find the right customers, ask the right questions, and close powerful deals. The program has twelve courses with two courses for free!  Visit Audible as well and explore this huge online library with thousands of books. Register now to get a free book and a 30-day free trial.  August is my birth month and it would be amazing if you share this podcast to your friends as a birthday gift! Drop us your comments and reviews on Apple podcast. We are also on Google Podcast, Stitcher, Spotify.  Audio provided by Free SFX and Bensound.Mentioned in this episode:HubSpot and bluëmago | STUDIOSHubSpot and bluëmago | STUDIOS hubpspot.com/marketers bluemangostudios.com

The Pipeline Hoax The American dream or the pipeline hoax? The American dream is about owning a home or a piece of property that belongs to you. But homes are expensive and not everyone can afford the American dream. In the year 2000, people who shouldn’t have qualified for home-ownership started owning homes and this occurrence caused a worldwide crisis.  The housing crisis connects to sales in two ways: greed and improper qualification. Bankers wanted to get more mortgages so they could sell these mortgages to the secondary market. The problem with this is that people who were getting houses were not qualified for the mortgages they got. The bankers did whatever it took to get people through the door. When prices went up, these homeowners fell short and eventually lost their homes.  Sales pressure As sales leaders, you face this situation often. You need to bring in the dollars, and you’re judged based on how much money you can help the company make. Sales reps are expected to have as many deals as possible in the pipeline. This is where the hoax comes in.  Salespeople sometimes mask leads in later stages of the pipeline as opportunities. These deals don’t close because the people were never truly qualified. They don’t have the money or the time frame.  Sellers are marking leads who are investigating, doing research, and window shopping as though they are opportunities. The sales reps may have 50 of these deals but only 10 truly qualified people. The sales reps keep adding these people to the pipeline because they’re told to add opportunities. The quality decreases because they’re adding leads instead of real opportunities.  Similar to the housing crisis, the sales reps report these numbers to you. As the sales leader, you present it to the VPs and they make decisions based on the potential revenue sources. When the time comes for the revenue to start coming in, you look bad, the VPs look bad, and the company looks bad. As a result, someone is getting fired.  This situation causes a crisis within the organization. Sales leaders take the fall because they’ve been deceived by the sales reps who try to sell leads as opportunities.  Consistent education  As sales leaders, it’s your responsibility to make sure that the pipeline hoax doesn’t happen again. Yelling at your sales reps won’t solve the problem. What you need is consistent education.  One-on-one coaching time  One-on-one coaching time with your sales reps is critical. Make sure to establish a distinct definition of a lead versus an opportunity. Don’t assume that sales reps know this because it’s in the sales handbook or in the orientation. Play it safe by reiterating it to the sales reps so that the quality of your leads won’t deteriorate.  Watch the internal culture. Numbers are good but they must be the right numbers. Teach them that a proper lead is someone who shows interest, has the budget, and has a specific timeframe. Sales reps must be able to gauge this information in their business conversations.  Give the sales reps a rundown of the important steps in the process. Print them and put them on their desks to keep the culture focused on quality.  Sales leaders can talk about all these things with their sales reps in one-on-one meetings. Discuss these subjects with them, see how they take on deals, and don’t be afraid to identify and fix the problems.  Role-playing  Role-playing is another excellent method for educating your sales reps.  Have your sales reps do a role-play of how they talk to their clients Have your senior sellers who excel in their jobs demonstrate how they qualify their leads properly Point out how and what should happen or how they go about getting the proper information.  Doing all these things protects you from falling into the hoax.  Re-education is the answer to an organization’s problem. When the sales reps aren’t asking the right questions and when they don’t understand what leads and opportunities are, they’ll bring in numbers that look crazy at the end of the quarter.  Stop assuming that your team knows everything. Re-educate your sales team to the basics of the selling process. #BacktoBasic Foster the proper culture in the organization so your sales reps will bring in the right numbers and close more deals.  “The Pipeline Hoax” episode resources  Take care of your sales team and help them improve. Learn more about that with The Sales Evangelist Certifies Sales Training Program. It’s a helpful tool for salespeople and sales leaders to help them improve their skills and abilities in finding the right customers, asking the right questions, and closing a great deal. There are 12 modules in all but you can get the first two modules for free. If you’re a sales rep looking to hone your craft and learn from the top 1% of sellers, make plans to attend the Sales Success Summit in Austin, Tx, October 14-15. Scheduled on a Monday and Tuesday to limit the impact to the sales week, the Sales Success Summit connects sellers with top-level performers who have appeared on the podcast. Visit Top1Summit.com to learn more and register!  Check out Audible as well and its thousands of books. Try it now to get a 30-day free trial and a free book. Go to audibletrial.com/tse.  For my birthday, I’d love for you to share a rating or review for the podcast. It helps more people find our content so we can help more people do big things. If you like this episode, then do let us know by dropping us some comments and reviews on Apple podcast. We are also on Google Podcast, Stitcher, Spotify.  Audio provided by Free SFX and Bensound.Mentioned in this episode:HubSpot and bluëmago | STUDIOSHubSpot and bluëmago | STUDIOS hubpspot.com/marketers bluemangostudios.com

Some people believe that quitting is bad, but Dr. Stanley Robertson believes that the winners-never-quit fallacy is preventing your success. Dr. Stan — CFO for a non-profit in Chicago — takes issue with the idea that quitting is always bad and he wants to share ideas about how to become a successful quitter. Quitting  Quitting is simply giving up on something. You can quit going to the gym or quit a bad relationship or quit eating certain foods. You can quit just about anything. It’s easy to see from these examples that quitting isn’t always bad, but he takes it a step further. He believes that the winners-never-quit fallacy prevents people, and sellers, from finding success.  Sometimes we have to quit things, and sometimes it’s even desirable to quit things. In fact, we should be quitting things all the time.  Dr. Stan got the idea from his son, who is a Marine Corps officer. As he approached the end of his tour of duty, he called his dad one day to say he was considering quitting. He wasn’t sure he wanted to continue being a Marine Corps officer.  Dr. Stan’s advice at the time was to keep going. He pointed to the benefits, the prestige, and the opportunities it would provide. His son, who was 23 at the time, would be able to retire at 43. These were the things he thought were good. Eventually, he rethought his response, and he told his son that he should quit if that’s what he really wanted.  Quit shaming Based upon that experience, he came up with the concept of “quit shaming,” or embarrassing people because they quit things. We tend to look down on people who divorce from a bad marriage, or who quit a job that isn’t working out, or who quit an investment. We sometimes even hide the fact that we quit because we fear the pushback.  When Dr. Stan was young, a guy offered to sell him a VHS — which was new technology at the time — for $200, where it typically sold for $600. Stan bought the VHS only to find that the box was full of bricks rather than a VHS. He was devastated to lose all his money.  In order to replace the income, Stan stole things. He eventually went into the Marine Corps himself, where his petit theft ended in a court-martial, with Stan losing his stripes. He knew he had to quit making those same choices. In the end, he gave up stealing and earned his law degree.  Every human being goes through a growth process that demands that they give up things along the way. In fact, seasons of life sometimes lead us to quit things. Take, for example, Arnold Swarzenegger, who gave up body-building for acting, and then gave up acting for politics.  Our life cycle often causes us to give up things, but some people can’t disengage from the things they are doing because they are emotionally tied to them.  Course correction The point isn’t to quit altogether because something isn’t working out. Instead, make a course correction. Do the next right thing.  In order to be successful in life, you have to create new things and new goals to replace the things you gave up.  The biggest challenge for people who need to disengage from things is emotional trauma. If you’re going to quit, acknowledge the negative emotions. Recognize that some people will try to embarrass you, so you must develop a plan forward. The negativity will be less impactful if you have a new plan in place.  We have a problem disengaging from things. Researchers conducted a study called the Jigsaw Puzzle Study in which they studied two groups who were tasked with completing a jigsaw puzzle. One group completed the puzzle, while the group was intentionally interrupted. Researchers discovered that the group who completed the puzzle was happy, while the other group spent twice as much time thinking about the puzzle.  The human brain is hard-wired for completion. When we give up something, our brains are hard-wired to complete that circle.  Times you shouldn’t quit Don’t quit because things are hard. If you struggle to sell your product, don’t quit. Continue working, and push through those struggles to become a better seller.  Don’t quit because you haven’t succeeded yet. The get-rich-quick concept isn’t realistic, and your success could happen next month.  Don’t quit because you covet your neighbor’s success. Never compare yourself to someone else’s performance. It’s ok to gain inspiration from your neighbor, but don’t quit because of it.  How to quit Interestingly, most people don’t struggle to continue on a given path because that concept has been drilled into our psyche. Ninety-nine out of 100 people will advise you to keep going. Dr. Stan’s work focuses on those people who want or need to give up something but they struggle to disengage. He teaches them how to make that break.  One of his clients struggled with her weight and her husband belittled her for it. She didn’t want to give up the relationship, partly because they had a business together. She feared that people would question her decision to quit, but eventually, she got a divorce. Once she gave up the business and the marriage, she lost all the weight and her confidence soared.  Abandon a deal For sellers, this could appear as a deal that you’ve invested so much time in that you’re hesitant to walk away. Even when your gut tells you that it will never close, you continue investing your time and resources into it because you’re emotionally tied to it.  The truth is that failure to let go of the wrong deal can cause you to miss a better opportunity that can succeed. Sometimes buyers aren’t going to buy, and it’s ok to walk away from those deals. #WrongDeal The sunk-cost fallacy refers to the tendency to make decisions based upon what happened in the past rather than making decisions based upon the outcoming you’re hoping for. The fact that a deal didn’t work out in the past has no bearing on what might happen in the future. We often make decisions because we’ve spent so much money on something.  Ringling Brothers had been in business for 146 years making all kinds of money, but last year they went out of business. They had been sued by animal rights activists and the company wouldn’t give up the use of animals. The company was emotionally invested in the use of animals, despite the fact that other groups like Cirque Du Soleil hold wildly successful circuses with no animals.  Blockbuster should have quit using VHS and moved to DVD or streaming. The company should have engaged in new technology, but they had invested so much in their inventory that they couldn’t disengage.  You should not be prevented from giving up things for fear of other people’s opinions. Don’t let anyone else stop you from changing course. Always make the decision for yourself. Do not fail to disengage because of what others might say about you.  “Winners never quit fallacy” episode resources Check out Dr. Stan’s book, Quit: The Last Principle of Success at www.thequitdoctor.com.  Connect with me at donald@thesalesevangelist.com. If you’re a sales rep looking to hone your craft and learn from the top 1% of sellers, make plans to attend the Sales Success Summit in Austin, Tx, October 14-15. Scheduled on a Monday and Tuesday to limit the impact to the sales week, the Sales Success Summit connects sellers with top-level performers who have appeared on the podcast. Visit Top1Summit.com to learn more and register!  You can also connect with me at donald@thesalesevangelist.com or try our first module of  TSE Certified Sales Training Program for free. This episode has been made possible with the help of  TSE Certified Sales Training Program, a training course designed to help sellers in improving their performance. We want you guys to go out each and every single day to find more ideal customers and do big things. I hope you like and learned many things from this episode. If you did, please review us and give us a five-star rating on Apple podcast or in any platform you’re using - Google Podcast, Stitcher, and Spotify.  You can also share this with your friends and colleagues.  Audio provided by Free SFX and Bensound.Mentioned in this episode:HubSpot and bluëmago | STUDIOSHubSpot and bluëmago | STUDIOS hubpspot.com/marketers bluemangostudios.com

Your company continues to grow and you need leaders to guide your team, so you’re considering the question, “When should I promote someone?”   Because of your company’s growth, you need leaders and you need managers. So who should you promote? What do you look for in the people who will lead your teams? What characteristics or habits should they possess?  Developing leaders Even if your business isn’t growing at breakneck speed, you may need to focus on developing people who can lead when the time comes. The last thing you want to do is keep people in the same position for long periods of time without any opportunity for growth. They’ll get tired and burn out, and then they’ll look elsewhere for growth opportunities. Make sure you’re always looking for ways to create and develop leaders internally.  The qualities necessary for leaders in your industry may differ from those of other segments, but for sellers in general, the following guidelines offer a good start for identifying potential leaders.  Seller doesn’t equal leader Your employee might be a spectacular seller, but that doesn’t necessarily translate to leadership. Furthermore, if you have a particularly gifted seller on your team, you may not want to remove him from that sales role.  It’s tempting to believe that your best closer can become a sales leader and train all your other sellers to close as effectively as he does. And it might be true that he can. But it might also be true that he loves selling and he doesn’t want to spend his time conducting one-on-ones or creating reports.  If your team members aren’t interested in leading, don’t force them. Let your sellers do what they do best for your company. Look for these traits as you ponder when to promote someone. Sellers who want to lead When you begin your search, look for sellers who actually want to lead. If one of your team members talks frequently about leading or climbing the corporate ladder, consider giving him the opportunity to do it. If he is ambitious and goal-oriented, he might be just the leader you’re looking for.  I recently met with a BDR that a client of mine hired, and the guy was passionate about his work. He strives to go above and beyond the call of duty, and he wants to work his way into a leadership role. He wants to contribute to the organization, but he isn’t power-hungry. He understands that great leaders don’t threaten the people above them because they aren’t competing to take their jobs.  Prepare your replacements as you consider other opportunities you’ll compete for.  In every leadership role, consider who could replace you in your position, and then ask yourself how you can develop that person. #SalesLeaders Sellers with a proven track record Desire isn’t enough to be a successful seller. You must also have good results behind your name.  You’ll note that I said above that you should not necessarily remove your top seller to turn him into a sales leader. The exception is when that seller is the best candidate for the job and when she wants to do the job.  Recognize, too, that a top performer won’t necessarily be the only team member with amazing results. Consider the top five sellers on your team and then decide whether any of them possess leadership potential.  Consider whether they have any desire to train other sellers, and take note of a “lone wolf” mentality that suggests they don’t want to share with others. Make it your goal to develop a nurturing leadership approach in which team members help one another.  Sellers who don’t volunteer to lead Keep in mind that some sellers may not volunteer to lead, but that shouldn’t necessarily exclude them from consideration. If they have the framework, the talents, and the characteristics of a great leader, challenge them to step out of their comfort zone.  In the book Sales Management. Simplified, Mike Weinberg recalls a CEO who believed it was his responsibility to stretch people like a rubber band: to the edge of their capabilities without breaking them.  They may not recognize their own capabilities, but your job is to help them see what they are capable of.  Sellers who are problem-solvers Too often, sellers fall into the trap of complaining about their work situations. Instead of looking for ways to improve things, they look for mistakes. That negative outlook shows in their results. Look for sellers who are problem-solvers as you seek people to promote. Typically, they’ll be your best sellers because they make it a practice to solve problems for customers. If you find a seller like this among your team members and promote him, he’ll set an example of problem-solving for the rest of the team.  You’ll have less to worry about because they’ll solve the problems before they get to you. Surround yourself with leaders who can think for you and take care of things so you can focus on other issues.  Sellers who are willing to work Your leaders must be willing to work hard. This doesn’t mean that they work 18-hour days, because it’s very possible to do great work in less time. Instead, you want leaders who can plan and accomplish things.  Watch for the people on your team who show up for work early or who listen to podcasts to learn more. Be aware of the people on your team who dedicate time and effort to develop themselves.  This isn’t about developing a culture of staying late every day, but rather a willingness to do whatever it takes to get the job done. For me, I’m a family guy, and Mondays and Fridays are my family days during the week. If I need to stay late, I’ll make it happen around those commitments.  Sellers who are developing themselves As a bonus, look for people on your team who are investing in themselves. Find those people who are reading books or seeking events to further their training or signing up for webinars that will help them improve their skill set.  If your team members are seeking to improve without you telling them to, you’re well on your way to finding an amazing leader.  Help your team members get to the next level and transition into roles that challenge them.  “When should I promote someone?” episode resources If you’re a sales rep looking to hone your craft and learn from the top 1% of sellers, make plans to attend the Sales Success Summit in Austin, Tx, October 14-15. Scheduled on a Monday and Tuesday to limit the impact to the sales week, the Sales Success Summit connects sellers with top-level performers who have appeared on the podcast. Visit Top1Summit.com to learn more and register!  You can also connect with me at donald@thesalesevangelist.com or try our first module of  TSE Certified Sales Training Program for free. This episode has been made possible with the help of  TSE Certified Sales Training Program, a training course designed to help sellers in improving their performance. We want you guys to go out each and every single day to find more ideal customers and do big things. I hope you like and learned many things from this episode. If you did, please review us and give us a five-star rating on Apple podcast or in any platform you’re using - Google Podcast, Stitcher, and Spotify.  You can also share this with your friends and colleagues.  Audio provided by Free SFX and Bensound.Mentioned in this episode:HubSpot and bluëmago | STUDIOSHubSpot and bluëmago | STUDIOS hubpspot.com/marketers bluemangostudios.com

Sellers often face obstacles in their sales process, and the need to remove them is sometimes referred to as the need to “Shoot the donkey.” Will Batista has worked on several presidential campaigns and other political campaigns throughout the country. He recently led a state ballot initiative to change Nevada’s constitution and now he is now working in the energy sector, particularly in the communications and investor relations of the company. Jonathan Diaz works in the university setting where he serves as an adviser and he also teaches classes.  Shoot the donkey  This phrase originates from an article that Will discovered while he was looking at political media companies. Shooting the donkey means removing obstacles in your course.  In the movie Patton, based on true events, the characters were heading up a mountain but there was a donkey in the way. Failure to get the donkey out of the way would put them in a dire situation resulting in casualties, so they sent out some of the guys to move the donkey. Nothing worked so the general said, ‘Shoot the donkey!’  Sometimes we have to remove obstacles in our way by whatever means necessary, especially in the sales industry, where you eat or you don’t eat based on the sales you make. #ShootTheDonkey Remove the obstacles  When we were in college, our obstacles were our beliefs. We didn’t believe in ourselves as much as we should have. There are times that we don’t give ourselves credit when we should. This is true in sales as well. You might not trust your sales ability and you keep telling yourself that you’re no good at it. This idea is difficult to overcome but it’s imperative that you get through it because it’s the only way for you to become successful.  For example, back in college when we were selling water, the first obstacle that we had was that we spent a lot of money to get a booth and to get all the water. In order to do that business at a bigger scale, we needed more people, so we went to Idaho Falls and that’s when we did a better job.  The third time, we ran out of water and we could have given up, but we didn’t. Will went to Sam’s club and got ice and made it happen.  We succeeded on a small scale. We didn’t make hundreds and thousands of dollars but it was proof that when you put a desire into action, you can make it happen.  Fear of obstacles Sometimes we fear obstacles and see them as a negative thing because they do have a negative impact at that moment. There is, however, an opportunity for growth and change in every obstacle, and the ability to tackle problems in a different way. It is a great time for a change and to challenge your ability to think differently.  The water selling was very basic but year after year, we saw that we’re not doing so great and that became an opportunity to improve the process. Obstacles are typically not good things, but they are opportunities for us to grow and to think critically so that when we are faced with another problem in the future, we will be able to overcome the challenge.  In politics  A lot of times when you are trying to get something done, there are always goals that you need to meet. Will was thrown into the fire in his first year working as field staff in Reno because he had no experience recruiting volunteers or meeting metrics.  He had to learn the ropes quickly and the obstacles he faced were the goals that were being imposed on him. He had to find ways to meet the goals regardless of whether he had volunteers or not.  Will needed to get into these gated communities but he couldn’t get in. Sometimes, they’d follow another car and find a way to get to the individuals and voters to get their contact information. He had to do whatever was necessary to meet their goals. They had goals in mind and they focused their actions to meet the goals.  Obstacles will always be there but you’ve gotta do what you’ve gotta do.  Another challenge was getting people into the office to make the calls for the campaign so sometimes, Will had two phones going at the same time. He’d be leaving a message on one phone and talking on the other. Hustling is when you do what you need to do to hit your goals.  For students John advises students of three main things as they seek the best fit:  Identify their interests  Identify their skills and abilities Determine their values, or the things that are important to them For students, the biggest obstacle is the parental control or familial influence. Students now are pressured with the idea that they need to choose a major that will provide them with stability in the future. Many are being pushed into taking courses that they aren’t interested in, courses that they aren’t good at, and courses that are not even aligned to their values.  John tells his students that for them to shoot the donkey, they need to remove the barrier and talk to their parents. They need to choose the major of their choice because, at the end of the day, it’s them who will go through all the studying and not their parents.  John helps the students remove the barrier of parental control to see the other options and areas that can work for them.  Removing barriers A typical challenge in sales is the people. Sales leaders manage sales teams and often they feel like they don’t have enough qualified workforce or that they don’t have enough people with qualified sales experience. Sales leaders overcome this obstacle by trusting the skills that people bring from all different walks of life.  If you are experiencing a barrier in your sales, and you’ve hit a plateau even when you already have a very good team, try to think outside the box. Bring in somebody from outside of the organization who can break down the barriers that your current sales team cannot.  Whether it’s in politics, in the corporate world, or in sales, people often fail to recognize the skills that people from other industries have. It’s time to break down that barrier and start looking outside your comfort zone.  Keep it real without being rude. Give real feedback without being demeaning. You don’t want to waste time so it is important to make the choice that you really want.  “Sales From The Street - "Shoot the Donkey" resource episode  Connect with Will in his LinkedIn account or email him in batista.wilfredo@gmail.com. You can also reach John via his email jondlazas@gmail.com and johndssj@gmail.com.  Whatever role you are playing in your industry, I challenge you to go out and look for the challenges that are in your way. Remove the challenges, make the hard decisions, and make things happen.  If you’re a sales rep looking to hone your craft and learn from the top 1% of sellers, make plans to attend the Sales Success Summit in Austin, Tx, October 14-15. Scheduled on a Monday and Tuesday to limit the impact to the sales week, the Sales Success Summit connects sellers with top-level performers who have appeared on the podcast. Visit Top1Summit.com to learn more and register!  This episode has been fun and it’s brought to you in part by Audible. It has thousands of books and it offers a 30-day trial and a free book when you sign up. Just type audibletrial.com/tse and start discovering the books to become a sales savvy.  The episode is also brought to you in part by the TSE Certified Sales Training Program. It is a helpful tool for sales leaders and sales reps in improving their skills. It teaches you how to find better prospects, how to have meaningful conversations, and what questions to ask to close deals. Check out the program now and get the first two modules for free.  Visit thesalesevangelist.com/freecourse to find more information about the program.  If you like this episode then tell us about it, give us your good review and rate us on  Apple podcast.  You can also find us in Google Podcast, Stitcher, and Spotify.  Audio provided by Free SFX and Bensound.Mentioned in this episode:HubSpot and bluëmago | STUDIOSHubSpot and bluëmago | STUDIOS hubpspot.com/marketers bluemangostudios.com