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In this episode of the Advanced Selling Podcast, I share a lamenting sports officiating story about out of control, fourth grade hoops parents.
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You know who you are.
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Bill makes the ultimate low accountability example by simply saying, I don t have a mirror.
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And we talk about the lesson of personal responsibility and what element of that you need in your sales life.
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Welcome back to the Advanced Selling Podcast, the longest running sales training podcast in podcast history.
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My name is Brian Neal.
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I m Bill Kasky.
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We re here every week for your listening enjoyment.
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Welcome, veteran listeners, those who ve been around a while, we love you.
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Thanks for tuning in.
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We d also love to have you part of our Insider Program, wonderful group of listeners that gets together and goes a little level deeper.
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The other cool thing is Bill and I are live in that program, literally for an hour 15.
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Our next Insider is this coming Friday.
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So if you re listening to this,
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Well, no, when is this going to be?
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Never mind.
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Scratch that.
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See, I knew I d screw that up.
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Keep this all in there, Trevi.
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Anyway, the replay will be available.
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So anyways, it s the first Friday of every month.
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And if you want some live coaching from me and Bill, it s so worth the money.
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Yeah, and this Friday, and if you get into the program after Friday, you ll be able to get access, as Brian said, is we re going to be focusing on whatever is on your mind.
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In the past few months, we ve had topics.
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We ve had specific topics like messaging, and lead generation, and business planning.
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And we wanted to do one every quarter, where we just focused on what s in the room.
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Yes.
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So the people on this call will be bringing us their biggest issues, biggest opportunities, biggest problems.
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We ll get some other sets of eyes and ears on it.
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Yes.
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And so those we re going to be doing that every quarter.
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And this happens to be one of the ones we re doing here in February.
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For sure.
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So all of you listening need to really strongly consider being a part of that program.
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It s really cool.
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And the entry fee is minimal compared to the value.
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I ll just tell you that on purpose.
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OK.
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So go to advancedsellingpodcast.com slash insider if you want to get a little bit more information and see what s coming up in store for future trainings.
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Thanks for saving me on the CTA, Bill.
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It s all right, man.
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Call it.
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CTA.
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It s my middle name.
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CTA.
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I love it.
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So here s something that happened.
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So I m a sports official.
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I m a professional sports official.
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I ve been refereeing for 33, almost 34 years.
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I ve heard it all from the stands, from coaches, from everything.
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Here s my question to you.
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I went to my stepson s fourth grade basketball game yesterday.
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Fourth grade basketball game.
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He s my stepson.
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Doesn t go to the same school my kids went to.
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The parent group, and there s a couple specific ones, were the most of our team, were the most obnoxious,
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group of parents towards sports officials I ve ever seen in fourth grade basketball.
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And I struggled to not say anything.
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And I didn t say anything.
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But I just like, do you remember how you were when your kids were that age?
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And I don t know, because I m a ref.
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I ve got a little clout.
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You ve got a different perspective.
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I want an objective opinion.
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Fourth grade, right?
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High school, OK.
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It s a little more competitive.
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There s more at stake.
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We ve lost our minds in kids  sports at these lower levels, I believe.
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And here s the sad part of it, is two of the kids, including our stepson, who is not wired this way, the first thing he said to us was how bad the refs were.
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And he said that because he heard his coaches and all the other parents saying it.
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And you re teaching kids that it s someone else s fault that you got beat and you re no good, other than the kid who the best kid on the team who went 0 for 20.
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That s kind of our topic today, is personal responsibility.
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That s a perfect example of how our external environments, when we re growing up,
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can shift that responsibility from we just played a bad game to they called a bad game.
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And we lost because of that.
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That one ref, he hated me.
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Why did this ref hate me so much?
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And the team.
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And having reffed that level of basketball, it is impossible.
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Oh, yeah.
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It is nothing more than a cafeteria.
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Everybody s slapping.
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It s a cafeteria, right?
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You got to pick what you call.
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And if anybody knows, and I know this is cliche for refs to say, but what s great, we have a shortage of sports officials.
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So any of you dads and moms,
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I gotta say both, are one of these yellers or screamers at a basketball game, or a baseball game, or a football game.
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I invite you, I ll be right alongside you, go out and just call one half, and you ll see what it feels like and how difficult it is.
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And not even just it s difficult by itself, when you get in these lower level, like you said, these kids, and they have crappy shoes, so they slide.
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That s right, they slide.
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That s a travel.
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I m like, he s nine, and he s got slicky shoes, right?
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It just doesn t work.
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I m like, people, we ve lost our minds.
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Sports, youth sports has lost our minds.
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I remember when I was in high school playing for the high school team, and all of the high school players would referee the Carmel Dads Club of Italy.
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So I think we usually had fourth or maybe fifth or sixth grade.
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And so when we walked into the gym, this is not, I m not trying to be blustering here,
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There was a little bit of like, oh, wow, there s Jim Mingledown, Terry Brookie, and Bill Kasky.
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And so I don t think we got as much static from the fans, because they kind of knew us, and they kind of probably felt sorry for us.
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You guys just played a game last night.
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Here it is, 8 AM Saturday, and you re out here.
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But I remember we paid like $5 or something a game, and we thought we had hit the high cash.
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Oh, totally, the tall cotton.
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Yeah.
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I mean, you can get a six-pack of Mickey s Big Mouse for $2 back then.
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So the topic, though, is a story kind of matches the topic.
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And the topic is personal responsibility.
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And are we taking personal responsibility for our own lives?
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And I know in this political environment and all the crazy stuff that s going on in 2020, sometimes I sit back and I look and say, have we missed this whole personal responsibility thing?
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Because we re waiting for somebody else to take care of us, to do something, to send us a stimulus check,
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to get us a vaccine, to deliver masks.
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We re constantly in this motion of waiting for the outside world to take care of us.
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And I think we ve lost a little bit of something.
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I think salespeople typically have a fair amount of personal responsibility kind of baked into them.
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But I thought it was a topic worth talking about and thinking about it at a little bit deeper level than just
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Am I showing up at my job on time?
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Am I making the appropriate calls?
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Down to, am I responsible for what I think, and how I feel, and what I think about my place of work, and what I think about the job I m doing?
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I just think there s a lot of misses there.
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Yes.
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And you as a listener, here s a great little test for yourself.
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Think about your either last sales review, or last quarterly review, or your commission, or whatever, or conversation with your manager in one of those time periods where you missed.
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Think of that time period where you missed last, and you re in the conversation with your manager.
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And your manager essentially wants to get to the root of what happened.
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Rewind that conversation and ask yourself,
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Of all the things I said, of the reasons why I didn t reach my goal, how much of those were directed towards myself?
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And how much were directed at external circumstances?
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And my experience has been, when I ask people, why did you miss?
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The last place they look is in the mirror.
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It s the last stop.
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And some of them don t even know to go there.
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Well, I would look in a mirror, but I don t have a mirror, so.
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You don t have a mirror?
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So it s your fault.
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Oh, OK.
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I m just kidding.
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That s the ultimate excuse.
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I can t look in the mirror.
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That s actually really funny.
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That s great.
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That would be good.
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Have you looked in the mirror?
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Well, I don t have a mirror.
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Where am I supposed to put a mirror?
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I got nowhere.
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I mean, look at this office you ve got me in.
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There s no room for mirrors on the cubes.
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Totally.
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It s true though.
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It s true, isn t it?
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This is how it is sometimes.
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OK, so let s start there.
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So my first statement on this topic is that should be the first place you look.
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And it s really hard to do.
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But you ve got to go back to yourself, the term take care of your side of the street.
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It s a very, very common term.
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Other rooms and you re like, okay, I ve got to take care of my own stuff because I can t control everybody else external yet It s the last place we look so the takeaway I m giving the example for you as the listener is to start on your side of the street
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and really delve into your contribution of any of these things.
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Outcome, calls, profit, margins low on your deals, whatever.
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Start with yourself first.
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I heard a guy the other night, his name is Mikhailovich, and I can t remember his first name.
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He s written a couple of books on some corporate visioning work, but he said the biggest
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problem we have today is that we don t know how to find the biggest problem we have today.
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Because we re all so close to our own game that we can t sit in the press box and be on the field.
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We can t watch the game unfold and be in the game.
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It s hard to do.
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Great players can do that.
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But I think that s a good lesson for us as we take responsibility for, well, what are the results that we re not getting?
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And how can I trace that back to something that I m not doing, not thinking, not prepared for?
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Everybody talks about LinkedIn and how I should be on LinkedIn, but nobody s making me be on it, so maybe I shouldn t be on it.
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And then I think, well, wait a minute.
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If you have personal responsibility for your results,
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and LinkedIn is a part of that, why are you waiting for someone to tell you to get on it?
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Yes.
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Coaching can be really valuable here, too.
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I do a little coaching, and I know you do, too, with some of the corporate clients we both have.
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And sometimes when you re with a coach, they can peer around all the excuses and all the blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, and get to the real issue, because they will be able to see it where you can t.
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Right.
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And I think that s a real value in having a coach.
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I ve coached enough people, and I know you have too, that you can sometimes in 15, 20 minutes peer around the noise and get to the real nugget.
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Yes.
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From Noise to Nugget by Brian Neal and Bill Kasky.
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Clubhouse.
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It s a Clubhouse title.
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Noise to Nugget.
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I think everyone has a...
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I think we have a personal responsibility to, well, I already said to start where you are first.
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But I also think we have a personal responsibility to question our own behaviors.
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Because we don t do that very often.
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We don t look back and say, what did I do or not do?
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And we have clients all the time.
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And if you get coaching from Bill or me, you re almost always going to get a similar answer here.
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They re giving me pushback on price.
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They won t call me back.
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These are very tactical things.
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But where we will always start in our coaching practice is, well, what are you doing or saying that s causing them to push back on price or not saying?
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What are you doing, saying, or not saying that s causing them to not call you back?
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That s where the whole game starts.
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It has to start there.
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We can t look external at those things.
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I think that s really, really important to do.
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Yeah, so you ve just defined the very essence of personal responsibility by asking yourself the question What role have I played in this outcome that I didn t want?
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Yes That was an optimum and I can t just always say well, you know, that s just them.
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They re just price buyers Yes, and you have to say well, what did I not show them?
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How did I not demonstrate things?
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Yes.
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Here s another thing that I think that we do is
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is there s sort of a check-the-box mentality, I think, that sometimes we sales professionals have, where we ve got to get a capabilities PowerPoint ready for the client meeting, virtual meeting next week.
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Yes.
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OK.
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So we ve got one that we did.
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Oh, we did this about six months ago.
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Let s look at this one.
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Can we just improve it a little bit?
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Yes, instead of saying oh, wait a minute now.
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This client is different.
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This potential client is different than that one What do these people want?
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What story could we tell these people that really connected our value with their pains and problems?
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You know, what are their color schemes in their company and how can we I m not talking about putting their logo on our PowerPoints but how can we shore up the look and the design of things so that it I
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Feels right to them.
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It feels they recognize that it s not aerial font, but it s Avenir next font Because that s what they use seriously I mean if you want to make people feel comfortable Start using the same colors and copy and font and and just the whole vibe and people will say well geez they get us and they won t be able to tell you why
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But I think a lot of times we just go for the checkbox.
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Well, you got the PowerPoint?
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Yeah.
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We didn t pay any attention to color schemes, to line items, to pictures, to visuals, and we just mail it in.
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And I don t think, especially in a virtual world, mailing it in, you maybe can mail it in if you have an effervescent personality and you show up in the office and you re good with people.
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Virtual, it s not the same.
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Your PowerPoint and your,
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your, whatever the visual demonstration of your value is, takes on a little bit more importance.
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Truth.
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We can t mail it anymore anyways, because no one uses mail.
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We got to text it in.
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We got to text it in.
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We got to email it in.
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What was that, Avenir what?
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Avenir next?
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Avenir next?
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Never heard that one before.
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There s two fonts.
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There s Avenir, which should come on your Mac.
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With a B?
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Like Bravo?
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Avenir?
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Avenir.
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A-V-E-N-I-R.
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And you ll see it everywhere.
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Once you see it, you ll see Avenir everywhere.
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That s great.
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I love learning things.
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I didn t know Avenir text was a thing.
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OK, here s my last one.
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This is a little deep.
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Maybe, I don t know, let s see.
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I think you have a responsibility to surrender that it s not you.
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What I mean by that is we tend to have a good month
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And we think it s us, right?
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And our bosses think it s us.
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High five.
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Bill had a great month.
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Bill did seven figures this month.
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Go, Bill.
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He was at 180% of quota.
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And I have a crappy month.
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And it s like, oh, Brian had a crappy month, OK?
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He was 20% of quota, blah, blah.
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You know, this guy sucks.
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Whatever.
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None of those things are related.
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you ve got to give power to something bigger than yourself and all this stuff.
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Because otherwise, you ll take credit for things you shouldn t take credit for, and you ll give yourself blame that you shouldn t give yourself blame for.
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So I think you ve got to surrender this and say, I have a role in this, but in the end, it s not all just me on either side of the fence.
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Does that make sense?
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Because I think a lot of people, I ve seen a lot of people have, they get deflated with bad sales numbers, and they internalize that and think they re a bad person or a bad
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business person, and they re not at all.
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They just had a couple of bad months, you know?
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Like, who cares?
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Surrender.
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So what you re saying there is, accept the responsibility to the extent you actually have it when things are going poorly, but don t overly exaggerate your role when things are going great.
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That s the danger.
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And when we say, look in the mirror.
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Is that healthy balance?
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Yes, it s very healthy.
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But you still have to separate you as the human and the soul from those things along the way, too.
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Because some people take too much responsibility for that, right?
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When things go well.
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Oh, I suck, or it s all me, or I didn t do this, I didn t do that.
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Okay, that does that just those are mechanical things.
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Yeah, you re still a great human on the inside I was listening to a podcast the other day.
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They interviewed the Producer executive producer of the Queen s Gambit you ever heard of the Queen s Gambit I have heard of the Queen s Gambit and I know it s about a woman who plays chess.
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Yeah, it s a Netflix hit It was number one all 2020.
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Yes, and
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Although he did say, the announcer said, do you think that the fact that we were all quarantined had something to do with the popularity?
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He goes, no, not really.
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I m like, what are you talking about?
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That s the only reason.
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No, it was a really good movie.
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But he sat on it for 35 years.
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He had rights to the movie for 35 years, since 1985, 1986.
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I didn t know that.
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And he said he was always trying to find a studio to do it, a director, and he couldn t find it.
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I didn t know that.
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And when this host would ask this producer about how great he was, he was always really clear in deflecting all of that praise.
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He said, look, I appreciate these words, but Scott Blank was the director.
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We don t have him, we don t have a hit.
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What s-her-name was the actress.
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We don t have her, we don t have a hit.
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So this idea that I m the one that brought it to life, yeah, I mean, I had a hand in it.
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But without these people, this is a nothing burger.
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See, there you go.
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And I think high-integrity people always are deflecting the praise and saying, look, this was a team effort.
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If it was a team, if it wasn t, obviously.
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But it almost always is.
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It always is.
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Even the professional golfer, he or she s got coaches, got mentors, got
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people who help them through slumps and techniques and all that.
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Yes, everybody.
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And I will go on record in saying that a Whataburger is way better than a Nothingburger without question.
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We ll have the Whataburger In-N-Out debate on a later episode.
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That s a very loaded topic.
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We ll do a Clubhouse on that.
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And I am very strong in my beliefs about In-N-Out versus Whataburger.
1
SPEAKER_01
OK, that s it.
1
SPEAKER_01
We d love to have you as part of the Insider Program.
1
SPEAKER_01
Go to advancedsellingpodcast.com.
1
SPEAKER_01
Click on the little button that says, How to Become an Insider.
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SPEAKER_01
We d love to see you there.
1
SPEAKER_01
We re there every Friday, the first Friday of every month, doing live coaching, live coaching people.
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SPEAKER_01
You have to be part of that.
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SPEAKER_01
Please join us there.
1
SPEAKER_01
And join our LinkedIn group.
1
SPEAKER_01
We re up to about 12,000 people.
1
SPEAKER_01
And we re going to plop some things in there, along with this little clubhouse deal.
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SPEAKER_01
We re going to get that rolling, too.
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SPEAKER_01
So you can hear us record live.
1
SPEAKER_01
All right.
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SPEAKER_01
That s it.
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SPEAKER_01
See you next time.
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SPEAKER_01
See you next time.
1
SPEAKER_01
Bye.