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Welcome everybody back to the Advanced Selling Podcast, the longest running sales training podcast, Podcast History.
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I m one of your hosts, Bill Kasky.
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Other host here, Brian Neal.
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And you ll notice today that my audio is not up to par.
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I am on the road, sitting in a room that has absolutely no padding other than a little rug.
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So you re hearing a little echo and my microphone s not good.
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So
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Brian, you re going to have to take the show.
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No, I m not going to take the show.
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I will just cue you if there s movement or echo.
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It makes me validated that I hung all of these freaking styrofoam panels up in my office.
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Makes me feel like it was worth something.
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It was.
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It was.
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Let s see.
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We re going to talk about 2023 here in a second, which is a fun topic to start talking about.
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Q4, Bill, I was at a very, very large sales conference that our friends at Salesforce put on called Dreamforce.
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It s like their Palooza, so to speak.
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Crazy, crazy, big, fun, great, well, I know one of your daughters works there.
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and helps put it on.
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They know how to do a show.
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And they know how to do a show from the standpoint, you know, the old days, the shows were basically excuses to get drunk.
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Pretty much that was it.
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Well, this is super informed.
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They did a really good job.
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But on the way out, I was flying, flying out there and fly a lot.
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And I ve had a first, a first that I ve never seen before.
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There s a couple next to me checking in, two women, and they re filling out some forms.
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And, uh, the ticket agent said, uh, here, you re going to need to fill this one out too.
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And she goes, Oh, is this for Puffy?
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And she goes, yeah, she s going to need to sign it.
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I look over and Puffy is a dog.
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That s going to be flying in the underbelly of the plane.
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You know, they have like a special plan for the dogs, but I m like, how is Puffy going to sign the document that says like, she s cool with all this stuff.
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And I m like, and I m watching.
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And then the one woman said to her partner, she s like, yeah, we ve got a file.
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This one s for Puffy to fill it out.
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She s like, she s good.
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She had felt like this.
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It s like, it s like a kid flying.
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And I never saw her put the paw print on the thing.
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I didn t see, like, she didn t dip the paw print in ink and put it on.
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But I don t know if it s like, if the person, the agent didn t realize it was a dog and thought Puffy was a kid or I don t know.
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It was just weird.
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I d never, there was a lot of hubbub for the dog to fly on the plane.
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And I never saw again, evidence that Puffy actually signed the document.
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So I don t know if she, if TSA got ahold of that and they re like, Hey,
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Can I see your documents?
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And she turned her head sideways and had all these pictures in my mind of this stuff that could happen.
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Anyway, that s crazy.
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Isn t it?
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There s a lot, there was just a lot of paperwork for the dog to fly in the plane, which I m to some degree, I understand.
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Yeah.
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weekend.
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No, can t do that.
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No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no
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Well, this topic today, we re going to talk about some reasons and some ways that you, as a sales leader, VP of sales, CEO, can help your people outperform over the next 12 months, maybe what they ve done in the last 12 months.
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And outperforming also comes, the other side of the coin is, what can we do to avoid underperforming?
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And so Brian and I talked pre-show about some things that might fit under one of those two categories.
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And we think it s a good time for VPs of sales and leaders to start taking stock of their teams and talents and wisdom and skills and say, what can we do to really ratchet this thing up in the next three months so that 2023 is an awesome year, regardless of what the market gives us.
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And I would say also, if you are
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a lot of sales leaders that listen to this, and most of your sales people, that you can do this for yourself also.
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You can take reflection and take some of the things that Bill and I are gonna talk about in today s episode and put them into play for yourself, do some self-evaluation or things like that, and or then pass it to your leader.
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And your leader can say, hey boss, let s do this.
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Here s something that I think we lose sight of.
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We live so much in the day-to-day and the month-to-month in selling that it becomes very hard to pull back from that and plan for a quarter or a year.
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And I know that s cliche that years are made of quarters, quarters are made of months, months are made of weeks, weeks are made of days.
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So we worry about the day.
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And I think this is one of the things that people do too late.
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So this is kind of my first little hint here of how to outperform next year is to work to live time-wise at least two or three months out, depending upon your sales cycle at all times.
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I m saying, I m seeing this in our firm right now where we re in a sales dip.
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And what I m realizing is the sales dip has come from sales behavior that things that weren t done or done not the best way two months ago.
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Yet here we are chasing the number for the month.
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So it s, yeah, it s like, it s like counterintuitive.
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So.
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It is, it is.
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And I know that one of the people you support and follow is Dan.
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Sullivan, and he talks about 25 year goals.
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Yeah.
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So, you know, you have that extreme, which is hard for me to wrap my arms around.
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But there s something to it.
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There s something to a super long range goal, because I don t think Dan probably worries about whether he makes a sale today or not.
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I m sure he s not selling anymore.
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But because he s focused on the long game.
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And I think we could take a lesson from that from him is let s focus on a little bit longer game, maybe not 25 years, but at least a year out.
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Yes.
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And let s not get too hung up in the day.
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Yes.
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Yeah.
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And sales leaders listen to that loud and clear because we do as sales leaders tend to get so focused on what s the forecast, what s the forecast, what s coming in this week, what s coming in this week, what s coming in next week, what s coming in the month, what s the month going to look like.
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And that forces people into short-term thinking.
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How could they not think short-term then?
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So that s my first bit to see how far you can take your brain.
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That s a really good one.
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I will have one along with that, that this is a really good time to start taking
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inventory of the skills that your people need to embrace to have a successful 2023.
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I probably talk about skills maybe too much, but I do think there s so much to
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identifying what are the skills that are going to make my team world class.
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Are they, is it skills like prospecting?
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That s a skill.
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Now there s sub skills underneath that, but is it how to make the phone call?
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Is it how to do LinkedIn?
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Is it how to send an email?
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So there s a lot of micro skills underneath that category of prospecting.
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But this is a great time to be looking at each of your team members and saying, where can we improve?
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And start now versus starting January 1, because the skills take time to build.
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And this is a great time to send your people to training, send them to coaching, buy them a book, listen to the podcast, go back and listen to ASP podcast where we talk about that.
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The point there is that this is a good time to start identifying the skills required.
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Where is their lack?
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Where is their deficiency?
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Not be ashamed of it.
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None of us do everything well.
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None of us.
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And there s parts of the sales process I m really good at.
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There s parts I m terrible at, even after 152 years of it.
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So that would be my ideas.
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If you want your team to outperform the last 12 months, really get committed to skills they need to work on.
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That s great.
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There s a great article from the Harvard Business Review
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called Five Skills Every Salesperson Needs to Succeed.
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Recommend everybody listening to this podcast, go read that article.
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September 19, 2022 is the date, with just a big study of 20,000 job listings for sales.
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But it just talks about the new skills, to your point, Bill, about 2023 skills.
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You know, a little sneak peek in here is leveraging digital and virtual channels.
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The ability to get power from data.
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the capacity to adapt.
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Those were never in job, you know, postings and, you know, five, 10 years ago, even, you know, it was all about, yeah, self start or go get her all that jazz.
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It s becoming much more cerebral and thoughtful.
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So I love your idea of retooling and not just retooling, like, you know, well, buildings get better opening the sales call.
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That s good and important.
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And, but also think about what is the new
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what does the new buyer need?
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Yeah, what does the new seller, sales process need?
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Yeah, I did a program, in fact, I m doing a program this week out in Denver.
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And one of the things we re going to talk about is what does your buyer really want?
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Not in terms of features and benefits of the product, but what do they want generally in life?
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Because if we don t know that, just about what are they thinking about when they re not thinking about work?
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And just one example is I think people are craving to be heard.
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and understood and acknowledged.
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And I think this last few years we ve been through has reduced that.
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It s reduced that and thus increased the need for, they just want to be heard.
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Don t interrupt them.
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If they re talking, shut the hell up and listen to them.
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Pose a follow-up question so you re clear about what they re trying to accomplish.
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I just think most sales professionals are bad at that.
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Not our listeners, but generally they are.
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And so if you can just think, what am I
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what does my buyer want, and what skill do I need to work on to help them get what they want, you re going to close an inordinate amount of sales.
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Your numbers will be fine.
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Yeah, for sure.
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You know what else I think has gotten in the way of the skill of the listening stuff is the, and it s heavy in the tech world, but it s really everywhere, is the emphasis on the demo or the presentation.
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I think it s really, really, it inhibited people s ability to, just like you said, listen, and let someone voice how they feel.
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There s no doubt in my mind.
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So you re saying that people, that we re going to the demo at some point, so why do I really need to hear all this stuff?
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A little bit.
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Yeah, yeah.
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Yes.
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Yeah.
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Yeah.
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Like, let s just get to the demo.
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The demo will take care of everything.
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You know what I mean?
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Good stuff.
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Yeah.
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And it s so safe.
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It s so easy.
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So here s clicking slides.
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So I wrote down one.
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for everyone, everyone can do this.
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If you re looking to outperform in 2023, you need to calendar practice time on your calendar.
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And now s the time to do it for 2023, because likely there s not a whole lot of stuff on your calendar right now.
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And what better, what better use of time is there in terms of skill development, improving myself, if I want to outperform than practice time.
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And I d love to look on your calendar after this episode and say, Oh gosh, you put 30 minutes of practice or scrimmage time, whatever you want to call it.
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And even title those things, you know, either by month or session.
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So in January, maybe the theme is I m going to practice my openings and I just do four 30 minute practice sessions, one each week in January, just practicing my opening, going through a verbal agenda, just whatever that is.
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I might practice my questioning in February.
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But a constant skill up and a constant space to practice, I think, is really important for outperforming.
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That s great.
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That s great.
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And you could record it.
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You could video record it.
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You could audio record it.
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You could have somebody listen.
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You could have somebody in the session with you to challenge you or to or to role play.
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I mean, there s all different ways to do it.
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All the above.
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I love that.
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Yeah, I love that.
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That s an outperform.
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Yeah, because what Yeah, when you when you get into the game, you can t be you ve got to be like, what was the book thinking slow thinking fast?
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You can t be thinking you just got to be reacting and you got to be intuitive.
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And if you have if you re unpracticed, you will start to think too much and then you ll get inside your own head.
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Whoa, geez, this slay all slipping away.
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I better better make a move here.
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What should I do?
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Let me pull up my playbook.
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Yep.
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So my number four here is, I m going to pull out the personal brand category board again.
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But I read a book in the past couple of weekends.
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And it s not an obscure book.
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It was a book big in the tech business.
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It s called The Sovereign Individual.
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It was written by a British journalist back in 1995 or 1996.
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It s been updated a couple of times, but not in the last 20 years.
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And it was big in the tech world, because it was all about how the microprocessor and the microchip has changed everything, changed how we buy.
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Think of the internet.
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The internet wouldn t exist without the microchip, microprocessor.
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That happened in the 80s, 70s, and 80s.
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And basically, the book is the sovereignty of the individual is the most powerful thing a company has, the ability for us to tell our story.
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and do a podcast or shoot a video or write an article or position ourselves as a brand and an expert and somebody who is to be reckoned with.
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That all happened with the microchip.
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And I never thought about it that way.
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I used to think about personal brand as, well, you just got to get out there.
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You re the person.
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You re the face of the company and your territory.
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But it s a bigger thing than that.
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It s all about the technology has allowed we as sovereign individuals to blossom.
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Are we taking full advantage of it?
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It s deep.
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It is.
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The word sovereign is deep.
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Sovereign.
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The word sovereignty.
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It is.
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Yeah.
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And this guy takes it all.
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I mean, he s smart.
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Sometimes I can t even understand, but most of them.
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Actually, that s the only thing I ve understood, that one thing.
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He talks about how all the trouble that we have today in our world
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is a result of this.
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Because the individual through the internet and through technology has become sovereign, autonomous is another word for that.
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And the nations don t like that because it s hard to control people when they re off the
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the person in India is talking to the person in America, and there is a global economy, it becomes hard for nation states to control.
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And a lot of the grasping for control is a result of this, the end of the freedom of the individual.
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But that is deeper than we want to get into.
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But it s good.
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It is interesting.
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Start the United States of Bill.
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United States of brand.
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They even talked about the metaverse in here.
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And they even, the way they said it was something like, you know, it s going to be kind of like a metaverse.
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And I m like, Oh, I m now I know where they got the name.
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We just switch control mechanisms.
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Yeah.
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So that s my fourth is that s good.
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Keep personal brand on front and center.
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I love it.
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I love it.
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Last thing I m gonna say is, um, this is to avoid, uh, underperforming to avoid underperforming, um,
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Don t, it s a good double negative on purpose.
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Don t not take risk.
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Don t not take risk.
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Did I say that right?
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So I want you to take a risk.
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So I find a lot of people, especially if you get economic headwinds, people do this like buckle down, you batten down the hatches, that sort of stuff.
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I think that s a very, very risky thing to do.
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And that can cause you to underperform.
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you become a victim to the circumstances and things like that.
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So if we do get headwinds and things start to flatten more than they are or anything like that, don t stop.
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Don t, don t, don t go over conservative with it.
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I think that ll cause you to underperform.
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You may not outperform in a market like that, but being too conservative and pulling too far back may make you underperform more is the idea there.
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So you re reframing risk there.
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The old way to look at risk is hide.
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The new way to look at risk is if I hide, I m going to get slaughtered.
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So I ve got to be out.
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I ve got to continue to reinvent myself, innovate, try new things, try, try, try, double down on what works.
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And you re saying that in a slowdown, we stop trying so hard.
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We stop trying new things.
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And we justify it by the slowdown or by the conditions like, well, it s a bad time to do something new.
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Like, you know, if you look back in history, you got all sorts of data that shows how many businesses start during those slowdowns because people lose jobs and they got nowhere to go, but up sort of thing.
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So be one of those people.
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Yeah.
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So I had one I had one thing that I think we should avoid.
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And it s kind of like you, I m trying to think of how to say it, so it s not a triple negative like you use.
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That was an impressive triple negative.
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Was that a triple?
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I didn t know if I got back around it.
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It was double, but it was still impressive.
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Clean, we get into the vague sometimes.
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And so I guess my rule is to stop underperforming, avoid the vague, avoid things that are vague.
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And this could be vague with your client.
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And I know you talk a lot about clear future, understanding where we re going, what our next steps are, specifically what s going to happen in the process.
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I think we have become super vague.
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And I think it s the way all of our
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all of our communication in the world as our leaders, our politicians, they re all very vague.
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There s very few specifics.
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And I don t want
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us to fall prey to that.
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And if you re with a client and you feel like there s something that s vague, you have to bring it up.
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And likewise, for VPs of sales, if your people know they want to generate a million dollars of new business but don t know how, then there s too much vagueness there.
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Let s get into the details.
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And I think we avoid the details because it somehow is beneath us.
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And it s like, well, that is the detail.
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How do I write the LinkedIn post?
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How do I write that email letter?
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All those things are details, but they re all hugely important.
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So true.
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I don t know why that is.
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It is the vagueness.
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It was like, it s like an epidemic of vagueness.
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I don t know if it s, we don t want to know, we don t want to press.
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SPEAKER_00
We, you know, we just take everything, you know, like, okay, sounds good.
2
SPEAKER_00
Well, this is great.
2
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
2
SPEAKER_00
I, I, um, was coaching someone and,
2
SPEAKER_00
We had, I don t know, maybe three different meetings where we were hearing things like, well, yeah, we really like this stuff.
2
SPEAKER_00
We want to find a way to work together.
2
SPEAKER_00
Let s keep talking.
2
SPEAKER_00
It was like that.
2
SPEAKER_00
I m like, let s do something.
2
SPEAKER_00
Let s don t keep talking.
2
SPEAKER_00
Let s decide to do something.
2
SPEAKER_00
Like, you know, exactly.
2
SPEAKER_01
That s exactly what I m talking about.
2
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
2
SPEAKER_01
This is, this is looking really good.
2
SPEAKER_01
I think we, I think we should probably look at exploring and find a way that exactly.
2
SPEAKER_00
No, no.
2
SPEAKER_01
You can tell me no, but I can t keep doing the no.
2
SPEAKER_00
It drives me crazy.
2
SPEAKER_00
That s good.
2
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
2
SPEAKER_00
And it s so, so rampant.
2
SPEAKER_00
We see it all the time on both sides.
2
SPEAKER_01
So you leaders, if you heard this and it spoke to you in some way, and you want to get it to your people, obviously you know how to do that.
2
SPEAKER_01
And sales professionals, listeners, if you think your leaders need to hear this, go that way too.
2
SPEAKER_01
Pass it along.
2
SPEAKER_01
It s good.
2
SPEAKER_01
All right.
2
SPEAKER_01
From Denver, the advanced selling part from Denver.
2
SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
2
SPEAKER_01
Next, next episode.
2
SPEAKER_01
Well, I don t know.
2
SPEAKER_01
Next episode, I might be in the same place here in Denver.
2
SPEAKER_01
I ll never come back.
2
SPEAKER_01
All right.
2
SPEAKER_01
See y all later.
2
SPEAKER_01
Bye bye.