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In this episode of the Advanced Selling Podcast, I lament about my ineptness to fixing things, especially with fine motor skills.
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Bill shares his radical frustration against an inanimate object.
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And in the spirit of making this a December to remember, we bring you the first of a three-part series sharing precise instructions on what to do week to week with the time you ve got left to sell in December.
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Welcome, everybody, 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 are here wrapping up the year.
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Glad that you are with us.
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If you re a new listener, new listener in December, we like that, don t we?
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you re going to be in for a really great treat for 2022.
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And if you ve been here for years, which we know a lot of you have, we re so thankful for you.
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Go to our LinkedIn group.
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We re pressing, are we 13,000 people in the LinkedIn group now?
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Pretty close.
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Yeah, we re getting more and more active over there, and the conversations are getting good.
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So hop over there.
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We re going to be announcing new stuff too over there as we go through.
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If we have something new, that s going to be kind of our main channel over there.
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And also check out the ASP Insider.
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Got a wonderful group there.
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Bill just had a great session.
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I m assuming it was great.
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I wasn t there.
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Yeah, it was good.
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It was on personal business planning.
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And that whole process, we ve talked about it a lot on the podcast, and we promoted it.
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We had like 12 or 13 new members come in for that one.
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It was interesting because I don t think, I m convinced that we talk about planning a whole lot more than we actually do it.
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Yes.
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There s no doubt.
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And there s a forecasting element to it, which is when the CEO or the VP of sales, or if you re a sales manager, you re like, OK, let s do the forecast for next year.
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But that s not planning.
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Nope.
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That is not planning.
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And what I found with these folks, they were really into it.
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And we talked about mindset and what kind of mindset you re going to need to shift to accomplish your goals.
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Talked about the big hairy goal that you have for next year.
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We re talking about income.
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But it was really a good session.
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And actually, we re going to be doing a follow-up session this Friday.
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Sweet.
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So if you d like to get access to that recording, you can go to advancedsellingpodcast.com slash insider.
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You get access to all prior recordings when you join.
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Yes.
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Anyway, it was a good session.
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Thanks for asking.
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We did have a little technical thing, which we were talking about before the, I couldn t be there at an appointment.
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So Bill took over for us and forgot to, you know, share the zoom thing.
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So I came into the office real quick to log in and Travis was just kind of messing around with my computer a minute ago and tried to unplug my dongle.
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And you saw me.
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I almost had a conniption.
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You had a little frantic.
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Not because I don t mind that people touch my stuff.
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I m not worried about that.
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No, no.
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Especially Travis knows what he s doing.
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But I dropped my computer.
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If anyone s ever dropped their computer, you know what this is, especially if it s a Mac.
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And it s made of metal.
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It bends.
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And I bent the little hole where the power cord goes in there.
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So I don t know about you, Bill.
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I am the worst human on the Earth when it comes to fixing mechanical things and fine motor skill.
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Well, stuff like that, that has an electronic component to it, too.
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And so it s not like you re going to rewire the motherboard to get that fixed.
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But I m going to try, which I did.
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You turn it off and back on again.
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And if you re bad at things, we talk about this, too, Bill and I talk about this pre-show a little bit, which I m bad at it, and I hate to do it.
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So if I have to fix something, I get really frustrated, very angry to anyone around me.
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Mostly I m angry at myself.
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Oh, absolutely.
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And so I was fixing that computer, and I know this is a MacBook Pro.
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And I ve got frickin  needle nose pliers.
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I m jamming them into where the power thing.
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There s little like this itty bitty little sliver of metal.
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Give him some time.
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I think I can t touch seriously and then I found but jamming in there I took a hammer and I m hammering the dongle into the power like port and I got it in there and it worked and two things one I m so proud of myself that I fixed my Mac and two if anyone ever pulls a dongle out It s all done.
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So Travis started to pull the dongle.
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I don t do that
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Well, speaking of this, I had a battle with an easel the other day.
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It s probably been three or four months ago.
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I bought this easel.
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It was a cheap easel.
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Bought it from Amazon.
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And I d had it for about a year.
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And every time I tried to use it, it was one of those that it was a whiteboard easel, and it has the flimsy legs on it.
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It s the kind that you get when you go into like a Holiday Inn or a Marriott and you re giving a present.
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Do you need an easel?
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Yeah, and they give you something that you can t ride on.
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Or when you forget yours at the speaking gig and you run to OfficeMax real quick and buy it real quick.
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Yeah, buy it for $30.
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So anyway, this was a $100 thing.
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I guess it served me well for a while, but it
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It somehow, it started to collapse.
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And every time I tried to work with it, it would yell back at me.
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And finally, I had had it.
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And this is going to sound terrible.
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I guess I had anger issues.
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I destroyed that SOB.
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I literally destroyed it.
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I took it out in the garage.
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I m hammering.
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And I finally collapsed it and put it in the trash.
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And I felt better.
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We are such funny creatures, aren t we?
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Humans are such funny creatures.
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And I got done and I had a cigarette and a cup of coffee.
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No, I got done and I m like, where did that anger come from?
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It was me because I bought it.
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It wasn t right.
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I didn t know how to fix it.
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It s always goes back to that.
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It s so hard when you re in the middle of it.
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But if anyone has any interesting mechanical stories, he seriously gets so angry at it.
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And you know, the other problem you have is I, and so I ve got a friend who s like a mentor to me.
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He s like, we always have to blame something or someone, don t we?
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Outside of ourselves.
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And so I m blaming whatever I m blaming Apple.
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I m like, this is a piece of crap.
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I mean, I ve had it for 11 years.
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It s worked brilliantly.
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But just because it, you know, I m blaming someone else, because my kids didn t put, they moved the rug, so it landed on the hardwood, and that s why it cracks.
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Well, it s their fault.
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It s not their fault, it s my fault.
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It s so funny how we are, isn t it?
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It s so funny.
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But it s human.
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And here we try to, on this show, give you ideas on how to sell to people like this, who are totally irrational sometimes.
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Completely, completely.
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We wanted to do something here special for the month of December.
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It s a weird month because we have Christmas and holidays and we have people on vacation starting here in a couple weeks.
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And so basically we ve got three episodes.
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We ve got today, we ve got next week, the 13th and the next week, the 20th.
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And we wanted to give you some ideas on what we think your agenda should be those weeks.
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Yes.
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And rather than talk about business planning for 2022, that s something you should be doing or probably in the middle of right now.
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But we wanted to get really tactical about what can I be doing, what can you be doing during those weeks to get some quick wins or to build some velocity for next year.
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And if you re listening to this late, some people listen to the late, this is why you should listen every week when we release them, because it s kind of time sensitive this way.
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Otherwise, you just got to put this one in the listen to later list for next December.
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Because it s very timely, I think, to the end of the year.
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I think it is, too.
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You know what I mean?
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So this is your, we re going to tell you today in this episode, your agenda for the week of December the 6th.
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And then the next two episodes will cover the week of the 13th and the 20th.
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This will take you to a nice little ending into the holiday break.
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Yeah.
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So I think you go first, because I think you ve got a couple, and I ve just got one.
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OK, yeah, sure.
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So the first thing I said, this week, the week of December 6, we have to get very clear and decisive on what open opportunities can get a decision and which ones cannot get a decision.
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And by that, I mean a closed one contract, a closed lost, closed, or it s going to bump.
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We teach a little stoplight thing.
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It s kind of cheeky, but it works.
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So if it s green, it means it can get a decision.
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If it s red, it cannot get a decision.
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And if it s yellow, we ve got to do some things literally in the next five days to figure that out.
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And it s a great thing, because as you go through this week, your yellow should shrink.
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Things should either become green, meaning you ve got a date to get a decision, or they become red, which means they bump to a January calendar date, and that s it.
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It sounds simple.
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It s not, but you ve got to get real clear on those.
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A bunch of sales, a bunch of you listening to this right now have all your open opportunities labeled the same way.
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You think they all have a chance, right?
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I m going to work as hard as I can to check out for the holidays, right?
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Don t do that.
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Get clear on it.
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Get clear.
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Yeah, that s really good.
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That s good.
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I ve got one here that I have found.
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I do this every year about this time.
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And I usually do it later in the year, like in the last week.
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But I think the week of the 6th is good.
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And that is this.
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Go back and this, this is a little bit of a tedious exercise, but I find that you will always uncover something that you forgot about in 2021.
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Go back to your emails, just go back to all your emails, go to Google or however you do your, uh, retrieve your emails and just go back and look and you ll start to see names.
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You re like, what the hell ever happened to Brian?
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We were going and then, and then some, you will find 30 people
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that you had forgotten about because time kills memory, time kills deals, and you just have totally spaced.
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And go back to those people.
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Now, where are you going to find them?
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I think you probably find them in your email.
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email inbox.
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Now you probably have thousands of email inboxes, but just scan, just go through them quickly and a name will pop out, write it down.
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And you can even, and what I would do for the other two or three hours is I would email these people, say, look, we were talking back in April, we lost touch.
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Is there anything we need to talk about over the next few weeks to get ready for a great 2022?
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That s great.
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Let s do that.
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And I would say take a couple of hours and scan your email list or your text list, and maybe even your LinkedIn feed, too, if you have those kinds of people that reach out there or LinkedIn messaging.
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But you will always find things you forgot about.
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That is a wonderful idea.
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And it s interesting.
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Now, a lot of you use a CRM.
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And it s funny to me.
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The CRM is meant to keep that from happening.
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It s meant to not let you forget anything.
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And it still doesn t work for that.
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Because you close lost something in February of 2021, you ve forgotten about it.
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And maybe it goes into a campaign or something.
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But maybe it needs a personal.
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That s a campaign.
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That s very impersonal.
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What you re talking about is very personal.
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I love that idea.
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Can I add to it?
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Yeah, man.
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I would also add, don t just look at end users there.
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Look at connectors, potential partners, things you were invited to, that you attended, or things that you invited others to, that they attended.
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Like lists, like you and I do events.
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We can go back and scroll down the event list.
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Like, I wonder what s up with these people?
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What s going on?
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Totally agree.
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That s good.
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That s good.
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It s a great filler.
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It s a great pasture to find.
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Pasture?
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I don t know why I said that.
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Why did I say pasture?
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What was that patch?
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Patch of grass.
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That s a technique.
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Yeah, yeah, yeah.
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Yeah, one of my good friends who sold in tech used to say that.
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Well, I used to hear that.
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I don t hear that so much anymore.
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No.
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Has that gone the way of the dodo bird?
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I m sure it s been canceled.
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I don t know.
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Maybe somebody canceled it.
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It triggered somebody.
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It did.
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Exactly.
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Patch.
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Patch.
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Patch items.
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And I think this last one maybe is saying the same thing, but I would encourage.
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So on the week of the 6th, that s this week, I would have you take a look at your calendar between now and your last day of work in calendar year 2021.
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and reverse timeline all the things that need to occur and get super tight in the timeline.
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Because I also find salespeople have this tendency sometimes at this part of the year to just ease off.
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Yeah.
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And they take long lunches.
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And they go to early happy hours.
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And they kind of come in late.
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And they just do their stuff.
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And they have a great excuse, don t they?
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Oh, boss.
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When I was in my partying 20s, December 1st, we were done.
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We were done.
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Yes.
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Well, you know, holidays and Christmas parties.
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And yeah, we, yeah.
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Well, and we both sold to retail.
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And retail wouldn t see.
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That was kind of a, it was a legit excuse.
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That was legit.
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They wouldn t see you.
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You know, grocery store.
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Exactly.
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It really wasn t.
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We still tell our jokes.
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It was really hard to get to see him.
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Well, then it is so funny too.
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So we went to the retail stores.
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You go in there.
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There s no one there.
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Like there s no shoppers.
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When I wanted to see the, if I went to go see a Kroger store manager at 10 AM on a Tuesday, even though it s December 6th, there s no one there.
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He s not doing anything different.
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That s so funny, isn t it?
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But we said, yeah, holidays.
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So just shore up the calendar, reverse timeline, and just make sure you ve got everything buttoned up.
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If you can calendar signature dates, I know that sounds a little like, it s not meant to be cheesy-closey, but if someone has agreed they re going to give you an answer, just put it on the calendar.
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Yeah.
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And it doesn t even have to be a meeting.
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Say, yeah, Bill and Brian final go-no-go or something like that.
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Yeah.
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I like this because you re just closing up loose ends.
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Every loose end that we have stays with us during the holidays.
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You don t want to have loose ends when you re out and wherever you go to Biscayne Bay or the nudist colony or wherever you go.
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You don t want to have that, you want to have your mind totally present, especially of you.
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Yes, right.
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So you don t want loose ends.
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So I love those things.
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I love those two things.
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Oh, that s funny.
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All right.
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So that s, that s your assignment for the sixth.
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Yep, the week of the sixth.
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The week of the sixth.
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So hopefully you ve got, it gives you four to six hours worth of stuff there.
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We re gonna come back next episode and talk about the week of the 13th, when that episode releases, some things you can be doing there.
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We ve got four things that we want you to do that, that are different than what you just heard.
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So you re gonna get decisive on which deals can get an answer on the 6th, you re gonna show up your calendar, and then you re gonna also flip backwards all the way through the year, through your emails to see who have you forgotten about, peel them out, shoot them a note, see if they wanna reconnect and get together.
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Perfect, that s your agenda for the week.
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See you next Monday.
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Bye-bye.