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Welcome, everybody, to the Advanced Selling Podcast, the longest running sales training podcast in the history of podcasts.
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My name is Brian Neal.
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I m Bill Kasky.
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Happy New Year, Brian.
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Here again for another year, 2024.
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is here.
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Remember, I was watching some video on TikTok of when the New Year s Eve of 2000 happened.
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Everyone thought the world was going to end.
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And someone had put up a little video of the recording of that.
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That was really, really interesting to think that the guy immediately panned over on the video.
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He s videoing Dick Clark, and he panned over to his computer to make sure it s still on and still working.
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Those are old school problems we have.
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In 2024, we don t have that.
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We re good.
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No Y2K in 2024.
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Remember that?
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I mean, you and I were working together then, weren t we?
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A hundred percent.
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Yeah.
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And just the panic.
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And then it was like, oh, nothing.
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It s like, man, it doesn t take much to get the public in a panic state, does it, today?
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Recall that one of our pretty good clients, your client, who was in the IT space, built a bunker in Maine, fully staffed to survive the world ending.
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So, didn t happen, did it?
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No.
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But it could have.
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So we were prepared, that s for sure.
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OK, I have a quick story, and I want to know how you would handle this, because you re a family guy.
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And I know you re close to your family and extended families.
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And my wife s mother passed just before Christmas.
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And it was sudden, and it was very, very sad.
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But she was 87.
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It s not a but.
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It s not a but.
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But it was still a difficult time, even though she had some issues, heart issues.
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And so it was very sad.
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So in an effort to help the family, we re going to do a service here in a couple of weeks.
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And I said, let me take care of the music, of editing the music.
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We re going to have the 100 photos.
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And they re going to slide through.
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And then we ll pick the music.
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And I ll do that.
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I m not going to pick the music, but I ll edit it.
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So we got together a couple of nights ago, and we talked about some songs.
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And they d talked about them before.
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I had them all there.
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So we played them just to kind of think of, OK, is that a good song for a funeral, for a procession?
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So I had them all set.
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We had like eight songs.
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We re going to use a minute and a half each to get to 10 minutes.
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I get back that night, and I had the whole thing put together, and I mixed them up so that way everybody could hear how it would sound, sent them out.
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First response I get is, well, I don t like country music.
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It s like, what?
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We sat there in a room, and we knew that Tim McGraw was one and Brad Paisley was one.
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Nope, not a country music fan, hate country music.
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My mom hated country.
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This is the children, by the way, the siblings.
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OK.
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And then the next thing I got was one of the people, I won t say who, because not that they listen.
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But they could.
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They could.
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Didn t like the song that another person, Peter Gabriel, didn t like the Peter Gabriel song, which I love Peter Gabriel.
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Me too.
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But when you re doing these things, there s always the question of, well, who are we doing the music for?
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It s not for the deceased, although it would be nice if the deceased were a big music fan and loved, say, Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass.
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I don t know why I picked that one, but from that era,
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And they love that genre of music big band.
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Maybe that s part of it.
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See That s how I would look at it.
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I 100 so I made a when my dad passed away I made I still have it on my Spotify.
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It says dad s funeral.
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That s my and I still listen to it sometimes and I chose it with my siblings help but support and it was all things that either my dad loved or
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or that reminded us of our dad.
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The very first song is In the Mood by Glenn Miller.
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Because my dad loved Big Man.
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He grew up in that era.
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Theme songs to Cheers and to Johnny Carson Show, because he watched that show religiously.
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Then songs that reminded us of him, like Leader of the Band by Dan Fogelberg.
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It s a really good playlist, actually.
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I should send it to you.
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Yeah, I ll have to check that out.
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If you want to follow us on Spotify, go to Dad s Funeral.
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Dad s Funeral.
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Another podcast episode.
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Dad s Funeral playlist.
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Anyway, so I m in your camp, Bill, on this one.
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I like the two filters, the filter of what did they like and what what reminds us of them.
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And
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And I don t want to get into your family dynamics, but what s the alternative?
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If we don t like country, and we don t like this song, what do we like?
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Are we as a Bob Seger?
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Where are we going?
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Well, everybody had a favorite song that reminded them, I think, of their mother.
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But the words didn t fit.
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Some of them were about romantic relationships ending.
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Yeah, yeah.
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So I think you have to be careful of the words, too.
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The words need to refer to love and sorrow and sadness and all that.
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So anyway, to finish up the story, then I got the whole thing done.
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Got the whole thing done.
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It s all done.
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Everybody s fine.
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And then I get three texts yesterday, hey, how about this song?
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So it s not as easy as just pulling them apart, dropping it in.
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So we got a little Natalie Cole, and we got a little, there was this other song that was really beautiful.
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And we are actually going to change it.
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But here s the sales part of it.
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I did not handle the situation well because I didn t have any kind of an upfront understanding about how this was all going to work.
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What I should have done, and this is a lesson for all of us, is when you re asked to do something, we have to have some rules of the road, some guardrails, and say, look, here s the way this will work.
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We need to have it done by the 13th.
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In order to do that, we ve got to have it done.
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And here s what I will do.
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I will take one stab.
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I ll do it again.
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We ll do it again.
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We ll come back.
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Input.
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I ll do it again.
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And that ll be it.
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Everybody good with that?
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But I didn t do that because I was wanting to serve.
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I didn t want to.
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I felt like, well, that might be a little bit much.
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But when you re doing something like that, you have to have an
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just the rules.
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What rules are we going to play by here?
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And I didn t do that.
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So that was my mistake.
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That s good.
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That s good.
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Good reflection.
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No, no, I think it s really good reflection.
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And the other thing to keep in mind, sales is a little less charged than, you know, maybe your parents funeral, is that there s still emotion involved.
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There s emotion involved, people lose a little bit of their
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Um, uh, the left brain, the common sense, logic, things like that.
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And now you have, you ve gone from a, you know, 80 minute that now you re, you re in the four hour range on your playlist.
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So it s going to be a long funeral.
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Like no one can leave yet.
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Why?
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Well, the playlist isn t over.
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I mean, we got to sit here until Bill s playlist ends.
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We made some additions.
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So we ll be here till about six tonight.
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Well, the maximum number of photos is 100 based on their system, I guess.
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So we re either going to have to expand it to five seconds each or reduce it to like a third of a second.
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Depends on how long.
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Stretch.
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Stretch.
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That TV movement, stretch.
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OK.
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Enough personal stories.
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Let s get to it.
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Yeah.
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And sorry to hear about your James Bond.
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Yeah, thank you.
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Thank you.
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It was very sad.
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And she s a wonderful lady and a lot of energy.
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Yes.
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So I was listening the other day to end of year podcast.
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Here we are starting 2024, and we re excited about it.
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I think it s going to be a good year.
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It s going to be a crazy year with the election and all the political stuff and wars and everything.
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But all we can pay attention to is what we can control and influence.
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And one of the things that I
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I m doing this year, I ve done it in the past, but probably not religiously, is find a word that I can live by for 30 to 60 to 90 days.
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It may not be a word for the year, but a word for a period of time up front that I can start to think, OK, I m going to filter what I do through this word, and if this word
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can help me decide, make decisions, it s going to be a better year.
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It s going to be a better.
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So I thought that would be a decent topic today to talk about.
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I mean, and most people, I would say, most people, when they choose a word, pick a word of the year.
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Is that fair?
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Some people even get tattoos.
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I m not proposing that you and I go get tattoos for our words from today s episode.
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However, but we also talked about in the pre-show prep
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What s the length of time?
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So we re picking, I think, quarters here.
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We re going to do word of the quarter.
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Yeah, let s do quarters.
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Word of the quarter.
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This is our word of the quarter.
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Give us a little space to change it, Q2, or keep it rolling, however we feel that way.
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I love that.
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That s actually a little lesson.
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A lot of people do word of the year.
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I think they should consider shortening that up a little bit.
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Yeah, because I think by the time you get to July and you ask the person, what was your word for the year?
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Neither.
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They either look at their tattoo, like, oh, great.
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Look at their wrists or my back.
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You look exactly.
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It s right.
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It s under my left shoulder blade careful.
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See it.
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It s right right above the Disney Mickey Mouse symbol and below the dragon Okay, so let s talk about how to pick the word and then we ll reveal our words Audiences standing by with beta
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Deep breath.
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How do you select a word?
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That s a great, great question.
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So I first thought there are, I ve got two big broad categories.
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There are, and this is a big word itself, but like there s the etheric category or the spiritual emotional category.
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Then there s the tactical category.
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And try to think of things in both of those.
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And I know I have several of those things swirling around on both.
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And then decide which side of the fence of that I want to get on first.
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Like, do I want to start the year with more of a spiritual, theoretical, philosophical thing?
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Or do I want to get a little more tactical?
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I just went tactical for me, just because of where I m at.
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But that s not right or wrong.
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But that was my first filtering point was a tactical over a philosophical.
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Not that I won t change it.
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Q2, we ll see.
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Yeah, you could do a spiritual component on Q2.
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Yeah, totally.
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That s the whole idea.
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Or if you want to do it by the month, I think you can do that, too.
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Because 30 days is enough time that it will give you some access.
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My filter was more business, associate business.
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But personal, is what do I need to be thinking of every day as I get up out of bed, and I go work out, and I stop for my Go Juice, which I m referring to my Starbucks as.
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I down that, and by 7, 7 30, I m ready to go.
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What s the word that s going to fuel me and going to help me make the decisions I need to make throughout that day so that I can achieve
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my goals and be more meaningful and impact.
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And I have some goals, I m not a huge 17 goals setter kind of guy, but I ve got a couple that revolve around income.
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So that s how I look at it, is what is the word that s going to help me filter what I m doing and just be in the back of my mind, be alongside me the whole time.
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Time for the reveal?
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OK.
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Shall we go first or me too?
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I ll go first.
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OK.
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So I went tactical.
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It s funny.
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You do this big word, big reveal, and it sounds like a boring word.
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But my word of the first quarter is process.
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Process.
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And it has to do both where we re coming at the whole sales programming and coaching and content is all built around
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process, operating system stuff.
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You just set up where so many things fail is in systematic process.
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The creation of your mother-in-law s playlist failed at some point because of a lack of process.
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There s one thing to have one, step one.
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Step two is to follow it.
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And so that s why I m going to try to work my tail off to be very disciplined.
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What s the process here?
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What s the systematic way to do this?
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Yeah, that s good.
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To give me the best chance of success.
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That s so good.
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And what makes it even better is that
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Most companies don t have it.
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They don t have it.
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And because I think most of us are not, we have to school ourselves on how to be process-minded.
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It s not natural.
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If it s not for me, and I know you, it s probably not.
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But we have to get to the point where, oh, no, this is natural because we ve worked at it.
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We ve skilled up at it.
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Yes.
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Process.
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Yeah.
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I did a LinkedIn Live today, and I was talking about how to get to the top level person or how to get to a decision maker, because that s a question we get a lot.
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Or we see, you re not talking to the right person.
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How do I get there?
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Well, go in and.
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And don t do that.
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And I feel like there s got to be a process for that.
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If you find yourself not talking to all of the decision makers or the people that you really need to talk to, what s the process?
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If you get in at too low a level, what s the process?
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It s got to be one.
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Yeah, you ve got to have one.
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Takes all the pressure off.
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Yeah.
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And it s not like some kind of million dollar thing.
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It could be something very simple.
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But you have to think about it in terms of scaling and repeatability, which process does.
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All right.
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So mine is, I m a little older than you.
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Just a little.
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Just a little.
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But I m trying to keep my mojo and keep my ambition level high.
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And I feel good about next year, and I feel good about my ambition level.
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But one of the things that I feel like I ve really been lousy at
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is leveraging.
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Leverage is my word for the quarter.
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And when I say leverage, I don t mean financial leverage.
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I mean, how do you take things that you re good at or already doing and figure out a way to make them more meaningful, more
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So one of the things we talked about for our podcast here before the end of the year is we talked about, how do we leverage this?
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How do we take the content that we re doing and put it up on LinkedIn and promote the podcast?
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And you take your stuff, I take mine.
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That s the whole idea of doing it together is we get good content from each other.
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How do we leverage this?
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And so that s my word.
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for the quarter is everything that I do, I ve got to look through the eyes of, OK, I m going to do this once.
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Is there a leverage factor to this?
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It s fantastic, especially when that s the, and I love that you said, what s my word that gets me going after your GoJuice.
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Is that your grandkids name for the coffee?
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No.
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GoJuice, you get that.
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And what s that thing?
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So what you re doing then, the thing I love about this whole concept of the word of the quarter
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is that if it becomes your first filter point in all things.
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In your case, you say, hey, we just recorded this awesome podcast episode.
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The first thing you don t think, well, that s good.
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Well, see you in a couple of weeks and we re done.
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You instantly think, how can I leverage what we just did?
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Can I take the audio file, send it to someone?
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Can I use that in my process to call to a higher level in a company?
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Right.
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It s like everything goes into the next highest best use, which I really, really love that as a first filter point that just takes discipline to do.
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That s great.
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I leverage this.
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So the final conclusion here is find a word that epitomizes the kind of person you want to become.
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Brian wants to become more conscious of process.
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I want to become more conscious of leverage.
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What s the consciousness factor, the mindfulness factor?
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And then put it on your phone.
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Put it up on a wall.
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Find a way to visibly demonstrate and proclaim it so that you don t forget.
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I don t care if the world, the world doesn t need to know this.
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You re not going into your next cocktail hour and saying, hey, let me, if I told you guys my word for the day, gather, come on.
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It s only for you.
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But that s the most important person in the world right now is you.
100%.
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And if you dwell on this thing, especially for that first month and you carry it through the quarter, it ll become habitual for you.
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And you watch what happens.
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It s a really, really great, really good thing for all of us salespeople to do.
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Yeah, good.
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All right.
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Make sure you check out The Insider.
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Go to advancedsellingpodcast.com slash insider.
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We re actually going to be talking a little bit about leverage on the 12th, which I think is Friday coming up.
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And so if you re not joined already, make sure you go check it out.
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I ll see you next time.
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Bye.
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Bye.