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[EDITOR’S NOTE: This is a replay of the Sales Game Changers LIVE sponsored by the Institute for Excellence in Sales on September 9, 2021. It featured “You Were Born to Fly” author and sales expert Daneil Gomez.]
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DANIEL’S TIP FOR EMERGING SALES LEADERS: “Perfection kills your dreams. Perfection kills your presentation. It doesn’t have to be perfect, ladies and gentlemen. Act in spite of the perfection, act. Many times, I’ve acted and you figure out the details later. The moment you think that it’s perfect, it’s going to be too late. By that time, months, years may pass by and I’ve met so many people, Fred, that waited for that perfect moment and it never comes. Nothing’s ever going to be perfect but along the journey, you’re going to realize you’re going to work on your perfection and it’s going to get better and better. Next you know, you’re going to look back and you’ll be like, how did I get here? It’s because you acted in spite of the imperfections that your product, your service, and the presentation that you had. You have to act.”
THE PODCAST BEGINS HERE
Fred Diamond: We have Daniel Gomez, he is the author of You Were Born to Fly. Today we’re going to be talking about four of Daniel’s ideas on how you can be more confident.
Daniel, it’s an interesting time for sales professionals to be confident. We’re doing this in the fall of 2021, it’s 18 months after the pandemic has started. There’s been a lot of ups and downs and everybody’s gone through something and people are still going through something. We’re still doing today’s show, we’re doing it from my studio in my home office, and I presume you’re at your house as well.
First of all, it’s great to see you. Congratulations on the book, it’s a fantastic book. Your journey has been quite extraordinary to get to where you are and people can go to your website, which you’ll tell us about, to find your story but today we’re talking about confidence. I got to give you some credit, man. I’ve been following you for quite some time and you have a very interesting and impressive approach to help salespeople be more confident, and you’re going to get to your four ideas. First question, why do sales professionals today suffer from a confidence shortfall?
Daniel Gomez: Well, it’s amazing. First of all, Fred, thank you for having me on your show. I’m honored to be here. I had it on my calendar, I’m excited, so I’m going to bring some value. I think they fall short of that because confidence is built over time. Everybody wants to come in and boom, I want to do this. I had a training and right away, they want to be a million-dollar producer, and they have all this and the first they come out, their expectations may be way out there and they over-put that goal. Then they don’t hit it and they lose the confidence and they lose that self-belief.
I think the first thing you need to do is set realistic goals. Set goals for sure but set realistic goals because the thing is you don’t have to be great to start, but you do have to start to be great in sales. You got to learn. First of all, you got to learn your product, you got to learn who your audience is, who you’re going to go and offer that to and then B, have you really studied your product? Because this is the truth, Fred.
Most people don’t realize that before the customer buys any product, any service, they’re buying you. They’re buying Daniel Gomez, they’re buying Fred, they’re buying you watching on the webinar, they’re buying you. The thing is they don’t dress up to the part of the client that they’re going to go and offer their services to.
What do I mean by that? I’m wearing a jacket today, I’m dressing up because this is a different audience, because this is where I belong. There are times when I go and if I go speak to a different audience, then I got to cater to my audience. Many young sales reps, they don’t go and they try to pitch or they try to offer their services, and they’re not mirroring who their client is.
Fred Diamond: We’re going to be talking about some of your ideas, your four tips here on how you could build that confidence right now. A couple of things you said. We talk about sales professionals all day long, we do webinars every single day, and understanding what you sell to whom is so critical. We’ve been spending so much time talking about understanding the challenges that your customer is facing right now because every customer on the planet is facing unique challenges.
This has all started from the pandemic, the shift. Now, you’ve always had to show value, which means you always have needed to understand what you offer and how that provides value for the customer, but now it’s still even more critical. Customers still have less time because we’re all still dealing with some of the challenges and repercussions of the pandemic. I’m excited here. Daniel is going to be giving us four great ideas. Daniel, number one, let’s get to it.
Daniel Gomez: The thing is you have to be certain about the product and service you’re offering, like I was saying. When two people get in front of each other, Fred, and there’s a presentation, the thing is that the person with the most certainty is the one that’s going to out-sell the other person. If you’re not certain about what you’re offering, then how are you going to let your prospect know that, “Hey, this is what you need”?
If they are certain, guess what? If they tell you that they’re more certain in the fact that maybe this isn’t the right product for them because you’re leading the wrong way, well, they sold you on that. Most sales professionals when they encounter this, sometimes they back down and they don’t realize that you got to be certain about the product. You got to sell the solution. I’ve seen so many professionals that go in there, and they try to sell the product instead of selling the fact of what is it going to solve for the end user? What’s the result? What’s the benefit of that?
You can’t lead with facts. So many times we lead with facts and you lose. They’re disengaging because you got to tell them, first of all, this is what our products and services is going to do for you. Once you lead with that, it says the problem it’s going to solve for you. When you show them that end, like you said, you got to lead with more value right now. I’m going to give you a formula. Until value exceeds the price as a service that you’re offering or as a product, that’s where the transaction is made. That’s where a sale is made.
You don’t build value. The way you build value is you build value in yourself, you build value in the product and a service, and then you build value and the business, the organization that you work for. A good example of that is I’ve been working at IBM for the last three years and we stand by their products and service, we’re going to stand by our computers, we’re going to stand by our printers. Just know that we’re going to be there for you. Not only that, Mr. Customer, guess what? We also give back to our community, and we help the homeless and the needy or whatever charity your organization might have. That’s one way of building value.
Two, tell them a story about a customer that says, hey, by the way, Fred Diamond bought our services and they loved it. Fred had this problem, they couldn’t get their copies out in time and next thing you know, they found our copier, the production went up because of the speed of what they could make copies at and their productivity went up. Next thing you know, their sales revenue went up because everything was moving around store, there wasn’t a bottleneck in the process. Or three years later, hey, I’ve been with IBM now for so many years, XYZ, I’m not going anywhere. You’re building value in that.
When you build value that exceeds the price, that exceeds the offer that you’re making to them, that’s where it’s made. I think that when you lead with that first option of, this is who I am, I’m here, our business is here, this is what our products and services do and you show that value at a higher level, people need that right now. Because I’ll tell you, Fred, people are scared right now because there’s a lot of businesses, especially small business owners that are still in fight or flight. They’re scared, they have a scarcity mindset and they’re not in making the investments when in reality, they should be making those investments right now.
Fred Diamond: It’s definitely a challenging time as we’ve talked about. Interesting examples there. Why do you think there’s the scarcity mentality? I’m not going to be so obvious and say, because of the pandemic, business has shut back. But why would you say, invest right now when some people may say, well, the reality is that there’s no business to be had because people aren’t going to movie theatres or whatever it might be?
Daniel Gomez: Well, the thing is that the scarcity mindset has been there all along. It was just never magnified. Now in 2020, it was magnified even more. A good example of that is when 2020 came around, I lost $40,000 in paid speaking engagements. I was like, “Oh man, what am I going to do?” Because the world shut down March 16th, 2020 and that’s when I really felt like God said, “Hey, start your podcast” and I was hesitant to start that because I was like, “Well, who’s going to listen to my podcast?”
With all the success I had, Fred, with my books and everything else, I still had that doubt and so many times that doubt sets in because that scarcity mindset sets in and you don’t act. You don’t take that action. If it wasn’t for our podcast, our intention wasn’t to monetize it but we did. But to answer your question, when that time comes that the fear sets in, usually fear keeps us frozen, and then it magnifies that scarcity mindset and then what happens when that happens? We focus on the negativity, we focus on the problem.
This is the main thing, as a sales professional, you’re not solution-minded. You yourself start that inner dialogue that says this, and I just talked about it this week in a corporate training. You start saying business is slow, man, no opportunities are around me. What’s going on? The more you talk about that stuff, guess what? The more you talk about those scenarios, that’s what you attract.
To answer your question, you have to pay attention to four things, Fred. What am I watching? What am I listening to? Who is in my proximity? Who are my associations? Then the last thing is, what am I reading? Because the fact is there are so many people watching the news, and it’s just contaminating your mind and it makes you focus on the negative. Then at that point right there, you lose your confident sales because all you’re looking at is the doom and gloom and that the inner dialogue that you’re saying to yourself is that exact story.
In that, when you focus on the bad, you’re going to miss. The fact is this, there’s so many opportunities all around us, but you’re not seeing them because you have the negative mindset, because you’re taking that news and you’re listening to your coworker saying, “Man, I haven’t made a sale in a week, my manager is a jerk, he doesn’t give us any opportunities, or he’s just being mean.” Then guess what? You spiral down here and once you get stuck in that rut, it’s hard to get out of that mindset, Fred.
Fred Diamond: That’s very powerful. Number two, what is the second recommendation you have here to help the sales professionals listening to today’s Sales Game Changers Podcast build their confidence?
Daniel Gomez: I started saying what are you listening to? Every morning you got to wake up and you got to listen to an audio book or read a book. You got to take enough positive content because the way you start the morning is the way the day is going to go. When you get into that and you start thinking positive, you’re taking that positive food, it just changes your entire mindset.
This is the thing, when you’re happy, when you feel that man, it’s going to be a great day, you got to wake up every day and do this. After you do that, Fred, the power of affirmations. I’ll tell you what, what’s helped me in my sales career is every morning I say this, I am a selling machine, I am a closing machine, I am helping hundreds of customers today. Write those affirmations right now. I am a selling machine, I am a closing machine, I am making a difference for my clients.
When you start speaking that life over yourself, you start to attract it because what we focus on, we attract to ourselves throughout the day. If you don’t take control of your morning, start the morning by looking in the mirror right here and look into the pupil of your eyes. Because, Fred, the gateway to your soul is through your eyes.
The moment you look at yourself in the eyes and you say, I am somebody, I am helping clients today, I am a million-dollar producer, I am a number one sales professional. When you start saying that, you start to believe it. Then when those times of adversity come, yes, you might have a setback but guess what? Your resilience, your bounce back is even stronger, Fred and the more resilient you are in sales, then guess what? The quicker you’re going to get back to that next yes.
Because the truth is this, no’s are going to come. Nowadays we’re going to get 1, 2, 3, 4 no’s but guess what? That yes is right around the corner and if you don’t set the morning right by telling yourself that I am a winner, I am a champion, have that positive self-talk, spend time reading or listening to something positive like an audio book, it frames the mindset to really get you going and it gives you just that boost of confidence, that boost of energy because what we focus on once again, ladies and gentlemen, we attract to ourselves, Fred.
Fred Diamond: Daniel, we have a question here that comes in from Richard. Richard, I believe is in the Washington DC area. Richard, it’s good to see you. Richard says, “What if things go horribly wrong?” That’s an interesting question. Well, it’s an interesting concept. Like one person’s horribly wrong is another person’s opportunity. One door opens, one door closes, but it’s interesting. We’re actually doing today’s show on September 9th. Of course, in two days, it’s the 20th anniversary of September 11th.
Give us some of your thoughts on that. It’s great to wake up, I love the affirmations, I love listening to great music, talking to great people. I have this expression when something bad happens, I say, breathe, meditate for a minute, call a friend. Those three things, breathe, get still, call a friend for some support. To answer Richard’s questions, what are your thoughts on something like that? If something goes horribly wrong, is an affirmation going to get you back on course or what is your suggestions for that? Richard, thanks again for the question.
Daniel Gomez: If something goes horribly wrong, many times when we’re growing and we’re progressing in our careers as a sales professional, the only way we’re going to get better, Fred, is through a challenge, through adversity. First of all, Richard, thank you for that question. You have to embrace that challenge, to embrace that problem. A good example of this is when my wife was diagnosed with breast cancer four years ago. We could have looked at the negative, we could have looked that it was horrific, because she was stage-three breast cancer.
But this is a question that we ask ourselves, Richard, just what am I supposed to learn from this situation? That’s what I asked myself. What am I supposed to learn from the very things, the very season in our life right now, what am I supposed to learn from this? When you take time to ask yourself the right questions, Richard, the right answers are going to come. Something goes horribly bad, ask yourself, what am I supposed to learn from this scenario?
A good example of that, Fred, is I was doing a presentation one time with an amazing Fortune 500 Corporation and guess what? The projector went out, it tipped over, it wouldn’t light back up, and I was like, uh-oh. They said, “Well, Daniel, can you do the presentation without the projector?” The truth is at that moment, Fred, I hadn’t done the presentation without it. I had two choices at that time. I could have backed down, buckled up but I said, you know what? I told the ladies, “No, I got it. Let’s do this.”
It just took me to another level because if I would have never been in that position, this is the answer, Richard. When you’re put in those moments of those huge problems that come your way, it helps you to reveal your genius. It helps you to become a great problem solver. Until those problems come, you’re never going to realize the hidden potential that you have inside of yourself as a sales professional. Because the only thing that’s going to elevate us to the next level is those very challenges, those very adversities, or those huge horrific problems like you’re saying. If something goes terribly wrong, how are we going to know how great we are unless we’re that?
A good example of this is think about the New England Patriots when they were down and Brady could have given up, but he didn’t. He wouldn’t have been called the greatest of all time at that moment in the Super Bowl unless he was put in that situation where he was down for four touchdowns. He came back because the adversity made him better.
The adversity is what helped him this last year at Tampa Bay because even though the rest of his teammates maybe weren’t where he needed them to be, he had the mental toughness to bounce back. He says, “You know, I’ve been in this before.” When you’re in that sales situation and your presentation goes terribly wrong, the projector doesn’t work or a pamphlet gets wet, whatever it may be, it helps you to think on your feet and overcome that, and guess what? Your confidence is built in the adversity, Richard.
Fred Diamond: Daniel, I have a follow up to that. You use the word resilience. I want to throw out a different word which is perseverance. You mentioned that your wife was diagnosed with breast cancer four years ago. A lot of times people give up after something relatively quickly. It’s like something bad happened, I’m gone, I’m out of here, if you will. Talk about how long things may take to rebound.
I love your answer there about what lessons do I learn from this? You might need a coach to help you visualize what should you be learning from this, but that’s a whole separate thing. Talk a little bit about the ability not just to be resilient but to persevere in times when it’s going longer than you had thought.
I talked to someone this morning. I talked to a sales leader who’s a member of the Institute for Excellence in Sales who’s doing really well now. He said to me, I don’t know if you know this or not, but my first four years I was struggling to just figure things out. I had no idea. I thought from day one, he was a success and he persevered for four years. Give us some of your thoughts on that.
Daniel Gomez: Well, I have a terminology for that. I want your audience to write this down right now. You have to be consistently persistent. I talk about that in my book, You Were Born to Fly. You have to be consistently persistent. You have to be consistent every single day in showing up. The mistake that we make, Fred, is that we think that the big leaps, the big wins are what makes us great, what brings out our excellence as a sale professional. But the fact is that if you grow 1% every day, you’re not 100% better at the end of the year, you’re 1000% better because of the compound interest.
When you show up consistently every single day, and I’m going to use this simple word because I don’t like using big words, but I’m going to give you a little phrase here. It’s all about baby steps. If you’re taking baby steps and moving forward every day, just know that sooner or later, that bigger wind is going to come and that’s what builds your persistence. The biggest mistake is that we think it has to be a big account that we land or a big thing to be a win. No, the fact is that just showing up sometimes is a win.
I’m going to be totally honest with you. Four years ago, I’ll never forget that I was going to give up on my business, because in my mind this is what I said, Fred. I can go back to the organization that I was working at or in that industry and make a quarter million dollars a year easily. Why am I struggling here? I’m struggling to make $10,000 a month when I could go back and make the double of that, easy. But the thing is that when I was in the restroom frustrated and crying, Fred, I was 99.9% sure I was going to give up, but I didn’t.
At that moment, I had to dig deeper within yourself and that’s when you realize what you’re made of. When I kept going forward, not that it got easier but I realized that after I made it through that day, just the fact that I didn’t quit, that was a huge win. Just the fact that I went back the next day, my wife gave me a quote that I’ll never forget. You’re a champion when you go back the next day regardless of what happened the day before.
Many times, Fred, we focus on that failure or that deal that we spent two months, three months, a year, that presentation that we had to get in front of those people and it didn’t go our way and guess what? We focus on that presentation that went bad instead of saying, what did I learn from that presentation that I can use to make myself better? When you approach it from that mindset, you realize that you have the persistence to get better, that you have the persistence to get stronger and when you do that, I call it the bounce back. When your bounce back gets stronger in your mind, you know you’re going to fall but you’re going to bounce back 100 times faster, Fred.
Fred Diamond: Consistently persistent. You already told us 50 things, but there were four things you were going to talk to. We talked about number one, which was certainty, number two, the power of affirmation. What’s number three, Daniel Gomez?
Daniel Gomez: Number three is you got to smile, Fred. So many people don’t smile nowadays. I just flew the other day to Kentucky and it was amazing. When I landed on the airport, I was there and no one’s smiling. That’s like, is the whole world mad or what? But we don’t realize people can feel your smile. They can hear your smile over the phone. Think about that.
When you smile a smile, there are so many things but I want to say this. This is the biggest thing is, I’m going to start with the big wow at the beginning instead of the end. When you smile, it opens up the cheque book, it opens up the spending for that client that you’re trying to do business with. Let me say that again. When you smile, it opens up the wallet of your potential customer and client. When you smile, it says you’re approachable. Not only that, a smile is contagious. A smile just makes you feel better.
Actually, the best medicine in the world is laughter. Laughter is just amazing. When you smile, it just brings out that positive vibe and it’s a magnetism that draws people to you. A smile says you’re approachable too. I can tell you that so many people sometimes, I get it, being a sales professional is not an easy gig, it’s hard. But why do you want to beat yourself up and why do you want to just really be hard on yourself when you can take a moment and smile to yourself, smile in the mirror and smile to your clients? because when you smile, it’s going to open up the wallet to your potential customer and client, Fred.
Fred Diamond: It’s interesting, I have a friend who’s a perpetual bachelor. He’s been a bachelor his whole career, never married. He might have had a marriage early on. We were talking the other day about being single and being attractive as a single person. He said that all the women that he’s talked to, they all said the number one differentiator with guys that are attractive are the ones that smile. That’s the first thing that he said that a lot of women have said to them is the smile. Number four, again, you’ve given us three great ideas, certainty, the power of affirmations, smiling, and I agree with that. I’m going to try to start smiling more. What’s the fourth, Daniel? The fourth secret to confidence success.
Daniel Gomez: Raise your tonality, Fred. Raise your tonality. Boom, baby, right? Think about this. If I just said Fred, how are you doing? You’re liking my presentation? You’d be like, “Dude, this guy’s a clown. Get him out of here.” But hey, guess what, Fred? We’re going to have an amazing day today, we’re going to talk about sales, we’re going to energize your audience. If you ever lack confidence in the morning and you don’t feel good if you’re walking into a presentation, raise your voice 10% to 15% and guess what? Just by raising your voice, it raises your chin and it raises your presentation, it raises the confidence in yourself.
Raise your tonality. Why? Because nonverbal communication is 93% of communication, Fred, and so many times we think it’s the words. Think about this. I’m going to do this little exercise. I didn’t say he took your daughter. I didn’t say he took your daughter. I didn’t say he took your daughter. I just said the same words, but they all had different meanings, didn’t they? Did you catch that?
Even though it’s the same exact sentence, the tonality that I use on different words, they gave it a different meaning. When you’re speaking to your prospect, when you’re speaking to that potential client, what tonality are you using? Are you accenting the right words in your presentation? Are you using the energy, the enthusiasm when it’s needed or do you have a monotone? Because 93% of communication is nonverbal and many young salespeople, women included, their tonality is totally off and they miss it and then they wonder why they didn’t get the sale.
Then this is the worst thing. I’m going to give you a bonus. The worst question that you can ask is, and I’ve seen it over and over. “Well, what do you think?” What do you think they’re going to say when you say, what do you think? What do you think? Don’t ever end any presentation, I don’t care what you’re selling, whether it’s printers, cookies, whatever it is, and say, what do you think? Because right then and there, you just killed your own deal. You spent three hours on your presentation for nothing instead of leading the prospect into a different stage of the transaction as a process, Fred.
Fred Diamond: I was on the call with a sales rep who’s a member of the Institute for Excellence in Sales and he asked me – and they had the software to allow me to do this – if I could listen to his call. He says his bosses do and he just was curious if I could listen. I listened in, I said, “Sure, I’d be happy to give you some thoughts.” The customer agreed to the sale. It was very interesting, the customer agreed. The customer said, “Yeah, I want to get started.” Then the guy said, “Is there any reason why you would not want to move ahead with us?” It was a zoom call and I was like, the customer just said he wants to be your customer. Why would you possibly ask that question?
We’re talking today to Daniel Gomez. He’s the author of You Were Born to Fly and we talked about confidence. He said four things, certainty, the power of affirmations every morning, and you’re a great guy, do a great job, you’re a super salesman, you run a $3 million company, things like that. Smile. Ladies and gentlemen, if you’re not smiling, smile through the phone, people can hear you. Raise your tonality. Make your voice more impactful. Focus on the messaging that you want to get across.
Daniel, first of all, before I ask you for your final action step. I’m not sure if you know this or not, but you made a good decision when you left that company you were working for to go work for yourself and to do the speaking, to do the academy that you do, to do the training that you do, the podcast that you started. You’ve impacted tens of thousands of people.
We got to know you through the work that you do at the Institute for Excellence in Sales and it’s been our honor to have you today. We’ve actually spent time with you just to learn more about your motivational processes. I want to acknowledge you for the great job that you’ve done for helping so many people. Give us your final action step. You’ve given us so many great ideas, give us one thing specific that people should do right now after watching today’s webcast or listening to today’s Sales Game Changers podcast to take their career to the next level.
Daniel Gomez: The one word of advice I want to give you, this is the action step. Perfection kills your dreams. Perfection kills your presentation. It doesn’t have to be perfect, ladies and gentlemen. Act in spite of the perfection, act. Many times, I’ve acted and you figure out the details later. The moment you think that it’s perfect, it’s going to be too late. By that time, months, years may pass by and I’ve met so many people, Fred, that waited for that perfect moment and it never comes.
The thing is this, nothing’s ever going to be perfect but along the journey, you’re going to realize you’re going to work on your perfection and it’s going to get better and better. Next you know, you’re going to look back and you’ll be like, how did I get here? It’s because you acted in spite of the imperfections that your product, your service, and the presentation that you had. You have to act.
The biggest lie we’ve been told is that knowledge is power. Knowledge isn’t power, knowledge is you’re just learning stuff, you’re not using it. But the activation of that knowledge and moving forward like I said, in baby steps. Even one day you might not feel like it, but you take a baby step forward. That one step is going to take you thousand miles ahead of you down the road, Fred.
Fred Diamond: We have an expression that we like to use. I use it all the time that perfect is pretty but done is beautiful. Daniel Gomez, thank you so much for being with us today. For all of our listeners of the Sales Game Changers podcast, thank you as well.
Transcribed by Mariana Badillo