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[EDITOR’S NOTE: This is a replay of the Sales Game Changers virtual learning session sponsored by the Institute for Excellence in Sales on May 21, 2022, featuring Dave Conway of Conway Consulting. He was a student of the late Bob Proctor.]
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DAVE’S TIP: “Do this for seven days, I’m going to ask 10 minutes of your day for the next seven days. In the morning, when you wake, at the top of the piece of paper write on the top, what do I want to see happen in my life?\You put a timer on for 10 minutes, and whatever comes out, just write it down on the piece of paper. You do this every day for seven days. After seven days circle, the one that really jumps out at you. Then build a clear mental picture in your mind of having and being or doing whatever that thing is. You keep carrying that thing into every day and I promise you as sure as it’s getting dark tonight, it’ll start to move into form.”
THE PODCAST BEGINS HERE
Fred Diamond: Dave, we’re talking today about a topic that we haven’t spoken about before, we’ve been doing a mindset show almost every single Thursday for two years now – we’re recording today’s show in the spring of 2022 – and I look forward to every single show because I know we have thousands of listeners, but at a minimum, it helps me with my mindset and staying focused. The topic today is momentum.
We really haven’t spoken about momentum specifically, so I’m excited to talk about this. On today’s show, we have Dave Conway, he’s the founder of Conway Consulting. He’s also created One Sale a Day Club and the Never Fails Sales Process. Dave, it’s great to see you. A number of our listeners reached out to me and said, “Fred, you got to get Dave on the show.” I’m excited to talk to you today. Momentum, what does that mean?
Dave Conway: Momentum is to carry energy from one moment into the next moment, into the next moment, into the next moment, and into the next moment. Momentum is all about energy and the perpetuation of the energy. It’s strange, because momentum requires energy to even keep it in movement. Momentum is a very, very interesting idea and it’s essential to salespeople.
Fred Diamond: We talk about energy on almost every single show we do. It’s such a critical thing in sales. A lot of people listen to The Sales Game Changers Podcast because we’re aspirational. We’ve been doing the show through some crazy times. We started the podcast way before the pandemic, but then when the pandemic kicked in, we shifted to doing shows every day.
People do get into sales ruts, even the best sales professionals for macro reasons, micro reasons, personal reasons. The critical thing is that you’re going to help us work on ways to keep the mind neutral so that you don’t experience the big up and downs as forward to your success and what your attitude is. Before we even get deep into this, I do want to acknowledge something of course, you were formally a top coach and mentor for the legendary speaker and author, the great Bob Proctor who may he rest in peace, passed away earlier this year. Tell us a little bit about that. What was it like working hand in hand with such a legend like the great Bob Proctor?
Dave Conway: A lot of people are asking me the question, “What’s it like working with him?” Some people actually say to me, “Oh, you’re so lucky to get to work with Bob Proctor.” The truth is I am lucky, but I want to be clear about something. Bob Proctor was the toughest boss I’ve ever had. [Laughs] You do not get to the levels of Bob Proctor without the word discipline. One time I remember I was trying to make excuses for my sales results because I was on his sales and coaching staff there.
He’s a very goal-orientated man. Anyone that’s familiar with him, he talked a lot about the paradigm, your conditioned mind, and he says, “If your results haven’t changed, you haven’t changed your paradigm.” He’s always asking us about our results and why our results are the way they are. It was never like an attack or anything, but it was always very direct.
Bob Proctor had mastered three key traits that I believe all salespeople want to master. You want to be direct, honest, and loving. If you’re just direct and honest, you’re just an a-hole. If you’re just loving, you’re just a people pleaser. You got to find the balance between all three direct, honest, and loving and he’d mastered that.
He could beat you like a rented mule, and then he could bring you back up after a second and say, “But you know, you’ve got what it takes.” It was, beat you, raise you, beat you, raise you. There was one time we had a sales training in Scottsdale. He was asking me about my results, and unintentionally, to my own ignorance, I started making excuses or reasons why my results were the way they were.
He never accepted that. If you ever came at him with a reason why life was the way it was or if you ever tried to hold something outside of yourself responsible for the results that you’re getting, whether in your life or your sales career, whatever it is, results are results. He never let you off the hook. He always forced me to look inside.
If I was to put a number on it, I would say probably 85% of the time with Bob was uncomfortable, bordering on unpleasant [laughs]. He’s always holding up the mirror. “You can do better, it’s in you, it’s your paradigm. What are your results?” You could say it, and he said, “No, it’s your paradigm work on this. Work on this habit of the mind.” Because of him, my life is unrecognizable today.
Fred Diamond: That’s very powerful. I’m really glad that you explained it the way that you did. I’m sure he was a loving person, like you said, but he was directing the way he was so that you could hopefully get to that level as well. I’m thinking about, we’ve had a number of performance coaches on The Sales Game Changers Mindset Show. We have one particular guest who got some coaching from Kobe Bryant, may he also rest in peace. His name is Alan Stein, Jr. He met Kobe at a basketball training program and he asked Kobe if he could watch him practice. Kobe said, “Yeah, I’ll be practicing tomorrow morning at four o’clock in the morning at one of the gyms.” Alan went there at three just to make sure he wasn’t late. Kobe was practicing at three o’clock in the morning.
The people at that level, they just don’t wake up and say, “I’m going to be at that level.” It’s all the work. You alluded to the fact of the power of the mind. Let’s just get started here. How important is it to understand the mind when it comes to sales? Again, we do a show every week on mindset. I want your answer on that. How important is it to understand the mind when it comes to professional sales?
Dave Conway: I used to put this caveat before I used to say what I’m about to say. I used to say, “In my opinion, the mind is everything.” I used to say it that way I don’t know why the hell I was saying that way, maybe I just wanted to massage the message or something. But today, I scrap that part. Your mind is everything in sales. What we have to understand is that selling is a mental game. It’s all about the mind. Even when you meet a prospect, your own mind, your prospect’s mind, I’ve also found that the more I know about me, the more I know about you.
We may appear different, one could be a man, one could be a woman, you could have light skin, dark skin, brown eyes, blue eyes, blond hair, brown hair, we all different heights, weights, you name it, but inside, we’re all the same. Inside, the mind works one way. It moves from an imaginative state, an idea in the conscious mind, moves in the subconscious mind, becomes a desire, the desire controls the behavior then and movement of the body. Then that’s expressed. It’s the same, it’s the creative process.
There’s only one creative process in a human beings’ consciousness. When you start to understand about the mind, how the mind operates, the movement of thought, I like to call it the journey of thought. It moves from the want phase in the conscious, which is in the imagination. Once it crosses the line, I don’t know where this line is, but it’s a line into the subconscious, then that want becomes a desire. The desire controls the body. How do you get the person to take that journey of thought from the want into the sub into desire? When it takes the journey into the sub as a desire, that’s where the paradigm is, too. That’s where all objections come from.
For your listeners here, you want to write this down. Every time you hear the word “but,” whatever comes after that word is the paradigm. To understand the mind, I think is essential to sales. If all you did was study the mind and apply the things you study on your sales presentations, and with your client service, your income will start to increase. No question.
Fred Diamond: You talked about how when you were dealing with Bob Proctor, he would always say, “Look in, find out what’s the obstacle.” I agree with you 1,000%, things have changed a lot over the last couple of years for obvious reasons. That’s why we do a show every Friday called Creativity in Sales. Salespeople have to be the most creative people in the company. There’s no straight line. There’s 40 closes that may need to happen in some cases before you make a transaction. You have to constantly be creative and thinking, but since it’s so hard, even what you said before, there are external factors that come in that you have to figure out and get past. Maybe your customer just lost their budget, or maybe your main champion just left or whatever it might be or war in Ukraine, whatever it might be. We hit ruts. We hit moments with dips, not infrequently. The great salespeople figure out ways to get past it. What is your advice on that? When we hit these ruts, what are some things we should do to get through them?
Dave Conway: The thing we got to understand by ruts is they have to be worked out of. You got to work out of them. If you get an email, everyone’s experienced this. Let’s say, a text. It’s two o’clock, you’re having the greatest day of all time. Then you get a text from somebody, and it could be a no or some bad news or perceived bad news and then you drop like a stone. It’s key to avoid ruts, we want to stay neutral. I always say that wins are just as dangerous as losses. They’re just as dangerous, because you have a great week last week, you can start to take your foot off the gas.
You have to understand a lot of times last week wasn’t actually created last week. Last week was created maybe the week before or two weeks before. You’re always dealing with effects all the time. It goes cause and effect. When you drop into a rut, what starts to happen is doubt starts to creep in, negative emotions, negative thoughts. It can start to control your perception too. A lot of doom and gloom can start to enter into your consciousness. When we drop into a rut, what starts to happen is it’d be the opposite of momentum, we start to get into a state of inertia.
Sometimes when things aren’t going good, especially maybe a fear, it maybe some financial fear, maybe have some anxiety, those things aren’t usually expressed, they’re usually suppressed. What starts to happen with the anxiety is you want to isolate. I know when I’m afraid, I don’t want to do something. When I have anxiety, I want to just like curl up and not be wherever the heck I’m supposed to be. It takes a lot of courage to get yourself out of a rut. I found that the more energy you start to release, start to get creative, come up with something, write down a list, just release energy into what exists. If you’re having a hard time creating something new, then double down on your existing clients. Start to go the extra mile, Maybe you don’t feel it in the beginning, but start to go the extra mile and everything you do start to release energy into your existing environment. I’ll promise you, you’ll turn the tides of that rut. You’ll shift them.
Fred Diamond: Now, that’s a great point. Actually, I experienced a little bit of that this week. We have a lot of things we offer at the Institute for Excellence in Sales, and a day went and I didn’t sell anything and didn’t get any inquiries and etc. I was like, “This ain’t great.” Next day, we got two new customers. What I like to tell people, one of the biggest momentum solutions is generating revenue. Getting a check and being proud that people have believed in what you’re offering, and they’re going to become customers.
How do we create that consistency, though? How do we avoid the big ones? Dave, we’ve had some major things the last two years. There’s always been things. It’s funny, before the pandemic, we talked about mindset once a year at the Institute for Excellence in Sales, maybe on a Friday in October. Now we’re talking every single week about mindset, and we’ve had so many things. Obviously, so many mental challenges, things have happened to people, to family members, to jobs, there’s been so much loss that people have talked about over the last couple of years. How do we create that consistency? How do we avoid the big ruts and even the big ups as well? How do we stay in the space of constantly moving forward in a positive way?
Dave Conway: You have to consciously just work on your enthusiasm every day. We had a client, her name was Sunny Lippincott. Sunny was in our mentorship for a year when I asked her this question. I asked her the question, “Sunny, what’s the biggest thing you took away?” I’ve been running my mouth in her ear for a year, so I’ve said a lot there. I said, “What’s the number one thing? What’s the biggest thing you took away in that year?” Her idea stuck with me ever since and that’d be why I’m talking about it. Her answer, she said that the realization that she has to choose her attitude every single day. When we talk about attitude, we have to understand that we can’t control the outside world.
The faster we understand that, the better. There’s one little word called blame. As you start to blame something outside of yourself, and this is why it was so hard working with Bob for me at the time, because I was just in the habit of holding other things responsible for my life. This doesn’t mean that people aren’t going through challenges or to be hard hearted or cold or anything like that. That’s not what I’m talking about. What I’m talking about is the second you blame, then you open the door for resentment. Resentment cuts you off from enthusiasm. You have to work on your enthusiasm every day.
Even today, I still have to build it up. You can carry momentum in from yesterday, but you really do have to let the dead bury the dead. You can look at it, what am I in control of? There’s an awesome question that I’d like to give your audience that has really multiplied my income faster than any other question when it comes to my sales presentation. A habit that I started to do a few years ago was after every sales presentation, I asked myself, “Was there a point that I lost control of that conversation?” Then what it started to show me is there were certain objections that would hammer me. There would be a certain personality type that just steamrolled me every time. There’d be certain conversations that I didn’t want to have.
I couldn’t get to the direct, honest, and loving. I might be stuck in the directness part or the honesty part. I might be sugarcoating the pill about certain things. Then when I started learning about direct, honest, and loving, I would forget the loving part. I just be basically an a-hole to somebody [laughs]. When I started asking myself that question, “Was there a point that I lost control of that sales presentation?” It became very revealing where I needed to improve. I’d like to give this on a holistic level for your day, because all we have is today.
It’ll help with the question that you’re asking. What I’ve began to do in the evening, was, I started to ask myself, “Was there a moment that I lost control in the day?” It could be all kinds of stuff, all the little things like, maybe diet, maybe my attitude, maybe social media took me over for too long, whatever it is. Maybe I got one of those texts, and it just really smashed multiple hours of my day. Maybe I wasn’t controlling my thinking, maybe I wasn’t controlling my energy. When you ask yourself this, where you have to look back around to having a neutral mind too when it comes to momentum and life in general. You will find every night areas you lost control. Isn’t that what we’re all really seeking? Aren’t we all just selling more control? Who doesn’t want more control? Everybody wants more control.
A brave person, a successful and elite salesperson, they start to look for the areas that they lose control and start to gain more control in that area. Another question ask yourself too, “Is this problem in me or outside of me?” We have a war going on right now and in the world. It’s like, “Well, that’s not in me. I didn’t cause that war, but might it affect me? Yes.” Whether it’s going to affect you emotionally and mentally, that’s your decision. That’s a big pill to swallow for a lot of people.
Fred Diamond: The reality is we have to continue. I tell this to people all the time when people call me and they have challenges with their leadership, let’s say, and they want to complain about leadership, I always say to them, “Look,” I say, “You’re responsible for you, your boss is responsible for six of you, his boss is responsible for six of him. You’re a critical piece of your company achieving its goals.” If you have something going on with you, you got to understand how it affects everybody else in your organization. You need to snap into play so that you continue to be as effective as you can be. You know what? Everybody goes through stuff, even CEOs. Your CEO right now, ladies and gentlemen, he or she is going through stuff right now.
Let’s take this question from Nicole. Nicole says, “Can Dave talk a little bit more about what it means to be loving? Is that something I should be showing to my customers?” Thanks, Nicole, for the question. You mentioned one of three of Bob Proctor’s guidance was to be loving. Tell us a little bit more about what that means. Is that a sappy thing? How does that play into really being successful in doing what your goal is, which is to achieve revenue and grow your transactions?
Dave Conway: Nicole, I want to give you a really great thing, you can find it online and might be on YouTube. It’s by Earl Nightingale. He talks about a thing called Empathy Ego Balance. What it is, it’s like imagine a person sitting on a couch. They’re not having a great time, they’re really not. They have a challenge and we’re problem solvers the salespeople. You know how in some countries, everybody has to go into the army for four years or whatever?
I think everybody should be in sales for four years, because you got to become very, very tough to succeed [laughs]. Let’s say you have somebody sitting on the couch, and they have a problem. The direct, honest, and loving part or also Empathy Ego Balance, what you do is you go down, you sit with them, you tell them the truth, you put your arm around them, you empathize with them, but then you also tell them, “Hey, look, we got to get off this couch. Let’s stand up.”
There’s some people that would scream at a person. They don’t sit on the couch with them, they could be standing in front of them, and saying, like, “Hey, get off the couch. Come on, snap out of it.” They probably would yell back, “If I knew how, I would.” It’s more a, let’s snap out of it, we can do this, it’s okay. It diffuses an energy field. While you have another person that will go sit on the couch with them, then they start crying and then everyone’s just down in the doldrums and low energy.
This is where you really want to be careful because there’s two kinds of incomes. There’s psychic income, where you get a fix or a hit from helping somebody. One of the stimulants of the brain is mutual suffering too. You ever notice that about people? It’s like, “Oh, I lost my keys too”. Or, “My spouse passed.” Or whatever it is, you relate, it’s mutual suffering, it’s a connection automatic. When the person that sits on the couch and puts their arm around them, but they don’t get off the couch, now you got two people sitting on the couch. You got to learn to sit on the couch with them, put your arm around them, help them understand. Then also, “Hey, let’s stand up.” Gain their trust to stand up together and move forward with a decision.
Fred Diamond: That’s very powerful. Nicole says thank you so much. I’m curious also, you’ve helped companies do thousands of online sales calls, you’ve probably done thousands yourself as well. What are some of the key lessons that you took away from so many sales calls that you’ve done?
Dave Conway: That is an amazing question. There’s the psychic income and then there’s the monetary. Don’t fall into the trap of just getting psychic fixes, make sure the deals are getting closed. I know a lot of salespeople, they think they did good because they talked to people all day. You’re not a salesperson, you’re just a researcher. Watch out for people pleasing when it comes to sales, it cripples a lot of great services because the person gets paid with the emotional side. Make sure you get paid on the monetary side too.
Now, the biggest thing that I ever discovered, and I never was taught this. You know how we learn things from being taught and then we experience it? Doing that many sales calls online and just that many sales calls in general, that’s been my greatest teacher of all. One of the greatest realizations that I realized is that all sales move through the human imagination. All sales, every sale I’ve ever made and every sale I ever will make is because of the human imagination.
I remember this one time, I was talking to a younger lady, and she really lacked confidence. What I discovered was when people lack confidence or trust – the root word of confidence is fidere, which is just trust. Trust and confidence, same thing. The people that lack confidence, their imaginations go dormant. In the first moments in contact with your prospect, it is all about liberating their imagination. It is all about opening their imagination, finding out what they want. What’s their desire? Why have they agreed to meet with you? There is a desire behind every single movement of the body. If anybody’s ever met with you, you have to understand that they have a desire.
The faster you can find out what that desire is, the second they tell you, then that’s actually what you start selling. You can find out within 60 seconds of a sales presentation. “Hey, what inspired you to meet with me today?” One question. Whatever they say, that’s what you’re going to sell them. When it comes to imagination, where there’s no confidence, the imagination shrinks, it starts to go in. You’ll know this with some people, “Hey, what do you want? What you want to see happen?” There’ll be very vague. You got to start to isolate exact images. The second someone tells you what they want, you form a clear mental picture of them having it in your mind, and you’ll create an instant resonance and rapport with that prospect.
Fred Diamond: We have a question here that comes in from Bronson. Bronson says, “Dave has a lot of energy. What are some things Dave does to keep himself motivated?” Bronson, thanks. Dave, you’re obviously a high-energy guy, you’ve done so much great work for a lot of people you’ve worked with, as we’ve mentioned before, the great Bob Proctor, who was obviously a great coach to you. What are some things you do? You talked about things you do at night, just to rethink. Maybe some of the things that broke down during the day. Tell us a little bit about some things that you personally do to keep your mind as fresh and to keep your momentum going throughout the sales processes that you go through.
Dave Conway: Thanks, Bronson. It starts in the morning. This isn’t news to anybody. Morning routines are excellent. For me, the most powerful thing in my morning routine is this, I actually sit down, I’ll set a timer and I’ll go five minutes. I will actually pray for all of my clients, I will start to see them getting what they want, I will start to see the transaction. I’ll see the close, but also, I’ll actually see them in their glory, getting what they want. I do convert it into a prayer.
You can convert it into whatever your persuasion is in that area of life. For me, I actually take five minutes and pray for them. I’ve found that whenever I experienced ruts, I can always pinpoint it back to being selfish. Where I invert my energy field. The second I start to think about you, Bronson, the second I start to think about Fred, the second I start to think about Nicole, I get excited. You see, desire is the triggering mechanism to release energy. When you start to focus on them, and focus on helping others get what they want, really, and truly, I believe you become unstoppable. I try and get my butt out of my own way in the morning, stop thinking about myself, make a commitment to serve today and to do it to my utmost. I used to actually do personal development to get and now actually, I’m at the point in my life where I do personal development, so I give better.
Fred Diamond: That’s a great thing. My favorite quote of all time, is the Einstein quote, “Only life lived in service of others is a life worth living.”
Dave, I want to thank you again for sharing with us your insights, telling us some stories about Bob Proctor, which was fantastic. For those of you who are not familiar with Bob Proctor, just go Google him and bless his memory. I want to acknowledge you for your success and for the following that you have of people who want to learn from you, and you’ve done a great job helping thousands, if not tens of thousands of sales professionals, maybe even hundreds of thousands at this point working with Bob to get more out of life and to achieve their goals, help companies and help their families.
We’d like to end every Sales Game Changers Podcasts asking our guests for one specific action step. You’ve given us 20 great ideas already. Give us something that our listeners should do right now to take their sales career to the next level.
Dave Conway: Do this. Take a pen, take a paper. Do this for seven days, I’m going to ask 10 minutes of your day for the next seven days. In the morning, when you wake, at the top of the piece of paper write on the top, what do I want to see happen in my life? What do I want? You put a timer on for 10 minutes, and whatever comes out, just write it down on the piece of paper. You do this every day for seven days. At the end of the seven days, I want you to circle one. This could be material, it could be character, maybe you want to increase a character trait. Maybe you want to become a better closer, maybe you want to master your intro, whatever it is, and nothing off the table.
What do I want to see happen? Put it down. After seven days circle, the one that really jumps out at you. Then build a clear mental picture in your mind of having and being or doing whatever that thing is. You keep carrying that thing into every day and I promise you as sure as it’s getting dark tonight, it’ll start to move into form.
Fred Diamond: Once again, thanks to all the listeners of today’s Sales Game Changers Podcast. Thank you, Dave Conway. My name is Fred Diamond, this is The Sales Game Changers Podcast.
Transcribed by Mariana Badillo