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[EDITOR’S NOTE: This is a replay of the OPTINAL SALES MINDSET Webinar sponsored by the Institute for Excellence in Sales and hosted by Fred Diamond on October 22, 2020. It featured Sales Mindset expert Gene Zannetti.]
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EPISODE 286: Sports Mindset Expert Gene Zannetti Shows How Shifting from a Prey to Predator Mindset Can Grow Your Sales Career Exponentially
GENE’S TIP TO EMERGING SALES LEADERS: “I want you to take three different prey mindsets that you tend to have and change them into predator mindsets. If you tend to think about other people’s opinions of you, think how would you change that into focusing more on your effort, your attitude, your aggressiveness. If you’re afraid of rejection, if you’re thinking too much about the numbers, if you compare yourself too much to your neighbor, change that prey mindset into a predator mindset. Start with three simple examples and then you could move on throughout your life. Any area you want to get better at, you could apply the same approach and it will work, guaranteed. As we always say, whether it’s sports, business, school or life, mindset makes the difference.”
Fred Diamond: Gene, it’s good to have you here. I met you and your brother, have been following the stuff that you do, you guys are doing great work helping sales organizations and businesses implement some of the skills and mindsets of world-class athletic performers and we’re going to talk about that today. First off, how’s your mindset today? How are you feeling as we get embarked upon today’s webinar?
Gene Zannetti: Going well, thank you for having me, Fred. Ready to rock and roll.
Fred Diamond: Let’s talk about sports and sales. Two weeks ago we had Ken Harvey who was a four-time Pro Ball football player, played for the Washington football team and we’ve had some other athletes before on our Sales Game Changers podcasts, we’ve interviewed some top sales leaders who, like you, went up through the wrestling chain to get into business. Let’s talk about how sales success and sports success are similar, how does that look and how does that represent itself in the real world?
Gene Zannetti: People are people and competition is competition. As we always say, like it or not, we live in a very competitive society so if you ask anyone who performs in any kind of stressful situation whether it’s taking a test, job interview, sales, sports, you ask them what percentage of their success is physical or technical versus what percentage is mental, and almost everyone across the board will throw out some really high number. They’ll say it’s 90% mental and the lowest number I’ve really heard is like 40 – 50% which is still a very large chunk of the pie. Then you ask them, “How much time are you spending in your preparation physically or technically versus mentally?”
And usually it’s the opposite story, they say 95% of their training is the X’s and O’s or the physical training, it doesn’t matter if it’s sales success or being on a diet. We all know it’s in our head but most of us spend 95% of our time training physically or doing the X’s and O’s, technical training, which is very important. We just need to make sure we bridge that gap so not only are we working hard but we’re also working smart. It’s not either/or, it’s both/and.
Fred Diamond: Why do you think that so many sales leaders and so many sales organizations focus on, like you say, the X’s and the O’s? We do this too, we teach people prospecting skills. As a matter of fact, tomorrow we’re going to bring The Sales Hunter, Mark Hunter and his book just came out right before the pandemic called A Mind for Sales, but he also wrote High Profit Prospecting and High Profit Selling as well. We do a lot of training on the X’s and the O’s, account strategy, referral building and here we are once again. We are doing something every week on mindset but why do you think organizations don’t? Why do you think there is that gap?
Gene Zannetti: First of all, because we know how important the technical and the physical is. When it comes to sports if you want to be successful you need to know how to play your sport, you need to have great technique, you need to do the skills and the drills. Same thing technically in sales, you need to have the skills, you need to have your questions pre-planned, you need to have different ways you could transition into different closes so that’s very important. Strength training, getting into shape, we know it’s important, you have to get on the treadmill, you have to get in the weight room. We know physical is so important and it’s easier to see, we can see ourselves improving physically and technically but mentally, we don’t see it the same way. Unfortunately, there’s a lot of misconceptions with mindset that when people hear the term ‘mindset training’ they think, “Let’s hold hands in a circle, let’s sing Kumbaya” and that’s great for comradery, of course but that’s very different than what we’re talking about with mindset training.
This is very different than motivational speaking, counseling or therapy. I love all of those things just like I know it’s important to have the X’s and O’s down, the technical training and the physical, mentally it’s just as important but there’s a lot of those misconceptions. I love the motivational speakers, I follow a lot of them on Instagram, counseling and therapy, I have two master’s degree, one’s in clinical psychology, I became a school psychologist. I’m all about therapy and counseling and if you need it, get that help, that’s a strength, that’s not a weakness. I always push the mental health but when we talk about mindset training it’s different than that, it’s more like strength training for the mind. I think to answer your question, “Why don’t teams do that?” is because they don’t really understand what mental training is. Look at it as strength training for your mind, in order to get stronger you need to lift weights and go to the gym. You can’t just think about lifting weights, you have to lift the weights or if you don’t have a gym like during the pandemic, you get on the ground, you do push-ups, you do sit-ups.
There’s some physical work involved, it’s active engagement. Same thing with mindset training, it’s doing the exercises, it’s doing the activities, getting what we call mental reps, I’m sure we’ll get into that later. Most people don’t know how to do that, they don’t know how to get stronger mentally, they don’t know how to build confidence. What are the strategies to relax under pressure? If you ask someone how they get in better shape, they can tell you run, go on the elliptical, ride bikes, do canoeing, whatever. They can tell you what to do but how do I build confidence? It’s a little bit tougher to think about. We look at it as strength training for the mind but you have to know what those exercises are.
Fred Diamond: We’re going to talk in a second here about the five mandatory mindsets but I have a question about training. The question actually comes here from Geraldine and Geraldine is in Washington, DC. She says, “Can you improve your mindset?” I have a question for you like that. If someone is struggling with prospecting we could teach them phone skills, we can teach them how to be more engaging, we can teach them better questioning skills, there’s tons of books. I’m looking to my left, I have a bookshelf of probably 200 sales training related books on how you can get better at the X’s and O’s like we talked about. But can you improve your mindset? We’re going to talk about those mindsets in a second but can you see someone really take their mindset to the next level? And I want to put this in context, we did a conference six years ago that was called The Customer Acquisition Symposium, we had six of the best sales trainers in the planet in Washington DC, it was one of the first full-day sales conferences. At the end of the day we had all six of them on the stage and I said, “Guys, if you could just sum it up in one word, what do salespeople need to work on to be better?” Five out of the six said mindset and that’s why we’re doing a mindset show every single week. My question for you, Gene, and then we’re going to follow up with the top 5 mandatory mindsets, can you improve your mindset the same way you can improve your phone skills, your prospecting skills, your presentation in front of the virtual audience?
Gene Zannetti: Absolutely, it’s a scientific field and that’s what sports psychology was all about. I didn’t even know that existed back in high school and I was a wrestler, both my younger brothers and I, they took second in the state of New Jersey, I took third but we both felt like we were more practice room wrestlers. In practice we would do a lot better than we would perform under the bright lights when the pressure was on, so you have that intuitive sense that pressure makes a difference but it was never addressed. Then I read my first book on sports psychology, I just happened to be in a Borders book store when I was a senior in high school and the book was called Fight Your Fear and Win by Dr. Don Greene and he was a sports psychologist and performance enhancement specialist.
Never heard about this before and I thought, “This is the most interesting subject in the world, how do I get the most potential out of myself that I possibly can? I looked into it, that’s why my first master’s degree was in exercise science and sports psychology, there’s a whole science behind it. Unfortunately, it’s kind of new relatively speaking in America, the US Olympic team didn’t start doing this until 1984. The Soviets were a little bit ahead of them by maybe a decade or so but it’s still relatively new, but the science is there, they have different metrics both qualitative and quantitative measures on how they could see actually anxiety going lower, your confidence going higher, your mental toughness getting stronger. You have to know what you’re looking for and you have to have the right metrics.
Fred Diamond: Let’s get right to it. What are the top 5 mandatory mindsets, Gene?
Gene Zannetti: We call this the Mindset Principles and this is exactly what we do with our sports teams, we work with the US Olympic teams, we work some UFC fighters, professional athletes, University of Michigan, University of Pennsylvania. Same stuff that we do with the businesses that we work with, with Abbott, with SI-ONE, with AXA Advisors, all these places it’s the same thing. #1, I am thankful for the opportunity to work and if you were an athlete it would be I’m thankful for the opportunity to compete. It all begins with an attitude of gratitude, it’s very hard to be nervous and thankful at the same time. In the same way, we see anxiety and depression plaguing our nation worse than ever before and this is even before the pandemic, I can’t even imagine where the numbers are now.
The opposite of depression and sadness is not happiness – that was surprising when I learned that – the opposite of depression is thankfulness and attitude of gratitude. This is why you always hear people, even the more pop people, Tony Robbins, Oprah saying make a gratitude journal. They’re absolutely right, what are you thankful for? #1, you have to be thankful for the opportunity to work, to compete or to do a podcast like we’re doing right now. Whether you’re Fortune 500 business, whether you’re a youth athlete.
#2, I’m aggressive and relentless and of course, we have to know what that means within our field. We’re not talking about crossing boundaries or being pushy doing things we shouldn’t be doing, of course there’s a level of professionalism but whatever field you’re in, fortune favors the bold. If you’re going to err on one side of playing cautious or playing gutsy, I always say err on the side of being gutsy. The most successful people are hustlers, they’re go-getters, they get it done, they don’t make excuses, they’re all about personal responsibility so being aggressive, getting after it, most salespeople a lot of times don’t even ask for the sale. If you don’t A-S-K, you can’t G-E-T, we’ve probably heard that a million times. Then relentless, it doesn’t just start in the beginning of the day, it carries throughout the day and then next week and the following week and years. I’m aggressive and relentless, it doesn’t matter if you’re an athlete, a student, a salesperson or anything in between.
#3, I have no fear of losing or making mistakes. That’s a big one, that is the key thing that cripples most people, the fear of rejection, fear of looking bad, we worked a lot of pharmaceutical sales, having a doctor yell at you or getting the door slammed in your face, this is totally applicable to any field. We’re afraid of what other people think about us, other people’s judgements. We cannot be afraid to lose or to make mistakes. I look at history, who are the greatest warriors of all time? US Military, the Spartans, the Samurai, the Aztechs, what do they all have in common? Two things, they know who they are, they know what they believe and as a result, they’re willing to die for it. That’s out in war, what about in sales? What about in sports? If these people are able to train themselves to put their life on the line, then we could train ourselves to deal with the fear of failure, the fear of rejection, the fear of any kind of loss. It comes down to knowing who we are and knowing what we believe, that’s why we always say you have to be rock solid in these five mindsets. Sports, school, business or life, you know who you are, you know what you believe and as a result, you have #3. I have no fear of losing or making mistakes.
#4, I never ever give up. As basic as it sounds, a lot of people quit. We could quit while we’re doing poorly, we could also quit while we’re doing really well. How many times have we gotten content? We made a sale and we say, “I’m good for the day.” No, get one more. I think back to my wrestling days at the University of Pennsylvania, our coach would always tell us, “Finish the match on top, don’t be content with the 2 point win when you could win by 3 or 4. You can’t give up whether you’re doing well or doing poorly and especially now during this COVID time that we’re still in and the whole new normal, we can’t ever give up. A lot of salespeople have had success doing things a certain way their whole life, they’ve just found their groove and now we have to change, we have to shift, we have to evolve as people, as salespeople. It’s so important that we don’t quit, that we welcome this, that any time one door closes, another opens and any time there’s adversity, there’s always a new opportunity.
That’s why we’re doing what we’re doing, seeing opportunity through adversity. With our business, Winning Mindset, we called a company meeting as soon as they had a lockdown, probably the next day and we said, “Look, team. History has shown us” – again, going back to history, history helps us understand the present and predict the future – “that when something like this happens massively either people go broke, some companies go broke, some people become multi-millionaires. This is either the biggest blessing that could have ever happened to us or the worst curse that could have happened and it all comes down to our attitude. We’re going to be the group that turns this into a multi-million dollar organization. Are we there yet? No we’re not, but we’re moving in the right direction and that’s the key. As my dad always said, the biggest room in the world is the room for improvement so I never give up.
#5, last mindset that’s mandatory for a champion is I trust the process. You have to trust the process, most of your life is spent on a plateau. There’s a book by George Leonard called Mastery and he speaks about this, that people think success is this diagonal straight line and it’s actually you go up and then you plateau, and then you go up again and then it’s another plateau. You find that in life you spend most of your time on a plateau so you have to be comfortable with the plateau always aiming to get better, you feel good about where you are now, you feel good about where you’re going in the future, we’re never content but we understand that this is part of the process. You have to trust the process, that’s why you need a mentor, that’s why you need to continue being a lifelong learner watching great podcasts and shows such as yours where you’re constantly soaking up information and getting better. If you don’t do that, you’ll never grow, you’ll never have those outcomes you want, you’ll plateau, you’ll never get to the next plateau. You want to always get to that next one so trusting the process. You don’t have to reinvent the wheel, study successful people, success leaves clues and that’ll show you where you go next. Then you get on your next plateau and then you get to the next one.
Fred Diamond: Repeat them for us again and let’s get deep into each one on some things that sales professionals should be doing or could be doing to really get to the level. We’ve dealt with so many sales professionals and every Wednesday we interview sales leaders. It’s called the Sales Game Changers Live and we interview VPs, Chief Revenue Officers of companies like IBM, Oracle and Microsoft, Hilton Hotels, places like that and those guys and ladies didn’t get to that level without having these five mindsets a part of who they are. It’s not to say they didn’t go through challenging times, everybody goes through challenging times and everybody has had to figure things out. We just had our 10th Annual Award Event last week and we gave our Women in Sales Leadership Award to a woman who’s a senior general manager, VP of Sales at Oracle Corporation, her name is Tamara Greenspan. She talked about all the people that she thanked in her life, in her 30 year career that have been a part of it and that’s how she got to the highest level. Repeat the five and then let’s get a little bit deeper. Gina here says that she loves your dad’s thinking, “The biggest room in the house is the room for improvement.” Thank you so much, Gina.
Gene, give us the five again and then let’s get deep into all five.
Gene Zannetti: #1, I’m thankful for the opportunity to work. #2, I’m aggressive and relentless. #3, I have no fear of losing or making mistakes. #4, I never give up. #5, I trust the process.
Fred Diamond: Let’s get deep into all of these with some suggestions. If you’re watching today’s webcast and you want to submit an idea on how you are enacting one of these five, feel free to submit it via the question panel and we’ll get to it as well. #1, thankful and the opportunity to compete, gratitude. When I think of gratitude I think of thanking people, “Thank you, Gene.” Thank you everybody, we have dozens of people watching today’s webinar. To everybody who’s giving us an hour of their time 2 o’clock Eastern time on October 22nd, I see a number of people here who log in every day, I see some people here who I haven’t met before so thank you all for being here. Let’s talk about, Gene, from your perspective, what are some things top notch sales professionals are doing to show gratitude?
Gene Zannetti: It’s just an entire attitude towards life, we spoke before about raking the leaves. You could go out there and you could say, “This stinks, this is the worst part about the fall, I’ve got to rake these leaves again” and we get it, we understand, that is an annoying thing but we could also say, “I’m thankful for the opportunity to rake leaves.” Why? It means I’m healthy, it means I’m physically capable, I’m mentally capable, I’m getting fresh air outside. It’s really that attitude towards life that whatever we’re doing whether we’re competing, whether we’re working, whether we’re playing a sport, we’re thankful for the opportunity to do it. Baby wakes up in the middle of the night, starts crying, I get it, it’s adversity, it’s not easy, it’s not what you’d prefer but, “I’m thankful for the opportunity to have a son.”
Fred Diamond: You’ve made that choice, everybody who’s doing anything in sales – or life, for the most part – almost everything really comes down to a choice, putting yourself in position. You chose to be a father, which means part of that comes up at 1 o’clock in the morning sometimes, you need to be there. Same thing with sales, you’ve chosen to be in position to appreciate the opportunity to be here right now. I’ve worked for some of the top companies in the world and I tell people this all the time, if you’re in sales, it’s great to work for a company that’s doing great at the moment you’re in sales. When cash is flowing into your company it’s such a great place to be but it’s also a great place to be if your company is struggling because you do have customers that need your technology, your products or your offering or they’re looking for you for guidance so there’s definitely a lot to be thankful for and to have gratitude towards.
Gene Zannetti: Like you said, we see who the real positive thinkers are when times are tough, when COVID strikes, when all of a sudden the numbers are down, when other people are criticizing, blaming, complaining, when the pressure is on. Then it’s very difficult to be a positive thinker and one of the exercises, a simple thing you can do, anyone can do this instantly, as soon as you catch yourself complaining, right away give three things you’re thankful for. Immediately say them and what happens is it changes your perspective, it’s the last thing you’re going to want to do because when you’re having a bad day, you want to wallow in self-pity, you want that pat on the back from other people and I get it, that’s human, that’s normal. But make sure you’re saying those three things you’re thankful for because that’s going to balance out your perspective and get you to start seeing opportunity.
Fred Diamond: The next one is be aggressive and be relentless. Let’s talk about that in some detail as far as how sales professionals can do that. The reason I’m asking that question is we’ve had numerous conversations on the Sales Game Changers webinars and podcasts about introversion versus extrovert. A lot of people think that great salespeople are go-getters, extroverts, they’re out there, there’s some work that’s been done that shows that the introverts may be the best sales professionals. One of our good friends, Matthew Pollard came out with his book last year, The Introvert’s Edge where he focuses on that as well. Let’s talk about how you could use relentlessness no matter what your personality is like and how that can play to your advantage.
Gene Zannetti: Let’s take that introvert because that would be the tougher case because we know the whole big mouth theory, the squeaky wheel gets the oil and most of the time, the people that are successful in sales tend to have bigger personalities. We could set that aside for now, let’s look at the introverts. When we talk about being aggressive and relentless maybe what it is with you is you have pre-planned questions, you really did your homework, you were aggressive in your research, you were aggressive in not asking aggressive questions but you have questions prepared, you have contingencies. “If my client says this, then I could go down this road. If they say that, I don’t bring this up, I go down that road.” There’s many ways to be a hustler and to be a go-getter but basically it’s that you’re willing to put it on the line, you’re willing to go for it, you will ask for the sale.
Also, I think about social media, you could be very aggressive on social media. My brother and I, when we started Wrestling Mindset, the first chapter of Winning Mindset, we were friending everyone in the wrestling community on Facebook. Once we started in business, it started in LinkedIn. We got to the point where we said, “If you’re not getting blocked on LinkedIn or on these different social media pages where you’re friending too many people, you’re not reaching out to enough people. We passed that on to people in our business and again, it’s not a matter of being annoying but you have to put yourself out there, you have to get on people’s radar. You could absolutely be an introvert, my brother is a great example, he’s an introvert but he’s very ferocious when it comes to aggressive and relentlessness reaching out to people. I think he’s the one who set this up with us in the beginning, you guys spoke first.
Fred Diamond: How did your coach, when you were a collegiate wrestler, how did he coach you to be relentless and what are some things that you’re doing now to inspire and train some of the sales professionals and business professionals you work with to be a little more aggressive, be a little more relentless?
Gene Zannetti: I think that relates to #3, the mindset we’re talking about, because a lot of times it’s removing the barrier that we’re putting in front of ourselves. Your greatest opponent, my greatest opponent, it’s always ourselves so the first obstacle we have to overcome is ourselves. That goes for every salesperson on this call even if they’re not involved in sales, you still have to overcome yourself for a diet, to be in shape, whatever it is. The big thing that holds us back is that fear of rejection, I have no fear of losing or making mistakes. If you look at the great leaders, the great coaches, the great teachers, parents, they say the same thing. Control things in your control, forget about things outside of your control. I’m sure everyone on this call, everyone watching this heard that before, I’m not telling you anything new but how do you get that message to stick?
That’s exactly what we have done with athletes and salespeople, we have a great analogy. I took an animal behavior class at the University of Pennsylvania and they said there’s two different types of animals, there’s predator and there’s prey. You can tell the difference between a predator and prey animal just by looking at them. Most people think their teeth, no, it’s not their teeth. Is it their size? No, it’s their eyes. If you look at predator animals, lions, tigers and bears, their eyes are located on the front of their head because they’re focused on their goal, they’re focused on what they can control. We always say, “Eyes on the front like to hunt.” When you look at prey animals, squirrels, chipmunks, rabbits, deer, maybe we have some hunters on the show, we say, “Eyes on the side like to hide.” Why? Because they’re focused on what’s going on around them, they don’t want to get eaten so the predator is thinking about lunch, the prey is thinking about not being lunch. Eyes on the front like to hunt, eyes on the side like to hide.
What does that have to do with an athlete? What does that have to do with a salesperson or even just a parent? Everything, that’s your metaphor for focusing on things within your control. If you want to have what we call a predator mindset, and again, I know that word has a lot of negative connotations, we’re not talking about anything like that. As an analogy, predator salespeople, predator athletes in that mindset are focusing on things within their control and the way I see it, they’re mainly five things. The first two are before your performance, your preparation and your lifestyle. You have 100% control – most control – over your preparation and your lifestyle. If you’re living at a higher level than your competitors, eventually you’re going to beat them in whatever area of life. You could out-hustle someone, you could out-work someone. It means you’re getting into shape, it means you’re going to sleep at a regular hour, drugs, alcohol, no abuse there, eating healthy. Look, nobody’s perfect but we’re improving in those areas, we’re eating as healthy as we can, we’re trying to get 8 hours of sleep, we’re trying to live that healthy lifestyle because we know that’s going to have a direct impact on our sales performance or on our athletic performance.
Then the day of a competition, the day of a sales call, the day of any performance, you’re giving a speech, you’re the best man at a wedding. It comes down to three things, your effort, your attitude and your aggressiveness. That’s the predator mindset on the day of a performance, effort, attitude and aggressiveness, that’s directly in your control so that’s what you focus on. Everything outside of that becomes prey mindset, focusing on other people’s opinions, even focusing on getting the sale. How many times do we miss the sale because we’re thinking too much about the sale or we’re thinking too much about what we can gain? Whether we’re thinking about the money, in sports the records, the rankings, the seating, the predictions, it happens at work also. We’re looking at the clock, “I’m almost done with the day”, that’s prey mindset, can’t be a clock-watcher. If I’m in the lead in my company for the sales lead, if I’m focusing too much on that, whatever it might be. It’s just information that’s not in our control. Of course we want our boss to like us, of course we want our coworkers to respect us but we can’t be focusing on that. I have to be living, I have to be in the moment. We always say the past is history, the future is a mystery, only the present is a gift so you have to stay in the present moment and the way you do that is by adopting that predator mindset. Effort, attitude and aggressiveness. Everything else is prey mindset.
Fred Diamond: I mentioned before we had our Annual Sales Excellence Awards last Friday and our keynote speaker was Jim Peterik, he’s from the band Survivor and he wrote a song called Eye of the Tiger, “The eye of the tiger stalks his prey in the night.” That was fantastic and for those watching today, you could always watch the replay on the I4ESBD.com website. #4, never give up. It’s interesting, the top sales performers are adopting a lot of these that you’ve talked about. “You’ll miss this one but you’ll get the next one”, when we look at some of the great sales professionals out there that we work with, they might have worked on a deal or a client for 10 years. Maybe they worked their entire 20s and eventually they were in position for somebody to become a customer. One of the mindset type things is you may not get the sale on the first call, obviously but if you’re still in the game – which goes probably to #5 as well, trust the process – and you have the right chops, the right attitude, the right mindset, you’re learning to become a great sales professional, you’re at the right company at the right time, you have the right mentors, you may get the deal when you’re 35. It may take those times for you to get in position to get the customer. Talk about never giving up, how does that relate? What are some strategies you have for that? Then lead us into trusting the process.
Gene Zannetti: If you’re a person of integrity, if you’re a person that provides value and if you’re out to genuinely help people, good things are going to happen. Maybe the sale comes from that person, maybe it comes from that person 10 years from now, maybe you never see a dollar of their money, maybe you get it from someone else but your good name is there, your reputation is building. Also, you’re helping people and of course we all want to make a living, of course we have to make money but that being said, I think people get into sales because they genuinely want to help people. They like being a problem solver, you like having the solution to other people’s problem and you’re very willing to help them, that’s why I find salespeople and entrepreneurs generally make the best mentors because they’re always willing to pay it forward and to give back.
I guess what I’m trying to say here is that you know how many seeds are in an apple but you never know how many apples are in a seed. Think about that, you don’t know how many apples one seed can produce, you could count the number of seeds that are in an apple. Plant seeds, be a person of integrity, give a lot of value, don’t expect anything in return, have that integrity. Say what you mean, mean what you say and good things tend to happen.
That would lead us into #5, trusting the process. Why do I say that so confidently? Partially because of my own experience but who am I? I’m one guy. I look at all the successful people that have come before me, you, the people who’ve been on your show, success leaves clues. You see this is what happens when you’re a person of integrity, when you put out good work, when you’re willing to help people and you mean what you say and you say what you mean.
Fred Diamond: Gene, we have a question here that’s coming in from the audience and then after this I want to ask you for your final thought. I want you to give us an action step, you’ve given us so many great ideas for people to be conscious of. A question here comes from Mickey and Mickey is in Jersey not too far from where you grew up. Mickey wants to know, “What should my day look like?” That’s an interesting question. As an athlete, I guess he’s asking what are some things you need to do and this comes up a lot on the mindset show. You mentioned Oprah and Tony Robbins, Tony Robbins of course is famous for having some rituals. I’m just curious, you don’t need to go through your whole day – Mickey, we’ll get you that later on – what are some of the morning rituals or habits that you have on a daily basis to ensure that you’re in position to reap the benefits of all the things that we talked about?
Gene Zannetti: What you said right there is the key, people talk about routines and habits, that’s what’s going to make you successful. First thing, you need to know where you’re going, what are you trying to do? Your goal dictates your behavior. You don’t just do things just to do them and that’s the mistake we get sometimes so you want to be planned and you want to be organized. It doesn’t have to be necessarily to the T but you need to know the direction you’re looking to go in all areas of your life. I have to think holistically, I have to think spirit, mind and body. What am I trying to accomplish? That’s going to dictate the flow of my day and that’s how you develop your routines and your patterns. I wake up in the morning, the first thing I’m thinking, spiritually I’m giving thanks to God, I make my morning offering, I start the day with prayer. Food, I know what I’m eating because I’m thinking about being in shape. I know I’m having my three eggs, I know I’m putting spinach on it and I know that I’m having my Ezekiel bread because I know it’s healthy and I want to stay in shape. I’m having my coffee in the morning, I’m putting in not sugar, I’m putting in Stevia because I know it’s a natural sweetener and it doesn’t have the calories. I know cinnamon is good for me so I throw it in there and I know coffee is for closers so I start it off with that.
I also make sure I always have my water with me, I’m drinking that bottle as soon as I wake up, there it is right there. Now I have a son who’s one and a half so I’m spending a lot of the morning with him and then again, around 9 o’clock that’s when work starts hitting, start getting into it, start making the sales calls right off the bat. I have the calls that I have, HubSpot, we use that, I know the different people that I’m making the calls to. You start to get into those rhythms and then I know after this call I’ll be getting a workout in. Then I’m going to church at 6 o’clock. Even though it’s not exactly planned, I know the direction I’m going, I know a workout will take place, I know sales calls will be made, I know my morning routine, I know my pre-sleep routine. It’s got to be there, plan it ahead of time and look holistically. Spirit, mind and body. Who are you? What are you trying to accomplish? It’s not that you don’t have enough time. A lot of people say, “I didn’t have enough time to do this.” Wrong, it’s not important enough to you.
Fred Diamond: Gene Zannetti, you’ve given us some great ideas. Gene, tell us how people can connect with you and how they can reach you. Obviously LinkedIn, again you could find him on the transcript of today’s podcast. Tell us how we can reach you and Gene, we like to end every show with an action step. You’ve given us a lot of great ideas here, perfect episode of the Optimal Sales Mindset. Give us one action step, one thing that you insist people do today to take their sales career to the next level.
Gene Zannetti: It’s winningmindset.solutions. Also, if you have any kids that play a sport we’re zwinningmindset.com, we’ll send that out over to you. We have a podcast, we have a YouTube page, we’re constantly pumping free information. The business books that I’ve read say give a lot of value, give a lot of free value so we do that, we’re happy to work with anyone who’s on this call to do a free session with you, with your team, with your kid, it doesn’t make a difference. We’re happy to help, we’re happy to put the value first so you can see the product for yourself and you can see just how much mindset training and getting the mental edge really does help.
Next, we’re talking about the tip of the day. We spoke about the predator and prey mindset, that analogy. What I want you to do, very simple, I want you to take three different prey mindsets that you tend to have and I want you to change them into predator mindsets. If you tend to think about other people’s opinions of you, instead how would you change that into focusing more on your effort, your attitude, your aggressiveness? If you’re afraid of rejection, if you’re thinking too much about the numbers, if you compare yourself too much to your neighbor, change that prey mindset into a predator mindset. Start with three simple examples and then you could move on throughout your life. Any area you want to get better at, you could apply the same approach and it will work, guaranteed. As we always say, whether it’s sports, business, school or life, mindset makes the difference.
Transcribed by Mariana Badillo