EPISODE 370: FireEye Sales Leader Greg Davison on How to Motivate Your Sales Team as Things Heat Up

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[EDITOR’S NOTE: This is a replay of the Sales Game Changers LIVE Webinar sponsored by the Institute for Excellence in Sales on June 8, 2021. It featured FireEye Canada and US Inside Sales Leader Greg Davison.]

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GREG’S TIP FOR EMERGING SALES LEADERS: “You’re the culmination of all the decisions that you’ve made. Using a baseball analogy, if you struck out, maybe you decided you didn’t practice enough. If you weren’t in the right place to catch that flyball, maybe you didn’t think about how to plan before that play happened to think about what could happen. If you don’t like something, just change it. Just go and do it. In saying that, it’s recognition that the most precious asset that we all have is time. You can’t waste it, you’ve got to do all the hard things. Go put all of those things on your calendar now!”

THE PODCAST STARTS HERE

Fred Diamond: Welcome to the Sales Game Changers live. Greg, I’m very excited to have you here. You’re the second FireEye leader that we’ve had. We’ve had the great Craig Mueller on the show a couple of years ago, and we also had him right smack in the middle of the pandemic. He’s given us some great insights.

First of all, it’s great to see you. You lead the FireEye Canada, you also lead a big portion of the United States inside sales team. I’m also excited because you’ve worked for some great companies. You’ve worked for Dell, you’ve worked for VMware, you’ve worked for Xerox, you’ve worked for IBM.

You’re also a student of sales, so I’m also looking forward to the stuff we’re going to be talking about today. I’m also very excited, as I always am, to get your recommendations for sales leaders, how they can take their careers to the next level.

First off, let’s get started here. It’s great seeing you, thank you so much. You’re up in Canada, I’m down in Northern Virginia for people watching us live. Big news from FireEye over the course of the last couple of weeks.

Typically, I ask people what’s going on in the organization right now. Usually, it’s some type of transition going on. You actually have some real things that have happened that are definitely impacting how you lead the organization, how you move forward. Again, great seeing you. Let’s get to it, talk about some of the big priorities right now facing you guys.

Greg Davison: Fred, let me start by saying thank you for doing what you do and for the Institute for Excellence.I’m always going to be a student. I follow you, I follow the likes of Darren Daley, Jim Rohn will always be classic and you just never know where those good ideas are going to come from, so thank you. For everybody listening, good on, everybody, for investing the time to sharpen their swords.

Jumping right into it, this last week had been a very interesting time to be part of FireEye. I’ve been here now five years, it’s my favorite place that I have spent time. It’s very engaging, it’s very political, it’s very here-and-now, and cyber is definitely top of everybody’s list. That particular business is approaching 180 billion with a CAGR of 10% to 15%.

We just announced last week that we’re making a very substantial move where the technology piece is going to separate from the company and join STG out of California, Symphony Technology Group.

What’s fascinating for me, I won’t know till Friday where I land, whether I land on the services solution side or the product side. Everybody’s asking, where do you want to land? For me, I joke it’s a little bit like a gender reveal for a baby. So long as the baby’s healthy, I don’t care if it’s a boy or a girl, I’m just happy. Both of them come with some exciting opportunities for sure.

The only downside, honestly, is I’m very, very close with the team that I’m part of, that I’m building, that I’m constantly nurturing. And the only real guarantee that I have for Friday is that I’m going to be with half the team and the other half’s going to be on the other side. The good news is the two leaders moving forward are very close and I think we’ll be able to continue to nurture that and we’ll be better off for it.

Fred Diamond: Let’s talk a little bit about the sales side. Again, we’re broadcasting today, June 9th. You said on Friday you’re going to know. A lot of people are probably listening to this this week and anxiously awaiting the news. But from a sales perspective, let’s talk about some of the priorities and some of the things that you’ve been focusing on and that you’re focusing on right now.

Greg Davison: I’m a little bit boring when it comes to priorities, I’ve got my own perspective which I’m very bullish on. I’m not a fan of leaders, particularly sales leaders, that change priorities like they change their jackets for seasons around the weather.

For me, if you look at when I was at Dell for 13 years or recently at VMware or here for five, my priorities have been three things. Know your business, long-term engagement model and having fun. Everything else falls as subsets of those, but those definitely help me accomplish what’s really important, and we could spend more time on that.

To get more, I’ll say, micro on this, priorities especially in cyber, it’s this week. It’s about, what are the current events happening in cyber? If you’re a salesperson and you own relationships and you’re wanting to drive that value, you have to have your own point of view. You have to be able to share that in order to be effective.

For me, priorities, I am looking forward to Friday to finally get that next step, and away we go. Right now, the other part I’m frankly focused on is helping my current team stay focused with the right mindset. This is interesting, I love studying people, we all do. In the absence of information, people assume the worst.

When we announced this significant change happening with FireEye, there’s obviously some that turned very pessimistic. It’s been a mission of mine to help people see all the positive of what could be, as opposed to just thinking assumptions.

Fred Diamond: That leads into an interesting question. Again, we’ve been doing webinars every day since the pandemic kicked in. There’s a lot of words that have come up frequently, value, listening, things along those lines, empathy of course is a big one. But one of the words, Greg, that has come up a lot is elite. I want to get some of your insights into what it means to be an elite sales professional right now.

Again, we’re doing today’s interview, it’s June. I know things are still a little bit tight up where you are, but in the United States a lot of things are opening up. As a matter of fact, I live in Northern Virginia just outside of DC and a lot of places have removed the mask requirement. You can go into restaurants and supermarkets without having to wear a mask and it’s a big shift. I live near an office park and I see some of the parking lot beginning to get full.

Talk about elite. I think one thing that’s happened over the last year is that there’s been an acknowledgement that you need to be elite because you need to provide so much value for customers to be interested in you right now. Talk about the word elite, what does that mean? Do you believe everybody should strive for that?

Greg Davison: That’s an interesting word. Someone said to me a long time ago in a conversation, two words are valuable and successful, what’s the difference? I resided myself to the fact that I work every day to ensure that I’m valuable. If you’re valuable, success will be attracted to you.

With that, it’s really easy right now inside our business to get mired with all the internal conversations. My message to the team and myself included, we have to look at how much time we’re actually spending inside and in those things that are just busy work, and what are we actually spending with customers and with partners?

Someone once said to me, sales is easy, 50% of it is just showing up. I believe that, in fact, it should be greater than that but even if you said that, you’re probably behind that when you look at how much time you’re actually spending face to face. That’s a really important one right now for elite, is making that commitment and just getting that part done.

Two is education. In order to share a point of view effectively with a client, you have to be able to connect the dots between where they potentially have some challenges, where you have some capabilities. That means you should be attending podcasts like this. Daily news is absolutely critical, you’ve got to be up to speed.

In my world of cyber, interesting event yesterday, the FBI was able to track down the cyber currency associated with the pipeline breach and they were able to repatriate it. That happened and it’s top of mind of every executive I talk to today.

Networking with people, because you get great ideas when you exchange that. The last thing I’d say, Frankly, it’s a Jim Rohn idea. He says, ideas in, ideas out. If you’re not getting new ideas in, how can you come up with new ideas? I tell my people all the time, leaders read. You’ve got to read.

Fred Diamond: Let’s talk about this for a second. I usually don’t ask this question because I usually don’t want to put the guest on the spot, but you mentioned reading a second ago. What’s a good book that either you just finished or you’re reading right now or that’s your go-to?

One that we have as a go-to, one of our sponsors is the great John Asher and he wrote Close Deals Faster. It’s a book that we send to all of our members, it’s a fascinating book. John’s an expert on the neuroscience of sales.

How about you? Give us one recommendation on a book that you would encourage people to read right now.

Greg Davison: My favorite business author, period, Marcus Buckingham. Famous quote from Marcus Buckingham, “If you have more than three priorities, you have none.” Because the human psyche, you can’t remember more than that. I live that every day.

Another one I just started reading, I just started reading a book called Farsighted by Steven Johnson. You and I were talking earlier, when I finish a book, I like to give it to someone so they can enjoy it. I gave the book away, I don’t have it here but the book is a little bit older, it’s called Where Good Ideas Come From. If you read that, it’s going to help open your aperture just to be open for where those collisions come from.

Case in point, he talked about early days, the importance of a coffee house where you have a farmer and having a beer or coffee with maybe a lawyer. They’re obviously different walks of life, but one might bring up a problem and they might debate it and there’s parallels in terms of how it can be solved. I find that fascinating.

The book I just finished reading is called Alter Ego, and it’s interesting. It talks about elite performance and the author mentions high-profile business people or figure heads like Martin Luther King, and some of the things that they would do.

For example, Martin Luther King would wear fake glasses because he thought it would change his persona. When he put them on, he said he walked and talked different. Or different athletes, I think he talked about Shaquille O’Neil. In the hardest games, Shaquille would put himself in the Jason mindset of best thriller movie where he was just impenetrable, unstoppable.

For me, that’s a toolset. I use it in some ways too, you get into certain predicaments and you might turn and say, maybe a mentor or someone you know, how would they solve this problem?

Fred Diamond: We have an interesting question here that’s coming from Nicholas and Nicholas is in the DC region. Nicholas says, “I started as a sales rep a year ago.” That must have been after the pandemic kicked in. It’s interesting, we have a whole bunch of SDR and BDR type people, I know you manage inside sales as well, who’ve started after the pandemic kicked in.

They never have been to the office, they started from their house, they’re probably still working from their apartment or their parent’s basement or whatever it might be. His question is, what are Greg’s advice for me?

Greg, for junior sales professionals, especially those who have spent somewhat of a decent portion of their career in quarantine, in lockdown, under pandemic. What would be your recommendations for them moving forward to be successful?

Greg Davison: That’s a great question. I’ve always said one day I’m going to write a book called Business Age, and it strikes me that when I was late 20s, I looked older, I already had gray hair and I was working the banking territory for IBM. One of my managers said, you had a great year and thank you but we’re going to take you away from this assignment. I said, why? He goes, we didn’t know how old you were, you’re not old enough to do that job.

It was an assimilation with age meant maturity. My first guiding principle would be business age. You could be 28 but have the aperture and present and be part of a meeting as if you’re a 50-year-old, with maturity. Similarly, I see some 50-year-olds that frankly, present themselves in a boardroom like they’re 18. Don’t let new affect you in that way. Don’t fall back to, “I haven’t gotten enough experience.”

Number two, I would say definitely spend as much time as you can networking. Grow your network inside your company, especially get to know people higher level. The higher I get in the business, the more I want to talk to the lowest possible because you get the real truth there. You’ll find most leaders will share that same perspective. Definitely, I would say network inside the business, network outside the business.

Number three is a simple thing, we’re doing it right now. Be involved with people and use your Zoom camera. When the pandemic started, I committed I was going to always use my camera. Sometimes I sit on internal meetings and there’s 50 people and there’s the presenter with his or hers on, and me, and that’s it.  Everybody joked about it, but at least I’m staying true to myself on it. I think it just gives a whole different perspective in your ability to foster those relationships quickly.

Fred Diamond: Greg, we have a question here from Denise, and Denise is in Houston, TX. Denise says, “I’m curious that Greg worked at Dell. What are some of the sales lessons he learned at Dell?” You’ve got Dell, you’ve got IBM, I’m sure you took away some great lessons. To answer Denise’s question, what might be some lessons you took away from Dell? Then I’m also curious what you might have taken away from IBM.

Greg Davison: I’m incredibly passionate about my time at Dell. It’s probably where I grew the most. I joined there and I ran intel server sales and was sitting in a meeting once and someone said, you want to be the Dell Canada President? You can’t do that, you’ve never carried a bag. I realized the team had not seen me in that capacity so I decided, okay, that’s a big thing and I’ve got to go and do that.

I said, hey, give me the hardest and baddest acquisition territory. Nobody wanted it and I took it and I did a great job. That allowed me to fast track my career and get my first people management goal. I did a bunch of that and fast tracked into running services, I ran the service project business. It was full size, about 100 people, Canada, US and 360 million as part of that P&L.

There’s a lot of great friends I have at Dell, lots of great memories. My favorite mentor there, he taught me the art of simplicity. There’s so much happening in the world of Dell, you’ve got 38 different products you’ve got to be knowledgeable on and try and position, and a half are in meeting with a client. We all know you can’t do that.

I remember going to meet with Dave in meetings and he was a sales director at the time. I was young and eager and aggressive and I’d come with my 7 things that I’m going to do this week but I didn’t really get any of them done because it’s just too noisy, too much going on. That morphed into, no, Greg, what is the one thing that you’re going to get done this week?

It helped me to instill simplicity and focus and I still drive that today. I think of Dave many times when I’m in meetings and we’re driving that message. Stephen Covey is quoted with the original quote, but Dave used to say to me, the most important thing is to keep the most important thing, the most important thing.

Fred Diamond: Which goes back to what you talked before about you can only focus on three things. One of the best lessons that we learned during the pandemic, we had a guest named David Morelli who said, as you’re interfacing with your customers, you have to remember three things. Everybody in the world – and this is still true in June of 2021 – is dealing with one of three things.

They’re dealing with the pandemic, what does COVID mean to you? How do you deal with that? Do you have little kids and you’re now a teacher? Whatever that might be, do you have a parent? The second thing is the financial side, everybody’s dealing with the financial repercussions of what the pandemic has led to. The third thing is whatever it might be.

You guys right now are dealing with the acquisition and the shift into what your mode might be. As we talk about that, I want to get some of your insights into how you’re leading your team as they interact with their customers. I don’t really want to talk about empathy per se, but how are you directing your teams?

Again, we’re in June. How are you suggesting that they interface with customers? How are you suggesting that they talk to them and how are you leading them that way?

Greg Davison: I’m going to give some perspective and then hit me up if I’m not answering the question there, Fred. That’s a bit question and it’s different right now with COVID. There’s so much busy work going on, we’ve bounced from Zoom meeting to Zoom meeting.

A little thing that I do which I’m a huge fan of, I run my team call every Monday. It starts at 11:05 because there’s no way you’re going to finish your 10 o’clock meeting at 11:00 and be on mine to be punctual, and I expect people to be punctual. You’ve got five minutes where you can grab your coffee, but there’s a lot of busy work going on.

I see generally salespeople doing the right things, I see people’s hearts are in the right spots for sure. But in the context of busy work, you have to have the courage to say no. You’ve got to say no more than you say yes so that you can focus on what’s important.

Number two, we need to interrelate with people. You go on to a Zoom call and you’re delivering your five-page pitch, the customers are going to tune off. They can reach off screen, they can leverage their phone. My point is there is no golden pitch, instead, you want to be valuable.

I like to tell everybody, you will have access in that company at a level that you sound right. If you want to open up a five-page golden deck and you want to deliver the technical speeds and feeds, I guarantee you’re not going to have another session with that CXO. They’re going to put you down to Rick who’s responsible for that particular area. Be careful about that.

Number three, which is probably the hardest thing. I like to say do today what your future self will thank you for. In other words, do the hard work now. In the context of sales, what does that mean? It means get into your account plans. And I’m not a big fan of three-page plans, the plans that we have with my teams are on a single page because it’s more about the dialogue and the interaction of the team than it is the written. That stuff’s like fruit, it expires as soon as the meeting’s over.

Account planning, spending the time on proposals. Everybody in sales is all excited to submit this quotation. If it’s a quotation, it’s going to go to the bottom of the pile but to align to the business problem, that’s probably a whole other podcast for you. Calling the hard customers that you just haven’t gotten around to. You do that hard work now that your future self will say, hey, I’m glad I did that last week.

Fred Diamond: I like that, do the things that your future self will thank you for. Greg Davison, we have a question here from Daniella, Daniella is in Virginia. She says, “Greg mentioned building your networking skills.” I’m going to rephrase this question a little bit.

Greg, what are some of your suggestions on building those relationships? Again, you’ve reached a great level here at FireEye, you’ve worked for some great companies. Talk about relationship building and some of your specific recommendations on what people should do.

Greg Davison: If you have a board in front of your desk or off to the side of your desk, write it down on a sticky the word relationship or networking and stick it. Make sure it’s front and center all the time. If I have idle time during the day, I’ll go through my LinkedIn and it’s very extensive, and I’ll randomly pick somebody that I haven’t talked to in years and I’ll send them a note.

I genuinely care, I find it fascinating to do that sort of thing. The flip side is the salesperson that you’re interviewing, they talk about the big deal that they got done three years ago. I always say, well, when was the last time they talked to that executive? If they haven’t talked to them, I’m tuned out. I don’t want to talk to that person, I want the person that genuinely has a natural curiosity and wants to nurture that on their own without a deal in front of them.

Couple things. I like LinkedIn as a vehicle. I was this morning on with a very large storage company talking with the majority of their company and what’s going on in cyber. As part of my session, I talked about the importance of networking. I asked everybody to reach out to me on LinkedIn.

I want to extend that and I also want them to feel like I’m approachable. I reminded them that I don’t do email very well. In fact, I don’t do email. I said, you can text me, you can ping me on LinkedIn but start that dialogue. You don’t know where that’s going to go.

Another thing, I put up my hand, I volunteer internally for the new hire programs that we run. I just find it fascinating to listen to people join the company from all different walks of life and what they think. If I can help mold them up, give them a head start, but I always say to them, for those interested, I want you to put on my calendar three months from now, six months from now, just to check in. Let’s check in for 15 minutes, I want to know how you’re doing, what you’re seeing.

I’m helping them but it’s also me learning from those experiences. Some of those things are so subtle that it’s passing in the night, you’re walking downtown and you see your friend you haven’t seen in a long time. Just book some time, understand what they’re working on. That’s networking, but for me, it’s more than networking. It’s idea share, it’s where I get a lot of great ideas from.

Fred Diamond: Just a quick note here, Gayle, your sales enablement leader says, “Greg is a huge asset to me in enablement, always offering up of himself.” That’s why Dan Satinoff who’s one of our contacts suggested we have you on the show. Greg, what are reps doing wrong? Again, you’ve worked with tons of them. What do you see them doing wrong time and time again either as a junior or senior or mid-level?

Greg Davison: We talked a little bit about some of these things. One, don’t let a limited tenure prevent you from being successful. You can be with a company for six months, and I know it might feel uncomfortable calling on the CISO or a CIO, but if you’re prepared and you’ve done your research, you’re absolutely entitled to it.

Make sure that you’re talking with their binocular as opposed to the speeds and feeds. That’s an inhibitor, I would say. Just be conscious of that, knowing that there’s a human characteristic that makes us feel nervous about that, you’ve got to overcome it.

Number two, what drives me crazy is the reps looking for that golden pitch. For fun, two years ago at our kick-off, myself and another leader said, come to our seminar and this seminar is going to give you the FireEye golden pitch. It was deliberately the exact opposite of that. Instead, how do you assemble your own point of view? How do you dialogue? What do you listen for with a client?

If you want to be successful with clients, develop a relationship. Invest the time. Before you go talk to the next client, understand what’s happening in their industry. What did their CEO say in their last address? Dialogue on that, because I guarantee you’re going to have a perspective. If you’re sitting having a drink, there’s something that you’ve seen, you can relate to there.

If you talk to clients as I do, they appreciate and they respect the time with sellers that are giving them – call it the Challenger Sale – but giving them challenging ideas. Think about this problem different, or here’s something that maybe you haven’t thought of in terms of how you go and solve.

Fred Diamond: We’re coming towards the end of the pandemic and things are really beginning to open up. It’s an interesting time, last week my guest on the Sales Game Changers Live, a guy named Tim Solms with Dun & Bradstreet. I asked him, what is the biggest challenge you’re facing right now? He says it’s eliminating fatigue.

He leads public sector for D&B and everybody who’s in the public sector market kicked right into getting the government into the cloud and serving the government. For people who are listening, the federal government buys typically most of their stuff July, August and September so they went right into what’s called the end of fiscal year, federal buying season.

He says, now that we’re coming out a lot of this, people are fatigued. We used the word languish a couple of weeks ago as well.

Greg Davison: That was the word.

Fred Diamond: It was a huge word. So many people are reevaluating where they want to work, where they want to live. Do they want to work remotely or go to the office? Those are big questions. I’m just curious for you specifically, again, Greg Davison, how have you changed as a sales leader over the last year? You mentioned a few moments ago, think about doing the things for where you want to be. How have you changed as a sales leader over the last year?

Greg Davison: As much as I study people, I almost out-of-body experience watch myself. There’ll be times where I’ll record a team call and listen to my own tone. I’m watching people in COVID, COVID has an effect for sure. I was talking with one of our members and for the first time, I thought, man, this person sounds like they’re burning out, like they’re just not their normal self.

Even myself, I’ve seen signs of that where I know what I need to do, I need to log off earlier and I need to go for a bike ride or I need to go for a walk, I just need to go clear my head and do a reset. Because you spend your whole day in this chair in front of this computer other than when you get up to get lunch.

I’ve become much more conscious of people and what effects COVID could have on them, just the dynamic of how we get work done. The other one that’s challenging for me, I’m not naturally an empathetic person. People that know me say, Greg, bullshit because I see it. The honest truth is whenever I’ve done a Myers-Briggs or colors or any of that, it’s the lowest score for me. I know it is, and I’m always trying to insulate on that so I probably over-index on those things.

I’m the kind of person, when I get into the business meeting, I don’t want to talk about the weekend. I don’t want to talk about the owl hanging on the wall, I want to get right to it. With COVID, I’ve had to pause and actually spend more time consciously asking people how they’re doing, how they’re feeling. I need that because I’m worried about burnout.

Here’s an example, one of the leaders on my team, I said to this person, “Of your team members, who are the closest people?” He said, “I can probably get to three or four of them within an hour.” I said, great. So you can drive half an hour, they can drive half an hour and you guys can meet and potentially grab lunch. He’s like, yeah, I could. I said, why don’t you do that? He said, I’m going to go and do that. I think they went and grabbed subs and sat in a Walmart parking lot, obviously socially distant and spent some time together. Those are little things of making massive difference in the world that we’re in right now.

Fred Diamond: Greg Davison, I want to thank you so much. You’ve given us this great information. I have time for one more question before we get to the final action step that you’re going to give us. What are your expectations for sales professionals right now?

We’ve hit on a whole bunch of things. Coming out of the pandemic in a lot of different ways, you guys are going through a massive change with the acquisition that you’re going to find out how that directs you in a couple of days as well.

A lot of things that we talked about focus on change and what the pandemic has shifted selling to be in a lot of ways. At the end of the day, there still needs to be the actions of selling. But a lot of things have come in the way to affect that. What are your expectations for sales professionals right now?

Greg Davison: I believe that leadership needs to be predictable to their people. I think right now I have to walk away from my business aside from this large acquisition transaction that’s happening. But business as usual, I can step away for two weeks and it’s going to operate in a great way because I’ve got excellent people. They collaborate, they nurture the culture of themselves, it’s wonderful to watch it.

I believe in being predictable. When I joined FireEye five years ago, we didn’t have a set performance plan. Everybody would come to the end of the year, they’d write their own performance plan with their own objectives and it was very disconnected.

In the spirit of simple, we have a performance plan now that sits on one page so it’s very easy to look at, have it go on your board, document your little pieces. It really talked to both the what’s and the how’s. For sales professionals, those are both really important. The what’s for sure the number, that’s a really important part of sales.

Equally important, and when I do performance reviews, 50% are what’s, 50% are how’s. If you crush your number but you leave a wake behind you, not interested. If your numbers aren’t there but you’re doing all the right things, that’s a great story too because I know that the future’s going to be very fruitful for that particular territory. Expectations, for me, I want to be predictable, I’ve got to be clear and they’ve got to execute, conversely, on the what’s and the how’s. It’s a communication both ways.

The other part I’d say for expectations of sales professionals, we talked a lot about it during this call, it’s this point of view. You need to be comfortable not debating, you don’t want to go and pick a fight all the time. But be educated so that you can share a point of view with your clients.

The last piece is simply accountability. We talk in our business, our CEO says, do what you say you’re going to do. So critical, especially with COVID. With all the noise, it’s easy to make a commitment to do something and miss it, that’s a big no-no for me.

Fred Diamond: You just raised a really good point. We had a show about a month ago, we had a couple CIOs from the federal side, the original Chief Information Officer from the DHS and the current one from the Patent and Trade Office. They said, we’re not looking for grand things in a lot of ways. If you can tell me one nugget of your industry that’s going to help me direct my organization to provide more valuable service to the citizens of the United States, that’s what I’m listening for. Or even something for a customer, a better way for us to interface with the organization. It’s little things, it’s not 10-year scheme of cybersecurity solutions, it may just be a little twist.

First of all, I want to thank FireEye again for being a sponsor of the Institute for Excellence in Sales. Greg, when we first started to get to know FireEye, Dan and Gayle all said, “You’ve got to get Greg on the show, he’s a thinker about all this stuff.” We love having sales leaders who have thought about this and who love to impart information. I want to acknowledge you for doing a great job and for how you’ve helped so many sales professionals over the course of your career, and will continue to do so.

Give us one final action step, give us one thing specifically. You’ve given us dozens of ideas, give us one more specific thing people should do to take their sales career to the next level.

Greg Davison: I’m going to start by saying thank you, Fred, for this session. I’ve really enjoyed it. Particularly, thank you to those that had the courage to ask a question. I’ve got high respect for you asking that and it means you’re actively listening and actively looking to make a difference. Good on you and thank you.

I’ll close with a thought that I used to drive into the baseball teams that I was coaching for seven years. We won the state championship and it was Triple-A, I know you’ve got a baseball team coming up, Fred. I would talk to the kids about right here, right now, you’re the culmination of all the decisions that you’ve made.

If you struck out, maybe you decided you didn’t practice enough. If you weren’t in the right place to catch that flyball, maybe you didn’t think about how to plan before that play happened to think about what could happen. You’re a culmination right now of all the decisions that you’ve made.

I would also say that if you don’t like something, just change it. Just go and do it. In saying that, it’s recognition that the most precious asset that we all have is time. You can’t waste it, you’ve got to do all the hard things. Go and practice baseball, practice those swings, think about what that play’s going to be.

Go and put time on your calendar of when you’re going to go do that cold call that’s scaring you half to death. Put time on your calendar with peers, maybe order up some Uber lunch, skip the dishes and work on account plans for an hour. But do it with some people and have some fun with it. Again, thank you very much, Fred. Appreciate the time.

Fred Diamond: Once again, Greg Davison, thank you so much. Thank you to our good friends at FireEye. Good luck on Friday when you find out what you’re going to be focusing on for the next part of your very successful career. Everybody else, thank you all so much for being here. We look forward to seeing you on the next Sales Game Changers podcast.

Transcribed by Mariana Badillo

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