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Today’s show featured an interview with Jennifer Lyall of Liv Healthy. Download her “7 Steps to Transform Your Energy to Attract More Clients here.
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JENNIFER’S ADVICE: “We see so many people just walking around the world like zombies, going through the motions of their day. They’re tethered to technology. They care more about what’s going on in that little device, whether it’s their laptop, their tablet, or their phone. It is such a valuable tool. However, it’s only as valuable as the operator. What if we can take that same pause that we take to check our phone battery levels, what if we can take that pause to ask ourselves, how am I feeling? The changes that makes in our inner world, transforming to active awareness, to understanding what’s going on inside of us and how what’s going on inside here then impacts our productivity, our relationships, everything out there, it really is a game changer. It will really transform a ripple effect of goodness into the world. I’ve seen it impacting my life, my relationships, my business. It changes your whole perspective on how you live.”
THE PODCAST BEGINS HERE
Fred Diamond: I’m really excited for the topic we’re going to be talking about today. My guest is Jennifer Lyall. She is the Intuitive Biz Mentor, and we’re going to be talking about energy, and specifically energy depletion, and how to really get your energy back. Jennifer, we talked about this before. I was a consultant for a long time before I created the Institute for Excellence in Sales. About probably eight years into my tenure, I realized that my main differentiator, because there’s a lot of smart consultants out there, my main differentiator was my energy. I spent a lot of time and energy to try to figure out how to increase it, not just when I’m in front of customers, not just when I’m doing the work with them or even with partners, but when I’m by myself. We all need downtime, of course, but how to keep doing that.
One thing that’s really interesting about you is that you’re on a mission to teach one million people how to check their inner battery as often as they check their phone battery. You’ve reached over 50,000 through some radio and podcast interviews, talk about that mission to teach a million people how to check their inner battery.
Jennifer Lyall: We see so many people just walking around the world like zombies, going through the motions of their day. They’re tethered to technology. They care more about what’s going on in that little device, whether it’s their laptop, their tablet, or their phone. It is such a valuable tool. However, it’s only as valuable as the operator. What if we can take that same pause that we take to check our phone battery levels, what if we can take that pause to ask ourselves, how am I feeling? The changes that makes in our inner world, transforming to active awareness, to understanding what’s going on inside of us and how what’s going on inside here then impacts our productivity, our relationships, everything out there, it really is a game changer. It will really transform a ripple effect of goodness into the world. I’ve seen it impacting my life, my relationships, my business. It changes your whole perspective on how you live.
Fred Diamond: We’re doing today’s interview in November of 2023, and it’s a very challenging time for sales professionals. It’s a very, very challenging time for human beings. There’s two wars going on. But from our perspective here on the show, we’re coming out of a very interesting, challenging three years. Again, the Institute for Excellence in Sales, we help large employers, typically B2B and business to government for that matter, attract, retain, elevate, top tier sales talent. We’ve spoken, Jennifer, to a number of our members, a number of the companies, our partners, who have said that there’s a serious energy depletion challenge because of all the uncertainty, and should we go hybrid, and is COVID coming back? There’s reports that are saying that there’s been a spike in COVID-19 in various places.
Then of course, every customer that we deal with has also had to deal with the last three years, and their customers, and their customers. Everyone’s spent a lot of energy, almost it seems, just keeping up. It seems that we’re truly running on empty in some cases. Why right now? First of all, do you agree? I’m sure you do, but give us your perspective on that, and then let’s start talking about some of the antidotes to this. Because salespeople, you can’t sit in that malaise. You can’t sit in that depletion for even a minute. Maybe you need time to regroup, but if you’re going to be stuck there, you’re going to be out of business.
Jennifer Lyall: Exactly. This work transformed my life over COVID, because I was moving along in my business, I was doing this process myself haphazardly, and it was impacting the way I was showing up. It wasn’t until I started to take control of what my energy was like throughout my day, that I was able to really multiply my revenue in my business. Because not only does it impact the way you see the world, but it impacts the language that comes out of your mouth. Sales is all about energy, because you have to have that connection with your prospective clients. If you are exhausted, and you don’t feel motivated to pick up the phone, to send that email, to show up in the places that you need to show up. Or if you show up there and you are just like a sack of potatoes, you’re not going to have that deep, delicious connection with your prospective clients. It really impacts the way you move through life.
Fred Diamond: I want to ask you about sales leaders. Again, we have a lot of sales leaders listening to this, and one of the challenges of the last couple years was monitoring your people, understanding where they are. As people have said, and this is still true, when we were going through the payday, if you will, of the pandemic, we’re all in this massive storm, but in different boats. We spent a lot of time in the Sales Game Changers Podcast and at the Institute for Excellence in Sales, working with sales leaders to help them see what their people were going through, the men and the women on their sales team. For the sales leaders out there, what are some signs of energy depletion? How can sales leaders see where their people may be struggling with this?
Jennifer Lyall: It would show up by how responsive they are to the emails and just to correspondence. It shows up in how they’re participating in team meetings. It shows up in how they’re hitting their numbers. It shows up in constantly finding excuses for why they’re not able to do it? They’re blaming all of these outside factors, but really it’s more about what’s going on within them, and they don’t have the tools to be able to manage themselves or just even understand what’s going on inside of themselves, because they’re just trying to keep up and push through, because that’s all that they know. Those are some key things. People needing more stress leave, being sick a lot, it just adds up.
Fred Diamond: You talk about the three zones of energy and how they can impact your sales. Talk about that a little bit.
Jennifer Lyall: In this concept of checking your inner battery, I invite people to check in and ask themselves how they’re feeling physically, emotionally, mentally, and spiritually on a scale of 1 to 10. When you’re in that 1, 2, or 3 zone, you’re just getting by in survival. When you are 4, 5, 6, or 7, you’re suffering. When you’re at 8, 9, or 10, you’re in that thrive zone. The way you view what’s possible for yourself, for your business, for your sales targets, for how you’re serving your clients, is completely transformed based on where you are in those three levels. It impacts the way that you are able to problem solve. Because when you’re in that thrive zone, that’s in that flow state, where your prefrontal cortex is on fire, you’re able to troubleshoot, you’re able to really function at a high level. The inspiration comes, you trust in yourself more, you’re confident.
When you’re in that suffering zone, you’re flip-flopping back and forth between that thriving zone and the survival zone, and then you’re inconsistent with your performance. Really that suffering zone is suffering unnecessarily. It’s suffering because you’re caught up in old paradigms of thinking. You’re caught up in old ways of approaching things. You’re caught up in the perspective of the world and what’s going on out there, rather than tapping into your own inner wisdom and inner power of your sales expertise. You’ve been doing this, you know what to do, you know how to serve your clients, and sometimes we just forget. Then in the survival zone, that’s when you’re really in fear and doubt and really maybe even grief because you’re like, “Oh my gosh, I’m grieving the way things were and I’m not sure I can get back there again.” It has you stuck in quicksand, and it prevents you from taking the simple actions that you know that if you just take it, it will build the momentum out.
Fred Diamond: How do you stay in that thriving zone? That’s obviously the place where you want to be. Like we said too, everyone is affected by life. Everyone’s affected by the world, things within your family, things within your town. Maybe you’re really affected by things that are happening in the world. Everyone will go there at some point. The key is not to stay there. The key is to get into this beautiful place of the thriving zone. Let’s talk about that for a little bit. How do you stay there and how do you activate your success mechanisms to break through your sales goals?
Jennifer Lyall: Great questions. When you check in and you discover that your levels are low, you have a choice as to, “Am I going to stay at this place, or am I going to do something about it?” Now, sometimes you are going to need to work through something. Maybe there is some grief going on, and recognizing that your low might be the opportunity to just say, “I need the space and grace to move through whatever’s going on.” That’s okay. You rejig your schedule and you give yourself permission to have that space. But if you just are recognizing, “I’m getting into a funk. I’m getting into things in my own head,” with the words that are going on replay in your mind, the stories that you’re ruminating about, and you have a choice.
In that moment, you can choose to do something to do what I call boosting your inner battery. For me, I talk about 10 different mindfulness and action approaches that you can do that are simple, and it’s just about you discovering what works best for you. The very simplest thing that you can do are two deep breaths. You can do that anytime, anywhere. You’re about to go into a sales meeting. Maybe you’re in the middle of a sales meeting and you just find that you’re feeling a little off for whatever reason, because you have been checking your inner battery, and you recognize when you’re getting off your game. You can take those two breaths, because we’ve all got to breathe. You don’t need any extra tools for that.
It could be going out for a walk. It could be putting on your favorite song. It could be pulling out your favorite book that really motivates you. There’s some quotes that you have flagged that whenever you find your thinking going off course, maybe you’re getting caught up in doubt and worry, “Nope, hold on.” Let’s come back to these few ways of thinking to refocus your attention and intention. It could be that you need to take time to just journal and write through some of the things that are coming up, because if you’re in a real funk, you need to get out of that.
The idea of staying in that thriving zone 100% of the time, that’s a little unrealistic, because just as we breathe, there has to be an in-breath and an outbreath. Like the waves, there’s the waves going in and out. There are going to be waves throughout your day, your week, your month, your year. The thing is, is to notice those ebbs and flows. Start to recognize some of those triggers, maybe people that you interact with that might impact you. It could be that you start to make a correlation between the food that you eat, what you consume, what you drink, the sleep that you get, and how those personal patterns are impacting you. It could be that you discovered that there are times in the sales cycle that impact you, or the financial cycle, the year, that impact you. You can start to prepare for those moments so that you can consciously show up as that best version of you. Doing those little energy boosts. For me personally, I like to go outside barefoot on the grass. We have so many nerve endings on the bottom of our hands and the bottom of our feet. It’s like a reset for me.
When I do work with my clients, I work with a lot of entrepreneurs and small businesses, a lot of the leaders from the small businesses on how to master your energy. Sometimes they’ll show up to a meeting and they’re in the middle of, “This has been going on, and that’s been going on.” It’s like, “Okay, we can’t accomplish anything in the meeting when they’re in that energy.” First, we get grounded and centered and come back to checking your inner battery, seeing where they are, and then we’ll do a few different techniques like the deep breathing, or I’ll guide them through a meditation, or I’ll work with clearing their energy so that they can come back to feeling like themselves again.
The thing that most people say to me in our work together is that, “Oh my gosh, I feel like myself again.” I really want to emphasize this point, because when you are down in that suffering and survival mode, that’s not who you really are. You’re amazing and powerful, and you are tolerating that level of energy, and you have a choice.
Fred Diamond: Actually, as you just gave that example there, the energy that you could have, typically we’ve been talking here about depletion and malaise, but you could have energy that’s just high energy, but just not very empowering. Maybe they’re stress related, or something has happened, or something happened in your personal life that is consuming you. I want to talk about getting help from your team or from other people. We don’t always recognize where there’s a shift, maybe until it’s too late, or maybe down the road at some point. I’ve had some, for lack of a better word, mentors or advisors who have pointed things out to me that I didn’t realize were happening. Then they quickly brought me back to, like you just said, who you really are.
Everybody who’s listening to this podcast today, the Sales Game Changers Podcast with Jennifer Lyall, I’m going to say that everybody who’s listening is successful. Even if you’re reading the transcript, thank you very much, by the way, you’re taking 30 minutes out of your life to figure out how can you get better, and not just how can you get better, but how is that going to help the people that you serve?
Talk about, for lack of a better word, community or support. I know you’re a coach and you work with people in those regards, but how about peers and people below you or above you? Talk a little bit about how that can help you re-energize, and what are some of your suggestions for that?
Jennifer Lyall: Just having the conversations so that people with other experience can share their perspective and can mirror back to you like, “Hold on a second here. You’re telling me about this, this, and this, and aren’t you an expert in that?” People are like, “Yeah, I need to take my own advice.” Sometimes just being able to hear that other people are going through the same thing too so that you know that you’re not alone. Whether you want to have regular meetings with your team members, with your colleagues, even with your spouse, to be able to talk things through. Or recognizing that maybe you do need some extra support and maybe within your organization there’s an employee assistant plan, or maybe you have someone in your place of worship that might be able to offer support too, but talking it through absolutely is huge. I’m very fortunate to be in a number of circles with other entrepreneurs and to hear what they’re going through too, and it’s just like, “Thank goodness it’s not just me.” Or, “Oh, so you’ve been through this, and you know how to get through.” You’re like, “Yeah, just A, B, C,” and then you’re not stuck in it anymore, and you have that lifeline, that way out. It’s huge.
Fred Diamond: Do you believe in the saying, this too shall pass? Is that something that you see all the time?
Jennifer Lyall: Absolutely. Every single opportunity is presented to us for our own growth.
Fred Diamond: Tell us a little more about what you specifically do. What services do you offer your customers? Do you have any programs that you’re bringing to the marketplace that people can participate in?
Jennifer Lyall: I work with people one-on-one, entrepreneurs. That’s been my main focus. However, I am starting to work with more organizations, helping sales teams, helping different groups within the organization to improve their energy and improve their confidence so that they can reach some really big targets. I work one-on-one as well as having some group programs within the more B2B market. I have a really powerful reenergize program where it’s a 21-day program to take a team through a transformation of mastering this habit, of checking your inner battery, and recognizing then not only how you can up-level and boost your inner battery and spend more time in that thriving zone, but also understanding how you can use this with your clients too. For example, I have one client that’s a real estate agent. That being one of the most stressful transactions of your lives, she uses this process to help her clients then show up also in that thriving zone so it makes the whole sales process easier. It is so good.
Fred Diamond: I’m thinking about that. A lot of great sales professionals listening and that we service at the Institute for Excellence in Sales and listen to this podcast, they’ve been successful in sales for a long time. They recognize that the reason why they’re successful is because of their service to their customer. I like that example that you just did. It harkens me back to a moment when I was a consultant, it was probably 15 years ago. Microsoft was one of my big clients, and I did a lot of work with Microsoft Partners. I remember, I had a meeting with a mid-level executive at Microsoft, and she came into the meeting just very stressed. She was all over the place, and we were getting ready to do a presentation to a large company that they were going to offer my services to.
I remember I said to her, “Just take a breath. Let’s get grounded.” I wasn’t an energy coach, and I don’t do anything like what you do, and I said, “Let’s put our feet down on the ground. Let’s put our hands on the table. Let’s take deep breaths.” This was a senior executive at Microsoft, and we did that for two minutes. We just got grounded. I remember thinking to myself, “Wow, she’s actually doing this.” But it was very obvious that she wasn’t in the place for us to have a very good meeting with the customers that they were introducing me to. Years later, she actually thanked me about that. It was funny. Let’s follow that up for a little bit here.
What are some things that we could implement in the sales process? We’ve already talked about things we could do for ourselves to show up more effectively. Maybe you can also suggest a thing or two that the great sales professionals listening can bring to their customer to energize them. Maybe it’s a different way. We have Johnny Beirne as a colleague together who talked about doing a different way of presenting and not just sitting in front of the Zoom with the rectangle. Can you think of an idea or two that maybe the sales professionals listening can implement to raise the energy of their customers?
Jennifer Lyall: I think that the biggest differentiation is the connection. Number one, they have to show up as that heart-centered aware salesperson, and being conscientious and taking that time to find out how that client, the prospective client, is doing in that moment. Just as you gave that example for how you coached that client through that situation, understanding, “Okay, so I had this difficulty with my kid this morning. I’m sorry I’m all over the place.” Well, they’re not going to be able to listen to what your sales presentation is. Giving that person a moment to maybe get a few things off their chest, and maybe they’re not going to want to get very personal, but maybe there’s an opportunity for deeper connections.
Just like we talked a moment ago about how you can have a connection with a colleague as extra support, maybe there’s some extra personal support that you can do because you’re in that elevated state. You having your prospective client in that elevated state for themselves too, will help them with making the buying decision, help them with taking in the information that you’re there to share. There’s that simple aspect of it, but honestly, if you create the habit of checking your inner battery on a regular basis, and creating that active awareness, you start to discover so much about yourself that it’s easier for you to recognize when things are off and other people.
Fred Diamond: Jennifer, this has really been a fascinating conversation. The world is really struggling with the right level of energy, I believe. We could have a great business day and everything goes great, and then you go home and turn on the news, or you turn on your web browser, or maybe you have it set for one of the general opening pages, and you see things that are just designed to suck the energy out of you. Before I ask you for your final thought, is there anything else that you want to bring up that we might not have addressed today before you give us your final thought?
Jennifer Lyall: You discussed, or you asked me about how to activate your success mechanism, and we didn’t get to touch on that. When you are in that elevated state and you understand what it is that you really want, our success mechanism is something that in the book Psycho-Cybernetics by Maxwell Maltz, he talks about how our brain, one of the ways it operates is like a heat-seeking missile, and staying focused on that beautiful outcome of what you want. Your sales target, how you want to serve, the impact that you want to make with your clients, keeping your focus on that.
Even though sometimes things aren’t quite going the right way, even though something happens, you don’t get a deal, or maybe the sales meeting didn’t quite unfold the way you thought it was going to unfold, and then you get all discouraged and you beat yourself up, that takes you back into that suffering mode. Having the courage to say, “All right, what can I learn from that?” and coming back to boosting your inner battery again and getting refocused on where it is that you want to go, it helps you with activating your success mechanism, because your subconscious mind is going to help you with automatically focusing on the different opportunities that align to the ultimate goal. It’s all just learning.
Fred Diamond: There’s a couple things that are happening in the sales world. Again, everybody has gone into a place over the last couple years. It’s amazing, again, the Institute for Excellence in Sales, we work with some of the top B2B and business to government sales organizations in the world. Some of the top brand names have come to us recently, again, we’re doing today’s interview in the middle of November 2023, and said, “Can you help us get back to the art of selling?” Mindfulness is still very important, of course, and what you’re talking about here is fascinating. But companies have said, “Help. We’ve lost the art of selling.” 30, 60, 90-day plans, what to say to customers, how to go out and be with them. You definitely need to raise the energy to be able to be a professional salesperson right now. Again, we work with some of the top ones in the B2B space, and a lot of the advice here is going to help them rethink how they could be more effective at the art and science of selling.
I want to thank Jennifer Lyall. Again, this was great information. I’m energized and there’s so many things that have come through. I encourage people to reach out to you. They can find you on LinkedIn, and you offer great things. Good for you. You and I are also friends on Facebook as well. I just want to acknowledge, I love following you on Facebook, and how you interact with the environment. You talked before about just going outside, and I don’t know if you get snow anymore in Toronto with global warming, but you don’t want to go out there too long with your feet in the snow. But just getting grounded and just appreciating the great things on this planet. With all the challenges that we’re facing, there’s still beauty and greatness out there.
Jennifer, give us one final thought, one specific action item. You’ve given us so many great ideas, but give us one thing that people should do right now after listening to the podcast or reading the transcript.
Jennifer Lyall: Take a pause and ask yourself, on a scale of 1 to 10, how are you feeling right now? Give yourself permission to just do this throughout your day. It’ll make a huge difference.
Transcribed by Mariana Badillo