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[EDITOR’S NOTE: This is a replay of the OPTIMAL SALES MINDSET Webinar hosted by Fred Diamond, Host of the Sales Game Changers Podcast, on May 14, 2020. It featured sales motivational speaker Alan Stein, Jr.]

Register for Thursday’s OPTIMAL SALES MINDSET: How to Maintain Your Curiosity and Brilliance in These Challenging Times here.

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EPISODE 248: Organizational Performance Expert Alan Stein, Jr. Dishes Out Three Things to Help Sales Leaders Raise Their Team’s Performance as this Unusual Summer Begins

ALAN’S TIP TO EMERGING SALES LEADERS: “As sales professionals, we need to do everything in our power to get rid of blaming, complaining and making excuses. Those three things will never ever do anything to improve your performance, improve your situation and they’re certainly not going to help you improve your sale. Anytime we blame, we complain or we make an excuse we’re actually taking responsibility off of ourselves and we’re putting it on someone else. Sales professionals and high performers don’t do that.  We all need to live by a code of extreme ownership.”

Fred Diamond: It’s great to have you on today’s webcast, my friend. How are you doing?

Alan Stein Jr.: I’m fantastic, in fact I’m one of the ones that nothing can stop me at present. I’m brimming with optimism and poised but I guess I’ll start this by saying that it’s okay if you’re listening or watching and you’re not there. Just know and appreciate the fact that you more than likely have been and will continue to be on an emotional roller coaster for a while as we continue the recovery and the reopening, just give yourself some grace and some compassion and patience and just know that those emotions will ebb and flow.

While at present I’m certainly optimistic and poised and feeling good, I’ve had my moments of despair and I certainly had my times where I wasn’t feeling so good. I think that’s a good place for us to start when we’re going to talk about mindset and just so you all know, my goal is to share a couple strategies and tips for 4-5 minutes and then take a pause and if someone has a question or Fred wants to chime in, we’ll just rinse and repeat that until the 45 minutes is up. I do want to make this as interactive as we can as I know we all miss being in person. I think self-awareness needs to be the foundation and we all do need to look at where we fall on that spectrum. In essence, if I use slightly different language what Fred just asked you all are, “Are you on the end of optimism or are you on the end of uncertainty and anxiety?”

Every single one of us is somewhere on that spectrum but equally important, every one of your clients and every one of your customers is somewhere on that spectrum and you can’t make the assumption that they’re in the same place that you are. You may be brimming with optimism and they may be highly anxious and uncertain and it’s very important deep in your connection with them that you be chameleon like enough to meet them where they are and not force them to come where you are. I know many of you have a vast Rolodex and you have lots of clients and customers, that’s going to be one of the biggest challenges is trying to take the temperature, if you will, of each and every group that you work with and each and every client and customer to figure out where they are. A few thoughts, when it comes to optimism it’s very obvious to all of us what the negatives are of this pandemic, it’s a long list starting with people losing lives and their health being sacrificed to people being furloughed and losing jobs to seniors in high school and college not having graduations and athletes not having spring sports and vacations and weddings being cancelled, we know all of that.

I don’t mean to take anything away from that, those are facts but it doesn’t mean we have to focus on them. What we can do is choose to focus on some of the silver linings and there’s two silver linings that I believe are occurring right now for sales professionals. The first is that you’re getting an opportunity to strengthen different muscles and work on different skill sets that you most likely didn’t need to work on before and one of the main ones is communication especially in a virtual world. If most of your interaction was face to face with clients, this is forcing you to add more tools to your tool box and actually be a more well-rounded communicator. I think that’s incredibly important, that we embrace that and we look at this as an opportunity to sharpen our sword in multiple ways. I know as a keynote speaker I was saying to Fred before we hit record that’s been one of my personal biggest challenges, I’m not in person without being able to read the room and feel the room, I’m just staring off into a cavernous webcam and not getting any real-time feedback. That is a challenge, but I embrace that challenge because I’m confident that if I can learn to do this in front of a webcam, I’ll be the more influential and impactful when I can get back in front of a live audience.

I think it’s incredibly important that we focus on the silver linings. I also believe this is an opportune time for you to deepen your connection with your clients and customers because you have somewhat of a captive audience right now, they’re not out doing all of the things that we would normally be doing. You can make the time to reach out to them individually and create multiple touch points where you can actually deepen that connection.

You can earn more trust from them and earn more buy-in and believe-in so that when the floodgates do open back up you’ve actually cemented a better relationship. They’ll be more likely to do business with you when the time is right. As far as those that are feeling somewhat uncertain and anxious, that’s a very normal feeling and my only recommendation is with uncertainty usually comes this feeling of lack of control.

For me, where I get comfort is focusing more on the things that I do have control over, certainly my attitude and my effort but creating routines and creating habits, being able to take control of the decisions that I make every single day gives me a little bit more sense of being in control which clearly none of us are, this is a chaotic time. That’s probably the initial chunk and Fred, I can see your head nodding. If that jars any questions from you or if anyone has entered a question that they’d love to ask.

Fred Diamond: How do you maintain your energy level?” You mentioned the fact that you’re by yourself, we’ve all been by ourselves for two months, people on today’s webcast are around the world, I see a lot of them are local but I know people are coming from the UK, I know somebody here is from South Africa as well. We don’t know necessarily when everyone’s going to go back in meeting with customers so this is going to be what it’s going to be like probably for at least another four weeks, maybe even through the end of the summer, who knows? So, how do you maintain that energy level when it’s just you being solitary in your apartment, in your house, in the office, in the basement? You’re not going to have that level of personal engagement.

Alan Stein Jr.: I love that question and thank you so much for asking. I would like to look at the energy levels from three different perspectives, mental, physical and emotional and all I’ll do is share my perspective and what I’m doing and then each of you can run that through your own filter and decide what works for you. From a physical standpoint, I try to move my body every day. When weather is permitting here in the D.C. area I try to get outside to take a walk, get a little natural vitamin D and just walk around, be outside and enjoy some fresh air. I try to do something that gets me moving, sometimes that might just be doing some push-ups and sit-ups and lunges, there’s a ton of different at-home videos that you can follow on YouTube or again, sometimes it’s nothing more than a walk and listening to a podcast like the Sales Game Changers.

Then from a mental standpoint I try to energize myself by learning something new so either reading a book or listening to an audiobook or a podcast or watching a YouTube video that’s more on the educational/inspirational side. Then from the emotional standpoint, that usually has to do with connection.

Based on my situation because I’m amicably divorced, I have my kids half of the time even during this quarantine so that actually fills my bucket when I get to be with my children. When I’m not with my children, then I make sure that I can connect with others doing calls like this. As much as Fred may think I’m doing him a favor by being on this, he’s actually doing me a huge favor by letting me do what I love to do which is share and present. This is the highlight of my day today, so as much as I hope I’m adding value to each and every one of you, this is actually filling my bucket and energizing me. If every single day I can take a few minutes to do something physically active, I can take a few minutes to break a mental sweat and I can do something to connect with human beings, for me that allows me to keep my energy high in addition to the normal things of get adequate sleep, stay hydrated and try to eat as well as you’re capable of. For me, I try not to overcomplicate it and that’s a recipe that allows me to keep my energy up.

Fred Diamond: Once again, if you have any questions for Alan Stein Jr. just submit them through the panel or even just something you want Alan to further get deep on and involved with. I do have one question here that just came through before we get to your next section. You’ve become one of the top speakers in the country on performance improvement not just for sales professionals but for business leaders. Plaudits to you, you’ve actually done that in a relatively short amount of time so you’re used to speaking, I follow you on all the social media and I see you take a picture before you speak, rooms filled or about to be filled with hundreds of people. Now you’re speaking to a dot on a laptop and of course, there’s you and I so how do you project yourself and what are some of the recommendations for the people who are watching us today on better ways to make yourself more livid, more alive as you’re in a presentation mode just via your laptop?

Alan Stein Jr.: Given that speaking actually is my vocation, I approach this virtual talk with my same pregame routine that I would have done if I was live in front of an audience. I have a very specific ritual and routine that I do to get prepared all the way to tying up my tie and I’m dressing as if I’m going to be live. I’ve got my hands free so that I can speak with my hands which is certainly what I do if I’m live. The only major restriction from a physical standpoint is that I don’t have a stage to walk around on, that I need to stay somewhat stationary so that you all don’t get motion sickness but I approach virtual with the same mentality that I would approach being in person and even though I’m looking at this dot, I’m visualizing and imagining a face. I can see Fred’s face which is always a warm smile but I’m imagining an audience, I’m picturing some of you that are out there right now and hoping that what I’m saying is connecting and that is, as I mentioned, the biggest challenge is I don’t know that. If I crack a joke I can’t hear any laughter so I don’t know if it worked. If I said something that I thought would be really helpful I can’t tell if you guys are leaning over to write that down or not so it’s still challenging but this leads me actually perfectly into my next section which is a mindset that I’ve always had but I’ve applied even more so now. I wake up every single day and say to myself, “Today I’m going to do the best I can with what I have where I am.” I think we’re all familiar with the, “Do the best you can” part but how about with the, “What I have” part? That’s where we all can clearly see some limitations as we’ve already been mentioning but we can’t use those as an excuse. We need to do the best we can with the tools that we’re given wherever we are and realize that it’s not a level playing field, some people have access to more resources than others at present but this dovetails nicely into the other mantra that I have: we all as sales professionals and as performers need to do everything in our power to get rid of blaming, complaining and making excuses.

Those three things will never ever do anything to improve your performance, improve your situation and they’re certainly not going to help you improve your sale. Anytime we blame, we complain or we make an excuse we’re actually taking responsibility off of ourselves and we’re putting it on someone else. Sales professionals and high performers don’t do that, we all need to live by a code of extreme ownership. Clearly this would be the easiest time since I’ve been alive for us to make excuses and to blame other people or other things and to complain about how bad things are, it’s so easy to do but if you want to be a great sales professional you can’t just do the things that are easy to do, you can’t just do the things that everyone else does. You will never make a sale based off of making excuses, complaining and blaming others so the sooner we can get rid of those things, it’s almost like we’re taking a weight vest off. We’ll become lighter, we’ll become emotionally more nimble, our performance will go through the roof but equally important and I know this from personal experience, we’ll be so much happier and more fulfilled when we don’t hide behind excuses and complaints and blaming other people and it’s just us again. We’ll feel better about everything that we do. My guess is if you’re like me, you’ll still every once in a while revert back to one of those things but hopefully you have the self-awareness to catch yourself and say, “Okay, that’s not going to help me right now, I need to be able to move forward.” To be a great leader, once you’ve adopted that mindset for yourself then you need to make that contagious with everyone in your organization. You need your sales colleagues and your leadership teams, everyone to have that same mindset. Yes, things are really tough right now they’re tough economically, they’re tough in so many different ways but making excuses, complaining and blaming the situation isn’t going to make it better so we might as well get rid of the negativity.

Fred Diamond: Alan, you raised a good point there which has come up many times across the last couple of weeks that we’ve been doing these webcasts on a daily basis, you’re a professional. You are a sales professional, it’s hard right now for reasons that we all know that we don’t need to go into but if you’re a professional, what do you do to continue being a professional? Maybe your customer is having challenges and isn’t ready to buy right now for reasons that we all know but what should you be doing as a professional? Alan, we have a question that came on, you talked about how you start your day thinking about what can you be doing with what you have. A question comes in here actually from a guest in Canada, so thank you to all of our Canadian friends who are on today’s webcast. Alan, can you tell us how you structure your full day for optimal performance? Again, not many people know this but you’ve worked with some of the top basketball professionals in the history of basketball, people like Kobe, Kevin Durant, Victor Oladipo so you’ve seen some of the true world-class performers and what you’ve been able to do is translate that into business and sales as you work with companies right now. Talk about the ideal day for right now for maintaining the optimal mindset for sales professionals.

Alan Stein Jr.: Once again, what I’ll do is I’ll share my approach but I don’t ever want someone to think that the way I do things, it is right or is better than the way someone else does, it’s what works for me and that’s what each of us should be looking for right now. What is the routine and what are the disciplines and habits that work best for us? With as many people as you have listening and watching right now, there’s a wide array of different circumstances. You probably have some single professionals that are living by themselves and then you have someone else that has three or four kids and they have to home school proctor in addition to being a sales professional so it’s going to be all over the map. As I mentioned, I told you the big rocks that need to be in place for me and that is to keep my energy up, that’s because we can’t ever get time back but we can replenish energy. There’s no reason that we can’t be at 100% with our batteries full every single day but once a day passes, it’s gone. Those things that I mentioned earlier are structured as part of my day. I also know enough about myself to know that I’m much more of a morning person, that before 10 a.m. is when I do my best critical thinking, it’s when I do my best problem solving, it’s when I have the clearest thoughts if I’m going to write, it’s also when I have the highest physical energy. So, I try to stack my mornings that I do most of the heavy lifting of doing those types of things and then I try to save other work for later in the day. Clearly because my goal is to give you all as much value as possible, I need to make sure that I was on at 2:00 p.m. Eastern time today so I had to structure my day in a way that I could get some things one this morning and that I could allow enough time to mentally, physically and emotionally prepare for this keynote talk that we’re doing virtually. Every day is a little bit different, some days I have four or five of these Zoom calls in a day and then sometimes I don’t have any and I can focus on doing some other projects so I think from a structure standpoint, the consistency is important and knowing how you operate best is important. Everything else, you’ve got to be the one to fill in the big rock. For me, come 8, 9 o’clock p.m., my brain starts to stop functioning at a high level, I’m not worth much after that so that’s time where I can kick back and read or watch a documentary or something on Netflix, I’m not doing any heavy work at night but someone listening to this right now might be the exact opposite. You might loathe early mornings and you do your best critical thinking and problem solving at 11 p.m., that’s great. Make sure that’s when you’re writing your proposals or you’re creating social content or you’re doing the things that work best for you. Almost everything will always come back to the self-awareness of knowing what you need to do to perform at a high level.

Fred Diamond: Once again, if anyone has any questions submit them via the panel. Also, please take a screenshot, email it to me at fdiamond@i4esbd.org, you can do it after today’s webcast. The best screenshot will get a copy of Alan’s book Raise Your Game. Alright Alan, we’re ready for the next segment here.

Alan Stein Jr.: Back when I was in the basketball space, coaches would hire me to come in to consult with them. They wanted me to come watch their practices and then give some input and feedback on how efficient and effective their practices were. I would always go to practice 30 to 40 minutes early because I wanted to watch the players and the staff before the practice started. Inevitably, I could take every player and put them into one of two buckets: you had those that were waiting for practice to start and then you had those that were preparing for practice to start and it was a very stark contrast. If you can picture a teenage boys’ basketball team at the high school level, those that were waiting, they didn’t have their shoes tied and their shirts weren’t tucked in, they were sitting in the bleachers thumbing through their phone or they were in the hallways trying to pick up girls and then you had those that were preparing.

Those were the ones that already had a sweat going, they were laced up and doing some type of form shooting or maybe some stretching, they were mentally, physically and emotionally getting ready to compete at the highest level so that the moment the coach blew the whistle, they were ready to go. The reason I bring that up is as sales professionals in this unusual climate, I hope that you’re not waiting for this pandemic to be over, I hope that you’re preparing for it to be over. Of course the big elephant in the room is the fact that we don’t know when practice is going to start. As Fred mentioned, it could be a couple weeks, it could be a couple months, we don’t know but the actual start time is irrelevant because if every day you’re doing something to prepare for the recovery and the reopening then whenever that happens, you will be ready.

It’s always better to be ready for an opportunity that never arises than unprepared for one that does so if the whole world opens up next week, are you prepared for that or are you going to say, “Hang on, I need a few more days to get myself ready”? We don’t want to be in that camp so you need to start figuring out what are the things that you can do to mentally, physically and emotionally prepare to be at the top of your game when the world does open up. Some of that will be internal and some of that will be external with the relationships with your clients and customers and the partners and groups that you work with and doing everything you can to help them prepare for when the world opens up. You guys can look at yourselves as being a resource above and beyond just being sales professionals and I don’t say just sales professionals in a diminishing way, but you have an opportunity to add value above and beyond what you would normally do. The key, of course, is figuring out and each one of us needs to do that somewhat differently, what do I need to do to prepare? The moral of that story is just make sure you’re not back on your heels and you’re not surprised when the world starts coming back around. When that pendulum swings back and we go into full recovery and open mode, make sure you’ve been prepared to do so and by doing so, you’ll be the front-runners. You’ll be in front of your competition.

Fred Diamond: We have some great sales professionals listening in. Preparation is critical and I hate using the word ‘new normal’ because this is definitely not normal, it’s definitely new. If you’re watching today’s webcast, use the question panel, submit something to us that you’re doing today to prepare. Alan is absolutely correct, you should be doing things. Every Monday, Alan, we post on LinkedIn some advice from some of our past Sales Game Changers guests on what are they encouraging their teams to do. Preparation, strategic planning comes through, we have somebody here who just submitted that they’re creating account plans for all of their accounts post-whatever this might be. Again, send something via the question panel that you might be doing. Someone says right here they’re creating lists of things that they are asking their customers each time. What are some of the things that you’re seeing on some of the sales leaders that you’re working with that they’re doing to prepare right now to be more effective moving forward?

Alan Stein Jr.: The ones that I’ve been working with are using the relationship pyramid that I’ve discussed before. The bottom of the pyramid, and I think we talked enough about this at present, is the self-care part. Just making sure that you are ready, your mindset is ready to get back out there, then the next is making sure that your teammates are as well. I know depending on your situation there’s going to be a wide variety of when you’re a sales professional who else is on your team and who else you work with, but I’ve always believed that a rising tide raises all boats so anything you can do to help the person next to you, the folks that are wearing the same polo and the same logo that you’re wearing, anything you can do to help them perform at a higher level is going to help the greater good of the entire team. Whatever you can do to be the type of teammate that you want to play with, I encourage you, do that now.

As I mentioned at the very beginning, we’re all on that spectrum ranging from optimism to anxious and uncertain and this is a great time to reach out to those on your team whether it’s your leadership team or folks in HR or folks in R&D or admin staff, whatever it may be and see where they’re falling on that spectrum. Then see what you can do to help move them along so that they can get closer to the optimistic side. You have to be so chameleon like and go to where they are.

Fred Diamond: Let’s talk about that for a second. We did a session last week with Steven Gaffney on managing optimal teams. You’ve worked with some of the best team performers in the planet, you’ve worked with a lot of the high performing basketball players. What might be some examples of being a good teammate? You said be a good teammate but what might be some things you think people could be doing today to be a more effective teammate? If you look back at the poll here, 44% of the people said, “I’m cool most of the time but sometimes I’m concerned” and 25% of the people were below the curve saying, “I’m concerned.” How might you show up as a great teammate today? Again, we’re doing today’s webcast, it’s May 14th, 2020. Here we are, things are beginning to open up a little bit, some states are beginning to open up, the nonessential businesses, restaurants and certain areas like that, certain stores. You’ve studied teams, you’ve studied some of the best teammates in the world. What might be some examples of things that our listeners can physically do today to help their teammates along?

Alan Stein Jr.: One of them I know you mentioned in that awesome LinkedIn post that you made and that’s this concept of ten assists and this has been a foundational belief that I’ve always had. The premise of ten assists – and some of you, I believe are familiar with this and actually are doing it with great success – every single morning when you wake up, put 10 rubber bands on your left wrist and every time you give an assist to one of your teammates or to one of your clients and customers if you’d prefer to define it that way, you move one rubber band from your left wrist over to your right wrist. An assist is anything that you do that goes above and beyond what you’re expected to do, above and beyond what you’re supposed to do, above and beyond what they think that you’ll do and whether large or small, when you give out an assist you take one rubber band off the left and you move it to the right. Here’s the rub, you’re not allowed to go to sleep that night until all 10 rubber bands are on your right wrist, until you know for a fact that you did 10 things above and beyond what you’re supposed to do and expected to do and needed to do to help fill the bucket of a teammate or a customer and client.

I know that some of you listening to this, you’ve probably already dished out 20 assists by the time you’re listening to this webinar, that’s fantastic, keep doing that. Then if you want to be a great teammate you can hold those accountable on your team to do the same thing and I’ve always believed that accountability is a gift, that holding someone accountable is the best gift that you can give them because it shows them that you care about them and their performance and that you care about the team’s performance. Just remember that holding someone accountable is something that you do for them, it’s not something that you do to them and we have to make sure that everyone on our team understands that, that if Fred and I are teammates and for some reason today he doesn’t show up as his best self it’s my duty as his teammate to help him raise his game and to call him out. The way at which I call him out and the way at which I hold him accountable will be based on the way that would be best received by him, not necessarily the way that I would prefer to do it.

That leaves me to this thought that when I was a child, going back to my two bucket analogies, you could take every single kid and put them into one of two categories. You had those that could swallow a Tylenol pill and you had those that had to have it smashed up in apple sauce to take the Tylenol pill and that’s what we need to do as sales professionals. Whether gauging with a teammate or gauging with a client or customer, you have to figure out how do they take their Tylenol and then you need to give it to them in the manner that they prefer. It doesn’t matter to me if Fred can swallow a pill or he needs it with apple sauce, all that matters to me is that he takes his Tylenol so it’s my job to give it to him in the manner that he prefers. When you can have the emotional intelligence and the discernment to be able to do that for your teammates and do that for those that you serve, you’ll be so much more attractive and magnetic. You’ll be the teammate that you’ll want to play with and you’ll be the type of sales professional that customers and clients want to do business with.

Fred Diamond: That’s a great point. The whole concept of being proactive, there are some great articles that I’ve seen recently, it’s not enough today to say, “How can I help you?” or, “Is there anything you need from me?” if you’re a sales professional reaching out to customers, you need to start being more specific. You need to start being more focused on, “Is there something I can help you with your communications or something to help you with reopening?” Or, “Something I can help you with producing materials to help your customers?” One of the interesting challenges right now today is that your customer has challenges but your customer’s customer and your customer’s customer’s customer all have the same type of challenge, so be proactive.

Alan Stein Jr.: Fred, if I can add to that and I love that you brought that up. Part of being proactive is being able to anticipate client needs and anticipate customer issues, problems and pain points. One of the best advice that I would give to assistant basketball coaches is figure out what are the things that you think your head coach is going to ask you to do and do them before they ask. You know that they’re going to ask you to sweep the floor before practice so why do you wait for them to ask? Sweep the floor before they even get to the gym. I don’t know how many people right now are glued to ESPN on Sunday night to watch The Last Dance, the documentary about the Bulls and Michael Jordan’s last season but it brings back very nostalgic memories for me. Dennis Rodman, as undersized as he was, is arguably the best rebounder in the history of the NBA and the fact that he was only 6’8 and able to lead the league in rebounding for three straight years just showed how remarkable he was.

He said numerous times that the main reason he was able to do that was because he could anticipate where the ball was going to go, he could anticipate based on the angle of the shot where it was most likely to go if it missed and then he would make sure he was there, because he wasn’t the biggest or strongest or fastest guy. We need to do the same thing, I’m willing to bet in your industry there are certain trends where you can anticipate some of the pain points in advance and if you can reach out and solve a problem for a customer before they even know that’s a problem, you become superhuman and you become invaluable to them. If you’re in a commoditized business, you take yourself out of being a commodity and you become someone that they have to work with because you can anticipate these types of problems. Think like Dennis Rodman when it comes to rebounding and get to the ball before the ball gets there.

Fred Diamond: If you have any questions for Alan Stein Jr. submit them via the panel. Alan, we do have a question here and somebody here must be a Facebook friend of yours. “Who was a better teammate, Pippen or Jordan?” I love talking to you about basketball, obviously you’ve done work with Kobe, we’ve already addressed that story in the past. Just curiously, who do you think was a better teammate, Pippen or Jordan?

Alan Stein Jr.: I think they both had their positives and they both had their flaws as all of us do as human beings. I believe that Jordan led by example and he held people to a very high standard but Jordan didn’t really care how his teammates wanted their Tylenol, he was going to shove it down their throat no matter what. Then on the other hand, I think Pippen probably had a better emotional IQ when it came to dealing with the different types of personalities on the team but I think there were a few times, and Pippen owns this, that he was actually selfish and he actually put his needs in front of the team, and selfishness is a cancer to any team. Overall you’re talking about two of the best basketball players to ever play and I do think both of them were exceptional teammates overall but they certainly had their flaws. But if you’re going to make me answer, I would say Jordan, I would slightly edge out as the better teammate.

Fred Diamond: You’ve worked with some of the most elite basketball players in the history of the world like we’ve talked about, you talked about some of these great stories in your book, Raise Your Game. Again, if you haven’t submitted your screenshot yet, take a screenshot, email it to me before midnight tonight and the best screenshot is going to get a copy of Alan’s autographed book. If you think about some of the elite basketball players in the history of the world, what are they doing today? How would they perform in this circumstance? If you think about it, if you’re a basketball player a bad thing may be being on a bad team or you don’t like to coach or you’re dealing with an injury or something. What are some of the lessons that you took from some of those elite performers that we could apply today right smack in the middle of this new world as we’re beginning to hopefully come out of it? What are top two or three things that they did that we can apply? Again, we got sales professionals around the globe watching us today, we’re going to make this a Sales Game Changers podcast as well. What are two or three habits that we could apply that you’ve learned to be more successful with our mindset?

Alan Stein Jr.: The cool part is in some degree we’ve mentioned them so far on this talk. One that we didn’t mention, though is that they always stick to the basics and they have a strong respect and appreciation for the fundamentals. Right now is a great time, while many of us have paused and hit reset and been able to take a beat, now is a great time to get back in the lab and work on those fundamentals. Some of the other things that we have mentioned when they realize that things are out of their control on the external world, they double down on the things that they do have control over which is their own effort and their own attitude. They aren’t waiting for the next practice, the next workout or the next game, they are preparing for it, they’re doing all of the little things. It’s not just good enough to show up to practice and give a good effort, to be able to perform at practice you need to have gotten a good night’s sleep the night before and eaten a healthy breakfast the day of and gone through some of your pre-practice rituals and routines to prepare so they look at it from a very holistic standpoint. Another thing that makes the elite the elite is as confident as they are – and they’ve earned the right to be confident through demonstrated performance during the unseen hours, but they also have a stroke of humility and they know that they don’t have every answer, they know they don’t know everything and no matter how good they get, they know that they can still get better.

They stay very open to coaching, they stay very open to learning no matter how successful they are. To some of them it was almost a curse that they can’t even enjoy winning because they immediately start thinking about, “We have to win again, we have to win the next time.” They really focus on those core fundamentals and habits and they don’t deviate from them. Then lastly, they don’t allow themselves to get distracted. It’s not just about doing the right thing, it’s also about avoiding doing the wrong thing and that’s really important. They keep their circles tight, they stay well insulated, they focus on the basics, they respect the fundamentals, they make sure that they’re always in preparation mode, they do the little things every day as part of their routine and they stay very open to coaching and learning. If all of us could just do that core thing that I said for 20 seconds right there, we’d see performance skyrocket.

Fred Diamond: When you talk about sales those little things would be researching your customer, thinking of solutions for your customer, working on your writing, your ability to write a nice, crisp, coherent email, working on your presentation skills, working on your ability to communicate via the phone, via text. We have Alan for about another 5 minutes so if you have any more questions for Alan Stein Jr., please submit it. We have a question here, “What are the little things that an elite basketball player would be working on?” When we think about these amazing players, we think of the 360 dunks and those aren’t the things that they’re working on. Tell us those little things that elite performers work on to give us some context in the sales world.

Alan Stein Jr.: What I’ll do is I’ll tell you what basketball players work on and then I’ll tell you the equivalent of that for sales professionals. Basketball players know that every single thing they do on the court starts at their feet. Every shot, every pass, every rebound, every defensive slide, everything starts at their feet so their footwork is the most important part to building a foundation to which the rest of the house is built. Then in order for them to be good at any of the skills, they have to train themselves to have perfect feet. The best players in the world will do footwork drills every single day, that is just a part of what they do.

What I firmly believe is the equivalent of that in the sales game is the ability to actively listen. The ability to actively listen and ask insightful questions is the footwork of sales because when you ask the right questions, you don’t have to convince a client or a customer to buy from you. If you ask the right questions and they are the right fit, they’ll convince themselves to buy from you. If you can sharpen your sword and your intuition and emotional intelligence and your ability to ask the right questions at the right time to the right people and process the information and then based on what they say, offer them another insightful question, you’ll just simply drop the breadcrumbs until you lead to the only logical answer which is for them to do business with you.

Fred Diamond: That is a great analogy, footwork is the active listening. That is such a great analogy because active listening comes up so many times on the Sales Game Changers podcast when we have guests. We have a question here for Alan Stein Jr. “Do you have any ideas for making virtual meetings more creative, appealing with clients?” That’s a great question. We’re all in the same place, people think there’s only so much you could do in front of the little dot on your laptop but do you have any suggestions for making virtual meetings more appealing or more creative with your clients? Thank you, Anne, for that question.

Alan Stein Jr.: That is a wonderful question and in full transparency, Anne, it’s a question that I’m constantly asking myself because as I try to look down the runway of the next 6 to 9 months, I know that I’m going to have to get more well-versed with this technical world and with doing these calls. Because I believe in engagement and I want engagement, I’m going to slowly start trying some different things to figure out ways to answer that question for you so let’s make sure we stay in touch. At present, I don’t think I have any mind-blowing ideas outside of the obvious which Fred has done a tremendous job of on this is getting engagement from you all, asking you all questions, doing a poll at the very beginning to set the tone, encouraging you to write questions in the chat area. I think there’s a variety of ways that we all collectively will start to see ourselves get better. I can tell you for a fact that I’ve done more Zoom calls in the last three weeks than I did in the three years prior to that so repetition is our friend, repetition is the mother of all skill.

The more we start doing these things, we’ll get better and more polished at doing them but we’ll also spark the creativity and innovation of figuring out ways that we can try to make them more interactive and more enjoyable, because we don’t want folks to start getting Zoom fatigue. Zoom fatigue really could set in over the next 5 to 6 months and that’s not something we want. I recommend all of you to use your creativity and innovation to try different ways and just like when I’m on stage, there are times that I try certain things and it doesn’t work as well as I’d like, so then I go back and I workshop it and I try it again, and I try it in a slightly different way or deliver it in a different way. If it’s still not working then maybe I shelf it or maybe I continue to tweak it until it does work. Don’t be afraid to try things with your staff and with your clients and customers, some things will work really well, some things will fall flat and then you can decide whether those things are worth tweaking or not but let’s make sure we stay in touch over the next several months. Any ideas that I get, I’ll make sure I post them on social media so that you guys can enjoy them as well.

Fred Diamond: One thing I would recommend to people is just get familiar with the technology. There’s a lot of little tricks that we’ve begun to learn, I’ve just learned that you can submit handouts, we use GoToWebinar as our platform and you can do handouts. The other thing too about making the virtual meetings more creative and valuable is what we’ve been talking about over the last 45 minutes, preparing. It’s coming with those great questions. If you think about it, a lot of the sales type things that we talk about, you’re absolutely right, one of the best ways to be a great listener is to have great questions, is to prepare, is to come with some ideas. The other thing, is let your customer talk. If you let your customer talk 90% of the conversation versus you show up and throw up and show them things that they could see on their own, you’re not really adding much value to them. I want to thank Alan Stein Jr. once again.

Alan Stein Jr.: Can I add one thing to that, Fred? I’m sorry, I realize folks have to go. You’re 100% right. I’m going to give you guys a coaching analogy and then I’ll leave it to you to figure out how to apply that to yourself. When I watch an inexperienced coach – and let’s just use the high school basketball team, for example – and they set up a scrimmage situation and their point guard comes down and makes a bad pass and turns the ball over, a very novice coach will stop practice, will yell at the player and tell them what they should have done and then they’ll resume. An expert coach will stop practice briefly, ask the player what they saw, “Why did you think that was the right pass to make?” because they realize that player didn’t mean to turn the ball over, they were doing at that time what they thought was the right play to make and in hindsight it wasn’t, so they ask them, “What did you see and why did you think that was the right play?”

Once the player understands that it wasn’t, then they say, “What was something else that you could have done? What was a different option, what was a different pass that you could have made to maybe get a better solution?” Inevitably the player will be able to figure it out, and the reason they do that is one, to get more buy-in and believe-in from the player but two, it makes the lessons stickier. That kid is not going to forget that now because they are the ones that came up with the resolution, it wasn’t just spoon fed to them as if they were some type of robot. This goes back to don’t be afraid to ask as many questions as you can and ask questions that are literally dropping the breadcrumbs to where you want the client and customer to go, and if you are the right fit when they get there, business with you will be a done deal.

Transcribed by Mariana Badillo

The post EPISODE 248: Organizational Performance Expert Alan Stein, Jr. Dishes Out Three Things to Help Sales Leaders Raise Their Team’s Performance as this Unusual Summer Begins first appeared on Sales Game Changers Podcast.

Become a member of the elite Institute for Excellence in Sales.

Please register for SALES GAME CHANGERS LIVE LEARNING EVENT: Sales Transformation and Solutions During the COVID-19 featuring Veeam’s Mike Durso and Saleforce’s Connor Marsden on Wednesday, April 22, 2020 2:00 PM EDT here.

EDITOR’S NOTE: We conducted this interview in February 2020, hence the poor social distancing below. Since the show was released during the COVID-19 pandemic, we asked Diane what her advice is for sales professionals during the pandemic. She offered the following:

•  Take really great care of yourself.  Nutrition, Sleep, Movement, etc.
•  Keep sourcing yourself with positive and visionary messages from inspiring, motivating and wise leaders (like IES provides.). 
•  What your mind focuses on is what you create.  Spend time envisioning the future with your clients.  What do you see is possible over the horizon? What can you do now to make the future a reality?

EPISODE 225: Squeeze More Life Out of Time Author Diane Cashin Says These Mindset Strategies Will Help Sales Leaders Succeed During the COVID-19 Pandemic

DIANE’S FINAL TIP TO EMERGING SALES LEADERS: “When I think about selling I even change the word, I say I’m just going to go care about somebody today, I’m going to care about what they need and hopefully there’s a good fit for me and my company.”

Diane Cashin is the author of Squeeze More Life Out of Time, where she talks about strategies for managing your mind, energy and your minutes to live an extraordinary life.

A speaker, author and coach, she works with leaders and individuals as an ontological coach to tap into “who they are” to amplify “what they do” to make what seems impossible, possible.

Diane’s had a great career in sales. She was at Cisco for a long time and managed strategic alliances and partnerships with companies such as Lockheed, BAE and L3 Communications.

She’s also an expert on the health care industry.

Find Diane on LinkedIn here.

Fred Diamond: Diane, we’re going to be talking today about specifically how you can put some practices in place to be more of an effective sales professional. We asked you to be on the show for two reasons: the book just came out and it’s a tremendous book with a lot of great tips, and you also come from the sales world so you know the life that our listeners have been experiencing. I know you’ve listened to a number of the shows and I’m really excited for getting some ideas from you on how the people listening around the globe can put some practices and habits in place so they can be more productive. First off, how are you doing today?

Diane Cashin: I am extraordinary. How are you today, Fred?

Fred Diamond: I’m doing fantastic. Again, I’m excited about talking to you, the book is fantastic, we’ll provide plenty of links for people to get access to the book. Again, it’s called Squeeze More Life Out of Time. How did you come up with the title ‘Squeeze More Life Out of Time’?

Diane Cashin: It just seemed like a lot of things in life, we want to do so many things and we just run out of time, so where’s all the time going? It is one of the finite things we have to accept in life but where does your time go? If you really want to play a big game in life and be a sales superstar, you really have to be mindful of where you have time leakage, time, energy and emotional leakage that distracts you from what you really want to create.

Fred Diamond: Again, we have Sales Game Changers listening around the globe. I mentioned in the introduction that you worked at Cisco for a long time. Cisco, of course, is one of the top companies in the history of technology and again, you had a very successful sales career there. Why don’t you tell us before we get really deep into some of the topics today, what was it like to work in sales at Cisco?

Diane Cashin: When you’re working for a company like that, you’re a disruptor in many ways. You’re on the front end of things while you’re taking care of problems right now so all the time we really needed to understand where the business of our partners or customers was going as well as where it was now. How were we going to help them move from their as-is state to their future desired state? They were continually transforming, it was always a bit disruptive, it always was taking them out of their comfort zones but when you take great minds and you put them together and you say, “Okay, what can we do together?” Your chocolate, our peanut butter is the way I would look at it in a strategic alliance space is we’re better together so how can we help change the end customer environment? How can we solve really complex problems together? That was so much fun. It’s always great to have a strong brand and the RND teams that are behind that. You have the confidence to go talk about things and talk about the unknown and bring that back and say, “Here’s a really complex problem, what approach might we take?” Often times we felt like we were making the impossible possible so whether it was on the front end strategic lead doing business development shaping things for years, the RND process. Or right now there’s something going on, the client needs a solution or they’re expanding or their technology innovation was changing so much faster now. Every 18 months things were changing so now the CIOs and the CTOs were looking to us to say, “How do I keep up with this speed?” Having a great sales force and all the geniuses at Cisco standing up and saying, “We can help” and, “Let’s do it together” was really an amazing journey.

Fred Diamond: We’re going to be talking about a lot of the themes you have in the book as they apply to sales professionals. I’m excited to be talking to you about this because again, you come from the sales world, you understand what sales professionals go through, you’ve worked with tons of partners, you spent a little bit of time in your career in the non for profit space, you also focused on the healthcare vertical so you have a nice, wide ranging view of what sales professionals go through.

As you know, on the Sales Game Changers podcast we ask the sales leaders for their tips and their advice and what type of challenges do the Sales Game Changers that work for them need to overcome. We’re going to address a couple of them today, we’re going to talk specifically about time management which comes up all the time. When I ask the sales leaders, “What’s your advice for the sales professionals listening?” They always talk about managing their time.

The second thing that they always talk about is preparation, that you need to prepare for the interaction with the customer.

The third thing that comes up is relationships, how do you build these strong relationships to help your customers get more value? The fourth thing we’re going to talk about today is persistence, so I strongly recommend if you’re listening to the podcast today, again you’re probably driving your car or you’re probably out mowing the lawn or working out on the treadmill, but maybe take out your notebook, maybe take out a notepad, listen to the show again, read the transcript – of course, we transcribe every show – because Diane is going to give us some salient ways on how you can truly optimize your sales career. We’re going to get deeper on today’s show than we typically do on the podcast so are you okay with that, Diane?

Are you ready to go?

Diane Cashin: Love it, let’s do it.

Fred Diamond: Let’s get started with time management. When I ask the sales leaders who are on the podcast, “How have you reached the level that you have?” I’m always surprised at how many of them say they optimized their time. They’ve learned how to optimize not just their days but their minutes, so let’s talk about that. First of all, why is time management a problem? Why does that come up all the time on the podcast? And then let’s get deep, your book is called Squeeze More Life Out of Time, so tell us about that.

Diane Cashin: Having lived that journey in sales, boots on the ground trying to figure it all, you feel like you’re always behind, you can never seem to catch up. A lot of it I look at as where is my time going? When you stop to truly notice it, you’re going to find you have a lot of places where you’re leaking time so it’s already overwhelming, yet you have things that you’re potentially creating yourself that are distractions and not necessarily serving you anymore. A couple of things are for example, when you think about the course of your day, where are you leaking time? Where can you plug them in? I put them in the category of energy and emotion leaks because when you’re not focused on what you need to do, if maybe there’s something, let’s say, gossipy or you’re watching the news or you’re on Facebook or there’s something going on, what you’re focusing on is taking your time and that is what you’re going to be in action to create.

It may then be emotionally impactful but you can’t be effective in your sales game if you’re over here and you’re only giving 50% of your attention to what you’re doing because there’s this other thing whispering in your ear about an event that happened or something that you saw on social media or a phone call you just got. Again, thanks for saying, “Take out a paper or take a look for yourself”, where do you notice you lose time? Sometimes it’s more subtle, it’s extended conversations that probably could have been held in maybe 5 minutes instead of 15, they could be meetings that you’re taking an hour or you’re invited to, yet they could have been 30 minutes or maybe you didn’t need to attend at all.

Part of this is how do you change your relationship to your time and that your time has value? What I did – and I do this all the time – is I look at what is my hourly rate, and you can change this based on how many hours you really want to work. But if you think about it, we don’t want to work more hours, we want to work the right amount of hours but be as impactful as possible. Let’s say I have a sales quota of a million dollars, my hourly rate based on a 40 hour work week with 2 weeks’ vacation, let’s say it’s 2,000 hours. That’s $500 dollars an hour, so if you’re spending 15 minutes of that looking at social media or chit-chatting over the water cooler stuff or, “Oh no he didn’t, oh no she didn’t” kind of stuff, that is time lost and you don’t get that time back.

You can continue then to also look at it, what’s the correlation to my quota? What does it mean to my salary? Maybe if you bring a million dollars in you make 100K, that means every hour to you in your pocket is $50 dollars. Now, if you really take those numbers, you post them on a wall, put them in your car dashboard, stick them on your phone, that’s your real value to quota and to income. What would you do differently with that awareness? How are you going to guard your time now?

Fred Diamond: If you think about some of that, you mentioned a million dollars. Obviously working at companies like Cisco and large companies like that, you can make that especially for some of your accounts, if you will. What are some of the high performing professionals that you’ve worked with and that you’ve coached – again, I didn’t mention this in the beginning as well but you’re also an executive coach. You work with CEOs and business leaders and sales leaders around the globe helping them get more value from their lives. What are some of the things that they do? Do they not gossip, do they not go on social media? Is it 100% focus? What are some of the best traits?

Diane Cashin: From a time perspective specifically, some people will talk about, “I get up at 5 A.M. every day.” I tend to say, “Just get up two hours or so before your first commitment” because you need that time to source yourself. What are your intentions for the day? What are your areas of focus? What are the three things only they can do that day that they’re going to get done and be completely unstoppable? They spend time thinking about that, they might meditate but they really set their intention and purpose for the day. Calendars help with that or calendars can hinder but once they do that, they also take some time to source their body.

They eat well or they go for a run, they’re putting energy into their body so that they can perform at a high level and then lastly, they usually in that hour or so – I call it an hour power – they move. We talk about moving, but they read something or they’re inspired by somebody else whether it’s cliff-note level of books or watching a masterclass, they source themselves with at least 20 minutes’ worth of someone else that’s doing awesome things in the world. They set their intentions and get focused all their energy for the day, they take care of their body and they take care of their mind.

Fred Diamond: I want to go back and I want you to define intention. You’ve mentioned that a couple of times, get real specific. What does intention mean? Especially for high performance people.

Diane Cashin: It can change from day to day. Let’s say you have a proposal due today or let’s go with a presentation with somebody really important, you’re going to try to move the deal further into the funnel or even close it. Now you’ve got to get up in front of a room. You might wake up that morning and set your intention with lots of breaths and say, “Today my intention is courage” or, “Today my intention is possibility.” “Today my intention is closing” but when you give yourself something as your guiding, your true north, the beacon for the day, you’re going to say, “If my intention is courage, what are three things I can do to support me being courageous today?”

One of them might just be talk to a friend beforehand or get coached or mentored. Maybe it’s letting go of the need to hyper-perform. Maybe it’s to relax and interact and be more comfortable engaging with people and not have the practice letting go of the fear of presenting. For you, what would that look like? These are some of the things that I’ve seen and heard, but what gets in the way of your success? Specifically, what action am I going to take and who am I going to be today to go make it happen? Then you’re completely unstoppable around that.

Fred Diamond: One of the things I’ve noticed in the over 200 plus interviews that we’ve done on the Sales Game Changers podcast is that we’re providing ways for sales professionals to remove blocks to their success. You talked about this a couple times, things that are in the way, disruptions, distractions. Talk about focus, how can someone truly get focused? You mentioned in the morning, “What is your intention for the day?” it’s courage or whatever it might be. Talk about ways that high performers truly focus and don’t get the hour spent on Facebook which is not going to make you a million bucks. If your goal is to do a million and your hourly rate is $500 an hour and you’re spending an hour on Facebook, you just lost $500.

Diane Cashin: That’s right. It’s an important thing to get focused even with your funnel. If you think you need four times your funnel to close, the capacity of focus, you’re casting net wide, you’re listening, learning, you’re asking questions, you’re partnering, you’re looking to talk to more clients about problems.

When you think about focus, it’s important salespeople qualify and de-qualify so sometimes what I find, especially for the clients that I coach, is while they think they’re asking great questions, they’re asking many great questions but they’re somehow avoiding some of the most important ones that really let them know if this is truly going to come to fruition or not. I think what great leaders do in a very flat, detached, non-emotional way is they’ll ask a very important question and they’re not afraid that the person may say something they don’t like or tell them no. They have come through the years of their being sales experts and executives, I’m sure when they started they had fear.

I think other people let fear get in the way that, “If I ask this question, I may seem too forward or I may make them feel uncomfortable or they may not be happy with me. I may lose the deal on the spot simply because I asked about their budget.” Some people don’t necessarily want to ask some of the most important questions.

Fred Diamond: Which goes back to the next topic, then. We’re talking about asking the right questions. One of the things that comes up all the time on the Sales Game Changers podcast is preparation. I ask the question, “Tell us about your expertise, tell us about your specific area of brilliance” and a lot of times they’ll say preparation. “I really know how to prepare” or they’ll say they’re a great listener and I’ll say, “Well, how do you become a better listener?” and they say, “By preparing.” So let’s talk about preparation as the next topic. Why would some sales professionals not prepare? And let’s talk about some things they could be doing to prepare even better.

Diane Cashin: Let’s break it into two pieces because one of the symptoms of not preparing is you don’t have enough time. Part of what I invite people to do is really start blocking off time on their calendar. It doesn’t have to be specific like, “I’m going to answer my email from 3:00 to 4:00 but if you block off time for these systems now that say, “My calendar is up to date”, and people just take your time, a lot of professionals are just booked back to back and it doesn’t let you do the innovative, creative, preparatory work you need to do. It also doesn’t let you just have time to think and prepare what questions you might even ask. Some of the stuff is obvious, but be a little selfish with your time but block it off so people don’t steal it in today’s calendars that are shared.

That’s one thing. The other thing around preparation is it’s never been easier to prepare. Use Google and then it gives you all the links of where you’re going to look and that’s great, so please do all of that. Read about the company, read as much as you can about what they’re doing. I would also submit that when you’re preparing for something it’s the human connection. We talk about relationships but even though somebody has business goals or outcomes that your product/service/solution/approach might help them, it may help them sleep better at night because they solve it. They may get a bonus because they solved it. They’re out here looking for maybe what you have, so when you’re preparing for that, obviously know how this will make a difference for their life, not just to how the solution will fit the company but how will it make their day different? What about their team, what about their clients, what about their shareholders?

When I think about preparation, we tend to focus on the now like their as-is state, the challenge, the problem. The best salespeople I find ask the questions that take them into the future. For example, “Fred, when we’re on the other side of this, when you have the solution or our services, tell me what is it like for your business now. What’s it like for your clients? How about your team? How about profitability? What will be different for you once we’ve done when we’re on the other side of this?” What that does is it takes them to a forward place and if you capture that in your notes, “This is what life is going to be like for Fred, his team, his profitability”, when you get further into the relationship where things maybe get bumpy, when we talk about the persistent stuff, you can remind them of that because often times we’re living in the moment.

We’re solving to the moment and then the days get hold of us but when you’re talking at the relationship level, at the solutioning level, you can reference back their words of what they said about how this is going to be the game changer.

Fred Diamond: Interesting point there, and we’ll talk about this probably more in the relationship conversation we’re going to have in a minute or two but you talked about preparing not from your perspective but from their perspective. How is this going to help you? A lot of people, when they listen to the show they think it’s preparation about how you prepare yourself, how you do the research but it’s not about preparing for what I’m  going to say, it’s preparing for how you’re going to make an impact with the customer.

Diane Cashin: The more you know about them, of course. Running these global alliances I knew more about these companies than they may have known about themselves because that was my job, to really know them well so I could be in service and I could make a difference for them and mutual growth. At the same time I also had to think about, “How do I really understand what they need so as to make a difference for our company, too?”

There was a little bit of what we needed, of course but when you make it about somebody else, you make it about them, you make it about your boss even internally, when you make it about your boss, your team, your company, when you make it about the person you’re working with to solve the problem, their team, their company, in the end none of this is really about you. If you take the time to care about all of those people whose lives you impact in your role, they’re going to be so grateful. Tremendous partnerships will be built, relationships will be really strong and the way you do that is you need to be a curiosity bug like when you were five. You have to ask really curious, caring questions, like you care about them.

[Sponsor break]

Fred Diamond: Diane, we talked about time management, we talked about preparation, let’s talk now about relationships. Again, a lot of times when I do the Sales Game Changers podcast I’m interviewing sales leaders who’ve had 20, 30, sometimes even 40 years’ careers of success and a lot of times they’ll go back to that they’ve built these great relationships that have maintained themselves, people that they’re still working with 30 somewhat years ago, especially for people who are serving the same market like government or healthcare or public sector. Let’s talk about relationships, why do people struggle with relationships and what are some things that the Sales Game Changers listening to today’s show can do to get more value, more life out of their relationships?

Diane Cashin: It’s a great segue from our last piece. In the end, whether it’s business or in life it’s really not about you. When you make a difference for other people’s lives, when you care about them, focus on them, are interested in them, the relationships and the connections really click in a much different level. When you think about who we are, when life is good for us, we’re having a great day or we’re on vacation, the attributes we have as individuals, we might show up as leader or levity or generosity. We might be loving or compassionate and those are the attributes usually when you’re in the beginning of a relationship of any kind, but in business when you meet someone they bring their best attributes usually forward. When you notice those attributes, that’s really important because as business goes on, unfortunately we switch. We become assertive, aggressive, angry, we become demanding, our confidence, we have doubt and insecurity. That can affect your relationships so in the sales context when you honor someone’s greatness, no matter what is happening in your day or who they’re being and you show up with your best attributes… Let’s just say you have a deal where somebody’s going dark, “I don’t understand what’s happening, I thought I had a good relationship, I thought I asked the right questions, I had it in my funnel at 70%” but you can’t reach them.

A lot of times what a salesperson or any human being will do is their fears will show up, their insecurities will show up, their disappointment, their frustration so they switch from leader, compassion, patient, positive attribute into story. “What does this mean? I can’t believe they’re treating me this way, what’s that about?” When we do that, our communications change as well. Even if we think we’re writing a nice email, the energy is different and your message is absolutely different.

What I tend to find in those situations when it starts to go sideways or you have something you as a salesperson are managing and now you can’t reach the prospect or the person you think you have this relationship with, what do you do? Who do you become, how do you handle it? I tend to tell people, “Pick up the phone and make it about them, remind them of that future vision and then also ask them for guidance. Don’t make it about the deal.” Say, “I want to make sure that I’m really taking extraordinary care of you aligned with your vision. Perhaps you can give me some perspective, is there anything I could do better, differently? You can only do so much at the relationship level if they don’t engage but here’s the thing, if you always stay in a positive way and you never pull out the snarky, condescending, fearful, direct voice, today just may be the day that deal won’t go through.

When you leave them great no matter what’s happening, they’re going to remember that even if you never do business again, they’re going to remember how you made them feel and how you left them through their transaction and they may not have done the best thing by not calling you back or not telling you what’s going to happen. You’re sitting here with a giant question mark like, “I still don’t understand, I need closure” but if you stay in your best and greatest and you leave them great no matter what happens with the deal, they will always remember your professionalism, your integrity, your trust and how you treated them.

Fred Diamond: I want to ask you a very specific question and get your specific advice, how do you fight being snarky? Let’s say there’s a deal you’ve been working on for a year, the customer says, “We’re definitely going to do it” and you’ve told your boss, “On the pipeline it’s 90%, boss it’s going to come in” and then they go dark and then they send you a quick note, “Sorry, we’re not going to do this this year” and you were counting on it, you’ve already spent the money. I get it, you want to be in your best self and you want to be nice to them because one of the things we also hear from the podcast is it’s a long game and that deal may reappear. How do you not be snarky? How do you fight the temptation to send those flaming emails? How do you fight that temptation?

Diane Cashin: We all know what happens to people in social media, for example when they don’t take a moment. It used to be years ago they’d say, “Count to 10” and all that and that’s hard to do, but when you’re in the moment that’s an automatic response that’s coming. Fear, frustration, anger, hurt, disappointment but you get to choose. This is the difference of those who rise up and those who don’t, the people who have that automatic knee-jerk reaction, they’re going to plateau at a certain point in their career but it’s the evolved leader that realized – through probably years of situations – where they can actually take a breath and say, “Okay, I’m so angry right now.”

Maybe they go do some kick boxing or throw some stuff, who knows? I’m not saying don’t feel that way, you just manage it in a more private way, talk with your manager about it, do not do it publicly, definitely don’t do it with the client. If you can stand at that fork in the road of choice and say, “Instead of me switching to my fear and my anger showing up, I’m going to choose to take a breath and I’m going to go back.” Make a list for yourself, what are your best attributes that make you you? What is it that people love about you? Write that list for yourself and then when you’re standing at choice of, “I’m so angry right now”, read that list and be that person. Be your best self and it may take a day but don’t show up don’t let anger, fear, negativity run the conversation or narrative. You don’t usually recover well from that.

Even when you’re not getting the deal, stay in that positive place and continue to support that person, continue to say really great things about them and the deal and the company. Always bring your best and greatest, write a list of what makes you so awesome and then read that list.

Fred Diamond: Again, were talking today with Diane Cashin. Diane, I want to ask you for your final tip, you’ve given us such great insights today. Again, I recommend everyone go out and purchase the book, Squeeze More Life Out of Time. Where can you find the book, on Amazon and all those places?

Diane Cashin: My publisher is AuthorHouse so it’s best to get it there if you can.

Fred Diamond: Before I ask you for your final thought, I want to tackle one more topic, it comes up all the time as well, it’s persistence. I used to work for a woman, my first job out of school, she had a placard on her wall which said, “Persistence is our key to success.” What does that mean? Why aren’t people as persistent as they need to be? We’ve interviewed some Sales Game Changers who’ve said, “It wasn’t until the 15th call that I finally got the meeting” yet a lot of people stop after two or three. Let’s talk about persistence, why is it a problem? Why do the Sales Game Changers that I interview bring it up? Why do they need to tell the people working for them they need to be more persistent and how can you become more persistent?

Diane Cashin: I think there’s something about that word in a way. I don’t know what the connotation of the word persistent triggers, but words do land on people in a certain way so sometimes people feel like if you’re being too persistent, you’re being pushy or assertive or aggressive, I look at that word and say, “What does persistence mean in terms of my ability to at least get a clear go, no-go?” As long as I have an open question mark, I need to stay on course. It might be determination, it might be dedication, it might be consistency so as long as it’s not answered, there’s still work to be done. The question then is why do people stop? What is the relationship to multiple touch points? Where do they get stuck or stopped?

You go from all in, you’re super excited on one side and then you make a couple calls, you do a couple things and then something happens and then your energy starts to run out, and you get to the other side and then you’ve got nothing for your effort and you let go but you still never know what happened. When you look at that continuum, where is it you get stuck or stopped and why? You can actually draw this out because there’s probably a fairly good pattern for you of how many times you asked a question or how many times you ask for something before you say, “Okay, I’m done, I’m out, now I’m wasting my time.”

It’s a balance, you want to stay focused on what’s most important, you don’t want to spend a lot of time on things that aren’t but if you can, in your spare moments, pick up the phone and call that person again, ask yourself what are you afraid of or what’s in the way of you making that call or reaching out again? Why are you stuck or stopped? What is it about you – not them – that you need to take a look at? It may just be no for now, or it could be they don’t need the solution. Give it a couple more tries, push yourself a little further than you usually do, but at some point you do have to make a go, no-go in terms of wasting time and that gets you back to the focus. “I’m going to focus on the big deals, I’m going to focus on what the most important things for my company and my customer or clients are and on these other things that I’m incubating, I’m going to maybe approach it a different way.

Persistence may not be on the deal, maybe I shift and my persistence is I start sharing some emails and some interesting things because I know so much about them because I prepared.” [Laughs]

Fred Diamond: We have Sales Game Changers listening all around the globe, why don’t you give us one final thought to inspire them today?

Diane Cashin: When you get up every day with the intention to make a difference for other people and you have the support of your team, and you are fearlessly connecting with people from a place of caring about them and you ask those questions so you really seek to understand before you seek to be understood – I think that’s a Covey quote – it’s not about you yet, then they’re going to have a good day, you’re going to have a good day and that funnel is going to get richer and richer. Good selling, everybody. When I think about selling I even change the word, “I’m just going to go care about somebody today, I’m going to care about what they need and hopefully there’s a good fit for me and my company.”

Fred Diamond: One thing you said when we came back from the break and you just said it again – for the Sales Game Changers listening, for all the Sales Game Changers we’ve interviewed – it’s not about you. It’s about the customer, it’s about your team, it’s about your company. I think if you make it about you, you’re going to fail or you’re not going to achieve the great levels of the super professionals that we talk about.

Diane Cashin: Some people may just say, “I just want to carry a bag and sell” and that’s an okay thing, there’s nothing wrong with that but if you have aspirations to rise, that’s the key to it. People want to do business, as we say, with people but it’s more than that. It’s the connection, the trust, the integrity and the work that you’ve done, how you come through the hard times together. The last little piece of that is you mentioned I was with Cisco and I worked with these big companies and I worked in healthcare IT for a long time with big companies. The challenge is what do you do when you’re in a smaller company? Because those big brands, you call and they take the meeting. I worked for service disabled veterans as well and nonprofits and still, it’s the same thing.

When you make it about somebody else and you’re not trying to say, “Hurry up, get through that last part because I can’t wait to tell you what I’m going to do for you today, what can I do to put you in that car today?” Because you never want it to feel like they’ve been sold. You want them to feel cared, that you’ve consulted with them, that you really helped them solve a problem and in the end it’s a mutually beneficial win and the relationship will grow and they will trust you in the future and you phone will ring when they need something again.

Transcribed by Mariana Badillo
Produced by Rosario Suarez

The post EPISODE 225: Squeeze More Life Out of Time Author Diane Cashin Says These Mindset Strategies Will Help Sales Leaders Succeed During the COVID-19 Pandemic first appeared on Sales Game Changers Podcast.

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EPISODE 202: Sales Mindset Development Expert Umar Hameed Says Change is Possible if Sales Professionals Apply These Simple Techniques

UMAR’S FINAL TIP TO EMERGING SALES LEADERS: “I want to share with people and I hope they get it in their hearts is that change is possible, change happens very quickly, you can make that change permanently. With technologies from applied neuroscience, neurolinguistic programming and others we have a deep understanding of how to create that change quickly and make that change permanent.”

Umar Hameed is the developer of the NeuroBoosterz, a tool to help sales professionals optimize their performance by improving their mindset.

Here is the link to the app website: NeuroBoosterz – Software for your mind (https://neuroboosterz.com/)

He is an expert on changing human behaviors and he’s worked with sales teams around the globe to help them improve their performance.

He’s an expert on Neuro-linguistic programming (NLP) and its applications in business and sales.

Find Umar on LinkedIn!

Umar Hameed: Fred, thanks so much for having me on the show, I’m a big fan. My reason for being is helping people get the tools they need to take charge of their mindset so they can get better performance not only in sales, in leadership but in life.

Fred Diamond: Let’s start from the beginning, what does mindset mean? We hear about improving your mindset, as a matter of fact, at the Institute for Excellence in Sales mindset comes up all the time and actually on the Sales Game Changers podcast it comes up all the time as well. What do we mean by mindset, before we talk about ways to enhance and improve it?

Umar Hameed: I’ll tell it to you in this way: have you ever heard of affirmations?

Fred Diamond: Absolutely.

Umar Hameed: People believe in them, right? You could have somebody out there saying, “I am the best salesperson in the world” and they could say it a hundred times but underneath that, there’s another voice saying, “Who the hell are you kidding?” That is mindset, we’ve got the conscious part – what we say, what we want – and we go to workshops, we learn tools. “This is it, this is going to be the year, 2020 is going to be my year, Fred.” How many salespeople are going to say that around the globe? Every one of them, but how many of them are really going to make this the year?

The answer is not enough because that negative voice that came up in the affirmation story I told you is what we believe and what’s really going on. We go to take the actions we want but our mindset can either enhance our actions so we get the results we want, or it can sabotage our actions. Nobody ever says, “You know what would be fun? I’m going to talk to myself negatively for the next 20 minutes before I go into a sales meeting.” “You’re ugly, you’ll never sell anything.” No one does that on purpose, but it’s coming from somewhere and where it’s coming from is our mindset, and we’ll go deeper into that as we go on this conversation.

Fred Diamond: Absolutely. The app that you’ve created, the NeuroBoosterz app actually helps people take their mindset and make it stronger. We’re going to talk about that at length but before we get to that, tell us a little more about you. Tell us what you’re specifically an expert in. Again, we’re going to be talking about the NeuroBoosterz app but your company is called No Limit Selling, you’re a speaker around the globe. Tell us a little more about your background which led you to create this app.

Umar Hameed: It all started back, it was the late 80’s, I ran a computer consulting firm and I was doing pretty well. Loved it, worked hard at it, had passion for it, then I took up squash and I sucked at it but a couple of months later I got better. Two months later I got better and better, and one day it’s like, “Wait a minute, how come I can improve these massive improvements in squash but in business I’m not doing that?” Someone said, “Go see this woman, her name is Una Elliot, she does something called neurolinguistic programming, NLP.

I go and see this woman and it was a life changing event. Whatever the block was in my business life just disappeared and it was life changing, and I made a promise back then, “Must learn this.” As I’ve been growing in my sales career and my technology career I started picking up NLP and getting a deep understanding of the human psyche, applied neuroscience and my real expertise is in NLP and applied neuroscience. I help leaders and salespeople take charge of their most valuable asset resource, that’s their mindset.

Fred Diamond: Before we go any further, define NLP. It’s come up a couple times on the Sales Game Changers podcast but what exactly is it?

Umar Hameed: NLP is understanding human behavior and how we perceive the world. My favorite definition is the one I came up with. If you have an issue, let’s say, you go to a therapist for 6 months. One Thursday afternoon the therapist says the magic words and you get this epiphany and he fear you had for public speaking disappeared. I’m not concerned about the 6 months of therapy but I’m deeply fascinated by before the therapist said that magic thing, you were stuck and a moment after they said it something changed inside.

NLP is the understanding of the human mindset so you can create that change predictably and you can do it today, not 6 months from now. NLP is mastery over the mindset and it’s been distilled down in such a way. For a second, think about Einstein when he’s trying to figure out the universe and he’s got 21 blackboards full of ugly math. When he figured it out, it went down to E=MC², any high school kid can figure that equation out but NLP is taking this complex study of the human mind and condensing it down to something simple, elegant, powerful that mere mortals like I can understand. It can empower people like you to break through barriers that have been holding you back from being ‘awesomer’.

Fred Diamond: Let’s talk a little bit about how that applies to sales. What are some of the techniques or what are some of the ideas behind it to help the Sales Game Changers listening to today’s podcast take their career to the next level?

Umar Hameed: For example, we’ve all had deals that we’ve been promising our VP’s, “This is going to come in this quarter” and it’s looking on track, and at the last second the CFO goes in a different direction and you lose that sale. For a sales rep, that could devastate them for a day, a week, the next quarter or the next year. On the NeuroBoosterz app we’ve got a track called Rebound and what that does is it takes you through an NLP process in 10 minutes. What that does is it gets you to let go of all the trauma of the loss, it gets you to learn whatever you needed to learn and then it gets you to access your most powerful sales that you’ve ever had in your lifetime so you authentically feel that in your mind, in your body. That allows you to take something that would have traumatized you or stopped you for weeks and it turns it around in 10 minutes. That’s NLP and that’s the power salespeople have now with this app, you’ve got the power to decide how you want to feel and act in the palm of your hand.

Fred Diamond: Let’s talk about the app for a little bit. Again, it’s called NeuroBoosterz and you can download it wherever you can download your apps.

Umar Hameed: Absolutely.

Fred Diamond: You talked about why you developed it, but tell us specifically how it works and how it can help sales professionals get past some of those blocks.

Umar Hameed: When I ask salespeople and I’ll ask you, Fred you’re in sales. Let’s say there’s 200 sales days in a year, how many of those days are when you are on fire, where you’re at your very best self out of the 200? What would you say the average salesperson, how many days out of the year are they?

Fred Diamond: 50% maybe.

Umar Hameed: I would think that’s aiming high because I’ve asked a lot of people and they were saying, “Maybe 20% of the days where I’m on fire, unstoppable. There’s probably 30% of the time where I’m not on par, where I feel less than. A fight with the spouse, a traffic jam, just not in the mood and the rest of the time I’m just normal and average kind of sales thing.” The question is how can we take those average days and give you tools in the app that allow you to access peak states of performance when you need it. It could be that today you’re just feeling okay but you’re going in for the most important meeting of the year, and you can listen to a track on the NeuroBoosterz called Boost Your Self-Esteem. You might go from a 6/10 to a 10/10 in 7 minutes and when you go in to do that presentation you are at the top of the world and you’re unstoppable. That level of confidence translates to confidence in your product in the prospect’s mind.

Fred Diamond: How does that work? Do I go into a dark room somewhere or…?

Umar Hameed: No, just put the earbuds in in the car and it uses NLP techniques to show you how to take charge of your mind. Not only does it take you from feeling 6/10 to 10/10 but it teaches you how to do it so you’ve got it any time you need it. The nice thing about the app, a lot of times we have these amazing tools in sales and life that we don’t use because, “How do I use it again?” When you’ve got the app, it’s like, “I don’t have to do anything.” Plug in the earbuds, hit go on the player and it gets you to access that state. It takes all the barriers that could be in the way of you accessing how you want to feel.

Fred Diamond: I want to go back to mindset as it relates to this. Is mindset just another way of saying confidence?

Umar Hameed: I think confidence is a byproduct of mindset. I was at an event yesterday and somebody was talking about the solution that they provide and they asked people, “Would you like to just test this thing out to see if I’m on the right track?” and then their voice cracked. “You could get it, too” and you could just tell there’s some belief around money that that person has and that caused their voice to crack when they asked for the sale. That’s mindset. In your research you’ve interviewed a lot of salespeople and a lot of sales leaders, what percentage of salespeople do you think do not ask for the sale? They’ll hedge around it and promote the value but not ask, what percentage do you think that is?

Fred Diamond: It’s a huge problem. We did a podcast with a guy named Steve Richard and Steve Richard’s company is called ExecVision, they’ve analyzed millions of sales calls. I asked Steve, “What is the main thing that you took away from listening to literally millions of sales calls?” and he said, “There was never any follow up, there was never the next step.” You’re talking about this final step but it was hardly ever an agreement on the next step of course which is in one case asking for the money, asking for the deal.

Umar Hameed: What’s interesting is I’d say out of all the calls that he’s listened to, let’s say 80% of all those sales reps have had sales training. I’d say probably out of 100% there’s probably 60% that have had multiple sales trainings in their career about that subject. They know what to do, they know how important it is, they know it’s going to make them money but they’re still not doing it. The question is why? It’s mindset, some belief.

When I’m talking to sales reps, you have a room full of sales reps and our beliefs dictate what we do in this world. They dictate our mindset so we get most of our beliefs by the time we’re 7 years of age. We have simple thoughts at that point so the simple sentences inside I had that go in the unconscious, one of those sentences is something like this. I go to the sales rep, maybe a hundred of them and say, “Please finish this sentence for me: salespeople are…?” And somebody will say, “Outgoing, they’re brave, they’re brilliant” and about 6 or 7 positive sentence closers, and then someone says, “They’re sleazy, they’re untrustworthy.” Guess which list is three times bigger? The negative one, because that’s the beliefs in our society around selling.

We see that as something taboo and evil, you’re taking advantage of people but there would not be any of the lifesaving drugs that exist right now if someone didn’t sell it. Those beliefs are sitting in our unconscious and that’s why we don’t follow the sales training. That’s why when our sales manager says, “I listened to your call and you weren’t doing this thing” and a month later they tell you the same thing, you could get fired but the fear of facing your wife being fired is less than overcoming a belief that you have around sales and money in your mind.

Fred Diamond: Back to that, again you listen to the NeuroBoosterz app and I know you have a whole bunch of different options that they can listen to and you can also get them customized as well, which we’ll talk about at the end. How does it change? How does your app make change happen? You just said a lot of our mindset is set when we’re below the age of 7. Maybe your mom says no to you or something and you keep thinking “no” or whatever it might be. How does the app help change the mindset? Because I’ll be honest with you, it comes up all the time. When I ask the sales leaders that we interview on the Sales Game Changers podcast, “What are your tips? What are some things you think young professionals can do?” mindset comes up. Of course, there’s the usual things like passion and preparation and listening skills.

Umar Hameed: What was that?

Fred Diamond: [Laughs] Listening skills, etc. Tell me how the app actively changes the mindset and then, does it rigidly change it? Is it a permanent change or do I keep going back to, “Maybe the guy is going to say no and I’m afraid to ask for the deal” type of thing?

Umar Hameed: Several questions packed into that. Let me ask you right now in terms of happiness, level the happiness 1 to 10 right now sitting now with me.

Fred Diamond: 10.

Umar Hameed: For real, what would it really be?

Fred Diamond: 10, I’m thrilled to be talking to you. We’ve gotten such great response to the Sales Game Changers podcast and I’m a big believer and I’ve seen your work and I’ve seen how you help sales professionals improve. I’m not going to say 5, it’s a 10. Should I say 9 to make it easier? [Laughs]

Umar Hameed: No, I’ll pick a different topic. Bear with me here, listeners – in terms of feeling loved at this moment, scale of 1 to 10.

Fred Diamond: 7.

Umar Hameed: Remind me of your daughter’s name, youngest one.

Fred Diamond: Abby.

Umar Hameed: Just for a moment, I want you to go back to the first time you held her in your arms. Go back there and see what you saw back then and hear whatever you heard back then, your voice, her cooing.

Fred Diamond: It’s great.

Umar Hameed: When you do that, it changes that level of connection and love, right?

Fred Diamond: Yes.

Umar Hameed: What I changed there was not just the thought, but in order for you to feel that feeling, I changed your brain chemistry. Doesn’t that blow your mind? In like 10 seconds we did thatThat’s the power we have to change our mindset in a moment. For the permanent change, going into the sales meeting asking for the sale is going to be really easy to do because you just listen to it before you went in, but underneath that is a belief that’s been driving the old behavior. We all know what our behaviors are because we can measure our results. “I’m not getting enough yes’s in my meetings.” What’s the behavior that’s getting in the way? It could be not asking for the sale or caving in on price, whatever it is. That’s where we stop and say, “I need to change my behavior, I’m going to go get a consultant” or, “I’m going to take a workshop” or, “I’m going to give myself a good talking to and the next time, I’m going to be different.”

The reality is the next time you’re not because underneath every single behavior that counts is a belief in your unconscious that was created a long time ago that’s like a black hole of gravity that locks that behavior in place. Nothing in the world is going to change it, and once in a blue moon we do change it but because we didn’t address the underlying belief very quickly, within a day, a week we go back to the old way of being. Talk to any sales manager. “Umar, you should see us, we had the sales trainer that came in, he was amazing, sales went up” for about a month and a half and then everyone went back to their old way of being because they got new information but they didn’t change the underlying beliefs.

Fred Diamond: That’s pretty powerful, I’m thinking about the example you just used for me and I can see how within a millisecond my mindset had shifted. Especially as I’m going into now an important meeting or something with a customer, a demonstration when I really need the deal, if you will I can see how those types of mind activities can definitely make things change. Again, we’re talking today with Umar Hameed, he’s the Developer of NeuroBoosterz, it’s an app which will help you – how would you describe it again?

Umar Hameed: There’s a better you inside you and this app is going to help you get it there now.

Fred Diamond: Umar, before we take a short break and listen to one of our sponsors, you’ve been in the sales world for a long time. You’ve led sales teams now in addition to developing the app which led to it. You speak all around the world on sales performance improvement techniques typically using NLP and other ways to change human behaviors. A lot of people like when I ask the sales VP’s about mentors they’ve had along the way. Could you maybe share a story about an impactful sales mentor and how they helped you take your career to the next level?

Umar Hameed: There’s a gentleman by the name of John Evanoff and he’s in Canada. He’s one of my mentors, he is a no BS kind of guy, and what he really taught me was that you need to be authentic and you need to have the hutzpah to do the ask. He truly lives his authentic self and that was a life changing relationship. There’s a lot of techniques out there and I think one of the reasons people have a negative set of beliefs around salespeople themselves is because we think that we need to be someone else to be in that sales mode.

The most impactful, powerful sales leaders that I’ve ever met are themselves, when they go with their friends it’s the same person showing up there that shows up in a really high pressure sales situation, that they don’t take on this, “Hi, how are you? Wouldn’t you like to buy?” They’re just authentic and when you meet someone authentic, you’ve met people like that in sales and outside, there’s just something about being in their presence that you feel comfortable. Our body language transmits so much information about what we’re thinking and often times it does not align with the words that we’re using. People that are authentic, everything lines up and consciously we don’t pick it up for most people but you get that vibe that’s like, “There’s something not quite right about that person.” Being authentic, you get the vibe right.

Fred Diamond: For the Sales Game Changers listening around the globe, this comes up not infrequently on the podcast as well. We’re talking to people typically who’ve had 20-30 years of success and they talk about more sales happening when you’re not selling. You’re telling people, “Don’t be Joe the Sales Guy who isn’t who you are, be who you are and that’ll help you engage, that’ll help you form relationships and that’ll help you be more satisfied.”

Umar Hameed: Just before we go to break, I do a podcast as well. What’s really frustrating as hell is we do the interview and I’m a good interviewer and we have a great conversation, then we turn the recording equipment off and then real magic happens. The person goes, “I should have told you this” and all these rich nuggets come out. What changed when the recorder was on? Mindset changed because all of a sudden you’re off the record and people become their authentic selves and they become more vulnerable. The biggest lessons we have are when we screwed up or when we had doubts. That’s where the real magic comes in and that’s my mission in life, how do we provide that mindset tool kit to people so they can be their best selves, their authentic selves, when they need it?

[Sponsor break]

Fred Diamond: Alright, we’re back with Umar Hameed. Umar, you’ve given us a lot of great information on how Sales Game Changers listening to the podcast can change certain behaviors to take their sales career up a notch and to the next level. What’s the most important thing you want to get across to the Sales Game Changers listening around the globe to help them take their career to the next level?

Umar Hameed: The most important thing that I want to share with people and I hope they get it in their hearts is that change is possible, change happens very quickly, you can make that change permanently. A lot of times people have this notion because our society has that notion that change is hard, it’s difficult if it ever is going to happen. I’m here to tell you with technologies from applied neuroscience, neurolinguistic programming and others that now we have a deep understanding of how to create that change quickly and make that change permanent. Just imagine, people have this idea of what’s possible for them and sometimes their best friends look at them and go, “No, you’re capable of so much more, you’re incredibly awesome” and they just can’t see it because they can’t believe it. I want them to know that change is possible for them and it’s their duty to themselves and the people that they love to be the very best version of themselves that they can be. You’re the role model for so many people and if you settle, you give them permission to settle as well.

Fred Diamond: You speak around the world on these types of topics. What are some of the other topics that you speak about?

Umar Hameed: Primarily I talk about leadership, sales and life but it’s the same talk because it’s all about our mindset and how it stops us from executing. What’s interesting is when I’ve done speeches in Singapore or in Buenos Aires, the issues we struggle with here are the exact same issues they struggle with over there. It’s, “How can I give myself permission to be the best self that I can be? How can I get self-doubt to go away?”

Fred Diamond: Once again, how can Sales Game Changers listening around the globe get access to you?

Umar Hameed: You can go to the app store for Apple or Google Play for Android and you get the app there. You can go to my website at NeuroBoosterz.com and there’s also some demo tracks there you can go listen to right now and take the app out for a test drive.

Fred Diamond: We talked about self-esteem, what are some of the other categories that the app will cover?

Umar Hameed: The first category is designed for salespeople and it’s the sales mindset, there’s about 11 or 12 tracks in different areas of sales. The second one is health and wellness, third one is sleep and relaxation, a lot of people have trouble falling asleep. Then we’ve got transformation, this is changing behaviors that have been stuck for a long time. Then we have life’s ups and downs and I think that about covers it.

Fred Diamond: Give us one final thought.

Umar Hameed: The final thought I want to share with people is this: no matter who you are, there are areas in your life that are important to you, in your sales career that are important to you. “I wish I could be a better leader” or, “I wish I could ask for referrals more effectively” or, “I wish I could serve my sales team at a better level.” Whatever that thing is, as soon as you ask that question, “Why am I not performing at the level that I want, what’s getting in the way?” You know the answer. You may not know how to change it, but you know what the answer is. Just asking that question and keeping that in focus saying, “I would be more confident at this if I could…” Asking that question is the first step to creating change.

What I’ve done with the app is that when you come up with the answer, rather than waiting for a sales trainer or a sales guru to help you at some point in the future, you’ve got the app in the palm of your hand and you can create that change right then and there. The nice thing about the app is people can suggest tracks saying, “Do you have a track that would X,Y,Z?” In which case I would create it for the community and then people can also request custom NeuroBoosterz designed specifically for them.

I’ll give you one example of that before we shut down the show. There’s a gentleman by the name of Doug Miller, in terms of recruiters in the country there’s 330 thousand recruiters in the US. He’s a sales recruiter and he’s probably #48 in the country, super successful. He calls me up and says, “Umar, I wake up every morning at 4:45 on weekdays and 2 days out of the 5 I’m out of the door on a jog at 5 o’clock. 3 days I’m hitting the snooze button. The days that I do a jog I start it for the win, they’re great sales days. The days that I hit the snooze button aren’t as good. Could you help me wake up every single morning?”

We did a 15 minute phone interview and we figured out what’s something that you would not not do? Something that’s an imperative and he tells me what that thing is, we link it in with getting up in the morning in a NeuroBoosterz to just rewire his brain. This was like a month and a half ago and he tells me, “Every single morning I wake up at 4:45, I’m out the door without exception, I can’t listen to your app on weekends because I’d wake up at 4:45 on weekends.” That’s the power of NeuroBoosterz, we can create a specific one for you that’s tuned for your DNA and your situation. That gives me such joy, to be able to give people the power to create change that’s specifically designed for them.

Transcribed by Mariana Badillo
Produced by Rosario Suarez

The post EPISODE 202: Sales Mindset Development Expert Umar Hameed Says Change is Possible if Sales Professionals Apply These Simple Techniques first appeared on Sales Game Changers Podcast.

SPECIAL EPISODE 010: Alan Stein, Jr. Shares How Sales Pros Can Raise Their Game By Applying the Preparation Habits of Elite Basketball Stars Such as Kobe, Nash and Curry

ALAN’S FINAL TIP TO EMERGING SALES LEADERS: “Adopt “10 assists.” Every morning you wake up, you can put 10 rubber bands on your left wrist or you can put 10 pennies in your left pocket. Every time you give an assist to either a current client or customer or to a prospect, take one rubber band off your left wrist and put it on your right wrist, or you take one penny out of your left pocket and you put it in your right pocket. Don’t go to bed until you know that you’ve dished out 10 assists, or that you’ve done 10 things above and beyond what you’re expected to do, to add value to someone else or to assist a prospect client or a current customer. Start to keep tangible count of how much you’re trying to help others and fill their buckets, both with future business and with current business. I guarantee you, that will help you raise your game.

Alan Stein Jr. is a performance coach who works with business leaders, sales leaders and sales teams all around the world.

He’s the author of the new best-seller Raise Your Game.

Find Alan on LinkedIn!

Fred Diamond: Why don’t you elaborate a little bit on your journey and tell us what you do now?

Alan Stein Jr.: I’ve spent most of my professional career in elite basketball. Basketball was my first identifiable passion, I fell in love with the game at 5 or 6 years old and made most of my living and career in the game of basketball until recently and worked as a performance coach. My job was to help players literally raise their game by improving their athleticism, their mindset, their habits, their disciplines and about two years ago I decided to take that framework and apply it to the business world to help leaders and sales professionals in organizations utilize the same mindsets and disciplines that elite athletes use, and how they can apply that to business and specifically to sales.

Fred Diamond: What are some of the things that you do now? Tell us some of the things that you’re doing today, are you speaking? Are you doing individual coaching? Give us an insight into what Alan Stein Jr. is doing today.

Alan Stein Jr.: Most of what I’m doing is speaking. I absolutely love being in front of people live interacting and connecting and I found speaking is a wonderful platform to do that. I do a fair amount of key note speaking but then I also take some deep dives and do half day workshops and full day training where we can really uncover what’s required for someone to improve their performance in any specific area, but I found that both leadership in sales tends to be where my message resonates the most.

Fred Diamond: Can you give us a little bit more of the background on some of the things you did in the basketball world? 18 somewhat years you said you were working as an elite basketball coach. What does that look like, did you work with professionals? Did you work with teams or players that we might be familiar with?

Alan Stein Jr.: I’ve been self-employed since the day I graduated from college back in 1999 so I ran my own training business and that was multi-faceted. I was what many would consider a personal trainer for individual basketball players and then I also worked with several teams. Being a product of the DC area here, I was very fortunate to work with two elite high school programs, Montrose Christian in Rockville, Maryland which is where Kevin Durant graduated from and then Dematha Catholic high school in Hyattsville, Maryland who’s had a whole slew of NBA players. I had a nice combination of working with players individually as well as working with teams.

Towards the end of my basketball career, that shifted mostly to teaching coaches how to train their players, so I became a “train the trainer” so that coaches at the youth and high school level specifically would be able to train their players effectively. My claim to fame was because the DC area is so rich with high school talent that I was able to work with probably 15 to 20 future NBA players, but I worked with them when they were in middle school and high school. Again, names like Kevin Durant and Victor Oladipo and Markelle Fultz. I really enjoyed playing a role in their lives when they were young and help them matriculate up.

Fred Diamond: When you’re working with someone who’s that age, 14, 15, 16, – you’ve mentioned three tremendous players. Of course Oladipo has taken his game to a tremendous level and Kevin Durant is obviously one of the top 3 or 4 players in the league and a world champion. Do you see things in them? I’ll tell you why I’m asking that question, a lot of times we work with sales leaders and we talk about the challenges of finding top tier talent, and motivating and continuing to grow top tier talent which is what a lot of the guests on the Sales Game Changers podcast do. Can you sense when someone’s 14, 15, that they’re going to be one of the top 5, 10 players in the league at some point?

Alan Stein Jr.: You can certainly see potential. You can see the runway for where they’re going and especially with a sport like basketball, part of that is on the physical side. Do they have the physical tools to play at a high level? Surprisingly, there’s a fairly decent amount of kids that do so then what you have to start looking at is their work habits and their attitude, their commitment to being the best player they can be.

When I think of the players we just referenced – Kevin Durant and Victor Oladipo – yes, they had the physical tools present but they had all of the intangibles. They were incredibly coachable, they had positive attitudes, they were infectious team mates, they were always the first one to the gym and the last one to leave, they consistently wanted to improve their craft. When you see the combination of the innate talent mixed with this desire to be great and to have great habits and to be coachable, then you know they have the potential to be an elite level player.

Fred Diamond: We ask the question on the Sales Game Changers podcast about mentoring. A lot of the people that we interview believe that they’re mentors and they’ve been able to be mentored. You used the word “coachable”, how would you apply that from your basketball experience to maybe your sales career?

Alan Stein Jr.: Coachable simply means having the humility to be open to someone providing direction that no matter how talented you are, no matter how successful you’ve been, there’s always more to learn. You should be incredibly open to learning from a variety of sources. That’s one of the reasons I’ve been able to carve a niche in the business world given the fact that I’ve spent most of my life in a gym, is that I tell organizations, “I’m going to come at this with a completely different perspective.

You’ve probably been taught many of the same things if you continue to live in the frame that you live, but my goal is to be able to share some things from a completely different perspective” and again take those aspects that I’ve learned through coaching and through basketball and elite performers and then apply those appropriately to things like sales. I believe being open to being coached or being open to being mentored is one of the most important characteristics for anybody to have.

Fred Diamond: We have Sales Game Changers listening around the globe to today’s podcast. What are some of the key lessons that you took away as a basketball performance coach that you believe translates into sales and sales excellence?

Alan Stein Jr.: If I can back up one step, keep in mind when I said that I’ve been self-employed since 1999. That means I’ve been selling my entire career, I had to sell my training services. In basketball I had a series of online training products and coaching courses, so I’m very familiar with the selling on that level but then coaching is all about selling your beliefs. It’s about selling your vision, it’s about creating buy-in and believe-in with your players. Whether it’s selling my philosophy and methodology or selling an online vertical jump training program, I’ve been selling for my entire career.

Back to what you specifically asked of what I learned through coaching that directly applies to selling, first and foremost would be the mantra that I learned at a very early age, and that’s you have you connect first and you coach second. If you want to get a player to give you the effort and the focus that’s required for them to be a great player, you have to build trust and you have to create a connection. Once you’ve done that, players will be willing to do just about anything you ask. I believe the same is true when it comes to selling, you need to create trust and a connection with the person or the organization that you’re selling to and that’s what ultimately will lay the foundation for everything else that will follow.

Fred Diamond: Very good. I have a question, when elite players are on the basketball courts – your LeBrons, your Durants, if you will – obviously not everybody is going to be as great as those guys. Even if you’ve made it to the NBA, you’re one of the top 300 people in the basketball world at that time. How do elite players interact with less elite players? Maybe like the 10th guy who’s also on the court at that time. Give us a little bit of insight into the mindset of the elite player as they’re working with someone. The reason I’m applying it is maybe someone who’s a sales leader, who’s a coach, he has maybe 2, 3 top players but maybe number 5 through 10 aren’t going to make it.

Alan Stein Jr.: When you get to a player like LeBron’s level who will go down as one of the all-time greats, he realizes that his legacy is only partially based on what he does, that the vast majority of his legacy is based on how much better he makes everyone around him which ultimately will determine whether or not they win. Sometimes that’s difficult when players are younger, they tend to get a little bit frustrated with the fact that not everyone is as good as they are or not everyone works as hard as they do, but usually through maturity – and I’ve seen it time and time again with players like LeBron and KD -is they realize that they themselves are a leader and they themselves are a coach on the court. They take pride in knowing that it’s up to them to help raise the level of, as you just said, say the 10th player and find ways to model the behavior that they want to see in that player.

They lead by example and to help pull them along, and to say, “I get to the gym an hour early every day, why don’t you start meeting me here? Let me help you work on your game.” They take the role as mentor because they realize that they can have a tremendous impact on the team and the culture well above and beyond just what they do on the court.

Fred Diamond: You’ve spoken about the concept of connection through touches, what does that mean?

Alan Stein Jr.: I believe connection – or trust, rather – is built through connections. I reference a story about Steve Nash who’s probably my favorite player of all time. Back in 2004, it was the first year he won back to back MVP titles and he actually led the league in only two statistical categories that year: one was assists – which for any of your listeners that follow basketball means he likes to share the sugar and get other people involved, which is a great trait of a leader. The other, he led the league in touches. In this case, we’re talking about high-fives and fist bumps and pats on the backside. If you’re listening to this and you’re wondering how I could possibly know that he led the league in touches, let me tell you.

There was a study done by UC Berkeley where a research team wanted to measure if showing signs of enthusiasm correlated to winning games. They had a team of researchers and they watched every minute of every NBA game that entire season and the made a tally mark every time a player gave a high-five, a fist bump or a pat on the butt. The Phoenix Suns, who Steve Nash played for, they were so enamored with this study that they hired a full-time intern to do the same thing just for Steve Nash. Amazingly, the very first game that the intern recorded – and an NBA game is 48 minutes long – Steve Nash recorded 239 high-fives, fist bumps and touches.

What I take from that is Steve Nash is a furnace of human connection. In a game like basketball, physical touch actually has a psychological and a physiological transfer of energy to your teammate, it picks them up and again he was a furnace for connection. We can translate that same mindset to sales, and now we’re talking about mental touches or emotional touches. These can be in the forms of text messages, emails, phone calls or grabbing coffee with someone. If you want to sell at a high level, it’s all about touches and once you’ve qualified your prospects and you know who’s a good fit for what it is that you’re selling, then you need to make sure that you’re establishing that trust through constant connection. You can look at these almost as a bank account and you want to make daily deposits, you want to make touches as often as possible and not only leading up to the sale but even after the sale is made. I think real sales professionals continue to create touches with the folks that have purchased from them to keep them in the pipeline and to make sure that they feel great about what took place.

Fred Diamond: That’s actually a great point. Some of the Sales Game Changers that we’ve interviewed, they’ve been selling into the same market for some cases 20, 30 years and they talk about a sale that they made 20 years ago and they’re still in connection with the customer. I want to raise a slightly different question right here, one of the key words that comes up frequently at the Institute for Excellence in Sales is mindset. We’re talking about that in theory throughout this entire interview and you obviously are a mindset guy.

Give us an insight into the mindset, we talked about trust a little bit, talk about the mindset of elite performers on the basketball court and talk about some guys – not guys, specifically – but how have you seen a shift towards the quintessential type of high performing mindset?

Alan Stein Jr.: Mindset is the key, mindset is the only thing that will allow us to fully reach our potential with our talent and with our skill. Without mindset, you’ll be mediocre at best regardless of your natural talent. I believe the mindset that elite performers – and this could be in any walk of life, this could be the best salesperson that’s listening to this podcast, we could be talking about Tom Brady or Beyoncé, or any elite performer – they have the ability to live in the present moment.

The short definition of being in the present moment is to be where your feet are which sounds sometimes counter intuitive, “How could you be anywhere else than your feet?” In a day and age where we are constantly bombarded, especially with digital distractions, I can guarantee that we have listeners right now who have been with someone but they haven’t really been with someone. If you’re with a prospect and you’re not giving them your full, undivided attention, you’re not making great eye contact with open body language, you’re not actively listening, there is going to be a disconnect because that means you might be there in body but you’re not there in mind and spirit.

There’s a few things that if we take a deeper dive are required to live in the present moment. One is to focus on the next play, and this mindset is crucial for folks in sales, it might be one of the most important pillars. Two is to focus on the things that you can control which really, if you brush away all the cobwebs, there’s only two things in this world we have 100% control over and that’s our own attitude and our own effort. Third – and this is incredibly important to sales as well – is to focus on the process, to not attach yourself to the outcome but to fall in love with the process. I know that can be incredibly challenging for sales professionals because our success is measured by the outcome, it’s measured by how many we sell or what we sell but you have to learn to fall in love with the process and trust and respect the process because when you do, you greatly increase your chance of whatever outcome you’re looking for.

Fred Diamond: Trust the process, that’s actually come up in a couple different of our Sales Game Changers podcast. We interviewed a sales VP over at Red River named Kush Kumar, it was one of our most downloaded shows and the title was focusing on trusting the process. We’re talking today with Alan Stein Jr., he’s the author of Raise your Game. He’s a performance coach, he’s worked with elite basketball programs in his career, now he’s working with sales teams and leaders. Alan, we were talking before the show about the concept of selflessness and the concept of really focusing on others, and you were telling me about a coach’s mantra that applied to this. Tell us a little more about that.

Alan Stein Jr.: I was very fortunate early in my coaching career to have some really amazing mentors. One of the things they taught me which is something that all young people need to hear – because I find that when we’re younger we tend to be a little more egocentric, we tend to think the world revolves around u, as we all get older and hopefully wiser and more enlightened, we realize that it doesn’t. A coach’s mantra should be, “It’s not about me, it’s about you” and that would be me as a coach speaking to my players. I wholeheartedly believe the same is true when it comes to sales, that if you’re a qualified prospect for me, Fred, it isn’t about me, my product or my service, it’s about you and what is it that you need. I’m sure we’ll dive in later to that mindset of, “I don’t really even believe we’re technically selling.” What I think we’re doing is we’re solving a problem for people – in the form of sales, of course – but if you put your focus on the other person and what is it that they need, what would be a good fit for them, how can you resolve the challenges that they have, you’ll find that you don’t even really need to sell anything because it’ll sell itself once you’ve established that.

Fred Diamond: We’ve talked about some elite performers, one thing that comes through in the Sales Game Changers podcast is the people that we talk to and interview have made it to the highest level in sales. I remember one day thinking, “I’m interviewing all these great people and they’re all so successful.” Then I began to realize that they’ve all had 15, 20 years, you just don’t show up one day and become a VP of sales. You also don’t show up one day and become one of the top 10 basketball players. You once told me a story about Kobe Bryant, your first interaction with Kobe, can you share that with our audience and how that much provided evidence to you of the amount of work that a guy like that puts in?

Alan Stein Jr.: What you just said just reminds me – I don’t know who to attribute the quote to, because I’ve heard it from several people – but that it takes several years to make an overnight success. It’s the same thing, you see someone that’s selling at a high level and you think, “They just happened into that.” No, they didn’t. They’ve been trusting and respecting the process for years to get to that level. The story you reference is one of my favorite stories, one because I actually think it’s a decent story but two because the moral of the story which I will share with you all had a profound impact on my life and on the way that I viewed not only coaching but my entire perspective.

Back in 2007, Nike Basketball flew me out to Los Angeles to work the first ever Kobe Bryant Skills Academy. Nike’s goal was to bring in the top high school and college players from around the country for an intense 3 day minicamp with the best player in the world. For anyone listening, if you’re not a basketball aficionado, it’s OK. Michael Jordan who pretty much everyone’s heard of had already retired a couple times at that point and LeBron James in 2007 was on his way to greatness, but he was still climbing that mountain, most experts would agree that Kobe was the best player.

As I told you all, I’ve lived in a basketball bubble basically my entire life so I had heard the urban legend of how insanely intense Kobe’s individual workouts were. Now that I was on camp staff, I figured this was my chance and this was my shot. At my earliest opportunity, I walked right up to him and asked him if I could watch one of his private workouts. Kobe was incredibly gracious and hospitable and said, “Sure, no problem. I’m going to go tomorrow at 4” which confused me because I had just got done looking at the schedule and the first workout was with the players was the following day at 3:30. Kobe noticed the confused look on my face and he quickly clarified that with a smile and a wink and said, “That’s going to be 4 am.”

Certainly anyone listening to this can appreciate the fact that there’s not really a legitimate excuse in the world of why you can’t be somewhere at 4 in the morning, especially when you’re talking to a guy like Kobe Bryant, so I’d basically committed myself to being there. I figured, “If I’m going to be there anyway, I might as well try and impress Kobe. I might as well show him how serious of a trainer I was.” I came up with a plan to beat him to the gym, so I set my alarm for 3 am and the alarm goes off, I jump up and I get myself together and I hop in a taxi and I get to them gym. I step out of the taxi, it’s around 3:30 in the morning and of course it’s pitch black and yet I can see the gym lights already on, even from the parking lot I could faintly hear a ball bouncing and sneakers squeaking. I walk in the side door, Kobe’s already in a full sweat. He was going through an intense warm up before his scheduled workout started with his trainer. Out of professional courtesy and just because I was incredibly thankful to be there, I didn’t say anything to Kobe and I didn’t say anything to his trainer, I just sat down to watch and for the first 45 minutes I was actually really surprised.

For the first 45 minutes, I watched the best player in the world do the most basic footwork and offensive moves. Kobe was doing stuff that I had routinely taught to middle school aged players. Let’s not get it twisted, this is Kobe Bryant so he was doing everything with surgical precision and he was doing everything at an unparalleled level of focus and intensity but the stuff he was actually doing was incredibly basic. The whole workout lasted a few hours and when it was over, again, I didn’t bother him or his trainer, I just left but my curiosity got the best of me so I had to know.

Later that day at camp, I went up to him and said, “Kobe, I don’t understand. You’re the best player in the world, why are you doing such basic drills?” Once again, he flashed that million dollar smile and was incredibly gracious but said with all seriousness, “Why do you think I’m the best player in the world? Because I never get bored with the basics.” The hairs on the back of my neck stand up every time I tell that story because I remember how it made me feel. It’s like one of those epiphany moments that we all have, it made me realize that just because something is basic it doesn’t mean that it’s easy. We live in a society and culture today that tells us it’s OK to skip steps, that tells us it’s OK to skip over the process, that all but pushes us to chase what’s shiny, hot, new, flashy and sexy, and ignore what’s basic but the basics work. They always have and they always will, it doesn’t matter if we’re talking about footwork on the basketball court or we’re talking about the ability to sell at a high level, the basics work and if you want to be elite you’ve got to fall in love with the basics.

Fred Diamond: Not infrequently throughout the Sales Game Changers podcast when we ask the sales leaders for their advice for the sales professionals listening around the world, what should you be doing to take your game to a great or good level? Talk about things like practicing, working on role plays, practicing your pitch in front of a mirror. So many times people show up at a customer site and they start practicing some of the things that they should have known years before and hours and months before. A lot of the Sales Game Changers talked about their preparation and things along those lines. Not only Kobe Bryant showing up at 3 o’clock in the morning for practicing, I’ve got to imagine almost anyone who’s in the NBA, anyone who’s even in the D league. Obviously, they’re not going to get up at 3 in the morning most of them like Kobe, Kobe is elite as is LeBron, I’ve heard stories about him practicing at 3 o’clock in the morning as well but anyone who’s even made it to the D league level, college division 1, had to have had this type of performance improvement over the years in their whole career. Alan, before we take a short break, tell us about the book. It’s called Raise Your Game, what should we expect from this book?

Alan Stein Jr.: The book has been two years in the works and I’m really proud of the final product. What I did was I uncovered the secrets, and I say that tongue in cheek because I don’t believe there are any secrets per se, but really the secrets of what makes the best, the best. It’s things like we’ve been discussing, it’s sticking to the basics, trusting the process, being coachable. The book is divided into three sections, you have one section that’s the player’s section which again, would be any individual on a team, this would be an employee at an organization. The next section is focused on the coach or again, as we translate that to business, a manager, a director, a supervisor or the CEO and then the third section is focused on the team or the organization.

Each section has 5 chapters and each of those chapters has a specific theme or word that’s required to be the best player you can be, to be the best coach you can be or be the best team you can be. Please know even though my background comes from basketball this is a business book, this book’s target audience is folks like the folks listening to this, folks in sales, folks with leadership positions in business, it just happens to do so through the lens of a basketball performance coach. I did an equal amount of research to give the book the proper balance of elite level sales professionals and CEOs and what the highest performing companies and organizations do, so it’s a nice mixture of seeing what elite performers do on the court as well as in the office.

I’m really pleased with it, excited about it and certainly hope you guys will enjoy checking it out.

Fred Diamond: I could talk to you for the next 7 hours about this topic, and we actually have a number of podcasts we’re doing, some of the guests that have been on the show are elite athletes, collegiate champions, some have made it through the pros, we talk about their sales career. Before we take a short break and listen to one of our sponsors, we’re going to come back and ask you for some of your tips, I just have to ask you: who are your top 2 or 3 players of all time that you idolize? Obviously you told us a great Kobe Bryant story, I’ll tell you mine. The guy played for the Sixers when I grew up, Billy Cunningham, hall of famer, Kangaroo kid, North Carolina. I grew up in Philly, watched him play, he was on the 67 Team. Of course, he coached the 1983 team as well. Who are your top 2 or 3 players that you idolize as superstars?

Alan Stein Jr.: I’m 42 years old so giving the time period where I grew up, Michael Jordan is definitely my #1. Some of my best childhood memories were watching him play on TV and trying to go out to my front yard in the driveway and emulate things he was doing. I had every pair of Jordan’s and posters all over my wall, Wheaties boxes that I didn’t even open to eat the cereal because I just wanted to keep the Wheaties boxes on my dresser. You’d be hard pressed to find any basketball person around my age that didn’t think Jordan was the most amazing, but given that I’ve been in the game for this long there’s so many players that I just absolutely adore.

mentioned Steve Nash, I would say Steve Nash is probably my favorite player outside of Michael Jordan just because I think he was equal part basketball talent and equal part amazing teammate which I found really electric. If I had to pick a third, of course I’m biased to the players I’ve worked with so I’m going to excuse them from the ballot. I’d have to say Stephen Curry. I think Stephen Curry is absolutely remarkable, I literally think he is changing the way the game is played at the NBA level because of his ability to shoot the ball from distance. I would go with Jordan, Nash and Curry.

Fred Diamond: Alan, what’s the most important thing you want to get across to junior selling professionals listening around the globe right now to help them improve their sales career?

Alan Stein Jr.: I want them to look at selling as filling other people’s buckets and finding ways to raise the game of other’s. In order to do that, you have to take care of yourself first. It’s a very old adage that you can’t pour anything out of an empty cup which means if your battery is drained and your bucket’s not full, you will not be able to sell or serve at a high level. Sales takes a tremendous amount of energy, not just in looking, in qualifying for prospects but the actual process itself and the follow up, it takes a lot of energy. You have to take care of yourself first, so you have to figure out the things that you need to do to perform at a high level whether it’s your nutrition or what you do for fitness, or what you do to push yourself mentally and emotionally.

Maybe it’s reading, maybe it’s continuing to listen to great podcasts like this, but it’s whatever you need to do to perform at a high level. Then you need to make the time to do that, that if you take a player like LeBron James, if he were to show up to practice or show up to a game and he wasn’t well rested, he wasn’t well fed, he wasn’t hydrated, that’s actually an act of selfishness because his choice to not be well fed and ready to perform at a high level he’s taking away from everybody else on the team. That’s how I want you to view sales, that in order to pour into others, you have to pour into yourself first and that is not being selfish. When you take care of yourself first as an act of service to others, that is the definition of unselfishness.

Fred Diamond: Alan, I want to ask you a question. We talked about the concept of next play and keep looking next play which is so very powerful, I want to ask you a slightly different question, the concept of break down. We talked to elite sales performers and people may turn in a great year, things are going well, the market’s good, there’s demand for their product, right place, right time then the next year starts, all of a sudden nobody’s buying. Customers aren’t returning phone calls, customers are going to the internet without having to go to a sales professional.

Could you answer one question on the concept of break down and how do you get past that? What are some strategies that you’ve seen some elite players over the years, once they have a bad game or maybe the first half, nothing syncing or anything like that or they wake up, they have 5 fouls in the first quarter. What are some things that elite performers do when there is a break down to move past it?

Alan Stein Jr.: There’s two, and one we’ve touched on briefly which was continue to trust the process, to detach yourself from the outcome. We mentioned Stephen Curry earlier, I think he’s going to go down in history as the greatest shooter the game’s ever seen but inevitably he’s going to have an off game. It doesn’t happen often because he’s that good but if Steph were to go 2 for 20 from the field tonight, he’s not going to go change his shooting form the next morning in practice. He’s going to stick to what he knows works, he’s going to stick to the script and stick to the process and realize that eventually, things will even out. There are going to be all sorts of ebbs and flows, especially when it comes to sales. Some of those may be in your control and those are the ones you want to focus on, maybe you didn’t prepare to the degree that you were capable of, maybe you didn’t put in the required effort but the vast majority of time are going to be things outside of your control which means we can’t dwell on them. I think another thing that sales professionals need to do is learn to view every interaction you have with a prospect as a way of gathering feedback and regardless of the feedback that you get. In sales, most people would agree that if you make the sale that’s positive feedback and if you don’t make the sale that’s negative feedback but I view feedback as inherently neutral, as completely sterile, it’s completely unbiased.

The whether they buy or not is simply the outcome but regardless of whether someone buys or doesn’t, there will be feedback that you’ll get. Elite performers take that feedback regardless of what it is and they mine for the gold that allows them to move themselves forward and continue to get better as opposed to using it in a way that cripples them and moves them back. If I’m trying to make a sale with you, Fred, whether the sale goes through or not there are things from that interaction that I can learn to make sure that I do a better job in the future as well as things to avoid. That can be really difficult to do, but if we get detached to the outcome, if I’m frustrated or in my feelings by the fact that you didn’t buy, that’s going to revert me backwards that’s going to push me in the wrong direction. I think viewing feedback as a tool and as a gift is a way to increase our performance and certainly increase sales.

Fred Diamond: Very good. What are some of the things that you do to sharpen your saw and stay fresh?

Alan Stein Jr.: The #1 thing that I do is try to look outside of my direct industry. If you had to put me in a box, I would be considered a professional speaker and I don’t spend a ton of time studying other professional speakers, I spend a lot of time studying musicians and actors, stand-up comedians is a big one not because I’m trying to be funnier but I think those are all folks that have mastered the art of being an orator and I want to learn from them. I want to learn about their timing, their rhythm, their inflection, their body language, the way they deliver, the way they connect with an audience.

For me, in this example of trying to improve my professional speaking skills I look at a variety of other domains to help me do that. I firmly believe that sales professionals should do the same thing. Yes, you should absolutely be in the know, continue to listen to this podcast and devour everything that the IES puts out, continue to study your own sale strategies but also look at other people that have the ability to connect. If you really believe that sales is about connection, then you should study coaches, you should study other leaders and people outside of sales in addition to what you’re doing inside the frame.

Fred Diamond: Can you just tell us something else that goes on the basketball court? It doesn’t have to be tied to sales, give us an insight, something that the average viewer may not know about. You talked about Steve Nash and obviously he’s someone who’s radically transformed the game, obviously Steph Curry, we see how he’s transformed the game by sinking shots regularly from 40 feet out, if you will. Feet, not yards – yards would be a hell of a shot. Give us something that the average fan who loves basketball may not know about that goes on either in the court or the course of the season that will give us a little bit of insight and inspiration.

Alan Stein Jr.: A good friend of mine, a former partner and an elite basketball trainer named Drew Hanlen coined the term “unseen hours.” In basketball, those are literally the hours when the cameras aren’t rolling, the lights are off and the cheerleaders are not dancing. That’s ultimately where a basketball player is made. Inevitably, if we turned on a game tonight and Steph goes off for 45 and makes 8 or 9 three-pointers, we’re amazed by that but if you saw the amount of work that he put in during the “unseen hours”, it becomes less amazing. That is not a back handed compliment, that is a sincere compliment that if you knew the type of work that a player like Steph put in behind the scenes, you wouldn’t be that surprised that he makes those 40 footers because he does them routinely every day when no one’s watching. The same thing is true in sales, your game is when you’re actually sitting down with a prospect and you’re trying to make the sale.

Most of the heavy lifting should have been done ahead of time when you’re researching and qualifying that prospect, when you’re thinking of why your product or service is going to solve the problem that they have. That all comes down to preparation and then your game is when you’re actually in front of them. That’s why, as Fred mentioned so perfectly, your practice, your preparation, your role playing – I’m amazed how many sales professionals don’t role play and I think that’s a huge mistake. Your role play is the fundamentals of what you’re trying to do. I think what players do during the “unseen hours”, it’s amazing the commitment that these elite performers have.

They’re across the board because elite performers love hanging around other elite performers, and the NBA players that I’ve been around, you know who they go and visit in the off season? They go and visit top musicians. They want to see what Beyoncé is doing to prepare for a world tour, they go and talk to business leaders so they’re around high performers as well and that’s one thing that unites all of them, including those of you listening right now, is you have to master the “unseen hours” if you want to perform well when everybody’s watching.

Fred Diamond: That is a tremendous answer and as we’re talking here, one of the key themes that comes up throughout the Sales Game Changers podcast as we interview elite sales leaders is preparation. A lot of times, people who we interview for the show or elite sales leaders will say one of their most important skills is the ability to listen and I’ll say to them, “Tell us something you do to be a better listener.” They all have given a lot of great answers, but one of the answers I love is, “I over-prepare. I get to know everything there is to know about the customer, his or her industry, what the challenges the industry is facing, what type of things their competitors are doing” and that’s right, Steph doesn’t show up on the court and say, “I think tonight I’m going to try this.”

He’s obviously creative, that of course he’s creating new things as was Kobe and LeBron and all the elite players, but at the same time all those “unseen hours.” Sales Game Changers listening to the podcast, please take that at heart. Thank you, by the way, for listening to this podcast. You’ve just invested a great half hour of your time if you’re driving or working out or walking the dog to get some great insights here from Alan Stein Jr. We’ve done hundreds of shows, I encourage you to keep listening but what are you doing when you’re not in front of the customer, when you’re not on calls? What are things that you’re doing to get better at the art and science of selling? Alan, do you want to say something before we get to your final tip?

Alan Stein Jr.: I sure do, you just reminded me of two thoughts. One, I had an opportunity a couple years ago to spend a half day with Mark Cuban from Shark Tank and the brash owner of the Dallas Mavericks. One of the things that he said was that his goal was to always be the most prepared person in any room that he goes into. He can’t control whether he’s the tallest person in the room, he can’t control if he’s the richest person in the room, he can’t control a lot of those things but he can control his preparation and he would never want to enter a room unless he knows that he was the most prepared.

Another story, back to my man Steve Nash, when I had a conversation with him he said that at the end of every off season workout he would pick an unusable finish around the basket. Maybe it’s a reverse layup with his off hand or maybe he’s jumping off of the off foot, just something unconventional and his ticket to leave his workout was to make that 100 times. Again, maybe it’s an off foot layup with his off hand and he would do that 100 times before he would leave.

Then he said, “Inevitably this season, Alan, you’re going to see me do something that looks crazy, that looks magical, that you’re going to think I just pulled it out of thin air but I didn’t. I guarantee you that whatever you’ve seen me do in a game I have practiced before no matter how unconventional or how unusual it is. I have absolutely done that before, I’m never doing it for the first time.” I think both of those stories really speak to the ability to prepare which is something that we have major influence over. To be an elite sales professional you have to fall in love with preparation.

Fred Diamond: Very good. We’re talking today, Alan Stein Jr., he’s the author of a book called Raise Your Game. This has been a tremendous interview, it was a lot of fun, thank you so much Alan, for the great insights. Why don’t you give us one final thought to inspire the Sales Game Changers listening around the globe today?

Alan Stein Jr.: I’d like you guys to adopt something I learned from a mentor several years ago and it’s called 10 assists. What you do is every single morning you wake up, you can put 10 rubber bands on your left wrist or you can put 10 pennies in your left pocket, whatever works for you, and every time you give an assist to either a current client or customer or to a prospect, then you take one rubber band off your left wrist and you put it on your right wrist, or you take one penny out of your left pocket and you put it in your right pocket.

The only rub is you don’t go to bed until you know that you’ve dished out 10 assists, that you’ve done 10 things above and beyond what you’re expected to do, to add value to someone else or to assist a prospect client or a current customer. Just like anything, some of you that are elite, you’re probably given 10 assists before breakfast. If that’s the case, then up it to 20 or 25, find something that stretches you but start to keep tangible count of how much you’re trying to pour into others and fill their buckets, both with future business and with current business. I guarantee you, that will help you raise your game.

The post SPECIAL EPISODE 010: Alan Stein, Jr. Shares How Sales Pros Can Raise Their Game By Applying the Preparation Habits of Elite Basketball Stars Such as Kobe, Nash and Curry first appeared on Sales Game Changers Podcast.

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EPISODE 082: How Do You Get the Optimal Sales Mindset? Listen to Federal Cybersecurity Sales Executive Wayne Lewandowski and Find Out Now

WAYNE’S CLOSING TIP TO EMERGING SALES LEADERS: “It’s in your head. You can do it or you can’t and in either case whatever the answer is in your head, you’re right, because that’s what you believe. So stay committed to your career, believe that this is going to be something that is going to take a lot of hard work and sweat equity and go after it.“

Wayne Lewandowski is the Senior VP and General Manager for North American Public Sector at HyTrust.

He started his career with Bell Atlantic.

He has sold many disruptive technologies in his career.

HyTrust helps organizations securely manage their workloads and data in the data center and the cloud while ensuring their compliant with key regulations and that privileged users cannot create significant disruptions to the data center or exfiltrate sensitive data and workloads.

Find Wayne on LinkedIn!

Fred Diamond: Very good. I’m excited to talk to you, we’ve had a couple of guests on who are in the cyberspace, it’s always interesting to find out what is going on there so I look forward to getting some great information from you today. Why don’t you tell us what you sell today and tell us what excites you about that.

Wayne Lewandowski: I think what excites me about the HyTrust platform is it’s really a convergence of two things and that’s always a challenging question because everyone’s looking for, “Hey, what’s your elevator pitch?” and that becomes difficult when you’re in a disruptive market because there’s a lot of unknowns which means that you generally have to put a lot more context running.

HyTrust really converges between two things: providing integrity to the infrastructure that’s been virtualized that could be in a data center or in the cloud. It also provides a cyber security element and how that converges is we provide a capability that allows us to de-risk the environment by taking controls that would be otherwise unfettered from privileged users, the folks that are operating and provisioning the environment as well as adding an encryption to the workload, the data and ensuring that wherever that information may go that it’s not only secure, has integrity that negligent or malicious activities can’s occur but also that it’s continuously in a compliant manner which is important especially in the public sector market. There is a lot of regulatory requirements that are necessary to be compliant with.

Fred Diamond: Very good. Have you spent most of your career in the public sector space?

Wayne Lewandowski: I have. With very few exceptions, I’ve always had a touch in at least state and local if not federal for the majority of my career.

Fred Diamond: Why don’t you tell us how you first got into sales as a career?

Wayne Lewandowski: Interesting story. I’ve always been intrigued by sales from a very young age and when I was in college I worked at a sporting goods store selling tennis shoes and sports equipment, things like that. Even at that point I realized that I didn’t want to be on a comp plan that wasn’t variable nature and they had a commission plan there over and above your hourly wage. While I was working there over the 4, 5 years I was with the company I used to go to a separate store that was about 30 miles away but it was the highest performing store in the company. I’d work there on Saturdays and one day I was waiting on a middle aged guy, probably my age now that was looking for an opportunity to get back in shape.

I spent quite a bit of time with him, sell him a pair of very expensive New Balance tennis shoes and at the end of it he asked me what he could do for me, and I said, “That’s simple, I’d like a job in sales.” He got me an interview at Bell Atlantic Paging, this is when you could only buy beepers from a sales rep, not at a store or something like that and I got the job after 30 days of hounding the sales manager.

Fred Diamond: Alright, very good. What are some of the things that you learned? You said your first job was selling expensive sporting goods, tennis shoes. What are some of the key things you learned from that job that has helped you in your career in corporate sales?

Wayne Lewandowski: I’d say there are some lessons that were learned there but I think more importantly it really started in my first outside job working for Bell Atlantic, but I think consistency, of course being perceptive of customer needs, things of that nature. Really when I got into outside sales, these are the days when there wasn’t quite the structure that we have now. There wasn’t an inside team, you didn’t work your way up and build your self’s habits you just took a job in outside sales and went after it.

Some of the things that I learned that I needed to do pretty quickly is get down to the basics: every day doing the consistent activities that were necessary for me to be successful. That meant meeting customers, finding new opportunities, building a pipeline, doing that activity and being honest with myself and analyzing was the activity that I was generating on my account sufficient and taking me through a sale cycle that would ultimately get me the sales results that I was looking for.

Also realized that distractions were critically important to get out of the way. It’s not to say that we all don’t have interests that are outside of our work but to be sure that during those very sacred working hours that I was singularly focused on being precise about my activities.

I’d say outside of that that the one other thing that was probably hard for any of us in sales is understanding the mental game. I think in that way it’s a lot like golf, it’s what between your ears that can defeat or allow you to claim victory and getting those negative thoughts out and ensuring that you have a level of execution starts with a fantastic attitude.

Fred Diamond: One of the key words that comes up time and time again on the Sales Game Changers podcast is mindset, having the right mindset. I have a quick question for you, you talked about eliminating distractions and staying focused. What are some of the things that you do to ensure that that’s happened? Again, you’ve had a successful career, you’re now the Senior VP of Public Sector Sales in North America for HyTrust. What are some of the things that you do to make sure that you’re as focused as possible?

Wayne Lewandowski: Quite a few things, Fred. I think it starts with how we all work today. Most of us used to go into an office and I’ve worked from a home office since really the late 90’s and it’s understanding when the work day starts. Sometimes the tougher one is when it ends because that tends to be a little fuzzier but being precise about once you start your day, have a plan for it, understanding what those major objectives are, what are your A priorities versus your B. If you never get to those, you still accomplished a net win for the day.

I think that’s critically important and again, it goes back to that prioritization of those activities. The things that are most impactful at this point in my career are ensuring that I’m supporting my team properly to enable them to execute at the highest levels that allow them success as well as myself.

Fred Diamond: Tell us a little more about you specifically. What are you an expert in? Tell us a little more about your specific area of brilliance.

Wayne Lewandowski: I think for me, what I’ve come to the conclusion is over my career, and I’ve worked for a variety of different size companies and worked in both sales as well as sales leadership positions, I would say that where my expertise lies at this point is either creating a version 1.0 or version 2.0 of a public sector team.

This is a difficult market, it provides a lot of protracted sale cycles, localization of marketing materials and things like that can make it rather daunting for most commercial companies and to understand what that process and the type of team as well as execution is necessary to build that marketplace. I’d say that’s probably been my success today doing that several times around my career.

Fred Diamond: Very good. You’ve managed teams along the way and along the way you’ve probably had some impactful sales career mentors. Why don’t you talk about one or two and tell us how they impacted your career?

Wayne Lewandowski: I think for me, it started with my first real sales job and it was at Bell Atlantic. My first sales manager was Tom Carothers and what I most remember about Tom is he came to work every day with an attitude to go get after it, he was always excited and supportive of his sales team. He was there to mentor us through quite a bit of the ups and downs of sales, especially early in the game when your mental toughness may not be where it should be.

I still recall one of the things he did for me and I still have it in my library is provided me my first Zig Ziglar book with a little signature note on it in the front cover. I think from there quite frankly I’d say it’s hard to say that you don’t get something from every opportunity that you work in. That’s both good and bad and it’s understanding how you take those lessons away and improve yourself as you move forward in your career.

Fred Diamond: Very good. What are two of the biggest challenges you face as a sales leader?

Wayne Lewandowski: Probably the biggest one is finding A players and what I define as that, everybody wants an A player and I think depending on the maturity of your company, what that means and what the skills are can differ. For me, it’s finding people that understand what a startup culture is and that’s a rapid environment where you’re not only painting the bus as it’s running down the highway at top speed, you may be actually grabbing the can while the bus is already moving. That’s difficult for some people.

I think finding folks that understand there’s a difference between an enterprise account manager that can take things that already have some maturity within the customer base and actually building that brand and awareness of a product or solution and being able to evangelize while still knitting out the results that are necessary for the team to grow.

Fred Diamond: Wayne, tell us about the #1 specific sale success or win from your career that you’re most proud of. Why don’t you take us back to that moment?

Wayne Lewandowski: Sure. This was back in 2000, I was selling some BI early stage technology and at the time I was a sales rep covering department defense. One of my key opportunities was with the marine core and after a rather long and protracted sale cycle which was about 20 months I finally closed this piece of business and what I learned from that was there were a couple things I needed to do to manage enterprise deal.

One was to ensure that I had an internal champion that was going to help me shepherd the right stake holders, understand the blind spots that you don’t necessarily get from being on the outside. I had to ensure that I had an ROI attached to that opportunity that matched and aligned with what the executive’s stake holders in the account saw as imperative for them to procure anything and I think beyond that it was not getting comfortable with the folks that did enjoy talking to me. I had to reach up into the organization, get to the final decision makers, create that compelling event that aligned with their mission to ensure that the deal was closed. It did come to a dramatic close, I got the order on December 31st so it made for a good new year’s eve.

Fred Diamond: Very good. That is of course after the government buying season has ended so 20 months and actually doesn’t really 20 months sound like a long time? But it’s just over a year, did you have to define the need for them or did they have a specific need for specifically what you sold at the time?

Wayne Lewandowski: No, they really didn’t and that’s what made it challenging. This was one of the disruptive technologies I sold along the way, this was showing them how they could get significant reductions in cost of what they were paying for communications from DISA which handles a lot of the pink power pipe type of resources for the DOD and show them how they could create stronger visibility in the readiness of their manpower reports that were coming out of green bar paper reports from the main frame. We can enable that to be quicker, faster and put into spreadsheets and other decision making type of formats.

Fred Diamond: Wayne, you’ve had a great career in sales. Did you ever question being in sales? Again, you sold in a couple different scenarios, disruptive technologies, large companies, small companies, startups, different types of technologies. Did you ever question being in sales? Was there ever a moment where you thought to yourself, “It’s too hard, it’s just not for me”?

Wayne Lewandowski: I think that’s something that everybody goes through at different stages in your career. It can be a real grind especially in enterprise sales where you may be doing the right activities and not getting results quarter after quarter and sometimes as much as a year, year and a half. So sure, I had those issues along the way as well but I think when it really came down to it and I looked at what opportunities were out in the market, there’s nothing that matches my desire and skill more than being in sales. I enjoy the flexibility, I love the competitive nature of being in sales and knowing that you do get paid for performance is something that excites me quite a bit.

Fred Diamond: Wayne, what’s the most important thing you want to get across to junior selling professionals to help them improve their career?

Wayne Lewandowski: There’s a couple things that I think are important, Fred. As I mentioned, being mentally tough is critically important. You have to identify some positive influences in your life that are going to allow you to stay centered. I think for everyone that can change, it might be family or faith or just making sure you get the right type of input into your head on a daily basis but you have to stay mentally tough.

I think that you also have to build strong communication skills and I don’t believe that’s really even restricted to sales but anything in a business environment having great oral and written skills are absolutely paramount to how you communicate. We know that more often than not, our customers we may be getting to them through email or text or chat and things like that. Having some level of decisive communication skill around that and then be able to enunciate and have a clear messaging as you move forward in the cycle is absolutely important.

I’d say other things that are important is building a mentorship. Programs like this are a great way to do it virtually but have high touch with some folks that you have confidence in that you want to be like. Ask them the questions in a safe place that’ll allow you to maybe shortcut some of the mistakes that folks like myself may have made along the years and then I think it’s important to build your personal brand.

That’s not only good for you but it’s also good for your company and that’s from creating better awareness of the market that you’re serving, understanding what those needs are and really becoming an expert in that vertical, in my case public sector and knowing how you can create connections through social media and organizations that help you create a higher level of position of authority in the market that you’re serving.

Fred Diamond: Very good. What are some of the things you do to sharpen your saw and stay fresh?

Wayne Lewandowski: A couple things. I think reading is an important part and that’s a balance between a personal belief type reading as well as business improvement. I rarely read just for entertainment purposes, it’s more for that improvement. I think building a lifestyle that creates balance for you around work and play, for me I’m an avid skier so having that time to get on the slopes and have the complexity of understanding how to navigate a mountain at high speed allows me to challenge myself but get away from the sales game a little bit.

Beyond that, it’s just that overall balance in your life. You don’t do anybody any good in your career if you’re constantly at the wheel. At some point you have to take a break, refresh your mind and come at it with full vigor.

Fred Diamond: Where’s your favorite place to ski?

Wayne Lewandowski: Out west, I’m a Utah powder junkie.

Fred Diamond: OK. I once skied at Alta, is that still there?

Wayne Lewandowski: That’s my favorite, absolutely.

Fred Diamond: What’s a major initiative you’re working on today to ensure your continued success?

Wayne Lewandowski: It’s some of the things that we just talked about. For me, building a personal brand is critically important. Making sure that I’ve got connections into the marketplace that allow it to rise the overall visibility of HyTrust and how I’m serving them in this leadership position. Beyond that, it’s really staying sharp through constantly looking at different practices and innovations to ensure that I’m bringing the best game to my team and my company and market.

Fred Diamond: I want to ask you one follow-up question, Wayne. You’ve mentioned building your personal brand a couple of times here in the last minute or so. Can you tell us what that looks like for someone who wants to have a successful career in sales and somethings you do to stay constantly aware of that?

Wayne Lewandowski: It does differ depending on what role you’re playing in the company, of course. For myself, I’ve got different media organizations that assist me in making sure that I have blogs and articles and things like that that I’m either contributing to or authoring ensuring that I’ve got speaking opportunities in different conferences and events and things of that nature.

That becomes a little bit harder when you’re a junior sales person, I think where it starts for most folks that are early in their career will be things like LinkedIn and associations that tie to their marketplace making sure that you’re involved in different working groups and collaborating online with content that’s not self-serving but serving that market and by doing so you’ll increase your quotient and visibility.

Fred Diamond: Wayne, sales is hard, we kept talking today about the need to be mentally tough, to have a strong mindset. People don’t return your phone calls, they don’t return your emails. With your particular customer there’s rules and regulations and a lot of macro things you need to be aware of plus in cyberspace, the whole cyber marketplace is new and a lot of competitors, people trying to figure things out, so why have you continued? What is it about sales as a career that has kept you going?

Wayne Lewandowski: A couple things. I love the competitive nature, I’ve always enjoyed competing. I think the idea of not having the opportunity to be compensated and recognized based on my results is just unappealing. Having that passion towards success is critically important to me and quite frankly I think it changed my outlook as I get older. I’m in my early 50’s now and have been in professional sales for 30 years and I quite frankly can’t see a time where I would not want to be in this type of situation.

Fred Diamond: Why don’t you give us one final thought for the Sales Game Changers listening to today’s podcast around the globe?

Wayne Lewandowski: I think the one takeaway if nothing else is it’s in your head. You can do it or you can’t and in either case whatever the answer is in your head, you’re right, because that’s what you believe. So stay committed to your career, believe that this is going to be something that is going to take a lot of hard work and sweat equity and go after it.

Transcribed by Mariana Badillo
Produced by Rosario Suarez

The post EPISODE 082: How Do You Get the Optimal Sales Mindset? Listen to Federal Cybersecurity Sales Executive Wayne Lewandowski and Find Out Now first appeared on Sales Game Changers Podcast.