Episode 28: 4 Ways I Supercharge My Personal Leadership and Learning

Hi everyone, I'm Ben Wright, successful entrepreneur, corporate leader and expert sales coach to some of the most talented people our amazing planet has to offer. You're listening to the Stronger Sales Team podcast where we bring together and simplify the complex world of B2B sales management. And to help the millions of sales managers worldwide build, motivate and keep together highly effective sales teams. Teams who grow revenue and make their businesses actual profits along the journey. We also provide great insights and actionable steps to managing your personal health. A happy and productive year is not only better for your teams, but everyone around you. So if you're an ambitious sales leader who wants to build the highest performing and engaged teams, stronger sales teams is right where you need to be. Welcome back to Stronger Sales Teams, the place where we provide real world and practical advice to help you develop superpowered B2B sales teams. So the last few weeks we've been focusing around our big market research project that we've commissioned for 2023, and that involved lots and lots of secondary, but also primary resources. And I've mentioned a few times, it's the biggest piece of market research around sales leader behavior that I've been involved with across my career. So what came out really clearly out of that was that the number one challenge for sales leaders was talent management for 2023. So that's managing your existing talent, that's making sure they're engaged, they're performing, they're productive, but also then onboarding new talent and making sure that you have the quality of people in your business that you need to. Last week we focused specifically around what makes a high performing individual salesperson. And I went through a. So that was episode 27, which was last week, and we really focused on individual sales contributors. Today. What I want to focus on is as a sales leader, how we can ourselves prepare to make sure that we are learning most effectively. There is no doubt that we need to continue to learn as any type of individual, but particularly as leaders, to make sure that we are engaging our teams most effectively, to make sure that we are ahead of trends as they're coming, or at the very least, embracing them as fast as we possibly can. So I thought what better way to do that than to share how I go about learning? And I have four really clear ways that I approach learning, but also on top of that, to provide a structure as to how you might be able to approach it for yourself so that you have some type of formula that you can follow and then tailor it to what works best for you. So I might jump straight into it. I think today this is a solo episode and let's start talking about how we can approach learning. So there's lots and lots of press and literature out there around how much time you should be spending learning. And it's anywhere from kind of 5% through to, I think the largest I've seen is 25% of your time per week on learning. Right. And that's a huge amount of time and I think very much industry specific for me, I aim for about 10% of my working week spent on learning. So if you're a 40 hour week, and I think the reality is a lot of sales leaders aren't, a lot of sales leaders are somewhere in the 40 to 60 hour a week zone. And don't take that, that from me is promoting a 60 hour week. But certainly there are plenty of sales leader jobs where a 40 hour week doesn't quite do enough. But that said, aspirationally, I think a lot of us aim for that. So today I'm going to talk about 10% of a 40 hour week, right. Which equates to four hours of learning to be spent each and every single week on how you can improve your leadership skills, your individual contribution skills and everything around that. So when you first think about that and you go, wow, four hours a week learning, that can actually be quite daunting for a lot. I know that when, when I think of it that way, I straightaway go, well, how do I actually spend that time? How do I allocate it effectively without impacting on the rest of my role? But as we go through today, I'm hopeful that you'll see it is very achievable just with a little bit of mindset adjustment or certainly at the very least focus on how you can do it. So as I said, there's four ways that I go through it myself. Number one for me is content subscriptions. This has changed quite significantly over the last few years. But now personally, and I didn't used to do this as part of my learning regime, but I definitely do now, and it's one of my big parts is I subscribe to sabre between 6 and 10 resources at any one time that will land in my email inbox frequently, anywhere from daily through to kind of once a week is when these will land in my inbox. And these type of subscriptions or content subscriptions are things like technical selling skills, AI, sales enablement, or even just generally more cultural approaches to how you're leading teams. So I generally will spread them around and I'll chop and change them very regularly. Right. So for example, at the moment I'm listening to Thibu Sures, who's actually we had as a guest on the podcast the Other Way. And within that I'll be looking at his prospecting program and how he goes about that because I think there's some really good things you can learn from experts in the field. Now I might do that for the next three to six months and then Tibu will either launch something else out in his repertoire that's really valuable for me or I'll move across and I'll replace that with something else. So I think these are quite transient and certainly I value the ability to move in and out of the content subscriptions as I need to. But at the moment, if I'm to give you some examples about what I'm subscribing to, I'm huge on video at the moment. It's one of my big areas that I think is making a huge difference to sales leaders and sales individuals. So videoask loom those type of softwares, I'm getting lots of content subscriptions coming in from them. From an AI point of view, the rundown AI is one I'm subscribing to and I get something most days from then. And then from an overall world perspective, the Wall Street Journal comes into my inbox every day and I actually read that on my mobile phone. It's my little five minute chop out to see what's going on across the rest of the world. Tibusuras, as I've mentioned, and Kajabi. So Kajabi is a learning platform that helps you build communities based around learning. So I'm doing a fair bit of work around that at the moment. So how do I do this or when do I do this? Typically I'll spend 10 to 15 minutes a day on this. So it's a daily habit and I'll do it at lunchtimes or when I need a break from daily meetings. I try to avoid doing it first thing because first things when your brain. For me, my brain's working, really working at its best early. So I like to hit the day with something really important. I E Podcasting on the weeks that I'm podcasting, it'll be the first thing I do. Six o' clock in the morning, I'm at my desk and bang, I'm writing my podcast and then into them. But if I do that five days a week, 10 to 15 minutes per day, that's about an hour of learning done Straight away. So one of my four hours is through content subscriptions. The other thing I'll say on this is that for sales leaders, have a look at the CRM that you're using. They are typically really good. I've had a look at a lot of the HubSpot stuff, for example. You'll find there's plenty of stuff across the learning resources for those platforms and it's worth you having a look at. Okay, so that's number one, content subscriptions is my first of my four learning go tos. Number two, and it's not going to surprise anyone but podcasts. So clearly I'm into the podcasting game. But where I used to read books, I now listen to podcasts instead. Why? A couple of really clear reasons. First of all, books generally mean you can't do anything else at the one time. And I'm a huge multitasker. It's very rare. I'm doing only one thing. And a lot of my friends, they don't just notice it, they comment on it. I'm constantly doing two or three things at once. So I like to listen to podcasts because I can do that when I'm at the gym, when I'm going for a run, when I'm going for a walk. Right. Lots of different ways. Even when I'm walking around the house. And if I'm cleaning or doing something that needs a small amount of brain power but actually some physical movement, you'll see me listening to podcasts. The other reason I've moved to podcasts is because I find you can get a lot more content in quickly versus a book. And previously I used to worry a little bit around the quality of podcasts that are out there. But there are just so many shows out there now. In fact, there are too many shows out there now that if you're careless of what you're publishing. So if you don't research what you're publishing, give it some thought, or put it into a content that resonates with people, then you don't get listeners. So I'll really leverage on that. When I'm choosing podcasts, I'll look at recommendations from peers. So it doesn't need to be a pure five star rating, but I need to see that there's been some people rating the show, even if it's a 4.5 or a high fours or something like that, because it won't resonate with everyone. But certainly I want to see a high star rating and I want to see that the podcast has made an effort to actually get people to rate their show right, because it means they're thinking about what people are listening to. I'll also take recommendations from peers. So, for example, one of my friends, Luke, has recommended doac Diary of a CEO. Love listening to that. Now. It's a really, really long podcast, but I'll find the time when I've got some nice, clear headspace to listen on some bigger themes that are happening across the world. I'll also do some quick research myself, look at any reviews or other searchable data, and I'll often actually go and look at the businesses that these people are running to make sure they're successful businesses before I take their advice. So all of that takes two or three minutes, really, per podcast, and then I'll pick again six to eight podcasts that I'm listening to quite regularly, and they will change according to what I'm actually thinking about and what I'm working on at the time. So. So at the moment I'm listening to, if I want some longer stuff that is not so much directly related to the business that I'm in, I'll listen to a little bit around the Huberman label. They're very, very long, but certainly there's some good stuff in there. Diary of a CEO, as I said, which is called doac D O A C Then, from a professional learning point of view, I really like the Martech podcast. M A R T E C H I think that's fantastic around talking about the technology that's coming into particularly the marketing sphere. And actually listen to Amy Porterfield's one that I've listened to for a little while. She has a very different approach to business to me, but has had a lot of success in the online coaching world and particularly putting courses out there. So I like to hear from that slightly different perspective. So thanks to all those people that have the podcast out there. But I certainly like to change it up. And if you'd like to know some more of the things I listen to, then just get in touch. I'm happy to help. So when do I do podcasts? They're my go to. They are my absolute go to when I'm driving or exercising, in particular, particularly when I'm at the gym. And I'll normally get through about two hours of podcasts across the week just from exercising. So. But I take that as a minimum. So really that's kind of 50% of my learning at the moment is coming from podcasts. And that will change, right? That will move according to where I'M at in my life. But three out of my four hours, I'm taking from content subscriptions and podcasting. And by the way, I actually hit more than four hours a week. But certainly there's some key areas. A tip from me on this one is actually the speed. You listen to podcasts, and a little bit cheeky here, but depending the podcast style, I'll often listen at 1.25 or in fact, most of the time, I actually listen at 1.5 speed. What it does is it helps me to stay focused on the message without drifting. Sometimes podcasts can speak a bit slowly. I know I'm not guilty of that. I move a million miles an hour, but I like those ones that move a bit slower to listen to them on fast speed because I get through them, I stay focused, and then I actually type notes into my phone as I hear anything that's really important. And then every two to three weeks, I'll actually grab those notes and I'll work them through into the flow of how I go about work. So I've got a real system, six or eight podcasts, 1.25 or 1.5 speed notes into my iPhone, and then I consolidate those notes every few weeks into my action items and my flow of work. That, for me is the most critical part to get across today is that whatever you're taking from your learning, you need to make sure you're embedding it into what you do. It's super, super important. So for me, if I take Tibusuris as an example, I've actually upped my LinkedIn cadence and changed slightly my messaging around when I'm making connections with LinkedIn based on the information I got from him. Right. He's also pretty good around your LinkedIn profile, so I've been able to take some advice from there. So where I can find points that are important to me, I will make sure that I take them, I write them down, and then I embed them into whatever I'm doing. Okay, so that's podcasting. And number two, number three, coaching and mentoring. So, yes, I have a coach, too. I am a coach, but I also have a coach and I have quite a few mentors. So clearly there's a difference between each one, which I'll go through in a minute. But my coach, it is a professional engagement and I do pay for it. Whereas mentors are people that I know pretty well and I trust. So the coach will provide me structure and focus in the areas that I want help with. For me, the areas that I actually need most help with is around my mindset in terms of what I'm approaching. My technical skills, my ability to lead people and manage businesses is one that I get some help with. But really my mindset about how I approach things is where I love most help because it keeps me really positive and engaged. So my coaching conversations, they will have a depth of conversation that drives really deep into issues and keeps me very much on track. So my mentor engagements, and I am a mentor to people, as well as having mentors, they're generally less frequent and often shorter as they're also really busy people. Right. People who I mentor don't pay me, and the people that I get mentoring from, I don't pay. Right. So it's a very different relationship where you need to be very mindful of their time. A coach, every week or every second week, an hour, and then questions outside of that, that's cool. That's a professional relationship and they're paid to do that. A mentor is someone there to provide you advice because they're very experienced at something. But I just need to be quite mindful as to how much of their time I'm taking up so as to not overstretch that friendship. So right now, for example, I have probably three mentors that I go to myself and one professional coach. So in terms of time, I get coaching once a fortnight, typically a little bit less at the moment, but I've certainly been getting it once a fortnight across historically around how I operate. And my mentor engagements are kind of every other week. So I might speak to one of the three every six or eight weeks or so. And that makes up for me about half an hour to an hour of learning a week. So I'm almost at my four hours from subscriptions, podcasting and coaching and mentoring. But in terms of a tip for this, for you listening, please keep in mind that coaching's generally an evolution. So I've had multiple coaches across my career, and for me, I try to find the perfect coach for now rather than a coach for life. So for me, the greatest success as a coach is to see our students outgrow us. And sometimes that takes 12 months, sometimes that takes five years. So the average for me is probably around about that two year mark where people that are driving really fast growth businesses or moving through stages in their career where they'll move on to other coaches versus those that are generally a bit more stable in what they're doing and what they want to do in life, or they make one career change for example, I'll generally stay with them for quite a bit longer. But certainly don't be afraid that if you change coaches or you might have one stable coach and different mentors. Right. It's okay to change. It's also okay to stay with them for an extended period of time. Okay, so the last for me, of my four really key training, this one's a little bit out of left field, and that is actually team training sessions that I facilitate myself. So this is where for any teams that I'm working with or for my team where I sit down and have scheduled weekly training sessions, I include that in my personal learning. And there's a really good reason why. So for me, I actually learned from these because I get to not only teach what I know, but also to get very direct feedback. So by teaching, it helps me to cement the knowledge that I've learned or that I work on and essentially stop me forgetting it. Right? So I get to practice that information that I've built up or my practices or policies or skills that I know by teaching them out to people. So for me, that's definitely a part of learning, but also what happens is I get really direct feedback in return. So I will hear things happening in the market, I will hear trends, I will hear changes from this group of engaged people. Right? So my training sessions are anywhere from kind of five to 25 people in sessions. And what I get back is really powerful because I can't scan the entire market and see everything. In fact, I rely on hearing things from content subscriptions, from podcast. Right. But I also get them from people that are directly out in the field. So what will happen really regularly is that I will run a training session, and by the end of that training session, I'll have three or four or five even things that I want to go look up and research further into. Right? The latest AI technology coming out, or I was in a session last week when someone actually brought up a way of objection handling that I hadn't heard before. So I went and had a look and it was a little bit cryptic, a little bit different, but I was like, wow, I actually hadn't heard that way of objection handling. So it's really cool to be able to get learnings back from other people. But on top of that, it also creates regimenting routine that I highly value for me. I'm absolutely unflappable in that. Training should be held weekly, it should be constant, and everyone needs to buy into it. And the reason is that if you create that habit, it actually rolls out into everything else you do. When we know that we are training once a week, we are reviewing deals once a week, we're meeting together as a team once a week, you know then that you have some structure around your weeks and what you need to achieve, but also that you come into these sessions with your mind, ready to learn. And I think that by doing it with such regiment that you gain more in terms of the training, both from a delivery point of view and those receiving on the other end. So for me, training's often done, and I've mentioned this in previous podcasts, it's often done in the mornings. Tuesdays is kind of when I've always run them with my teams. But without doubt, the best salespeople I've ever worked with are absolutely relentless in their pursuit of more knowledge. So that's about an hour a week. So that's well and truly up to my four hours a week from training, just from those four avenues. And I've got some other areas that I'll run through in a minute that I'll talk through, but certainly when you look at it in that fashion, it's actually quite chunkable and quite achievable to get to your four hours per week. A tip for anyone wanting to work out how to run a training program. I have a free resource out there. It's on strongestsalesteam.com training or you can jump onto the website and find it there. Or even podcast episode 16. You can go back to episode 16 and you'll find a whole session around building out a training program for your team, something I've done a huge amount of. So also get in touch if you'd like a little bit more support around that. So they're my four go to trainings, content subscriptions, podcasting, coaching and mentoring and training that I deliver. They work really well and they give me kind of four and a half to five, even a little bit more hours per week of learning, which is perfect for me. Of course, that doesn't mean they're perfect for everyone. And there's lots of other ways that we can receive our training. So a few of those. I think I should go through them quickly now. Right. They're things like books. Feel free to DM me if you want some recommendations about books. I've got some friends that are absolutely religious readers. They really enjoy it and they get some great time out of reading books. Online courses, plenty of online courses available. We've got some coming. I can't wait to get them out. Webinars are becoming increasingly popular. They're no longer just live, they're now on demand. And there's services out there that allow you to access webinars at any time. Peer to peer learning, that's a big one. Having coffee, having lunch, just sitting down and talking to people that you know and respect, right? Absolutely. A way that you can get more learning in manager training. So asking your leader, particularly one you respect within the workplace, around giving you some support for training and then business learning. Lots of businesses have their own programs that they run around learning, so see what's in yours and if you can tap into any of that, some of them are fantastic, some of them not so good. But use your discernment and use your instinct and you'll actually work out what is perfect for you. For you. Okay, so there's some great training options there. Before we finish up though, for me, I want to provide a bit of a structure that you might be able to use as to how you can design your own training program for yourself. This will only take you five minutes. If you can find five minutes even. As soon as this podcast finishes, put down what you're doing and just take five minutes to run this exercise. So the first part is have a think about the topics that you want to increase your training and your learning cadence on. Right? So if you're a sales leader, it might be leading a team during tough economic times, it might be how to handle difficult conversations, it might be how to prospect better. Right. If your team's struggling at that and you would like to lead from the front, it might be how to run engaging meetings, it might be how to build a sales process, it might be how to develop sales metrics. Right. Write down exactly what you want to be trained on. How to build a sales strategy, I think is a really key one for a lot of salespeople. In fact, it's almost at the top. How to build a strategy that sales teams and salespeople actually engage with. Right, so you've written that down. Next one, write down how you like to learn. Is it podcasts, is it coaching, is it online courses, is it doing your own research and then applying it? Is it a mixture of everything? Right, so you've written down what you need to train on now and then the modalities that you like to receive training in. Next is I want you to write down where you're naturally receiving your learning from. So training sessions from your peers. Right. The areas where you already have in your day to day operations, time for learning, and then put A time against it. So hope that most of you are running training sessions with your team now and there might be an hour a week, right, that you can straightaway tick off, assuming that you're getting something back from those trainings. Right. If you're not, then there's probably a bigger conversation about how you structure them and get in touch. We can try and help you, but I think if you're running a good, strong, structured training program, you should be getting something back. All right, so we're having a think about the topics, we're writing down our sources that we like to learn from, and then we're having a look at where we're getting natural learning from. Right? So by now we should have a couple of, you know, might be an hour we've already got sorted. We know where we want to learn from and what we want to learn on. Next thing, sit down and write down how much time you want to spend learning. So if you want to use the 10% formula, you're a 50 hour worker, for example, you spend 50 hours a week working, five hours, right? So then next step, tally up what you get from your natural learning. So you're aiming for four hours or five hours, let's say you're aiming for five hours and you're getting two hours a week from natural learning. So you have a target of three hours that you need to supplement on top of that. Right? So we now know what you want to be trained on, we now know where you want to be trained, your modalities, and we know you've got a gap of about three hours to fill. Perfect. With that remaining through that list of what you still need to be learning on. Right? And the three hours that you need to spend, start thinking about where you can go and get that training from. So if you're listening to our podcast, for example, I hope that's supplementing your sales leadership training. So there's half an hour a week straight away that you can tick off. Right? And then find the other sources that you want to be getting that learning from. Is it coaching or mentoring or reading or online courses or whatever it may be. Right? So that should then give you a target. So you know what you're getting your natural learning on, you know what you're not getting enough learning on, and then you want to be able to supplement that. And then you know exactly how much time you need to spend on that. So please get in touch if that doesn't quite make sense, but we probably have three or four resources out now. There's about eight more coming over the next couple of months. So once they're out, it'll definitely be made clear on the podcast and you can certainly find out where some of those resources are. So that will be able to help you with your learning gaps. Okay. Last but not least on this is make sure you're repeating this exercise every six months or so as you'll naturally find that some topics will come in and some topics will be removed. Right. It's a journey, not a one stop process. So where you might want training on building a sales process now, six months down the track, your training might turn to getting the most out of new team members in your business. And that's absolutely fine. In fact, it's really important that you're updating your training gaps and finding them as you need to. Okay, so everything that's come out of here, my four learning resources, that will actually be one of the resources we make available. So that should be coming out this week. In fact, it is coming out this week with the podcast. So stay tuned. You'll be able to download that as we go. Of course, if you weren't able to capture everything, then jump onto the show notes in your own time. They're on the website@strongersalesteam.com or if you want a little bit of extra help. We love doing discovery calls. They really help people out and I find that I get a lot out of helping people. I really enjoy it. So get in touch through any of the social media channels, stronger sales teams on Instagram or LinkedIn. I'm across every connection, so you should hear back from me. But before we leave for today, our health and wellbeing tip. I continue to focus on mental health at the moment. This will probably be the last one in the series, but this is from my coach, Josie Thompson. Thanks, Josie, or J.T. as I call her. I love this quote and again, I paraphrase because generally these quotes tend to morph a little bit over time. But what we don't want to do is let yesterday's memories or the fear of what may happen tomorrow impact on today. Right. So fantastic advice. I love this one. Don't let your experience of yesterday impact what you're doing today. Whilst we want to learn from it, don't let it dictate your future. But also make sure that we don't spend our time worrying about what may or may not happen in the future. Right. We need to stay focused on what we can influence from today. So learn from the past, but don't let it dictate today. Also, don't worry about what has or hasn't happened in the future by impacting our thinking and our actions for also for today. Right? So it's super powerful when you're in really tough times. Can really help us to particularly me. It helps me to compartmentalize and keep me grounded and focused. Give it a go. Let me know how it works for you. Okay? So until next time, keep living in a world of possibility and you'll be amazed by what you can achieve. Want to be kept up to date with any of our free materials to help you build the best sales teams possible? Well, the easiest way you can do so is to follow us on your favorite social media channel. We're onger sales teams on most of them and if you DM us stronger, we'll send you right back some great resources to help you build your super powered sales team. Sales team if you'd like a little more help, please get in touch directly and book a free discovery call with me. I run a limited number of these sessions and they're free for my podcast listeners. I'd love to help you out. Until then, see you next week for another podcast of stronger sales team.