Mastering Leadership - What Sales Can Teach Us About Resilience

All right. Hello, everyone. We're gonna try something this week. I've been noticing that for some reason LinkedIn is cutting the beginning of the videos. So I'm just gonna blab on here for a couple of minutes, not a couple of minutes, maybe 30 seconds before I make the official introduction of this LinkedIn Live and introduce myself. So here we go. 5 more seconds. I hope you're all doing well. and you have nice weather. We have a lot of snow, but it's sunny, so I'm not going to complain. All right, here we go. So this is officially the beginning of the LinkedIn Live, and I would really be interested to see if I was cut or not. So here we go. You all know who I am. Maybe you don't, which is very, very normal. I'm Claire Hayek. I'm the CEO, founder and CEO of MSP Team Building. And recently, actually, we have a new division called MSP Innovation that tackles on Anything that has to do with AI, tech approach to leadership, stay tuned. But today, we are talking about how we can master leadership and what sales can teach us about resilience. It's not something, not a title or a subject that people talk about much. But I thought it was really interesting. And I'm very excited to have with me André Lavigne, an expert sales strategist and leadership coach with over 30 years of experience helping leaders basically tackle these challenges and turn adversity into opportunities. André, bienvenue! Welcome, welcome!

Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you for having me here. Looking forward to our chat.

I've been actually looking forward to this one. We had our series, Breaking the Taboo, last week. And that was with 3 wonderful wonderfully talented entrepreneurs. We're talking about stress, humor, and conflict resolution. And I mentioned the title. I mentioned basically this live and their eyes just opened up and they're like, oh my God! I'm like, yep, yep. Everybody's very interested in this. So, if you are with us, please do say hi in the chat and tell us where you're joining us from, from which part of the world. We'd love to know. And I'll be throwing some questions at you. Please do participate. Do put your questions as we go. I will be featuring them here on screen so we can have a conversation as opposed to wait all the way to the end for Q&As. So please do put your comments in the chat and talk to us. And I would like to welcome Connor from our team that you don't see on screen, but he's in the background running the show and running the chat for us and sharing some stuff.

Hi, Connor.

Really nice to have you. Thank you. Thank you. So, let's dive right in. I mean, this subject is so relevant. I'm always talking about leaders have to be like superheroes nowadays. There's so much going on with leadership and it's not easy. It's not easy and it doesn't come naturally. It's not something they teach you in school, right? It's something you learn on the battleground.

Yeah.

And now, it's even tougher than ever because there's so much uncertainty with the economy. Everything is rapidly changing. I mean, we're not going to dive into tariffs and what's happening with that. I think we talked about it enough last week. And post-COVID, everything that's happened, disengaged team, hybrid, in-person, everything is just so volatile.

Yeah.

But there's one thing, resilience. We talk a lot about resilience and how important it is as a leader. But we don't talk about it, how it relates in the world of sales. And this is what we're doing today. And I'm really, really excited to know, André, your take on this. So, if we just dive right in, let's just talk about resilience in sales.

Yeah.

I mean, you've worked with so many teams, with so many leaders that are facing a lot of challenging moments, challenging environments, high-stakes environments. What do you think? Do you have like some parallels between leadership challenges and the resilience of salespeople? And something to kind of brief us in. And how do you see those related?

Well, thanks again for having me. I think resilience is a huge part of the sales. And by the way, I'll just say this because we're talking about sales. And in business, it seemed to me it's like almost a taboo as well. Okay? Nobody wants to talk about sales. They talk about marketing.

They talk about sales, right? I don't want to sell.

Sales is an awesome profession. So anyway.

I know.

You're right. And the thing is, everybody sells. Everybody sells. You're selling yourself to get a job and so on and so forth. You know, this is why, you know, And this is going to be the leeway. I wrote the book about how to demystify sales for non-salespeople. So, I've been doing this for a long time. And what makes a big, big difference in sales is understanding. And it's the same for entrepreneurs, understanding the concept of delayed gratification. Hmm.

Okay?

In terms of resilience, I think that's really the first thing. if you're an entrepreneur, or if you want to become an entrepreneur, and you don't understand and abide to the concept of delayed gratification, you're going to be stressed out forever. Because in sales, like as an entrepreneur, we're building stuff. We're, we're working hard to get to a result that will, as an end product, will give us commission, money, whatever, the result of the exchange of your goods and services. So the concept of delayed gratification is the first thing. So in the book, I am talking about the situation, the crisis, okay, and the fact that we're in a crisis. When I did my research on the book, I did a quick research on, you know, what was, you know, how many crises did we have in the last 50 years?

Okay.

And then I got the financial crisis, the wars, all of that. And it's literally hundreds. Okay. So, because sales in difficult time is even more difficult. Okay. So you got to bring a lot of value. You got to be talking to people open to change. Okay, as, as a salesperson, as an entrepreneur, okay, one thing you gotta learn early and, and really, really believe in, the fact that the only constant in our industry is change.

I love that one.

If you don't—

if you're listening right now, write this down, okay? This is a gold nugget. I'm gonna put it on a Post-it note here on my screen.

So the only constant In, in, in our industry.

In our industry. Is change.

Change. So, so if in, in the book I put an ideogram, a Chinese ideogram that says, in all crisis, the ideogram is composed of, of, of 2, 2 little Chinese drawings there that says, then the 2 says, the first one says, Danger, and the second one says opportunity. So in all changes, there's of course danger, but there's also opportunity. So, so the— so as an entrepreneur, our role is to understand and, and really believe that if I want to survive, if I want to strive, I got to be able to adapt to change. And if I want to do this, I'll understand and I'll clearly plan for delayed gratification. So I got a plan and I got to see it through. So that's my take on resilience for leaders.

Yeah, no, I love that. And I literally wrote this down. The only constant in— I guess I put in leadership because that would help me— is change.

It could be in life as well.

I'm complaining about, God, give me a break. I mean, I'm exhausted. And we talked about this backstage, everyone, just so you know.

Yeah.

Andre and I were just killing time and doing what we do, chit-chatting and everything. And we really want— I really wanted to go online because I'm like, oh my God, there's so many gold nuggets that we're discussing right now backstage. We're going to bring it to everyone here. But yeah, one of the things that I shared with Andre is that it's tough. It's freaking tough. Entrepreneurship is tough. And actually, I was talking to Connor. We're sound checking before. I'm like, this one is for me today. I need this. I need to hear this. I mean, if anybody knows resilience, it's me. It's like my middle name is resilience, for God's sakes. But you know what? Even resilient people sometimes feel that dip, feel that like, oh my God, I need that pick-me-up, right? And this one was— I feel like I'm gifting myself this live today. So, thank you, Claire, for gifting Claire this live. Thank you, André, for being part of it. So, here's a little interesting statistic. Research by McKinsey found that companies with resilient leaders during crises outperformed their peers by 50% in terms of revenue growth. I mean, how about that, right? So, resilience is definitely not something to be undervalued here. So, and I love how sales teaches us persistence, adaptability, learning from the no, right? Because I mean, if anybody knows the no, it's salespeople, sales managers, sales leaders. And leaders that face rejection. It basically is a big thing. It's a big challenge. But this is how you develop your resilience. You need to have that resilience because you are facing rejection. But it's all about what motivates you, what engages you, and why Your passion, what you believe in, and what you are offering, or what you're basically communicating to the other person and how you're adding value to them. That's your motivator. That's your purpose. And that's what keeps you resilient. Otherwise, if it's just for the purpose of selling something, I mean, everybody would quit, right? But you're not selling something. You are sharing something you believe that you know can help that person. So, it's a whole different approach, right? But nevertheless, resilience is key, right? So anyway, here, let me put this question here for our audience. Have you ever faced a challenge where resilience helped you bounce back? So, we'd like to know. We'd like to hear from you. Please do put it in the chat and we'll— I'll pop in there and take a quick look in a second. Moving along. So, I've noticed and I think a lot of people can agree that one of the biggest challenges or obstacles that leaders face is overcoming limiting beliefs. We're talking about limiting beliefs of their own and those may be around them, maybe their teams. So, what lessons do you think, André, from sales can leaders take to tackle this limiting belief aspect of things?

Claire, thanks for the question. I would say that in the last 5 years, I probably coached over 130 leaders, entrepreneurs. And one thing that I see the most often is exactly that, the limiting beliefs. If you believe that you're an industry that's going to be very difficult to tackle. If you believe that the sales cycle, because you're in a crisis and it's going to be really, really long. If you believe all of those and you don't challenge those beliefs, you're going to be right. All the things that you say, that the sales cycle will be long, the resistance will be high, customer will think my product is priced too high and so on. All of that, if you believe that this is the case, then you're going to be right. But if you challenge those beliefs and if you say, okay, if the sales cycle is long typically, how can I make it faster? What can I do? How can I change my message? How can I understand better the customer situation and bring value faster?

Yeah.

Because if your intent is to help them solve their issues and solve their problems, and that those problems have high enough impacts, then they will want to move quickly.

Mm-hmm.

You know, if the impact is huge, why wait another year? Why wait another 6 months? So in your message, you'll build alternative message to be able to convey the fact that this is not a belief you should hold on to. You will build strategies and action plans around those beliefs.

Okay?

Yeah. And will— and I often say that, will that work 100% of the time? And the answer is no. But it will work 100% better than if you stick to your limiting belief.

It's true.

So that's, that's, and, and I see this on, on a daily, almost on a daily basis with entrepreneurs, you know, anything that they— and, and think about it, and for your audience as well, think about if, if you express something and you believe in it, and oh, and I'm gonna say, oh, the, the, the, the The tariffs are gonna affect my business dramatically. And if you think that, you're gonna be right.

100%.

And I talk about this all the time.

Absolutely, André. I mean, you are— I'm all in with you on this one. I'm always preaching about this. I'm always saying your thoughts, because, you know, talking about neuroscience and how the brain works, that your thoughts influence your emotions and influence— then your emotions influence the environment around you. You are literally creating your reality every second. A neuron fires and wires together. So if, if your, your brain and your thoughts are saying, I'm not going to succeed, I'm a failure, um, I can't do this, I'm giving up, or whatever, you know, if you're, if you're completely at that level of, you know, vibration and energy level, um, then, then the body will react. The body will react. It's just automatically that's what the brain is controlling. The thoughts go in the brain, the brain controls everything else in your body, and it's your energy and you're literally influencing what's going on around you. Who wants to, you know, do business with somebody that is negative, that already thinks that they're gonna fail? It's then everything is affected. The way you show up, who you're being, how your face is, your facial expression, what energy you're emanating. Everything around you, the people We talk about mirror neurons. People feel that. It's very subtle. It's scientific. But people feel how you're being. This is why people are drawn to positive, driven, resilient people because they have that power to just lift you up. And that's what we're drawn to, right? Yeah.

And one point, Claire, along these lines is I always tell my clients, but the important thing is you first create your reality in your mind. You first create the reality in your mind, and then you execute on it. So therefore, if your reality is a limiting belief, there's nothing you'll be able to create. It's there. But if you're creating your reality that there's ways to overcome, there's means that you can take to to build something different, then you'll realize, you'll make your reality that you've dreamt of or that you created in your mind the reality in the physical world. Yeah.

And I mean, this is not, it's not rocket science. It's freaking neuroscience, people. Trust me. Okay? And the thing is, we're not talking about something here that is so mystical. I mean, look at all the successful people out there. They all have the same story. You know, I often talk about Hollywood stars that had nothing and made it out of nothing. But they had that vision. They knew. They saw. They imagined. They were rejected. I mean, Rocky and with Sylvester Stallone, the story. My God! Like, it's so inspiring. We don't have time to get into it. If you ever get a chance to watch a documentary on Sylvester Stallone's life or read his book, it's such a great lesson of resilience and perseverance and knowing the focus. And again, I'm loving this. I needed this one today. Thanks so much, André. It's like I'm preaching to myself right now. It's like, Clare, you know this. You know this, right?

You know this.

I need somebody to tell me as well. I'm always telling everyone else. And we talked about this. You know, even people, experts like us, we do what we do. We coach and help a lot of people. We also need coaches. Everybody needs a coach. And I was telling André backstage, like, even Tony Robbins has a coach, you know. And I love that. I love that. But anyway, let me share another stat here. According to a study by Stanford University, adopting a growth mindset. So, it's all in your head, right? So, imagine just focusing on a growth mindset that increases motivation and productivity by 47% in teams. So, how you show up in front of your team or your customer or whoever you're working with will affect how they perform. How crazy is that? Again, I'm not surprised. I knew this. But we will share it in the chat and we'd love to hear what you think. So, do you believe mindset plays a significant role in overcoming challenges at work? Yes or no? And what's your experience with this? So, I'm going to jump Write to the chat. I've shared a couple of things, a couple of comments earlier as André was discussing because sometimes they pile up and I don't, you know, we don't have time to share. So please do share here what you think about mindset and mindset's role when it comes to overcoming challenges at work. And just a quick hello to Tamara.

Hi.

Parisio that is with us, just dropping in her comment here. And as well as I believe we have Nikki, Nikki that has tons of snow in Wisconsin. It's coming down good. Yes, we know what you're talking about. I'm in the Lower Laurentians here in Montreal area. And oh, we got snow. We got snow. André, I think you do too, right?

Yeah, I'm in the middle of the province in a small, small village. And facing the St. Lawrence River. And because of the St. Lawrence with the wind, is every time there's snow, the next day there's more snow, and the next day there's more snow because of the wind.

So, but it's a beautiful day today. It's sunny. And I just, I'm just looking forward to going for a walk. I don't know how I'm gonna find that 10, 15 minutes to go for a walk today. It's a very busy day. But I need to. It's gorgeous out. I mean, obviously, like, not warm, Sunny. Just cold sunny, but sunny. I'll take that. Okay. So let's get into the 3rd segment. So now we know that resilience and mindset are critical. And we did the parallel with salespeople and leadership. If you can share with us, André, that would be really cool. If you can share like 3 practical strategies that anyone, leaders, entrepreneurs, it doesn't matter what level, right? 3 practical strategies that we can use to lead with the same resilience and the resources that we see in top salespeople. What is it? What is it? What have they got? Please do share those 3 strategies if you can. If there's more, we'll take it.

Well, let me—

We'll take minimum 3, please.

Minimum 3. Let me start by a quick, quick story. When I started in sales, I had the chance to work with an industrial psychologist that gave my first sales training. And, you know, in the days, there was no social media. There was no— actually, telemarketing started to be a big thing. So imagine how long ago that was.

So I remember those times.

So I was— my territory was the Eastern Townships in of Montreal. It's like a rural area with, you know, small businesses, but you had to go, you know, knock on doors and open doors and talk to people. And sometimes you see the big sign, no salespeople, and you still had to walk in. And so the training I got and the story I want to share with you is the trainer used to say, You know, in order to face rejection, you got to think that there's only 7 or 8 really bad people in the world, really mean, okay, that will be rude. Only 7 or 8.

Yeah.

But they move, they move a lot. So, so the funny thing is the way to apply the strategy was if you walk in an office and the receptionist or the manager was super rude, you used to get out Before getting in the car and say, oh, they just moved. And, and on you go. So basically, if you're talking about strategy, this is one. This is one to say, instead of focusing on what happened, because it's not personal, your intention, as you said earlier, is to help people, help them solve challenge and make an exchange that will benefit both parties. So if that's your intention is, you know, and people are rude or, or you feel rejected, hang on to your objective, hang on to your plan, hang on to your delayed gratification, okay? Because at the end of the day, that's what will make you keep going, okay?

Mm-hmm.

If you're running a marathon and you're thinking about your, your legs are hurting and you got trouble to breathe and you're not thinking about the finish line, you're not going to succeed. Okay. So the strategy is to, to look at your desired outcome. If you can fix that in your mind, that's going to help you. Okay. So in terms of resilience, that's, I think, one of the big things that comes with another strategy, which is planning. Okay. If you don't plan for anything, After a few rejections, after a slump, after a bad month, then you're gonna start in, uh, okay, well then this is more difficult than I thought. Maybe I should, you know, fire employees so I'll cut my cost.

Right.

I got, uh, when, when the COVID started, I was working, one of my clients was in the telecommunication. So, so when they, you know, when they announced that they were shutting down the business, you know, shutting down everything, I called my client. And I say, wow, John, this is a good, good time for you. You've been pushing for, you know, helping people work from a distance, not in the office, and, you know, remote working. And he said, well, I just fired my 4 sales reps. I said, what? And I was like, really? He said, I had to cut costs. And I said, this was, you know, I was so excited for you. This was your big time. This was your opportunity. And so, so you got to hold on to your mission, hold on to your objective. And if not, then you'll destroy your business and probably destroy your life.

Yeah, I mean, being reactive to change, because remember, it's the constant in life. Just in case you missed it in the first 5 minutes, the constant in life is change. So if you're just going to be pretty much reacting to change, then you're losing your focus. So, looking at what you just said, André, so if I understand correctly, focusing on where you're heading, what's your focus, what's your goal. Focus on that goal. And there'll be light bumps, right? But don't let those steer you away from your focus. So, reassess. You might need to cut some people. I mean, obviously, we all have to do that. But it doesn't mean, you know, you can't just react to change because then you're going to be completely off track, right? So, very, very, very good. Definitely a very good share there. Okay, so we got 2.

I'm short of one. So, the other one is measure and adapt. So, if you see that some of the things that you're doing in sales, it's easy. The sales process is super easy. You got to create the vision. You got to align yourself to see if there's a fit. You got to manage the risk, and then the customer will make his decision. So it's very easy. So if there are things in there, like if, if you can't be efficient at creating the vision, right, then change your message, change the way you tell your story, and change the way the customer will understand how you will help them. You can help them solve their issues.

Right.

The second part is, is there's a fit. So if there's not, if the situation has changed in your environment so much and the condition for a fit between what you offer and what the customer needs changes, then try to adapt that. Try to maybe change some of the components or change the equation, but change something to adapt. And then The risk, you always have to be— to adapt to the risk, to the perceived risk that the customer has. But you got to always have to proactively work on finding mitigation for the— with the customer. Okay, so, so measure and adapt. So if you feel that it takes too long to get to customer, adapt. Your message is probably wrong. If it takes too long to align and get a proper fit with the customer, There's something in your product mix that doesn't work. So change that. If there's, there's, you know, an economic downturn, economic situation that makes the perceived risk too high, change that. You can work on that. So measure and adapt. And that's probably the best strategy to go through tough times.

Okay. Well, you know, these are really very relevant strategies. Thank you so much, André, for sharing your knowledge and your experience with us today. And like I said, this was really helpful. Actually, I love all our LinkedIn Lives because as much as I try to add value to our listeners and invite very interesting and professional experts in the field in order to help us navigate change and navigate challenges, it also brings them a lot of value but brings us a lot of value. And sometimes I feel that even our speakers that are here and guests, they feel that they're learning a thing or two. So it's all about that community and exchanging ideas and advancing. So I'm very grateful. Thank you so much, André Lévin, for joining us today. And I'm very, very grateful that I know you and we work with you. So if you have any other questions, please put them in the chat. And while you're doing that, I just wanted to Let you know that next week, we are talking about your brand. A lot of leaders talk about that. Actually don't know much about that, and a lot were actually requested some information on it. So next week's live, it's going to be February 19th at 11:30, same time, 11:30 EST, 8:30 PST. Imagine if your leadership brand spoke for you. Here's how to make it happen. I'm extremely excited for this one. So please do scan the QR code or just go on my LinkedIn under events and RSVP. I'll probably be inviting everyone anyway, but it makes it easier when you RSVP before if you definitely want to be for that one. And I strongly recommend that you do show up. It's going to be really interesting. I'll be joined by an expert on branding and communication and marketing. So that's for next week. And I would like to just quickly also mention that In case you didn't know, we do launch our AI Sprints membership next week. So, this is not only for leaders. This is for everyone, whether you're an entrepreneur, solopreneur, somebody starting a business, or working for your employer. Anybody, any level. AI is here, people. AI is here and it's moving really fast. We just finished our masterclass last month and the Feedback was amazing. We're so happy because we've been talking about this all of 2024, and finally we're able to bring it to you. These sprints are amazing. I'm not going to go into details. Please do scan the code. Take a look at it later, Andre. I encourage you to do that too. AI can shave off three to five hours and up to fifty percent of your time every week. So if you do want to go on vacation, and I know you are going on a vacation. And you're feeling a bit overwhelmed or you just have a lot of work to do. Think AI. It could do a lot of the work and take off that pressure off of you. But anyway, my 2 cents. Please do check out the page and reach out for anything. And finally, if you just want to know, have a bit more information about what we talked about today, resilience, and we want to talk about how we can help you with that. overcome challenges and navigate change and learn a thing or two from André, please do type resilience in the chat. And I'll get back to you. And yeah, gladly get back to you with some information. André, thanks again. Thanks so much for joining me. Any last words you want to share with our audience before we go offline?

I think it's a lot of— a lot was said. But again, remember, change is the only constant in our lives.

I love that one. And I totally second that. You know what? I'm sorry, I forgot to just pop in and take a look at the chat quickly here. Just want to make sure that I'm sharing a couple of the comments here. So, Nikki said, keep your eye on the prize always. And Nikki also said, know your audience. Thanks for— and thank you, Nicky. And thank you also, Tamara, for joining us today. And those of you who are watching this at another date, you know where to find us. And please do RSVP for our events. There's going to be more coming. And again, André, thanks for taking the time. Lovely, lovely chatting with you today. It helped me a lot and I hope it helped everybody else as well, as much. So, thanks again.

Thank you. Bye.