Maximize Your Sales Confidence (Part 1) with David Schwendiman

Coming to you from the center for social confidence in Portland, Oregon, welcome to shrink for the shy guy helping men everywhere go from social anxiety to social domination with your host, Dr. Aziz. Hey, welcome to today's episode of the show. Today is about sales. It's about how to maximize your sales confidence. And this is a big area because sales is incredibly important, and you might. If you're listening and you're directly in sales, then this is especially important for you to hear. I'm gonna be doing an interview with David Schwindemann, who is an incredible sales expert. He coaches people on this stuff. He helps people with this stuff. He was incredible in sales. He's trained hundreds of people on how to be better. So he really knows this stuff inside and out. But it's incredibly important to master this part of life for a number of reasons. One, if you're directly in sales, then the better you get at handling your inner game. Your confidence, how you approach people and situations, that makes all the difference. Because we all know that getting bogged down by rejections or a sense of this person's not gonna want to buy anything anyway, and we approach it that way, it kills our chances, and it leads to a drudgery and a kind of a depressing approach to your work. And so it's incredibly important to get that inner game handled. And also, though, even if you're not directly in sales, sales is one of the most important skills, because if you ever want to start your own business, you have to learn sales. You might say, well, hire someone to do sales. Yeah, not right away. And to know how to hire and who to hire and how to train them, you got to be really good at it yourself. So if you ever want to start your own business, sales is important. A lot of people work not in their own business, but they work in companies where sales is important. Even if you don't work directly in sales, the ability. I mean, the skills that you'll learn through sales and through this interview that I do with David. The inner game stuff applies to so many different parts of life. It applies to, certainly dating and relationships, but also putting yourself out there for job interviews, putting yourself out there in any way, because sales ultimately is putting yourself out there in a big way. And one of the biggest fears that gets in the way for us is, guess what? That's right. It's the fear that gets in the way for putting ourselves out in any way, which is the fear of rejection, the fear of no. The fear of no, and I don't like you, and Nowhere does that come up more than in sales and maybe dating and relationships. So there's a huge overlap. And wherever you are, whatever your profession is, whatever work you do, this is going to be an incredibly valuable interview for you. And on top of that, David is just an amazing man. I mean, the way he's approached his life, you'll hear a little more about his story, but just his energy, his enthusiasm, his values, who he is is incredibly valuable as well. So let's jump into that interview with David now.

Expert interview.

My guest expert today is Dave Schwindemann, and I'm really excited to have Dave on the show because Dave knows a lot about sales and the confidence around sales, and his story is pretty fascinating. He has been kind of throwing himself into different things, into life and in so many different ways. Between 2006 and 2011, he started a personal training business, which went under after six months. He started a construction company that went under after four years. He started a software company where the CEO did a hostile takeover of his own company. He's still trying to figure out how that's even possible. And he left three years after starting it. And in 2011, Dave was broken. He was $25,000 in debt with two kids at home, and they'd sold everything they owned, including the family car. And at that point, he applied for a position as an insurance agent with Farmers Insurance. And the first month, he made 119in sales from a lady who wandered into his office. And then the second month, he made $210 by writing his own policies and giving himself the commissions. And. And then from there, he just took off. He was determined to not let himself down and his family down. And five months later, he was ranked second in the state of Oregon for life sales and the top producing new agent for commercial insurance. And then from 2012, he moved on to district manager, has been training people, was in the higher corporate level, training and worked with all kinds of agents, helping them become masters of sales. And now he actually left in 2014, he left his corporate job to start his own coaching business focused on helping salespeople. And he helps people one on one now to reach what he calls unreasonable goals and changing who they are on the inside and the outside. So, I mean, Dave has just a wealth of experience around sales and how this all works. So, Dave, thanks so much for joining us today.

Yeah, I'm excited.

This is awesome. So there are so many things just from your bio that I can ask you about, but one of the things that really struck me is you continually threw yourself into things and you didn't give up and say, okay, I'm just gonna take some job that I don't like. You kept on putting yourself out there. And I'm wondering, how did you do that? How do you do that?

I don't know that I had a choice. It's one of those, It's a funny thing where I'm just, I can't stand. It's like an animal being locked up. Right? That's just who I am, is somebody I like doing it my own way. And it's something that came up really. Like I said, I graduated from college. I got married right after I graduated. I'm on my honeymoon, I'm applying for all these positions. I read this book, I read Rich Dad, Poor dad and just lit me up. I thought, gosh, I can do it on my own. I can be my own boss and make the money I want to make and live the life I want to live. And that just, you know, something inside me kind of shifted then and I just said, I'm going to do it. I'm young. I was, Gosh, I was 26 years old. I thought, I got the rest of my life, I can screw it all up. And obviously from my bio, I did. And I still have time to rebuild it. So now is the time. If I'm going to do something crazy, then let's do it. And my wife was behind me. I don't know if she knew what she was getting into, but at the time she agreed and we jumped off the cliff. I turned down my job offers and started that personal training business.

That is awesome.

I have wanted and dreamed of going back many times into a nice, safe job where I can just show up every day, someone else tells me what to do, I don't have to worry about it. And I tried that for a year and a half and at the end of it, I just couldn't do it anymore.

Yeah, yeah, it sounds like it was the kind of place that would make you go crazy. Yeah.

And I, you know what? I honestly, I had a lot of freedom. I literally didn't have a boss, but. But I couldn't. The suits and the cubicle, you know, just the whole nine yards. The company issued laptop. Just couldn't, I just couldn't do it.

I'm getting itchy. I gotta get out of here.

That was really it. It was really it. And I thought my parents, parents thought I was crazy for leaving. I thought I was a little bit nuts for leaving. I was on the Track to keep moving up. I got four promotions in two years. My income went up by a crazy amount. All signs were pointing to big things for me and I just had to get out of there. I had to do it my own way.

Is this the most recent one working as a trainer?

Yeah. It's my only corporate job I've ever had.

Yeah. So let's, I mean there's so much more I want to keep circling back to you because I think the value of our conversation is going to be some of the things we talk about with Sam. But if people can just get a sense of who you are and how you live, I think that is incredibly valuable for inspiring confidence because at the end of the day, it's not about, I mean sure we want to be successful and you are and you will be, but it's this ability to just keep throwing ourselves into life and that's part of sales too. And so let's explore that. Let's dive in directly into sales.

So.

When you were growing your own sales abilities, let's talk about some of the challenges, fears that you experienced and maybe that you train people who are new to sales. What are some of the main kind of inner fears, blocks that you noticed in yourself and others when it comes to sales? We're going to pause for just a moment, take a quick break, and then dive back into the interview with Dave. Want to know the biggest reason why people fail to gain confidence? It's not intelligence, motivation or willpower. It's a lack of support. Making these powerful shifts on your own can be difficult. Get the support, guidance and accountability you need to truly transform your confidence so you can confidently talk with strangers, expand your social life, connect with coworkers, and once and for all feel comfortable interacting with anyone. Go to socialconfidencecenter.com coaching now to learn more.

Gosh, my. I'm trying to think of where the best place to even start is. I mean, sales itself has such a negative connotation. I mean that was, that's, that's the job we go to when we can't do anything else. You know, I was, I became, I got into sales because I literally on my first interview with farmers, I had to borrow my brother in law's car to get to the interview. I didn't own a car at the time. That was really the bottom of it. I thought no one else was hiring me. I'm putting applications and resumes out anywhere and this district manager was looking for new agents and was willing to take a chance on me. So it's a scary thing. And I got into it thinking that it was going to be rough and tried to be the person I thought I was supposed to be. Whenever I do sales trainings, I usually either play a clip from or reference Groundhog's Day, where there's got that Ned character that comes in, he's a life insurance salesman, and just this poking him in the chest the whole time, that was me. I thought, this is how it goes. You wear a suit. I had a suit. I had my little clipboard I'd carry around with me and I would just go and bang on doors and try to get people to buy. And it was miserable. I mean, that hundred and nineteen dollars my first month was literally. This lady wandered into the office and my, my DM took pity on me and wrote the policy and then just put my name on it so I could get paid something and not have an entire month of cold calling and door knocking. That didn't go well. So the fear is that we're going to get into this and it's not going to work and we're going to end up broke. And that almost happened to me. You know, two months in, I was already broke. I was literally eating bean burritos for breakfast and lunch every day so that I could save money. I'd buy them at the. At the discount grocers down the road. And that's what I ate just to try and get this thing to go. So every day was frightening. You know, it was. I don't know if that answers your question, but the fear is you're not going to make it. The fear is that you're not good enough and that when people tell you no, it hurts. It hurts on the inside. It's not. It's. As much as we'd like it to just be information, it's really a feeling in sales that they are saying, I'm telling you no. It's like asking a girl out 10 times, 20 times, 100 times a day and being rejected over and over again. You just eventually don't want to do it again. Yeah.

What's interesting is the idea of, and I think you're absolutely right, is that when we get a no, in my experience, there's a sense of they're saying no to me, and if I was somehow better or a different person, they would have said yes.

Yeah. Yeah. We get into sales with all these big ideas and I was the same way of, gosh, I'm a good person. People like talking to me. I can make this work. And then all of a sudden it's not working and you're getting this overwhelming rejection. And it starts to be this. Just this monster. My wife still tells the story about how every Wednesday night I would come home, sit on the living room floor and just sit there and be depressed and tell her I couldn't make it, it wasn't going to work, I didn't know what I was going to do. And just constantly down like that, it's a huge roller coaster.

And so the interesting thing is, in a lot of areas of life, there's a fear or a challenge. If we expose ourselves to a lot of it, the fear tends to diminish. We tend to say, hey, if you were to do public speaking, you get out there and you go to Toastmasters and you just find everywhere you can speak and you do it 50, 60 times. The fear might be a lot less. And that's often the case for people. However, there's something interesting you're describing here where you would go out, you know, 10, 20, I don't know how many interactions you'd have a day. And instead of it dissipating, it actually becomes more and more painful and stuck. So what do you think's going on there? Why is it different with sales?

Gosh, that's a great question. I think it's how I was just working with a guy on this yesterday, and the more I work with other people on it, the more I can see it. What I think happens is that personal piece where we take it with us, we carry that with us. So that one rejection, we now feel a little bit less than, and we get up the guts and we put ourselves out there again, and then we get hit again and we feel a little bit less than again. And so it just compounds where it's such a. I guess I read a book a while back that described sales as being one of the best, one of the best ways to figure out exactly what other people think of you. You know, there is nothing hidden there. People are going to tell you exactly what they think of you. So you. You're just putting your heart on your sleeve every single day and hearing no. It just compounds to where you just start believing this story that you're getting. You're telling yourself over and over again with that rejection of I'm not good enough. I'm really not good enough. If I was in any way good enough, somebody would have said yes by now. I must really suck at this versus public speaking or anything else. You can still get up there and Give a speech and you'll get feedback, but you can almost feel yourself improving in sales. The only way that you know if you're good is if somebody says yes. And at two months in and I had no yeses, I was starting to wonder, or I didn't wonder. I knew I wasn't any good at this. This wasn't working.

Yeah. So let's talk about that. You said something in the bio about how you transformed, how you were selling.

Yeah.

So tell me about that. What. What was the turnaround for you?

It's. You know, it's a turnaround. I learned college. I was not a very outgoing person at all. Dating, for me, did not happen in high school, and it continued to look like that was going to be my path in college. And I'll tell a bit of a story. I think there's. I think there's a good. There's a good moral here. I met this guy who was just amazing, like, outgoing, like, life of the party. I'm in this. I live in this cooperative house with a bunch of guys, and we kind of hit it off over Goldeneye, that old Nintendo 64 game. We'd play that all the time.

Oh, yeah.

So this guy was always going out with girls. And what I started to do was I started watching him, and I started just kind of talking to him. Like, what do you say to a girl when you first meet her? He says, oh, I say this, this, and this. And I thought, okay. And then I say, how do you dress? And he says, well, these are the kind of clothes I buy. And so I started, in a way, I did the outside in transformation, where I just started copying him. It started working. And I found the things that I liked that really kind of fit my personality, did more of that. And I started applying that in different areas of my life. And about two months into sales, I realized I could probably do the same thing here. And so I went online and I found a list of the top performing agents in the company. And I just called them, and I thought, what do I have to lose? If they're jerks, they're jerks. And I called them up, and I still have the legal pads. I keep them just for the sake of. They're so fun to look at, where I would literally call. And if you were one of them, I would have called you up and said, aziz, my name is Dave. I just started with farmers. I'm doing horrible. And you're very, very good, according to what I see on the corporate website. Would you tell me when you started out, how did you get going? And then I just took notes, and I literally copied everything that they said. If they said I did this kind of marketing and I walked in here and said this, I would do that exact thing. And it did two things for me. Number one, I'm doing something that someone else has used, and it's worked. And the piece on the confident side was, if it didn't work, it wasn't my fault. If it didn't work, it wasn't me. They gave me a bad idea, and so I needed to find something else. So it not only gave me better tools, but it took the pressure off of me to be the one who had to be good at sales. I didn't have to be good. I'm just going to play this role, and if it works, and I got good advice, if it didn't work, I'm going to call the next person and see if their ideas work better.

Let's pause for just one more moment, take another quick break, and be right back right after this. Have you heard about optimal self coaching? It's what Aziz teaches all of his private and group coaching clients. It helps you completely transform the way you talk to yourself in your own mind so you can instantly start feeling more confident, be more comfortable around others, and guide yourself to greater levels of career and relationship success. To learn exactly how to transform your inner Coach, go to YourConfidenceCode.com to get your copy today. That is awesome. And it just highlights the story about your friend in college with women and these people who were top sellers. It just shows the power of modeling. And I think we all do ourselves a disservice by looking at someone who's exceptional in a way that we want to be. And. And we create this barrier between us, this vaporous barrier, like, jeez, they're a different species than I am. Yeah, yeah. And when you do what you're doing, you just break down the barriers, and all of a sudden you realize that we can replicate what people do.

That's what I had to do, is I had to realize. I think part of that came up from playing sports as a kid where. When we play sports, I grew up as a gymnast. No one knows how to do gymnastics inherently. Our coach would tell us, try this, and then we would do it. If it didn't work, he'd say, okay, let's tweak it a little bit. Let's do it this way. And taking that same mentality into sales, you know, I didn't feel like a terrible person. If I couldn't get a handstand in gymnastics, you know, I just. Okay, something's not working here. What's wrong? And for some reason, in sales, we make a story out of it. So I really just took that. And like I said, I made it their fault. I took all the press, completely took no responsibility for my performance. If this isn't working, it's that guy I called yesterday and his advice was bad, and it's on him. But at the same time, I freed myself up to just, like I said verbatim, I would do exactly what they told me.

Wow. So you got some strategies, some ideas. Did it shift the way when you were in conversations with people, did it shift the way you interacted with those people and how you showed up and what you said?

At first it did. It did, definitely. So at first, it was more. I wrote down in my notes here for thinking about what we talk about today. I'm not a doctor. I just Play 1 on TV. So I would just play a role. So at first, I'm literally making up a character and kind of thinking, okay, this agent would go in and say these things, and they would act in this way. This is what they said would work. So I'm just going to go in and do that. And it was very rote. So it was very rudimentary, but it kind of got me. It got it working until eventually I came up with this little trick I would play in my own head where I literally had the mantra, this is going very well. And so no matter what the person would say to me, I have been asked to leave. I've had people sit there and roll their eyes when I walked in. Whatever it was, I would. Instead of telling myself what we normally would, which is, oh, crap, another one that doesn't want to have me here, I'm interrupting their day. They're frustrated with me, whatever. They did my mantra inside my own head. And I would just do it. I would make myself say it. And my mind was, this is perfect. This is exactly how I was hoping this would go. And then I would continue the conversation as though everything was fine. And what I found was people would start. They were very confused at first as to why it wasn't working, when they're giving me the obvious social signals that I should be leaving. And then they would start warming up to me. And I ended up getting a lot of sales from people that were not excited when I first walked in. And eventually, through just sheer ignorance, I tell my agents, you've got to be too Stupid to realize they don't want you there. And when you get that and you stay friendly and positive and just keep it light, then we'd start talking.

That is a fascinating part, I think, about sales and about the confidence that's required to be effective is it's not just getting into the conversation, it's staying in the conversation. Especially after the person has given you some indicator, obvious or subtle, hey, I don't want this. I don't need this. I can't afford this. That sounds great, but it's not the right time. Whatever it is, there's some sense of not quite right. And then there's some sort of confidence we need to have to be able to stay in that conversation. And I love it. Sounds like you. When you get that cue in your mind, you'd say, well, this is perfect. This is going great.

Yeah, yeah. I just don't accept it. I don't accept that answer, or I don't accept it in the way that it may be intended. So if you tell me, yeah, I'm not that interested right now, I go, oh, you must not understand how cool this thing is that I'm coming. You don't understand insurance. So I just need to tell you a little bit more about it. Or we just haven't. I haven't quite connected with you in the way that I meant to, so I just turn it around. I just. I literally. Stephen Covey talks about. I just would. I practice active reframing. It's not a natural thing, you know, and it feels really strange at first, but when you start doing that, then people, you know, it's. Emotions are contagious. And so if I start getting beat down and show that weakness and that fear, then they're gonna. Then that's how it's gonna go. And on the flip side, if I just pretend that this is perfect, and I couldn't imagine a better conversation to have than the one I'm having with this person. Then. Then they. In a way, they have to play along with it.

And they would tell me, can you say a little more about what active reframing is? Is it something you say out loud or just that thing that you were doing in your own mind?

It's in my mind. If you say, I'm not interested, Dave, then I can either hear this person doesn't want me or my product right now, or in my mind, I would say, here, not interested. And I would just instantly translate it. Like, if I knew another language, I would say, oh, they told me they haven't heard enough yet. I need to explain more.

Yeah. And behind that I hear is a belief of, oh, this is. They don't understand yet how amazing this product is. And so that sounds like another piece of that confidence is really believing in what you're selling. Is that right?

Yeah, that's a big one. And not backing down, having the confidence to stand behind what you're selling. So there came a point early on in my. It's funny, my district manager that I was. That I came in underneath when I started training agents, he said, please don't teach them to sell the way you did. It doesn't work for anybody else. It only worked for you. You're an anomaly. But what I did early on was I set a bar and I said, I won't ever sell somebody something I don't believe will help them. And so if I had a client sitting across from me and they wanted terrible coverage, or even now, as a coach, if I'm working with a client and they say, these are my goals and they're not goals that are really worth investing in, then I just tell them, I say, you don't need me for that. You know, for. A client comes in and says, I want. I want bare bones, minimum coverage on my. On my insurance. And I knew that would put them at risk. I'd say, that's fantastic. I recommend that you go to this guy down the street and I would pull a business card out of my desk and hand it to him. And I said, I won't write that policy because that doesn't help you. And out of. I think I had three people over my career walk out of my office with that, and two of them came back and bought from me.

So that is really powerful. What is behind that for you? Is it a value? Is it a way of wanting to be in the world? Can you tell us more about that?

Yeah, it's really. And I can even feel it in my body now. It's doing what's best for the other person. Sales is not about manipulating somebody into getting something. For me, it's about me offering something of value to them. And. And I think a lot of the times as salespeople, we put ourselves in a subservient position to the client, trying to please them and make them like us, versus showing up and saying, I have some knowledge. In my case, it was knowledge of how insurance worked and what their risks were that I can offer them, or if it's a product, and I know it's really helpful. I know this is a Good product. I know this is better than what else is out there, and we need to talk about that. I just stood firm in that, and I didn't back down on it. And it was scary at first. It's really hard to have someone say, are you crazy? I can get this cheaper somewhere else. And to be able to say, you're right, but you don't get me, and you don't get the quality that I'm offering right now. So if you want it cheaper, then I would literally, like I said, I kept business cards in my desk, and I would say, that's fantastic. Go down to Bob Reed. He's down the road. He will take great care of you. It won't be the level that I can, but if that's what you're looking for, this is the guy to talk to.

If you want cheap, think Bob Reed.

That was it. And Bob was out of business after three years, and I'm still going strong, so, you know it. I stood firm in it. And if anything, like I said, clients would leave, they'd still respect me. Most of the time when they saw I was serious, that I wasn't just going to do whatever it took to get the sale, which is all about me, I was going to do whatever it took to take care of them. Then their guard came down and they saw there was something different going on here. We could have a real conversation, and I felt great about it. So I can go home every day feeling really good that I'm helping people and doesn't matter what my numbers are. And it just. The side effect is you end up selling way more than anybody else.

Yes. Kind of one of those paradoxes when you let go and you're not so focused on me, because really, the hyper focus on me, and I got to get them, it all goes back to that, am I good enough? Motive and trying to prove something, because it's not really even about the money oftentimes. No, it's about some sense of, oh, I'm. I dodged the bullet of being not, you know, not good enough. Yeah.

Yeah. And then we end up dodging everything. We end up dodging the calls we need to make, we end up dodging the clients, and then we just start sabotaging from there and things. And things go downhill quickly.

Yeah. That is all the time we have for today's interview, unfortunately, because there is so much good stuff coming up, and I didn't want to cut anything out. So next week, we'll be diving into the rest of the interview with Dave, where We're going to look at the inner game of sales, all the fears beyond the fear of rejection, all the buttons that it pushes inside of us about asking for things directly and putting ourselves out there and being afraid of being pushy, all of these things. We're going to look at much more in depth next week in the interview, the rest of the interview. But for the interest of time, we had to stop it for today, and let's dive into your actions.

Time for action.

Your action step today is to do what Dave was saying about modeling. I mean, that is one of the most valuable things you could ever learn. That is worth hundreds of thousands of dollars if you apply what he's saying. So what I'd like you to think of is the. Who are the masters in your field now? Whether you're in sales or something else, wherever you work, whatever you do, who are the people who are excellent at what you do? And you can go big, like he did. He looked across the whole state, or you can go small. You can look for someone in your company who is exceptional. And maybe you're not even working on sales or anything like that. You're looking at the area of dating relationships. That's why you're listening to this podcast. That's why you're working on your confidence.

Perfect.

Who do you know who's exceptional at talking to women? Or let's say you're working on just general social confidence. Great. Who do you know who is really good at talking to people? Maybe you have a friend or a cousin or a relative who's just really smooth and confident and warm and friendly with people. So whoever it is, find an expert, find a model, and then go ask them questions. What do they do? How do they think about the situation? What strategies do they have? How do they handle rejection? You really want to talk to that person. And if you can do that, if you can apply what Dave suggested, it can transform your life. I've been pursuing and talking to and learning from people who are excellent in the ways that I want to be excellent for many years. It's been a major part of my journey. I'm still doing it right now, and I encourage you to do the same because it can rapidly accelerate your progress, your growth, and ultimately your income and your impact. So get out there and do that. That's your action step for today, and I look forward to speaking with you more in the next episode. Until we speak again, may you have the courage to be who you are and to know on a deep level that you're awesome. I'll talk to you soon. Thanks for listening to Shrink for the shy guy with Dr. Aziz. If you know anyone who can benefit from what you've just heard, please let them know and send them a link to shrinkforthshyguy.com for free blogs, ebooks and training videos related to overcoming shyness and increasing confidence, go to social confidencecenter.com. Sam.