HOW TO COMPOUND YOUR SUCCESS IN B2B SALES AND SELLING

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Here we go. So, habits and sales. I mean, I think I look at it as like you can either be a flywheel where it gets faster and faster or a merry-go-round where it just, you feel like it's faster and faster. What's your view?

Yeah, I read a book recently and it was talking about the merry-go-round of bad habits and it's really easy to get stuck in that bad habit cycle and in life and especially in sales. And I think the more you, you know, you don't see the results right away with habits, whether they're good or bad. So that's, that's the problem is you're not seeing these results for months or even years in some cases. So with prospecting or whatever it may be. So I think people get in their heads a little bit and they make these goals too big and they don't focus on these daily habits. And unfortunately in sales, it's really easy to have a lot of bad habits. And I have a number of ones that I still have and that I've tried to help and get better at over the years. But it's just so easy to, even once you get momentum, maybe breaking that habit to go right back into it a few weeks later. And lose that momentum?

Well, think about a bad habit. Any bad habit you have, super easy to start and really hard to break.

Why?

Because a bad habit, you get a huge reward immediately with little or no effort, and your brain goes, let's do that again. And typically the reward isn't so much. So what do you do? Brain says, Do more of it. And then you keep doing more and all of a sudden you start to notice it, whether it's eating, drinking, whatever it is. Bad habits are super easy to start, but really hard to break because our brain says, I like that. I like— let's take sugar. We've all had sugar at some point in our life, right?

And got my, got my coffee right here. Yeah.

Do you put sugar in it?

I do. I do.

Have you ever had it without sugar?

Yeah. And I don't like it very much without sugar.

But is that the taste or the feeling?

It's the feeling placebo probably. It's just in my head and I can't break out of it.

Right. Because You know, I had a, a partner sent me a box of cookies a month ago, and I don't eat sugar at all, right? Purposefully, because I like it too much. And I saw these cookies and, you know, they did it. It was nice. They sent it to me and I felt a little— I rationalized it and I ate it and, uh, tastes delicious. But you just feel it. You can just feel it go onto your system and you, and you feel the buzz and the jolt and half hour later you want another cookie. Now think about the cookie habit. How hard would that be to start? Pretty easy.

Pretty easy to start. Yep.

And when I was done with them, I started looking around.

I go, hmm.

Where can I get a cookie? And I used to have a real bad sequence. I would get up, drink too much coffee. So you're at work, work, work, work, work, work. And then after work, you're all hyped up and you go to happy hour with your friends. And what do you do at happy hour? You drink. All of a sudden, ah, brings me back down. But then all of a sudden you don't sleep well. So you're starting to see the cycle here. So you get up, you need more coffee, you need coffee through the day, and then day doesn't go well. Another happy hour. You don't sleep very well. You wake up, you don't feel refreshed, and all of a sudden it, it's not a flywheel. It, it's a, you know, going down constantly. And then all of a sudden now you have to break Or reduce coffee, reduce fear, reduce stress, increase sleeping. That's a lot.

Yeah. And it can be overwhelming and that's why it's really hard to do. And I think sales, it's so easy to fall into all those traps you just talked about because I remember, and this is when I was in my 20s, so it's easier to get away with some of this stuff, but I found myself At a certain point where I was waking up, going straight into the stressful environment of sales, going to meetings or traveling, not taking any time to myself. So I'm going straight into a really stressful environment, working 10+ hours a day, drinking a ton of coffee or energy drinks, probably at the time even worse than coffee, and traveling and entertaining customers at night. And next thing you know, it's like, man, I'm, I'm freaking burnt out. I'm running around with my head cut off and Still getting stuff done and I was able to perform, but it was not where I wanted to be. And I'm like, do I really want to keep doing this my whole career where I'm just entertaining? And then I was doing, going out on the weekends on my own too. So it's just, it's not a good cycle. And I feel like that happens pretty consistently with salespeople for whatever reason. It's like the kind of work hard, play hard mentality, and that can only get you so far, but I don't think it's as mainstream as it used to be, at least for me. So that epiphany for me was that I didn't really want to keep going down that path. So I was like, okay, how do I change my habits? How do I change maybe what I'm doing in my career and focus on other areas and, and really go there? And then when I started spending more time for myself and kind of starting the day off with a morning routine, that was a great habit that kind of got me in a good cycle of getting into these other healthy habits. And I didn't do anything crazy at the beginning. It was, I think, 10, 15 minutes to start. And then over time that just came. that kept building up and building up. And then the more of those positive things you're doing, like morning routine turns into, all right, I'm working out 5 days a week. I'm not eating out Monday through Friday and I have good stuff in my refrigerator so I don't have those temptations like your cookies. So I, I kind of had this sort of burnout period where I was just like, man, I can't keep doing this anymore. And it was a ton of those bad habits compiled together and I just started with something small, that morning routine, and it kind of put me in a whole different trajectory the last like 4 or 5 years.

That's it. And I think you need to ask yourself, am I on an upward spiral or downward spiral? And let's now take it to bad habits in sales. And I'm working in one of my courses with this entrepreneur who's a recruiter, and he's gone from having a team To— he anticipated a recession. All his clients anticipated a recession. And now he's kind of a frontline individual contributor. And but what he knows is the phone. And we were sitting down on a one-on-one and he goes, yeah, I did 150 dials, 2 pickups. And I'm like, do you really— was that worth your time? He goes, it's my system. That's how he works. Now, a manager would love that, but he's an entrepreneur, so he doesn't get no base salary. He has to produce results, not activity. And I think today managers have made activity a distraction instead of an action. And it's terrible because now Reps have all these bad habits. They feel as long as they're hitting buttons, they're working. But that— the correlation is not very tight anymore. What he wants is those 2 pickups, but given 8 hours to get 2, and I'm showing him ways of getting 10 times, 20 times that, and— but it's different. He has to break a habit to start a new one. His brain is so— I'm not comfortable with that. His brain isn't saying, oh, that won't work. It's like, that's just different. When I'm doing the dials, I feel engaged. I feel connected to it. He thinks dialing is a good habit. And it used to be. when people pick up the phone and when you had people's cell numbers and they knew you, but it's no longer in his case that effective.

And maybe that's why it's a little challenging because 25 years ago, maybe it did work and people still have that stuck in their head and they think it's still a good, good habit to your point, but it's not the case. And I can attest to your student there because I'm doing the entrepreneur thing and I, I mean, there's no way I would ever do the 100 dials a day just for my own sanity. And it would, I would be done after a few days doing that, but also just being effective. So when you're, when you have a lot on the line with commission or being an entrepreneur, you think about things a lot differently and you want to be way more effective. And it's, if you're doing the 100 calls plus a day or the emails, I mean, you just turn into, everything's generic. Nothing's customized. You're a robot. You're going to look like a commodity. You're doing what everybody else is doing. And it's just not a habit that I want to get into, and it's definitely not a good habit. And then I think that just comes down to at least he had a system. He wants to make 150 calls, which is crazy, but most people wing it out there. They don't have a plan or a system, and then they just keep making these same mistakes, which are all kind of these micro habits because they don't have some overarching system or process to do that. So whether it's how often am I going to prospect, or how am I going to prospect, how many hours a day, but just All these different things that go into the system. I think that was, I used to kind of just go off my, my confidence and my previous success and I still did well, but I didn't really have a system. And when I started having to get new business and go into these new markets and new industries, I realized it's, it's much harder to, to do that. And you really have to have a system if you want to, you know, be in that top 5 or 10% with, with whatever you're doing. But it all comes down to those daily things. And I, I think again, People make it too big in their head, but if you can just do those daily things, have a system, have a process that's effective, then you can really move the needle. But it's gonna take, it's not gonna happen next week. Like if I start this week doing this new prospecting, I'm not gonna see results right away. It's gonna take some time to build it up. And that's, I think people get discouraged and they give up after a week or two.

Yeah, because it's easy to give up because nothing in sales works 100% of the time. If you can get it to work 20, 30, 40% of the time, you'll be a millionaire easily. So our brain goes, well, it didn't work. That doesn't mean it doesn't work, period. It means it didn't work at that moment with that person. And I think people eliminate the most important habit of thinking and not thinking like a sales rep, but thinking like a client. I did a recent post on empathy and I tried to position it as mind reading instead of using the word empathy. Because salespeople, when they hear the word empathy, what do they think? They think sympathy. Then they think, I'm thinking, so I am thinking like the client. No, no, you're thinking like a salesperson thinking like a client. And then you have salespeople go, oh, as long as you know the why, you're all set. It's like, no, that's one element of a deal. How about why now? How about how are we going to get it? How about how are we going to get it paid for? Well, I'll think about that when I, when I'm in that trap. No, you have to think about it before you get into the trap so you can prevent it from falling into the trap.

I was talking to a gentleman recently and he sells in the utility space and they were a newer company that's more disruptive. Disruptive and they are trying to break all these legacy players and utilities. And he was saying his product service has a 20-year lifecycle. So anytime they go into these places, their champion or champions have to approve it for 20 years. So you talk about the ultimate putting your neck out there. He was literally saying that his champions and people that were pushing it would be putting their job on the line to bring his product in. So I mean, that's like the ultimate kind of empathy there is you really have to put yourself in their perspective and see what they're going up against. And they could be really putting their neck out there potentially too. And you have to kind of think where they're coming from. That's a pretty extreme example. That's not going to be every case. But that really made me think of, man, I mean, sometimes when people bringing in new stuff and advocating for you, I mean, they're really putting themselves out there and they have to almost have a political campaign to get it done. And that was just a great story because it made me think of all the times where I was pushing people and I didn't really think about what they had to go through internally. And, and, you know, when I dealt with Home Depot to these hospitals, I mean, it's brutal from a political standpoint and all the bureaucracy. So if you can understand what they're going through and become an expert in that and try to help them navigate that, that's where you're going to really be elite from a sales standpoint.

Yeah, because one of the questions I always ask is, what do you think they're feeling? Right now. And people always look at me like deer in the headlights. And I go, if you don't know what they're feeling, how do you know what to say? Because everyone knows that people buy emotionally and justify it with logic. But everyone works on logic, not emotion. And if you don't understand the emotion that person's going through, in your case, It's scary. And in most cases, we're selling to end users of our product, but they have zero budget authority and it's over, say, $50K. So it's got to go pretty high up. And the only time they've had this visibility is probably at the Christmas party. And the CEO or VP maybe has heard your name go by. But not much more. So that's what they're feeling. Think of the last time you went and talked to your CEO or the CEO of a client, and it's pretty scary, isn't it? It's intimidating.

For sure.

You're nervous. And if they say no or no, not, not now, how do you react?

Well, I probably either get defensive or get desperate and try to push something or give some price incentive or—

No, no, the client. The client.

Oh, oh yeah. Yeah. Okay.

How would you feel?

I, I wouldn't feel that good about it.

Yeah. You cave.

Yep.

And, and guess what? That's the number one cause of no decision. Everybody thinks it's the end user changed their mind. No, no, the end user didn't change their mind. They didn't have the guts, the preparation, and the skill to convince somebody else of it. So that's what they're feeling. So what do you do? Use more logic? That's not gonna— no, that doesn't change it. You know, do you have any fears? Roller coasters, skydiving, anything like that? Ooh.

Yeah. I mean, I, heights for, I'm not a big, big fan of heights even though I live in a high-rise. So that's a bad idea. But yeah, I'm not a big fan of heights.

So.

Yeah. Let's say you're in Dubai and, or wherever they have those glass floors on those tall buildings and you can step out and look straight down. Yep. Now, does logic really solve that problem? That glass is 6 inches thick. It could hold 1,000 pounds. Does that make you feel any better?

No.

Not enough. Maybe a little.

Not enough.

Yeah. So when you're out there, all that logic doesn't help you. But somebody else who talks you through the fear, you know, gets you to understand that you've done this before, you can do it again. It's the right thing. How do we get you comfortable with it and get your leadership comfortable with it?

It's almost like you have to guide them through that, be a guide. You know, you've been there before, you've done that, you exude that confidence, and you kind of, you don't push them, you kind of just guide them through it. I was reading another book. I don't know what's going on with all my books lately, but it was like Lewis and Clark, and they basically were exploring the whole western part of the US, and they needed guides to help them. And it was, you know, Sacagawea was the famous guide that kind of got them across. Otherwise, they would have got lost and had all these issues. So if you don't— same thing with the customer— if you don't kind of guide them through that, both on the, you know, the business side with those CEOs and your champions, to give them the confidence, because ultimately you're trying to make them look good. You want to make your customers look good. So when they have to go up against stuff, like, how do you prepare them the best way? And I think that was when I always thought of myself as a project manager and trying to push things along. and guide them through it. That always seemed to help. And by the time you continuously do that, you almost are kind of working with them and almost at their company. You feel like you're an employee of their company at times depending on how big the deal was. And that was, I think, where you really got in front of those CEOs and you made it happen.

Yeah. And I think also today a lot of salespeople behave like they're in the passenger seat instead of the driver's seat. of their career. So they keep looking around for the driver to say, hey, hit the gas. It's like, no, that's your foot that has to hit the gas. Oh, what about my manager? Well, you're in the driver's seat. Don't drive over the pothole if you don't want to drive over the pothole. Oh, easier said than done. Well, you're in the driver's seat. Get in the seat, put your hand on the steering wheel, put your foot on the accelerator. And it's safer to imagine that you're in the passenger seat because you can blame the driver. The problem is you're the driver and you're not accepting the blame. Once you decide that you're the driver, then it's a little bit scary, but it's a little bit empowering because now you're the one that can put the foot on the gas. You can steer it. But you're also responsible for what you hit along the way.

And that's probably why people want to stay in the passenger seat is because you have to be accountable and you have to be real with yourself and recognize the bad habits of not prospecting. Or for me, I was saying yes too much and my days were just exploded with meetings and all this stuff that I wasn't prioritizing. So you have to be real with yourself. And take that driver's seat, which not everyone is cut out for. And then you have to have a lot of uncomfortable conversations with yourself to really overcome that. But it's almost like a freeing effect when you're real with yourself and you're not lying. You know, that weight's a little bit off your shoulders. You recognize that you have some things you got to work on, but you're not blaming other people. And it's kind of more in your hands, which is a lot of pressure for sure. But it's a much better place to be, I think, whether you're in commission sales or, or whatever, and you're kind of self-sufficient, which I think most managers hope— well, I wouldn't say most managers, but a lot of them probably micromanage. But if you're self-sufficient and a good sales rep, that's what people like underneath them because you're gonna make them look good. And, and, and that's how the mentality I've tried to have for a while. But it didn't— wasn't easy to get to that point. And I think you had— it's really being accountable and having those tough conversations with yourself, which is not, not fun.

Yeah, because A lot of people just sit around listening to their manager, looking for their manager for direction. And I remember doing a ride-along with my manager once, and this one rep called him no less than 4 times on the way to the client and no less than 4 times on the way back to the airport. And I remember him hanging up the phone and we'd look at each other and go, And he'd tell me, he goes, yeah, he's kind of high touch. And if I talked to my manager once a week, it was a rarity. It was usually every other week to give a forecast review because he felt obligated to give me direction. Hadn't been to the account, has no context. And what I really wanted was his help internally. Getting either product enhancements approved, pricing, extended, whatever it was that would help close the deal that the company could do. That's what I needed his help with. You know, blind advice, I didn't find very insightful. But this other rep needed to— they were talking about each little conversation point, and the manager just felt obligated to say something. But the rep isn't thinking. And guess what happens if the rep loses that deal? Who do they blame?

The rep.

Well, the rep blames the manager. The manager never takes any responsibility. It's your deal. I was just giving advice. It's your fault. And let's face it, you don't close the deal, you don't get paid. And that was my model. Is I looked at every day, it's like, am I doing something to move my income up or is it going to move my income down? And I used to have a column in my spreadsheet where I would have the commission on the deal. And I did that to both incentivize myself to do the right thing and to keep the tuition cost of the lessons of not doing the right thing. Because if I lost the deal, that's how much it cost me. And that was the, what the tuition was. And a lot of people, that's kind of harsh. Well, it's true. How else are you going to learn? Oh, win or learn. Yeah. As soon as I hear that, I know that's someone who's never learned anything because they're just really comfortable losing.

Or they have a high base and they're worried about it. They're not really trying to close anything. But yeah, that, I mean, that's a great way to, it's a painful way to learn the mistakes or to incentivize yourself not to make the mistakes. So I think that's a great idea. And I started keeping a tracker of all my mistakes and some of these bad habits that way I'd remind myself, because it's easy. It doesn't matter how much you talk about it. If you don't write it down and keep track of it, then you're going to keep doing this stuff over and over again. So I have Sticky notes on my desk. I have a Word document that has my biggest mistakes from deals. So I have all these bad habits and reminders on my mirrors and stuff because that's how it just keeps me in that kind of mode and doing stuff daily to try to get out of it. And I also was very self-sufficient, but if you can find out ways to use your manager or other people to help knock heads around internally to get stuff done, I mean, I think that's where you can usually And really utilize them. And sometimes I probably was too self-sufficient. I didn't ask for help sometimes where they could have helped me get that political capital internally to get something approved or get a price reduced or whatever. So I probably made that mistake of not utilizing all the resources I had because I was trying to do too much on my own. So that was just one note I wanted to say about those A-player reps are probably really good, but then they could also utilize their manager for some of that other stuff internally, potentially.

Yeah.

And I think you've got to look at what you do because once you start analyzing your day, you know, keep track of it. You know, how much time did I spend? What time did I actually start doing productive work? How long did I do it for? Who'd I do it with? What was the best return I got? What was a waste of time? Would I do it again or was I Not good in judging that activity, you know, because I tend to be a little too harsh. You know, I rarely take conversations or calls or meetings where it isn't clear there's a business objective, because if I did, I'd spend the whole day doing it. But I probably miss some. You know, I've got this one guy chasing me right now. It looks interesting and stuff, but I still don't understand how I would use it. But he's been very persistent. A lot of value, not pitching, a lot of value. And I go, maybe I should look into it because it might be something, not this year, but the next year. And I was thinking about it all night and I should give it a shot. But that's— each of us has got to learn that. Are you too harsh and critical and stingy with your time? Or are you too generous with it? Because what we have is our time and our skill level, and the skill level takes a long time to develop. So you better use your time really well. And thinking about those stupid-ass enablement meetings and things that take up a lot of time and have zero value— Oh, but it kills 3 hours. You don't want to kill hours. You want to close deals. So, and I always used to keep track, is that how much time did I spend today face-to-face or live with a client? That's a great KPI.

Hmm.

Because clients don't spend time with you unless they want to. They have a choice. It's not their job to talk to us. It's our job to talk to them. So if they are talking to us, we're hoping that there's something behind that. You have a chance to create something behind that. And I think a lot of people just want to talk to the most people possible. That's not a good KPI.

I started doing something recently where I think about my day when I'm planning it out and I'm, I say if I only had 2 hours, Tomorrow, what would be the most effective thing that I could focus that 2 hours on? And that's sort of my number one goal for the day is whatever that goes into that 2 hours. And I, I've had many times where I'm too generous with my time, like you were saying, probably still do as well. I'm not up to your level as far as the inquiries by any means, but when you can really figure that out, say no more and really prioritize it, that's, that's gonna be a game changer for any salesperson.

And to become great at sales, the best way is to model somebody who already has become good at sales and to hear other people who have become great at sales and the journey that they're going through, the false beliefs, the misnomers, the mindset issues, all of this stuff that gets in our way between where we are and And the income that we want. Let's face it, we're in sales because we're money motivated, we're competitive, we want to be better every day than we were yesterday. And how do we do that? Hmm, just really, you know, read a book, listen to a podcast. That's good. Good start. I like it. But then you have to take action. And then you want both tactical and strategic ideas. You want mindset. You want strategy. You want to understand how companies buy. You want really deep content and examples, case studies, so that you can learn from other people's mistakes.

That's what I'm here for.

I'm here for you to learn from my mistakes. And boy, do I got a lot of them. So go to b2brevenue.com. Sign up for the courses. There's 2 major ones. Start the conversation, get the meeting, fills up your pipeline, gets rid of that problem of, oh, I don't have enough leads. I don't have enough meetings. It gets those conversations started with the people you want to talk to. Now it's not about a pitch. It's about a conversation. Now everybody thinks of conversations when you're talking or you're online at the same time, or you're on the phone or Zoom at the same time. That's not a conversation. A conversation's when the client is talking about what they care about, what they're interested in. And that is what we call qualification, where we can sense where are they and how do we build up that curiosity into interest, into urgency to get a deal. And these are skills that we need. They're lifelong skills that we need in sales. And then how do we get a deal closed? Yes, anyone can take an order, but what if they don't know how to get it done? You got a new account where you're trying to get a big change done internally. What are the issues? If you're not planning that through, odds are it's not going to get done no matter how much your champion wants it. So winning the complex sales solves that problem for you. Why waste all your time on these false positives or these no decisions? Because they don't pay very well. They pay 0.0. What you want to do is pay a lot. So sign up today. Invest in yourself. You're the asset in sales. Quit waiting for somebody else to approve it or train you. See if you can get it expensed. That should be your first sales obstacle. Your first sales challenge is how do you get your company to pay for it? Just go down, tell your manager you want to do this. I put a little example email in the show notes right below here. Just swipe up and take a look at that. And if they won't, you got to ask yourself, why won't you?

Why won't you?

Why won't you? Oh, it takes time. Well, you work all day.

You're working wrong all day.

Why not improve that? There's the time right there. Oh, the money, Brian. It's money. Well, you make more money if you become better in sales. And Start the Conversation pays for itself the first week because you're going to get at least 2 meetings Just learning from the very basics of it. Closing the Complex Sale will pay for itself 100 times over. Students in it tell me it's the best money they ever spent because they now have control over their deals. And it doesn't end.

Some give up.

Some give up after they win their first deal and they think they've got enough. No, come back, come back, keep going. You can get even bigger deals, more deals, faster deals. That's what it's all about. Sign up today. Put the excuses away. Yeah, excuses feel good, but they're expensive. Excuse— you know what the excuses are costing you? Tens, 50, maybe a couple hundred thousand dollars a year in lost income.

Really?

Yeah. The difference between where you are today— let's say you're making $150,000. Decent, decent income. But you know, there's other people in your industry making $300K, $400K, $500K. Well, how are you going to do that? You all think it's just about getting a better job, a better territory, a better manager. They can help. Go do that.

Then what happens?

It's still you there with those leads, trying to close those deals and Do you have the game? Few people do. Everyone thinks they do. Why not prove it? The market tells you what you're worth.

Accept it.

Now become better. And the way to become better is to improve every day. Really make a daily routine of learning and developing because it's not At the knowledge level. You have to become unconsciously competent at these skills, which takes time, repetition, and emotion. And I show you how to do it, how I did it, how I've taught hundreds of people to do it. But you have to want to because I can't force you. A lot of people wish I could. So do I, but I can't.

So sign up today.

We'll see you next time.