HOW TO MAXIMIZE YOUR ENERGY AND FOCUS TO MAKE MORE IN B2B SALES

When I first got into sales, there was this guy on the team. He was much older, probably 10 years older than the rest of us. So, we always looked at him as the guy who had the most experience. But he was kind of burnt out. And every time he wasn't successful, he had a great reason for it. But of course, that reason was something that he had no control over. The leads suck, the customer changed, somebody left the company, all these things. Territory's terrible. And one day, one of the other reps came up to me and he goes, uh, you should stop hanging around with him. And I go, why?

He goes, that guy—

you know, they had a word for it back then— S-bird. Meaning that he always had a turd, an excuse, something to dump his problems on some other department. Marketing wasn't doing this. His sales engineers sucked, didn't do the demo right. Somebody messed up the time. It was never his fault. Yet he never really did very well. But again, he had a great attitude. An excuse for it. And he was very articulate at it. And you could tell it made him feel better. And I'd hear it and I'd go, well, yeah, that happens. There was some truth to it. It wasn't that it was a lie. It was that it didn't matter. The problem we have in sales is there's so many things that we could focus on. And our instincts naturally say focus on the things that aren't us. We deflect. If you ever watch an argument in your life with other people that you're not emotionally attached to, what you'll see is 2 people deflecting and then exaggerating, uh, to the nth extent of what the other person is saying. And both people are not hearing or caring. what the other people are saying. That's their ego taking over. They, instead of sitting down and saying, well, help me understand that. What I heard was this, but I don't think I heard what you meant. What do you really mean so I can understand? Kind of that compassion, a little bit of empathy, really trying to pull it out. And This is kind of one of the quintessential problems that we have when we try and develop ourselves as salespeople. We run into a catch-22. We want to become better, but to become better, we have to reflect and take ownership that we're not perfect.

Okay.

One of the great pivot points in my career was when I started First, trying to understand what fault I had in it. Why? Because that I have control over, that I can change, instead of rationalizing why what I did was acceptable and okay. Because what, what trumped everything for me was that I was in sales to make money. I could do something else. But I could do something in sales and make twice as much. And the logic to me was clear. I could work half as many years, or I could live twice as better. That was up to me. And the only thing that was really in my way was me. Yes, the world works the way the world works. I have to adapt to it. And I think You know, maybe it's today, but it's always been this way that everybody wants the world to work their way. And I wish it did.

I really do. My world would be better.

But it works its way, and we have to adapt to it. And this may seem obvious until you face it. And we may be able to see this in others, but we can't see it in ourselves. And it's something that we have to deal with every day because certainly the complex sale is counterintuitive, meaning it goes completely against our intuition. And when you have something that isn't well understood by even your manager and your VP, the complex sale— yes, if it's inbound and it's a repeat order, everybody understands that. I'm talking about cold outbound, trying to sell into a new account. That process, we know how we like to be, but it's never that way. It's the way the world works. And we have a lot of levers and pulleys that we can use, but we still don't have 100% control over it. Lots of influence depending on your skill and where you want to take it. But our instincts are 100% off. We want it to happen fast. We want it to be smooth. We think it's logical. Throw all that out the window. There's ingredients of all of that in it, but that's not how it works. And when we don't understand how something works, what do we do?

Accept it?

No.

No!

We fill it in. And here's the big mistake. We fill it in with hypothesis and witchcraft and hoping and assuming instead of analysis and asking people who have been through it before. Because it isn't a clear straight line.

It'd be nice if it was, but it's not.

It's much like those little memes that they put on LinkedIn that how we think success works and how it really works. It is kind of this weird jagged line, but there are ingredients. There's— there are morsels that we do have control over and a lot that we have influence over. Sorry about the long intro, but I really want to not to minimize this discussion that we have on today's show. I want you to kind of be open-minded and first notice it in others, because this is what helped me, because it's easier to see what's wrong with others than it is to see where there's room for improvement in ourselves. I would do a matrix on all the reps that I knew— the best ones, the okay ones, and the, and the rest. And I would put the characteristics of them. And then I would say, well, who's like an A in presentation? Or who's an A in rapport building? Who's an A in trust building? Who's an A in dealing with executives? And then I said, then I study their style. And then I contrast it against the Bs and the Cs. And from that, I would kind of prioritize the things that I would work on. And I highly encourage you to do this. Instead of constantly deflecting and expecting the world to spoon-feed you. Those days are over. Sales is the exact opposite of what we've seen in the classroom and in college. It's not about sitting in a nice row and listening. It's about participating. It's about asking about the things that you don't understand. It's about discussion and debate and Engagement. It's not about mindlessly cooperating. And I think today what we see in sales, you're either mindlessly cooperating or you're out. What we have to do is create these events that we want in our life instead of just trying to find it at a new, a new job. If you really want to become great at sales, we offer 2 major courses: Start the Conversation, Get the Meeting, And closing the complex sale. So it solves the 2 major problems that we have in B2B— getting that first meeting and taking that first meeting all the way from that meeting to closure. And now we, for the last year, we've been offering it through certified trainers on site. So if your team, and you can convince your manager, or you are a manager and you want your team to go to the next level, To quit thinking in this brain-dead cadence-focused world that we have today, that thinking that the objective is to hound people on as many channels simultaneously as possible. That's not selling, that's retargeting. Sorry guys, that's a marketing thing that's been around for 10 years. That's what people have been doing. We have on, on the sales side, we have to have a conversation. Most of the stuff we sell People are not going to understand until you have a conversation. They're not going to become interested until you have a conversation. Remember, interest finds us. The idea of prospecting isn't what it was 5 years ago. Today, if people want, need, or feel pain, they go and search for a solution. Why wouldn't they? Unless they haven't reached that level yet. Those are the people we want to get, and I teach you how to do that. Let's get into the interview and I'll sum it up at the end.

Here we go.

Do you often fall into a trap of focusing in on a bunch of stuff that you don't have control over, but you're using it as a reason why you're not making progress?

It's happened to me many times, especially in sales. So I have several stories over the years where it kind of took control of me for a while, where I was so consumed with things that were outside of my control in my sales job that it was just kind of dragging me down and making me not very productive and very negative. And you just get in kind of a bad spot. So there's many times where I was focused on stuff I couldn't control. And then I started reading something recently, The Daily Stoic by Ryan Holiday, and it's just all these daily kind of stoicism type things. But one of the big things with stoicism is to focus on what you can control and not what you can't control. It's kind of like the obstacle is the way type thing. So I've, I've been a huge fan of that and it kind of just flips the script a little bit because a lot, I think in life, especially in sales, we get so consumed with things you can't control or you can't change and it drives people crazy, but you're never going to make any progress with it. So why not focus on what you can actually do to move the needle for yourself or for your territory? So. perspective, but you have to think about it. Otherwise, you can fall into those traps pretty easily.

Yeah. And I think this is something, if you're not really doing it today, you gotta do it because managers are looking for this when they're hiring. You know, it's called the locus of control, whether you view and take ownership of the things that you can control, your time, your focus, Your energy, your skill set. Everyone says, oh, my manager won't let me. And I'm like, well, is your manager there with you right now? Does your manager tell you what to think, how to feel? They affect it. Okay, okay. Yeah. And this, this is a— it feels good when you do that. I mean, the water cooler crowd, reps who migrate to that, I've never seen be successful. At club, you're not gonna see a bunch of people complaining about this or that or something else. And you can say it's luck or whatever, who knows what it is. But if you don't have control over it, you might have a little influence, but not much. The economy, Not much influence yet. You know, some of my best years have been during recessions. I don't know why. I didn't do anything magical because we don't need the whole economy to make our number. You know, most of us just need $1 million, $2 million of revenue a year. Find out what's the easiest, smartest way to get that million. Or $2 million instead of complaining about it because that's taken up your time and your energy and your focus.

And that's probably one of the biggest ones you hear is the economy excuse over the years for sure. When that happens, that's, that's number one probably at the top. And there's a lot of things with supply chain since the pandemic and all this stuff, backorders. I mean, Your territory and quota. I mean, I've had all those kind of get the best of me at times. I think one of the ones that bothered me the most and, and kind of consumed me was when I worked for a bigger company, the way my territory was set up compared to others and the way the math didn't make sense. And it was split up and I would close something and some of it would go to somebody else. And I just started, it was a really big company, so it was a battle that I was probably never gonna win no matter how good I was at, at the time. But I tried to, win that battle and try to get my territory shored up. But then I just got so consumed with these other people's territory and what they were doing, what they were closing, how much money they're making. I lost sight of what I could actually do that year. I still had a good year, but I wasted a lot of time driving myself crazy trying to fix my territory in a— that could be possible in a smaller company, but at the time at the bigger company, it's just a battle I was probably never going to win. So, and, and it was just putting me in kind of a negative type of mindset because I was worried about other people's territories. So there's, There's a million ways it can happen in sales and it can be luck to your point, who's in Presence Club, who's at the top, or, you know, who knows why they're there, but you also don't know how much work they put in to get there too. So it's kind of, you can see both sides of it. So if you're so worried about other people, you just need to focus on what you can actually do to get better with your territory. And if, hey, if your territory is not good and you don't like the company or whatever's going on, then maybe you take control of trying to find something else that is a better fit for you too.

Yeah, and I think a lot of people do that, and that might be the answer, but it might be more of the same. Yeah, I don't know. And, you know, I used to— you know, you start interviewing because it feels good. Somebody wants you, somebody's willing to do something for you, they value you. That feels good. But are they going to give you a good territory? I never got a good territory when I started a new company. You know, if it was a startup where, oh, you got a great big geography, but there's zero customers, zero marketing, is that a good territory? I don't know. It might be a great territory, but I think Like a lot of salespeople, new is exciting. New is a good dopamine hit. But the problem is in 9 months you either produce or they get rid of you. I mean, that's pretty much how it works, you know, because I, I get hit up all the time. Hey, can I be on your show? I look at their profile and they haven't had a single job for more than a year and a half. And I'm like, how much do you know about sales? You know, 5 companies a year and a half.

I don't know.

I don't know you. You might be a genius, who knows? But I would think there'd be a little bit more sticking there, you know, because if you did a lot in a year and a half, something must have been working already, or the deals were small or whatever. And I think today the downside of social media is you see a lot of people bragging. You know, how much I make and how I'm a genius.

I'm this, I'm that.

And you're like, oh, maybe I'm in the wrong field. And you might be, but, you know, jumping around, is that really the right solution? It might be an immediate feel-better solution, but it might not be a great solution because if you add yet another 9-month job onto your resume, does that increase your marketability or decrease it?

Definitely gonna decrease it. Definitely gonna decrease it. And to your point, it's also risky going to new companies and going to startups. I've had my own experience with that and it didn't work out quite well. And at the end of the day though, I mean, there were a lot of things that were happening that were out of my control with why maybe it wasn't going as well, but it was in my control that I made that decision. So the sooner I realized, hey, I need to be accountable about making this decision and I'm the one that wanted to go to this startup and I knew the risks involved. Didn't work out. Hey, let's kind of move forward. Still painful. Not a lesson that you necessarily want to learn. I would tell other people to learn, but it, the sooner I was accountable about it and I realized what I actually, the actions I took to do it, then it kind of just took the weight off my shoulders and I kind of moved forward rather than blaming them for all this stuff that was going on, which was really out of my control anyway. So. I think you have to be careful with going to the startups or hopping around and have to know the risks involved with it. Also, I think the people you surround yourself with in sales, whether it's teammates or your manager, people within the company, to your point, that water cooler crowd, if you're always hanging out with those people that are talking about other people or complaining about the leadership or complaining about whatever it is, I mean, you're just gonna get stuck into that too. So I think in sales you have to kind of line yourself up with the right people because everybody likes to gossip and talk, especially these bigger companies. So you have to be mindful of who you're talking to, who you're working with. If you are trying to climb the ladder and move up into leadership roles in sales, I mean, politics are a big part of it. So you have to understand sort of where you're focusing your time and energy. So I, there's also been times where I didn't line up with the right people necessarily. And anytime I go to a new place or company, I'm always trying to kind of see those, those high flyers, people that you want to be around that are kind of knocking heads and making things happen because that's the people you're gonna learn from. Or if you're trying to get promoted and work up, In a company, you need to be kind of latched onto some people like that too.

Yeah. Because you got to also go, you know, what type of persons does my manager want? Because you don't have control over your manager, but you have control over what they see of you. Meaning, you know, the biggest thing I hear is, oh, I need to make 50 dials. Well, it's pretty easy to fake 50 dials. I did it. Your manager did it.

Their manager did it.

Everyone's done it since day one. Now you can fight them on it, or you can actually do 50 dials that produces nothing and spends your whole day, or you can make it appear that way. And this might seem, you know, crazy for somebody to say this, but it's like, cut the crap, right? And I did a video on the worst excuse in the world was blaming your manager for something. Then I got a bunch of managers who said, well, they gotta do this. And I go, oh, and I've just put a little micromanager with a little finger pointing up at their comment because no manager in their right mind wants you to be a little robot. It's a, there's a structure or cadence that they have. They kind of want you to follow it, but they only care about the results. I can't tell you the number of, you know, annual, you know, kickoff banquets that I've been to where the top rep, if they opened the CRM once that year, it was a surprise. And usually people were joking about it. I never saw the guy who had the prettiest dashboard and KPI completion. That's a sign that people don't understand sales. It's not a sign that they do. And a lot of— and it's a good red flag when you're interviewing with a manager who focuses only on that data-driven. The only data they care about is revenue. Everything else is to justify existence.

And it's still gonna be your fault as a sales rep if you don't hit the numbers and you're gonna get the one who gets fired. It's, it's, it's not, at some point it would go up to the manager, but you're gonna be the one that has to be accountable to that. So you might as well, whatever, say whatever you need to say, but get, get stuff done. Because to your point, all that matters is, is hitting the numbers and making it happen. No one really cares how you get there. And that's, it's always been like that. If you're doing well, people tend to leave you alone and let you do your thing, which is great. That's one of the biggest benefits of sales is kind of Having that entrepreneurial lifestyle and making your own schedule and all that type of stuff. The other thing that are sometimes out of your control is you're going to have bad days, you're going to have obstacles, you're going to lose deals, you're going to have all these ups and downs, and and that's stuff that's happening to you. But how you react to it, you can control. But that's tough because it's easy to let it overwhelm you. You lose a deal that was going to make your year, and you have so much investment into it that it just that bad. deal turns into a bad month, into a bad year, and it's just a trickle effect. So there's a lot of things that happen to us that we can't control, but we can control how we react. And, you know, take, take a day or whatever. If you lose a big deal or something bad happens, do whatever you need to do to kind of reboot. But then understand, well, maybe don't have all your eggs in one basket, but also like, how do you get back on track and kind of have a plan for that? Because otherwise it's easy to get sucked into that negative mentality and letting those bad days turn into Bad months, et cetera. So I, I've learned that too, is you have to vent a little bit when stuff like that happens, but you also have to kind of get back on track and not let it completely derail you. Because I mean, what, what I do now, and if you're in any type of commission sales job, I mean, if you lose something, it's, it's painful. There's no doubt because it's kind of your livelihood a little bit. So it can be tough, but you still have to kind of manage it the right way. Otherwise you're just gonna burn out and, and drive yourself crazy.

Yeah. And I, I can't tell you the number of times I've heard, I did everything possible. That's a rationalization. You just threw away that education because there's, there's still some lesson in there, no matter how, you know, hidden it might be. We tend to fall into these traps. We give proposals too quick. We believe the champion's the decision maker, all this stuff. And we tend to find out when they have to do something. And I think your point about talking to somebody is critical. And even if it's just talking to, you know, your phone to record it every day, which is one of my habits, it gets me verbalizing what's going on in my life and gets me thinking.

I like that. That's like kind of like your version of journaling.

It's my version of journaling. You know, I have my AirPods in. I don't have to pick up a pen. I don't even have to be near my phone. I can walk around the house talking about, you know, what went right, what went wrong, how to modify my day. Because now I'm, I'm really grading my weeks as well to kind of come up with a structure. Because the days are good, but there's weekly issues as well. And I did something recently because this summer I was trying to increase my speed in running, and I've been running competitively since I was a freshman in high school. So, and people say, well, you don't need a running coach. I go, well, my speed is not improving. I mean, the work is up here. The results are down here. I'm doing something wrong. So I got this running coach, which people would say, come on, it's one foot in front of the other, Burns. What are you doing? You know? Yeah, I watch the videos, all this stuff. Well, guess what? He goes, are you doing lunges? It's like you're stiff and your legs aren't moving at the pace. It looks like your quads aren't— No, no, no. I do squats. Every other day, religiously. He goes, yeah, but that's not a lunge. I go, lunges hurt my right knee. And he goes, well, that's why you have to do them. And I go, I can't do— I go, don't start with a full lunge, just do a little bit. And within 3 weeks, there was a remarkable change in my speed. And he was like, are you rolling?

No.

Doing the foam roller? I go, I got a couple of them. I didn't ask you if you have them. He asked me, do you use them daily? And I go, no, it hurts. That's why I wasn't doing it. Now, you can laugh at me, but we're all doing this. We're all kind of skipping things, ignoring things, augmenting them to the things that we do like because we like them, and skipping the things that we don't like. But it required, you know, it's Solomon's paradox where somebody who's viewing it Can see the obvious answer, while somebody who's doing it can't see it because they don't want to see it. Now ask yourself: How many of those things do you have in sales? Right? You're comfortable being busy versus effective. You're calling high when you shouldn't be calling low, or low when you're calling high. You're you're spamming instead of. Being a little bit creative with connecting them. You're rushing and pouncing instead of taking your time, build up a relationship with the person. You're thinking about things as a rep instead of as a client, and all of a sudden the lights will go on. But the, the likelihood that you'll find that— maybe eventually, but Probably somebody else could see it like this.

Exactly. I mean, I, that's why I kind of got into coaching and mentoring and with the right people. I think if you can find a sales program, I took yours years ago and that was good to finally get perspective and it kind of had a lot of epiphanies and it made sense. And if you don't kind of have somebody that you can kind of trust that you respect, that has done stuff that you've done before, that can kind of give you some candid feedback in a maybe a kind way, but they give you direct feedback of where you need to work on. It's gonna be tough to hear it probably at times, but that's gonna help you not repeat it in the future. So if you don't do that with a coach or a friend who's an accountability partner, it could be a spouse, maybe your spouse is in sales too and they can beat it up a little bit. Whatever it is, you're gonna keep repeating those mistakes and then, then that is gonna be out of your control, or you're gonna think it's outta your control. But if you actually do the accountability and you have someone tell you, then it becomes in your control because you don't keep repeating it over and over again. But probably most people don't do that, and then they just assume it's outta their control and it's whatever excuse it is, but they can actually kind of do that. So it's sort of like the inputs you, you put in your life too. I mean, you know, what are you doing to, to get better? Whether it's being active, like what you were talking about, or getting your mind better, or, Embracing feedback in the right way and trying to improve all these things that are uncomfortable for people. But it's the only way you can get better, especially in sales. So it's sort of how I look at it, but it didn't, it didn't happen right away. I mean, this took years to kind of get to that point where I learned a lot of these lessons and now it's, I wish I knew all this stuff when I started when I was 22. Easy to say that, but I mean, goodness gracious, I would've taken over the world if you know this stuff now. So it's, I wish, I wish people Good. You know, it's when you, you see young people in sales, it's like, man, I, if I was you, I would do all this stuff because if I was doing all this and controlling what I can control, I mean, it's, it's a game changer for sure.

Yeah.

And a lot of us, it, it's just too comfortable complaining or pointing. And if it's not gonna change, either you change or adapt to it. You know, I can't tell you the number. I've never gotten a comp plan and said, man, this is, I'm gonna kill it with this. I've always gotten the comp plan. I go, how the hell am I going to do this? And then it's December 31st and you did it. And I've had good managers. I've had a lot of bad managers too, you know, so you, it's, and you got to figure out how to show them the things that they need to see and still sell something, or how to involve them in the account and how not to involve them in the account. You know, one manager, I couldn't put clients' phone numbers in the CRM. I had to have a system where I inverse the last 2 numbers so that I could remember the number and have no one else call that person because I would always get that call. Hey, I tried to call this person. It didn't go through. I go, why are you calling that person? Don't you think you should talk with me first to get context?

Why?

I don't know. Because the last time you talked to somebody, the deal fell through. Maybe that's why. So there's ways around these things. You have to be a little creative sometimes, but I think too many people just, you know, they're sheep. They do what they're told. That's what we learn in school. But the best salespeople are mavericks. They're kind of out on their own. Figuring this out on their own because they have to. And sales is that type of profession. You know, we're trying to get large companies to change, and that is not natural. You know, recurring revenue and upselling, that's natural.

Yeah, that's easy.

But selling into a new account that doesn't know you, never used you, They're a little scared and it takes a lot of time and effort to get them to change. And that's our responsibility. And a lot of people, you know, they blame the leads and marketing and I get it. B2B marketing is beyond broken. It is like in the dumpster and it's on fire and moving away. You know, it's, it was broken 7 years ago. Today it's like— You know, I deal with CMOs all the time. I know exactly what they're gonna do, right? They're always gonna go to Instagram and Facebook ads. LinkedIn ads are too expensive. Working with influencers or anyone who has an audience, it's like they don't understand how to measure it. So they're not gonna do it because they can't get credit for it internally. They need to count something. Doesn't work. Reps get upset. But today, do you need marketing? It's nice to have, but you have access to your whole market. Gotta do a little work, but it's still gonna be better than an Instagram ad with a Hotmail account.

And there's no accountability too with marketing, it seems, because there's, it's impressions or all this kind of fugazi type stuff and you can't really track it back to stuff. So I get it for sure on blaming marketing for leads. So I just kind of took it into my own hands and started building my own personal brand on LinkedIn. And that's kind of helped me. I mean, I think more than half of my conversations come from LinkedIn. So that's been a big one for me. The other one that just popped in my head too, thinking about things that you can't control is the past. So if you made mistakes, we talked about mistakes, you want to keep track of those and get better, but sometimes you can dwell on stuff from the past, which at this point you have no control over. And it can kind of consume you, whether it was a deal you lost or a job you took or whatever you did in sales. And that can kind of creep up on people where you're obsessed with the past. And I do think you want to limit regrets as much as possible. So you want to be proactive and invest to try to limit stuff because you only have so much time when you get older. But it's stuff out of your control. So I think you got to learn from it, move on, get better, improve, and then not get consumed with the past because that can be an easy one to fall into with sales or, you know, you didn't join Amazon at the right time or you didn't go to Salesforce once they started doing their CRM, like all these opportunities that you're like, oh yeah, one of my buddies worked for Tesla back in 2010, 2011 and he was trying to get me to invest in it. Obviously that was a mistake. So it's like you, but you can't go back and change any of that. So it's, you have to kind of move forward, I think too.

Yeah, because I think a lot of people view their resume as a legal document. No, who wrote it? You. It should be the best impression of you possible. And I've had friends say, well, uh, age discrimination. I go, how do they know how old you are? Well, they see you the date I graduated college. And who put that down?

I did.

Well, that's how they know. Maybe take it off. Maybe don't put a date. Oh, I got a reduction in force. Well, do they need to know that? Talk about what you did do. Put a positive spin on it. You have control over that. But no, everyone treats it like it's a legal document that you submit to the government with your taxes. No, it's not that. It's not a W-2. It's your impression of you. It's your little data sheet. And everybody gets locked into this. Oh, I can't lie. I'm not saying lie. I'm saying have them focus on what you can do for them, not what went wrong, and, and spend the hour interview explaining what went wrong. That's not the good use of the interview time. It's what you can do right for them. Now, that might take a little coaching from somebody, but exactly.

I mean, you can control your attitude, you can control how you portray yourself in an interview, what's, what's on the resume paper. So there's a lot of things in your control and, and just try to focus on how you're reacting to everything. And I started reading this Daily Stoic. It really helped me kind of just focus on that because that's one of the biggest principles of it. And it's just got a good lesson every single day. It's one And it's easy to do, and it just kind of reminds me to focus on everything that I can control. And in sales, there's a lot of things outside of your control. So if you don't, you're going to get stressed, you're going to get burnt out, and you're going to drive yourself crazy if you don't focus on the right things.

We get comfortable with excuses, don't we? They kind of feel good in the moment. They do. Our brain is looking for a reason why we're not having the success we want. We create an excuse. Boom! It feels good. It's like aspirin or a little cookie. Gives you a little energy, a little jolt. It's a positive dopamine hit. But is it a real positive thing? You didn't get the result. Did you learn anything? If you create the excuse that Uh, you did everything perfect. Did you learn anything? How could you if you think you did everything perfect? This is part of the catch-22 that people fall into in sales. They rationalize what they did, but they don't look for the solution. And, and a lot of times the solution is complicated and hard to accept. And it's speculation even sometimes. And most of the time you won't know. Here's a great analogy. Over the holidays, I don't know how I got stuck in it. I think it was Rob Reiner came out with a podcast about the Kennedy assassination. Now, this is a classic human flaw that we have. Since we don't know what happened, We speculate on what happened. The human mind gets a little itchy when it doesn't have an answer for things. You see this a lot with everything. Every time you have a conspiracy theory, it's to fill in what we don't know. We see it with UFOs. We see it with all kinds of— I don't even want to bring up a lot of the things that trigger political discussions here. But most things in life that are complicated, we don't completely understand. We still don't understand the weather completely. We can't predict it consistently very well.

Have you noticed?

I have to watch the weather all the time because I'm an outdoor runner, and the weather has a big impact. And sometimes I run in the dark, Which means I've got to watch the weather even more.

And I run in the woods, which means I have to pay attention to it even more.

So I notice it all the time. And you know what?

It's close.

Sometimes it's almost right, but rarely is it exactly right. It's off a little bit. It's a heuristic. It's not an algorithm. A heuristic is a set of best practices. It's pattern matching. It's what you're seeing with ChatGPT right now. It's pattern matching what you're asking to the best things it has in its database, aggregates them and presents them to you.

Very helpful.

But in the human mind, when we don't have an answer for it, we create one. That's a conspiracy. In the JFK thing, What I— I went down this rat hole. I was going from that podcast and I go, wait a second, some of these facts aren't exactly facts. They're opinions. Eyewitnesses is an opinion. It's not a fact. A videotape is a, hopefully a digital or analog recording from that perspective. Hopefully it's more factual. The clock is right, the lens is right, but it's still giving you a vantage point that's different from other vantage points. And what you see consistently, as I started going watching documentary after documentary, is that people are picking the facts that match their conspiracy theory. And all of a sudden Well, first, each theory sounds completely convincing until you do the fact-checking, because what they're doing is taking one person's opinion and extrapolating that one more step and assuming that it's a fact. And it may be, but it may not be. And this is what we have in the complex sale, because— and I hate to use a An assassination as an example for this. It's kind of gross, but look at it as like a large complex sale. Every time people are doing a postmortem on it, they're kind of filling in the gaps with assumptions. And that's okay to play it out, but it's not okay to rationalize why the deal didn't close. Are you really learning anything from that? Or are you creating a conspiracy theory? Well, what are the most common things you hear? Uh, it's politics. Well, of course it's politics. You get more than one person and it's politics, right? People have to get along. That's what a company is, but nothing but a group of people. And of course it's politics. Families have politics. Couples have politics. It's natural. Or they're idiots. Remember the idiot trap that I talked about the last couple of episodes? This is deflecting the responsibility onto somebody else and usually means that we're trying to use logic to solve an emotional problem. It's okay to be uncomfortable. In B2B sales because we pretty much live in our uncomfort zone. If you live in your comfort zone in sales, you're probably shrinking. So how do you take this episode and make something useful out of it? Start reflecting. Catch yourself making excuses, rationalizations, filling in unknowns with Theories and become a student of it. And then separate out, what do I have control over? Let's dig into that. Think about it. You have control over your time, a lot more of it than you think. You have control over your energy, which is a great ingredient because people talk about will and skill. How do you have will with no energy? And how do we make more energy? Sleep better, eat better, get a little bit of exercise, stay optimistic, get mental energy, stay focused on what we want instead of what we don't want. What we focus on expands. Our thoughts, the meaning that we give to things, we decide that. We can decide that. Our reptilian brain will give us emotions, but remember, that part of our brain just cares about surviving. Our prefrontal cortex thinks about the future, can rationally analyze things, can look at things logically. Our prefrontal cortex can think like other people, but we've got to develop it. Most of us are on automatic, kind of that reptilian habit-based, and that's okay if the habits are good and the— and you're not letting the reptilian brain drive your whole life. You got to put a little prefrontal cortex in there, and that's kind of where your manager hopefully would fit into. And that's why sales coaching and training And this is the biggest thing I've learned from coaching salespeople is that salespeople need coaching, including me.

And that's why I've got a coach for chess, running, and coaching.

And it's helped me incredibly because they're seeing things that would take a long time for surface in myself. And I get to fix them. And I try and journal every day about those things. I ask myself the questions: What did I overlook that I should have seen? Become a student of the game, and the game will work for you. Thanks for listening. Check us out at b2brevenue.com. If you'd like one of our certified trainers to come in, hit me up on LinkedIn or info. info@b2brevenue.com, and we'll get somebody to give you a call, talk it through, see if it's a match for you and what you'd like to accomplish. And make this your year in sales.