THE SECRETS TO MAXIMIZING YOUR ENERGY IN B2B SALES AND SELLING

Hey, before we get into the interview, I want to make sure you're aware of our other podcasts, the Sales Questions, Brutally Honest Answers show, which is a very quick, under 5 minutes in most cases, sometimes just a few minutes where I answer your questions. You can just send me any question to my LinkedIn profile, Brian G. Burns, and I'll put it in the queue to answer. Also, the Sales Leadership Show. If you're looking to get into sales leadership or you want to hear from the world's best sales leaders, that's where I interview them. Check it out, the Sales Leadership Show. Also at b2brevenue.com, you can learn all about all the courses. Links are in the show notes below, as well as our link to our partners over at brevitypitch.com, the fastest, easiest way to become great at sales and practice. Before it's showtime.

Here we go. One thing about sales, there's a lot of things to do, isn't there?

There really is. It's easy to kind of go off the rails a little bit and get distracted throughout the day, whether it's checking social media, emails. If you're working from home, got kids, all this stuff going on. So it's, it's how do you really kind of focus? I feel like is a, is a really tough thing to do and you can waste a lot of time being distracted. With all those things I mentioned. So it's, I think the attention of ourselves is, is really important. Like, how do you really stay focused on what's driving the needle, what's driving revenue? And also just keeping the attention of folks around you is really tough too, because I mean, you're in a Zoom meeting and it's 5 minutes in, you can just see people looking at their phones or looking at something else. They go off camera and it's, it's really hard to keep other people's attention, let alone our own. And I, it's just something I've been thinking about. more lately is how do you kind of stay more focused and not get as distracted as a salesperson when you're kind of off on an island? A lot of times you're, you don't have as much structure typically, so it's easy to fall into a lot of traps and distraction for sure.

Yeah, because I notice if I don't make, you know, a list of things to do, have some structure with, with good breaks, the day can go by real quick. And I get nothing done. You know, whether it's, you know, LinkedIn stuff or some meeting that goes too long, or I'm working on something and all of a sudden you, you spend some time on something that looks like real work, feels like real work, but it doesn't produce anything. And this is critical in sales because we have to produce stuff. We only get paid on what we produce. And that's why, you know, how you utilize your time is something that we can really make a superpower. And it doesn't require any real experience, just a little structure, a little motivation, a little discipline, and some habit forming. Because if I looked at, or I worked at one of these companies today where there's all this, this huge tech stack, these KPIs, all these enablement meetings and webinars and this and that, your day can go by without accomplishing anything.

It's, it's rough. It's rough for sure. And I think the structure you talked about, I'm a big planner and kind of try to prioritize. So I'll plan out my week high level, the biggest top 3 5 things I want to get done for the week, and if all else fails, that's what I want to get done. And that's kind of my, my North Star. And then each day I kind of have one big thing I want to accomplish, and I lay out my structure throughout the day. And, and I leave— I'm also too rigid sometimes where I have everything dialed in too much. So I need to have more breaks in there, some healthy distractions and breaks. But I found that if I plan my week out, plan my day out within reason, I don't have to think as much, and I already kind of know where I need to focus my time and what's going to drive the needle, in my opinion and perspective. And if I don't, I feel chaotic. I'm kind of running around. I, you know, I'm just not very productive in my mind, and I'm kind of wasting time, which I hate to waste time for sure. But the planning and prioritizing is huge for me daily, weekly, and really throughout the year. Also, just kind of, if you work from home, a lot of salespeople are working remote, working from home. What, what type of an environment are you kind of building for yourself at home where you can limit distractions and really focus? If you have family and kids, it's going to be much tougher. Most likely you got dogs, all kinds of stuff going on. So you have to really factor in a lot of that stuff. And, uh, I like to have music in the background for certain parts of my day where it just really helps me focus if I'm prospecting, what have you. So there's just little nuances that I've, over the years, I kind of know that helped me. And, and there's also certain times of the day where I can focus better than others. So I try to block certain segments to, to really focus on prospecting. I, I mean, it's not as fun prospecting and doing some of the stuff always on, you know, LinkedIn or emails, whatever you're doing. So I try to do that in the morning just to get it over with, and, and then that way I can focus more on other things and, and feel fresh throughout the day. So a lot of prioritizing, a lot of structure, and also just thinking about your environment of where you're working. I, I know some people that they just couldn't focus at home because they had kids and dogs running around. So they rented an office space and they went somewhere that they can just be quiet, you know, for certain parts of the day. So you have to think about all those things. Otherwise, you're gonna get, get sucked into that vortex of enablement meetings and the things you were talking about.

Yeah. And I think you have to separate what is revenue generating and everything else, right? Just, and for me, I have, you know, the jobs to be done every week. And last year I kind of focused on my days, getting my day down. But what I found was I wasn't building some compounding week after week. So I go, how do I win the week? And what are the ingredients there? And not overload. I think what people do is they overload, they get burnt out, and then they crash, and then they start all over again. What's the minimum things I need to do, my deliverables, and how do I get them all at an A level? And if you were to look at it with like, that's not much time. It isn't if you don't do it well, but it is if you do it well. It does take time. And too many reps I've seen They focus on the busy part and not the accomplishment part. What's really gonna move the lever? And I was working with the founder of Brevite and, you know, he showed me his calendar. It was a disaster. It was, you know, 8 meetings a day. And he was telling, I'm burnt out. I'm not really, the last 3 are just arduous. And I go, how many of those are gonna close? Well, this is, How many of those meet your ICP, ideal customer profile? They showed interest, they like the ROI. I think it was probably 3. Okay. Pre-qualify and only take 4 meetings a day. Or how many meetings a day can you do at an A level? He said 4. Definitely 4. Okay. What are the top 4 for that day or the top 20 for that week? And, you know, I talked to him the other day. He goes, we should write a book about this. This is not revolutionary.

This is—

and why did he do 8? Because 8 felt better than 4. It's twice as good as 4. No, it's killing the other, the real good 4, because out of those 4, maybe 2 will buy. So out of the 8, only 2 would buy. So now you're wasting half your day on things that aren't going to give you a return.

Free yourself up.

And believe me, when you— what I call Sophie's Choice, you have to make these hard choices, but you have to make them. If you remember the movie, the mother had to choose between 2 children. Just one, you can only save one. So in that case, that's an impossible choice. In our case, it's a hard choice, but we have to make it. And kind of the most powerful thing I did is I kept my deals in order of closure on my pipeline, not alphabetical, not on size, not on what I feel good about. What is the order in which they're going to close? Made me think about it and prioritize it because I, I would always see a rep going, working on this phantom 7-figure deal all the time. And I go, what if it doesn't close this year? If it slips into next year and closes, you won't get paid on it because they'll just add it to your quota. Well, they're like, well, it could close. Then you get all the bullshit rationalization that goes through our head. Well, you never know. I love the never know. That's the get out of jail free card. Well, it's your income, not mine. If you make the wrong choice, you don't get paid. But if you make the right choice, you get to it when it fits your priority, not your ideal. And I gotta tell you, this one company, it was a sales manager owned this huge deal, supposed to be a huge deal. And the whole company was building a product for it. That's all they talked about. It's gonna change the world. And she closed it, but there was no revenue attached. It was basically a buying agreement and a distribution agreement. And it turned out they bought like $50K in the next year. It was like a nothing thing. You know, $50K at that time at that company was a medium-sized deal, but she put a year into it, not only her time and probably 3 years of manpower time into it. So there's no ROI on that. That deal cost the company money. It didn't make the company money. But it felt good.

It's exciting.

But is that a distraction? Or is that action? Sounds like distraction to me, doesn't it?

I would agree. And that's where it's really challenging to use your judgment and prioritize the right way. Because if you— there could be situations where you're going into that and, you know, hey, I'm just gonna learn from this because it's a new company and I want to To see how this process works. But that's— no one's ever actually doing that. They're, they're actually— they start believing. Maybe at first they kind of think that, then they start getting into it, and then they start believing, hey, we can actually get this done. And then you start getting that kind of confidence paradox going where you're overconfident with it. But, and I, and I've fallen into this as well. I, I, I've been that person many times that has my meeting stacked throughout the day, and it feels good, especially if it's customer meetings that are potential. But you're right, if, if you have that many going, I mean, you can maybe maintain that for a little bit as far as your energy and confidence and how you portray yourself on the meetings, but you're going to end up going meeting to meeting, not have as much time to prep. And eventually it's going to catch up to you if you're selling something that's more complex and not transactional. So, and you're going to feel like crap most likely, and you're going to burn out because if you're constantly talking and having to be on your A-game and sales voice for those situations, it's just, it's, it's exhausting. So I found if I could I mean, ideally, you want to have as many qualified meetings as possible in the day. But if you kind of tone it back a little bit and you have maybe, for me, 2 or 3 that are really good, that are progressing, I can spend more time preparing for them. So that way I have every angle kind of covered. I— it feels like you're doing less and it's kind of hard to focus and plan more for a lot of people, but you actually get more done in the long run, I have found. So I struggle with that because I like to be Productive and busy, but I I try to cut back some of that and only have meetings certain times during the week. That way, I can kind of focus and plan and prioritize. But it's that's definitely art and a science that it's it's a constant kind of struggle to kind of be effective with it, and I've gotten better at that. And and I try to set set goals that that kind of help me get there of of kind of what you were talking about that prioritizing. The, the top deals. And I really have kind of 3 main things each week that I want to do. And most of them are, they're all revenue generating from a professional standpoint. I also have some personal goals of things I want to do, same type of format, but those 3 are always revenue generating. So it could be getting the next meeting with, with the current customer that I'm already working with. It could be, you know, doing a, a test or a pilot or getting a workshop approved or whatever it is. It's all revenue generating. It's pushing it to that next stage. And And they're kind of ranked 1, 2, 3 of the most important, in my opinion. So that helps me a lot. But it's hard though. It's hard to judge which deals you think are going to provide that revenue. And then when you start getting into that storm of those conversations, they get excited, you're excited, then you start going down that path and then you're flooding your calendar with meetings that are probably— it's not your fault necessarily. It doesn't matter how good you are. they're not going to close because there's other factors involved that you're not realizing, and you kind of get, get overconfident. That, that happens a lot, I think, with us, right?

Because we're in a performance profession. What athlete tries to do more games, right? They don't care. They want to play the game that they win. They don't want to play— otherwise it's just practice, bad practice, unstructured practice. And again, what does every rep say why they didn't do the details? I didn't have time. But wait, why didn't you have time? Well, I had to do all these deals that will never close. They wanted to meet, only time they could do it. I love the only time they could do it. So you take, take your time away from a deal you could win to work on a deal you can't win or isn't ready yet. What pushes you to it is focus. Activity, everyone loves it because it feels like success. But you know what really feels like success? Succeeding. And to succeed, right? And the same guy, he— a lot of the reps in the course have been contacting him to look at his product. And he's like, what'd you get out of the course? When did it not work? And the number one thing why it— when it didn't work is when I didn't have time to apply it, or I forgot, or I was busy, or I fell into a trap. Now, let's say you get on an airplane, and the— what we want to do is fly as many flights a day as possible. Is that what you want your pilot to be? This is my 17th flight today. Oh great, my life is in your hands. How much you sleep less? I didn't sleep at all. Look at me, I'm flying again. No, you don't want that because you want to land. It's a performance. You got to get there.

You don't care.

The company doesn't even care either. Company wants the plane. They don't want Oh, the insurance money is great, but the reputation and the loss of passengers and the loss of a pilot and a crew. And but we look at sales differently. It's your income. We're in it to make money, not be busy. And a lot of people think, oh, if I throw enough crap against the wall, something will stick. Well, really? Is that a profession, or is that a—

what is that?

That's luck. That's chance. That's what a numbers game is. It's pure chance. Is your 401 or your retirement strategy a lottery ticket? Do you want your income to be a gamble? Sure, there's a, a slight game of chance to it, but you want to Know as much as you can to focus on the things that are most likely to close. And you can just see it when I work at different companies. The young first year, first 5 years, they, they're willing to work their butts off. This is big money for them, so they will be as busy as possible, and they'll do okay. But the people with 10, 15 years They're sitting back, they're thinking, they're mapping out their accounts, putting up the org chart, worrying about this thing and that thing and how to prevent this thing from stalling, and they sell 3 times as much. Which one do you want to be? It's up to you.

Great point. It's a great point. And I, I've been that, that young, young gun out, out of the gates. Oh yeah, it's, yeah, way easier to do it, uh, when you're right out of school and, and whatnot, and, and, and you learned some probably hard lessons along the way, but exactly. I mean, you have to prioritize. It's never the top reps are never the ones that are working the most, doing 80 hours a week or crazy stuff like that. It's always the ones that are prioritizing and they have these massive whale deals that they, people think they're just lucky to get them, but I'm sure they, they worked and had a strategy for months or years leading up to that to actually land the deal. So that's how it always goes. And there's certainly the bigger things to focus on, but there's also smaller things that can get you distracted too, because it can be kind of counterintuitive because I do a lot on LinkedIn. I know you do as well. And LinkedIn's really effective for what I do to kind of build up that know, like, and trust and get in front of more opportunities. But sometimes I find myself just getting on there too much. It's like turned into a full social media where I'm just checking it way too much than I need to. So I have to try to set guardrails of Hey, only look at LinkedIn certain times a day, like 3 times a day, morning, lunch, evening, whatever it may be. And same with email too. Email, you can get sucked into that and you're just replying to stuff that doesn't matter, or you get distracted and spend 10 minutes trying to reply to something when you should have been focused on one thing. So I try to block times within reason for LinkedIn and other avenues because they can just suck a lot of time out. And I do. Kind of a hybrid of it, but the Pomodoro method, pretty popular. It's where you do 25 minutes on one task and you take a 5-minute break, and then you just kind of keep doing that throughout the day. I, I kind of do it a little bit longer. I'll do closer to 45 minutes or 50 and then take like a 10-minute break. It just kind of works better for me. But I'll turn my phone off, not turn it off, but I'll put it on quiet and I'll have music playing. That way I don't hear any beeps or buzzes, and then boom, just kind of get after whatever that task is. So. There's smaller things too that can kind of, next thing you look at, you spend 60 minutes to an hour and a half in a day on, on social or just looking at email that doesn't do anything for you.

Yeah. Yeah. Because let's face it, the feed is designed to entice you. That's the whole point. And it's real easy. Oh, what's this? Let me read it. Then I go over here and there goes an hour. Well, I learned all about this new AI thing. Okay, is that gonna help you close something? And I had this VP, I was working on this huge deal and, you know, he wanted to come meet them and I'm like, who's inviting you? And I'm like, fine, if you want, I'm meeting, I'm gonna be there Thursday, meet me there. And he goes, can you pick me up? I go, where are you staying? I like to stay downtown, which is 45 minutes in the wrong direction. And I'm like, I'm not going downtown. It'll take me an hour and a half with traffic to come pick you up. And he goes, come on, man, I don't know the area.

Get a cab.

I made him take a cab there because I'm just not— because what kind of mood am I going to be in after driving an hour and a half, 2 hours to bring somebody who's bringing zero value to me? Doesn't understand the account. He doesn't understand the company. He just wants to get a checkbox. Then he shows up and he opens up his laptop and starts reading his email. I go, can we talk about the account? Because I got to catch up on my email. I go, are there any deals in there? Well, you're not a VP. You don't understand. I got to reply to all this stuff. I go, trust me, you could put that away for a week and we'd do better. 2 weeks later, I was talking to him. He came out again and we were going to another account.

He goes, you know what? You're right.

I've got to deprioritize my email. And I'm like, on my list of things, you know, I scan it for orders and stuff. Everything else, just ignore. He replied to everybody's request with a nice little paragraph and I'm like, composed it. You're not an author, you're a sales leader. There are so many— everything can be a time trap in sales. And if you don't look out, you still think, oh, I'm working so hard. I had a business partner and could never get anything done, but busy, worked 80 hours a week. I go, let's sit down with your schedule. Monday was going to Costco to pick up supplies. Get online and order them and have them delivered. There goes Monday. Monday's freed up, right? You can bill out at $150 an hour. It's pretty easy to find that you could pay somebody $500 to go to Costco or, or pick up this stuff. And people don't— oh, but I'd like to pick it out myself. Oh, picking out the right paper towels is really— you can do that online now, you know. Why do people love distractions? Because they don't want to face reality. Why do people not prioritize their pipeline? Takes thought.

Well, what if I do it wrong?

Well, you're doing it wrong now, so it's probably better to do it a little bit better than you're doing now. And, you know, you see this especially in marketing. They'll have a font selection meeting 3 times a week. Which font and what size? Let's discuss that on the next meeting. You're like, and I listen to the podcast to try and understand how they think. And it's like, you probably don't want to do that because the thinking is just so abstract and academic that I don't think anything gets done. And now you understand why nothing gets done. You know, what color should we use?

Really?

Why don't you have somebody generate 3 colors and you pick?

Oh man, that's so true with, with the, the color and the font. But it's tough. And I think you said we, we do distraction or we embrace distraction because we don't wanna face reality. That's so true because it's, it's, you don't wanna get to the, the nitty gritty of what you're actually focused on. And, and also I think taking it to another level is putting Healthy distraction in your day. So if you're going to be doing all this social media or scrolling email, why not fill that in with something that's going to get you better? Get, you know, like going on a walk or working out. I've been trying to get better at if I am going to take breaks and not scroll on social media, what can I do during that time to focus? So is it listening to a podcast that I enjoy? Is it going on a walk? Is it doing some, you know, some type of workout? So you can also build healthy distractions, I think, that gets you focused as well, and that's probably taken it to another level. And, but you have to plan all this stuff out. You have to prioritize. You have to understand what's really driving revenue, uh, for sure with, with your sales role, but also, you know, what's driving you outside of that too, and knowing where you get distracted. So I, you know, I don't have my phone when I go to bed at night. I put it far away so I can't look at it on purpose. So it's hard for me to look at my phone because otherwise I'm gonna scroll on my phone. When I'm, you know, which isn't good either because then you're looking at the screen at night. So there's all these different things and you can kind of build healthier distraction or just remove the distraction. That's probably the best way with habits is just get that distraction away. So take the app off your phone, whatever it is. That, that also helps too.

Yeah. And I think you have to own your calendar because if you're working, I work with somebody that everyone says they're busy, too busy, too busy, too busy. Let's bring up your calendar. And most won't do it because they're ashamed of how full it is with stuff that has no relevance whatsoever. Enablement meeting, hour and a half. Planning for enablement meeting. Get rid of that. Send it— have them record it and send you the recording and watch it at night. And this is what I always had as the test. I go, would you do it on a Saturday? What do you mean? I go, would you do it on your own time? Why, that's family time. Right, but it's important, isn't it? Well, it's not that important. Oh, it's— is it more important than revenue?

No.

Then why is it there? You know, and now I see on Instagram these AI programs, resort your calendar. What a nightmare that would be. You're going to let some program readjust your calendar. You know, that busybody is getting nothing done. Because if you have more than really 4 solid things a day, it's too many. I mean, solid, qualified, like meetings with real live people, not prospecting. Because how many can you really do well? And if you're not going to do it well, guess what the outcome is going to be?

Yeah.

Not revenue.

Just burnout.

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 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? 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 Sale 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? 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.