Sales Gravy: Jeb Blount

On this episode of the Sales Gravy podcast, Jeb Blount focuses on brokeness and the two common mindsets of highly successful people and how to grow from adversity. This past week I stumbled on this quote passage from Vance Havner.  God uses broken things: broken soil to produce a crop, broken clouds to give rain, broken grain to give bread, broken bread to give strength and broken people to do great things.  We have all been broken in some way, no matter what your path, no matter where you came from, no matter where you started, no matter where you finished, no matter how rich you are, how poor you are, everyone at some level has been broken.  That’s good news because as human beings, brokeness binds us together. It’s the one thing that we all have in common.  When we have faced that adversity and we have grown from it, is a story that we can tell other people. It’s something we have that’s part of us that we can share, and we can help other people with.  One of the things I’ve noticed recently is that there are a lot of people out there that are doing everything possible to avoid being broken, avoid adversity, and avoid even being bent.  They avoid pain and they shy away from obstacles. This is a mistake because adversity – being broken – is our greatest teacher. It is through the crucible of adversity that we become stronger.  Transformation Sometimes we’re so broken that it transforms us. It changes us. We come back from that deep pain, different than who we were before.  Sometimes it opens up our eyes so that we can truly see. Other times it opens up our heart so that we can truly feel and love. That’s the power of brokenness.  God uses broken things.  The Two Most Important Mindsets I’ve had the privilege of traveling to every continent on the globe except Antarctica. Along the way I’ve met some incredible people from all walks of life. What I’ve learned about successful people, is that ultimately they share two mindsets in common.  First, they believe that there is a higher power in their lives that put them on Earth for a purpose, and they’re supposed to fulfill that purpose. In other words, they believe that they’re supposed to be successful in their walk in life. The second thing they believe is that everything happens for a reason. This is the strongest of the two because this mindset gives you strength. This mindset frees you from the chains of victimhood.  This mindset that everything happens for a reason, allows you to learn from being broken. Learn from adversity, learn from pain, learn from the bad things that are going to happen to you; and trust me, bad things are going to happen to you. You will be broken again and again and again.   The Choice What successful people realize is that this is just part of walking through life and you have a choice about how you view this brokenness.  If it makes you a victim, you learn nothing. It holds you down, holds you back, and leads to misery and suffering.   On the other hand, if you believe that God (or your personal higher power) uses broken things on purpose, then you ask to most uplifting question: “What am I supposed to learn from this?” Sometimes what you learn is that you were broken because you were on the wrong path and that you need to get back to your purpose. In other situations, it’s a signal that you need to make a quick course correction. What you were doing wasn’t working. Try something new. Sometimes being broken gets you fired up. It’s becomes the fuel and the motivation to get back up, dust yourself off, and run back into the game.  God uses broken things, broken soul to produce a crop, broken clouds to give rain, broken grain to give bread, broken bread to give strength and broken people to do great things.  Ps. You can access Sales Gravy University Here

On this episode of the Sales Gravy podcast, Jeb Blount (Fanatical Prospecting) answers a listener’s question about how to effectively balance prospecting for new logos with serving and managing existing accounts. Balance Prospecting and Account Management Maggie is a member of my insider group, and she asked me a pretty important question about how to balance prospecting and account management. “I’m a top salesperson, and I want to stay on top. But one of the things about my job is that I have to manage and service my existing accounts, and I have to go out and look for new logos and new opportunities. And the more business that I sell, the harder it is for me to prospect to go find new opportunities so that I can sell more.” If in your sales job, you have to go hunt new accounts and you have to manage the accounts that you go out and close, then Maggie’s question makes a lot of sense. It’s hard to be a hunter and a zookeeper at the same time. Going out, prospecting, facing rejection, knocking on doors, picking up the phone, and calling people is completely different than servicing your accounts, upselling, cross-selling, and retaining the business that you have. This is one of the key reasons why people struggle to balance prospecting with account management. Prospecting Sucks The truth is, in most cases, you struggle to strike a balance because prospecting sucks and you don’t want to do it. It’s a whole lot easier to call up an existing account, solve their problems, do customer service, and upsell and cross-sell with people that already know you than it is to pick up the phone and call an invisible stranger. It’s a whole lot easier to call a friend than to call someone that will probably reject you, because that’s what happens in prospecting. You get a lot of rejection. So you say that you struggle with balance, but the reason that you’re struggling is that you don’t have any balance. You spend all of your time managing accounts and none of your time prospecting. Next, you procrastinate and put off prospecting. You find every excuse not to prospect. Having an account base gives you really good excuses not to prospect, so you don’t. The need to prospect and the need to fill up your pipeline begins to add up. You Can’t Do All of Your Prospecting At Once Your sales manager is saying, “Hey, you have to go find me some new business,” and you’re not making the commissions that you want to make. There’s a lot of pressure on you. So suddenly you’re faced with, “Oh my goodness gracious, I have to prospect.” Then you try to pile all of your prospecting into one day. Desperately, you try to do it all at one time. That’s when you start to run into big problems because you have the demands of your existing account base and you have to prospect. And nobody wants to spend an entire day prospecting because as I said earlier, prospecting sucks. Suddenly, you’re overwhelmed with this big old pile of prospecting that you have to do. So you don’t prospect. Instead, you go back to account management, which makes the problem worse. Because you’re overwhelmed and stressed out, you feel out of balance. You start looking for an easy button solution to a problem that, if you’re honest with yourself, you created. Not because of your workload, but because you were avoiding prospecting in the first place. Prospect Every Single Day The key is that you need to prospect a little bit every day. And when you do a little bit of prospecting every single day, you begin to take advantage of the cumulative impact of all those little bits of activity. Breaking up your prospecting activity into little bits that you do every single day also makes it easier. It’s a lot more palatable to do the things that you don’t want to do in small chunks than to save it all up and do it at one time. The first thing you want to do is begin blocking time out for prospecting. That means that it needs to be on your calendar. You need an actual time block on your calendar every single day for prospecting. Account management is going to consume most of your day, spending time with your existing customers.  Those customers are going to be calling you. They’re going to be interacting with you. They’re going to be sending emails to you. So the best time to schedule your prospecting block is at the very beginning of the day. Front-Load Your Day With A Prospecting Block If you wait, you will never do it. First of all, you don’t want to do it, so it’s easy to procrastinate. And second, because so many things are going to be hitting you every time you sit down to prospect, another problem is going to show up and you’re going to go chase the problem for an existing customer rather than prospect. So front-load your day with prospecting. That means the very first thing you do in the morning is prospect. The next thing you want to think about is how much prospecting you actually have to do. And if you’re really honest with yourself, it’s not that much. How Much Prospecting Do I Need to Do Everyday? In Maggie’s case, for example, she’s a top salesperson and she’s got a full book of accounts that she’s managing. Those accounts are putting commissions in her pocket and they’re producing revenue. So what she needs to do is sell enough new business to make sure that she’s covering any accounts that she loses and she closes enough new business to continually grow her account base and stay on top of the sales rankings. So the truth is, for Maggie and most salespeople who have to balance account management and prospecting, you only need to dedicate about an hour a day of prospecting to do all of those things. When I say dedicate, I mean actually prospecting with your head down during that block of time. You’re not researching. You’re not getting coffee. You’re not talking to friends. You’re not texting people. You’re not answering your email. You’re not answering your phone. You’re not taking incoming calls and you’re not watching cat videos. You are prospecting. You have to dedicate the time to prospecting. If you really think about this, it’s not that hard. Discipline, Sacrifice, and Mindset In fact, it’s really not even about balancing account management and prospecting. It’s about having the discipline to manage your day. Discipline is sacrificing what you want now for what you want most. And if what you want most is to stay on top of the rankings, to produce new business, to earn more money, and to gain the praise and the adoration of your leaders and your peers, then simply tap into that desire to shift your mindset and do a little bit of prospecting every single day. We want to hear from you. Let us know what you think about this episode – we love your comments and questions. Just send Jeb a text message at 1-706-397-4599 or CLICK HERE TO TEXT. P.S. You can access Sales Gravy University Here

On my final Coronavirus talk, I discuss what happens post-pandemic, the power of blending, and what you need to do right now to now to future-proof your sales career. The Pipe Is Life A year ago, I made the first coronavirus talk about outbound prospecting. No matter when, where, or how as a salesperson, your number one job is to go out and fill up the pipeline. A lot of people were asking questions at the outset of the coronavirus about whether or not they should prospect at all. And if we take a look at the last year, the salespeople who kept the pipeline full, crushed it, and salespeople across all industries had the year of their life because they kept prospecting. Salespeople who were prospecting by foot and in-person moved to the telephone. People that were using the telephone found that because they were working at home and not driving as much, they could double up on their prospecting compared to the year before. A year ago, prospecting consistently was the most important thing that you could do. And today, it is still the most important thing that you can do because the pipe is life. The number one reason why people fail in sales is that they fail to prospect. It’s just that simple. We’ve been through a lot this year. But as we start looking to the future, as salespeople we’ve got to think, “How do we future-proof ourselves?” There’s A Whole New Playing Field In Sales The one thing that is absolutely true about the last year is that we compressed about 10 years’ worth of innovation into a period of about 12 months. Salespeople everywhere woke up to a new playing field.  This playing field was being driven primarily by buyers because buyers had changed. The new playing field was, “I’m not going in person, I’m going to be on a video. I’ve got to learn how to leverage an omnichannel approach for connecting with my customers and moving deals through my pipeline.”  What top sales professionals discovered over the last year is something called blending. How To Win With Blending Blending is choosing the communication channel at any given point in the sales process that gives you the highest probability of achieving your sales outcome at the lowest cost of time, energy, and money. This is the formula for the future: choosing the communication channel that gives you the highest probability of getting the outcome that you desire, at any given place in the sales process, with any given customer, at the lowest cost of time, energy, and money. Essentially, it’s efficiency + effectiveness = productivity. It’s that simple. So as you start thinking about future-proofing yourself, the number one thing you have to do is start mastering every single communication channel, whether it’s direct messaging, the phone, video, email, snail mail, you name it. It’s the ability to use every possible way to connect with someone. Even with social media or smoke signals if you have to. Mastering all of those channels so that you gain a competitive edge. You can meet your buyers where they are and blend these different communication channels so that you can have more conversations with people. We Can Talk To More People In Less Time If you just go back to what I said earlier, a year ago, I talked about prospecting because one of the truths about sales is that the more people you talk with, the more you’re going to sell. But because we have all these different channels to use, now it makes sense that we can talk to more people in less time, which puts more in the pipeline. That means that we’re going to sell a lot more in the long run. This is future-proofing. Sadly, over the last year, I’ve noticed that there are two basic types of salespeople. There are wishbones and there are rainmakers. The wishbones are the folks that were hoping and wishing that things would go back to the way they were. There are people right now looking at the end of the pandemic, which is in front of us and it’s going to end very soon, who are saying, “I can just go back to the way I was before.” But let me give you a couple of stats. Why We Will Never Go Back To “Normal” in Sales McKinsey did a study of B2B sales and they found that 77% of customers prefer virtual when they’re dealing with an existing vendor. 71% of buyers say that they prefer a virtual interaction at the top of the sales funnel when they’re evaluating a new vendor. 76% of buyers said that if they have a choice between a telephone call and a video call, they want a video call. What buyers are telling us is that they like virtual because it’s fast, it’s easy, and it’s frictionless. And the salespeople who are adopting this new technology, they’re the ones that are owning the future. The wishbones who wish things didn’t have to change, the wishbones who think maybe things will go back to the way they were are deluding themselves. And in sales, you cannot be delusional and successful at the same time. To the wishbones who are hoping and wishing that they can go back to their comfort zones: it’s never going to go back, ever. We have changed forever. So in order to future-proof yourself, what you have to begin to do is invest and start learning. Sales Is About Probabilities I use a simple formula called Adopt, Adapt, Adept. Adopt means that I’m constantly looking for new technology, new ways to communicate, new ways to interact with my customers, new ways to sell, new ways to make myself better at the craft of selling. And then I adapt those new ways to my way of going to market, to my customer base, to my industry. And so I don’t just take everything and say, “Well, there’s one black and white way of doing things.” Because there’s not, right? Sales is about probabilities. I want to choose things and use things that give me the highest probability in any given situation. So I adapt it to my particular way of doing things. And then I practice and practice and practice until I become adept at it. The Difference Between Rainmakers and Wishbones That’s what rainmakers do. Rainmakers practice. They put it into practice and you know, they’re going to fail. That’s okay. You’re going to make a mistake here and there. That’s okay. They keep trying. Wishbones? They try it once and it doesn’t work, then they just go back to the way things were before. The word of the day is future-proofing. Future-proof, yourself. This is what I believe. There has never been a better time ever in the history of the sales profession to be in the sales profession. We have so many things in front of us and so many innovations that are coming our way. We have so many ways to connect with buyers. Salespeople who step into this future, step into this innovation, they’re going to own the world. They’re going to be the ones that are helping buyers and cashing huge commission checks. They’re going to be the ones on the top of the ranking report at their company and their sales organization. Future-proofing is the word of the day. Ride the Wave to Future Success So as a sales professional, right now, as we start looking toward the end of the pandemic, instead of looking backward, and thinking, “Maybe things will go back to the way they were,” I want you to think about moving forward. And I want you to think about the explosion of innovation that is going to be coming your way, the digital transformation that is going to be rolling over. It’s like a tsunami. And I want you to get on your surfboard and I want you to ride that wave because you, the sales professionals, the rainmakers that adopt these new techniques, you’re the ones that will own the future. And you are the ones that will take sales to a completely new level. More Coronavirus Talk Episodes: Prospecting Coronavirus Talk #1 Excuses Coronavirus Talk #2 The Gift of Time Coronavirus Talk #3 Confusion Coronavirus Talk #4 Fear and Worry Coronavirus Talk #5 On Mourning Coronavirus Talk #6 Gratitude Coronavirus Talk #7 On New Possibilities #8 On Mental and Physical Resilience #9

On this fun Sales Gravy Podcast episode, Sales Gravy Master Trainer Gina Trimarco and Account Executive Jeb Blount Jr discuss how they learned to love selling. From cold calling, to losing deals, and all of the challenges in between, you’ll love the story of how a young college grad finds his way in the sale profession. We want to hear from you. Let us know what you think about this episode – we love your comments and questions. Just send Jeb a text message at 1-706-397-4599 or CLICK HERE TO TEXT. Ps. You can access Sales Gravy University Here

On this episode of the Sales Gravy podcast, Jeb Blount is joined by the Women Your Mother Warned You About – Gina Trimarco & Rachel Pitts. We get behind the scenes with the WYMWYA podcast, learn how Gina and Rachel almost broke up, the value of getting a coach, and why when you are coachable, other people will invest in helping you reach your goals. We want to hear from you. Let us know what you think about this episode – we love your comments and questions. Just send Jeb a text message at 1-706-397-4599 or just CLICK HERE TO TEXT. Sales teams that read together, succeed together. Download our FREE Virtual Selling Book Club Guide for a complete kit for starting and running a book club for your sales team.

On this episode of the Sales Gravy podcast Jeb Blount and Keith Lubner explore sales messaging tactics for closing bigger deals. From stories to images to stepping into your buyer’s shoes, these tried and true techniques will help you both grab and hold your buyer’s attention and rise above your competition. There is no doubt that developing powerful sales messaging is one of the most challenging skill sets for modern sales professionals. Jeb and Keith break the process of down in a way that makes it easy to begin crafting sales messages that resonate. We want to hear from you. Let us know what you think about this episode – we love your comments and questions. Just send Jeb a text message at 1-706-397-4599 or just CLICK HERE TO TEXT. Ps. You can access Sales Gravy University Here

How to celebrate success during the pandemic? Salespeople and their leaders are asking this question. This season, the pandemic has canceled President’s Club and moved Sales Kickoffs from physical meetings to virtual. Its left many sales professionals feeling that the work they did to reach the top is anti-climatic and empty. In this Sales Gravy Podcast episode,  Jeb Blount and Victor Antonio discuss the keys to celebrating success and staying motivated this year and beyond. We want to hear from you. What are you doing this year to celebrate success, reward yourself, and stay motivated? Send Jeb a text message at 1-706-397-4599 or just CLICK HERE TO TEXT. Jeb: Celebrating Victories, Big and Small We are here in studio blue with the great Victor Antonio, who I believe is one of the greatest orators of our generation. His presence on stage excites me. It’s incredible, it’s engaging, and his stories are real. The path that Victor took to get to where he is today is inspiring. You came up from poverty and you’ve built an empire since then. I want to talk about some of the issues that people are dealing with today in that context. We’re in the third wave of the pandemic right now, and I’m hearing stories of salespeople who just feel down. One of the people in my insider group sent me a text message and it broke my heart. She’s like, “I worked all year long. I put everything into getting to President’s Club, and then we had our virtual sales kick-off. I saw my name on a bullet point on a slide and it was just completely anti-climatic. How do I celebrate this? How do I tell my family and friends that I had this victory in my life?” It hurt me because I know how that feels. I loved to walk on stage and get a trophy, I lived for that as a salesperson. In fact, I told my sales manager, “I don’t care about the money. I want to win. I want the trophy.” So in this world, I thought there was no better person than you to have a conversation with. What can salespeople do to celebrate their victories, both big and small? Victor: Don’t Let Others Determine Your Value It’s interesting to me that people want that external validation. A trophy is an inanimate object, you know what I mean? The real victory comes from looking at everything you’ve done. Take a moment to reflect and say, “Look at what I did!” and walk on your own mental stage. We all want recognition. We all want our successes to be meaningful. But if I just nailed that year, my biggest trophy was always the check. That was my trophy. For people who need that external validation, why do you need it? Why depend on somebody else’s appreciation of you to determine your value? Appreciate it. Live in that space, man. Jeb: Trophies Are The Past, Live in The Present One of the things that I’ve always lived by is that when you’re in second place, your job is to take first place. When you’re in first place, you’re competing with yourself. The problem with getting good is that you get in first place, you win the trophy, and you forget who you’re competing with. You forget that your job is to put the accelerator on instead of getting complacent. Looking at your trophies is living in the past. There are basically three places that you can live at any given time. You can live in the past. You can live in the present. You can live in the future. The only place that’s real is the present right now, the future hasn’t been written, and the past doesn’t exist anymore. It’s just something that happened. One of the problems that we face when we’re struggling to motivate ourselves or feel that recognition is that we’re living in the wrong place. We need to spend more time in the present than these other places. Victor: The Thrill of the Journey I want to challenge your perception of your success a little. I think your joy really comes in the process of getting to the next level. It has nothing to do with actually reaching the next level. Everything’s a game of inches, and you’re a guy who lives like that. “How do I make it a little better?” “How do I fix that?” That in itself is your thrill. You’re always thinking, “What else can we do?” And there’s a joy in that. For us, the fun part of the journey is to see if I can take it to the next level. Some people see that as effort or work or almost fatiguing. The person who was disappointed in just having their name in a bullet point on a presentation is one of those people. What they’re not looking at are all the things they probably did that year to adjust, to make it happen. Even if they hit the same number in a pandemic year, I think that’s a win. Now, if you killed it, congratulations! Really celebrate. High five yourself! Jeb: Celebrate The Little Wins Along The Way If you are building anything, whether it’s a sales pipeline, a sales year, or a business, it’s long stretches of grind and suck interrupted by a few brief moments of elation. So when you get the elation, you have to be able to celebrate it. You can’t celebrate too long, but I do think it’s part of the journey. In many cases, people don’t take the time to celebrate the little wins. You have to be in the moment, enjoy the journey and the small victories along the way. Long stretches of pain, long stretches of grind, and a few brief moments of elation. That’s the formula. It’s not a lot of elation and a little bit of grind. It doesn’t work that way. You’ve got to pay for success in advance with some pain. Victor: Little Celebrations Every Day I want to go back to the person with their name on a bullet point. They think, “I did all of this work. I expected something at the end and for somebody to give it to me.” And what you’re saying is, why don’t you just give it to yourself every day on a daily basis after you do something cool? I’d rather have a lot of small little celebrations over 365 days than wait for one big one at the end. A big one’s always going to disappoint me, but man, if I can celebrate 365 wins, I’m good. Jeb: Changing Your Self-Talk An optimist says, “Hey, let me move to the next thing, move to the next thing, move to the next thing.” And I think that optimism also allows you to change your self-talk. And one of the things that I read recently is that the way that we talk to ourselves is much faster than the way that we speak normally. We’re speaking up to 4,000 words per minute to ourselves in our head because we compress the way that we talk to ourselves in our brains. Let’s say that you went to your sales kickoff and your name got up there, and then you felt like it was anti-climatic. If you’re telling yourself that over and over and over again, when you leave, you’re like, “Oh God, I didn’t get what I needed.” And you become the victim, instead of saying, “My name was on the bullet point. I mean, there were a thousand other salespeople out there. None of the other people got recognized.” It’s all in the way you look at it and how you talk to yourself. Jeb: Learn How To Fail Fast In this environment, you have to learn how to fail fast. When you’re in a situation and you are trying new things, you have to always be iterating. I’ve probably got a hundred thousand dollars of studio equipment in a closet someplace because we tried them and they didn’t work. So we said, “Let’s do it again.” We didn’t say we’re never going to buy anything again. We said, “We still know what we want to accomplish. What we’re looking for, this just isn’t going to get us there. Let’s do something else.” So we get better and better and better. I think this is also part of optimism. It’s looking around and every time you see something, explore it. You have to be present and say, “Look, this didn’t work.” And instead of beating yourself up for it, say, “I learned that it didn’t work. Let’s try something else. Let’s do something else.” You have to keep trying. Do it again, do it again, do it again. Iterate, iterate, iterate. And I think that is a big part of me being in the present. I love iteration. I love doing something and finding out, “Okay. I can make it a little bit better. Let’s do it again. I can make it a little bit better. I can get a little bit better at this.” Over time, that creates small victories. Victor: Just Be Better Than You Were Yesterday I think it’s all momentum, isn’t it? Just be better than who you were yesterday. That’s all it is, right? That’s your motivation to be better— who you were yesterday. That’s the true competition because if you start looking at what other people are doing, you lose focus on what you should be doing and what is meaningful to you. When you look at what other people have, you start saying, “Why don’t I have that? I should have that.” It really takes the focus off of what you really want. Your journey is your journey alone. It sounds so cliche, but the toughest road to success is the road back to you. It isn’t until you figure out who you want to be, how you want to roll, that you’re going to be happy. There is no external validation that can beat that. I don’t know about you, but I have my own happy dance. I do a 30-second happy dance. And I do it at my desk. Nobody else sees it. Nobody else will ever see it. But it’s my dance. I love that because it’s my personal celebration moment. That’s what matters.

Coronavirus is Testing Mental Resilience The Coronavirus third wave is putting a strain on the mental resilience of sales professionals and impacting performance. From New Possibilities to Managing Mental Resilience   The last time I came to you with the coronavirus talk was back in July. Back then we were talking about new possibilities— about how going through a crucible of adversity helps you lift the chains of limitations off of yourself so that you can see that anything is possible if you make the choice to persevere.  I come to you now in January, during the third wave of the coronavirus, because I’m noticing a big problem. Salespeople are beginning to wear out. In some cases, it’s depression and loneliness. In other cases, it’s waiting and hoping for this to all be over and constantly having your hopes dashed.  All of this stress and anxiety combine to put you in a situation where you just don’t feel very good about life. In sales, if you don’t feel good about life, it’s going to be really, really hard to feel good about selling.  Mental and Physical Drain The net result is that many people just feel mentally and physically drained. In sales, you need a great deal of mental resilience because you often face so much rejection. The job is hard. And now, you have to work twice as hard to accomplish your sales goals.  In this environment, you need a great deal of intellectual acuity in order to outwit your competitors. Mental acuity requires a great deal of physical stamina. Likewise, mental resilience is directly impacted by physical resilience.  If you’re allowing those days when you just feel depressed to take you down with them, then it’s going to be a lot harder to to to gain the physical stamina that you need.  A Challenge to Focus on You So my challenge to you on this Coronavirus Talk is to go look in the mirror: Are you taking care of yourself? Drinking too much? Eating too much or the wrong things? Getting enough exercise? Are you doing things to your body that make it harder for you to recover mentally?  If the answer is yes, resolve to make changes. Reach deep down inside of yourself and find the discipline. Before I made these changes, I didn’t feel good, didn’t really look good, and I wasn’t performing at my very best. Flip forward a couple of months, with a real focus and discipline on taking care of my physical health, and I’m in a much better place. I’ve got so much more energy and feel much more equipped to handle the disappointments, stress, and anxiety that come along with this horrible pandemic.  Take Action So take action now. Start eating right, getting enough sleep, and exercising. Do this and I promise you that you will not only get through this, but you’ll also put yourself in a position to win on the other side.  I want to hear from you. What are you doing to keep yourself mentally and physically fit during this pandemic? Send me a text message at 1-706-397-4599 or just CLICK HERE TO TEXT. More Coronavirus Talk Episodes: Prospecting Coronavirus Talk #1 Excuses Coronavirus Talk #2 The Gift of Time Coronavirus Talk #3 Confusion Coronavirus Talk #4 Fear and Worry Coronavirus Talk #5 On Mourning Coronavirus Talk #6 Gratitude Coronavirus Talk #7 On New Possibilities #8

On this episode of the Sales Gravy Podcast, Jeb Blount (Virtual Selling) and Matthew Pollard (The Introverts Edge to Networking) take on networking for introverts. One of the biggest myths about networking is that to be an effective networker you need to have the “gift-of-gab” and be an outgoing self-promoter. The truth is, it’s just the opposite. In fact, introverts often make the best networkers. You just need a plan, system, and authenticity. On this paradigm-shifting podcast episode, you learn tips and tactics for leveraging your innate introvert superpowers to target prospects and influencers, engage in networking conversations, and turn networking into a repeatable system that helps you build your business and pipeline. Join Jeb Blount’s Insider Group. Text “insider” to 1-706-397-4599 or HERE Matthew: The Inspiration Behind The Introvert’s Edge to Networking A lot of people don’t like networking and I think it’s because they don’t understand what networking really is. They go to networking events and they see these people that do transactional networking. They have these surface-level conversations with people and they walk out with all these business cards without having a real conversation with anyone. The cards sit on their desk and they think, “If they call me, then I’ll work with them.” And of course, they never do. So they had this mindset that networking just doesn’t work. People need to be more strategic when they’re networking. Secondly, networking doesn’t just take place in a networking room. People assume you have to be face to face because it doesn’t work virtually. And now people are realizing they can actually sell more if they stay at home. Networking is the same way. Most people don’t even know how to articulate the value of what they offer in three minutes when someone is politely listening. What chance do they have when someone gives them half a second online? Jeb: What to Do With That Stack of Business Cards I was working with a group of CPAs who were going to networking events, but they weren’t really getting anything out of them. When I asked about their process, they said, “We talk to people, collect their business cards, and then we come back and wait for them to call us.” I asked why they don’t call them, and they said, “Well, we do call them, but sometimes we’ll call them like three or four weeks later. We don’t want to bother them right after the networking event.” This is not hard. Why don’t you try calling them 24 hours after the networking event? Because they’re probably going to remember you right away. They won’t remember you in a month from now. The advice I gave them was this: The next networking event you go to, when you get their business card, write down something about the person on the back of the business card. As I walk away, I go to my LinkedIn app on my phone and I send them a connection request. The probability that they accept my request goes up exponentially. They also gave me a business card that usually has their cell phone number on it. So I send them a text message that says, “It was so nice meeting you, thank you so much for the conversation. I’ll give you a call tomorrow.” And then I call them the next day. If you do that, appointments go up exponentially. We followed up with this group a couple of weeks later, and sure enough, it was working for them. Suddenly they were meeting people, calling them, and getting meetings. What’s your take on starting conversations, following up, and making connections online? Matthew: Follow-Up Doesn’t Have To Be Awkward If I take a sales mindset, maybe with people on social media, after I walking out of the room means that we are starting to foster that relationship. I’ll connect with them on LinkedIn. Depending on your relationship, why not connect with them on Facebook? Check them out on Instagram. One of the things I tell people is to look people up on LinkedIn beforehand who you know will be there. Instead of all these unfamiliar faces, you actually have a bunch of people you’ve already connected with before you go. It shouldn’t be a bunch of preplanned conversations, but tell them, “I look forward to speaking with you tomorrow.” You should never stop a conversation without a plan for your next follow-up. The problem is when you introduce yourself incorrectly, it leads to this kind of awkward conversation where you say, “Oh, I’m in insurance.” They’ll say something like, “I’ve already got insurance. Thanks.” Now you have an awkward exchange before you have to ask them what they do and then the conversation’s over. Change the Dynamic of Networking Conversations My suggestion is to change the dynamic altogether. I had this guy come to me and he said, “I love selling insurance. But when I go to networking events and tell people I sell insurance, I watch their eyes scream. They’re like, ‘How do I get out of this conversation in less than three minutes? Can I go to the bathroom? Can I go to the bar?’” So he explains to people what he does, but he already knows what they’re going to say. And then he feels obligated to ask them. Now he’s just wasted the money and the time of going. It’s stressful. If you’re commoditizing yourself and saying, “I fit in this category,” I already know from the moment I speak to you, I can disqualify you or say I don’t need it. That’s what most people do in the numbers game of transactional sales networks. You want to introduce yourself differently, but to do that, I need to know why you actually care about this product. If you don’t care about the product or service that you’re selling and you don’t think it adds value, find something else. What I find is that most people gravitate to the products and services that they are connected with in some way, shape, or form. Why Are You Passionate About What You Sell? I asked him why he was passionate about selling insurance, and he said he likes to help people. I told him it needs to get deeper than that. Between a person that earns $50k a year versus somebody that earns $250k, which one do you care about helping most? He said he would pick the person who makes $250k because he can sell them more stuff. I told him that’s not really where we want to go with this. What about a guy that hustles to get into a Harvard degree and got into a C-level executive role where he makes $250k, versus someone that started their own business out of nothing, hired on a bunch of people, and now they make $250k. Which one of those do you care about helping most? And he said, “Obviously the small business owner. I just feel like they deserve more help because my grandfather got a business, owned a farm, and hired all these people. Then he got sick and ended up having to sell it. I just watched him wither away and die for 10 years in front of the TV in this little apartment, because that’s what he could afford.” Story Matters So I said, “Here’s what I want you to think about instead of going in and introducing yourself as an insurance salesperson. Why not introduce yourself as the ‘hustle lifeguard’? When people ask what that is, you then talk about your passion and mission, helping the hustlers of this world, the people who create something out of nothing. You’ll find that people will gravitate to you.” What was funny is that the small business owners that heard that, they’re like, “I need that. You’re right. I’m not prioritizing, I don’t want to end up like your grandfather.” But people who aren’t small business owners almost never seem passionate about what they do, so they hear his story and they want to extend his passion into what they do. They’re like, “I’m not in a small business, but could I work with you too?” It transformed everything. He went from an employee to starting his own business, and his business exploded. Matthew: Get Them Talking First One of the introvert’s strengths is our ability to be empathetic, ask great questions, and really listen to what the answers are. An extrovert often wants to talk about themselves. Extroverts can learn how to actively listen and empathize, but introverts believe they can’t learn to do those other behaviors, and the key isn’t about being more extroverted. That’s a true recipe for failure and feeling inauthentic. You have to learn a system that channels your introverted strengths. The thing that I will tell you though, is absolutely like when you go and speak to someone for the first time, it’s about being interested, not interesting. A lot of people get worried that they’ve got nothing to add. The person that’s networking wants to talk about themselves. So if you ask, “What brought you to this networking event?” something will come up. Or, “What’s going on in your life at the moment?” Maybe they’ll say, “Oh, I just got promoted.” Be genuinely excited for them. Or if they say, “Oh, no, I always didn’t get here because something’s going on at the office,” ask them questions about it. Empathize with them. Offer assistance or advice. Somebody will say, “Oh my gosh, I can’t believe I haven’t even asked you what it is that you do!” And then you get permission to answer. Networking In Everyday Situations I like to travel economy sometimes, because going on a short flight, I find that a lot of people these days don’t want to spend the extra money on first-class for a short flight. So I’ll sit down and I’ll have a conversation where the first thing I’ll say is, “Are you going home, or are you heading out for a meeting?” And a lot of times they’ll say, “Oh, I’m heading out to a meeting,” especially if it’s the morning. And we’ll then have a dialogue. I’ll joke about the fact that I won’t pay for first-class for short rides to create this dialogue. Now we’re having a dialogue about all the people that are in first class. There’s a story in the book actually about one of the best relationships I created was literally at an airport. The flight had been delayed and I’m sitting in a restaurant waiting for my flight to get sorted. I heard everybody else talking about the conference that they’re going to next to me. And I was the speaker at the conference. So I turned around and said, “I’m hoping that we can get out today as well.” And that is all I needed. That is just building on something that you’re overhearing. Tips for Great Conversation Starters The night before an event, I’ll go out for a meal and generally I’ll sit at the bar and there’ll be another executive sitting at the bar because they don’t want to sit at a restaurant by themselves. They’re like, “You’re in business, too?” And then we’ll have a conversation. I’ll say, “What did you order? Is it any good?” That dialogue is all you need to strike up a conversation. And then I’ll say, “What are you here for?” It literally brings the same conversation back. I’ll then invest in them about what they do, what brought them there, if they got some time to enjoy the city, some of the things that I saw earlier today, if I’d been to the city before, and eventually they’ll say, “So rude of me, I cannot believe I haven’t asked you what you do. What is it that you do?” The thing is that you can create these serendipity moments everywhere. It’s unbelievable. I talk about this for a whole chapter. So many people tell me how lucky I am for running into all the right people. I have practiced and practiced so much that I always have conversations thought out. Networking Happens Everywhere Now, when I first started, it was a networking room and that’s it. But once I mastered the networking room, I started to look for conversation starters that I could use when I was at sports games, when I was at restaurants, or doing something in the city. Anytime I see an opportunity, I almost get upset with myself unless I practice one of my conversation starters. This is for two reasons: One is that it’ll either be a great opportunity I could have missed out on, or secondly, maybe it leads to nothing, but I really learned something that didn’t go well that I can then practice later when I do run into that right connection. I’ll know exactly how to handle it. Jeb: Practice Makes Perfect in Networking One of the ways that I’ve helped myself create these conversation starters is by talking to people when I’m waiting in line for fast food. I’ve always practiced this and it doesn’t make me feel even a little bit nervous. I’m a big fan of fast food, so I’m always getting the burger. I’m waiting in line and there are people in line and they have logo shirts on. I’ll go, “Hey, I couldn’t help but notice that you work for this company. What do you do there?” And people love to talk about that. I can always start asking questions and it just helps me open up a dialogue or find out about the company. And I learn a lot about the marketplace that way. I don’t always create the same sort of these reciprocal relationships that last a long time, but I learn things I didn’t know. They’re usually pretty good conversations and I never feel even the least bit of nervousness about that at all. You Have Nothing to Lose By Trying I think that you have to be intentional about it. You have to decide you’re going to do it. And then, you have to practice. Practicing has been the way that I’ve gotten myself better at those types of conversations. I have conversations with strangers that have zero impact on my life. I’m probably gonna have zero impact on their life. So there’s nothing to lose, nothing to gain. And my thought is that if I asked them about their day, let them talk, and I don’t say anything, all I did was make their day brighter and they walked away thinking, “Wow, that was a really nice person.” I get practice by getting out of my own head and having those easy conversations.

On this episode of the Sales Gravy Podcast Jeb Blount (People Follow You) and Kristie Jones discuss the trials and tribulations of building and sustaining a sales accountability culture. You’ll learn that without accountability your sales team will generate inconsistent results and devolve into the wild, wild west. Kristie: How I Developed My Passion for Creating a Sales Accountability Culture I actually started in SaaS sales leadership back in 2000. As I progressed through my career, I started to work for some VC-backed companies, and I got that VC-backed startup bug. Accountability is so critical when you’re dealing with people who have given you money and expect a return on the investment. Early-stage startups and fast-growing startups are all about urgency and results. I was working as a VP of Sales and it was clear that those environments needed to have a sales accountability culture. We needed to create and maintain one. In about 2016, I left the W2 world and started my own sales consultancy. I’m passionate about helping early-stage tech startups build their sales teams and formalize their process. I spend a ton of time doing executive coaching on accountability culture. I’m still walking into companies and talking to them about accountability culture after really not seeing it. That includes everything from not having firm quotas, to not dealing with “accountability dodgers”. Jeb: Too Much Money, Not Enough Leadership In some cases, there’s zero leadership, too much money, and people run wild. In other cases, you’ve just got a founder who is trying to put everything together. There’s an inflection point where if you don’t create some accountability, it’s a disaster. What advice do you have for a business, no matter where they fit on that spectrum, for sales leaders or executives, to shift into an accountability culture? Kristie: Expectations Are The Foundation Of A Sales Accountability Culture It starts with setting expectations and putting those in writing. In the middle of this pandemic, it’s more important than ever. There’s more uncertainty than ever before, which also means that sales reps need accountability more than ever before. They need to understand: “What will cause me to lose my job?” Everybody’s worried about that. They need to understand the circumstances around that. A sales accountability culture starts during the interview process. During the interview process, I’m already starting to set expectations just by the behavioral-based interview questions that I’m asking to ensure that people will walk their talk and that people will fall on the sword when they need to. During the start of COVID-19, I went back to all of my clients and former clients and wrote a little how-to menu and said, “You have to create accountability around the work schedule because the work schedule is not eight-to-five anymore. You have to understand what you can expect from them, even from a work schedule standpoint.” Also, expectations are a two-way street. As a leader, I can’t just sit down with you and say, “Here are my expectations, let’s negotiate them and put them in writing.” I also need to say, “Here’s what you can expect from me.” And then, at the end of our expectations meeting, I ask, “What do you want me to do if you don’t hold up your end of the bargain?” I let them set their own consequences. Why would I wait until it’s gone south on me, just to go back to fix it in a way that may not work for the rep? I hear everything from, “I need a gentle reminder,” to, “I need you to take me out to lunch, clearly something’s going on and I need some one-on-one attention.” I hear a lot of different answers to that question, but I write those down on the document, too. And so it’s so much easier for me to go to a rep who’s not walking their talk and say, “We had this conversation and this is what we discussed. This is what you told me to do if you weren’t holding yourself accountable. I think we’re at that place, so now we can have that conversation.” Kristie: Don’t Wait For A Crisis To Have Clear Communication I let the conversation happen a couple of different ways. So I want that first conversation to happen in the first one or two weeks of onboarding. I spend a lot of time helping my founders onboard new reps, and I build that in. I create an hour-by-hour, day-by-day, formal onboarding plan for the first two weeks for my founders, including a two-hour expectations conversation. If I worked with the founder before, they can run through that themselves. I want them to understand not only expectations but also communication. For example, how does the employee want to be communicated with? We’re dealing with a lot of Gen Y and Gen Z, right? So they like having conversations over Slack. And I always say to people, when my door is open, you’re welcome to come in. But I run a very tight schedule. I say to them, if it’s a 911, you better text me. If you need an answer in 24 hours, email me. Those are expectation conversations, too, that people just don’t think about. Business is shifting so quickly that you really need quarterly expectations conversations. You can’t just set expectations in week two and expect them to not change by month nine. So we need to sit down quarterly as a team. What are the expectations of the team, as well as individual expectations? We’re going to have these conversations upfront so we don’t have to have a very awkward conversation in the middle of a crisis. Jeb: Why Expectations Matter That expectation meeting matters, because when I look back on the early stages of our company, our biggest mistake was not having those conversations. So when there was a crisis, it was pretty easy for the employee to look at me and say, “You didn’t tell me what to do.” And there is a truth in the fact that if people think they’re doing the right thing, it didn’t even occur to them to do anything else. Kristie: A Rep’s Failure Is Also The Leader’s Failure You’ve got to go in with that attitude. I assume everyone is doing the best they can. Sometimes the best they can do is subpar, but only because I failed them as the leader. When executive coaching, I’m teaching them how to do this because my clients can not afford to make hiring mistakes. They can’t afford to let people go because they didn’t know they should have had these conversations. And now things are so left of center that there’s no coming back to the center. I think one of the harder things for people who are the hiring manager, whether that be the founder, whether that be HR, whether it be the VP of sales, is that you might’ve mis-hired. That’s accountability for yourself. That’s saying, “I made a bad hire. I’ve got to fix my own problem.” And again, it’s not the employee’s fault. I always take full responsibility for bad hires because I should know better. We had a mis-hire that happened, and I consulted with the founder and said, “This person is not qualified for this job. You’re going to set them up to fail, and it’s never going to be their fault.” And now seven months later, after two of the four sales reps quit, now we’ve got ourselves a problem. Now we have to make the decision we should’ve made if we were disciplined during the hiring process. But the other thing that people don’t realize is the morale problem that it causes. When I terminate a rep for accountability issues or non-performance and another rep walks in my office and closes the door and says, “We weren’t sure how long it was going to take you,” it’s embarrassing. The managers always are the last to know, right? We’re not living amongst the gossip and we’re not going out for a beer afterward with the employees, but I’ve had that happen to me two or three times over 20 years. And it is embarrassing and humiliating that your team was waiting patiently for you to get rid of the bad apple so we could change the culture on the sales floor. Jeb: Leaders Must Be Accountable To Themselves That is one of the keys to creating a sales accountability culture. You’ve got to recognize that people who aren’t accountable pull down and hold back the very best of the best salespeople. They are lifted up when they’re surrounded by people who are accountable to the mission, accountable to the numbers, and accountable to integrity. I think sales is a competitive environment where everybody is working to get to the top of the leaderboard. There can’t be backbiting and people doing side deals behind your back. And I’ve had that happen in my own business and people didn’t tell me, so I found out later on. It pulls the entire organization down. Even if they are your top salesperson, it pulls everybody down around them. That’s just a key part of building that accountability. One of my early leaders and mentors, Mary Gardner, who in my early twenties taught me how to be a sales leader, said to me: If you have to fire somebody, the first thing you do is go into the restroom, look in the mirror, look yourself in the eye, and you say, “This is my fault. It is my fault that I have to fire this person. I own this, I’m accountable for this.” Then you go fire them. It sounds weird on the outside, but it was a really important lesson. I’ll have leaders even say to me, “Well, I didn’t hire that person.” But they don’t get a free pass on that, either. You’re firing this person and it’s your fault because you couldn’t coach them. It’s your fault because you couldn’t make them better, and it’s usually your fault because you hired them in the first place. You did it too quickly and you didn’t ask the right questions. I think that as leaders, if we’re accountable to ourselves, then it’s easier for us to lead from a place where we’re saying that this is a place where we’re all going to be accountable for the things we’ve promised the organization. Kristie: How To Begin Creating A Sales Accountability Culture Don’t forget that it’s a two-way street. I can’t set expectations for my sales reps, but not be willing to be held accountable myself. Tell them: “Here’s what you can expect from me now. What else do you need that I didn’t mention? What else are you expecting from me?” These sound like complicated conversations, but with a couple of these under your belt, they’re not. I promise that it will make your life as a sales leader so much easier. It will add a level of respect to your organization and the team. Not every department has an accountability culture, either. I tell sales leaders that we’ll lead the way for the company and set the example. Everybody’s looking to us anyway, so we’ll create an accountability culture. Set those expectations, and then set consequences. You and I talked a lot about termination today, but it doesn’t have to get to that point. There have to be milestone consequences along the way. How are we going to handle that? Ask the employee, what do you want me to do? Let them set their own consequences. You have to negotiate that and agree to that. As a new leader who comes into an existing team, you have to sit back within the first two weeks and have those expectation conversations. You have to start all over again, no matter whether the last leader did it or not. This is now your team. It needs to be run by you and they need to understand what they can expect from you. Get Kristie’s free resources here: https://salesaccelerationgroup.com/salesgravy