Sales Game Changers | Tips from Successful Sales Leaders

This is episode 496. Tips for Sales Career Success Read the complete transcript on the Sales Game Changers Podcast website. JOHN'S TIP: "Be a zealot about pre-call planning. Read 10-K's, look at their Twitter, go look at their Facebook, go find out as much as you can about that person and their business as you possibly can. If you look at the risk factors in most 10-K's, if you're calling on public companies, you'll know what's on the mind of that person and you don't have to ask the 'what keeps you up at night' question because it's right there in black and white. Get your call opening correct and that call plan. The planning is priceless. Planning a call is priceless.

This is episode 494. Tips for sales career success. Read the complete transcription on the Sales Game Changers Podcast website. TOM'S TIP: "Look at everything you produce, whether it's a PowerPoint, a website, an email, or a lecture, and honestly ask yourself, how different is this from what your prospect is getting from the competition? Is it dramatically different? Look at it. If it's not, change it. Be dramatically different, change it, do something different. Otherwise, you're just going to be swept up with the rest of the competition."

This is episode 494. Tips for sales career success. Read the complete transcription on the Sales Game Changers Podcast website. BLAIR'S TIP: "Simply start identifying your strengths of what you're doing effectively and write those down. Three things every single day so that you start naming and labeling the things that you're already doing that are effective. Then you have something that's identifiable, repeatable and duplicatable and you're already doing it. It's the simplest most effective thing I can tell people to do."

This is episode 493. Tips for sales career success. Read the complete transcript on the Sales Game Changers Podcast website. HEATHER'S TIP: "I'm going to encourage everyone to not give up their power of choice. Because bad things happen every day. Things outside of us, external situations will arise that are difficult, that are very challenging, but you get to choose how you think about it, how you feel about it, and how you respond to it. Don't give up your power."

This is episode 492. Tips for sales career success. Read the complete transcription on the Sales Game Changers Podcast website. ANDY'S TIP: "When hiring, the main question is can this person hit quota in my environment under my circumstances? If it's an existing person, then the question is, what do I have to do to coach them up so that they can perform better? The best place to find candidates is to put in a referral system in your company amongst your existing team. Not just the sales team, but everybody in the company. And that includes from your clients and your customers, so why not make them part of winning on the referral fees?"

This is episode 491. Tips for Sales Career Success. Read the complete transcription on the Sales Game Changers Podcast website. BOB'S TIP: "Cling to, "Yes and." There's an oversimplification that the majority of people use for 'yes and' that it's an ideation tool only. At its core, it's a communication tool because you cannot 'yes and' somebody without listening to them, without understanding them. And' is the bridge to your voice. This provides this opportunity to build bridges. 'Yes and' links to that postponement of judgment. 'Yes and' is a fantastic conflict management technique. Imagine some difficult questions being thrown your way or pushback that you're receiving. A way to deal with both of those is through 'yes and.'

This is episode 490. Read the complete transcription on the Sales Game Changers Podcast website. Tips for sales career success. KRISTIE'S TIP: "Be fearless in speaking up and saying things are not okay in a way that you can be heard. It's not about stomping out or raising your voice. It's about, "Hey, you're probably not even aware that this happened in the meeting, or that you made this comment that made me feel small and invisible." It's our job. We are going to have to support each other. We're also going to have to have uncomfortable conversations in order to help move it forward. No change in our country and other countries have happened without having uncomfortable conversations happen."

This is episode 489. Tips for sales career success. Read the complete transcription on the Sales Game Changers Podcast website. LAUREN'S TIP: "Go listen to your calls. The #1 thing you can do is listen to game tape. Go listen to your calls, go listen to other people's calls. When you do so, I'd like you to get into the mind of your customer. Play the pause game, play anybody's call, pause, "What's the customer thinking right now?" and what would you do next? The goal, remember, is engagement. Getting that customer to open up, getting that prospect to talk to you and to share their needs and their challenges so that you can help solve a potential problem. If you listen to your game tape with that in mind, I think you'll come up with three or four instant action items that you can take to take your game to the next level. Not enough people are doing it. If you commit to your craft that way, you can soar to the top and stay there."

This is episode 488. Read the complete transcription on the Sales Game Changers Podcast website. Tips for sales career success. REENA'S TIP: "Know your value. How do you do this? You can start with a mind map. Just start brainstorming out the education you bring to the table, the experiences you bring to the table, your personality traits, training, certifications. Just start putting it all out there to see. Start with a brainstorm session. If you don't know off the cuff your value, at least start there. From there, begin to fine tune it and build it out so that your value is essentially your brand statement. You want to know your value. Then you want to be able to articulate your value which is being able to express owning that I."

This is episode 487. Tips for sales career success. Read the complete transcription on the Sales Game Changers Podcast website. NANCY'S TIP: "Pick up the phone, hold yourself accountable to making a certain amount of dials a week, get it going. I'm telling you, I'll be the next person to get that piece of business if you don't do it."

This is episode 486. Tips for sales career success. Read the complete transcription on the Sales Game Changers Podcast website. JUDE'S TIP: "The 60% solution was something I pulled from my marine brothers. Perfect information is impossible, whether it's the fog of war or the dynamic points of views on a problem. How do you get to enough information that you can action a plan? Whether it's go right, left, dig or charge, frequently it's much more about execution than it is about the plan or strategy. Too oftentimes people can get trapped in wanting to get that perfect insight when in reality, they will learn more, and our customers will, with a minimum viable product. The experience of trying to implement this approach will give you better insight than all the analysis that you could do. I'm a big fan of that."

This is episode 485. Tips for sales career success. Read the complete transcription on the Sales Game Changers Podcast website. ALEX'S TIP: "Write down three names, write down three current customers or past customers, people you haven't talked to in a while. Look at someone you haven't talked to in six months or more. Write down three names of people you haven't talked to in six months or more, and then immediately, without thinking about it or analyzing it or scheduling it for later, immediately, go to the phone and call them and say, "Hey man, I was thinking about you. How are you? How's your family? Is everybody healthy? Now, what are you working on these days that I can help you with? Because I'd like to help." You will be the only one in that person's life doing that and they will remember that phone call forever. It's a pretty good way to live and it's pretty easy too."

This is episode 484. Read the complete transcription on the Sales Game Changers Podcast website. ALINA'S TIP: "It's very important to understand one's skillset and understand what one's strengths are and to make sure to double down on them because that unique combination of skill is probably just specific to you. The more we understand how we can contribute to the growth of our environment, not only to our company, but to our family unit and to our village in general. That deep understanding of our skillset can help us understand how we can better contribute, but also to understand when we might have to leave some other things to others that might do it better than us. I think that's one important part of the puzzle. Obviously, once that's integrated and understood, one has to have a lot of strength and energy in one's powers to be able to execute. So consistently working on self-confidence and that motivation is an equally strong contributor to success."

This is episode 483. Tips for sales career success. Read the complete transcription on the Sales Game Changers Podcast website. MIKES' TIP: "I work with large corporations. One of the things we do is collect the stories that we find when we're training their salespeople, because salespeople are great at telling stories, and put them in a story bank for our clients so that new salespeople don't have that problem. But if you're in a company that doesn't have a collection of stories, and that will be most companies, you'll need to learn how to find them yourself and collect them yourself and share them with your colleagues. That's an enjoyable skill to learn."

This is episode 482. Tips for Sales Career Success. Read the complete transcription on the Sales Game Changers Podcast website. MARK'S TIP: "Be a student of sales. Learn about the process. Be curious. Learn about what makes the person sitting next to you, maybe just virtually these days, successful and try to apply those things. This is a profession and it's a great profession and one that you can really help people with. Think about it from that perspective. If you have that going forward, I think you'll have a long, successful career in sales."

This is episode 481. Read the complete transcript on the Sales Game Changers Podcast website. JEN'S TIP: "I would suggest you defining success for yourself. Find out what you're good at, find out what you're not good at, or what you don't like to do. Determine it for yourself. Don't let other people put their expectations on what your career journey should look like, but really just own it. For anyone out there considering bringing more women on, or for people with open roles, considering transferable skills and the value that a different perspective brings to the table is so important that that diversity of thought will help your sales organization be more successful.

This is episode 480. Read the complete transcript on the Sales Game Changers Podcast website. BRENT'S TIP: "Commit 3% of your time, an hour a week to getting better at helping buyers anchor on value. Stories, value discovery strategies, that give-get at the end. Where do they see value? Commit 3% to write down your questions. Just get with a peer, ask your manager. If you commit 3% a week, you will be amazed at how quickly your selling velocity gets better."

This is episode 479. Read the complete transcript on the Sales Game Changers Podcast website. MICHAEL'S TIP: "it's not about throwing away the investments (in sales tech) you've made but how to optimize those investments with a way to take the best information and the nuggets that are in all those different investments and then optimize them and use that information in a way that provides context and makes it actionable for your sales reps (so that they succeed.)" LISA'S TIP: "For sales leaders, don't underestimate the importance of the care and feeding of your sales teams. It's not a math equation of how many reps and assignments, it is really about people and doing what you can to make them successful in their jobs. If you're a sales rep starting off in your career, be clear and vocal with your management about what you need. We're in a position now where we're listening more, the people aspect has gotten very important. Be specific about where you need help and the things you need to succeed, and that will go a long way."

This is episode 478. Read the complete transcription on the Sales Game Changers Podcast website. PATTY'S TIP: "What do you think it takes to get promoted?" First and foremost, you have to be really good in your current job. Do not ever forego being good in your current job, because you are chasing down a next-level title. Second, build the right network. I would encourage everyone to take a look at your existing network. Is it with inside your traditional workgroup as it sits today? Or do you have people that are outside of your traditional workgroup where you've built a network that has diversity across the different levels of the business? Third, personal brand. What do people say about you? How are you perceived as an individual? My challenge would be, go out, ask a few people, "Hey, what's your perception of me? How would you describe me?" That's going to give you insight on what that personal brand looks like for you."

This is episode 477. Read the complete trancript on the Sales Game Changers Podcast website. LORI'S' TIP: "Visualize the kinds of connections that you want to bring into your network. Do a little visualization, setting and intention. Visualize the kinds of conversations you would like to have and feel gratitude for them as if they have already happened." JEFF'S TIP: "Download your LinkedIn connections to your Dropbox, PC or wherever you go. Take a look at the file. It takes about 10, 20 minutes for LinkedIn to send it to you, they'll process your request and send you an email. Take a look at that file and come up with five people that you haven't connected with in over two years. You have all these people in your connections, who haven't you talked to in two years that you already know? Reach out to them this afternoon. Pick up the phone. If you can't reach them by phone, send them an email, but reach out to them."

This is episode 476. Read the complete transcription on the Sales Game Changers Podcast website. Tips for sales career success. AMY'S TIP: "Take the two-minute challenge and practice some version of mindfulness for two minutes sometime during a transition period during the day, because it will train your brain. Think about it too, before you send that email or text when you're ticked off, if you pause for two minutes, or if you pause for two minutes before a sales call. I pause and I have a specific ritual of things I do, such as before sales calls, I pause and do this very specific mindfulness-based practices and intentions, and before clients, all of it. Then the other thing would be is use acknowledge, appreciate, and ask as a way to have conversations, because that's going to allow someone to be validated. It's going to be compassionate. It's going to be curious. It's going to open up space for you to have the sales conversation that you want to have, acknowledge, appreciate and ask, and be mindful.

This is episode 475. Tips for sales career success. Read the complete transcription on the Sales Game Changers Podcast website. ANDRES' TIP: "As you start reflecting on whether or not you want to make a change, ask yourself, "Am I running away from something or am I running towards something?" Because if you are running away from something, then really understanding what this next opportunity is, is it more of the same or is it really truly an opportunity? Am I running towards it? Really spend some time reflecting so that you don't become that no-show, or you're not that person that is constantly switching jobs because you haven't figured out exactly what it is that you want to do with your career. WILL'S TIP: "Get really good at asking great questions. It is, to me, the number one skill that I see out there that really makes a difference, and understanding the second, third, and fourth level questions. Do question trees. I would challenge everyone to do one a day. It is game-changing to be able to be prepared for the answers you're going to get and be able to really facilitate a conversation to get to that impact, become a great question-asker, incredibly curious."

This is episode 474. Read the complete transcription on the Sales Game Changers Podcast website. NANCY'S TIP: "Ask for what you need. Be clear on what you need and ask. I'm a firm believer that I need to ask for what I need in all aspects of my life. We were talking about personal relationship, professional, ask for what you need.

This is episode 473. Read the complete transcript on the Sales Game Changers Podcast website. DR. CINDY'S TIP: "Truly ask for what you want today. Whether it's French fries instead of a salad, that you want somebody else to pick up your kids from school versus you do it, ask for what you want. Just try it in those little areas where there's not such a huge impact where it feels like, "Oh my gosh. If I ask for this promotion and I don't get it, the world will fall," but allow yourself to start asking for what you want and give yourself permission to do that. It will become easier and easier over time. I'd love to hear the success stories."

Tips for Sales Career Success. Episode 472. Read the complete transcription on the Sales Game Changers Podcast website. ALISON'S TIP: "I invite you to get real in terms of what aren't you doing. What are you missing? In what ways have you not tried to engage with your customer? Are you just going to what's familiar? The opportunity is, what is one new way you could engage with your customer that you haven't? That deep down intuitively you know is something that you should be trying, and maybe something that's holding you back is, "Well, that's going to take a lot of time." Yeah, probably because you haven't done it yet. If we're not challenging ourselves and stretching in a way that brings new insights, you are not going to be able to take new insights to your customers."

Tips for Sales Career Success Read the complete transcription on the Sales Game Changers Podcast website. KEN'S TIP: "Don't forget to keep really good track of your track record because most people are moving on to the next thing, and I query them because I do very detailed interviews about the details of their track record, their deals, their customers, and they don't have it all together. Then the other thing just to make you stand out is positive energy. Put it out there and what goes around, comes around. FRANK'S TIP: "Stand out. Try to get in front of the companies that you're interested in and apply all the principles that Ken pointed out on how to interview for a job. It's a sales job. Just stand out among all the other people that might be having conversations during an interview versus interviewing to win. That's the main takeaway for salespeople.

Episode 470 of the Sales Game Changers Podcast. Read the complete transcription on the Sales Game Changers Podcast website. LYNN'S TIP: "Take the time to plan for prospect conversations. I think it all boils down to that. The more you do that, I think you're going to see your close rate and win ratio improve."

This is episode number 469. Read the complete transcript on the Sales Game Changers Podcast website. JANE'S TIP: "Resilience is a teachable skill. You may not have learned it, but you can learn it now. Even if it's as simple as failure is an event, not a person. Every time you make a mistake, you remind yourself, failure is an event. It is one thing; you are still a good person. Get over it, move on."

This is episode 468. Read the complete transcript on the Sales Game Changers Podcast website. LISA'S TIP: "Noble purpose is both a strategic intent and a methodology. It's based on the research that says salespeople who focus on improving life for customers outperform salespeople focused on targets and quotas. That's really easy to see why. If you had a choice of two salespeople coming to call on you and one sitting in your waiting room, or your virtual waiting room, thinking, "I got to close this deal." The other one's sitting in the virtual waiting room thinking, "How can I help this customer?" You're going to like the second one better." ELIZABETH'S TIP: "Tell a customer impact story. Those stories do so much for your customers, and the ability to describe how you make a difference to others can win them over. They also do a lot for you personally. Talking about how you've made a difference fills you with pride, we release that dopamine, that serotonin, that we know feels so good. People on both sides of the seller relationship are craving that now."

This is episode 467. Read the complete transcript on the Sales Game Changers Podcast website. ANDY'S TIP: "Keep reading. As a podcaster you might think I'd say listen to podcasts. I think it's great. Please listen to this podcast, listen to my podcast but I still think reading is the most effective way to learn because you're exposed in a medium where people have to lay out a comprehensive cohesive argument. I think if you want to be influenced to learn new things and adopt new perspectives, that's the best way. Whether it's in sales or whether it's to Fred's point, the one we talked about earlier, it's about the world around us, it's biographies of great people and what they've achieved. I love to read and still read history. Just keep reading and keep learning."

This is episode 466. Read the complete transcription on the Sales Game Changers Podcast website. JOHN'S TIP: "We're not going back to normal, so we really have to think about the future. Many, many companies have been innovating during this recession that we've been in and are starting to come out of. Our company now has eight new offerings that we did not have pre-recession. They are either totally new or totally upgraded from an old offering. We're not going back. Think about coming out, when we finally get out, what's the new stuff you've got to offer the new prospects?"

This is episode 465. Read the complete transcription on the Sales Game Changers Podcast website. MARC'S TIP: "Figure out your values. When everything changes and all the strategies go away because of a pandemic or something, knowing what your core values are, those become the compass that you can use to orient yourself. For example, "I don't know what's coming up next, but I know how I want to treat my people, how I want to treat my clients." If you Google values inventory, there's millions of them out there. One's at concordleadershipgroup.com/values. You could just figure out what are your top five, and that will help you make smart decisions quickly."

This is episode 464. Read the complete transcription on the Sales Game Changers Podcast website. TOM'S TIP: "As we emerge from this pandemic, every piece of data screams what people are desperate for from the salespeople they see – it's human conversation. Enough already with the structure of questions, that's not bad stuff, you're a human being. Things like empathy, attentive listening, premise on your questions, providing reaction, asking clarifying questions, these are the ways human beings interact. Now that none of us have been able to interact, we're dying for it. The door is wide open for you to be the one that does that and be different on that alone."

This is episode 463. Read the complete transcription on the Sales Game Changers Podcast website. THOMAS' TIP: "Do an analysis of yourself, do a self-analysis and say, "Where do I need to improve that to get to the next level?" Sit down, write down what your strengths are. What do you need to improve upon in 2022 to get you to the next level? Then immediately find people that can help you get there. Whether that's attending the IES workshops every month, whether that's a podcast, there's so many ways that you can get better, but you first have to identify what is the one thing? Don't write down 10 things, but we can focus on no more than three."

This is episode 462. Read the complete transcription on the Sales Game Changers Podcast website. KELLY'S TIP: "What would be game-changing for you? Then make a commitment to putting that into action. Be intentional about it. Because listening to it and being aware of it is the first step. But if you don't put it into action, it's never going to help you. Every little baby step you take counts towards creating something great down the road. Take the action."

This is episode 461. Read the complete transcript on the Sales Game Changers Podcast website. TODD'S TIP: "When people say, "Why does authenticity matter?" I go, well, do you want comfort, do you want understanding, do you want rapport? That's the relationship foundation upon which anything else that might happen will happen, and it begins with being a human being who's a little more real, authentic."

This is episode 460. Read the complete transcription on the Sales Game Changers Podcast website. WAYNE'S TIP: "Focus on the client's outcome, not on your product. All too often we go in there and all we're trying to do is push the differentiators in our product. The time of feature, function, benefit, not there now, it's about what's the outcome. Go in, do a deep discovery, understand how you can influence positively and deliver value as well as defined by the client, and then talk about your product. Don't do it too early."

This is episode 459. Read the complete transcription on the Sales Game Changers Podcast website. COLLEEN'S TIP: "It's time for a new perspective in sales. I believe in teaching both the hard skills, what I've framed up as the sales IQ skills – negotiation skills, value propositions, prospecting, closing – but what was missing for years and is still missing in a lot of sales organizations are coaching and teaching the soft skills, emotional intelligence skills. Emotional intelligence sounds great but how do you actually yield hard sales results? What I'd like to encourage everyone today is for this new perspective, when you're coaching your salespeople, absolutely coach to the hard skills but start including language such as, "Where do you think lack of empathy got in the way of forwarding this opportunity?", "Where did your lack of assertiveness go up?", "How are you playing into instant gratification?" It's not an either/or proposition which often people confuse that when they hear of emotional intelligence.

This is episode 458. Read the complete transcription on the Sales Game Changers Podcast website. Meredith's TIP: "Find someone to be an accountability partner with you. Pair up with someone so that you work with another individual to help them and you improve in a particular skill. Because when you make a commitment to someone else and you meet with them on a regular basis, you are going to be more aware of using that skill and applying it in between the times that you meet with your accountability partner. Denny's TIP: "An elite team is a team where everyone on the team, the sales manager as well as the sales reps, all of the people involved are good at listening to each other so that the people, all of them felt understood and respected so that they are forthcoming with what's going on. Also, they help each other solve problems. They stimulate each other to think. It's not just a one-way thing. It's people sharing ideas and they ask for the ideas."

This is episode 457. Read the complete transcription on the Sales Game Changers Podcast website. REBECCA'S TIP: "Embrace the new year. Don't be rudderless, develop an account plan, action your plan, be adaptive, agile and flexible to the needs and demands of your customers as the environments are ever-changing." HANNAH KATE'S TIP: "Meet with all of your clients and prospects or as many as you can in the early part of the year and really listen to what their resolutions are, personal and professional. You'll learn about their pain points, their goals, then what motivates them as people. Emotional intelligence is so important in sales so take this opportunity to meet with as many people as you can and really listen to what they have going on."

This is episode 456. Read the complete transcription on the Sales Game Changers Podcast website. Julie's TIP: "Everyone needs to watch themselves more on video. Watch a recent recording or record your next interaction and play it back. Time every time you make eye contact with yourself. Every time your on-screen persona makes eye contact with you, the real person, have a stopwatch to time that. Then I want you to add up that time and divide that by the time of the entire call. If it is less than 50%, which for most people it is significantly less than 50%, you got some work to do because you're missing that opportunity to really build that connection. Also, look at what your face is saying. If you're sharing something positive, did your face support that? Is there variety in it? Is it just a blank slate the entire time? Those are good starting points."

This is episode 455. Read the complete transcription on the Sales Game Changers Podcast website. Mike's TIP: "Play with more gratitude, more joy, more freedom, more creativity and go deep into that belief that you are more than a sales professional, just like the Steph Curry's are more than just athletes. I think it is something that can be a foundational element of your performance and it's something that's super important. I think if you can leave here and figure out a way to build some legs for you to believe in that and adopt that belief, it's going to take you a long way, and it's going to impact you beyond the sales arena."

This is episode 454. Read the complete transcript on the Sales Game Changers Podcast website. Mike is an IES Premier Sales Leaders. Learn more here. Find Mike on LinkedIn. MIKE'S' TIP: "Figure out what your goals are. The goals aren't just, "Make my number." Sometimes the goal is, "I need to be strategically relevant to XYZ customer," "I need to find my own sales process, build my own sales engine." Figure out what your top 2-3 goals are and no more than that. Then work backwards from there. Think, how long is it going to take me and what do I need to do to slowly build up to accomplishing what these goals might be? The buildup needs to be set with marker flags. Marker flags are leading indicators of success."

This is episode 453. Read the complete transcription on the Sales Game Changers Podcast website. TIFFANY'S TIP: "Seek mentors. I always encourage people because mentors are a powerful thing to have. They can help you with career advice. They can help you through professional transitions. They can help you get some insider advice into promotions that you want or that are available. I think mentors are such a powerful thing. You could have one or two or build an army of mentors. Maybe it is someone that you meet once a month for coffee, I think that every mentor-mentee relationship is different, but someone that you can reach out to that you trust that can give you advice and that you can maybe perhaps lend some value to when you can as well, is really important. Then once you're in a position where you can mentor somebody else, be a mentor and be a guide." LACEY'S TIP: "Make yourself known outside of your direct team. And just say yes to the next opportunity that's presented to you. Sometimes it means getting out of your comfort zone a little bit. If it's something that maybe scares you a little bit, like speaking up in a meeting, or sharing a new idea that you have, or doing a presentation or public speaking, saying yes to just putting yourself in a different scenario even though it might be scary, it's only going to help you grow as a leader.

This is episode 452. Read the complete transcription on the Sales Game Changers Podcast website. Liz's TIP: "Prioritize, figure out who your ideal customer is, figure out what are the most important things you need to do. Take all of those other things that don't matter and put them on the back burner, but do the things that matter. Prioritize the customers that are going to grow, prioritize the ideal customer that's got the shortest sales cycle and the most likelihood of buying and prioritize out those customers that are wasting your time and are never going to buy from you. Prioritize."

This is episode 451. Read the complete transcription on the Sales Game Changers Podcast website. Jack's TIP: "I'm a huge believer in mindset. Consultative Selling starts with mindset but mindset is useless unless you do the things and you have the skills to be able to implement that mindset. So A) adopt a mindset but then B) it's all about practice, practice, practice."

This is episode 450. Read the complete transcription on the Sales Game Changers Podcast website. Paul's TIP: "Treat storytelling like any other leadership skill that you want to have, leadership and sales skills. Study it. It's not the kind of thing that well, if I'm not born with it I'll just never have it. It's not. You can learn it. Read a book, watch some YouTube videos, take a class. It is something you can learn, and you should. Treat it that way."

This is episode 449. Read the complete transcription on the Sales Game Changers Podcast website. Colleen's TIP: "Carve out some time between now and December 31 to really take a good, hard look at what happened this year, analyze the numbers and plan to make some changes. One of the first things I would do is look at what's working even if I don't necessarily like it and then commit to doing more of that in January, including maybe getting a mentor or finding someone in the organization who's been more successful than you and reaching out to figure out what they're doing that was such a success this year. I think that will help you to create some activity, remember that action creates motivation, not the other way around. If you can find someone who has great ideas on what's creating success in your marketplace today right now and you implement them, you're going to be more motivated which is going to help your mindset."

This is episode 448. Read the complete transcript on the Sales Game Changers Podcast website. David's TIP: "I'm a huge believer in a concept that I originally learned from the Grateful Dead and that concept can absolutely be applied to sales and many salespeople do, however, a lot don't. That's the idea of giving gifts without any expectation of anything in return. The Grateful Dead allowed concertgoers record their concerts for free as long as they didn't sell them. What does this mean for salespeople? The more helpful you are, the more valuable information you provide, the more that you help people not just by helping them to understand your company and its products but just by creating something valuable or linking to something valuable or sharing a news story that you see that your potential client might be interested in, the more you're seen as being somebody who's providing something or value, the more people will be drawn to you who will become your fans and will more likely want to buy something from you. Note that it's not free if require an email address, That is precisely the wrong thing to do because that's a coercion technique, that's like saying to somebody, "No, you cannot have my white paper unless you give me something first, your email address." That's not a good way to sell in my mind, that's not a good way to build fans in my mind, better to give it away.

This is episode 447. Read the complete transcription on the Sales Game Changers Podcast website. Chris' TIP: "One of the things that we've run up against is people always say, "I don't have time, I need to learn time management." No you don't, there's no such thing. You need to learn commitment management. In today's world, we observed people are "over-involved" and under-committed. We've got a gazillion little things going on but they're not necessarily committed to many of them so let's take a step back, go sit down, it only takes you maybe 15, 20 minutes. Make a list of the four, no more than 5 big commitments that you have in your life. Then what you do is you go look at your calendar and match up, "What am I doing with my time to support those commitments?" What you will invariably find is that you've got a lot of stuff that you're doing that's got nothing to do with those five commitments. Simple: quit doing it."