“If you do it enough and you keep practicing it, it becomes so much easier” – Todd Caponi in today’s Tip 1056
Are you still feeling Zoom fatigued?
Join the conversation below and share your thoughts!
Todd Caponi on LinkedIn
Todd Caponi on Twitter
The Transparency Sale Website
The Transparency Sale Book
The Transparent Sales Leader Book
Have feedback? Want to share a sales tip? Call or text the Sales Success Hotline: 512-777-1442 or Email: [email protected]
Transcript
Scott Ingram: You’re listening to the Daily Sales Tips podcast and I’m your host, Scott Ingram. Today’s tip comes from Todd Caponi. Todd is the author of the 3x award-winning & best-selling book, The Transparency Sale, and a top-rated keynote speaker & trainer as Principal of Sales Melon, LLC. His new book, The Transparent Sales Leader, is planned for early 2022. Here he is:
Todd Caponi: Do you find that certain elements of the sales process are fatiguing? Like prospecting. You make a bunch of calls and you just feel like you can’t keep your head up. Well, I want you to think back to what I can’t even believe was 20 months ago already. If you recall, I think you do, that the world turned, right? We all went home, and you don’t need me to tell you how those first few months looked, but it probably looked like a green circular dot light that was sitting on the top of your laptop. Right? That you had to stare into for every single call. And as a matter of fact, you probably didn’t know where to look, and you didn’t know when it was your turn to talk. You couldn’t read the room as you’re doing all of these Zoom calls.
We could see ourselves as we were talking, which is a little tiring because imagine looking in the mirror as you’re having conversations with people that video of yourself is a little bit hard to deal with. The Internet would hiccup. There would be delays. We’d be talking over each other. Sometimes you’d be looking at somebody and going, “Wow, is she really on the moon? Is she at the beach? Is that a real background, or is she using a green screen?” We were highly conscious of and constantly embarrassed by our dogs barking or a cat walking across the laptop or children yelling. Zoom fatigue was here and it was real. Now I use the word was on purpose because if you look across LinkedIn or anywhere else, there’s not much talk of Zoom fatigue anymore. Why would that be?
Well, let’s talk about another fatigue for a minute.
If I asked you to do 50 pushups right now, could you do it? Some of you might say yes, but the others, it would be too fatiguing that you might be able to get to 50, but everything would hurt. Now for the individuals who would have no problem banging out 50 pushups. It’s probably because they do them a lot, or they do them every day. For those who can’t, if required to do pushups on and off every single day for months at the end of the month would be no problem to do pretty quickly, too, right? Just like push-up fatigue. We had Zoom fatigue. Before exercising those areas of our brains that we’re not wired to make the adjustments. What seems physically or mentally taxing fades over time. I mean, doing Zoom calls daily now, for 20 months, there’s no more talk of Zoom fatigue.
Now, one of the funny things that I’ve realized is when you get out of practice of something, when you go back to it, it becomes pretty fatiguing, right? I mean, for most of us, we haven’t had many in-person meetings over the last 20 months, and when we get back to them, the first few in-person meetings are going to be fatiguing. I was talking to a client about this and explaining this idea of fatigue and sales and video calls and all of that. And I explained to him that, “Hey, listen, I believe there’s something called in-person fatigue that’s coming next.” And he replied, “Holy crap, you’re right.” I went to my first all-day off-site since last February, and by 3 p.m. I couldn’t hold my head up.
Now in-person meetings, they require effort. I mean, imagine running a couple of miles every day, then stopping for 18 months. You don’t just pick up where you left off. Your first few runs again are going to be pretty fatiguing. You’ll be sore and you’ll probably have to convince yourself to keep going. Now, if you get back to doing in-person meetings every single day, then it’s going to go away over time, they’re going to become easy if you let them.
I think about this as it relates not only to our shift back to in-person and the fact that many of us are talking ourselves out of in-person because, “Oh, gosh, I didn’t realize how tiring it was.” Well, it’s a brain thing, but many of us that talked ourselves out of doing the day-to-day fatiguing or things that feel like they’re fatiguing in our sales efforts, like cold calling or prospecting. Even for me, I get out of practice for a while I start doing it. I’m like, “Ah, man, this is exhausting,” but just like everything else, just like the Zoom calls and Zoom fatigue that became such a big thing and suddenly went away. Just like your push-ups or whatever exercises you do. Running.
If you do it enough and you keep practicing it, it becomes so much easier. But you got to let it. Right? Are you still feeling Zoom fatigued? If not, can you take those ideas in that mindset to some of the other things that you find are taxing or fatiguing that you know you should do? But with some practice that fatigue is going to go away. So give that some thought. So much of it is mindset, but a lot of it is just practicing your brain both mentally and physically, to be able to handle it.
Scott Ingram: To get your hands on a copy of The Transparency Sale and to connect with Todd on LinkedIn, just click over to DailySales.Tips/1056 where you’ll find those links and more.
Once you’ve done that. Be sure to come back tomorrow for another great sales tip. Thanks for listening!