“At some level this felt like a failure, but not for very long. This community has been super supportive.” – Scott Ingram in today’s tip 133
What you need to focus on? What’s going to have the biggest impact for you and those around you, and what can you cut out or remove to make room for that?
Join the conversation below and share your own experience!
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Transcript
Scott Ingram: You’re listening to the Daily Sales Tips podcast and I’m your host, Scott Ingram. Today I’m going to share a really personal story. Those of you who are on the listener list and get my usually weekly emails already saw most of this in this week’s email, and I thought I’d go just a little bit deeper here in today’s tip.
There were a couple of things that triggered a big decision I made this week. The first was my prep for the webinar I did with Dale Carnegie on the Principles of Top 1% Level Sales Success, and as part of that process I built a word cloud out of all of the things all of the people I’ve interviewed on the Sales Success Stories podcast told me were the top 3 contributors to their own success in sales. I also shared that word cloud with the listener list subscribers a couple of weeks ago as well and one of the biggest words right in the center of that image was the word “Focus.”
Then I interviewed Ian Bembenek who is absolutely crushing it. He’s outperforming all of his peers massively and selling more than two times the second best guy on his team. Now he told me that he’s just working two times harder to do that, but what was most interesting is that he’s not working two times longer. Instead he’s just maniacally focused on the task at hand over the course of an 8 hour day.
Meanwhile it’s Memorial Day Weekend and I’m waking up at 3am and completely freaking out about how much I have to get done. Most of you know that I have my own sales job and associated quota and aspirations to contend with in addition to hosting two sales podcasts, and was working to deliver to massive projects at the same time in the second volume of the Sales Success Stories book and the Sales Success Summit in October.
I realized something had to give if I was going to maintain my sanity. A huge shoutout to Jeff Bajorek here. He’s not only an amazing regular contributor to this show, but he’s also an incredible friend and mentor. He sent me a voice message as I was freaking out that helped me see the best way forward.
That’s when I decided to pull the plug on the book project, at least for now. We’ll probably pick it up again after the Summit and aim to publish in Q1 of 2020, but having one less major project and all of the cat herding that goes with it to manage felt like the right move.
So I let all of my co-authors who were contributing their stories to the book know what was going on. Then I reached out to everyone who had contributed to the crowdfunding campaign to help make it possible what was going on and immediately refunded their money.
At some level this felt like a failure, but not for very long. This community has been super supportive. I got so many great notes and stories about the personal impact they’ve experienced because of this content. There’s a lot of value in just telling people what’s really going on, even if it feels like you’re failing.
Now I can breathe a little bit easier and really focus on the Sales Success Summit where I’ve seen the biggest impacts come from. One of the guys who came to last year’s Summit which was in May, so just over a year ago got a killer new job through connections that he made through the Summit and just last week cashed a commission check for just one deal that was worth several hundred thousand dollars, and I know that’s not the only big deal he had in his pipeline.
That’s the kind of life changing impact I want to continue to make and while I love the books and want to keep doing them, the Summit is so much more because you get to spend two days in a really intimate setting with all of these top performers and we’ll just have to change the book launch party at Sandra Bullocks old house to an after party. That’s easy.
So the tip in all of this is simply this: Think about what you need to focus on. What’s going to have the biggest impact for you and those around you, and what can you cut out or remove to make room for that? And also, don’t be afraid to fail out loud. I’m finding that it helps more than it hurts.
Hey, thanks for listening and if you haven’t already joined the listener list yourself so I can send you a video from the last Sales Success Summit and other behind the scenes goodies, please click over to DailySales.Tips and punch in your email address OR I think if you’re in the US you can still text Top1 to 444999 that T-O-P and the number 1 to 444999
Thanks again and I’ll talk to you tomorrow.