“Challenge causes growth” – Scott Ingram in today’s Tip 468
What can you do right now? What can you work on right now?
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Transcript
Scott Ingram: Today on the Daily Sales Tips podcast. My guest is, kind of here with me live. Hi Jeff!
Jeff Bajorek: Hey Scott!
Scott Ingram: So Jeff Bajorek is here and we were talking about what Jeff’s next tip was going to be and we got into this deep conversation about what the heck do we call this situation that we’re all finding ourselves in right now. And I went back through just the handful of recent emails and saw that we’ve referred to this as being difficult times and uncertain times. Unprecedented times. Challenging times. Tough times. Changing times. Crazy times. Jeff, what time is it?
Jeff Bajorek: This Tip’s gonna release on a Friday. So I think it’s Friday and if you look at the numbers then I think most of your downloads come on Mondays. You have spikes on Mondays cause people catch up over the weekend. So maybe it’s Monday where you are. Look at the calendar, that’s what time it is. That’s what day it is. And I think we need to start thinking about where we are right now instead of where we hope we could be if we just fell asleep and took a nap for two weeks. You know, like I certainly thought, you know, at the end of April or I’m sorry, at the end of March when you know, our governor here in the state of Michigan said, “Okay, stay at home, stay safe. We’re going to put a couple of weeks on this. We’re going to try to flatten the curve and we’re going to move forward.” You know, appropriately from there. And I thought you know what, two weeks, that’d be good. If I could take a nap for two weeks and just wake up, this will all go away. We’re going to be fine. The more we learn, the more we learn is not going to be that simple. And that as we try to continue to reopen the economy safely, responsibly, you know, in stages we still have done nothing to actually treat or prevent the disease other than staying home. I’ll wait from each other so that we don’t give it to as many people as quickly. That solution, those solutions are still months away. So how long are we going to pretend that we can just snap our fingers and it’s going to be okay? These aren’t times. Today, It’s Friday.
Scott Ingram: Yeah. The one that’s bothering me the most of that list is when people say this, these are difficult times, right? I don’t like the judgment, right? I don’t like the fact that, sure, maybe they’re difficult. Maybe today is difficult, but let’s not apply that negativity. If there’s one that I’m okay with and I wish that I had an answer. I wish I had a recommendation like, “Hey, let’s all call it this.” But for me, the one that works the best is these are challenging times. Because challenging to me, challenge causes growth, right? If you want to go to the gym and get stronger, you challenge yourself and so hopefully that’s really the outcome. That’s the way the perspective that we’re going to put on this is, it may not be comfortable and nobody’s called it comfortable times, but it is this challenge that we’re going to need to continue to work through the next thing that you brought up that I want to touch on for just a minute before we wrap up cause we like to keep these nice and short is, again, the impacts of this is, are you going to last a really long time and I think the next thing that we’re going to be hearing and here overused is the “New Normal.” And to your point, if today’s Friday, why don’t we just call every day “Normal”, right? There’s always been change. Nothing has ever stood still. The pace of change is changing, but we’ve been experiencing that for as long as I’ve been alive.
Jeff Bajorek: There’s so many different ways that we can get into this, but I think, you know, minding the time of the segment and the constraints that we want to keep it on. What I love about your reframing of difficult times to challenging times is the optimism that there is in challenging. And great salespeople, kind of salespeople that listen to your podcast, they’re optimistic. They want to set the world on fire every day. Yes, there are challenges. Let’s acknowledge them. Let’s not make this not be Pollyanna about this. Let’s not pretend that there isn’t something going on that’s out of our control that presents new challenges and new opportunities, but to call them difficult applies a label that doesn’t help anybody. What can you do right now? What can you work on right now? What are the new constraints that provide those new opportunities and how do you take advantage of those new opportunities that are there? The companies that I’m working with that I don’t think are going to do very well are the ones that are panicking. The ones who have a puncher’s chance or maybe a better than a puncher’s chance are the ones that are saying, “Look, this is what we do. It’s what we know we have to do. This is what we’re going to do. We’re going to do it as much of it as we can. We’re gonna do everything we can.“ The companies that I’m betting on right now are the ones saying, “Okay, we’re going to do all that stuff. Well, we’re going to look for other ways to operate within our current situation.” So the optimism in challenge is way different than “Uh, is so difficult right now.” Like what do you want to tell yourself in the bathroom mirror every day? So that’s why I love about your reframe and the thing is, there’s nothing optimistic about new normal. That’s not an optimistic phrase, but it disguises itself as one. What are we going to do today to take advantage of the situation that we have? That’s what you should be asking yourself. Forget the labels. Leave those for somebody else. Leave those for your competitors that you’re out there beating.
Scott Ingram: Yep. The last thing I’ll say is it’ll be interesting to see what the future us calls this time looking back on it. I hope that we call it “The Pandemic” because I, I’m hoping there we don’t have to differentiate between various pandemics and it is just the one, I think one per lifetime is pretty good. And I want us to look back and think about what did we do with that time. And here’s a little bit of foreshadowing cause I’ve got a conversation coming up that I’m hoping that I get to bring to this podcast. Here’s a quote from an email that I got. “I took this pandemic as my chance to get into SAAS Sales.” So I’ve got a story of a guy who broke into sales in arguably, here I’m gonna use the word, one of the most difficult times.
Jeff Bajorek: One of the most challenging times.
Scott Ingram: One of the most challenging times to get a job in sales, did it with zero sales background. So great story coming your way. Thanks as always for listening. Jeff, thank you for always being such a core part of this podcast and come on back tomorrow for another great sales tip. Thanks for listening.