Clip from Episode 15 featuring Josh Mueller of Cutco Cutlery and Vast Action, Inc.:

I learned from a mentor, Brendon Burchard, that the best way to strategize is to use what he calls the daily productivity sheet. It’s like a worksheet. I think you can download it on the website. You download this worksheet. You fill it out. I don’t necessarily fill out the worksheet everyday anymore, but it’s how I think about my day. It’s how I plan my day. It’s what are the three biggest projects I’m working on right now? What are the things that are must do to get done on those projects right now? You list those things out. Who are the people that I need to get in touch with today, that I need to reach out to to help me move these projects forward? Who are the people that I’m waiting to hear back from that I probably need to follow-up with again? Then, what are my priorities for the day? What are the things in those projects, outside those projects, around those projects… those things that gotta get done no matter what. All those things  go on a list. He calls it the daily productivity planner, that’s what it is. It’s just about going through and doing those things. Working that stuff out. That’s where that fifteen minutes of strategy everyday comes in. Figuring all that stuff out and then just following through on executing that stuff, and if there’s time at the end of the day. Then cool. I’ll do other things I need to do: check my email or work on other projects of whatever. That’s a huge thing. Time blocking is huge…

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Clip from Episode 15 featuring Josh Mueller of Cutco Cutlery and Vast Action, Inc.:

A lot of people that get into sales, they’re getting into it reluctantly because they believe that sales people are sleazy or that it requires a skillset that has a lot of negative connotations attached to it. I don’t believe that at all. In fact I believe that we are all sales people… You gave an amazing example of your wife being one hell of a sales person… Oh she’s awesome! She sold me on staying with her for the rest of my life, so that was a big one. She is one of the best sales people I know. She gets me to take out the trash in the pouring rain sometimes. Parents, you’ve got to sell your kids on doing their homework. Somebody has to sell toilet paper to the store that you buy it from. Everything needs to be sold. So I believe that sales people are really the backbone of the world. Without us, nothing happens. It doesn’t have to be sleazy, it doesn’t have to be pushy or pitchy. It doesn’t have to be what people think of sales and what it was thirty, forty, fifty years ago

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Clip from Episode 15 featuring Josh Mueller of Cutco Cutlery and Vast Action, Inc.:

I know that through this someone’s going to be impacted as long as that’s happening that’s all that matters. There were people who were where I wanted to be a long time ago that shared openly and with no expectation of anything in return, and I am where I am today as a result of stacks and stacks of those types of people. Why would I want to receive from others and not exchange that energy and give back too? It just doesn’t make sense.

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Clip from Episode 15 featuring Josh Mueller of Cutco Cutlery and Vast Action, Inc.:

Another big thing for me that I learned just because I get to represent a best in class product, world class product with world class service with Cutco is: If it’s not best in class don’t sell it! Plain and simple. It’s really hard to sell cheap chatchke stuff, and there’s a lot of really great high quality things out there that need to be sold. We’re doing the world a disservice by selling a whole bunch of cheap disposable stuff. We should be selling the world best in class all the time. If you want to be ta best in class sales person it starts with a best in class product and best in class service. If it’s your own business, if you’re an entrepreneur, and you feel like your product or service is not best in class yet. Well then you’ve got to get back to work, and figure out what are the steps that need to be taken to make it best in class. Awesome. We’re working on making this a world class podcast, so thanks for being here!

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Clip from Episode 15 featuring Josh Mueller of Cutco Cutlery and Vast Action, Inc.:

It starts with taking ownership over your results… good and bad. I’ve found for me that there were times where I wanted to give myself all the credit for the success, but then blame everybody else for all the struggle. It wasn’t until I really decided that, you know what, if I’m going to give myself the credit for the success then I also have to give myself credit for the struggles. I have to take responsibility for both. Then what’s great is if you get real about your struggles, and you take responsibility for that. It becomes really motivating to actually want to change it.

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Clip from Bonus Episode 1 featuring Steve Woods of Nudge.ai:

The success of LinkedIn has almost been its downfall in the sense that everyone’s got thousands of connections, and so many of them you met at a conference eight years ago and you wouldn’t recognize each other at all. Understanding where there’s a real relationship is huge for that.

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Clip from Bonus Episode 1 featuring Steve Woods of Nudge.ai:

The thing that I’m excited about is it really enables the sales professionals out there to do what they’ve always dreamed of doing. Which is professional selling. Turning that trigger event into a conversation and seeing the prospects eyes light up as you say: If you think about your world in this way, here’s how we can help in this deeply profound opportunity that you didn’t think about. That’s professional selling. It’s not hammering the phones and leaving voicemails, it’s having conversations with prospects to say: we can help you. We can move you into the future, and I love the fact that we’re able to create more of those conversations for sales professionals. It’s so much fun!

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Clip from Bonus Episode 1 featuring Steve Woods of Nudge.ai:

I think if you talk with anyone they’ll agree that their network is critical, and if you take a step back and say: Is it going to pay back this quarter? Everyone knows. No, your network is a long-term investment. It’s not going to pay back this quarter. It’s not going to close deals right now. This is effort that will come back over years, and what’s been really successful about putting a metric around what your network looks like. It gives you that immediate tie. Relationships die off over time. Everyday that goes past is another day that you haven’t been in touch with all of the people you weren’t in touch with, but unless you’re tracking that that’s really hard to keep top of mind. By putting that metric around it and saying: Scott, build your network. Every week that goes by it’s died off a little bit. Get out there, do the work, build it and keep that line above zero. It gives that immediate term feedback to the growth of an asset that is very long-term. I think that’s why people have gravitated to that because it allows them to objectively see what they know they need to be doing, but historically just kind of this this intuitive… I don’t know. I think I’ve got a network. I guess it’s kind of strong. I guess it grew this week. I don’t really know.

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Clip from Bonus Episode 1 featuring Steve Woods of Nudge.ai:

And starting the right conversations we can really transform both the experience of the buyers, who generally don’t love sales people. And the experience of sales people who generally don’t like the grunt work of just pounding away at activities.

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