I still believe in hand written notes and I still believe in FedEx packages. I still believe in coming up with ways through those methods to kind of cut through the noise. I’ll tell you I do believe that getting to VITA and staying at VITO is possible. I think it’s not as hard as some people may make it out to be. If you can again lead with the value to their organization with the business case with the why. And then the last piece is I’m happy to walk away. I mean if there’s not a clear alignment between both organizations it may not make sense and that’s OK. And I think I still see salespeople that try and save the deal or fight for the deal or try and win unwinnable deals or spend their time on deals that have low to no probability of closing and if based on deal qualification and based on MEDDPICC. If everything’s in the red probably not going to close. Why are we spending so much time on it?”

I’ve read things in between. But one of the stand outs was the Seven Immutable Laws of Sales Negotiation and that one’s really interesting. Through just being in sales for you know 10 years plus I had adopted some of them but that one’s a stand out for me because it talks about things like not negotiating until you know you’re number one. So not even starting a contract negotiation less you are the clients number one choice because you can’t negotiate to be the best. That just involves price concessions and that ultimately hurts the business. Have a business plan. We’ve talked about business cases a lot. It talks about a plan on getting squeezed. Plan on that. You’re going to be asked for something and try to anticipate what those things are and leave them in purposely so you aren’t at bare minimum by the time you get to that point. It talks about finding non-monetary trade ups and that was really interesting to me because it talks about how to actually build those within your own organization. Definitely recommend the book. One of the things we started doing is looking at what can we provide to our clients that are of value to them that don’t impact fully our revenue and our margins because at the end of the day we are the business is a public company we need to think about our shareholders too. And then one of the biggest ones never give without getting. If someone asks you for something and you’re willing to give it to them that’s fine but you have to get something in return. And that can be signature dates, that can be access, that can be information it can be a lot of different things. But don’t give without out getting. Give to get.And the last one is if things aren’t panning out walk away. So that was a great book. Great read. Solidified some my own beliefs and taught me a few things. So if you guys you haven’t read it that’s a really good one as well.

I’ve read over the years but right now like in front of me I’ll look at my desk I’ve got the Sandler Rules. I’m starting a brush up on Sandler selling. So I’ve got the 49 timeless selling principles and how to apply them. I’ve also got a book called Drive which talks about intrinsic and extrinsic motivation and then I’ve got the One Minute Manager because having recently got gotten back into leadership I wanted to brush up on some of the leadership skills so those are the three books I’m kind of jumping between right now and then I just it was about six months ago and I’ve read things in between. But one of the standout was The seven Immutable Laws of Sales Negotiation.

Talk about how you think about goals and just your approach to that in general. I take very much a Start with Why. What do I really want in life and why do I want it, and work my way backwards. And these are, I’m talking you know lifelong goals and I’m talking five year goals and one year goals and heck it could be a one week goal. The why are the end results you’re trying to get can really shape how you do it and what you do. So I don’t know have you ever watched Simon Sinek Start with Why? Oh yeah absolutely. I think that… if you’re listening to this and you haven’t watched that yet like that’s required. That’s required watching as part of this show. So if you’ve not done that yet. Like hit pause go watch that. And then you’re allowed to resume as a fan of the show. I couldn’t agree more. Simon is a brilliant person. He is a very positive impact on the world. So love the guy anyway. So I try and look at what are those things. And then work backwards in what I need to do to achieve them. So for instance if I want to make a certain amount of money this year and whatever that amount of money is means that I need to be a certain percentage of plan. In order to be a certain percentage of plan I need to sell a certain amount of deals. In order to sell a certain amount of deals I need to have a certain number of appointments and number of opportunities. In order to have a certain number of opportunities that pan out. I need a certain number of appointments. In order to have a number of appointments I need to have a certain number of outreaches and how all that fits together and I look at that and say OK here’s what I need to do to accomplish that goal. And it doesn’t necessarily need to be hitting goal it could be I want to lose 10 pounds. Alright, so if I want to lose 10 pounds you know here’s what I need to do this week this month to from diet and exercise perspective and work my way backwards and plan it out and then go do it and hold myself accountable to it.

Motivation, intrinsic and extrinsic motivation. Things that motivate me I have a lot of personal desire and life goals. I honestly love sales. I love the game. I have a strong desire to be one of the best at it in the organizations I am lucky enough to work for and work with. So there’s a lot of care that I have there. The other more probably extrinsic motivation is of course around financial freedom and the ability to do what I want with my life and be able to spend time with my family. I had two parents who worked exceptionally hard. They both rose to very high levels within their careers. Senior executives, and I can tell you that one of the things when they look back on their lives they said you know what I wish we had more time to do stuff together. I was very successful professionally, but personally my professional life took a lot from us. And I’ve had that conversation with them and I have made some decisions in my life to make sure that I am there for my family. And I have tried to position what I do and my future goals to make sure that there’s a very healthy balance within my life and that’s important to me, and that motivates me.

I’m a firm believer of challenger sale. I think I’ve followed it and was taught on it from when it first came out so I consider myself a challenger. I mean teach tailor take control. My style within challenger is I see myself kind of as a facilitator as a consultant. I don’t even necessarily call myself a sales person all the time anymore. I feel like my job is to speak to executives or speak to people about the business challenges that they’re having. Try to understand the implications of those business challenges on their bottom line. And then align my company solution to them. And if it’s a fit, great. If it’s not that’s ok too. Let’s walk away as fast as possible because we’re both busy people and we have other things to do.

You said that you won’t travel basically on spec. So at what point would you typically go on site to see a client and how much green… what are you using to determine whether or not that’s qualified. So what I’m looking for is it’s often right around the demo stage and what I’m looking for is economic buyer what I’m looking for is metrics and what I’m looking for is clear pain. If we can solve a problem there’s a business case for it and I have a conversation about the problem that we can solve and the implications on it with a VITO,CXO what have you. The person that could actually sign or the the person making the ultimate decision. I will get in the car, I will get on a plane, I will travel to the other side of the world at that point. But if we don’t know the problem solving and if we don’t have a business case to solve it and we don’t have this person making the decision that were actually presented to. I often won’t travel. I’ll do it virtually until we’re at that stage.

Next stage is demo. So presenting the solution, and to me this is it starts with presenting the business case. Here’s what I’ve learned. Here’s the financial implications I believe I can have for your business here’s how my solution aligns to what you’re trying to achieve. And Scott I’ll tell you this is the stage where I walk away if there isn’t that level of alignment. And that’s actually the next step is alignment. So once we do the demo. Once we review all of that information. And we show how our solution can map to their pain and the implications of it if we’re not walking away with the client at that stage saying we agree let’s explore this more. We’re pretty close if we don’t have alignments. That’s where I will often walk away from an opportunity or just let the client know hey you know my job as a consultant I have gone in we’ve evaluated we’ve presented what we think we can help and we’re not aligned with the end result here. So let’s not spend any more time on it together because I’m sure there are other people out there who can help you with this and I frankly believe they we’re not the best fit. And that saves… I get a lot of respect from clients from that and it saves me a lot of time and frankly it’s a win win for the client and my organization.

I manage myself to getting it all done. And at the end of the week if it’s not all done then I’m not stopping that week or that day until the things I said needed to get done are done. I hold myself accountable to the end result. I don’t necessarily hold myself accountable to the individual hour or the individual day when it comes to that level of repeatability. If it’s on my calendar it’s going to get done at that time. That’s the accountability factor and if it doesn’t then it needs to get done.

One of the things I focus on every single week is prospecting and I task manage myself like you wouldn’t believe. I currently work from home if I didn’t a task manage myself I’d probably be out golfing. So I’ll put my prospecting time my client follow up time all my meeting times everything I’m going to do. I have in my Outlook calendar so I treat all of those things and I think this has been important. I treat all of them like they are client meetings. So if I have on there prospect from noon to 1 on Monday. I am prospecting noon to 1 on Monday. Everything else is not important at that time no matter what it is just like if I was in a client meeting I can’t just stop my client meeting to respond to an email or do something else. I treat the things on my calendar and I take them seriously and I block those times off accordingly.