Clip from Episode 8: Jacquelyn Nicholson of Percolate:

I think when people hear no they just assume OK. It’s no. Move on. To me a no is always an opportunity to ask what they want. Obviously there are situations when a prospective customer says no. That OK it really means no that’s fine. You know and it’s not it’s just to me though it’s also an opportunity to go deeper and I think a bit of a corollary to that is if you’ve lost a deal so let’s say your company tried to sell a solution to you know a prospective customer they signed with a competitor or a similar company and they signed a contract for a year. Well just because you lost that round doesn’t mean you shouldn’t stay in touch with that person and to provide value over time because you can always win that business back. And I’ve had that situation happen to me the last two years where were competitive situations where we had lost prior to my arrival where we stayed in touch with the prospective customer and several times now have actually been the victor in the next time around. So so no. Yes means. I mean I get that No means no. But at the same time you know there’s depending on where you’re at in a negotiation or a particular conversation they could be seeking more information from you a concession more value. And so you want to uncover that instead of just taking the no at face value and moving on you’d want to ask the questions uncover the motivation uncover the reasons and then you can make an assessment as to when you might be back in touch. But it’s it’s never really over is my point is you can always re-approach that situation.

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Clip from Episode 8: Jacquelyn Nicholson of Percolate:

Is there something that you believe that the average sales rep would think is crazy? Oh a lot of the people I work with today think I’m crazy for how much I ask for for our services and our software or how much I try to sell. And this isn’t like if anybody who’s my customer is listening it’s not about trying to you know get more money than is appropriate. It’s just you know extracting the maximum you know price that’s viable that makes sense that provides value back to the customer. So it’s really about you know asking for the price that makes sense and I find a lot of times people that you know the first thing they want to do is oh we’ll just cut the price. And I and I never know why that is because that’s not that’s not the point. Yeah. You know it’s funny I have a personal philosophy that I never negotiate with myself. I think it’s fascinating that so many sales people they’re preparing your proposal and then and then they’re discounting before they’ve even shown it to the customer and that that seems insane to me. Oh yeah. That’s actually a much more eloquent way of putting it the way you put it. And I completely agree with you.

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Clip from Episode 8: Jacquelyn Nicholson of Percolate:

And then also when I’m traveling which is another challenging thing that you had asked me about. I just try to stay up to speed I try to sort of look at the e-mails look at the responses I need to generate and prioritize them so that’s important. And I’m a big believer in not being constantly on e-mail because I think that’s very disruptive so I try to have a block of time where I get some work done then I might go in and check my emails for an hour or two and then go back to the to-do list, so it’s important to not have those constant distractions on your mobile device or at your desktop.

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Clip from Episode 8: Jacquelyn Nicholson of Percolate:

This morning at 5:30 it was still dark out. The dogs were not yet going crazy and I could have some coffee and spend some time journaling. So one of the important habits that I have was something that Riv taught me which is around journaling. So the importance of journaling is spending time with the number one person who affects your success and that is you. So spending time reflecting on how things have gone you know what challenges you’re facing observations about your day what was frustrating what where did you show up as the person that you aspire to be. And I really found out the funny thing was during that journaling time you know you learn an awful lot about how you want to prioritize your day what your intentions are. So I try to every morning do that and just set out my intentions.

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Clip from Episode 8: Jacquelyn Nicholson of Percolate:

For me coaching is a paid relationship. So it’s you know you get what you pay for. So if you’re really looking for very serious advances executive coaching can be the way to go. But you know that’s not necessarily possible or accessible for everybody and a good mentor should give you an awful lot of of what a more formal relationship with a coach should do. So I don’t I don’t necessarily know that there’s a huge difference but for me you know when I when I have my time with my coach that I’m paying for. I use that time wisely. And then you know mentors the great part about mentors is you know typically it’s a it’s a give and get sort of relationship so you may be able to offer them something but it’s something that’s just a mentor’s advice and thoughts and time is freely given. And so I think it’s it’s not a huge difference. There’s just a few subtleties that I don’t know if that’s a helpful answer but that’s how I think of it.

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Clip from Episode 8: Jacquelyn Nicholson of Percolate:

I learned this from my my executive coach Jim Riviello and Riv said to me you know when we first started working together almost three years ago. He asked me how I define success, and I thought well gosh you know I want to make a lot of money. I want a title I want this I want that I want a nice car I want to be able to drink nice wine and he sort of laughed at me. He goes Yeah yeah. OK let’s let’s break that down a little bit. So he got me thinking very differently and this is what I tell everybody today is you know success for me is being the person that I want to be. And I can be that person whether it’s in the face of adversity if I’ve been cut off on the freeway if I’ve just been I’ve just lost a big deal. I can still be successful because my success is tied to the person I am and when I show up as the person that I aspire to be that’s when I’m successful and for me that’s defined as the person that my husband would marry all over again the person that my boss Matt would hire again and the person that my kids are really proud to introduce to their friends. So when I do that that’s when I’m successful and so that’s why I’m most proud of those things and what what really drives me.

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Clip from Episode 8: Jacquelyn Nicholson of Percolate:

This mentorship theme has showed up a lot in these conversations. What advice would you have for finding mentors cultivating those relationships like how how did you find Mr. Walsh for example? Well I think it’s just finding someone that you look up to is a really critical part of it because if you admire them chances are that other people admire them. And that’s going to lead you to something. I think that would could possibly lead to your success so I think it’s number one it should always be somebody successful. It should be somebody that captures that which you’re seeking. So for instance what my mentors have always given to me is they’ve been successful in their field. Typically you know they don’t have to be a person who is older than you are. It could be somebody that’s a peer it could be somebody younger depending on what you’re seeking. A lot of times though mentors do tend to be people who are further along in their careers. And I think the benefit of that is sometimes you can short circuit mistakes that you don’t have to make if you can learn from their mistakes which is really cool. But I think some of it goes back to what we started our conversation with is building rapport. So you have to have something in common you have to have something that is a spark between you and a potential mentor and then a lot of companies of your companies have formal mentoring programs that can be a good way to just get an experience for what it’s like. If a company doesn’t do a mentoring program or if they don’t have a formal one you can always have informal mentors. Currently today at Percolate. I am an informal mentor for a load of people in our mid-market group which has just been a real honor for me.

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Clip from Episode 8: Jacquelyn Nicholson of Percolate:

I had fantastic mentors and if I would just say if you’re listening to this and you don’t have a mentor. You need to find one because or an executive coach a coach a mentor can make all the difference in your professional career. And personally too. I had a fantastic mentor at the time you know who would listen to me and talk to me about my goals and I’ll never forget what he said to me. He said you know you really should be in sales you should go into sales because if if I were an Eskimo I would buy an igloo from you and a refrigerator to keep it in.

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Clip from Episode 8: Jacquelyn Nicholson of Percolate:

A lot of times I would sit there like I mentioned to you I’d sit in these presentations just thinking oh my god do you even know what Johnson and Johnson does? Do you know we make? Do you care why we want to do this? And that’s when I sort of a light came on and I said you know I would be really good at selling. But by gosh I am not going to sell this way. So you learn firsthand everything not to do? In a way you know I did meet some wonderful people along the way. And when you ask me this question I thought back about those business solutions I chose to buy and they were the people that came in and really cared what the implications were for us. They cared about what was important. They made it easy to buy from them and they made it simple for for me and the team to understand. And they provided just everything as part of the solution that was important to us. And that’s. And they really understood the deadlines they understood what was frustrating for us they understood the budget limitations we had they understood why we were doing this project in the first place and how new it was to a fantastic company that’s not necessarily always the first to embrace technology. So that’s who we chose to do business with that those were the people that really made it simple and that’s it that really affected me as I became a seller.

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Clip from Episode 8: Jacquelyn Nicholson of Percolate:

I think it really depends on the situation. But there are a few good ones so you can ask. I used to work for this gentleman who asked the best questions that I called skin crawling questions their the questions that make the prospective person you know prospective customers say oh gosh I didn’t think of that. So a lot of times it could be. So what happens if you don’t solve this problem so once you’ve uncovered the problem so. So what are the consequences so what happens if we don’t address this that your open ended questions are the most important. Of course I should’ve started with that. You know don’t ask something that’s yes or no if you can help yourself. A lot of times you’ll need to know those things but asking an open ended question can be really valuable in terms of your success in terms of what people will reveal and then going a level deeper. So a lot of times you know if they raise an objection you can sort of soften that and come back with you know a question that’s a little bit challenging or that might uncover more information and just don’t be happy with the first question and the first answer I think is the way I do it.

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