Today I’ve got a quick update on our upcoming Basecamp event. This was originally scheduled for May 9th and was meant to be kind of a Sales Success Summit light. A single-day event with a whole series of really actionable, shorter presentations from the top sellers that you’ve heard here on this show. I won’t go into the gory details, but some things happened that caused me to rethink that approach and I’m super excited about how we’ve pivoted. We’ll be taking that originally planned content and will be doing a day-long webinar series in collaboration with Sales Hacker on June 9th. We don’t quite have the landing page up for that, but if you go to top1.fm and join the listener list you’ll be one of the first to have the opportunity to sign-up.

The bigger pivot is with the core event. As I talked about at the beginning of the year, I’ve wanted to lean more into the value of the community this year and I’ve decided to make the event a way more intimate experience. We’ve also moved the dates to May 22nd and 23rd and my tagline for the event is No Presentations… All Conversations, which is kind of funny because not only is this relevant for the community, but it could also be used to largely describe my own sales approach, but I digress.

We still have maybe a dozen spots available as I record this and the only way to get a ticket is to purchase an All Access Pass which also includes your ticket to the Sales Success Summit in October. The details are at top1.fm/2023 and the sign-up link is at the bottom of that page. There’s even a monthly payment option which would technically allow you to attend for a laughable up-front investment prior to our coming together in a few short weeks.

Here’s a bit more about what to expect if you’re considering joining us. We’ll come together late Monday afternoon on the 22nd at this boutique hotel in downtown Austin where many of those attending will also be staying, so talk about immersive. That evening we actually will have 1 presentation and a happy hour that we’ll open up to the public because Lisa Palmer, the star of episode 100 here on the podcast literally just finished defending her thesis and will be getting her PhD in Artificial Intelligence. She’s going to talk about AI from a more complex sales perspective in her presentation: From Human to Hybrid: 10 Ways to Use AI Today to Crush Your Number. After that’s all done, we’ll kick out the public and let the real experience begin.

We’ll go all day and night on Tuesday the 23rd with a half dozen facilitated conversations ranging from Executive Presence, to Leveraging AI and ChatGPT to Partner and CoSelling to Managing Your Sales Career with plenty of space and fun for everyone to make more meaningful connections while enjoying some great Austin food.

Something tells me we’re going to end up spending a lot of time on the rooftop lounge with an epic view of downtown Austin until rather late before we’re all forced to head home and get back to work Wednesday morning.

Again, if you’re thinking of joining us, space is super limited and there are only a handful of seats left, so grab your All Access Pass now at top1.fm/2023, or feel free to send me a message on LinkedIn if I can help answer any questions.

Thanks for listening!

This episode is brought to you thanks to the generous support of Vidyard. To join the waitlist to get access to their coming AI Script Generator just click over to top1.fm/vai for Vidyard AI. Top1.fm/vai.

In today’s bonus episode of the Sales Success Stories podcast, I’ve got the complete audio from another of the top-rated presentations from the 2022 Sales Success Summit. This is Melissa Gaglione, who was the star of episode 133 on this podcast delivering her presentation on Developing Your Sales Superpower. Here she is:

For links to connect with Melissa on LinkedIn, to her brand new Video Prospecting Course, and to get your hands on Vidyard and access to their coming AI Script Generator, just click over to top1.fm/melissa2022, and then I’ll see you back here next week because you’re subscribed to the podcast right? Thanks for listening!

Links Mentioned:

Melissa Gaglione on LinkedIn
Developing Your Sales Superpower – Melissa Gaglione
133: Passion, Dedication, and Detail Focused with LivePerson’s Melissa Gaglione
Video Prospecting – Cold Video Outreach Strategies From Planning To Recording To Sending
2023 Sales Success Summit
Vidyard AI Script Generator

Paul DiVinceno has been a senior business advisor and team leader to Fortune 500 Companies such as Gartner, Dell, and Cintas along with Startup Clients like Humu & Indeed.com utilizing a Business Outcome Focused skill set covering all aspects go to market utilizing best-inbred approaches to leverage: people, process, technology, and culture. Paul is an Continue Reading …

In today’s bonus episode of the Sales Success Stories podcast, I’ve got the complete audio from another of the top-rated presentations from the 2022 Sales Success Summit. This is Evan Kelsay, who was the star of episodes 56 and 74 on this podcast delivering his presentation on Megadeal Hack: The Internal Sale, and I think I’m pretty safe in saying that this was the funniest presentation at the Summit which is pretty massively enhanced by Evan’s slides, so I’d highly recommend you check out the video version. You’ll find a link to that at top1.fm/evan2022. Here he is:

Again, for links to the video version of Evan’s presentation, to his original interview episodes and to learn more about how to join us at this year’s Sales Success Summit and more, just click over to top1.fm/evan2022. Once you’ve done that, make sure you’re subscribed to the podcast and come back next Tuesday for another interview with another top sales performer. Thanks for listening!

Links Mentioned:

Megadeal Hack: The Internal Sale – Evan Kelsay
74: Let Sellers Sell with Evan Kelsay (Round 2)
56: Evan Kelsay of Seismic – 800% Achievement with a Massive Deal
2023 Sales Success Summit

Jacquelyn Nicholson has decades of experience building and supporting the best brands in the world and growing businesses in new markets from scratch. She is passionate about being the woman her husband would marry again, the mom her kids are proud of, and the person her boss or customer would work with again. Jacquelyn is a Continue Reading …

In today’s bonus episode of the Sales Success Stories podcast, I’ve got the complete audio from another of the top-rated presentations from the 2022 Sales Success Summit. This is Luke Floyd, who was the star of episode 140 on this podcast delivering his presentation on Unlimiting Beliefs and Owning Your Success. Don’t tell anybody, but this was my personal favorite presentation from this last Summit. So much of it really resonated with me and once again there’s some killer Q&A at the end. For the video version where you can see Luke’s slides for a little additional context, click over to top1.fm/luke2022 for that link. Here it is:

Again, for links to the video version of Luke’s presentation, to his original interview episode and to learn more about how to join us at this year’s Sales Success Summit and more, just click over to top1.fm/luke2022. Once you’ve done that, make sure you’re subscribed to the podcast and come back next Tuesday for another interview with another top sales performer. Thanks for listening!

Links Mentioned:

Unlimiting Beliefs and Owning Your Success – Luke Floyd
140: Feel Great About Sales: A Race Between Me and Myself with Deel’s Luke Floyd
2023 Sales Success Summit

Fabian Perez is the top Account Executive at Kaseya, the leading provider of IT and security management solutions for managed service providers (MSPs) and small to medium-sized businesses (SMBs). Fabian is a Continue Reading …

In today’s bonus episode of the Sales Success Stories podcast, I’ve got the complete audio from another of the presentations from the 2022 Sales Success Summit. This is Briana Stimmler, who was the star of episode 132 on this podcast delivering her presentation on Maintaining Your Momentum and Staying Motivated. Also, for a link to the video version so you can actually see Briana’s presentation, click over to top1.fm/briana2022. Here it is:

Again, for links to the video version of Briana’s presentation, to her original interview episode and to learn more about how to join us at this year’s Sales Success Summit and more, just click over to top1.fm/briana2022. Once you’ve done that, make sure you’re subscribed to the podcast and come back next Tuesday for another interview with another top sales performer. Thanks for listening!

Links Mentioned:

Maintaining Your Momentum and Staying Motivated – Briana Stimmler
132: Solutions-Based Selling with Microsoft’s Briana Stimmler
2023 Sales Success Summit

JC Pollard was the top commercial Account Executive at Gong last year and was a top-performing SDR before that. Gong enables revenue teams to realize their fullest potential by unveiling their customer reality. Prior to being elevated to AE, JC was a top Sales Development Representative (SDR). JC is a Continue Reading …

In today’s bonus episode of the Sales Success Stories Podcast, I’m going to do something I’ve never done before. It’s super personal and super uncomfortable, but given how much it resonated with others on our last Sales Success Community call, it feels like a really important thing to share.

I’m trying to Defunkify myself!

I have been off my game for almost an entire year, and I’m sure experiencing some mild depression. I won’t get into all of the causes, because it’s really not that important, and many of us get into this place for a whole variety of reasons. What I want to focus on is getting out of it!

I know myself pretty well, and what I know about my previous bouts with depression and my level of openness is that I’m generally pretty comfortable talking about the experience AFTER I’m through it. I really don’t like to acknowledge it or talk about it when I’m in it.

That behavior probably causes me to experience it longer because I don’t want to acknowledge it and get help outside of myself.

The double edge sword of my current situation is that over this last year, it’s never been that bad. It’s a really mild case and I’ve certainly experienced worse, but I think it’s hampered my previous attempts to break free because it’s a low-level situation, the energy I’ve put into recovering has been pretty low level as well, so nothing has really stuck.

I’m also pretty good at faking it when I’m in this place. Only a couple of really close friends likely had any idea what was going on, and I’m still the top rep in my company and performing above expectations, so I haven’t really been getting any questions there, though I’m sure there are a few on my team who have noticed that my level of proactivity and responsiveness isn’t nearly what it usually is.

It also really upset me when I achieved a new all-time high, on my scale, and the first digit in my weight rolled over for the first time in my life.

I’ve decided that enough is enough and chose to call myself out publicly inside this community that I’m always trying to support. Recognizing that now I need a little bit of help.

Like I said at the beginning, their response, and the number of people who closely identified with feeling a similar level of funk and burnout is what prompted me to go even more public and share all of this here, because I know I’m not alone. This is just one of those things that we really don’t talk about enough, but we need to talk about more and we need to get more help when we’re in it. We need to let people know when we’re struggling.

Again, my intention here is to share my journey out. I’m not so interested in a bunch of unsolicited advice, as I’ve got a pretty strong support network. What I would love to hear is your own story of recovery. If you’ve recently defunkified yourself. I want to know what you did that helped you the most. This is a show about success stories after all, and I can’t get enough of them.

The first thing I did after deciding that enough is enough was to do some journaling. I took some time to write about where I was struggling the most. What some of the biggest issues and sticking points were and I started to write down some new goals and really focus on the activities that I thought would help me turn things around.

The biggest area where I’ve been off has been in my workouts. If you’ve listened to this show for a decent amount of time, then you know that I’m a huge Peloton fan. I’ve done over 750 rides, and you’d probably be surprised to know that I hadn’t been on the bike for basically a year. I was consistent through the end of last February, did 3 rides in March of 2022 and that’s been it. Since then I’ve walked with some regularity. The last few months I’ve gone to the gym and lifted a little bit a couple of times a week on average, but it dawned on me that I basically hadn’t gotten my heart rate up in a meaningful way in almost a year!

This is core to the way that I typically function. Taking that action. Getting sweaty and out of breath most days of the week is probably the most important building block to my routine.

I did get a ride in this last Saturday and by the time you hear this I will likely have gotten in at least one more ride. I felt AMAZING after that first ride back. I went relatively easy, but got a good sweat going and literally forgot how good it made me feel. I also forgot how good Peloton is at pushing my competitive buttons and getting me to think about improvement, progress, and consistency.

That’s the first, most important building block I’m working on putting back in place.

Next will be my routine. Again, those who’ve been around for a while know that my superpower is my productivity process. I haven’t been able to execute that process for basically a year. I’ve tried and tried and tried, but haven’t been able to complete it. So that’s next.

Fortunately, my work laptop just came off of lease. I’ve got a brand new one that I’m in the process of setting up and I’m using that as an excuse to change and update my environment. One of my monitors went out, so I’m getting a couple of new screens that are just a little bit larger, and nicer.  If you’ve read Atomic Habits then you know how big a role your environment plays in helping you develop new habits.

You’re welcome to ask me about my progress with my productivity process, because that’s the second most key thing for me.

It really comes down to action. What I’ve read, and what I know about myself, is that action impacts emotion. It’s getting into action and doing things that has the biggest impact on how you feel. So getting back into my productivity process and really starting to crank again, I know is going to create a virtuous cycle. The more I do, the better I’ll feel. The better I feel, the more I’ll want to do.

I’ll also be working to address my diet in some simple ways so I can start taking some weight off, but maybe the biggest thing that has me excited is actually talking about this journey.

I started this process maybe a week and a half ago, and the morning of our last Sales Success Community call I decided that I was going to look for some input from everyone as I start to build the agenda for our one-day Basecamp event I’ll be hosting here in Austin on May 9th. But I had one of my shower ideas and decided that I was going to talk about this journey. It’s been a few years since I’ve taken the stage myself to talk about what I’m doing and it’s time. So at this year’s Basecamp event, I’ll be talking about Defunkifying and Overcoming Burnout.

Again, I’d love to hear your stories. Those success stories where you overcame the funk or overcame an intense feeling of burnout. I’ll focus primarily on my own story, but would love to share some other examples and lessons learned, because what we each need is very individual. Not everyone needs to work out the way I do for example.

Knowing myself, I know that I’m driven by public commitments like this. There’s no way I’m going to get up on that stage 75 days from the day this episode drops and won’t be in a better place.

So that’s me and what I’m working on, but if you’re also in this place. Send me a note. Email is best: [email protected]. I’m not sure what I’m going to do with that yet as this was a very spur-of-the-moment idea and I honestly haven’t thought everything through, but maybe I’ll share some more regular updates with that group of fellow funkers. I might even put together a small support group and we can jump on a call every couple of weeks as we work through this together. But I think the first step is just acknowledging that you’re not at 100% and telling somebody. Even if it’s only me.

There’s also the broader Sales Success Community where I know you’ll find support and like I said, I’ll be talking about all of this in more detail at our Basecamp event in May. You can learn more about that event and about joining the Sales Success Community at top1.fm/2023 that’s T-O-P the number One dot F-M forward slash 2-0-2-3.

And this is just the beginning for me. I’m going to continue to work on this. There are a few more resources I’m planning to experiment with as I work through this process and I hope you’ll follow along.

Ok, that wasn’t quite as scary as I thought. Thanks for listening. Thanks for letting me share something intensely personal and I’d appreciate it if you’d share this with someone else who you think might need it.

We’ll get back to business next week with another brand-new interview episode. Thanks again!