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“...remember that life’s duties are made up of small, individual actions. Focus on each one as you fulfill your responsibilities, and complete them with care.” - Marcus Aurelius
Life’s tasks are made up of small, individual actions. Rather than getting frustrated or overwhelmed by them, focus on one step at a time and complete each with care.
In sales, we can also get caught up in the big picture too easily and hitting quotas, closing deals, navigating objections seems to take over. But by breaking responsibilities into manageable steps, you can avoid unnecessary stress.
Focus on what’s right in front of you: a call, an email, a presentation.
Like Jim Halpert from The Office, simplify what others complicate. Avoid the drama, keep things straightforward, and stay calm.
One step at a time leads to progress and success.
Actionable tips:
- Break large goals into smaller tasks. For example, rather than thinking about closing a deal, focus on scheduling the next meeting or answering one key question for the client.
- Stay calm during difficult interactions. When a customer is upset, focus on responding with clarity and patience, rather than reacting emotionally.
- Review your daily process. Are there steps that you can simplify to make your workflow more efficient?
- Try using the acronym KISS: Keep It Simple, Stupid. Break your tasks down into manageable steps and avoid overcomplicating things. Simplifying your approach reduces stress and helps you stay focused on what truly matters.
Remember you will die.
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Follow Jack & Zac: Jack: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jack-frimston-5010177b/ Zac: https://www.linkedin.com/in/zac-thompson-33a9a39b/
Connect with We Have a Meeting: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/we-have-a-meeting/ Website: https://www.wehaveameeting.com/
Disclaimer:
The Sales Stoic draws inspiration from the profound wisdom of Stoicism as presented in Ryan Holiday's "The Daily Stoic." As avid readers & fans, we deeply respect the work of Ryan Holiday, and acknowledge the significant impact of Stoic philosophy on our own approach to sales and life.
While The Sales Stoic applies the core principles of Stoicism to the unique challenges and opportunities faced by salespeople, it is an original work with its own distinct voice and focus. We aim to build upon the timeless wisdom of Stoicism to empower sales professionals with practical guidance and actionable insights for success in their careers and personal lives.
Jack Frimston
Co-Founder at We Have a Meeting
Zac Thompson
Co-Founder at We Have a Meeting
You've got a habit for making things hard, haven't you? Mmm, if you buy me a drink. It's the 16th of February, can you guess who it is? It's gonna be epic, T-D-U-S-S. It's not, it's Curlychops, it's Marcus Aurelius. If someone asked you how to write your name, would you bark out each letter? And if they get angry, would you then return the anger? Would you rather gently spell out each letter for them?
So then remember in life that your duties are the sum of individual acts. Pay attention to each of these as you do your duty. Just methodically complete your task. Meditations. So we go back to Confucius on this one sometimes, but he said, the man that chases two rabbits catches none. And more often than not in sales, we make things harder than they need to be. So we were having a conversation recently about
we focus on cold calling for our clients. And we were saying, well, actually, even though would go against our morals, we could probably introduce a low ticket item of emails and LinkedIn. And we could do all these other offerings. But sometimes we'd lose focus. We'd make things so much harder than they need to be. And then all of a sudden you lose focus on what you're actually trying to achieve. It's a bit like Magpie or Shiny Odd.
object syndrome. So you, you've run up many different things and actually by, by trying to be a jack of all trades, you become a master. It's that thing, isn't it? You go into a restaurant and they give you a menu with 30,000 different things and you flick into each page. You're not left thinking, I bet this is a quality establishment. They're so focused on filling up all these different cups sporadically. Absolutely. None of them ever get full.
Whereas if you went into a restaurant and it was his three things we do really well, we actually only do this one. All we do is just this burger, just this way. That's it. That's the only thing that we do. You know, it's going to be good. Then they're focused on just that one thing. I like it when you go into like those random cafes in London and they go, we've got an Italian section, an Indian section, Chinese section. You're like, this isn't going to be good.
I'm going to be ill. I'm going to be really poor. But you talk about it. There's a great book by a guy, I believe his name is Barry Schwartz. And he wrote a book called The Paradox of Choice. And the world that we're living in now, 2025, there's so much choice. So Deliveroo, you've got so you could eat anything. Tinder, countless swipes. There's so many job opportunities. There's everything which sometimes can be overwhelming and give us too many options that we don't know actually.
what we want to choose, but actually by bringing it down a level and focusing on the simple things, actually that might make it easier for us and actually help us be more content with the choice that we do make. me an example. So you walk into, like you said with the restaurant, just by having one choice, like you walk into Levi jeans store and they do, you've got straight jeans, you've got flare jeans, you've got boot cut, you've got all these different types of jeans.
It makes me want to walk out there with no jeans on. Yeah. And sometimes you do. And sometimes I do. So it's like in a business like ours, isn't it? That's that's revolved around booking of meetings. Sometimes there's that feeling to go and we do it this way. We do it that way. We can do it that way. We can flambe it. There's all these different ways that we can do it. But the other person doesn't care. No, they just care about. I just want the meeting. don't really care how you get me there. And it's quite overwhelming if you scroll through LinkedIn.
You can say, here's a hundred cold call openers. Yeah. And all of a sudden what you do is you say, right, well, I'm going to practice every, all of them today, but you're making it harder for yourself. Pick one thing that you think will work and try it. And if it doesn't work, eventually you can move on and pick a new thing, but don't try to cram it all in because it's just going to overwhelm the situation and you're making things harder than they need to be. We used to offer one-to-one coaching.
And sometimes I'd be talking to people who were selling, also kind of building a business at the same time. And the amount of times that it'd be, the script didn't work on this one call. So I've just completely changed the whole business model. I got this one little bit of negative feedback. So I'm not going to do that thing ever again. He got, we'll pull up the stats a bit. Let's go through all the, just, just that one call was made. I just want to change everything.
And our brains are so wired for other, they favor negative information to keep us safe. Actually, you'll make these complete knee jerk 360 total changes to things that never needed to be made. And yeah, I do that never really get anywhere. And you see it, you see it on LinkedIn all the time, but people that have, I know people that have had five different businesses in the space of three years and they're constantly changing. And it's like, just, just pick the thing. It's the best business advice is pick the thing.
Do the thing, do the thing again, keep doing the thing. Yeah. Do you know? Yeah, I did actually. And that's why I have. So we're to get this painted straight after the break. yeah, do the thing. Do the thing. I've been Jack Frimston. I've been Zach Thompson. Remember you will die. One tree whole.