May the January 4th Be With You Well

We've both got something wrong with us. Then, wow, what's yours? Uh, I can't talk about it on camera, but I'll tell you off there. Thanks so much! Cheers.

So, January the 4th. Are you ready? Okay, get ready for this: All you need are certainty of judgment in the present moment, action for the common good in the present moment, and an attitude of gratitude in the present moment for anything that comes your way. By my friend and yours, Marcus Aelius.

Marcus Aurelius… wow. So we can think of that as perception, action, and will. Perception is an interesting one. This is one of these things I always geek out about. It can give you a bit of a panic attack, but you are unable to see things as they actually are. That’s something I always think about. Often, what you're doing is either seeing things in their absolute worst—it feels much worse than it actually is, and I'm suffering more in my imagination than I am in reality (to take a quote from our friend Seneca)—or you're seeing things much better than they actually are. But it's very, very hard for us, as people, to see the objective reality. There’s things like recency bias, right?

We’ve experienced this as salespeople. You might have had a hundred good conversations, but then one bad conversation where someone says, "Why don’t you go get a real job? This is ridiculous. Do you know about GDPR?" You get absolutely hammered by someone on the phone, and next thing you know, you forget about all those hundred good conversations. Suddenly, you think, "This is the worst job ever. I hate myself. What am I doing here?" And that's again perception—your brain starting to tell you a story. It’s not for a bad reason. That recency bias, that little shortcut in the brain, is kicking in to keep you safe because it doesn’t want you to be rejected.

What is rejection? Rejection is the feeling that you're going to die. It goes back thousands and thousands of years. If you were rejected from the tribe, you'd probably end up dead because you'd get mauled to death by a tiger. It’s that feeling, but actually, right now, you get rejected and you feel a little bit silly—your cheeks go a bit crimson—but no one's going to die. No one's ever died in sales, apart from maybe at the Christmas party after a few too many shandies. But that's for another episode. And I'm sorry about what I did. I still make payments to the family now. Can we say that? I don't know… anyway.

The next point is around action, right? And action is really interesting. I think all salespeople should know what actually makes someone act. If you're an SDR, let’s say your primary function is not only how do I book a meeting, but how do I get someone to show up to the meeting, right? Regardless of the sales methodology you follow, you're really looking for two things: Does the person I’m speaking to have a problem that we solve, and is there motivation to fix it?

How I think about it is this: Emotion will come from deep thoughts. So if I can make someone really think about the problem that they have, I ask them a question that makes them go, "Wow, that's a good question." Or I ask something challenging, and I make them think, "I need to do something about this because the business is failing." Suddenly, there’s that emotional attachment. And when someone has to attach an emotion to something, that’s when there’s action. It’s like a flagpole. We call it a flagpole in the sand. If you push it, does it move? Does it stand on its own?

There are some great things you can do around that. So, if you think about perception, I always think, "What is actionable? What can you take away?" Get a Post-it note, stick it on your desk, and write down these two questions: Is this useful? Is this true? So when those thoughts come to you—obviously, we’re all an amalgamation of different human biases—ask yourself those two questions: Is this useful? No. Is it true? What is true? Is it true, or is it just an unbalanced opinion?

When we think about motivation, make sure you're asking the right questions. Qualified for different people means different things, but make sure they have a problem and are genuinely motivated to solve it.

Now, let's talk about the third one: Will. I think it’s very easy—and almost a little bit trite—to say the will to show up every day and do the action, even though you're getting rejected, even though there’s a snowstorm banging in your face. Where I think people struggle with the will is when they think they’ve got the sure thing in the back pocket. You’ve got the big deal—the big deal is suddenly clouding your judgment and making you not focus on everything else. What happens if the big deal doesn’t come in?

One of the Stoics might have been Seneca, in Letters from Stoke, talking about how one of his friends’ city or town or something had burnt down. He said the problem was, why it affected him so much, is because he never imagined that would happen. He never played out the worst possible scenario. And I think, as salespeople, the deal—the big deal coming in—that’s the city, right? That’s where I'm going. That’s where my promotion is. That’s where my commission is. That’s where the holiday to Bali is, like in that one deal. But you haven’t prepared yourself for what if it goes away?

The will for me is, do you have the will, regardless of good or bad, to just do the actions no matter what? Nothing can disrupt the flow. Whether you’re doing really well or doing really badly, you still show up and have to do the output. And in that way, your results are going to be consistent and predictable.

One of the things we shout about a lot is: You can’t lose something that you never had. People bank on stuff, but actually, if it’s not signed and the money’s not in the bank, it’s not yours. You can't get upset over things that haven’t been a done deal.

I think there’s some beautiful advice in there. Smash it on this lovely January day.

I’ve been Jack Frimston. I’ve been Zach Thompson. Remember, you will die. Motto: It’s only a pound.