Do you know what my favorite sales question in the world is? Why are you so cheeky and gorgeous? That's my second favorite. My favorite sales question is: On a scale of 1 to 10, but you can't use the number seven, which is so fitting because it's the 7th of January.

The proper work of the mind is the exercise of choice, refusal, yearning, repulsion, preparation, purpose, and ascent. What then can pollute and clog the mind's proper functioning? Nothing but its own corrupt decisions. Who do you think said that? Marcus Aurelius. Wow, and it was the seven clear functions of the mind.

So when I hear this, I think about being a professional when it comes to sales. Sales used to be one of the most professional jobs out there. Now it's what you do when you get a degree in music or drama and you can't make it in the industry. Why me? So it's about being a professional. What does being a professional mean to you? It's interesting.

I'm not going to say that I'm some sort of angel, and I certainly had a large part of my career. Larger, right? I certainly had part of my career that I wasn't a professional. What I mean by that is I would just show up expecting things to happen. So I would put my clothes on, I'd show up, and think the salesperson's going to be there when I get in. I can turn it on, and sometimes I would, sometimes I wouldn't.

But when I actually had to start taking it really seriously, which I think was probably the point that my wife said, "We're having a baby," and I was like, "Oh wow, I'm actually in a job that I need to be really good at now." There was a part of me that thought, now I need to prepare, now I need to show up every day like a professional.

If you look at professional athletes, they aren't just showing up to play the game and hoping they're going to win. It's almost down to a science of what they've eaten, how they've looked after themselves on the weekend, what they've done on Sunday night to prepare for Monday, what they do in the morning to make sure they're not just showing up, the amount of caffeine they need.

It's a slope that you can go down for a very, very long time, learning and grabbing different bits and adding them to the toolbox as you go. But if you're someone who's just showing up every day hoping things happen, you'll find that you've got this very, very inconsistent performance.

And I think that's right. What we're probably not saying is you don't need to get up at 4:00 a.m., run a marathon, do an ice bath, eat a smoothie, and make sure that you're making cold calls by 7:00 a.m. That's just me.

That's just you, and that's not what we're saying. But I look back at 23, 24, and I truly believe I was an NPC, a non-playable character. I was just getting up, falling asleep on the train, waking up at the office, getting ready to go, just getting through the day, probably having a burger at lunch, feeling sloppy at my desk, going for a few beers after work, and it continues.

But you, like you say, it's about being a professional. And if you're in a sales role and you're thinking, "Yeah, but I'm not here forever," it's like, okay, that's absolutely fine. You probably want to go on to do bigger and better things. We've definitely been in those office jobs where we say, and we go, "Well, it doesn't matter because, you know, Universal Records are going to knock on the door one day and give me a big deal."

But while you're here, I always think, just put the work in, get good, because even if you don't end up in sales, whatever you end up doing, whatever your craft is, if you work towards being a professional and mastery, those skills will transfer.

And you've learned that, okay? I've learned how to travel the road toward mastery. Really, unome in there, aren't you?

Okay, what else did you want to say? I think one of the things is about assumptions and knowing things. When you get off a cold call, I think this is an interesting one, but: Do I know this? How do I know this? That's one question to ask yourself.

Okay, he's upset with his current provider. How do I know this? Well, I said "X," I said "insert company name here," and I heard a bit of heavy breathing. Okay, but do I know? Was I on the phone with Darth Vader, or did he say, "I'm unhappy with X?"

So, how do you know things? Don't make assumptions. Only rely on facts. Beautiful.

Do you mind if I say that to your face? Very much so. Okay, well, it's not beautiful though.

Yeah, one of the best sales questions you can ask is the most simple: It's "What do you mean?" Right? Because what we're doing is we're always, always making assumptions. But really, what you're trying to do is get things down to their most simple objective truth.

Okay, so let's say I spoke to someone and I'm a marketing service, and the response is, "Oh, we're always looking to improve in marketing, we were just looking at something before." Salesperson, then commission breath. Happy ears. "Okay, great, well, I can get you booked in next week and show you some..." Whoa, whoa, whoa, pump the brakes. What you should be saying there is, "You mentioned you're always looking into marketing. What do you mean? You were looking at something before? Sorry, what did you mean by that?"

And that curiosity lets us get deeper and deeper. And if you've been listening to the series so far, I've talked before about: With deep thought comes emotion, and with emotion comes action. So no one ever got upset from talking about themselves too much, in too much detail. In fact, that's where the true rapport is built.

Listen to people. Make people feel heard. Easy for me to say, and just do the bit. Do the bit. I think not enough people are doing the bit. I think Chris Williamson from Modern Wisdom talks about being a podcast host as a profession.

So look at what your job role is, look at what you do, and think of it as a profession. And what would a professional person do? Beautiful.

Beautiful. I think the only other thing that I would maybe mention is when people are reviewing things like pipelines. So if you're a salesperson or you've got a sales team, and you're sat down, and you're saying, "Look, I've got this deal that I'm working on at the minute," having that objective, unclouded reality of it.

One of the simplest things you can do is only allow things into the pipeline that have a meeting attached to them. Have a defined next step. "Oh, would you like to catch up on Friday?" isn't really good enough. What you want to be able to say is, "We can talk about that later." What you want to be able to say is, "10:00 a.m. on Friday, I've got a catch-up call. It's aced. We'll find out then what's happening."

And that way, there's no hope in the pipeline. You're dealing with hard yeses, hard noes, and we call it something, don't we? What do we call it? You want to say it at the same time? Okay, one, two, three... Bam Famam!

Wow. Bam Famam. Yeah, book a meeting from a meeting. So make sure that whenever you're ending a meeting, if it's a hard no, cool, there we go, see you later, out the pipeline. But if it's continuing down that journey, make sure that there's something—think in check-in points along the way. Have that commitment, and that keeps you in control of the process.

Wow. You know what? You're growing on me. I've been Jack Frimston. I've been Zack Thompson. Remember, you will die. Referee, surely. That was a fast tackle.