Yesterday, I shared a bit of insight on a sentence that stood out to me from page 263 of "The Goal" by Eliyahu M. Goldratt...
"It wouldn't be bad to learn how to manage my life, but I'm afraid that would be asking for too much."
Today, let's skip ahead a few pages.
Alex is at dinner, unwinding and celebrating, pondering, and planning with his wife, when he realizes that the solutions he and his team devised together were all based on common sense.
However, "they flew directly in the face of everything I'd ever learned."
I see this every day in my training and consulting.
Salespeople know they need to listen more, ask better questions, not jump to conclusions, meet their prospects where they are, tell more stories, stop being quote monkeys, ask for referrals and testimonials, stop discounting, do more prospecting, share less gossip, write down their goals, and get after it.
Business leaders know they need to:
recruit better, which means consistently sourcing and screening top talent
train their salespeople, which does not mean product training
stop yelling at their salespeople to update their CRM
carry a quota themselves, i.e., be a player-coach
learn how to motivate everyone on their team individually, which means getting to know everyone beyond what their territory and quotas are.
As you read those lists, nothing is "new" or "wow" or "out of this world," is it?
So we overlook them. We skip them. We shove them aside so we can make room for the new and improved, the shiny and blinky, the whizbang, the bleeding edge.
How is that working out for you?
For 54 years, I've heard the Bruce Lee quote, "I fear not the man who has practiced 10,000 kicks once, but I fear the man who has practiced one kick 10,000 times."After many years of Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, I can finally appreciate it.
For nearly a decade, my smaller, older instructor has beaten me with the same 3-4 attacks because he has lost more matches than I've ever competed in.
He has practiced more attacks with his left leg than I have practiced with my entire body.
He has spent more time simply warming up than I have actually trained.
That's why he was #1 in the world in his division.
But training like that for so long is boring, right?
Not when you know why you're doing it.
Not when you know it works.
Since 1995, I've been figuring out what works in sales, marketing, and personal development.
I applied it to my life for over a decade, then trusted my abilities to go out on my own.
Since 2006, I've helped others apply and master what I've learned.
Now, I've consolidated all of that into 12 Weeks To Peak™ so you can find your own common sense ideas that fly in the face of what you've been taught, which will enable you to go as far and as fast as you want.
I work with a max of 12 in this affordable, small-group edition, which you can begin here.
If you’d like to discuss having me as your daily, private accountability partner for 12 intense weeks, you can schedule a time to discuss it here.
~Wes Schaeffer
P.S. Tomorrow, I’m talking about another line from the same page in the book, which ties in nicely as to why I ask you a lot more questions in the 12 Weeks To Peak™program instead of barking orders at you.
Professional selling is about helping the prospect reach their own conclusions while you remain in control of the playing field and rules of engagement.
So you'll learn how to be a professional salesperson in 12 Weeks To Peak™...among other things.
You can get started here now.