“Go ahead…”

Wally didn’t feel like playing the baseball game that day so he said, “Go ahead & let the other guy play…”

The problem for Wally is that the other kid never gave his Wally his position back.

You’ve probably never hear of Wally Pipp, but you’ve probably heard of Lou Gehrig…

For 56 years Lou Gehrig held the record for most consecutive games played.

This message is 2 fold:

If you’re deep on the depth chart today…even if it looks like there’s no way anything’s going to open up for you…

Play, practice, & prepare like you’re a starter because you never when that “1 opportunity” turns your whole life around.

When you hear, “Go ahead,” you play in such a way to never give that position up.

& if you’re in the lead position, don’t ever think that you can’t be dethroned.

Every opportunity counts…every customer counts…every situation counts…

Because all it takes is for you to “not feel like it,” & say, “Go ahead…”

That’s the day you fall…& the moment they rise.

“Go ahead,” is not a command it’s a mindset & if you say it once, you’ll say it anytime “you don’t feel like it.”

Opportunities exist for you…but they exist for others too…

Especially when you say, “Go ahead…”

Instead say, “I got it…”

Stay in The Sales Life 💪

(Thanks to Michael Strahan’s book for the inspiration for this post)

The advantage you have over professional athletes

I hate to tell you this, but chances are real good that you’ll never play for an NBA, NFL, nor any other professional team. Chances are even better that you’ll never sign a multi-year mega-million dollar contract either. When we hear the news, we day dream & talk at length about the massive contracts athletes sign in the off-season. In an effort to win a championship, teams lock up key players by inking them to multi-year, mega- million dollar contracts. Some of those deals you think are no-brainers…others you say, “What in the hell?,” to, but in either case, I guess hard work really does pay off, huh?

Or does it?

Because the following season after the player signed for instant wealth, they just don’t seem to run as hard, play through the pain as much, nor magically pull out a win the same way they did before they got caked up- which makes you ask the question, “What happened?” The response is always the same, “Oh, he got paid,” but that’s supposed to happen right? Aren’t you supposed to be paid for all of the hard work and sweat equity that you put in? Why doesn’t the athlete play like he used to? Why, if he’s making the most money he’s ever made-more then most of us could ever dream of, why is he so disruptive in the locker room & headlines?

What happened?

And there’s your answer…and your advantage. It happened for them & I hope it never “happened” for you. They realized their full potential and you have not. See, once these guys reach that max contract deal, it signifies that they’ve reached the top- all of it and then some- the problem is, when you think that you’ve reached the end, you cease working for new beginnings. Playing now switches from proving to protecting. Instead of playing & proving they’re worth the investment, they instead play not to get hurt & lose what they’ve contractually won.

So while yes, they should benefit from all of their hard, work, max deals should never equal max potential. See, if there’s no longer a bar to look up to, what would you reach for? Think about this, if I sat and wrote you a check for $1 million saying, “I think this is your full potential,” what would you do next? Would you look at it as a start or finish? Would you lay up & buy a bunch of shit or would you look at it instead as a down payment & parlay that monetary gain to make it work for you. Would you move the bar of potential up or would the bar just go away because now you’ve reached a certain status?

Contrary to athletes, no one is going to pay you in advance for what they think that you’re worth, you have to push the barriers of your potential every day, and as you do, you’ll earn not only monetarily, but also you’ll amass experience, wisdom, grit, & resilience along the way. And when you reach or even exceed your wildest expectations, because you’ve put in the sweat equity and kept moving the bar up, you’ll realize that you may have exceeded your expectations, but you have not exceeded your potential.

With each notch up, you get a newer, broader perspective. Your eyes are opened wider & what seems impossible to others, is i’mpossible to you. So you push even harder, higher, & broader in all directions- some days you don’t know if what you’re doing even matters…only to discover years later, it mattered and now here’s the meaning.

What was once the finish line now becomes the new starting line of so much more. Yes, have a destination, but I hope you never “arrive.” Play to your full potential today, but I hope you never reach it so that when you fight your ass off to reach your summit, you discover that you may have reached a summit, but not the summit because when you get to what you thought was the highest peak you could possibly climb, you look around & realize there are millions more higher mountains waiting to be climbed….by you.

Never stop climbing.

I’ll see you in the Sales Life!

⭐️⭐️Subscribe to my weekly podcast The Sales Life w/ Marsh Buice. You can find it on iTunes, Spotify, or Google Play

Everyone’s a “then”

For every now, there was a then...

Once it was just Mick, Keith, Charlie, & Ronnie before they became The Rolling Stones. Don, Joe, & Timothy were just regular dudes before they became the legendary band called the Eagles. Andre & Antwan weren’t always Andre 3000 & Big Boi of OutKast. “Luda!” wasn’t shouted by the doctor as he slapped Chris Bridges on the ass in the delivery room.

When you look at people’s now, remember there was a then–many, many then’s in order to become their now. Be patient & work your ass off in the months & years of then’s. Yes, it’ll be thankless @ times; it’ll seem as if it’s for naught often; periodically you’ll feel like a damn fool for grinding on your dream while everyone else seems to be getting ahead except you.

When your days are in the ditch, remind yourself that you’re investing in your then…your nows will come soon enough & the results will pay off.

For “then” just keep working for “now.”

I’ll see you in the Sales Life.

Subscribe to my weekly podcast The Sales Life w/ Marsh Buice. You can find it on iTunes, Spotify, or Google Play

It’s not about just you

I had a salesperson that I just couldn’t seem to get her to work with more customers- being she was new, I would repeatedly emphasize to her to work with more customers, but when they would come in, she’d usually fall back & let another salesperson Up (catch) them. I couldn’t figure it out..she knew her product, she was technically sound, & she was used to competing against the boys because she came from a male dominated industry …so what was it? When asked, she responded, “Marsh, I don’t have a huge need- the other salespeople around me have to struggle to make a sale in order to pay rent & car notes- I don’t have a huge need so I don’t need to make much.” Leaning back I asked her, “So what’s your end game…” to that she told me that she planned on being in the car business a long time. “Then if that’s the case, you’re not doing yourself much good- here’s why…

First, you can’t teach what you don’t know & you’ll never know until you first do. In his biography, Arnold Schwarzenegger said the 3 keys to him becoming a 7x Mr Olympia, successful businessman, & one of the highest paid actors at the time in Hollywood were reps, reps, reps.”

Reps weatherproof your career. You’ve got to work with hundreds of experiences, objections, scenarios, & obstacles while fading & maneuvering through thousands of rejections not only so that you can learn, but so that you can pay it forward and help others succeed who are starting out as well. Reps also give your customers the needed assurances that you can help them with their current situation because you’ve helped other customers maneuver through similar circumstances as well.

“This brings me to my 2nd point,” I told her, “When you’re not working with enough customers, not only do you not possess enough of the necessary skills that they desire & deserve, but not working with enough customers means that you’re OK with them buying from an inferior salesperson- if you say that you’re here to help customers, then you’ve got to follow through with actions to those words.”

“Which brings me to my 3rd point,” I quipped, “Do you have kids?” She told me that she had a boy and a girl- Mason & Madison…”Do you want them to do well in life,” I asked knowing she’d say yes. “If you want them to do well, then be their teacher- set the example because they can’t be what they don’t see. The reason why so many struggle as adults today is because, no one played the part…no one showed them the pattern… no one chalked the outline, nor showed them what they could be because no one helped them see…no one showed them more so they’ve accepted less.”

You must do well…you must reach beyond your comfort zone…you must dig deep and get back up…you must set audacious goals & kick the door in when Life tries to slam it in your face…you must reach higher because this isn’t just about you.

It’s way bigger than that…

….but first you’ve got to set the bar.

I’ll see you on the Blacktop.

Not even a second

I like Daniel Coyle’s book The Little Book of Talent: 52 Tips For Improving Your Skills-now he also wrote The Talent Code which is a good book about how individuals unlock their talent-a book that we’ll chop up later, but today I want to talk about something I hope that you’re doing every day…and that’s making mistakes-not only making them, but more specifically what you do after you make them. We don’t like to make mistakes-mistakes make us vulnerable to others…it exposes us to being laughed at, talked about, sneered at, pointed to, written up and even fired-and that’s just on the outside. The internal game -what’s going on the inside of us is even worse. When we make a mistakes, we begin to lose our internal mojo-our self-confidence, but self-confidence is a very strange thing: if you try and fail your self-confidence slips a notch…but if you don’t try for fear of failing, that too causes you to lose your self-confidence because you’re not producing- so it becomes one of those damned if you do..damned if you don’t scenarios. So here’s my thing, if you’re going to expose yourself to the possibility of losing your self-confidence either way, then why not lose it in the only direction that you have the possibility to not only gain it back but also inch it forward-and it sure as hell ain’t by sitting around…you’ll gain confidence and skills through making mistakes because as Coyle says in Tip #22, “Mistakes are your guideposts for improvement.” Coyle discovered brain scan studies that revealed that .25 seconds-a quarter of a second after making a mistake we do 1 of 2 things: We either ignore the mistake or we look hard at it…

…I’ll add a third to Coyle’s findings…

We justify the mistake. We justify why we did what we did, then ignore any sort of corrective coaching or measures thereafter. Some of the most intelligent people ask, “How could I have been wrong in the action that I took..” instead of justifying why they could’ve been right.

Don’t wait to look at the mistake- look at it right away. Players know this- as soon as they come to the sidelines they’re looking at their tablets trying to figure out how they threw the interception, how the ball was stripped out of their hands, or why they were called for pass interference- they don’t have time to explain away the mistake nor do they have time to deal with the mistake later- they analyze & correct immediately because the game is still going on…

So is yours…

…precious time is ticking away while you’re either standing around explaining (to those who really don’t even care) or you just flat out ignore one of the greatest teachers the Universe has to offer: Mistakes.

So do me you a favor…1) As long as they are not illegal, immoral, or unethical, make many mistakes today and right after you make them, 2)Look those mistakes right in the mouth- don’t wince or shy away from them…don’t blame anyone or anything for them. Own them- if you accepted the wins then you sure as hell have got to own the losses. Find & improve your mistakes. And as Coyle’s Law states, “Take mistakes seriously but never personally.”

I’ll see you on the Blacktop.

Subscribe and Listen to my daily podcast The Sales Life w Marsh Buice on iTunes or anchor.fm

What you miss becomes your momentum

It’s sooo frustrating to put in the hard work only to wind up empty handed. You work with a customer for hours, days, even months only to finally catch them on the phone and discover that they bought somewhere else.

Or what about the video or blog post that you worked on for hours only to have one viewer? (Hmm I wonder who that could’ve been.)

You tried out for the team…you put in the application…you submitted a proposal…or you finally got the chance to set up a meeting, but you ended up scratching.

No jersey with your name on the back; no new fancy title; no gabillion dollar new account; and the meeting got canceled while you were sitting in the waiting room.

You could stop by the local gas station and buy that $9.99 bottle of Yellow Tail to drown your sorrow…

You could blame the man for always keeping you down…

Or you could realize that you didn’t miss anything, because what you “missed” actually becomes your momentum. 

One of my favorite phrases is, feed the machine – meaning, constantly feed your action… relentlessly feed your effort… because if you feed it, the results will show.

Maybe the results don’t show up in the way that you’d like for them to, but they always show.

Sometimes they show up in winning results…

But they always show up in feedback.

The problem is we rarely take stock in feedback.

Yes or no…deal or no deal…”Congratulations,” or “Thanks, we’ll pass,” use the feedback to tweak and refine your next approach, phone call, meeting, or submission. REGARDLESS of your immediate result. 

Because…

Feedback isn’t valuable…it’s priceless. 

Feedback is your return on effort.

Musicians know all about feedback…

When they get on stage to do a sound check, sometimes their mic gives that deafening ring – that’s feedback and the sound engineer makes the necessary adjustments so that the sound comes out clear and crisp when they get ready to perform…your process needs to be the same way.

When you step onto the stage with a customer-hell, when even you step onto the grand stage of Life– your initial feedback may be ear piercing, but keep making the necessary adjustments….

Musicians don’t just walk off stage due to the initial foul sound.

They make the adjustments- not once, but all throughout the performance.

So should you…

Whether you’re slaying it today or just flat ass bombing, make the adjustments with the feedback that you are receiving – don’t personalize or internalize it, just keep adjusting…

And if you “miss” the result, keep in mind that you made the momentum. Make the adjustments and keep on rocking.

Stay in The Sales Life!

-Marsh

 

Most Objections Have Options

It’s been said that nothing in life is guaranteed, yet one thing is certain in sales: There will always be objections. In the sales profession, objections are a necessary evil. After all, if there were no objections there wouldn’t be a need for salespeople; thankfully the products do not sell themselves and need advocates like you and me, to favorably demonstrate the advantages we have over our competitors’. Look at objections not as roadblocks but rather as detours. If you were traveling to Disney World on a family vacation and 400 miles into the trip you ran into a “Road Closed” sign would you turn around and go home? Of course not, you would search for an alternative route and continue on your trip. Although the trip may take a little longer, you know you will eventually get there.  The Road To The Sale will be full of “Road Closed” signs, but it is up to you, Sales Professional, to find unconventional routes in order to complete the sales journey.  Most objections have options.

Some customers give objections as a means of stalling; they will give an objection trying to freeze the obligation of having to make a buy/not buy decision, while other customers give objections by saying No when in fact they may be saying Know. They cannot make a decision because they don’t know enough about you, your dealership, or the product you represent. When a customer gives you an objection, ask yourself is it a wall or a hall? Is the objection one that you reach an impasse and can go no further or does the objection have an alternative route-simply, does the stated objection have any options? If the customer’s objection has options, the sale still has a heartbeat. In order to get a proper diagnosis, some surgeons have to do exploratory surgery. You are a surgeon on the black top and when you are faced with an objection it is up to you to do exploratory surgery and bring a solution to your customer’s transportation problem. A salesperson is viewed as being pushy when he gives his customer only one option-to buy or not buy, instead of exploring a client’s objections and recommending alternative options in an effort to bring closure to a sale.

When faced with a major health crisis, doctors give their patients their options; when confronted with a problem in the cockpit, pilots weigh their options; when a country is faced with a crisis, Presidents seek their options. Your career is no different; it is life or death [to your paycheck;] the possibility to crash and burn does loom; an all-out war of rejection and adversity is waged every day on the black top. The best defenses to objections are options.

New wines, old wineskin

Centuries ago, before elaborate bottling processes and wineries, wines were transported in wineskins. It was advised to never pour new wine into old wineskins because old wineskins were contaminated with fermented bacteria. New wineskins lose their pliability as they age and burst when the new wine is poured into old skins, the skins no longer have the flexibility to expand and contract to the fermented gases.

Isn’t that what we do? As we age, we lack the flexibility to adjust to life and earn the label of being “set in our ways.” We use the excuse of “that’s just who I am,” as if it’s ok and then can’t understand why year after year nothing is changing. Each day, each week, month after month, and every year, we receive new wine. Daily, we receive new opportunities that can turn our lives around, but we are pouring new wine, new opportunities into old wineskins. Our mind’s old skins, fermented with past failures, setbacks, and negative thoughts are bursting, spilling new opportunities onto the ground and becoming washed away with our self-imposed limitations. Just as a snake sheds its skin and begins anew, begin each day anew with expectations. When your expectations rise above your past and are not limited on your present circumstances, a new skin, your new beginning, is set in motion. You will receive what you expect.   

Do you still have the Ooh Factor?

After all of these years, do you still have the Ooh Factor? You do remember the freshman Ooh Factor when you first hit the blacktop; you were literally oozing with Optimism, [saw] Opportunity, and had [good] Habits. Like athletes, salespeople need an edge; these factors are edge- the triplets to maintaining a successful sales career.

• Optimism: What are you expecting each day? Are you looking through the lenses of optimism and seeing a favorable outcome or looking through the microscope of the daily minutia? When you look through a microscope, you magnify your problems and often you become drilled down into things you have no control over. You have no control over yesterday’s customer who had sub-par credit or was $11k buried in their trade. How many problems did you have when you first got into the business? The only thing you were focused on was making a sale; you didn’t know enough to have any other worries. A baby doesn’t know when he will begin to walk; he just gets up and tries, falls, and tries again. The same is true for you in sales; you fall down, and must get back up and try again.
• Opportunity: Because of your optimism, opportunities seem to open up everywhere. Ever hear of beginner’s luck for the green pea? Beginner’s luck is nothing more than optimism; because of the optimism, opportunity is created. While the new kid is sprinting across the lot in order to grab a key for his next customer, all of the veterans stand around and jealously sneer at his efforts. The sad truth is they remember they too used to be that way. Optimism breeds opportunities; conversely pessimism produces more problems. What you look for you will find; when you look for the problems in each customer, you begin to punch holes into your own sales. It becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. Pessimism overcomes optimism and becomes a vicious cycle. When this happens, you begin to focus on the problems hindering you from making a sale instead of cherishing the opportunity right in front of you.
• Habits are the glue that holds your fortunes or your misfortunes together. Habits guarantee results 100% of the time; unfortunately you may not like the outcome of your daily disciplines. If you make it a daily priority to read 30 minutes pertaining to sales, make 3 new phone calls, and don’t leave until you catch 2 ups each day, your habits will reap you a fortune. As Dennis Waitley said, “Habits are like a submarine, they run silent and deep.” It takes time to rewire your patterns you’ve developed; you didn’t obtain the habits overnight, nor will you rid yourself of them. If you don’t like where your are, change your habits to obtain your have-its.

You still have the Ooh Factor; it may be lying deep in the recesses of your mind, but it has never left you. All it takes is faith in your abilities, daily action, and focus in the daily disciplines. When you tweak the efforts-you will reap Ooh results.

The Audacity To Have H.O.P.E.

Recently, my 16-year-old sent me a text message, “Life is like riding a bike, it doesn’t matter how slow you go as long as you keep moving.” We have reached a crossroads of sorts in life. Although you may want to stop pedaling, you must choose to keep the squeaky wheels rolling. You may not be gaining much ground, but the fact that you are still pedaling is a sign that you are winning. (Chicago) Bears Coach Mike Ditka said, “You are never a loser until you quit trying.” I urge you to have the Audacity to have H.O.P.E. Have the boldness, unrestricted thought, and disrespectful attitude to, Have an Opportunistic Perspective Everyday. Have the reckless abandonment not to care what the press, your friends, nor your family is saying about how bad things are getting. Seeds planted in the best conditions will grow.

Take 11 seconds of your day and talk to a co-worker or look at the television and see how fast the seeds of negativity get spewed upon you. It seems as though negativity is everywhere. Mass media has profited from reporting news of negative circumstances or behavior. Even your coworker profits from saying negative things while standing by the water cooler; the profit he gains are by the words he speaks. The tongue is compared to a tiny ruder of a massive ship steering it through both calm and tumultuous waters- so too does the ruder of your life’s ship steer you toward the things that you speak. For out of the mouth cry the issues of life.

Your computer system

If you listen to the external, you become deaf to the internal. Your gut instinct is your subconscious in action. There is a distinct difference between the conscious and subconscious mind. Think of your subconscious as the hard drive of a computer system and the conscious as the software. Every day your software is commanding your hardware what to do. Your subconscious takes everything as fact and does not know the difference between real or unreal. A computer’s software and hardware must be compatible to function properly, so does the conscious and subconscious mind. Do not allow a virus to infect your computer system ruining everything the system designed to do. What program are you running now, Neg 2.0 or Pos 3.0?

Vision and Sight

Think of it this way. Your conscious is your vision- it is what you expect. Your subconscious is your sight and what it sees is accepted as fact. You must keep the perspective that opportunity awaits you, all you have to do is visualize it and let your sight accept it as fact. What are you anticipating or eagerly striving for now? Guess what, you are probably receiving what you are expecting. Your vision will defeat the battles of your circumstances allowing your sight to win the war- defeating every self-deprecating, self-defeating thought trying to keep you down. The world was formed from a spoken word, do you still think your negative, spoken words are not powerful enough to knock you off track?

Anybody got a light?

Pessimism bites the hand of optimism. Pessimism is the Jim Jones concoction of your life’s success. Drink from that cup of thought and ruin your chances of excellence. Keep your hand open. Wake up daily, go to sleep nightly loving yourself. Become bold enough to hang up on life’s “telemarketers” selling defeat and instead create a fan page of your life. Your biggest fan should be you. Your problems are only temporary. Keep your hand open to receive the opportunities that surround you. No receiver ever caught the game winning touchdown with closed hands-they had to be open to receive, hence the word “receiver.” Someone else’s trash is your treasure. The hand of life will give you fire and coals. Coals are opportunities and stay smoldering until provoked, suddenly causing a spark. The spark becomes a fire and gives life to your dreams and ambitions instantly. Passion is the oxygen that fuels the fire. When was the last time you walked up to the smoldering coals of life and began stabbing and provoking the coals to cause a spark and breathe life into your opportunities? Dreams can go from darkness, to a spark, to light because of provocation and BOOM, a dream gives birth to reality.

My challenge to you is not to take the average road, byway, nor highway of life. Turn left on Audacity Road. Keep your mind open, stay bold, relentless, downright audacious to not let someone else be the offensive coordinator of your life. Script your own game plan; call your own plays, and score your own victories in your quest for life. H.O.P.E. is everywhere you envision it.