Breaking free of NEGATIVE Confirmation Bias

 

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Confirmation Bias is good…when it’s good. But when things aren’t working & you’re on a slick spot your actions confirm the doom and gloom.

So how do you break free of Negative CB?

Individualize it don’t personalize it.

If you personalize your moments, you’ll try to handle them emotionally & your emotions will only make things worse.

Feel yourself slipping into Negative CB when you think of all outcomes as catastrophic.

The next customer, phone call, lead, or attempt all lines up with your dead end thoughts. You go down the rabbit hole of, “See I told you so!” When your attempts fail you confirm it with “See,I knew it wouldn’t work..etc”

Feel yourself slipping when you start saying phrases like, “Again!” “I can’t win for losing!” “Another one…” (Not in the DJ Khaled tone)

Individualizing the moment has nothing to do with emotions & everything to do with your approach, mechanics, techniques, & follow through.

You take EACH situation, analyze it, & play for next.

The quickest way out of your rut is to shut up (no whoa is me) & take on next.

Nothing lasts forever…wins nor losses, but you will prolong the losses if you lump all of the losses together by personalizing then vs individualizing them-what worked, what didn’t, what next 💥?

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Square the Circle…don’t Circle the Square

When I’m pressed for time, I’ll run a quick 2 miles around the road that circles my house. (4 laps = 1 mile)

Because I had to force myself to hit the road, I try to hurry & get it over with by cutting the corners instead of fully rounding them off.

At the time, it seems like I’m getting around the circle quicker, but after eight laps, mentally I’m trying to pull up, but my watch tells me to keep running…

It’s not yet 2 miles…

Come to find out, because I cut the corners, I end up having to take needless, extra steps.

An extra 100 ft doesn’t seem like much, but if I add that extra 100 ft up over the next 52 runs, I end up adding a mile’s worth of steps for the same “2 mile” run.

Sound familiar?

You’re tired…sore…frustrated…& the month’s been grueling…

Nothing seems to be going your way…

So you cut the corners…

In an effort to “save time,” you rush through customers, quickly assessing if they’re buying or not…

You take extra days off to rest from last week’s leg day at the gym…

You jump from one relationship into the next proclaiming, “this is the one…”

You “put it all on the card” or renew the loan this month and gamble on figuring out how to make the payments next month(s)…

You cut the corners…because it seems like it’s the quickest way to make your lap that day…

Hurry & get it over with seems logical…

But it’s costly…

Because this is a long race you’re running & you’re needlessly adding extra steps to achieve a decision…outcome…or goal.

Run the full mile you’re in…

Today, I know you don’t feel like it…I know it’s been rough…I know the extra weight of frustration, fatigue, & anger make your run slower & harder…

But take the steps now…

All of them…

Because you’ll take fewer in the long run.

When I’m on that hard ass, “don’t feel like it” run & feel like cutting the corners…

When the voices are banging in my head- screaming that no one will know that I’m cutting the corners…

I tell myself, “Square the circle…don’t circle the square.”

See, the road around my house is a circle, but the parameters are a square, so if I stay on that parameter, eight laps is two miles…

But if I circle the square & cut the corners, that same two miles ends up costing me extra steps..wasted energy & time.

Square the circle today….

When you cry to yourself, “ I don’t feel like doing this-I’m just going to round this thing off!!!”

Don’t, because it may feel like it’s quicker now, but remember your life isn’t a lap…it’s many, many miles…

Today’s lap may be hard…but in the end the steps will be efficiently fewer…& it’ll all be worth it.

Have an amazing day…

~Stay in The Sales 💪ife.

Quit reading

Evan Carmichael said,

“Reading doesn’t have to be your top priority, but learning should be…”

So maybe reading’s not your bag, but just because you don’t like to read doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t learn.

You’ve just got to find the way that works better for you.

I get it…

Reading may feel like a chore.

You may fall asleep after 5 minutes of reading or you just can’t seem to stay focused.

That’s cool…don’t beat yourself up because you don’t read or that you’re slow reader.

Beat yourself up because you don’t learn.

🔥Not liking to read is not a reason to not learn.

You’ve got to figure out other ways that you can learn.

I love to read, but after 10 years of voraciously reading I’ve gotten burned out-so much so that I read very little.

But it doesn’t mean that I don’t learn.

I learn through podcasts & I’ve subscribed to YouTube premium where I can listen to YouTube (w/out the screen being on.)

I think ways of learning are seasonal…

There are seasons I like to read & other seasons I prefer audiobooks, podcasts, & YouTube more.

I may stop one, but I never stop learning.

Find what works better for you to keep progressing.

Your 5th grade teacher wasn’t right.

🔥Reading’s not the only way to go, but learning’s the place to be.

Make learning a top priority & it doesn’t have to be in a book.

Have an amazing day.

~Stay in The Sales Life 💪

Oooh you’ve got a big ole but

“I love you…but”

“I want hire you…but”

“I want to buy from you…but”

🔥The buts negate everything.

& you only hear what comes after but.

Your skin color, neighborhood, family, your past, present circumstances, nor the fact that you didn’t graduate high school nor go to college…

They’re not holding you back…

It’s your “buts.”

“I want to lose 20 lbs but I’m a single parent raising 2 kids, working 2 jobs, & have too much to do…”

“I want to sell 30 this month, but I haven’t been here long & am new to the area..”

“I want to make $100k this year, but only make $50k. There’s no way for me to double my income.”

You’re right…because your “buts” affirm your excuses.

🔥Keep your buts…

Buts can negate…but they can also give you permission.

🔥When you use the word “but” today as an excuse of why something can’t be done…

Use “but” to give you permission instead.

Use whatever time & resources you have RIGHT NOW to move forward.

🔥I want to lose 20LBS, but I have 10 minutes, & a floor where I can do pushups, planks, & burpees.

🔥I want to sell 30 this month, but I’ve got to get in front of 65-70 people.

🔥I want to earn $100k this year, but I’ve got to strengthen my knowledge, techniques, & give all my creatives away for now.

Don’t give me that but…give me that but.

Stay in The Sales Life 💪

___________

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You’re good…as of today

Whatever is considered “Best in the World” today is going to be obsolete tomorrow.

Technology is changing…

& if technology is changing so are tendencies…

& if tendencies are changing, so must your techniques.

Oh I get the fact that you’re all that and a bag of hot Funyuns…

You’ve exceeded your wildest expectations…

Making more money than you would’ve ever dreamed of…

You’re good….as of today.

🔥”Laurel” may be a good name for your dog or daughter…

🔥but it’s not a good strategy for your life.

When Kareem Abdul Jabbar broke the NBA all time scoring record, Wilt Chamberlain said, “Had I known anyone would come close to breaking the record I would’ve put it out of sight…”

Laurels…

Wilt was good…as of that “today.”

The sad thing is he knew there was more…

Even sadder is, he could’ve put it out of sight…

but didn’t.

Setting the record made him the “Best in the World….”

🔥Had he kept going…he could’ve been the best ever.

Oh you’re good…as of today.

~Stay in The Sales Life 💪

It‘s not called First Replier

Million dollar real estate broker Ryan Serhant observed that one reason why you may not be finding success is because you are replying and not responding. In this automated, ever-growing commoditized world, your greatest asset as a sales person is differentiating yourself by responding instead of replying.

In this automated, ever-growing commoditized world, your greatest asset as a sales person is differentiating yourself by responding instead of replying.

We salespeople often reply when the customer we’re currently working with is the cherry to our crap-filled month. Nothing’s been going right & no one is buying, so it’s no surprise this one isn’t either. While everyone around you seems to be swimming in deals, you just so happened to have caught the one picky customer who has NO CLUE what they want; or the customer who seems to be 11 yrs out from buying; or the customer who you just don’t seem to jive with… In defense, we shut down mentally and lay up lame ass replies to their questions & concerns. Replies are words placed in the right order, said at the right time, yet void of any emotion.

We had a customer come in recently who was all busted up. Her life was turned upside down. She left her abusive husband while he left her with bad credit and a repo’d car. Obviously she was an emotional soup-crying, confused, & no idea what to do from here. A tuned out salesperson would’ve pulled her credit & replied with, “Sorry, your credit is too bad I can’t help you,” but a tuned-in salesperson would respond by saying, “Look, your credit has taken some hits, so which family member can we get on the phone right now, to get you back on track? Today is going to be your new birthday!” The responding salesperson aligned with her emotional state & offered a specific course of action.

Think about it…they’re not called First Repliers, they’re called First Responders because they come onto the scene, asses the situation, & work to get you to safety. Customers need that from you. They come in with a range of emotions & need you to asses and respond in a way that aligns with their emotions & the results they need to see. The one they do business with is the one who responds best.

That might as well be you. 😉

I’ll see you in the Sales Life.

⭐️ Catch The Sales Life with Marsh Buice podcast. You can find it on iTunes, Spotify, or Google Play

Stop Apologizing

In his book, “Lose Well,” comedian Chris Gethard  writes,

“When we decide we want to shift the standard of our life to include something new and out of the box, we tend to spend a lot of time apologizing for it and justifying it. People we encounter express incredulity and we scramble to downplay the quest we’re setting out on.”

A’int that the truth…

…as soon as you throw something big and audacious out into the universe, what’s the first thing you do when people snap back with, “You!!…you’re going to do what!!”  “You want what?!” “You think you can be what?!”

You get slippery feet and immediately back away from your loftiness, simply because you expressed your dreams to a small-minded person who has given up on their own dreams.

Look how quick you are to release the reigns of your dreams simply because some else can’t see what you see. 

The minute they push back, express doubt, or look at you like you’re a damn fool, you apologize & justify with, “I know…it probably wasn’t gonna work anyway, but I was just thinking about it…” (Poof) “I was just goofing around..I-I-I was just bullshitting with you.” (Poof)

“Other people’s opinions are one of the most dangerous things to our success”

~Chris Gethard

Stop apologizing for who you are and what you want…if you want it and you’re committed to it..then f’ing do it, and stop apologizing along the way.

I don’t care how minor or major your pivot is, whether it’s learning a new language; if it’s taking swimming lessons so you can enjoy the summer with your kids; if it’s writing a book, blog or starting a podcast; or owning the damn company you for work for now….Go!!! and don’t look back nor explain yourself with weak ass apologies.

For 10 seconds, look up from this & ask yourself, “What do I want to do, go, be, and have?” No explaining…no justifying…and damn sure no apologizing.

If you want to be a stand up comedian, go to Open Mic Nights-yes you’ll be terrible, but you’ll never be good until you get worse first.

If you want to begin speaking, turn your phone on and contribute to the world-yes you…YOU have something we need to hear.

If you want to teach school enroll in online classes…but you’ve racked up a bunch of student loans and the government is already looking for you, then start by becoming an aide just to see if it’s something you really will commit to. (And work out some sort of payment arrangements with the gov, because they will get their money eventually. Trust me, I know firsthand.)

If  want to become an area manager, become a local one first. If you want to be a top producer, learn how to be a consistent one, then stretch the goal. If you want to be a better parent or just a better human being, then go right a damn head, step forward and stop apologizing.

We apologize too much and too long. We apologize over and over and over for our past mistakes and downfalls.

When you keep apologizing for then, you’ll never live your Now.

No wonder you can’t get ahead because your spending your current days apologizing for all of your yesterdays.

And get this...even if you were blemish free, they’d still dis, judge, and talk about you because people would rather judge you than account for themselves. It’s cool though, because they’re not on your bus anyway…

You want it, then do it, & stop apologizing.

I’ll see you in the Sales Life.

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

Is it worth my time?

One of my salespeople wants to double his income this year. “If you want to double your income then you’re gonna have to at least double the amount of customers you work with too,” I told him. We calculated specifically how many customers he would have to work with each month to realize his goal. When I wrote the number down, I saw his eyes widen & the wheels of doubt began to churn.

51…

Calling out his fears I asked, “I bet you’re asking yourself how in the hell am I going to do that, aren’t you?” But when we broke the seemingly big, overall number down to a per day digit, it worked out to a manageable 2 customers per day. That’s it! To move his goal from a wish to a reality, he only needed to work with a little over two customers each day. Then I talked a little shit to him, “Are you telling me in at nine or 10 hour workday you can’t find two customers to physically work with every single day?!”

Of course he nodded emphatically in agreement- it seemed easy, but it’s not. The math is the easy part; doing it consistently for 23 straight days…well that’s the hard part. Sales by design is simple, but when it comes to putting that simplicity into action, it ain’t easy because as the rejections mount up, the effort wains. One way your brain works to protect your fragile ego is to disguise itself is being a “timesaver;” instead of taking a risk and working with the wrong customer, your mind whispers to you to selectively pick & only work with the perfect customer-the ones who look like they can & will buy today. What we really want to know is, “Is this customer even worth my time?”

Funny isn’t it when you were new in sales you didn’t even know to ask that question. Each day you spent more time working with customers and less time hanging out with salespeople and today it’s opposite; you spend more time with salespeople and less time with customers because you’re always trying to figure out, “Who’s worth my time?”

Maybe instead of self-sabotaging your success, when you’re mind flares up and asks, “Is it worth my time,” you should shut your mind down and push on by saying, “I don’t know, but they’re worth my two.” Two is all you need today! Just 2 everyday to put in your bucketful of 51 customers for the month. So the next opportunity is just a part of your bucket list this month. Regardless of the outcome- can’t buy, not ready to buy, or did buy, make it a part of your 2 (or whatever # yours calcs out to be).

Maximize the opportunity and whatever the end result throw it in the bucket and move on to the next customer. Selling is a little bit of a Jedi mind trick. To shortcut & conserve energy, your mind works in patterns. It compares your current pattern to past patterns (& outcomes) and if it doesn’t like the pattern, it tells you to bail out by asking limited, “Sorry I can’t help you,” questions. Take control of your mind & your success; when it asks, “Is it worth my time?” You respond with, “I don’t know, but it’s worth my 2!”

Put your 2 in the bucket every day & at the end of the month, you’ll pour out a pipeline of working customers, more sales, & a strong ass work ethic.

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

“I don’t know”

Kyle Maynard was born with no arms and no legs. He may have been classified as disabled, but his parents didn’t treat him as disabled. Kyle grew up doing many things that his “normal” friends did. It may have taken him longer to do something, but he’d always figure it out. He tried high school football and ended up falling in love with wrestling. Initially, like anything Kyle took on, wrestling kicked his ass, but he stayed with it-pushing back the self-doubt & self-defeat-always determined to figure it out. (Check out his book No Excuses)

In Daymond John’s book “Rise & Grind,” Kyle said that he’d always wanted to climb Mount Kilimanjaro which is the highest peak in Africa. Each year 20,000 people try to reach the summit of Mount Kilimanjaro, but with thin air and fierce storms, only half are able to check it off of their bucket list.

In the beginning, Kyle set out to climb Stone Mountain, a tiny mountain of only 900 feet in comparison to the 19,000 foot behemoth Kilimanjaro. The Stone Mountain climb was brutal for Kyle, tearing large patches of skin off of the ends of his arms in the process. When the climb was over, a beaten & battered Kyle told a friend of his dream to climb Mount Kilimanjaro. She looked at him as if he were crazy, asking, “You just tore up your arms doing (tiny) Stone Mountain. How are you going to climb Kilimanjaro?”

Kyle answered her with three words, “I don’t know.”

But it was those three words that made him go to work to conquer his dream of climbing Mount Kilimanjaro. (And he did it.)

What happens when you say the words “I don’t know?” Do you use the words as a crutch? Explaining that you’re not experienced enough… that you’re too short, too fat, too skinny, or the wrong skin shade? Do you say the words, I don’t know, because you’ve been conditioned all of your life to accept life as it is because you were raised in the projects; had to live with Big Mama, had no dad, had a drug addicted mom, were fired, demoted or bankrupt? Specifically what has, I don’t know, done to you? …but what can it do for you?

I don’t care where you’ve been, hell been only makes for a good story when you soon tell of your massive success. Don’t let “I don’t know” be a handicap & work against you. Make, I don’t know” work for you by going to work to figure it out.

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