Knowledge in Sales is Not Power

“What  sets me a part from everyone else is my level of application. ” – Tony Robbins

I’ll say that again, Knowledge is NOT power.

The truth is it’s the application of knowledge is true power!

How many of you know someone who has read all the sales books, has gone to a great school and knows exactly what they should do but they still just don’t do it?

The key to success in sales and in life is to immediately apply what you’ve learned.

Sometimes people say: “What books should I read to get really good at sales?”

I suggest reading one book and then make it a mission to apply 1 chapter per week.

(Okay okay here are a few to start)

The truth is we are drowning in information but we are starving for wisdom.

And true wisdom is taking the information and the knowledge and actually applying it.

That is my personal challenge for you this week, to read 1 book and apply one principle.

 

Are you working harder on yourself or on your job?

“Learn to work harder on yourself than you do on your job.” – Jim Rohn

Are you working harder on yourself or on your job?

Excellent question!

Most people will tell you that they are working 40 hours a week at their job.

Maybe if they are working harder, they are putting in 60 hours per week on their job.

But how many hours are they putting into their own personal development and education?

How many hours are they spending in the gym?

How many hours are they spending meditating?

How many hours are they spending taking a class that will improve their skills?

How many hours are they spending reading material in their field?

In the business world and in life hard work is considered a top value.

The idea being, when you work hard you are rewarded.

But choosing to work on the right things, is just as important as simply putting in the hard work.

If you work day and night on unimportant tasks, you will not get very far, no matter how hard you work.

Have you seen someone working for hours organizing their desk?

Or have you seen someone spending hours and hours on a low value task or unimportant email?

Ask yourself this question: what is the most important work you can possibly do?

The most important work you can possibly do is on yourself.

The more you do what you do the more you get what you’ve got.

The only way you will get change in your life is to make different decisions.

So if you are working harder on your job right now than you are on yourself, make a different decision!

Decide right now to make you the priority over your job!

The amazing thing about today is how many options and opportunities we have!

But that’s the curse of today as well.

Because with all these options and all these choices you can easily get side tracked on things that will never change your life for the better.

With too many options people take the route of least resistance. And in many cases the path of least resistance is watching a screen or sitting on the coach and going for entertainment instead of education.

Do you want to double your income?

Great!

You’re going to have to make a change and a different decision on what you focus on and what you pay attention to!

The more you learn the more you earn!

So work hard on the right thing!

And the right thing  is learning how to be the best version of you!

Whatever that means to you.

That’s right!

Work harder on yourself than you do on your job! 

Are you?

Stop Neglecting What You Know You Should Do And Take Action NOW!

What happens when you neglect the things that you know you should do?

Nothing immediately.

Hell is truth seen too late. – Thomas Hobbes

The truth is when you neglect something you don’t see the negative impact immediately.

If you did you wouldn’t neglect things because the truth would be so painful.

Imagine if when you neglected to do something important that you could vividly see what would happen immediately.

Imagine you neglected your diet and you see yourself 50 pounds overweight.

Picture in your minds eye that you neglected your finances and you see yourself under a mountain of debt with creditors hounding you.

When you neglect to call prospects in your sales pipeline imagine you see your customers going to your competitors, your bank account getting smaller, and you missing out on the promotion.

The truth is neglect is negative interest compounded over time.

The truth is not doing something is robbing you of your better future.

The truth is neglect is the enemy of sales and the enemy of a healthy, wealthy, and prosperous life.

And that is why neglecting to do something is one of the most dangerous habits you can pick up.

When you do less than you can in hurts you over the long term.

Many people cannot see very far out in the future.  If they could they certainly would not be neglecting to do the things that would make them healthy, wealth, and powerful.

In the book The Unheavenly City, Dr. Bandfield found that a person’s time perspective made a major difference in their upward social mobility.  He found that the ability to look out further into the future was correlated with success.

Why is that?

Well in my opinion if you can see the all the rewards of your hard labor in the future it makes the present pain , discomfort or uncertainty easier because it’s only temporary and the best is yet to come!

If you had a crystal clear vision of exactly what life will be like when you do all the things you know you should do.

And

If you had a crystal clear vision of exactly what life will be like when you neglect to do all the things you know you should do.

Would you take action?

Or would you find an excuse.

If you can see the consequences it’s going to be very difficult to find an excuse because it’s right in front of your face.

The truth is because people are not associated to the horrible pain that neglect brings they continue to do it.

It’s like the frog in the pot of water, slowly but surely they increase the temperature until the water is boiling and the frog is cooked.

That is what neglect is doing, it’s slowly destroying your future, it’s slowly robbing you of your income and it’s slowly destroying all the good that you created.

Here is a quick exercise you can do to stop neglect right now!  Use the dual forces of pain and pleasure to build a propulsion system so that you can take action NOW!

What are you are putting off doing right now?

 

In the past, what was the most painful part about taking action?

 

In the past, what was the most pleasurable part of not taking action?

 

What would be the most pleasurable part of taking action right now?

 

What would be the most painful consequences of not taking action now?

 

What would it mean if you took action right now?

 

What would it mean if you never took action and put this off forever? 

 

After answering these questions, are you willing to take action right NOW?

Listening = Success

The best advice I was ever given when it comes to sales is simply this:

You have two ears and one mouth, use them in that order.

Listening builds trust.

Listening builds rapport.

Listening allows you to gather information.

Listening allows you to learn more.

Listening is the key to winning in sales.

Listening means you are focused on the other person.

Listening does not mean you are waiting for your turn to speak or that you are focused on yourself.

Listening means you are focused on the other person with all of your senses.

Listening does not mean you are reading a new article or checking your phone while the other person is talking, even if they can’t see you because you are on the phone with them.

Listening means that you care.

Listening means that you can be trusted.

Listening is the answer.

Listening is also a skill.

Listening requires practice.

Here is an excellent Ted Talk on 5 ways to listen better.

Backtracking

How can you prove you are an excellent listener?

You can do this easily by backtracking backtracking means that you mirror back or repeat back what someone has said in their own words.

This important part to remember about backtracking is to make sure you use their words.

Don’t use your words, use the clients words.

After all this is not about you this is about truly listening to the client.

If someone says to you ” My main challenge right now is that I am not getting the type of return on investment I’d like from my marketing.”

I would not say back ” Interesting, so what your saying your problem is that you are not making any money from your advertising.”

The reason I say this is because it builds massive rapport with the other person when you match and mirror their language patterns, and use specific words they prefer in their model of the world.

Instead I would say back ” Interesting so if I understand you correctly the main challenge you are having right now is that you are not getting the type of return on investment you’d like from your marketing, is that correct?”

Now this is something that is fairly basic so you wouldn’t need to backtrack every single thing someone is saying, if you do back track every single thing someone says it can be extremely annoying.  Use this skill with important / complex bits of information and it will allow you to clarify what they are saying and make sure you’ve got it right.

Pause 

The fastest way to break your rapport with someone is to interrupt them.  So if that is your goal, interrupt away. The artful pause is truly a lost art. As a general rule after someone finishes talking please wait a few seconds so they can finish their thought.  Don’t jump in too early.  Or ask a question and break their train of thought.  Force yourself to listen.

Listen more than you speak, it’s 80 / 20 with listening. Speak 20 % of the time, listen 80% of the time, it’s the formula for great success in selling!  

 

 

 

Make the Complex Effortless and Easy

Easy.

Conversely, complexity is the enemy of execution.

And believe me if you are in sales it’s important to grasp this fact.

Are you are aware the more complex you make your sale the less likely it is that someone will move forward?

And are you aware the more simple, easy, and enjoyable you make buying the more clients you will have?

It’s a basic tenant of sales:  If you are able to make the sales process fun & easy for your clients you will have more clients! 

The ability to make what may be a 20 step internal process and convert it into something that is as easy as one, two, three is a virtue and a skills.

Making buying simple is also a way to add tremendous value.

In addition to the value your product or service has already, you have a massive impact on the perceived value of your product by the way you conduct the selling process.

If you make the selling process complex and difficult to understand and you can’t explain it in a simple fashion the value of your product will go down in the clients mind.

Remember this:  You are not just competing against other products and services you are competing against the other sales people at your competitor companies.

If your competitor can make buying easy and you can’t, guess what… You Lose!

The lesson is to find ways to add massive value for your clients. When you add massive value you see massive success and you will feel great about yourself!

Not only that you will hear your phone ringing because of all the referrals you will receive.

And what better way to add massive value then by making the complex simple and easy?

Now how specifically can you do this?

It’s going to require some extra work and determination on your part and it’s not for the weak willed or average sales person.

The top performer looks at every process and sees a way to improve it, either by eliminating unneeded steps or shifting them all together.

Not only that, when a top performer sees a way a process can be improved they use the power of persuasion and influence to help those around them in other departments to see how improving the process makes perfect sense.

And when the top performer persuades and influences their friends in other departments of the company, the do so in an eloquent way so they feel empowered in improving the internal process.

The top performer feels empowered by seeing process improvements.  And they certainly don’t feel overwhelmed by them.  They see an internal process improvement as an opportunity for personal growth and development and as a challenge to rise above and to take their career to the next level.

And what does the top performer do for the client?

If there is something going on internally that needs to be addressed, the top performer takes it upon his or herself to find an easy solution for the client and they take care of this behind the scenes in addition to “selling” the product.

The most exciting deals are almost never simple, they are typically complex.

How complex is it when the client redlines 10 sections of your agreement and wants to have a new feature developed that is not on the road map?

Maybe internally this is a lot of work on your part and requires the work of 5 different departments and different stakeholders.

That’s okay, step up to the challenge, this is how careers are made!  Be one of the few who do, be one of those people who steps up to the challenge and embraces it.  This is what separates the average sales person from the top performing champion!

Think of yourself as the Wizard of Oz, you can do all these different things behind the curtain to make the complex seem simple and easy. And it will be simple and easy because you are handling things behind the scenes.

A pleasurable buying experience is what matters. When you make buying easy you make the experience enjoyable!  

 

 

Speed, Value & Cognitive Bias

Speed increases value.

The faster you are in your sales process the more value your product is perceived to have.

Any customer or business person can verify this fact through experience.

And there are many studies out there from operations management theory to queueing theory that can back this up.

Again the longer you make a client wait the less perceived value your product has.

This Harvard study shows how operational transparency affects perceived wait time/value. And it actually has an interesting graph that shows value given different wait times.

Imagine if you received an email from a person who wants to do business with you that you have never met or spoken with before.

Now take this one step further and imagine you actually take the time to respond to the email, knowing full well it’s one of hundreds that you receive on a daily basis.

How would you feel if that person took 24 hours to respond back?

How would you feel if that person took 8 hours to respond back?

How would you feel if that person took 4 hours to respond back?

How would you feel if they responded to your email immediately?

And how would you feel if that person called you within a minute to five minutes of you responding to their email?

If you are like the majority of people you are going to feel very differently depending on the speed and quality of the response that you get.

I’ve used the strategy of rapid personal response time with anyone I am interacting with for the very first time.  If someone emails you and you immediately call them and speak with them personally you will be amazed by the results.

The strategy of rapid personal communication on the first interaction takes full advantage of value versus perceived wait time and full advantage of the primacy bias.

The primacy bias is a form of cognitive bias where people are more likely to remember the beginning of an experience.

The primacy bias is similar to the peak-end rule and the recency bias.  The peak end rule is the tendency to remember the peak of an experience and the recency bias is the tendency to remember the end of an experience.

More on these biases here

These are forms of cognitive bias that all sales people, persuaders, and influencers should be aware of.

What this means to you is if you reach out rapidly in the very first interaction you have with a new prospect, people are most likely to remember this very first interaction and associate massive value to your product or service.

What this really means to you is that the most important part of any client interaction or presentation is the beginning, the peak of the experience, and the end!  

Here is a full list of cognitive biases.

Read through these!!!

The one I see sales people fall victim to the most is the sunk cost fallacy, specifically when they don’t qualify people out of the process early on… more on this next time and thanks for reading!

Is this the Beginning or the End?

“That which is at rest is easy to grasp.

That which has not yet come about is easy to plan for.

That which is fragile is easily broken.

That which is minute is easily scattered.

Handle things before they arise.

Manage affairs before they are in a mess.

A thick tree grows from a tiny seed.

A tall building arises from a mound of earth.

A journey of a thousand miles starts with one step.

Contriving, you are defeated;

Grasping, you lose.

The sage doesn’t contrive, so she isn’t beaten.

Not grasping, she doesn’t lose.

When people are carrying out their projects they usually blow it at the end.

If you are as careful at the end

As you were at the beginning,

You won’t be disappointed.

Therefore the sage desires non-desire,

Does not value rare good,

Studies the unlearnable

So that she can correct the mistakes of average people

And aid all things in manifesting their true nature.

Without presuming to take the initiative.”

Lao Tzu – Verse 64 of the TAO TE CHING

I’ve always appreciated this verse of the Tao Te Ching.  I appreciate it because it points out a key difference, that makes all the difference.

And that is to enjoy the process as much as you desire the end goal.

Goals are extremely important because If you don’t have a goal then you have nothing to move toward.

But if you are only focused on the goal then you miss out on the enjoyment of the process itself.

Sales is a process.

And it’s a process to be enjoyed.

Remember this fact.

Remember that sales is a process to be enjoyed if it’s the end of the month.

And remember that sales is a process to be enjoyed if it’s the beginning of the month.

It doesn’t matter if it’s the end of the month or the beginning of the month, enjoy the process!

And have fun selling!

 

 

 

Three Keys To Emotional & Sales Mastery – Part 4 – Language

This is a continuation of Three Keys To Emotional & Sales Mastery – Part 3

Where we discussed the 3 keys to managing your emotional state and turning yourself on, as a quick reminder they are:

Physiology – Your physical body, and how it feels at this moment.

Mental Focus – What you are paying attention at any time effects how you feel.

The Language You Use With Yourself And Your Clients – How do you frame things with your language?

Words have the power to influence and motivate.  They also have the power to break rapport with someone and to offend them.

It’s not what you say, it’s how you say it.  And it’s what words you choose to use is a major key to success in sales and a major key to mastering your emotions.

Here is how you can shift your sales vocabulary right now and enjoy a higher level of success with your clients:

Rejection Words (Any Term That Trigger Fear.) Go Ahead Terms(Terms that make buying EASY)
Appointment Meeting, Visit
Cost or Price Total investment, Total Amount
Cost or Price Value, valued at, Available for, available at, Offered for, offered at, Worth
Down Payment Initial Investment, or Initial Amount
Monthly Payment Monthly Investment, Monthly Amount
Contract The agreement, The paperwork, the form
Sign Fill Out the paperwork. Okay the paperwork, approve the form, authorize the agreement, endorse the file copies. Give the go ahead.
Buy Own
Sell, Sold Happily Involve, Acquired, Help Obtain, Counsel, or consult, Worked with me on the arrangements, Aide or assist the buyer by eliminating difficulties
Sell, Sold Providing expertise, or supplying vital information, Had the honor(privilege, pleasure, challenge) of acting as agent, representative, or intermediary. Developed the opportunity, Worked out the details.
Customer Clients, People we serve, families we serve
Prospect Potential clients, future clients
Commission Fee for Service
Problem Challenge, Opportunity
Objections Concerns, Areas of Concern, Questions
Cheaper More economical
Pitches and Deals Hear the presentations I’ve developed for your company. Participate in the demonstration. Get involved in the wonderful opportunity we have for you. Consider this interesting transaction.

A big thanks to Tom Hopkins for pointing out many of these go ahead terms in his book How To Master The Art of Selling.

Now  first person to do this in recorded history was the Solon a leader of Athens in ancient Greece.  He found that it was difficult to get the citizens to pay their “taxes”  so instead started calling them “contributions”.  You can find this in Parallel Lives by Plutarch.

It’s funny that our political consultants in modern times are relearning the old rule of it’s not what you say it’s how you say it.  During the George W. Bush administration the Bush Administration wanted to push forward  more”Tax Cuts” but found through the work of political consultant Frank Luntz if they called “Tax Cuts”  “Tax Relief” it was more persuasive in focus groups.

Regardless of your political beliefs, words matter a great deal when it comes to influence.

Most Persuasive Words:

  • Easily & Easy
  • Naturally & Natural
  • Unlimited
  • Aware
  • Realize
  • Experience
  • Expand 
  • Beyond 
  • Before
  • After
  • Now
  • Because
  • Stop
  • Start
  • Again
“When you realize how easy it is to use these words in your presentations you will unlock your unlimited potential as a sales person.  Are you aware of how easy it is to sell when you use these words?  When you start using these words you stop loosing sales and go beyond what you ever thought possible!
Now these words are powerful so use them wisely.  And before you move on to another blog post remember to implement these words because once you do your income will increase.
Again, it’s important that you experience these words yourself by using them in your every day language.  Before you realize it you will be unconsciously competent at using this words naturally.   Are you aware of how powerful words truly are?”
Those last few paragraphs was me having fun with these persuasive words, I highly encourage you to try them out.
In addition to effecting your clients emotional states.  The language you use on yourself and what you say to yourself has a huge impact on your own emotional state!
Imagine if you were saying to yourself:
“I have a MASSIVE PROBLEM”
versus
” I have a challenge”
Really think about what you are saying to yourself because you are the one you must influence first.
If you plan on influencing anyone else, you must first influence yourself. 
Your self talk is either helping you or hurting you.  Take some time to monitor what you are actually saying to yourself.
Some people say things to themselves they wouldn’t say to their worst enemy.  Be kind to yourself and build yourself up with the language you use on yourself.
I like these suggestions from Brian Tracy on great self talk to use on yourself:
1. “I like myself!”
2. “I’m the best!”
3. “I love my work!”
4. “I can do it!”
5. “Every day, in every way, I am getting better and better.”
Whatever you memorize you internalize.  When you say a phrase over and over and over again, eventually it will show up in your internal dialog.
A phrase I’ve drilled into my head is:
“Success is EASY”
and
“It’s EASY to be Successful”
Now you can be successful too if you use words that persuade people to buy instead of words that persuade people to not buy.  And you can skyrocket your success if you use words on yourself that build you up instead of tearing you down.
I’m curious, what are some words I’ve missed,  what are words that you use in the sales context that are highly effective?  Please add them to the comments and thanks for reading!

Three Keys To Emotional & Sales Mastery – Part 3

Focus

Use your focus or die. Those were the options.  And I had  already signed the liability waiver that said death was certainly possible. The cold can kill you. And the cold will kill under the right circumstances.  

Let me explain.

******Disclaimer ….. do not try anything in this blog post without consulting a doctor or a trained professional…..***********

The ice cold water was like a thousand needles sticking you at once.  It was the kind of cold that could take your breath away from the shock if you let it.

“Remember no talking on the way to the ice cascade.  We must use all the power of our focus.  Make sure to keep your eyes out for your buddy at the ice waterfall.  We don’t want to loose any one.  Use your focus. Then we will go into the water together, get ready…”

We began the 10 minute trek to ice cascade. The temperature outside was well below freezing.  I looked ahead at the frozen-over creek. We continued the quiet trudge through the snow, following the person in front of us. The only sound was the crunch of snow, the sound of your heart beating, and the sound of your own breathing.

You could see your breath.

And you could feel the intense focus of the group.

As we approached the ice waterfall, Everything was frozen except for the pool of water immediately beneath the cascade of water or waterfall. The pool of unfrozen water immediately around the waterfall was about 5 to 6 feet deep, at it’s deepest.  The only reason it wasn’t frozen  over like the rest of the creek was because the water was moving.

I’d gone into the water the day before in board shorts for exactly one minute. And I remembered how cold it was yesterday as I prepared to get into the water for the second time. The memory was crisp from yesterday,  right before I got in the water yesterday what the instructor said had stuck with me

The instructor was an Austrian, he sounded like Arnold Schwarzenegger:

“If you get in dah vater der, vift no training.  30 seconds ambulance. 1 minute hearse.”

I remembered the water had been so cold it seemed to suck some of your life force out.

We stopped at the park benches next to the ice waterfall.  I imagined people during the summer months enjoying a lunch time snack next to the creek as they began their hike.

People in the group started removing their warm winter jackets, and snow boots and stripped down revealing only their board shorts.

I put on my flip flops.  My feet were blistered from the cold exposure the day before.

I stepped forward and followed the person in front of me into the freezing cold ice water.  The intense focus of the group continued into the water. We were all breathing with the same intense focus.

I wadded in forward in the ice cold water until it was up to my waist.  As I moved forward I did everything I could not to slip.  I kept wading until the water was up to my neck.  The entire group formed a circle in the ice cold water and we continued to breath in and out calmly.  There we would stay for another 6 minutes. 

There was no inner monolog.  There was no self talk.  Just the sound of breathing and the cold.

And that’s when I realized that Focus is a way to achieve superhuman feats. 

This is a continuation of Three Keys To Emotional & Sales Mastery – Part 2

Where we discussed the 3 keys to managing your emotional state and turning yourself on, as a quick reminder they are:

Physiology – Your physical body, and how it feels at this moment.

Mental Focus – What you are paying attention at any time effects how you feel.

The Language You Use With Yourself And Your Clients – How do you frame things with your language?

What you focus on is what you will feel.

Let me explain.

If you ask a question, what is the best thing in your life right now?

This is redirecting your focus with a simple question.

And If I ask a follow up question:

How does this make you feel?

If we have rapport, you will search for those good feelings and feel them.  All this was done with a few quick questions.

or

If I ask you the question, what is the worst thing in your life right now, what do you hate?

This is redirecting your focus with a simple question.

And If I ask a follow up question:

How does this make you feel?

If we have rapport, you will search for those bad feelings and feel them.

The truth is we are doing this to ourselves almost every single day.  And we are the ones who control what we focus on.

The fact that you are reading this means that you’ve chosen to redirect your focus for a moment and I don’t take that lightly because:

The ability to focus single-mindedly on your most important task or goal is what sets apart the successful people from the failures.

Success is easy disciplines repeated daily.

Failure is neglecting to do easy disciplines every day, over the course of many years.

Focusing on the daily disciplines is the key.

Focus is the key.

What is focus?

And How do you attain a higher level of focus?

The fact that you have read this far into this blog post means that you have a higher level of focus then the majority of people.  Check out this slate.com article about how most people won’t even scroll through an article.

The vast majority of people focus on things that are not important or will not get them a higher level of sales in any way.  Don’t major in minor things. Don’t spend time focusing on what won’t serve you.

You can focus on why things are not working right now or focus on what you are going to do right now to turn it around.

You ability to focus is like a muscle, and like any muscle: if you want to strengthen a focus muscle it requires training.

The true challenge is the many different distractions and diversions in your office environment, on your phone, in your email inbox, in your mail. We are constantly being bombarded with different marketing messages trying to get your focus and attention.

Your Focus is truly your inner power.

Our true inner power is the ability to direct our mind our focus and attention on what we want in life.

Many people focus on what they don’t want. It’s going to be hard to get what you want if you focus on what you don’t want.

One of the quickest way to strengthen your mental focus and to be able to control your attention for prolonged periods of time is to practice some form of meditation.

The type of meditation is not as important as the act of focusing the mind single-pointedly like a laser beam.  Natural light on it’s own may not be that strong but with a focused laser beam you can cut through steel.

Think of your mind like a magnifying glass.  When you place your attention on something it comes into sharper focus.

Your mind also naturally deletes what you are not focusing on as you can only hold  7+or- 2  chunks of information in your attention at once.  Your mind will delete other parts of your experience you are not focusing on.

Your mind will cut through goals like a laser beam when you focus all of your attention on the goal.

One of the biggest challenges I see for sales people is they have a lack of mental focus or a lack of clear goals.  They get distracted by the day to day.  They loose their focus when they need it the most.

Focus is energy and energy is focus. Where focus goes energy flows.

For years I had attempted on and off to meditate. As I had always heard that meditation was good for you.  After failing (or what in my mind I considered failing at the time) to meditate consistently, I gave up on traditional sitting meditation.

I looked at long distance running as a form of meditation.  In a way, it is, because meditation is directing the mind to focus on something specifically. The act of focusing the attention creates more clarity and clarity is power. What you focus on, it be the breath, or a single sound or mantra repeated does not really matter as much as working to control your level of attention and focus.

I found myself trying a number of different meditative practices but nothing really stuck besides running until 2017.

Let me explain.

One simple discipline I’ve adopted is listening to empowering content on the way to work and I am a big fan of Tim Ferriss’s pod cast.

I listened to a Tim Ferris pod cast with Wim Hof, the Iceman.  Wim has 28 world records and the conversation was very interesting intellectually.  As many things are, like reading this blog post it’s stimulating your brain and you are taking in information about me listening to a pod cast but you don’t get the same experience as listening to a pod cast yourself.

There is a certain point where understanding something intellectually is not enough.  You can understand what it is intellectually to be excited but actually feeling the emotion of excitement is a completely different experience, than reading or hearing about it.

Yes, you can describe it and yes, you can talk about it but the map is not the territory. The language used to describe something is not the same thing as the thing being described.

What was being described in the pod cast was the Wim Hof Method, the Wim Hof method’s pillars are Breathing, Meditation, Cold Exposure, and Yoga.

And I thought to myself, that’s really interesting that this man has been scientifically proven to be able to influence the autonomic nervous system.  And this is something that science thought was not possible.  Wim Hof proved science wrong and is literally at the edge of what we know and what we don’t know, Check out this vice.com documentary on Wim Hof.

That was it though.  I thought that it was an interesting idea but in my head I’m thinking,

“Yes I know how to breath and yes I understand meditation is a valuable tool. I don’t really like the cold so while this is interesting intellectually I’m going to keep doing what I’m doing. ”

Do you ever have an idea that keeps following you around so much that eventually you can’t ignore it anymore?

This is what happened to me.  I continued to hear about Wim Hof in various places completely ignoring it.

I’ve attended Unleash The Power within Tony Robbins Seminar once a year for the past 3 years.  And at the San Jose UPW that I attended in 2016 Wim Hof was actually there for the 4th day.  The 4th day of the seminar is the day completely focused on health.

With the breathing exercise he lead I was able to increase my longest breath hold from about 30 seconds to over 2 minutes.  This is without any air in the lungs.  So not taking a big breath in and holding it but actually taking deep breaths to oxygenate the body and then exhaling all the air in the body.

This gave me a new experience. And that new experience blew my mind.  And that’s what mental and physical challenges can do. It can give you a new experience and new frame of reference.

You start thinking:

If I can do this then what else can I do?

Any time you have a big achievement or if you do something that you didn’t think was possible, immediately generalize it.

If I can do this, what else can I do?

If I can do this, what else am I capable of?

Loaded with this new experience, I immediately became immensely curious to find out more about the Wim Hof Method and I wanted to learn more about Wim.

I watched his Vice.com documentary.

I signed up for his online course.

I signed up to go to Poland for a 5 day immersion event in the Wim Hof Method.  The exact same experience that they do in the Vice.com documentary.

What I learned from this experience is that your mental focus is really your true inner power and that the ability to focus on a goal or a task or what you want to accomplish is the key determining factor in your level of success at anything you want.

With your focus you can get into freezing water that would kill someone with no training.

Your focus is your ability to literally become a super human.  With focus we can achieve what many believe would be impossible.

That’s another reason why I love the UPW seminar.

When you can walk over fire, what else can you do?

When you learn to walk on fire what stopped you in the past will no longer stop you in the future.

Focus is the key.

Focus is what controls your results.

Focus is where the mind is at any given time.

You don’t see with your eyes you see through your eyes.

What do you look at?

What do you hear?

What do you feel?

The senses are giving us input and the true lesson is that you control your focus.

You control what you are looking at.

You control what you listen to.

You control how you feel, it’s your nervous system after all.

You control what questions you ask yourself.

You control what you say to yourself.

You control what you focus on.

You might say, that’s all well and good you went to Poland to go train with some iceman.  I don’t have time to do that.

That’s okay you don’t have to go to Poland or climb an ice mountain in your shorts to get immediate control of your focus right now, you can do this by simply asking yourself a question.

What is the most important thing for me to focus on right now?

That’s a great question to start with.

How can you redirect your clients focus?

By asking a question.

It’s really that simple.

I practice a simple 15 to 20 min meditation each morning after attending the Wim Hof Poland Experience.  This simple practice pays massive dividends in your focus throughout the day and your productivity, not only that I’ve not been sick once since coming back from Poland.

Also remember this the breath is the string on the kite of your mind.

Where your breath goes your emotions will follow.

If there is only one thing you take away from this blog post,  try out some form of directing your mental focus, like meditation, and practice it daily.  This will strengthen your ability to focus in all areas of life, not just sales.

What would life be like if you had the ability to consistently focus?

Focus is an adaptation.

Focus is a practice.

What will you choose to focus on NOW?

Three Keys To Emotional & Sales Mastery – Part 2

This is a continuation of Three Keys To Emotional & Sales Mastery – Part 1

Where we discussed the 3 keys to managing your emotional state and turning yourself on, as a quick reminder they are:

Physiology – Your physical body, and how it feels at this moment.

Mental Focus – What you are paying attention at any time effects how you feel.

The Language You Use With Yourself And Your Clients – How do you frame things with your language?

In this post we will discuss Physiology specifically and the different tips and tricks I’ve used throughout the year to build a healthy lifestyle and build sales success. 

One major lesson I learned or relearned from attending Tony Robbins seminars is that emotions are created by motion and how you move your body.

One of the questions that Tony asks the attendees is that If you look at someone who is depressed what are they doing with their body ?

If you look at someone feeling depressed it’s easy to identify them because they are going to be looking down, they will not be taking up much space, they won’t be making eye contact, they will be breathing shallowly and they will be frowning.

Most people believe that you feel an emotion and you then put your body into a certain posture, you make your face put on a certain expression that goes with that emotion.

The exact opposite is true. You are first making the changes with your posture, how you breath, your facial expression, where you look at and then you get the result of feeling depressed.

You make the change in your body first and then the emotion is what follows. If you want more of the science behind this check out this great Ted Talk – Your Body Language May Shape Who You Are.

The body is a biofeedback mechanism and the way you position your body and how you hold your body will drastically change how you feel.

And how you feel will absolutely effect your  behavior.

I’ll repeat this again because it’s extremely important with regards to sales.

How you feel will effect your behavior.

How you feel will also effect your clients behavior because it will effect how they feel. 

A big part of how you feel at any given moment directly is related to your body.

Changing the way you move your body is easy if you are aware of it.

So if you are in an un-resourceful state, change the way you MOVE!   This is the quickest way to change the way you feel!  Change the way you MOVE your Body.  Move your Body in a different way!

To truly take charge of your physiology you must be in line with your body and aware of your body.

How deeply are you breathing right now?

How are you standing or sitting?

What is your posture?

What is your facial expression?

Are you smiling?

Remember emotions are feelings, you feel them in your body.

True emotional mastery starts with how you use your body. And if you really want to be a true master you must be able to adapt your body to get yourself into peak energy at any time.

Imagine your dream client walks into the office and you are not feeling so great, how valuable would it be if you could shift your emotional state instantly and handle the presentation?

How I came across emotional fitness and emotional mastery initially began because I was studying energy.

The questions I was obsessed with at the time were:

What is energy?

How do you get more energy?

Why do some people have more energy than others?

My thought process was this:

If you have unlimited energy how difficult will your problems seem?

If you had unlimited energy, what would life be like?

The emotional state you are in at any given time, effects the amount of energy you have.

If you are in a un-resourceful emotional state it can be difficult to even get out of bed.

When I was overweight and not working out on a consistent basis, it was far more challenging to get the energy I needed to achieve goals.

Goal achievement and sales achievement absolutely require a high level of energy. And having a high level of energy requires that you are in a resourceful emotional state. 

Now that I’m fit and healthy I have much greater resources to pull from and much more energy reserves to draw on.

When I was Living in New York I started training in Muay Thai kickboxing.  Eventually I fell in love with trail running and running Ultra Marathons here in the Bay Area.  At one point I was a even NASM certified personal trainer.  All because I was obsessed with endurance and energy in the body.

Physical training translates into mental training.  If you put high physical demands on yourself the mental demands don’t seem nearly as challenging or daunting.

Google’s Eric Schmidt the former CEO of Google mentioned on Reid Hoffman’s new podcast Masters of Scale that when he was hiring for Google’s Sales Department he would look for people who were former Olympians or NFL Players because he believed the physical discipline and determination it required to excel at a high level physically would translate directly into the sales context.

I agree with this and can verify it from first hand experience, anyone who’s excelled at a sport has a huge opportunity to excel in sales.  The sport itself does not matter, I’ve seen people with backgrounds in tennis, water polo, football, marathoners, and athletes of all kinds excel in sales and I believe a big part of that is the physical disciplines they learned in their sport of choice.

The key take away is this: The training be it mental or physical, must never stop.  You’ve got to consistently put yourself in a place where the training is on-going.  This is how you truly get control of your emotions, through training them.

After getting into Marathon’s I transitioned into running Ultra Marathons (Distances of over 26.2 Miles).  I’ve completed a number of 50Ks and 50 Milers and I am currently training for a 100 mile race in November 2017.

I look at Ultra Marathons as Mental, not just Physical Training.  It’s a great lesson for sales because sales is very much like a marathon.

Being active physically, making specific demands on the body makes sales easier.

Your body is the vehicle for your mind and your spirit.  Your body is what is moving you forward.  Now if you neglect your body, your sales will on some level suffer because your health with suffer.

How healthy you feel will influence how many sales you make.

If you feel like crap, it’s going to be much much harder to pick up the phone.

In the words of Jim Rohn, your body is a Temple…. not a Wood Shed.  And some people treat their body like a woodshed.

Another thing that Jim Rohn said that really resonated with me is this: If you want to be healthy, study health and if you want to be wealthy study wealth.

I took this to heart and decided that I would take my health into my own hands and make it a consistent and on-going study and I encourage you to do the same thing.  Anything you want in life, make it a study.

Now I’d like to share with you what I’ve discovered in my almost 10 years of studying health to save you some time.

The more I learned about energy and the body the more I realized that the body is capable of miraculous things if you treat it well and provide it with what it needs.

My philosophy is that your health is your wealth.  And my top value is health. Health is what I value most.

Here are a few different health habits that have helped me to dramatically increase my health and as a result my sales and emotional fitness.  You don’t have to adopt all of these as they are what work for me they certainly may not work for everyone out there.  In my opinion  any behavior or habit is worth trying on for a few months or weeks to determine if it works for you. I use this methodology for sales as well as health practices.

****I am also not a doctor so please consult you doctor before trying out any of these habits.*******

The Key To More Energy – Alkalize and Energize

“Let food be thy medicine and medicine be thy food.” – Hippocrates

You can think of your body as an ongoing biochemical process.  The quality of those biochemicals at any given time is going to be the quality of your life and they quality of your emotions.

In my quest to get more energy naturally I discovered the power of an Alkaline diet.  Your blood PH level is supposed to be slightly Alkaline.  If you look at someone with major health problems and you test their PH levels they will typically be highly acidic.  An acidic environment is an environment where disease can grow.

One way to ensure your creating a biochemical environment that is disease preventing instead of disease creating is to eat more Alkaline foods and limit your intake of acidic foods, here is an easy chart that outlines what foods are acidic and what foods are alkaline.

Join A Group Fitness Class

If you are looking to get back into shape quickly and easily one of the most powerful things you can do is join any kind of group fitness class.  (If you live in the Bay Area –  Specifically the East Bay –  I’d recommend Pacific Ring Sports if you are interested in getting into martial arts.) Really any group fitness class will provide:

  • Accountability –  A group fitness class naturally provides  more accountability because you are accountable to the group not just yourself.  People will typically do more for other people than they will for themselves.
  • Variety In Your Exercises – One of the biggest challenges I’ve seen with people working out consistently is that they get board or they go to the gym and they leave early or they figure out some excuse not to push themselves harder.
  • Friends – You can make a lot of friends by joining a group workout class, you might even get some Referrals!

Do Physical Challenges That Push You To Grow.

In the end the kind of exercise is not important.  What is important is that you make it a habit and make it consistent.  Once you have that down, pick something that would be a challenge for you to do.  It might be a marathon or it might be Tough Mudder or it might be climbing a mountain or doing an iron man.  When you pick a physical goal that challenges you the benefits are tremendous in the type of character you will build in yourself.

Determination, grit, and perseverance are key personality trains that all top performing sales people possess. A physical challenge is another great way to train for this ability that pays countless dividends over time.

Get A Standing Desk

When I was a studying to become a NASM certified personal trainer I learned a lot about  movement imbalances that are created from working in an office.  If you look at the majority of people who work in an office they have poor posture and they are hunched over their desk.  Over a long time working in an office this can cause your hip flexors to be tight because you are sitting down all day.  It also can cause the top of your back to be rounded.

Long term sitting will take years off your life check out this study for more information.

If you stand while you present you are using your entire body this will make your presentations more effective and you’ll live longer.  You can thank me later.  This is a game changer. If you don’t have a standing desk at work, build your own like I did by following this life hacker article, all for under 25 dollars!  EASY!

If You Are Standing All Day – Don’t Wear Dress Shoes with  Heel on Them

Another major movement imbalance is caused by wearing dress shoes with a heel. Find a good looking dress shoe that doesn’t have a heel and you’ll prevent a lot of ankle sprains and injuries.  Simple change but it makes a huge difference.

Limit Caffeine Intake, Give It Up, Or Cycle On and Off

I’m currently cycled off of caffeine.  In the past I’ve drank my fair share of red bull, coffee, and even chewed caffeine gum. I think the important thing to remember about Caffeine is that it’s a drug. Caffeine is a stimulant and  stimulants effect your bio-chemistry and your emotional state.

What I noticed is that for me personally caffeine amplifies the specific emotional states of anger and anxiety.   If I had a really big presentation coming up, being in an anxious state is not super helpful.  And when you are stuck in traffic having a little irritation get amplified into anger is not super helpful either.

I am not saying that you have to give up Red Bull or give up coffee but you may want to limit your intake for a few reasons or at least cycle off of it for a few weeks every few months.

  • If you stay on caffeine for years and years with no break you risk adrenal fatigue.
  • If you never cycle off you’ll have to increase your dosage to get the same results.  (You know your in trouble when 3 espresso shots does not effect you in any way)
  • You harm your sleep cycle. Ever hear people complain about all these different thoughts racing through their head before they go to bed and they just can’t get to sleep.  9 times out of 10 this is probably due to the amount of caffeine they consume.

If you are interested in giving up caffeine for a while or cycling off I’d recommend going to whole foods and getting a bottle of L-Thyrosine.  L-Thyrosine is an amino acid if you take it when you are cycling off caffeine it gets rid of the caffeine withdrawal. ( Thank you to Tim Ferriss for this one!)

Limit Alcohol Intake 

As you already know, alcohol is going to effect you the next day, if you are hung over you are not going to deliver your best work.  It also effects your sleep cycles and your emotional states.

The Key To Being Extremely Effective – Get Great Sleep

Getting a good night sleep has a huge effect on your emotional state. If you’ve heard that phrase someone has gotten up on the wrong side of the bed that person getting poor sleep risks squandering an entire day and loosing sales. Getting great sleep is a secret to being extremely effective.

  • Get a Great Bed – A wise person once told me.  Get comfortable shoes and a really great bed. You are going to be on your feet all day and you are going to spend a third of your life sleeping.  The rational is this if you spend a third of your life on a bed you might as well invest in a good one because you are going to be spending a lot of time there.  You are going to spend at least 1 third of your life sleeping you might as well get the most out of your bed and your sleep.
  • Get a Black Out Curtain –  Have a completely dark room to sleep in does wonders for the quality of sleep you get.  This small investment has literally transformed the sleep I get.
  • Unplug From Your Devises  – Cell phone buzzing next to you at night?  This has been shown to interrupt your sleep.  Unplug for a while, you’ll feel better.

My Favorite Books On Health and Exercise:

4-Hour Body

Eat and Run

Born to Run

Why make the money if you don’t have your health?

If you take care of your body you’ll feel great!  And you’ll make a lot more money!

Stay tuned for the next installment in this series on emotional mastery where we will we discuss the power of taking control of what you focus on.  In the meantime, stay healthy my friends!