Mastering Adaptability – Change in The Workplace

Michael Diettrich Chastain, a professional coach, trainer, and consultant dedicated to peak performance, believes that self-discovery has positive effects in a business setting and that change in the workplace doesn’t have to be a frustrating, drawn-out process. In this interview, Michael talks about influencers of success and the acronym he came up with to explain them, CHANGES, which is also the title of his upcoming book.

This Sales Expert Interview covers:

Avoiding change in the workplace

• A lot of people resist change in the workplace because their personal lives are already so hectic. There is room for having structure and routine, but our ability to be flexible is a valuable skill as well.

Being more adaptive

• The more integrated we can become with the various aspects of our lived experiences, the more effective we are at change management.

Key indicators of success

• Very few people understand what to look for to know whether they are on the right path for success. Know what is influencing you at the moment.
• We can have a number of elements in our favor, but there might be just one thing lacking we don’t realize.

Fear of success

• The fear of success can be more debilitating than the fear of failure. Self-sabotage can be subconscious.

Emotional intelligence

• This is a flexible characteristic that can be developed and there are many characteristics under this umbrella.

Self-awareness

• There are a number of strategies and tools to help discover this. Michael talks about a few of them.

Focusing on what is important

• There are many ways to deal with high-stress situations in the moment, but daily proactive intervention is more effective.

Nurturing your spirit

• Have the courage to evaluate your beliefs and whether they are serving your goals.

Our Host

John is the Amazon bestselling author of Winning the Battle for Sales: Lessons on Closing Every Deal from the World’s Greatest Military Victories and Social Upheaval: How to Win at Social Selling. A globally acknowledged Sales & Marketing thought leader, speaker, and strategist. He is CSMO at Pipeliner CRM. In his spare time, John is an avid Martial Artist.

Great Sellers

For over 36 years Ron Karr has been in sales and leadership positions and is widely recognized as a sales success expert. Ron discusses his methodology, the Velocity Mindset, and 7 traits of great sellers.

This Sales Expert Interview covers:

What is a Velocity Mindset?

• We all want to do more. But how do we gain speed? Ron talks about what we need to do, and not do, to achieve this.

Lack of focus

• The right kind of focus requires a customer-focused mindset.
• Are you going into the sales process as a salesperson or a leader?

Emails and voicemails

• Why don’t people reply to your emails or voicemails? Visualize your goals first and this might help. Don’t focus on the end-game.

Positioning and building alliances

• Be careful how you are positioning yourself when talking to prospects. Great sellers are seen as trusted advisors.
• Referrals are the best way to get business.

Asking good questions

• Questioning is a fundamental skill that some people still struggle with. Don’t ask status based questions.
• Make sure you aren’t making too many assumptions. Clarify, clarify, clarify!

Empathy

• If you don’t have empathy, you are more susceptible to a self-focused mindset. Help get people to where they want to be and you will reap the benefits.
• There are a lot of things you need to understand about your buyer like what kind of risks they are taking.
• Great sellers get to the heart before the mind.

Persuasion

• Ask people about their goals. Get to know them and help them get there. They will be more likely to listen.

Accountability

• If you can’t keep promises to yourself, you can’t keep them to others.
• Let people come to their own conclusions.

Our Host

John is the Amazon bestselling author of Winning the Battle for Sales: Lessons on Closing Every Deal from the World’s Greatest Military Victories and Social Upheaval: How to Win at Social Selling. A globally acknowledged Sales & Marketing thought leader, speaker, and strategist. He is CSMO at Pipeliner CRM. In his spare time, John is an avid Martial Artist.

The Responsibility of Leadership

You don’t know what you don’t know, right? Sharon Hughes who runs Launch Your Creativity and is a certified Life Coach and certified in Critical Incident Stress Debriefing/Management talks about things leaders may not realize about themselves or leadership blindspots. She discusses the importance of outside feedback and other responsibilities of being a leader.

This Sales Expert Interview covers:

What are leadership blindspots?

• Leadership is a calling. Not everyone has the core skills necessary. What sets you apart and makes people want to follow you?
• What’s really the reason you want to be a leader? Do you actually just want to be seen and heard?
• Being good at tasks and good with people are two totally different things.

Am I cut out for leadership?

• Every aspiring leader needs to have a sounding board to see what they are missing. The Johari window is helpful in this conversation.
• Leadership has multiple meanings. Maybe you’re a leader in other areas of your life you don’t even realize.

Mistakes to avoid

• Sharon talks about “levels of blindness.”
• You might think you’re great but does everyone else? Don’t act on what one person tells you.
• Not all situations are black and white.

Expectations of millennials

• Millennials often ask the questions that lend to molding them into the leaders of tomorrow. This is a golden opportunity for leaders they should take full advantage of.

Adapting communication style

• You have to know your people so well that you can read their body language. This builds trust and commitment. Healthy boundaries are important.

The distributed workforce

• You may be leading people who you never see. You can still figure out ways to stay engaged with your team and make them feel valued.

Our Host

John is the Amazon bestselling author of Winning the Battle for Sales: Lessons on Closing Every Deal from the World’s Greatest Military Victories and Social Upheaval: How to Win at Social Selling. A globally acknowledged Sales & Marketing thought leader, speaker, and strategist. He is CSMO at Pipeliner CRM. In his spare time, John is an avid Martial Artist.

Conditioning Your Mind for Success

Melanie is a revenue strategist and business optimizer who helps leaders with the mindset, actions, and strategies to propel them to the next level of success. In this interview, she explains how a mind that is conditioned for success is the most powerful machine on the planet. We always have the choice to shatter old experiences and create new ones.

This Sales Expert Interview covers:

What does “stop being a bottleneck” mean?

• Entrepreneurs and leaders sometimes struggle with getting out of their old thinking to create new results.
• What you’re doing that used to work is not working anymore or continuing to have the same issues can be signs you’re being a bottleneck.

Break out of being a bottleneck

• Be open to outside help and new ideas.
• Make bold moves. Do something so far outside of your comfort zone.
• Set a goal and once you start taking steps you will gain momentum.
• Don’t worry about not knowing how and don’t try to do everything alone.

Collecting excuses vs successes

• If we get stuck on the reasons why it won’t work, it never will.
• We have access to more resources than ever. You just have to reach out and find the right thing for you.

Inner dialogue

• We must be very conscious of what we are feeding our minds because our inner dialogue is the fuel to take an action or hold ourselves back. Nobody can control our thoughts but us.
• No good comes out of comparing yourself to others in a negative way. Try to learn from others.

The imposter syndrome

• This is one of the biggest reasons people don’t go for something big. If you just do it, you’ll realize nobody knows it all.

Our Host

John is the Amazon bestselling author of Winning the Battle for Sales: Lessons on Closing Every Deal from the World’s Greatest Military Victories and Social Upheaval: How to Win at Social Selling. A globally acknowledged Sales & Marketing thought leader, speaker, and strategist. He is CSMO at Pipeliner CRM. In his spare time, John is an avid Martial Artist.

Surrounding Yourself with Superstars

Finding top talent is a problem for a lot of companies for multiple reasons. Frank Pacetta, internationally renowned motivational speaker, author, and sales executive, believes organizations and their cultures can and should be like a great sports team or family. In this interview, he discusses how to recruit the best people and set them up for success.

This Sales Expert Interview covers:

Two issues with recruiting top talent

• You can’t use a cookie cutter approach to finding top talent.
• It’s about relentlessly searching for talent. Think about the far-reaching positive effects.

Reactive hiring

• It’s so easy to slack off on constantly looking for new people. Maybe the company didn’t do so great last quarter. Think big picture.
• You have to work hard to keep the best talent too.

Securing top talent

• There are multiple ways to discover top talent. Frank lists a few.
• Who is going to come in and be a positive impact on the culture you’ve built?

How to integrate the superstar

• This is going to take a tough discussion. It’s important to set clear expectations.

Hitting the ground running

• Frank talks about how to ensure the superstar hits the ground running and there isn’t a window for people to second guess your decision.
• Ask the recruit what their team members would say about them in 6 months.

Being a role model

• You don’t want your newest superstar hire to be successful just in their own work. You want them to bring about positive change throughout your whole team.

Our Host

John is the Amazon bestselling author of Winning the Battle for Sales: Lessons on Closing Every Deal from the World’s Greatest Military Victories and Social Upheaval: How to Win at Social Selling. A globally acknowledged Sales & Marketing thought leader, speaker, and strategist. He is CSMO at Pipeliner CRM. In his spare time, John is an avid Martial Artist.

Looking to The Future

Wouldn’t you rather put yourself out of business than have a competitor do it for you? Joe Calloway, author, and business coach says the biggest obstacle to your future success is your present success. In this interview, he talks about how the constant upheaval in the marketplace means we should always be looking for our next best thing and finding our next success.

This Sales Expert Interview covers:

Taking steps to your next success

• Joe works with people that are already successful but they are looking for more.
• Some people are builders and some are maintainers. It’s a different skill set.

Cutting through the noise

• Joe helps people with ideas determine if 3 things hold true before moving forward.
• Following your passion doesn’t always mean you will make money. Make sure there is a market for your idea.
• Some people need to write down the next steps to move concept to action.

Obstacles

• We tend to overthink because we want perfection before launching an idea or product. Perfection is a get out of jail free card. It’s just not possible.
• Once an idea hits the market, your direction may change and that’s okay.

Self-awareness

• We get bogged down in doing what we’re good at. Joe helps people identify what else people are good at and start working on that set of skills.
• Joe gives a personal example of an area he discovered he was also good at.

Doubt and change

• If we’ve been successful once can we do it again? You’ll never know if you don’t try.
• How do you sustain your present success but also pursue something else that could push you forward even more?

Our Host

John is the Amazon bestselling author of Winning the Battle for Sales: Lessons on Closing Every Deal from the World’s Greatest Military Victories and Social Upheaval: How to Win at Social Selling. A globally acknowledged Sales & Marketing thought leader, speaker, and strategist. He is CSMO at Pipeliner CRM. In his spare time, John is an avid Martial Artist.

Finding the Right Candidates

Mark Gundlach, co-founder of Build Staffing Group, discusses why recruiting for sales can seem more difficult on the surface and what companies should be looking for when recruiting salespeople. He stresses the importance of knowing exactly what you are looking for as well as your core values.

This Sales Expert Interview covers:

How to attract top salespeople

• Algorithms aren’t always the best course of action when hiring. Mark’s company goes into a bit more detail.
• Let’s face it. Money talks. If you have a compensation package that resonates, that certainly helps. You can offer equity if you’re a startup.
• The salesperson has to buy into what they are selling. If they don’t believe in the product or service it’s a losing battle.

Turnover

• It’s extremely common for people today to switch jobs after 1-2 years. So you should really be constantly recruiting.
• Companies need to get more comfortable with this idea and figure out how to make it work for them.
• Turnover isn’t necessarily a bad thing. It prevents people who have been there for a long time from getting too comfortable.

Generational changes

• Salespeople should put their numbers in their resume. Recruiters and hiring managers want to see a track record of success.
• A college degree shows that the salesperson has completed something from start to finish.
• More and more companies are asking salespeople what they are passionate about.
• Remote working is becoming more and more prevalent, but Mark says some of their clients still won’t consider candidates who live too far away.

Our Host

John is the Amazon bestselling author of Winning the Battle for Sales: Lessons on Closing Every Deal from the World’s Greatest Military Victories and Social Upheaval: How to Win at Social Selling. A globally acknowledged Sales & Marketing thought leader, speaker, and strategist. He is CSMO at Pipeliner CRM. In his spare time, John is an avid Martial Artist.

Take the Power Back

Klyn Elsbury, Amazon bestselling author, motivational speaker, and trainer, was born with cystic fibrosis and told she wouldn’t live past the age of 14. At the age of 25 she was advised to make life-ending arrangements. Klyn decided she wanted to thrive and not just live so she went on a quest to fulfill her potential. Now she speaks to companies and helps businesspeople and entrepreneurs reach their full potential. In this interview Klyn talks about the nine patterns she discovered after interviewing many famous entrepreneurs as well as breakthroughs she has had with some of her clients.

This Sales Expert Interview covers:

Klyn’s journey and how she applied it to helping others

• Before writing her book, Klyn interviewed famous entrepreneurs and found 9 patterns. She talks about these patterns and how her struggles were similar to anyone else’s.

Helping people focus

• Klyn sees the problem people have today is not a lack of focus but a lack of prioritization.
• Don’t let a seeming mile long to do list bog you down or be an excuse for inaction. It can be helpful to break tasks down into sections.
• Prioritize the things that actually drive revenue.

The negative perception of sales

• Society and even salespeople themselves can sometimes have a very negative opinion of sales. If a salesperson doesn’t see it as a noble cause, they are probably going to struggle.
• Salespeople don’t invest enough in themselves. Stop pretending you aren’t a salesperson!

Teaching people how to be a shark

• Sometimes it takes tough love to snap people back to reality when facing adversity.
• If emotions aren’t serving you, it’s time to break that pattern.

Our Host

John is the Amazon bestselling author of Winning the Battle for Sales: Lessons on Closing Every Deal from the World’s Greatest Military Victories and Social Upheaval: How to Win at Social Selling. A globally acknowledged Sales & Marketing thought leader, speaker, and strategist. He is CSMO at Pipeliner CRM. In his spare time, John is an avid Martial Artist.