The Definition Of Vibrant Culture And How To Achieve It (video)

In this Expert Insight Interview, Nicole Greer discusses creating a vibrant culture. Nicole Greer is the principal coach and CEO of Vibrant Coaching, which helps individuals, corporations, government entities, and non-profits become the people they were created to be through defining and fulfilling their missions, working better in teams, and exemplifying excellent leadership.

This Expert Insight Interview discusses:

The definition of vibrant culture and how to achieve it
Why employees often feel disconnected from their organizations
How senior leaders can dial in the vision and tell a story about their business

Vibrant Culture

A vibrant culture is lit from within, meaning that the leaders inside the company are leading with clarity; everybody knows where the goal is and has a plan of action to get themselves there. It is essential to lead with integrity. Character is one of the utmost important things that anyone should drive inside their business.

Men and women of character put out amazing products, take care of customers and take care of each other. Transforming the ordinary comes from having a group of people excited about the future and wanting to do more than the status quo — wanting to grow and having a growth mindset.

Feeling Disconnected

Many people have had the experience of getting a vision statement from the executive team, a mission statement from marketing, another message from their department head, etc. In these situations, people often end up feeling disconnected from their organizations.

This is where the mindset of “just doing your part” comes from — people don’t understand what the company is all about or where they fit into the big picture.

Dialing In the Vision

Vision is one thing that is not dialed-in in many organizations. Everything starts at the top and flows downhill, so the senior leader must be able to explain where the company/brand is going and tell their employees a story about the future of the business.

Putting together stories where people can imagine where the business will be one, two, or five years from now is crucial. These stories enable team members to understand how the company is doing and where it is going.

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 has conducted over 1500 video interviews of thought leaders for Sales POP! online sales magazine & YouTube Channel and for audio podcast channels where Sales POP! is rated in the top 2% of most popular shows out of 3,320,580 podcasts globally, ranked by Listen Score. He is CSMO at Pipeliner CRM. In his spare time, John is an avid Martial Artist.

The Concepts of Trust and Mistrust (video)

In this Expert Insight Interview, Jerry Michalski discusses the concepts of trust and mistrust. Jerry Michalski is the curator of the world’s most extensive mind map, Guide to the World in Context, tech visionary, keynote speaker, and an expert on trust and mistrust.

This Expert Insight Interview discusses:

The fundamental principles of trust
How we have come to mistrust our institutions
The potential solution to widespread mistrust

Principles of Trust

When people set out to build trust, they often overlook its fundamental principle: being consistent, predictable, and simply doing what you say you will do. Jerry Michalski doesn’t deal with building high-trust teams and developing trust in interactions. Although he obviously knows a thing or two about these things, he primarily focuses on trust and mistrust in institutional design.

This shows up for him in things like the compulsory education system and Wikipedia. Years ago, he met John Taylor Gatto, a retired New York high-school teacher, who talked to him about the hidden curriculum of schooling, which is all about mistrust. At this point, Jerry realized that we had designed our institutions from the standpoint of mistrust.

A Flaw in the System

We have designed our institutions in this way because the average person has a legitimate worldview that says most people are just out for themselves, that life is nasty, brutish, and short, and that we have to design our systems to protect ourselves against the bad actors.

On the other hand, Jerry Michalski believes that most people would like to help and make things better for others. He believes that when we design the systems against the bad actors first, we separate everybody else and cut the genius out of the room.

Potential Solutions

There’s an excellent reason why people mistrust institutions such as the government, and it is partly because most of the institutions we’re used to dealing with do not trust us. They are designed to assume that we are out to get the most we possibly can greedily.

Most of the solutions to this problem presented by academics and experts either create novel institutions that make us feel queasy and scared or don’t even need institutionalization, instead suggesting we take back responsibility for some things and cooperate through trust.

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 has conducted over 1500 video interviews of thought leaders for Sales POP! online sales magazine & YouTube Channel and for audio podcast channels where Sales POP! is rated in the top 2% of most popular shows out of 3,320,580 podcasts globally, ranked by Listen Score. He is CSMO at Pipeliner CRM. In his spare time, John is an avid Martial Artist.

Why Cold Calling and Telemarketing Works Better Now Than Before (video)

In this Expert Insight Interview, Jeremy Chen discusses telemarketing and cold calling. Jeremy Chen is from Jeremy Chen Sales, which helps businesses transform their sales strategies. Whether you’re looking to define sales processes or develop a brand new one, they provide the services that you need.

This Expert Insight Interview discusses:

Why cold calling and telemarketing work better now than ever before
How the pandemic has affected telemarketers
Why it is essential to distance your real-life persona from your telemarketing one

Telemarketing Is Not Dead

Many “experts,” say that telemarketing and cold calling are dead. Jeremy Chen doesn’t only disagree with this idea, but he believes that cold calling and telemarketing work better than ever. He says that he loves when people tell him that these practices are dead because it means there’s that much less noise for him to compete with.

The reluctance to pick up the phone seems endemic now, not just among salespeople. In Jeremy’s opinion, cold calling is like a highly competitive sport. Any high-performing athlete trains for their discipline every day, and if you’re not trained, it shows. The same is true for cold calling.

Pandemic Effect

Many salespeople are reporting that, after the pandemic, it is easier to get people on the phone than it had been in the past. Perhaps this has to do with the fact that more people are now at home, having been cut off from their surroundings in the office, so they are more receptive to answering the phone and talking to a stranger.

In that sense, this is arguably a better time than ever for telemarketers and cold callers. Interestingly, Jeremy points out that the connection rate over the phone had been miserable during the pandemic, although the actual conversion rate and revenue didn’t drop.

Playing a Character

Cold calling is an art as much as it is a science. It is important to remember that when you’re making a phone call, you’re presenting a particular personality or version of yourself that doesn’t necessarily correlate with your character in “real life.”

Jeremy is not affected by rejections during his working hours, even if they are the most unpleasant experiences at the moment, because he considers his caller personality a sort-of character, like an actor would in a play or a movie.

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 has conducted over 1500 video interviews of thought leaders for Sales POP! online sales magazine & YouTube Channel and for audio podcast channels where Sales POP! is rated in the top 2% of most popular shows out of 3,320,580 podcasts globally, ranked by Listen Score. He is CSMO at Pipeliner CRM. In his spare time, John is an avid Martial Artist.

The Misconceptions About Highly Sensitive People (video)

In this Expert Insight Interview, Heather Dominick discusses whether you can be highly successful and highly sensitive at the same time. Heather Dominick is the founder of A Course In Business Miracles. Since 2010, she has trained highly sensitive entrepreneurs and leaders to do things differently by working less and making more social impact and a higher income.

This Expert Insight Interview discusses:

The misconceptions about highly sensitive people
How the phrase “highly sensitive” was coined
How high sensitivity can be a strength rather than a weakness

Misconceptions

We often think that the most successful people are somehow less sensitive, hard-nosed, and can roll with the punches and keep going. This probably puts many people off trying to go down leadership paths, etc.

When you don’t understand how to work with a nervous system wired differently from the majority of the population, it can create a lot of havoc. But when you do learn how to work with it, it can work to support you in every role, including leadership.

Harnessing the Superpower

The phrase “highly sensitive” was coined as a result of comprehensive research, primarily during the 1990s. In short, what it means to be highly sensitive is that your nervous system is wired to take in stimulation at a much higher degree than someone who is not highly sensitive, and only 20% of people are born this way.

The key to harnessing your high sensitivity is whether you are trained on how to work with your nervous system or not. If you’re not, which is the case for many highly sensitives, you will likely feel some internal sense of being different or less than. Without the help or support to put the puzzle pieces together, you could have a lot of anxiety.

Highly Sensitive Strengths

When you learn how to hone and intentionally use your highly sensitive nature, that gives you access to what Heather refers to as the Top 12 Highly Sensitive Strengths. For example, those who are highly sensitive have a high level of intuitive ability and empathy, as well as other strengths such as deep thinking, deep listening, deep feeling, etc.

When you learn how to have those strengths working for you, they can be tremendous assets for leadership in any regard. This is particularly true when it comes to leadership roles in the world of self-employment.

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 has conducted over 1500 video interviews of thought leaders for Sales POP! online sales magazine & YouTube Channel and for audio podcast channels where Sales POP! is rated in the top 2% of most popular shows out of 3,320,580 podcasts globally, ranked by Listen Score. He is CSMO at Pipeliner CRM. In his spare time, John is an avid Martial Artist.

How The Feeling Of Rejection Keeps Us Down (video)

In this Expert Insight Interview, Gladys Agwai discusses her book Dumped, Not Dumped On: How to Stop Reliving the Negative Impact of Rejection in Your Life, Business, and Career. Gladys Agwai is a professional business strategist who supports clarity of purpose and objective with an effective plan to execute confidently. Her company, Ignite Within, is a transformative coaching and consulting firm.

This Expert Insight Interview discusses:

How the feeling of rejection keeps us down
Why we need to understand that getting dumped often hides a great opportunity
How adversity often produces the most teachable moments

Getting Dumped

We have all experienced being dumped in some capacity. Some of us have lost jobs, and others have lost marriages, partners, clients, etc. There is no salesperson out there who a client has not rejected.

Gladys understands that the feeling of getting dumped sucks, no matter what the reason. It hurts, and often it doesn’t feel justified or fair. But she believes that there is an opportunity within any time you get dumped, regardless of who dumps you. However, we get so emotional with the feeling of rejection that we don’t see this opportunity.

Perspective

When you get rejected, it is almost impossible not to think that there’s something wrong with you and start defining your self-worth by it. When this happens to salespeople, it often inhibits them from going after other clients, especially higher-level ones.

The sad thing is that sometimes it takes years and years to understand that a negative situation we experienced in the past led us on a path to success later on. It takes a prism of time for us to realize that rejections carry opportunities within them and change the trajectory of our lives and careers.

Teachable Moments

It is essential to understand what you need and what you want and not allow the feeling of rejection to keep you from getting what you want. Your sales objectives equate to money in your pocket, enabling you to live the life you want to live.

We should never allow other people to be able to keep us from whatever it is that we say we want. Our most difficult moments often provide us with some of the most extraordinary life education we will ever receive.

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 has conducted over 1500 video interviews of thought leaders for Sales POP! online sales magazine & YouTube Channel and for audio podcast channels where Sales POP! is rated in the top 2% of most popular shows out of 3,320,580 podcasts globally, ranked by Listen Score. He is CSMO at Pipeliner CRM. In his spare time, John is an avid Martial Artist.

Productivity Hacks for Leaders (video)

In this Expert Insight Interview, Benjamin Friedman discusses productivity hacks for leaders. Benjamin Friedman has spent over 18 years facilitating scaling and growth, often leading to exit events. He has overseen five successful M&A transactions in the last ten years, and now he helps advise people on the subject.

This Expert Insight Interview discusses:

The term “productivity hack” and how Benjamin Friedman uses it
The importance of taking a step back
The power of a strong support network

Productivity Hacks

The term “hack” is often perceived in the wrong way, implying that something is wrong and needs to be fixed. However, Benjamin Friedman applies the word in terms of improvement. Everyone can be more productive in certain aspects of their life, and he looks to use “hacks” to their productivity.

He works with founders who are constantly trying to grow their businesses and have to think about how to scale from where they are to where they want to be. This is one of the most complex parts of being a leader, especially for small businesses.

Stepping Back

It is so easy to get caught up in what’s going on, become overwhelmed, and go the opposite direction of where you want to go, becoming less productive throughout the day. Instead of being at hyper-speed all the time, sometimes it makes sense to pull back and spend some time calibrating where you are and where you’re headed.

This may sound counterintuitive, but Benjamin encourages founders to do it whether things are going well or if there’s been a bit of trouble and they need to reassess the situation. Stepping away from the day-to-day and recalibrating how things are going in the moment is crucial to your ability to be productive.

Support Network

We live in a world where everybody feels completely overwhelmed, and people feel like they’re busier than they’ve ever been. So, taking some time to assess your situation with a mentor, coach, or even a business partner is incredibly important.

Doing everything on your own is extremely difficult, and it is always better to have a third party who is invested in your success. It is essential to have people in your life who support you no matter what — this is typically what we get from friends and family. However, it is also important to find people who challenge you in a supportive, constructive way.

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 has conducted over 1500 video interviews of thought leaders for Sales POP! online sales magazine & YouTube Channel and for audio podcast channels where Sales POP! is rated in the top 2% of most popular shows out of 3,320,580 podcasts globally, ranked by Listen Score. He is CSMO at Pipeliner CRM. In his spare time, John is an avid Martial Artist.

How to Speak a Business Owner Language (video)

In this Expert Insight Interview, Amy Schultz discusses how to speak in a language that is relevant to a business owner. Amy Schultz is the president of a company called LeadSeen, and a sales, marketing, and ads genius.

This Expert Insight Interview discusses:

How business owners think and why marketers must speak their language
Amy’s background in finance and how it has helped her develop as a marketer
Why marketers need to understand their clients’ positions on the digital landscape

Marketing Speak

Many companies hire marketing agencies or marketing professionals to cover their marketing needs because they feel like they need a professional to be able to create “marketing speak.” Amy Schultz encourages a different approach — she doesn’t focus on creating marketing content or speaking in a marketing-oriented language. Instead, she focuses on talking in a language relevant to a business owner.

From what Amy understands about how business owners think, everything needs to tie back to revenue. The goal is to grow revenue, not lose money, so you have to speak their language, breaking down “marketing speak” into a language business owners can understand. This is what she teaches other marketing professionals to help them close more business.

Business Owners’ Language

Amy started as a commercial/business banker, so she has a background in finance. While in that position, she was the trusted advisor to all of the business owners in her portfolio. They would come to her for help with insurance, marketing, ways to purchase a fleet of vehicles, etc.

She quickly realized that the biggest need that her clients had was on the marketing side of things because they didn’t understand the new digital world that had evolved for all of us. Almost all of the deals that marketers get a chance to look at can be closed by speaking a business owner’s language.

Understanding the Landscape

We are bombarded with marketing today. You can’t go anywhere without being targeted by ads through your email or social media. Because of all this noise, we tend to block out most of our received inputs. This means the only way a marketer can get through to you is by showing you something that resonates with relevance to your business.

Typical marketers try to develop services and present them to business owners. They don’t realize that they are missing the point of “why” they are recommending certain things. It is crucial to help the business owner understand their position in the digital landscape and why they need your services.

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 has conducted over 1500 video interviews of thought leaders for Sales POP! online sales magazine & YouTube Channel and for audio podcast channels where Sales POP! is rated in the top 2% of most popular shows out of 3,320,580 podcasts globally, ranked by Listen Score. He is CSMO at Pipeliner CRM. In his spare time, John is an avid Martial Artist.

Why Failure Is The Biggest Catalyst For Change (video)

In this Expert Insight Interview, Alina Timofeeva discusses failure. Alina Timofeeva is a multi-award-winning female leader in cloud, data, and digital. She is also a TEDx speaker, mentor, and podcaster. Her TEDx talk Fail but Never Give Up has over 355,000 views, is getting translated into 30 languages, and is in the top 10 world’s most-watched TEDx speeches.

This Expert Insight Interview discusses:

Why failure can be the biggest catalyst for change
How to take action even when you don’t feel like it
Getting past the obstacles of failure and rejection

Failure

Failure is a loaded word, and people interpret it in many different ways. Although it has the same meaning, it has a different connotation for most people. For Alina, failure is when you want to do something, but you don’t get the outcome you wanted to achieve.

In her talk, she put out a lot of arguments that failure is an opportunity to grow, so instead of looking at it as a setback, you can see it as a way to develop and become a better person. Our biggest lessons often come from failure.

Action

It often takes hitting rock bottom for us to make real, fundamental changes, but not everybody is equipped to do that. So, how can people reorient their attitude to failure and look at it and embrace it as a learning opportunity or an opportunity to change and grow?

For Alina, the answer to this question lies in action. People tend to wait for a sign to take action, and she believes that this is the wrong approach. Do not wait for inspiration; take action, even if you just take small steps.

Overcoming the Pain

Sometimes people allow themselves to think that other people have a better idea of how good they are and set the agenda for their life going forward. Instead of allowing that to happen, successful people look for the next best step to move forward.

The important, and most challenging part of this entire idea, is that it is pretty hard to find this change in your mindset. For example, when Alina moved to the UK, she applied for 500 jobs and got declined for 497 of them. No matter how persistent you are and how upbeat your personality is, getting rejected 497 times still hurts. Getting past this pain is what separates the biggest winners from the rest.

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 has conducted over 1500 video interviews of thought leaders for Sales POP! online sales magazine & YouTube Channel and for audio podcast channels where Sales POP! is rated in the top 2% of most popular shows out of 3,320,580 podcasts globally, ranked by Listen Score. He is CSMO at Pipeliner CRM. In his spare time, John is an avid Martial Artist.