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The Advanced Selling Podcast
Goal Setting Mastery (Part 1 - Taking Stock)
00:16:57
In this first episode of a three-part series, Bill and Bryan explore the importance of honest self-assessment in sales performance. They discuss why facing your "brutal facts" - from income reality to process effectiveness - is crucial for growth. The...
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- [00:07]
A
Welcome everybody, to the advanced selling podcast. The longest running sales training podcast in the history of podcasts. My name is Brian Neal.
- [00:13]
B
The history of podcasts, it stretches back to 20 years ago. I'm Bill Caskey.
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A
What's his name? Alan Hunter. Was Alan Hunter the MTV VJ who sort of put podcasting on the map. Oh my gosh. Whatever happened to fact checker Doug? Is he still.
- [00:34]
B
I think he passed Josh.
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A
Did he?
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B
No.
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A
Oh, you don't see.
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B
Who was the first, the first, the first podcaster wasn't an Adam Curry.
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A
Adam Curry, that's who it. And he was a VJ too.
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B
Yeah, he was a vj.
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A
Yeah.
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B
He still has a podcast. He's. He's out there.
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A
Okay. Oh, is he?
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B
Podcasting has gotten to him. He's way out.
- [00:58]
A
You see the Stuart Wild of podcasting.
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B
He is. He might be. Yeah. Google Stuart Wild for those of you.
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A
Exactly, Stuart Wild and old school.
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B
Yeah. But you know what's funny is that when the. Joe Rogan, all the Trump and the Harris and all the political candidates wanted to get on Joe Rogan, I remember watching a CNN report where they implied that Joe Rogan just has a podcast. I mean, he's not on mainstream media. I mean, this, this dude has a podcast. He doesn't even have a. And I thought, you know, there's a lot of people in the mainstream and, and even in the. Not mainstream media, but just the mainstream of life who still don't understand the power of podcasting.
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A
No.
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B
Who still diminish. They diminish it because they don't listen to them. They don't understand them. They don't know that right now, on any given day in the U.S. 150 million people are tuned into podcast and 300,000 people are tuned into Fox and CNN. And we think, oh, they're. They're the giants.
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A
That's right.
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B
They're not the Giants anymore.
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A
No, they're the sleeping giants. See what I did there?
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B
Yeah. So anyway, I had a quick story we're going to do, if my memory serves me correctly from our planning session, we're going to do a three part series here. Starting today. We're going to talk about personal growth, where you are currently. Number two, session two next week is where you want to be, where you're going. And number three is how you're going to get there. And I think it wraps in good with a personal reflection time at the end of the year.
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A
It's be a great guide for you as you head into that holiday break. And you know you're going to close, but you can close. But at some point it's going to slow down a little bit and you need to do some reflection time. So Bill and I will guide you. Guided through this visualization. Guided. You have to be quiet on this next story, don't you? You have to kind of whisper it.
- [02:55]
B
Yes, I do. Here's, here's my story for the week.
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A
Okay.
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B
You know sometimes how you will ask someone around you for advice or for just input, maybe more input. You know, what do you think of the color of this pencil? Or I'm getting ready to write this book. What do you think of these titles? And you got to be really careful with that because the person who you're, who you're asking to whom you're asking the question. Proper grammar is you never know where they are currently in their emotional state. They may hate you.
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A
Yeah.
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B
And so they're not going to give good advice. They may not be well versed in the topic. And so you have to watch. So the other night I was, we're getting ready to do something, a webinar. And I was asking my wife about the overall scheme of things, like, you know, the slides and how we're doing in the flow and, you know, just generally how. So I did like a 10 minute quick run through it.
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A
Yeah.
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B
And as soon as we got done, she said, well, your first sentence, you said strategies, not solutions. And I'm wondering if, if you should say solutions before strategies or strategies before solutions. And I really didn't hear what you said the last 15 minutes because I was focused on that faux pa that you made. I'm like, okay, I'm looking for the essence here. The essence does the thing flow well. And I thought, but that's how, that's how people see the world. When you ask somebody who sees the world through the lens of, you know, very tactical things, that's what you're going to get. Not her fault.
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A
Not her fault.
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B
Didn't. I didn't lay. I didn't. I should have asked AI. I should have asked chat.
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A
That would have been a great thing to do. And I know exactly what you're talking about, Bill. That happens. The old visionary kind of integrator mentality where we have ideas and we get this feedback and the feedback comes like. I think the font on slide two is a little off center. Just a little off center. I'm like, you're blanking kidding me. You just said that. That's not what I'm after. Well, it is, but it is. And Then we can't come off of it now. Now I got to go, oh, no, no. So instead of getting this, like, like, you know, you and I would give feedback like, well, the, you know, the feeling, the vibe. We're like, okay, we're going, is that good? Is that good? You know, and you need both.
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B
You need the fonts to look right and you need the vibe to be right.
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A
Yeah. So.
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B
But I, I think that's just cautionary. Especially, you know, it's the end of the year. We're starting to get our partners or spouses or husbands and wives involved and say, look, here's what I'm thinking about for next year.
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A
That's right.
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B
And you have to understand where they're coming from when they look. Especially if you've spent seven hours on your business plan and you're show. You're popping it on them and showing it to them, saying, here, what do you think? And they tear it apart and. But they haven't spent the seven hours. So you have to take all that in consideration. Okay, topic, let's go.
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A
Yeah, let's go. We're a three part series here. Okay. This was inspired by a little thing that I use called wag. Where. And it's for sales calls. Just highlight, you know, where we were, W were where we are and where we're going. So wag, where are going?
- [06:06]
B
Ah, it's not. Well, you said W.
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A
Here we go. So, Wilson.
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B
Well, let's do.
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A
Let's do a little differently. Let's talk about where we are, where we are A, where we're going G. And how to get there. And this reminds me, Will Wheaton commercials, the Wheat Thins commercials is what this reminds me of. This is our version of the Wheat Thins deal. If you don't know that, that's funny. So we'll start with episode one, where we are. How do we take inventory of where we are? It's a great little.
- [06:40]
B
Okay, let's talk first about why it's important to take inventory about our current reality. What. What's in it for us if we do that? Because sometimes that can feel like I just want to know, where am I going? But there is a certain rationale to why we should do that. What are your thoughts on that?
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A
I'm going to quote my longtime mentor and peer group leader, Mike Donahue. Mike Donahue, who's retiring, by the way. Sidebar. Mike Donahue, he used to have the saying. I think he got it from Patrick Lencioni. How do you say that? Book Face the Brutal facts. Face the brutal facts. Face the brutal facts. Think about this time of year. You're going to go through the holidays, and then it's going to be January. And you don't want to get on a scale because you're afraid of what you'll see. You don't want to go to the gym because you're afraid of how tired you'll be or how out of shape you are. And in our sales life, sometimes we don't want to face the brutal facts. So that's my first thought in that is I like the mirror and say, let's fit. Let's see. Let's see where we are. Let's be really real. Really real with where we are with our performance, our sales life, our career, all that sort of thing.
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B
Yeah, it's almost like an acronym you've created. Face the brutal facts. Could be fib.
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A
I love. We're valuable. We're a vowel.
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B
Yeah. No. No vowel acronyms.
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A
We're not allowed.
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B
Okay, so. So let's talk about the brutal facts around certain topics. So the brutal fact around income, brutal fact around process. I mean, the fact is there are probably things that you're doing in your business right now that you don't like to do. They're just there. You don't like. And therefore you either don't do them or you don't do them. Well, let's just say that. Let's just say cold outreach is one of those areas.
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A
Yeah.
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B
That you don't like to do.
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A
You.
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B
You talk about how you like doing it, but you really don't like doing it. So I think a brutal fact is, this is something that I despise, therefore I don't do it, therefore I'm not going to ever be good at it. So the question then becomes is, what can you do in its place? And I know that we're not there yet. That's more of the action plan. But that's why I think we shouldn't be afraid to write down the brutal facts of what are we good at? What are we not good at? What do we despise and loathe doing? Because it could be, once we write that down, we say, you know what? You don't have to do it that way. There are other ways to do it.
- [09:06]
A
Absolutely. And that's a good. That kind of framework of, what am I doing? Am I taking inventory right now? And what am I. What do I love about what I'm doing, What I've done this year? What do I not love about it? And just getting real clean on that is such a good thing to do. There's a guy named Tom Bilyeu. I think that's how he started Quest. Right. You know, Tom. So. And I got a chance to talk with him real briefly at an event I was at back in May. May a year ago, so a while back. But still, he's a very accessible guy. Very open, very humble. Like it. But he's the most. One of the most intense people I've ever been around. But he just put a post on LinkedIn yesterday and some of the stuff, you know, like, okay, whatever it is, it's just how. It's just different for me. But this one hit me. He's like, I had the reason he grew from his kitchen to whatever it was, 6 or $700 million where he exited his company. Quest Nutrition was his extreme focus. And he said, you got to be extremely focused on one, like one thing. And to me, that one thing should be the thing that you love the most and you're best at. And he, he said, then look at your calendar and see how much time you spend not on that one thing. I did that. And I'm like, dang, this is a really good exercise here to do.
- [10:21]
B
Well, I also heard him say it could have been. Could have been the same podcast it was lifted from, but, you know, they had trouble in some of their finding the equipment that was going to process the food and the bars he was a, he owned quit was a quest like health bars or athletic bars. And he said, everybody in the industry told me that won't work. And his response was, oh, no, it has to work now. And he figured out a way to make it work by gathering the experts who, even some who said it won't work, saying, look, I gotta make it work. And I thought that is a, that's also, since you brought it up, a great analogy for why it's important that we face the brutal facts. Fupfa. Because at some point, the brutal fact may turn into a blossoming opportunity. But if we're afraid to face it, we're going to keep trudging through the fact. Like, again, cold calling.
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A
What.
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B
What if you could triple your business and not make another cold call?
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A
Right.
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B
Oh, well, Bill, that's not going to work. Oh, really? People are doing it. So you can either buy into the old orthodoxy that you've. You've bought into and say, well, I couldn't, I couldn't do that, or you can say, no, if you're kidding me, I can triple my Business. And I make a cold call so I can make more money and be happier. Why aren't you signing up for that? But sometimes it's that old. It's those old ties that bind us to the. To the past.
- [11:46]
A
Yes.
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B
Into our current. Current reality.
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A
That's really good. Then another tactical thing. When we're taking inventory here. This. This is. This is brutal facts. But this gets very specific. I really want you to look at how your results showed up, both what you did and the form in which they showed up. Form. So fire alarms going off in the Caskey studio. Yeah.
- [12:13]
B
I'm sorry about that noise.
- [12:15]
A
So think about this for a second. You might be the number two of 30 sellers, but you had two deals that represented 80% of your performance. I would look in the mirror at that instead of going, oh, shoot, I'm number. Or, shoot, I'm number two. I'm number two. That's a really risky business.
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B
Risky, yeah.
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A
So look at depth and have a little critical eye of your own performance. And even just how you got there, you know, like, I love to ask. I know. Bill, you do this too. Whenever we're working with clients, one of the first questions I always ask when we're talking about a deal is, where did this come from? And it's amazing sometimes how many times I go, oh, it was a call in. You know, well, there's a marketing lead. I'm like, okay, be careful, because, you know, you need to control your own stuff here. So just look at where things came from. Be very real. And that's so true.
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B
Source. What's the source of the lead or the discussion or the customer? I was watching Grant Cardone the other day.
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A
Yeah.
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B
And he was doing something on Twitter. It was Saturday, and I was. I was sitting out back. Jane was gone. I was just enjoying the beautiful fall weather in Indiana. And he was asking people who came up on stage who were clients of his. It was a pitch for a product. He was asking people, where did you first hear about me? And every one of them heard about him from something he gave away.
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A
Ah.
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B
It was either a. Or like a book. Like $10 book or more. More often than not, it was a webinar, a speech he gave. He was on a podcast, and he said something I think was important. He's like, you know, sometimes we look at where the lead come from, but we don't trace it back all the way to, well, where did they first hear about us? And he said, if you're in your business, if you're not offering free Content to people who can raise their hand, even if they raise it halfway and start to listen and get, get comfortable with you, you're giving up market opportunity. And if you're just waiting for people to come shove checks in your face, that's not the way it works today.
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A
Right.
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B
And I thought so what you said, the source of the lead is important, but don't forget to track back. Well, how did they even know to call me?
- [14:28]
A
Exactly. Yeah, yeah, that's a. These are great look back things for you as you're doing, working through this. Where, where am I now? How did I get my result? What was my result, what was the composition of my result and what activities am I doing on my calendar? You know, daily, weekly, monthly, hourly. That align with what I'm really good at. What I love to do is a great little framework for your.
- [14:50]
B
Can I offer one more? One more before we close and move on to the next one, which is where you going is. You know, I sometimes error or with too many things I'm trying to populate too many things I'm trying to do this and do that and do that. Before we know it, I'm not focused. Or sometimes you have all your eggs in one basket like you talked about, where I'm just counting on inbound leads. Well, that's a terrible strategy. So as you're looking at your current reality, I think you have to say, am I balanced here? Is my portfolio of inbounds or channels of sources of leads? Is it balanced? Or am I devoting all my time to one area and none to others? And not spread yourself too thin, but not put all your eggs in one basket. So it might be that what are the four or five areas of lead generation that you're, you're focused on? Maybe one's outbound calling, maybe one is, you know, being on other people's podcasts. Maybe one is speaking at the local, you know, Lions Club forum or whatever those are. Just make sure you're balancing that out and not putting everything into one channel.
- [15:55]
A
That's great balance. Lions Club, they still have.
- [16:02]
B
I don't know, I almost said Kiwanis.
- [16:05]
A
Those are great, man. I love a good Qantas International, especially in Southern Indiana. Fried chicken.
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B
I'm sure it's going strong.
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A
Oh my gosh, it's fantastic.
- [16:14]
B
All right. Okay, so if you haven't joined our LinkedIn, go to advanced selling podcast.com LinkedIn. That should take you right to our group. Got 12, 13,000 people there and we'd love to hear what you think about this concept of where are you? I just don't think people spend enough time on facing current reality.
- [16:33]
A
Fuck her. No. Oops, here we are.
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B
I would not. FCR would not be.
- [16:40]
A
So next time we are going to talk about episode two of this little three part series is where we are going. We're going to do a little planning and we'll leave the vowels out again.
- [16:48]
B
All right? I'll see you next time, Ra.