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The Advanced Selling Podcast
Success Loves Discipline
00:13:40
In this solo episode, Bryan takes a thoughtful look back at his biggest takeaways from 2024. He explores the idea that sales is 90% process and 10% magic—and why most sales training only focuses on the magic. To drive exponential results, Bryan...
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- [00:04]
Bryan
Foreign. Welcome everybody to the Advanced selling podcast. The longest running sales training podcast in podcast history. Solo episode time B Neil here solo in the Blind Zebra studio. If you're looking on YouTube, I'm actually in the Blind Zebra world headquarters in studio. Sometimes when I record with my good friend Bill, I'm in the Blind Zebra home headquarters in the basement. Not very appealing but when you look at this, we got all these fancy lights and all this stuff is where I live most of the time. If you're listening to this, this is one of our solo episodes powered by the Blind Zebra sales operating system. We are just finishing our one year anniversary of having taken the Blind Zebra sales operating system to market. In that year we have certified. Are you ready 31? 31 operations coaches. Operations coaches are those who take Blind Zebra sales operating system and take it back to their companies. And you yourself can become a Blind Zebra sales operating system operations coach or OC. Just go to blind-zebra.com or shoot me an email direct. I don't care if you have my email address. Brian B R Y a n@blind-zebra.com b r y a n blind-zebra.com just put in in the subject line O O certification. OC certification. Now it's a corporate program. You can't come as an individual, it costs too much, I promise. But you can introduce us into your organization. We can talk about how the program works. We have a group of about 13 coming up. This is being recorded in November of 2024. We have about 13. I think 13 is his last account people coming to get certified in December and now we're filling up January of 2025. So now's the time to start the conversation. We can start it now, we can finish it in January and get you into our January certification class for the Blind Zebra sales operating system. Even have like a big book that you get certified in. See the big book, all of it. Okay, so today's episode, it's reflective time, isn't it? We're getting towards the end of the year and I wanted to talk about some things that I personally learned through 2024, both from observation and also from doing ourselves. Because we're all running businesses. Bill's running a business, I'm running a business, you're running a business. Even if you work for somebody else in your territory. So I just want to talk about some things that I reflecting right now on 2024 that I'm going to carry into 25 and I'm gonna but one of my business plan themes you know, we, we. You've heard us talk about the business plan before. My business plan theme is Burn the boats and speed up. Burn the boats and speed up. Because we've got something really cool with what we're doing with the blind zebra space and we're going to like, pile it on. All right, so think about your theme for 2025, but here's a good three things I learned in 2024. I'm going to carry forward 25, and number one, I want you to take the exercise of doing this yourself. Make sure you go and do your own reflection. But more importantly, take what I'm saying and say, interesting. B. Neil. I like that. Okay, here's the first one. Our friend, friend of the show, Tom Searcy, owns a company called Hunt. Big sales, great person gave me this and he, I think if I remember right, he gives his dad credit for this. But the quote is this. Sales is 90 process and 10% magic. 90% process and 10% magic. Now, that's not what I learned because I heard that years and years ago. Here's what I learned this year. And part of it is selfish, as I've both created and now watched companies install our blind zebra sales operating system. And it can be any operating system you have. This is the advanced selling podcast, the world's longest running sales training podcast. I have been in sales training industry since, since I first met Bill Caskey and I went to work with him and for him June 3rd of 1997. I've hold myself out to be a sales trainer and sales coach. A few episodes ago, you hear, you heard Bill and I talk about where training is and we're lifelong sales trainers and coaches and that's what we do. And there's hundreds of people, there's now this new category of influencers. You're out training people, training. Here's what I learned. If sales is 90 process and 10% magic, training works on the magic. Training works on the magic. And the magic's only 10% of it. And it's awesome. And if you can impact the 10%, it's fantastic. But what I learned, and I've seen it happen and I've watched it happen and we've done it. If you spend time, energy and effort on the 90% on the doing part, the process, and get really, really dialed in on efficient, effective, clear processes. And I'm not talking about this, the external sales process here process that people confuse that like, well, I got a sale, I'm a sailor person. I got the submarine that's not a sales process. That's. That's a. That's not an operations. Rather, that's a process between you and the buyer. But it's not, it's not, you know, anything internally that you, you personally do to operate you and your business and your territory. I'm talking about internal sales operations. And this goes far past, like CRM stuff. But if you can hone in on some way to operate in a mechanical fashion in a very, very efficient, effective manner and then go get some training to enhance the 10%. Is lights out good? Lights out. Good. So that's my first one. Training only touches the magic. And here I am, I'm in my life long. I'm like sitting here going, surrendering to this, like, you know what is my life's work dead? No, it's not dead. Not dead at all. Training, super important. It's awesome. It only addresses one part of it. You can get really good at operations. Lights out. Lights out. Good. In my football job, what we call, the word we use for operations is called mechanics. Teams use operations like they'll say, like when they go to kick a field goal. The operations is how fast the ball gets snapped, put down, spun and kicked. And it's down like less than a second, 1.8 seconds. And they measure all these things. That's the operation. All those things have to happen for the magic of the kicker to kick the field goal. If any of those three elements of the, of the, of the operation. If the snap is bad, if the hold is bad, or the ball's not in the proper position with the laces out, or my throwback people, laces out. Laces out. Finkle and Einhorn. Google that, you young people. It's from a Ace Ventura Pet detective tangent. That's an operation. You got to go through those things to let the magic happen. I don't golf. I don't golf. But if you watch golfers, there's a whole lot of stuff that goes on before the club gets swung, okay? And the magic is in that kind of the swing. But boy, the operations are so. The address, what you do, where your hands are, all the. So think about your sales operations and how much time, energy and effort you put into it. Training tends to not address that. Training addresses the magic part. So what do I say? How do I handle this? Objection. Here's what to say. Here's a clever way to trick somebody. Or that's just. That's. That's the magic. So that's first thing. Second thing is where those two Things come together when you put them together. When you put them together, it's an exponential return. So when you take great training and there's some great trainers out there, I would argue Bill Caskey is a great trainer. I think I was pretty good at it. There's a whole bunch of people, Jeb Blunt, Keenan, KD Dorsey, there's so many, they're everywhere. Mark Hunter, I mean, keep going. There's a whole bunch of Anthony Adarino, friends of the show, great trainers, just training. It only does one part. When you mirror. When you attach great training to a ridiculously awesome operating system, you almost can't lose because you win by the losing. Because you're not only going to work on deals that work and you're going to work them mechanically through a really nice tight discipline system. You can't lose. It's awesome. So think about in your 2025 thing, think about how much training you're doing versus how much operating you're doing, how much systematic, you know, alterations, changing, tweaking and then following your, your operating system you're doing. And then the third thing is from my good friend, business coach of ours, Justin Moss. Justin Moss is our EOS coach. Entrepreneurial Operating System is what that stands for. EOS Entrepreneurial Operating System. We run on the EOS system which I got the idea to create the Blind Zebra sales operating system. Because I'm finding that if I have an operating system in my company, I can scale it and grow it much, much quicker than when I don't. And I always know where I'm at. I have huge amount culture of accountability and I know exactly what's happening and I can see what the truth is. Even if I don't like the truth, I can see the reality of it. Justin has a phrase that is his missional, mission based phrase. It's his. Missional is not a word. It. Where's Bill when I need him? Bill's a guy with the big vocabulary, not me. The phrase is success loves discipline. Success loves discipline. If you're looking at the reflection of 2024 and saying, Dang, I want to get this thing cooking in 2025. You're a salesperson, you're a sales leader. You want your team to get cooking in 2025. This is more than a slogan though. Success loves discipline. Most people think discipline means I get up precisely at 6:01am, I take four steps into the restroom, I look at myself in the mirror and tell myself I'm good enough, I'm smart enough, and doggone at People like me, I brush my teeth eight times on the left. Eight times. That's obsession. That's ocd. Some of us have that, some of us have that. That's not. That's a personal problem. I'm kidding. If you're ocd, I got a little bit of that. That's the thing. Discipline to me doesn't have to do with that precision of that thing. It has to do with my willingness to follow the systems and processes that are in front of me. It's my willingness to just do the thing. And so an example would be if one of my elements of discipline is that I always have a scheduled next meeting at the end of every one of my sales calls. And the way that I end all of my sales calls is by saying the phrase, okay, if we're going to talk again, we always get our calendars out to book our next meeting for clarity and efficiency. It's a discipline. It just means that I choose to do it versus choose not to. It's not about necessarily that, you know, precise down to the atomic clock precision. It's not about. And it's not also not about 75. Hard discipline doesn't mean like, yes, I eat 2,000 calories a day and I hit all of my macros and I make sure I get 14,000 steps and I get up at 601, I go to bed precisely at 9. Again, that sounds a little. That's not what I'm talking about. There's a lot of people out that do that that aren't me. That's great that you do that. I'm talking about just some fundamental ways to be. And a great example is I always end all of my sales calls with the phrase we get our calendars out. And the moment that I get ghosted, I employ a tool, a mechanical tool and operations tool that happens to be in the Blind Zebra sales operating system that I execute that will rebook that meeting 7 out of 10 times. I just don't get ghosted because I don't let it happen. When I do have a thing for, it just doesn't happen. And yet there's a lot of training on what to do when you get ghosted, but there's no operating system on how to avoid it. And that's the trick just that you just operate and it's just what you do. And it's not a thousand push ups a day. That's not what it is. It's very, very, very simple. The problem with it is it's simple to not do. Also I always tell people it's real easy to go for a walk if you're sitting on the couch. You're a little overweight, a little thick. Real easy to go for a walk. It's real easy to do. And it's easier to sit there. It's easier to sit there. And going on a walk isn't like, you know, Green Beret stuff, crawling through the mud and doing a billion pushups and, know, half drowning in the pool, stuff like that. Okay, that's a different level. I'm talking about just the discipline to go on a walk. Just the discipline to get up and go. That's all I'm talking about. It's very simple stuff. Success loves discipline. I'd have you look at what discipline looks like for you in the future. And don't go too far too fast. Do some little things. Little things for you again, not getting up, you know, doing 75 hard. If you want to do that good, you knock yourself out. That's fantastic. That's not what I'm talking about. Talking about some core fundamental discipline stuff. So that's it. Training touches the magic. You take a great operation system and take great training, put it together, you can't lose. And success loves discipline. Sound like the opening line of a movie, doesn't it? Okay, that's it. Brian B R Y a n@blind-zebra.com if you want to talk to me about becoming certified in Blind Zebra Sales Operating system, do that also. You hear us talk all the time about the Insider. The Insider is a really great economical way to get live coaching with my friend Bill. Make sure you join. If you. If you're looking individually for yourself, what a great investment, a great time to do it. End of the year is a great thing to do, so look for more of that. We've got a cool. These little solo episodes. We're having some fun doing them and we're gonna do. I'm gonna call mine something new coming up in the new year. Have to wait and see what that is. We got a new little. Little bumper music, a little new little segment title for it. So you have to wait and see what that is. So that's it. Appreciate you. See you next time. Cheers.