Are You Recession Ready?
Episode 7 – Mindset

Episode Transcript

Alex Chan | Paul O’Donohue

I have a question for you. If you’re a business owner or CEO, are you recession ready? This session discusses step number seven of the SalesStar high-performance pathway. And here to help us to cover this important topic is does founder and CEO Paul O’Donohue. Paul, this is so important. Mindset can really play havoc with a person or it can really support a person during a time of financial crisis, can’t it?

Alex This is one of my favorite subjects because this is where we find missing millions and organization to do is the mindset. You know, many, many CEOs always call us and and go, hey, we need some sales skills training, but it’s often the wrong thing to lead with the right mindset. 80% of sales success and when times get tough or the deal size becomes really, really, really big and there’s more at stake. Mindset even plays a bigger part. It gets amplified. So what are we talking when we’re talking about mindset? Well, you know, there are the two to really two aspects that we need to be aware of with our sales people, not just our sales people, better sales leaders, for that matter. First and foremost, it’s about your motivational drivers, like when times are tough that the tough get going. But we need to make sure that our salespeople have the right levels of motivation. So when it’s a tough selling environment, there are really four crucial elements that we look for in terms of motivation. But there’s one thing that rises to the top, and that is the level of commitment. Salespeople need to be more committed than they’ve ever been. They need to do that extra bit of activity, that extra follow up, that be that that little bit more resilient. And in order to advance the deal and in order to win more opportunities.

You know, commitment is different to desire and that requires real determination, a real firm focus, doesn’t that?

Well, commitment – what we test for Alex is it’s the commitment it’s an unconditional commitment that’s doing whatever it takes, even if it might scare you or make you very uncomfortable, like prospecting. We might be asking our account managers to prospect to win market share. So this is a great example of a CEO bringing us in to say, can you teach our account managers to become BDMs and hunters? Yeah, we can teach them those skills. But the question is, is whether they will do it. You know, not everyone who you train is trying to trainable. You’ve actually got to have the right DNA, the right mindset. So got to have the right motivational drives. Got it. Got to have the want and the commitment to do that in the first place. So the second part to mindset that we evaluate for and help companies with is psychological conditions. The DNA that brilliant paid salespeople selling them effectively. So, you know, the first one that we need to be mindful of is just our self-limiting beliefs. Us as leaders, how that manifests to the organization. You know, if there’s too much talk about bad times ahead, it’s going to be tough selling. It’s going to be tough to get in front of people. It’s going to be tougher to sell it against the competition. Well, if we say then as leaders, guess what? Our salespeople will probably buy into that notion as well. But we’ve got to also check as leaders as positive as we can be. You know, we’ve got to lead with we’re going to crush the recession. We’re ready for the recession. We’ve got the best strategy to weather the storm. We’ve got the best people. Right. We need to install some confidence in them. So they lead confidence. Right. We’ve got to be mindful that this thing called mindset. It’s hard. It’s hard to see. It’s not visible. Like you can have a very confident sales person, but they might they might be like that duck swimming on the water. They seem to be cruising along smoothly, but their legs are paddling like they’re in a freaking out. Really, really hard to chip mindset. But we do have the right tools to beat this, and it’s important that we diagnose before we start to prescribe and we get a good handle on what people are suffering from, from a psychological point of view, because they can seem resilient, but they might not be. So as good sales leaders, we need to make sure our sales people are effective. And it starts with this neck-top computer.

You know Paul, we’ve been talking to a lot of clients just recently because of the difficult and challenging times that we’ve been in. Technically, it’s not a recession yet, but we can see that one is potentially on the horizon. And they’re talking to me about supply chain issues, about price rises that result from this. And I’ve had sales people and managers say to me, you know, we have difficulty selling because we can’t supply we can’t complete the job on time. And of course, prices are going up in the interim and they’re seeing these as barriers to sales. That is a real mindset issue because when we stop and help them to evaluate their own situation, they begin to realize that actually, if we take a positive mindset to this, this is a salesperson’s dream. They can sell on the basis of urgency. You know, you need to order now if you want to get this delivered on time, not being pushy, just giving them the right advice to help them to stay productive.

Well, they’re three distinctions we evaluate for, that isn’t conducive to supporting price rises and to having those conversations. One is the need for approval. Alex And you know, this is really typical with relationship sellers who predicate their sale on their interpersonal relationship, right? So they love to be liked by their customers in extreme cases. They love to be loved and the challenge with that is that they don’t like to be seen as pushy salespeople, they don’t like to challenge the client. They don’t like to cause any conflict that might and their personal relationship. So it’s tough for them to have those conversations. So we need to be aware of which salespeople have this need for approval so we can we can put some intervention around eradicating that need for approval. Second thing is this notion called money weakness. A lot of salespeople suffer from money weakness and how that manifestes they don’t have the bravery to talk about money. They don’t have the bravery to give a price increase. They can’t start that conversation because in their head; A: There is an avoidance of talking about money and finances. But any raise might seem like a lot of money in their head. You know what happens when their prospects give them the push back, too? That’s a big increase. They’re going to be thinking, yes, sitters. I thought that was they’re not going to be concerned at handling that objection and then staying firm. So I talked about three. The third one is buying cycle weakness. There’s 100% correlation to how you buy to help you sell.

So you mean if you’re a slow considered buyer then you may projected onto your client, is that right?

Yes. So and the reverse is true. Think about what’s going to change in a tougher economy. Your prospects are going to be more considered. They’re going to slow pull you, they’re going to stall, you know, sales cycles are going to blow out. And if you’ve got to buy cycle weakness, it has 50% impact on your ability to close deals. So you know, all your salespeople that are suffering from buy cycle and that’s one of those things you can’t you can’t really just read, you have to evaluate before you get a good sense of the say, habit or not, that has a major impact because as soon as they hear a prospect say, you know, our budgets are tight at the moment, this is a big decision for us. We have to get together as a committee and have, you know, three other suppliers come to us. And you’re the first, you know, all of that usual reteric, salespeople who have buy cycle weakness will be thinking in the nanosecond that sounds fair to me, and they wont be able to close that deal.

Rather than dealing with it as you would. An objection so…

Exactly the way be a controlled the process, rather to get to the next step and be at a firm closer so that can really, really impede the ability to win market share in tough times.

Paul, fascinating subject mindset. Wow! It’s a biggy they might think they need skill training and all but it could all have to do with their their attitude, their mindset, their positivity, their outlook. Thank you very much for sharing those insights with us. Is there anything that we can help our viewers with maybe something they can download?

Yeah, there’s a really fantastic asset that’s an e-book. It’s called Reviewing Your Annual Sales Performance, Increasing Profits. And we talk about the four crucial elements that really drive motivation. We talk about five aspects of psychological barriers that get in the way. And it’s really important to understand those distinctions. As a sales leader, we’ve got to be good coaches, so be aware of it. It’s good reading. Get access to the link below.

Thanks very much for joining us today, Paul. If you want to know more, reach out to a SalesStar high-performance coach. We’re here to help. Follow the series to get the full overview on how to be recession ready as we continue with our journey through the SalesStar Nine Step High-Performance pathway. And remember, watch out for key strategic moves later in the series. Thanks for joining us. We’ll see you next time.