What is Mindset?

“If you want to change your results, then you MUST change the way you think”

 

What propels a salesperson to the far right tail of the bell curve? What is the “ONE THING” that the elite know that the good and average don’t? For us the answer has become crystal clear. It’s called “Mindset”.

In this week’s podcast, Bryan Neale flies solo and discusses this concept. He also explains the following four “Mindset” shifts:

  1. Abundance
  2. Detachment
  3. Intent
  4. Expert Positioning

Also mentioned in this podcast:

 

[powerpress]

The Transcript:

Hi everybody, Bryan Neale here, alone in the studio, by myself. Bill Caskey is on vacation out in Los Angeles. I actually spent a little time with him just this week going to see a speaking coach that we’re going to again named Bo Easton. Had a great time with him. And he stayed out here and I didn’t. So we are here every week. This is the Advanced Selling podcast. We are glad you’re with us. We try to bring you ideas and philosophies and strategies that will help make your sales life and your sales effectiveness much, much better. I do have an event to tell you about. Now this is just for Indianapolis people or people in the Midwest. On June the 27th, that’s actually this Thursday, if you’re in town or around and are looking for something to do between 8 and 11, we are having an event called Caskey and Friends, and we’re going to be on stage together in Indianapolis, Indiana at the Indianapolis Art Center, myself, Brooke Green, one of my fellow consultants here in Indianapolis named Chip McLean and Bill Caskey are all going to give 20 to 30 minute chat about some things that I think will be really, really fun and very, very useful for you. So if you’re interested in that, you go to Caskeyandfriends.com, C-A-S-K-E-Y, A-N-D Friends.com, you have to spell out the word And. Or you can tweet us up or hashtag us at #caskeyleader on Thursday as we’re talking, if you want to follow that on Twitter, we will be there.

Today, I asked Jill, said, “Hey, I’m going to be flying solo today,” and I said, “You got any ideas for something that I can talk about?” And she said, “You know, I got a question a few weeks ago, someone asked me if we had any documentation to define mindset,” and the answer was no, and I think we’ve talked about mindset plenty, but we’ve never really sat down and said, “Okay, what exactly is it? Define it for people, and then really, really place it out in a way where people can understand it.” So today’s episode is all about the inner game, and for those of you who have been listening a long time and you’re a client, this is going to be a great tune-up, so don’t delete this or think, “Well I don’t need, I know this, I got this handled. So I got to, I’ll just go my own merry way and listen to the next episode.” No, this is a good tune-up for you, and if you’re new to the podcast of all the things that we talk about, this without question will be the most important thing that you’ll ever hear from us.

Now I want to start by defining mindset, then I’m going to give you some core principals, I’m going to give you four of those, and I’m also going to show you sort of a point/counterpoint to each of the principals so that you can start to do a little self-analysis of where you stand with the inner game principals. And as time goes on, I want you to think of your inner game as a muscle that you can constantly and should constantly exercise. It’s something that loses mass over time if you don’t do it, just like your muscles do. It will degenerate and go away and become rotten if you don’t feed it. It also is something that you can constantly, constantly do because it doesn’t take a lot of effort for you to do. It’s not like lifting weights where you got to go to a gym and sweat a whole bunch. This is literally just sort of sitting down and contemplating some of the principals that we discuss, okay.

So we’re going to, I’ll take you through these, I’ll define it broadly. Then I’ll take you through the four core concepts. I’ll kind of point/counterpoint those things, and then you’ll be able to do your own little self-score, all right?

So definition of the mindset, and it’s so funny because this is such a big, important aspect of what we do. And the best way that I can explain this to you very simply is if you were looking to change your result in your life, and for most of you that listen you say, “Well I want to have better sales. I want to have more money. I want to have more income.” Before you can have anything different or more, you have to change your behavior. You have to start by doing something different. You’ve heard the old adage that’s overused a bit that doing the same thing over and over will give you the same result, and that’s the definition of insanity. So you know that you have to do something different. And the challenge with most sales development coaching programs is mostly those programs live in the second level. They’ll go in and do an analysis and they’ll say, “Oh you know what your people need to do? What you guys need to do is you need to change your paper from blue to pink,” because we think the proposal will pop more if it’s on blue paper or pink paper. Or they’ll say, “You know, we analyzed your call volume, and your call volume you’re averaging about 14.2 calls. We think you need to be averaging about 26 calls.” So everyone goes, “Okay, great. We’ll change that.” It’s all behavior-based.

Well there’s a big, big fallacy, a big problem of very, very incorrect assumption that just by changing my behavior I’ll end up changing my results overtime because if I don’t change what’s before the behavior, the behavior will end up gravitating back to what the old behavior was that gave you the old result, and it happens time and time and time again.

The Definition of Mindset

And so for us, the beginning of all this is what we call the inner game, and by definition, the inner game for us is very, very simply put how do I think and feel about what I’m doing – that’s the behavior part – and my results that my doing is creating. So as simple as I can say, it’s everything that goes on in your mind. It’s how do I think and feel. It’s the dialogue. It’s the tape that plays. It’s your perspective. It’s your opinion. It’s how you feel about things. It’s your wiring. It’s your energy. It’s all those things that seem very intangible, yet they’re the most important things that come out and influence your sales outcome.

The hard part for people is it’s hard for people to put their arms around ‘cause they’re like, “Well I don’t really understand or know what it is. I know how to make more calls. I know what 15 calls looks like compared to 25 calls. But I’m not really sure I know how to change my philosophy on something.” So what I’m going to do next is I’m going to take that broad definition of thinking and I’m going to move it down and give you four core principals that, again, long time listeners will have heard. Brand new listeners this should be new to you, and this should be the most important thing that you ever remember. One thing I will tell you to take away from this is I give you these principals, these have to become yours and there’s nothing here that we created, there’s nothing here that’s new and innovative to the point where you’re like, “Oh my gosh, they created a word, they created a philosophy.” Everything here already exists. You though have to make what I’m going to tell you next your own. You can’t try to memorize it, or you can’t go, “Oh yeah, what was the second one? I always forget the second one.” You have to know exactly what these are for you. And you will get much, much, much further along by doing that than you will from trying to listen to us over and over and get it week to week, all right?

#1 Inner Game Shift: Abundance

So our core number one inner game philosophy that we start with is how I see the market and the word that we use over and over is seeing the market as an abundant place. And you’ll hear us talk about the idea of abundance all the time. Now what’s beautiful about abundance, to help make that more understandable for you. What does abundance mean, definition? You say, “Well it means a lot.” Well it means more than that. It means a whole lot. It means overflowing. It’s like more than I can handle. All that you have to do to prove yourself, that there’s abundance in your marketplace, is look out the freaking window. So may people drive around as salespeople and they think, “Man, it’s tough out here. Man, there’s not a lot, ugh. You know, our customer is really drying up. It’s really hard.” If you just look out the window for a moment and think of all the possible businesses and all the buildings that you pass, and I don’t care if you live in a little town like Wichita, Kansas – I just offended all the Wichita Kansas people didn’t I? If you live in a metropolis like Wichita, Kansas, or if you live in New York City or I just flew out to L.A., or if you’re on a plane, you look out the window, it’s really mind-boggling how much opportunity there is. So you have to think about how you see the market.

Now the opposite, and I said I was going to point and counterpoint these things, the opposite of abundance starts with an S and it’s the word scarcity. And what I find is most salespeople, when I first meet them, they really come with this mindset or this feeling of scarcity. It’s almost like this “When’s the thing going to fall? Boy, there’s not enough out here. Man, it’s really tough. Man, it’s really tight. Boy, our competitors are really, really, really putting the screws to us right now.” All those things are scarcity thoughts, right. You have to start to figure out where you are in this abundance scarcity continuum before you can ever improve or change or modify your current perspective of the world. You may have grown up in a household that believes in the scarcity that endorses it. I know I did. I know, you know, growing up you’d hear things like, you know, your grandma would bitch about the price of milk, “Gosh darn, the price,” you know. Today, these days, this is one of my huge pet peeves, people bitch about the price of gas, “Boy, have you seen the price of gas? It’s $3.55.” Ooh. So I say walk. No one’s going to walk. No one stops driving their car, but yet they want to gripe about that. All those things to me are scarcity thought, they’re scarcity mentality elements.

As you start to discount price, I see so many times when people justify with a discount price, “Well I didn’t want to lose the deal,” that’s a scarcity thought. Every time you have one of those thoughts, you have to start to monitor this to get a gage for where you are in this abundance scarcity program, okay. That’s the very, very core principal first, number one, big, big A, capital A Abundance.

#2 Inner Game Shift: Detachment

Okay, second thing is attachment. The opposite of attachment is detachment and we want everyone to operate with a sense of detachment. That means that you’re able to let things go. If you believe in abundance, it makes it much more easy to let things go. Again, we see people that run around the world scared, holding onto things, not wanting to let everything go. Everyone’s afraid to kill the deal out of their funnel ‘cause they think it’s an opportunity, and you know what, it’s not. It’s not. It’s an opportunity when the money’s in your checking account. When the deal closes and the commission check gets there, then it’s an opportunity. Up until then, it’s really nothing. It’s absolutely nothing. You say, “Well it’s close.” It’s only something until it’s something, and it’s something when the money’s in your checking account. So you’ve got to be able to let things go. That’s attachment and detachment. And again, you think of yourself on that continuum. How attached am I to all the things that I have in my life, all the money that I have, all the deals that I think I have, or can I let everything go? And letting everything go is really, really scary, and that’s what I’m purporting to do here for people. All I’m telling you is that you’ve got to learn to operate with a sense of detachment. Some deals are going to work; some aren’t. Some are going to become customers; some aren’t. And it just depends on what those things are.

#3 Inner Game Shift: Intent

Okay third thing here, the third inner game principal is intent – intent for us, our old school intent for salespeople. If I ask you the question I ask all the time in class, “So what is your intent as a salesperson,” they all say, “Well it’s to sell. It’s to close a deal.” And the problem is when people sense that from you, they resist. They put their hand over their wallet. As soon as I sense you’re trying to take money from me, I put my hand over my wallet and I guard it. As soon as I go where we want you to go, which is the intent of being helpful, helpful or being resourceful to someone, then all of the sudden I’m much more warm and I’m much more open to you. And so from a inner game standpoint, my mentality, ‘cause I want to be helpful and resourceful for people, I don’t want to sell people things. They will buy things from you if you show up with the intent to help them. They will resist you if you show up with the intent to sell to them. And you should rewind that sentence and listen to it over and over and over and over. And so you try to figure out what is my intent when I show up. Your intent can then go into words and you can say that to people. My intent when I meet someone for the first time is literally just to determine if I think I can be helpful for them, and I’m real pure about that, and sometimes helping them means that I do a deal with them, sometimes helping them means that I introduce them to somebody else that might be helpful in another way. And that’s just how I show up and my energy’s there and people can sense that, and they’re drawn and attracted to that. That’s inner game principal number three, helping versus selling.

#4 Inner Game Shift: Expert Positioning

And the fourth now inner game principal – and this is a real big one, we’ve talked about this a lot – this is how do I see myself, and we call this in our work now expert positioning. So I ask myself, my mentality, my inner game, do I think of myself as an expert in my business or do I think of myself as a salesperson? And if you think of yourself as a salesperson, you will be treated like a salesperson. There’s a little special place for salespeople in the office, right. They get kicked out, set in the corner, they don’t get called back, they don’t get followed up on. That’s where salespeople go. Experts get called on, they get invited in, they get asked to the table, they get engaged with. That’s how experts get treated. Salespeople – and it’s so funny for me to see this – they are so well positioned to be experts, all of them are because all they do is run around and talk to people all day in the business, yet none of them see themselves that way. And so you’ve got to start to catalog and think about all the stuff you know about your business, and consider yourself an expert in whatever it is that you do versus seeing yourself as a salesperson.

Okay, the best way to handle this is to take those things – abundance, detachment, intent and expert positioning – and laminate that stuff and carry it around with you and own it. That’s how you’ll get the most out of this little bit about inner game. We will continue to talk about that stuff, and as you know from listening, this is the most important thing that we teach for sure. If you join us please on our LinkdIn group, Linkdin.com, you go to Advanced Selling Podcast LinkdIn Group, feel free to post a question there, and if you’re interested in Caksey and Friends, you can go Caskeyandfriends.com, spell out the A-N-D, Caskeyandfriends.com, if you want to come join us and see us speak in Indianapolis on June the 27th. That is all. See you next time. Bye.