A Hit Streak; It’s What You Look for in Sales

75 years ago, Joe DiMaggio’s legendary 56 game hit streak was underway. 75 years later, experts say it is probably the one record in Major League Baseball that will never be broken.

While baseball players measure their hitting success by hit streaks, the same attitude measures true in sales. Let’s take a look at key lessons an historic feat by a Hall of Famer brings to your sales game:

Belief

Baseball, like sales, depends on plenty of failure on your way to success. In baseball, you fail to get a hit 70% of the time at the plate, and you are considered one of the better hitters in baseball! You can be the top salesperson in your company. They keep score of who has the highest revenues per month in sales, but no one keeps track of the batting average in sales (successful sales v. sales attempts).

You can bet the top performers are keeping track of that score. They are constantly sharpening their skills to improve and make their sales attempts, their best effort for success. For Joe DiMaggio, his secret to hitting success was putting the ball in play. DiMaggio believed that as long as he could hit the ball there was a chance that it could be hit where a fielder wasn’t. During the 56 game hit streak, DiMaggio struck out only 5 times during the span of the 56 game hit streak (223 AB)! Belief in what you do drives the behavior of winning.

You may need to work overtime

In sales, you need to schedule your day, so that you maximize activity. You need to regularly be focused on sales activities during your day, and schedule all the non-sales activity during non-selling time. If you don’t want to sabotage your selling time, then you have got to plan on putting in overtime.

One fact that is overlooked, is that during DiMaggio’s hit streak he played in 7 doubleheaders! 25% of the days in that hit streak, Joe worked overtime!

Tomorrow is another day

Not every day is a success, and you will encounter setbacks. As long as you put forward your best effort, you cannot ask more of yourself than that. Remember that tomorrow is another day, and that you will make a difference when you consistently put forth your best effort.

The day that the hit streak ended, do you think Joe DiMaggio was disappointed? You better believe he was!

DiMaggio also knew that tomorrow was another day, and he proceeded to go on another hitting streak 16 games. A hit in 72 of 73 games; Amazing!

I'm Possible

This quote is painted on the wall of where my daughter takes gymnastics classes.  When I first noticed it, I decided I had to take a picture of it.

Think about a time when you were quick to say that something is impossible.  How did you determine that it was not possible?  Was it a genuine fact that it was impossible; or was it more likely that in order to make it possible was going to involve two of the most important words in sales?

These two words are what most sales people want to avoid, and at the same time achieve great outcomes.

If you haven’t guessed the words yet, I will provide you with the answer:

HARD WORK

Now before you argue with me that you work hard, I am not suggesting you are lazy.  You know those days when you have put in 12 hours, you’re wiped out, and at the end of the day you feel that you have accomplished less than you expected, and feel there is still more to do?  It is more likely that we are keeping ourselves busy with the easy things, rather than working hard on the difficult things (things we may even believe are impossible).

The truth is that working on the hardest things, can actually make it easier for us.  My experience has been that most sales people are not willing to do the hard work that will make things easy.

Next week is an annual event: Groundhog Day

While the Groundhog will make its assessment on the arrival of spring, what if we would make an assessment of what we are willing to change today: working on something difficult, that come spring time, would make things easier?

Here are some suggestions that you could work on as a company:

• What is the # 1 problem we need to solve as a company that would make our business easier?
• What is our competition not willing to do, that we would be willing to do?
• What have our customers been asking us to do that we have been saying is “impossible”?

What about working on your individual skills?  It’s easy for us to avoid learning, and practicing things, because we talk ourselves into “I already know that!”  The tough question we should be asking ourselves is: “How good am I at that?”

You will be limited by your weakest points.  Yes, it will take HARD WORK (there are those words again), and improving your weakest points to the level of your strengths would be like going from winter to spring!

Think about this.  You could be a great sales person, but if you are weak at prospecting or networking, it is going to be difficult for you to keep your funnel full with new business opportunities.

Here is a list of some things you could focus on as a sales person:

• Prospecting
• Networking
• Role playing
• Time management
• Reading
• Writing
• Recording your sales presentations
• Public speaking

The list could go on with any areas where you need to get better.  My challenge to you is to pick one, and schedule a daily amount of time that you can commit to working on it.  Do that, and you can make what you believed impossible, to become possible.

I’ll be interested to hear from you.  Personally, I am looking to focus on writing 30 minutes a day.  Eventually, I will be able to regularly write articles worth sharing.

Good luck to you, and make the impossible, possible!

Chris.

We Have No WIFI Here…..

What happens when you hear these words?  Does anxiety set in?  Perhaps you are relieved that you have a moment to unplug?

I had the great opportunity to attend a meeting last week to see a fantastic speaker, Dan Barnett, talk about Make or Break Cultures, and how you can get extraordinary results from your team.

Norma was our group leader for this event.  She shared this picture from her recent trip to Iceland where she saw this sign at a café.  Norma reminded us that we were there for a couple of hours, and that we should shut off our cell phones, so that we could all take advantage of working together, and learning valuable new strategies that Dan would help us bring back to our businesses.

The result: people left the room energized; armed with new ideas to work on their business to achieve new levels! If we as business leaders and managers were this disciplined more often, what could be achieved?  Well, 3 very important things would happen:

1. Employees get better at making decisions
2. You get better at solving problems
3. You find more opportunities

Sounds good doesn’t it?  Let’s take a closer look:

Employees get better at making decisions

Think about when you experience reading the umpteenth e-mail that you have been cc’d on volleying a decision back and forth.  As the boss, you decide to end this, by replying the solution, and move on.  While you may feel a temporary sense of achievement, like the gun slinger that shoots the bad guy, you have set yourself up for a bigger problem.  

When you jump in to solve these problems, your employees are learning that the best ways to solve their problems are: “Just ask the boss.”  The employee gets their problem solved, and if the decision ends up being a bad one, who takes responsibility?  It’s not the employee, it’s YOU!  The employee misses out on a valuable learning experience. You are welcome to argue that you don’t want them to make a mistake.  I would suggest that you let them learn and grow by making mistakes; just like you did.  

Your job as a leader is not to solve everyone’s problems.  Your job is to hire results-oriented problem solvers.

You get better at solving problems

As a leader, you are responsible for solving the big problems, the Godzilla problems!  

Have you ever noticed that you come up with some of your best ideas when you are away from your office?  Maybe when you are out for a walk, or even in the shower?  It’s not by accident.

When you unplug your phone, and get away from the office, you now have the opportunity to focus on solving problems unlike you could before.  Can you re-call a time when you solved one of your most important problems, when you were being constantly interrupted?  I doubt it.

You find more opportunities

What kind of opportunities will you find?  How in the world should I know? Here is what I do know: that you never know where the next idea or valuable client may be.

That next valuable client could be standing right next to you when you are in line at Starbucks. You could strike up a conversation with them, or you could be scrolling through Linkedin on your smart phone searching for someone to send an “I'd like to add you to my professional network on LinkedIn.” e-mail.  It’s your choice.  I will choose striking up a conversation every time.

If you are interested in other ways to unplug, read my other post on Digital Hygiene.

Coincidence or Not??

A colleague shared this picture with me recently.  I love it so much that it is worth sharing with others. 

For many of my years, I have felt that having a positive attitude is THE most important trait you can have to be successful in anything that you want to achieve.  The debate has raged on for centuries about what it takes to achieve success: knowledge, skill, hard work, positive attitude, power, etc.

This picture finally gives proof, and settles the argument: When ranking important traits, ATTITUDE scores 100%!

There are still some non-believers out there that would argue with me: Positive attitude alone cannot get it done!

Congratulations non-believers!  You get a small victory here.  The picture here shows three traits:

KNOWLEDGE

HARD WORK

ATTITUDE

Think of a three-legged stool.  If you are missing one of these legs, such as HARD WORK, the stool will topple over.  So yes, you need all three.

Now let’s think a little differently.  Instead of three-legged stool, let’s make it more personal, and think of our own body.

KNOWLEDGE is your brain.  Focus on continuous learning, and the strength of the brain grows and keeps your skills razor sharp.

HARD WORK is your muscles.  Continuous hard work strengthens your muscles, your endurance, and makes what once were difficult tasks now easy.

ATTITUDE is your oxygen.  This is the fuel in your body that breathes life into everything that you do.

Think about this: you are the smartest and hardest working person on the planet.  Now, hold your breath for 30 minutes.

How well did you do?  Without oxygen, there is nothing!

That is why when we look at KNOWLEDGE, HARD WORK, and ATTITUDE, ATTITUDE scores 100%!

So here we are today, right around the mid-point of 2015.  So far in your achievements this year you could be struggling; you could be killing it.  Whatever your situation may be, start by focusing on a positive attitude first, as you get ready for the 2nd half of 2015.

P.S.  If you want to focus on improving your attitude and sales skills, you can get a FREE 5 DAY PASS for Gitomer VT.  Use Code: 2068 or Chris Polek when registering.  Register Here

Enroll by July 31, 2015, and receive a FREE copy of The Little Gold Book of Yes! Attitude by Jeffrey Gitomer.

Digital Hygiene

Last month, I participated at Business Technology Association’s Winter Break at Disney.  A fantastic event with record attendance, and I must confess that the brief escape from what has been a long, cold New Jersey winter was not too shabby.

During many conversations, I was asked: “What do you think of the event?”

I remember talking with someone, and explaining that my favorite thing about an event like this is that everyone has an opportunity to physically be away from the distractions of their business, and get the opportunity to talk with each other.

Have you noticed that there is an unfair balance in communicating electronically versus actual conversation?

Conversations have evolved to telephone, to voice mail, to e-mail, to text, to Facebook posts, to Twitter.

Of course it is super convenient, and at the same time it has thrown off a huge imbalance.

You see a couple sitting in a restaurant, meals on the table, and each of them are staring at their smart phones.  Is each person zoned in to their own smart phone, or are the two people having a very stimulating conversation via text? You start wondering 20 years from now; will we even talk with each other at all?  Perhaps, it will be because we have forgotten how.

Many know that I am a big fan of Seth Godin, and Seth’s blog this weekend inspired me to think about this communication dilemma more.  Here it is, short and powerful:

Five steps to digital hygiene

Washing your hands helps you avoid getting sick.

Putting fattening foods out of your reach helps you stay slim.

And the provocations and habits you encounter in the digital world keep you productive (or drive you crazy):

1. Turn off mail and social media alerts on your phone.
2. Don't read the comments. Not on your posts or on the posts of other people. Not the reviews and not the trolls.
3. De-escalate the anger in every email exchange.
4. Put your phone in the glove compartment while driving.
5. Spend the most creative hour of your day creating, not responding.

Each habit is hard to swallow and easy to maintain. Worth it.

Click here to read Seth’s blog

I hope Seth’s message had a positive impact on improving your digital hygiene.

# 5 was the step that resonated most with me.  Choosing to write and share this message, instead of cleaning up e-mail.  If it made you think about which of Seth’s steps you need to take action on, then writing this was all worth it.

Which step was most valuable to you?

Did You See Your Shadow?

It’s that time of year.  Nature’s greatest weather prognosticator will have its day!

The Groundhog will officially tell us if Spring is coming early, or if we are looking at six weeks more of Winter.  Where I live (New Jersey), I look out my window and see plenty of snow on the ground.  I’ll be focused on Winter for a bit more.

Regardless of the Groundhog’s forecast, Spring is coming.  Whether you feel it in the climate, or it is the first day of Spring (March 20).

What if the Groundhog were to come into our business, and give us a prediction where our business is so far in 2015?  How would we react to that prediction?

January is a weird month.  Everyone is trying to get back in the groove after a lengthy holiday break.  Some have even spent time setting lofty aspirations (perhaps too high) on what they plan to accomplish for 2015.  We hit the ground running full of excitement.  A week goes by and we’re still busy, productive, and it doesn’t quite seem like the first week.  Next, activity starts to wane off, and we get discouraged because we don’t see immediate results.

This would be the equivalent of the Groundhog seeing its shadow, and running back to the burrow (six more weeks of Winter).  I would encourage you not to do that.  I am not saying throw out your goals altogether, rather, start looking at some smaller accomplishments that will create a win for you.  You will feel better about yourself as you accomplish things bit by bit.

I am a big fan of baseball.  I have attended well over a thousand games in my lifetime.  I have seen countless times where the opposing team scores five or six runs in the first inning, and when the top of the first is over: it’s quiet, and you see depressed fans.  My attitude is: what kind of fans are these?  All we gotta do is get one run baby!  We’ve got nine more innings to go!  Score one run an inning, and we can catch up!  I can also tell you that I have received many looks from fans that roll their eyes at that comment.  I don’t let those non-believers bother me.  They’re probably leaving in a couple of innings to avoid the traffic anyway.

Maybe 2015 has started off like gangbusters for you!  That’s great!  The Groundhog hasn’t seen its shadow, and Spring is coming early!

Your biggest challenge is remaining focused, and staying consistent; don’t rest on your laurels.  There is still plenty of time left in this year.  Just because you had a great month to begin 2015, doesn’t mean that you get to take the remaining 92% of the year off!

Regardless of whether today in your business it looks as if Spring is coming early, or if there are six more weeks of Winter, take Dale Carnegie’s advice and live in day tight compartments.

My philosophy is to work hard, give value, and be nice to people. Live it day by day. By the end of a year’s time it really adds up to something.  Try it.

The Return of The Elf on the Shelf

This past Thanksgiving weekend The Elf on the Shelf made her familiar return to our home.  If you have young children, grand children, nieces, and nephews, you are probably all too familiar about the impact these little scout elves have added to Christmas tradition.  In my opinion, what the smart phone did to the mobile phone industry is similar to what The Elf on the Shelf has done to the Christmas Season!

For those of you unfamiliar with The Elf on the Shelf, these scout elves are sent from the North Pole to help Santa Claus manage his Naughty and Nice Lists.  Once a family adopts an elf, and names it, that elf receives its Christmas magic and can fly to the North Pole every night to report the day’s activities to Santa.

So when our elf made its annual return the morning after Thanksgiving, it wasn’t only the start of the Christmas season; it was the beginning of weeks of good behavior of our two young daughters.  Well, perhaps the effort of good behavior would be more accurate!

So this got me thinking.  What would happen if an Elf on the Shelf were in our businesses at this time of year?  How would that shape our behavior?

Perhaps we would be more productive.  Maybe starting our day 30 minutes earlier, and finishing our day 30 minutes later?  Did you know that adding one hour of productive work time each work day, adds up to six work weeks over a year!

If you are in sales, what if instead of getting to the office on time, you planned to meet with a client or prospective client before heading into the office?  That would add up to another 250 sales appointments over a year!  What type of impact would that have on your sales results for the year?

What about your dedication to skills training and self improvement?  How good of a student were you in this area last year?  What are your plans to be a better student this year?  Do you want to be a better student?  If so, start with this: stop telling yourself: “I already know that.”, and ask yourself: “How well do I do that?”

Since we are dedicating that extra six weeks of work to our year, here are a couple of ideas:

Resolve to read one book each month.  Don’t just make it all about business.  Make sure that 50% of the books are about motivation, attitude, and self improvement.

Find two other sales colleagues and schedule one hour per week to practice role playing sales scenarios.  Why would three people be the magic number?  One person plays the role of the sales person, one person plays the role of the customer, and one person plays the role of the observer.  Take 10 minutes to role play a situation, and 10 minutes to discuss amongst the three of you how things went.  What went well?  What you would have done differently?  Then switch roles.  In the one hour, everyone gets a chance to play each role. 

The best thing about this type of exercise is that it is practice.  Not practicing with your colleagues, means that you are practicing on your customers and prospects; is that what you really want to do?  If you and two colleagues are disciplined to schedule this once a week for an entire year, all three would be on your way to being sales experts!

I hope these ideas helped you think about what you could focus on for next year.  If you could just master one of them over the next 12 months, what type of impact would that have for you?

So you may have experienced that The Elf on the Shelf does an excellent job at jump starting our behavior.  If that is what you need, I suggest you go out and buy one.

The real challenge is all up to you.   Can you maintain the daily discipline for the long term?  If you said yes, get ready to reap the rewards!

Important Life Lessons from an NFL Player

All Pro NFL Defenseman JJ Watt recently stopped by a youth football game, and gave some words of advice.

Although he was talking with young kids, his advice was meant to be for what you do throughout life.

Here are some of the highlights:

“Play because you love the game.”  If you don’t love what you do, then get out of the game and find a new one.  When you love what you do, it shows.  When you don’t love what you do, it shows.  Love it, or leave it.

“Work hard.”  Pretty simple, not much explanation required.  I would also add don’t get discouraged, when other people are doing better than you.  Just know in your heart that you have done your best, and that you will strive to get incrementally better every day.

“Listen to your coaches, parents, and teachers.”  People want to help you succeed.  Whether it is family, friends, employees, peers, teachers, or mentors; listen to them and accept their help.  JJ fully admits that he didn’t get where he was today, just because he was better than anyone else.  He had great coaches, parents, teachers, and friends that challenged and encouraged him to do his best, and sometimes it meant doing things that were hard.

“Take the right road.”  I don’t think JJ could have put this any plainer, whether talking to a child, or an adult.  He simply says: “You know the difference between right and wrong.  You will have chances in life when you will reach a road where there is the right way and the wrong way.  Take the right way every time.”

“Do your homework.”  Your parents told you all through your school years.  Once you grew up and got your business cards, you may not have had homework.  Your real homework is to be prepared.  Are you prepared everyday you go out to that business meeting, or sales appointment?  People today are busier than ever.  Be prepared, and don’t waste their time. 

People appreciate when you are prepared, and bring value to the time you schedule with them.  People don’t want to do business with people that waste their time.

Here is a simple rule for sales on what customers want:

Customers are looking for you to help them accomplish something they are not, or they are looking for you to help them avoid something they are going through.  If you cannot be prepared to do this for customers on your appointments, you may want to think about getting out of sales.

“Eat your vegetables.”  I would guess that your doctor would support that comment no matter what age you are.

“Listen to the people who are trying to help you, and avoid the people who are trying to bring you down.”  Hang around positive people that want nothing but the best for you.  They will help you succeed.

Don’t let negative people rain on your parade; move past them.  They will only bring you self doubt, and lower your self-esteem.

Here is the actual video, which is about 2 minutes.  The video is not well lit, due to the time of day.  However it is more important for you to listen to it versus what you see:

Everything has Meaning

“No experience is ever wasted.  Everything has meaning.”

This is the message that was staring me in the face the other day as I drank my coffee on the way to the office.

Until I get to discuss that with Oprah one day, I did spend a lot of time thinking about the phrase on that coffee cup and what it meant to me.  If I really wanted to focus on all my experiences, the easiest way to categorize them would be good and bad.

Bad experiences should be viewed as a learning experience and the opportunity to turn a negative, into a positive.  Negativity is not your friend.  Negative thoughts do nothing good for you.  Your productivity is reduced.  Stress and worry rise, even to a point that could trigger anger.

These negative thoughts will just drain your energy, and make it more difficult for you to get traction going for a positive attitude.

Ever had a “BAD” day?  Sure you have; we all have.  At the end of the day, were you energized or were you exhausted?

Here is a good rule to practice: Whenever you have a bad experience, give the negative thoughts on that experience a maximum lifetime of one hour, and move on to positive action.

It would be foolish to let something small like a rude encounter with someone during your commute to work sabotage your entire day.  Aside from yourself, you could begin to breed negativity amongst others, which could have a domino effect, and put you in a deeper hole.

On the other hand, with a serious bad experience, the same rule applies.  After an hour, negative thoughts are not helping you.  You have to get over it, so you can ask yourself: How can I focus on this problem and turn it around?  You can’t do that when your mind is focused on negative thoughts.

A great example of this is one of our state’s (New Jersey) most famous entrepreneurs Thomas Edison.  He wasn’t just the guy who invented the light bulb, he is the guy who discovered thousands of ways that a light bulb would not work.

I would have to say, from my experience, that bad experiences are easier to handle.  The reason I say that is because a bad experience is like a cold slap in the face; a wakeup call. 

Good experiences, while they make us feel happy and fulfilled, can be dangerous as well.  Believe me, I am all for focusing on a positive attitude.  The one thing to be aware of is that long streaks of good experiences also start to build denial and complacency, and you need to make sure that they are kept in check.

I see this happen in areas like sales all the time.  Sales people should work on improving their skills day by day, and incrementally improve to be the best they can be.  However, when I discuss skills training with many business owners, and sales people, the attitude is: “We really don’t need that right now, because business is good.  We have done that before, and we know all about it.”

Rather than just say: “I know that already.”  Ask yourself: “How well am I doing that?”

Strive to be the best sales person you can be.  The reality is that most likely there is a better sales person out there than you, and you may just be lucky that they don’t work for your competition (yet).

I have also seen companies talk about how their business this year has been one of the better years they have had in more than five years, which is fantastic news.  I would also ask: “What needs to improve in my business to keep the momentum going?”

Recessions come and go, and recession proofing your business is a full time job; even more so during the good times.  If you would like more ideas on recession proofing your business read my article here.

Two important questions:

Bad experiences: “What am I learning from this?”

Good experiences: “How can I improve on this?”

The answers can very well be the key to your success!

As Oprah says: “No experience is ever wasted.  Everything has meaning.”