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48: Get even more from 2019 · Cyber Go-To-Market Talk: The Cybersecurity Podcast About Cyber Sales, Marketing & Revenue Growth

• 0:33
  SPEAKER_00: 25 years ago, Oasis sang, Don't loop back in anger.
• 0:38
  SPEAKER_00: But how do you feel about looking back at your 2019?
• 0:42
  SPEAKER_00: Learn a great framework to reflect on the positives and negatives from last year in this episode.
• 0:55
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome to the Bite-Size Sales Podcast, where we believe that sales is the most important team in a B2B company, that the sales team deserves great sales training delivered online because it sucks spending days out of the field or off the phones.
• 1:10
  SPEAKER_00: And we believe that taking bite-sized steps each day to get better at your craft is the best way to improve your results.
• 1:17
  SPEAKER_00: I am your host, Andrew Monahan, and I'm using my 20 plus years in B2B sales to bring you simple, actionable ideas that you can use every day to help you get better.
• 1:28
  SPEAKER_00: Before we get to the topic for today, this episode is sponsored by Sales Bluebird.
• 1:34
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• 1:41
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• 1:56
  SPEAKER_00: Sign up right now at salesbluebird.com.
• 2:02
  SPEAKER_00: So welcome to episode 48 of the Bite-sized sales podcast, and this is our first episode of 2020.
• 2:10
  SPEAKER_00: New decade, new year, new beginnings.
• 2:13
  SPEAKER_00: And for most of us who have experienced a kind of financial year end just now, we're now into planning mode or even executing mode into the new year.
• 2:24
  SPEAKER_00: When we're looking at planning and thinking about this year, I would say there's probably three traps that we tend to fall into that I've seen again and again.
• 2:33
  SPEAKER_00: One is to only look forward, right?
• 2:35
  SPEAKER_00: To look at what's coming up in 2020.
• 2:38
  SPEAKER_00: I think that's a mistake because I think there's a lot to learn, good and bad, from 2019.
• 2:43
  SPEAKER_00: The second thing that I've seen people fall into, the second trap is the only thing about very factual things, performance results, right?
• 2:52
  SPEAKER_00: In our world in sales, they think about performance against quota.
• 2:55
  SPEAKER_00: What did I sell?
• 2:56
  SPEAKER_00: What did I earn?
• 2:57
  SPEAKER_00: Very factual things like that.
• 2:58
  SPEAKER_00: And I think there's a lot more to be learned as you reflect deeper than just those surface level results.
• 3:05
  SPEAKER_00: And then the third thing is that we tend to want to focus just on thinking about positives that happened and less so on negatives, you know, for good reason, right?
• 3:15
  SPEAKER_00: Where salespeople in general are very positive type people.
• 3:19
  SPEAKER_00: We think the outlook looks good, and we don't necessarily like to look back at some bad things that happened the year before where we failed or we didn't do things well enough.
• 3:29
  SPEAKER_00: But there's a lot to be learned from that.
• 3:30
  SPEAKER_00: You know, one thing that's true is things in general are never as good or as bad as you think.
• 3:37
  SPEAKER_00: In our world of highs and lows, you know, as you know, we can go in an hour and half an hour from a super high to super low, uh, especially as you're trying to get deals closed and get them in the door and you get setbacks along the way and things like that.
• 3:52
  SPEAKER_00: But if you really sit back and you go, well, you know, things are never quite as bad or as good as you think they are, right?
• 3:58
  SPEAKER_00: They're somewhere more in the middle than we believe.
• 4:01
  SPEAKER_00: And I think that's true as we reflect, as we take the time at the end of the year to reflect back on the year before, we have that arm's length distance, that that uh sense of appreciation from what happened months before to know, well, I don't remember at that time.
• 4:17
  SPEAKER_00: I thought it was terrible, but actually it wasn't as bad as I thought, or I thought it was awesome and we weren't doing quite as well as I thought we were.
• 4:23
  SPEAKER_00: So that's true.
• 4:24
  SPEAKER_00: And you know, we're now at the point where we can live back in 2019, reflect properly on what happened, and do some deep reflection that we don't do enough on.
• 4:34
  SPEAKER_00: As I say, you know, very easy to look at the surface level indicators, but the real learnings can happen as we look a lot deeper and ask ourselves some very tough questions about how we felt, what we think we did well, what we didn't do well, why that is, things like that.
• 4:52
  SPEAKER_00: So I recently went through an exercise with Peter Shallard.
• 4:55
  SPEAKER_00: Uh Peter is known as the shrink for entrepreneurs, and he has that uh that sense and sensibility about sales and entrepreneurship that I think is so valuable, but also that knowledge and experience around psychology of planning, psychology of goal setting.
• 5:13
  SPEAKER_00: And a big part of what we went through with him was looking back.
• 5:16
  SPEAKER_00: So I want to steal and borrow some of the questions that he was asking us and give them to you.
• 5:21
  SPEAKER_00: So as you follow along, think deeply about the questions I'm asking.
• 5:26
  SPEAKER_00: Challenge yourself to really put some thought in.
• 5:28
  SPEAKER_00: Then this might, I think there's only seven questions I'm gonna give you, but it might take you an hour to go through.
• 5:33
  SPEAKER_00: But that hour is so valuable when you really think about what you can learn from this.
• 5:37
  SPEAKER_00: So let's get into this.
• 5:39
  SPEAKER_00: The first one is what is the biggest that was me moment in 2019?
• 5:46
  SPEAKER_00: So this is challenging you to look back and say, you know, you get your strengths and weaknesses, your values, beliefs, who you are as a person.
• 5:53
  SPEAKER_00: And there's gonna be times in the year where you felt like that was a moment where I was absolutely in my zone.
• 5:59
  SPEAKER_00: I was doing things I love to do that I'm very good at, and I just felt awesome when we were doing it, right?
• 6:06
  SPEAKER_00: And this it might be in a sales cycle, it might be dealing with you know prospects, it might have been after the sale, whatever it is.
• 6:13
  SPEAKER_00: There'll be moments as you look back, it'll give you energy to think about what those moments were.
• 6:19
  SPEAKER_00: Next question is what new capabilities did you master last year?
• 6:27
  SPEAKER_00: So in Peter's world, capabilities are are skills, are things that you can do now, right?
• 6:32
  SPEAKER_00: Things that you do as opposed to think.
• 6:35
  SPEAKER_00: So, you know, it might have been I I got better at, or I was I really mastered the outreach by LinkedIn, let's say.
• 6:43
  SPEAKER_00: Or I I spent a lot of time because I had a number of big deals on negotiation skills, and I really mastered how to negotiate these big deals I've got going on.
• 6:53
  SPEAKER_00: So it's gonna be things that you learned last year that you're not really, really good at.
• 6:58
  SPEAKER_00: So let's celebrate those.
• 6:59
  SPEAKER_00: And then the next question that he had was what behavior really caused you to win?
• 7:05
  SPEAKER_00: So this is like a follow-on.
• 7:07
  SPEAKER_00: So if you look back at the things you were doing last year, what were the things that you actually did?
• 7:13
  SPEAKER_00: So again, these are you know, I think about behaviors as things you could video record yourself doing, right?
• 7:18
  SPEAKER_00: If you can't video record uh it, it's not a behavior, right?
• 7:22
  SPEAKER_00: So it might have been what beh what behavior really caused you to win.
• 7:26
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe it was uh, I don't know, your your morning routine.
• 7:30
  SPEAKER_00: It might have been how you approached your prospecting, and you were adamant that you were gonna do a couple hours of outreach through five different channels in 2019.
• 7:39
  SPEAKER_00: You did it and you had this huge pipe that was that was quality and you could follow through on, and you you didn't feel the stress at the quarter end because you had so much padding in there.
• 7:47
  SPEAKER_00: So, what behavior really caused you to win last year?
• 7:52
  SPEAKER_00: The next question is what capability is lacking or let you down?
• 7:58
  SPEAKER_00: So, this is the color rate to the what behaviors you mastered, but or what capabilities you mastered, but which ones let you down?
• 8:06
  SPEAKER_00: When you when you look back at where things weren't going well for you last year, what was it about your own skill set that just was not up to par, was not good enough in your mind to really get you through or or avoid many of the challenges that you faced?
• 8:22
  SPEAKER_00: You know, talking about the prospecting, right?
• 8:25
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe your prospecting wasn't consistent enough, right?
• 8:28
  SPEAKER_00: And you the way you were doing it wasn't effective, and it was very me-oriented rather than you know, buyer-oriented or or prospect-oriented.
• 8:36
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know.
• 8:36
  SPEAKER_00: There's lots of things that could be.
• 8:38
  SPEAKER_00: Challenge yourself to really be honest with yourself and be tough on yourself as well.
• 8:42
  SPEAKER_00: Is that there's bound to be things that let you down last year?
• 8:45
  SPEAKER_00: What are those?
• 8:47
  SPEAKER_00: Next question is what negative behavior or missing positive behavior caused you grief last year?
• 8:56
  SPEAKER_00: So this is the the follow-on, right?
• 8:58
  SPEAKER_00: So this is things that again, behaviors are things that you do that you could actually record yourself and video doing.
• 9:03
  SPEAKER_00: So, what negative behavior caused you grief?
• 9:07
  SPEAKER_00: I I know one for me always I struggle with over the years is is procrastination at certain times, right?
• 9:12
  SPEAKER_00: So that to me, that's a that's a negative behavior.
• 9:14
  SPEAKER_00: I'm I'm sitting here at my desk, I know I should be doing things, but I'm putting them off for whatever you know, deep psychological reasons.
• 9:21
  SPEAKER_00: I do that.
• 9:22
  SPEAKER_00: And at various times that that rears its ugly head with me.
• 9:25
  SPEAKER_00: And I I procrastinate things that I shouldn't be procrastinating.
• 9:29
  SPEAKER_00: Uh and maybe you have something similar, maybe you have something completely different, but there's gonna be things that you were doing last year which caused you problems.
• 9:37
  SPEAKER_00: Next question is what were the biggest accomplishments in the past year?
• 9:45
  SPEAKER_00: And I think the easy thing to do here is to say, you know, things like you know, performance against quota, if you were strong on that, or earnings, you know, against your goals, things like that, right?
• 9:54
  SPEAKER_00: And that's not bad, don't get me wrong.
• 9:56
  SPEAKER_00: But beyond that, what was there that might be a little bit softer that were your biggest accomplishments?
• 10:02
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe you took on a big challenge, and maybe this might be even your personal life as well.
• 10:06
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know.
• 10:07
  SPEAKER_00: But you know, there's things that you took on, and you you you you ran this big project and you did very well with it.
• 10:13
  SPEAKER_00: There were some things that you were identified last year as you being weaknesses, and now you've really conquered them and you've shored them up, and they're no longer weaknesses for you.
• 10:22
  SPEAKER_00: And then the last question, I think this might be the most powerful one of the whole lot, because I think it gets us focused in the right mindset, which was what was the most extraordinary value or customer experiences experience that you created last year?
• 10:39
  SPEAKER_00: So I like this because it's not just about the wins, right?
• 10:43
  SPEAKER_00: It's not about bookings and getting above quota, but you know, if you look at the customers, the prospects you worked with in 2019, which were the ones that you sold and then we delivered against the promise, and they received all this huge outcomes, huge values they weren't getting in the first place, and made a real big difference to their business and their lives.
• 11:05
  SPEAKER_00: If you can think about two or three of those, I think it gives you one, it gives you energy to say, I want to do more of that, because we like those situations where we help our customers achieve great things.
• 11:16
  SPEAKER_00: But secondly, it gives you great stories going into this year.
• 11:20
  SPEAKER_00: If you're looking for those great customer stories, you can say, you know, just last year I was working with someone just like you.
• 11:27
  SPEAKER_00: Here's where they were before, and now here's where they were after.
• 11:30
  SPEAKER_00: So I think this is a very powerful question.
• 11:32
  SPEAKER_00: So those are the seven questions that I picked out of the ones that I worked with with Peter Schaller's team on.
• 11:38
  SPEAKER_00: My action for you on this is take a good hour, maybe an hour or two, think deeply about these questions.
• 11:45
  SPEAKER_00: Don't just kind of skip over them and jot the first thing that comes down in your mind.
• 11:49
  SPEAKER_00: Really go deep and see what you can learn as you're going through this.
• 11:53
  SPEAKER_00: And then the important thing is once you've done that, is say, well, how can I take the thoughts I've had in this reflection and put them into what I want to do in 2020.
• 12:07
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• 12:15
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• 12:17
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• 12:23
  SPEAKER_00: It will mean the world to me and it could make a difference to those you share it with.
• 12:28
  SPEAKER_00: Also, I need your suggestions, please.
• 12:31
  SPEAKER_00: If you have a topic you want me to cover or just want to get in touch, simply email me at upside at unstoppable.do.
• 12:39
  SPEAKER_00: That's upside at unstoppable.do.
• 12:44
  SPEAKER_00: And now to wrap up, training without implementation is just entertainment.
• 12:50
  SPEAKER_00: And pretty poor entertainment when I deliver it.
• 12:53
  SPEAKER_00: So make sure you take action on what you learned today and keep getting it better and better each and every day.
• 12:59
  SPEAKER_00: Also, this world does not need more sales BS.
• 13:03
  SPEAKER_00: So please don't create any more.
• 13:05
  SPEAKER_00: Be great at the fundamentals, be honest, be real, be yourself, just do not BS.
• 13:12
  SPEAKER_00: And finally, I'm signing off as the great Joe Sexton would by saying, gone to sell.