The next four weeks are dedicated to TeleSales Twisting Dan Waldschmidt’s new book Edgy Conversations – How Ordinary people Can Achieve Outrageous Success… so new that it doesn’t really release until April 2nd! Don’t worry you don’t have to wait order your copy today.
Why? Well I think that Dan hits the nail on the head with this very personal account of success.
This is also why I’m going to give you the TeleSales Twist both as part of Monday’s Inside Sales Leadership Corner and my Wednesday posts that are focused on inside salespeople over the next four weeks and look at each section of the book:
* Extreme Behavior
* Disciplined Activity
* Giving Mindset
* Y(h)uman Strategy
When it comes to inside sales leadership, there are two things that struck me as critical:
FIRST – are you talking yourself out of action?
We talkourselves out of action before we even get started.
We spend time, mental energy and emotion trying to look good rather than getting results.
We debate the plan rather than working on it.
We make excuses for our mediocrity.
pg 38
Leadership isn’t easy, it’s difficult. There are days when you don’t feeeeeel like it perhaps it is a lack of physical – mental – emotional energy.
Take a moment and think about the last time you:
* were short with one of your salespeople because you felt drained.
* said the right things in a meeting – without any intention of doing something once you left.
* argued over a silly little point that really didn’t matter when measured against getting to the end result.
* pointed a finger at someone else, instead of yourself when things went wrong.
Of course I’m not saying any of that is an every day thing – I’m saying that it might be a habit of tiredness; when you’re tired, stressed, or beaten down. Check yourself, are you giving in instead of getting up and being the BEST leader you can possibly be – always?
SECOND – Are you always learning?
I love Dan’s definition “Learning is about capturing the lessons that are happening all around you”
Make sure you are paying attention! That may not sound like an extreme behavior but paying attention uses up a lot of that energy we just talked about.
In order to learn, you have to realize there is a lesson happening right now! Then catalog the situation along with the lesson.
Plus you then need to figure out how you will implement the lesson (so you don’t have to learn it again.. and again… and again).
Here are some question strings Dan gives us to help find and learn those lessons:
“ Tell me more…”
“I’m not sure I understand…”
“What makes you say that?”
“Can you clarify what you mean?”
pg 55
Do something today that incorporates a lesson you learned immediately into how you lead your team (and yourself). Continuous improvement is a an extreme behavior that will set you apart from the pack.
Want more … of course you do … well:
* buy the book
* read the next post (and the posts through April 9th)
* listen to Sales Coaching over Coffee to hear Dan chat with me April 10th at 1:00 NY Time (just click on that Listen2Lynn button on the left there).
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