Sales Essentials: Ramp-Up Course

The Success Triangle

How do we become successful at sales? There's what we call the success triangle - the BAT triangle. It doesn't matter what you do in life, any endeavor you get into. Let's take baseball. If you want to be a good baseball player - specifically when we're talking about hitting - you have to get up to the plate. There are fundamentals: how you stand, the distance to the plate, how you hold your arms, how you swing the bat. Those are all what we call techniques. You have to be good at your technique to be successful.

You also have to get up to bat. I can have the best technique, but if I don't get up to bat, I'm probably not going to get better at hitting. So that's technique and behavior. But then there's the third part of the triangle: attitude. What we think, what we feel when we're up at the plate. If I'm saying to myself, "This pitcher throws the ball too fast. I can't hit the ball" - that's a belief, that's a mindset, that's an attitude. And with that mindset, I'm probably not going to be successful over time.

It's the same thing in selling. We have techniques around selling - everybody comes to training to learn how to get past a gatekeeper, how to ask really good questions, how to overcome the prospect's buying system, how to take control of the process. Behavior relative to selling is going out there and doing it: cold calling, prospecting on LinkedIn, networking in person, going to trade shows, asking for referrals, doing free talks. There's a lot of behavior associated with developing and bringing in new business. Technique and behavior are big, but in sales, attitude is just as important to being successful.

I've asked this question over a thousand times across 18 years of doing this: if you had to assign a percentage to attitude, behavior, and technique - all three adding up to 100% - what percentage would you give attitude relative to success in selling? Every group I ask, if I take the aggregate and average it out, people come in around 60% to 65%. Some of you put 30 or 35 - and it might not be an issue for you. But a good majority of us believe that attitude has a lot to do with success in selling. Based on that feedback, if we didn't spend one of these eight sessions dealing with mindset, I believe that would be malpractice in sales development.

The Eighth-Grade Dance

I'm going to tell a story. It's embarrassing, but I'll tell it to make a point. I went to Safety Harbor Middle School in Safety Harbor, Florida. We had this eighth-grade dance - 6:00 to 9:00, in the gymnasium. All the girls were on one side, all the boys on the other. I had a best friend named Mike, and I really liked this girl named Bonnie Bergeron. I tell this story hoping Bonnie Bergeron is not in sales and doesn't show up to one of these sessions someday.

My buddy Mike kept pushing me: "Jim, ask her to dance. What is wrong with you? It's quarter to nine. You've got 15 minutes." I'd been telling him for an hour and a half, "I've got to ask her." So I finally beeline it over to Bonnie, I ask her, and she says, "No. I don't want to dance with you." I go back to Mike and say, "I knew I shouldn't have asked."

Mike says, "Don't worry about it. I'll get somebody." So Mike goes around asking every girl, "Hey, do you want to dance with Jim?" "No." "You want to dance with Jim?" "No." Five or six nos - and then, "Yes." So here's my question: why was it so easy for Mike? Why did I sit there and agonize over it for two hours?

**Participant:** He wasn't the one getting rejected. You were technically getting rejected through him, so it was a pretty objective, third-party view.

Exactly. Now raise your hand if you have to prospect for new business. You don't have to answer this out loud - just answer it internally. When you have to pick up the phone and call someone, or go out and meet new people, or ask - who do you feel more like? Me, who took forever to ask Bonnie to dance, or my friend Mike?

Here's the dirty little secret. Once I figured this out, everything changed around prospecting. When we started, our behavior cookbook required 40 cold calls a day - 200 a week, 9,600 a year to presidents and business owners in the Chicagoland area. I hated it. It scared me to pick up the phone. And once I figured it out, I realized I felt like I was asking Bonnie to dance every time I called someone. But that's not the case. I'm not calling for me - I'm calling for Sandler, for sales training. It has nothing to do with me personally. Once I figured that out, the whole thing changed.

If I said I'd give you $200 cash right now to pick up the phone and call 50 business owners in Chicago - all you have to do is ask, "Hey, are you interested in sales training?" You don't even have to reach them. Just dial 50 numbers. Would you do it? Of course. If I had to cold call for you, it would be nothing. But when I have to cold call for myself, there's suddenly this weight on my shoulders. And that was the breakthrough: it's not about us.

Identity vs. Role: The IR Framework

Some people said, "Jim, you're taking it personally." So what does it mean to take something personally?

**Participant:** In insurance, our biggest fear is asking for referrals. After we've earned someone's business and they like us, if we ask about a neighbor and they say no, it feels like a direct reflection of me personally - as opposed to hiding under the umbrella of State Farm until that moment I stick myself out.

**Participant:** It's not about me. If somebody tells me no - I mean, sometimes I might come across a person who just doesn't like me, but that's very rare. Most people really like me. But when somebody tells me no, I know it's about their budget or pain points I haven't uncovered yet. It has nothing to do with me personally.

That's a phenomenal mindset as a salesperson. It may come across as arrogant, but it's not - and if you genuinely believe that, people will like you. And that's the key.

So let me share what it actually means to take something personally. There's a concept we talk about in Sandler called Identity and Role - IR theory. Imagine a baby born today at the hospital. A normal baby - all fingers, all toes. On a scale of one to 10, with 10 being a perfect human being and one being worthless, what number would you give that baby? I'm getting a lot of tens. Of course.

Now fast-forward two years - the terrible twos. What number would you give that same baby now? I'm seeing eights, some lower numbers. Fast-forward to 16 years old. Same person. What number? I'm getting ones now.

Here's the thing: your value as a human being always stays at a 10. That never changes. But you also have roles in life. You're a student. You're a friend. You might be a parent. You might play a sport.

Let me tell you a quick story. A friend of mine lives on a cul-de-sac in Chicago, and whenever a new family moves in, they throw a block party. A family moves in from California - they have one kid, Mike, eight years old. All the parents say, "Make him feel welcome." So they invite him to play basketball at the gym on Saturday. Mike is excited, dad drops him off, they pick teams - and when they throw Mike the ball, he starts running with it. "Whoa, whoa - what are you doing? You have to dribble." Turns out Mike doesn't know how to play basketball.

The second week, the team captains are arguing: "If I get Mike, I get three players because he's so bad." They're not even passing him the ball. "Why don't you be the water boy?" Kids can be brutal - "Loser. Can't even play basketball." The third week, his dad says, "Hey Mike, it's Saturday, you want to go play?" Mike says, "Dad, I'm really sick."

Is he really sick? Of course not. He's hearing messages - "Loser, water boy" - and he's starting to let those messages affect how he sees himself. And here's the thing: Mike is a one out of 10 as a basketball player. He genuinely can't play. But as a student, he's in the grade ahead of everyone, straight-A student - a 10. Mike thinks because he's bad at basketball, there's something wrong with him personally.

This is going to be tough as a salesperson. If we start taking our role performance personally, it's going to be a tough career. You're going to get hung up on. You're going to get rejected many times. That's just you as a salesperson - it has nothing to do with who you are personally. Our job as sales trainers is to build your spine up to be steel, so that nobody touches who you are. They only get what you do.

I'll be honest - when I started Sandler in 1996, my role side was absolutely impacting my identity side. It took a long time to build that up. But if you can build a spine of steel in sales, you are going to be good.

Winners, At-Leasters, and Non-Winners

If you think of yourself on an identity scale, seven to ten puts you in what we call the winner group. Four to six are at-leasters. Zero to three are non-winners. What attributes does a winner have? Confident, resilient, optimistic, authentic - a lot of words apply to what we'd call a life winner.

What about the opposite - zero to three? Lazy, victim, reactive, no ambition, afraid to take risks. And the middle group, the at-leasters? Mediocre. They do just enough. They get by. They're excuse-makers.

Here's how this ties to selling. Imagine a horizontal axis that represents time - Q1, Q2, Q3, Q4 - and a vertical axis representing sales, correlated with that identity scale. Take a salesperson we'll call Wally Weak Closer. Wally's an at-leaster, a four-to-sixer. His sales slump in Q1, and his manager calls him out. Wally thinks, "I'm bad? I ain't this bad." So he performs up to where he sees himself. End of Q2, he's had a great quarter - and now he thinks, "I'm good? I ain't this good." And so he drifts back down. Wally four-to-sixes his entire sales career because that's his comfort zone. "I don't have what it takes to maintain top salesperson. I'm comfortable where I am."

The rule is this: you can only perform in your roles in a manner consistent with how you see yourself conceptually. If we can build up the identity side, sales performance will follow.

Situational Belief and Head Trash

Think about walking into a big first meeting - a really large opportunity. What's the self-talk of a winner going into that call? "I've got this. They'd be crazy not to use us. How can I help them better? I don't even need this sale." Now contrast that with an at-leaster going into the same opportunity: "I'm nervous. I hope I'm ready. This is going to be hard."

If you're a prospect and two salespeople come in to see you - one believes you'd be crazy not to work with them, the other is hoping you like them - would you be able to detect the difference? Absolutely. And here's a rule we'll come back to when we get into bonding and rapport: people don't remember what you say, they remember how you make them feel. If you go in nervous and unconfident, people don't feel good. And if they don't feel good, they're not going to invite you back. But someone who is self-assured, humble, and confident makes you feel like you'd be making the right decision - and we haven't even started selling anything yet.

That at-leaster mindset can creep into all of us. We call it head trash - stuff we think is true but really isn't, and it impacts how we perform. How successful you will be is almost entirely determined by how you talk to yourself.

Here are some examples of head trash I've heard over the years. "Prospecting is a waste of time." "We're a commodity - people only care about price." "It is my job to educate my prospect." That last one is actually the number one negative belief in selling, according to research. What it really means is: in order to sell, I have to do unpaid consulting. I know some of you are pushing back right now - "You don't understand my business." I get it. Just keep an open mind; we'll come back to it. Other examples: "If they're happy with their current provider, I can't help them." "I don't want to seem salesy." These are beliefs that will not help you move someone from initial contact to client.

The Belief Wheel

Here's one of the best tools I know for managing your mindset. We call it the belief wheel. Let me give you an example using my own experience.

My coach Dave would check in with me every two weeks on my cold calls. He asked me once, "When you're making these calls and people are saying no - have you tried asking for a referral?" I thought that was the stupidest idea I'd ever heard. Who gives a referral to someone cold-calling them and basically hanging up? I said exactly that. And he asked me, "Jim, do you think referrals won't work because you believe it, or because you've actually tried it a hundred times and it failed?" I had to admit - I'd never tried it. I just knew it wasn't going to work.

So he gave me a script. Let me show you how it went. Let's say I'm cold-calling Andrew, and Andrew says, "Jim, we're not interested. Thanks for the call." Here's what I'd say: "Hey Andrew, appreciate that - doesn't sound like we can help you. Before I let you go, maybe you can help me out. I don't know if you know anybody in your circles - a networking group, a close group of business owners - someone who's frustrated with their sales results and would be open to a three-to-five-minute conversation similar to the one we just had. And if not, no problem."

I tried it with a CEO named Cliff Maudlin at Marketing Specialists in Chicago. He said, "Yeah, I know a guy - Doug." He sent Doug an email, told him to expect my call. I called Doug. He's been a client of ours for 15 years. I had to go back to my coach and admit it worked. And I was furious, because that meant I had to keep doing it.

Here's how the belief wheel works. I believed asking for referrals on cold calls wouldn't work. Because of that belief, I imagined what the prospect was thinking: "I don't even know you - there's no way I'm giving you a referral." Because I assumed they'd think that, I didn't ask. Because I didn't ask, I didn't get referrals. Which reinforced the original belief. It's a self-fulfilling prophecy.

What needs to change first - your belief or your actions? In reality, you just have to act and challenge the belief by doing it. It's like the gym. If I wait to feel energetic before I go, I never go. But if I just show up and start working out, I walk out feeling great. As Mark Twain said, "It isn't what you don't know that gets you in trouble - it's what you know for sure that just isn't so." And the rule we come back to in Sandler all the time: it's not how you feel that determines how you act - it's how you act that determines how you feel.

Rewriting Your Self-Talk Before a Call

I was getting ready to do cold calls one day, and I asked myself: how do I feel right now? Nervous, anxious, and apathetic. Thought precedes emotion - I can't feel that way unless I'm saying things to myself that cause it. So I asked: what am I saying to myself?

Here's what came up. "I hate cold calls." "I'm a pest" - my dad used to yell at salespeople who called during dinner, and I always imagined I was calling my dad. "Nobody's going to be interested." "This is a waste of time." "Cold calling doesn't work." And at 40 years old: "I can't believe I have to do cold calls at my age. This is for people just starting out." That's a lot of head trash, and it's not any one thing - it's the cumulative effect.

But that voice inside you is like a kid. It lies to you. It manipulates you. So I started asking: what is actually true? If I didn't make cold calls, I wouldn't have my top two clients - both of them came from cold calls. I was actually pretty good at the process - I had people tell me, "I usually hang up on salespeople, but I like your style." So maybe I wasn't a pest; maybe it was just the approach other people used.

Is it a waste of time? Let me do the math. 40 dials took me about an hour and a half. In those 40 dials, I typically reached four to five people. With a solid 30-second commercial, I'd get two to three interested per week - either a meeting booked or a strategic follow-up on my touch plan. That's roughly 12 leads a month, 120 leads a year over 10 active months. I could close something out of that. Not a waste of time.

And then: "My services are 10 times the value of the investment." That's true - I tripled my income in the two to three years after I started applying Sandler. "Not everyone needs what I sell, but those who do will be very glad I called." Prospecting is nothing more than a sorting activity. My buddy Mike: "You want to dance with Jim?" "Nope." "Nope." "Nope." "Yes." No sweat. Just keep sorting.

Here's what I know from doing this exercise: I've had people email me after doing it before a sales call saying it made a real difference. The time to do it is not the night before - it's 30 minutes before you make the call. You're essentially choosing which version of yourself makes that call: the one drowning in head trash, or the one with a clear, honest, accurate mindset. That's a choice you can make. You can discipline your mindset right before a call to get into the right state and execute flawlessly. It works. Don't take my word for it - try it 10 times before any uncomfortable situation and see what happens.