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Dennis Collins: Welcome to another episode of Connect and Convert, the Sales Accelerator Podcast where small business owners learn insider secrets to grow their sales faster than ever. And talk about fast. How about my partner in crime, Leah?

Leah Bumphrey: Hi, Dennis. How are you doing?

Dennis Collins: Doing great. We have another great topic today.

Leah Bumphrey: Yeah, I’m excited about this one.

Dennis Collins: I hear this from some clients. I’ve heard it for years from people that I’ve coached and trained. How come nobody told us this? How come nobody helped us with this? The one essential selling skill you really don’t hear much about from the sales trainers. Okay, now I don’t know about you, Leah, but I am like, does the word or phrase “training junkie” come to mind?

I would be a training junkie. I love to get trained. I love to do training. As a manager and a business owner, I purchased hundreds, if not thousands of hours of sales training. So, I’m kind of a 360 guy on training. How about you?

Leah Bumphrey: Well, it’s an area that I’ve always loved. I do not have the same amount of experience as you do, but boy, I just love the idea of taking something that you know and showing someone else.

I think you would have been an incredible person to work for in terms of you know how to do it. You know how to sell. You also know how to give that information to people and change it up for different people. I’ve been in situations where having an internal trainer is a cost-saving measure but end up missing stuff.

They may be great at sales but man, they have no idea how to take those skills and give it to someone else. Or they might be great at training, but they have no idea what’s really going on in the real world of sales. So that’s why your insights — I love them because you do both fabulously.

Dennis Collins: Well, I appreciate that.

Yeah, the DIY can be messy, I know I have had to come in after a DIY and I’m thinking of one right now. It was a radio station group in Iowa of all places, and I had to go in and clean up a DIY mess And I will tell you the president and general manager was a smart MBA, a very smart person, but unfortunately did not have the training chops. Did not have the ability to do the training. Had great operational skills and tried to do the DIY as a cost-saving measure and it was not so good.

So today we’re gonna talk about one particular thing that has been missing in all the training that I have had, and I try to make it part of any training that I perform. Let’s set the stage.

Leah Bumphrey: Okay.

Dennis Collins: You just had an awful sales conversation with a prospective customer. You tried everything to engage, to understand their situation, to build some type of rapport, to uncover their pain, to look at their buying strategy, how they going to make this decision. You really and truly want to help them solve their problem, but you couldn’t get to it. You couldn’t crack this particular customer. So it was a failure, not a success. Nothing went right. There was no connection. There was no discovery and therefore no sale. Okay. So, if you’re like most people, that’s not your only call of the day. It’s on to the next call.

Okay. How are you feeling, Leah? How do you think our little Sammy salesperson would be feeling at this point?

Leah Bumphrey: You know what? It is the exact opposite of how he felt before going into the call. Cause you’re going in, you’re ready, you have your information, you’re ready to go. You’re so excited about what’s going to happen next.

And then you’re deflated. It’s asking what happened. You’re trying to analyze. What could I have done better? What did I do wrong? Why did I not see this coming? It’s just a heavy weight that can come heavy because it didn’t go the way you were hoping, planning, wanting.

Dennis Collins: As you know, you’ve heard me compare selling skills to professional golfers. You a bad hole.

They go shoot a double bogey, a triple bogey, three, you know, two or three shots over par, and then they got to go to the next tee and tee off on the next hole. Guess what? Professional golfers are trained in what to say to themselves, and what to think when they’re standing there on the next tee after a horrible hole.

A horrible performance. What do you say to get yourself back in the right frame of mind? They actually have psychologists. There was one guy that I used to study. Can’t think of his name right now, but he was a psychologist for golfers. That’s all he worked with. And he helped them at that moment of truth when they’ve had a bad performance on the last hole, and they’ve got to go perform on the next hole.

Wow. So, if they can do it, we can do it, right? So, I don’t know, maybe you don’t have this voice. I have this little weasel voice in my head that’s constantly playing. Is that voice up there in Canada? Do you get that voice?

Leah Bumphrey: Oh, there are whispers. It’s an echo. Sometimes it’s really, really, really, really loud.

Dennis Collins: Yeah. So, you know what that weaselly little voice is saying I can’t win. It always goes this way. Why? I’m a screw-up. I’m a failure. I’m never going to get this right. I’ve obviously done something wrong. Even when I had a success, it was pure luck. I mean, I should be doing a lot better. I’m a failure.

Ooh. What do you do? What’s the impact of those thoughts on your next call? I don’t know about you, Leah. I know you’ve been around the sales profession for a long time. Your dad was in sales. You’ve been in sales. Almost every salesperson I ever ask about this assures me of this.

The customer will never know that I’m pessimistic, that I’m negative, or that I have a lack of confidence. They’ll never know. Every person I’ve ever asked, how are you going to handle the next call? Oh, I’m fine. I never show it to the customer. What do you think about that, Leah? Is that a reasonable position?

Leah Bumphrey: You know what? It’s not. What it is, it’s an attempt to go where you should towards something more positive, but it’s an attempt that’s based on a bad foundation. It’s impossible to just shrug something off and say, nobody’s going to see.

Dennis Collins: I’ve talked about this before on this podcast. I have the amazing pleasure, the wonderful pleasure of listening to a lot of recorded sales conversations.

I mean a lot! And I can tell from the beginning of the sales conversation, the confidence level now of certain people because I’m used to their cadence. I’m used to the way they talk. I’m used to the way they interact with a customer. I can almost predict from the first 5 to 7 minutes of a sales conversation, their level of competence and the likelihood (or lack thereof) of them succeeding.

It’s so easy and apparent when you know what to listen for and the customers’ antennas are always up. They’re looking for any reason, any chink in the armor, any doubt will be magnified. So what do we do about this? When I was learning to sell this was not a topic in any training that I’ve taken. It’s not a topic. You’re tough. Come on, buddy. Get back in there. Just get out there. And you know, it’s like when you fall off a horse, get back up on the horse, shrug it off, just go do it. Is that good advice? What do you think?

Leah Bumphrey: Well, again, the motivation is right. You’re trying to inspire someone to feel a different way, to be more positive, to move forward.

But the foundation of doing it like that isn’t because strong. Most of us don’t respond to this feeling go, go, go, go, go. When you’re not in that mindset, it’s easy to be cheerleading when you’re already cheerleading, even for yourself. But when you’re down here, you don’t just jump.

Dennis Collins: So, you know, I came to the conclusion, that it’s not necessarily the training that failed.

It’s what’s been left out of the training. What hasn’t been said? Again, I always have to do my science. You know, I always put this somewhere in the podcast. Optimistic salespeople. Here’s our nerd alert. There it is. The nerd alert. Producer Paul didn’t forget the nerd alert.

Love it. Optimistic salespeople sell 56 percent more than their pessimistic counterparts. Sandler, which is one of the world’s most famous sales training organizations, has normed that on thousands and thousands. That’s good enough for me.

So today I just want to introduce a topic. We’re going to do more on this because there’s not enough time in one episode to cover this. It’s a complicated topic, but important. Here’s the missing element in sales training. Understanding resilience. What is resilience? It’s the ability to bounce back from a difficult situation, adapt, and maintain your purpose, and your well-being in the face of adversity.

How hard is that, Leah? I mean, that’s a nice definition. Easy or hard?

Leah Bumphrey: Well, both actually. It’s hard when you don’t know how to do it, but like anything worth doing, the more you practice it, the more you consider it, the more you kind of meditate on why and how and where it is that you’re coming from and where you’re going, the easier it becomes.

Sales are not unlike so many things in life that you have to be consistent at, that you have to have a plan for. The more you do it, the easier and the more part of who you are it becomes, and it just is ingrained in what you do. So, both.

Dennis Collins: From what I hear you saying, it’s a skill that can be learned and practiced. Would that be accurate? Did I hear you correctly?

Leah Bumphrey: Absolutely. That is correct.

Dennis Collins: I totally agree. And science agrees with you. It’s not about avoiding negative experiences. Some people say, well, I just won’t do the negative. Really? Then you’re not going to be in the human race. I mean, we have it every single day.

Leah Bumphrey: Have you ever seen some people, not necessarily just in sales, Dennis, but there are some people who had a charmed childhood. They had a beautiful life.

They had everything materially. They had every opportunity provided to them. It was just this yellow brick road all the way to the Emerald City. And they are a mess, and their parents can’t figure out why is. It’s because they never had to develop resilience. Now I’m talking about a broad scale, but it applies to you.

Your career in sales. If everything has been hunky dory fantastic over the last year that you’ve been in sales or the last 10 years, oh man, you haven’t learned anything. You haven’t learned how to deal with it. That’s what you’re talking about.

Dennis Collins: Somebody early in my career spoke to that and said you know what you’re getting into a profession that has the highest of highs and the lowest of lows. Wow.

Cause I was a commissioned salesperson. I didn’t get a salary. I didn’t get any guarantee. If I didn’t sell, I didn’t get paid. So, you know, it’s pretty easy to figure that out. But nobody taught me resilience, you know, so it’s self-taught or self-learned. So, I want that to stop right now. I want to do my little part on Connect and Convert, to talk about resilience.

Realistic optimism is one of the skills that we will talk about to practice resilience. Remaining positive but still being grounded in reality. Not denying reality, not saying negative things don’t happen to me because they do, but being realistically optimistic. The other phrase that I like is the role of meaning-making. What is meaning-making?

I think it’s the most critical aspect of resilience. How do you maintain a positive perspective in the face of evil, the face of adversity. In the face of failure, when confronted with negative experiences, how do you find ways to make sense of them? How do we get meaning from that struggle and reflect on it instead of asking what’s not happening, asking what is happening?

What are the lessons we’ve learned? What strengths are we developing from that negative experience? Finding a purpose that the struggle is not all for naught. Does that make sense, Leah? Is that something you think our listeners and viewers would appreciate hearing?

Leah Bumphrey: Well, what I like about it is that it’s a real tangible way that it can improve. Doesn’t matter what it is that you’re selling. It doesn’t matter what business you’re in, it’s real, it’s tangible and it’s not,”Oh, the power of positive thinking…” You know, you have to just, “Yes, yes, yes. It’s a blue sky outside.”

No, no, no, no, no, no. That makes me upset.

Dennis Collins: Boy, you said it. Back in the day that was the answer to all this stuff. Well, you just have to do affirmations, and positive affirmations and think positively. If only it were that easy, that’s certainly a step in the right direction, but that’s not the deal.

Resilience has many aspects and guess what? We’re going to talk about that in a future episode. I want to do a deep dive into resilience for salespeople. What is it? What are the negative biases that we have? There are basically six negative biases that could be categorized. We all have one that we’re really good at.

We’re all good at at least one of those negative biases. And there are eight ways. So, a tease for the next time.

Leah Bumphrey: There’s just so much good information there. Absolutely. It’s important. I was excited, Dennis, after our last episode, where we were responding to a listener’s question about books that we would recommend.

And I spent a little bit of time thinking about it. And there are some great sales books. But for my kids who are not in sales but love understanding the psychology behind it, I have always recommended to them Napoleon Hill, Think and Grow Rich. It is the basis of so many programs that are out there.

And I don’t care how old it is. He lays it out. He lays out the premise of moving forward with business in such a quietly logical way that man, I mean, so many other authors have taken that format and ran with it. So, if you haven’t read that, pick up that book and read it. You can find it at a used bookstore. It’s well worth it.

Dennis Collins: You know, it’s interesting you say that. I have that book on the shelf over here behind me. I have been reading it again. I mean, it is still inspiring, motivating, actually stuff that we talk about here on this podcast. Other people in the sales lane are talking about that and all started way back then.

And it’s still true today. I highly recommend it, I’m glad you brought that up. That’s just not for sales. That’s just for general knowledge, just people’s knowledge of why people do things. How they do it and why they do what they do. Motivations… Great book.

Leah Bumphrey: And it’s written a lot about the way you and I interact and the way we present this for our listeners and viewers because it is a mixture of the Nerd Alert information, science, and the stories.

Thank you, Paul. But it mashes together in a beautiful way that’s real. So I’m thrilled to hear that you’re rereading that. There’s actually a workbook and I ordered it for my middle son Jonah. Because it pulls you through the steps in such a neat way and you can’t find that in a used bookstore.

You have to order it. It’s still in print. It’s hard to find.

Dennis Collins: Good for you. Well, that’s a great thing to gift to a child, to anybody that really cares about improving themselves, becoming a better person. And isn’t that what it’s all about? That’s right. I want to close with a story today.

You know, we talked about theory, but I also like to always give you a story. I’ve recently watched a very competent salesperson, in one of my clients’ businesses go from a pretty high level of success to a much lower level. Very concerning. So I’ve had talks with him and his management about what changed.

And during a coaching session, I learned about some of the negative noise, as I call it, that he was struggling with. And you know, there’s no way to know this. He’s not going to tell people about this. He’s a guy. He’s tough. You know, get back in the game, but he remembered that when he was hitting all his numbers, he was the confident, self-assured, optimistic person, and he acknowledged that the situations that he’s been facing have turned him around and caused him to be less confident and more pessimistic because of the setbacks.

This is resilience in practice. I am currently working with him on his resilience skills. Again, I won’t take all eight at the same time, but we’ll take one and we’ll master them. And that’s the challenge I would issue to our listeners. The first step to creating a positive frame is self-awareness.

You know, we have system one brain and system two brain. And system one brain runs 90 percent of our stuff every day. They’re automatic thoughts and we don’t listen to them. They’re just in the background. Start to recognize those thoughts when they appear, those negative thoughts.

How do those thoughts make you feel, make you act? That’s the first step, Leah, to getting a hold of the negativity bias. Much more on this in future episodes.

Leah Bumphrey: This is a great topic. I’m really looking forward to diving deep.

Dennis Collins: It’s one of my favorites as well, and I can’t wait to share some of the stuff that I’ve learned and stuff that I’ve used that didn’t work and stuff that I’ve used that did work. We share everything here on on Connect and Convert. Not just the wins but also the losses. Sometimes you can learn more from your losses than your wins.

Leah Bumphrey: Yeah, absolutely.

Dennis Collins: Okay, we better say goodbye and thank you listeners and viewers for your time.

As always, we’ll be back every week. Make sure to tune in to the next episode of Connect and Convert, the Sales Accelerator Podcast. See you next time.

Leah Bumphrey: See y’all.

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