[024] Using Challenges to Help Your Sales Team Win, with Jeff Baietto from Injoy Global

Connect with Jeff on LinkedIn.

Jeff‘s Bio
Jeff is the COO and Co-Founder of InJoy Global, Host of the InJoy Success Podcast, and Co-Creator of the revolutionary personal growth platform – My Challenge Creator. Jeff has a Master’s in Spiritual Psychology, and a background in the video game industry, along with years of experience in executive coaching and personal development. With this cocktail of gamification and positive psychology, Jeff is on the cutting edge of what makes changing for the better, easier, and faster than ever before.

Jeff’s Links
https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeffbaietto/

https://www.injoyglobal.com/

https://www.mychallengecreator.com

[00:00:00] Jason: Hey, what’s going on, everybody. Welcome to another episode of the scalable call center sales podcast. Today with me, my guest is Jeff Baietto from Injoy global. So he is the CEO and co-founder of Injoy global host of the Injoy success podcast and co-creator of revolutionary personal growth platform.

[00:00:21] The, my challenge creator. This is going to be fun because he has a master’s in spiritual psychology background in the video game industry, uh, as well as years of experience in executive coaching, personal development. And essentially he’s taken all of that and built a platform that gamifies. Knowledge, education transformation, all kinds of things.

[00:00:43] Uh, and so we’re going to talk about how this applies to the call center to sales, to inside sales, to basically everybody. Uh, Jeff, welcome to the scalable call center sales

[00:00:53]

Jeff: podcast. Thanks Jason. It’s so great to be here.

[00:00:56]

Jason: All right. So this is a podcast for call centers for inside telephones sales leaders, business owners.

[00:01:04] Right. You know that, um, and in most of those situations, which, you know, they’re some kind of game of education in place. Usually the classic is here’s a spiff or a contest close these deals, or do this many phone calls today. And I’ll give you $5 or a lottery ticket, or I’ll give you this, or you can win a TV.

[00:01:23] And, you know, they’re driving these incentives, whether it’s daily, weekly, quarterly, monthly, you know, putting deals and stats on the whiteboard. Like that’s the classic, let’s just say gamification mode, even though it’s not really in that sense. And of course there’s different apps, but let’s talk about kind of your background, what you saw as a need for development for individuals, for companies.

[00:01:46] Well, it’s a platform for individuals. Now, you started in corporate life with enjoy and, um, you know, where that makes the shift and helps people out there.

[00:01:57]

Jeff: Yeah, thank you. So you, you know, when it comes to people, um, no matter what job they’re in and salespeople, you know, sales is tough. So, uh, there’s an added layer of challenge and certain things that can support sales people, but people fundamentally want for things to really engage and to bring their best self forward.

[00:02:14] And those four things across all industries and all professions are, they want to feel valued. They want to feel connected to others. They want to feel like what they’re doing is contributing to a bigger picture and they want to feel like they’re growing professionally and personally over time that they can stop and look back and say, I’m a better version of myself today than I was six months ago or a year ago.

[00:02:35] So why that’s important is to the degree that you can create that environment, you can bring out the best in your people. And I think we all know, especially when it comes to sales, there’s usually 20% of the people who are doing 80% of the sales. And the goal is if. Some of the people in the 60% in that middle group who are doing okay, if you can get them to just, up-level just a little bit, that can be exponential growth for your business.

[00:02:57] So when you’re catering to what our basic fundamental needs are to bring our best self forward, it’s much easier to, you know, elevate the masses, not just your top performers, but everybody so that you get maximum performance from, from all of your, uh, all of your teams.

[00:03:15]

Jason: Well, and I love that approach because I see a lot of leaders in organizations, let’s say sales leaders, sales managers, just focusing on that top group or trying to find more of the top group, right.

[00:03:27] That 20% that are doing 80% of the deals that work. Um, but you’re right. I mean, if you can move the middle up even just a little bit, maybe they’re never going to be the superstars, but if they can do better consistently, right. Because one of the things. Sales, you see a lot of people go up and down, which is tough on the business, tough on the person, mentally, emotionally morale for the team.

[00:03:51] If you can, even just even out the ups and downs, like over a day or week or month, whatever that cycle is, then I’ve seen that have huge. Differences for the organization and the bottom

[00:04:02]

Jeff: line. Absolutely. I mean, to your, can I just to your point? Yeah. You know, a lot of times, if people would analyze what’s differentiating the great from the good it’s consistency, the great are performing consistently.

[00:04:15] Over time, not just having one good month or one good week, they’re consistently performing. So I think for when it comes to sales that we always have to just kind of back up and look at it and say, what’s different between this group and this group. And really, it’s not the training. Everyone’s getting the same training.

[00:04:30] It’s not the tools. Everyone has access to the same tool. So what is it? And oftentimes if you ask the top salespeople, what are you doing different? It’s just like, well, I do. Every day and they’ve got a ritual and they’ve made them habits. And that’s what we found is we can help people create new habits, which typically is very hard.

[00:04:46] But if you can, then people get the benefits. Of upleveling themselves. And they can see that in real time because it’s usually behavior is the precursor to performance. Right. So if we can just get them to do the behaviors that all modeling that’s Tony Robbins is big deal. If we could model more of the behavior of your top performers, then everyone, you know, then that’ll raise everyone’s game, even though they might not ever be that top person, they can all get better.

[00:05:12] We can all get.

[00:05:14]

Jason: So, how have you found obviously with the platform that you’ve built, but where does that help build those habits and the discipline, especially in terms of, you know, the classic debate of how many days it takes to build a habit, right? 21 30, 66, a hundred, never, you know, how have you approached that with your background and then what you do.

[00:05:38]

Jeff: Yeah, I think it’s important to realize those are a lot of there’s a lot of numbers thrown out there in terms of how long it takes the form of habit. But the reality is if anyone’s ever started going to the gym and that was a commitment, it doesn’t matter if you went for two weeks or three weeks or four weeks, if you stop going.

[00:05:53] You’ve lost it, right? Like there’s a lot of times I was a runner for a while. I ran every day for years now I don’t run. I don’t have that as a habit like we can. So the point of this is, is personal development and professional development is an ongoing game, right? It’s something that we do have to look at making incremental changes that we can actually continue.

[00:06:12] Long-term and the day we stop doing them, we’re at risk of backtracking, right? So this is, it is like working out. We can’t go to the gym one time in January and feel like we’re going to be in shape for the rest of the year. This is something that takes me. We have to make it a part of our daily routine.

[00:06:28] And that’s why we use. You know, challenges as a way to get people into the momentum of seeing what’s possible. And once they start to get a taste of a better them, better results like that, that’s its own reward. Right? So we use a lot of tricks on the front end to trick the brain to make it easy, to start doing something new that we weren’t doing yet.

[00:06:49] Because that can be uncomfortable regardless of how good it is for us. But once we start to see the benefit of that, and we have some encouragement, we have all that, that environmental support that I mentioned earlier, that people are feeling valued for their efforts. They’re seeing that they’re connected to others.

[00:07:03] They’re not alone. Um, they’re seeing that what they’re doing, no matter how small or how, how new they are, is contributing to a bigger picture and that they’re growing. When that happens, they want more of that. And as they want more of that, they continue to do what got them, that feeling in the. Which gives them the best chance of creating a lifelong, a lifelong practice and habit, if that makes sense.

[00:07:24] So it’s not just again, doing something for, we do 30 day challenges and then you’re done and you’re good forever. Most of our successful clients do they do a challenge every quarter. They give. Uh, way that people can get engaged, start practicing, see if they can keep it going on their own. And then they give them another, another dose the next quarter.

[00:07:43] And as that continues, people do find themselves ebbing and flowing, but less, they start to see like, oh, I’m going to keep this and they can keep that habit longer. Um, and they fall back, uh, shallower. Like they don’t, they don’t lose as much when they’re off, then they come back in better. So it is a, it’s an ongoing process is what I want, you know?

[00:08:03]

Jason: Yeah. And if we look at that workout habit or any habit, there’s always times always cause it’s life where you just can’t be a hundred percent, right. Something is going to happen. Uh, it’s really tough to be a hundred percent on, pretty much any habit that you’re trying to build. The key is that recovery, right?

[00:08:20] Like some things I’ve heard is it’s okay to miss one day at the gym. Don’t miss too. Right. It’s okay to miss one day. This thing, but don’t miss too, because then you’ll really start to slip, which I think that’s part of what your addressing and what you’re seeing again with the platform. Now you said a moment ago that there’s some tricks that you do upfront.

[00:08:41] What are those tricks? Because I know building that momentum, getting somebody to go to the gym, not just the first EV you, most people are excited that first day. It’s like the fourth day when the resorts aren’t there. It’s so you’re sore tired. Like, how do you. Use those tricks that, you know, work with the human brain to get them to start and stop.

[00:09:01]

Jeff: Yep. So if we look at how, how most people want to create change, let’s, let’s stay in the kind of working out arena. Like most people are like, I want six pack abs, or I want to lose 20 pounds. Like, it’s this big goal. It’s not something that’s going to happen overnight. And so they go at it all gung ho and day four they’re in pain.

[00:09:17] Like it hurts, right. So much harder to do something the next day. When, what you felt the day before was pain and you didn’t see the results. Right? So what we have to look at is when we’re looking at setting a goal, we have to know that the 20 pounds or the, you know, the, the next level in our. That’s not a tomorrow thing.

[00:09:35] There’s going to, you know, it’s going to be incremental, but over time. And I think that’s one of those great quotes people, Val, you know, usually overestimate what they can get done in one year, but vastly underestimate what they can get done in 10 and to some varying degree is in terms of time. But the idea here is if you’re feeling that every time you do something.

[00:09:51] If you bite off too much, um, at the beginning working out again, I used to be a runner. I, I thought I should get back into running when I went to run three miles, which was easy for me in the past, but I hadn’t run for a long time. I was sore. I knew I couldn’t do it. I was beating myself up mentally. Like none of this was good and my chance of continuing that was almost zero.

[00:10:10] But if I would set a small goal, just walk around. Walk around like, just something I knew I could do. No problem. I start to get the other side of it, which is the, when I did it. Oh, if I did that, I can probably do one more thing. Now, each thing is starting to build momentum. So the idea here is when we use gamification, one of the.

[00:10:29] Celebrate small, the small incremental wins. Most of us only celebrate the big stuff that happens in our life. And if we’re being honest, we’re not even that good at celebrating that. So what they’ve found from neuroscience is when they study the brain, the brain doesn’t actually distinguish that much from a big win in a small win.

[00:10:45] So if we start to celebrate the small wins, we get all almost all the same physiological and neurological benefits. As we do when we celebrate the big stuff, but we get them all the time. So if we start looking at the things we are actually doing, we made that extra call. We followed up with someone, we did, whatever those things were that we should be counting as wins.

[00:11:03] Those were positive actions in the direction of our goal, but we typically skip over because they’re either we take them for granted or we feel they’re too small to celebrate. That’s one thing when we start doing that, which our platform like gives a simple way to celebrate when. When you do that, and you start looking for small things on a daily basis, two things happen.

[00:11:20] One, you get all those benefits of feeling the benefits of having a win, but it also accelerates getting to the bigger wins, celebrating small gets to the bigger, faster. That’s just one of the tips.

[00:11:31]

Jason: And I think those micro wins are, are really important in, in any goal. And also looking at it small and like, Wherever your goal is right.

[00:11:40] Let’s say losing the weight or, you know, becoming a sales superstar, closing X amount of deals or making this amount of money. It’s not instant. There is no overnight success. There’s no get rich quick. There’s no, you know, instant diet, weight loss thing. It’s going to take time. And again, the key is to play that long game that I found when, especially when you’re talking about sales, like you want to get there.

[00:12:01] It’s about doing these things every day, building the habit, but also building the pipeline, building the momentum. Now I know the trade off with that because I’ve led enough sales teams and also witnessed enough. Other managers is the tendency to not want to celebrate somebody’s small wins. When maybe they’re not performing enough or what you need is bigger.

[00:12:22] So imagine the scenario, Jeff, where I’m a sales manager and I need my sales person to close three deals a day and it’s noon. And they made 50 calls, which could be a micro wind. Hey, you reached out, you sent this many quotes, but we’re losing the game. And so how do you balance that? Or what have you learned?

[00:12:41] Like it’s halftime in the game we’re losing, but everyone’s trying really hard. What do you do about that? Like what are you selling.

[00:12:49]

Jeff: Yep. So good question. And you know, I think again, most top sales organizations or top sales people know that if certain things are being done, if the person is in the right job, right.

[00:13:02] If, if they’re, if they’re a good sales person or have the capability of being a good sales person, if they do these things, results should follow. There are some precursors. They know that if you do this, you know, typically, um, now there are some intangible. Um, which I think is also something to just reiterate, right?

[00:13:19] Not everyone’s built to be a salesperson. So I think that’s one thing, not everyone, you know, it doesn’t matter what you do is going to be an excellent salespeople, but people who are drawn to that, people who do want to make that a career are in it and just want to improve, they have that drive. They have that.

[00:13:34] Most top salespeople would say, now here’s the key to go from here to here. And if you do these things that might not happen today, right? It might not by noon. You still might have a bad day, but you won’t have a lot of bad days in a row. And I think that that’s the important thing for the sales managers to realize is if the entire team is doing more of the things.

[00:13:53] That they know if everyone was doing will definitely increase results. Then over time you start to have clear data, this person, they’re just not a salesperson they’re doing it. They’re just not a sales person. These people are now doing it and they’re seeing the impact. Great. Now they just needed a little nudge, a little support.

[00:14:10] And then my are my superstars. They’re still my superstars. So I think that’s the one thing. If people are doing it and they’re in the right position, then results always go up over time. It might not be on a Wednesday. Within the month within the quarter, unless again, the really the conversation is this just isn’t the right fit.

[00:14:30]

Jason: So one thing that came to my mind just now, and this is kind of related, but kind of not related is the fact that we, as people can only control activities, right? We can’t control results. We can control. How many days we go to the gym, how much you work out, how many calories you try to burn, but we can’t control how much weight we lose, right?

[00:14:51] Like everybody’s different. There’s a lot of different factors. But if you put in enough effort, you should write that formula that you’re talking about in sales, I can control the result, the activities. I can make this many calls a day. I can send this many quotes a month, whatever that is. And that should, if I plant enough seeds, it will equal the fruit that I want.

[00:15:09] Um, in your experience and or with the challenges that you’ve seen successful and the people successful, what’s that balance of celebrating activities that you can control and results you can’t, but those wins that are on the results side, right? The fruits of the labor.

[00:15:27]

Jeff: Yup. So in our current world situation, the.

[00:15:31] I looked at that and measured. And like, we, we know there’s no question of results. We either hit it or we didn’t hit it. We either, you know, we either reached it or didn’t so results are easily. And often the only thing that we look at, but no, one’s confused as to whether or not. You know, got the results.

[00:15:48] So the other thing that behavior is really the thing that, that if we’re going to focus on something that we can control and that we can move in a direction, that’s where we want to focus, because we, we know the results we’re watching those. We’d definitely like that’s clear yes or no black or white, but when you start focusing on the behaviors, which you can control, yes.

[00:16:07] You might be saying like, oh, that’s a small wind that didn’t really like, that’s who cares. That’s not a big thing. It’s not the point. The big, the point is, is that. Triggered something in that person’s brain. To celebrate and put them in a more positive state. They’re a better sales person. Now, the mind psychology of this, they call it positive psychology as a, as a branch of psychology.

[00:16:27] That studies how good we are when we’re in a positive state of mind versus a negative. Now, everybody gets that they’re better when they’re in a good mood. When they’re in a positive state, they’re more patient. They, they, they take more risks. They learn better. All of those things we know intuitively, but just how much better is what the science shows us.

[00:16:43] And it’s not a little bit, we are exponentially better at everything when we’re in a positive state of mind. And the key of that is, is that working with neuroscientists, they’ve found that there are some simple exercises that no matter where people fall on the continuum, we can all learn to move ourselves into a positive state, more frequently and stay there longer with practice.

[00:17:01] Now, when we’re in a positive state sales go up by a lot, that’s it like that the science is not a gray, you know, everything, every single business metric goes up considerably when your team is in a positive state. That’s the only thing I changed, not new training, not anything else. Just getting them into a positive state.

[00:17:21] They make the extra call. They do the relationship building that they need. Like, it’s just all of a sudden, it’s just there, the person that they need to be to close the deal, to build the relationship, to follow up and all those things. I think we all know that again, the difference between these people, what is it?

[00:17:36] There’s something that we in the past said, oh, it’s these things, but we all know if we would model what those people are doing. We would start to get. And so what we’re saying is focused on behavior. That the people who are doing, whether they do it like totally naturally, and they, they’re not even aware of doing it, but these are the qualities of great salespeople.

[00:17:57] These are the qualities of great people, of highly productive people. When you start modeling that. Sure. It might not seem in the moment that that’s a big enough winner. It’s not a big deal. Um, but the balance is if they do that, then over time, you’re, you’re looking at data. These people are doing these things.

[00:18:12] Is that map. And when you have data to base it against, then you can start tweaking. Now you’re playing with a formula. You’re not guessing. Do we bring in this speaker? Do we do this training and hoping that that does something you’re watching their behaviors. Did it translate to the result you want it?

[00:18:27] If not, if you change the behavior and you keep tweaking your formula until you figure out, yeah, this works 90% of the time. Great. Now you’re dialed in and you have a serious advantage in your business versus a group. That’s not using a system for this.

[00:18:42]

Jason: So one of the things that I know from organizations is that if someone’s going to do a challenge or someone’s going to be open to things like this, or training or coaching or feedback or wanting to grow, it has to come from within the organization, right?

[00:18:58] Like everyone’s gotta be on board or it’s gotta be a part of their culture. What do you see as determining factors? You know, with where you started with this platform and your program, it was for companies to run internal challenges with their teams. What have you seen, or maybe on the flip side, what companies have you spoken with in the past?

[00:19:22] Where after you dove into their culture, you said this just isn’t going to work. Like, trust me, like we get start this, but your people aren’t on board. Like what factors, what characteristics, what company called. Must be in place for everyone or the majority of people to want to. Yeah.

[00:19:40]

Jeff: Kind of a challenge.

[00:19:40] We know that upfront, like, because the leadership, the people we’re talking to about this, if they don’t think it’s a good idea, or if they’re not on. That’s a non-starter right. Um, you can’t bring something in for your people that you don’t get, or aren’t a believer in if you’re not going to lead by example, like that’s a, non-starter one of the examples I’ll give is we were working with Thomson Reuters.

[00:20:01] Uh, they have 1200 salespeople, so that was the pilot group that they gave us. They’re all over the. A couple of the things they S they were excited. The team, um, that was bringing us in was excited because they were the culture team and they had just, they’ve been doing trainings. They had lots of great feedback from all the divisions in their organization on the training.

[00:20:18] So this was going to be supporting that culture training. And, um, but they said to us, they said, well, gamification, you know, we’re going to give you the sales team because one they’re self-starters. So they don’t really need. You know, the, they don’t need the motivation of competing against other people.

[00:20:33] And then we highly recommend having prizes and making it fun. Not again. I mean, and I’ll share a little bit about that. There’s just, again, the, the, to, to trick the brain into feeling like we’re playing something, not another thing I have to do, but they said, well, they’re not going to really care about a gift card or other stuff.

[00:20:48] They make plenty of money, but if it works for them, we’ll do it everywhere because this will be like, so we did it and they rolled it out and here are the key things, their VP of sales. Is awesome. Like he is charismatic and he got it. He’s like, you know, 1200 people. I barely see. Like there, they come in once a year for an annual sales meeting, but otherwise they’re kind of on their own.

[00:21:09] Um, this could be really great as a community builder. This’ll be a great way for me just to be kind of seeing what’s going on. So they ran it out, they ran it. And then what they found is one, the salespeople love to just be connected. So these were self-starters, but it still is nice to see that or to feel and be reminded.

[00:21:26] I’m part of a big organization. You know, and I have a lot of other colleagues that are going through the same things. I’m going through some wins, some not wins, but it’s nice to be able to support them. So they found this community element of the challenge, really powerful for what otherwise was just again, a once or twice a year, annual gathering of this.

[00:21:44] The other thing that they found is yes, the salespeople are typically pretty positive people that are self-starters, but it was nice to have something on their phone that was coming and it was branded and it was just on-message and on-point for whatever product or topic or theme that they were all working on together.

[00:21:58] And it was another unifier around content. So the VP could say like, I’m getting my message to everyone on a daily basis, but not having to call everyone or having to be on the phone all the time. So they were getting. A little bit of light reinforcement of the training. They were getting a unifying elements.

[00:22:15] And then the playful aspect of we are going to compete in salespeople we’re naturally competitive. So it did play into a bunch of different reasons and they loved it, which was a surprise actually to the group that we were working, you know, that we were saying, they weren’t sure how it was going to go.

[00:22:29] And when that went well, they were like, oh, this is, this is a really nice tool. Um, not just for our salespeople, but we’ll use this for all.

[00:22:37]

Jason: Well, and I love that example. You’ve told me that before, about how they embraced it and how it was used, especially the unifying. I mean, thinking about now how so many organizations in the past year and a half have had to go remote virtual, spreading people out, right.

[00:22:53] There’s organizations like what you’re talking about. They’ve always been that way or they’ve have little pockets, but they have people all over the place. Um, but now that’s more common. And what can organizations do to keep everyone together and not just zoom meetings, not just slack channels, but like something else that everyone.

[00:23:11] Playing together right there. It’s separate but together, right? It’s like, Hey, I want to win at my game, but I want everyone to do well. And I want to support this community. So I love that. And I appreciate what you said, which has been my experience, which is if the leaders don’t want something or don’t support it, or aren’t interested, then it’s never going to work because it will fall flat.

[00:23:33] When you try to

[00:23:33]

Jeff: put something. And the other thing I just, as a suggestion, is it always just in the positioning, we found just a tremendous difference in the onboarding and the uptake in the initial uptake. Uh, and buy-in when it was positioned as we’ve been listening, like we’ve been listening to you guys as the sales team, and we know that you want some additional tools.

[00:23:54] You’d like to feel more connected. You like a little bit more support. Like that’s almost always true. But almost at any point in any organization, you could say we’ve been, you know, like the sales team would probably want some of those things. So just positioning it as we’ve been listening, we found something we’d like to try.

[00:24:10] Right? Whatever the program is based on your feedback, we’ll either keep it or not keep it right. And now it’s something. You’re putting the power, you know, the power of keeping this new tool, but the intention of it, wasn’t like trying to squeeze more productivity out of us. Um, it was, I think the, you know, what, what I’m hearing is this is what, something that might support you guys and what you’re asking for, which starts to build again more trust and it starts to feel.

[00:24:34] You have more support from, you know, from the management or from, you know, from your leaders, your direct leaders, and that, that goes a long way as well. So the positioning, once the leaders are bought in and they know that this is a good thing, or they like it, it’s not saying, Hey, here’s another thing. It starts on Monday.

[00:24:47] You got to do this. It’s, we’re going to try this because this sounds like something that, you know, we’ve been hearing. And if you like it, we’ll keep it in. Uh, we’ll get rid of it. It’s up to you guys. So give it a try. Hey, it’s Jason

[00:24:58]

Jason: here. We’ll be right back to the podcast in a moment, but first are you ready to help your inside sales team close more deals?

[00:25:04] In my experience, there’s a certain percentage of your team that acts more like order takers than sales professionals. The first step to creating a scalable sales team is to equip your reps with the right mindset. And proven strategies to transform them into quota breakers, to build a team of authentic persuaders that will crush their goals, email jason@cutterconsultinggroupdotcomorgotowwwdotcutterconsultinggroup.com.

[00:25:29] So there’s one thing that you and I both know, and probably everyone listening to this podcast knows it’s sales is tough, right? If your amazing you’re in that 20%, that gets 80% of the results. You’re a sales superstar. Depending on what you’re selling. I almost guarantee you’re losing more than you’re winning, right?

[00:25:50] Like if you’re an amazing closer, you maybe have a 30, 40% close ratio, unless you’re just being handed referrals or really warm leads, which means you’re not closing more than you’re actually closing. And that’s, if you’re amazing. And then there’s the fact that if you’re not amazing, you’re in that middle group, we talked about wanting to move them up.

[00:26:07] They’re definitely getting punched in the face way more than they’re winning. Just sales and stuff. That’s why most people can’t do it. Most people aren’t interested. They, they, it’s tough to stay in that. So one of the things I know that’s super important and also scary when it comes to sales and sales leadership, and watching people is the mental health side.

[00:26:26] Right. There’s already enough challenge in the world. A lot of people are already struggling, mentally, even pre pandemic just with the way that the world is. And then you throw in sales on top of that life. And then. You know, you have a good day today. Tomorrow’s a terrible day. And just, how do you handle that?

[00:26:43] So within your platform or just what you found with stale, like your psychology side and everything in general, like what do you see as some good tools for that, or the best way to approach that, to kind of support like the more. Mental health side to help people in sales. Yeah,

[00:27:01]

Jeff: it’s really true. I mean, when I was in college, I paid my way through school selling study guides door to door during the summer, and you know, 13 hours a day.

[00:27:09] It was like, I was this nice kid from a small town in Wisconsin. And all of a sudden people were like, get outta here. Like they were mean to me. And I had never just confronted that. And then again, it was maybe one out of 30 that we were closing. Um, in those days in, in that experience, it was awful. Like the pain is real.

[00:27:26] Like this is, you know, for most of us who are in sales, it’s like, we’re nice people. We really have this beautiful intention we want to help. And then all of a sudden people are rude or they don’t get back to us or they say no for whatever reason, you know? And it’s just, there’s a lot of that. And so we’re dealing with rejection, you know, all the time.

[00:27:43] And again, as you mentioned, even a great salesperson is still, probably most of the time hearing a no. A lot of that is here. Right? And I think that that’s why salespeople are awesome. Like in general, if you can succeed in sales, you’re a great person to have in the world because you’ve really figured out how to control your emotions, how to support yourself and make sure you’re full as you go into each day so that you don’t get bumped and bruised by the general malaise of, of, of the population as they’re confronting, you know, they’re confronted with buying decisions in their own stuff.

[00:28:14] So what we found, and, and again, this comes back to this. Is taking care of ourselves. And so in our situation, what we try to do is, again, we want to make sure people are feeling as good as possible for real things. Now you had mentioned in the very beginning, like the carrots, you know, the, if you get this many sales, you get $500, you do this now that’s nice, but it’s just a surface thing.

[00:28:37] Right? And so the same people typically. All the time, because again, they’re okay with the rejection, but $500, $200. Like it’s just not enough for most of us to get over the fact that this hurts or this isn’t feeling good, or what am I doing wrong? And when we beat ourselves up, even after the fact of like, I thought I did everything right, like I’m still not, you know, that’s tough as well.

[00:28:57] So the idea here is put some positive stuff in every morning. Like you just have to have an influx of good material to make sure you’re thinking. Is set up for success and all of there’s lots. That’s why we start each morning on the platform with a quote. So in sales, there’s a whole lot of things, but it’s a lot about attitude.

[00:29:17] If you start to have positive thoughts going through your mind, the rejection doesn’t hurt as much. If you have a way, a practice of celebrating a small win or, um, you know, focusing, reflecting on the things you did well each day, you start to let go of the other stuff, but most of us are default. We had 10 things go right during the day.

[00:29:35] And one thing go wrong and we spend all of our time thinking about the one thing that went wrong and we ended up chalking that up as a bad. And then you ha you do that too many times in a row. You’re really beaten down. But if you reverse that and you have five things go well and five things that didn’t go well, but you focused all your time on the five things you did go well.

[00:29:52] And just a little bit of time on what didn’t go well to learn from it, then you’re really setting yourself up. Well, that was a good day. I learned something and I did these five things and you do that enough times, and now you get resilience, right? You start to feel, you start to create that fortitude and that strength to be able to connect.

[00:30:07] Whatever’s happening in the world outside and say, it doesn’t matter. I’m good. Like I came into this situation feeling good. I’m going to leave this situation feeling good. I got the sale. I didn’t get the sale. That’s how it goes. But I’m going to get the next one and right. That that’s also an attitude.

[00:30:20] What’s next? Who’s next? Who’s next. So often the difference between great and good are great and not good, uh, is attitude. And so that starts with mental health. It starts with, with personal self-care and making sure we’re in a space to be able to take on all of the challenges that come inherently in the career of sales.

[00:30:40] Yeah.

[00:30:41]

Jason: Well, and going back to what you said about the fact that we as humans, aren’t good at celebrating. The wins, the successes and we, we’re not even good at celebrating the big ones. I will speak for myself. I am historically not good and or terrible at celebrating any wins. And what’s interesting is if we look at from a longterm evolutionary, psychological standpoint, wins are great, but losses like way back in the day could equal.

[00:31:10] Right. So it’s much more important to focus on the negatives, avoid them, keep them from happening. Cause the rest just goes into the survival bucket, but you really don’t want to, you know, do things that are going to cause you harm and or death. And unfortunately that part is still at play. And so you’re right.

[00:31:28] I mean, it takes a lot of intention to be like, okay, yes. Five people said no, but five people said yes or five people are moving forward. Like let’s look at those. And just fight against that evolutionary part of our brain. Right? That survival part. That’s just like, no, no, no, everything is bad. Everything is danger.

[00:31:46] Like we need to just stay safe and comfortable where we are and stop trying new things.

[00:31:52]

Jeff: Yeah. It’s a good point because it does feel like we’re our survival’s at risk. Like it does still feel like that even though we’re still okay, we’re still going to go home to our house, but that. That is a base level feeling like they’re rejecting me or I’m, you know, I’m going to lose this deal, lose my job, whatever the case is.

[00:32:10] So kind of creating this game concept around it. I’m playing something. I’m seeing how this work, like, what did I do over here that worked, what did I not? It removes this personal element of it because we fortunately don’t live in a world where a saber tooth tiger is actually gonna eat us. Like, so a lot of the.

[00:32:27] Our experience of the rejection or the no is way greater and blown way out of proportion to what the actual experience is now that’s the human condition. So that takes some, some building of a muscle to make sure that that stays in its rightful place, which is a learning opportunity, but not a, not a, um, a debilitating experience.

[00:32:49]

Jason: Yeah. And that’s, it’s really that keeping it into perspective, which one side is celebrating the successes, but also keeping in mind. It’s not usually as bad as our brain wants it to be or make it out to be. Um, the other thing, and I heard this quote a long time ago. Do you remember where I heard it from, but I use this a lot and I share this with a lot of people.

[00:33:08] Is that so far, uh, you’ve survived a hundred percent of your bad days, which means no matter how bad today was like. Woke up tomorrow, like you survived it, you made it through it. Right. So it’s, you know, especially in the world of sales, getting blown out of proportion, just, you know, making everything’s worse, which goes back to that mental health side, which is, you know, wanting to make sure it, you know, there’s the positive psychology, like you said, which is so valuable.

[00:33:33] And then there’s even the, just staying out of the depressed, anxious, terrible feeling side. Right. And just keeping away from that and shifting over time. The positive mental attitude, which sounds so like woo and hippie, but it’s true.

[00:33:52]

Jeff: And the science shows that shows that as well. Like again, I think from a reward structure, what we really want, right.

[00:33:57] Our deep needs, if those are being met, we’re much more resilient in general. So those deep needs of feeling. Like we’re valued. Right? So again, as a, as a sales leader, valuing your team and having, like having a practice of making sure people are feeling valued for their efforts and for their work and, and for their results.

[00:34:16] Right. But that, that sense of feeling valued is a deeper need than. $100 or $200, or, you know, as a prize, right? The deeper need of feeling connected. I’m not alone. Like that’s, that’s also a very human thing is like, when we feel bad, our mental health goes to I’m all alone in this with 1200 salespeople around the country.

[00:34:35] One of the things like on a bad day, which everybody has. Um, they saw other people listening, like, oh man, I lost something. I thought I was going to get an it system bummed out, but everyone would be like, Hey, hang in there, hang in there. You’re okay. And all of a sudden it’s like, they didn’t feel alone and that didn’t take as long to recover as you mentioned.

[00:34:49] So the recovery from that and that need of connection is way better, is way deeper. So when you start to deliver for your team on the deeper needs, you’re going to find their resilience go up. You’re going to find them just all of a sudden way back. Without actually any more sales training, like they just are better because they’re not, they’re recovering faster.

[00:35:08] They’re learning from their mistakes. They’re separating themselves from the it’s not them failing. It’s just, this didn’t work. So there’s all those things when you start to deliver on deeper needs than just a superficial need of cash for the month, or, you know, a TV is nice to win or, you know, whatever it is, those are nice.

[00:35:25] But the next day I’m still the same. So if you don’t build up, if I’m not being built up or I’m not filling myself up the next day, I have the same insecurities, the same fears and the same, all those things. And I’m hoping. That I win. I’m hoping like, but when you start building the muscles, now I feel much more prepared.

[00:35:42] I still might not do well that day, but I’m, I had a better chance of succeeding. And I know that like, going into this, I’m a better, I have a much better chance of success, which is the game. If we can give that to our salespeople, that’s not only great for business. That’s, they’ll be grateful to you forever for that.

[00:36:00]

Jason: Yeah. And the stat is now becoming more and more well known that most. Leave their jobs because of their manager, not because of pay, not because of benefits, not because of the snacks in the, in the break room, right. It’s mostly because of their manager and either how they’re treated or what they’re not getting.

[00:36:18] And those are the times in my experience, it’s more of how, what they’re not getting. Then just a terrible manager. Who’s, you know, treating people right. It’s usually just those needs aren’t being met. Like you’re talking about which again, for the leaders that are listening to this, that’s so key. You want to, you want to affect your turnover instantly that.

[00:36:37] Start giving your people what they need at that base that, that Maslow’s hierarchy of need level, right? Like moving up that pyramid and giving them that community. And then the other thing I was thinking about too, as you’re sharing this is that I know, and this goes back to that mental health, which I think is so important.

[00:36:54] I know that you and I have talked about that before offline. That one of the best advices when you’re feeling depressed or anxious, you know? Cause most people are just like withdrawing to themselves is to actually do something for somebody else. Right. Like they say, if you’re depressed, go volunteer, go give, go call somebody like go help somebody.

[00:37:13] And then that gets you out of your own way. And I know because I’ve actually, uh, been on your platform and run a challenge for salespeople. So I’m speaking from watching. This is that, you know, when people are struggling, if they can reach out to other people, or even if they’re sitting next to somebody in the next cube, right.

[00:37:30] Like helping them out. We’ll snap them out of as well, which is where I think that connectedness is so important. Like your,

[00:37:37]

Jeff: it goes a long way. And I think for leaders, just as a, just as a button to what you had had mentioned is, you know, most leaders would love to be kind of celebrating or congratulating people, but most leaders are putting out fires all day long.

[00:37:50] Like that’s, you know, the job. Problem problem, problem. Solved problem. Solved problem solved. So when we talked to a lot of executives and leaders, it’s not that they don’t want or don’t need. It’s not that they don’t feel that they love their team or that they really appreciate them, but their team is usually experiencing them only in the presence of an issue or a frustrating moment or a teaching moment.

[00:38:11] But it’s. So the experience, when, when we ask managers or leaders, we say, well, what do you think of your team? I’ll have a great team. They’re awesome. I’ve spent years putting them together. They’re, they’re fantastic. When we asked the team, how do you think your manager feels about you? Uh, he, he or she is like, I don’t know.

[00:38:26] I might, I might be fired tomorrow or I don’t think they liked me at all, or like, it’s so. Consistent that the message being sent. Isn’t the one that they want being received. And it’s understandable, right? Because again, in a day we’re busy and so going to everybody and saying, you know, Hey Jason, great job yesterday.

[00:38:42] I just wanted to tell you that and going to the next person. No, you’re busy. You’ve got things to do. So you need to find a way to easily. Valuing your people, a part of your conversation. And the one example I’ll give is a Bloomingdale’s examples. So they have all their salespeople, um, using the platform and the general manager of one of the flagship stores that I have 400 people.

[00:39:03] And I’ll tell you, I’m a nice person. And she is, she’s a super nice person. But she said, when people saw me. So whatever area of the store, like they were like, oh no, like what do we do now? And she said, like, I just watched them their entire being. And she said, when I started, they were using it again on the, on the platform, there was a way to see the wins and what people were doing.

[00:39:22] She said, I would go in, I’d read, I’d read that just before I go into. I was there to fix something like something went wrong, but I would start it and say, Hey, Julie, I just read that you did this. That was awesome. And Mary, like, you did this great job. That’s awesome. Now I need your guys’ help. Now. Here’s what happened and I need, and she said that the difference there with two sentences of acknowledging the good and then bringing what she needed them to work on, changed her experience.

[00:39:46] Completely. And now they didn’t, they didn’t mind her coming. They knew she was going to be also seeing the good they were doing, not just the things that they needed to work on. So that was a big game changer because to your earlier point, every single year, 70% on average of people rate themselves disengaged from their career, from their job.

[00:40:05] And the number one reason every single year is because I don’t feel valued by my direct supervisor. That’s the reason. So this idea of making sure. If you like your team, if you value your team, figuring out a simple way to let them know, not an exchange of, of teaching them or correcting them or fixing what needs to be fixed, but adding it in.

[00:40:24] And if you can do that, it doesn’t take a lot of you don’t have to do one-to-one even once in a while telling him like, you know what? That was awesome. Great job there. Now I need your help on this. That will go a long way. And they’ll put that into their. You know, kind of, um, in the, into their bank of just like, man, he or she really sees me and that’s important.

[00:40:42] And then they’ll give you they’ll even give they’ll show up at a higher level. Is. And

[00:40:46]

Jason: I will say from my experience leading teams too, one of the biggest things that I have worked on to be very intentional is that when I engage with salespeople or managers who are under me is to not always have an issue or come to them, like the principal and they’re in trouble is to, you know, do as much positive support and positive conversations as possible and not in a fake and phony way, but just in a, like, let’s just have good positive interactions.

[00:41:16] So that when you see me coming, you’re not afraid or cringing or pretending to work or whatever it is. Right. And I think that’s always important. And I think like your platform and these kinds of challenges is good because it’s not tied to anything. It’s not like, Hey, everyone’s in trouble. We all better like buckle up and figure this out.

[00:41:32] It’s let’s do this. Everyone set your goals. Do this challenge together, let’s support each other together. Uh, and then it’s this isolated thing versus like tied to

[00:41:44]

Jeff: what you’re talking about. Yeah. And, you know, that brings up a really interesting point. A lot of sales managers were great sales. Right that got promoted up and they’re not necessarily great leaders of people, you know, that’s a different skill set.

[00:41:55] And so one of the things we’ve found is to become a great coach, right? Which is really the goal of if a sales manager or any executive like being a great coach for the team, bringing out the best in the people around you. Simple way. There’s just like, you know, there’s a great lot of great books on this.

[00:42:09] Um, Carol WEX work on, on the growth mindset is the one that comes to mind. But three simple questions turns everyone into a. Coach. And this is, uh, just to keep in your back pocket. Like what were three w you, you want to have these, like you said, not tied to something negative conversations once in a while, once a quarter, once a month.

[00:42:27] And it’s just, Hey, tell me, tell me three of the wins you have this last. What’s one challenge you had and how’d you work through it. And is there anything I can do to support you and help you be better in the next month? Those three questions. If you’ll just ask them, then just listen. They will feel like you’re an amazing coach.

[00:42:42] And if you do that a couple times a year, like that’s the, that’s it, it doesn’t have to be daily. It doesn’t have to be weekly, but they’ll know that if you really listen, like again, that has to be sincere. But it’s not tied to anything else. And so now it’s not, I’m in trouble from the principal. Oh, this might be like, there’s an openness, there’s an excitement of the communication, but those three simple questions, it turns anyone, whether you’ve had formal training or not at being a, a leader or coach or whatever, into a real, that’s a really powerful, positive conversation that will ultimately bring out the best in your.

[00:43:15]

Jason: I love it. And that last question of those three is so important. And I’ve found in asking that most people are surprised because most people are so in their own lives, even in our personal lives, right. Not just work-wise, but like everyone’s, most people are focused on themselves, such that if they even ask that they don’t really mean it, but it’s like, Hey, you know, what can I do to help you?

[00:43:36] It’s so shocking. A lot of people just don’t even believe. That, you know, somebody would ask them that

[00:43:41]

Jeff: it changes the entire thing to it, to a much, much more of a team environment, which is what you want the feeling to be. If you’re in charge of a bunch of a bunch of.

[00:43:50]

Jason: Well, and it goes to the servant leadership mode, which is I’m here to support you.

[00:43:56] Like I work for you as a manager or a leader. You are the most important asset. I work for you. How can I support you as long as you’re doing what you need to do, if you shouldn’t be in sales or you aren’t working very hard and aren’t doing the activities, that’s a different conversation. Otherwise I’m here to support you.

[00:44:13] So I know one of the things that is instrumental for. Not just changed, but habits. That’s like the, your challenge that I want to touch on before we finish, which is getting people to be clear and then tying things to their why? Like, why do they want to do it professionally personally? Like where does that fit in?

[00:44:35] Where have you seen that? Like as a requirement or where does that fit into like the challenges that you guys.

[00:44:43]

Jeff: Yep. It’s pretty fundamental. And again, I think Simon Sinek and, um, you know, start with the why, like, I think we’ve, most of us have either seen a video or read the book and, and yet we quickly forget that.

[00:44:53] And so first from a manager standpoint, from a, a sales leaders standpoint, if you’re sharing the why that’s powerful and doing it in a way that again, they hear one of the examples we were working with a, um, a team of executives and. President of this division said, let’s talk about, we’re going to talk about goals for a moment.

[00:45:11] And so we asked him to say, Mike, you know, what are the goals for this year? And he said, well, we’re going to increase sales by this amount. Like, that was his first thing. Like we’re going to, and we watched the entire rest of the salespeople’s like energy, just drop in the room and we’re going to do this.

[00:45:25] Well, let me say Mike, did you just see what happened? Like you just lost the room, like you just lost. He said, well, why not? Like he was super excited, like super gung ho, and then we said a watch this, what did you just hear Mike say? So what they heard is we’re not doing enough. It’s never been. We’re not going to be able to do like, like all of it was negative.

[00:45:44] Then we said to the rest of the group, now watch this, Mike, what did you mean? What was the real reason that you want to hit the sales goal? Well, because then we can fund all the stuff that we’ve been saying we want to do. We can bring in the next four people that we needed. We can do the bonuses that we’ve been talking about.

[00:45:58] Then you watch the energy come back in the room, but he wasn’t talking about the real, why he was doing, he was doing. Right. So that was just one powerful example with when we’re explaining things like, why do we want the increase? Why do we want this? Don’t just make it about like, well, we did that last month.

[00:46:13] We did that last year. Make it about like, again, what’s the mission of your organization? Who are you helping? What’s the goal? What happens when we get 10% more sales or 20% more sales? What does that mean? In the bigger picture that they can start to really dig into and say, I’m a part of this mission.

[00:46:31] I’m a part of this, because that is a really big motivator when things aren’t going well. It’s all right. I just, I can do it. Cause this is this isn’t about me. This isn’t about this, this one sale. This is about helping people ex solve this problem. So I think that’s one of those big things as well. That just came up as.

[00:46:49] Yeah.

[00:46:49]

Jason: And I think too, when you have people who are on the sales team and you’re wanting them to make a change or play a bigger game, or, you know, accomplish their goals or what they think their goals are, you know, monetarily. Right. Cause it kind of starts with that is also having everybody understands their why, like why do they want to make more money?

[00:47:08] Why do they want to be successful? Why is that important? Because again, going back to what we started with, which is sales is tough. Yeah, and it’s going to be tough and you’re going to have those bad days. You gotta have that Y that pushes you through at the individual level.

[00:47:23]

Jeff: Almost all great salespeople.

[00:47:25] Like when you ask why you do that, they have a mission. They’ve thought about it. It’s really meaningful to them. I’m doing this. And it means this. And, you know, Zig Ziglar tells a great story of a people on the railroad. And it was, you know, someone who was still working on the line, doing the railroad. And then the president of the, of the railroad comes by and says, Hey Mike, you know, and they ended up knowing each other and someone afterwards said, how do you know, how do you know the president.

[00:47:48] Oh, the railroad. He said, oh, we went to work on the same day. He goes, well, how is it then that you’re still working out here in the sun and he’s the president of the, of the entire railroad. And he said, well, it’s real easy. When I started, I went to work for $10 and 50 cents an hour. And bill went to work for the railroad.

[00:48:02] Right? Like he got connected to what he was up to building, you know, it was this transfer like, and so when you’re connected to a mission, like everything’s different and the little stuff doesn’t bother. Um, you know, it just kinda falls off because you’re, you’re on, you know, and that’s where all, I think when, whether it’s our life or our job, when we start realizing that this is for my family, you know, this is for my wellbeing, or this is because I want to leave my legacy as, as someone who really contributed to making the world a better place.

[00:48:28] And this is how I’m doing that. And almost any job can get there. Every single, like in a few minutes, the janitor and the CEO can both get to why, what they did. Is making a big impact and a big positive that plays a positive role, you know, not only for their organization, but for the world at large, for their family and so on.

[00:48:46] So it’s really context. And I think it’s what were the exercise. If people haven’t done it and that’s why in our challenges, that’s one of the quick things is like everyone reads. They just read, you know, the mission in this case of the, of the organization and a chance for them to read, like what, what does this mean to me?

[00:49:02] And when you have that present our thoughts, like whatever we’re present to impacts our behavior. If we’re present to what, why we do this, that’s going to affect our choices. And if we’re not aware of why we’re doing it, it’s much easier to get thrown off. I

[00:49:16]

Jason: love it. That’s a great spot to end with all of this.

[00:49:19] So I know Jeff is that, uh, you have the website enjoy global.com. There’s also my challenge creator doc. I know that you’re on LinkedIn, Jeff by eight. Oh, I also know if anyone’s listening to this, that I have run some challenges through your platform and sets them up for sales teams. So if people have questions or want even a glimpse at that to reach out to me, anything else you have coming up, any other places people can go to find out more that I didn’t cover or new, cool things that you guys are putting in.

[00:49:50]

Jeff: I will, uh, just a shameless plug for our podcast to enjoy success podcast. Um, we do have a bunch of amazing people and the premise is really just defining success, you know, as to what’s important to you and hearing a lot of different people say here’s what it means to them and how they’ve created an extraordinary life for themselves.

[00:50:07] But that comes down to that foundational thing of really knowing why we do what we do. And when we do then all of life. Even if the outer world were doing the same activities, but our experience of it can be totally different. And that’s our wish for everybody is that we all enjoy everyday more, no matter what it is.

[00:50:23] And especially when you’re in a tough, a tough career like sales, but you realize the bigger picture and that it’s playing a huge role in the service that you’re providing in the product that you’re providing in the good that you’re doing for the greater picture to really remember that because we need you, we need sales.

[00:50:39] Yeah.

[00:50:39]

Jason: Well, I appreciate that. So the enjoy success podcast, we’ll have a link in the show notes for all of these things. Um, but wherever you found this podcast, uh, search for it, uh, and get that positive stuff. I appreciate Jeff. Thanks for the work that you’re doing, what you’re doing to help organizations, individuals.

[00:50:58] I mean, here’s the thing. Platforms out. There’s a lot of things out there that don’t necessarily focus on the individual and helping and the team and helping people be successful. So I appreciate what you’re doing and thanks for coming on the show and sharing all this with the.

[00:51:13]

Jeff: Thank you, Jason. It’s been an honor to be here.

[00:51:15] I really you’re so good at this. So it’s just a, it’s been really a joy to be here. So thank you. Did you get some inspirations of ways to help your call center sales team win bigger, stronger, and faster. Hope you are fired up to scale your sales operations. If you got value from this podcast, please go in and leave a rating and review.

[00:51:37] Also make sure to forward this episode to anyone else, you know, in the call center space, we appreciate your support in growing the scalable call center sales podcast, family. And if you have any comments, ideas, or feedback, contact us at Cotter consulting, group.com. .