hi folks just half past the hour so we're bang on i will just open up the famous slides uh we're on would you believe unit 11 so time is literally flying um okay so let me just share where we're going i'm not anticipating any Wi-Fi issues this evening but you never know there's always a chance um beautiful evening out there uh fair play for spending three hours of it with yourselves and myself but there is actually quite an interesting unit ahead so let's start kicking in um okay um I I'll come back to this in a sec because we'll just do a quick uh catch up on what I've gone back to where you there there we go okay so this is where we are we covered the sales process last week and we're about to go through the sales habit loop i hope my sound is good certainly absolutely um I'll do that in a sec um so look how far we've come we talked about how disruptive it is to sell these days how our biggest competitor is do nothing because of how our minds work um how the buyer actually has a really tough job to be fair and I think um if you just keep your eye on sales literature you really will see truly how selling is aligned to what the buyer is doing and not trying to um I suppose disrupt too much but equally you need to be very clear on your sales strategy what are you seeking to do great products that you have into the markets you have or are you going to come up with new products into new markets where are you going to go what's your vision what's your growth strategy what are your growth targets then what is a typical great customer for you and then the buys we hit the buys you know um why now why us why listen why care why change all of the buyers roadblocks and then our magic weapon the value proposition uh like what makes your product or service better than all of your competitors what can you truly say the reason you should pick us is dot dot dot like what actually is that so what you know you're being attacked all the time what's your points of par versus your competitors then what's your points of difference and then equally what are your features your advantages and your benefits and all of these are crafted based on what kind of market you're going after you know do you remember when we talked about how if your market was very crowded well what should your value proposition strategy be if your market is very uh new to you what should your um strategy be what's your value prop so lots of things here connecting together digital selling is what we covered uh two weeks ago in terms of I'll just say Tik Tok we pretty much just looked at Tix talks all evening but to be fair we talked about how do you actually communicate your content across digital channels so that your target buyers go I actually think they're quite interesting i might go towards them as I'm becoming aware of a challenge that they might solve you know what what is your link with your marketing team and if you don't have a marketing team what is your marketing content out there because the bad news is you kind of have to put stuff out there um I'm kicking myself i've asked got my company to create a LinkedIn page for Ireland now I have to create content for it but you know what it's going to be worth it um if if you want to grow you have to get your message out there we talked about the sales process last week and for fans of James Clear not James Bond uh we're going to be going through uh sales habits which in some companies is called cadence or routine what is your structure and then we'll wrap it up next week so we we really have covered quite a lot and thanks a million for your participation thus far uh there was a good question right at the start so if you want to share if I go into the I think the easiest thing for me to do is to go into the LMS so just bear with me one sec as I go to the LMS and I sign in and then I'm going to share the screen so I'll go to the sales management course blah blah blah sales management okay so to share learning logs for me to have a quick look to support versus marketing scheme you go to announcements and in any announcement I should have my email address or LinkedIn you can just ping me there and I'll direct you to my uh email so the email is in these posts that I'm uh pointing to uh in the announcements okay back to the slideshow i'm not going to bring you back to last week just yet i want to I'm pretty excited about some of the content i actually increased the content for this evening because I'm doing something else with UCD around habits and there was some great new things so I just brought those in see how we go so how do we learn is the first section of this unit then we talk a lot about habits like how do habits work and what is the point about talking about habits when we're thinking about selling it will all add up and then we'll talk about replacing bad habits with good habits don't get too fixated with this uh habit word i I call it routine like what's my routine and when I feel myself getting distracted how do I kick myself out of that and for those eagle-eyed of you whenever I share uh my web browser you'll notice I have a website open called random.org i put all my priorities into random.org and I let random pick what I should do first because I have loads of priorities what do I do first if I have five urgent and important things what do I do first well I do the customerf facing stuff first but then I go where which customerf facing and I know I don't want to contact that customer because they're angry so I let the universe decide what I'm going to do first because otherwise I will ignore the angry one until the third task and maybe I should just do it first so in order for me to jumpstart my routine I pretty much just use random selection of my priorities that's how I uh work through things everybody has their own kind of method so let's work through a little bit of the content and the theory so ultimately it's about you as a salesperson so what are you like as a salesperson in terms of how can you be the most successful salesperson that you can be and what are the strategies to help you implement the right routine to ensure your success because I've I've got news for you you are your biggest obstacle just in the same way that do nothing is our biggest obstacle to b doing a sale you are your biggest obstacle to being the most successful version of you so we're first of all going to talk about how do we learn because um I was reading an article about the future of skills uh done by the um it wasn't by yeah it was the world economic forum and they said um hey one of the big skills that will be beneficial over the next 20 years is learning how to learn things and put them into effect for your own benefit so what is the actual method of learning so the first part is practice so it's interesting so far this evening we've focused on two words habits cadence routine and now I'm introducing the word practice how do you like if you have a call with a customer and even if you're amazing do you roleplay it beforehand do you practice what you're going to say do you prepare you know we we all know the the sporting you know if you um plan to fail you fail to plan so it's a case of do you realize the benefit that practicing something can have in helping you to learn something now I'm going to be a little bit sciency for a sec so just bear with me pra p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p practicing moves things from your shortterm memory to long-term and that is incredibly beneficial for you that's also why sleep is really good for you but let's not get distracted there um ultimately it's a case of practicing helps you pay attention to something for the first time then to rehearse it and then to repeat it over time and all of this enables you to put something in place really well more consistently so this is where we're going to talk about how you go through the learning journey so we all started off here and we're here with anything new that we encounter we don't know what we're not good at we have no idea we're we're we're unconscious as to the fact as to whether we can do something or not we haven't tried and then as we start to try things we become aware of what we cannot do in other words I play the piano it's behind me here as I'm speaking to you and when I'm learning a new piece of music oh my goodness I get very aware very quickly of what I need to work on so at the start I go that sounds like a nice piece of mu music i'll try and learn that and then as I go through the process of practicing it I become very aware of what I cannot do and then the same time as I move forward I become aware of what I am good at so I'm good at these bits and I'm not good at these bits but I become more confident as I progress and then we move to a very interesting state and this is one which I will describe and perhaps if anybody else is musically uh capable on the call you'll get it it's as if my fingers know what to do i'm not using my mind anymore i am unconsciously capable of doing something because I have practiced it it's the same as learning how to drive a car so at the start you go "Well that can't be that hard there's a couple of levers there's a couple of pedals you know there's buttons but then very quickly you become aware of what you weren't good at so when you were learning how to drive the car what what bit were you going "Ah I'm not good at this it was hill starts for me." Absolutely i still I I don't know how you pass me in my exam because I mangled the hillstart and then what do you become aware that you're good at you know threepoint turns roundabouts whatever you want to talk about and then you forget knowing what you know you don't think about it anymore you're unconsciously competent at it so this is the learning experience and if you take what I've just covered and what I covered and introduced just beforehand it is about the role of practice so ultimately I'm now going to ask you to think about how you approach your working week how do you approach meetings how do you approach receiving information and then responding to it so the first uh piece of information I'd like to share with you as you you're reading it so I'll just let you read that for a sec and reflect on it do you do what you said you were going to do so when you look at the end of a week and I'm a believer that there's 52 weeks in the year a week is an incredibly powerful period of time you can achieve so much in a week i am definitely what I would call a freak because Monday is my favorite day of the week because of just how much you can get done Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday get loads done but more people get things done if they actually write down what they planned to do in the week ahead and sales is a numbers game folks so do you actually write down at the start I'm going to make 10 outbound emails or I'm going to bring up five old leads or you know do you actually write down your goals so there was a really good question from um let's see i don't want to get the name wrong so I'll just check if they are here i think they are hang on let me just I'm cycling up and down the attendees and it's suddenly frozen because that's what it is no they're actually not here this week there was a really good question as to how do you put emotions into uh selling conversations and I think one of the most uh powerful emotions you can have is trust in somebody and you can generate trust by keeping your commitments keeping your promises so do you keep your promises to yourself about what you will do in the week ahead because you are the biggest obstacle to getting stuff done here's something which is particularly relevant at the start of a calendar year so when do you fit in the hard work when do you schedule the work that needs to be done in order to achieve the goal that you're trying to achieve so there's a big philosophy at the moment about working calendars and it's the need to block off time for critical deep work because ever since co everything has been broken down into periods of half hours and teams meetings or zoom or Google meets or whatever can just come in up the middle of nowhere so where do you schedule where do you protect your time so I'm sure we have all had conversations with our bosses where our bosses look at our numbers and go "Well can you where where's the bigger number i'm really busy it's hard to find the time." Yes it is hard to find the time you actually have to really work hard to get that time into your calendar but you have to be purposeful about it this is about intentions so this is the final paragraph in this slide and it gives me the prompt to say do you actually have a plan we all have intentions we all have you know objectives about where we want to go to some may be more fuzzy than others but do you then actually have a three or six month plan about how to get to it and there's one of the benefits of a plan because here I'm a I'm a firm believer in that a plan has to change the minute you start implementing it that's just the way the world works but you can then look back and go did I at least finish the plan or did I change the plan did I did I at least follow what I'm trying to do did I keep my promises to myself so I have a big meeting with my CEO in two weeks easy peasy i'll just pick out the plan that I presented in January and I'll go where am I in that plan i don't have to think of anything new i can basically say well that's what I plan to do i have good news and bad news but ultimately I've learned from the bad news and the good news has just been nice off we go so in terms of actual having learning intentions where do you have intentions to fit selling into your busy working day that's actually just reminded me in terms of I'm meant to be selling to the educational sector and it's fallen out of my calendar that's not great where where's your selling bits so I remember the first job I was given a company car and I was mortified because it's a company car and I felt gooded um that I needed to show that I was good enough to merit the car so I used to make my cold calls in the car and I would actually not go into the office until I'd made my cold calls in the morning from the car it made me feel feel better made me feel like I was selling and it made made me feel like I was doing tasks which should then justify getting the company car so when in your calendar do you schedule work which is profoundly important to what you do which is your selling activities now we're going to go a little bit more in depth in terms of what should your activities comprise of in other words what is an actual routine because selling habits selling activities are a routine you do a couple of steps in a sequence that's why sales technology such as sales loft or gong actually refer to them as a cadence a sequence of steps so Charles Dwig wrote the habit loop which identified the power of a habit we'll we'll talk about James Clear in a minute in terms of atomic habits but ultimately there was a Q a Q triggered a routine the routine then generated a reward and a lot of this is is in your own mind the reason I use random.org or is sometimes I can have too many cues and I'm trying to reduce the amount of cues that I then focus on so I'll just say I'm going to just work on these three things and then I'll go off and just work on those so here's some questions when you're selling what do you actually repeatedly do like what do you actually do and it's that you're executing your sales habit so what you repeatedly do and what time you spend planning researching learning doing that ultimately forms the type of salesperson that you are so I'll just let you read that and then I'll put a few questions in your mind get a quick bit of coffee think of the best salesperson you ever worked with what habits did you observe that they had what were their amazing sales habits so I had a boss who used to say the best salesperson they knew was a lazy salesperson because they'd actually really spend time thinking about who they should focus on selling on to they wouldn't they wouldn't chase everybody they would go I'll just sell to you who you and you and so their habits were actually a lot of the time spent on really identifying who they should sell to and then they'd focus on that so here's a statistic for you 45% of the decisions we make every day aren't decisions they're habits so we need to develop great habits to get out of our own way so we spend time doing the things we should be doing so this is a gentle uh a gentleman from ancient Greece when things were a lot more simple technology-wise but human behavior hadn't changed ultimately Aristotle is then saying excellence isn't an act but a habit it's so true think of when you think you had a good week versus a bad week what what made it different and how can you bake some of those things that represented a good week into all of your weeks but let's uh break down the habit a little bit more so what are your cues so I know I should start this off by being strength-based and go "Okay well what's a what's a cue that would help you focus for the next hour on selling?" And equally I could ask you to think of a cue which stops you from doing what you should be doing like it is is it a notification coming through on your phone is it your dog or cat jumping up like what's what's the cue that signals your brain to kick in with a habit so for me in one job it was getting into the company car and getting my phone out that was a cue for me to kick into then the routine the actual actions which are the selling actions like what are the tasks that you have to do so there's a couple of classic cues which I'll go through now first is time so you know before the first call your first cup of coffee you know the the the first piece of free time after lunch you know the the time just before the day is going to end there's other cues such as location so a room that you might be in a building but equally a crew a cue can be a preceding events so in other words your phone beeping um the the uh laptop turning up a a notification so a preceding event can be a a cue the other cue can be uh I hope this isn't triging triggering your emotional state so you might be very tired after a a tough weekend where lots of things went on so is is that a great way to start the Monday you know is that going to be your cue for a successful Monday that's why this unit and next week goes on to say here plan your week at the end of Friday so you kind of come in on Monday and you almost don't have to think it's there in front of you just do this and what do you get when you just do this you get a reward now that reward might be a bit of a tick in your brain going "Da well done there's a bit of dopamine you did well well done you rock on to the next one." Now a lot of you are sitting here thinking "Uh Dave bad habits get rewards too right?" Yeah I know so we're going to go into good versus bad habits but the starting point of this unit is for me to ask you do you plan your week do you set yourself goals and then do you recognize what your positive and negative cues are that get in the way of executing the right routine for you so if you're taking notes and you're thinking about your learning log do you challenge any of your routines so when you're working from home do you find that you're walking to the kitchen do you find that you're making loads of cups of coffee that you're you know breaking into your focus time with tasks that aren't actually to do with selling anything so how do you actually physically disrupt and change your routine like do you hide your phone do you put it on mute etc do you make sure that you have a good breakfast with lots of eggs to fill you up so that you're you're off and rocking and you don't feel like going to the uh uh fridge as much okay there's a science bit coming up so bear with me so when a Q and your behavior in response to that Q become neurologically entwin interwined what's happening is a neural pathway is developing that links those things together so that's why habits are sticky because your cue and the routine and the award reward create a little canal in your brain little neurological pathway now there has been studies done over the last six or seven years about a thing called neuroplasticity which is the fact that you can retrain your brain you can undo bad habits and you can form new ones and this very much came out of the Carol Dwek growth mindset fixed mindset and a lot of people look at those um books and go "Oh fixed mindset is bad." That's that's actually not the case sometimes a fixed mindset can be really good but ultimately the point that this part of the course is making is that give yourself a break if you find that you have some bad habits and you're going I I'm got these bad habits it's never going to work give yourself a break it's okay yeah it's they have created a little pathway in your brain that you're going to have to replace with a new pathway it'll take you know five or six weeks but you'll get there to know something is the start and don't beat yourself up because we all have bad habits you've heard me tell you how I get around not knowing what one to do and I get a bit frozen i go I have five really important things to do what will I do i just put it into the random.org and that tells me what I should do next and then I give out about it okay some interesting uh slides about to come up so there's lots of different types of habits so what what we're now showing you is material from atomic habits which is the book by James Clear the book you're going to see in the next slide and habits shape your identity so instead of um saying I want to exercise one of the things that you can do to trick your brain is you can say I'm somebody who exercises so literally your I'm just going to say this your habit becomes linked with your identity now I know and I'm thinking about it myself how do you know if somebody's done a triathlon well they'll tell you that they did a triathlon like it can be a little bit of a meme but there's no harm to say instead of saying I want to write a book one day you say here I'm I'm a writer and instead of saying I want to lose weight you say I want to make healthy choices so one of the things you can do to change your habit is you change the words you are using to yourself so rather than leave all your sales activity to Thursday and Friday and you go well I know nobody in the world wants to have a selling message received on a Friday i've missed it i have to move into next week you say "Well I'm somebody who sells earlier in the week." And then once again just gather those small wins like give yourself a break and when you find yourself that you're breaking habits more often here well done that's creating a positive new neural pathway for you so the message about this slide is um but if you don't make a plan for a week and instead you say okay I'm going to start making a plan for at least Mondays i'm going to have my Mondays more organized and that will help me structure the week thereafter now I'm going to share this video tomorrow but the video is 8 minutes long so I'm not going to show the video right now but I will share it i'm not going to uh play it now because it's 8 minutes long but ultimately I know not everybody in this room works in sales right now but you when you work in sales you have to adopt the selling mindset i am here to sell i am somebody who gets new leads who looks after existing businesses who solves problems for them that helps retention and renewal and growth that is who I am i'm going to keep my promise to myself and I'm going to keep those promises to my customers that will help keep you on the straight and narrow when all the other diversions come in okay let's now look at the next slide which does repeat a little bit of the information but it uh anchors it against James Clear so let you read through that so habits drive a huge percentage of what we do every day but equally habits can be disruptive and habits are triggered by a Q so if you find yourself getting some bad habits you need to disrupt your cues and we'll kick in in about 10 minutes talking about that and then here look at the example in the last bullet point how many working hours do you have each day let's let's say eight eight and a half whatever there is loads of minutes in those how long does it 10 take to make a phone call or send an email what if you made a 1% improvement in that every day now I know there's some very funny videos out there about people saying "I have three days in 24 hours i get up at you know micro o'lock." I don't know what time the person says they get up but they break their day into three days and as a result they say "I have a thousand days a year." And the the material isn't trying to fool the calendar or science but it's trying to reduce your bad habits that get in the way of making most of your working day because one of my values is I don't try to work the weekend and I don't I far from expect to work the weekend let's get everything we need to do done Monday to Friday so we can go and enjoy the weekend and what what if we could actually get more out on Monday to Friday than we did before well here sales is a numbers game that means we will actually get more results out of it so just to go through the definitions for sex so you get the best out of this unit a Q is a trigger that initiates behavior a craving is a desire for a change in state a response is the action taken to fulfill the craving and a reward is the outcome that reinforces the behavior so this is where it's very interesting with the acknowledgment of neurodeiversity in the workplace you know the importance of movement breaks you know the the desire to step up and away from your place of work and and actual make a physical movement be that a walk etc that's actually a really good way of breaking a bad habit as long as you bring your phone with you and you can actually do some work as you're actually moving so it's a case of just you can look at things either as a negative or a positive you choose and that can help form a new neural pathway which then helps the choice to be easier the next time let's uh now talk about what everybody knows there positive and negative habits so think about your positive habits and what would be defined in your mind as negative there's some examples here but feel free to think of your own and the big question is how do you replace negative habits with positive ones so that's where we're going to end it this evening it would be a case of um think about your working environment how does it support your positive habits how does it create negative habits how would you actually say words to yourself to disrupt those negative cues and triggers so that they don't then overtake your routine and also there's external environmental facts which can be motivating or demotivating you know noise in the workplace not enough space not enough room not enough equipment you know feel free to negotiate with the powers that be to put in place better uh environmental uh factors in work uh to support positive habits versus then negative ones we're one slide away from a breakout room and we'll use the breakout rooms this week uh to talk about this week rather than uh cover uh the sales process but uh let's see how we get on timewise so this unit started off by talking about how you learn and the importance of practice and the importance of practice for putting things from the short-term memory to the long-term memory and the role of repetition and rehearsal before the main event all of these help you reinforce good habits and good execution but the other point that was made at the start of this unit was that folks who write things down and make a plan tend to actually implement that plan and if their planning items are um to do with their world of work well they were going to get more often than not better results than people who just let it kind of happen to them and this is unit 11 if unit one to 10 has taught you anything it's that it's super competitive out there and there are loads of competitors to you guys who are perhaps practicing better habits so the founder I've told you this story before but I I just think it's so powerful that the founder of Salesforce Mark Beni off when he started Salesforce there was a really big competitor called Oh good grief don't tell me I've forgotten that uh competitor they were bought by Oracle gosh I have forgotten uh anyway let's call it big company um do you know why I've forgotten because they're actually out of business now really um anyway Mark Ben off the habit that he chose was he would sell to small companies and he's never stopped that habit they still sell to small companies now obviously they sell to massive companies uh but the habit that he never stopped was we are always going to sell to small companies because I'm never going to let a competitor rise against us the way this some that they rose up against the company whose name I can't remember which is quite funny think about it in a minute okay um those of you who follow Simon the Synynic will very much start to recognize the three circles and the fact that in the middle of the circle it's what's your why why are you doing this what are you working for what you seeking to achieve because that is something that will put your feet on the ground as you get up every day to achieve what you're trying to achieve like keep your promises to yourself and I think that's the strongest emotion that uh just once again to refer back to last week keeping your promises to your customers is one of the best emotions that you can generate uh trust from which will help you in the world of selling okay quite a lot to take in uh how are we doing we're about uh 40 minutes in so we're doing all right uh we're now going to go into a uh breakout room and it's going to be unfortunately not strength-based but it's about what are the cues that trigger a routine that is not beneficial what knocks you off your selling cadence and now that you've understood that okay neural pathway is kicking in there how do I disrupt and stop that cue do I have to do something physically do I have to use a particular identity based habit mantra i am somebody who overcomes obstacles like how how are you going to deal with it uh I'll see how you guys are getting on i'm not going to necessarily keep you in for the 15 minutes let's see we've got a good number of people here today so I'll make the breakout rooms about five people each and I will see you shortly so the exam question is think of a personal or professional environment what are the cues that trigger a routine that is not beneficial um keep it uh keep it appropriate for your audience and I'll see you shortly just 5 seconds folks not long for them to go okay welcome back uh let me just go through the breakout rooms briefly so what we were trying to discuss there was a cue that triggered a routine that is not beneficial so the question was how would you now with a little bit more knowledge in relation to the sequence that plays out how would you look to disrupt that queue in order to prevent that bad routine from kicking in so room one that was Horge Kingsley Ren Necris Romana and Avon uh how did you guys get on what were the uh kind of um disruptions that you would use to displace a queue that would bring you down a routine that would waste 10 minutes of your precious day i I think all of us said the first thing was emails it's it's the emails definitely can completely distract you and get you in a different direction you might have your tasks to do for the day i know I personally find that I write down my task this is when I get done today and you take them off as you do them but then some days I find because of the emails and you know needs response or needs a quote or needs action i can find myself at the end of the day and I haven't done any of the tasks that I'd written down I did the day before or the beginning of the day because the emails just totally overpowers um your activity that's from my experience and then um telephone was another one people find no telephone on their desk if it's not on silent and you hear bleeping or you're seeing calls come in it can kind of pull you away from what you should be doing and that could be from personal side or you know even a business but from a personal side the telephone your phone at your desk can be a bit of a distraction so what would you do to deal with the email or to deal with the phone what was the Yeah discussed resolutions yeah we discussed what the idea was that maybe every day just lock in an hour in your calendar so it could be the first thing in the morning you spend an hour or maybe an hour in the evening h and that's just email time and rest of the day you don't look at it you try and avoid it so you just dedicate time to emails which is good cuz but that gives you better structure and that was kind of the main thing and then the phone stick it on silent you know if if you if you need it for emergencies have it there so you can see the screen of somebody you have to answer it but generally don't have it bleeping and have it on silent yeah the reason I kind of half laughed there is I was trying to think of an ex- boss of mine who was a bit tricky and I don't know how they did it but literally they would slack email and call me at the same time and it was so funny um yeah I do think that that some great examples there of just clear space in your calendar to focus uh it's definitely a 2025 uh positive routine um so it's a good one thanks room one um we'll quickly we'll do one or two other rooms and then I want to bring you through an example and then we get on to the method of moving good habits to bad habit bad habits to good habits room two that's Charles Fabiana Johan Miguel and Ryan um what were the cues that triggered a routine that weren't beneficial in your room and how did you think about disrupting them and changing the routine from a negative Q to a positive one um I uh yeah I've been um well with nominated sorry so um that was that was the democratic process we went through anyway um cheers yeah we all there was a good contrast in terms of there was a good mix of um opinions and contributions there kind of different elements um you know Miguel made a good point about like you know teams notifications notifications in general um you know you try to stay focused on one task or another but you know it's hard to get away from them especially because the more monotonous your tasks are the the more interesting these notifications become uh Johan said um yeah a good point about like you know basically not being able to delegate or say no um even maybe being guilty of being you know a bit uh guilty of hoarding hoarding work and not being able to offload it and um to the detriment of of the work uh in some cases like you you might hold on to it and say I should have really delegated a little bit of that and um fab made a good point as well of um you kind of feel like you always have to be the salesperson um even in cases where you have to know good work to kind of get through um you kind of always have to answer the phone and answer customers but um it's a kind of a tough balance at times you know there is some incredible powerful stuff coming out of those first two rooms so we'll go through a few other rooms and then I'm just going to come back um room three Anya Emma Katarina Paul and Peter how did you get guys get on what kind of cues arose and how would you look then to manipulate what you're going through in order to divert the routine from being a a negative one to a positive one what came up in your room a lot of it was kind of similar to what's being said there lots of emails phone notifications um teams messages and just kind of Yeah the attitude was try to box them off early in the morning lay out clients and areas for dealing with them i kind of had the thing that caused me issues is kind of days off site days out the office just dealing with customers we kind of try to go out and see people as much as possible if companies have golf days um offsite days any type of events um obviously these all eat into your office time and your actual working hours so it's kind of very important to have a schedule around them to kind of fit in what you need to do in the working week as well um but no it was kind of the same type of stuff as the first two groups yeah but with a really good example put into the middle of it um when there is a queue but it's a it's an event it's like it's it's a thing that has its own outcome but it's placed in the middle of lots of other things with their own outcomes it's it's a really good example nice one uh we'll we'll quickly just we'll try room four as well carolina Colin Nisha Nyall and Zia how did you guys get on what anything come up in your room relating to cues and routines and how to change them so I I can go ahead the I believe that in our group we felt that many times what could be a bad in our bed routine in our business could be the coffee breaks or the cigarette breaks uh we get stressed we want a break and that's going to be a loop so you're stressed you want a break for five minutes you you can in my case I would uh lose contact or clients possible sales uh if I was leaving this my store my environment um and also not having a plan for the day that like on the day before or even on that day in the morning to plan how it's going to be our day try to manage everything and be a bit relaxed um before the day starts and have everything organized and then go ahead and just concrete the goals I believe very good many thanks Carolina thanks for talking that through and look seeing as we're here um Alan Dan Daniel Debbie and Shane what what were the cues that would trigger a negative routine in your room and how would you look to disrupt that uh trigger what came up in your room folks i I can chat thank you someone else um it's kind of similar to um what a lot of people have previously discussed so inability to say no um unable to delegate um distractions in the workplace um business priorities like end of quarter obviously is important for sales that can change absolutely everything depending on what comes in um but also then there's the mundane routine admin that nobody likes but sometimes it's easier to do that than what you really need to do um so I like some of the points that come up if you can prepare and if you can automate some of those things which are definitely possible now with AI for example if you have to research prospect or a customer or profile a client that can be a lot of that can be done with AI um at a high level oh yeah absolutely abs completely i for a while a couple of weeks ago I had I I had AI managing my emails and doing it really well but then the company brought in an AI policy to say we could I I asked for permission and the process to get permission for using this tool was so long I I actually gave up but anyway I want to bring a few things together which will hopefully support your learning journey um number one nobody sees your cues you see your cues so the instruction and the guidance I'm asked to give you which I think is really good is you need to be your own coach you need to be able to say to yourself "Ah do you see what's happening here do you see what you're doing do you see what's about to happen?" And then you're meant to bring it back to is this in line with your goals because you know when you coach somebody else right you coach using maybe a coaching model uh clean or grow grow is the most used one goal reality obstacle way forward be your own coach coach yourself about your reaction to the cues as to whether or not it's in line with your goals now I'm going to pause for a second because brilliant points were made about just how busy the world of work is and I cannot help you change how busy your world of work is those things are there in your calendar and you can't move them and neither can I but what I would then ask you is look at the free space in your calendar that you can control about what you do about your outcomes now I'm going to say something which I feel but it's up to you as to whether you adopt it or not here what are you choosing to do between 8 and 9 or between six and seven like you you you've shown great decision to do half six to half nine every Wednesday fair play i really admire that how are you using your time that you control to best effect so number one nobody sees your cues you are your own coach you can align yourself to the goal that you set yourself you cannot control a lot of your calendar none of us can but you can control the time that you can control how are you choosing to spend that time and are you making a plan and are you holding yourself to account that's the big picture stuff so I'm now going to move away from the big picture stuff because there's a lot of food for thought in terms of how you get the best out of the month of April and the four weeks that are in April could be five i haven't checked the calendar but now let's think about a sales conversation for a minute because cues happen in sale conversations all the time let's say I'm selling to you and you guys go "Um Dave thanks a million for all the details about the coaching course we're going to go away and think about it." This is such a classic cue in the world of sales the cue is you say "We're not sure." In your head you're going "We're not sure." Or "It's not going to be Dave we're going to go to the imi." Or there's lots of things happening in your head that I don't know about only you know about the the active activity after that queue is you're going to go away and think about things and I'm going to be going away wondering about you that's the routine and I'm going to be emailing you and texting you and phoning you and going "Here what's have you made a decision why shouldn't I start to disrupt these cues a lot more effectively in the call in the moment face to face?" And it was great that you guys mentioned face to face i would also equate phone as being as important as face to face these days depending on where your customers are so in the same way that I asked you to reflect on nobody sees your co cues so how are you coaching yourself against the goals that you set the next thing I'd ask you to consider is what routines are you seeing in your pattern of executing selling what is creating delays and routines that are not favorable to you giving great information to your company about where the deal is how can you change those routines now I'm going to give you an answer so you don't have to worry too much the answer is more curiosity uh so you guys going to buy the coaching course from UCDPA it's really good it helps you coach better oh Dave we're going to go away and think about it oh okay i understand that what here what what what haven't I told you that means you have to go away and think about it what have I missed i'm now curious about the fact that you want to go away and think about it i want to know what you want to think about i'm being curious to disrupt the routine so I'll just leave it with the fact that there are two routines in your life there's the routine you use to manage your working week and there's the routines that happen in your business transactions and conversations and both are there to be disrupted in order for you to get the best out of what you can possibly be all right food for thought let's now go into some actionable frameworks all right so the next couple of slides go into some specific things that you can do that help you create good habits and break bad ones and this is about selling like to be blunt it's about how you use your time every day to focus on the activities that you should be doing in order to get amazing results so it's a case of um you know start small because willpower is like a m a muscle if you don't exercise your willpower you forget how to use your willpower so then you become subjected to everything that happens to you and then people say well here have you delivered those results so I couldn't because I was too busy and too distracted so it's a case of start with small habits so for example listening and thinking about the challenges you guys shared you know um hoarding work or not delegating or having lots of emails you know practice the Eisenhower matrix so I had this conversation with a a colleague in work and we both agreed that we were planning our day literally every hour every hour we would replan our day just based on the priorities that were coming in so it's a case of start with small habits of making sure you're focusing on what's urgent and important and then increase your habit in very small ways so you know if you don't plan your week you don't have to suddenly turn around after tonight and go I need to plan my Monday to Friday no like here just plan your Monday and then when you finish Monday try and plan your Tuesday you know just try and increase your habit in small ways and then you might find that you're better able to control your week and then you're better able to control your month as you build up you break your habits into chunks so let's say you set up a goal to say "I'm going to talk to 10 potential new customers next week so I'm going to talk to 10 or I'm going to ring 10 people who said no to me or they weren't sure i'm going to you know do 10 of something." All right well what when are you going to do the 10 what What about saying I'm going to do two a day in other words just and and when you have the two done you stop you stop so that you go I have done that because when you've done that and I'm going to pause and help you think it through you've done it you've executed the routine which triggers what you don't have to answer i'll tell you the reward and what happens in your brain when you have a cue a routine an award reward executed collectively it starts to build a new neural pathway in your brain this is a good thing it can also be how bad habits form just to let you know so it's a case of you are the referee of what is a good and a bad habit in your own mind just to let you know we all are we share that journey as as colleagues going through life but break the habits into trunk chunks so that you can carve a nice little canal into your brain Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday you don't have to carve all of the canal on the Monday because do you know what it ain't going to happen i have about 39 educational colleges to contact i haven't done it yet because the task is I have to contact 39 educational college i don't have time to contact 39 educational colleges but you know what going through this content with you guys and making me think do you know what i'll tomorrow I'll contact three then the next day I'll contact two etc etc right um do you know what's happening to me i'm getting a distracting work message um when you slip as you will get back on track quickly so I kind of gave you a what's the word a preview of this earlier on be be good to yourself like don't don't beat yourself up regarding your habits it is what it is so it's a case of if you miss it on the Tuesday get back on it on the Wednesday right so I'm going to say a key phrase here plan for failure it you are going to fail don't beat yourself up plan for what you'll do if you're failure and then be patient so depending on your goal you know your capacity to manage that goal uh so plan how you will actually execute that so these are steps to forming new sales habits right moving on this is the other side of it in terms of setting your goals so city question what is a smart goal folks what does the acronym stand for uh specific measurable attainable or achievable um I think the R is relevant and I think the T is for um timed very good um just put this in specific measurable achievable relevant time bound dead right so let's have a look at some actions what's a small habit that has significantly impacted your life so as you think about um your habit formations what's a small daily habit uh right so me personally waking up at the same time but maybe waking up a bit earlier very good what uh can you be more specific on the time uh sometimes 6 6 a.m very good and what do you do with that uh with that hour well before work I have time to get a workout in or just kind of um create my lunches and kind of pack the day and clean up so after work I can focus on other things as soon as I do get home so it won't mix with that okay very good and in terms of anybody else in the room um does anybody else have an example of a small daily habit that's significantly impacted your life thanks for coming in on that one um laying at bed so like if you lay your bed and you have a bad day at least you have a bed to come back to lay on you know okay that's Thanks Charles appreciate it just checking the chat yeah workouts do do you notice we're kind of thinking of there's good examples coming through which are very uh I suppose personal like sleep routine uh workouts all good and we have we have a market review every morning at half eight um which is literally just reviewing um it was actually pricing um with all of our competitors and customers supply so it's a price and quality comparison every day just to kind of give us footton for where we're starting for from for that day um and the reasoning for it is we came in um the 21st of August this year massive price changes um cheaper product in our competitor's shops so we actually had our own customers ringing us to see what was going on so just something that we've kind of taken in as kind of something we do every single morning yeah that's very The last time I heard that kind of example was from a colleague who moved to Australia and he went to work for a trading company and they would spend the first hour collectively looking at the news together and kind of looking at the the positions and sharing information it was a great learning experience for colleagues and and really also helped people kind of spot colleagues who could put one and one together and come up with three and almost predicting the future so yeah that's a that's it's extended it's extended as well so it's gone from sales to operations to quality control brilliant but it is definitely just a conversation on literally just where are we where are we going and what's the end goal is kind of have to turn into something very important and so simple but good foundation you know I but also it's team building you know it's collective I I there's so much you know do you remember when COVID first hit and um I don't know uh Paul in your business if you went completely remote probably not with the nature of the business but there would be an element of hybrid I don't know but for oh it was on so I started with five three days before the overarcher went on RTE wow and so I went in as a sales executive and March 14 days the March March 14 days in they told us the entire business has been split into two shifts and if one got co the other shift would then be split in half again and it would cover the two shifts now this has changed our business forever because the shifts that they put in place one week they worked Monday Tuesday Saturday Sunday and the next week it swapped and since then the staff have refused to change off these shifts because every second week they four days off and it's pretty much kind of restricted us in the customers we can deploy and the hours of the day and now look it works is it is it's a good process but it's very strange now yeah um I suppose I I hear what you're saying what what I was about to contribute was a lot of companies went into kind of the first 10 minutes of each day was a was a group meeting because a lot of people kind of Yeah but a lot of people kind of felt a bit isolated and miserable with co in terms of you know mental health became a big issue uh correctly and it was just that collective feeling because I'm I'm not going to jump around too much but I think this is a very interesting unit um if you think of Maslo and the kind of pyramid of motivation and it starts off with shelter food you know clothing etc and then it moves up into a sense of love and belonging you know ultimately one of the habits and cues that that trigger routines and behavior is is being together in a in a large group and that can trigger behaviors both good and bad behaviors so ultimately uh what was found during COVID was that when you gathered your team together virtually it actually triggered good routines because people felt a little bit isolated but being part of the team meant that that they felt connected and belonging and they felt and I have to be honest personally speaking the team connections I made during co are incredibly super strong and like we've all left and joined other companies but we're all still in touch so it's a case of um you know a habit you can form has surprising down the line outcomes that you you don't realize as you're actually doing them um so ultimately motivating habits need to follow these four fundamental behavioral laws i just let you kind of read this through so this is falling into the bucket of here th this is not nuclear science this is quite straightforward think about what your behavior change plans are make them very simple make them reward driven make them satisfying and you will start to put in place stronger motivational habits than bad habits so here's the magic answer in order to remove bad habits from your eight hours and you're not going to remove all your bad habits um remove your cues reframe your mindset make it difficult to like place your phone your personal phone physically away from you for those hour segments that you're going to protect and then have a negative outcome in other words like if you're keeping a to-do list of what you meant to be doing are you also making a list of the things that you shouldn't be doing and saying "Well I did that 10 times today." Like that's why phones have usage statistics on them but it's a case of you know use accountability use did that help me go achieve my goal today as something that you come back to i'll just say this sentence again nobody sees your cues you are your own coach so we're just going to quickly work through this well actually just checking the time let's see 2 minutes towards Let's Let's break now um which is uh good timing we're we're uh we're we're we're nicely on schedule so what I'll do is I'll put up the countdown timer i'll give you uh 12 minutes and I'll see you back here in 12 minutes okay folks testing testing just to see are there colleagues back right um so I'm briefly just sharing the report I spoke about earlier on uh the World Economic Forum the kind of skills that people are saying that you should um really look to acquire to best equip yourself over the next 5 10 years um okay so creative thinking resilience flexibility agility curiosity lifelong learning so you know this this is um I'll share this link uh the world economic forum and the videos um but ultimately it's a case of uh there's also skills like leadership skills social influence skills talent management skills which I think I had a conversation with um UCD today and we were talking about the the multiple generations in the workplace and just how best to support the most recent joiners into the workforce um to get the most out of themselves when they are the most addicted to their phones uh and I know that's that's an absolute massive uh characterization but ultimately getting the most out of yourself and other colleagues is a is a big skill that AI won't um replace being able to think strategically analytically and environmental stewardship so these are all areas that uh World Economic Forum reckon are big things and they are probably right okay let's get back to everybody's favorite uh slides um just do a quick review what we were talking about the fact that you know habits help fuel your motivation and motivation help fuel fuels helps fuel your engagement your productivity and your performance so habits are pretty profound and in order to break bad habits remove things make them unattractive make them difficult and make them unsatisfying and you know nobody knows what your bad habits are you do so this is your responsibility motivation is in internal it's your motivation it's not somebody else's it's yours likewise your bad habits are yours so they're yours to break okay so what I'd like you to do is uh choose a a habit so be that more exercise more reading more mindfulness more reducing procrastination so when you're going into the room pick one of these habits so quickly write those down reading mindfulness reducing procrastination or you know picking up your phone for example and then use the four laws making something invisible unattractive difficult or unsatisfying use those four laws to then come up with a strategy on how to reduce the impact of that bad habit right so um now I've focused on a bad habit there equally you could make something obvious attractive easy and satisfying to focus on a good habit so it's a case of you get to decide what you want to do so in the effort not to confuse everybody I'll just cover that again pick a habit now it's either a good habit or a bad habit you choose so not exercising enough or doing more exercise reading mindfulness working on your phone etc reducing procrastination and then if you want to get rid of a bad habit you use these four laws making them visible unsatisfacing unattractive uh or difficult to do or if you want to emphasize a good habit how to make it obvious attractive easy and satisfying and then bring the strategy back to the class so I will open up the breakout rooms i'll leave them as they are and I will see how you guys are getting on and we'll bring you back shortly so the rooms are open now just 10 seconds to go folks okay we'll go in reverse order we'll start with room five five allan Dan Daniel Debbie and Shane please describe your four laws that you were going to apply to a certain habit i'll go there David thank you Dan what we were saying was um um so the the bad habit was being distracted by your phone we were going to make it invisible so we're going to put it in a different room or whatever keep it away from you make it unattractive you have to actually go and get the phone in front of people or whatever make it difficult um we'll be in a bit of trouble here because unattractive difficult and unsatisfying we kind of there's a bit of crossover and all that so maybe I'll just go to the positive one right so we were saying increase focus so we were saying um if you have if you're already focused and you you you're you're disciplined you don't read your emails when you're doing tasks so then make it obvious put on an out of office you're focused and you're not going to be your c someone rings you or someone emails you they're not going to follow up with a with a call they're going to try to reach you make it attractive is you uh well you you should be looking at getting a ton of work done in that in that 40 minutes or per hour or whatever you do make it easy just um you know again if you the out of office on people shouldn't be trying to reach you and just be disciplined enough not to do it and then make it satisfying look say at the end of that 1 hour by not being distracted and jumping from email to phone all that I should have a big chunk of work done and that should be the satisfying element of it that's very good thanks Dan and thanks also for for raising the point you know here what's the difference between unsatisfying unattractive difficult like you know words have meanings and meanings are important um ultimately I think the best guidance I can give the room is let's start at the bottom which is unsatisfying in other words if I'm using my phone during what I intended to be ringing those not ringing contacting contacting those educational bodies to try and sell them something that we we offer you know I'm basically going against the goal I set myself this is not what I should be doing this is unsatisfying like I'm on my phone i'm playing chess on my phone this is unsatisfying i am defining this as unsatisfying so remember we talked about identitydriven habits so by doing something on my phone during a working hour that I was meant to do something else it has breached a rule I have set for myself this is not a good feeling i'm going to hold myself to account so this stuff takes work this takes work you know habit breaking habit forming takes work likewise with unattractive you know this is not a good look for me i'm meant to be doing my thing getting through things achieving things moving forward earning money etc this is this is not a good look what if my boss saw me so remember what I said about cues which was in the previous page i've flicked the page in my notes here nobody sees your cues so you know we've all heard the definition you know ethics is what you do when nobody's watching likewise your habits and your cues are you're the only person watching so in terms of reframing the mindset well what if I was observed doing this is this attractive or is it unattractive what are you doing on your phone in work come on come on you're not meant to be doing that and then as you said you you you nailed the other two but you did raise a good a very good point that some of these words are very similar but it's about specifically holding yourself to account or consider yourself to being observed and putting your brain in the place of what if somebody saw me do this would this be a good look you know stop playing chess when you're meant to be doing the spreadsheet thanks a million room five appreciate it um room four uh Carolina Colin Nisha Nile and Zia what uh strategy would you form against the habit that you talked about hi yeah so I I would just go so we had um a few different ideas that uh personally my my idea was that uh I'm pretty addicted to phone and I have my screen time on it but I usually keep pressing it the password again and I'm busy with my phone again so um there like well I I thought I could buy a small phone or just phone calls and distract myself from from my smartphone or just there are some kind of lockers that take the habit not to use the phone a lot or read some book or something just to distract some way or find an activity instead of using the phone so thanks you know [Music] uh there are many examples in life of bad habits which verge on the addiction side of things and one of the consistent methods of supporting people to form new habits is to make the the accountability bigger than themselves so you are more accountable to other people or to your business or to your family or to a higher power you know that is something that's quite well known so I would kind of say here everybody can get a break about being addicted to their phone the world is addicted to the phone it's how the world works but equally you get to decide how much is too much and you know and the benefit of this course and this unit is it's just going to put some techniques in your mind as to how to actually do it so the good news is we're going to move on with content but I think these habit knowing that there's a habit and bear in mind and I'm going to say this and I hope it's useful one of the main methods of learning is rehearsing something that is a habit so you learn through a habit so habits are clearly an amazing thing they're really useful but equally in the world of work in the world of life we can have habits that are not amazing and don't help us achieve our goals you're the person who spots them you have to do something about it and one of the things is to think how you would be considered if somebody else saw that you were doing that at that time the attractive element but bear in mind we are all human please give yourself a reward for doing a good habit if you have a reward for a good habit you will be more encountered you know uh to more empowered to replicate that habit more times so um I think I've uh given enough material around this uh okay so this is the uh James Clear habit loop be really clear about why you want the habit visualize the process that you will go through and then if this happens then I will do so plan for failure but plan for success reward yourself for doing a new habit put things into your calendar set your schedules and look at the last one it's not about getting it right it's about doing it like how many times during the day do we actually do things right you know here let's relax let's just execute it try to do the best we can and then let's try and do it better the next time okay um going to move past this breakout we've we've done enough breakouts around uh habits as I said I brought in some additional material just to uh emphasize the usefulness uh just checking the chat for a sec here Fabiana when I see questions like that my uh uh na native um weariness as being one of the youngest of a very large family is I look at that and I go it's a trap because both of those are bad things right micromanagement a bad habit or weakness let me come back with a better answer so micromanagement habit bad habit or weakness it's a great uh question um in 2025 micromanagement isn't considered to be fantastic um let me come back with a good answer i'll see how we're doing in time uh there's a couple of minds a couple of things coming to mind straight away um micromanagement okay let's let me come back to that one um right we're back in the world of selling now uh so in terms of the content that we were talking about we talked about routine so think of the big words you've heard over the last hour and a bit you've heard routine you've heard habit you've heard practice you've heard neural pathway but ultimately that it's all about how you organize your week and hold yourself to account about doing the things you should be doing to make the best results for yourself every week every month every quarter every year you don't have control over your calendar you've control over sections of your calendar well execute that control to the highest standard that you possibly can reward yourself for doing great things don't beat yourself up if you fail pick yourself up start again as soon as possible now I'm going to bring you back to the world of sales and I'm going to ask you what are what are the characteristics of a successful salesperson what behaviors should a salesperson display so do you want to put a few into chat there cool thanks Ryan yeah nice yeah I think Yeah good stuff yeah lots of good things coming through yeah absolutely yeah okay so let's just see yeah thanks Sea so you've listened well and then you're you're responding that's a really interesting that one Romana i I love the idea of the mindset of thinking how how would I sell this to somebody and remember the video from Jordan Blandford um you know sell me this pen you know there is a problem out there that you have the solution to and that's why I'd always say don't be afraid to move companies if you can spot somebody and um I'll just check chat for something knowledge yeah absolutely Nisha nobody wants a a salesperson who doesn't know Anthony um I'd agree yeah really good ones um you know I joined the company a long time ago and I had a brother and I spoke to him about the company and I spoke to him about a competitor and he said to me "Why don't you just join the competitor?" You know it's a case of uh you definitely want to make sure you know if if you see somebody that has a better pen than you have well if you can't beat them join them you know um right let's move through these so okay so these are ones for you to consider in terms of the traits of successful salespeople think of these in the context of your business and how you can acquire more capability for example you know the expertise doing this course is definitely something that opens up lots of different expertise areas for you to explore be that social be that targeting uh new customer areas be that over sales strategy i I was very much a third line item one in terms of my my safety questions were how was business h how do you do your business why do you make those choices about how your business operates like I was actually just curious about how the business worked and that I would then identify whether or not we could solve a problem for them so that's my that's my uh comfort zone but look at the second one this is definitely a hab a habit related one terms of avoiding wasting time avoiding delays i'm just checking chat for a sec i'm still thinking about your question Fabiana it's such a good one micromanagement so now let's talk about personality traits so the kind of personality traits that are uh the big five right so these are the big five personality traits that that all personalities are made up of so you're either open and curious to things or you're not open you you you choose to reduce the questions that you ask about life so these are the big five personality traits you're highly efficient you're highly organized or you know maybe you're kind of not as conscientious you know here it's okay like I never met um the musician Prince but you know was was he very efficient and organized or was he not efficient and organized like it's a case of highly successful people can be not very conscientious it's it's not a it's not a binary thing this is one that you're all very familiar with you know are you outgoing energetic or I I would dispute bringing outgoing and en energetic because introverts get energy from different means by by being on their own by doing their own interests so they're still en energetic introverts can still be energetic but they get their energy from different exercises different activities you know I think you guys can think of a few world leaders who mightn't be very agreeable who wouldn't be very friendly or compassionate um but it's a case of there's this is a large personality trait classifier yep thanks Alan good uh development of knowledge just put in by Alan in terms of ambiivert a combination of both is there anything you want to expand on that point uh Alan because it is it's a good development of what we're talking about because I think it's such a cliche that all sales people are extroverts but not necessarily that's and anyway there's different types of sales people out there in different types of roles absolutely i I think it's a it's well maybe it's it's the optimal to be an ambivert to to know when not to be an extrovert exactly and bear in mind just for the avoidance of doubt what this slide does is it presents the scales and then you you score where you score according to the scale but it definitely the the concept that sales people have to be highly charismatic and extrovert and life and soul of the party etc no that's that's long gone um there can be different elements of extroversion such as your assertiveness for example um it's it's not all about how you portray yourself in in social situations so absolutely completely agree with what's been put into chat um and then it's a case of look how sensitive are you to certain things how anxious are you um or it's a case of here do you just sail on through you know nothing nothing bothers you it's it's it's not going to affect you uh ultimately these are the main traits that are used to define personalities um from the perspective of habits it's about self-nowledge so the point about this slide at this time in this course is to know to what extent are you aware of what kind of person you are and how to counteract some of the traits that you have naturally so for example in the modern world of selling conscientiousness attention to detail being efficient being organized is highly valued and priced you know getting the stuff done because there's increasingly fewer resources and there's more demands on your time so being conscientious to get as much done early in the week so you can then crack on with other stuff is is highly priced and and AI will only help that in terms of uh the the supporting tools but sometimes to know is to understand so one of the things it's a case of uh I'll share some kind of uh assessment tools via links tomorrow that you can be aware of what kind of uh colleague you are and how that reflects within the workplace but there's a few principle sales habits that I just want to go through and the first one you'll hear you'll have heard me say in a different word um ultimately proactive being proactive is a key sales habit now there's a breakout room coming up so I'm not going to disclose much more being proactive is a key sales habit being a strategic thinker is a key sales habit it's one of the characteristics that the World Economic Forum actually reckons that thinking uh creative thinking strategic thinking system thinking problem solving is a key sales habit and then allelujah customer focus is here what a relief can you imagine if you had a salesperson who wasn't customer focused so just to share if I have a hundred things to do I will immediately group them into two lists stuff to do with customers and stuff to do with stuff to do with the office or other things and I will immediately prioritize customer stuff over non-C customer stuff even if the non-c customer stuff is respond to my boss about something I will put a customer first now why do I do that because I have heard my CEO say "There's nothing more important than a customer." So my CEO has evangelized that we are a customer first organization that's it so if my boss ever gives out and says "Why did it take you you know an hour to get back to me?" I say was I was working with customers okay I'm going to be breaking you guys into three breakout rooms so they're going to be quite big breakout room one which I will tell you about will have proactivity breakout room two will have strategic thinking and breakout room three will have strategic focus so if I just crack open the breakout rooms here for a second so just bear with me okay so Charles Fabiana Horge Johan Katarina Nisha Paul and Zia you have proactivity and the exam question is what does it mean to be proactive in the sales profession anya Alan Carolina Colin Dan Daniel Emma and uh Kingsley you have strategic thinking and the exam question is what does it mean to think strategically in relation to the sales profession how does that manifest itself Monday to Friday and then room three Debbie Nile Peter Ren Chris Romana Ryan Shane and Ivonne you've customer focus what does it mean to be customer focused as it relates to the sales professional so these are key traits these are key habits that you need to have i'll drop in see how you're getting on and we'll present fact shortly okay great to hear the discussion in all of the rooms um let's go through each of these and it's a case of what we've spoken about so far this unit is about habits routines cues rewards um the importance of rehearsals uh the the the the life cycle of learning the the power of repetition we've talked about how to disrupt your bad habits and work on good habits and all of the great content that's out there but equally if you think of all of the sales people and the sales conversations there are routines and habits built into all of those so we're going to go through three in a bit of detail so the first one is proactivity um I'm just going to make sure I'm sharing the slides which I am uh room one you had proactivity so that was Charles Fabiana Horge Johan Katarina Nisha Paul and Zia so in your definition what defined proactivity when it comes to sales management what did you talk about um I think All right okay go ahead go for go for Go ahead if you want go Paul go well actually Paul said uh most of it but basically it was all around planning so um going ahead knowing your um environment products um knowing uh your customers your competitors um your arguments uh knowing the uh rebutals knowing whatever the customer is going to complain about the pains the challenges uh so yeah basically it's going uh going to battle prepared uh got the armor got the grenades got the weapons and uh yeah that's it um so describe that um but and then you get all the information from from wherever you can so in my situation I was going to get a bit more specific but you go for chemical products you're going to get your information from um financial um organizations from um health and safety um ministries um from um um the uh Chamber of Commerce that kind of stuff um from LinkedIn from um social media in general um so yeah just uh being prepared basically brilliant list and as I was listening I was thinking of personal experience but then I was thinking about what I heard so far this evening about how busy everybody is and there's a lot of work in being proactive every week every day you're looking ahead you're predicting things you're putting work in place so like you're actually consuming time to being proactive but the benefit of it is fewer surprises you know probably better customer conversations more honesty um you know said a good thing as well she mentioned uh following up and I I feel it is something being proactive usually people try to get prepared as much as they can although you can sometimes forget a few sources and but uh following up is often a kind of proactivity that is uh absent so you usually do the first step but then you don't follow up uh as much well just consider it um everything about this course is a is for you to reflect on uh as to like I I have met salespeople who wouldn't follow up because they have so much of a market that literally they'll get another order in five minutes but but equally I've worked with salespeople including personal contacts who there's only 20 potential customers in the world they sell to the largest media companies there's only 20 of them that's it so you have to follow up um yeah fantastic it was just it was mentioned as well using your customers for the feedback so whether it be negative or positive that the best information feedback you're going to get back to people that have bought from you yeah and it's the truth isn't it obviously touched on using your customers good and the bad for the feedback to Yeah you gota you have to their voice is more valid than everybody's um in fact just to share one of the reasons I moved into sales was originally I wasn't in sales i was in the IT department and the company I was in was undergoing cuts and they were reducing headcount and I suddenly went "Oh I need to be close to customers because if you talk to customers you're less likely to be fired because you're talking to a customer the CEO might not be talking to a customer the accountant is definitely not talking to a customer." and I made the decision talk to customers because that is where you are more protected now that that's just me sharing what I moved into sales for um in terms of proactivity there is proactivity for yourself for all these things but also proactivity for your boss to make sure that if you need help you're you're getting the help in fast enough because you've spotted something a challenge that you need help because you are the choreographer of your company to help win a particular piece of business you're kind of a project manager so it's better to if you think of the negotiating styles last week uh you don't want to be the one that's everything is at the last minute cuz people go "No problem take care." Um you don't want to be the one like why did you not see that coming you're meant to be looking at this thinking so that you predict what's going to happen next because you're the superstar who can help the business win this uh big big deal or small deal or any deal okay many thanks room one uh room two Anya Alan Carolina Colin Dan Daniel Emma and Kingsley what is the role of strategic thinking when it comes to sales management i think I'm chatting by default thanks Alan come on in um so strategic thinking is kind of like a high level view so in an ideal case you have an ICP match when you're prospecting and there is a product market fit and it's time bound and you can understand the long-term value uh of getting that client or prospect on board and how long it'll take and then again like Johan mentioned previously you have supports and resources that you need to analyze um like current industry trends uh certain data um that will influence ultimately influence the decision decision you make on that yeah um but then you also through I suppose your engagement with the prospect or client um you'll make them aware and set expectations um for them um so that you're both on the same level playing field um and it hopefully it'll be a win-win situation but at the same time you'll you'll be prepared for um those objections when they come up and you'll have set those expectations so it should progress very good but that's an ideal scenario you know that we'd all love to have which doesn't happen every so often you know it hasn't been mentioned but imagine if somebody has the assumption that strategic thinking is as a result of a lot of study and you're reviewing things and you're spending time analyzing etc doesn't you know that can form part of strategic thinking but equally you know being able to spot a trend and make a recommendation based on that like here the last 10 customers I've spoken to have all said this I think we should react with a new so I I remember the last time I ran this course I had a couple of colleagues on the on the course who were selling um power and energy online and doortodoor and you know they were they were really spotting impacts on pricing people's decisions and they were feeding it back to their business with new pricing plans that could literally be launched within one or two weeks sometimes you can spot something very small and make a big decision and it's very strategic so it this is the classic mix of big things and also micro trend analysis so yeah brilliant um brilliant spot there but would there be some kind of feedback loop that most businesses would have like someone previously said that you you'd feed back um valuable information that the client is willing to share as well as um information that's out there that you got to go and but look Alan you know I am speaking from personal experience when I think back of the CEOs I have worked with and I've worked with a good few entrepreneurs and a good few non- entrepreneurs some of them didn't speak to customers you know your head would explode so like you were the person as sales that would tell the business what the market is doing and would inform what product or service should be offered because you're the person speaking to the customer but equally there is also in the last five or six years that the the um description productled company i don't know if anybody's heard it i can think of some examples in my head i don't want to name them uh because you might know people who work there and they might be annoyed that there's some companies out there that are productled companies so the people who build the product they make the decisions we are going this way this is why and uh sales are kind of behind them uh so ultimately my guidance and the content is guiding you as people who are interested in the world of sales do not underestimate the power of thinking strategically about potential about value about trends and data like look at unit one DAPEX data and analytics it comes up twice so my challenge from that week I put forward to you again how often are you looking at the data to make decisions about your patch your progress your asks of the business i was talking to a colleague today and we mentioned very transactional at the moment not very strategic you know data helps you move away from being transactional into being more empowered about what you're deciding to do and the final thing that sales people can really benefit from from strategic thinking is looking at things from your customers point of view so you know what if so have you considered you know your business at the moment what if you were able to do it differently because you want them to get to think about the future and the future is with you that is fundamental to your conversations about why change what if you did business in a different way and I know there's colleagues on this call who's in extremely strong position and being asked in by customers to help them make decisions about the future what if we did things differently what would you think what would you advise us to do so like that there's some incredibly strategic thinking businesses on the uh call so strategy is for salespeople too okay moving on to the final one which is the uh who not going to show the answer it's customer focus let's go through the breakout room so one sec that was breakout room three uh Peter uh Ren Chris Romana Ryan Shane and Avon what does customer focus mean in relation to sales management yeah I can go for this one so cheers Peter probably touches on what you've said there as well David and it um touched on in our conversation it's probably recognizing that the customer is absolutely central and we're in some ways completely dependent on them in in you know to um for numbers for for you know making sure the business is viable so it's probably about putting yourself in their shoes um and recognizing the customer experience um taking the actions that are best for the customer so making sure you're understanding their needs fully having empathy with their situations and problems um there's you're you're putting their needs front foot and center in terms of design of your products um so that you're solving the problems that they have um and then once the sale is made you obviously have continuous improvement cycle of um you know taking their feedback on board and then putting that into back into the design process um so things are better for them um being supportive and available for them when they things go wrong and that that's a a priority for you and it's not kind of going to the bottom of your your pile um if you have other things going on as well um and I think a big one that came up was um not being too uh too fond of your own voice and maybe listening and asking questions more so than um you know spit spitting out the presentation or your pitch rather your power point yeah stfu you know STFU uh yeah there's uh I really like some of the points particularly about the feedback from customers back into your product design um it's uh you know salespeople can advise their business a lot on what they need to do differently uh I'll also add in to the fact that um particularly at the start of this unit when when we went went way back unit one 2 3 we were talking about not all customers are the same there's big customers small medium and each business values them differently um you know sometimes you'll be encouraged by your accountants oh sure ignore that small company they're just a small company but equally you might move to a different organization who hugely values small customers you you just have to tap into what the business decides is a great customer what is a perfect customer for this business and there might be a few flavors but um always keep your eyes and ears open i I really liked what I heard 10 minutes ago about spotting trends identifying things because here you can suddenly spot a new segment arising based on your observations of what customers are doing you might go I think there's something happening like in my last job we realized there's something happening with South African companies they were coming to us a bit lot more we had no idea why why are we winning more business in South Africa but that drove a decision which then g drove future growth in in Africa we actually just one thing drove another thing whereas if we weren't looking at customers in the same way we might have missed it so keep your eyes and ears open i can't remember i think it was in the chat but it's a case of you know always be monitoring what is actually happening and thinking what it means for your business i I haven't described it as well as it was put up in the chat but consider what this actually means i now I remember like how would you sell this uh pen better you know you know always be thinking how you could be selling more you know your data your customer data will tell you faster than anything else and that's why I also liked what I heard today earlier about looking at your competitors what are what are the competitors doing you know anywhere I've ever worked I always picked one competitor i wanted to annihilate we are going to annihilate that competitor and that drove behavior of of really being focused on winning more than our fair share but also watching what they were doing because we're all after the same customers and therefore when you're thinking of c customers you have to also think of competitors all right I need to uh watch the time we're going to start ramping down for this unit in terms of just some uh content I want to talk through so uh right ultimately this unit it's about um sales habits sales routines sales characteristics and um this is a a small topic sorry I'm being distracted by messages come through this is a small topic in relation to the three C's of trust so quick question um when you look at these three words cander which is an another word for uh direct honesty um you know calling things exactly as they are competence which is ability capability and concern what's your understanding of these three in the context of selling can you just want to put this up onto chat for a minute what do you think cander competence and concern mean in relation to the context of selling thanks Alan yeah love that one Ryan yeah few more just before we we go into the content like pick one and put a chat up in terms of what does Yeah being authentic yeah why is concern there like what does concern got to do with selling surely we just want them to buy the stuff and pay us like do sales people care yep yeah absolutely if they're if they're not successful they won't be paying their bills in six months okay and I don't want to get I don't don't want to get trapped on the segmentation debate that I tried to reopen uh 5 minutes ago but sometimes you have to lobby to your business to go here like I know you don't treat this customer as as a perfect customer but I see a potential in them like don't be afraid to to uh advocate for your customers okay so let's go through these in a little bit more detail you know you've heard me say this and I've shared a video relating to it words are important so what questions are you asking your customers what are you then doing with that information and what are you saying to them and once again I think it was PJ who asked the question you know how do you demonstrate emotions in business conversations well and I reflected about it over the week as well and it even came to me today keep your promises you know salespeople have this is a shock horror a bad reputation you know we we we are not generally trusted as you'll say you're a salesperson that's why in one of the units it's well bring expertise to the meeting on here's the project manager here's etc here's the expertise but keep your promises if you keep your promises here they mightn't buy from you all the time but they'll always keep in touch with you and perhaps sometimes give you advice so this is a trait this is a way of working which will easily be present in 10 15 25 years uh next up competence it was great to hear a couple of minutes ago somebody say you know know your product you know know what you're selling knowledge i couldn't agree more like um I go back to the 1950s in American salespeople learn the product manual know what you're talking about now this is I often feel sorry for junior salespeople because there's a lot to learn you have to learn about selling and you then have to learn about your product and service so the good advice always is try and work for a company who already know you if possible in terms of your very first sales job so you know your very first sales job try and almost maybe internal promotion or you know work through it internally first and then um move to a company when you because you're going to make a lot of mistakes in your first sales job hands up um but ultimately competence is a key habit forming area for salespeople so I now get to ask a very annoying question that you don't have to answer but where in your calendar do you fit your learning time now I know you're going to say Dave it's between half six and half nine on Wednesdays and then I do some stuff during the weekend etc brilliant well done fair play keep it up keep up your learning time within your calendar and unfortunately I have to say sometimes it's outside of working hours because it's very hard to fit in learning time during the the week um I massively struggle with that where to put in those learning segments so it's a case of you make a plan that was part of what the early part of tonight was about you have to make a plan and then you have to see how you stick with it part of that plan has to be learning sections just checking yeah I hear you paul has anything been announced i'm keeping an eye out on He was due to start speaking at 9ine I think yeah supposed to be at 9:00 yeah we're just waiting i think the whole world is waiting just on cars yeah it's uh yeah that's moving on um uh the next one is uh concern like being curious being empathic and demonstrating a genuine interest so I I go back to in my last job we sold software to call centers and one of the customers we had looked after all of the private health care facilities in the US like this is a premium you know we you know the Mayo Clinic uh Cleveland Clinic etc and they looked after their reservation booking systems in other words you know who would be ringing in and asking for doctor's time and traditionally in that industry it's very get the customer off the call as soon as possible like literally six seven minute sorry you know two 3 minutes bang next call bang next call why because it's a cost the longer the call the more people you need in the call center the more money you have to pay etc etc but they realized that because healthcare is so competitive in the US that if they actually spent a bit more time with the people who were ringing in because those people were ringing in with fear with concerns with worries if they spend a bit more time and also if they showed that they remembered the person from the last time now I know you're all thinking Dave it's a call center how do you do that notes were kept so they would actually say "Oh David okay the last time you called in was September how do you feel after that?" You know the very first 30 seconds the script included personalized memories of previous calls that they would read from the notes of the last call that's a call center serving health care facilities in the US if that isn't an example of the importance of remembering your customer being kind to them being curious displaying a genuine interest for business purposes i don't know what is so um I was honest earlier on to go when I first started selling I would have gone to my safe harbor of tell me about how your business works what are your inputs your outputs why did you make those decisions etc etc as I've learned over time talk talk to the colleagues talk to the people about being people like how's work how how are you know how busy are you are you underresourced what's up and then you could plenty of time to talk about the business and I know there's colleagues on this call who go "Yeah Dave you're an idiot it took you a long time to work out that it was all about people." And that's absolutely right but this is a safe harbor for salespeople uh because I get to say a sentence next that you'll all know sometimes a customer you'll sell to in year zero you'll also sell to in year 12 both of you will have moved jobs many times but you will meet the same people on their journey in different roles in different jobs in different years so selling is truly a lifetime craft that can introduce you and reintroduce you to people all the time so that's just a quick reminder of the importance of cander competence and concern and they're almost indefinable benefits to your sales conversations so what's the takeaway the takeaway is where are you demonstrating cander in your sales conversations where are you demonstrating competence and where are you demonstrating concern and we've all faced those situations as we talk to customers your mind's going a bit blank what do I say next they're so angry i'm a I need to just react to this okay reach for concern if your customer is angry at you it's not time to crack open the product manual it may be good to say do you know what you're absolutely right this has been an absolute mess how do you feel about that how would you like me to go about solving it so it's a case of you get to pick what you use when you use it but ultimately cander competence concern is a good structure for um demonstrating uh nicer human skills in your sales conversations okay that was quite a lot to take in this evening um for the benefit of your learning log have a think about the the habit formation the routines all of the materials uh no worries Paul and as always uh reach out to me my contact details are in every announcement and I will post up the links from today tomorrow including uh the research for the question about micromanagement is it a bad habit and a weakness uh my considered thought just is it's both um but uh it can be addressed both in terms of bad habits and weakness okay folks have a great week and I'll see you next week take care thanks see you there byebye thanks for your support see you bye-bye