Conversations with Good Humans

Liz Heiman- Beliefs in Selling

• Catherine Brown • Episode 30

Share episode

What starts out as a discussion of habits in sales, turns into a masterclass on complex B2B sales.

My guest on Conversations With Good Humans is sales consultant and expert Liz Heiman. Liz grew up in selling as her father was co-founder of Miller Heiman. She has created a name for herself with her own firm and generously shares her wisdom in this episode.

Listen for Liz to explain what sales habits she considers to be so basic that she returns to them over and over again. You may just want to copy her!

Mentioned in this episode:
Liz Heiman on LinkedIn
Yoram Stone on LinkedIn
Bill Ganon on LinkedIn
https://www.regardingsales.com
Alan Stein Jr. on Ed Mylett's podcast

Do you think sales is a bad word? When you hear the word sales, I wonder what images come to mind. Whatever your relationship is with selling. I'm glad you're here. Let's have a conversation about how to sell like a good human. Hi. Welcome to Conversations with Good Humans. I'm your host Catherine Brown, and I'm author of the book called How Good Humans Sell.

Today On Conversations With Good Humans. I'm talking with Liz Heiman on the topic of habits in selling habits. I love this topic as the daughter of Steve Heiman of Miller Heiman sales training. Liz comes from a family of sales Royal. She now has her own sales consulting business called Regarding Sales, and Liz was super generous to join us for the recording early in the morning where when she was visiting Hawaii.

She is based out of Reno, Nevada. This recording captures the best of the discussion that we had on social audio where we held a live room. It was basically a live sales masterclass on what habits are necessary for best sales practices. I think you'll see there's a really special thing about my conversation with Liz because she gave so much away.

She's so generous with her sales knowledge, and I know you'll find something that you can apply to the way you wanna show up for your clients and prospects. Be sure to check the show notes to find relevant links to know how to follow Liz and to rate the podcast if you find it helpful. Let's jump right in and hear Liz answer the question of what does it mean to her to sell like a good human?

Um, what does it mean to sell, to be a good human and to sell? Those are those, they're separate, but they're also one thing. So when we're just basically being good humans, we're, we're being aware and conscious and thoughtful about the people around us. We're making the world a better place every day by the things that we think, say, do, don't do.

And that's the same as true in selling. If I wake up every morning and I say, It is not my job to close this much business, it is my job to help these, this many people accomplish something that's important to them or to prevent something that frightens them or to solve something that worries them. And so when I start my day there, It's not about me anymore.

When I'm selling, it's not about me, it's about my client, It's about the possibilities. It's about them and all the things that they wanna accomplish, and I am just their mentor in accomplishing that. And so that is where the three Cs come in. I think that when we're selling like good humans, we are.

Curious about our customers, our partners, we're compassionate about the situation that they're in and the things that they're worried about and what's going on with them. And we're creative in our conversations, in our solutions, in our engagements. And so those are the three Cs that I focus on. And I think that as a good human, we naturally do those things, but we forget that when we're selling we have to do those things as well.

So that's where I would start. 

Liz. I think 

that some people listening who maybe they don't do sales for the majority of their day every day, you know, they might be listening and thinking, Well, of course I would be focused on their needs or that, that's what the books tell me to do. And  guess, would you speak a little bit more about.

What temptations come into play or what you see with your clients? Like why does a person not act like a good human accidentally? We could 

even say, Well, the first thing I think is, it's really important to acknowledge that when you are in sales and that's your primary job, there is a tremendous amount of pressure, um, both financial and emotional, um, that you have to deal with.

So if you have a number to. Then you are focused on hitting that number. And it's hard not to be because that's how you pay your bills, and that's what's expected of you to keep your job. So I don't think that it's necessarily that people don't care, that salespeople don't care. They're just pressured into focusing on, uh, the end result instead of on the process of the client and good companies and good sales leaders.

Sales people focus on what's important and the number that we hit at the end of that is the result of doing good work. So I think that's one of the reasons that we get caught up in not focusing on the other person, but being really focused on our number and our goal. I think the other thing that happens sometimes is that we get so excited about our product and we get so excited about what we think and what we feel and what we want.

Because we want them to buy this product because it's so exciting and we, we think it's so cool and we, we can't help but be excited and, and so we are talking about us and our product and we're not talking about them. We're not focused on them. And I think the other thing that can happen is we get so worried or anxious in the process that we are afraid.

To relax and let the other person talk, let the other person explain and let the other person think. We're always in an active. Response mode. They said this, I'm gonna say this, they said this. I'm gonna say this. I, I, sometimes you guys hear me call it the Yaba Daba do. Right. Which is, Yeah. But yeah. But yeah, but, well, yeah, but isn't compassionate.

It isn't kind, it isn't helpful. We need to let other people think it through, and we need to understand what they're going through so that we can help them connect what's important to them, to how we can help them solve their problem. But it's hard in the midst of all of that pressure. Sometimes it's hard to be a good human being in a selling environment, even when we mean to be.

Thanks, Liz. Thanks for working in the three Cs too. That was really cool. So this interview is part of a series about beliefs, about sales, and one of the things I wanna be sure to ask before I open up to questions from the moderators I wanna be sure to ask you is one thing I've observed about you is that you are very deliberate and have good habits.

And so I wanna be sure to ask about habits. And the role that you think they play in selling. So here's my specific question. What role do you think that beliefs about habits play in the way you sell? Would 

you talk a little bit about that? This is kind of a fun thing to talk about because one of the things that, the myths about sales that we hear all the time is that good sales people are just naturals.

They're just naturally good sales people. And so, They're comfortable. They engage really well. They're outgoing. People love talking to them, and therefore they're good sales people. And actually the the Miller Heiman. Uh, company that I came from, that that whole company was based on the idea that if you wanna know what makes really successful salespeople successful, we'll show you because, um, Steve Heiman and Bob Miller interviewed a ton of successful salespeople and managed a ton of successful salespeople in their careers and realize it's not an accident and it's not a gift of.

It's actually a process. It's consistency. So my, that's my fourth C of selling, is consistency, right? You have to do the right things over and over and over again. Now, if you're consistently doing the wrong things over and over and over again, you're not gonna be successful. But if you're consistently doing the things that will make you success.

Over and over. If you're intentional about making time for prospecting, if you're intentional about preparing for your meetings, if you're intentional about your follow ups and your, um, scheduling your next meetings and all of those things that will make you more successful, you will be more successful salesperson if you believe that it's all this sort of carmic.

Mix where you're just happen to be lucky enough to be a great salesperson and you can always wing it, you're probably not going to be consistently successful. You're going to have highs and lows and ups and downs because you are doing things haphazardly. One 

of my pet peeves, Liz, is when people say that person was born to sell.

And I know that sometimes that's meant as a compliment, and sometimes that is a joke because they're saying the person has the gift of gab or that they're very persuasive. I think the intention is not always bad when someone says that, So I don't mean to suggest that's the case, but I don't like that expression because I think that it does, um, stand in opposition to this idea that.

Selling like a good human. And the practices we're talking about here are exactly that. They're practices, they're things that can be learned, and I think anyone can learn to be an effective helper through selling with practice. I know you work with a lot of early stage companies at this stage in your career, so would you speak a little bit more about that role of practice?

So here's the thing. When you're starting with a really early stage company, guess who the primary salesperson is? It happens to be the founder who very often is not somebody who came out of sales. They're often engineers. Or, um, or, uh, they were COOs or they play some other role, but sales is typically not something that they're experienced in familiar with.

Understand. If you talk to new founders about sales, they kind of think it's this magical black box that you drop stuff into the top and magically somehow in. Step thumbs out the bottom and they don't really know how it happens. So for them cells, it tends to be a very uncomfortable thing because they don't understand what they're really doing.

All they know is they've created something that they think is really cool and is gonna change the world, and it probably is. And they now have to go and sell it to people. And the interesting thing about it is you would think based on the fact that they have no experience, They won't be able to sell.

The opposite is sometimes true because they are so connected to what they've created that the story they can tell other people about it helps them get connected to it, and people buy it because of the story that the, the founder can tell. The problem that happens next is I can never translate. That com, that passion and excitement and connectedness to both the problem and the solution from this, the founder to a sales team.

When we make that transition, we have to put in place a whole bunch of things that help them be successful. And so what happens typically in a new organization as the the founders, Been selling, now they're too busy to sell anymore, and they bring in people with no understanding of what's involved in selling.

And I will talk to founders who I've tried three salespeople, it's failed every time. And I sit down and go, Okay, well let's do it right this time. Let's make sure we've got everything in place for them to be successful. Because that founder didn't, they didn't sell using process and. Selling forever.

They're selling for a short period of time with passion and it gets them through, but is not going to create a sustainable sales organization. I hope I answered the question that you were asking, Catherine. Thanks, 

Liz, our friend, Yoram Stone has a question. Yoram please do a super brief intro to give people some context for your question, and I think you wanna go next with Liz.

Hi 

everybody. My name is Yoram Stone. I'm, despite the accent, I'm actually speaking to you from New York City and I have a long, well, I have extensive background in setting things which are a bit different, so unusual, primarily in the SAS world, but also finance and Liz. I worked with some startups or even larger companies where they.

Are relaunching or revitalizing a product or launching new product. And something that got me thinking before, cuz one of the challenges has been is people expect, right? I've got sales people in the next few months is gonna be load of cash coming in. We know it can take sometimes even for really good sales people, for a lot of products.

Can sometimes take six months to a year. So you really see them mastering the sales process and bringing the cash, and especially when the founder might have had a bit of success initially with, shall we say, the easier pickings to begin with. Um, I, I'm wondering, as an individual sales person, how do you manage that, uh, relationship?

Because I'm not a big believer in tracking out the sales process. I'm a big believer if somebody can benefit from it, let's do it. But you are right. I, I think people sometimes get so excited about the product and talk about it cause they really wanna help. But it's nice for the prospect, but they're not feeling that this is going to change my world.

And that is really when they buy, you know, when they feel this is really gonna make my life better. So as an individual salesperson who's dealing with this pressure from up upper top, you know, deliver, deliver, deliver, and they're doing the right things and it's coming. How, how do you deal with that? How do you deal with that management that is sort of breathing down your neck and maybe asking for things that un either unrealistic or ultimately you'll get, may get a few quick sales, but they're not gonna be continuous revenue.

So I, That's a great question and there's a thousand things going through my head to answer that. I wanna start at the top before we go to the individual salesperson, because the salesperson is a person who gets stuck, but let's go higher up in the organization. One of the things that happens is it's not that the founder is pushing as much as the investors are often pushing.

So in this world of investment culture, we have investors who are really focused on return on investment and, and rightly so. They're giving you their money, they want money back, But what happens is that they're very unrealistic about. The length of the sales cycle, the number of people that, um, are a good fit, the, the amount of leads that need to come in, in order to close the right amount of business.

So we talk about the, the, I talk about the funnel all the time, and it, it, that this is your pipeline, but it's truly a funnel because it's wider at the top and narrower at the bottom. And that's because you probably have to put in 10. Prospects for everything that closes. And so because they don't fully understand what is involved in the process of selling this product or service, they have very unrealistic expectations.

They don't understand, not just the timeline. But they don't understand the investment of money and resources that are required to hit the kinds of numbers that they want. So this is something that I'm in. This is part of my mission, is to help investors learn how to better support new organizations to become, um, successful organizations.

The second thing is the ceo. This isn't, There's a misnomer that sells the sales of sales. If I hire a great salesperson, they can tell me a good story. They'll be able to go out and tell the world a great story and sell my stuff. Well, maybe, you know, you got like a one in 50 chance that you're gonna find that magical person who, who just knows how to do something from nothing.

But most of the time, salespeople have very specific skill sets and certain relationships and certain knowledge. Certain experience. And so when we're hiring to that salesperson, we have to hire the right person for the job that we have. And so one of the reasons that salespeople get so frustrated is because they're told the job looks like this, and in reality, the job looks like something else and they don't have the right set to be successful, or they just don't have the right resources to be successful.

They don't have the right tools. To support them in their effort or they don't have the right language or whatever it is that's missing. So as a salesperson, if you're going into a startup environment, be very clear about what that means. And for a lot of salespeople who came from an environment where they felt they weren't being supported in a big corporation and they land and a startup, all of a sudden they are really understanding what no support means.

There's a couple things. One is don't take a job if you are not prepared for what it means to work in a startup. Because in a startup, everybody does everything and salespeople get overwhelmed. Uh, you have to build your own process if a process isn't there. And you've gotta figure out and map your own process and revise it as you go.

You have to figure out how many leads have to come in the top of the funnel to close the leads at the bottom. You have to figure out what percentage is closing. You have to figure out who the ideal customer is that when you go to them they actually buy, and what things are going on. In their organization that would make them ready to buy.

You need to be able to do a great job qualifying so you're getting rid of the business or those leads that aren't gonna close and can focus on either getting new leads that are gonna close or closing the ones that are most likely to close. So part of it is getting in the right environment for your skill set.

The second is if you don't have a sales process and you don't have the things you need, you'll need to build them. Um, and that may be a time where you go to your boss and say, Hey, we need, we need some, you know, sales support here. Uh, I thought you had all these things and you don't. So I, I don't know if that answers it, Yoram, if that was helpful, but it, it really is.

If you're not in the right place, you have to be in a bit different place or you have to figure out how to build what you need in the place where you are. It 

answers a lot. As you said. There's so many things that you can say about that. I think it's important to really understand the sales people, not just where our managers are coming from, where the people are pressuring them, be investors, or in the corporate company's shareholders or wherever it may be, where they're coming from as well.

Um, and as sales people, we can do that. We do it every day inside an organization. We just forget to do it inside our. Thank you, Liz. Bill 

Gannon, would you like to introduce yourself? I think you have a question. Thank you, Catherine. 

It's Bill Gannon. And I'm delighted to be here, Liz, to work with you on this.

I'm the CEO of the Gannon Group and we focus on effective communication inside organizations, both at the executive level and right through to the sales level. Effective communication is what we are all about and about communication. Liz, I thought I had asked a couple of questions. I wonder if you're would like to comment on the art of surrounding an.

Uh, particularly as it comes to when you've qualified what you believe to be a decision maker, what the best practices are to uncover the other decision makers. 

Absolutely. So if you're in a business to business complex sale, that means you are a business selling to a business, and there are multiple people involved in that buying process.

The reason there are multiple people involved in that buying process is probably because it's a big investment. And or it is something that's going to change the way the organization functions, and many different departments are impacted by that. So if you are selling in that kind of environment, the big mistake that sellers make is what I call my guy selling.

My guy said, my guy said they're gonna, he's gonna send it up to this guy. My guy said they're gonna vote on it on this day. My guy said that these people are fine. They're all on board. Having a champion or a coach is a fabulous thing. If your guy is your champion and coach, that's great, but you cannot rely on one person in a sale That requires decision making from.

Five to 15 people, you cannot wa rely on one person to do that selling for you. So we, we do something called that that is more modernly called account based sales. So we talk about account based marketing and account based legion and account based sales. And the idea of that is that it's not a one-to-one selling.

It's a one to many or a many to many because often in a complex sale we will have the salesperson and a sales engineer and you know, several other people involved on our side, and they will have several people involved on their side. So it becomes very complex when that's the case. We need to begin to understand.

Who are these different kinds of people that are likely to be involved in the sale? Before we ever even start talking to people who is likely to be involved, would the CEO be involved? And if the answer's probably not, at what point would the CEO get involved? Is the CFO involved? And if not, at what point might they get involved?

Is, you know, are there technicians involved? Are there quality assurance people involved? Procurement involved is legal involved. We need to sit down and go, Who are the different players that could impact the outcome of this sale, depending upon your. What your product and who you're selling to, that may vary, but typically there are different kinds of buyers, and this again comes from Miller Heiman when I use these terms, but we talk about having an economic buying influence, a user buying influence, a technical buying influence, and then a coach.

That means economic buying influence is the person who has the final authority to say yes. If everybody else says no and no, if everybody else says, Although they may not be involved in the buying process at all until that point, um, the user buyers are the people who use or manage what you're talk, what you're selling, and what happens.

Like in the SaaS world, your immune and I have talked about this, often the seller sells to people who manage the users, and then the users never use it. So you never get the engagement you need to keep the sale going into the future because we ignore those buyers who have to be happy with using the tool that they're being sold.

And the third is what I call technical buying influences. And that doesn't necessarily mean it or somebody who's technical, but it can mean like purchasing agents. People have a checklist that they have. Check off these things. If it's legal, then you, you, you know, you have to have these certain things. If it's purchasing, you have to be an approved buyer or this or that, and maybe it is outside it, but you're using it function, so it has to work with the equipment that you currently have, right?

So understanding those gatekeepers are never gonna say yes. All they can do is say no. The user buyers need to say yes, and the final decision lies with the most senior person whose budget it belongs to, who's going to either say, I'm gonna let my team do what they wanna do, or I see a problem with this.

I'm gonna get involved. So when we understand the different people, that's the starting place. The next thing is to understand. When you actually get into the sale, what is their relationship to the problem? Is it important to them? Is it not important to them? You know, is it impacting their life? Do they have other priorities?

You need to understand their relationship to the problem. And the third thing is you need to be able to build a set of questions that you can borrow from. Not read off one by one, but borrow from to understand. Their relationship to the problem, how they're feeling about it, whether or not they wanna change it, and how you can help them.

But you can also ask them about other people in the environment and often they won't answer until you start asking attitude questions like, Hey, how do you think Sally will feel? When we implement this, how's this gonna change her day? How frustrating is it gonna be for her? Then you'll get an answer because you're un, you're showing them that you care about how the other people feel and they will probably answer you on that.

So that was a very big roundabout answer, Bill . 

It wasn't a roundabout answer, Liz and, And you did just what I expect Liz Simon to do. You already jumped through and anticipated my flow of the next question, which was really about once we get this surround, We start to get the players in our mind and who might also get in this decision, what are the techniques that are used to help get through to them?

And you just covered it beautifully by asking questions. You know, Liz, I think a lot of people think this asking of questions starts to sound nosy and intrusive and out of our realm of responsibility As salespeople, we're supposed to be there just telling about our benefits. I, I know you know where I stand on this, but I think questions are the lifeblood of the best sales people.

So you commented on that so beautifully, right at the end. I couldn't put a better bow around it. Being ready to ask questions is so important to understand, not just who the other people are, but what their relationship to that decision is. So thanks for that great job. 

I just wanna say really brief. We can over question as well.

So I just saw a, a really funny video that someone shared. I don't remember where I saw where this person had some spilled something down the front of her top and she wants to buy a shirt and she goes into the store and they so overwhelm her with questions and puts so many requirements in front of her that she isn't able to buy the shirt.

She needs to go to her meeting or wherever she's going. And so we wanna be really thoughtful about questions. The questions are not for me or about me. The questions are about how am I helping that person accomplish what they want to accomplish? If they've told me everything I need to know, which some buyers will do by the way, you ask a question and they will tell you everything you need to know, and you may have some little questions afterwards.

You do not have to bombard them with a thousand questions. Now you'll have other buyers who will say, Yeah, I really can't stand this. It just doesn't work the way I want it to. And then you're like, Okay, well help me understand what does not work the way you want it to mean. What do you wish it did? Tell me what you could be accomplishing if you did that.

So questions are to help the sales process questions are not for the sake of asking questions. They're not to fill out a a bunch of check marks. They're to help. You and the buyer make a good decision about what solution is going to help them the most. There's another set of questions that's really critical when you're selling in a complex business to business sale, and that is what is the decision making process?

What is the buying process? Well, once you decide you want it, then what happens? And after that, what happens? And what could happen if somebody else. It doesn't think it's the right solution. Walk me through how this might look. What you'll find is often your buyers don't know, and so you guys have to have, figure it out together.

Um, but the, the biggest delay I think, in sales is that they simply, the seller simply didn't understand what the buying process was and who all the people were involved. And what their role was in the buying process, and therefore they get tripped up along the way because they didn't, they didn't dot all their eyes and cross all their Ts and make sure that they talked to the people, um, about the things that were important in their decision making process.

Spot 

on. List Back to you, Catherine. 

Thanks, Bill. Thanks, Liz. Liz, this conversation coming back to the subject of habits and beliefs about habits, this reminds me I am on this kick right now, so anyone that follows me on LinkedIn is gonna see that I'm keep referencing these podcast episodes that I'm hearing from the Ed Mylett show.

I did not know about him till fairly recently, and he has one of the fastest growing. Personal development shows on YouTube, and I'm just really enjoying incorporating that into my walk routine in the morning because he's not just inspirational, because he's making you feel sort of pumped up, but he is very empowering with practical tools.

And one of the episodes I enjoyed the most recently I'm, This is like a bonus for everybody who's listening to this later, go find the Ed Mylet podcast and the interview where he interviews Alan Stein, Jr. Alan Stein, Jr.S an author who's written a couple books, and this entire podcast is using basketball as the analogies and talking about the life of particular basketball players.

And I, I mean, I like basketball fine, but I tend to be a person who shys away from a lot of sports analogies because it just doesn't resonate quite as much with me. But I loved this podcast because they talk about the fundamentals. Over and over and over. They talk about the habits and the fundamentals, and some of the things, Liz, that you're giving away here are the fundamentals to complex selling.

Being sure that every person who will eventually read this proposal is actually someone that you've had a conversation with. If it's at all possible and you understand what they're hoping to accomplish and their desires, and you understand that your guy is not the only person who's a part of this, you're not relying on that.

So on this subject of the fundamentals and habits and selling, what are other things that you think. People might think they graduate from, but those of us that have been selling for decades realize, Oh no, you never graduate from those. This is what you return to over and over and over again. What are examples of some of those things for you?

I think for me, this goes back to time management and funnel management. We get very busy and in when we get very busy, we get very reactive. We react to whatever crisis or emergency or urgency anyone else has, and our days become inundated with reactive activities that may or may not be helping us hit our goals.

Right? So if I have sales goals that I wanna hit, I have to be very aware of the activities that are going to make or break. My effort to hit my sales goals. So one of the things, and we talked about this already, is if the top of my funnel is prospecting and I need, and, and as things flow through my funnel or my pipeline, they disappear.

They won't talk to me or they qual, I qualify them out because it's not a good fit. Or somewhere along the line, somebody changes their mind or they start looking at a competitor or on and on. All of the things that happen that. Leads die. They go away. And so if this is the case, and I know that is true, that it's not a one to one, I get a lead and it closes, I get another lead and it closes since that's not the way sales works and, and we have to have many.

Go flowing through the funnel. In order to close one, we have to make sure that our activities are always filling the top of the funnel. So if we prioritize our work by saying, My first priority is to close the business that's ready to close, make sure they sign the document, make sure it gets to the people, whatever it is, they're ready to close.

I'm helping that business close. That's the first and most important thing, because I've gotten it that far. I don't wanna let it go away. The next most important thing is filling the top of your funnel, because if something's coming out the bottom, I need to put 10 things in and I'm, That's my magic number, but it isn't the magic number for everyone.

I need to put 10 things in the top of my funnel. If there's 10 things in the top of my funnel, then my next process is to start qualifying them. Can I get a conversation? Can I qualify them in or out? And then the last part is, is you know, sort of the, they're qualified. You think they're gonna buy it, there's a good chance they're gonna buy it.

Now I have to go through all of this effort of, of solving problems and meeting people and explaining and overcoming objections and all the stuff that has to be done. That takes a lot of time, but it's not my first priority because if all I do is focus on that part of the funnel, which. Easiest because I know the people, because they have urgency, because I can pick up the phone and call them.

If I only focus on that. If I prioritize that I, that is when my funnel will start running dry. So we need to really be thoughtful, prioritize our leads, and in order to prioritize our leads, we have to prioritize. We have to manage our time and put our priorities in where they need to be. If you do not put prospecting on your schedule and honor it like any other meeting, You will fall behind in prospecting and then you will fall behind in the long run on closing.

Allocating the time every day before I do anything else. I do this every afternoon at three o'clock. I do some research, whatever it is, but that you figure out how much time every week, every week you need to spend on prospecting. Then you can figure out. Where to put that time and make sure that it actually happens and what activities you're gonna do to make that happen.

That I think more than anything are this, the habits that we have to put in place. We have to prioritize and we have to schedule those priorities so that they happen. If you do that, Then you can learn to do the other things. But magic doesn't happen unless you are consistent and put the work in. Liz, that's so 

good.

A few other things that that come to my mind. I'll give the mods a chance to chime in if there's something key that they think we'd wanna list here too. Cuz this has turned into a bit of a little masterclass for people. So thank you so much for that. Liz. You know, another habit for me has become to review my.

So I write quarterly goals, and then during the day I've begun to set an alarm to look back at those and actually say like, is what's coming up in my schedule? Is what I've been working on right now is advancing what I said was important to me. So I'll give you a real quick, practical example. Yesterday I did a goal review.

I. Realized that I had not created any time to do some follow up from some sales calls I had last week. And I have a number of something that I want, something I wanna close by October 1st. And so I rearranged of things. I stopped what I was doing, I rearranged some things, I set a timer and I decided I was gonna work for one hour on follow up.

And these are people I've talked to quite a bit for things. So they weren't completely cold cuz otherwise the metrics are gonna sound crazy to you all. But I. Um, two RSVPs to something coming up that I was inviting them to, uh, a call scheduled for today and a call scheduled for next week in that hour.

And again, these are pretty warm, so this wasn't me cold calling, but in one hour I got these four significant things accomplished. Tying back to my goals. Having the habit of creating that time on my calendar. And for me, the new habit is period is is regular goal, goal review, very, very regular goal review.

That's another block and tackle foundational habit that I think star performers, they never move away from. They just double down on those again. Liz, anything you wanna say about that? I do, 

because I think there's one more piece that's really important to that. If I know what my goals are and they're in front of me all of the time, then every time I do an activity, I can stop and say, Is this moving me toward my goals?

So we have to remember that some things are urgent and some things are important, and some things are not important. Some things are not urgent, and any combination of those. But if I have all these activities that I'm doing and I stop every moment and say, Is this moving me toward my. Okay, this person is having a hissy fit about something or other who can solve that besides me so that I can focus on the activities that are moving me toward my goal.

And I think that in a lot of companies, they get into this, I call it a fire mode, where everybody's always focused on putting out fires and all the adrenaline associated with putting out fires and everybody talking to everybody and complaining and getting all upset. And if you, if you're wasting a ton of time on that, which a lot of sales people do.

And you stop and say, Is this moving me toward my goal? Who can solve this problem better than I can without multiple discussions? So I can get back to the adrenaline needed to get me toward my goal and the then the adrenaline that happens when I close my leads. So really knowing what my goal is and asking yourself all day long is this moving me toward my goal.

Bill, I 

think you had a follow up question. 

I did. And that is, uh, Liz, I think that is also. Every executive coaches, uh, mantra with talking to organizations who have lost their way or as it pertains to redesigning or restructuring what, and, and the daily time management of, of re of reconfiguring this company for new goals.

Is what you're doing feeding into one of the core planks of our. Either product or service, whatever the, whatever it is. And so, or further up river, you must establish what those are, right? And when you do establish it, now these become etched and marble. They become across the top of the window. Yes, of course we know about revisions and so on, but if these are truly value goals, if these are truly well vetted, well thought out through investors, board members, company, the whole thing, then you have to ask yourself.

Is the task as I go down the company, which one of these are you pulling? Is your weight pulling? Which one on these? You know, which one should I see progress of of these major platforms? And some cross platforms, some isn't just one, but every action you do needs to serve into that. And I think a per, it's a perfect of tail.

End of sales are the activities you're doing and when you're doing them serving you. And if they are serving you where, and the only way to be specific about the where is to get those goals figured out. So thanks for that. And it made me just think of exactly what we coach companies on too, of clarity singleness perhaps, or at least focus 

of purpose.

So much of our challenges that we don't stop to work on our pipeline or think about our goals and we. Devolve into bad habits and kind of let life happen to us. You know, not taking a proactive. Measure on that. So Liz, let me give you a chance, is there anything you were hoping to share on this discussion about beliefs, about habits and best practices in complex sales?

Anything else you wanna share? And then I wanna be sure to give you a chance to tell people where to follow you. So I 

think that there's a couple of things. One is remembering again, if you have a B2B complex sale, don't be lazy about building those relationships. Think really clearly about. All of the people in the sale and why that person would wanna talk to me.

So we often ask our buyer, our buyers, Will you introduce me so and so? And they're like, No, I got this. Well, you haven't given them a reason that you need to talk to that person. So if you can really connect. What you're doing with why it's a value to that person to have a conversation with you and why it's a value to that buyer who you have the relationship with to introduce you.

You know, once you do that, you can be really successful. But if you're just asking for introductions, if you're just asking questions without real forethought, you're going, you're going to not get the answers that you want. So what's really important is to understand your buyers. Why they. You know, what are their wins and losses?

What are they gonna lose? What's gonna happen if they buy this or you buy this and they have to do all the work associated with setting it up and so forth. So really understanding, taking the time to plan it out, to plot on some sort of a, you know, we use a blue sheet in Miller Heiman. Which, and I don't do that anymore cause I'm not with Miller Heiman, but I have my own way of plotting out every single sale, every complex sale.

Who are the people that I need to talk to? What is the information that they need? What do I need to ask? All of those things. It's not just accidental, it has to be really well thought out. Um, so that's one thing that I think is super important in your habits is taking the time to. The other, again, I can't say enough about how important it is to fill the top of your funnel, and I think that really stepping back and saying to yourself every day, If I follow these rules, if I follow these pro processes that I've set up and I'm consistent about my activities, I will be successful.

And we stop and we, we really have to throw away this idea that somehow it just comes naturally. Somehow it just happens. It doesn't just happen. It isn't just natural. There's a tremendous amount of work that you have to do and be consistent about and feel really good about. You know, I'm not wimpy because I call, I plan my call.

No, you're a superhero. When you plan your call and your client feels like they're a superhero, cuz you've made them feel important and listened to them and understood them. So, changing our attitudes about the preparation, the planning, the organizing, the management of your funnel, your funnel. If you know how to manage your funnel, if you know how to read it, and to look at it and say, What does this mean for me?

Six months down the road, you will always have leads and business co. You'll always have business closing. You'll always have income coming. When you stop managing your funnel and you stop managing your processes, that's when your sales line goes. You know, your sales go down below the line that you need it to be in.

Changing our attitudes about habits is, is really 

the key, Liz. That's so good. And this reminds me of a person that we've interviewed for, which is was Dana Williams who was talking about Clifton's strengths. Because depending upon just the way you're made, depending on what you're good at, what you're not good at, you will have a default mode to operate to, and you wanna be self aware about that.

One of my top five Clifton strengths is positivity. I just wake up and see the glass half full. But what that has meant for me as a sales professional is that in the past I realized I over, I over assume how many I'll close. Even if data says otherwise, I, I tend to believe the best about what could happen.

Well, when I need to be right about my forecast. What I have learned about myself in that situation is that I need to plan for about 20% more effort than I had thought , because I know that my default thinking leads me a different way. So that level of practice and self awareness requires a habit for you to compensate.

based on how you tend to think. Even so that, that comes to my mind about those individual differences, 

Liz, It it's true. And we all have strengths and we all have weaknesses, and we all have those things that sucker us in, that we know are not the best use of our time or not the best way to do things.

And if we don't really. Have discipline and be intentional. That's the other word that we use, right? If we're not disciplined and intentional about our sales activity, we, we fall into our worst habits. And I do it too. We all do it. We have to really be intentional 

and thoughtful. Yes. And so that's really what we wanna encourage our listeners to today is to realize that the people who are the MVP players, they ha they do the extra practice, if you like a sports analogy.

The people who are um, who are star performers in other industries, they're probably getting their early, they're probably working on their business. They're probably creating think time. They probably read, they probably do. Things that are, that are above and beyond in those good habits they've cultivated.

And, um, I heard a cool stat that I'll share to wrap us up. And then Liz, I'll give you a chance to tell everybody where to follow you. Um, I learned, I heard about this health statistic. It was done in the, in the realm of, um, physical fitness. They're saying if a person changes one habit and works on it for an average of 66 days, They said, Look, we know there's different research on, you know, how long it takes to cultivate a habit, but this guy's, this guy's practice was 66 days.

He said, if you pick one thing to add every day for 66 days, then you have an 80% chance that after 66 days it will be installed as a habit and be a normal activity for you. If in the 66 days you try to do two new things at a time, you have about a 40% chance. That you will be able to really install those in your brain as a habit after 66 days.

So I thought that, I thought those stats were really interesting and um, and also encouraging like, Oh my gosh, whatever this thing is, I wanna get better. You're saying if I practice it just a little bit every day for 66 days, that there's an 80% probability that it will just become who I am. How awesome is that, right?

Every the theme of the examples of things you've listed, Liz, you, that people could do that, and I think that's, I think that's so cool. 

I think Catherine, the, the other thing though that we have to remember is that we, in, in situations that are highly stressful or uh, crisis situations, we always revert back to our most natural.

Instincts and we all have not different natural instincts for solving problems because early days, and you know, in early civilization it was the different sets. Reactions to critical situations that kept people alive, right? Because one word person was automatically looking around at the world and one person was automatically, you know, making steps and one person was automatically getting people safe, right?

So whatever those things are, we have these natural things that we fall back on when there's a crisis. We, because we don't live in that environment anymore, we now have to say, Okay, that's my crisis response. I see myself doing this now, what do I have to do in this real world to get me out of this crisis?

Because sometimes our crisis behaviors get us deeper into the hole that we're in, so being aware of that is really important. Creating habits is great, important, critical, And remembering that when we get into a crisis, we may not do those behaviors even if they've become habit. I'm Liz Heiman, and I am, Let me just tell you how to reach me.

You can reach me on LinkedIn, which, uh, I'm the only Liz Heiman, h e i m a n on LinkedIn. You could also go to my website regarding sales.com and you can schedule an appointment if you'd like to chat. I have 30 minute sessions that are free that you can call me. Uh, set up a time and I'll, I'm happy to answer your questions and talk to you.

Those are the two best ways to reach me though. Send me a message and tell me how you found me. On LinkedIn and I would be happy to have a conversation with you and Liz. 

Your newsletters really get a lot of traction. Tell people about those 

as well. My newsletters actually are very, very simple. The idea is to direct you to where you can find me or other people who can help you.

So if you want to be on my mailing list, Um, which nobody wants to be on mailing list, but if you'd like to receive my newsletters and links to all kinds of great content and activities, uh, books that other brilliant women are writing about sales, sign up on my website or. Send me a message and I'll put you on and you can get my newsletter that will direct you to all kinds of content that will be useful to you in a selling and sales management environment.

Liz, 

thank you so much. I am so glad that it worked out time wise. Um, those of you that are listening or jumped in later, Don't know that she got up early for this because she's done the recording from Hawaii, and so thank you so much, Liz, for prioritizing this in your schedule to help us think about habits, beliefs about habits, what those fundamental practices are that help a person interestingly, by reviewing the basics, become superstars.

So appreciate you. Thanks for being a great human who sells beautifully and being a friend in this community, and we'll talk to you all 

soon. Happy selling, everybody. Take care. 

I'm so glad you joined us today. If you would like me to come and speak with your organization about how to sell like a good human.

Please contact me through the website, how good humans sell.com. Thanks and talk with you again.