8: Getting Out Of a Negative Tailspin

hey everybody it's John Barrows with make it happen Mondays thanks for joining me as you can see I got a new little backdrop here I've been trying to screw around with his blue jeans yet but as far as getting it off of my laptop I haven't figured it out yet though a little bit too last minute um so you'll notice my new logo in the back but it's probably backwards because the iPhone does it backwards but needless to say uh thanks for joining and uh again as always just ask whatever questions you guys all have I'm going to kick things off today with something that I've been thinking about over the weekend and um but then again open it up for Q&A so anybody has any questions about anything that they want to dive into I know somebody said last time uh when we asked for feedback to people hey you know what do you want us to cover and one of them was hey how to get meetings with executives uh you know that's right up my alley as far as my training is concerned so I can touch on that but today to get things started I wanted to kind of talk about how to get out of a negative tailspin you know because I think a lot of us in sales we we get into this like sales is a lot about momentum right I mean it's a you know when things are going well it almost seems like everything's going well in terms that you you know you you hit every green light on the way to the office you know people open a door for you you know you get what I think people pick up the phone you have good conversations you close deals when you didn't even know you were going to close them you know clients call you up and look for that upsell just because so it seems to that momentum is a great one that we should ride as long as possible but then there's the negative momentum right where things just keep going bad like you had that bad call with that client all of a sudden that client calls up and you thought you were going to close them for the end of the quarter and they don't close um you hit every red light on your way uh to work all that stuff and you know this weekend kind of woke me up a little bit to um that negative tailspin and what it can do and so I wanted to share some of my thoughts on how to get out of it right um there's a lot of negativity going on right now as far as the news and and politics and and you know a lot of different things and so you know with my daughter for instance she's six I try to get her to focus on or talk about hey what can we focus on right we can focus on I call it eat right effort attitude and how we treat people um that's really what you can control and I think that's what you need to focus on when things are going bad and and try to get those little wins going in the right direction you know I talk about management training for instance like with management training you talk about your a reps your b reps and your c reps you know your great average and pretty crappy ones with your a reps you just have to you know long-term goals let them go over communicate with them right and pretty much you got to assume that they're going to be rented space right so they're they're they're either going to go get a promotion because they're that good or they're going to go find a job making more money so you got to hold on to them as long as possible but you just over communicate with them and don't get in their way the b reps that's kind of your main job as a sales manager is to coach your b reps to become a so you can have a bench free raise but then your c reps and this is where this comes in is um these are the ones you got to get like c reps reps who are losing um are unfortunately used to losing they keep losing like the negative things keep happening to them and so we got to flip that around and start turning that into a positive direction now with a reps and people who are doing well you set longer term goals with b reps you turn you set kind of midterm goals to try to move in the right direction and with c reps you start very very short-term goals and i mean like literally daily if not hourly and that's how i think we can start moving things in the right direction so for instance you know if i'm having a really bad day first of all i want to change you know do the tony robbins thing change your state whatever but but then i gotta look for those little wins like hey can this hour can i can i get somebody can i break through a gatekeeper um you know like if i have all the calls i'm going to make can i get through a gatekeeper um can i get a response on an email can i get that client to say yes to him that that qualification meeting um you know can i find a new like any little thing you can possibly imagine so that you start to move things in that more positive direction you start being conscious of it too one of the things i did for a good friend of mine who was going through a rough patch a while back you know she was always like oh man things are rough and it's brutal and all this other stuff and i said and she was in a very negative mindset and so what i ended up doing was i gave her a notebook and i said look i want you to go around today and everywhere every time something positive happens to you okay i don't care how small it is somebody opens the door for you somebody calls you that you weren't expecting um you know anything and i don't mean just business wise i mean personally as well i want you to write it down in this notebook and at the end of the day i want you to come back and and let's talk about the things that happened right and she came back at the end of the day with a notebook filled with information and it was all you know stuff that she was very appreciative of you know she got a call from a uh from her cousin that she hadn't talked to in a little while like somebody literally opened the door for her she hit a green light all these different things and you know she ended up saying that you know what john this is this got me to realize that things are a lot better than i thought they were and and that's really the trick is is changing that mentality changing that mindset of everything's negative two things aren't actually that bad you know that's why for me you know before this election and all that other stuff i used to watch the news a lot at least once a week no i'm sorry once a day i would watch the nightly news from 6 30 to 7 o'clock obviously to stay up to date on what's happening in the world out there but also just to remind myself that no matter how bad my day is literally no matter how bad it is it ain't that bad right i mean i you know i watch the news and i just thank god every day that i was born in the united states of america for crying out loud you know i'm not sitting in there in one of these war-torn countries and scraping for food and water and all that stuff so i think it's a lot about the mentality that we have but it's also understanding and being appreciative of of what we really do have ultimately and realizing that business as important as it is it's not that important you know most of us aren't brain surgeons here most of us don't save lives or aren't in emergency rooms um so we got to put things into perspective so for my recommendation for those of y'all who are coming so here's a perfect example it's the end of the quarter right now right hopefully some of y'all are crushing it and you're already looking at q2 and starting to kind of map out your plans there but you know some of y'all are going to be stressing it this week and really just sweating about oh crap am i going to be able to hit my targets well you know just try to keep that positive mentality and saying yeah it's going to work out and if it doesn't work out i'll hit it next month right um but again look for those small things today how many calls you know how many people actually do you get on the phone how many email responses do you get back uh anything small to move in the right direction and then celebrate those right so you can keep building momentum in the right direction again i'm not a huge tony robbins fan here but i do believe in his change your state mentality as far as if you're in a negative mindset do something to change your state and he does it physically like he you know yells or screams or or or you know physically does something to change your state and i totally recommend doing that all right because sales are brutal beautiful profession but a brutal one um you know it takes up it beats up in the sense you make 50 60 dials and do all this work and you get absolutely no responses or you don't hit your quarter quarter target after you're going through all this work you know it's it's it's demoralizing in a lot of ways but man those little wins they start to build up and when that momentum builds it keeps rolling it's kind of like a train right a train takes a long time to get going but it also takes a long time to stop and so that's why um you know all those little things will eventually build up so that was just on my mind um that i wanted to share with you all because it's uh it's sales a little very psychological you know i talk about a lot of techniques and and different things here but i also you know the psychology behind selling is is actually almost as important to pay attention to why people do the things the way they do them those type of things so you know think about that this week and trying to stay in a positive mindset try to make somebody else smile you know what i mean um i always say like if you can get somebody to smile on the phone um you got them right like a voicemail my my biggest voicemails responses that i ever got was when i would like screw up a voicemail and leave some terrible one or whatever and then like midway through be like yeah this is john barrows with and get look crap you know i'm sorry i was trying a new picture that was a disaster you know if you got problems with this you know give me a call back or whatever i i would get more callbacks with that type of an approach with them with the perfect one every single time so keep that in mind as you go through your week realize things aren't that bad and try to move things in the right direction and try to some try to get if you have somebody in your office or that you're working with that's going through a negative or kind of down that negative tailspin uh try to help them out try to get them to change their view on where things are going and let them know that things aren't that bad all right so with that i wanted to answer one of the other questions again if you have any questions right now feel free to hit me up uh on any topic related to sales but one of the things that we we sent a question out to a lot of you um who've been watching this stuff and i appreciate you guys who are you know what do you want me to talk about what are some of the things that uh topics and one of them came back which was how do you get in touch with executives or how to get executives to call you back or email you back um which is right up in line with my my actual training you know my filling the funnel program a little plug here if you do want the full training i put it all online so you can just go jbarrows.com and go to the uh uh the online version of this um it's the same stuff that salesforce gets it's the same stuff that uh linkedin gets all that stuff um but really what i've been trying to focus on a lot lately is let's put it i've been asking a lot of executives okay i'm doing a soft survey here of hey what do you respond to you know and you know the answers vary but but one of the questions i asked him i said what was the last time a sales rep reached out to you in more than with more than one or two thoughtful messages right um in the sense i like sending one custom emails or whatever and then had more than a couple of them that hit up three four five six times that was part of a more thoughtful contact strategy where every one of those messages was customized right i was like i asked the executives like when was the last time that happened right every and i talked to a lot of them every executive i talked to like just literally it's like yeah i can't remember the last time but i said to them look if somebody reached out to you four five six times with a thoughtful within a condensed period of time with a thoughtful message every single time kind of pointing out something um based on some of the priorities they you know did research on you on or or your background and value that they could bring to the table don't you almost feel obligated to get back to them after that fourth or fifth one and literally every single executive i talked to is like yeah if they reach out to me four five six times and it's a thoughtful message that i can tell they've done their homework and i'm trying to bring value to the table you know i might not need what they have to offer but i'm gonna get back to them at least one way or the other and so that is my my thing for y'all to think about right now is it you know so many people right now are using these sales efficiency tools you know the outreach ios sales loft yesware tout app you know whatever name was send bloom name one right they're all using these what they should be used as sales efficiency tools but they're using them as sales automation tools and what they're doing is they're coming up with these bullshit cadences that are you know maybe one email that's that's kind of customized it shows you did a little bit of homework on me but then the next one is hey did you get my first email then the third one's hey bubbling this one up to the top and then the inevitable you know and then a couple more maybe and then the inevitable breakup email of hey you know um i don't know you know one two or three right you're interested and uh and you're just super busy right now or two you're not interested take me off your list or three you're stuck under a rock or getting eaten by an alligator or something bullshit like that right and that's what's going on out there right now and those templated contact strategies nobody's going to pay attention to those and by the way that's no different than marketing so i'm begging you stop doing those things right because they're just flooding the marketplace with crap and we're no difference than marketing so we got to put some thought into these and i know we can't do that for everybody all right if you're selling smb i get it the volume has to be there but at least be targeted with your approach if you guys want to see an incredible targeted approach i think i mentioned this in previous ones but um since some of you watch this and you know in different versions um there's three types of contact strategies right there's the fully tailored hey i am on your website your linkedin profile the whole thing right and every single message is is thoughtful and it brings a different point of value that that's my preferred but i get it we don't have a lot of time to do that right so i still want to do some i just still want to do some like me i i pick five a month right five accounts a month that i sit down for two hours map out a fully detailed six touch contact strategy to and map that all out right so i have this rolling top five so that's the tailored approach but then there's the targeted approach where it's it's based on like kind of a persona where it's you know vps of sales in the sas industry that use sales force or something like that right where it's there's a commonality there whether it's part of their you know it's because they use a certain solution or there's something that um you know it's a certain persona or a certain you know industry some some commonality that i can come up with four or five different messages that speak to that okay um that personas right because again vps of sales in the sas industry that use sales force have different priorities than vps of sales in the manufacturing industry that use microsoft dynamics and i can come up with a messaging that that speaks to each one of those differently and so the uh the point here is is that message like that's how we get volume at scale without doing templated just bullshit emails so if you want to see a great example of this go take a look at my recent blog and it talks about how um you know there was i think i titled it the best uh finally a contact strategy i can appreciate because this guy came at me with five six different emails they were all targeted to me but not it was pretty obvious he didn't do any research on me um but he knew that i was in the training world and he knew the challenges the trainers face trying to engage people and he hit me up five times and i was i was they were all targeted to me okay um and a different point of value every single time and after the fifth one i responded to it and i was so impressed with it i wrote a blog post on it and actually i even said to him i emailed him before i wrote the blog post i said look i got a question for you there's three types of contact strategies tailored fully tailored targeted and then templated right my guess is this was a targeted one where where you didn't i'm i'm betting you might not even wrote these i'm betting your marketing department even wrote these and he was like uh yeah you're john you're right he's like our marketing department does a really good job at that ideal customer profile and profiling accounts before we send out our stuff and so that's i said hey you know what tell your marketing department well done because this is one of the first times i've seen an approach like this that i've appreciated okay so go take a look at that blog post because it's it i like i said i was impressed so if you want to get volume up there um that's how you do it and to answer the question again of the person that reached out and said hey how do you get in touch with executives that's what it is it's about professional persistence okay and going at them with something different every single time that shows you did your homework and you're trying to bring value in some way shape or form because remember the most valuable asset any of us have is time so if you want my time it's got to be pretty damn clear that i'm going to get something out of getting back to you so in your emails and your voicemails it's got to be obvious that's why touching base and checking in is such crap all right so you've got to have that reason for your call and again i'll keep throwing nuggets out there that's my favorite nugget for those of you haven't heard this before start every single conversation off with that phrase the reason for my call is all right because if you can't finish that sentence you shouldn't be making the phone call all right so let me take a look at some questions here um iphone god it was too late phone oh so jay barrow's live i thought somebody else was i don't know oh sorry i missed it somebody was saying there wasn't a question though all right cool so anyways um keep talking about executives keep you know a couple questions how can you effectively show your so suzanne there we go um let me see how can you effectively show your boss that you recognize that you're not hitting your numbers but you're making changes to hopefully have a better month quarter um good question suzanne i i think the you know it's tough right that's actually where i think the hardest challenge is right now is um we you know managers and companies are still saying hey hit your numbers like you know the the quantity numbers but we want you to be more quality oriented you know if it was up to me i'd have you know half hour to do research and write a thoughtful customized email and contact strategy every account that i had right but it's that's just not realistic so i think that's the tough part with where we are right now is that companies are still in this mindset of volume but they understand that quality is where it needs to be uh but we're in the middle here right that's why you hear all this stuff about account-based marketing and company selling and all that stuff it's a recognition that blasting out template stuff is just not working anymore because it's such a ridiculous you know the noise right now is so deafening so i think the the way that you can show this as a as a rep and um and if your manager doesn't appreciate this approach you might want to start looking for another job and somebody else who does excuse me it's it's to show them the numbers so for instance say i'm say i'm your boss this is what i used to do to my reps is is 400 dials right i wanted to make 400 dials a week because i knew my equation my equation when i was selling for my first company thrive networks it was i made 400 a week that got me eight meetings a month that got me four proposals got me two pieces of closed business that was my equation i knew that cold because that's what i that's all i knew when i was that young 23 24 years old was i i didn't know any better so i i was just figured hey you know i'm gonna work harder than everybody else so i'm just gonna make more phone calls um and so with that equation when i hired some reps to backfill me and do the inside sales version of it um that's what i told him to do it was 400 dials make 400 dials now because for me as a manager i couldn't i needed to figure out whether it was a quality or quantity thing and i had to cross one of those off the list in order for me to help manage and coach you right so that's where i would sit down and say okay make 400 dials now some of the reps would come to me after a month or two and say hey john i'm not hitting my numbers you know like i'm not getting the meetings what should i do and i'd be like all right well how many dials did you make last month or last week and the week before well i made two 250 something like that i'd be like get out of my office i don't want to talk to you again because i don't know whether it's a quantity or a quality issue now when you hit that quantity number and you still weren't getting your number you know hitting your numbers and that you know getting the results that's where i started to back off and say okay now i know it's not an effort thing now i know it's a quality thing so now let's work on that right now let's come up with different approaches and try this or try that whatever and so my feedback to any rep out there that's struggling with i know like man i i so here's a small story sidebar here last week i was doing a training and i go in and i start railing on the fact you know and i was the death of the average sales rep if you're blasting out template emails i don't understand why i'm paying you and i i just call this rant and this one girl i could tell in the back of the room you know she started getting kind of upset and i could see her she was like starting to really get you know i could tell on her face right and she starts leno talking to the person next to her and then she just starts crying and i'm like oh shit um i've never had that happen before so what's going on right and she said to me she goes john i i agree with everything that you're saying right now i i you know the quality approach doing homework and all this other stuff she's like but i literally just got out of a meeting with my manager um who told me the exact opposite he told me that i needed to be blasting out these template emails again using one of these tools these sales efficiency tools i'm not going to name the one but um using these sales efficiency tools and he just wants he literally gave me the templates told me to send these out at volume and effectively said that i'm going to be replaced here in the next year through with technology so i she literally said i don't even know why i'm here right she's like i don't know why i'm in this training because i was told the exact opposite and i was like well that kind of sucks i was like i'm not gonna be i'm not gonna lie to you that that sucks hardcore right you know now we talked to her about like using this as an opportunity to leverage these tools and learn so that you can figure out kind of the nuances and split test different approaches so that when she would move up to the next role she would be able to have both her desire for the quality but also the understanding of how to leverage these tools as efficiently as possible and that combination is really solid if you can do that um but going back to proving to your managers that hey you might have missed your numbers but what are you doing differently like this is where you can say you know what i'm gonna spend a week just doing exactly what i'm told doing the numbers game right that type of thing and then i'm gonna spend a week maybe doing a the quality you know the so one week doing the quantity approach like i'm being told to and then the next week doing the quality approach so spend a week you know picking accounts doing homework on them coming up with a thoughtful contact strategy and seeing which one yields a higher response rate so if you you know so you can come back with data that's where managers um it's hard for them to to refute data right if it's just like boss i don't know what's working and i don't like this approach and blah blah blah then i'm not going to pay too much attention to you right because i you know i put these numbers together for a reason um i want you to do them and you're going to do them but if you come back to me and say boss look i did it your way last week and this is what i this is the these were the results i saw and then i did it my way this week and this was the results that i saw if those results are better and and shows a higher conversion ratio and a more thoughtful approach and their higher quality meetings or stuff like that if your manager doesn't pay to pay attention to that um i'd be worried i'd be worried and i would probably go kind of work my way into another position uh either with the company or somewhere else because that data shows it's kind of like when i was um when i was doing my first you know my first job going back to the one i was making 400 dials um i used to have conversations with my cfo and my cfo would always be like all right john you know year over year we'd have to we have to um we have to grow you know 50 this year and i'd be like dude we we grew 50 last year and i was busting my ass to do it and so okay this year 50 on top of that what i did last year was like okay well that i need a you know a couple more sales reps i need some more marketing budget and he'd be like well we don't have that kind of we don't have that so you know you're just gonna have to figure out how to make it work john i'd be like dude i can't work any harder i'm working like 17 18 hours a day here you know killing myself seven days a week you know i'm not even lying about that but it was my feeling about it right like and so it never really resonated with my cfo so i got really really fanatical about how or or you know very detail oriented about my numbers and i started understanding what my conversion ratios were what our average deal size was and know your equation right i've wrote a blog post on this one you can you can google it j barrows know your equation i think i even put a spreadsheet in there so you can play play around with this and i backed into the numbers and i found out you know again 400 dials got me eight meetings got me four proposals got me two pieces of closed business of an average deal size of 3500 that equation allowed me to figure out how to have a very uh objective conversation with my with my manager or you know my my executive cfo about what we needed and so the next year when he came to me and said john we got to grow 50 this year i'd be like okay well that means um i need two more inside sales reps and i need a an increase to about 500 a month in our marketing spend to drive those inbound needs he'd be like well i can't afford it you know we we can afford to hire those people and then i would show them the numbers i'd be like well i can't afford to get those numbers like this this is a factual conversation not a uh a feeling oriented conversation okay so really try to understand if you're trying to have a conversation with your manager put it back on take a beating maybe for a week or so but do an approach your way and compare it to the way that they're asking you to do it and come back with data and say hey check it out right what do you what do you want me to do and if they if if your data is better based on your approach compared to their approach and they still don't pay attention to you you know that's where you can start to look around all right but they should they should all right so again just to kind of sum things up um with today you know i started with that negative you know getting out of a negative tailspin all right um things are fucked up right now there's no question about that it's real easy really easy to get lost in this negative tailspin and and you know you you take the outside factors here of what's happening and then you add that to maybe your day-to-day at your job and things just kind of keep piling up and going in the wrong direction got to do something to change that state and my recommendation is find the little things take a notebook write down every positive thing that happens to you or when you come in set some goals for that day very very short-term goals for like this hour what do i want to get accomplished and then when you get that win go all right cool now turn that into another one this is why when you're making your calls by the way say you're making your phone calls and you get a positive response on something don't take a victory lap don't get a grab some coffee talk to people take that energy and flip it right back over into that next phone call because that energy that enthusiasm will come through again you've heard me say this before you know sales is the transfer of enthusiasm and and also over the phone you're only dealing with 70 uh 43 percent of the way that people communicate as human beings right so so you better make it worth it so that's why stand up when you're making your phone calls you know if you're having a bad day send emails try to do things in hour chunks because you can gain momentum and and you can get hyped up for that hour versus a full day which is brutal right and give yourself some breaks but also make sure that you're you're building on the positive momentum right to get you out of those negative tailspins uh and realize that you know again things could be a lot worse um as far as getting in touch with executive it's about the thoughtful contact strategy five six seven touches all thoughtful about them their priorities about something show that you did some homework some right and then as far as showing your boss about um you know you're not hitting your targets and you're trying to hit them next week give them a plan right and be metrics oriented with your approach if any of y'all want to be managers in the future you got to be scientists right you got to have a process you got to know your numbers right so you can apply that to everybody else if you're an artist it's damn hard to be a manager right because it you know teaching everybody how to be picasso is pretty rough unless you give them a paint by numbers all right so with that i'm gonna end today's session uh thanks for asking the questions today and for those of you who have watched always remember the quote from uh johnson what do you got um but yeah i mean just just keep grinding right and and if you could all do me a favor and again like i said just trying to help promote this stuff i know i get a lot more reviews after hours on this thing um the numbers are actually pretty solid after we post these but i would love to get more engagement here during so i don't know if it's the wrong time or there's a better time um but if you could help me promote this out there and share them share the love i'd appreciate it again always ask me always hit me up uh feel free on snapchat um john m as michael barrows like i said for those of you who are really interested in getting in touch with executives and understanding from a training perspective um you can hit up my website um hit me up with john at j barrows i'll give you a discount code um so you can get the training for like 20 off i think it is and then um yeah just keep coming on facebook live uh and and take a look at my resource library with all the cool stuff i put on there i try to put as much stuff out there as i can for free trying to add as much value as possible all right all right everybody well thank you all very much for your time today and uh make it a good week try try to go out and make somebody smile today all right have a good one cheers We'll see you next time.

We'll see you next time.