19: Armistice day

Today is the 11th of November, originally known as our mr Armistice Day as the guns were silenced on the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month in 1917 signifying the end of the first world war. Since then today has become a day run the world where we remember our veterans who have fought for us all with many having made the ultimate sacrifice for many of us, there are times of day of reflection and I am no different. For me it's a reminder that selling software , hitting numbers, making quota is important but at the end of the day it is just not that important. It's not life and death, but of course for armed forces it is, it's important that they do their jobs effectively because it can possibly be as serious as that. There is so much at stake, which is why they train so hard. Now I am actually very skeptical when I hear those people in our industry who use the example of elite special forces as the example of what they want their teams to operate like. And usually when they do that, they turn to training and say, you know, we should train our people. We should take it as seriously as the special forces do. I can't help but think that we in sales are a little bit different. And I don't mean that in any kind of ethical way. I don't mean it in capability like that it should be more different. We have a different role than special forces or the forces in general. They train a lot more of the time than they operate. I bet in many combat roles they might train 95% of the time and operate 5%. In sales we actually operate far more than that. Hopefully quite a lot of our time is spent operating a nd not something else. U m, and when we're doing it, w e, we get trained in what to do, but we learn a lot by doing, we're out there in the field on the phones doing what we do and learning and seeing what works and what doesn't work as we go along. The worlds between the two are just so different that I don't think we should use armed forces, special forces as a blueprint for success. But having said that, if we are honest with ourselves, most of us train ourselves probably less than 2% of the time. You know, companies really don't invest too much in proper skills, sales skills training as a rule. There's nothing exceptions out there. I get that. But you know , if you look at the companies and really what they end up doing, a lot of what they call sales training is really just product training. They think they can hire good people and just train them in the products and then have the magic happen. Let us figure it out. Let us use our , our pixie dust to somehow make it all different and make it successful. And certainly as individuals, even though our companies don't invest enough, we probably don't , don't do enough for ourselves either. You know, if I look back in my career and I cut myself on this for many parts of my career, very, very few sales people truly take intentional time on a regular basis to get better at our craft, our profession, something which can really help our results. You know, some like to hold this fact over the industry over salespeople, they call it a middle lays on sales, right? Sales people don't invest in themselves. You know, I tend to think of it a little bit differently. I think about it as an opportunity that we all have to get better and make a real difference. And my question for all of us today is, is to do this, do a true honest analysis of how much time each week we're spending intentionally getting better on a craft, not not learning product or any like that, but at our day to day skills of being a sales professional. Now to do that analysis, let me give you a quick guideline which I think will help ground you. If you think you spend an hour each week intentionally getting better, that's 2.5% of your working week. If you're only working 40 hours, and once you've done this analysis, set yourself a goal to improve it. Think about the growth mindset and getting better each day, each week. What if next week you spent 20% more than you did this week and the week after that you did 20% more? Again, very soon you will have doubled your investment in yourself and help you get better at your chosen profession. And if like most people, when you're being truly honest, you'll find that you're existing time spent getting better is actually pretty low. So it's not a huge ask of yourself to say, let's double the time. And when you think about that, think about what it might mean for your results. If you truly were able to invest twice as much today or next week as you were doing today, if you doubled that time, how much better would you get at your craft? What would be the results that you would get from that? And in fact, never mind results. You know, here's how I kind of think about this in my own life. And you know, this is just me. Might not be you. I think that there are people in this world who are putting their lives at risk all around the world to keep us all safe. They'd done it years and centuries in the past. They'll do it in the future. And I believe I owe it to them to make the best version of myself. You know, I'm a long way from being perfect, right? As many of us are. But I do know that I , I do work every day to get a little bit better. So finally, a to all the veterans out there , a truly heartfelt thank you for your service and all that you do.