[E120] Straight Talk with Danny Creed – Part 4 of 4

Jason: Welcome back, sales experience podcast. My name is Jason Cutter. This is part four. The final part of the conversation that Danny and I had literally on a roll before I knew it, I looked down and we were just cruising through the time that we had set for recording and funny enough, after we stopped recording, we continued talking for another 20 minutes and a talk about doing another part of this down the road, especially once he’s launched his books and you know, providing more value. So super fun. Hopefully you enjoyed this. Hopefully you got a lot of value out of this. Danny is a great guy. Makes sure at the end of this, he talks about his links, make sure to follow him, find him, check out his books, his materials. He is a wealth of knowledge and information and loves giving back. And I appreciate him being on the show. So please make sure to support him. And I appreciate you supporting the show and listening to this. Hopefully you’ve enjoyed it. Again, if you want to find the full transcript, go to cutterconsultinggroup.com and without any further adieu, enjoy this final segment with Danny and I.

Danny: Look, I’m not saying don’t take the biggest salary you can. But from a management standpoint, if it’s not the smartest thing to pay your sales people salaries and no commission or no one say, I live for commission, you want to make more money. I don’t have to go ask anybody. I go out, I sell more. You know, and even if you have a great salary and everything else, you still have to have that mentality that if I want to make more, I’m going to go out and create it. 

Jason: Yup. Which goes back to the goals, right. So you gotta have those goals and go after them and know what they are, whether they’re short term or long term. Right. I will debate, you know, five year goals are ridiculous for most people and not good because you never know where your life is going to be in five years.

Jason: But some goal for this pay period this week today, even the action steps, what do you got to do to get to where you want to be in the next 90 days and the next 12 months. And you know you’ve got to have that, especially as a salesperson because that’s what’s going to get you through the nose and the bad days and the slumps and carry it through.

Danny: Well I agree with you on that. The only thing I would say on the, like the five year though is that you should probably have some goals on income for five years out. You know, cause if you had income goals you could change what you’re selling to achieve that income goals. So I agree with you though from a sales standpoint, but that long term goal or you know, if you want to make six figures or seven figures, you better be have that you know picture to know what you’re going to sell and how you’re going to sell it.

Jason: And then working backwards, you’ve got to put in the effort. It’s one thing to want six figures or seven figures, it’s another one to put in the right appropriate amount of effort. And there’s nothing wrong. You don’t have to have a seven figure goal or even a six figure goal, but you always got to put in the right effort to match where you think you should be or the game you talk about playing. 

Danny: I really don’t appreciate anybody who gripes about the economy or the president or the weather or what the Russians are doing. You know, we didn’t research piece once and we did a research piece once and cause I had this contention that no matter what business category, no matter how ludicrous you could come up with that, there’s always one person in any market in America. Let’s just, I’ll trust you. Crushing it.

Danny: And you know, I was like, you’re a sewer cleaner. There’s five or six in town, but there’s one guy. So we actually did that research once and it’s a longer story, but we, what we did is once we found that one guy, we’d call him up and you know, you’re talking to some guy, we go, look, we’ve talked to all your competition. And they said, you’re the guy crushing it. Why are you crushing? He goes, “well, everybody’s, all my competitions sets around is watching the news and seeing all the bad stuff going on in there. They get in their heads, Oh golly, I better cut back on my advertising and marketing and pull my head in my shell like a turtle and see what happens.” And at the same time he goes, “I figured all their clients, they’ll lead to buy something somewhere.”

Danny: I can’t change the world news. So I just went out and said, “Hey, I’m open.” And it was attitude. I mean, it was there. If you have to have in this everything we’ve been talking about, you better have an attitude of I don’t care what’s going on, I have a product you need. That’s where it comes down to. And I know a lot of successful sales people that haven’t watched the local news in 10 years. Cause it just…

Jason: It doesn’t matter. And it brings you down. It’s causing a negative mindset and you’re focusing on the wrong things. So.. 

Danny: Well, I believe there’s two mindsets we could have in sales. We can have a survival mindset and we can have what I call a thriving mindset. And the thriving mindset, you don’t have to be thriving, but you believe you will be by the actions you’re taking.

Danny: And sometimes I can discover that so quickly in a prospect or salesperson, I’m praying, all I have to say is “how are you doing today?” And the, the survivor will go, “well, I’m okay, I’m getting by.” You know, and the thriver will go, “I’m doing fabulous. I’ve got 15 presentations a day and I know I’m going to sell one or two or three,” you know, and it’s all between the ears. Our biggest competitor is between the ear. If you’re selling anything, you know, if you don’t believe in it. I’ve sold stuff where people say, I don’t know whether this work will work or not, but you obviously do so I’m going to buy it. So it’s mindset. I actually had a guy telling me, I talk about in one of my speeches and books that I, I asked guy when he’s goals, where he goes, well they’re not written, but I think about him all my life. Everything I do, I think about these goals. And he went on and on and on. I said, so what is that goal? And he goes, I go to work every day and my goal is to break even. Yeah, that’s what… What? That’s a survival mindset if I ever heard it, but…

Jason: Well, and what I know from people like that, right. Cause you see us with salespeople as well, which is if that’s their goal or their, they don’t believe or you know, that’s their benchmark of where they’re drawing the line is that when they do have that good day and a couple of deals closed and they in the positive they’re going, well I know that’s not going to last. Or I’m sure that was a fluke and then prove themselves right the next day when they go under, you know, back to breaking even, yeah, I told you so. It must’ve just been, you know, a lucky call. I got the good leads for once and uh, you know,

Danny: Economy does suck. 

Jason: Yeah. See it must be the economy

Danny: Told you so told, you know, again, every great salesperson I’ve ever been around, and you, I’m sure you know this with all the good work you’re doing in coaching and consulting, I’m telling you, it just never ceases to amaze me that all the successful people have total continuous clarity. Search number one and number two they have that thriving attitude, mindset. You know, I, it’s just so important. And why is it so hard? Well, it’s so hard because we just fall into everybody around us. I think to be a great salesperson, you’ve got to almost change all your friends sometimes.

Jason: Sometimes yes. So two parts I think change your friends, which can be hard for some people, but I would say at a minimum, depending on what your sales environment looks like, whether you’re in an office or whatnot, is change who you talk to at the office. So sometimes I even, I’ve told reps like change where you’re sitting because the people around you aren’t winning. They’re the break even people and you know the barely making quota people and you want to win. So stop sitting near them like they’re going to drag you down. They’re going to gossip, they’re going to talk, they’re going to distract you. You know, whenever I’ve been in sales, if it’s in like a, an office with cubicles or whatever situation, I’m like three rows separate from everyone else by myself on an Island. You know, I’m there to talk to the successful people, but I’m not there to just chit chat with the people who aren’t winning.

Danny: Well, here’s a cool lesson that I learned the hard way, but I was always the last guy at work. I was always writing letters. I was always there making a final phone calls and people would say, Hey, why don’t you, let’s go have a beer. I go, now I a, I got to go finish my letters and such. But then I get criticized and I go, Oh, okay. And so I go out and then all they do is they were in gripe and groan. So I realized like I kind of put together this theory that well some people will do it unconsciously, but more than you would imagine people will do that to you consciously. Because if your extra work, will make you successful, and the more success you have, the worst these guys look. Yep. So some of them will do those negative conversations and talk around you and make you slow down and make you feel bad about, not going with the group. So they don’t look bad and you’re not too successful to show him up. So I’m with you 100% you’ve got to set yourself apart if you have to, you got to go get another room. Don’t ever come into the office if you don’t have to.

Jason: And if that’s the environment of the company, seriously, look at changing companies. There’s enough companies out there in the world. There’s no reason to, to put up with that, if that’s also what’s tolerated by management and management is okay with the mediocrity and the complaining and the drama instead of, you know, rising up everybody and raising the bar and trimming the people who aren’t there to win. And again, there’s nothing wrong with people who aren’t there to win except for that they’re in a sales role and that’s performance-based, right. You know, if they’re okay with that, then go find a union job or an admin job or something like that, you know? And which is nothing wrong with that, but don’t try to put yourself into a sales box.

Danny: No. You know, and again, people who won’t want to work as hard as you won’t be as committed as you were, I would say, look, mom always said, don’t put yourself on another level over people. But I think it’s okay in sales because if I go to another plateau, it’s okay. If I say look down on everybody and say, look, there’s a lot of room up here if you want to come up, but I’m not coming back down. And two or three will come up. Then I’ll go to another level and I’ll say, if you want to come up, come on. But I’m not going to sit around and take all this negativity cause it costs me money. And that’s what helps my family. And I always believe the work I do for my clients was something that they couldn’t get anywhere else and I’m going to help them be successful. So, you know, do you see that in your consulting and in coaching practice? I just see a lot of people aren’t successful because their partners are in or just negative. And they don’t know how to set themselves up.

Jason: They don’t know how to set themselves apart. Sometimes they’re worried about doing too successful. Like let’s say it’s, you know, the sales rep level and they’re not willing to and or they’re not willing to put in the effort to just make it happen for themselves and they’re waiting for it to be handed to them. Instructions wise, you know, training skills. So back to what we’re talking about. Well, so I had a bunch of questions planned. I had mentioned in the very beginning, I have five questions I want to ask every guest and I’m super transparent to serve. You know, if anyone new is listening to the show and you’ve made it this far, you may not know this, but in my first season I’m very transparent. I, you know, if things work out or don’t work out, I’ll explain it. I have these five questions.

Jason: My goal with season two was to ask my guests all these questions. So far I’ve recorded one of them where we barely went through them, but we ended up talking about anyway, this conversation, I could ask you those questions, but we’ve literally covered all of them in this almost hour long conversation, which I think is amazing. And anybody who knows me, my style is not like scripted planned questions. It’s a conversation, which is how I set it up so I didn’t get through my questions and, but you know for this here, so you know I’m going to put a bunch of your information on my website so people can find you. Find your book, upcoming books. Find you if they want your training, your coaching, you know, and we talked about this and anyone who knows me know that you know, theoretically, we’re kind of competitors in the same space, but we both, there’s so much business out there. If someone wants to work with you, that doesn’t mean anything about me. They like you, you have the experience that they may be looking for is different from me. So please make sure to check out Danny’s information. Where’s best place for them to find you if they’re interested in anything that you’ve done.

Danny: Well, let me before I say it preps with the line that Zig Ziglar used to say all the time and it was basically help enough people get what they want. They live by it. I’ve got it behind my desk at both offices and I think that’s a great way to live your life. My website is www.realworldcoaching. What is a real business coach? I’ve got three or four. 

Jason: You know, you have too many websites when you can’t keep track…

Danny: realworldbusinesscoach.com yup. And if anybody wants to connect LinkedIn, you can find me very easy there. And I do a lot of work there and my first book was called a life best lived a story of life, death and second chances. And it’s really about most people sit around their life waiting for someone to give you a second chance when we have the ability to give ourselves a second, third and fourth.

Danny: And it’s a powerful book based on some things that I went through. My new book series is going to be called straight talk on and we have a series of seven books coming out with the straight talk of headline and the first one is going to be straight talk on thriving business. And the second one, hopefully it’d be both of them will be out by Christmas, is straight talk on in. I don’t remember what the, what the publisher has decided on the final version is, but it’s a, it’s going to be on finding customers, finding prospects and it’s all a sales book about how to, cool way to find customers that I, I haven’t made a cold call in 14 years because I, I learned this technique. So anyway, www.realworldbusinesscoach.com. By the way, for everybody listening, this is, this is a great format. Jason does a great job at this because I get on a lot of them, so I hope you enjoy it and I hope you’ll listen.

Jason: Oh, thank you. And I appreciate that coming from you. I know that you’ve been on a lot of podcasts and I appreciate you being here and for anyone listening, you can go to the cutterconsultinggroup.com website. The transcript will be there. All of Danny’s links will be on there. Everything to find where he’s at. And again, Danny, thanks for uh, thanks for taking the time and chatting. Some a straight talk sales stuff here for sure.

Danny: Thank you so much. I, I’d like to come back.

Jason: Yeah, we should do a follow-up. Uh, definitely, uh, especially once you launch some more projects, we can do a followup series on this for sure.

Danny: We can act, we can talk more questions. 

Jason: Maybe we’ll go through my questions next time, so for sure. Thank you. Appreciate it. And, uh, everybody as always, keep in mind that everything in life is sales like we were just talking about, and people remember the experience you gave them.