Everybody knows motivation is a great starting point if you want to get ahead, but is it enough all by itself? What other things should you have if you want to succeed in sales?
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If you google how to get better in sales, most sales gurus will start out talking about motivation. But is motivation really all it takes?
This is the first of a two-part episode. In the first half, we discuss why we believe motivation isn't enough to make you a successful salesperson, but why it is important to have.
Next week, the episode continues with how motivation can start to lead you in the wrong direction.
How important do you think motivation is in sales? Text us at the number above or leave a comment.
Because motivation is so personality-driven, you can also text us to ask about taking a DISC personality assessment. When you know what your motivations are, you know how to use them to your advantage.
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Let's get ready to Throwdown!
What's up, everybody? We are back, Sales Throwdown. We are here. This week, we are celebrating veterans week. We have three veterans on the show. If you're new to the show, Al was in the Navy. Clint was in the other version of the Navy. And I was in the reserves.
Oh, hey, I just for the record, man, I loved all the Marines I worked around. I mean, they got a little crazy sometimes, and you had to get out of their damn way if they really needed to get someplace. But beyond that, man, you know, they were they were tight. You know, they when they got loose, it was sort of after hours when you know. And in the Navy, aside from you know, Special Forces, guys, the rest of us are usually just, you know, run of the mill dudes. That's right. You know, so, yeah, I hats off to the Marine Corps. Yeah, I like to give a solid solid guy.
I like to give Clint a little bit of you know, shit, because you know, he likes to give everybody else too much shit. But this week is also the Marine Corps birthday. So man,
Oh, yeah. Happy birthday,
Big week for Marines and they're just shutting the lights off on him. They're like, I go home.
That was awesome. It was also it's it's actually wonderful because my wife's birthday is the same as the Marine Corps birthday. And so I appreciate every drill instructor that made me learn all that stupid ass knowledge that I never use, again, like the date of the Marine Corps birthday, right? And, I mean, if it wasn't for like, Hey, you know, my buddies texted me like, hey, happy birthday, my gosh, shit. Yeah. Hey, Hey, babe. Happy birthday.
That's the only reason you remember it.
And now I have to go to Target to get you so.
So today, our topic is talking about talent and motivation, right? Because when you turn on YouTube, you turn on anything these days, there's, there's a bunch of these, you know, self appointed gurus, these experts and stuff. And we've kind of had our fair share of poking fun at some of these people. But a lot of people treat motivation as the cure all. Right, we get people like ramped up enough. They're, they're just gonna go out and do the work and be successful. And it was funny, because we're talking about the topic before. And you know, Clint, was not bought into this idea. Right. Which is, which is kind of interesting, because you would think that if any of us, he would be the guy who's like, just get it done kind of deal. Like, like, just don't worry about it just go stuff like that. So I'm curious for you, Clint, like, you were you were a little vocal about like, motivation not being enough. Can you talk a little bit more about that?
Yeah, I mean, you know, speaking on the Marine Corps and veterans and the military, I mean, motivation is key to getting a lot of things done. But, you know, that's, that's a small percentage of, you know, you forget about the skill side, right, the learned trade, you have to have the skill sets, or the tools to learn it, right. I mean, you don't have to have it all right away. Motivation helps, in a ton of ways get through sticky situations, you know, as you're learning and training, you got to have the motivation to stick with it. Bad sales, you know, when you're, when you're in kind of a, you know, a tough sale in front of, you know, a boardroom or whatever, you know, that motivation might plow you through that. So yeah, it's a great tool to have, it's a great thing to have on your side, but it's not the cure all. And it's definitely not even a big percent of what you need to do. Because I know guys that only have skill. And they and they are successful. Right? But I don't know any, in the professional world. I don't know any truly just 100% motivated people with zero skill that are successful. I don't know any of those. They end up washing from company to company, and trade to trade, as we say in everywhere, right? And the resumes nine pages long and they're about nine months, a piece at each job because because they interview well, right? Those people they interview well, they, they make a lot of friends, they're fun to be around. But then you get them on board and you expect results or motivation doesn't necessarily get you results. It's just, you know, unless you're hiring a cheerleader great. I mean, that does, that's what that person would do. But you know, most people aren't in that business. So skills or skills are very very crucial. Honing the skills every day is is crucial to you being successful and everybody being successful around you so yeah, I don't believe motivation is the cure all at all.
I like how you essentially said to not hire I personality types.
Yeah, yeah, pretty much.
Okay, but what we were told is motivation enough we you know, we kind of just said five minutes ago that was gonna be on topic. Well, yeah, I agree. Is motivation enough? No, of course it's not. But correct me if I'm wrong, is it not, is the whole sales technique, a package? I mean, you have to have motivation, if you don't have motivation, you're just gonna sit on your butt and not improve and not come up with a plan. And is that I mean, am I wrong? Even if you have skills, if you don't have motivation to do something with those skills, then you're just sitting, you're just a smart guy sitting on a chair. So I guess I'm just trying to understand, of course, motivation isn't enough, but you better have that that's a component you better have, you know,
For you, Nan, right, it sounds like we're now talking about two things, right? skills and the motivation, right? What do you think the ratio needs to be to do? Well, because like, I don't think that if you're 90% motivation and 10% skill, you're gonna, you're gonna figure it out. Right? And I think that the way that most people think about sales is that like, it's this innate talent, right? And we're going to talk about talent here in a minute. And in, so when you are that kind of person, right? And everybody views it is like something you're born with or not, and not a skill you can develop, then what happens is that you end up not being coachable. Right, so so you just fail out and run away and go do something else. Because you're really motivated, you just don't have the skills, right?
Right. Well, that's why, you know, we say, so often how important going back to the DISC, I think, it's so important to have each component to be successful, I don't think you can just have someone skilled someone, you know, if you just have a single one person that's skilled, one person that's motivated, you have to bring those two people together, or have them teach each other or learn from another source. But I really do think you have to have all of the components to be successful.
So what do you what do you think all the components are just real quick, and then we'll go to Clint.
Um, okay, obviously, we've we've said skills, and competence, you know, if if you feel inadequate, so you have to have some level of you've, you feel like you're capable of doing something. So lack of, if you if you're just like really insecure, I think that that can stifle you, as well. And I, I don't know, just a legitimate feeling of competence. So like, I can know how to go in and do surgery. But I get, I can get in there, I can have the skills, I can have the motivation. But if I don't have complete confidence in myself, then I'm going to do this. I mean, I'm sure you can speak to this too John, as you know, you can get into surgery now, I'll never have that, that that failure, like, Oh, crap, I could so screw up, you start that in your brain. So I don't think that's motivation. I don't think that skill, I think it's just having this, you know, just security in you know, what, you know, what you're doing, look it Al, he, I don't care what surgery he goes into, he will slam it, and the doctors know it. And so they ask him questions all the time. And I don't think I have that, as well. I mean, I know I don't have it as well as he does. But I think over time, that's just something, you know, I, it goes back to what we've talked to in previous episodes about, you can really learn from your mistakes, but unfortunately, there are areas you can't have mistakes like surgery. So, you know, there's, there's that skill set also that, you know, you have the knowledge of it, but you also better have the confidence in yourself, you know, so I think I'm sure I'm missing some but those are the top three that come to my mind now.
Nat- natural ability is huge. And it differs, I think, percentage wise, on how much natural ability you have to have that you're kind of born with and and this is going to the motivation side. This is where all those motivational speakers out there. And these people that sell these books on pure motivation, that's all you need. This is where they fail, because not everybody and I don't care what anybody says, I will fight this to death. Not everybody has the ability to do everything. It's just not you just don't you need, and the quicker you realize what you're really good at and what you just don't have the natural knack for, the better off you'll be. And these people have preached that every human being can do what every other human being can do. It's just not we weren't made equal. That's just not how it is. And sure I can play basketball. I'm 5'11" there's people that have played in the NBA 5'11" but I'm not that guy. If I worked out every day for the rest of my life I don't I still don't think I'd be that guy. So why put all my stuff into that pipe dream that will never happen, you know, and that's, that's probably easy, maybe easier for my personality to say just mix it out and move to the next thing but you know, natural ability's huge, right if you if you struggle with math your entire life and numbers don't come easy. And you're more artistic right? That's just the way your brain works. Don't try to Don't try to fail at being a CPA the rest of your life. That's silly. You know what I mean? I just doesn't make any sense.
That's so true. It's so true. Yeah, I can think of a ton of examples of that. But Al, you're being really quiet? What is your?
Yeah? Al's endless motivation, right, and has been pretty quiet so far.
He's actually been talking all time, but we have him on mute.
Yeah. You know, I was kind of curious as to how each one of you would approach this. I mean, John, we hadn't heard from you, what are your thoughts on it? Let me kick it over to you. And
So I'm big about the idea that like with the right motivation, things are possible. But you, I firmly believe that if you don't put, don't put the like, I can be extremely motivated to go to go beat Jon Bonds Jones, or Jon Bones, Bones Jones, right. But like, and I've trained and everything else, but like, I'm not going to win that fight, I'm not going to win that altercation. And I can be as motivated as as anybody to try to win that thing. But it's just not going to happen, my skill level is not set for the task. And for me, the way that I look at this is, there is some way that you can sell and be yourself and do and do all the things that are super important in conversation, you just have to find what that way is. And the way that it didn't work for me was doing medical device sales, right? Like like that whole process of going up and knocking on the door and trying to be you know, Al or that I or you know, schmoozing past the gatekeeper, and everything because I didn't know any of this stuff at the time. I had no natural ability in that thing, right? I'm a grinder, right? I'm going to figure it out with enough time and enough reps, but I'm probably not going to like even hit it the first like couple of a couple of times, right? It's fail and learn and fail and learn. And so now with the way that I sell in the way that I help other people sell it's much more around building, building the process the right way so that way, you can sell in a way that benefits your strengths, right? If you're really good at networking, cool, I can teach you how to generate referrals and introductions from like networking. But let's just be consistent on the activities, right, if you like to cold call, then we can do it that way. So I think that with the right motivation, you're going to be successful, but there's still a skill component. And then this is where it all comes together for me. Practice, right? If you're not, if this is your livelihood, and this is the thing that like keeps food on the table and the lights on in your home and stuff like this, and you're not practicing your craft on like a very regular basis. How much do you really want it? Is how I think about it.
You know, I think I don't know if we've said this in the past. But something that I've really been thinking about lately is sales is not simple. I think we've said anyone can be a salesperson, you know, as long as you're motivated, right? Well that's not true, it is really not simple. You need to know what you're selling, you need to know who your competitor is, I mean, there is a lot of planning, and you have to be motivated, if you want to plan and know all the things you need to know, you know, today. And I think I'm thinking really strongly about this today, because one of my big accounts, um, there was a little glitch, and I wanted to go in there and talk to the surgeon. And I thought about it for a long time. And I got out everything I could think of that potentially could come up, prepared, ready to answer ready to showing them, you know, whatever you needed to see, not knowing if he was even going to ask me anything. But I was not going to go in there unprepared for anything to to make this go the wrong direction, right? And what is that, it's motivation. But it's not just motivation, I had a lot of motivation, because I did not want to fail. But I also knew that I mean, I've learned this skill of preparation for any kind of meeting, be at the meeting the first person you're going to meet at the door. And and you know, beyond that, you better be prepared, prepared for what might potentially could come up, because otherwise you could just fail. If you need to know what you're doing. You need to know what could come up, you know, I think you should be prepared. And I think that takes motivation. I just am on a soapbox, I mean. Oh, that I just I think it's like really important to be motivated. So I think it's not enough but you should be motivated. And if you're not motivated. What Okay, like I would love to know this. What if you're not motivated? What if you're in sales, and you're not motivated? Which how scary is that? I think how is someone not motivated? I don't know that but
It's easy for you to say man because it fits your personality to a tee. Yep, like everything you just said fits so far in your corner as an S personality, and and that's, that's a, for me I look at I don't do anything unless I'm motivated to do it. And so while I kind of agree with you that, you know, how do you, you know, how would you even why would you even do anything if you're not motivated to do it? Or how do you just not have motivation? For me, I do think I don't do things because I know I'm not going to be motivated to do it. And so that, therefore, I just don't let myself fail at it, you know.
I'm clueless to what you're even saying. So can you give me an example? I know, it sounds silly, but
I mean, yeah. Okay. So like, I mean, there's certain jobs that I know that I could do in life, and I could probably do them well, but I know I'm not going to be motivated enough to care to make it successful. So I'm not going to do those jobs at all. Versus you can understand that somebody doesn't have motivation, not every person is just going to wake up and Oh, shit, I got to flip burgers and McDonald's today. So I'm just gonna have all the motivation in it all day long. This just doesn't work that way.
I would love. I would love that to be a topic sometime coming up. The point of view of people, I just want to put that out there. Because it is bizarre, to me. Bizarre, but reality, how different we all are. The perspective that we all have is bizarre to me in life. And I think that would be an interesting, I'll stop there. But
Well, it's funny, because I was smiling as you were talking about like this, your version of being prepared, right. And as I see, my version of being prepared is times 10. Right? To kind of like wrap a finer point around it. And excuse me, if I'm not prepared, I won't start at all right? So for me, I have to trap myself of like, hey, look, I don't need to know everything. Because I can always be like, hey, how important is that to this conversation? Oh, it's super important. Okay, cool. Like, let me find out right now. But if it's not super important to the conversation, I don't need to I don't need to spend the extra time preparing for that and preparing for all the situations that could arise around that thing. So I used to, like over prepare for, like every call. And then like, what I realized that I was doing was like I was building this hole that was like really hard for me to get out of on my calls, because I had all these ideas and perceptions. And I made all these assumptions and everything else. And so the way that I think about it is put in the practice on your process, right? Like, like, how, like how you sell. So that way, whether you have spent all the time preparing, or whether it's like kind of spur of the moment and you're just hopping into a conversation, you can still like do the same actions.
So that's, that's interesting. Because I because I understand that you're, you know, I know you well enough to know why that works. I will say that I'm really interested right now in, in hearing from the silent guy that's never been so quiet. And, and the reason I'm I keep waiting for him to hop in here is because I, of all personalities, that I know, especially my close friends, a lot of them are super I's. I feel like you guys feed I'm talking about eyes feed off everyone else's motivation. I mean, we I mean, there could be, we could do anything we could dig, you know, shit, you know, piles of shit for a living. And as long as I was motivated, you would be motivated, you know, and I just always felt that was quite, I envy that a little bit.
Well, first of all motivation's an emotion, right?
You googled that.
No, I didn't, I wrote it on a piece of paper here. He's,
He's a doctor, come on, you know.
And so you're you're putting an emotion to a process or an action, right? And motivation, I think is a short term, boost of energy or want to do an endeavor, right? So you know how it is, like if you go to a new job, or you learn, you know, you take a class, you're, you're highly motivated, right? The question is, did you have the cortical capacity to absorb the mechanics of what you're motivated right now to learn, right? Because once you get the skill set, you don't need as much motivation. It just becomes your process or what you do to then get the money that you need, like John was saying, to pay your bills, and we, we, we have this thing called sales, which gives you a lot of latitudes. So if you can get highly motivated to go learn a process and then get good at it, and then go make some money. Well, now the motivation changes as you take every one of those steps down that pathway. But to just go throw your hands in the air and get supercharged about what? Right, you know, so you go sit in a seminar, and you shake, rattle, and roll and you're amazing. At what? Okay, what are you really good at other than throwing your arms up and hugging yourself and slapping your neighbor and you're going to kill the? Well, okay. All right, how?
Yeah, I laugh because in my head as, as I'm hearing you kind of talk about like a motivational speaker, I always have this picture in my head that this motivational guy gets up on stage, and he does all that. And he walks off stage and cracks open a bottle of whiskey and goes into a dark room and shoots himself with heroin. That's what I mean. Maybe one too many movies.
You know, potentially, potentially, because I think all those guys are wrought with, you know, it's just like TV evangelists and everybody with like, the, you know, with the, you know, the, the tans and the, you know, the hairdos. And, you know, I mean, they they've got this backstory, right, so that's the front side. And, and I think they're selling a lot of blue sky, actually, for the most part. Now, if you've been one of the it's probably like AA, if you one of the 5%, who kicks the habit or makes it to the end zone. Yeah, but I think the vast majority of people are just in this hunt for something out there that they need to find inside themselves. Right?
Yeah. And, and there's something to be said too, about if it works for you, then who cares? What the backstory is. And who gives a shit? Because Because I run that to a lot. Well, oh, hey, did you have you ever read this book? Or do you ever seen this video? Oh, yeah, he's an idiot, I saw he, you know, beat up his wife or whatever. I'm like, Oh, that's not the message I'm trying to share my talking about him. Did you see the motivational video? You know what I mean? So it's like, you know, you can you can look at everything negatively. And motivation is also one of them, too. And, and the other side of it, too, is there's also there's also bad motivation. There's not it's not always motivation doesn't mean it's good. And you can you can be led down the wrong path. Yep. being excited about something that you shouldn't be excited about. It happens all the time.
Sure. So yeah, when we talk about motivation, you know, it's an emotional interest to motivate you to take an action step basically. But I think the the real grid in sales is to, because you can be not motivated to go talk to that gatekeeper. But your your, but but you're, you're, you're, you're professional enough, your, your, you know, your your self worth is there, you say, Hey, this is what I got to go do. And this is the process to get down to the paydirt. And I think that it's easy to get, you know, cuz you see in the in that, that talks to the point that you were talking about that guy that goes nine months at a company, he's onto a new company on it, because he's not performing. Right, he comes in, he interviews well, he, you know, you think he's gonna, you know, be the right fit for, you know, you've explained your side of the equation, he's saying yes, and seems to be very pliable, you know, he's motivated to make you want to hire him. But then there's no follow through. He doesn't, you know, develop the skill set of success, you know, as it relates to the numbers you need to see, because, from, from a business from the who, what, when you hire on to be a salesman for somebody, they have money to pay you, right. So this is I don't know very many salespeople, say, you know, I sold all this shit, and I didn't get paid. No, what happened is you didn't sell anything, they got tired of your base, and they replaced you with somebody or you saw it coming, and you jump to the next place. Yeah, I mean, are you holding yourself accountable? Maybe that's where it comes in. Right? I was highly motivated. Now I'm highly accountable to the routine that it takes to support my lifestyle, feed myself and put fuel in my jet airplane.
There's a guy named, fuel in the jet airplane. So there's a guy named Simon Sinek, who's got this book, it's called "Start with Why," and he talks about essentially finding that that motivation, right, because, you know, for most people, after a while, money drops away from being the biggest like motivator, right? Like, I'm, I'm working with a guy. And when we started working together, he hated cold calling, he avoided it and everything else. And we've done some mindset shift. And now he loves it. He looks forward to it. But he's also finding with with the success, his motivation to work, is is less because he's like, he's like, I'm kind of doing pretty good. I don't want to do this stuff. And I was like, beware, right? If you're not doing the leading indicators that you've been doing to get to business, and there's a drop off, you don't get to get pissed about the quality of the leads or anything else like this, because there's always there's always a volume component to selling like always, so I think you really have to figure out like, what is that motivating thing for you? And for me, like, I have, I have an accountability call every morning, 7:45. And we do it live, we it's a show, and we place these bets. So I'm not I'm not wired like, like Al is to, like, have this ever pressing need to go get in front of people, right? Like, this is all adjusted behavior. Because I know that if I don't do it, I won't be successful. So each week, if I don't do my activities, and everything else, I got to pay a cause that I do not like $500. Right. And eventually,
Wow, that's steep, man.
Well, because because because here's the deal. It's got to be expensive, right? Yeah, gotta hurt a little bit. Yeah, it's got a sting, it's a little bit like gambling, right? You know, so I'm gambling on myself, Oh, buddy, right. I got I got out lol excited. But, you know, I'm remarkably consistent because I don't want to pay, I don't want to lose, right. And even more than that, for me, I don't want to get on my accountability call with my, with my accountability partner who's working his ass off to do his side of things. And he also has a weekly $500 bet. And like, I don't want to let him down, more than I'm concerned about, like the $500 at this point, right? So there's there there, there's this idea of like, extrinsic motivation, which is like threat the carrot, the whip, you know, all these things, you know. And then there's the intrinsic motivation. Like when you look inside of yourself, and you find that thing that makes you want to do it, even though it's not in your comfort zone. It's not in your wheelhouse. It's not who you are out of the box. I think that's…
But don't, don't you think at the heart of it, you kind of have to like the challenge of solving the problem of success. However, whatever success is, right? There's usually the challenge is how do I solve the problem to get to the other side of difficult to call myself successful, right? Think about that. That success now becomes I want to be successful. Right? So now the challenge is the process that overcomes the problem. And gets me to the other side of difficult, because the first time you solve it, it's kind of like, wow, I got it done. How did I do that? Right? Yeah, you just fumbled around, the pieces came together and boom, you're like, Okay, let me recreate that. How do I get that to where it just, it's automatically where I'm going, right? Because when you walk through the door, I'm decided I wanted to sell something to this person. Yeah, doesn't always happen. But my decision has been made to sell something to this person. And I've got to work the problems and the kinks out and Nan had that situation today. Right? We had that conversation. And before you went on your sales call, and you had a dilemma, we had a discussion about it. And you won the day, right? So again, it's a it's a, it's a problem that has a solution. Are you the right person to deliver that solution?