How Top Performers Master Sales Skills w/ Practice Lab Co-founders Jonathan Mahan and Jordana Zeldin

0:02

Welcome to She Sells Radio so I have a question for you today have you ever had

0:08

one of those dreaded moments on a client sales call where you get an objection and you realize you are completely

0:16

fumbling your way through it the only reason I would know anything about that

0:21

is that is pretty much what my whole early sales career was built on and I

0:27

know you know you if you’ve been following me you know kind of my background in sales and some of the accomplishments I’ve had and you also

0:34

maybe don’t know all the things I screwed up early on and continue to still kind of fumble my way through in

0:40

certain moments for sure and I’ve made a lot of mistakes along the way and they are definitely part of the process but I

0:47

also know that I have lost deals and lost opportunities that I could have

0:53

probably of course not only made the money on but also really help people if I had better Tools in my toolkit and so

1:00

that’s why I’m so excited to bring you two amazing guests today who believe

1:06

that you should practice with your peers not on your prospects so Jonathan and Jordana are the co-founders of the

1:12

practice lab a place where sellers come together to develop their selling skills in the same way that performers athletes

1:18

and musicians develop theirs Jonathan enjoy Anna I’m so excited to have you on the show today welcome to she sells

1:25

radio thank you yeah I’m so glad to be here this is it’s always fun too when I have

1:31

co-founders because it’s like we get to hear different angles and different aspects and and all of that so this will

1:36

be really good so okay I think let’s just talk origin’s story here briefly like I want to hear from

1:42

both of you a little bit of your background what got the two of you together and what created the

1:47

inspiration for the practice lab I guess I’ll I’ll start with that so

1:54

um the practice that I really started maybe about 18 months ago I actually started a

2:00

new sales role at company and I was going through their onboarding and really there was three things that kind

2:05

of happened at the same time um which which birthed this project so the onboarding videos that I would watch in

2:11

the morning were really good videos right like really good training they talked about the right behaviors talked about talk to us about how to handle

2:16

objections What discovery questions to ask how to talk about pricing competitors it was good stuff I’d have

2:22

lunch I’d go take a walk I’d use like the gong app to listen to recorded calls as I walked and I would listen to the

2:28

recalls of my actual peers you know that were going on on a day-to-day basis and there was almost no overlap between

2:35

what we were all being taught and what people were actually doing on your sales calls and it was this really strong

2:41

reminder to me that there’s a really big gap between like intellectually understanding something and knowing what

2:47

good looks like and knowing what you should be doing and actually having the skill set necessary to pull it off in a

2:52

real conversation and I recognize the same Gap in myself right I’m a pretty avid reader and listener of podcasts and I know all sorts of sales Theory but

2:59

when I watch my real calls they do leave a lot to be desired right a lot of that theory doesn’t show up in my execution

3:05

so that was during the day and the third thing is that in the evening I was reading a book called Peak a labor a

3:11

book called it the Talent Code which is very similar both these books are by researchers who have spent decades studying top performers in a variety of

3:18

industries from you know acting to music to sports to chess you name it and

3:23

studying what it takes to become the very best of the best right how do you get to the top one percent of whatever your your field is

3:30

and of course in those books they talked about the gap between knowing and doing between understanding and execution and

3:36

in every other discipline the way that Gap is closed is through a particular type of focused deliberate practice

3:44

so I realized for myself that I really needed this if I was going to become the seller I wanted to be I needed to

3:49

practice my selling skills not just you know hop into a sales call and do my best and then repeat the next day

3:54

so the very earliest seat of the practice lab is I was actually working like I reached out with some colleagues of mine who were also on boarding was

4:00

like Hey guys if you want to come practice with me once a week and we started doing that and that felt really good so at that point I really have to

4:07

draw Ghana because she had a bit of a background in sales and practice and she was a sales trainer and kind of asked her if she wanted to offer this kind of

4:13

to our LinkedIn networks and one thing led to another and you know what became kind of a hobby suddenly became a side hustle what was the side hustle

4:19

something became a business yeah as it goes I love it I love it it’s

4:26

yeah it’s it’s so needed and I can relate to a lot of what you shared so Jordana from kind of I know you’re a

4:31

sales trainer that’s your background like what’s your journey been like getting here yeah I mean it’s interesting so I’m one

4:38

of those people that tripped and fell into sales and never ever imagined I would be in sales in my entire life I started out in the art world and was in

4:44

theater and and running an Arts non-profit fall into sales when an art tech company needed some people who

4:51

could speak the language of the art world so I came in and was so interesting is that for the first year

4:58

on the sales team I did just like I just did not feel it like I felt a little bit embarrassed about being in sales I

5:05

wasn’t really bringing myself to my selling conversations our team was very split off like we would take all of our

5:12

sales conversations in like these startupy style phone booths so no one ever

5:17

had the opportunity to really hear like what other people sounded like we didn’t hear victories we didn’t hear failures

5:24

we didn’t hear awkward attempts and the entire the entire position really just

5:29

felt like it wasn’t quite a match for me and what I was wanting and I was thinking about leaving sales until

5:35

this incredible incredible head of sales came in and the very first thing that he

5:40

did literally was take us out of our phone booths and into the sales pit so we could start to hear each other and he

5:47

would offer feedback and coaching on the fly in public so that we got to hear what he was listening for and how he was

5:54

coaching everybody to improve and we practice together we role played

6:00

we started to support each other in a way as a team that we just hadn’t in the

6:05

year prior and through the practice through the camaraderie through the

6:11

feedback developed a culture of feedback on the team where all of the feedback wasn’t just coming from the sales leader it was coming from each other and we

6:18

started to soar we started to feel like we belonged in our selling we started to become more skillful there was a level

6:24

of psychological safety on the team that was established by way of all of our hearing our messy attempts and failures

6:29

and wins Anna was contagious and it was then and there that I decided or kind of

6:35

realized that I got as much if not more gratification from coaching and developing my teammates as I did my own

6:42

sales wins and when I left and moved on from that position to become a sales

6:47

coach I found myself at a practice-based sales training company that took a

6:53

similar approach not the same one that we take in the practice lab and it was like once I saw the impact that breaking

6:59

down the sales conversation into bite-sized chunks had and once I became a coach the facilitated practice rather

7:05

than just conversation or explanation it was like I couldn’t unsee how much

7:10

improvement there was both in terms of skill and also confidence so when Jonathan reached out to me it’s like we

7:17

both had this understanding that practice was what was needed and came together to you know to offer this to to

7:23

sellers all over the place now you said something to Jordana there that I want to go back to you said in that role like

7:30

before the great director of sales came in you weren’t really and I think what you said is you weren’t really bringing

7:36

all of yourself to the sales calls in so many words what does that mean like I

7:42

want you to go a little deeper in what that would was like for you I think we all had this idea especially

7:47

because we were selling to galleries who are a little Elite and a little snooty like that we had to almost like

7:54

be some kind of character version of ourselves like speak the language of the gallery adopt adopt the tone adopt the

8:01

way of being and I’m just not that way and most of us on the team weren’t that way but we had such a I don’t know if it

8:08

was a fear or issues around status about what it meant to call into these big galleries that we left we thought we had

8:15

to leave ourselves at the door and what was so interesting is that this head of sales had no experience in the art world

8:20

at all so he didn’t have the same kind of reverence or fear that we had of these prospects and he just insisted

8:28

that we dropped the mask and be the same person that that we were five minutes

8:33

when we were joking around with a teammate you know as we were on the phone with our Prospect and that permission that humor that lightness

8:41

uh that allowance to show up as we were be it quirky or a little stumbly or

8:47

imperfect was like the unlock at least for me for really feeling like

8:53

alive in the work I guess because when you spend eight hours a day feeling like you have to be someone else in order to

8:59

perform that affects everything how well you perform in your selling conversations how you feel in your life

9:05

totally and that’s always I wanna Jonathan I want to ask you this question

9:10

first then we’ll we’ll pop it over to Jordana but you know to me that’s always been a bit of like the rub with scripts

9:16

and I came from a background of very heavily scripted sales conversations where it was like you you can’t deviate

9:24

like you literally don’t deviate from the script and I remember one of my more painful moments

9:29

that really hurt me in my heart was I was talking to a great guy great Prospect he’d seen me

9:36

speak somewhere and we were on a sales conversation about him signing up for coaching and the script that the company was very

9:44

adamant that we use it it always felt a little off to me but they were so adamant that we used it I was like okay I’m gonna just follow the Playbook I’m

9:51

gonna say what’s being said and as I’m like going through the like the price build up he pauses me and he’s like

9:57

could you just stop reading from a script and talk to me like I’m a real person wow and I remember in that moment

10:05

I was like oh okay it’s not feeling good to me I don’t feel like I can be myself it’s clearly not feeling good to him

10:12

either so what is that I want to hear from both of you like obviously you’re helping people hone their skills you’re

10:18

helping them develop they’re like the right words to say but what is that sweet spot in your opinion

10:25

between being scripted and then having like being able to bring ourselves to that

10:31

how do you help people find that Jonathan I’ll turn it to you first yeah there’s two things flowing through

10:37

my mind right one um one is that I would say the degree to which you pre-plan out

10:44

what you’re going to say and script it right um and there’s you know varying degrees of a pure script versus more of

10:49

a loose talk track um you know versus just a framework but the extent to which you plan it out I think has a lot to do

10:55

with how predictable that moment the conversation is um for example if you’re opening your

11:00

first call right it’s like an introduction ring call you probably have like what 10 of those a week or maybe more maybe less depending your business

11:06

and they tend to go the same way each time that’s one you pretty much can if not script that word for alert at least

11:11

you know lay out the framework of what bullet points you’re gonna hit it’s always going to be the same so you can prepare for that with kind of traditional rehearsal type practicing

11:19

um some things that are a little bit less predictable best examples like a discovery call right or some you know

11:26

Auto left field objection you haven’t heard before is another unpredictable one you can’t really practice for those by you know preparing in advance what

11:32

you’re going to say right so kind of this transition the second thing that runs through my mind is that

11:38

um practice does not necessarily mean rehearsal right practice does not necessarily mean a script it certainly

11:43

can but think about other disciplines where uh where they still practice but there’s no script let’s say you’re a

11:50

martial artist about to go into a competition it’s not scripted what you or your opponent are going to do but they still practice right if you’re a

11:56

freestyle rapper nothing scripted that you’re gonna say but you can still practice right if you’re an improv comedian nothing scripted but you can

12:03

still practice so practice doesn’t necessarily mean you’re you’re an actor holding a book of lines reciting them

12:09

right there are ways to practice we’re just fundamentally working on your neurological skills your linguistic skills you’re just improving the piece

12:16

of Hardware that is your brain so that when you land in those unpredictable situations you’ll be be able to handle them better because of all the practice

12:22

that went in advance so there is a time and a place for you know rehearsals so to speak for scripts but again there’s a

12:29

lot more to practice than just that that’s a really good point it’s like a it’s a higher level context to what’s going on here again because obviously

12:36

you all work with people in different companies so it’s like they have their own talking points they have their own

12:41

scripts they’re bringing in right but it’s it goes beyond that as well so Jordana yeah what would you end up I was

12:47

just also going to say two at least like this idea about giving yourself permission to to bring yourself into your selling you know oftentimes for

12:54

some reason people think that sales skills are like different than than human skills like

13:01

things that work in selling only work in selling so they’re these sales hacks or these tips or these tactics right but

13:08

what Jonathan and I have found is that the things that are most effective in selling and the things that that we

13:14

teach in the practice lab are only effective because they’re human skills that are regularly employed and can

13:20

certainly be regularly developed in all aspects of our lives so you know all too

13:25

often sellers will think about Discovery as like this checklist of predetermined questions that have to be asked rather

13:32

than thinking like what does it feel like to be actively listening in a conversation

13:38

and then to feel curious about something like in my like just literally curious

13:43

and then to allow that Curiosity to fuel a question that I can ask that digs at

13:49

some of the more interesting deeper things that we all know motivate human beings maybe it’s about around impact or

13:55

about the emotional tenor of a you know of a decision or a purchase or what’s really you know how whatever is going on

14:03

in an organization that you’re selling to might be causing other problems let’s say but in absence of understanding and

14:09

giving yourself the permission and Discovery to be in a conversation with a human being asking questions fueled by

14:14

curiosity it can be kind of hard to effectively do Discovery because you feel locked right into a checklist or a

14:22

framework so I think it’s important as we talk about bringing ourselves into into our

14:27

selling and we even talk about sales skills as first and foremost recognizing their effectiveness because they’re

14:33

fundamentally good human skills and then in the process of practicing and

14:39

developing skills that allow us to be a better and more effective salesperson we’re also practicing and developing

14:44

skills that allow us to be better human beings as well so appreciate that you share that because that to me is some of the gifts

14:52

that I see in our community that oftentimes through conditioning whether it’s you had a like

14:59

just really not great sales manager who was like just stick to the script and don’t like you to me I’m a big believer

15:08

in using intuition in the sales process and I understand it that’s hard to manage it’s hard to teach when you’re

15:14

teaching a large group of sales professionals but to me like journey into what you just said following the

15:19

curiosity asking the question um and we have you know we have a very diverse audience that listens to our

15:26

podcast a lot of our audience identifies as being a woman and so it’s like when I think about the skill sets that a lot of

15:32

times women naturally bring to sales it are it’s listening it’s empathy right

15:37

it’s some of those more human skill sets that sometimes we don’t they don’t get celebrated or they almost get like

15:42

stomped out in the teaching the process so what are some of those other human

15:48

skills that you see translating to sales as sales skills that we may not even think about as sales skills I’ll turn it

15:54

over to either of you who wants to jump in and answer that go for it Jonathan um yeah I mean like you know three that

16:01

that I jump out right away that you know we have uh Labs built to train people on

16:06

and to help people practice on is listening and how you listen right is a huge one it’s not just a matter of like

16:12

more and less listening like there’s different styles of listening which have different effects on your partner um so listening is one curiosity is a

16:18

huge one um but not just part of it is just like the sense of curiosity at all but then

16:24

also part of it is you can kind of train your curiosity to become curious about the right things right to become curious

16:30

about things that really matter um you can train your curiosity to do that so when someone’s sharing something with you and they say something the

16:36

questions that pop into your mind are questions about deeper level impact are questions about you know how this

16:41

problem is affecting them and their business and their lives and you can have more productive conversations because again you’ve trained your curiosity to get curious about more

16:48

interesting impactful stuff empathy is certainly one right there’s a lot that goes on in empathy from just

16:53

like the physical observation of signs and cues but also just kind of internal processing and your mirror neurons

16:59

knowing what to do with those signals when they come in so those are big ones um there’s something else I don’t know

17:05

how well I would describe it something I’ve stumbled on recently is there’s a certain

17:11

I don’t know mental emotional gymnastics you have you have to do in sales where you get very attached to the outcome of

17:18

working with someone but not in the traditional way sales people get attached to an outcome which is I need the sale to headquarter I want the sale

17:25

to make money it’s being attached to the outcome for the other person’s sake it’s having the mental ability to say you

17:31

know what yes there’s you know incentives in it for me but I’m going to temporarily just set those aside not focus on them I’m going to focus all of

17:37

my energy on the other person in their situation and why this Arrangement right

17:42

this partnership would be really good for them and I’m gonna let myself get like locked into and almost you know uh

17:48

develop affection for that idea right and like fall in love with the idea of working with them and having a

17:53

partnership and helping them with their problems and really get connected to it for their reasons and then convey that

17:59

passion that you have for this shared vision of this vision of working together convey it to them

18:04

and again to to do that to put yourself in the mind frame where you’re temporarily setting aside your own

18:10

incentives and you’re instead choosing to really get mentally and emotionally bought into this Vision that benefits them I don’t know what the word for that

18:17

is there probably is no word for that but like I found that is hugely powerful in sales when you can get to that point

18:22

right because all too often what we see are generally speaking it’s sellers who are all caught up in the outcome for

18:28

their reasons right occasionally we see sellers who are just detaching the outcome and just don’t care like whatever buy it or don’t but that

18:34

doesn’t help inspire people to take action right so that sweet spot is definitely allowing yourself to get captivated and caught up by the idea of

18:41

how beautiful it would be to work with this person but again maintaining those boundaries that you’re only focusing on

18:46

it for their reasons not yours so that may have been a really long tangent but that’s something that I’ve stumbled into

18:51

recently which again you can see the parallels between other aspects of life right anyone in your life that you’re trying to help anyone in your life that

18:58

you’re trying to motivate them to make a change in their life whether it’s your children or your siblings or you know uh

19:03

friends that’s it’s a very human skill right to be able to fall in love with a vision and convey that passion to

19:09

someone else but to do it for their reasons rather than your own reasons that’s that’s really powerful and we

19:14

just happen to be in a profession in sales where that same skill set is needed to succeed but again you can take

19:20

that skill set elsewhere and you know motivate your kids to do their homework or motivate your friend to you know

19:25

exercise more or start a business who knows what right you can use that motivational skill anywhere I’m gonna

19:30

try that on our toddler tonight and see what happens fall in love with the vision of your

19:37

dinner two it takes the pressure off of you

19:44

right as the seller as the because when we make it about ourselves that’s when we feel the pressure so Jordana anything

19:51

you would add to that in terms of human skills I mean another another really

19:57

interesting human skill that comes up in a surprising place for us is gratitude and we insert it at the moment of

20:04

objection which might seem kind of crazy and counterintuitive like yeah yeah so you get an objection from a from a prospect

20:11

and of course in your mind the first instinct is like where can I swear on this podcast

20:17

right like this isn’t what I wanted this is going to derail my sale this is where the relationship ends this is where

20:23

everything that I’ve been counting on gets lost right but we teach that there’s there’s a slightly different

20:29

mindset that you can take centered in gratitude which before you think about your own outcomes is first in

20:36

appreciation and an acknowledgment that they told you what was on their mind at all because we often forget like in

20:41

these sales conversations maybe our sales manager or maybe we ourselves a solopreneurs think like we have to

20:47

figure out what our you know what our prospects paying our challenges are but we’re a perfect stranger and they don’t

20:53

owe us that right so even the fact that they’re opening up about their pains and challenges at all in the context of a

20:58

sales conversation to see if we can help them we someone who is financially invested in being the solution for their

21:03

problems right not the safest thing there can be some gratitude there but when a prospect voice is an objection if

21:11

we Express gratitude that they said what was on their mind what was authentically going on for them rather than say

21:17

nodding smiling and ghosting us that allows us to shift our mindset a

21:22

little bit around both the mutual respect that’s shown in the relationship and the Timbre of our response so in the

21:30

objection handling framework that we teach what we really focus on is everything that you do before you

21:36

suggest the perspective that you hope will change their mind that is really designed to lower their resistance

21:43

increase their receptivity and feelings of safety so at the very least they’re open to hearing what you have to say

21:49

when that moment comes so it’s that beat of gratitude internally just I’m so glad they they

21:56

share this with me because now at least we can have a conversation about something then the next step is actively

22:02

thanking them we call it welcome you know really glad you shared what’s on your mind I so

22:07

appreciate your transparency whatever that looks like and then the next step rather than attempting to overcome or

22:15

asking like a gotcha question right to back them into a corner is literally to ask some questions in service of true

22:22

deeper authentic understanding because if we understand more about why our prospects are objecting not only do

22:29

we gather more information that we could then use to more effectively and in a tailored way eventually attempt to shift

22:35

their perspective if that’s what’s needed but in the process of making it our Focus to understand them

22:42

they in turn feel understood rather than overcome which in itself does wonders for how

22:50

open receptive and safe someone will feel yeah I love that I’ve never enjoyed

22:55

the term overcoming objections right it just feels very forceful in its approach

23:01

so I’d love if we could play that out a little bit here so you said when someone shares that expressing

23:08

gratitude and then truly from a place of curiosity going deeper let’s say that

23:13

somebody’s listening and let’s say she’s uh let’s say she’s a coach and she gets a money objection from a client like I’d

23:20

love to do this you know I’d love to do this program I just don’t know how I’m going to pay for it I don’t know

23:25

where the money is going to come from can you give an example of how you would go deeper in how you would approach that

23:32

yeah yeah Jonathan you’re you’re great at coming up with these on the Fly I’m gonna pass over to you sure yeah so the

23:39

the three steps right are to welcome empathize and ask questions understand so it might start off with

23:46

hey thanks for being real with me about that Elise uh I get it right times are tough so thank you for being transparent

23:51

um and I get it right the economy is slowing down um you guys have a lot of a lot of expenses you got to pay attention to so I imagine it would be tough to

23:59

allocate a significant sum like this I’m curious when you’re thinking about how to allocate limited funds to make it

24:05

through you know and kind of Thrive next year how are you thinking about that and what are some of the priorities and things that you’re you’re weighing

24:12

um oh you want me to play it out with you should we go deeper good enough probably good enough and

24:18

that you know may not be the most beautiful same question I ever asked but um you know first I welcomed it I kind

24:24

of empathize with their thinking and what they were going through in that moment and then again I asked a question to kind of keep the conversation going

24:29

because that told me the goal of this right is to lower defenses increase receptivity but most importantly keep

24:34

the conversation going because if you handle it in that way an objection can be the beginning of the most powerful

24:40

fruitful productive conversation you’ve had with that Prospect right rather than being the end of the conversation with a

24:46

relationship dies but it’s usually just getting past that initial hurdle right to the point where they do keep talking and the

24:52

conversation does keep going on so those three beats of Welcome empathize and understand um are what allows the conversation to

24:58

keep going and sometimes you keep going down the conversation you keep talking you find that yeah in fact it doesn’t make sense to work together but at least

25:04

now you as a seller have the satisfaction of knowing that yes in fact it didn’t make sense I didn’t just lose this before salesmanship it truly is the

25:11

circumstances that are making us part ways but in some cases you find that you know their perspective can be shifted or what

25:17

they’re concerned about there is a way around it and then you do find a way to work together um but again you’d never know that if

25:23

the conversation ended with sorry I don’t have the money so this is a three-step process for again opening them up and keeping people talking which

25:29

again to Joy down this point starts with gratitude you can try to do this from

25:35

like a fearful grabby mindset but it’s gonna be really really hard so taking

25:40

just one second of Silence to Center in that feeling of gratitude of like wow it’s tough to be the bearer of bad news

25:47

and they chose to do that tough thing and because of that we’re having to have this conversation I’m so glad I have a

25:53

chance to have this conversation with them like just centering on those feelings can totally shift the rest of

25:58

the conversation it takes guts to share an objection it’s vulnerable to share an objection you

26:04

know if you have a friend in your life who comes to you and has the guts to tell you that something you shared with

26:10

them heard or upset them let’s say you know if you just say yeah well the last time you said this that upset me

26:17

that’s instantly gonna cause them to close up but if you instead say I’m so glad you’re sharing this with me I can

26:24

so understand why when I said that thing it really hurt your feelings

26:29

it’s a completely different Dynamic and that’s why again it works with kids it works with friends that is why human to

26:36

human that approach is effective in sales as well good and the piece that I’m thinking

26:42

about here too is like one of the things we teach so much in the community is just about the importance of your emotional state and we’re not going to

26:50

go to we’re not going to go into quantum physics and the feeling State and all of that too far like today but it is so

26:55

important this is something that Joe dispenza teaches is you can’t think greater than your emotional state so if

27:01

you go into a fear state or you go into a scarcity State you’re not going to have like in that moment when they give

27:07

you that objection you’re not going to be able to lead that powerfully and help them get to where they need to be but if

27:14

you can take a moment to Center in that feeling of gratitude your thoughts will be more elevated you’ll be able to think

27:20

greater solutions for them greater questions to ask and stay in that state that’s in alignment with the ultimate

27:26

goal you’re both going for so yeah that’s a I’ve never heard it taught that

27:31

way before I think that’s super compelling and interesting absolutely interesting you you mentioned that you

27:37

know like you you can’t think and therefore can’t act at a level higher than your emotional state

27:42

um you know we’ve found that’s very true of cold calling where you can talk to people all day long about here’s a great talk track to use or you can talk to

27:49

them about the importance of confidence or about the importance of slowing down you can tell people their pitches their

27:54

their tone right is very important but ultimately if you’re in a frazzled panicked fearful state

28:01

there’s really no one out there who can like just willfully force all of their verbal and non-verbal cues right that

28:08

they’re sending out through the communication to align the way they want it’s it’s not quite a waste of your time

28:13

because you can make some progress but you’re not going to get very far if you ignore your internal State and just focus on these are the words this is the

28:19

tone this is the speed I’m just going to practice practice and ignore the internal state so we actually have like

28:25

specific Labs or exercises designed to help people with cold calling and we

28:30

spend half our practice time practicing the internal State practicing the mindset the emotions you know having

28:36

people use tools that are familiar to other disciplines where mindset’s important and we’re applying them to the

28:42

world of sales so it’s mantras it’s visualizations it’s recalling like emotional memories to first get your

28:48

emotions in tune and then you jump into your practice round and you you know you try out your words and you practice your

28:54

tone but like it starts with getting the emotions dialed in and that’s been really cool for us it’s new for us right

28:59

we’d always kind of skip the emotion piece and just focus is on behaviors so now this last this last you know lab or

29:06

this last cohort it’s the first time we’ve done that and it has been really powerful and people have consistently you know rated that part is the most

29:12

impactful part of the experience was focusing on their internal state oh I’m so glad you all are doing that I

29:19

love this I love this what are um let’s do like maybe one or two things that you teach people to do to enter

29:26

into that emotional state before they go into their cold calls or their Discovery Jordana I’ll turn it to you to share

29:33

yeah sure so we we teach kind of three ways in one is a mantra right like affirming

29:40

with words the state that you want to be in in order to pull off let’s say the vibe or the tone you want to convey on

29:46

the call so it might just be like I am so confident right now right or like I have never felt more excited to go into

29:52

this cold calling block and when you say these words and science shows this right like you can shift your state right it

29:59

can become your reality so that’s one um another one is is visualizing a

30:04

successful outcome you know imagine that your prospect is really excited to hear from you like oh my God I was just thinking about you guys so glad you

30:10

called right um or you could imagine entering uh your prospect’s name into your CRM and like

30:17

booking a meeting and passing it off to your account executive if you’re on a sales team and then another really really powerful way to emotionally Prime

30:25

yourself and actors use this all the time is to look back and remember a time when you felt blank and it could be a

30:32

sales time where you had the most incredible cold call or the most incredible Discovery call and you Vibe so hard with your your prospect and

30:38

everything worked out but it can also be totally outside of a sales context like a time your friend made you feel really

30:44

good or um you know that that time in high school when you’re on a soccer team and scored that goal and it just felt

30:51

incredible like all of those tools allow you to begin to shift your emotional

30:57

state because only seven percent of communication so they say is in words

31:02

right and this is true on phone calls too so when you’re calling somebody out of the blue there’s a lot happening in

31:08

your tonality and it can be very hard to force your your tonality if as Jonathan

31:14

said there’s fear nervousness Terror dread going on inside and people feel it too they’ll feel it

31:20

so you feel it you can’t fake it you can’t fake it oh my gosh yeah not at all okay this is so good I want to ask one

31:29

final kind of topic question will tell people how they can connect with you further and get involved

31:34

um with your work but I want to talk about the like overcoming the fear of

31:39

making mistakes because this is this is a conversation I’ve been having with my clients a lot lately like specifically

31:45

around money I’ve had a lot of people kind of getting past that battle of fear of making mistakes around money and

31:52

investing and kind of like helping people get into more of an abundance mindset there but I want to talk about fear of making mistakes with a prospect

32:00

right and how often does that probably hold us back have us not show up to our best selves so what are what’s a mindset

32:07

switch that you help clients achieve when it comes to overcoming that fear

32:13

I’ll turn it over to whoever wants to jump in and answer first you know so I’ll just share that that one way you

32:19

know that’s kind of the hypothesis of part of why we exist to make fewer mistakes on the phone with prospects is

32:25

a is of course to practice however I actually think you know as sellers

32:30

selling to other human beings that we have a lot more leeway than we think on sales calls and that if we ask a

32:37

discovery question that like feels a little awkward in our body or lands a little poorly we can say you know what

32:44

I don’t think that question sounded very good do you mind if we like rewind the tape and and I ask a question that

32:49

really gets to the heart of what I want to know about right or even using things

32:54

um our our friend and a colleague in the space Charles malbauer often talks about

32:59

um The Humbling disclaimer which is a little phrase that you can insert in advance of say asking a

33:06

difficult question which in some ways is very humanizing and and allows your prospect more often than not to give you

33:11

a pass and it sounds something like um you know at the risk of asking a really salesy question I’m curious like

33:18

back of the envelope like how much revenue do you imagine this is costing you right it’s that at the risk of

33:23

asking you a salesy question or I don’t even know how to phrase this as a

33:28

question but I’m finding myself really curious about like how the morale on the

33:34

rest of your team is going with all of these layoffs I don’t know how to phrase this or this might sound like a foolish

33:40

question but so if you’re uncomfortable you can actually name your discomfort

33:46

and uh that that other human being on the other end of the line is more often than not wanting to kind of jump in and

33:52

and rescue you and make it okay it’s very disarming like in a great way

33:58

yeah I would imagine I’m just thinking about being on the other side of that you would feel a certain level of

34:03

humanity and can literally that person because we’ve all we’ve all been there and they’re making it more real so yeah

34:10

awesome tips Jonathan anything you would add to that this kind of Strays off the path of

34:16

sales and practice and all that and it’s just something that I’ve found is powerful for myself as I kind of start

34:22

off in my entrepreneurial Journey here of course we are also you know afraid of making mistakes so to speak

34:27

um it’s a concept that I first learned in a book by Nasim telev called

34:33

anti-fragile and the way he explains it is that fragile things are damaged by

34:38

stressors right imagine a wine glass breaking robust things are generally unaffected by stressors imagine a brick

34:45

right drop it’s not going to break anti-fragile things grow stronger because of stressors right human bones

34:52

are a great example of that right athletes have some of the densest bones out there because of all the stress their bones are under so he encourages whenever something

34:59

happens typically something unpleasant unplanned or undesirable happens ask yourself like what’s a fragile response

35:05

to this where I’m gonna be harmed what’s the robust response where I can get by just fine but then ask yourself what’s

35:10

the anti-fragile response to this how can I use this to be better off because of it happening

35:15

and I’ve been adopting that thinking ever since we started this project and literally every time we make a mistake one of the steps we take is we ask

35:21

ourselves okay that just happened is there any way we can be better off because it happened and sometimes we

35:27

find great answers we are way better off because a mistake happened sometimes it doesn’t go so great but we at least recover from it but like that mindset of

35:34

every time a bad thing happens or mistake happens asking yourself how can I benefit from this once you’ve done

35:39

that a few times and once you’ve seen some success with that and you’ve actually turned a few mistakes into wins you suddenly aren’t nearly as afraid to

35:45

make State mistakes anymore because you’re like all right I’ll do my due diligence to try to make sure this is a mistake but at the end of the day I know

35:51

that if it does end of being a mistake I’ll find a way to turn it to a good thing and that just gives you so much confidence right as you move forward

35:58

through life into your business knowing that you can have that anti-federal response to just finding a mistake that

36:03

you make such a good perspective shift I love how sales translates to life in every single

36:10

way that’s why it’s so interesting I feel like that’s why we’re here like if we were just talking about selling a widget

36:16

for cash like would the three of us be having this conversation here you know so much bigger than today knowing the

36:23

three of us we might get into it maybe but you’re exactly right yeah it’s so much bigger it’s so much bigger so

36:29

Jonathan Jordan tell everyone where can they go to connect with you to find out more about the practice lab how they can

36:36

get involved and I want to also ask is this something that if you’re an entrepreneur maybe you’re doing

36:41

founder-led sales can you still benefit by getting involved what does that look like like who do you serve and how can

36:47

someone get involved yeah so well first of all I’ll say that Jonathan and I are very active on

36:52

LinkedIn um we’re talking regularly about practice and so many of these ideas so you could follow us there

36:58

um you can learn more about the program at the practicelab.com we also on the third Wednesday of every

37:04

month host a free objection handling training called wheel of objections where you have a chance to learn about

37:11

and then try on for size uh the very framework that we talked about uh you

37:17

know in the conversation with you in collaboration with practice Partners from across the B2B landscape and then

37:23

you know thirdly yes you know Founders and and solopreneurs are very much Sellers and all of us can benefit from

37:32

growing more awareness around the fundamental human behaviors that have the biggest impact on our conversations

37:39

and our relationships with our Prospect so we would welcome anyone who’s listening who’s curious and wants to

37:46

apply to Future cohorts to reach out and do so amazing

37:51

this was such a fun conversation and I just want to say I appreciate both of you and the work you’re doing I think

37:59

you know I love that I feel like the people I’m connecting with right now through the podcasts and through social

38:04

it’s like there’s a common mission to kind of raise the level of Consciousness in the world of sales and business and

38:11

you both are very much doing that um through the practice lab so thank you for what you’ve created and for coming

38:18

on today and sharing so generously it’s been really really enlightening and also um just so fun to get to know you know

38:25

to get to the new jordiana to see you again Jonathan and to have this conversation so thank you both thanks so much Elise thanks for having

38:31

us on absolutely absolutely so to you my listener we will link everything in the

38:37

show notes to go get connected with Jonathan and Jordana connect with them on social on LinkedIn you can check out

38:43

the practice lab we’ll link that as well I love the wheel of objection so that sounds like an amazing thing to join in

38:49

on the third Wednesday of the month and um yeah get connected get the support

38:55

that you need to help really really hone your skills and help serve more people through your sales process so as always

39:01

thank you so much for being a listener of the podcast you can always go get connected with me and what we’re doing

39:07

over at elisearcher.com find out more about our programs for women to help scale to six and then seven figures and

39:13

Beyond so grateful to have you in the community we’ll see you on our next episode of She Sells Radio. Bye for now.