If you've got back-to-the-grind blues, this energy-packed episode of the Sales IQ podcast could be the most important 35 minutes you invest all year. Join Larry Long Jr and Luigi as they put you on the right path for making 2022 your best year yet. Even if you've already let your resolutions slip. 

They dip into:

• What sets elite performers apart 
• How to drive our likelihood of success using our environment
• What sales and soccer have in common
• Where you should focus first, starting today.

LINKS 🔗

Find Larry on LinkedIn and or at his website.

Connect with Luigi on LinkedIn. 

Momentum is everything. Keep this energy flowing in 2022 by joining the Create Pipeline Program from Sales IQ. Next cohort opening soon. 

It's been awesome. I'm still away. I'm in the sunnyGold Coast, which is in Queensland, Enjoying going to the beach, going for runs, eating some burgers just doing a whole range of things with my kids, which has been really great to fill that cup. It's also been awesome to disconnect. And I think in a world where we can get so busy, it's really important that we take some time for ourselves.

And I'm going to be choosing to focus on the opportunities and focus on what's possible, and it all starts with mindset. It all starts with the goal setting piece. I want to thank some of you for sending over some pictures of your vision boards and sending me some of the goals that you're focused on this year.

Please, if you open to share. For those of you who haven't shared with me, send them across send me a note on LinkedIn, send me an email, luigi@salesIQ group.com, send it across. It's an amazing feeling when you develop a vision board or you put together a goal and you've got an action plan and you share it with others, it's the impact of that can be amazing.

And this month, the whole recipe, the whole purpose of this month on the Sales IQ podcast is all about building that foundation. It's going to help you spring to be the best you can be this year. And we've got an incredible lineup of guests which are going to bring energy. They're going to bring energy.

This podcast is brought to you by the create pipeline program from Sales IQ Global. This program will equip you with the skills, tools, and confidence to run an outbound strategy so you can generate more qualified opportunities and close more deals. Hear what Ellis from DocuSign has been able to achieve since joining the program and our incredible community. So my name is Ellis and I work at DocuSign as an EBR and the reason I started, Sales IQ was because I really needed that, that guidance and that training to make sure the outreach that I was doing was hitting the nail on the head. So I was lucky enough to start the program early on in, in this role. And since then I've been pretty successful in last quarter I finished on 185. Huge results by adopting the principles. Our next cohort is starting soon so to learn more, go to www.salesiqglobal.com, or if you have a team of sellers talk to us about our in-house offering. Control your pipeline, control your destiny, with Sales IQ.

Welcome to the show, Larry.

There's a ton of external factors. There always are, but I mean, we're. In circumstances, but if you're a seller and you want to have success, you've got the number one believe in yourself and believe in your product and your solution in your value. That's the star. Now of course, you got to set crystal clear goals.

You got to put together a work back plan and action plan, a game plan that you're going to execute on. You gotta be, but without that belief, good luck.

So I think that's a great way to start the podcast. And before we get into some of the things that sellers can do to really arm themselves with the right level, that foundation that can help elevate them this year. We'd love to learn a bit more about you mate, because you've had, you've been a quota carrier pretty much your entire career.

You've managed some incredibly large scaled sales teams across a variety of different functions. So just give us a sort of, you know, the, the quick intro to, to Larry Long Jr

And I learn that, Hey, just reading off of a script, any robot can do that. When I shared my story of being a failed business owner, and I was able to touch them right here in their home. That's when I had success. When I showed that I cared not just about them, but also their clients that's when I was able to break through.

So it says I've worked for companies selling the medical practices, selling the product managers sell an e-commerce software, you name it. But most recently I went out on my own. I'm now a motivational inspirational, most importantly, transformational keynote speaker. I'm a coach that works with sales organization sales. To help them take their game to that next level.

We'd love to know. I mean, you get to work with hundreds of people across a variety of different organizations around the world. When we think about the top performers, what are some of the characteristics that really separate. From everyone else.

I mean, they're, for the most part, they're all running the same place, but it's really the, the micro with the, the, the little details as well as the extra oomph that internal belief. When you can say it with competence, you might be saying the exact same thing as, as you're made to your left and to your right.

But it's how you're saying it. It's how that belief is transferred. And when I look at the definition of sales, I believe number one, it's a transfer of energy and you don't have to have off the wall. Energy dyno lie. Like you better have some sort of juice. You gotta have some sort of belief that comes through, not just in what you're saying, but how you're saying it.

Number two, you've got to be a matchmaker. So you've got to ask the questions to find out. What problems are the prospects trying to solve? What are their hopes, their dreams, their aspirations, their, their challenges, and how do you fit into that? Because if not, then you're just pitching the same vanilla thing to each.

And every person when everyone's needs everyone's wants and desires are different the best sellers ,they're really able to tailor and customize their message to the problems that are trying to be solved. Whereas the others are just kind of going down there, running that same play, regardless survey says no

Really the concepts of mindset and it hasn't really changed, right. We kind of, all of us know what we need to do to be successful, what we need to do to really set the foundations for success. But yet very few people take the time, like you said, We all use the same place. All the tactics are the same cold calling, emailing cadences structures, discovery questions regarding

And the thing that does separate them is his foot. He's his perspective. It's his mindset. It's the way in which he looks at situations with these prospects and thinks, okay, how can I help this person really think about what's happening in their world and flip the narrative. So why is it that, what do you think is the reason that stops sellers from real.

Making their mindset, a daily focus and be relentless in their pursuit to making sure that's the number one focus every day.

I'm guilty of this. My doctor told me, Larry, you got to cut down on the fried foods. I said, Hey doc, what time is it? As Beau time, we got a place here called Bojangles fried chicken and biscuits. I just added this morning. Now I'm trying to cut down. But that action. My action speaks so loud. I can't hear what you're saying.

That's when my mom used to say also accountability. Who's your accountability partner. Who's holding your feet to the fire. If you're your own accountability partner, watch out now I'm to prayed for you. Good luck. The be right there is belief which we touched on before. Everyone knows that the sea is care.

People can smell BS from a mile away. If you don't really care about your prospects, about your clients. You're not going to have success in the long run, or if you do, Ooh, you must have, you must have that magic Juju. I'm going to give you the D and this is a bonus discipline doing the right thing. And we all know that we should work on our mindset think and grow rich.

I just went through a master mind think and grow rich. We can all read. But what you're going to do about it. Will you have the discipline to actually do it and execute? That's the E and then the air is fun. You gotta have fun if you don't have fun and then no one around you is going to have fun. And they're going to say, Hey, I can't mess with this with this sales rep.

So you got to have that accountability buddy, because you're right. That self motivation can be very difficult to be constantly on. And I think if we think back about the last two years, that working from home, as much as people saying it's fantastic, employees are being flexible for me, Larry. There's nothing better than being on the floor with other sales pros, hearing the way they talk, getting the energy from somebody that's booked a meeting, or they've done a deal and they locked pumped.

You feel that enthusiasm, man. And you were like, yes, it's going to help me push my next call in or, you know, keep going because I've had a pot, possibly had a shit thing happened with a previous customer. And also it helps me build capability. I remember. The first day on a call center that I worked, you're like very young age, man, 18.

It was kind of like the boiler room, right? Just rows of desks, phones. No is just the pads touch pads. But I picked up all my objection, handling techniques, my pitch statement from everyone else in the room. Rose listening guy, man, that sounds pretty good. I'm going to give that a go or actually I'm not going to say that because you know, that's, that's really disingenuous.

Right. So I think, you know, what, the things that you're talking about, I think out of, out of everything that I've just heard, I think that accountability piece is probably the most important that I see, because I know that I felt some really bad habits kick in for myself. And so, you know, getting myself a coach back in fitness, for example, was a big thing for me because it allows

You never would have thunk that you could have gotten there now it's the same. It's very similar when it comes to sales, like you said, you're learning from others. You're feeding off of that energy. If you have a competitive spirit, you're trying to make sure that you show improve that you're the best that's out there, but also helping others, the pull them up.

It's that team. Which makes the dream work. It's all of those factors and that discipline that's so tough when you're isolated on an island, having that discipline to do what you're supposed to do when you're supposed to do it day in and day out, it makes a world of difference. And it's really the little things.

And I just wrote a book. I wrote a chapter in a book. The little things are really the big things

Action, accountability and that discipline. If you haven't been used to having somebody hold you accountable, or actually let me flip this question, where do you see the biggest barrier that stops a person taking that accountability piece from a negative to a positive, because many can actually find a negative in the accountability. Look, what can sellers do, if, if they're looking at it going. You holding me accountable with a negative scene, right? How did I slip it?

You look at the most successful people. They have coaches, they have mentors, they have many mentors, they have partners that assist them along the way. If you're going to try to do it all on yourself. Good luck. You might be successful. But when you have a team, when you have cheerleaders, when you have buddies and bud S that are picking you up and kicking you in the behind saying, Hey, step your game up.

Now you've got to elevate your game. You've got to bring it day in and day out. If you don't have. Ooh. It is tough. It's a lot tougher than it needs to be. And I use the analogy. I don't climb mountains, but if I were you better, you better believe I'm going to have a sharp up someone who's already been down that path.

Someone who can say, Hey, Larry, you're going to Zig, ah, that'll get you killed. You need the zap. It's the same thing in this sales world. So I encourage people. Number one, document your plan, like you said, what's the big goal and what's the game plan. After you document it, go ahead and get a team. And the team can just be one person, get a coach, a mentor, get a colleague that you can serve as an accountability partner, and they can be.

Your accountability partner and say, Hey, let's go get this big goal, but we know that we've got to do these things every day, every week, every month, every quarter, if we even want to have a chance, it doesn't guarantee that we're going to get the big goal, but I want to give myself the best chance.

And I think, because I think the other challenge that, and I resonate with this right, is that often what we find is, you know, a manager will come to you and say, Hey, you're not performing. I've got to put you on a performance improvement plan. They're not really coaching for performance. They're coaching out of necessity.

Right. And again, I think for me, I see that as a massive gap with sales teams and that the other thing is that the high performers often don't get the coaching because their manager is spending time on the low performers. Right. So they're not getting the level of coaching that they need to even accelerate.

And we know 80% will come from the top 20% of their performance. Right. So. Obviously what this is taking us down a path of is the importance of finding a coach or an accountability, buddy, if you haven't gone, then that path before. What are some of the characteristics that a great coach exhibits, so that if a seller is going to go down and go, Hey, I want to coach, Hey, I want to get Larry to might be, oh, so whoever, what should they be looking for in a great coach to give them confidence that this is going to be a great investment for themselves.

But what I found is that sometimes the best coaches, aren't always the best players. We see it in sales where the sales leaders were the top. Right. And they were able to get it done themselves. I called them be monsters, but they don't care about anyone else. They're not able to transfer how they did it and what they did to others.

And there's a huge disconnect. I work with sales leaders and so many times to be a good leader. You've got to care about others more than you care about yourself, which is that's tough. That's called being selfless. That's that's like being a parent right there. And I mean, the best coaches are really dope.

Then actually I called the give a damn factor. Do you give a damn about other people? And if you do show me what you're working with, what are your actions say? So many people will say, Hey, I care about other people, but then I look at their actions and it's selfish. It's not selfish. They're not investing the time, the energy, the resources, they're not asking the questions and actually listening to each of their reps.

Every rep is different. Luigi. What are your goals? What are your priorities? What's important to you? Where do you want to get to short-term and long-term and then how can I best support you? Who can I rally around to get you where you want to go? So many times those conversations never happen.

You can achieve, like, I I'm a big soccer fan or football, but, you know, call it soccer in parts of the world. And. I've heard Alex Ferguson, who would coach man United through an incredible era. And the things that you just spoke about then with the way that he's played as a scribe team. Yeah. A nurturer, a supporter, they all had the right environment to be able to be the best I can.

And what I'm hearing from you is that that's the type of environment sellers need to create for themselves. So this is incredible advice, Larry

I mean, he had some of the best players. How do you get them all together? And he shared, it really comes from that care from you showing the players through your action. You're showing your teammates through your actions, that you really care about them in the success of the org, as well as their individual success.

It's no different. There's so many times that leadership is not a. Leadership is really your actions. There are so many times that there's folks that have leadership titles and they're not leading anything. And then on the, on the opposite side, there's folks that don't have the titles that are the true leaders within an organization.

Right. But what he did do with the people that he had, he brought the best out of them. He turned them into the best. And I say this to say to a sales team, just because you've got the best tech stack doesn't mean you're the best sales pro. You might have all the tools, but you're not doing enough to bring your best self to the equation.

So all the tools are doing is amplifying what you're not doing. Right. And I've seen the best, the absolute best sock, like a coach, somebody. 180% above quarter, another 150% above, above. He's target this quarter and everybody else is using their sales engagement tool to send mass at scale. He's not, he's doing a disciplined approach every single day and he's achieving incredible results.

And if I could be wrong, but he was a Frenchman coming over to the English premier league. So he had everything going against them and to have the success that he had. Ooh, he was doing something. Right.

This is what I love about Jim Rowan. Right? He talked about, don't worry about the result because the result is an outcome of your attitudes and it goes right back to your inner belief system, your values that drive that certain attitude, right. And that drives your behavior, which ultimately is the emotion that drives to help you achieve the result for the actions that you take.

So I think what you've just said shared then is, is incredibly powerful for sellers to really think about, Hey, before I go, I need to do a mail to 10, whatever I need to be first focusing on self. And that's my biggest takeaway from this podcast today. And Larry, I just want to ask you, cause I know that we're coming to a point of end here, but I just want to ask you, you the inner belief, you can feel your passion.

You can fear energy. I would love to hear a quick story from you of a time where. Things weren't going to plan. And how did you use that in a belief to really shift your mindset?

That'll get you sitting on the bench. What position are you playing? Larry left. I remember calling my father who was a sportsman. He was a long jumper, triple jumper. He said, how you feel? No, Larry. I said, I feel terrible. I don't belong in division one, baseball at the college level. I definitely don't belong in the ACC.

It's a great conference. And my dad jumped through that phone and he said, boy, we don't ever talk like that. We don't believe like that because if you have that belief, you're never going to have success. You have no chance. He said, get back to the drawing board. Minnie get back on the T and practice your form.

But more importantly, you got to get your mind, right? He said with that crazy belief, with those crazy words that you're talking, you have no chance. So essentially listening to my father cause he throw in some choice, four letter words. I got back to the drawing board. I did a little exercise that I did when I was younger.

We moved around a lot. My mom, we would say our prayers. She would make me stand in the middle of the room, hands above my head. And I would have to say 10 times out loud. I am somebody when you put that in the universe, when you say it and you believe it, it's absolutely amazing. That turned around my freshman year of baseball.

I ended up batting 2 89. Three 19 and conference four year starter record holder at division one, just amazing. And it was really, you talked about Jim Roan, Jim Rowan said, you're the average of the five people you spend the most time with, be careful who your company is, because if you're around negative Nancys and negative Nellies oh, chances are you're going to be.

When you're around positive folks that are getting after that are inspiring, that are encouraging. You now have a chance. So that's, that's my my story going from, from, from down in the dumps start from the bottom now we're here.

Right. I have great potential and I can be the best I can be. I've just got to take action. And I've got to identify that the year. Sure. There are things that aren't going to go to plan, but I'm going to create the right environment for me to have the right people, to elevate me, to support me. And also before this episode, you said something before we started pressing record, tell me stuff that I don't want to know.

Right. Slap me on the wrist to say, Hey, you know, you got to get it done, get it done, stop delaying it, stop procrastinating. And again, this is where that accountability piece comes into play. Right? Because we all need people to help us. So, Larry, I just want to say, mate, I've engaging with your content on LinkedIn.

I've never sit there personally met you in a face-to-face environment, but your content. The energy has, has an impact, a positive impact on me every single time I engage you that. So I want to say thank you for the contribution you make to our community, man, it's a big world, but it's a small world. And the contribution you make is helping people every day.

So I want to say thanks very much for what you do for our profession.

This show has been recorded remotely produced by Sales IQ Global. Audio editing and music production by Stefan Malliate. Show notes by Victoria Mathieson and graphic design by Julie Marshall.

Don't forget to leave a rating and review on your podcast player. And if you want to find more about the programs we offer at Sales IQ, head to www.SalesIQGlobal.com.