In episode 98 of Pit Stops to Podium, we sit down with Ian Koniak, President and Founder of Ian Koniak Sales Coaching and CEO of Untap Your Sales Potential. With a background in leading national training workshops for Fortune 500 companies and a career sales record exceeding $100 million, Ian's expertise is unmatched. As the former #1 Enterprise Account Executive at Salesforce.com and current Acting Dean at Pavilion's Enterprise Sales School, he brings a wealth of knowledge to our discussion.
Today's episode revolves around Unlocking The Sales Champion Mindset. Ian will explore the defining traits and habits of Sales Champions, offering insights on effective coaching strategies for Account Executives to reach their peak performance.
If you’re ready to learn from one of the best, then buckle up and hold on!
Unleashing Sales Champion Mindset Dynamics
Bottom line: process over prize, (i.e. focus on the inputs instead of the outcomes)
In sales, there are two inputs that matter: advancing pipeline and creating pipeline.
Most people in sales are focused on the prize (quota, etc...), but a better approach is to focus on doing the right things everyday (the process) and know that in time the benefits will come naturally.
Establishing Effective Sales Behavior Patterns
If you have bad personal habits, you're going to have bad work habits. If you are physically active and healthy, you'll have more energy and confidence, and that carries over into having more energy and confidence in sales too.
It's also key to be able to focus and filter out distractions such as social media or YouTube, and spend more time on revenue-generating activities.
Managerial Strategies for Prioritizing Sales Pipeline Development
Managers need to set expectations, but not necessarily in activity, but rather in impact. For example, helping reps with time management and messaging.
Managers should only be looking at three metrics: 1) what meetings did you have, 2) of those meetings, what opportunities came out of it, and 3) of those opportunities, what's closing.
Looking at these metrics will help managers to know if reps need more help with creating pipeline or with advancing pipeline.
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/iankoniak/
Website: https://iankoniak.com/untap-your-sales-potential/
Brendan: Hey everyone, welcome to Pit Stops to Podium, the RevPartners podcast where we talk to execs who've competed and won in taking their companies from high growth to high scale. My name is Brendan Tolleson. I serve as the co-founder and CEO of RevPartners, and I'm delighted to have with me today, Ian Koniak, for this episode of Pit Stops to Podium. Welcome, Ian.
Ian: Welcome, great to be here, nice to meet you, Brendan.
Brendan: For those who may not be familiar with Ian, Ian serves as the CEO of Untap Your Sales Potential. And Ian, I would love to give you the opportunity to share a little bit about who Untap Your Sales Potential is and a little bit of the background in terms of your sales experience that led you to start this organization.
Ian: I'll start with the background. So I worked at two companies over a 20-year sales career. My first 10 years were spent at Ricoh, which is more of, I would say, a transactional seller. We sold copiers and printers and office equipment. And from there, I was their number one performer. And then I went into leadership and became a sales manager, a general manager, and ultimately a director of sales overseeing a $60 million org with 70 sales reps and 10 frontline sales managers. Then I realized I was playing in the wrong sport and I discovered SaaS. By being a customer of Salesforce, I had used Salesforce heavily to scale my own business and I decided I wanted to sell it instead. There was a little Forbes article that I read that said the average seller at Salesforce in the enterprise was making 300,000 and I was making about 250, leading a $60 million company. So I said, wait a minute, this makes no sense. Was determined to get in and then spent the next 10 years as an individual contributor at Salesforce where I rose to become their number one enterprise seller, made a good amount of money, and was able to retire to pursue a passion of mine, which was sales coaching. So I got to retire at 41, and start this business from a place of really wanting to serve others. I had gone through a lot of personal struggles in reaching the highest levels, and had gone through that mental battle of overcoming myself and overcoming my own demons and my own limiting beliefs and my own, I'd say, capacity of what I thought was possible. And by doing a ton of personal development in my own life, I was able to become the number one at seller at Salesforce. And I said, if I can do it, given all the struggles that I had, I know other people can do it. And what started originally with the near death experience where I thought I was gonna die in that moment, I said, you know what, if I lived, if I died right now, I wouldn't have really done something meaningful with my life. I was for the most part pursuing money and recognition and providing for my family, but I wasn't necessarily giving back and serving others at a level that I knew I was capable of. One thing I loved about leading sales teams was helping develop and serve others. So I decided to take a risk, a very calculated risk and retire early and start a business designed to help sales reps untap their full potential, which is really what that means is take sales reps that are good, right? But know there's a higher level that they're capable of achieving and awaken that giant within, awaken that, fuel that fire for them to become elite sellers. And as an elite seller, you can, especially in tech, live the life of your dreams, make the income of your dreams. And most people do not get to experience that. Most people are kind of stuck in that I'll call it 150 to 300K earning range versus getting north of five or even north of seven figures. So I take people that are in that kind of good, comfortable range of maybe getting quota, maybe a little higher and get them to be essentially the top performer of their company. That's, that's what we do at Untap Your Sales Potential. We have over a hundred clients and we also work with companies that sign up their, you know, reps to go into our coaching programs as well.
Brendan: Yeah, it seems like for a company that'd be a win-win. If they're reps are successful, ultimately the company is successful. And I really appreciate your humility and your vulnerability. I'm sure there's a lot that you can we'll hear about a little bit later in terms of some of the advice you have for our individuals and ultimately for organizations on how they can get better. And really appreciate the backstory when you mentioned the vulnerability of, hey, there was some professionalism going great. Personally, I was not. And I realized I had to make a pivot and a change. And so I really appreciate you sharing that story.
Ian: Yeah. What it's all about. I mean, that's where my growth occurred. When I got my own head right, that's when my sales exploded. And when I do a lot of coaching, I see that when we get to the deeper part of people and where they spend their time. It's really sad, but I did a poll on LinkedIn maybe a few months ago, and I asked sales reps, how much time do you spend on revenue generating activities per day? And the average across over 2000 respondents was two to three hours. And that's the truth of the matter. And it's super scary, but reps, they won't tell their managers, but they are not working, they're distracted, they're overwhelmed, they are, you know, less focused than ever and it's having a huge impact on their results and their company's results. So when you kind of break that down, I was in a similar boat. I wasn't, you know, if you work a full day on the right activities, you will be successful guaranteed all day, every day. And that's what we help people get to a place where they want to need to, and are willing to do the work.
Brendan: Yeah. Well, I love that I'm looking forward to unpacking more of what those activities are and how to drive that focus and alignment and clarity. But before we do that, we do have a tradition here at Pit Stops to Ppdium, and that's to get to know our guests outside of work. So, Ian, when you're not helping sales reps, how are you spending your time? What are the things that bring you life?
Ian: Well, I'll be candid with you. When you look at uber successful people, a lot of times the success they have in their work is not necessarily translated to their personal life, their health or their families or their relationships. So for me, I'm trying to set an example that you can have the highest level of success as a CEO, as a business owner, or a sales leader, and without sacrificing the personal relationship. So for me, my priority is when I'm done at work, I'm done and I spend time with my family. I have two young kids, three and seven, and we try to take weekend trips together. We do a lot of hiking, we go camping, we go up to Lake Arrowhead. So I'm spending as much time with my family as possible. And when I'm not with my family, I'm doing endurance type of sports. So I ran two marathons in the past year and love training, love running and biking, and it just keeps me sharp for the day. So I'm one of those two things. I'm either training or I'm with my family.
Brendan: Yeah, that's great. What's the next race on the calendar?
Ian: Well, interestingly, after running the LA Marathon in Long Beach, I put a pause on that. And my wife said, Ian, you're looking a little thin from all the running. You need to bulk up. So I'm actually this week hiring a trainer and going to be moving to weight training, um, three or four days a week. And really for me, it's about getting in that peak strength, strength training right now. So I'm putting a pause on the running and focusing more on getting stronger. So it's going to be a pivot.
Brendan: Well, I'm sure that's probably one, it's probably fun to have a new challenge, but also it might be better on your body to have not putting that many miles on the legs.
Ian: Yeah, running, running is hard on your body for sure. I'm not going to stop running. I'll still be doing light bike and running, but I'm not going to be doing the 15 mile weekend runs anymore. That's for sure. At least for the time.
Brendan: Well, I appreciate you sharing it. It's always fun to remind ourselves that we're human beings, not human doers. And so just to kind of understand those things that make people come alive is really powerful. So thanks for sharing both in your backstory, but also just now. Let's transition into the big idea. And we talked a little about in the beginning of the episode around what you're focused on as it relates to empowering the sales reps. And I love to talk a little bit about how we unlock the sales champion mindset. And so a lot of what you described as that mindset being so critical to the success of a sales rep and the challenges that reps are experiencing. So I'd love to talk about the mindset. I'd love to talk about the habits. And then for those managers and CROs, how do they effectively coach those AEs to maintain and sustain that type of mindset? So let's first unpack the mindset. When you talk about the mindset of a sales champion, what does that look like to you?
Ian: Yeah, I'll give you three words and I'll unpack it, but process over prize. So the bulk of the people in sales are focused on the prize. They're focused on hitting quota. They're focused on making a certain amount of money. They're focused on their performance and sales is a performance sport. But if you look at every single winning coach, the best coaches of all times, we're talking about Nick Saban. We're talking about, um, uh, we're talking about the coach, coach of UCLA, um, John Wooden. You can look at anyone, Bill Walsh from the 49ers. All of them will say the same thing. It's not about going after the prize. It's about doing the little things every day that lead to the prize. So the mindset of a sales champion is one that says, I trust that if I focus now on the process every single day and do the right activities and spend my time in the right places that the prize will come versus I'm chasing and running circles around this one or two deals. And when I'm not doing that, I'm stressed out and I can't think versus like, okay, these are the things I need to do today, every single day. And if I, it's almost like a machine. If I feed the right inputs, then the outcomes are gonna be there. So focusing on the inputs instead of the outcomes. Outcomes come out of inputs, which is what you put in. If you just take those words and you reverse them, right? Right? Outcome means come out of input, meaning put in. So the wording mindset is putting in the right inputs every single day. And in sales, there's two inputs that matter. Okay? Number one is advancing pipeline. If you have any deals, it's identifying what are the key next steps in those deals? How can I multi-thread? Who are the key champions? What are the gaps, you know, next steps that are gonna advance deals? That comes first, right? The second input is creating pipeline. That is it, advancing and creating pipeline. Everything else is noise and companies do a piss poor job of distracting and overwhelming the reps with noise that actually isn't related to creating or advancing pipeline. And I think, you know, people as sales leaders you have to take responsibility. So when I was leading teams, it was like, filter the noise, filter the noise. Don't give my reps more, keep them focused on two things, advancing great pipeline, I'll take care of the rest. So I think that now it's more difficult than ever because people get overwhelmed. They don't know where to start, they know what to do. So it's really about making it really simple and breaking down what are the activities under those two buckets that you need to be doing. And that's the mindset. The mindset is process over prize. I'm gonna focus on the things that lead to results versus obsessing about the results themselves, which only causes strength, stress, anxiety and overwhelm. How am I going to hit my number? What am I going to do? So I'll pause there and then there's another mindset I'll talk to that's key to sales champions as well.
Brendan: Yeah, I am a big fan of that mindset, and I'm a firm believer in it. And you talk about John Wooden and Nick Saban as examples. John Wooden talks about the first day is all about how to tie your shoes. And it's like, do the basics really well. Nick Saban, I live in Atlanta, so we're big college football fans. And Kirby Smart coaches at UGA, and he's an acolyte of Nick Saban. He's learned a few things from him and has won two back-to-back national championships. And it's all about how do we get better today and focus on today and it's get 1% better every day and focus on the process versus become a national champion. And to your point, if you focus on the inputs, those naturally take care of themselves. And so I like the idea of process over prize. And for a rep specifically, it's all about pipeline. How do you manage and how do you grow? It's a really good way to drive clarity and crystallization.
Ian: Yeah. And he calls it process thinking. If you look at process thinking, Nick Saban has a whole Wikipedia article on it. And it's like, it is the common denominator. I don't care if you're coaching athletes or you're coaching salespeople or you're coaching executives. It's the same thing. It's what can you do today? And here's what comes from that. And you probably experienced this because you're a CEO and a co-founder like me. And what comes from this is peace of mind. Peace of mind and knowing you are doing all you can to become the best you're capable of becoming. And that's really what I work with people on is this mindset. The reason sales reps are really unhappy, there was a study, I have a guy named Jeff Risley coming on my show in a couple of days and we're going to talk about it, but 70% of reps now report their mental health is fair or poor, which is really, really scary. That impacts results. It's the sales health alliance. You can look up the data behind it. How do you think you're gonna show up for work in front of clients if you're reporting your mental health is fair or poor, right? So if you fix the person and you get the person to an all in state where they have peace of mind and knowing they're doing all they can, right? They're gonna be able to sleep better at night. They're gonna be able to be more present. They're gonna be able to focus and execute more. So that's what I've encountered more than anything else is just sales reps are not happy with their own efforts. They're not feel like they're not doing enough. They feel guilty because they're so distracted or they're not executing their own prospect. And they're not doing the things that they know they need to do to be successful. And why is that, right? It's because of bad habits. And that's where, again, once you get the mindset right, then you have to work on the habits and unpack what they're actually doing with their time and how to help them learn to say no and how to focus and a lot of the things that really lead to the results that we want.
Brendan: Yeah, we have a, it reminds me one of our values at RevPartners is do your best, not your all. And it's that whole, it speaks into what you're just describing of like the mental health aspect of like, I'm giving everything I've got, but ultimately that's too much and it's very overwhelming. And so if we have crystallization and clarity around what we need to be doing, that allows us to do our best and say, hey, am I giving my best? And you can say yes or no to that question because I know what I'm supposed to be doing. Ian, let's transition into the next topic. We mentioned the mindset, and then you're segueing into the habits. So once you know the things that are most important in terms of process over price, how do you make sure you instill the right habits to derive the right behaviors?
Ian: Well, it's ironic, but, um, one of the things that I, I've heard a lot, I didn't make this up, I heard it and it's, it's been trying to do for years. How you do one thing is how you do everything. So if you have bad personal habits, you're going to have bad work habits. You can't have great work habits and then have terrible personal habits or terrible relationship habits or whatever. It all kind of bleeds together the way you show up. So, so for me, what I do is I look at their habits at work and their habits in their personal life. And I try and actually work on the habits that are going to help them specifically work better. So for me, exercise and helping people exercise consistently will actually help them feel good. And when they feel good in the morning, specifically, that usually translates into the day. So I'll get people on a regular exercise routine before they start work to build that discipline and it's amazing how it just translates into, they're feeling better at the start of the day, they have more energy, they're happier, and it's confidence. Confidence comes from keeping your word to yourself. So get people to commit to something that's gonna make them happy and healthy, and then watch that translate into the work life. So that's kind of the, you can't ignore the personal habits, I think they bleed together. So for me, exercise helps with the energy to get people in a peak state and sales is all about energy transfer. You've got to have energy and passion that then transfers to your clients about what you're doing. So you've got to get your own energy, right, to be able to energize others. And then the second piece is focus, right? How do you actually focus? And really, again, what we're dealing with right now is a generation of people, adults and millennials and all ages really, that are prone to distraction. We are living with a computer sitting in our hands 24 seven with apps and notifications and you know, everything to just make our brain essentially rewiring to crave immediate gratification that comes with dopamine. Okay. And by going on apps ever in between tasks or in between, you know, priorities, we're actually continuing to reinforce that neuro pathway of dopamine where we're becoming dopamine dependent. And so what I do is I look at kind of where they spend the time wasters of distractions, apps, whether it's Instagram or YouTube or news or sports or whatever. And we say how much time you spending on that. And what I see is on average about two to five hours per person. That's during the workday. Well, what could you do with two to five hours? That's and again, these are reps that are high performers that are coming to me and they would never share this with their manager, but this is what is going on. People are not working because they're distracted. So we just delete those apps. We literally will delete them during the week and we'll, we'll basically use tools like Opal to minimize how much time they're spending on distractions. And that forces them to be with their thoughts and not go to the immediate thing that's giving them dopamine. So with habits, it's all about choosing to delay gratification versus choosing immediate gratification. When you can starve that dopamine, when you can starve those distractions, then you're forced to actually work a little bit. So that's the first part of it is see how much wiring the brain has been based on what they're doing, unpack those things. And again, this is like, it's like half sales coaching, half sales therapy, because they wouldn't admit this. But once you see that, it's like, holy shit. If you're making 250 an hour based on your time, let's say, I'll just give you a simple equation I can use. And I think sales leaders can use this everywhere. Let's say your rep makes 250,000 a year, and they're working four hours on revenue generating activities per day. And that would be generous, okay? You take that 250, you divide it by 20 hours a week, divide that by 48 hours a week, that's $260 an hour is the value of their time for revenue generating activities. Take that three hours they wasted in a week, in a day on distractions and non-revenue activities or administrative or Slack email, just non-important activities and multiply it by three, that's 781 a day times five days a week times the 48 weeks a year, you just added 187K if they could just eliminate that. That same rep, just by making that change now, okay, is 200% of quota versus 100%, making 400 versus 250. And it works every single time. There is not a single time when they eliminate these things and then do RGAs when they don't see their results increase. So it's just, again, most managers aren't having these conversations. Most managers aren't coaching and leading. They're just managing the forecast and the pipeline versus the person and helping develop the person. So people come to me for that. I help them and then they get the results and then more people come. So it's, it's really about eliminating distractions, learning to focus, and then identifying those core things that they need to do, which they already know what they are for the most part, that they could and should be doing that typically get put off in place of distractions or busy work or something that really doesn't move the needle.
Brendan: Yeah, I like that a lot in terms of, you know, you can't, sounds like what you're kind of describing is you can't compartmentalize some of these things. And so there's a bleed over between personal and professional. I think you even alluded to that, even in your backstory of kind of you were running that race hard in Salesforce and it got to the point where there was issues.
Ian: Yeah, there was a lot of addiction issues. And honestly, like I remember I closed a $12 million deal. And the next two days I was on my phone playing video games for two days straight. I'm like, I deserved it. And I felt so low after closing this. I'm like, what is wrong with me? It's this feeling of like, even though I'm doing all these things, I still have this kind of angst or this, you know, need in it. And it's like, once you settle that and you calm the mind and you get to a place where you're just showing up and doing your best you know, doing what you can, but you have grace with yourself and you're not like beating yourself up. That's where the magic happens. And it's hard to break it down simply. It's not a one session or talk to me for an hour and you're mad. That's why my program is a year. People come in and they come out a year later as a different person because this stuff takes time to unpack. It takes time to really, you know, to change habits because habits are embedded for life. You're not just going to listen to a podcast and just change your habits. But I'd say one takeaway would be look at screen time, look at how much time you're actually spending and delete the apps that are, you know, that are taking up your time. And it's amazing how your brain starts to change because you'll find yourself looking for that thing, looking for that distraction and you don't have it. All of a sudden you have to be with yourself. And when you're with yourself, that's when it gets uncomfortable versus just distracting yourself all the time. And that's when the growth happens when you're uncomfortable.
Brendan: Yeah, Apple has this really, well people either love it or hate it probably, but they have that tool that says like how long you, on average you spend on your phone per day. That's a pretty revealing number. But you should, I mean, one of the things that we started doing is you gotta tell somebody, you can't just look at it, you have to say, hey, here's how much time I spent this week. And that is an uncomfortable conversation to have. That reminds me of a book by John Mark Comer called Ruthless Elimination of Hurry, which speaks to a lot of what you're describing of how do you slow down, how do you not become a slave to that dopamine and really make sure you have the right habits. Let's move into the last topic, Ian, as we wrap up a bit. And that's getting into, when we talk about habits, you talked about the personal habits that you help the individual with, but there's also a role and responsibility that the manager has in terms of allowing them to focus on those key priorities that you mentioned at the very beginning, which is around pipeline, whether it's development or progression. So how can a manager help drive that? I know we talked about the noise and distraction, but let's get more specific on what those things are and what you've seen be effective.
Ian: Yeah. And again, I know we're only 15, 20 minutes. I can spend three hours breaking down the details on this. But again, it's all about how you do one thing is how you do everything. So in the work habits specifically and what managers can do, I think number one is just they need to set expectations. One thing I see managers do really poorly is they manage activity, but not impact. So when I was leading my sales team and what I managed with I still have 100 people that I coach and I manage them and manage their results because that's what they're paying me for. It's really about looking at how and where they're spending their time and helping them prioritize what they can say yes to and what they can say no to. And so as a sales leader, one thing you can do is actually coach them. And I know that sounds basic, but where a lot of people are sales leaders is they coach deals and they just look at the deals. What can I do to advance it? But coaching the person as looking at their calendar and helping them figure out where to spend their time, helping them block off time for prospecting, helping them with their territory plan where they could specifically prioritize accounts, helping them with their messaging, right? Let me look at your emails. Let me see what you're sending out. Let me see what quality. Are you developing a point of view that's relevant and that's specific to the individual or the company that you're going after? A lot of times when you look and you actually, just yesterday I was coaching someone, he showed me his emails. It was to Northrop Grumman and it could have been sent to any account. I'm like, that's not, I wouldn't send that out. You got to do your research on Northrop and why should they care? Show me you know me. When you actually pull up the hood of the pipeline, if they're not generating pipeline. The thing that managers look at is how many calls did you make and how many emails you said? That doesn't matter. The only three metrics as a manager that matters that you should be looking at is what meetings did you have? Of those meetings, what opportunities came out of it? And of those opportunities, what's closing? Meetings, pipeline generated, and deals closed. So if they have a big pipeline, but they're not closing, that means you need to work with them on advancing pipeline and closing skills. If they have a lot of meetings, but they're not generating pipeline, that means that their value proposition is off or their discovery is not great. And if they don't have any meetings, that means their prospecting messaging is bad. So you need to diagnose and really inspect where their problems are and then help develop them. And if you don't have time, capacity or energy to develop them, send them to me, send them to a third party that can help coach. I mean it because if you can't do it, where are they getting it from? Odds are they're not, they're not going off on their own and learning. They're just frustrated. They're not getting results. The company and the managers are generally too busy to help, and it's not their fault. They want to help. It's just they're running. There's a lot of demand on sales, frontline sales managers. And they don't have the time. Their intentions are good, but they don't have the time to really go deep with coaching. So that's the key is like coach on the right things, lead by example, and then roll up your sleeves and get in the field with them. Close their deals. Your job is a manager's put money in your rep's pocket. Don't sit behind a report in Salesforce looking what they're doing, go out in the field, get in front of customers and help them put money in their pockets by getting in front of their clients. That's what the best managers do.
Brendan: Yeah, I like the reminder, the focus on impact, not on activity, and then really being crystal clear on what those three metrics are that really measure impact, which gets into meetings, opportunities, and then what's closing. We sit at the rev ops seat, which is more of the, to your point, the data and the reporting element, and that to me is all about leakage. Where's the leakage occurring and where do we have a conversion problem? And so that's where you can help empower that manager with, hey, your rep is that MQL SQL is not that conversion rates really low or the SQL to close one meaning opportunity to close one is low. And then you can to your point coach the rep on, hey, here's the problem. And how can I help you? Or not how can I help you? But here's how I want to help.
Ian: And I'm, you got it right. And I'm doing this right now in my own business. We are doing so much marketing and it's driving a lot of inbound leads where my, my head of sales has a lot of calls. And I've noticed his conversion metrics dropped off tremendously. Right. And is it because how we're positioning the calls? Is it because they're less qualified and we're offering free coaching sessions? What is it? And when I really inspected what it was, I found that it was him. I found that he was getting married, he's got a lot of responsibility right now, he's a bit overwhelmed. So what did that mean? It mean I needed to help, you know, reassure him that he's going to be great. That, you know, the weight of the world is not on his shoulders, that you know what, you're going to be okay. Don't put so much pressure on yourself and relief some of that pressure he's putting on himself. Because when you put that much pressure, you don't perform. Pressure cracks. You need to encourage and support people. So I'm just like, am I going to get fired? Is there a problem? No, brother, I believe in you. That's why I hired you. But you're getting in your own way by putting all this pressure. We're here to help people. We're here to serve people. It's not a fit. Don't worry about pitching them. Lead a horse to water. You can't make them drink. Your job is to do your very best to show them how and where we can help them and then lead them to buy. But if they don't, you know, then that's okay. And then what it did by having low conversion is it forced me to pivot and take action. So now I'm recording his calls. I'm coaching and watching what he's doing, and I'm attending and going to calls with him so I can actually be part of his so he can see how it's done and then I can have a little more impact. So again, it's all about focusing on the things you can control as a CEO, as a head of revenue, whatever your role, what can you do where you don't feel like you're out of control? And for me, it's getting closer to my team and making sure I'm supporting them, developing them and making sure that I'm responsible for their success. So I think, again, as a coach, I need to practice what I preach and coach my own team and that's what I'm doing right now.
Brendan: Yeah. Well, it's a good reminder that, um, as you were even using your, you know, personal example, uh, what you're instilling is confidence that you believe in that person, uh, and that you're there to partner alongside them as opposed to be a big brother and, um, have some like adversarial relationship. But I think that is such a huge element that oftentimes a lot of sales managers don't recognize. And the second thing, when you talk about focus, you talk about yes and no's and what we, you know, I think this is more of a, um, Jeff Bezos-ism, but it's like every yes is a no. And so being mindful that everything you do, you're saying no to something else. And so being very clear about what you're gonna prioritize. So it's a good way to, it's a good forcing function to understand what you need to be focusing on for that day.
Ian: I think if you say yes, if you say yes to other people's priorities, you're saying no to your own priorities. So it starts with defining what are your priorities in each of your roles and then blocking that off in the calendar and being sacred with honoring the time that you block off.
Brendan: Yeah, that's really good thought. Ian, as we wrap up, final app question. If we have reps here, we have managers saying, hey, I'd love to learn more about Ian's process and his coaching, or say, hey, from our company perspective, this would be great for our reps to roll out. What's a next step that they can take?
Ian: Yeah, I would say reach out on LinkedIn, which is, you know, I'm always on LinkedIn. I'm always posting and sharing content. Send me a direct message with a connection request and say, Hey, let's talk. And we could set up a call and talk about where your team needs help. And I can go through some of the workshops I provide, or if you want to sign them up for my coaching programs and I'll do the coaching with them, then we can talk about what that looks like. My website is untapyoursalespotential. So you can book a call with my sales team there if you want to talk about the programs or just reach out to me directly if you want to talk to me and I'm happy to see how and where I can help your team.
Brendan: All right, I'm sure you'll get a lot of calls, you know, for this conversation. There's a lot of good nuggets and reminders for our team just to make sure we have the right mindset, we create the right habits, and that we are driving the right focus and mindset for our team through the manager. So thanks again, really do appreciate it.
Ian: Absolutely. Thanks for having me, Brandon. Appreciate it. Bye.
Brendan: Alright, talk to you later.