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This is the Building Blocks of Success with Glenn Mattson.
Glenn Mattson:
Hey, everybody. Season 7, Episode 10. Today, we're going to be taking a look at this phenomenon that’s been really happening quite a bit in the last four to six weeks. And I want to share with everybody what happens when you're having a great start of the year, your second quarter, you're kicking it, things are happening at above and beyond what your expectations are. Some of you may even start saying to yourself, you know what, I should start changing what my goals are because I'm doing so good in comparison. So you have your run rate that's actually doing well. And what's starting to happen is, is that with that run rate, you're getting the success that your behavioral plan calls for.
Now, sometimes that behavior may be a little easier than you maybe thought it, maybe it's not, but you're getting the results that you're planning calls for, which is fantastic. So you're putting in the hard work. You're doing the behaviors, you're tracking and working on your technique and you're getting the results of those things, which is encouraging. And those results really breeds more commitment, more motivation into what you're doing and acknowledgement that it's working. And for a lot of people what starts to happen right around the June time frame, maybe even a little earlier, is they start saying to themselves, man, if I keep up this pattern, if I keep up this behavior, if I keep up this tracking, I'm going to have a hell of a year this year. And then all of a sudden, some weird thing starts to happen. So between the time that really the middle of the second quarter happens and really starting at the beginning of the fourth quarter, there's a mental gap where people start to... I don't want to say buy into the press releases, which is all the things that they did that got them where they are, they stopped doing. They stopped having the tenacity to do the follow-up. They stopped having the ability to ask the hard questions to get really what the truth is when it comes to qualifying.
In essence, they get lazy. They start to take things for granted. They say, hey, I've been 10 for 10 this last four weeks and they start to mostly take shortcuts is not the right word but they think selling is easy so they stop you know for instance, in our world, stop uncovering pain. If someone turns around and makes a request they say absolutely and they go ahead and send a hypo versus qualifying it and what's going to happen after they get it. So in essence a lot of the times it's by their own doing that starts to create a different outcome so again let's make sure we understand the patterns. You had a great start of the year. You were out of the gate running pretty hard, getting the results that you wanted. As a matter of fact, the results that you were getting were better than you expected and or better than you anticipated. So you start saying to yourself, my gosh, if I keep this up with these type of individuals, these type of clients, I may be able to actually do more than I anticipated this year.
Glenn Mattson:
So in your head, you start actually projecting that instead of doing 300, I'm going to do 400,000. Instead of doing 600, I'm going to do 700. Whatever the numbers are, you actually go ahead and move the needle on what you're going to accomplish this year. You move the needle on what was expected of you this year because of what you've done. And I can't tell you how many times I've had the conversation just this month with people that when they look back, they say to themselves, man, I'm just not in a good spot mentally. And a lot of them is because they've been sitting on this thing, thinking about this thing. And it's been literally most of September where they changed their numbers back in the June, April time period. Then all of a sudden, for whatever reason, the momentum that they had, the success that they’ve had, changed.
The motivation to ask the hard questions changed a little bit. The ability to follow through quickly changed a little bit. Their ability to ask the tough questions when it came to uncovering budget and decision changed a little bit. Their ability to find out truth versus just... or questions, right? Really getting to the third level, fourth level of pain changed. So if you take a look at three, four, five little different things that start to change, it actually adds up to quite a bit of an impact. And that large impact is the sales aren't coming in as easy as they were. Now, listen, we always get cycles where you're going to close 10 out of 10 and sometimes you're going to go zero for 10. That's just a law of averages. But this is when someone comes in and they're not doing what they should be doing and they start to get the results different than they expected. We've been there. We've been there where you shorten up your sales cycle.
Maybe we've been there where you didn't ask the right questions that we should have asked and all of a sudden we're getting stalls or even objections that we never got in the past. Well, that starts to have doubt. When that pops up, most of us are not stoic. And stoic meaning that we look over our shoulder and say, I changed. I'm taking the easy route. I'm the one that decided not to ask those hard questions. I'm the one that didn't ask the qualification questions just because I assumed that since they said these two things in the past when they said those, I won. So we start to kind of cheat sheet our own sales calls. Yet we don't take ownership on the fact that we are doing things differently in our sales call. What we start to do is we start to blame the prospects or we blame the marketing or we blame the economy or we start pointing our fingers someplace else besides the fact that I think I changed.
And what's worse is, is that as we start to look at these changes and where we're going to put our fingers on it, what gets even crazier is that as we start to point the fingers at it, we're not looking at what we could have done. We're looking at stuff that other things could have done differently. And by placing the blame on the outside, we're not taking ownership on the inside. And by not taking ownership on the inside, we're not the ones to fix the problem. That creates its own issues. So what I'd like to do today is to share with you that 99% of the results that you're getting is because of the time, energy, and effort that you're putting into it. If you had momentum and you chose not to continue that momentum, momentum will start to slow. When you stop doing the things that you did from a tactical standpoint to get the results, that changes the outcome. So when your results and your outcome starts to change, in essence, we start to get a little bit of panic.
Glenn Mattson:
That panic is when we start to challenge what we've done in the past and what we can do in the future, and are we actually good at what we're doing? That starts to get into the imposter syndrome, which is we start thinking to ourselves, we just got lucky. Or they were really ready to buy and it wasn't me. Imposter syndrome is really a virus that starts to eat away at your self-esteem. Where previously your self-esteem was, hey, look at what I've done. Now you're turning around saying, well, maybe it wasn't me. Maybe I was just lucky. Maybe it wasn't the words or the things I was saying. It was just luck. Maybe that now that I think I'm going to lose before I get on a sales call, that's really not coming out in my tone. It's not coming out in my questions, but it does. That's why you're going to win or lose really before you even start the sales process based on how you feel and think.
So I want us to look at this phenomenon that's happening to a lot of people, which is you have great goals. You work super hard at getting there. You start to over-earn what maybe you thought you could do. So you change the level of where the fence is going to be, i.e. you go for greater goals. And as you start to get to those greater goals, one or two things in your plan starts to wobble. And when those two things wobble, next thing you know, you know you're not going to get what you’re hoping for, for your goals. So now you're sitting there saying, well, geez, I'm not going to get the extra 100,000 I thought I was going to get. Shit, I'm not even sure I can hit the original goal I thought I was going to hit. And that does come back down to momentum, the change of momentum, and how you deal with it in between your ears. Remember, being poor is very different than being broke. Being broke is a condition. Being broke means that you can sell yourself out of it. Whatever your sales cycle is, is how long it will take you to get yourself out of it. If it's a four-week sales cycle, you can go from being broke to making money in four weeks. Being poor is a state of mind, and it's a very different thing to change. And I want everyone to realize that when we get into these states, 90% of the time, it is a choice that we made that got us here. It is a choice that we made to stop doing the things that made us successful. And now we put our hands up in the air and shrug and say, I don't know what's going on or why. The reality is we do. We changed. We changed what we were doing. We changed how we’re doing it. And that change is now impacting our results. And we're looking around thinking it’s something else. So as we sit and look at the quarter coming up and where you are right now.
Glenn Mattson:
If you are one of these individuals, I don't care if it's a recruiting goal, onboarding goal, AUM goal, sales goal, new logos, upticks in AUM, upticks in fees, whatever it may be that is part of your objectives. Stop looking over your shoulder and stop doing the shoulda, coulda, woulda. The shoulda, coulda, woulda doesn't do really anything unless you take a look at it from a stoic standpoint. I should have followed up with that. Great. So what does that mean moving forward? Looking over your shoulder doing the shoulda, coulda, woulda doesn't change the momentum. What changes the momentum is stop doing the things that are ineffective and start doing the things that are effective and stop wasting time trying to figure out the gap and why. Just realize you are where you are, embrace it, and then decide to change it, period. That's it.
So realize that it is our mindset that typically says, I want to do more. It's our mindset that 90% of the time we'll say that we need to do less here or slow down here, or you don't need to work as fast over here or be as intense over here. And usually we overlay it with some BS of, well, I deserve it. I deserve to go home a little earlier. I deserve, we can do that tomorrow. Don't need it to do it today. But you have to realize those small things that you’re pushing off are the things that made the difference that got you where you are. So a lot of times when we start overachieving, we subconsciously shoot ourselves in the foot. We actually subconsciously will be the ones that will slow us down by giving us false pretense, which is, I'm doing great, I can do it tomorrow. That's false pretense.
So when you're slowing down, you have to look at the changes that you're making. Are the changes deserved? Are the changes going to impact the flow that you have and the momentum that you're creating? If it's going to change your momentum, then that's not something you want to do. And if it does change your momentum, own the fact that what you're doing is changing momentum. Identify what you did change or what you thought you were improving or what you thought you were getting rid of. And you have to ask yourself a really hardcore question. Is that something I need to change or do I have to go back to the way it used to be? Now, going back to the way it used to be doesn't mean that you don't need to enhance it at a different point. But what it does mean is that how you used to go to the cookie store, how you got to the grocery store, isn't something that can change right now. Because when you changed it, you didn't have anything to improve or put in its place. So it would become a void.
Glenn Mattson:
For instance, I have someone that would do 10 outbound reaches every single day before they went home. Those 10 outbound reaches on average would get three to four really high quality introductions every single month. Well, they said to themselves, well, I can do those later. I can do them on the way home or I'll just do it tomorrow. And all of a sudden that 10 a day went down to really about 10 a week if they were lucky. Well, that 10 a week, if you just do the math, right? 10 a day got them down to three or four very strong introductions on a monthly basis. Well, doing 10 a week means they got maybe one good introduction in that month. So their behavior altered and therefore the numbers altered on the end result. But because those numbers altered, i.e. the introductions, their sales started to slip and they couldn't understand why the flow slowed down. The flow slowed down because they stopped doing the behaviors that got them there.
So as we looked at, it only took three or four questions to figure out what the gap was. And then we went back and said, how come you made the chance to change this? He said, well, I was doing very well. I was ahead of the curve. I just figured I could spend my time doing something different. Well, that spend my time doing something different was getting up later and having a different set of breakfasts or a different type of morning time than he used to have. Well, that's all fine and dandy, but what he replaced it with actually had an adverse impact into the business. So as we start to look at where you'd like to be in the future, you have to make sure that the things that you're doing in the past that are productive stay with you. The things that are not productive, you can change. But don't change the productive things in the eyes of trying to be more efficient or more effective.
So as you look at where you are this year, remember, momentum is everything. You know, if you're in a bad spot, thinking about it is never going to make it better. What changes a bad spot is action. And action is critical. So if you had momentum and it slowed down, you got to go back to your cookbook, figure out what the behavior is, and get back to work. And here's the crazy part about momentum. In the beginning, when you're actually on the downside of the slope, you all know what I mean by the downside of the slope, means that... the bad things that could be happening in Murphy's Law is you. You're getting high cancellation rates. Those that show up aren't as qualified as they used to be. You're not getting as much sale as you thought you could. Your average case size may be a little slipping. You're not asking the questions that you should be, etc.. What changes that is the ability to get in front of people.
Glenn Mattson:
So when we talk about momentum, it's really about focusing on the behaviors you need to do to get your yellows back up to where they need to be. And your yellows, as you all know, are new business opportunities. And within those yellows, when you have a fair amount of yellows, it makes you feel better. And plus you don't need the business anymore, which you know are big rules of ours, right? You always have to be two weeks out also. So if you're supposed to be seeing six new people a week, you have to be two weeks out, meaning that your calendar has 12 yellows in it right now. And that's being two weeks out. And two weeks out gives you an awful lot of power and motivation. So fixing this is just not a technique issue. It's a mindset issue. So again, when you're on that down current where you don't have a lot of things in your pipeline and what you do have isn't working well, you have to come to grips with it and say, what's going to get me out of this is seeing the right people and doing the right things and not so be concerned with the end result, which is the sale.
It's doing things right versus doing them wrong. Pretty easy. So as you get that momentum and start seeing enough of the right people, be focused on the tactics. Did I do my upfront contracts? Did I get to third level pain? Did I ask enough of the right questions? Did I spend too much time asking, too much of my time talking, or did I spend the right amount of time listening?
So as you start to break down your sales process to easy bite sized pieces on what your must-haves should be, i.e. using your AB journal, you will find it will not take you a long time to get back into the swing of things. But when you get back into the swing of things, remember, while you're changing momentum, the end result isn't the sale. You got to move the arrow back to the left a little bit. So in the beginning, it may be getting the number of yellows you need to have. Maybe it's just getting the number of conversations you need to have to get to the number of yellows.
So remember, in the beginning of changing momentum, your results should be more behavioral-based and or in the beginning of the funnel-based than it is just how much new premium should I get or how much new sales should I have gotten. So in this month alone, even though we're in the second week and we've had roughly 12 business days, I've had over 25 coaching calls either by the founder or their founders frustrated because one of their people started fast and is now ending slow. So as that happens to all of us, and it does, the lessons are you take a week off of a month, it's really hard to make up that month. You miss a month of production, it's really hard to make up your quarter. So momentum will come and go, and you will learn that it is so much harder to create momentum than it is to maintain it. Maintaining the momentum is more mindset which is, hey, I'm doing well, I can slow down. It's not.
That's the time to actually do a little more, do a little differently, pull a little more gas down to see what would happen, not putting the gas up. And when you do put the gas up, it is about momentum being regained, and that is activity. So when it's about activity, the results are not about sales. It's about what you need to do to get the sale. So is that the number of yellows, the number of contacts, number of asks, etc.? Stay three feet in front of your own feet on what your goal is. Is that getting to pain during the call, not worrying about did I make a sale or not? So those things that are three feet in front of you, if you keep those in front of you and keep your focus on what those are, the end result will be accomplished, which is the sale. But don't focus on the wrong end of the spectrum when you're trying to change momentum.
Look forward to hearing from everybody as you start to grow your practice on the Building Blocks of Success.
This is the Building Blocks of Success with Glenn Mattson.
