How can you be certain that your day-to-day activities are helping you achieve your goals? Additionally, how do you identify opportunities that you may have missed, so you can capture them the next time around?

In this snippet, Pam shares why metrics are fundamental to knowing whether or not you are growing in your business, and what metrics you need to understand whether or not you are making progress.

To hear the full episode, scroll back to Episode 71: You Can’t Grow Until You Measure.

High-performance is heavily influenced by your choices. There are studies that suggest that those who seek immediate gratification are less successful than those who delay gratification. 

Do you sacrifice the present for the future? Or do you give up the future to indulge in the present? This is not an easy question. 

Join Dan and Pam as they explore how our choices either promote or hinder our routines, commitments, and sense of fulfillment. In this episode, you’ll hear some interesting perspectives on the relationship between commitment and choices that will help you frame your thinking and decide what viewpoints you do and don’t agree with.

Your prospects are constantly being sold to, and as a result, they have developed a series of biases that help them filter out what conversations are going to be helpful or harmful to them. This reaction is primal, based on instinct that dates back tens of thousands of years. Even a referral from a trusted source may not be enough for them to let down their guard. What can sales professionals do to ease the prospect’s initial uncertainty and innate lack of trust?

In this episode of Breaking Sales, Dan and Pam explore how you can level the playing field with your prospects and clients so that both parties can enter the conversation with more courage and curiosity. They’ll explore the psychology behind the beginning of human interactions and what you can do to make a positive early impact.

Get to know the Lappin180 team in this bonus episode of Breaking Sales. In this candid conversation, you’ll get a behind-the-scenes look at coaching and gain insights on how teams operate and build relationships over time. Dan, Pam, and Kristie share their journeys to becoming coaches, the dynamics that allow them to function as a team, and reminisce about some of the successes and challenges they’ve faced together along the way.

Sharing your credentials with prospects may seem like a strong way to demonstrate your value, but in reality, leaning on your past accomplishments to convey your worth stems from insecurity and scarcity. Worse, while your prospective clients may be able to gain a lot from your experience and expertise, putting it at the forefront of your conversations to prove your capability and worth may actually have a negative effect.

In this snippet, Dan explores why credentialing is a common pitfall for professionals, and how pitching your solution or expertise can unintentionally trigger the wrong reaction from your prospect. To hear the full conversation, scroll back to Episode 69,” Sharing Your Credentials Can Damage Your Credibility.”

Assertiveness and persistence can add value to a conversation, but only if aligned with helping the other person assess their circumstances more honestly. Neither should be practiced to advance your agenda. How do you know when it is time to slow down and assert? 

In this episode of Breaking Sales, Dan continues his conversation with management consultant Kirsten Markley, to explore how curiosity, assertiveness, slowing down, and persistence all work together to create conversations that build trust and differentiate.

It’s human nature to revert to our routines when under pressure. If you’ve been taught to sell or position value, then you’ve grown accustomed to defaulting to your expertise when pressured by the prospect. You lead with competency in hopes the prospect will eventually “get” your point. Unfortunately, this doesn’t work as often as we’d like, and it often leaves us feeling disconnected and chasing the prospect for a decision.  

On this episode of Breaking Sales, Dan sits down with management consultant veteran Kirsten Markley to explore how she uses curiosity to learn and build trust, and take share of wallet away from the better well known competitors in her space.

Explaining why your product, service, or expertise is a better alternative isn’t enough. Decisions are not made based on benefits alone. There might be many “pros” in your prospect choosing to do business with you, but it’s the perceived risks, discomfort, and hurdles that will hold them back. 

In this episode of Breaking Sales, Dan and Pam continue their exploration into the psychology of decision-making. They share some personal experiences that have helped them better understand why it’s human nature to rationalize and avoid change, and provide examples of questions you can ask to slice through your prospect’s decision biases.

The purpose of any traditional sales conversation is to help the prospect objectively assess and debate how or if they should make a change to your product, service, or expertise. This requires enough self-awareness to minimize their biases, identify their attachments, and control their fears. Does your current conversation process and strategy account for this? In this episode of Breaking Sales, Dan and Pam discuss the psychology behind decision-making and explore how human beings approach and debate difficult choices. We’ll explore how facts alone are rarely enough to form a decision, and that it’s most often the relationship between perceived risks and gains that determine your fate.

In a world filled with endless distractions, willpower is our first line of defense against procrastination, and one of the greatest tools we have to accomplish our goals. But is willpower a finite resource, or one that we can learn to manage, grow, and expand?

In this snippet, Pam shares how she uses willpower to manage distraction, and offers an approach to discipline that you can use to stay focused and achieve your goals. To hear the full episode, scroll back to Episode 78: “Stress or Freedom—the Many Perspectives of Discipline.”