Authentic Persuasion Show

[E64] Sales Mindset Week: Mediocre Sheep and Crabs

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While positive

is ideal for most people to achieve their goals, and a negative mindset can
keep people stuck (although there are times when a negative mindset actually
drives people forward faster), there is a scary mindset in the ‘middle’ –
mediocrity.

Mediocrity is

the silent killer of goals, dreams, and hopes. You could be closing more deals
in sales, but you don’t.

This usually

occurs from those that you surround yourself with. At work, in a sales team, on
the sales floor there will be coworkers who want you to be okay with being
‘okay’ enough.

In this episode

I talk about how in sales (and life) – there are Sheep and Crabs.

Episode 64 – Transcript

Welcome to episode 64 of the

sales experience podcast. My name again is Jason Cutter.

As you heard in the intro, if

you’ve been listening to this show for any length of time, I appreciate it.
Thank you. Hopefully you subscribe if you’re brand new, this is an exciting
time to be listening to the show.

However, I would suggest

listening to episode 61 62 and 63 before this one because it’s all building,
but if you’re here now, you’re diving into this episode as the very first one.
Welcome. Thank you for being here. We’re talking about mind set.

This is kind of my mind-set.

Two Point Oh week I covered mind set week two of the podcast. I tried to cram
as much as I could into five 10 minute episodes this week. I’m failing to keep
them under 10 minutes. This one, I’m going to try to keep it short because I
have one thing I want to talk about.

I’m not going to recap like I

did so much in the last episode. Hopefully you did the homework assignment. It
was about positivity, so the last episode was talking about the positive mind
set.

What happens, what triggers

you to be in the positive mind frame? And of course in sales commission checks,
bonuses, high five celebration, closing deals, all of that triggers. But what
else? What about taking action? How do you feel? Sometimes you have a call, it
doesn’t result in a sale, but you know you gave it your all.

You know that if anyone asks

you and they say, you know, did you try everything you could. You can say,
honestly I did. And even though I didn’t get that sale, I still know I tried my
best and I just lost that one. Or they’re not the right prospect or you know,
there’s nothing I could have done.

I still feel positive I can

go to bed happy tonight cause I know I gave it my all even if I didn’t make
that sale. So hopefully you did the assignment. Spend some time thinking about
what you’re positive triggers are, your positive mind set, where you really
excel and focus on the positive side.

Today I’m going to talk about

the middle, which is the mediocre mind set, right? This one is very
challenging. This one is super important and it happens to everybody. It’s kind
of the negative mind set. It’s kind of the positive mind set, but really it’s
about mediocrity. And where mediocrity comes from is our ego.

Again, trying to keep us

safe. The mediocre side of our lives where we accept an average level of
performance is our brain keeping us safe in our comfort zone. We’re totally
okay with that. Where we accept traffic, we understand that’s how it goes.

We accept a certain level of

finance or a certain level of relationship where we’re, well, you know, we’re,
we’re not blissfully happy, but at least we’re not fighting all the time. So
we’re just okay and we’re existing, right?

So, and again, not good or

bad, not right or wrong, but most people in some or a lot of categories of
their life are leading a mediocre existence and are okay with that because
they’ve just come to accretive. And with this being a show about sales and the
sales experience, then we’re going to talk about it in terms of sales. The
mediocre mind set is such a killer of people.

Sales careers when they

either accept being average or they’re okay being in the middle of the pack a,
that one can be difficult. And again, I’m going to say this, it’s kind of
harsh, but if you’re okay being mediocre, maybe sales isn’t for you.

But that’s just being honest.

Maybe there’s something else that would get you more excited that allows you to
push aside your ego in your brain in such a way where you’re willing to be
uncomfortable. You’re willing to go out and do something that’s uncomfortable
in terms of what your strengths are because you know in the moment you’re
uncomfortable, but long term.

That’s where the rewards are.

It’s outside the comfort zone. Now, what leads to mediocrity? Obvious. Either
there’s the ego, there’s all of that. On the outside though, it’s two things. Its
sheep and crabs. Those are the two things. Now, again, you may think I’m crazy
if you listen to this show. You know I’m crazy. However, let me explain.

So sheep want everybody to be

the same, right? There’s a, you have a flock of sheep. They all travelled
together. If you’ve ever seen, it’s kind of like a school of fish where a flock
of sheep, when a wolf comes, since all the sheep look alike, they’re all white,
light coloured.

They all look similar. When

they move and they run together, it’s really hard for a Predator or anyone else
to pick out one in particular. There’s safety that comes with blending in and
being part of the herd and running together with the sheep.

That’s where, and I’m not

going to get into the full explanation, but that’s where the term black sheep
comes from because black sheep in a sea of white sheep is going to stand out
easily targeted by the wolf and black sheep die, right? You don’t see a lot of
black sheep in nature, of wild sheep because they’re going to be singled out
and then be killed. Same thing with fish.

Fish that go in, schools all

looked the same. Anything that stands out or does anything different is going
to get spotted by a Predator and Poof, that one’s gone. So the sheep in your
life want you to be the same, right?

The term that I used years ago.

And you know, it’s a funny one, is sheeple the sheeple in our lives, the
sheeple, and the Mash sheeple as a group want everyone to be the same. You
know, there’s the group of people that all have I iPhones and they think that
iPhones are the best, that they want everyone to be having an using an iPhone
because they see that as kind of the, the sheeple product and their safety in
that.

So anyone who doesn’t have an

iPhone is weird and everyone should be the same cause there’s safety in that,
you know, sameness, and same thing. On the flip side is there’s the android
people, some of which are very vocal about if you don’t have an Android, you’re
an idiot.

Because they want everyone to

be the same because there’s safety in that sameness. And so watch out for the
sheeple in your life, especially if they’re mediocre sheeple because what they
want is for you to be the same and either unhappy about politics or unhappy
about finances or unhappy in relationships that sometimes you have cheapo in
your life who they’re unhappy in the relationship.

They want you to be the same

as well, and that’s what they focus on is everyone being the same, buying the
same stuff, doing the same things, and so sheeple in the sales career can be
very dangerous because they want you to be the same.

They want you to blend in

whether that’s good or bad. Hopefully if it’s good, you’re going to rise to the
occasion. With that, that’s generally not where the sheep hang out. It’s not to
be awesome and amazing. It’s to blend in and just exist. Then on the other side
of this conversation is the crabs. Now with crabs.

What’s interesting is if

you’ve ever caught crabs, and I’ve seen videos of this where let’s say like
the, crazy Alaskan crab fishermen, they’ll catch all of these crabs and they’ll
put them in one big holding tank, right on those ships where you see like on
dangerous catch, they’ve got all these crabs, just hundreds, thousands of crabs
in this holding tank.

The video underwater that

I’ve seen, the crabs will kind of walk all over each other and stand over each
other. And then every once in a while some crabs will go towards the middle
seeing the light and thinking that’s the way to escape.

And so they kind of pile up

and one of the crab reaches up to try to escape. And then what happens is
another crab sees that they’re escaping and pulls them down as they’re trying
to escape. And everyone’s pulling each other down.

So instead of supporting

everybody on getting out and one of those like tough murder, crazy ass walls,
where the only way to get up and over that wall is for people to do a human
chain and drag each other up in a winning way. Instead, crabs drag each other
down because they don’t realize by doing that nobody’s going to win and they’re
all going to be a, you know, killed and yummy with butter.

So they don’t realize that.

And that’s what happens in our lives. There’s people who are crabs. So when you
start doing well, they see that as a threat to them and their ego and their
comfort zone.

And they will bring you down.

If you’re happy in a relationship and you’ve got a crab in your life who’s
negative in their relationship, you know, they’ll be pointed, well, what about this
and what about that? And they’ll try to poke holes in your happiness.

They’ll try to drag you down

because there’s some safety and comfort and being either mediocre or unhappy.
And so you’ve got to watch out for those crabs in your life, especially on the
sales floor. And again, I’m talking big picture life, but specifically for
sales, because when you’re on the sales floor closing lots of deals, your names
on the whiteboard or it’s on the TV, you’re ringing the bell or the Gong, you
know, whatever that might be.

You’re feeling good. The

crabs in your office are going to bring you down. They’re going to tell you
that, oh, you’re on a lucky streak, or, oh, you can’t sustain this.

Or last week you weren’t that

good. So likely this is just a fluke or whatever. Those crabs are going to get
in your head to try to drag you down and justify their mediocrity. They’re
losing their state of where they’re at and their unhappiness and their negative
mind-set.

So keep in mind, watch out

for the sheep and the crabs who are trying to keep you mediocre. If your goal
is to win, if your goal is to excel, be happy. Leverage your strengths, win at
whatever you’re doing, whether it’s sales or anything in life, and watch out
for the sheep and the crabs and being mediocre.

All right, your homework

assignment is what I want you to do. And I talked about these two crazy animals
is I want you to think about journal, talk to other people, and explore those
in your life. Let’s say specifically with sales in your office.

Could be co-workers, could be

managers, leaders, whatever, that are sheep and that are crabs. The ones who
are trying to keep you down, pull you down, keep you the same, whatever that is
that are not supportive and helping you in who are they? What do they generally
do, and is that helping you get to where you need to be or who should you
basically spend less time with?

Because that’s the important

part. All right. That’s it for this episode. Thank you so much for listening.
Super Fun, having a lot of fun with this. I know it’s a lot of information
trying to pack in here. Hopefully you’re getting some value from it.

Always, remember that

everything in life is sales and people will remember the experience you gave
them.

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