Peak Performance Selling

In this episode of the Peak Performance Selling podcast, Jordan shares a few lessons he learned from his father about good leadership. The lessons that Jordan focuses on are not directly related to revenue. Instead, they focus on treating employees and subordinates with respect, living with an attitude of gratitude, and creating a work environment that makes people want to stay for the long haul.

HIGHLIGHTS

Treat every person with dignity, compassion, kindness, and grace

It's always better to assume positive intent

Live with an attitude of gratitude

Celebrate the small wins

Maintain a childlike passion for ambition

Make it a habit to congratulate someone for a job well done

QUOTES

Jordan: "Regardless of who they are, or why we should or shouldn't be kind, what they can do for us, how do we treat these people with kindness, with dignity, with compassion, and give them grace with every interaction? It's not hard."

Jordan: "I've found it so easy over the years to assume the negatives. And it usually doesn't do me very much good. Especially then when I just pick up the phone and talk to somebody versus what I may assume over slack or over email. In this digitally disconnected world, assuming positive intent can help us find more solutions, better, more easily, more effectively."

Jordan: The most successful in the world, the sense of appreciation for everything that they have right now, and this concept that there's so much more out there, there's so for all of us to go around, so many of us feel entitled that tomorrow is going to come and we should just slog or grind through the day."

If you’re listening to the Peak Performance Selling Podcast, please subscribe, share, and send us your feedback.

LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/jordanbenjamin/

Website - http://mycoreos.com/

Podcast - https://www.mycoreos.com/podcast

Email - [email protected]

Twitter - https://twitter.com/jbenj09

In this episode of the Peak Performance Selling podcast, Jordan talks to Amy Volas, the founder and CEO of recruitment firm Avenue Talent Partners. Amy shares her incredible insight into leadership, developing a strong work ethic, and genuinely caring about people. Amy also talks about the importance of self-awareness and self-realization, and why it’s critical for leaders to understand that business starts and stops with people, not the bottom line.

HIGHLIGHTS

Get to the root of the pain point to address it

All good leaders have playbooks

How to bounce back from a tough time

Check your ego and don't try to be a hero

Always do things with integrity

It all starts and stops with people

Building communities in today's digital world

QUOTES

Amy: "The thing about playbooks, I might have one, you might have one, in my mind they are iterative. They're not read, rinse and repeat because everybody's business is different. And the best leaders I know, they're always learning and tweaking as they go."

Amy: "Even when it's hard, even when I want to crawl under a rock and not come back out, I own it. I try to do it with integrity, and I try to be as honest as I can be."

Amy: "I don't care what market we're in. If it's an up market, if it's down market, if it's a bull or a bear, I don't care. You still have to have people to do your business. When it's good, when it's bad, you have to. And the last time, I checked, you don't have a business without a customer because the customer writes the check. And guess who drives that? A little thing called sales."

Amy: "We all want to be seen, we all want to be heard, we all want to be understood. And I've added two more things to that: we all want to be valued and validated."

You can connect with Amy and her work in the links below:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/amyvolas/

Website (Business): https://avenuetalentpartners.com/

Website (Thursday Night Sales): https://thursdaynightsales.com/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/AvenueTP

If you’re listening to the Peak Performance Selling Podcast, please subscribe, share, and send us your feedback.

LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/jordanbenjamin/

Website - http://mycoreos.com/

Podcast - https://www.mycoreos.com/podcast

Email - [email protected]

Twitter - https://twitter.com/jbenj09

In this episode of the Peak Performance Selling podcast, Jordan talks to Hunter Baker. An experienced and empathetic sales leader herself, Hunter knows a thing or two about setting up a team for success and inevitably, helping them deal with failure as well. She also shares her struggles with imposter syndrome why having a growth mindset is the best way to overcome it. If you’re always looking forward to growth and learning, then failures are just mere learning opportunities.

HIGHLIGHTS

Hunter's pivotal learning moment

Dealing with imposter syndrome

You either have growth mindset, or you don't

The traits that make someone worth investing in

Let your team set their own goals

How to show up everyday at your best

QUOTES

Hunter: "It's okay to not be great from day one. You're gonna shine in this area, or maybe this other person doesn't shine. I need a well-rounded team so you go shine in the areas where you're good. The other things will come and you don't need to worry about the imposter syndrome."

Hunter: "Acknowledge the elephant in the room. Real or fabricated or whatever, it's important that you don't know it all, all of the time otherwise you stop learning. If you are the smartest person in the room, you should probably check yourself."

Hunter: "If you don't let people jump off a cliff and fail, they won't learn anything. If they are already doing the job, they're ready for the next job, not the job that they're already doing."

Hunter: "It all starts with hiring. If you hire the wrong people for what you're looking for, then you can't make someone who doesn't have that mindset into someone who has that mindset. It's one of those intangibles that you either have or don't."

Hunter: "My value is building. Give me a project, give me a problem, and tell me to go figure it out, and I will do it 9 times out of 10. Probably not every time. But I need problems because I really like solving them and I get great satisfaction from that."

You can connect with Hunter and her work in the links below:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/hunterbakerhb/

Email: [email protected]

If you’re listening to the Peak Performance Selling Podcast, please subscribe, share, and send us your feedback.

LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/jordanbenjamin/

Website - http://mycoreos.com/

Podcast - https://www.mycoreos.com/podcast

Email - [email protected]

Twitter - https://twitter.com/jbenj09

In this episode of the Peak Performance Selling podcast, Jordan talks to Bryan Elsesser, the VP of Sales for SaaStr. Bryan talks about the lessons he learned while cutting his teeth in the yellow-pages gig he participated in his youth. As a veteran sales leader in his own right, Bryan shares his top tips for building a culture of winning in your organization, how to become an effective manager, and dealing with burnout in your team.

HIGHLIGHTS

Learn from both great and not-so-great leaders

Life's too short to not be enjoying your job

Company culture is more than office beers and pizza

Managers do not need to know everything

Stop thinking about the next part of your career

Sales lessons from an opera singer

How management can address burnout issues

QUOTES

Bryan: "I think a great leader knows their people. They know who they are, they know what makes them tick."

Bryan: "This is the day and age where you have more choice salespeople than probably ever. It's a human environment. If you're not having fun, go find the fun. Life's too short man, you go find the fun."

Bryan: "If you are the manager or the leader, you cannot think that that means you're supposed to have all the answers. It means you're supposed to be able to navigate the strengths of every person on your team to build the best outcomes."

Bryan: "Stop thinking about the next part of your career. Think about how you can be awesome in what you're doing. Because if you're awesome at what you're doing, that's the only way you get offered the opportunity to go to those other opportunities."

Bryan: "That's how I think of burnout — I think of it as a measurement. And then what's the start-stop and adjustment that you need to do in order to allot for it. Because it's not always company retreats and pizza Fridays. It's something that you need to allot for and plan for."

You can connect with Bryan and his work in the links below:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bryanelsesser/

Website (Business): https://www.saastr.com/

If you’re listening to the Peak Performance Selling Podcast, please subscribe, share, and send us your feedback.

LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/jordanbenjamin/

Website - http://mycoreos.com/

Podcast - https://www.mycoreos.com/podcast

Email - [email protected]

Twitter - https://twitter.com/jbenj09

In this episode of the Peak Performance Selling podcast, Jordan talks to award-winning and bestselling sales author, Bob Burg. Bob talks about serving others as your primary target for sales, and treating money only as a reward for meeting that goal. Selling should be about adding value to your customer’s life by way of your product or service, and treating their success as your own.

For Bob, there is no faster and more sustainable way of attaining success in sales than by adopting a giving mindset. The most fulfilling way of conducting business, Bob says, is also the most profitable.

HIGHLIGHTS

Serving others, not money should be your primary target

The buying process has changed

Selling should be about giving

Customers are buying for their reasons, not yours

The 5 Laws of Stratospheric Success

QUOTES

Bob: "Great salesmanship is never about the salesperson. Great salesmanship is never about the product or services as important as those are. Great salesmanship is about the other person, it's about adding value to the life of another human being. I guess we can even say it's really about another person's life being better just because you are part of it."

Bob: "Nobody's gonna buy from you because you have a quota to meet. They're not gonna buy from you because you need the money or even because you're a really nice human being. They're gonna buy because they believe that they will be better off by doing so than by not doing so."

Bob: "When we say giving in this context, we simply mean constantly and consistently providing immense value to others and understanding that doing so is not only a more fulfilling way of conducting business, it's the most financially profitable way as well."

Bob: "All things being equal, people will do business with and refer business to those people they know, like, and trust. There's no faster, more powerful, or more effective way to elicit those feelings toward you from others than by genuinely moving from that I-focus or Me-focus to an Other-focus."

You can connect with Bob and his work in the links below:

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bobburg

Website: https://thegogiver.com/

Podcast: https://thegogiver.com/podcast/

Order Bob’s books: https://thegogiver.com/order-now/

If you’re listening to the Peak Performance Selling Podcast, please subscribe, share, and send us your feedback.

LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/jordanbenjamin/

Website - http://mycoreos.com/

Podcast - https://www.mycoreos.com/podcast

Email - [email protected]

Twitter - https://twitter.com/jbenj09

In this episode of the Peak Performance Selling podcast, Jordan talks to Flockjay CEO Shaan Hathiramani. Shaan graduated from Harvard with a degree in Applied Mathematics, but moved on to the investment and finance world during the 2008 recession to better equip himself with knowledge needed to thrive in uncertain times.

Shaan talks about the shifts that he has seen in today’s sales teams, and why he is optimistic about the future. Today’s sales environment, he says, is veering away from the cutthroat, sink-or-swim environments and going towards collaboration and purpose-driven places. He also talks about the work that he is doing with Flockjay, a company that empowers upward mobility through education and access.

HIGHLIGHTS

Changing the face of sales education with Flockjay

We have many tools, just not the right ones

Salespeople want a purpose outside financial reward

Companies need to focus more on employee onboarding

Saleswork is changing for the better

Stop hanging on to your setbacks

Moving from hero culture to team culture

QUOTES

Shaan: "I've taught financial literacy on the side for 10 years. And that's when it really started to click. That these last mile skills that allow us to unlock our own potential, are often the light skills that aren't taught in institutional curriculum but are actually things that you learn through osmosis, through exposure to networks and peers and by just having an awareness of what are things that are future-proof in today's world."

Shaan: "When I talk to sales leaders, I think the biggest thing folks are realizing is that sellers want to learn from other sellers and we've got to figure ways as an industry to capture those best practices, to scale our amazing managers, to deliver coaching and feedback and to facilitate that peer learning."

Shaan: "I think purpose is the foundation of any high-performing or elite go-to-market organization. And it's that one thing that's so important yet I think so many folks in the industry have been conditioned to try to map that thing to a metric. Right.

We're so activity driven. It's like, if it isn't affecting time to productivity or revenue philosophy or any one of these things, then why should I care? But I think now, you know, folks are realizing that that purpose means everything."

Shaan: "I started Flockjay with a very clear purpose of empowering individuals to access their full potential for upward mobility. And everything we do from a product perspective, from a go-to-market perspective, from a sales perspective has to connect with that worldview. We think about this less as an input, and more as an output. If we're living and breathing our values and the purpose will be a product of all of that."

You can connect with Shaan and his work in the links below:

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/hathiramani

Website: https://flockjay.com/

If you’re listening to the Peak Performance Selling Podcast, please subscribe, share, and send us your feedback.

LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/jordanbenjamin/

Website - http://mycoreos.com/

Podcast - https://www.mycoreos.com/podcast

Email - [email protected]

Twitter - https://twitter.com/jbenj09

In this episode of the Peak Performance Selling podcast, Jordan talks to work futurist and international keynote speaker Sophie Wade. As a workforce innovation specialist, Sophie shares valuable insights on the future of work, particularly in terms of remote work and hybrid working arrangements that companies have had to adopt quickly, if not haphazardly because of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Sophie’s new book, Empathy Works: The Key to Competitive Advantage in the New Era of Work comes out May 3rd.

HIGHLIGHTS

The perspective that comes from working in different countries

Why some companies are struggling to adapt to remote work

Hybrid work will take some getting used to

When having employees with multiple jobs make sense

Business systems are not evolving in the same pace as technology

Most people don't know to do their best work

What is empathy?

Listen to your co-workers as much as you do with clients

Trust is the foundation of all good relationships

QUOTES

Sophie: "We can use empathy to learn a lot more about other people when we are asking questions and watching people's faces. And the key thing is really trying to sort of connect in all of these different dimensions as well as paying attention to what people's moods are and listening to their voice tones and all these kinds of things. When we really pay attention to all these things they give us a huge amount of information so we don't need to spend four hours on the golf course, as fun as that may be."

Sophie: "Everybody being in the office, or everybody being remote, those are the two easiest solutions because everybody is sort of in the same environment. When you have different schedules, and people coming back and forth, and some people may be fully in the office and some may be fully remote, some people in between, it is just more complicated. But the world is more complicated, and the way business is operating, never mind supply chain disruptions."

Sophie: "If we can understand each other and work together better, that's the principle. It doesn't change but the more that we can make progress towards that goal and have more productive interactions and have better collaboration meetings particular when we're trying to sort of deal with these gnarly issues that we're dealing with now, that's all making the workplace more enjoyable, more effective and we can also be improving our performance."

Sophie: "Empathy... is generally understanding someone else's perspective, like how they see the world. Like you don't see the same world the same way that I see the world, like me trying to understand that and then also tapping into how you experience it, to how you feel."

You can connect with Sophie and her work in the links below:

Website: https://www.sophiewade.com/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/asophiewade

Transforming Work with Sophie Wade (Podcast): https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/transforming-work-with-sophie-wade/id1502313782

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sophie-wade-380b8/

New Book (Preorder): https://www.sophiewade.com/writing/

If you’re listening to the Peak Performance Selling Podcast, please subscribe, share, and send us your feedback.

LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/jordanbenjamin/

Website - http://mycoreos.com/

Podcast - https://www.mycoreos.com/podcast

Email - [email protected]

Twitter - https://twitter.com/jbenj09

In this episode of the Peak Performance Selling podcast, Jordan talks to The Practice Lab’s co-founders, Jordana Zeldin and Jonathan Mahan. Backed by data and firsthand experience, Jordana and Jonathan talk about how salespeople work and what can be improved within the profession. As seasoned sales leaders, Jordana and Jonathan share how they developed the first-ever sales training program for Account Executives ready to develop their skills the way athletes, musicians and performers do.

HIGHLIGHTS

Be more human in your interactions

Make time for the important things first

Passive learning is never enough in sales

Reps need to dig deeper to find the real pain point

Understanding is the foundation of good recommendations

People want to feel good about what they do

Pay attention to your nutrition

QUOTES

Jonathan: "Time management. I started religiously time-blocking my calendar. The most important things, those that really moved the needle, I made space for. All the other fluff and bull crap had to find time around those blocks."

Jordana: "A big aspect of practice that Jon and I have borrowed from how every other discipline approaches skill development is really related to breaking down this big called selling into smaller moments and practicable micro behaviors that we can help sellers to grow awareness around, and then get their reps in."

Jordana: "We like to do kind of a kickoff party and get a sense from people of what they're hoping to get essentially, where they're hoping to be at the end of the quarter. What's fascinating for me and Jon to hear is that not one person said I wanna close more deals. Everyone said I want to feel better in my selling. I want to have greater awareness."

Jonathan: "I would say, in sales, I don't see people paying attention to it. I also say, in our entire country, in our entire culture, people don't pay attention to it. The more research you do into the power of food and how food truly is medicine for your body, the more you realize, we have everything backwards."

You can connect with Jonathan and Jordana in the links below:

LinkedIn (Jonathan Mahan): https://www.linkedin.com/in/jtmahan/

LinkedIn (Jordana Zeldin): https://www.linkedin.com/in/jordanazeldin/

Website: https://www.thepracticelab.co/

If you’re listening to the Peak Performance Selling Podcast, please subscribe, share, and send us your feedback.

LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/jordanbenjamin/

Website - http://mycoreos.com/

Podcast - https://www.mycoreos.com/podcast

Email - [email protected]

Twitter - https://twitter.com/jbenj09

Jordan talks to enterprise sales veteran Salman Mohiuddin. Salman, who has worked on some of the biggest deals with companies such as Salesforce, IBM, and Asana, talks about navigating the world of sales as a devout Muslim man who has stayed true to his beliefs. Salman also talks about believing in what you’re selling, and understanding that if you don’t believe in your product, your customers won’t either.

5 minutes to get into your body, breathe and set yourself for a great day