[SPEAKER_01]: This is Jeb Blunt, and it's Money Monday on the Sales Grady Podcast.
[SPEAKER_00]: This is Brad Adams, Senior Master Trainer at Sales Grady, and I'm filling in for Jeb Blunt, and you're listening to Money Monday.
[SPEAKER_00]: Today, we're talking about the artificial ceilings that we build in our own minds.
[SPEAKER_00]: Now, many people know about the four-minute mile, the story of Roger Bannister.
[SPEAKER_00]: On May 6, 1954, that was a long time ago, he broke through the legendary four-minute mile barrier with the time of three minutes, 59 and four-tenths of a second.
[SPEAKER_00]: Now, runners had been chasing that goal, seriously chasing that goal, since at least 1886.
[SPEAKER_00]: So for nearly 70 years, the most brilliant coaches, the most gifted athletes in North America, Europe, and Australia, drove against the clock and the clock always won.
[SPEAKER_00]: Frankly, it had become a massive psychological barrier as well as a physical one.
[SPEAKER_00]: Runners were able to get so close, but the closer they got, the more daunting it became.
[SPEAKER_00]: Until it wasn't, and you know what happened next, within weeks of banister breaking it, other runners started doing it too.
[SPEAKER_00]: Nelson Mandela famously said, it always seems impossible until it's done.
[SPEAKER_00]: Now sales quotas are very interesting concept to me.
[SPEAKER_00]: companies assign a quarter to their reps based on lag indicators and the revenue goes to the business.
[SPEAKER_00]: And that makes sense.
[SPEAKER_00]: And for most reps, their entire psychological target is to hit the quota.
[SPEAKER_00]: But that mindset can be deeply limiting.
[SPEAKER_00]: When your soul focus is on hitting quota, you're staring at a lag indicator.
[SPEAKER_00]: The salespeople who smash targets, who consistently move the bar higher and higher, the ultra-high performers, if you will, are not focused on what they're supposed to do.
[SPEAKER_00]: They look internally, and they focus on their own lead indicators and input behaviors rather than the revenue target itself.
[SPEAKER_00]: They focus on what is possible.
[SPEAKER_00]: or maybe even what others think is impossible.
[SPEAKER_00]: I worked with the client that sells capital equipment.
[SPEAKER_00]: For years, the highest monthly sales total ever was achieved by a single rep, and that stood at $750,000 worth of equipment.
[SPEAKER_00]: It was their four minute mile, and it was an unbreakable ceiling, but one year two reps exceeded $850,000 in the same exact month, and then nine months later, a rep beat $1 million in sales.
[SPEAKER_00]: I have another client in manufacturing where the top reps were selling a very highly respectable $400,000 a month, but at the end of the year there was one rep that broke the 1 million monthly threshold.
[SPEAKER_00]: They called a million dollar mic and he didn't do it just once as a fluke.
[SPEAKER_00]: He followed up with five out of the next six months where he sold over a million dollars in sales.
[SPEAKER_00]: I even saw it with a bank that I worked with.
[SPEAKER_00]: a junior relationship manager prospected into a business segment that the senior leadership explicitly told her would not bear fruit.
[SPEAKER_00]: She ignored the ceiling.
[SPEAKER_00]: And the following year, she won the sales rep of the year for the massive deposit accounts that she acquired.
[SPEAKER_00]: It was truly a hold-my-beer moment.
[SPEAKER_00]: These ultra-high performers don't stare at the quote on their spreadsheet, instead they stay laser-focused on four specific needle movers right these down.
[SPEAKER_00]: Needle mover one, ruthless targeting.
[SPEAKER_00]: Zig Ziglar famously said, if you aim at nothing, you will hit every time.
[SPEAKER_00]: Too many sales reps follow the fog the mirror approach.
[SPEAKER_00]: If a prospect is breathing and interested, they are a target.
[SPEAKER_00]: If you want to perform at the highest level, this is a trap.
[SPEAKER_00]: Instead, I want you to look at your very best clients.
[SPEAKER_00]: Who values you?
[SPEAKER_00]: Who's highly profitable?
[SPEAKER_00]: Where are those consistent niches?
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm not saying that you should only hunt whales.
[SPEAKER_00]: If you do that, you will live on a ramen noodle's budget between brief moments of abundance.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm talking about consistency with high impact clients.
[SPEAKER_00]: Be thoughtful about how you build your lists.
[SPEAKER_00]: be selective with who you're willing to engage, and change what good looks like.
[SPEAKER_00]: To take this to the next level, you need to build what we call an ideal customer profile or ICP.
[SPEAKER_00]: Sit down and look at your top five most profitable lowest friction clients.
[SPEAKER_00]: What do they have in common?
[SPEAKER_00]: Look at their employee count, their vertical, the specific trigger events that they went through before they bought from you and even the personality traits of the decision maker.
[SPEAKER_00]: When you reverse engineer your wins, you stop guessing.
[SPEAKER_00]: You stop burning precious daylight, pitching to people who will never buy you, who can't afford you, or who will waste your customer services team's time.
[SPEAKER_00]: True high performers spend more time disqualifying bad fits than I do chasing them, ensure your calendar is packed exclusively with high probability opportunities.
[SPEAKER_00]: You don't move your number two, guarding your time.
[SPEAKER_00]: Now, as sales gravy, we teach a lot of folks about managing their sales day.
[SPEAKER_00]: Reps who achieve greatness are laser-focused on how they spend every moment.
[SPEAKER_00]: They're obsessed with expanding their revenue-producing moments.
[SPEAKER_00]: We call them the Golden Hours, and aggressively decreasing non-producing activity.
[SPEAKER_00]: Don't delude yourself into thinking that to grow your sales, you must always be available to put out fires, handle admin or answer every internal distraction.
[SPEAKER_00]: That mindset is going to hold you back.
[SPEAKER_00]: Do not allow yourself or others to interrupt your high value prospecting time.
[SPEAKER_00]: If you want to master this, you must introduce this concept of golden hours.
[SPEAKER_00]: These are the blocks of time during your day when your prospects and customers are most active and likely to engage.
[SPEAKER_00]: your phone is put away in silence, your email notifications are turned off, and your internal messaging apps are set to do not disturb.
[SPEAKER_00]: You are not an administrative assistant, you are a pipeline builder, and if a client has a fire, you deal with it outside of your prime prospecting blocks.
[SPEAKER_00]: When you treat your day like a surgeon treats an operating room, completely sterile from outside influences and distractions, your pipeline will explode.
[SPEAKER_00]: It'll move for number three, systemic consistency.
[SPEAKER_00]: Reps who achieve impossible heights, don't show up to work and ask,
[SPEAKER_00]: What am I going to do today?
[SPEAKER_00]: Who should I call next?
[SPEAKER_00]: They have a process and a system and they follow their plan and crucially they review and track their data to find out those minor 1% improvements that give them a higher output, have a plan, review the plan, and carve out time periodically to adjust it to current market conditions.
[SPEAKER_00]: Think of consistency as compounding interest for your pipeline.
[SPEAKER_00]: For example, the reps who hit a million dollar month don't do it by dialing 300 times on a random Tuesday because they panicked about their numbers.
[SPEAKER_00]: They do it by executing their system at free single day, whether it feels good or not.
[SPEAKER_00]: They build a personal playbook that dictates exactly how many touches a prospect gets across what channels and at what frequency.
[SPEAKER_00]: More importantly, they log their metrics.
[SPEAKER_00]: They know their exact conversion ratios from dials to conversation, conversation to meeting.
[SPEAKER_00]: And by tracking these behavioral lead indicators, they can audit their own performance, tweak their messaging, and they can spot pipeline bottlenecks before they turn into a dry spell.
[SPEAKER_00]: Needle mover number four, invest in yourself.
[SPEAKER_00]: Michael Jordan, who I personally think is the goat, and I'm sure a lot of people will debate this at a personal coach.
[SPEAKER_00]: Tiger Woods, out of coach, Oprah Winfrey, Barack Obama, some of the greatest minds and athletes in human history maintain and elevate their greatness because they invest in themselves.
[SPEAKER_00]: They ask questions, they invest in training.
[SPEAKER_00]: They focus on their health.
[SPEAKER_00]: their minds and their craft, keep yourself physically fit, drink water, eat the right foods, meditate, find a mentor, keep an open mind, and aggressively apply what you learn.
[SPEAKER_00]: Abraham Lincoln is quoted as saying that if you give me six hours to chop down a tree, I'll spend the first four hours sharpening my axe.
[SPEAKER_00]: The sharpest blade gets dull if you never stop to hone it, investing in yourself means dedicating time every single week, every single month to professional development and mental clarity.
[SPEAKER_00]: Read books that challenge your perspective.
[SPEAKER_00]: Listen to master classes on advanced negotiation and actively roleplay your discovery questions with peers who will push you.
[SPEAKER_00]: But don't stop at the intellectual side, your physical energy dictates your sales presence.
[SPEAKER_00]: Sales is a high stamina sport.
[SPEAKER_00]: If you show up to your desk, dehydrated, sleep deprived, and fueled by cheap fast food, your voice will lack conviction, your resilience will be low, and your prospects will feel that lack of energy.
[SPEAKER_00]: Treat yourself like an elite athlete because when your mind and body are operating at peak capacity, your confidence becomes bulletproof.
[SPEAKER_00]: When you stay laser focused on your process, your execution, and your personal growth,
[SPEAKER_00]: far beyond the limitations that your company or the market has set for you.
[SPEAKER_00]: Stop looking at your quota, focus on target clients, ruthlessly guard your time, execute with consistency and invest in yourself every single week.
[SPEAKER_00]: When you do these four things, you will rise way past whatever goal your company has put on paper and you will set a completely new bar and show your entire
[SPEAKER_00]: This has been Brad Adams on Money Monday.
[SPEAKER_00]: Thanks for listening today.
[SPEAKER_00]: Now, go bust through your four-minute mile.
[SPEAKER_00]: Keep filling your pipeline and let's get after it.
[SPEAKER_01]: I ain't never going back again I need some sea notes, some cheddar and a stack of ants I need a bowl of dough, all need no face for friends I need a pack of snaps, a handful of feeding wipes, a rubber band, and all my green bags Looked out, don't be playing with my pay body, and every day I sit That's why I brought my little scraper