It's World Muffin Day. Is it? It is. I know. We're gonna go and get you a muffin after this. I know you've been looking forward to one. It's the 20th of February. So get your trumpet out.
Because here they come. Robbers, perverts, killers and tyrants gather for your inspection their so-called pleasures. Marcus Aurelius meditations. Pleasures. People chase them, don't they? It wouldn't be a sales stoic conversation without talking about somebody in sales who has maybe ruined the word salesman. god.
His name's Jordan Belfort. Jordan. Formerly known as the Wharf of Salford Crescent. And by Salford Crescent, I mean Wall Street. Have you seen the film? I've seen it a lot of times and I thoroughly enjoy it. Did you? I enjoy everything it stands for. Did you ever base your personality when you were 21, 22 working in sales on Jordan Belfort? Definitely. think everyone first set out sales certainly did. Why are you saying it like that? What?
like you know something. know a lot of things. Robbers, perverts, killers and tyrants. Yes. How are you all four in one? I don't know. I don't know. It's a skill. It's a skill. But he he was he's a bit better these days. He talks about it more ethically, but I think he was corrupt, wasn't he? And he did what he wanted to do to fulfill his own needs. And a lot of salespeople do this. And I think that salespeople forget it's about serving.
and sales is helping others. And can I see the problems that you're facing and can I help you solve them? Yeah. Yeah, exactly. And then often when I think about the Wolf of Wall Street, he started off with the right intentions, didn't he? He started off, he went to Wall Street and he's looking around thinking, OK, this is exciting. There's something going on here. He goes and has a... He goes and has the lunch. Yeah.
And the guy's like, no, doesn't really work. It works differently than you think. Okay. And then suddenly he's found as a loophole in things and he's running away with it. It's getting bigger and bigger and the lies getting bigger and bigger and it falls away with him. But he started out with the right intentions. He was corrupted along the way. I find salespeople typically will try and find the loopholes and there is a funny thing about like
innovators and like some of the best inventors are just lazy people and they're looking for good solutions. But there also is that, I trying to find the easiest way to do this? especially when like booking meetings, like, what are the intentions? Will I get rewarded on people that just like anything that I book in the diary? So I'll just get anything over the line. Well, is it best for them? Like, like we've got to think about the prospect and are we actually helping them solve the problem? Not about you and your commission check.
And so we, we talk a lot about like realistic desired future state. Yes, we do. We've added the word realistic there, haven't we? We have. expectations meets reality is the level of happiness that you want to get to. And salespeople have this habit of selling things at perfect. Does it do this? Yeah, we're the best at that.
and they sell this idea of it's gonna be perfect when we work together. But what they're often left with is maybe if it's something great, something good, something that has a few teething problems but works out in the end, the experience for the customer is that was a bit disappointing because I was expecting perfect. So that's one angle of it. But the reason we put realistic desired future in here is we'd speak to people who'd say, I'd know this was working if I booked
Um, if we close the deal in the first month and say, okay, how long is your sales cycle? Six months. Right. So then is it reasonable to assume a deal or closing the first month? Well, no, but you said you were really good. No, but I don't sit the meetings though. You'd okay. Fine. Well then. All right. Fair enough. Well, let's say that we're having good conversations in the first month. Then I'd know that it was working then right now we've gone to a realistic expectation. Come from unrealistic to realistic.
And there's definitely, Sarah is in the early part of the business where people have maybe come to conclusions because we've not had that conversation. It's an essential conversation to have because they will, I thought you'd be able to do this based on what we never had the conversation around what you actually hoping to get out of this and where you're planting that flag of expectation. it realistic? salespeople like you don't want to be going out there finding new clients to replace your old clients every single month. What you want is repeat business.
customers that are happy and finding out what that looks like. Like if you can find customers that want to be with you for life and you've got something that's repeatable, that's the best place to be. Why? Because then you don't have that feast of famine where you're constantly going, well, we've lost five new clients. We need to go and find seven to sustain this month. You want to be in a position where you're saying, everyone's doing it. We're going to find new business because we want to grow and we want to achieve our beehives. Nice.
Nice. Thank you. No worries. I've been Jack Frimston. I've been Zack Thompson. Remember you would die. Don't be a Robert. Be a rubber.
