Eat What You Kill

1

Introduction to Mindset

You might be champing at the bit to dive into the details of what to say to prospects so you can close more sales. We're going to cover all of that, but first we have to address the super-important subject of mindset.

If the word mindset sounds too woo-woo for you, just think of it as the unspoken thoughts rattling around inside your head. I know you have those, because we all do. Whether you realize it or not, you have stories that you silently tell yourself about your strengths and weaknesses, your past performance, your future goals and expectations, your prospects and customers, and what defines success, mediocrity, and failure. Those statements and stories are always there, whether you notice them or not.

This really matters because, as Brian Tracy put it, "Sales success is 80 percent attitude and only 20 percent aptitude." Your subconscious attitude might be telling you that you're the best salesperson in the world, or a total loser, or somewhere in between-and you will act accordingly. Once you accept that 80 percent of your results flow from unspoken or even unnoticed beliefs, you'd better get really freaking good at shaping those beliefs.

In this section we will go beyond the usual rah-rah motivational sayings, to help you adopt the full mindset of a high-performing sales carnivore. You'll get a lot more clarity about your goals, your perceptions of what you can (and can't) accomplish, and your attitudes about competition, rejection, and much more.

Success has to start in your head before it can be manifested in reality. So let's change the stories you tell yourself, which will change your state of mind, which will then change your results. I've seen this happen in my own life and career, a story I told in depth in my previous book, The Self Xperience.

My view of success has been shaped by four simple but universal laws that smart people have been noticing for centuries.

The first is the law of attraction, also known as manifestation, which some dismiss as a superstition. But it's really human psychology, not anything supernatural. If you want to see real progress in your results, you have to set explicit goals and remind yourself of those goals every day. Become obsessed with your goals, whether that's hitting a certain income level, improving your closing ratio, or something else. Visualize in your mind's eye what your life will look like once you get there.

One effective tactic is to let yourself feel like you've already achieved those goals, by writing affirmations in the present or past tense, not the future (for example, "I made $100,000" rather than "I will make $100,000"). If you repeat such affirmations daily, you will subconsciously begin to do the action steps that will drive the success you seek. As the saying goes, sometimes you have to see it to believe it, but sometimes you have to believe it before you can see it.

The second law is the law of gravity. When Isaac Newton saw an apple fall from a tree in 1666, he realized that an invisible force is pulling everything downward. Gravity is neither good nor bad; it's just reality. When that apple hit the ground, that was where it was supposed to be at that moment. You, too, are wherever you're supposed to be at this point in your journey-so there's no need to be discouraged by your current status.

I look at this from a religious perspective, but even if you don't believe that God shapes our paths, the law of gravity still applies. We're all on a unique journey that may not make sense until we get near the end. Some of us have a rockier path, and some have a smoother path, but we're all doing our best against the gravity pulling us downward. Therefore we're all worthy of respect, no matter where we currently stand. Never trash-talk yourself by thinking something like I'm not worthy yet, but I will be after I hit my goals. That's not true! The mere act of living and pushing back against gravity makes you worthy.

The third law is one I made up, the law of GOYA. That's an acronym for GET OFF YOUR ASS. So many people think they can just think or meditate their way to success. But all of your thinking, including all the mindset tactics in this section of the book, needs to lead to action. Thinking without action won't help you.

When you embrace the law of attraction, the law of gravity, and the law of GOYA, they combine to drive the law of allowance: You will ultimately reap what you sow. When you project your goals into the world with intention, resist gravity without getting discouraged, and work hard, you will harvest good results, at the appropriate time during your unique journey.

If you have faith in these laws, take action to practice them, and stay patient, they will work their magic. The results you seek will start to follow.

2

Victim, Survivor,
or Conqueror?

You might hear some complicated theories about different mindsets, but to me there are only three basic ones: victim, survivor, and conqueror. The one you choose will give you very different ways of reacting and responding to adversity.

I've seen the victim mindset in a surprising number of people who go into sales. They always deny it, due to their lack of self-awareness. But the dead giveaway is that people with a victim mindset always self-justify when something goes wrong. They never take responsibility for any problems.

When I managed reps who thought like victims, they'd say, "I can't hit my sales targets because . . ." and the reason was always something external. Maybe they didn't have enough training. Or the product was bad, or too expensive. Or the neighborhood sucked, or the list of leads they were given had no potential. Or the sales script wasn't effective. No matter what the excuse, there was never even a dim awareness that maybe they needed to study more, practice more, work harder, and take responsibility for their own performance.

I'd reply that other reps (myself included) were doing far better with the exact same training, products, neighborhoods, leads, and scripts. In fact, some of us were killing it. If all those factors were really the problem, the company would be going out of business instead of thriving. So I'd say, "Maybe, just maybe, this might be a you problem rather than a company problem." Sometimes I'd knock doors with them for a few hours in the same neighborhood, just to show what was possible if they'd stop thinking like victims and work on their self-development.

The survivor mindset is one step up from the victim, because survivors do take personal responsibility. As a result they get better outcomes than victims. But the big problem for survivors is that they set the bar too low. They focus on the bare minimum required to meet their basic needs, and if they hit that number, they're happy. Survivors struggle with ambition and can't seem to imagine a bigger vision of what's possible.

A typical survivor sales rep will first look at his basic needs, which I call a nut. Let's say he's young and single, and every month he spends $1,000 on rent, $500 on a car payment, $500 on groceries and utilities, and $1,000 for everything else, including fun. That's a $3,000 nut, which adds up to $36,000 a year after taxes. If this survivor can make $45,000 after taxes, he can cover his nut and save a little for the future, and he'll feel good about it. If he breaks $50,000, he'll feel like a rock star. In other words he's not dreaming big, or even dreaming medium.

Now imagine that this survivor gets on a hot streak one quarter and nets $25,000-double his usual commissions. It's the best quarter of his life, and he's thrilled. But instead of seeing this as a floor for what's possible in the future, he sees it as a ceiling. He starts to get complacent, because he's already covered $25K of his $36K annual nut, so he feels like he can take things easy for a while. Maybe he'll put in fewer hours, or sell with less intensity. He'll try to coast on that burst of success without downgrading his lifestyle.

This kind of complacency will do almost as much damage as a victim mentality. If you're just doing enough to survive, you won't come anywhere close to approaching the true limits of your potential.

The third mindset type, the conqueror, neither blames the world for failures nor defines success as merely getting by. He's looking to compete and excel. He thinks, If that guy is making X, I bet I can do even better. If the company record for monthly sales is $300,000, the conqueror is gunning to break it. He's always looking for the next hill to climb. It's not even mostly about the money-it's about the excitement of setting a big goal and then nailing it. After that, the conqueror will set another big goal, because that adrenaline rush is addictive.

But there's a downside of the conqueror mentality that I call a success void. After every hill you climb, you start back at the bottom of another hill, maybe a bigger hill. And you might have a moment of thinking, Oh crap! Now what? If your greatest happiness comes from conquering, you might start to think you suck if you ever stop conquering.

What will happen if you eventually slow down, make less money, maybe get out of shape and lose your youthful good looks? Will everyone in your life abandon you? A conqueror needs to make time for family and friends and other sources of joy, not just setting new personal bests.

I used to be the number-one sales rep at one of the largest direct-to-consumer companies in the country, Vivint. One year the company gave me a huge trophy at the annual awards meeting-it must have weighed fifty pounds. But as I walked up for the presentation, I looked at the crowd and I could tell that nobody really gave a crap. I got some congratulations and some polite applause, but then it was on to the next people getting other awards. I had to wrestle with the truth that being number one is great, but it's not everything.

I still think the conqueror mindset is by far the best. You should definitely be looking for mountains to climb. You should maximize every ounce of your potential. But that mindset can fill in only part of the puzzle of success and happiness. You also have to learn to love yourself and other people, and make time for everything else that's also super important. We'll return to that theme later in the book.

3

Would You Rather
Be a W-2 or a 1099?

There are two basic kinds of relationships between a worker and an employer. The tax jargon is W-2 versus 1099, but the difference goes way beyond taxes.

If you work for wages or a salary, every year the company sends you a W-2 statement that you have to file with your federal taxes. It means you're being paid for your time, whether by the hour, the week, or the year.

If you're an independent contractor, you get a 1099 statement instead of a W-2. This means you're being paid not for your time but for the value you bring to the company, through sales commissions or other fees.

The herbivore mindset is that it's safer to be a W-2, paid for your time. It's predictable and consistent. Maybe your job comes with medical insurance, a 401(k) plan, or other benefits. Those things may not add up to a lot, but at least you know what you're getting, even if you just do the bare minimum expected. Of course, that's assuming you don't get fired or laid off.

The carnivore mindset is that it's better to be a 1099, paid for your value. That's riskier because if you don't generate value, you won't get paid anything. And you won't get insurance, a 401(k), paid vacation time, etc.

But the upside of a 1099 career is unlimited potential. You eat what you kill, so you can control how much you need to work or want to work to reach your goals. You control how much vacation time you can take. You never have to beg your boss for a day off. You won't be trapped in the permanent grind, working sixty plus hours a week for fifty weeks a year, if you can make the money you need in less time. In short, a 1099 gives you both maximum freedom and a maximum incentive to work hard and make the most of every hour you put in.

For most of our grandparents, a steady paycheck was a badge of honor and success. But now it can easily become a trap that keeps you from approaching your true earning potential. A W-2 person can fall into the mindset of depending on their boss or company to set up the conditions for success, such as providing strong inbound sales leads. That kind of dependency can make you feel helpless, like you can't succeed unless someone else does the prospecting for you.

In contrast, a 1099 person is usually generating their own leads. Hunting for prospects. Being creative. Solving problems. Betting on themselves. Not waiting around for anyone's help.

When I got recruited to be the VP of sales at Solcius, they told me it was a W-2 position with a good base salary, but a cap on commissions. I replied, "Hell no! I want to be commission only, and I want to make you write such huge commission checks that you'll be crying. I want to be the highest earner at this company!"

The CEO looked at me like I was crazy as I pitched my counteroffer.

"The more I sell and the more my team sells, the more you make, right? So why would you want to put a cap on how much you make?"

I then explained two other nonnegotiable conditions, on top of being a 1099.

First, they had to agree in writing that they wouldn't punish me or try to change my commission if I made way more than everybody else in this company. "My last company freaked out because I was making too much money and creating too many new customers for them to process. So they fired me. I can't have that again."

Second, they also had to agree that it was the company's responsibility to ramp up operations to handle all the business I was about to generate. "I can't have customers complaining that it's taking them weeks or months to get installations or get their loans approved. I'm going to close more deals faster than anyone you've worked with before. If my customers get pissed off at processing delays, that's bad for all of us. So you have to hire as many installation crews and loan processors as it takes to keep up."