Breaking Sales

How has honest but difficult feedback helped shape the individual members of the Lappin180 coaching team for the better? In this behind-the-scenes episode, Dan, Pam, and Kristie share the stories behind the toughest feedback they have ever received, and how it has helped them learn, grow, and achieve better outcomes. This conversation highlights why feedback is so essential to personal and professional growth at all stages of life.

Our innate instinct to label things as bad may have worked to protect us 20,000 years ago, but it often works against us in today’s modern world. How are people that work in the most high-stakes roles able to keep their composure despite the elevated sense of urgency? In this episode of Breaking Sales, Dan shares how his recent conversations with pediatricians treating the sickest children have continued to shape his thinking around the power of detachment. Dan and Pam discuss how these extreme examples of using detachment can be very useful in helping us stay calm and poised in difficult conversations. They also examine why we label potential threats through the lens of evolutionary psychology, and why this runs counter to the demands of today’s conversations and experiences.

How can you be certain that your day-to-day activities are helping you achieve your goals? Additionally, how do you identify opportunities that you may have missed, so you can capture them the next time around? In this snippet, Pam shares why metrics are fundamental to knowing whether or not you are growing in your business, and what metrics you need to understand whether or not you are making progress. To hear the full episode, scroll back to Episode 71: You Can’t Grow Until You Measure.

High-performance is heavily influenced by your choices. There are studies that suggest that those who seek immediate gratification are less successful than those who delay gratification. Do you sacrifice the present for the future? Or do you give up the future to indulge in the present? This is not an easy question. Join Dan and Pam as they explore how our choices either promote or hinder our routines, commitments, and sense of fulfillment. In this episode, you’ll hear some interesting perspectives on the relationship between commitment and choices that will help you frame your thinking and decide what viewpoints you do and don’t agree with.

Your prospects are constantly being sold to, and as a result, they have developed a series of biases that help them filter out what conversations are going to be helpful or harmful to them. This reaction is primal, based on instinct that dates back tens of thousands of years. Even a referral from a trusted source may not be enough for them to let down their guard. What can sales professionals do to ease the prospect’s initial uncertainty and innate lack of trust? In this episode of Breaking Sales, Dan and Pam explore how you can level the playing field with your prospects and clients so that both parties can enter the conversation with more courage and curiosity. They’ll explore the psychology behind the beginning of human interactions and what you can do to make a positive early impact.

Get to know the Lappin180 team in this bonus episode of Breaking Sales. In this candid conversation, you’ll get a behind-the-scenes look at coaching and gain insights on how teams operate and build relationships over time. Dan, Pam, and Kristie share their journeys to becoming coaches, the dynamics that allow them to function as a team, and reminisce about some of the successes and challenges they’ve faced together along the way.

Sharing your credentials with prospects may seem like a strong way to demonstrate your value, but in reality, leaning on your past accomplishments to convey your worth stems from insecurity and scarcity. Worse, while your prospective clients may be able to gain a lot from your experience and expertise, putting it at the forefront of your conversations to prove your capability and worth may actually have a negative effect. In this snippet, Dan explores why credentialing is a common pitfall for professionals, and how pitching your solution or expertise can unintentionally trigger the wrong reaction from your prospect. To hear the full conversation, scroll back to Episode 69,” Sharing Your Credentials Can Damage Your Credibility.”

Assertiveness and persistence can add value to a conversation, but only if aligned with helping the other person assess their circumstances more honestly. Neither should be practiced to advance your agenda. How do you know when it is time to slow down and assert? In this episode of Breaking Sales, Dan continues his conversation with management consultant Kirsten Markley, to explore how curiosity, assertiveness, slowing down, and persistence all work together to create conversations that build trust and differentiate.

It’s human nature to revert to our routines when under pressure. If you’ve been taught to sell or position value, then you’ve grown accustomed to defaulting to your expertise when pressured by the prospect. You lead with competency in hopes the prospect will eventually “get” your point. Unfortunately, this doesn’t work as often as we’d like, and it often leaves us feeling disconnected and chasing the prospect for a decision. On this episode of Breaking Sales, Dan sits down with management consultant veteran Kirsten Markley to explore how she uses curiosity to learn and build trust, and take share of wallet away from the better well known competitors in her space.

Explaining why your product, service, or expertise is a better alternative isn’t enough. Decisions are not made based on benefits alone. There might be many “pros” in your prospect choosing to do business with you, but it’s the perceived risks, discomfort, and hurdles that will hold them back. In this episode of Breaking Sales, Dan and Pam continue their exploration into the psychology of decision-making. They share some personal experiences that have helped them better understand why it’s human nature to rationalize and avoid change, and provide examples of questions you can ask to slice through your prospect’s decision biases.

The purpose of any traditional sales conversation is to help the prospect objectively assess and debate how or if they should make a change to your product, service, or expertise. This requires enough self-awareness to minimize their biases, identify their attachments, and control their fears. Does your current conversation process and strategy account for this? In this episode of Breaking Sales, Dan and Pam discuss the psychology behind decision-making and explore how human beings approach and debate difficult choices. We’ll explore how facts alone are rarely enough to form a decision, and that it’s most often the relationship between perceived risks and gains that determine your fate.

In a world filled with endless distractions, willpower is our first line of defense against procrastination, and one of the greatest tools we have to accomplish our goals. But is willpower a finite resource, or one that we can learn to manage, grow, and expand? In this snippet, Pam shares how she uses willpower to manage distraction, and offers an approach to discipline that you can use to stay focused and achieve your goals. To hear the full episode, scroll back to Episode 78: “Stress or Freedom—the Many Perspectives of Discipline.”

What you achieve, create, or experience in your professional and personal journey is reflective of your mindset. When decoding the world around you - your thoughts follow a thinking pattern. This routine dictates the actions you take, or don’t take. So if you want to achieve, create, or experience something more or different - strengthen your mindset. Gratitude is a simple and powerful place to start. In the final part of my conversation with Chris Schembra, a gratitude expert and the author of Wall Street Journal bestseller Gratitude Through Hard Times, we explore the connection between gratitude and how we think and the actions we take. As well as the impact of negative biographical experiences, and how to shift them to positive.

Is gratitude simply an altruistic way of thinking? Does it have a tangible impact on the challenges we face, and the relationships we attract and build each day? The answer - yes! It strengthens you and those around you. In this episode of Breaking Sales, Dan sat down with Chris Schembra, a gratitude expert and the author of WSJ bestseller Gratitude Through Hard Times to discuss. Chris shares how and why you should begin your gratitude journey, and how a gratitude practice will strengthen your connection with prospects, clients, teammates, family, and friends.

Rejection, self-doubt, imposter syndrome, or simple uncertainty—any one of them can cause anxiety, hesitation, and frustration. All of them reside in your mindset, and it’s often very difficult to consistently shake them. Enter gratitude. Whether preparing for a big sales call, leadership moment, or family dynamic, gratitude is a practice that can calm your nerves, instill conviction, and strengthen courage. Meet my guest, Chris Schembra, a gratitude expert and the author of “Gratitude and Pasta,” along with his latest book, “Gratitude Through Hard Times.” In this episode of Breaking Sales, Chris enlightens us on how practicing gratitude can reshape one's mindset to foster resilience and help us become more resolute in our actions.

When in a conversation, the process of seeking to understand the other person is core to building trust. In this Snippet, Pam and Dan discuss how to use questions to help your prospect become more objective as they evaluate your value and expertise. To hear the full conversation, scroll back to Episode 91—Your Mindset Impacts Your Results Pt 2.

Changing your mindset is essential for growth, and yet it remains a vague process and destination for so many. Yes, the word is overused and misused. It’s the absolute determining factor in how you perform and the trust you build in a conversation. It’s the crucial difference between the same results you’ve always experienced and moving into a realm of higher performance. In this episode, Dan continues his conversation with commercial real estate professional and Lappin180 client Jeff Vertun to explore what it took for him to analyze and evolve his mindset. They also look at how changing his mindset translated to the real world by breaking down a meeting that Jeff recently had between his team and a prospect.

Theory, methodology, ideology: life’s full of intriguing concepts, but in the end, success comes down to the risk (and reward) of taking action. In this episode, Dan speaks with commercial real estate professional and Lappin180 client Jeff Vertun to explore what it means to change your mindset, and how this directly impacts your ability to connect with your prospects by being curious (instead of hiding behind your competencies).

For the past three years, the Breaking Sales podcast has explored how sales professionals and leaders can develop a high-performance mindset. Now, we’re looking back at the most poignant moments to create the Best Of series, where we feature curated segments on select topics to help you approach your sales conversations and prospecting with more intentionality. In this episode, we will take a look at several clips focused on how to conduct your sales conversations with the prospect’s best interests in mind, not your own. We call this high-intent or benevolence. It runs counter to the low-intent mindset that many sales professionals have as they try to persuade their way to closing the deal. We’ll visit conversations on asking tough and meaningful questions, the power of staying in the moment when listening, and give a real-world example with guest Stephen Shedletzky of how he applies benevolence in his own business.

The Breaking Sales podcast has released hundreds of episodes exploring how sales professionals and leaders can develop a high-performance mindset. Now, we’re looking back at our favorite moments to create the Best Of series, where we feature curated segments on select topics to help you approach your conversations and relationships with more intentionality. In this episode, we will take a look at several clips focused on the relationship between abundance and scarcity, and how mastering these tactics can help you in your prospecting. We’ll examine the psychology behind scarcity and abundance and how to avoid falling into common pitfalls that signal scarcity to your clients.