Special Guest Scott Welle

0:04 Thank you for joining us on the Winning and Selling podcast. I'm Bill Hellkamp of Reach Development Systems and with me is Professor Scott Plum of the Minnesota Sales Institute. Peak Performance isn't luck. It's a choice. Top sales professionals don't just work harder. They work smarter, optimizing their mindset and habits and energy to consistently win. Today we will discuss science-backed strategies to stay motivated and to reject and operate at a higher level.

0:32 You will also discover how to manage your energy, build resistance and implement habits that drive sales success. Don't leave your performance to chance. Level up and unlock your full potential as Bill and I interviewed. Performance expert Scott Welling about Peak Performance for Sales Professionals on Episode 654 of the Winning and Selling podcast. We've had Scott on before. I'm looking forward to this conversation. I've seen him speak plenty of times and it's always good.

1:02 We are not going to do our book club today. We are in the One Thing by Gary Keller. Next week get ready to listen at Chapter 7 and 8. So if you're reading along, Chapter 7 and 8 in the One Thing. So I'm excited about talking with Scott Welling. Again, I've been a fan, Bill. I know you've been a fan for many, many years. I think we've known Scott for at least. I don't have any pictures of him signing or anything. I'm not that kind of a fan. I don't have his baseball card.

1:28 I don't have a bobble head of him. I have a bobble head of everybody but not Scott. That fandom, you know, not a big fan of that. He's written a few books and his word is outperform the norm. So outperformers are not born. They're made. We all have the capacity to raise our game. And Scott Welling has spent 15 plus years helping people do just that. Personally and professionally Scott Welling's 10 best-selling books, articles, videos and podcasts, online programs inspire millions of people worldwide.

2:01 He has a master's degree in sports psychology and was named the 2021 Midwest Motivational Speaker of the Year. For fun and because he's kind of a little crazy, he's completed 34 and competed. 34 marathons, five iron man's and a 100 mile ultimate marathon and serves others by showing them how to challenge their self-limiting beliefs and inspired to outperform every single day. So great to have you with us Scott. The last time you were here and some of our listeners remember that episode, it was in November of 2022.

2:33 So what's changed since then? What's changed since the last time we've talked? Oh boy, where do I even begin? Let's see if it was November of 2022. I would have gotten married since then. So that was probably the biggest life change. That's been going amazingly well. Appreciate it. Business is going great also. May have published one book since then. I'm not even sure I would have to go back and look at my timeline. But honestly, just one book that's a little disappointing. You should have had three or four done in that two years.

3:09 I'm doing my best, Bill. Not everybody. Not everybody can be you. Oh yeah, with none. I got a lot of ideas. But if I remember right, you got married on my birthday, Scott. And I think about you every time it's my birthday and I'm sure you think about me on your every wedding anniversary that you have. April 28th? Yes, that is it. Wow. Okay. I guess that's the reason that you didn't show up because I mean, I sent you that invite and you were the only person that did RSVP and I didn't even get an invite.

3:42 You're just got lost in the mail. You invited everybody almost in Minneapolis except me. Got lost in the mail. I promise I sent it. So let's dive into it. I think you got a lot of stuff, a lot of great stuff to share with our listeners. And your background is in the sports physiology, philosophy, et cetera. And salespeople overlap a little bit when it comes to holding them backs, holding salespeople back on conceptual beliefs that don't support a productive behavior.

4:12 What's the biggest thing that you've seen that holds athletes back and then also holds salespeople back in life or work? Yeah. So I mean, my background is loosely in physiology, but I really want to sit in psychology. This psychology and peak performance psychology and physiology are the same because they started with P's. Exactly. I think they're all the same. Go ahead. You can sound super smart and just call it psychophysiology.

4:39 I used to say that all the time just because I was like, wow, look at the big brain on Brad. I mean, honestly, I think the single biggest thing that holds us all back, whether we're talking about athletes or sales professionals or anybody is just simply belief systems because belief systems govern literally all of our thoughts, all of our feelings, all of our behaviors, and in turn, all of our results.

5:07 And the simplest way to explain belief systems is it's just a story that we're all telling ourselves and we're all doing it. We're telling ourselves a story about us, about our customer, our prospect, about others, about the world. And I think the simplest part, and it sounds really common sense, but it's just not always common practice. The starting point to being able to get the best out of you and being able to, I think, perform at your peak potential is to actually ask yourself, what is the story?

5:37 That I'm telling myself at any point in time. And is it a good story? And is it really serving either my prospecting efforts, my referral efforts, you know, my best self on the personal field of play? Like, again, it sounds really, really simple, but those belief systems govern literally every single thing that we do. And I think a lot of people just aren't self aware enough to even know at any given point in time what story they're telling themselves about a given situation. So start there.

6:09 Scott, that was the thing that was striking me as you were saying that because I understand what you're saying and I believe what you're saying. But we're so used to lying to ourselves that quite often we can't even see that story. Just what you're saying. We can't see that story that we're telling ourselves. We can't understand where the barriers are. How can we overcome that? How can we find ourselves telling ourselves the truth? Can other people help us?

6:36 What can we do to get through those constraints? We don't even see? Yeah, I think you can come at it a couple of different ways. Certainly, you know, surround yourself with people. I've tried to do this in my own life. People that don't always tell you what you want to hear, but tell you what you need to hear. So hopefully we're all surrounded by maybe loving people that support us, but also challenge us from time to time and can recognize if we're not telling ourselves a good story in a given area.

7:06 I think that can certainly be some ways to or a way to uncover perhaps some limiting beliefs. I just think another way is to just literally get a little bit more in touch with what is the story I am telling. And the way that I sometimes explain it is one of my favorite things about watching sports these days doesn't matter what sport it is football, basketball, golf, baseball, hockey can literally be anything. Is when you get to hear athletes mic'd up, like mic'd up in the heat of competition and mic'd up what I mean is what do they say into another competitor? What do they say into a teammate? What are they saying in the huddle?

7:42 And I always just say the self-awareness part of if we were to just mic you up as far as what you say to yourself every single day, what would we hear? Because so often what we say to ourselves is nothing that we would ever say to a husband, wife, a partner, a son or a daughter, a prospect, a customer, kind of, etc. And asking yourself what's the story I'm telling when you mic yourself up that way. I think it's a starting point to self-awareness and uncovering those things.

8:12 But most of those things, those negative things we say to ourselves, we say quietly. We say silently, right? There are things we would never say out loud. I know for myself when I have to do a training session to kind of get myself up for that. I start to use positive affirmations out loud to silence that negative quiet voice. Yeah, and one quick tip I can give you for this, which is different than the way that a lot of people do affirmations.

8:42 And I literally just saw an article on this yesterday, but I've been doing this for a long period of time. Is when you are giving yourself affirmations, don't say, don't say, I'm good enough, I'm smart enough and endog on it, people like me. Don't actually say the I part. Step outside of it and use your own name. So like, Bill, if you're doing it, say, Bill, I'm good enough. Bill, I'm smart enough and dog on it, people like that part of actually using your own name.

9:14 Now you remove yourself from the situation in a good way. And it's like someone else giving you affirming beliefs about who you are, what you can do, what you're capable of, kind of, etc. That is different than just the okay, I, I, I, and it just hits and it resonates a different way. A lot of people don't know that. Should we should we say, Bill, you are smart enough or Bill, I am smart enough. Should we do it to that third person? Yep, the third person.

9:44 Bill, you got this, Bill, pick up the phone, Bill, ask for the referral, Bill, close the sale. Like that, that part of it. Yep, third person. In addition to that Scott, I've heard that sometimes when you use it in the present text, it also is more affirming too. So I can say I weigh 200 pounds. And I start thinking and acting like I weigh 200 pounds, which means I got to manage my eating, other alcohol consumption and activity.

10:12 And I got to manage those three areas. I think about you running 34 marathons and I'm going to ask, you know, what's your favorite single malt Scotch? And I don't think you have one. I don't see Scott, come on now. I got to be honest with you, man. That's the biggest misconception about me is like, all I do is run and sit around and eat steam broccoli and chicken breasts or something like I love me some Scotch, some bourbon, some good IPA beer.

10:38 And trust me, I have fun. I work hard, but I play hard too. This is why I keep telling every time I introduce you at an event, people get us confused all the time. Well, you know, and the runners I've known can eat copious amounts of food because the calories you're burning through with your workout regimen just don't limit really what you have to eat. Some of them have to work to eat enough. Well, I certainly eat enough and it doesn't get any easier with age, but yeah, I like the word copious. That's an underrated word for sure.

11:13 So once we get ourselves understanding maybe what our limiting factors are, what do we do now? We use some affirmations and other tools we can use to shut down because those voices are strong, Scott. That limiting belief that we have that you're talking about, I might have had it since I was two. I know that some people still carry around what their father or mother told him at one time as a truth. And it's not easy to be able to overcome that. So I'm sure for all of the people that have listened to you and have been with you through all of these episodes, I'm guessing they do that because none of them subscribe to the OK, this is a magic pill and it's immediately going to fix things when I take it, starting tomorrow.

12:02 I always say you condition the mind, you condition belief systems the same way that you would condition the body. Like you don't get fit from running one time. OK, you don't maybe remove a limiting belief or a faulty belief system by recognizing it and by changing it one time. It is literally something that when you do it consistently over time, like anything else in life, you don't notice it in a day or a week or maybe even a month. But over the course of quarters and years, I mean, the entire trajectory of your feelings, behaviors, and results can look completely different than what they used to. But there is no magic pill for being able to do that.

12:46 So it sounds like accountability can be a good factor. Accountability can certainly be a good factor. And what you would hope would happen is as we go through the cycle of kind of beliefs, thoughts, feelings, results, or beliefs, thoughts, feelings, behaviors, results, what you would hope is if you just simply are aware and entertain a different story, a better story and belief system, and then go through that cycle, you're going to end up getting results and results.

13:16 That's how we get to the reinforcement for that new found and for that better belief system. That's how confirmation bias and that's how things work. And once you start getting just that little bit of supporting evidence for a new one for a better story that you can tell yourself, you would hope whether it's you being accountable for it or someone else holding you accountable for it. So you can say, okay, did you understand how this cycle kind of played out and what happened? Why don't we try that again? And then you start stacking it up and that's where things really look different.

13:50 Scott, there's, I think, see a lot of overlapping pressure between a pitcher and baseball in a salesperson at the last week of a month that's short of their quota. And the pressure to achieve the quota and the pressure on a pitcher to strike a batter out. I think there's some similarities there. If we were to get into the mind of a pitcher that is throwing to a hitter that has a reputation of hitter, what are some of the things that that pitcher may run through their head, very somebody who a salesperson that needs to make their quota at the end of the month.

14:23 My best advice there would be focus not on what might happen, focus on what you're doing. Okay. If you see and what I simply mean by that is, like, I know that the end goal of everything that we do and, and okay, a salesperson with a quota, like the end goal is, I want the commission, I want the quota, I got to hit my number at the end of the month and the end of the quarter. It drives our behavior. But the same way that a pitcher in the ninth inning on the mound can't perform their best. If literally they're thinking, I have to strike this guy out, they're thinking about their mechanics and they're probably thinking about some type of visual that to them represents

15:08 what their best slider or fastball or cutter actually looks like. Like, that's what they're thinking about in the heat of competition, the controllable stuff, that if they do that really well with excellence, we'll probably allow them to have that outcome, which is striking the batter out. So a sales professional, I think, can do the same exact thing. It's the preparation that goes into it. It's the how am I communicating the value that I can add and the benefits versus features and kind of different things that way.

15:42 My best advice would be just to simply focus on what you're doing, not what might happen and do that with excellence and those outcomes are probably going to take care of themselves. And it just reminds me of the movie for the love of the game. I don't know if you've ever seen that. I've seen it. Yeah. He says, clear the mechanisms, got all this stuff going on. And I think that's what you're saying. Clear the mechanism. Don't get all these things that are coming around who's on here. What's on going on? Who's yelling?

16:10 Here's the picture. Here's the glove. I know how to pitch a baseball. Throw that ball. And I'm very familiar with that movie and the way that I'd relate it to, I mean, especially for tenured or for experienced sales professionals that are on this call, like part of what allowed Kevin Costner to do that in that movie is all of the reps that he had leading up to that point. All of the tens of thousands of hours that he'd spent pitching and doing his thing. Now he can just say clear the mechanism and allow things to take over that gives him a good chance of producing the outcome.

16:45 So especially for a lot of experienced or tenured sales professionals, I would ask, okay, how many hundreds, if not thousands of hours, have you spent in sales doing some version of sales, talking to customers, prospecting, asking for referrals, knowing your product inside and out. Those hours matter. And when you start to stack those up, now in the same sort of way, you can clear the mechanism and allow all of those reps to come out.

17:14 And if you do that, you'll probably more often than not get the results that you're looking for. Well, so what is the secret of staying motivated? This has always been a challenge. I think salespeople have always had. How do I say motivated with all this adversity and emotional risking? I actually motivated through success. Yeah. It is so okay. I could answer this so many different ways and actually love that you asked me this question because I typically do roughly 50 to 60 different speeches a year, whether it's a keynote speech or a workshop or anything else.

17:50 And I would say in probably 80 to 90% of the speeches, I get asked this question. How do I be a little bit more motivated regardless of industry or audience? You know the question that I never get asked is, how can I be a little bit less distracted? Oh, how could I be a little bit more focused? And I'm not saying asking for more motivation and seeking more motivation is bad, but I sometimes think, and I often think for a little bit more focused.

18:16 But I sometimes think, and I often think for a lot of us, a better question to ask is, how can I be less distracted? How can I be more focused? How can I spend incrementally more time and energy on the stuff that actually moves the needle and actually translates to results? And it can be as simple as, you know, just audit your calendar. Like literally look at your calendar for a given day for a given week and think about how am I allocating my time and energy.

18:45 And is it allocated towards the stuff that actually moves the needle and potentially in that, what can I, what can I always say? What can I automate? What can I delegate? What can I eliminate? If you ask those three questions and then you start to, and it's never going to be perfect. But if you can focus on just progress and spending a little bit more time on those things that translate to results, watch what happens to me.

19:14 Watch what happens to not just your motivation because Bill, I think you said it, like the success that's going to come with that. Watch what happens not just to your motivation, but you know, watch what happens to your productivity and ultimately the results you get from it. Wow. So get yourself focused back down on the right activities. Go to mechanics rather than thinking about, oh, what's going to motivate me or, but get down to your mechanics. Here's what I need to do every day.

19:38 Yeah, I sometimes I give the analogy of road construction, right? And I talk about like the two seasons that we have in Minnesota. Everybody knows that we got winter and we got road construction, right? So we all know what road construction is in the summer in Minnesota. You can still get to your end destination, your quota at the end of the month, but usually it requires more time, more effort, more energy for you to be able to get there.

20:04 And asking for more motivation when you have all of this road construction, i.e. barriers, obstacles, distractions, inefficiencies, the stuff that robs our time and energy each and every day. If you're just trying to plow through that road construction with more motivation, I think it's actually a better question to ask. How could I be a little bit more in control of the construction company and remove some of that road construction.

20:31 So I have a clearer path to be able to get what I want. I think there's a common struggle with people wanting a cure or wanting relief. And I think relief is sudden. It's immediate. It's temporary. But a cure is creating a long term relief. I think about I have high blood pressure, probably because I'm a little bit overweight. I take a pill to reduce my high blood pressure. That's relief. What's the cure? Drop 20 pounds and you're going to be okay. And I take the relief. I take the easy way.

21:05 So being motivated and going for the cure takes a certain amount of belief that you deserve a better life. And I think some people struggle with that is that they just don't apply anything new because they don't believe that they deserve a better life. Yeah, I think that's actually a fantastic way to describe it because you can vary. What I heard what you were saying that is, all right, are we just putting a band-aid on the problem?

21:26 Or are we actually like, are we addressing the sometimes called the site of the problem or the source of the problem? And we can just very easily go to a site and okay, take this pill, put this band-aid on, all right, it'll make it better. But are we really addressing the underlying source of lack of motivation of distraction and inefficiencies? And I think addressing that source, I would argue if you really want to be successful in something long-term and do it on a high level, you have to go to the source.

21:59 You just can't continue to slap band-aids and kind of focus on the relief. I just don't think it's ever going to happen. Wow, that's well said. Well, too many of us are looking for that short-term fix. And I think when we look at an exercise routine, you've done marathons and Ironman. You don't wake up one morning and go, I think I'll run a hundred miles, right? It's a building up over time of capabilities. I told Scott this on our last episode. I just had some back problems. I decided to start a workout regime that I can do at home that's manageable because I can't always get to the club.

22:39 And every time I rule the time to do that, I don't look forward to it. But you've got to break through that. I don't look forward to this and say, okay, once I get through the first five sit-ups, it's going to be okay. And you've got to get through those first five sit-ups. Once I get through the first five push-ups, it's going to be okay. But it's getting over that inertia, that hump that says, I've got to do something every day. I can't improve all in one hunk.

23:08 I've got to do a little bit at a time and then look for little ways to improve that. So I do 20 push-ups. Tomorrow, maybe I'll do 21. And you keep improving a little bit and you keep some kind of a chart of it so you can see that improvement and build those goals. But if you won't go back to those basics and you just hope for, today will be better because I hope it will be better. And then all of a sudden, you're playing on your computer another day and it's gone.

23:37 Well said there. And I think so many different sales analogies that you can use from that. I mean, small wins are always the precursor to big wins. Right? I mean, every single contact, you know, every single phone call, email, kind of, etc. All those things add up. And a lot of times we discount them. Also, what gets measured gets managed. I mean, it really does. Whether you're talking about the number of push-ups you're doing or the number of dials you're making.

24:05 And I just think, yeah, there's absolutely a ton of parallels. And then just the foundational part of there are also basic. There are always building blocks of everything, whether it's fitness or sales or anything else. And, you know, we were talking before we started this podcast that anybody that has connected me on social knows that I blew up my ankle two days before Christmas. And there is something incredibly humbling about having a severe high ankle sprain with multiple ligaments ruptured and getting reverted back to square one where you go from running 40 to 50 miles a week to now all of a sudden, I can't walk without pain.

24:46 And to actually go back to square one and to be okay with, all right, I have to savor these small wins because I can't make it all back in one day or even one week. But I could make a little bit of progress each day. And if I can get started towards that progress each day, it's going to end up mattering and translating to a big outcome in the future. I think that's something everybody can get. You bring up a really important point, Scott, and that's the inconsistency. I think salespeople struggle with maintaining it. They might get through a moment of adversity. But how do they track it and how do they stay motivated and how do they overcome that inconsistent performance? Any advice you can give folks that are struggling with that?

25:29 A couple of that we've already hit on. I do truly believe what gets measured gets managed as well as mastered. You show me somebody that has inconsistent performance. I'll show you someone that is probably not disciplined in tracking some of the output. I would say tracking some of the inputs and maybe tracking some of the lead measures as far as prospecting is the lifeblood of every sales professional, right? Prospecting the referral. So I would say it's probably some aspect of not measuring what it is that you're actually doing as far as activities and actions.

26:06 That can certainly be a big one. I also think the part of chunking down even just what you brought it before with a monthly quota. A monthly quota when we're sitting here in early February, okay, I know that I have to hit that thing at the end of February, but in a lot of ways that can still seem like it's far away. And you don't take the disciplined action today because you feel like tomorrow, I.E. the end of the month is far enough away that I don't necessarily have to do it. So I think actually chunking down whether it's a monthly quota, quarterly quota, etc. into smaller milestones, benchmarks and checkpoints. I think that's a fantastic way to have a higher consistency of performance as far as what you're doing.

26:52 Well, we're starting to run out of time, unfortunately, and spend time well spent. I'd like you just to go back over. You hit on it really quickly, but kind of the five steps you started with belief. Can you can you go through those again? So I call it. I call it the cycle or the spiral of peak performance. So it basically starts with our underlying belief systems. And what happens is our belief systems end up feeding into our thoughts.

27:19 Our thoughts end up driving our feelings like Lizzie literally our physiological emotions. Those feelings drive our behaviors. And then our behaviors, the sum total of the things that we do or that we don't do, end up becoming the results that we get or that we don't get in our sales, professional, personal lives, etc. So it goes beliefs, thoughts, feelings, behaviors, results. And a lot of people won't go back to the source or they won't go back to the cure part of beliefs where they won't start there. Those are trying to slap a bandaid on some of these other things. And that's why it never really truly sticks.

28:01 So hopefully that makes sense. Understand your belief system is affirmations and activities to start to move yourself into a better direction. And you'll get the evidence, you'll take better behaviors and you'll get better evidence for that new belief system. And then that's where you start to actually spiral upward from it. You know, sitting around and taking and doing affirmations and never taking any action with it isn't going to help.

28:28 Either. So the beliefs have to then translate to thoughts, feelings, behaviors, results. And that's where you can really unlock, I think, a new level of performance when you get that full cycle going. Wow. I just love that. Where's the evidence? And when we have that negative belief, I asked myself, where's the evidence, Scott? You're making this up? Where's the evidence? And I'm talking to myself. I ask that all the time. Is that is that real? Or is that just a false narrative that you're telling yourself? Well, I look at the beliefs and anytime somebody tells me about it, I'm supported belief. I go, is that real? And they go, yeah, I go, is it true? And they look at me and I'm like, there's the difference. Of course, the belief is real, recognize it's real, but it is not true. And you're believing something that is not true. And that makes a tremendous amount of difference.

29:17 Well said. Well said. Wow. Scott, you know, my question that I was asking guests every time we're on the show is what book what person has had the greatest impact on your life? Has that changed or is it the same or? I was thinking, how do you inspire the inspire? Oh, hey, we were talking about this before we started. Like, life is about curiosity and learning and always be tinkering and trying to get a little bit better.

29:46 So there are so many different people that have inspired and motivated me in very different ways. I mean, James Clear comes to mind. I'm a huge fan of atomic habits. Tim Grover with winning and with relentless. If you like kind of the upfront direct mindset stuff. Brendan Burchard has been a big person, kind of the expert speaking online marketing, authoring kind of space. And then my brother, you know, being a Franciscan and being someone that's just really kept me grounded. And I think focused on really truly serving people and helping people in my own unique way.

30:28 I'm blend of all those people. Beautiful. It's a beautiful, beautiful answer. Well, thank you so much for being on the show again. This has been terrific. We do have just some resources for Scott. If you want to learn more about them, go to Scottwally.com. And that will be linked on our show page. So Scottwally.com. Our gold nugget for today. I think it ties into what Scott's been talking about by Winston Churchill. Success is not final. Failure is not fatal. It is the courage to continue that counts. So go out and continue.

31:01 With whatever is good work you're doing. So everything we talked about will be at winning at selling.com. So look for the information there. Next week, we're going to be back in the one thing by Gary Keller, Chapter seven and eight. And our topic is quote versus proposal. Please subscribe and share the podcast with your colleagues and on your social media. This is Episode 654. Go out and get better one skill at a time.

31:26 Joyful selling.