[00:00:00] Luigi Prestinenzi: Welcome to Mindset Monday by the Sales IQ Podcast. I'm your host, Luigi Prestinenzi and I'm here to help you be the best you can be. Everyone has the potential to be the best version of themselves they can be. Sometimes things prevent us from capitalizing on that awesomeness that is sitting dormant inside of you. This podcast is about helping you unlock potential by focusing on one thing that can help you be the very best you can be.

"With good basics you'll have endless options." I can't find who wrote that quote, but why is that my quote for this week? Last week I attended a panel for a sales kickoff event for one of my clients, a really large telecommunications company, and on the panel, the discussion about what sellers need to be successful, what they might need for the coming 2, 3, 4, 5 years to be successful and ensure they create a sustainable profession and sustainable future for themselves.

And one of the panel members, who was a very senior enablement professional from Salesforce, made mention of the skills that the future sellers or that future sellers will need in order to be successful. And what was really interesting with all those skills, essentially, none of them are new. None of them, none of the skills that she mentioned that will enable sellers to be the best they can be are skills that are outside of the fundamentals.

She spoke about sales professionals who took notes, who followed up with prospects, who solve problems, complex problem solving skills. Who are able to help sellers mitigate challenges and provide a point of view and a level of insight that created conversations with prospects and customers. Let's have a think about this.

These aren't skills that we should be thinking about doing in the future. These are skills we should be executing today. And if you're not, if you're listening to this podcast going, you know what? I don't see myself as a, as a complex problem solver. I'm not leveraging a point of view to create a conversation with my prospect.

Then you have an opportunity to improve today because those fundamentals, those basics are absolutely paramount in creating a foundation for success. And that is the thing that I think everybody's scared about what the future is going to hold for the world of selling. But the reality is there's 99% of sales professionals out there aren't following the basics.

We're all trying to do things differently. And we're all trying to find these hacks and ways in which we can improve the sales process. We're trying to make something that's very basic, very easy to execute, complex. And this is the opportunity that you have today to strip out that complexity and get back to the basics.

Get back to the things that the great Og Mandino, Earl Nightingale, Paul J. Meyer, all the basics that people have been writing about for over a hundred years. When you look at the book, you know How to Win Friends and Influence People, it is the most radical, innovative model and methodology. Use positivity, use positivity to create a relationship. Whoa, use positive feedback to progress a conversation. Don't use negative feedback, focus on the positive. Now that's wild.

When you think about it, that is out of this .World who came up with that? But the reality is that's nothing new people talk today about what's required to be successful. And to find that extra 1%. This is not new stuff.

All these modern day influences that are posting things of what you should be doing today to be successful. It is not new. We know what needs to be done. But yet we ignore following the basics. Is it that we ignore following the basics because we think to ourselves who wants to be basic, who wants to just follow the fundamentals? But it's in the fundamentals and the basics where the magic occurs.

And this is my message for this week. Instead of focusing on all the bells and whistles, instead of focusing on all the shiny objects that are sitting in front of us, let's just follow the basics. Sales is a very simple process. Engage with someone, identify an opportunity for growth for them, where they can achieve something better than where they're at today.

Create a business case with them that shows they're going to get a return on their investment and you move to a point of decision. It's fundamentally what the process is all about. So my message this week is if you've been focusing on the bells and whistles, if you've been making the complex simple, complex, strip out the complexity and make it simple. Focus on the basics. Get back to the basics, get back to the themes that the top sales performers do every single day.

It's not rocket science. What we do, it's not rocket science. We're not doctors. We're not coming up with something really outrageously difficult in the sales process. It's actually a very simple process. So that's my message this week, get back to the basics. Do the basics really well. Don't worry about the rest.

Now, if you find this message has resonated for you or someone you know needs to hear this, please like, rate, and share this content. I create this content to help you be the very best sales professional you can be.