[00:00:00] Luigi Prestinenzi: By the Sales IQ Network, this is the Sales IQ Podcast. I'm your host, Luigi Prestinenzi, and each week we'll be going on a journey that will inspire you, motivate you, and help you be the best sales professional you can be. Our focus will be on mindset, tactics, and the strategies that will enable you to create more pipeline and win more deals.

Selling during tough times and during times of uncertainty can be stressful. We're now going into the third year of this global pandemic. I don't think any of us would have thought that this challenge would still be going, but what we're now seeing is the challenge is having, or this pandemic is having some other unintended consequences.

We're now seeing, you know, global supply chain issues, labor market issues. There's a whole variety of issues that are impacting our customers, impacting us as sales profession. Now the challenges presents us as it can be quality demotivating, you know, the whole premise of what we do, the whole thing around selling is bringing that level of enthusiasm, bringing that level of energy, that optimistic viewpoint into into our world, into our opportunities.

And with all the negative kind of vibe that we were hearing, you know, the negative sentiment from news agencies, et cetera, it can fundamentally impact our level of motivation and our desire, but this also presents us an opportunity. And that's what this week's episode is all about.

We've got the incredible Meredith Elliott Powell. Who's the author of THRIVE: Strategies To Turn Uncertainty To Competitive Advantage. And we're going to talk about some of the strategies within the book that really does enable sellers to shift their mindset, shifted focus, instead of looking at things in that negative mindset, that fear allowing fear to prevent us from taking out.

At the episode, we're going to talk about how we can shift our mindset. Well, how do we capitalize on the opportunities that are occur as a result of an uncertain marketplace change breeds destruction companies are in somewhat a challenging market condition. Now as sellers. This is when we're needed the most, because we know that when we can solve a problem, when we can help a company achieve a better outcome, we have an opportunity.

We're obligated to go and talk to these companies. And this is the difference between a high-performing sales professional during times of uncertainty to a mediocre or low performing. Is that the high performer won't wait. They won't say, you know what? The market's tough and certainty. There's some challenges I'm just going to wait.

They're going to be proactive. They're going to double down. They're going to do what's required to get the job done. And that's what I love about this episode.

[00:02:48] Sponsor: This podcast is brought to you by the Create Pipeline program from Sales IQ Global.

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The other thing that we've got as a result of having Meredith on our episode this week, we've got her book to give away. So we've got 10 of her books to give away. So obviously they're going to go quite quick to all we need you to do. Just give this episode a rating, if you really like it, give it a rating on any of the podcast players that you listen to this podcast on. Take a photo of it and send it across to us athello@salesiqgroup.com and with your address, and we'll actually send the book out to you.

It's a great bookI've listened to it, an audio, and I've read the book and I thoroughly enjoyed it.

[00:04:32] Luigi Prestinenzi: Welcome to the show Meredith.

[00:04:34] Meridith Elliot Powell: Thank you. I'm excited to be here.

[00:04:36] Luigi Prestinenzi: I'm really excited. Obviously I've had the pleasure and I've had the privilege of seeing you present live and yeah, absolutely blown away from the experience you created live and also. The online courses that you've created are incredible.

And we'll make sure we put some show notes to talk to show where people can go and engage with you. But I just want to say, thanks for coming on our show, we're really excited because you know, your latest book THRIVE: Strategies To Turn Uncertainty To Competitive Advantage was one of my favorite reads last year.

And there are so many strategies in there to help sell as be the best they can be. But before we get into today's episode do you mind just sharing with our listeners a bit more about you and, and your sort of just a quick intro to who you are and.

[00:05:20] Meridith Elliot Powell: So basically I came up through the corporate world, probably like a lot of your listeners.

I started out in travel and tourism went into the healthcare space and then into finance. And I never thought that my career made a lot of sense until one day I was doing a podcast and I was asked about it and I realized I went into travel and tourism. After a hurricane, I went into healthcare after I'm here in the U S.

The government started to make cutbacks. And then I went into the finance arena when regulation started to come in and I figured out what I'm good at. And the reason I get attracted into industries is when disruption and uncertainty what happens is that really helping people find the path through what feels like challenging times and turns that into opportunity.

So that led to me starting my own career.

[00:06:09] Luigi Prestinenzi: Awesome. And I just, the language that you just used to send is a testament to who you are and what you represent. Right. Because I think, you know, you just said that, how do you turn a challenge into an opportunity? You know, how do you flip then? I think for many of us the last two years have presented challenges.

We've never had to work on. And so, you know, the strategy, how do we, how do we turn the challenge into an opportunity when we've never experienced this type of environment before? And this is one of the reasons why I was really excited to get you on for a month of mindset, because as I was reading your book, I actually listened to the audio and.

And it was just great, like the analogies the strategies in there. So tell us a bit about like, talk to us about what inspired you to write this book and was it planned, like when did you plan it or did COVID kind of bring this, accelerate the book to bring to the audience?

[00:07:00] Meridith Elliot Powell: You know, one of the things I love about being a sales person is that I feel like 90% of what we do is listen to people.

And so way back in 2018 and 2019, if we can all remember what our world was pre COVID, I was listening to customers and you probably found the same thing and every listener and it, everybody was talking the same language. Oh my gosh, business's amazing. We're having our best year on record, but everybody.

Waiting for the uncertainty. They were saying, when is the ball going to drop? What is the bottom going to fall out? And I kept hearing that over and over, and I thought, what is uncertainty always have to be a bad thing and why are we waiting for it to show. And what could happen if you're in your organization, if you could actually flip the script on that, like what opportunity could you create if you started keeping with your month of mindset, if you started to believe that uncertainty was exactly what you needed to do, do you need it to get a foothold in the landscape?

And that basically. I became obsessed with that. And that basically put me on a mission way back in 2018 and 19 to start researching the book, which I did. And then like everybody else, I got busy and the book set on the shelf and I had done a lot of the research, but then 2020 hit my business blew up.

Like maybe people's did, and I didn't know what to do. So I went back to this research and I was like, wow. These, you know, it was the companies that I had researched those leaders. They hadn't only come through all the disruption that I thought about, but I was like, my God, they've survived a pandemic.

What if I could figure out what they did and share it with everybody. So that's, that's sort of where the book came from. I wanted it to. The pain out of an uncertain environment, the guesswork out of an uncertain environment, give people hope, and then back it up with the methodology. And that's what the book is about.

[00:09:05] Luigi Prestinenzi: And what was one of the, sort of the biggest aha moments from your, when you were doing the research and companies that really excelled during moments of crisis? What was the biggest aha moment for you?

[00:09:18] Meridith Elliot Powell: That was the so easy. Is that success? Is it logical? It is not about I love this. It's not about how much money you have.

It's not about being in the right business. It's not being better educated than anybody. It is 100%, 100% about what you choose to focus on. And that was the biggest aha moment for me because. The one thing people want in an uncertain environment is control. And it's the thing we don't believe we can have, but you have control over what you focus on.

It's not easy, but you have control over it. And that was amazing to me because these companies that made it, it makes no sense, but what, what the difference was. They charted the course, they followed the methodology and they just forgot about the stuff they couldn't control. They let it go.

[00:10:11] Luigi Prestinenzi: So that's amazing. I mean, I love that because I'd been looking at this myself really thinking about the mindset of a sales professional, right. There is a difference. It's a mindset between a sales person. And one of our professional, and I think what you've just helped us really understand is that circle of control versus the circle, we just simply cannot control it's shifting the focus and.

How do I w the choices that I make with my time is fundamentally going to enable me to achieve certain outcomes from a, you know, flip this, because you're a consultant, you work with a whole variety of people. What does stop when you're looking at people that say might be experiencing a challenge and they're focusing on the wrong thing.

Right. You know what, some of the strategies that you've helped people work through to help them move from that reactive to proactive state of mind.

[00:11:06] Meridith Elliot Powell: Yeah, I think it's I think it's really important. First of all, to not 100% ignore. Those things that we're worried about. And one of my favorite exercises with peoples, I mean, there's a lot of fear in uncertainty and you and I have both worked with companies that really got hit.

They got hit hard. I mean, if you were in travel and tourism, if you were in the restaurant industry, I look at companies now who came through COVID beautifully, and now they're dealing with supply chain issues. I mean, those are valid fears and complaints. You have to get that out. So I think one of the most important extras.

I sit down a lot with teams or with leaders. And I say, tell me everything you're worried about. What's keeping you up at night. What are you afraid of? And get that all out. We make a list, we put it out all out on a big white board or a sheet of paper. And then we take that list and we say, let's divide it into what we can control and what we can't control.

You can't put things aside until you talk about the fear, but you can't allow that fear to go on. I mean, there's nothing wrong in your organization with having a time where you allow salespeople to complain about the competition, about the fact that they're getting hammered with price about all that, let him get it out, but then put an end to it and move on.

[00:12:24] Luigi Prestinenzi: Yeah, absolutely. But that fee that you talk about, right? Because I think fear is in a very powerful emotion. We know that. It will compel us to take action and it also paralyze us and it stops us from moving forward. How do you work? Like, because again it's, it's I think for most of us, some of that fear that we've been experiencing is, is a lot of fear.

We've never really worked through. Right. If you have been sitting on the fence and you've been a sales professional, that's kind of try to be proactive, but that fear has created that level of uncertainty and anxiety. What's one strategy that they can do to kind of move away from that still. No, except that is there.

But embrace it and then move away from that stopping me to take.

[00:13:10] Meridith Elliot Powell: So, you know, number one is the, I do want you to work through that exercise where you get that fear out of your body, because you do have to release it. But after that, you either can do this yourself. I would prefer if you sit down and do it with a sales person, who's succeeding through an uncertain marketplace and somebody who is succeeding in an uncertain marketplace, they are willing to help you. I have no doubts about that.

But you need to stop focusing on the result and get actions and behaviors in place. And because we can focus on actions and behaviors. So, you know, again, if you want to move through the fear, I want you to stop worrying about what you can't control, which is whether you'll hit your goal, whether your company will be here, whether the competition will swallow you up, but what you can control and you can focus on are the actions, your target market, how many sales calls do you need to make? What's your follow-up strategy? You know, who are you prospecting get really, really clear on those actions and do it every day. You know, years ago, I saw a great interview with Gabrielle Reece who's a famous volleyball player.

And any man who's 40 years old or knows who Gabrielle Reece is, but I saw her interviewed one time about how you become an Olympic. Champion how you get somebody who has that's status. And she said, I work out every day, whether I want to or not. And someday my workouts are awful. I don't have any heart or any feeling in it, but I do it even though they weren't good. Consistency is one of the most important words in moving through uncertainty. You just have to do the work every single day and somehow, like magic, that is going to carry you through.

[00:14:58] Luigi Prestinenzi: I love that. And it's funny, you shared that example because I was doing this with a, I did a sales kickoff earlier this week for a client and obviously there's a lot of uncertainty, right.

And there's a clip of I'll have to send you a quick post this and we might even put it to the show notes. It's a 2002 winter Olympic games. It's ice skating. The guys in a foreign or it's a very famous Australian story. The gentleman Bradbury he's lost coming into the loss lake. It's only 92nd rice, the four people in front of him collided.

They fell down and he won the race. And everybody said he was lucky to win, but then when you hear the interview, he says, it took me 12 years to get to that side of the line. He said, I trained, I injured myself. He cracked the, he fractured his neck at one point for an injury. But 90 seconds was a result of the 12 years of preparation.

[00:15:48] Meridith Elliot Powell: So, so, so true. You know, the other thing I think is if you're leading a team that is fearful focus on progress, instead of result, that is not as something else, that's really important. You know, if people are doing some things they hadn't done before, if they're making some progress, they don't have confidence right now.

And you've got a whole back country. For them. So maybe they're not achieving everything, but they're better than they were a week ago. And if you focus your time and your energy, you'll get there.

[00:16:18] Luigi Prestinenzi: And yeah, that's exactly right. And I think this is a little bottom, I'm really enjoying this episode because fundamentally what you're explaining is.

It's really shifting the focus on the positive attributes of what's happening versus the negative components, because positivity will breed positivity. Right. And it then creates that momentum. So I love this. In your book, you talk about conditioning for change, like conditioning yourself for change, right.

What are some of the things, again, from a, from a strategic perspective you know, where, where should I be starting as a sales professional, that's looking to really get. That mindset shift to elevate themselves this year.

[00:16:53] Meridith Elliot Powell: So you hit on one of my favorite strategies. Change can be your greatest opportunity.

If you see it coming, if you ignore change, it's going to bury you. And the thing that I, the thing that I think is funny about changes, we all know it's coming, but we sit here and wait for. I don't, I don't know why I need to study why we do that. So I really, one of the things that I found fascinating when I did the research and I wrote the book, was that people who navigate on certainty really well are waiting for change, to happen. They're predicting change.

And so there's a tool that I think sales teams should use themselves. But I think it's, it's a tool that they also should use with their customers, because I think the value and the opportunity to increase sales is helping your customers navigate change. And we use this tool called a SCEPTIC.

It's just a matter of words. It's just society, competition, economics, politics, technology, industry customers, and we can put it in the in the show notes, but it's a matter about getting the team together and talking about what you see happening outside. Of your organization, what's your competition doing?

Cause this uncertainty brought about mergers and acquisitions. Are there shifts and changes that you could turn into major opportunities? What's happening with technology? I was working with a financial institution that deals with a lot of people over the age of 65. And we're doing this. We noticed that.

People that over the 65, they had never gotten to go to technology now in the age of COVID didn't want to come in. So there was opportunity in technology we had never seen before. So you need to understand that there's more happening externally than internally. And if you do this, you start to get currently.

With change and the more comfortable with change you are, you may not predict it correctly, but you'll be so open to flex and change and that's, and that's what you want to be able to do. But also working through with your customers, help them navigate change. You want to be valuable, help them navigate the uncertainty.

[00:18:58] Luigi Prestinenzi: Yeah, I think you're so right, because the reality is if we're, if we're. Sales professionals, especially in the B2B world, we are selling change, right. We're asking them to change from whether one system to another. It could be a process. And within that change, they've got to have a, that appetite to change because there's going to be pain in change as well.

Like we all know that and I think. What you're explaining here, because it's saying don't wait for it, embrace it, and be proactive and really consider what's required to make that change happen. The other thing that I really loved in your book, and I'll never forget, cause I was sitting to the audio book as I do when I'm running and you spoke about.

What you start to visualize and what you start to put in front of your eyes starts to come about. And I think you used, I think it was a blue shampoo bottle if I remember correctly or something carrying buffer zone, but then, and then all of this, all blue something. And then all of a sudden, you said, once you start to sort of visualize it, it starts popping up.

Talk to us about again for, for sales professionals or for our community, that's trying to go out there and make magic happen. Why is that visualization component and really putting things in your sight line of sight is such an important part of, of, of designing, you know, Being successful in an uncertain time.

[00:20:12] Meridith Elliot Powell: You know, I live in what's, you're talking about is a strategy called relentless of vision. I live in Asheville, North Carolina, and this is a part of the world. That's all about woo and spirit and energy and everything. And so I could go down that path, but I'm going to go down the science path and the science path is exactly what you were talking about with the blue shampoo bottle.

I mean, if everybody listening to this right now closes their eyes and and I say open your eyes and look for the color. Red, you'll start to see red everywhere in your office. You'll start to recognize things that you hadn't seen before. So you need to start to condition your brain. Luigi. If you got up this morning and said, you weren't going to hit your sales goals and you see yourself being a real value to your customers, you see your company going another level.

Innovating the way that, that your industry impacts customers and deliver service. And I got up and I said, oh my God, I'm really worried. I'm not going to hit my sales goals. If I call a customer today, they're not going to want to talk to me. Your brain is going to find the positive all day. And my brain is going to find the negative.

What you ask your brain, most importantly, the questions that you phrase, your brain will find the answers to. It's like a machine. So doing this piece, you know, look, I am like a, I'm a sales girl at heart. I was like, all this stuff about strategy and vision. I didn't need any of it. Just get me in front of a customer and let me mow them down and sell them something.

But the more that I get in there, and the more that I understand it really is. I think it's fascinating that we can train our brains and what you put in. Really matters. So worry about that. Think about that talk. And a relentless vision is about the fact I have mine right here. Start my morning, reading my note cards every day.

That's my vision for my life. I just look at it. I do it again at lunch and I do it again before the end of the day, because I want my mind to find the opportunity. Please understand success is not lost. It does it. If we sat down and tried to map out when you're going to be successful and I'm going to be successful, we're going to end up drinking because we're going to be so depressed with the obstacles in front of us.

But if we feed our head, the right stuff, we are going to find our way through the maze and find it successfully through the maze.

[00:22:42] Luigi Prestinenzi: Great feedback. I mean, I think, look, I'm, I'm pretty fortunate. I started at an early age. With that positive conditioning and you know, listening to some incredible stuff from like the Paul J. Meyers and the Earl Nightingales of this world who you know, I don't remember Meredith my bestie yet or not my best year, yet the best year that I had from a sales perspective in my career, I listened to the same sounds a bit silly, but I listened to the same CD at the time, every single day. And it was Paul J. Meyers best, best. And it was like a 15 minute track. And he said some of the things I can still recite some of the things today. It was like, you know, 13 years ago. But because I was driving my car between appointments, it just continued conditioned to me. Right. It was the positivity, as he said, was oozing out of me.

Right. Because I created that charisma and that attraction, that when I went into opportunities I got the best out of the, most of the opportunities I was working on. But sometimes I find that even though I know the recipe for success, so I know that I need to have positive conditioning. It's sometimes hard to execute on each day.

Right. What are some of the strategies that you use to keep that a non-negotiable?

[00:23:51] Meridith Elliot Powell: What works for me and I think you've got to find out what works for you, but what works for me is to keep things consistent. I do them in small bites. I mean, I meditate every morning, but I don't meditate for more than 10 minutes.

And I read my relentless vision every day, but my relentless vision can be read in less than 20 seconds. And so I fall off the wagon occasionally. Hmm. It's hard to argue that I don't have 10 minutes that I'm not going to waste 10 minutes somewhere in a somewhere in a day. You and I were talking in the green room.

I, I'm a big believer in exercising every day. Like you are. So if I can do 20 minutes before eight o'clock in the morning, I'll do another 20 minutes somewhere in the day. So I would say another thing is I don't put things. I don't meditate at five o'clock in the afternoon. I set my day was small, tiny bits.

I make sales calls and small bits. I mean, no more than two or three sales calls a day because I'm not going to have a half a day to make sales calls. So for me, what works is small increments of time, because it's hard for me to argue. That I even, I even do a plank every night before I go to sleep. And this CR this cracks my husband up, but I've done it for over two years.

But at nights that I don't feel like doing it. This is the talk I'm having. You don't have 67. To get on the ground and do applying that's ridiculous. Get on the ground and do apply. So those small bits of time work for me, I can argue myself out of an hour. I can't really argue myself out 10 minutes.

[00:25:32] Luigi Prestinenzi: Again, I resonate a lot with what you're saying. Cause again, I've had to really look at my non-negotiables and say, Hey, these are some things for so many years, it would be, Gail was a creature of habit, right? You'd get up at a certain time or do a certain, you know, I'd have my routine gets out of work, et cetera.

And I allowed COVID it wasn't COVID didn't do this, but I allowed the working from home scenario, the demand aids, the lockdowns. I allowed the, my non-negotiables to become negotiables. And then all of a sudden I felt the know cause there is negativity in a day, but my ability to cope with that and my resilience levels and my ability to kind of turn a new.

Sort of thought pattern into positive was actually I was finding it harder and harder. It was kind of like, you know, the meter is on empty. The minute I shifted that approach and said, right, hang on a second. I've just got to recalibrate, recognize that I've gone down a different path. I felt literally felt my mindset change.

I literally felt better. Training swimming, whatever it was. I actually felt more energy. I was okay. The other day I was okay at three o'clock to have a nap because I'd got up at 4:00 AM. Right. Actually said, you know what? I'm giving myself permission now, 30 minutes. That was the best

darn I fell asleep. I woke up. I'm like, right, I'll just do my last, my last part of the day. So I really appreciate you sharing with that. Cause I think that's the other challenge that we can all face is. We set massive objectives for ourselves, and sometimes they're too hard, too. All way, way too hard, you know?

So I think that's great. What you're talking about is actually setting some little micro micro steps that over the course of a day, you're taking them off and you're actually taking off something quite big. So, yeah,

[00:27:20] Meridith Elliot Powell: I'm also a really, you know, when you talk about taking a nap, it's just hit me. This is really important thing too.

I'm not a big believer in time management. I believe in managing. My energy. So my friend, my friends really laugh at me. I'm like you, I get up at four o'clock in the morning, but typically most mornings, if I'm in town by seven or eight, o'clock, you'll find me on the tennis court. I leave to go do the things I want to do at three o'clock in the afternoon.

I might walk out the door. Play nine holes of golf or I'll go for a mountain bike ride. I am managing the things I enjoy into my day, all day long. And I think knowing what pours energy into you. Really isn't really as important. And to give yourself the room to do that, I love that you gave yourself the room to take a nap.

You deserve that and you come back charged your

[00:28:07] Luigi Prestinenzi: And, and again, I'll, I think she, what you just said, you do what you need to do to give you that energy. And for me, I'm not necessarily big on time management. I'm just big on, I've got to be effective with the time that I spend on certain tasks and when I'm effective and I'm getting things that I need done.

I don't feel guilty. And again, I found last year I was spending more time at my day. Right. I was getting less done. And then when I to stop, I felt guilty. So, you know, but I think, again, this is the whole purpose. This is what I love about our journey. You know, whichever I've been in sales my whole life. So I can't talk about other other careers, but this is what I love about the journey of what we do.

Right. Because we're constantly learning constantly evolve. I find that for this year, I feel like I've, I've, I've, I've reinvented myself because the shackles of the, of the pandemic for me is kind of coming off, travel not far away now. And I'm feeling like I'm 25 years old, again, about to get back on a plane, going into my first business trip.

I cannot tell you how excited I am by it. So, so just before we, I know that you know, we've got to let you go, but I could talk to you for hours. Before we let you go. Well, just would love what's your sort of, for anyone that's either doing great or not doing so great. What's a piece of advice you can give them to say, Hey, from a competitive advantage perspective how do we maintain that positive focus, where even when things don't go to plan

[00:29:33] Meridith Elliot Powell: I think the most important thing that I can tell you and I believe this into my bones is realize this is not about. It has nothing to do with you. And I think that's where fear and depression come in is because you're worried about yourself. You know, when I was a little kid, my mother used to tell me that the fastest way to get past my own problems was to go out and focus on somebody else's.

And when all of this happened, It immediately hit me. I needed to be out there helping my customers. And I believe as sales professionals, we have never been more essential than we are right now. As I look at the year that we're facing your customers, your prospects, they need you more than, so forget about your own problems.

Forget about everything else that you have going. Focus on them. The irony is it focusing on them, helping other people, is going to be your path out.

[00:30:23] Luigi Prestinenzi: Yeah, that's pretty powerful. So Meredith, before we wrap up, where is the best place for people to connect with you and find you.

[00:30:29] Meridith Elliot Powell: So I tend to live on LinkedIn more than I do anywhere else. That's the best social media channel. You can also find me at my website, which is simply valuespeaker.com. Just the words, value speaker dot com. I am a massive believer. Build your network. It will change your life. So if you connect with me, I will connect with you.

[00:30:46] Luigi Prestinenzi: So Meredith, like I said, I've had the privilege of seeing you in person You know, it's an incredible experience. I've personally benefited from your content. So I want to say thank you for the contribution you make to our profession. You're helping elevate sales be the best they can be. So I want to say thank you.

[00:31:02] Meridith Elliot Powell: Thank you. Thanks for having me on. This has been great.

[00:31:05] Luigi Prestinenzi: This show has been recorded remotely produced by Sales IQ Global. Audio editing and music production by Stefan Malliate, show notes by Victoria Mathieson and graphic design by Julie Marshall. Don't forget to leave a rating and review on your podcast player. And if you want to find more about the programs that we offer at Sales IQ, head to www.salesiqglobal.com.

This episode was digitally transcribed.