In this article I’ll discuss secret number 157 from my business partner Steve Siebold’s book, 177 Mental Toughness Secrets of the World Class. I’ve won deals because of this secret, and I’ve watched competitors lose deals because they ignored it.
Mental Toughness Secret Number 157: The Great Ones Are Critical Thinkers
“Positive thinking is a good foundation, yet it’s no match for the world-class philosophy of critical thinking.” — Steve Siebold
When I was selling banking equipment for Diebold, there was one bank we had been trying to get into for years. The Chairman of the Board was extremely tight with our competition, and every project went their way. We had about as much chance of getting into that account as a woolly mammoth had of getting into a Volkswagen Beetle.
So we started building relationships with other people at the bank, in particular the President and the COO, and we put ourselves in a position to bid on the next project. We made two suggestions for the bidding process. The first was a very detailed specification of exactly what was to be priced out, so every vendor would be bidding on the same thing. The second was that the bids be sealed and then opened publicly, at a set time, and read aloud in front of the board, several executives, the vendors, and other interested parties. No one could see anyone’s bid ahead of time, and the numbers would speak for themselves. It was the best way to keep everyone, including us, honest. We also went to our manager and got some very good pricing.
The President and the COO were running the bidding process, and the Chairman didn’t know about the new format until he walked into the meeting. He thought he was simply going over the bids with the President and COO, as he had in the past.
The President opened the first bid, our competitor’s, and read it aloud: “Company X comes in with a bid of $116,560.” Then he opened ours. “Company A comes in with a bid of… wait, is this right?” He looked at us. We nodded and smiled. “Company A comes in with a bid of $98,954.”
The Chairman exclaimed, “What? That can’t be right! There’s no way they can come in at that price!” Everyone looked at us, and we assured them we had bid on exactly what was specified and could deliver at that price. The competition could have spoken up at that point, but for one fact: they weren’t there. They had assumed it would be business as usual. They either didn’t know about the sealed-bid format or didn’t take it seriously, and they came in with inflated numbers. Our bid was accepted, and we got the majority of that bank’s business from then on. (I told this story in my book Sales Encyclopedia, and it’s still one of my favorites.)
Why did we win? The competitor was thinking the way most salespeople think: “We’ve always gotten this business. We’ll get it again.” We were thinking critically: “What has to be true for us to win, and what could go wrong?”
That’s the heart of Steve’s secret. He describes five basic levels of thinking. The lowest is unengaged, “going through the motions without really thinking about what we’re doing.” Next is negative thinking, “rooted in a fear- and scarcity-based consciousness.” Then neutral thinking, which “implies a lack of energy at best, indifference at worst.” Then positive thinking, which “often manifests positive results” but “is sometimes blinded by emotion.”
Steve’s example of where positive thinking falls short is one I love: “It’s a good place to start, unless you’re standing in the middle of a highway and a truck is headed toward you at ninety miles an hour and positive thinking tells you the truck will swerve out of your path!” The critical thinker, on the other hand, “reasons that the speeding truck driver may not see him and decides to move out of the way.” In Steve’s words, critical thinkers “use specific criteria to evaluate their reasoning and make decisions, unclouded by emotion.”
Over the years, I’ve seen salespeople at every one of those levels. At Diebold, I inherited an account from another rep at our company. That bank had been doing business with Diebold for over 40 years. The rep had made a mistake on a vault order, and he was so afraid to face the bank’s president that he started avoiding his phone calls and emails. That’s negative thinking, rooted in fear, and it nearly cost us a 40-year relationship. My manager reassigned the account to me. We got Diebold back in the bank’s good graces, and the project moved forward with me as the rep and Diebold providing all the equipment for the new branch.
I’ve also won business from competitors who were stuck in neutral. Their long-time clients could feel the indifference; it came across as apathy. Sometimes they had also padded their pricing because they assumed the client would never look elsewhere. All I had to do was show up, pay attention, and price it fairly.
Those experiences taught me never to be that competitor. With my own long-time clients, I always assumed someone else could be knocking on the door, because sooner or later, someone always was. While some reps in my position would pad their pricing on loyal accounts, I priced every proposal for a long-time client exactly as I would for anyone else. And I always asked, “Are you talking to anyone else on this, or comparing us to anyone?” More than once, I found myself in a competitive situation with a client I could have taken for granted. Because I had anticipated it, I was ready.
If you lead a sales team, look for positive thinking in your forecast. Ask each rep, “Which of your biggest accounts are you assuming will renew?” Then ask, “What would a competitor have to do to take it from you, and how do you know they aren’t doing it right now?” A rep who answers “They love us, they’d never leave” is the competitor in my sealed-bid story. A rep who can tell you who else is calling on the account, what they’re likely to offer, and how they’re protecting the relationship is a critical thinker. Those are the deals you can actually forecast.
Here’s the action step Steve provides in his book: “When you care about something, what type of thinker are you? How is your level of thinking impacting your current results?” Start with your biggest accounts and your biggest deals. Are you thinking critically about them, or just hoping the truck will swerve?
Steve Siebold and I are partners who, cumulatively, have 69 years in the profession of sales growth and excellence. We have mastered pragmatic techniques to create dramatic growth in sales teams, from the under-performers to the all-stars. This work has increased sales by more than $3.2 billion for companies like Johnson & Johnson, GlaxoSmithKline, Merrill Lynch, Coca-Cola, and Toyota, among many others. If you’d like to discuss instilling this, and other mental toughness principles, in your team, go to www.completeselling.com or email me at johnchapin@completeselling.com.
John Chapin is a sales speaker, trainer, and coach with over 39 years of sales and sales management experience, a #1 sales rep in three industries, and author of the 2010 Sales Book of the Year, Sales Encyclopedia (Axiom Book Awards). You may reprint this article provided the contact information stays in place.