The Fire Inside

“Jeff, I love how passionate you are about this!”

It took far more restraint than I’m comfortable admitting not to punch that product manager in the neck.

The conversation started at a surgeon training meeting. We’d come back from dinner, and our customers had gone to their rooms for the evening. It was customary for my manager and me to hang around, debrief, and do some more selling. But instead of finding new customers, we were working on executive leaders. 

My manager, the EVP, this product manager, and I were sitting in the hotel lobby talking about plans, the customers we had lined up, and the products we needed to expand our portfolio and make a dent in the market. I tend to get a little excitable about what I do, and if you’ve ever seen me train, you know what I mean. 

I finished a statement emphatically, and with a big grin on his face, Sebastian (not his real name) looked me right in the eye and said what he said. I was dumbfounded.

He did not have that same passion (that had been evident for a while). Here was a guy directly responsible for bringing products to market for us to succeed as a company, for me to succeed in my job, and he was amused. We were on the same team, and he was letting me down.

I bit my tongue. I don’t lash out because it’s not who I am. But it started to become pretty clear to me that I might be better off taking the fire in my belly somewhere else.

Do you have a passion for selling what you sell?

Are you excited to solve the problem you solve? Are you fully committed to the solutions you sell? 

Above all, selling is a transfer of enthusiasm. Often, that very passion is the difference between booking the meeting or not, encouraging the next step or not, or making the sale or not.

It’s the not-so-secret weapon of sales success. You can't fake real passion, and when it’s there, it’s palpable.

If you don’t have a fire in your belly to solve the problems you do, why not? If you don’t fully believe in your company's solution, you’re hurting yourself, your company, and your customers.

Are you frustrated that more people don’t know you can help them?

When you have that belief, you look at your success differently. You start to get upset when things don’t go as well as you think they should.

I'm not talking about guilt. Nobody has fun at a pity party, and beating yourself up is rarely helpful. But when you see things clearly, and your prospects don’t, you start to wonder what they’re missing and how you can communicate the situation differently. The puzzle pieces are all on the table in front of you. They just haven’t been put together properly yet.

You don't want a pit in your stomach, you want a chip on your shoulder. It turns into a gleam in your eye, and then it's pure, unadulterated motivation. 

It’s rocket fuel for a seller.

Salespeople, do you feel this? What would it do for your success if you did?

Sales leaders, are you encouraging this kind of passion? If great sellers create the environment to buy, great leaders create the environment to sell. This is crucial.

I’ve got that fire in my belly again, and I'm in growth mode.

I’ve always been passionate about what I do. That comes through in how I do it, and many people comment on that. It’s fun (and I’m honored) to do that for others.

It’s also not enough.

Without the clarity of how you can help people, the passion doesn’t go much further than that. You get labeled as someone who sees things differently, is fun to watch, and is exciting to listen to. People pause in their feeds, watch you and then keep scrolling.

“But I know the pieces fit.”

It took me a long time to recognize that I have a novel way of looking at selling, and it’s a point of view that makes people feel better about doing it. The insights are honest, impactful, and make people more successful.

The world needs better prospectors right now. I can help, not by providing new talk tracks or sequence suggestions, but by identifying and removing the barriers preventing that work from being done.

People tell me how much they love my content but don’t often realize that it's very much how I help sales teams. A lot of thought leaders don't communicate this very well, so I’ll be a little more explicit.

I can help your team create more sales opportunities and feel better about doing it. We should talk about how. Is it worth 25 minutes to learn exactly what’s holding you back?