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Glenn Mattson
Welcome back to the Building Blocks of Success. Today is the theme of the Success Triangle. And you know, the Success Triangle has three areas: attitude, behavior, and technique and whatever you determine success is in the middle. That was your goals. We talked about goals versus dreams and we talked about the behavioral plan. Last session, we just talked about the Crucial Elements of Success, which is all about desire, commitment, your self-esteem and your successful mindset. In a successful mindset it is really important, right? When we talked about the successful mindset, we have to ask ourselves, are you the kind of individual that looks at something that you did and say, hey, man, I failed at this, I failed at this, which is what you should be saying to yourself. What I want you to stop saying to yourself is, I'm a failure, because, right? I'm a failure because I didn't make the phone calls. No, you just failed at making the phone calls. So don't take ownership of your lack of action, take ownership of your lack of action. Meaning that I don't want you to take it personal, just by the fact that you made a choice, you made a choice not to make the phone calls, own it and be done with it. Which means you failed at doing it. It doesn't mean you're a failure because. Look if I go to a driving range, and right, I don't play enough golf to be good. I also have a tendency that when I want to hit the ball, as my downswing is coming, it screams in my head, crush the ball, which is the opposite of what you should be doing. When you go to the golf course, you have the ability and you want to swing that club, you want to hit that ball, we have to take a look at our mindset. So if I'm going to driving range, and I'm practicing, I'm practicing and practicing and practicing. And I'm hooking it, hooking it and hooking it and slicing and slicing and slicing it and then killing a couple of worms, and then hitting it so hard that it hits the divider right next to me, right, which is a disaster. But I don't go home and throw my bag into the back of my car, go home and start yelling at the kids or kick my dog. It doesn't mean I'm a bad person because I can't hit a golf ball. It just means I can't hit a golf ball. I'm a failure at hitting a golf ball. I'm not a failure because I can't hit a golf ball. You got to put the stuff into perspective.
Glenn Mattson
Today we're going to talk about the barriers, the barriers are the roadblocks. The barriers are the walls that are between us and our goals. So we have desire, we have commitment, we're ready to run through a wall, we take responsibility, we're still going to have barriers of success. Now, there's lots of them. But for today, we're gonna talk about a handful. And what I consider to be the largest barriers that had the largest amount of rippling effect. Now we talked about obviously the barrier of limited commitment, or not having desire or not filling out your plan and all that fun stuff. But right now I'm going to talk about psychological barriers.
Glenn Mattson
The first one I want to talk about is this thing called need for approval. Now you have to remember something psychological barriers are beliefs that we have in our head. These beliefs will impact our decisions. These decisions that we make because of our beliefs are typically not the right decisions that we make, whether it's a decision. And then once we make that decision, we have a result and we have an outcome. So for instance, need for approval was the first one when I talk about. Need for approval really means deep down inside that you value what others think of you more than yourself. You psychologically need people to like you. So you don't want to do anything that may impact that need to be liked from their standpoint. Right? So realize fear of rejection. Everybody has this, listening to this podcast, everyone has it. But it's also the largest weakness that we have that has the most amount of ripples. Remember, I was talking about golf, if I hit a golf ball into a water hole, it's going to go into the water and it creates ripples. Well, this fear of rejection has the most amount of ripples than almost any other weakness that we have. So and it's the worst one to have because those ripples impact so many different places inside of our, our practice in our business. It's by far the hardest to fix, because no one knows that you're dealing with this besides yourself so you can make lots of excuses around why it's not changing. When I talk about need for approval, I mean, stop being a wimp. So where it occurs, it occurs in prospect and occurs in asking for referrals, it occurs in networking, occurs and picking up the telephone. It occurs in that little thing inside your belly button when maybe you're doing LinkedIn and it turns into, hey, let's have a conversation and now it's time to dial the phone and that uncomfortability in your belly button. So prospecting, closing, closing for an appointment, closing for money, closing for business, closing, thank God, how many people may have two or three meetings, and they never had the courage to close it. What is going on? You got to close the deal. Close the file. Gotta close something. Gotta make a decision. By asking tough questions, asking the right questions. Are you just educating? Are you qualifying? How about being misled? How about being used, how about being wined to, and you still know it and you follow through with what they're asking?
Glenn Mattson
So emotional. When we look at need for approval and fear of rejection, I just want you to realize everybody has it, everybody has. So fear of rejection, just to make sure we're on the same page is when your brain says to you do the topic, see need for approvers, you do know what to say, you know the success triangle what the technique is. The reality is is part of your brain says, alright, Glenn, ask a Max. And then your psychological part of you will turn around and say, are you out of your mind? What happens if they don't like me? Are you out of your mind? That seems pushy. So we know what to do. This is important. This is really important. We know what to do, we choose not to do it. And that choice is generated or has the engine or the power of that choice comes from fear of rejection. So if you've ever said to yourself, I like to make that phone call, I'd like to go talk to that person. Maybe some of you have a natural network of individuals, a natural market of people you could talk to, you know them on a social level, you may even be friendly with them, but having that conversation that converts over to business completely freaks you out. That's fear of rejection for the most of you know what I'm talking about. So fear of rejection by far is the number one biggest weakness that we have. It's that feeling inside of us that we have to overcome and many people don't overcome it. And they don't make it in sales. So your fear of rejection, your need for approval, is one of the biggest barriers of success I would have you take a look at.
Glenn Mattson
Now, we have something called an attitude behavioral journal at Sandler that we use, that'll help you fix it. But it's daily journaling. On a daily objective every day, why don't you just write down one attitudinal goal? One thing that your goal for today is to face your fear of rejection. Is it to ask for referral on that phone call? Is it actually to make the phone call? Is it actually to plant your feet and say to someone in negotiating the answer now? What is the right thing to do? When you're wimping out? You got to have the capacity to look yourself in the mirror at the end of the day. Remember that daily scorecard we talked about? So when you're brushing your teeth and days over and you're looking at yourself in the mirror. You want to have lessons. You want to have things that you learned during the day. But what we want to have less and less of, you saying to yourself, damn, I wimped out today. Not only do you have a day that maybe wasn't as successful as you want it to. But we definitely don't want to have a day where you chose to wimp out, to double negative. Every time you choose to wimp out, you take two bricks inside of your self-esteem off of the wall. That's the good wall. Right? That's the empowering wall, that's your confidence wall, every time you know what to do, and you choose not to do it, you take two bricks off that wall, and you move it over to the wall, it's doubt. You move on to the wall. That's where procrastination sits, you move on to a wall, where you're not sure if you really want to go and do it, you got to do. That that's not the wall we want. That's the black wolf. That's the wall that's doubt. Need for approval is part of our wall. So every time you know what to do, you choose not to, you're taking some of the bricks, of your courage and your confidence in moving it away to the other wall. And that wall is all the negative parts of your psyche. But every time you plant your feet, and you decide to do what's right. I do not care about the outcome right now. We talked about need for approval, it has nothing to do with outcome. Need for approval has to do with the act of doing the action. So if you're afraid to pick up the telephone, it's four o'clock and your body's screaming, go home, go home, go home, or you've been you know, you've dialed the phone in your zero for 30. My God I've been there. It's really easy to quit, got it. That's not what winners do. Winners lean into it. So the goal, I don't care if you set up an appointment, the goal at that point is to pick up the telephone and dial it. The goal is the behavior. You got to do the behaviors consistently, then you can start worrying about your results. But don't get me wrong, I'm a result freak, I get that. But we have to face the issues that are holding us back if the fear is picking up the telephone. If the fear is having a conversation at a networking meeting, if the fear is talking to someone that you know, the fear is planting your feet and asking a tough question, the courage is doing the action. I don't care what the results are. And don't let negative results reinforce your fear of doing it. If you're afraid of doing something and you did it anyways, you should be prouder than hell of yourself for overcoming your fear and doing it. Believe it or not, that moves bricks from the bad wall, to the good wall. Need for approval, it's huge. So how we fix it is we have to say that we haven't you this is not AA, but you got to turn around and say man, I have fear of rejection. Now, you may have had fear of rejection with a certain type of clientele, and that you overcame it, but now you're moving up the food chain, and you're talking to different levels of individuals and out of the blue, you have the same feeling again. So you may not have need for approval with mid-level managers, if you're doing corporate sales, for instance, but you get to the C suite you do. Maybe the kind of individual, you don't have need for approval with with individuals that are at a certain demographics, dollar amount, size of business, yet you start talking to someone that's earning a lot of money, and you start to panic because they're different than you, they make more money than you. Oh my gosh. So all of a sudden that fear kicks in. So how you have to fix it is you got to admit that you have it.
Glenn Mattson
Second thing I would like you to write down your notes and how to fix it is change your need to be liked to the need to be respected. See, need for approval is a very ironic weakness. The more you try to be liked, more times than not, the less you respected. See, let's take something for instance, if someone is having a conversation, and they throw something at you like hey, do you mind if you send me something in the mail? Or it looks like we had a good conversation once you put pen to paper and put some things together for us? Someone asks you a question. And that's part of their plan, but it's not part of your plan. Remember, there's always a plan in play. So if it's part of their plan, it's time to plant your feet and ask the right questions, get back onto your plan. So if you choose not to do that, part of the thing I want you to look at is, is the person you're sitting in front of gaining respect from you? Are they gaining respect because you're saying yes to everything even though it's not in your best interests are quite honestly in theirs?
Glenn Mattson
So you have to ask yourself, am I gaining the respect by asking the right questions, doing the right process? Or am I just a yes person?
Glenn Mattson
The other one, that's a great way to help you fix it is ask one more question than you're comfortable. One more, just ask one more. So if you're having a conversation and you're about to panic and you're having sweat come down to your ankles and got marbles in your mouth and you know, you're supposed to ask this question, just ask it. Whatever happens afterwards, run out of the meeting afterwards, right? So just ask one more question than you're comfortable with, and then move out. If you do that every call. You do one more question. One more question. One more question. Over 60 days, 90 days, and it's huge growth. Ask one more question.
Glenn Mattson
Last thing I want to share with you on that front is this. Get it someplace else. What I mean by getting it someplace else means they get your need for approval someplace else. Go help at a soup kitchen, humanity, build some homes, coach some kids on the weekends, do whatever you need to do, but get your juice right someplace else. That's need for approval or fear of rejection, one of the biggest things that hold us back. I gotta tell you that 90% of the time that we do coaching with new individuals, or we're doing training with new individuals or companies, for sure, with executives, and in rainmakers and large producers, one of the topics that always pops up in coaching, is how do I get rid of my fear of rejection? Some people may not have it on sales, but they have it when they have to hold their own people accountable. Do you realize that 90% of workers want to be held accountable? 90% of people would love to have some feedback. You realize that also that 57% of all managers and business owners choose not to hold their people accountable. They choose not to. You know why? They don't wanna be the bad person. You know what that is, it's called fear of rejection. So how many of us have staff or kids or anything that's not doing what they should be doing and everyone knows it, and you're not calling it? That's fear of rejection, being afraid.
Glenn Mattson
The other element I want to share with you it's called emotional involvement.
Glenn Mattson
Emotional involvement is completely different. See with need for approval, you know what to do, you just wimp out. Emotional involvement is an episode that happens an episode occurs when that occurs, because you do not have conviction in how to handle it, because you do not have conviction in your technique, you panic. And panic means you do self-talk. And this, by the way, happens in a nanosecond. So maybe someone may ask you a question. Maybe it's about a product, maybe it's about you, maybe it's our pricing, maybe it's about anything. Maybe it's about a phone call, you're making a phone call, they say hello you don't have conviction what to say. All of a sudden, in our head, we go oh my God, how do we get here? Why am I making these phone calls? Oh, no. Well, we say other stuff like oh, sugar, oh, crap, oh, blank. The second we do self talk, we are off the reservation., we are off. Meaning that our emotions have completely taken over our brain. And when our emotions completely take over a brain, we've all been there, and then how I know you've been there is that when an episode occurs, and you can feel the pressure come to you. And then after the battle, after the conversation, after the dialogue, are you an amazing Monday morning quarterback? Are you the kind of person that says to yourself, we have criticized this? You should have said this? Why didn't you say that? Right? If you didn't do an amazing job of woulda, shoulda, coulda you gotta remember something, man. You got to remember that, if it was a technique problem, you wouldn't be a Monday morning quarterback, you would say I have no idea what to do. I'm lost. But if you're saying to yourself, I coulda, shoulda, woulda what that means is that you did know what to do. But in the heat of the battle, it wasn't there. We tell you what I mean by the heat of the battle. The heat of the battle means that in the middle your sales call because you panic, you couldn't go to the drawer, you couldn't go to the filing system. You couldn't go to that place inside your psyche that had the tactic. It actually shut off. When you leave the call or hang up the telephone. Take a deep breath. actually feeling your body. Almost like draining out of your body like your feet just opened up a drain and all the pressure leaves your body. And the second that happens. All the techniques pop in your head. Bam, there they are.
Glenn Mattson
So because we get emotionally involved, our brain shuts down. Unlike need for approval, when we know what to do, we chose not to. Emotional involvement is we know what to do after the fact because our brain shut off during it. And please don't play mental games with yourself and tell me it's emotional involvement when you really know its need for approval. You know what to do in the middle of battle, you're having a conversation in your head, you know what to do you know, when you're wimping out. Don't make excuses on that.
Glenn Mattson
But if it's emotional involvement, this is how you fix it. You got to figure out what causes the panic. Is it what someone said? Is it when they said it? Or is it how they said it? You may be amazingly good with individuals who are calm, but when someone all of a sudden becomes aggressive, or they become relentless to you, or maybe they're domineering personalities, and that gets you emotionally involved. So it's an episode. You got to identify what causes you to panic.
Glenn Mattson
The next is you must learn the strategy or tactic to handle the situation. Now, when I say learn it, I don't mean you know it. So when you learn things, you can either learn to get it right, or you can learn never to get it wrong. There is a significant difference between the two of them. Checkbox training is learning until you get it right and you're done. I'm telling you for emotional involvement, you have to learn how to do it's you never get it wrong, you keep practicing it to never get it wrong. So once you learn what causes it, you must identify the tactic or strategy that you need to learn and own to deal with it. And then you have to own it, which means roleplay, roleplay, roleplay, roleplay, roleplay, roleplay, roleplay, roleplay. A lot of times, we bring in joint work specialists, because their emotional involvement is higher than ours. So we look at the attitudinal piece of the Success Triangle, desire, commitment, self-esteem and outlook, along with your successful mindset, i.e. making excuses. Those are absolutely crucial. When we're following our plan and doing our daily activities, we're gonna hit barriers of success. The first two that we talked about is need for approval, and fear of rejection, along with emotional involvement. I gave you some tips on how to fix it. As we start to go through this journey, we're going to share more and more of those areas, and what some of them are, and how to fix them. But those are the two biggest, fear of rejections close to 30% of your business is down the drain, just specifically, because of that, if you're brand new in the business, it's close to 80%. I have individuals that have been running their practices in their business for 15, 20 years are insanely successful, they have need for approval also.
Glenn Mattson
They may have it with staff, they may have it with other individuals, etc. But it's there. So address it, fix it stronger inside your brain to follow through your tactics even more so.
Glenn Mattson
Next session, we're gonna talk about the bottom right piece of the triangle, which is tactics and strategies. That's the technique side, talk to you then.
Glenn Mattson
This has been the Building Blocks of Success with Glenn Mattson.