Ian Ko­ni­ak is a coach for high per­form­ing sales reps, and one of the con­cepts he works with peo­ple on is what he calls The In­tegrity Gap.

Af­ter con­nect­ing at the Sales Suc­cess Sum­mit, Ian and I sat down to dis­cuss the con­cept of in­tegrity, since we’re among the only peo­ple re­al­ly talk­ing about it in a sales con­text.

The books are closed on 2022. How would you classify your year?

For the past few weeks, I’ve naturally been having this conversation with a lot of people (as I’m sure you have too). This is always an introspective time of year for me, and I like to retreat a little bit from my normal day-to-day to think about how things are going and in which direction I’d like them to head.

After quite a bit of thought, the best way I can describe 2022 is “the best worst year I could have possibly had.”

On today’s show, I’m taking you back in time to share my sales origin story, and the moment I decided that I was going to do it the way I felt it needed to be done, or maybe I just wasn’t cut out for sales.

That was 15 years or so ago, so I’ll leave the verdict up to you. 😉

It was 2006. My almost 10-year-old stepson Michael had been skeptical of the jolly old elf for the past couple of years.

You could tell in subtle ways. The letter to Santa didn't go in the mailbox until just a few days before Christmas. Then the next year, he asked for the impossible-to-find toy. Somehow, improbably, he was always surprised and delighted on Christmas morning.

But that year was the ultimate test.

Today I want to define three key terms that are going to come into play this season: confidence, belief, and Resistance.

Confidence and belief are often used interchangeably. The word belief is even used in some definitions of confidence. While I don’t want to argue semantics, I believe (pun fully intended) that there is a major difference.

Great salespeople create an environment to buy.

Great sales leaders create an environment to sell.

If you lead a team, have you thought about this? Do you have an idea of what a great selling environment looks like?

As we wind down over the next couple of weeks (or accelerate at a breakneck pace to try and make a number for the year), in the quiet moments you have, I'd like you to think about this concept, and I'm willing to bet you haven't before.

We use the pendulum as a metaphor for extremes. We see it in social trends and politics all the time. It’s important to note that there is at least a thread of truth in the extremes, that’s why they get taken so far. When they get carried away, that’s when the momentum naturally causes a regression to the mean, which is usually a lot closer to the truth.

I've been seeing more chatter about companies forcing their employees to return to the office (RTO). Most notable is Twitter, as Elon Musk is apparently trying to hot-box his engineers into fixing the platform.

It's too early to tell if the strategy will be successful, but forcing people to work 80+ hour weeks will end spectacularly one way or another.

"You'll never sell better than when you Sell Like You” That rolls off the tongue really nicely, and people's eyes light up when I say that. They all seem to get it conceptually, but we have to peel back the layers of the onion here. What is the value of selling like you? What is the outcome, what happens to you? What happens to your results when you Sell Like You?

There have been several moments in my career (and I assume in yours as well) where I have wondered whether or not I should do something.

I've been in discovery calls where I wondered if I should ask a certain question. I've raised my voice in operating rooms and stopped surgeons from proceeding because I saw something I didn't like. I've driven across town to see someone without an appointment because I just had a feeling they might be willing to see me.

I've never been let down by that intuition.

I love every new season of this podcast more than the one before, and the ones before have been pretty darn good. For Season 4, I’m thrilled to be talking about how to Sell Like You.

This concept came about in 2021 when I was speaking at the OutBound conference. It hit me like a ton of bricks during a conversation I was having with two rockstar sellers in front of my exhibit booth. Right away, I registered the domain and I knew I was onto something.

I’ve been obsessed with Steven Pressfield lately.

I was first introduced to The War of Art about ten years ago when Seth Godin referred to it in The Icarus Deception. It was impactful, and I knew the concept of Resistance (with a Capital R) was a big one, but that was barely the tip of the iceberg.

Here's a simple way to leverage gratitude at the end of the year to create new opportunities for your business at the beginning of next year. 

Naturally, as the year comes to a close, you're going to be thinking about gratitude. You're going to want to spend some time and show your appreciation to your best customers and clients. You're gonna want to think about where you've come over the past year, and you're definitely going to want to think about where you're going in the future. 

...and nobody does when you're not.

I had the same conversation two separate times with two separate sales reps on back-to-back days. When that happens to me, I know I need to address it for the rest of you because there are some people out there who are going through this and really just don't know where to turn.

Here's the situation.

Over the seven-plus years that I’ve had my consulting business, I’ve become much more interested in what holds salespeople back than what moves them forward. The problems themselves are more interesting than the fixes, and the fun is in the application. 

Your prospects need you now more than ever.

I could probably end this piece right now, but that would be anticlimactic, wouldn't it?

That’s a wrap on Season 3!

I’ve put together a quarter’s worth of prospecting episodes all in one place, which coincidentally is how long you should stay engaged with a prospect before you move on to another one.

This season discussed the frameworks I use with my clients to help them become more effective opportunity creators, and I hope it’s been helpful for you.

I don’t watch much baseball anymore. There was a time when it was ubiquitous on the tv every evening, but times change as kids grow up and they’re more interested in their own shows on the screen. I still manage to tune into the playoffs in October. Meaningful games are just too hard to turn down.

“Alright, Jeff, 25 episodes of prospecting theory. Would you please just tell me what to say?”

Content is not just for marketers anymore. On today’s episode, I’m going to show you how I’ve used content in the past as well as how I’m using it today. I think it’s going to reaffirm your belief and give you a couple of different spins on what you’re already doing.