7 Minutes to Better Selling Podcast Ep. 30

Welcome to the 7 Minutes to Better Selling Podcast. I'm your host, Colin Lake

President and Founder of Developing the Next Leaders. I welcome Tim Seifert, a longtime friend. He is also the head of the Retirement Solutions

Division for a Fortune 500 company and also heads their Center for Financial Planning Excellence

So Tim Seifert, we're so glad to have you join us. And it's been way too long

for you not to be sitting on this show with me. So grateful for you being here

My man, it's always great to be with you, Colin, and appreciate all the great work that you're doing

developing future leaders. And I just love the well-asked question. It's so good

So, so good. Your training. So keep up the good work, buddy. Noble purpose

Thank you, Tim. All right, Tim. So you and I know each other for 25 years

And right prior to me knowing you, you were a like a field representative covering North and South Carolina

Do you have both North and South Carolina or just North Carolina? North Carolina and Northern South. Right

Yeah. OK, so you have this small little region and then you move to a leadership position and then a bigger leadership position, a bigger, bigger leadership position still

And now you're like, now you have really put yourself in a place where you are leading a large organization doing tens of billions of dollars of sales

How do you go from there to where you are today? Oh, wow. What a great question. Get right at it, buddy

You know, Colin, you'll appreciate this. It's standing on the shoulders of giants

when I take a look back at my success and our success together is it is truly standing on the

shoulders of giants so when you say how did you get from there 22 years old to here is I always

find out what is the most successful people in your your your circle what are they doing so darn

well and just copy it and make it your own and then you and I are both growth mindset just one

percent better every day just one percent better every day but when i think and look at my career

it is 100 and standing on the shoulders of those that came before me and how can i have that growth

mindset and make it just a little bit better but those three people those three gentlemen today

are exactly why i'm where i am today is they taught me something really early in my career

boy that is a great answer tim i tell you that is a really i mean i could ask you like 30 questions offer We don have time for all 30 However I am going to ask you one So you ask them to spend some time with you They say yes right So you hope that if it

in your circle, they say yes. How does the conversation go? A lot of people know how to

say, can you help me? But you don't know how to get the right type of help. So how did you ask

for the help that you ultimately needed to allow you to become like the best presenter

the best at relationships and the best at like ink, ink. Intentionality

You and I use this word. Can you be more specific? Double click

Can you be more specific? Tell me what was going through your mind when you said this

Why did you choose this word? so we we with with sean kevin and tommy those every other week and our our conversation

is they would take me through this path of learning and that's more specific tell me why

where did you articulate that tell me what you were making the comparison to and i just kept

asking more and more questions it's the well-asked questions with you know what it was colin

practice over and over again until where you master it's a 10,000 hour rule right you ultimately

master this presentation skill you master asking great questions you master listening skills you

master the idea of centers of influence you master your office day right Kevin Connor taught me the

process this is my process this is what i do this is how i time block this when i do my expenses

this is how i do my receipts right he met today would be mastering the virtual virtuoso it's

mastering anything you have to do with owning your calendar it's all the stuff we teach but it's

it's discipline we don't rise to the occasion we fall to the level of our process we fall to the

level of our training. We fall to the level of our discipline. So what does it take? Hours and

hours of hard work. That's what separates the top 1% from the rest. You want to get to the top 1%

You got to change your relationship with heart. Joe Thompson taught us this, Colin

That's great. Joe Thompson said, kid, right? He's calling me kit. Kid, you know, 22 year old kit, right

You want to change your world, change your relationship with heart and your world will change

It so good Yeah I just love it Tim Tim we getting I going to shorten you just a little bit here so we don go too long but I really want to ask you this question I think you

the master of selling in so many ways and so many ways of thinking about it and working

towards mastery and not perfecting, but improving yourself. And so there is a world that is

changing from a sales perspective. Once upon a time, salespeople would say, here's the information

here's our product, but that is not enough anymore. We need to teach people how to use the product

and we need to teach people how to use the product for the better of their business and better their

clients' lives. So my question to you is from an opportunity perspective, what are like a couple

of things that you would point to that would help salespeople sell more effectively today

like September 29th today? All right. Colin, so we study this through our Center of Sales Excellence, our Center of Financial Planning Excellence

We study greatness. So what makes great salespeople great? And let me give them to you

just quickly, Colin, you ready? Number one is the way they think, right? So they think abundantly

and they think win-win, the law of reciprocity. The only way I can get what I want in life is help

others get what they want in life. So it's the way they think. And these are an order of priority

Number one is the way they think. Number two is the way they prepare, right? So we just talked

about that. They prepare continuously. The use of agenda in every meeting. They practice presentations

preparation process the way they prepare number three is the way they show up they actually work

they work with passion and they work beyond expectations and we can talk about the three

dimensions of setting proper expectations number four is the way they follow through

right it's the w's at the end of every meeting interaction whatever it's a w's who does what

by when you got to get the date time with the help of whom and then lastly Colin is the way they live

we talk about the attitude of gratitude right they live with humility and kindness now when I say

kindness I'm talking about empathy when I say kindness is don't mistake my kindness as weakness

right big difference but when we study the great sales people and Colin under each one of these we

We could go for an hour, but it's those five factors that rise above everything

And they do it consistently with discipline over time. And remember it's in order of priority

And the first one is the way you think. What do you mean by they think win Like I get what I want and you get what you want mr and mrs client um like is is is that what you saying like give us just a bit more depth on that

yeah so i mean this gets back to our buddy joe thompson when i left for the business 22 years

old he kicked me out of the office he gave me this thing two books first was a red book remember

the red book it was every broke it was every financial professional and back then it was

southern Virginia and West Virginia where I went out and he said don't come back until you call

every one of these go see all these people there's 3,500 I said Joe I don't know if I can do that

because I don't come back don't come back to the holidays stay in West Virginia and I listened to

him I thought it was okay the other book the other book which really masters what we call

you know the law the true law of reciprocity is think and grow rich by napoleon hill

and and i think you know the story you're listening to the story but you know napoleon

is andrew carnegie called in for anto to napoleon hill was a young writer the pittsburgh gazette

and he said go interview the 200 wealthiest families in the world and and and what is it

that made him wealthy. And he came back and he said, here's the 12 or 13 principles. And they

were all based around the law of reciprocity. And the law of reciprocity simply says this

that the only way any one person can get what they want in life is to first help others get

what they want in life. So to answer your question, win-win follows the law of reciprocity

right and it's not you you said a little backwards is i win when they win right so in other words

help them win first right give give give to ultimately all right tim i'm going to give you

last word but before i do i'm going to say thanks everyone for joining thanks everyone spending time

we're a little bit over we're a little bit over our 12 to 15 minutes on the live versions here

um we'll do some wonderful editing and make sure that tim's many pearls of wisdom are left in here

But, Tim, how do people get more from you or learn more, you know, learn how to connect with you best

Because I'm sure more people want to hear more from Tim Seifert. I know I do. Yeah, I mean, just how about LinkedIn

We'll just go with LinkedIn. So just for Lincoln Financial, but LinkedIn is a great way to get a hold of me

All right, great. Well, Tim, that was awesome. You know, that word is thrown around way too much in today's vernacular

or everyone uses these big awesomes and amazings and incredibles in just about every circumstance

I'm telling you, I think that was awesome. That was exactly what a listener, whether you are the newest of salespeople or the most experienced of salespeople

there are so many gems for us to do on that. So I can't thank you enough for spending some time with us and good selling to everybody