Sales Management Podcast
Cory Bray, 8x author and co-founder of CoachCRM, digs into hot sales management topics.
Sales Management Podcast
45. Resilience as Your Super Power with Gayle Charach
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Ever felt like you're sailing through stormy seas, both in your professional and personal life? You're not alone. Join me as I sit down with Gayle Charach, a seasoned resilience coach, to dive deep into navigating life's turbulent waters.
Building Resilience in Sales Management
Speaker 1Welcome to the sales management podcast , your source for actionable sales management strategies and tactics . I'm your host Coach , crm co-founder , corey Bray . No long intros , no long ads , let's go . I've got a special guest for you today Joining me . From Canada , it's recently minted resilience coach after 20 years in the world of sales . Enablement Gail Sharok . Gail , how are you ?
Speaker 2I'm great , Corey . How are you ?
Speaker 1Oh , I'm great , I'm resilient today , bouncing back from you are . I don't know what I'm bouncing back from , but it just doesn't . Even you can't let things knock you down , and that's why I'm so excited to talk to you today about resilience and some of the things that people can take for themselves and for their teams . When things are hard , how to get them pushing forward in their direction . That's awesome .
Speaker 2I will make one little amendment . You meant bouncing back . I don't like to think of resilience as bouncing back , because sometimes we don't want to go back to a state that we were in . In my case , I bounced forward , and that's what I like to think of resilience , as is , yes , getting back up again , but then pushing forward , not bouncing back .
Speaker 1I love that , and that's what happens when we get cute with language and we say , oh , it's alliteration , so we should say bounce back because it sounds fun . No , bounce forward . So we've already got our first takeaway from today . So tell us , out of all the things that you could have done in the world with your life , what drew you to the idea of coaching people around resilience ?
Speaker 2So interesting a question . So I spent 20 years in the field of enablement and after my last layoff , which was my fourth over the course of 20 years , and yet again it was wrong place , wrong time . It wasn't me , it was a series of layoffs .
Speaker 1It's crazy , because I know people that have worked with you and you get praised by everyone . I've never heard a negative thing come out of anybody's mouth .
Speaker 2Yeah , it's amazing . And yet , when you're in a place where things aren't so stable , these are things that happen and it happens to all of us , and especially in the world of technology . I mean , you and I both have watched for the last six months the exit , exit , exit after exit after exit , layoff after layoff after layoff , and I'm looking at all these very sad and very seriously hurt people whose lives were so enmeshed in their work and they can't separate who they are anymore . So a layoff happens in a situation like that . And that was my first layoff , my very first layoff I'll never forget . I was about three months into it .
Speaker 2I was pouring over job boards , and this is 15 , 16 years ago , so the tools weren't as extensive as they are now . But in that time I remember one morning waking up and we had a fridge that needed to be shipped out and another one was being delivered and I had to get up and clean the fridge out and I'm on my hands and knees on the floor . My husband walked into the kitchen and I looked up at him and said I don't want to be a charwoman anymore . And it just occurred to me at that moment that I was so wrapped up in my job , that my job was so who I was , that I had nothing outside of that , and I've lost my identity . And I think that's a big piece of what we're seeing now is a lot of people are re-evaluating and saying OK , in my case , it was my fourth layoff , am I ready to go another round or no ? And I just , I just was too tired , corey , I was exhausted , and I realized a few months into my layoff that I was depleted , I mean literally burnt to a crisp . For 20 years I had been riding myself so hard that I didn't stop and take care of me , and I think that was a huge recognition .
Speaker 2So , as I started thinking about , ok , if sales enablement is not what I want , to move forward with what's out there for me , and I thought about all the things that I'd done in my multiple careers over my lifetime , and they all focused on developing people . So I thought what can I do around developing people ? Well , it's got to be something that I deeply know and I'm familiar with . And if there's anything I know , it's being resilient . So that's . I landed on resilience coaching . I love it .
Speaker 2So what is resilience ? Resilience is the ability to bend with pressure and not break under it . So I've got a really beautiful quote that I love , and I love it because I wear a bracelet every day that says be stronger than the storm . And the quote is from Louisa May Alcott and it says I'm not afraid of storms because I'm learning how to sail my ship . And that's what resilience is . If you think of of you as being a vessel in the midst of a sea that's turbulent and stormy , how do you keep that ship upright and not allow it to meet the fate of the Titanic ? Right , you are that ship . How do you sail through and become resilient ? There's so many ways , but yeah .
Resilience and Turbulence in the Workplace
Speaker 2Yeah .
Speaker 1Well , as you look out into the world , I'm curious do you , do you see a trend with people becoming more resilient , less resilient , and what's driving that ?
Speaker 2It's really interesting . It's a great question actually , and am I seeing a trend ? What I'm seeing is , again , if I , if I use LinkedIn as my barometer right now and my circle of people , which spans sales across any number of industries , I'm seeing a lot of people looking really weary . I'm seeing the messages that are coming through on LinkedIn as sounding really exhausted , like are we here again ? Do we have to do this again ? So , if you ask me , I don't think people are showing extreme resilience . I think there are many that are , but I think there are many , many folks that are getting caught up in that swirl and they're really struggling to write the ship .
Speaker 1Yeah , I get it . It's hard too , because I think right now , as we talk , it's July of 2023 . Yeah , and there is a bimodial , is that it ? I don't know , I'm probably going to sound dumb .
Speaker 1Anyways , there's some groups that are doing really really well , like some things are just doing incredible right now . Nvidia right now might be doing better than any company's ever done in the history of the world , and they're in tech . Apple's doing great . The big tech folks are doing phenomenal . And then at the lower end of the tech market , people are really struggling and they've got zombie companies that have raised more money than they're actually worth right now . A lot of companies that get to their next milestone and then in other sectors of the economy , etc . Miss some . Healthcare is doing great because people are getting older and people need healthcare and we're innovating and things like that , and so it's not bad for everybody like it was in 2009 . There's no pockets of negativity , and I think that might even make it harder . If you see your neighbor doing really well and you're over here struggling , what kind of impact does that have on somebody ?
Speaker 2Absolutely , and that's part of getting caught up in that swirl of turbulence , right Is well , wait a minute . How come Corey's sailing right beside me on the same ocean , and yet his ship is upright and he's moving forward . And here I am struggling to write it . What is Corey doing that I'm not doing ? That's what I want to know , right ?
Speaker 1Yeah .
Speaker 2Oh , I think I mean for me . What I'm seeing is that people and again you know , look at the color of the hair on my head it's silver , and every one of these silver hairs holds a lesson learned . So I've been around a long time , really long time , and I've seen a lot of transition , I've seen a lot of transformation . I've seen a lot of change . It's really a struggle for people right now when you think about everything that's going on around us the economy and all the struggles with that and then you get a layoff notice in the middle of a South economy and you're worried about tapping your savings , and I mean there's so many things that are so overwhelming . So it's easy to get caught up in that turbulence all around you instead of focusing on the ship . What is the ship need in order to stay upright ?
Speaker 2Yeah , we focus a lot on the turbulence around us and not a lot on the us .
Speaker 1Let's look at this from the perspective of a sales leader that's got its team that's in a tough spot . Yeah , teams not hitting their numbers . You got expectations , lead flows down and there's no room for excuses . What advice would you give somebody in sales leadership right now who's got that situation and their team is frankly not not being as resilient as they could be ?
Speaker 2So I think the first question I would ask a sales leader in that situation is have you talked to the ships right ? What conversations are you having with the people on your team ? Are you aware that there could be undercurrents of things going on that you're not aware of , that are outside of the work around , that could be impacting these people's productivity ? And I think that's a big miss that I see a lot of management teams make is that we look at everything . This is my workplace , these are my work people . Therefore , anything to do with work is okay . Anything outside of that , no , we can't touch that .
Speaker 2Well , guess what ? I'm not . I don't have a face that I put on for work and a face that I put on when I come home . As a matter of fact , I had this exact conversation with one of my clients recently who said you know , I didn't know how to respond when managers asked if we were okay , given that we just had layoffs and I wasn't sure how to respond . And I said but well , did you just come out and tell them what you know ? Why didn't you say what you're saying to me ?
Speaker 2Well , because , and again , a lot of people are feeling like there's not psychological safety in the workplace for them to be able to open up . So who is it to come incumbent upon ? Not upon this employee who's shaking and shivering in her boots because she's an individual contributor who doesn't have power , right perceived in her mind , doesn't have power . And and when I asked why didn't you say what you said to me , the answer I received was well , gail , I have an eight to five face and I have a six o'clock after face , and my response to that was that must be exhausting . I can barely manage one of me , let alone . If there were two of me , I couldn't imagine it .
Speaker 2So stop , let's stop for a second and understand that we are not machines , so we are people , and people have all sorts of things going on in their lives outside of the workplace . So sometimes , as leaders , we have to do a little digging to figure out is this a workplace issue or are there other things that are are happening in this turbulent sea around this person who is the ship on trying to help remain upright ? And if I don't take that leap of faith and try to tap that in this person , then I'm never going to make a change . So I say to managers who are seeing things that are not working . Is it all work or could there be undertones of things that are going on that you're not aware of ? That ? Maybe have to probe a little bit . For yeah , because we are humans and we bring our whole human selves to work . No matter how hard we try with the masks , we are still human .
Speaker 1We are . We are what . This goes along with what Helminoi says coach the player , not play .
Speaker 2Exactly , you guys have that nailed . It is about coaching the player and not the play , and especially in sales , it's really difficult as a leader to separate yourself from that . As a leader , it's scary to be vulnerable and to tap into someone else's vulnerability . So you know , to lead what I say . I mean I just went through this extreme burnout situation where I was literally the only word I could come up with to describe it was depleted . I was literally so depleted .
Speaker 2So one of the things that I realized through my own healing which , by the way I went out and sought coaching because I knew that I was this rudderless ship swimming in a storm and I needed some help to keep up right . So I went out and sought coaching and through that I learned for me . You know , again I took it back to the core and said there's been so many changes in my life , changes that people at work don't necessarily know about . Do they know that I moved to another city to take care of my parents , that my recipe has changed , that I'm no longer responsible just for me and getting up in the morning and going to work , but now I have an elderly father that I have to take it ? And if there's all these things that change in people's lives all the time and that upsets Apple Cards and it upsets our emotional balance , I knew I couldn't help other people , I couldn't be a coach unless I put my own damn oxygen mask on first , right ? So I think that's an important lesson for all leaders to learn is what are you doing to keep your ship up right ? You managing to cope with the turbulence around you and do you think you've got it right ? If you've got a right , great , go and help your people . If there's something that you're missing , go , take care of that .
Speaker 2And as this is the thing that bothers me , corey , is that we've all gone through workshops like this in our lifetime , where you know we talk about our feelings or emotions . We tie that back to our unmet needs and figure out ultimately what is our purpose , what is our passion . The recipe is changing . How do you keep track of knowing ? Is this still ? Am I still ? Is this still my core passion area ? Or has that changed ?
Speaker 2Because , again , with all these silver hairs on my head , what interested me at 20 , didn't interest me at 30 , and the same thing did not interest me at 50 , right ? So as we get older and we're exposed to more things . Things change , we change , so why are we not going back to the basics and making sure , every few years , has our recipes changed , that we're going back to the basics and understanding ? Are my core values still the same ? Great , is it aligned ? Or is all that aligned with my passion ? Do I have a purpose ? Is my purpose still the same ? Has my purpose changed ? And when you think of it from a leadership perspective , this is all going on in your people as well . Put your oxygen mask on , make sure you're okay and then coach the player .
Speaker 1Yeah . So here's the tricky part . Sometimes the things that people on the team are dealing with are pretty extreme , so you've got a manager who might not know how to deal with that . There might be some serious things going on at home or in other aspects of life . How have you seen managers lean on other folks , be it HR , senior leaders , someone else , when you've got an employee ? I've heard several examples over the last year where things aren't good at home , things aren't good with the extended family . Maybe somebody gets a little on the wrong side of the criminal justice system .
Speaker 2A little .
Speaker 1Potentially .
Speaker 2Is that like being a little bit pregnant ?
Speaker 1Yeah , yeah , yeah , yeah , exactly Things like this pop up you're a sales manager
Leadership Responsibilities and Building Resilience
Speaker 1. What the heck do you do about that ?
Speaker 2You know what this is . One thing I've always said to sales leaders is yes , you're a sales leader and you have to manage a book of business . But guess what , when you become a leader , you also have to manage people , and if you don't know thyself , you cannot manage people . So who do you turn to ? I can tell you for years in my role in enablement if you've got a good enabler , who you're walking shoulder to shoulder with , those are good sounding boards . Your enablement people are really good sounding boards for you , good people to go to , to tap on the shoulder and say you know , this is the situation I'm in , this is the situation I'm dealing with . At least , at the very minimum , tell me where to turn .
Speaker 2Right Enablers are people who are dot connectors . We've got all kinds of contacts in all sorts of parts of different worlds and undoubtedly we'll have something , some recommendation , to give you . Same for your HR person , right ? I mean , if it's a delicate situation where there's a life in the balance or God forbid , something really serious , that's when you get with your HR person , obviously . So , yeah , are we looking at an opening cans of worms as leaders ? Yes , but that's a responsibility we took home when we agreed to leadership .
Speaker 1Yeah it's not just about the pipeline report .
Speaker 2No , it's not , and that's the thing you know . The mistake that so many people make is promoting people into management who have been great reps . Well , that's terrific , but have you given them the skills and the tools to know how to manage the other part of their job ? Because now you've added a dimension that they didn't have . They were really good at managing books of business before , but now you've asked them to manage people . Have you prepped them and primed them for that ? Have you given them the skills , the tools to do that ? If not , are you really promoting the right people ?
Speaker 1Many companies haven't . And if your company has not trained your managers on how to coach , send an email to Free Stuff at coachcrmcom and we'll send you a free copy of the coaching salespeople course . Gail's seeing it . Gail , what do you think ?
Speaker 2Amazing . You guys have absolutely nailed the coaching , and the fact that your moniker is Coach the Player and not the Play is exactly where my head is at and has always been at . It's about the people .
Speaker 1Yeah , that email address is free stuff at coachcrmcom free stuff at coachcrmcom . Back to the show . So , gail , when we're thinking about becoming resilient on the team , how do we set a short-term goal to show that we're getting some kind of leading indicator of success ? So , for example , right now we're recording this , July 17th Many teams have just closed out their second quarter or they're about to . In the next 14 days , someone's down , they're not heading it . How does the manager and the rep work together to come back from something that might be looking really , really bad and at least start pushing forward , not bouncing back ?
Speaker 2So , again , I think , do a little digging . If you're a manager , you have to do a little digging , and you have to make that digging go a little bit below the surface of where you would normally play , which is at that business level , right , try to uncover is there something else that's going on underneath the surface that is happening , and then work towards finding a solution for that with your person . Is there some additional coaching that might help them ? Is it that they need some therapy ? I mean , these are things that we need as people leaders . We need to be cognizant of knowing when to turn people towards another path . Right , yeah , you know , in terms of , for me , the framework for resiliency overall is about finding the joy and the passion in life , understanding our emotions so that we know which of our needs are being met , what's not being met , setting boundaries and that's really important too , and I think it's a big miss that a lot of managers don't plumb onto is , you know , we're continually adding to our employees' tasks , but what are we taking away to give them the balance ? And when you think about this world that we're in right now , in technology , where there's been a lot of layoffs , your remaining employees are sitting stewing over the fact that they've got now added responsibilities because those bodies that were doing those things are gone . So boundaries are really important . Understanding what voices are playing in people's heads . How are they coming down on themselves ? How are you encouraging a positive growth mindset right , and ultimately , are you accepting of the fact that your people are going to show up as their whole messy selves to work right ?
Speaker 2It's not just about the business , it's about the people . So a metric I'm not sure that I can say that there's a metric . I think , again , engage with your team , your HR team , your enablement team . I think those are two good starts that managers can start to work towards . How can I solve this bigger problem of people ? It's not just my business . My business is suffering because there's something broken with my people and I need some help . So first , be the first to stand up and ask for that help . There's no shame in that and being vulnerable and sharing yourself . Hey , guys , when I'm really having a , I'm going through a shit time right now , my dad is calling me all day . I'm trying to focus on work . This is what's going on . I mean , share a little bit of what's going on in your life , being a little bit vulnerable is actually a strength .
Speaker 1And you don't need to be a hero .
Speaker 2No .
Speaker 1Nobody's looking .
Speaker 2I don't want a hero . I want someone who's going to help me take a step forward . I don't need heroes .
Speaker 1That's a great Bonnie Tyler song .
Speaker 2Yes , it is .
Speaker 1I love that song when I'm playing poker . Sometimes I'll be listening to podcasts . I'm going to listen to Bonnie Tyler . I might be the only person in the entire poker room that's ever thought that before , but great song . I love it , you don't know what song I'm talking about Tyler hero and Spotify . It's phenomenal .
Speaker 2Yes , I just think really , you know leaders have such a hard job . You guys are . It's , it is being a leader today of people is so multifaceted and it's no longer the luxury of just dealing with the business side .
Speaker 1Well , and the interesting thing is that this is it's something that I've seen come up over and over again . It's people talk about this as a new thing . There's a cover article , cover story Harvard business review , january 2016 . I just looked it up . They talked about the collaborative overload , where your best people are being overloaded , and the image that they use on the cover of this Harvard business review Magazine is an electrical socket that looks like Kurt Klerp Griswold's from family vacation , where he's got 20 plugs into one outlet and it's going to start a fire If you take your best people and have them be responsible for everything .
Speaker 2Exactly , and I think that's another another . And then think of your your least productive or your least . You know the person you're struggling with the most . What if you gave them a little added responsibility but coach them to that right , you're increasing that self , that person's self worth , and you're alleviating the burden on something . The question is , can they manage both ? Well , do you have the right people ?
Speaker 1Well , maybe , or just this this sounds a little more aggressive but or should you fire your least productive people and just not spend any time with them at all and reinvest the time , the energy and the resources into the remaining people ? Cause I think nothing disengages an employee more than watching leadership and resources go into somebody that's underperforming .
Speaker 2I agree , I agree . So I'm not suggesting that everybody take their weakest performers and give them a whole , much more responsibility , but think about it in the context of somebody who , where their self worth might be at risk , right yeah , and they're not going to be able to act where they're . And sales is the hardest job for that . I mean God , if you don't make your number , you're not worth anything , right , you're going to get let go . I mean , we bash salespeople all the time . It's probably the worst profession for the whole notion of imposter syndrome , right being something that I'm not . It plays itself out so much in the world of selling and it's a constant stream of pressure , of quote , of meeting numbers , of right . And when do you take stock ? When you stop and take a breath and say am I whole ? Am I whole ? Am I able to give everything I've got because I've got what to give , right , or do I need to fix me a little bit ?
Speaker 1Well , and fix me could be a couple of things right . So it could be fix me in the context of this job . Or ask the question am I bad at job picking ? True , yes , because if we all know the people that aren't that good , but they're at the right company and they're crushing it , yeah , yeah , there's the folks that are really , really good and they're in a tough spot . One of my friends told me one time he said the best thing he ever did was his first job at a college . He worked for the worst company in the market and he said that he learned so much from that that that really helped launch this career .
Speaker 2Anything else could only get better , right ?
Speaker 1Yeah , I mean , when people hate you by default , you've got a big hill to climb , and that's a way to find resilience , and one of the things that might impact somebody's ability to be resilient is have they had to be resilient before ?
Speaker 2Absolutely , and that's a really great question , especially when you've got young up and coming sales people were hiring kids that are straight out of college and this is their first job and where , you know , get on the phone and start calling and hammering and then they fail that first round , but they were a students in college . So what happened and how do you think they're dealing with that ? How do you think that person who was the A student and ace their college education and came out with a 3.98 grade point average , is dealing with the fact that they failed the quarter ?
Speaker 1Right the added thing they've never hit on a romantic person potential . I'm trying to say this without offending people . They've never attempted to date in person and been told no to their face thousands of times , like when you and I were coming up because they got their apps now and if the other person doesn't swipe right on them , they don't get a ewe gross .
Speaker 1No , get out of here . Look at their face 10 , 15 , 20 times in one night , whereas when I was 20 , sure , rejection all day long . Just you , just that's fine . And then all of a sudden , nothing matters , and just this is part of the game . But if that's never happened to you , if humans haven't stood in front of you and literally rejected to your face thousands of times , then you're
Resilience and Communication in Leadership
Speaker 1put in a different position . I think culturally that's just something that's changed with different generations throughout the years .
Speaker 2For sure , for sure . And I think those are things that we need , especially when you've got a young team , young up and coming , who don't have life lessons learned really hard ones . Most young people have nuclear family still or some form of family right . They haven't lost parents at a younger age . There's a huge blow . What about your middle age people who are dealing with having to manage now , elderly care on top of keeping a full-time job and at the same time they've got kids going to college ? So you're juggling like think about where your people are at in their lifespan and what they might have . You know what strength they and I've got a great tool called my resilience plan . If anyone wants to tap me on the shoulder for that , I'm happy to help with it , but that's it Give me your email address .
Speaker 1Once you're in your email address , good , gail .
Speaker 2Plot done .
Speaker 1GailSharac at gmailcom and Sharac . It's spelled differently than the beverage .
Speaker 2Yes , it is C-H-A-R-A-C-H . It's kind of like character without the T-E-R , because we're characters the Sharacs . So I think that's something that managers need to keep in mind is , look at your people where they are in their lifetime and from a resilience perspective . Are they too young to have experienced so much that they need to have developed that resilience ? Are they in their early stages of developing it ? Are they people in their middle sort of age world where they have suffered loss ? It could be job loss , it could be people loss , but there's pet loss , right ?
Speaker 2I mean any of the things are going to upset someone's emotional apple cart enough to cause a follow-up of something . It could be a lack of productivity , lack of focus . How are they ? On the burnout scale ? I mean there's a terrific tool that Jeff Reisley has put out there from the Sales Mental Health or Sales Health Alliance . He's got a burnout tool . I actually went in and I did the burnout test and I love it because it's not just a standard five questions . He's got them well-weighted so that you've got a little bit more . It just felt more real to me . So , on his scale of thriving to unwell , I had like flashing red lights of unwellness , yeah , from I think it was 70 to 92 or something is unwell , and I scored something like an 89 . It was that bad . But did any of my managers along the way , any of my leaders along the way , stop and say Gail , what's going on ? Gail , you're looking like you may need a little bit of a vacation . No , no , Gail had to figure that out all by Gail's self .
Speaker 2Which is okay , but guys , if you're- .
Speaker 1I mean , that's another life lesson , Nobody generally nobody cares about you .
Speaker 2That's it . You have to care about you first and you have to put your own oxygen mask on , and that's why I left sales enablement , because I was so burnt out that I realized I had nothing left to give in that respect .
Speaker 1Now , let's think about how we can use this to our advantage , though . So if I'm a frontline manager and I'm under the impression that you have to put your own oxygen mask on first , well , what if I report to the vice president ? How do I help them so they're not feeling the same way about me in terms of communications ?
Speaker 2So walk me through this again , Corey .
Speaker 1How can I push information to as a manager ? How can I push information to my manager to help them have more confidence in what I'm doing , to help surface coaching opportunities for me and manage up really well ? Because if I'm feeling something about my team , the assumption should be that , well , what could my manager be feeling about me and how do I mitigate the fact that I'm feeling that they're feeling about me in the same way that I'm feeling about individuals on my team ?
Speaker 2That's a great question , and my coach actually tells the story of how she was feeling a little bit under the gun and a little bit very much imposter-like , and she actually was in a workplace that she felt relatively safe in and she brought it up at a manager meeting and , to her surprise , every one of those managers said well , I feel that all the time . Yeah , again , I think it's about open communication . Right , it's about being able to share and understand that sharing is not and that vulnerability of sharing is not a negative thing , it's a positive thing . So in my case , if I were the manager sitting with a team that's not being productive and I'm having some challenges , and I want to push upwards to my team to say , are you aware Like I need some help over here ? Hello , it's about open and honest communication and if we can't have that , then we can't be leaders . Yeah , I mean , you've got to be able to be . You've got to be able to open the kimono a little bit and share . Yep , love that and that goes both ways .
Speaker 1I heard something on a podcast the other day that I thought was really interesting , and they said that when someone has a problem , there's two different ways that we can react to it . We can either say how did that make you feel and say what are you going to do about it , and the commentary yeah , I love your take on this .
Speaker 2I think both questions are equally important . I think I first want to understand how you feel about it , and once we've processed that , I'm going to move you forward .
Speaker 1So you're going to ? When you say moving forward , are you going to ? Are you just getting the feelings out of the way so I can feel like I got them out of the way ?
Speaker 2No , it's not about getting them out of the way . It's about understanding Again , if you're feeling something , it's going to be an indicator of a need that is being met or unmet , right
Recognizing Unmet Needs and Moving Forward
Speaker 2. So let's figure out is there something that's not being met for you ? Is it an emotion that is tied to an unmet need ? And then let's solve that right . And so , what is that unmet need ? Is it that you're not sleeping well ? Are you ? Does your diet need some change ? Do you need an appointment with the doctor ? I mean , let's figure out what unmet need is causing that emotion . Once that's being acknowledged and dealt with , then the next question becomes and now , how are you going to move forward ?
Speaker 1So I don't know one or the other .
Speaker 2I think it's both .
Speaker 1I like it . I just lost 50 pounds . I feel way better .
Speaker 2Exactly , exactly .
Speaker 1I should have done that sooner .
Speaker 2That's right , and I know that I need to right , but am I doing anything about it right now ? No , I'm caught up in my own .
Speaker 1So , but the cause the reason I did it is because in just like in sales , nobody's going to change unless they have pain . Yeah , I got gout twice in one month and I couldn't . I was in . I was in Southern Spain , at the beach , 24th floor apartment overlooking the Mediterranean Sea , and I couldn't leave for four days because I couldn't fricking walk . So I was ordering Indian food and eating there at the table . I had to go down the elevator to get it and I had to take a cane to do that and I could barely walk on a cane . And then I said I shouldn't be doing this anymore and I used a slightly different language to myself . But that's the gist of it .
Speaker 2But why do we wait that long ? Why do we wait until we're in the unwell phase to do something about anything ?
Speaker 1Here's my thing and I think I can tie an analogy in here is when I was growing up , I played basketball and I played basketball probably 25 hours a week . Well , when you play basketball 25 hours a week , you burn a lot of calories , so I overate by habit . I was eating two , three dinners , eating a lot at lunch . I was an overeater and I love food .
Speaker 2Yeah .
Speaker 1And now I'm in my current athletic adventures where I play pool and chess and these things that burn lots of calories and I have the same diet . All of a sudden it says well , maybe have a salad for lunch and don't eat dinner .
Speaker 2Your recipe changed right .
Speaker 1Get the four-counter Chick-fil-A instead of the time 25 hours of basketball .
Speaker 2You're now doing things that are far more sedentary . Your recipe changed , so you had to change your diet , yeah , To accommodate . Well , why wouldn't we change things in ourselves when our recipes changed ? That's what I'm saying . If we don't take stock every time there's been some kind of upheaval in our life , even something as simple as moving from the apartment on the 25th floor to an apartment on the 10th floor , that's stress . And if we're not taking stock and stopping to say , all right , I've had a series of cumulative big events that have caused a lot of pressure . What impact is that having on me ? And that's where I wanna understand how my feeling because how I'm feeling is gonna tell me what needs of mine are being met and not met .
Speaker 2Corey , there was a huge , huge eye-opening surprise for me in my own depletion and healing when I was going through the coaching process and it came time to evaluate my values . If you would have told me , even five years ago , let alone 20 years ago , that my second top , most value , after authenticity , would be self-care , I would have laughed at you . Who's time for self-care ? And I'm not talking about manicures and pedicures . I'm talking about the really the deep dive inside , the meditation , the walking , the movement . I mean all the things that we do to make our bodies work . If our body physically isn't working , then nothing else in it , around us is going to work .
Speaker 2And that was the problem that I had when I recognized how burnt out I was . I had no capacity for anything If I had five minutes of focus at a time . That was a lot . And I'm now ? How many months away from that . It's been over six months of healing for me and , quite frankly , I'm still maybe at a 60% . I'm not 100% , but it took me 20 years to get here . So it's going to take time to work on that and I think that's part of the resilience pieces Taking stock . I started I had been listening but not hearing , and when I started reading job descriptions and felt a physical , visceral reaction , I realized that my body wasn't up for another stint of exhaustive job hunting and being positive . I knew I couldn't do it . So it's recognizing our limitations and then working to fix what's broken so that we have that whole self to go back out there and move forward with .
Speaker 1Well , this is the hard part , because you've got all of these things that are more personal , and then you've got things around Are they asking a discovery question , setting next steps , doing effective demos , keeping their talk time down so the prospect can actually talk ? And that's where zooming out coaching the player , not the play is absolutely critical . If you wanna learn more about how we do that , check out coachcrmcom . We've got a free version .
Speaker 2Free version and I have to say , having been in that tool , having learned the lessons , having been through the courseware , there is no other tool on the market that I am aware of that manages coaching like you guys do . You have nailed it . So it's true , and I'm not just . It's not just platitudes , because I'm on your podcast , corey , you know that .
Speaker 1I know you've told me that before . I appreciate it . Gil , thank you so much and tell folks about what you're up to and how to reach out to you .
Speaker 2So I am now reinventing myself as a coach . I am coaching to resilience . What does that mean ? It means coaching people to be stronger in any way . It means coaching people who are looking to transform themselves in some way , develop themselves in some way personal , professional , anything like that . Tap me on the shoulder . If you're right now feeling all of those feelings of heaviness and overwhelm and I just I feel like some days I can't put one foot in front of another , that's when to tap a gaol on the shoulder and you know , for everyone out there I mean , we work with you know therapy , therapists work in the past to get you to a sort of better present . Coaches will take your present and help move you to a better future . And that's what I at my heart . That's what I want to do is just help people move forward in their lives .
Speaker 1If you want to move to the future , tap gaol . If you're enjoying the salesman , if you're enjoying the sales management podcast , subscribe to it on Apple or Spotify . We're producing new episodes . It'll be out twice a week at least . Maybe we'll do something special . I don't know If you know anybody that should be a guest . We're always looking for guests . We can do interview format , we can do debate format and if somebody wants to propose a handful of folks to come on and really get into a topic , we can do a WWE style Royal Rumble . That would be fun . Haven't done one yet , looking forward to doing one , and we'll see you next time . Sales management podcast Corey Gray , ob God .