Self-Scouting: The Mid-Year Sales Review Most Reps Skip

You're six months into the year. Do you actually know what's working in your sales process — and what you quietly stopped doing back in February?

Bill and Bryan borrow a trick from football coaches: self-scouting. Before the next game, coaches review their own film to find what their team does well (so they can do more of it) and what they do poorly (so the other team can't exploit it). Bill and Bryan apply that same exercise to your sales year — build a 20-point scorecard, grade yourself honestly, and use it to plan a strong back half.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:06

Welcome back, everybody, ladies and gents. We are here every week at the Advanced Selling Podcast. I'm your host, Bill Kaske. Brian Neal over here. This is the longest running sales training podcast podcast history, and we are celebrating our 20th year in biz. We are going to officially be celebrating during the month of September. And if you have a story about how you started listening to the podcast, what it's done for you, what you're still craving but haven't heard in 20 years, let us know at listener at advanced selling podcast.com. You can even send us an audio. You can send us a video, but we since this is primarily an audio podcast, record an audio on your phone and send it in to us. We'd love to hear from you.

SPEAKER_01 0:46

Just email it to listener at advanced selling podcast.com. It doesn't have to be like 40 minutes, like you know, 30 seconds. Just flip your take your voice memo out and say, Hey Bill, hey Brian, what's up? It's me and say your name. Hey, I'm listening to you guys, appreciate the great work or love this or love that. And then email it to listener atvanced selling podcast.com. Just do that today.

SPEAKER_00 1:03

And that automatically registers you for an event that we're doing in September that's a coaching event, and we're going to do just Brian and I are going to coach anybody who has registered in anybody.

SPEAKER_01 1:15

Anybody 20th extravaganza, 20th year extravaganza for the podcast. That's a score, Bill. Isn't my right there? It's a score. It's a score. Score some tickets. No, score. That's like a you know, four score and seven years ago. 87, right? Score. I'm going back, you know.

SPEAKER_00 1:30

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:31

Old English. Yeah, old ye English. Ye old ye old podcast. I didn't catch that. It's so see. I should have listened to our last episode, shouldn't I have? That's right. Should have listened to our last episode. It's my fault.

SPEAKER_00 1:45

I had a friend once who did that. He would he would start the story in the middle of the story, and he would throw out something like, What's like a score, isn't it? You know what I'm saying? No, no. Okay, come on now, Jonathan. You gotta back up a little bit for those that are slow in the back here.

SPEAKER_01 2:03

Uh my wife and I took a trip to a place that I think you like, Bill. I just wanted to fact check this if you like it. Um, for the first time ever, I'd been there for games. I'd never gone there to go do what you're supposed to do there, which is um eat, drink, and be merry. And we uh listened to music. We went to Nashville for the first time ever. I'd never been to Nashville. The music in Nashville just blows your mind. Yeah. Everyone you see, like, why aren't they famous? Why aren't they famous? And I thought of all of the kids that go to Nashville with that dream and the people walking around with guitars on their back. And I'm like, man, this is just such an interesting thing to watch. Yeah. As an outsider, just fantastic. You know. So we just had a blast. We saw some great singer-songwriter, because you just pop in, you know, and then we went into a little honky tonk, and there's guys that had to be in their 70s playing music from 10 p.m. to 2 a.m. and good old-fashioned, you know, Johnny Cash type stuff. And man, we had fun. We had fun.

SPEAKER_00 3:02

You know what I noticed about Nashville when I was there and hopping into some of those places there on was it not Broadway? Broadway. Yeah, Will Street. That's Memphis. Um is all of the all of the audio systems are like first rate. Literally. Literally. Speaker set up and the sound systems and the microphones. Every everybody there is taking a lot of care with okay, we're gonna stand up here and sing. We better have a way to get this out into the audience in the right way. The sound systems and audio systems there. I I don't know.

SPEAKER_01 3:32

That's just me being a listen, listeners, give us a moment here. Uh everything is what I noticed, all the singers have their iPhones on their mic stands now. And and I realized this at one of the bars we were in. Everything is EQ'd on an app, both their ear monitors and the house. So there's a guy with an iPad. I saw I as his next band came in. I watched him, and then all the guys are setting their stuff up, and they can get all their EQs and stuff up, andor lyrics if they need them on their phone. Because one of the singers, he hit his phone. He's he said to his band, Hey, sorry guys, that was me turning you up in my ears too much. Sorry, I hit the wrong button on his thing. And then they have they all have another mic that communicates just to the band. So they have a stage mic that's behind him, and he turns around, he talks on that. The band's all staring at him because you can't hear because the bar's so hot, right? And they all nod, nod, nod, like, okay, we're gonna do a little Tom Petty for you. It was really cool to watch that. The technical side of that was amazing, and I agree. The the sound was flawless everywhere, just flawless for the rooms, anyway. That's cool. Bill and I are audio files. Would you say that audio file? Is that what you would say? I think it, I think it is audio file accounts.

SPEAKER_00 4:40

Yeah, I don't know much uh, you know, about the I know that at church I I stand or sit right next to the audio, not on purpose, not like but I do notice, and I do notice the guys spends a lot of time moving things around. I'm like, we should get it set and set right. And then I notice that sometimes the microphone is off, and yeah and the drums are way too loud. So, but I haven't said anything. I don't say anything. That's a thing. I noticed that your uh eight decibel, uh, your high range there is a little bit. Yeah, yeah. All right.

SPEAKER_01 5:14

Uh okay, so we're halfway through the year, kids. Halfway through Jan to June, July through December. We are into July, and that means that you have six months of history on how your year is going. And so today we're going to talk about what to do with that. And there's a concept that is used in uh football and high levels, college, and pros, uh, called self-scouting. And self-scouting is just what you might think it is. It is the uh process of pretending like you're playing yourself and looking for your strengths and weaknesses. What are some things that that you you can notice on your film that your team does really well that you'd want to really stop if you were the other team? And what are some things that your team doesn't do so well that you would want to take advantage of if you were playing you? And um, we've been uh we put this into our operating system just this year for the first time. And it's been a very valuable exercise to put pen to paper with some scoreboards about self-scouting. And so I thought, good topic, um, where we can kind of walk you through what that might look like and then what to do about it for the back half of the year. It's good. It's good.

SPEAKER_00 6:18

I had exactly that happen to me. I I had a an event, a couple of events, a couple of webinars that I did that just didn't this didn't catch. These didn't didn't do what I wanted them to do. And we've had it in the past where it does, and this one just was off. And we changed some things around. And I was telling one of my coaches about it, and he said, Well, have you done it? If somebody came to you, if you client, your client came to you and said, This is what's happened, this is what I did, you would give them advice. Just take yourself out of it and give yourself advice. And even I know we all know to do that, but sometimes you it's the actual intentional removal of yourself from it and say, if somebody came to me with this problem, what would I tell them? Oh, I'd tell them first off, the opening two minutes was a total waste of time. Or I'd say, you know, your your call to action was very vague, it wasn't sharp, it wasn't strong. And when you do that to yourself, it's amazing what you'll come up with if you're willing to be rigorously honest with yourself.

SPEAKER_01 7:14

That's brilliant. Self-scout. And then that is the I think to start this exercise. The overarching theme here is exactly what you just said, Bill. Rigorously honest with yourself, kimono open, no sh no hiding, no shame, no, no anything. Yeah, you got to be very real.

SPEAKER_00 7:31

Um, and you all did that. I had a cold that day. Here, here's why uh here's why I went seven minutes on the opening is because uh my printer didn't work. And I had, you know, I had uh I had the right hand screw.

SPEAKER_01 7:43

Yeah, that'll work. That's that'll that'll that'll make things different the back half of the year. And self-scouting, if you listen to my opening, um, doesn't just mean what's bad, it means what's good too. When you look and go, man, I'm really good. I did a really good job first half of the year with filling the top of the funnel. My prospecting was consistent. Uh, I was connected and introduced by clients. That worked really, really well. I want to pile on that second half. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 8:10

Um stop doing it. You know what? Yeah, right. And now that I think about it, I stopped doing what I was doing in the first quarter. And now my funnel's not where it should be. So it's not no shame. We're not judging ourselves, we're just inspecting ourselves. Boy, that's really good.

SPEAKER_01 8:27

That that what you just said, because if I watch people work, it's we which you and I do for a living, um, andor ourselves, that is a silent killer. Uh, that is one that you don't realize you're doing, which is you do something that works and then you stop repeating it and let it be for all sorts of reasons. But man, you should look back. And now I bet you did some things, you listeners. I bet you did some things in January, February that worked really well that you haven't done since. Yeah, almost guarantee you did something like that yourself. Oh my god, he's right. I did that. Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 9:05

When we need the business, we go out and do the things, and then we get the business, and then we stop doing the things, and then we need it's a cycle, it's like a roller coaster. Yeah, until you get off that and get system systematized to no, we're doing this every day, we're doing a podcast every week. We're not doing it only when we need listeners because that that just doesn't work.

SPEAKER_01 9:24

No, it doesn't.

SPEAKER_00 9:25

So if you want to go through uh some tips on how to do this, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 9:30

I'll give a generic tip first to structure these things. And so we have this. Um, it's more tied to our operating system, but and I stole this idea. Um, we came up with a um 20 elements to score ourselves on from five being the best to one being the worst, which comes out to a nice, neat, and tidy 100 possible points. And it might be tough for you to come up with 20 elements. Um, do your best though, and just think about mechanical things. So you think about mindset, maybe come up with three or four mindset things. Then you come up with prospecting top of funnel stuff, then LinkedIn usage, then social media usage or or link that sort of thing. And then think about uh uh clarity of your calendar, think about uh uh navigating a complex process. And did I get all the buyers in the room? Think about pricing discussions, think about closing. You come up with those big categories, two or three questions each. There's 20.

SPEAKER_00 10:25

There's 20 years.

SPEAKER_01 10:26

Yeah, and then it's one to five.

SPEAKER_00 10:28

Yeah, that's fascinating because I just we we literally did not talk about this. We did not talk about this. I just came up with the 20 focal points of mastering sales. There it is, which were 20 points. They're categorized, four areas, five questions, five for per area, and we're actually working with AI to see if we can create some kind of a little bit more of a systematic assessment. But 20. Now I didn't I didn't assign five points to it, like you went all the way to the math part, but 20 is not that hard to come up with. If you're if you're it could be your you know, your uh how you open meetings, it could be something very tactical, or it could be how you report to your manager, how you use your manager for coaching. So there's there's hundreds of things. Just find the first 20 that come to mind, and then you can always substitute later on. But I like that. It's great.

SPEAKER_01 11:16

The score gives you a good old-fashioned American uh grading system, then and first half of the year, you got an 87 B plus. Not bad, could be better. And you'll see it's so obvious when you do this. You go through and you circle the threes and the twos. There's your there's your growth, and then you circle the fives. That's what you pile on. Yeah, it's it's not that hard.

SPEAKER_00 11:35

And don't get don't get too hung up and well, you know, do I want to leverage the fours or do I want to improve the twos? Just your mind will will do the right thing, but you have to show it something. That's what you're doing here. You're showing these are the 20 things. Here's where I rate. You know what? This two, it doesn't really matter. This four here, I could, I could get this to a if I got this to a five, I double my income. So you can, but once you have the map, you can decide where you want to go on it. I've got one that I think happens a lot, and you know, um, and that is the procrastination. Most of the time we have things we procrastinate on, whether it's working out, whether it's eating better, whether it's calling a person that we haven't talked to in a while. There's always procrastination in our world, and we do it because we can't do everything. But I would suggest that as you look back to over the last six months, what did you procrastinate on? What did you say, you know, I'll get to this someday? And and go back and you can make a list, but you probably know just off the top of your head, because there's a story there somewhere. One of the stories might be that I procrastinated on it because I really don't believe it's going to bring value. Then forget about it. Get it off your list. But if you're procrastinating about something because you don't know how to do the thing, or you're uh, or you haven't blocked out time to do the thing, or you maybe you're afraid to do, you know it's the right thing to do, but you're kind of on edge about it. Those are the things worth exploring. Because if you could take their, let's just say you procrastinate on three things on an ongoing basis, take a look at why you do it and come to terms with, no, I need to do it. And I've got to have an action, I've some, I've got to have some kind of a plan to make it happen. I've I've see this all the time that it's the knowing, doing gap. We know what to do, we just don't do it, and we don't do it because we procrastinate. But it could be those things are the actual things that are gonna help you make your numbers in the six, the last six months. That's awesome.

SPEAKER_01 13:35

It's a great feeder because you all when you say it, everybody knows it. You know what I mean? As soon as you say, What did you procrastinate the first six months? You knew you should have done, you just haven't done yet. Uh huh, you got me. Didn't get you. That's not the point. Um, but you know, point is you know. I gotcha. I gotcha. I know, I know, I gotcha, I got this. Me too. Um let's see. Um, the other thing I'll say about the back half of the year, and I think it's important as you do the self-scouting, maybe you grid out some scores, get a couple areas to pile on, fours and fives, get a couple uh development areas that you really want to commit to, do what Bill's saying, commit to some action with an accountability partner or a small group of people that want to, you know, not procrastinate anymore. As you're getting ready for July through December, do not forget you have a five and a half month, maybe five month selling year because of the holidays. And one of my favorite things, because I'm kind of a weather geek, Bill, and I said it last night and annoy the hell out of my kids. I'm like, man, is it me or the days seem like they're getting shorter? Because we're past the uh summer uh vernal equinox and they are getting shorter. And I tell everyone, I said, You think you got all year left, you think you got mountains of time forever to make your number. And I promise you, you're gonna blink, and it's gonna be December 21st, and you're gonna go, What the hell just happened? Yeah, so do not sit on this. Do not sit on this. Oh good. That's all I got. Me too. That's a good one. Yeah, see how self-scouting, get get 20 things, put five, get a number, circle a couple things, get an accountability group, take action on the things, and plan for a five-month back half of the year.

SPEAKER_00 15:16

You'll be in willing, just be willing to take action. Just the willingness to take action can only happen though, until once you have this inventory, whatever you want to call it, of these 20 things. Or you don't have to do 20, but uh, you know, since Brian did 20, I did 20, do 20.

SPEAKER_01 15:31

Seems like a theme, doesn't it? Yeah. It's in the ether, in the zeitgeist, as you say. All right. Uh send us an audio. Listener atvanced podcast.com. A thing, uh, a hey guys, uh, great show, 20th anniversary. Happy 20th. Uh, listener to advanced link podcast.com. Go to your voice memos on your phone, record a quick little voice memo, just email it right then. Just do it today. Do it right when you hear this. Two minutes. Nothing, not even two minutes. And then that'll get you a ticket to our uh 20th anniversary extravaganza in September.

SPEAKER_00 15:59

Yeah, we need to set that date because I'm I'm out for 10 days, and I guess we should talk about this off of 10 days. That's great. Going to a rehab. Uh rehab. Oh, I just said going to a vacation out west. We're doing the Utah Yosemite Oh fuck. Yeah. And so we'll have to probably make it the end of September. Anyway, we'll get a date to you. Yeah. And make sure you send us that. That'd be great. See ya. Please. Bye. Bye.