EP49: Enslaved by Preconceptions? Shoshin Can Set You Free.

Can your prospects smell your “commission breath”? Is your eagerness to set the appointment or reach for the deal keeping you from gleaning the information you need from your conversations with prospects?

There is a danger that comes with expertise. When you are a true beginner, your mind is empty and open. You are willing to learn and consider all pieces of information. As you develop expertise, however, your mind naturally becomes more closed. As a salesperson, you might have a preconceived notion that you know where a cold call is heading. Rejectionville again! And this makes you less open to discovering new information, less likely to hear your prospect’s confession about his business or job or a problem you might solve. Your expectations are not immediately met, and you get that sense of doom that this call is a waste of your time. What can save you from that out-on-a-ledge, sales-related fear of impending doom? Shoshin, a Zen Buddhism concept that means “beginner’s mind.” Chris, Corey, and Jake Housdon discuss how employing the curiosity mindset of Shoshin (“I know nothing. Tell me about your experience.”) allows you to take ahold of your emotions, lead your prospect back into having a conversation, and put you back on the road to discovery.

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About Our Guest Jake Housdon is CEO and co-founder of SDR League, the world's first esports league for salespeople.

The complete transcript of this episode is below:

Chris Beall (02:09):

Yeah, Jeb Blount always... He always says that the biggest problem that we all have in sales, and he wrote a whole book about it, Sales EQ, is that we don't understand our own emotions and therefore have ways of... I'll call it managing, but I don't mean it in a controlling kind of sense. The ability to remain detached while executing precisely and with energy. And it's a tricky business in everything, though. I mean, I'm an old rock climber mountaineer. And how can you be detached, especially doing some of the games that I used to do, which did not involve a rope. I'm not saying I'm a smart person, right? I'm just telling you the truth. Corey, you know the Praying Monk, right?

Corey Frank (02:51):

Yes.

Chris Beall (02:51):

On Camel's Head, on Camelback Mountain. And I remember having this experience once at about 6:30 in the morning where I was free soloing. A very easy climb. I had to go up to the top of the Praying Monk, but it's got a lot of exposure. Exposure means how far you fall before you hit. And the exposure on that climb, it looks like you're going to fall into somebody's swimming pool, about 600 feet below you on the first move. So you come out of this little cave, tunnel, and you traverse right onto the face, and then you kind of get yourself situated, and it's a really easy climb. It's really easy. It's just a long ways down. And to do it, unroped at dawn, when the sun is just taking up as a kind of lonely and kind of special feeling, right? So I was up there doing that one Saturday morning, and I get up about halfway up the climb, and there's a little old mudstone flake there. That's got a hole in it, and you can move it with your finger.

You can actually pull on it, and it'll wiggle, and you're going to have to actually use it, not use it at the same time. So it's a very delicate sort of operation. And suddenly, I hear a noise. Totally unexpected noise, an industrial noise, and it's getting louder and louder and louder. What did I need to do? It's just like what happens when you are afraid that this person that you're talking with in a discovery conversation isn't the right customer. They're almost right, but. Nah, they're not going to go with us, right? What do you do? How do you not panic?

So that was the skill that, I was given the good fortune of learning, through a game that is too stupid to play it. Nobody should play it, which is this particular thing. And by the way, the way the story ends is fine. Obviously, I'm reasonably with us, or this is some real high-tech talk about ghosting. They talked about ghosting people now. We could be ghosting me right now. But I finally get enough courage, and I calmed down, and I get enough courage and turn my head, and there's the Goodyear Blimp, Colombia, at eye level about a hundred feet away. It's a bunch of people having a breakfast tour looking at "Look, human flies." Right? So my hands are sweating right now, by the way, as I try to emotionally detach from that little piece of PTSD.

Corey Frank (04:52):

But you know, Chris, what I think you've outlined there is the perfect archetype example of what we have as the four legs of that barstool, where you had that fear. Should I do this free solo on the Praying Monk? And then you had to cross that bridge going from fear to trust. I trust that I'm competent enough to get there. And then I'm curious enough if this foothold can may