Episode #272: Shoshin - The Beginner's Mind

The word shoshin or beginner’s mind in Japanese is a great metaphor for the world of sales. When we start some activity there is a simplicity, a purity about what we are doing. We don’t have enough information or experience to have any particular angles on what we are looking at. We take things as they are and we have no delusions about how they should be. We have no habits yet, because the activity is too fresh and new. There are no habits to unwind either, because we are deep into trying to grasp what we are supposed to be doing. We are hungry to master this activity and we are dedicating our mental and physical efforts to do so. We are committed to getting it right.

This is a great mind set to help us improve, to polish what we are doing and to tackle new things. In sales, we are always under pressure from numbers, boss expectations, threats of removal and financial doom. One year can easily morph straight into the next, with a brief cessation of hostilities over the new year holidays. We were beaten down and tired over the course of the previous year and are slightly refreshed as we enter the new year. We tend to bring all of our baggage from the previous year with us though, especially our mindset. We just pick up where we left off and we are not elevating our chances of success in this year.

If we grasp the shoshin concept, we will take a close look at what we are doing, what we are trying to achieve and what needs to happen for us to be successful. We will begin to break down the various tasks required into their component parts and analyse our strengths and weaknesses. We will investigate how we can build those strengths even further and look to what we need to alter to diminish our weaknesses.

Why aren’t we doing this constantly throughout the year? The answer is very simple – we are too busy running on the spot. We are constantly chasing the numbers, trying to slam square pegs into round holes and permanently stressed. The break at new year is a great time to reconsider how we are doing things and what things we should stop doing and which things we should start doing. This sounds simple enough, except that we don’t do it.

Each component of the sales cycle needs to be interrogated for where we can improve. Are we asking for enough referrals or at all? Can we be more proactive this year? We know we should never ask in a dumb way such as “do you know anyone….”. This opens up the entire world to our client and they are crushed by the enormous weight of that consideration. We need to ask about a group of faces they can see in their mind’s eye. It might be members of the Chamber of Commerce they belong to or their golf group or their friends or associates. If we have given good service to them as a salesperson, we have every right to ask for a referral and we shouldn’t be shy about it. When we started in sales we had no hesitation to ask, but over the years of constant rejections and being beaten down on price by buyers, we have become constrained in our thinking.

On another front, are we following up leads fast enough? Two hours is deemed as the window of opportunity to contact a client when they enter the lead funnel. Maybe they clicked on a search word and were directed to your website and then signed up for a newsletter or something where they gave up their contact details. Is the internal system able to deliver their details to you within that two hour time frame and are you sufficiently motivated to drive this lead followup to the peak of your priorities? When you got your first leads, you were a demon on speed to do the followup, you were like a rocket to get hold of that client. Over the years you may have gotten into a lope and forgotten how to sprint hard to grab the business. Go back to your beginner’s mindset and remember how you used to approach things.

Are you doing enough research on the company and the buyer before you contact them? Were you an avid detective when you first started selling, trying to unearth as much information as possible on the target company before you made the call? How about now? Has complacency set in and you feel you don’t need to do that anymore, because you can wing it and you are too lazy or too busy to do the work?

If you have been selling for a while you have seen the emergence of unbelievable engines of client search called social media. Even if there are no annual reports available because they are not a listed company, the chances are high they will have a company website or multiple social media accounts. Before we meet the buyer, we can know so much more about them. We are looking for connectors, commonalities to break that wall between us, so we can build the credibility and trust. What a wonderful age in which to be a salesperson.

Let’s re-create that shoshin, beginner’s mind for this year and get back to doing the things we know we need to be doing, but which we have let slide. Let’s get our mindset right while our competitors drag their sorry selves into 2022 and change nothing. We can use our shoshin to get an unfair advantage over our rivals and make this the best year possible for ourselves.