Who is on the show:

In this episode, we host Jill Konrath. As a business-to-business sales expert, Jill’s ideas and insights are ubiquitous in multiple forums, both on and offline.

Jill’s newsletters are read by 125,000+ sellers worldwide. Her popular blog has been syndicated on numerous business and sales websites.

Why is she on the show:

She was recently named one of the most influential people on sales by LinkedIn, among many other recognitions.

What did i learn in this episode:

As sales professionals, we are constantly busy and we are to find time on ever more busier executives so we can position ourselves as someone who can add value to them and their business.

We do a lot of our work online (from checking our emails to researching our clients and their social profiles to reading more about the financial results of our customers. And some of the most brilliant minds in our era are working tirelessly to keep us hooked on their products by using findings from neuroscience research.

When we add both of the above, it is extremely difficult to not get lost in the rabbit hole that is the internet.

Some things that Jill recommends:

No notification policy: Notifications are one of the most important way that we get distracted and sucked into rabitholes. So, the first thing to do to gain our time & focus back is to remove all notifications. I only have notification for when either my wife or my boss reaches out to me.

Batch our work: She recommends that it is easier to focus and we become a lot more productive when we batch our work. Fixed time for emails. Fixed time for online research and so forth.

Shut down the distractions: As sales professionals, we need to be able to think deeper and find insights. The ability to shutdown our gadgets and thinking deeply is  important to refresh our brains. We need to give our brains some rest.

Focus: Think about and decide what is the one thing that we can do today/this week that will have the biggest impact and focus on accomplish that.

Learn how to work in a digital world: As a species, we have not evolved to deal with the digital world. And this is not going to go down but only going to get worse. So, we need to consciously learn how to live and work in a digital world.

Take a break: The higher level thinking which is required in order to connect with different thoughts, identify patterns and gain insights require that we take breaks so that we can replenish & rejuvenate our brains. Work on 50 - 10 mins bursts - 50 mins work followed by 10 mins of active break (walk, drink water, stretch, etc).

Work on what matters: With the time saved by becoming more productive, we as sales professional can continue to do more high value activities and self development.

Unclogging our pipeline: So much of deals or opportunities are in our pipeline because we hope that they will happen. Just like it is important to be more intentional and focused on our time, we need to be as focused and intentional about keeping our pipeline unclogged. By unclogging our pipeline, we can find common themes among the opportunities, thereby helping us address these concerns. Another high value activity.

Best Prospects are the one's undergoing change: The best prospects who will be open to change are the one's that are already going through some kind of flux. This change makes them more open to challenging the status quo.

Overcoming Overwhelm: By becoming more focused and productive, we can use the time we save to not only do high value activities but also help our customers by giving them information that can help them overcome their overwhelm.

Best part of her job: Solving challenging, complex,  sales problems.

Biggest challenge of her job: Difficulty to decide which ideas to go after.

Whats on her bucket list: Iceland.

Recommendation: Hidden Figures, the movie

What superhero would she be:  Jill, the time master

What is so obvious to her which people miss all the time: Overwhelm is the biggest problem at the root of almost every challenge.

2 action recommendation: Minimise distractions. Find out your own ways to avoid and minimise distractions. There no hacks, only lasting change.

Where can you connect with her:

You can find all her great work on her website - www.jillkonrath.com and on LinkedIn. You can buy her latest book here.