Ep. 190 Forks in the Road

You’ll gain the benefit of Joe Pici’s experience for not only adjusting but taking advantage of unforeseen challenges.

Podcast Transcript

Voice over:

Get ready for an unfair advantage over your competition. This is The Sales Edge podcast. Where globally recognized sales expert and trainer Joe Pici helps you sharpen your skills for booking for appointments and closing more deals. And now here’s your host Joe Pici.

Joe Pici (JP):

Well team, welcome back to The Sales Edge. This is Joe Pici your host and thank you so much for coming back. Thank you so much for being part of our team and thank you so much for being the driving force to our growth. You know, before we get started on podcast number 190. I don’t know if it’s because of all the talk. All of my clients are just talking about the Super Bowl and football, but at 3 o’clock this morning, I kind of woke up and I was just thinking back. I don’t know if you know it or not, some of you do but I was a football coach for 20 years. Ten high school, 10 college. And probably the most challenging coaching I did was a defensive backs. Now in football, there’s offense and defense and and the wide receivers. They’re the ones that go out catch passes and tried to beat the defensive backs and get in the end zone. And a defensive backs, which I believe, this is a Joe’ism, is the absolute toughest position to play in a sport of football. It is 100% reaction based. You never know, what’s really going to happen. Teams have found new and better ways of throwing that ball down the field and so they were in constant reaction mode. And as I would coach them on their on, their skills and their abilities. I always caution them to be ready, to be ready for that chain, for that break for that different route.

That’s exciting. Because today we’re going to make the analogies of that. We’re going to talk to you about being ready, being able, being willing. And so as if I have to think about well the last 12 months if I was writing a book from February to February, I would title it “Forks in the Road”. You know, every challenge, difficulty, opportunity, in life we face is a fork in a road. You know, so much has been said about the last 12 months, but yet there’s not been a lot of day, a week, a month, a year of our Lives that we didn’t hit forks in the road. This is the time we can face, difficult decisions. You know, this is this is where we are presented with something we were not expecting. It’s where we have to make a decision and choose which possibility we’re going to pursue. Is it going to be this road? Is it going to be that road? Now, I know Yogi Berra for some of you don’t know who that is. You can Google him, coined the phrase when you go get to the fork in the road take it.

The sad part is, most people struggle with that because they don’t know which road to take. You know, it’s a split where we have to head in a new and different direction. You know, how many times have we had to negotiate that fork in the road? How many times have we been presented with a set of circumstances we weren’t prepared for? Tt just wasn’t in the cards. We didn’t know it was coming. And just like my defensive backs, they would be in their backpedal. They would be reading the the receiver, in man coverage and Zone coverage, the receiver to the quarterback. They would be reading so many things but they really didn’t know what that receiver was going to do. You know, and so in knowing that constantly we have potential challenges in options at every fork in the road, we are forced to make a decision and a choice. You know when you take a new road what goes on, what are the emotions? What are what do we what are we subjected to?

You know, so many people have a fear of new or the unknown. You know, what we don’t know sometimes can freeze us. Some people do not embrace new things and that doesn’t make them weak. It just is what it is. You know, there’s fear of failure. There’s feel fear of embarrassment. We don’t want to look bad. That’s one of the reasons why so few athletes want to be defensive back because, if you know anything about a defensive back they’re on an island. And when they make a mistake or when they have a failure everybody in the stadium knows it because, there’s somebody behind them in the end zone having a dance. But there’s also fear of success. So many people are afraid, if I succeed I may have to work harder. I may have to do more. So New Direction will create stress no matter what it is. No matter what happens. No matter how it shakes out when we hit that fork in the road, there is going to be added stress.

You know, we so many times can look at the fork in a road as as a loss. We’ve committed time, effort, emotion, commitment, money to one direction only to be confronted with, It’s now time to take a new direction. And so many people get so hung up. You know, there was a book written many years ago. You can’t steal second with your foot on first. Just think about that. So sometimes we’re forced to pivot. And a pivot is this, you’re going in one direction you plant your foot and you head off into another direction. We have to be nimble. We have to be ready. We have to anticipate that tomorrow, an hour from now, next week we could hit a fork in the road.

It’s about leaving the old and moving to the new. And that’s scary for some people. That you know, based on behavior styles and and I was doing a private disc training through Zoom with some people in Iowa yesterday. Great friends, James and Beth Mayou are getting certified in our disk model human behavior. And you know, we were talking about how different behavior styles handle change and stress. You know, so so there’s many ways that people respond. You know, it’s doesn’t make you good or bad. These are ways that some people can respond. So some people just don’t know what to do. They’re confronted with that fork. They’re confronted with that obstacle, that change, that all the sudden a door closes. And so what they do is they rely on other people to make the decision for them. And that could be good or bad. I believe it can be very dangerous because a decision you don’t make you will not commit to. And so, but this is one thing I see people do, they do a committee search. What do you think I should do? What direction do you think I should head? Now I’m not saying we shouldn’t research. I’m not saying we shouldn’t seek wise counsel or opinion. I’m not saying that. I think you collect data. I think you collect data, but ultimately the decision is ours. We could have a collective decision. But at the end of the day somebody has to decide. And as a good friend of mine used to say deciding quit deciding

Number two. Many count the cost and reason things out and weigh all the pros and cons and that’s a beneficial way to do it. However, you can’t take all day to do it. You can’t take all week. You can’t, you have to set a time line to which at this point, I’m going to make a decision. And so we don’t want to get into the paralysis by analysis. We want to say by this date we’re moving forward. And so the research in a pros and cons, although they can be good in are good. At some point in time, the reason we accumulate information is to make a decision.

Number three. Some rely on feeling, gut feeling or intuition. And I’ll tell you some people are really good at this. Some people can make great decisions through intuition. Some people rely on their gut feeling. I will say there’s a danger there, because intuition and gut feeling are tied 100% into the emotion. Which is fears, excitement. All of the emotional things that can happen. And so although some people can make that quick gut decision and intuition and make it work. I would say there’s also a challenge to that. And then you have people, they have a predetermined decision making process. You know, it’s in some of our past podcasts. I’ve done about two other podcasts on how to make quality decisions. You know, here at Pici and Pici, Joe and Dawn Pici. We created a priority management system that’s built in, it’s here. If we had a fork in the road this afternoon, we will sit down look at the priority management decision and make a decision based on objectives, goals, strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats. Yeah SWOT analysis. That helps us make decisions. So it’s essential and my recommendation to you is, to have a system for making pivotal decisions. Because I can tell you the year 2021 will be filled with forks in the road. You know, we are the first week of February. We’re just wrapping up the first week of February and I can promise you this. In only five weeks we have had to pivot many times because, nothing stays still. So when you’re looking at your decision making process, you know, what do you rely on? Do you rely on your friends, your peers, your business associates, whatever who you coach with? Do you rely on them making decision for you? Do you rely on gathering quantities of information, weighing the pros and cons?

Do you rely on intuition and gut feeling? Or do you now have a system that you could make quality decisions. Because someone listening to this podcast within the next hour, you will be hit with a fork in the road.

So let’s look at different issues that happen with fork in a road. What happens when you hit the fork in the road? Immediately you’re going to be forced to head off into a new direction. It’s going to be uncomfortable. It’s going to create change. It’s going to create a newness. So the first thing we have to understand, one of the characteristics of fork in a road is a new direction. Another one is, you’re going to have to set a new vision a new clarity. Whatever the direction is you’re going to be heading off to, you’re going to have to determine what do I want this to accomplish for us? What do I want this to do? What do I want? Because it could be different. It has to be tied into this new direction.

Next it’s going to create a very new focus. And focus is where you set your objectives, your benchmarks, your metrics. This is where you’re looking at the building blocks, your your building model, your business model. I can promise you last February March when we hit that fork in a road. We relined our entire business model. Yes. We took some from what we were doing, but we made subtractions and additions. And we put it into force. There was a new focus. There was an absolute new focus.

And next, It’s going to be new mindset necessary. Hitting the fork in the road and accelerating out of the fork in the road and committing to the new fork in the road, takes tremendous mental toughness. Takes tremendous mental discipline. You know, it takes tremendous mental ambition. It’s a you know, comfort is the enemy of success. And so in the fork that you were at you were comfortable. You knew what you were doing. You were excited. You know, you were consciously competent so to speak. And so you were moving on and then all of a sudden you hit the fork. And mentally we have to have that mental toughness, that discipline, that ambition, which creates a higher level of mindset mastery.

The next one is you’re going to have to have new execution. So under execution, you’re going to be mastering a new strategy and new skills. And if you go back to podcast 188 and you go through the learning cycle of unconsciously incompetent. You know, when last March when Dawn and I collectively made the fork in a road and Dawn took the project on, to build out sell more virtual .com. We were unconsciously incompetent. We didn’t know, we didn’t know what we didn’t know. We didn’t know what it was, how to do it. And so learning starting to kick in. We had to reinvest and re-educate we had to start to execute. We had the start the model and you don’t get to start on second base. And we moved into conscious competence. And once again, then we knew what the gaps were. We knew what we needed to master.

And we chose to invest a time, the money, the sacrifice, the self-discipline, all of the things that we’re talking about here. And we cross the Rubicon and I’ll be doing a talk on Crossing the Rubicon. And got to conscious competence. And now we have besides Pici and Pici, which is one of our hosts. A speaking, coaching, training, consulting firm. We now have SellMoreVirtually.com. Which is an entirely online coaching, speaking, mentoring, downloads, virtual membership platform with e-courses.

That was very it was tough. It was tough.

New skills. At some point in time the new direction, the fork in the road is going to cause us to have to learn not only new strategy, but new skills. Maybe all of a sudden you’re going to be put in a sales role. You have to master sales. Maybe you had to lay off some people and now you take on, you take on the responsibility of marketing and sales, or manufacturing, or customer whatever it is. Every new situation will need new and better skills.

And then we have to, there’ll be a new set of non-negotiables. Every new direction has its own set of non-negotiables. Everyone. And so sitting down and creating that list of the non-negotiables, of this new project, very important. It is very important to know the price you’re going to have to pay and not to negotiate the non-negotiables. So when you look at this strategy here and hitting the fork in the road. And pivoting and setting a new direction, a new vision, clarity, a new focus, new mindset. New execution over strategy and skills and new set of non-negotiables. Socrates think you probably didn’t think I read stuff like that, well Socrates once wrote The Secret of change is to focus all of your energy. Not on fighting the old but on building the new. Boy is that powerful. So no matter what we face, no matter what happens, be aware challenges in forks in the road are here to stay.

Let’s develop that mental toughness. Let’s develop all those things to get ready for the next fork in the road. So I have a couple things for you here. First of all sell more virtually.com is up. It’s built and it’s ready for you to check it out. So please visit it. Please call me at 407 947 2590. If you have any want to have a complimentary cup of joe. Send me an e-mail Joe@piciandpici.com. And take out your phone, type the word “sales edge”, one word into your text and send it to 55678. There are links of five free video course on recapture lost revenue through virtual selling. There is a link that will tell you everything about sell more virtually.com. There’s links to our podcast. There’s free downloads, there’s tremendous content. More than anything we want to be an asset to you. If this podcast is of value, can you like it? Can you share it? Can you write a positive comment? This, we are in a time never before have we seen in our ability to pivot, okay, to hit the fork in the road and and proactively move in that direction. Is going to show our success or failure and I know we’re going to succeed. Have a great day. We’ll see you at our next podcast.

Voice over:

Thanks for listening. New episodes will air each Tuesday and Thursday. So make sure to subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts and give us a five star review. The Sales Edge is sponsored by Pici and Pici Incorporated. A firm which provides training, consulting, and keynote presentations. Empowering corporations and individuals to attract and retain quality clients, for higher revenues and growth. Make more money in sales, speak with Joe in person by calling 407 947 2590 or visit www.piciandpici.com