Mary Marshall is the new President of Forrest Performance Group, the nation’s most cutting edge sales and management training company. She is going to share her journey including how she was an instrumental leader in growing FPG into an Inc. 5000 Fastest Growing Company. She has also been instrumental in creating FPG’s Stevie Award-winning sales, customer service, and leadership programs.
Her background includes online learning facilitation, sales, professional speaking, and moderating. She helps change behavior by teaching FPG’s award winning programs. Today, we talk about fulling tapping into human performance to increase sales, performance, and profits. Mary shares a lesson she learned in a call center job that she hated until she learned to change her mindset. These techniques on changing her perspective still hold true today.
Show Notes
- [03:35] Mary's first job was at the college call center asking for money. She learned so much. She cried in her first ten minutes.
- [05:37] This job made her miserable. She decided to talk to the top salesperson and find out why he was so happy.
- [05:39] Every day was wonderful for him talking to people on the phone, hearing their stories, taking something off their to-do list, and making them smile.
- [06:14] This changed her whole trajectory. The next semester everything was wonderful for her. She went to work excited every day.
- [06:38] She took this mindset into every sales job that she had after that.
- [06:52] At FPG she began helping the content team and now she is president of the company. It has been an incredible journey for her.
- [07:53] The power of reframing the mindset is amazing.
- [10:06] If you don't believe you can't create an environment for yourself or others to believe.
- [11:30] Beliefs are what hold us back from selling. It's our mindset and not deciding to yield or give up.
- [13:01] Persuasion is pushing forward when you know the product is right for that person or company, by doing your homework up front as opposed to manipulation.
- [14:49] Internalizing beliefs like people don't want to be sold to makes a salesperson think that there is something intrinsically wrong with what they are doing.
- [15:38] People love to be sold to. They don't want to be sold to buy anybody who's unethical.
- [16:29] To be successful sales release mindset issues that prevent you from doing things like selling on the phone.
- [17:39] Mary shares the difference between working with individuals as opposed to teams when doing sales coaching.
- [18:16] Skill training is great in a group framework. Some will act and some won't. This is where individual training comes into play.
- [19:19] Find the leash that is preventing the salesperson from following through.
- [19:58] One-on-one coaching can help change the limiting belief.
- [24:37] Before Mary starts her day she thinks about the type of energy she needs according to the task or people that she is going to be dealing with. She wants to always be in the right frame of mind.
- [25:54] She also writes things down and practices preparing herself for her next task or sales call.
- [26:22] Be present with who you are with. By preparing you can be grounded. Role play or have other people listen to what you are doing.
- [27:30] The most important thing is to have a process.
- [27:47] Mary uses the seven steps of starting strong with each person she sales too.
- [29:12] The first step is to ask a triple binding question. Get people to make decisions as fast as possible.
- [31:27] Sales and leadership isn't personal life or professional life, it is just life.
- [32:07] Success for Mary is responding in the most loving and effective way.
- [32:57] Her biggest goal is creating leaders for her company. She wants to create a space and environment that allows people to become leaders.
- [35:19] Mary listens to as many books as possible on Audible. She also does a lot of learning on Growth Cafe. She is also on Wunderlist.
- [38:04] Mary likes using social media to stay involved and excited with old neighbors that she used to have.
- [38:41] People can't be successful today without connecting on social media.
- [39:48] When you finally meet someone in person who you've known on social media for a number of years it's like meeting an old friend.
- [40:17] Out of college, Mary went up to the president of a company that she wanted to work for who she saw at a party, and his reply was we don't hire little girls as sales people.
- [41:29] This fueled her to prove him wrong. She also started noticing people who actually believed in her, and she realized she had to let go of the situation with this man.
- [42:26] Listen to people who actually believe in you. This is the fuel source that gives you the energy at the end of the day to do your job and go home and be a great mom.
- [43:30] Find the person who is the most successful in whatever you want to do and do what this person is doing.
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