Episode Sponsored By: Strassburger Steaks
Our guest this week is Mark England,founder of Procabulary, the language of getting things done.
They build fun, simple and easy to use tools that help you discover direction, purpose and turbo-charge every goal from the smallest daily task to lifes biggest dreams.
Mark’s stated mission is tohelp people create more powerful, more fulfilled lives using the power of better words and stories.
This episode is brought to you by, Strassburger Steaks. They are bringing the steakhouse to your house. Celebrate your next occasion with meat!
On today’s show…
1:00 – The philosophy behind Procabulary, a revolutionary language program
3:00 – Mark’s career ended and his life began
7:00 – Emotional Detoxification
16:20 – Translating and transforming common sales complaints
20:00 – The danger of “soft-talk”
30:00 – When an internal monologue affects you externally
36:00 – Your mind is built to find opportunities and block negativity…if you know how.
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FULL TRANSCRIPTION
Mark England: We’ve all sat next to someone on a couch. Let’s focus on our personal lives for a moment. We’ve all sat next to somebody on a couch somewhere where they’re all tense and tight for whatever reason.
Jeffrey Gitomer: That was high school, wasn’t it?
Mark England: That was high school? No. I’ve got a very good story about this.
Jeffrey Gitomer: I’m sure you do. Where do we start this? An answer? It doesn’t matter. We’re having a good time. Right.
Jen Gluckow: He couldn’t wait to get in here.
Jeffrey Gitomer: You need sales balls to make sales calls. I’m Tweeting that puppy. Okay. Hello, everybody. And welcome to Sell or Die. Those are your two options. My name is Jeffrey Gitomer. I am the author, actually the writer, of The Little Red Book of Selling. And to my right-
Jen Gluckow: I’m Jen Gluckow, Founder and CEO of Sales in a New York Minute.
Jeffrey Gitomer: And to her right-
Mark England: My name is Mark England, and I’m one of the co-founders of Procabulary.
Jeffrey Gitomer: Can you describe for us what is Procabulary?
Mark England: Procabulary is a philosophy and a methodology. The philosophy is that our identity is an ongoing, fluid, flexible process that we participate in. And we participate with our language on a day to day, hour to hour, moment to moment … It’s a process. And the methodology, the beginning of the conversation of the methodology, is our online training course, Core Language Upgrade. So what we’ve done is we have mapped out two sub-sets of the English language. And you and I talked about this earlier, Jen. And why is this important?
It’s very important for people to understand there’s a lot more to their language than what they learned in school. Most people’s education about their language comes down to three static things, spelling, grammar and definitions. None of which address how our language engages and interacts with our imagination and our feelings and influences for better or for worse how and where we breathe in ourselves and the other people that we interact with, whether it’s a selling environment or any other environment. And when people, they gain an understanding generally and technically speaking, that this is going on all the time, it opens up worlds and avenues of personal and professional development.
Jen Gluckow: I agree. I mean, in school I learned grammar. It was ingrained in me to have the best grammar, spelling, all that. And we were never really taught the impact that our language has on us to ourselves or the impact that it has on others. So how did you get into that? Did you always study language?
Mark England: No, not at all. The wheels came off the bus in 2002 in Bangkok, Thailand. I was a competitive martial artist in college, mixed martial arts and kickboxing. And I’d done well enough on the amateur circuits for me to … Well, I just had one dream and one focus, and that was to go pro. And I got presented-
Jeffrey Gitomer: Get the belt.
Mark England: Right?
Jeffrey Gitomer: I love the belt.
Mark England: The belt. You got to get the belt, man. I had two options. It was either go pro in 2002 or move to Thailand and train Thai boxing for a year and then come back and go pro. So it was either go pro or go pro. So I moved over to Thailand, a small fish in a huge pond. And me in all my brilliance, I was a little bit hurt when I went over there from a recent fight and I did not let myself rest. I had created such a … let’s use the word hard environment in my mind, a hard identity, that relaxing and having conscious, productive, down regulatory time, it was not in the conversation. So I over-trained. I just overdid it. Anyway, long story short I had my second knee surgery over there. I said it in the Ted Talk. The doctor said, he said, “Your career as a fighter is over.
Jeffrey Gitomer: Oh, how pleasant.
Mark England: You can become a very good swimmer.”
Jeffrey Gitomer: Yeah.
Mark England: It felt like somebody hit me in the face with a ball-peen hammer. And I took it so badly. And he was right, by the way. I was done. I took it so badly, I didn’t laugh for a year. The conversation that I created in my mind, I was having with myself, was so detrimental and so negative, I couldn’t get my face in a position to where I could enjoy myself much less laugh. And I went over to Thailand with my girlfriend from college. And she was a really funny person. Right? And I remember clearly she’s being herself, telling jokes. I was watching her and I said you know what? Six months ago I would have been laughing with her. I’m not laughing now. For a whole year I was in that state until I got to a point, thank the Lord, that I was able to recognize I’m participating in this situation and I can do this for a extended period of time. It could be another year, it could be another 30 years. And that is a massive waste of talent.
Jeffrey Gitomer: Yeah.
Mark England: So I said to myself, something has to change. That something is me. I don’t know what the specifics of that are. Right around the same time I had a couple of conversations with someone who had gone … I was living in Bangkok, Thailand at the time still. I ended up staying over there for 10 years. It was our vice principal. Our vice principal had gone down and done a detox at the spa. I know you’ve heard about that, at Ko Samui. It’s an island in the Gulf of Thailand. And this also dovetails into the story of how I met you all. I met my business partner to be down there, Adam Chen. Huge shout out to that guy.
Jen Gluckow: Adam!
Mark England: Adam! We love you, man. It just is what it is. And that process of going down and paying a different kind of attention to myself, focusing on myself in different ways … I had no experience in the benefits of making adjustments in diet and basically making adjustments in lifestyle. And one of the main conversations down there … I can get specific about the exact evening that changed my life, was one about emotional health and well being, as in the stories we create and the language that we use. A guy was doing a presentation on emotional detoxification. I thought that was the weirdest thing I ever heard. And one of my friends, he gave me the weird eyeball. He said, “You need to go.” I said, “Oh. All right, fine.”
I went, and he talked about words. He talked about stories. He talked about identities and gave some specific examples. And he said, “Does anyone have a story that you’re all hung up about?” And this woman just shot her hand right up. He said, “Well, what was the story?” And four years ago … So her issue was that she was reluctant to get in a relationship with another guy. And the story that-
Jeffrey Gitomer: That never happens.
Mark England: Ever.
Jeffrey Gitomer: Yeah.
Mark England: Never.
Jeffrey Gitomer: Yeah.
Mark England: She went to Beach Week with her friends and him and his friends. Anyway, long, messy story short … He cheated on her with one of her friends and then broke up with her in front of everybody. And she was wrecked.
Jeffrey Gitomer: How pleasant.
Mark England: How nice.
Jeffrey Gitomer: Yeah. No alcohol involved.
Mark England: Never. Not at all. Totally sober. He had her go through the story. At the end of the story … It took about three, three and a half minutes. She was crying. She was angry with tears. Took her through that same story again, made two adjustments to the language. And now she’s sad, no tears. And now that I’ve made those two connections I’m leaning in. Third time he had her change the very end. Now she’s neutral, more or less, so much so that her perspective changed. That she said, “You know, that guy was weird and it was never going to work anyway.” And that all happened in 10 minutes. And I said that’s not my story, but that’s my story.
Jeffrey Gitomer: Yeah.
Mark England: I went to the website, downloaded-
Jen Gluckow: Wow.
Mark England: … the thing and that was the beginning.
Jeffrey Gitomer: Cool.
Mark England: So yes, I now pay attention to what I say and how it influences me. And I connect dots. And my life is significantly better personally and professionally because of that practice, which it absolutely is. It’s a practice.
Jeffrey Gitomer: But there was a point there where it became a defining moment for you.
Mark England: Yes, sir.
Jeffrey Gitomer: And you said, “A-ha.” When she got to the end of the third story and it was a positive outcome, that changed everything for you mentally. You said, “Oh, I can … ” You didn’t even have to tell your story.
Mark England: No, I did not. Because I was very guarded. We had the opportunity at the end of the presentation to tell our story and I got up and left.
Jen Gluckow: Whoa.
Jeffrey Gitomer: Whoa.
Mark England: Yup. I’m not sharing my story with anybody. Absolutely. I was petrified of that.
Jeffrey Gitomer: Yeah.
Mark England: What I did do is go straight to the internet caf, when they had those things over there, and I downloaded the 81 page manual and I went to work on myself. I said I’m not talking to anyone, but I’m going to work.
Jeffrey Gitomer: Yeah.
Jen Gluckow: Way to go.
Mark England: I had a session this morning. I had two sessions this morning with two very lovely ladies. In one of them we identified that paying attention to what interests us and then practicing around those interests develops skill. What I knew at the time was this is interesting to me and I want to get better at it. That’s all I knew.
Jeffrey Gitomer: Agreed.
Mark England: I had no clue that it was going to turn into and now for all the right reasons snowball into what it has. And so backing up to what I did, from the 81 page manual I went and bought all the DVDs that I could on this particular method of navigating and adjusting stories, making them more accurate interpretations of what happened. Instead of she never lets me do what I really want to do to she sometimes never lets me do what I want to do.
Jen Gluckow: Yeah.
Mark England: Take out the never. She sometimes lets me do what I want to do. And then, wait a minute. I sometimes let me do what I want to do. So I’ve gone from an absolute externalized story to something focused in on me. Okay? Much more productive of a conversation. And then I went and trained with the founder of the system, went back to the spa, and I was a … That same spa, that’s where I met Adam. I was essentially a counselor for many, well thousands of people over a five year period of time. And just two people, two chairs, one story to navigate. And I took notes. And later, about seven years later, I met up with Adam again-
Jeffrey Gitomer: On accident-
Mark England: … showed him what I was doing.
Jeffrey Gitomer: … or on purpose?
Mark England: It was divine intervention.
Jeffrey Gitomer: Got it.
Jen Gluckow: Ooh, I love that.
Mark England: Yes.
Jen Gluckow: I love that.
Mark England: Because I was only supposed to be over there for two weeks and I ended up staying four months. And in that four months we went to work. And he took a look at what I was doing, and he says, “Okay. This is legitimate tech,” as in the technique, “and we’ve got to change some things. And then this is a legitimate business.” I said, “Yes, sir. Let’s do it.” And it’s been three and a half years since then.
Jeffrey Gitomer: Wow.
Mark England: Very interesting.
Jen Gluckow: Very cool.
Mark England: Very interesting times.
Jeffrey Gitomer: And so by changing the context of the story and changing some of the words in the story you can get someone to reassess how they’ve looked at it for an extended period of time.
Mark England: Yes, to their benefit. Absolutely.
Jeffrey Gitomer: You said something earlier about ignoring interests or following your interests.
Mark England: Yes.
Jeffrey Gitomer: Most people ignore those interests in favor of I have a mortgage, I have to have this job. I’m not going to divert myself to something that I could potentially love. Is that fair to say?
Mark England: It’s exceedingly common. And as long as they or anyone … Because it’s not a personal conversation. Two plus two equals four. If I say I don’t want to keep focusing on my past, or anyone says that, that language forces them to focus on the worst parts of where they’ve been and why, regardless of the fact that they have a sincere desire to move forward. And that’s one of the many interesting parts of the conversation about negations when we explain this. The first thing my driving teacher, he taught me when I got in the car … He said look where you want to go because you’re probably going to go there. And then we keep going with the car analogy. Yes, it’s very good to keep in perspective and keep in mind where we’ve been. A lot of times it can help us generate fuel. And the rear view mirror is this big for a reason, and the wind shield is that big for a reason.
Jeffrey Gitomer: Yeah.
Mark England: Focus more on what you want. Focus less on what you don’t want and watch what happens. Your energy level will rise. You’ll have more emotional endurances for the trials and tribulations that any kind of worthwhile endeavor will present you with. And it’s a better way to navigate.
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Jen Gluckow: I want to break this down for our die hards, because the true power in understanding what you’re talking about is actually feeling it and experiencing it. So I’m going to come up with … And Jeffrey, I would love for your help in coming up with a few different scenarios of things that sales people say and stories that sales people have.
Mark England: I love it.
Jen Gluckow: And we’re going to throw them out to you.
Mark England: Let’s do it.
Jen Gluckow: And help us break it down. Okay?
Mark England: Let’s do it.
Jen Gluckow: So here’s one. My quota is double from last year. There’s no way I can achieve double the amount of sales in the same amount of time.
Mark England: Okay, perfect. So I would say to someone-
Jen Gluckow: Oh, and they decreased my commission rate.
Mark England: Perfect. We’ll segment that sentence out and then translate it. So there’s no way I can double my sales quota. So I would take in I and put in anyone.
Jen Gluckow: Okay.
Mark England: There’s no way anyone could double my sales quota. Let’s take out anyone and put in Jeffrey Gitomer. There’s no way Jeffrey Gitomer could double my sales quota.
Jeffrey Gitomer: Cool.
Mark England: Okay? Yes, there is actually. And how would he do that? How would he go about doubling sales? How would he do it? So if it’s possible for him to do it, then can I do it? Okay. Well, I don’t quite feel like I can do it. Could I do it? Yes, I could do that if … If what? And so now we identified that that is a possible outcome. That is a possible positive outcome. And now I’m into process. What do I need to do in order to make it happen? What would Jeffrey do? What would anyone with legit sales training do? Okay. Write some of those things down. Very important to write down thoughts, words, as you all well know.
Jeffrey Gitomer: And so do I have to re-dedicate myself to something? Do I have to learn something new? Do I have to not watch TV in-
Mark England: All potentially, and probably [crosstalk 00:18:25].
Jeffrey Gitomer: Are you going to make me make my own game plan?
Jen Gluckow: Yeah.
Mark England: Yes.
Jen Gluckow: That’s the cool thing.
Mark England: Yes. And then it goes even further from me making you make your own game plan to you making you make your own game plan, to you getting excited about making your own game plan, to I make my game plan.
Jeffrey Gitomer: Dammit.
Mark England: Dammit, when I wake up in the morning and I think to myself, “Okay. Now that I’ve concluded that that is fact about me, I make my own game plan,” what’s my game plan? I’m not considering whether I can possibly, soft talk, make my own game plan. I make my own game plan, and here it is for the week, for the month, for the year, for the quarter, whatever it is.
Jen Gluckow: Okay, wait. Back it up. So you just mentioned something sort of under your breath that I don’t think our die hards know what you’re talking about. Tell us about soft talk.
Mark England: Okay. How would you ask for the sale, Jen? Give me a professional asking for the sale statement.
Jen Gluckow: When would you like to get started?
Jeffrey Gitomer: Do you want to hear mine?
Mark England: Go for it.
Jeffrey Gitomer: I’ll be your best friend.
Jen Gluckow: Do you want to know how some people ask for the sale?
Mark England: Yes.
Jen Gluckow: Okay. Can you see yourself using this maybe possibly in the future?
Mark England: I want to know why Jeffrey just took a sip of his coffee and said, “Oh, my God.”
Jeffrey Gitomer: Well, you have to be firm in your request or you’ll get meatballs for an answer.
Jen Gluckow: I’m trying to set Mark up, here.
Jeffrey Gitomer: Oh, I got you.
Mark England: That’s exactly what it is. That’s the specific words of soft talk. So what is soft talk? Everybody’s heard it. Maybes, likes, possiblys, I thinks, potentially.
Jeffrey Gitomer: High verbs.
Mark England: Yes. What they do is they soften my position and syntactically speaking, very strange. I think I might need to have a better sales process. How many I’s are in that statement? I think I … Now I’ve got two of me in that conversation. That’s weird. Why do I need two of me to make a good decision?
Jen Gluckow: I think you could really benefit from our product.
Mark England: Wonderful. How much confidence and enthusiasm is that going to build in me? Actually, none. It’s going to put me in the back seat. I’m going to get deflated about that. With just a little bit of understanding … We start conversations, very frequently we start the procabulary experience with soft talk. Because it’s so easy to do. A good friend of mine I met on a plane, Brian [Mouka 00:21:01], sat next to him. I’m reading a book on mind mapping. And he goes, he says, “What are you reading? What do you do?” And I said, “Get out a pen and write down a goal.” And he did. And I asked him to put in a perhaps, a maybe and a could. And he said, “I don’t even want to do that.” And I said, “Why?” He said, “Because it gives me this weird, icky feeling.”
And so that’s one of … Back to the Core Language Upgrade, our online course, we highlight three pillars of what we call conflict language, which is the sub-set of the English language … and it’s an education issue again … that people use accidentally to create conflict, indecision, problems, doubt and negativity inside them self and in other people when they speak. And soft talk is one of them. The other is negations. I can’t keep focusing on my past. I’m just not going to mess this up again. I don’t want my boss to think that I’m not making sales. Things of that nature.
Jeffrey Gitomer: Can you do it fast forward? Can you say this is not going to be a good day?
Mark England: Absolutely. Many people project negatively.
Jeffrey Gitomer: Yeah. You can predict your own outcome.
Jen Gluckow: Yeah.
Mark England: Sure. And let’s talk abracadabra, because now’s the time to talk about it.
Jen Gluckow: Oh, let’s hear it.
Jeffrey Gitomer: Okay, cool.
Mark England: And in my opinion, on a side note, this is the most well recognized word on the planet cross-culturally speaking.
Jeffrey Gitomer: I thought it was Muhammad Ali.
Jen Gluckow: You asked us this last night. So maybe you can ask Doug.
Jeffrey Gitomer: Let’s talk about the most recognized word on the planet, Coca-Cola, Muhammad Ali, and now you’ve added abracadabra.
Mark England: Abracadabra. Abracadabra is my bet.
Jeffrey Gitomer: Cool.
Jen Gluckow: Wait. Let’s ask Doug what he thinks.
Jeffrey Gitomer: Yeah. Let’s ask. Let’s bring our producer in here.
Jen Gluckow: What do you think of when you hear abracadabra, Doug?
Mark England: If he says Steve Miller Band, I’m going to go nuts.
Doug: Well, now that’s in my brain because I love Steve Miller Band. But I think when you hear abracadabra you think of a magician.
Mark England: Exactly.
Jeffrey Gitomer: Right.
Mark England: Magic.
Jeffrey Gitomer: Pulling a rabbit out of your hat.
Mark England: A rabbit coming out of a hat, a magic wand, something along the lines of magic. Everybody goes there. One in 100 go to Steve Miller Band. We talked about this last night. Abracadabra, this is huge. This changed, it put into place so many things for me. Abracadabra is Aramaic. Aramaic is one of the languages that Jesus spoke. It’s one of the languages the Old Testament was originally written in. And it translates to with my word I create or with my word I influence.
Jeffrey Gitomer: That’s what it means?
Mark England: That’s what it means.
Jeffrey Gitomer: Damn.
Mark England: That’s exactly what I said. That’s exactly what I said. When the particular friend told me that, I said come over here and tell me everything you know about that. And then I went and looked it up. It’s fascinatingly actually true. And so to go back to negating in our future, I don’t want to have a bad day. I don’t want to have a bad week next week. So what does that language force me to do? Create a worst case scenario in my mind. And when I create a worst case scenario in my mind, what happens to my emotions and feelings? We’re going to go to the four things that abracadabra, that our words influence. What does that do? Worst case scenario, I create quote-unquote “negativity”. Over time, potentially in the moment very frequently, my body, my posture … Have you seen somebody? You’ve seen plenty of people with bad posture.
Jeffrey Gitomer: Yeah. They curl up.
Mark England: Yeah. Guess what kind of dialog they’re having?
Jeffrey Gitomer: Negative inside their head.
Mark England: This kind.
Jen Gluckow: So how about I can’t lose this sale.
Mark England: Okay. I want to know because. I can’t lose this sale because. Well, we’ll get to the because. I can’t lose this sale. Okay. So if you can’t lose the sale, what can you do?
Jen Gluckow: I can win the sale.
Mark England: I can win the sale. Obviously there’s going to be a different mental imagery.
Jeffrey Gitomer: I can change the way I’m presenting myself.
Mark England: Yes.
Jeffrey Gitomer: I can change the way I’m proving value to the other guy.
Mark England: Yes.
Jeffrey Gitomer: I mean, you can go into the detail of the sale at that point and say what could be done in this situation. You can say to yourself well, the guy only buys price or the guy is just going to take a lowest price on the proposal or the guy is not returning my phone call. And it becomes the guy’s issue or the woman’s issue. But if you tell yourself what you can do, it automatically becomes problem solving rather than problem complaining.
Mark England: 100%. 100%. I stop externalizing the causes for everything and I look at what can I do now. What can I do tomorrow to take that possibility of the sale and turn it into a probability? And if I turn my pipeline into a series of probabilities, then now we’ve got a legitimate conversation going. And a lot of it comes down to the quality of the language that we use, internally and externally.
Jen Gluckow: On the course or in the course, you talk about someone who’s focused on not losing their job.
Mark England: Yes.
Jen Gluckow: Talk to us about that.
Mark England: Yes. So we start a translation, which is what our terminology is for making adjustments to the language. I can’t lose my job. Okay. If I can’t lose my job, well let’s look at the mental imagery. When I say that what kind of picture do I make?
Jeffrey Gitomer: Not a good one.
Mark England: Not a good one. It’s me losing my job.
Jen Gluckow: A picture of you losing your job.
Mark England: Me losing my job.
Jeffrey Gitomer: Actually I think you can fast forward on that, like I can’t pay my mortgage.
Jen Gluckow: Right.
Jeffrey Gitomer: I can’t make my car payment. My kid’s going to have no food.
Jen Gluckow: But that’s a whole mental image, right?
Mark England: It’s a cascading effect.
Jen Gluckow: Yeah.
Mark England: And that is what happens when someone creates that worst case scenario. And then what happens? And then what happens? And then what happens? And if I create those series of pictures and mental movies, now let’s talk about breath so we’ve got all four pillars in. What happens to the way I breathe? I go into a stress response. I go into sympathetic nervous system response. And when I or you or anyone goes into sympathetic nervous system response, our breathing gets trapped in our upper chest. We do half of our business in a professional environment, so sales training, leadership development, cultural development, and then performance athletics. In performance athletics we gained traction because we connected the dots between what we think and say, and how and where we breathe. And whether it’s we’re preparing for a yoga class or a competition of some sort or I’m getting ready to deliver a Ted Talk or a presentation or a sales pitch … You all know this very well. If I’m breathing in my abdomen then I’m going to sound different.
Jen Gluckow: Fuller, for sure.
Mark England: Yes. Fuller and real. It’s much more easy for people to be considered professional and reliable and pro, put the pro in procabulary, if they deliver their message, their presentation from a place of abdominal breathing, which is parasympathetic nervous system response.
Jen Gluckow: This is totally cool. Jeffrey is back on the road giving public seminars. I love it. Jeffrey, you’re in high demand, man. People are emailing asking when you’re coming back, and you’re back. If you’ve never been to Des Moines, now is the time to plan your visit. Jeffrey will be appearing live delivering a seminar on leadership and a seminar on sales mastery on May 17th and May 18th. Go to See Gitomer, S-E-E Gitomer .com and get your ticket. And while you’re there, get one for your entire team. We’ll see you there.
Jeffrey Gitomer: And if you’re from New York City, Des Moines is in Iowa. When I’m setting up my sound check I tell the person in doing my AV, no bass. If the bass doesn’t come from me, it’s not going to come. I can’t fake bass. And so I make them only do high and medium tones in the sound board. And then it’s up to me to resonate with the audience.
Jen Gluckow: He does every time.
Mark England: And that’s one of the reasons that you’re in the position that … You’re not in the position that you’re in. You’ve created the position that you’re in.
Jen Gluckow: Wow. That’s so much more powerful.
Jeffrey Gitomer: I don’t [crosstalk 00:29:37]. Yeah.
Jen Gluckow: Look at that.
Mark England: And it’s accurate.
Jen Gluckow: Procabulary.
Mark England: It’s accurate.
Jeffrey Gitomer: But I told you last night, I got lucky. Because I’ve had two throat operations, I was literally taught how to breathe and speak. And it’s on an inhale and an exhale. And you just let all the air out of your stomach through your vocal folds as opposed to just speaking from here and you can almost hear. Feel your stomach just kind of tense up.
Jen Gluckow: I can see it in your shoulders when you do that.
Jeffrey Gitomer: Exactly.
Mark England: We’ve all sat next to someone on a couch. Let’s focus on our personal lives for a moment. We’ve all sat next to somebody on a couch somewhere where they’re all tense and tight for whatever reason.
Jeffrey Gitomer: That was high school, wasn’t it?
Mark England: That was high school? No. I’ve got a very good story about this.
Jeffrey Gitomer: I’m sure you do.
Mark England: Just three months ago, on my last trip out to LA, we’re in New Jersey flying to LA and a woman sits down next to me about 30 years old. And she’s furiously texting on her cell phone. As we’re taking off, she’s calling someone. And she says, “I think my phone is tapped. I’ll call you when I get back, when we land.” Click. Hangs up. That’s all I hear.
Jeffrey Gitomer: Phone is tapped?
Mark England: She thinks … I think my phone is tapped.
Jeffrey Gitomer: Oh, my God.
Mark England: And so I think to myself, “Well, that’s fascinating.” I pay attention at times to where she’s breathing. And it was the most shallow breathing I’ve ever seen in a conscious person. She was taking sips of air and then sighs of relief. I actually was getting worried. She would go … and hold her breath a lot longer than that. She’s in a stress response. So if she’s doing that with her breath, I know generally speaking what kind of conversation she’s having with herself to keep herself stressed.
Jen Gluckow: Did you send her a link to your course?
Mark England: The last hour … It was a three hour, four hour flight. The last hour I said okay. I got my food out and I said, “So you think your phone’s tapped. Right?” She goes, “What did you say?” I said, “Your phone. You think it’s tapped.” And she goes, “Oh, my God. What do I do?” Poor thing. And then we talked about strategies. She thought someone in her life was tracking her, and very likely the person was because the phone was on his plan. And then you can have those things … Yeah, exactly. Why I bring that up is that whether it’s a conversation that we’re having, a thought process that we’re having about someone in our personal lives or professional lives … If people think in a certain way and they speak in a certain way, unbeknownst to them because it seems very real, they’re trapping their breathing in their chest. And let’s say that she’s having that drama go on in her personal life and she’s flying out to LA to give a sales presentation. And the whole time, she’s just kept her breath in her upper chest. How is she going to do? She’s going to sound like an amateur.
Jeffrey Gitomer: She’s going to fail. Yeah.
Mark England: She’s going to sound like an amateur.
Jeffrey Gitomer: Well, she will come in and fumble.
Mark England: Yes.
Jen Gluckow: Plus, she’s stuck in her personal story and not thinking about the customers.
Mark England: And let’s talk more about sales.
Jeffrey Gitomer: Well, hang on one second.
Mark England: Yeah.
Jeffrey Gitomer: Her thought may not even be real.
Mark England: Very inaccurate, because she concluded inaccurately.
Jeffrey Gitomer: Exactly.
Mark England: She couldn’t do anything about it, which is a stressful thought in and of itself. I had her write that down. And she was like, “No, wait a minute. I actually can do something about this.” And first and foremost could you get rid of your phone? I mean, if you had to. Yeah, she could. She’s going to stay with friends. I mean, she had options. Her language was blinding her out, was blinding her to those options.
Jeffrey Gitomer: Negative input or negative thought blocks creativity. I’ve written that for 20 years.
Mark England: 100%.
Jeffrey Gitomer: Yeah.
Mark England: 100%.
Jeffrey Gitomer: Because you get out of an argument. You walk down the road and you go, “I should have said that to that guy.”
Jen Gluckow: Yeah.
Jeffrey Gitomer: And it’s like, five minutes later and you’re all clear again.
Jen Gluckow: You cooled down and now you’re thinking straight.
Mark England: You know what else negative thinking and stress responses and it’s called coastal breathing or shallow breathing or labored breathing does? It also decreases someone’s ability to listen. And we’ve all seen someone drive in their car and they get stressed out. Maybe they’re late. And what do they do? They turn the volume down because they can’t even hear themselves think. And they get all uptight and up on the steering wheel. And how important is it Jeffrey, to be able to listen, like really listen to what your prospect is saying?
Jen Gluckow: So give us two tips. If you’re a die hard out there, what do you do when you’re stuck in that thought pattern?
Jeffrey Gitomer: Being real realistic, when your shit hits your own fan.
Jen Gluckow: Yup.
Mark England: Write down the conversation that you are having in your mind in conversational English. Get it from your internal world to your external world on paper. Just that, that is the most reliable way to begin to dispel, which means to cast out the negativity that we all create for ourselves when we speak and think in a certain way.
Jen Gluckow: He doesn’t want to say when shit hits your fan.
Jeffrey Gitomer: Right. But we do. Don’t worry about it.
Jen Gluckow: It’s okay.
Mark England: Yes, okay.
Jen Gluckow: We’ll say it for you.
Mark England: Yes. When shit hits the fan, get the conversation externalized on paper. And then it goes from something … Because yes, it’s the conversation, but it’s also the repetition of the conversation. So how many times am I thinking about that negative thing?
Jeffrey Gitomer: I agree.
Mark England: It’s a feedback.
Jeffrey Gitomer: I totally agree. And the more you see the negative, the deeper it goes in your soul.
Jen Gluckow: It goes down a rabbit hole.
Jeffrey Gitomer: Yeah.
Mark England: It goes down a rabbit hole. And now that that conversation, now that that thought process is out on a piece of paper and it’s got a definitive beginning and a definitive end, then I see it for more of what it is. I literally have created breathing room. I created perspective. And then just a little bit of education about what words are inflaming my imagination and creating the stress. Then I can make a couple of adjustments in my language and I get a better response from myself. So people that are into performance, this is a performance-enhancing tool.
Jeffrey Gitomer: So the challenge that you have is when you’re in that negative zone. What can you define for yourself rather than blame other people for the circumstance? You take responsibility for it. You write it down. You look for your other choices and you go, “Wait. Let me take this path instead of that path.”
Mark England: Yes. You absolutely give yourself options. And to talk about negativity, how did you phrase it Jeffrey? Negativity, it blocks creativity?
Jeffrey Gitomer: Cross creativity. Yeah.
Mark England: We’ve all had the experience of buying a new car or riding around in a new car, and then we start to see that car more and more out and about. One of the-
Jen Gluckow: All the sudden you see it everywhere.
Mark England: All the sudden you see it everywhere. You’re like, wait a minute. What’s going on? Where is this car-
Jen Gluckow: Everyone has it now.
Mark England: … coming from? How did this happen?
Jeffrey Gitomer: They were always there.
Mark England: They were always there. And what I’ve done is I’ve focused my attention onto that particular vehicle. And we have a piece of hardware in our brain. It’s called the reticular activating system. And it is designed to find whatever it is programmed and whatever we deem necessary, whatever we focus on. Whether it’s a new car or it’s the same way that people learn to see opportunities. Once we see opportunities, then we start to see other opportunities. Because our reticular activating system is now focused in on them. And if I’m looking for opportunities, I’m dismissing the negative situations, negative people. It’s the same thing. If I’m looking for BMW X5s, I start to see more and more of those around. What else am I not seeing? Blue trucks, green Suburbans.
Jeffrey Gitomer: Well, when I had my first MG, the sports car, it turns out that all MG owners wave to each other when they’re going by.
Mark England: Who knew?
Jeffrey Gitomer: Right. Until I got the car and like, “Why is everybody waving at me?” Oh, wait. That’s part of the deal.
Jen Gluckow: Yeah.
Jeffrey Gitomer: And there was no internet that you could go to. This was in the ’60s.
Mark England: That’s so cool.
Jeffrey Gitomer: So I’m waving at everybody all of a sudden. And I noticed there’s hundreds of MGs out there.
Mark England: Is it the same thing with proficient sellers?
Jeffrey Gitomer: No.
Jen Gluckow: Oh, yeah. If you’re focused on-
Jeffrey Gitomer: No. We hate each other.
Mark England: More successful people?
Jeffrey Gitomer: Yeah.
Mark England: You nod. You want to be around them. Oh, you got an MG too? Tell me about when did you get that? You’ve got an extra detail on that. Let me know more.
Jeffrey Gitomer: I bet you Tesla drivers do it. But I’ll bet you Chevy drivers don’t.
Mark England: Jeep drivers do.
Jeffrey Gitomer: They do?
Jen Gluckow: There’s a pride.
Mark England: Yeah. The Jeep drivers-
Jen Gluckow: There’s a pride.
Mark England: People that have Jeeps, they wave.
Jeffrey Gitomer: That’s interesting.
Mark England: Yeah.
Jeffrey Gitomer: Okay. So we’re enthralled.
Jen Gluckow: This is amazing. And so Mark, you have been and Adam have been so generous to offer our die hards a promotion on a little discount on our-
Mark England: Sure thing.
Jen Gluckow: … on your course.
Mark England: Yes.
Jen Gluckow: I’m taking it. It’s an incredible course. And it will change the way you think, and it will change the way you act. If you take it and you do it and you listen to it and you keep doing it, it’s incredible. You should get it for yourself. You should get it for your team. Procabulary.org, promo code SELLORDIE.
Jeffrey Gitomer: Ooh.
Mark England: Go to courses.
Jen Gluckow: All one word, SELLORDIE?
Mark England: All one word. It’s not case sensitive. Go to Procabulary.org. Go to courses. Watch the three minute promotional video. You’ll get the distillation of what it is and all the things it’ll help you with. And then the promotional code SELLORDIE, and you’ll get $100 off. It’s a $299 course, and you’ll get it for $199 and lifetime access to it.
Jen Gluckow: Wow. That’s amazing.
Jeffrey Gitomer: Here’s the deal. It’s very forward thinking and if you want to be forward thinking about how you can change the negative things in your life to positive things in your life by yourself, then this is the option for you. If you are looking at this and going, “What the hell is this going to do for me,” don’t take it. Because it’s not time for you.
Jen Gluckow: Then it’s not for you.
Jeffrey Gitomer: Yeah. It’s not time for you yet.
Jen Gluckow: The cool thing about the course is you break it down between this is what you will learn for your personal life, this is what you’ll learn for your career. This is how you can use it in the workplace versus at home. And it really makes you think about changing your words. I mean, there’s certain words now that I’ve said in the past 24 hours that I’m like, “Oh!” [crosstalk 00:40:09].
Jeffrey Gitomer: But here’s the deal for you real die hards. There’s a sales slant to this course. They go out and talk about how this effects sales people and customers. And when you take the course, or when you buy the course, it will help you in your conversations to earn you money. This is a money earning course, not a money costing course. And I think you need to look at it that way.
Mark England: I’d like to say one more thing about that.
Jeffrey Gitomer: Nope. Time’s up.
Mark England: Most people’s, the strategy that they’re given, it sounds like this. Oh, just have a good attitude, or be more positive.
Jeffrey Gitomer: No. You need to have a better attitude.
Mark England: Yes. Okay, great. I totally understand that. Now where’s the how? Where’s the action steps? And now that we’re talking about that part of the conversation, why have I scripted this crappy identity for myself? How did this happen? We go into the art and science of that in the course and give you a myriad of options of how to create a version of you that kicks ass.
Jeffrey Gitomer: So my statement where I’ve asked people over the course of the last three seminars that I gave to quote “define yourself”, take a moment and define yourself, then I really have to take it deeper and change the language in it.
Mark England: Always it is a binary negation, binary language. Very frequently there is an opportunity to enhance what we think and say.
Jeffrey Gitomer: Take out the adverbs.
Mark England: Yes.
Jeffrey Gitomer: Take out the wishy-washy descriptive words.
Mark England: Yes.
Jeffrey Gitomer: What I tell people is what do you want your kids to say at your funeral. That’s to define yourself.
Mark England: There you go.
Jeffrey Gitomer: Yeah. That makes it succinct because the kids don’t know any better.
Mark England: Very well said.
Jen Gluckow: Well Mark, this has been amazing. Thank you.
Mark England: Because you two are amazing.
Jeffrey Gitomer: No, no, no.
Jen Gluckow: Thank you.
Jeffrey Gitomer: Well, you’re right. But we have to add you to the list.
Jen Gluckow: We are, and you are also amazing. So thank you for coming on our show. And I’d love to have you back, I know Jeffrey would too, to talk about your goal setting techniques. Because what you are doing in that arena is just revolutionary, and no one’s doing it. And we didn’t even have time to get into that today.
Mark England: Very happy to do that.
Jeffrey Gitomer: Cool.
Mark England: Period.
Jeffrey Gitomer: Wear a different shirt, too. It’s not the same day.
Mark England: Yes, sir.
Jeffrey Gitomer: Okay. All right. Travel safe. Tell Adam we said hey.
Jen Gluckow: Thank you.
Mark England: Of course.
Jeffrey Gitomer: Cheers.
Mark England: Cheers.
Jen Gluckow: Die hards, thank you for listening to Sell or Die. If you like what you heard make sure to subscribe and rate this podcast. Give it a star on Overcast and tell a friend.
Jeffrey Gitomer: Tell both your friends. Just don’t tell your competition. You can follow me on Twitter@Gitomer, and Jen@SalesInAnyMinute.
Jen Gluckow: Send your sales questions to SellOrDie@Gitomer.com. We’ll be back next week with Motivation Monday and another amazing guest.
Jeffrey Gitomer: Until then, I’m Jeffrey Gitomer.
Jen Gluckow: And I’m Jen Gluckow.
Jeffrey Gitomer: And we’re reminding you to get out there and sell or die.
Jen Gluckow: Even if your ass falls off.
