Five Questions for Jeffrey Hayzlett, Chairman and CEO of C-Suite Network, Author, Keynote Speaker5/29/2019 ![]() I recently had the opportunity to meet Jeffrey Hayzlett, Chairman and CEO of the C-Suite Network at a local National Speakers Association event in New Jersey where he was speaking. He exceeded my expectations. He not only gave an inspirational talk on what has made him successful as a public speaker and an entrepreneur, but spent a lot of time interacting with attendees, including me. Since I still had more questions, I reached out to him to see if you would be open to answering five questions that I would post it as a blog so others can benefit too. He replied immediately with a terse email: “On the BIG 5—bring it.” Jeffrey is a busy man. Besides running his company, he is an author, keynote speaker, and a host of his own podcast show. He could have ignored my request but didn't. He knew I was going to add value to him by spreading his thoughts and enhance his brand. I learned something very important from attending his talk and interacting with him in that he is a great marketer and has an effective and efficient system in place. To get the job done, he assigned one of his outstanding Senior Media Strategist, Keira, to work with me. I had a very good experience working with her. She made Jeffrey look real good that shows that he certainly knows how to hire the best. To learn more about Jeffrey’s thinking about business, values, and success, I recommend you read his excellent books: The Hero Factor: How Great Leaders Transform Organizations and Create Winning Cultures Think Big, Act Bigger: The Rewards of Being Relentless Running the Gauntlet: Essential Business Lessons to Lead, Drive Change, and Grow Profits The Mirror Test: Is Your Business Really Breathing? I have read all of them and will be blogging about what I learned about his working with Donald Trump in his book Think Big, Act Bigger. Below you will find the answers to my questions and the five book recommendations that have influenced his thinking. Five Questions Can you briefly talk about what your preparation is like before you give a speech? I like to prepare for a speech by knowing as much as possible about the event, its organizers, the venue, and the audience. I research everything about them – bios, interviews they’ve done, any press and I also look for some type of factoid, or original piece of knowledge, pertaining to any or all. I find that the more you can personalize your speech, the more successful it’ll be. How do you measure your speeches’ success? By the engagement I receive all over social media and the engagement I receive from the crowd while I’m on stage. For example, I always look out at the crowd, and if I see half of them on their phones, something’s gone wrong. My speeches are meant to live lively, engaging, and interactive. Afterward, I get tons of requests for pictures with audience members, and they ask me all kinds of questions about business, marketing, or leadership. I’m happy to answer any questions and take pictures with them. The more pictures I see on social media, the better. That’s how I measure success, not to mention the standing O’s are a pretty clear indicator. With so much noise today, what makes one stand out? What makes anyone stand out: being yourself. Authenticity is one of those ‘old’ values that never goes out of style. It’s about being yourself, regardless of the scenario you find yourself in. Being authentic, genuine, and speaking from the heart is how you stand out. Anyone can make a speech, not everyone is capable of reaching an audience. What does it take today to get to the C-Suite? Hard work and dedication. In business, nothing happens by chance or by luck alone. You have to work harder than anyone else, and while there are no guarantees that you’ll reach the c-suite, hard work always pays off. It’s called “work” for a reason -- because it’s HARD. What skills, attributes and competencies folks in the C-Suite look for in people they hire? They look for someone who is dedicated to the company’s mission and vision, someone who will roll up their sleeves to do whatever it takes to move the needle forward and increase the bottom line. They look for ‘clock changers,’ which I describe as people who are willing to stand out and go the extra mile by making a difference and doing whatever needs to be done, instead of being more interested in blending with the rest of the pack. Personally, I look for people who are willing to learn and not always necessarily the people with the most impressive resume. Don’t get me wrong, a good resume goes a long way, but you can always teach people a higher level, or different, skillset. You can’t teach attitude or passion. One More Question What makes you so good at what you do and what do you do to keep getting better at it? You just keep trying every single day to do your best. There’s no such thing as perfection, but you have to keep on trying. You can’t let one bad day influence the rest of the week/month. People often ask me, “what has been your best day?” or “what has been my highest accomplishment?” I always reply with “I’ll let you know when that happens.” There’s always tomorrow (and room for improvement). Can you please recommend five books that have influenced your thinking? How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie Rise and Grind: Outperform, Outwork, and Outhustle Your Way to a More Successful and Rewarding Life by Daymond John Blue Ocean Strategy, Expanded Edition: How to Create Uncontested Market Space and Make the Competition Irrelevant by W. Chan Kim and Renée A. Mauborgne Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill The Art of War by Sun Tzu ##### ![]() Jay Oza is a writer, speaker, executive coach. He makes people thrive on high stakes stage whether it's for a job interview, a sales presentation or an important speech. He is the author of the book Winning Speech Moments: How to Achieve Your Objective with Anyone, Anytime, Anywhere. Please download the speech checklist and the speech workbook to help you with your next high stakes speech. You can contact him at [email protected] or 732-847-9877. Please contact him if you would like to attend his workshop on "Interviewing is the Most Important Skill for Success Today" to accelerate getting a good high-paying job and developing a critical skill for success.
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For exercise, I like to walk, not jog. Walking lets me multitask in that I get to do several things such as exercise, enjoy nature, listening to a podcast or an audiobook, thinking, reflecting, and generating ideas. Nothing invigorates me more than a good one hour walk at a park near where I live. I walk the whole course except when I come to this hill (shown in the picture). I jog this part. I not only want to get my heart rate beating a little faster, but test my focus. I do this every day as a way to remind me that when you do something hard, you got to think it, plan it and then do it. Here is what I do before I get closer to the bottom of the hill. Keep the end goal in mind, which is to jog without stopping to the top stake located fifty feet past the top of the hill (on the left in the picture). Steps I follow 1) Get control of the breathing 2) Get control of the pace 3) Keep the head down to focus on the next step and not look up. When I look up, I lose control of my pace, breath, and focus and really struggle. I used to stop when I did this. 4) Keep myself occupied by listening to a podcast or an audiobook. 5) Focus on one step at a time until I get to the top and then continue my walk. I take a breath to reflect and say I am now ready to climb different kinds of hills for the rest of the day. This helps me better focus on whether I am working on a book, a speech, or a workshop. When I get to the top, I feel good. I know it is not a big deal for joggers, but it is a big deal for me since I can't jog the whole course due to the pain in the metatarsal part of my left leg. The jog up the hill reminds me that we are climbing hills every day and with some plan, thought and resolve, you can make it to the top and continue your journey till you come across another hill. With more jogging up the hill, it gets manageable but never any easier. And that is a good metaphor for to keep in mind when you take on a physical challenge. The reason I am pointing this personal thing I do is that you can also take on some small physical challenge and use it as a way to motivate yourself to do something hard every day. If you can't walk or jog, then perhaps you can solve a puzzle, meditate or do yoga. Using a process to do one thing can help clear up how to tackle something hard in another area. ##### ![]() Jay Oza is a writer, speaker, executive coach. He makes people thrive on high stakes stage whether it's for a job interview, a sales presentation or an important speech. He is the author of the book Winning Speech Moments: How to Achieve Your Objective with Anyone, Anytime, Anywhere. Please download the speech checklist and the speech workbook to help you with your next high stakes speech. You can contact him at [email protected] or 732-847-9877. Please contact him if you would like to attend his workshop on "Interviewing is the Most Important Skill for Success Today" to accelerate getting a good high-paying job and developing a critical skill for success. Tiger Woods showed everyone that he can win majors in golf when he won the Masters in 2019 when most thought he would never win another major. He showed that he still is a great golfer mainly because of his faith in himself, his game and his relentless work ethic. But then he made a big mistake by not playing in any tournaments before the next major, the PGA Championship which comes one month after the Masters. You would think he would not repeat this mistake again, but he did as he did not play in any tournaments after the US Open till he teed up at the British Open. He opened with a 78 and did better in the second round with a 70, but missed the cut. Tiger missed the cut at the PGA Championship and at the British Open. That is a big deal for him. Perhaps I am too hard on the world's greatest golfer for missing a cut, but he is Tiger Woods and time is not on his side to catch and surpass Jack Nicklaus' record of 18 majors. To win a major, you have to play in the minor tournaments a week before or two weeks before a major. If your game is off a little, it can be a difference between competing and missing a cut. The competition is that good at the PGA level. Tiger probably took time off to rest his back, but golf is about touch and feel. You can't practice your way to competing and winning a major. You win majors by playing in the minor tournaments before the major. This applies not to Tiger but all of us in what we do. Now if you are an avid Tiger supporter, you may say that he missed the cut because he was not that familiar with the brutal Beth Page Black course where PGA Championship was played. Though he does not know Beth Page Black as well as Augusta National Golf Club where Masters is played, but Tiger did win the US Open on the same Beth Page Black course in 2002. So that excuse falls flat. I just think he was rusty for not playing before the PGA Championship. The winner, Brooks Koepka played last week before the major, and the runner-up, Dustin Johnson, played two weeks before the PGA Championship. Tiger didn't play, and I think it caught up with him as he missed the cut by one stroke. The lesson to take away from this is that practice is not enough. As Allen Iverson, a great basketball player, once went on a famous rant about practice that "We're talking about practice. How silly is that?... We're not talking about the game---the actual game---when it matters. " Brooks Koepka competed the week before the PGA Championship, and he was in a top form and became a repeat champion. Last week's tournament became a practice for him that helped him win the major. I hope Tiger does not make this mistake again since it was boring watching golf when he is not competing in majors. So if you want to win, you can learn a lot from Tiger Woods but not taking time off between majors. You have to be sharp before the major, so you have a good shot at winning when the stakes are the highest. ##### ![]() Jay Oza is a writer, speaker, executive coach. He makes people thrive on high stakes stage whether it's for a job interview, a sales presentation or an important speech. He is the author of the book Winning Speech Moments: How to Achieve Your Objective with Anyone, Anytime, Anywhere. Please download the speech checklist and the speech workbook to help you with your next high stakes speech. You can contact him at [email protected] or 732-847-9877. Please contact him if you would like to attend his workshop on "Interviewing is the Most Important Skill for Success Today" to accelerate getting a good high-paying job and developing a critical skill for success. Five Questions about Selling for Skip Miller, Author of "Selling Above and Below the Line"5/19/2019 ![]() Sometimes you buy a highly recommended book that you never get around to reading it. That was the case with me with the book Selling Above and Below the Line by Skip Miller when it was published. But recently I heard Skip discuss some of the ideas he covers in the book on the podcast “Same Side Selling” with Ian Altman. The way he explained how to sell Above the Line (ATL) and Below the Line (BTL) resonated with me so I had to read the book to get a deeper understanding. And I am glad I did but also kicked myself for waiting so long. After listening to him and reading his excellent book, I reached out to him via LinkedIn to see if he would be open to answering five questions among many I came up with. He immediately sent me an email with the subject, “How can I help you?” I always advise people that before you ever do business with anyone, find out how they network. You can find out a lot about people by the way they network. Look, it is much easier to be responsive when there is a potential business on the line, but Skip, with his busy schedule, turned around my questions in one day. I was impressed and learned something from him. Besides Skip being a class act, he is a President of M3 Learning based in Silicon Valley that trains sales professionals how to sell the way managers, directors and those in the C-suites like to buy, specifically using the concept Above the Line and Below the Line. Skip has authored other excellent books such as of ProActive Selling, ProActive Sales Management, Knock Your Socks Off Prospecting, Ultimate Sales Tool Kit, and More ProActive Sales Management. Skip loves teaching people how to sell effectively and efficiently through books, speeches, podcasts, blogs, and answering questions on selling as you will see below. You can tell he cares about this craft and does his part to make salespeople better, so they are not only successful but enjoy selling and satisfy customers. Question 1: Can a salesman have credibility at both Above the Line and Below the Line? Or do you recommend that a salesman bring his ATL executive for an ATL to ATL meeting, assuming they have practiced, planned, and prepared well before the meeting? You can talk to kids as a dad and to other adults as parents, yes? It's two value points. One needs to use the best product they can afford, BTL, and one need is to have it have an effect on the bottom line of the business, especially some initiatives that the ATL is working on and they need help with. Don't overcomplicate it. There are two different value propositions, and you have to address the right one with the right person in the right language. Question 2: Do you think there may be more than one line in a large enterprise-wide sale where you often have to start at BTL for proof of concept and pilot before moving to ATL for a departmental wide solution and then TL (Top Line) for an enterprise-wide solution? The reason I ask this question is that companies are risk-averse, thus are reluctant to make an enterprise-wide decision until they see the solution deployed at one or more sites. When companies take this approach, aren’t you dealing with more than one line since the conversation is likely going to be different with the buyers or managers, operational executives, and financial executives? Of course. Companies are set up to mitigate risk and trial things out unless they have a very urgent need to do something. Very urgent, like loss of market share, new competitive product, or major product mistake. However, there are a ton of ATLs who will jump in the pool and do not have a toe in the water first, if their value prop is addressed correctly. ($3M deal in 6 weeks kind of stuff) See the section of TRAINS in the Train Station in the book as well. The more trains you can effect, from one station master (ATL BUYER) or affect multiple train stations, the better the value and the more risk the customer is willing to take on, and weight that into the purchase decision. To be single threaded in an enterprise account is very dangerous. Question 3: Don’t companies like to pigeonhole vendor salespeople at the BTL level and work with the top consultancies like McKinsey to help them at the ATL level? How can you break through when a company is not looking at a vendor salesman for ATL insights? Another reason for this could be that the ATL executives may have an excellent relationship with the consultancy and view them as a trusted advisor and keep vendor salesman at the BTL level thus possibly commoditizing the solution that he is offering? What do you do here? Salespeople pigeon hole themselves by only speaking features and functions, and then they get to ATL, they regurgitate their successful BTL speak/presentation, which is not what the ATL wants to hear. I know of a ton of great salespeople who talk ATL so well, they are sought out by ATLs. McKinsey, Bain, BCG, and all the rest are great at top strategic stuff. Execution, at the point of attack, with a solution is what vendor salespeople have. The good vendor solution sales people hunt out problems first. Bad vendor solution sales people are a solution looking for a problem...wrong way! What do I do on a call? I call ATL...Hunt for Trains (as an example I use in my book)...Identify Gaps. That's my mission. Question 4: My focus is on helping people get senior to executive level jobs, including sales professionals. When they are interviewing, don’t you think they have to use what you are teaching in your book Above the Line to resonate with key decision makers that they can sell well both internally and externally at both Above the Line and Below the Line? You nailed it. The more the salespeople can demonstrate they can speak to BTL and ATL, know the differences, ask great questions, invoke transfer of ownership, and request decisions, win. The rest, they SELL, DEMO, TALK, SHOW, GIVE, CHAT, HELP....notice these are 4-letter words? But don't speak BTL to an ATL buyer or ATL to a BTL buyer, they won't be in rapport with you, and that's not good. Question 5: After reading your book, I have to ask this question about energy at the ATL level. Is it a stretch to say that the Boeing 737 MAX is a good example of what happens when there is too much energy at the ATL level and little at the BTL level? By this, I mean that Boeing executives and carriers’ executives did not get adequate input at the BTL level, the people who built the plane, such as engineers at Boeing, and those who have to make the plane fly such as pilots at carriers who purchased the planes. I don't know about the example, but the ATL who makes a decision without getting the BTL buy-in runs a risk. In the printer story, if I would have bought a printer for Ann, the BTL buyer in this case, and she didn't like it, I would have to and to return the printer, which would have wasted time and cost me money. I could force her to use the printer I want, but that usually does not end well. Only a corporate emergency would have an ATL do something without getting BTL involvement. One More Question: What is the one thing you are really good at that has made you so successful in sales, and what do you do keep getting better at that? I can sit in the customer chair and ask buyer customer-centric questions, rather than questions about my product or service. Can you please recommend five books that have influenced your thinking in sales? How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie The Goal: A Process of Ongoing Improvement by Eliyahu M. Goldrat and Jeff Cox SPIN Selling by Neil Rackham Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap... And Others Don’t by Jim Collins Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill Selling the Way Your Customer Wants to Buy by Marvin Sadovsky ##### ![]() Jay Oza is a writer, speaker, executive coach. He makes people thrive on high stakes stage whether it's for a job interview, a sales presentation or an important speech. He is the author of the book Winning Speech Moments: How to Achieve Your Objective with Anyone, Anytime, Anywhere. He was recently honored with an award by Hire Heroes USA for his outstanding volunteer work with military veterans and their spouses and by Brookdale Community College for Excellence in Teaching. Please download the speech checklist and the speech workbook to help you with your next high stakes speech. You can get more information at www.winningspeechmoments.com. You are always welcome to contact him at [email protected] or 732-847-9877. If you have a high stakes event (job interview, sales meeting or a big speech) coming up soon, please contact him right away that is if you want to win. Also, contact him for his next "Interviewing is the Most Important Skill for Success Today" workshop if you want to accelerate getting a good high-paying job. |
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