Resources in this Episode:

Christine Schlonski [0:02]
Hi Gorgeous, welcome back to episode number 016 with the wonderful Dondi Scumaci.

Unknown [0:09]
Hello, this is Dondi Scumaci you’re listening to Heart Sells! with Christine Schlonski, enjoy!

Christine Schlonski [0:16]
Before we dive into the episode where I’m going to share with you the amazing wisdom of Dondi Scumaci I want to make sure that you know about my 7 Day Free Challenge coming already up on January 7th. The challenge is all about asking for the sale with confidence, making your offer with ease and grace and actually making the money you deserve. So hop on over to www.christineschlonski.com/challenge. Sign up today so we can get the party started on January 7th. That’s christineschlonski.com/challenge. I see you there. As we learned in the last episode. Dondi Scumaci is not only an international speaker and known for high energy presentations that produce dramatic results, she’s also is a best selling author and sought-after consultant and her work is known all over the globe in the United States, in Canada, in Europe, in Australia, inSouth Africa and she is also an animal lover and I hope you enjoyed the story of her rescued horse of finding her core. If you have not checked that out make sure you tune in so you don’t miss that amazing episode. Have fun today and I’m we’re coming back to the show Dondi ScumaciWell, welcome back, Donnie. I’m so excited to have you on again.

Dondi Scumaci [2:01]
I am happy to be with you again.

Christine Schlonski [2:03]
Wonderful you shared so great, valuable insights on the last show. And I would love to kind of pick up on your amazing advice get really, really clear about possible objections. And objection seems to be like a heavy, maybe a little bit of a negative word. So if you want to kind of re-word it could just be customer questions like, regular normal questions you would ask yourself, like, what do I get for that kind of investment? Or how long is it gonna take? Are there other options that might be better for me? Because the client always comes from that from that angle: What’s in it for me? So I think it would be a very nice idea for each entrepreneur to just sit down and write down all the questions/objections and then find answers. Wouldn’t you agree?

Dondi Scumaci [3:10]
I absolutely do. I think that exercise, what’s really interesting is if you create that maybe even sort of the, like the, you know, the scariest list ever of the questions you know, or were, you just might cringe if you heard it, there’s something so confident, confidence building about just being ready. You may never hear that your customer may never say that or ask that but you’re ready if they do. And so that that kind of gets back to what we were talking about in the first show about that whole belief, right? What are you believing? Because it’s so interesting is that, first of all, we believe something and then we take an action and then action is going to reinforce our original our original belief, right? So there’s a cycle of in a belief-act-result. And maybe even before the belief, we have an experience that shapes the belief. So maybe the experiences are really positive experience that that that causes us to believe in ourselves and our ability and our capability. And so we’re going to take action on that belief and we’re going to get results that that correspond to to that. Or maybe we have, maybe we have an experience that’s really a setback, right? Maybe we have an experience that is it lets us down. And that also can creep into our heart and become a belief. I always remember when we moved, we live in San Antonio, Texas and when we moved to Texas, it was for my son playing baseball, right. So he had been recruited to pitch for a private school here in in in Texas, and I can work anywhere there’s an airport. So off we came to Texas, and that was a little odd the first weekend that we were moving in, he had a tournament in Houston and I was also then going off to speak, so we kind of divided to conquer you will and when we both got back from our trips, he was just he was just his, his face was just so let down. He was so sad. And I said to him, how did you do?

Dondi Scumaci [5:13]
Now keep in mind that we were coming from Colorado, he was an award-winning pitcher. He was heavily recruited. I mean, the colleges were scouting him, professional teams were scouting him and I come back from this my trip and his first tournament, and he is absolutely dejected and I said: What happened? and he said They hit everything I have. And I said, Well, that’s going to happen, right? You’re going to have to shake I went into motivational mama mode, right? And he said, Please stop you. What you don’t understand is they I had a great day they hit everything I’ve got. And for the first time in his life, I think he started to wonder maybe I’m not that good. Maybe I’m maybe I’m not qualified. Maybe I’m not enough. And for its several weeks, he could not throw that ball. His coach actually said to him to me, you’re the speaker say something to this kid. Because I don’t know what happened to him. You know, he came back from Houston, a different person. He learned the wrong lesson from his experience. You know, sometimes I think that we say maybe you’ve heard the saying experiences a good teacher, I think experience can be a lousy teacher if you take the wrong lesson. So he learned in Houston in that tournament, maybe I’m not enough. That became a belief and then his actions and his results followed, right. Just attracted to himself those outcomes. And I maybe the right lesson was I’m in a whole new league now, right? I’m in and I was a little fish, big fish in a little pond. And now I’m a little fish in a really big pond. Well, what do little fishes and big ponds do? They grow! So you know, we sat down and had a conversation about that. And it was amazing. Once the belief was all turn his skill returned. Right. And he went on to have a brilliant college career in baseball. So my, my, my question to myself has been in the past and to your listeners is, where have you along the way, picked up the wrong lesson, right? Where have you picked up the wrong lesson, and it is like, is like, the brake on your life, you know, and the emergency brake on your car, you may be driving, you know, down the, the, the freeway the highway with your, you know, 75, you know, miles an hour, but if you’ve got the emergency brake, fully engaged, you’re tearing up the car, right? So I think that sometimes these exercises of what are the things I think my customer might say? What are those? What are the sometimes we’re actually speaking to our own fears, right? It’s not that they will ever say it, is that we fear they will. And that that keeps us from just being very present to the moment. So once you go through that exercise, you release that break, right, that internal, that internal break, and you start to walk into those situations with more confidence.

Christine Schlonski [8:05]
Yeah, I I just love it. You gotta smile, because I’m going to tell you why real quick. So I have variety Fridays, where I just check experiences where I teach some of the stuff that I have learned or I share resources. So the episode 002 actually talk about the German Autobahn, and if you go 100 or 150 miles per hour, you cannot take the exit ramp where you need to drive like 30 to exit off the autobahn safely. And that was just the same thing you said, with the brakes on right. If you go 75 miles an hour, you just can’t do that No, you cannot. And then on episode 005, I talked about my power system, which that the P stands for the past. And that’s exactly what you said, Where did you pick up the belief that sales is something sleazy, pushy, unethical or whatever you tell yourself, it doesn’t need to be conscious, but maybe subconscious of having had like, a bad experience somebody taking your money and ran off or whatever it is. So it’s just so perfect this these examples.

Dondi Scumaci [9:19]
I love that I love that: Where did you pick up the idea or the belief that sales is an ethical? Where did Where did you get that? I so I think sometimes for me, I think sales is such a wonderful discipline because it really is an inside-out kind of a proposition. And sales really asks us to kind of explore around and really understand the process and understand people and I think that we can queue in on, you know, what you hear a lot about empathy at, right. And really, if you can find a need and meet that need, right. So that that whole in a design thinking is really interesting if you apply it to sales because design thinking is just really is about really sitting in another person’s seat, walking in their feet for a moment and trying to figure out, you know, what is the need, where’s the pain? How do I help? And what’s really interesting about that is that if you can just if you can just find a way to meet that need, right, the sale will take care of itself, right. That’s another thing that I often talk to people about is, if you will, that it may be kind of gets back to that, that that core conversation that we had in the first episode. And it was, you know, if I can if I can step back to understand then needs that I fill right if I can and here’s the decision that I made a long time ago. And I used to tell salespeople this all the time, if you will, just if you will, if you will just focus on the results that produce or excuse me, focus on the actions that produce results, the results will take care of themselves, you don’t need even need to worry about that, right. And I often talk to people to about the value and opportunity. So there are people are, I’m looking for more opportunity I’m looking at, you don’t have to worry about the opportunity, just focus on becoming more valuable, right, if you focus on your value opportunity is starting her car, right. So, you know, I firmly believe that and, and I think that’s very empowering. Because I do control and influence how much value I can load into a situation I, I do control or influence how my skill set, right my knowledge of my industry, my knowledge of my customers, my ability to prepare all of those things. So if I can just focus on, on loading more value into every customer situation, my results are going to take care of themselves, I don’t need to be focused on that at all, actually. And I think that that can be very, very empowering as well. So just focus on becoming more valuable driving more value and, you know, as Dr. Covey talks about focusing on that circle of influence. What are the things that I influenced? I can impact? What is the decision I can make today? What is the, you know, what is that the skill I can build? What is the, you know, the effort that I can put in? What, what can I do? And by the way, sometimes, you know, we might not be feeling super confident we might not be feeling super powerful. And in the, in the scope of all of the things going on around us and so many things we don’t control, you know, the economy, right, politics, world peace world, I mean, there’s a lot of stuff we don’t control. If we can bring our eyes back to what is the thing I can do: The decision, I can make? The action I can take? The impact that can have? The value I can drive? What is the thing I can do? And sometimes maybe that thing will be so small. It will in the light of all that other stuff, it will feel so tiny, do it anyway, and then do the next little thing and the next one and the next one. And before you know it, boom, you’ve opened doors that you didn’t even see coming, right.

Dondi Scumaci [13:06]
So I think to some degree, it’s really about empowering ourselves by focusing on the things that we can impact and not letting ourselves get, you know, I wrote about that a lot in my second book, it was this whole idea of know, when we worry, right, we start to worry. And we give our we give all of our energy to that and it just leaks out of us. Right? If you’re worried or afraid you’re focusing on things that you probably can’t change. The second you bring your eye back to that circle of influence, you know, then that then your energy starts to return and you start to feel more powerful. Again, I would just I would I would love to say about this whole dynamic of sales is I think we’ve arrived when we actually get to the place of where we would feel that we had that we had not done our customer justice if we didn’t ask for the business. And I recently experienced that with someone that I that I work with a client of mine, and she was feeling very uncomfortable with the whole selling thing she did. She didn’t ever see herself as a salesperson and suddenly her role included a sales activity. And I and I went through a process what if you don’t, what if you don’t pick up the phone and call that customer? What could happen to them? And she said: Well, you know, she started to make a list of some of the negative outcomes that could happen if this customer didn’t have the information and didn’t have the opportunity. And I said, Okay, so, so at by the end of our conversation, she said: Gosh if I don’t call these customers, that’s terrible! Actually, it is terrible. So she, you know, sometimes that emotional open that emotional gate, give yourself emotional permission, maybe another exercise is: What if you don’t? What if you don’t present your value? What would mean to your customer?

Christine Schlonski [15:00]
Yeah, I still get that. I always say sales is love. Just, first of all, people go like, what? Second of all, we can actually talk about it because it opens the door what you just said, What if the person in need doesn’t get what you have to offer?

Dondi Scumaci [15:16]
No, I think I even think about some of the most brilliant things in my life, the most precious things in my life, that that did not come up at a low cost, right? So you know, the horse thing. I remember being so frustrated with trying to train this horse. He was a rescue. He was green, he didn’t know he didn’t trust and I was brand new. And by the way, that’s a bad combo, right? That’s not a recommendation. That’s a confession. I’m brand new, he’s very green. That’s a recipe for disaster. And I remember trying to do this by myself for about six months, just trying to figure it out. I was reading everything I could read and I it wasn’t getting any better. And I remember finally reaching for help and asking this trainer that I had just seen on the property at the at the Equestrian Center I said: Would you help me? And she turned around and she said I have been waiting for you to ask. I have been waiting for you to ask and I and it from that was three years ago and now this is a horse who’s performing at level four dressage. That’s pretty amazing, right. I I don’t I wouldn’t be enjoying this part of my life as much. I wouldn’t have learned the things so whatever her cost is, and by the way, she just raised our prices didn’t bat an eye when she told me either because she’s worth it. And she knows it and so do I.

Christine Schlonski [16:40]
Yeah. Oh, that’s so, so, so beautiful. Thank you so much for sharing. So let us know where people can find you.

Dondi Scumaci [16:49]
You can find me at my name anywhere on Twitter or Facebook or Instagram any of the social sites Dondi Scumaci so it’s D-O-N-D-I S-C-U-M-A-C-I and my website, of course, is dondiscumaci.com, there’s some good blogs up there, there’s also a downloadable free chap, that free first chapter of Career Moves. If you want to explore around and see if that book is of interest to you. You can open your the first chapter for free. So I hope that you will go up there and open your gift.

Christine Schlonski [17:20]
Yeah, amazing. Amazing. And I’m going to put the links in the show notes. So check out the show notes. hop on over to christineschlonski.com. And you just need to click that’s all you need to do. And I have one last question. And so many successful people that I have met, like the majority of them, they have like a mantra or a quote they are referring to in times when they feel maybe, you know, then life is not in harmony, or they need a little extra string for confidence or something. Are you using mantras yourself?

Dondi Scumaci [18:01]
I use lots of lots of affirmations. In fact, that exercise that I told you about where I logged my, my beliefs, right, my and my power empowering beliefs in my limiting ones I actually turned the negative beliefs into positive affirmations. So I have a whole bunch of them, you know: I can do this. I am capable, right. I love what, what Jack Canfield you said, I’m lovable and I’m capable and I’m worthy of success. I think that’s, you know, one that we can all relate to. But I think the one that I probably say most often to myself is: I will figure this out. I will make this happen. I will succeed.

Christine Schlonski [18:40]
Yes. Thank you so, so much. What a great interview. Thank you.

Dondi Scumaci [18:45]
Thank you for having me. I enjoyed it.

Christine Schlonski [18:48]
Wow, that was so much fun. And as you could see Dondi and I, we seem to think alike a lot. That’s so exciting. So hop on over to christineschlonski.com for the show notes, the transcript all the resources we have talked about. They are there waiting for you so that we can support you on your amazing journey. Hopefully, by now you have subscribed to the Heart Sells! Podcast so that you get notifications for each and every new episode. I am so excited and grateful that you are here and as my gift today I want to invite you to get your Sales Journaling prompts to get more confident when you are in a sales conversation. I have put these prompts up in the Success Library that is my free membership site. As it says it’s a library you go in, you take what you want, the good thing is you don’t need to bring it back. It is yours to keep. And this Sales Journaling Prompts will help you to shift your sales mindset into a sales success mindset. And why do I know that? Pretty simple. I have made millions by shifting my mindset in regards to sales and I was able to create millions in revenue, build sales teams and make people that didn’t want to be in sales successful, because it is possible to shift your mind. So hop on over to christineschlonski.com. Check that out. Get the Sales Journaling prompts, have fun and give your gifts to the world. Thank you so much for being here. Have a wonderful day and tune in to the next episode. Bye for now.