Refreshing the Sales Brain
Does your sales brain need a little bit of a break?
The one and only Pete Lange and I talk about how you define that creative time, how you step away from sales to be fully refreshed when you step back into it.
JEFF: You’ve been in home sales for several years. You lead a sales team up there in Wisconsin. You’re in a stressful job. It’s a stressful job all the time, but maybe more so when the market shifts and suddenly we need sales, and there’s a lot of pressure on us to be able to get those sales. It can rack up a little bit, and I think everybody reading this can relate.
I would contend that when we take those problems home, and we never release them, then we’re never that good when we get back to work the next day. We never really got the downtime. You are very much into making sure that you get some creative downtime. Tell us a little bit about that.
PETE: I’ve been blessed to have a dual career, midlife career, working full time as a music teacher, professional musician, kind of in between sales careers. My music career has survived into this incarnation as a sales leader, and I’ve made it clear to ownership, and everybody, all of my colleagues know that it’s, it’s a vital part of my existence. I said I wasn’t going to actively look to grow it. I’m not trying to promote myself as a performer, but I have enough traction that I continue to get gigs as a trumpet player and as a singer working with several big bands in my area.
My calendar will show you that some nights every week, I’ve got something musical happening, and it’s essential to my state of health, my state of energy, my state of well-being. Everybody around me knows it. It’s a vital part of keeping the energy in what I’m doing professionally.
JEFF: Let’s talk about why you carry a lot of stress in the real estate business. What is it about music, and could it be anything that allows you to step back and step into something? What is it that is so beneficial to you?
PETE: I think that it’s on the level of any hobby that somebody is truly passionate about. Any second pursuit that anybody is truly passionate about is the ability to get into a flow state, the ability to stop the mental chatter, and the urgency and pressure of the need to do. To wholly immerse in an activity that honestly just pulls you out of that.
Music can do that for any of us listening to it but performing it in particular for me. So I think it’s just that the interruption of mental noise that allows for a reset, allows for that flow state, and allows for you to return like, okay, I can go back, and I could sort it out a little better.
JEFF: In the book, The Power of Full Engagement by Jim Lehrer and Tony Schwartz talk about the idea that if you want to be fully engaged in something, you have to fully disengage from everything else. I know for me, I have never been out on the ice in the middle of a game thinking, Hey, do I need to be in Phoenix on Tuesday? When I’m in a game, it is all game. I am assuming that that’s the same thing. You can’t think about that problem home buyer on lot 12 over here while you’re in the middle of a performance.
PETE: Absolutely not. It requires too much engagement to perform. Anything like music or sports, hockey at a high level, is too dangerous to get, have your mind be someplace else. You’ve got to be all in. I think that’s why a lot of people like kind of dangerous sports or thrill sports like there’s no room for anything except full engagement in what’s happening right now at the moment.
JEFF: A lot of people would say that if you’re performing in front of a group, it’s the same thing. You can’t be thinking about other things, right? I mean, you’re just totally into the performance at that point.
PETE: True. There is a parallel and a corollary to what we do, as is the sales leader or salespeople, sales performers. You ought to be able to get in that flow that way, too.
JEFF: Let’s talk about the creative crossover. One of the interesting phenomena is that when we do something creative, when we are not at work, it’s the brain is an interesting muscle because most muscles wear out when they’re overused. But when you’re flexing the creative side of your brain, you get more creativity than you really need. Have you found that the creative release that you have in the music side of your life, transfers over into the business side of your life?
PETE: I think so. My music life is pretty social, too. So the bands that I’m in are a community, and there’s an attachment there. So a lot of social activity in between sets, in between shows. I find probably some of those insights that come when I’m detached from the sales environment happen maybe more like an athletic pursuit. If I’m on a long road bike ride, suddenly a problem will just solve itself. It’s like, Oh, I know what to do. I know what to do when I get back to the office. So it’s probably as a result of, of the creative pursuit too. They don’t tend to happen like on the bandstand or in real-time as much. But it’s away from that again, the mental noise of problem solving that those solutions sometimes just reveal themselves so beautifully. And I think that’s due to using creativity and using the other side of the brain or the other side of consciousness for sure.
JEFF: One last thing here before I let you go, Pete. I’ve known you for a few years. You’re a passionate guy. You’re passionate about music, your passionate about sales, your passionate about leadership. Can you even imagine doing something in your life that you weren’t particularly passionate about?
PETE: No. I’ve had a couple situations that I found myself in where that was the case. It’s it’s drudgery. If you’re not burning a flame, days go by real slow.
JEFF: Yeah, you have to be all in and you have to be well. Fantastic stuff Pete. Thank you so very much. Hey, listen, if you’re all in Wisconsin, find out where Pete Lange’s band is playing. You’re not going to be disappointed. It’s the best of the best. Pete, thanks for joining us today.
Refreshing the sales brain now, what are you going to do about it? Let’s go out, make an action plan, find something passionate, and detach for a little while. You’ll be better when you come back.
Until next time, my friends learn more to earn more!
