Scott Scully 00:00
Welcome back to The Grove show. I’m with my partners in crime, Eric Watkins and Jeff winters. Hello, gentlemen.
Eric Watkins 00:07
Good day to you. Good day to you Good day to you
Jeff Winters 00:11
honestly feels like we never left. I feel like I have been here this whole time. That’s how comfortable I feel like you’re living
Scott Scully 00:17
in the studio. Yeah. First of all, by the way, if you’re just joining us, what is the gross show? The gross show is tactical advice,
Eric Watkins 00:25
not theory things
Scott Scully 00:27
thinks that. Yeah, no theory, no textbooks. This is all Convo about things that we’ve actually implemented, we are using and it is working, whether we’re doing it or whether our close vendors or people in, in business relationships are using these tactics. These are inaction they’re working. And they are causing consistent year over year growth. And we wanted to put a show together to make it just a little easier for people out there in their journey. Because we just know how tough it is. I wish I would have had this 28 years ago,
Eric Watkins 01:03
I wish I would have had what I talked about today, six months ago. Yeah. Like we’re, we’re, we’re if we learn it, and we’re doing it, we’re bringing it out here. If
Scott Scully 01:15
you’re not growing, you’re dying. So I just want to make a couple of shout outs before we get into or swing it over to our LinkedIn sheriff. I wanted to shout out our customers, we have a growing number of customers that are interacting with us on the growth show, I know that you’re out there listening, and this is on behalf of all of us, we appreciate you. We would not exist abstract would not exist if you were not so loyal, and kind. And we appreciate you. And we just want to be part of your journey and help you in growth. Thank you very much. Thanks for listening, spread the word to our team members 550. And growing, we wanted to put this together for you. So that we could make it just a little bit easier to understand why it is that we do what we do. And we felt that if we were working through some of these really important topics through a podcast, it’d be an easy way to talk to you. And we could help in your growth and you becoming even better consultants for our partners and even more impactful in, in your jobs and in your lives. Hope this causes growth for you, for our prospects, if we have interacted with you at some point, and we’re not currently doing business. This is part of us staying in touch with you. And we hope we build confidence in the things that we’re doing over time. And whenever you’re ready, we’re ready for that powerful partnership. And if we don’t have any business affiliation with you, whatsoever, that’s fine. That’s why we wanted to do this. We wanted to make sure that we put good content out into the world, we just want it to be a smooth ride towards growth. It is not
Eric Watkins 03:11
smooth it out as much as policies are the
Scott Scully 03:14
shocks, if you will through business growth.
03:17
What about the people that are just here for the laughs?
Scott Scully 03:20
There are two of those. And thank we welcome
03:23
all of you with open arms.
Scott Scully 03:25
Yes. All right. So one of your favorite sections, you loyal listeners, keep calling out your favorite section. Jeff, the sheriff work in the Lincoln LinkedIn pastures. What do we have this week?
Jeff Winters 03:42
They do talk about it? They do. I’m getting the people and I said this a few episodes ago, we’re getting the people who are the truth tellers. They like that I always do when the LinkedIn post about the show, we say hey, these are some truths in that I think. I think it’s not a blue checkmark of credibility. But I certainly think you’re getting close. It adds a little credibility to the people where I, you know, talk about the truth. I don’t know. No data to support that, but certainly something I think is true. Speaking of today, Bob Marsh, he’s a CRO keynote speaker on sales and leadership and founder. And now he can add to that truth teller, because he says Bob says probably my number one tip for any manager or leader of people always be recruiting. If you have an open position and this is key, or even if you don’t make sure you’re always building a talent pipeline. This is really good. I think it is so easy to not have that bullpen of people to come in when you need them. You don’t know what somebody’s gonna resign. You don’t know what something’s gonna happen like, you just don’t know as a leader, your number one job. Have the best players You can’t do that if everything is just in time recruiting.
Scott Scully 05:04
I find it amazing that so many people are fascinated with professional sports. Um, you’ve got your diehard fans that have completely converted half of their house to get up on a Sunday. And live NFL football. They know the league, and they know that there are scouts out there, combing us trying to find the best talent to put in every position. Like people know this, they live by this. But then we don’t do it in business. How does that happen? Like, we know that professional sports teams, you are elite, if you’ve joined an NFL team, an NBA team, an NHL team, and you’re also not safe. Just because you’ve made the team doesn’t mean you’re always going to play that position. Right? Why does that not happen in business? I love this post couldn’t agree more. You need the best players in all of your positions all the time. And you always have to be looking and people should continue to improve or not hold that position.
Eric Watkins 06:12
Yeah, I feel like this is 100% truth. And I think the root of why we don’t do it as leaders is because we’re so focused on the day to day and we’re not stepping out. So some sort of regular cadence of how are you going to evaluate the characteristics of your team? And what are you comparing them against? And what’s the litmus test? And the, you know, the bar raiser mentality that Amazon uses every new person we’re going to put into a position? Are they raising the bar? Or are they just adequate? In the role? I think this is great. And I think it’s often overlooked. the busier you are, the worse you are at this.
Jeff Winters 06:49
Yeah, and a lot of this is networking. It sounds simple. But we had a situation just yesterday, where we had an opening. And we were able to go through the internal Rolodex and call someone and get them hired that day. I mean, that’s, that’s what you need as a business. That’s what you should set yourself up for. So this is really good sage advice. Others other search advice, a universal truth. From Len Lisowski. Len says, I lost the deal based upon price. Unless you sell a commodity, no, you didn’t lose based on price, you didn’t show them value, you didn’t align with the business goal or strategic imperative. You didn’t have true executive sponsorship, you didn’t sell broadly enough across the organization, you didn’t prove how your solution could solve the client’s business problems I could go on. But you did not lose based on price price is the easiest reason a client can provide. But rarely, the true reason you lost. Price is the easiest reason a client can provide by why they didn’t go with you. And they don’t want to tell you why. But in today’s world, where people are so in tune with the difference between a low quality or high quality solution, how that can impact their business. You’re not losing deals based on price. You’re just not. You’re losing deals for a variety of other reasons. And you shouldn’t as a sales leader, except this excuse truth.
Eric Watkins 08:17
Yeah, cheers. I agree with that. It’s the easiest excuse for a sales rep to use. It’s the easiest excuse because you can’t argue with it. Oh, is price. Right? But you know, the and I think that’s why a lot of people lean on that. But you’re right, there’s so much everybody would buy something. If you know the circuit like no one’s pricing their products so far out of the realm of affordability.
Scott Scully 08:39
You know how in sales processes, there’s ways to log reasons to lose deals, contract price, doing business with a competitor, not the right size? And maybe this should be a call out to take price off the list? Yes. That’s a good idea. If people say it, yeah, all sales managers when somebody says price say no. Go find the other reasons. Yeah, good idea.
Eric Watkins 09:03
And don’t let a prospect tell you price. Yeah, will hurt my feelings. It’s not price. Yeah, it’s not price.
Scott Scully 09:10
There’s a deeper part to this too, because so many people discount because they think that somebody’s just gonna make the decision based on 250 or $500 a month less. And if they built another enough value, they wouldn’t have had to come off the price point period.
Jeff Winters 09:27
Now you may have sparked a different debate. But let us move on to the other side of this coin a darker side of the coin. I wonder if I’m gonna get universal agreement on this slide. We don’t need universal agreement on the show folks. I’m not a yes man. Happy to have the discussion. But this is a lie that I think is a lie. unpopular opinion. Leaders should not pursue friendships with the team they lead. Before you get upset with me hear me out. Leaders are responsible to build relationships with the people they lead. They are responsible to foster unity within those teams, but building friendships with the team creates confusion and unhealthy power dynamics. I think that’s bullshit. I don’t think that’s right. I am friends with many people that I lead. And I’m also friends. I think Scott, with my boss, they’re not unhealthy, we’re good. Like, then I think I’ll use our like, I know, like, I know what it is, I know what it’s not like, if I’m not doing a good job at work, you’ll even say, alright, on a personal level, you won’t come over, like, but like, I’m still doing a shitty job at work. So you don’t hold back. You can, the way you do it is can be tricky. But that’s ridiculous. You can be friends with people, that’s outrageous.
Scott Scully 10:48
I feel like, it’s pretty hard to avoid, when you’re in the trenches with people all day, every day, and you really enjoy those people and respect them. You can’t help but to establish some friendships, I think where there’d be some truth in this is, you know, a couple layers. Underneath where, you know, if you are a manager, and you’re all out on a Friday night, and you know, you’re in a situation where maybe there’s a lot of drinking, and there’s some things that start to go on that maybe you didn’t want to see. And now all of a sudden you have to do something about it. I think there are situations with certain people on your team that it just makes. It could make it awkward if you put yourself in certain environments or situations with with people at work.
Eric Watkins 11:55
Sure. I think it’s a lie at face value. I think a leaders intent should not be to become their team members, friends, first, you should start with the mission vision of the team. And then inevitably, if you can do both great do both, but don’t let one get in the way of the other. That would be my response.
Jeff Winters 12:15
People say they don’t gotta like you. They just gotta respect you. You know what, fuck it helps if they like you, though. Like, it really does. It helps if they don’t dislike you, but I understand your point.
Eric Watkins 12:26
Yeah, but no, you’re 100%. Right. Everything comes at a cost. Yeah,
Jeff Winters 12:31
it helps that I like Scott, you don’t like I’ll do what he says anyway, because he’s my boss. But like, I also like him and trust him like those are important things,
Eric Watkins 12:37
right? Well, any what’s super important, I feel like, ultimately, is feedback. And if you don’t have that relationship, a lot of times people withhold information. And they don’t give you that feedback. And if you don’t have all the information on the table, you can’t make the best decisions.
Scott Scully 12:53
If you’re going to, if you’re going to do this, like I could see why this post was made. And by the way, we’re for everybody out there, we’re partners, right? So we’re friends, but we also own shares in a business together. So that might be different than a couple levels underneath where maybe somebody’s running a sales team. And all of a sudden, they’re really good friends with two out of 10 sales on the sales team. And then one of those people happens to get promoted, maybe even because they’re the person that should be promoted. But everybody knows that. You’re you have good friendships with those two people. Now favoritism comes into play. Or you’re the sales manager, yep. 10 people and want to your salespeople does something frickin stupid on a Saturday night and you see it, you got to do something about it. And then you feel you feel like you don’t want to do something about it. Maybe nobody knows. And this is my friend, it can get pretty tricky if you’re not ready, willing and able to separate business and personal. And I’m more worried about what people see. Like if you’re friends with some and not friends with other others, and you’re a leader that can really sure lead off that you’re favoring some and not equal to others. That’s a difficult one.
Jeff Winters 14:23
It’s a hard one. But life is so long, and you work at a company five years, 10 years. I’m not going to sacrifice my potential friendships with people just because they work for me. You know, I’m not down for that. Yeah, it’s bullshit. But it’s also clear that you know, Scott and I are best friends. And that’s what I took away from that. And she took away from that. I don’t know if other people hurt. I have got
Eric Watkins 14:45
you’re a better friend than an employee for sure. Definitely. give you that. I
Scott Scully 14:50
mean, I don’t have I don’t have Jeff up on my frigerator
Eric Watkins 14:53
I’m out there though. Right.
Jeff Winters 14:54
You did my Christmas card. You did? Yeah, you did. What’s up All