Welcome to SALES with ASLAN, a weekly podcast hosted by ASLAN Co-founders Tom Stanfill and Tab Norris, geared at helping sales professionals and sales leaders eliminate the hard sell. At the end of the day, we believe that selling is serving. ASLAN helps sellers make the shift from a ‘typical’ sales approach, to one that makes us more influential because we embrace the truth that the customer’s receptivity is more important than your value prop or message.
The goal of these interviews is to spotlight various experts in the world of sales and sales leadership – sharing informational stories, techniques, and expert interviews on the sales topics you care about.
The following are notes from EP. 191 Becoming A Growth Leader
Tune in as Tom and Tab welcome author and sales leader Scott Edinger to the podcast. In this episode, we dive into Scott’s latest book, Growth Leader, designed to help seasoned pros and hungry novices unlock sustainable sales growth.
Discover:- What it takes to become a growth leader who inspires meaningful change
- How to create a sales experience that will increase your close rate
- Tips to foster a collaborative and innovative culture
- Strategies to empower and engage your team long-term
You won’t want to miss this opportunity to learn from one of the best in the business! This episode is created by ASLAN Training. ASLAN equips sales teams with the skills and knowledge they need to consistently win in today's competitive market.
Listen to the conversation here:
Or read below-
00:14
Tom Stanfill
Welcome back to another episode of sales with Adeline. I'm, I'm looking at my trusty co host, Doctor. You're back to Doctor now, Dr. Tab Norris.
00:24
Tab Norris
Good.
00:24
Tab Norris
It's good to be.
00:28
Tom Stanfill
It. Love you. I think our listeners, Tab, are going to really get a lot out of this. We are bringing some value. We're talking to on this a guy named Scott Edinger and he's done a lot tab, in our space in the world of sales training. He's worked with some of the most prestigious sales training and leadership development. Know the people that created spend selling zinger, Falkman, which has done more research on leadership than anybody. He's an executive position with those companies. He's now consultant to Fortune 50 companies, a regular contributor to Harvard Business Review in Forbes. He's a best selling author of three books. And we're going to talk about his latest book, Growth leader. And there's so many things that we learned and valued out of this podcast.
01:19
Tom Stanfill
It's hard to distill it down and tease you with a couple, but what was kind of your main takeaway? What should the audience be excited about?
01:26
Tab Norris
Yeah, well, they should be excited because I started reading the book and I couldn't put it down.
01:29
Tab Norris
I read half of the book.
01:30
Tab Norris
I know, in like two and a half hours. So I mean that you should be excited about that.
01:35
Tom Stanfill
I did the same thing. I was like, I'm going to prep for the podcast because I got in late last night and then I'm like, damn. And I got up early this morning to finish know I now want to.
01:43
Tab Norris
Finish it over the. So I'm telling you, it's a great book. It's a great book. And I loved how he talks about the importance of the sales experience. Yeah, I just thought that was phenomenal. Just the way he positioned that defined.
01:57
Tom Stanfill
It differently and how the value of it. Because everybody talks about consultant selling, solution selling. But Scott really got us to think about it. As our friend Fletcher would say, it was just a quarter turn.
02:08
Tab Norris
Quarter turn.
02:08
Tom Stanfill
That's just a little bit different way to think about it. And the role of the executive team, sort of the role all the way up the chain to the C suite and how their role in driving what happens at the intersection between the rep and the customer is critical.
02:23
Tab Norris
Yeah, you're going to love this podcast. I do. Great guest.
02:28
Tom Stanfill
I also love Tab, the way that he talked about leadership and he shared some of the research that they found about the number one driver to effective leadership, the most critical characteristic attribute of a leader. I thought that's worth the podcast itself, so I know you're going to join it. So enjoy this episode with Scott Engager, the author of Growth Leader. Welcome to sales with ASLAN. We are very honored to have you on the show. Honestly, when I was introduced to you and told about your book, I didn't think we'd actually could get you on the show. So we're really excited to have you.
03:07
Scott Edinger
Well, that's flattering. Thank you. I'm excited to be here talking with the two of you.
03:11
Tom Stanfill
Yeah. So this is your third book on leadership is out, right? You wrote what? Hidden leadership. Inspiring leader.
03:21
Scott Edinger
Yep. The inspiring leader and the hidden leader. This is the third in the trilogy. The growth leader.
03:29
Tom Stanfill
Yeah. I hope it's as successful as Harry Potter.
03:32
Scott Edinger
Yeah. There's a lot of doubt on that statement. We hope it's successful in lots of other ways.
03:40
Tom Stanfill
Well, tell us about the book. I mean, we've read it. We were talking about as were prepping for the show with you, were talking about how much we love it. And I was joking that I was just going to skim it so I could prep for the interview. And I'm like, damn it, the guy's got me reading the book. I actually got up early this morning to really dive in. I didn't quite finish it, but I got through a lot of it.
04:04
Scott Edinger
Well, that's wonderful. Thank you. Sorry I cost you some sleep. But nonetheless, this book was written out of watching the same problem occur for over a decade. In fact, I have notes on the growth leader from before my last book, the Hidden Leader, was published. So I've been conceiving of this book for a while. But the perspective is really this, that growth for an organization, no matter how you measure it, revenue, net income, market share, wallet share, net promoter score, whatever it is, growth of some kind is a leadership issue. And when organizations look to their sales function to be responsible for growth, too many executives, I'm specifically talking to you. Senior leaders, c suite, executive management, they abdicate the responsibility for the health of the revenue stream. It's sort of like sales. Go do it. Yes, it's separate.
05:06
Scott Edinger
In fact, that's a big premise in the book, that these areas of strategy and leadership and sales are treated in most organizations as separate things, separate areas of focus. My observation and the research I did for the book shows really clearly that driving growth, profitable growth, successfully lies at the intersection of those three, that you cannot treat them as mutually exclusive. Tie them together, you've got a chance to grow at a rate that's accelerated from the market. Fail to do that and you leave a lot to chance.
05:42
Tom Stanfill
Yeah, you do. Yeah. Obviously you start the book by saying if your CEO gave me this book, give it back.
05:53
Scott Edinger
Right?
05:56
Tom Stanfill
Yeah. When a lot of our people, I would imagine that they're going to listen to this podcast and they're going to be maybe a little frustrated because they're like, yeah, I wish our CEO would do that.
06:05
Scott Edinger
This is why I wrote the book.
06:07
Tom Stanfill
Okay, so talk about that. Talk to the people who are like their frontline leader or their director. And obviously we're going to talk about the selling experience, how we can change that and what we can get to all of that. But yeah, talk to how do we apply this if we're not the CEO?
06:24
Scott Edinger
Well, this is why the book starts that way.
06:26
Tom Stanfill
Okay.
06:27
Scott Edinger
And I think it's even more important than any other content in the book. Anytime you put sales on something for an organization, it gets delegated. I wanted to say dished, but it gets delegated to the sales team, usually ahead of sales, who bookmark for a later part of the conversation. That head of sales many times does not have a seat at the real executive table. I'm talking CEO CFO, where the strategic decisions are made. It's often delegated to that. Anytime you put sales on something, it's why the word sales is not on the COVID of the book. It's got a lot to say about sales, right. But it's a leadership book dedicated to how do you grow your business. And if you use a direct sales organization of any kind, that's what this is about.
07:14
Scott Edinger
So that note, that upfront note, I imagined that because it would be about sales, the immediate response would be CEO, VP of sales, go do this. And they can't.
07:30
Tom Stanfill
I can't tell you the number of times we've been in organizations and we're helping them implement a Salesforce transformation initiative and we're doing all this work and we're training all these people and we're working with the frontline leaders and we've got this transformation plan and everything's working. And then we come back in for sort of our next visit tab. I think this client, and they're all doing something else, right?
07:54
Tab Norris
They just went away.
07:56
Tom Stanfill
What are you doing? I'm like, we have to do all these. We're doing a completely different initiative.
08:01
Scott Edinger
I was just with that company.
08:05
Tom Stanfill
And.
08:06
Tab Norris
I was too the other day as well.
08:08
Scott Edinger
Right. So this is part of the frustrating element of it. And why frankly, after three full on rewrites it was still hard to get the directness of that message without being a full on jerk at the start of it. I really try not to be, but I'm trying to be very direct and say, if the CEO delegated this book to you, turn around, take it back, don't just say you read it. But maybe it's like we both read this and talk about these ideas, because that's what is missing, that collaboration, that connective tissue between executive leadership and strategy and sales. And by bringing that together, that's where you have a chance to create really sustainable and powerful growth. Leveraging the sales organization as part of the value of the business, not just a form of distribution.
08:57
Scott Edinger
And that's a fundamentally different way of thinking about the role, purpose, function of sales in your business. But sales can't change that on their own. They would have already. By the way, you've done enough training to help sales professionals think differently about this. This is a leadership issue, not a sales issue.
09:19
Tom Stanfill
Not a sales issue.
09:20
Tab Norris
Yeah, I was going to say I think about over the last 28 years, Tom, tell me if you agree with this. All of our extremely successful projects and partnerships, that's why it's extremely successful. It's got legs. It's a partnership and grow. It's top down and it becomes part of the strategy. And that's when change happens.
09:45
Scott Edinger
Right. That is it, right. It's like you can do all the great training in the world. You're steeped in the world of excellent sales training. Right. We talked about, we share this background, but unless that approach, that method, that system, whatever you train on becomes a part of our strategy. Like this is the way we do business, it's how we go to market, it's how we run our company. Unless it gets adopted at that level, then it's kind of like sending an average golfer or even a poor golfer to a couple of days of golf camp and expecting them to really get, or average swimmer to take them to a couple of days of swim lessons, average piano player an afternoon of lessons, that's what it amounts to. Unless it becomes part of this is how we're going to do things differently.
10:36
Tom Stanfill
I think maybe the best way to unpack this for people that might be going. I want to figure out how to, like, what are we really talking about?
10:43
Scott Edinger
Oh, yes, I'm sorry. I think we got on maybe tangent here. You're going to have to do some editing.
10:47
Tom Stanfill
No, I think the setup is perfect, but I want to bring it to the like, let's start at. Because I think this is where it made sense for me as I was reading the book is like, we started talking about the sales experience, and then I saw it work all the way back up to the CEO. When I saw that connection, oh, I could see how that started in the c suite. And now I'm seeing it happen at the sales experience. So talk a little bit about maybe you can even use an example of a sales experience and why that's so important. And then we say, well, that's going to work because it was designed in the C suite. Does that make sense?
11:24
Scott Edinger
Yeah, absolutely. And tab, were talking earlier about my air conditioning story. If you want, I can try to do that in a couple of minutes. I love your story. I would offer this. When organizations think about their competitive advantages and the reasons why customers choose them, you never hear, we provide a valuable and compelling sales experience. It's about the features, it's about the benefits of the products, the services they offer. It's about the brand, it's about all the things they do. And the sales experience is sort of. And that's the way we get people to understand all we do. We communicate that value to them. But the McKinsey and company analysis that I share in the book shows that 25% of the purchasing decision and B, two B purchases is based on the overall sales experience. Right.
12:19
Tom Stanfill
Lots of organizations surprised by that, by the way.
12:21
Scott Edinger
Me too.
12:22
Tom Stanfill
I loved how you said the customer says it only represents 8%. Right. The reality was it was 25%. When you looked at what actually happened, I thought that was really strong.
12:32
Scott Edinger
There's rich detail in that research. I can be a research wonk about this sort of stuff. So I try not to bore people about it. But this is why, if you ask someone, well, that doesn't enter in, we're not going to be readily admitting, well, I was really influenced by the seller. It just makes it sound like you're not judging it objectively. But the fact of the matter is that a quarter of the decision, the Gartner research on existing customers said it was over half of the decision is on the buyer's experience in the sales process. Well, you start to think about those things. It's, huh.
13:06
Scott Edinger
All of the things we invest in, all of the things we go after strategically, and yet the value of the sales experience is a huge factor in whether customers choose us and stay with us and we don't even talk about it. It is absent, I would say, conspicuous by absence in the strategic agenda for the C suite. So sales experience becomes a hidden advantage. And it's sort of like, I want to take that out of conceptual. And if you can indulge me, you can edit me down on the length of the story if we need to. But I've got a class like this today.
13:40
Tom Stanfill
I love this story. Go ahead, tell the story.
13:42
Scott Edinger
Okay, so for those of you who listening, I live in Florida. It's hot in Florida. Air conditioning is a strategic purchase, right? Like the early bird special is strategic. So a few years ago, I'm in the market for a new AC system for my house. It's a difficult house. It's a hundred year old house, one and a half story floor plan, craftsman style house, big upstairs loft kind of space. And 100 years ago, we did not know much about insulation, right? So that makes it maddeningly difficult to get it to be one comfortable temperature. And what I thought I needed was a larger, more powerful system. Not at all. What I needed was a smaller system, but two of them in a completely different configuration, because all of those factors.
14:31
Scott Edinger
So I meet with the first couple of AC companies, all referred by a couple of what I'd say, cool friends, right? They know what they. And we go through all the circumstances, and then I tell them exactly what I need. Now pause on that for a second.
14:46
Tom Stanfill
I love that. I know exactly where you're going with that.
14:49
Scott Edinger
I tell them, right? I tell them.
14:52
Tom Stanfill
I tell them.
14:52
Scott Edinger
You're listening here.
14:53
Tom Stanfill
You're the expert.
14:54
Scott Edinger
Yes, I know, Jack squad. I just need a bigger system.
14:59
Tom Stanfill
And that's what reps do. They go, okay, I will get you what you think you need.
15:02
Tab Norris
Because talking about this guy, right?
15:07
Scott Edinger
So what do your customers, how often do your customers, your clients come to you say, here's what I need. Here's exactly what I need. Here's what the solution should be, and here's how you should implement it. This is a golden opportunity for sales experience. So the first two, they do exactly what Tab said. They come back to me with proposals for shocking. Exactly what I'd asked for. The third sales experience is very different. The guy's name is Gary. And Gary starts by measuring all the windows. He's calculating the heat load in different parts of the home, and then he's evaluating the airflow and measuring the temperature differentials between the rooms and the different parts of the one and a half story floor plan. And then he's checking the ductwork, like every 5ft. And then he comes back to me with a proposal.
15:51
Scott Edinger
After all this, I'm like, what is taking so long? The other guys comes back to me with a proposal that is three times the price of the other two, three x 300% more. And it's that clever solution. You don't need a bigger system, Scott. You need two smaller ones with a completely different configuration, rerouting the airflow through your house with new ductwork. I would have never come up with that on my own, and it was obvious that's what I needed to do. But of course, I'm about to choke on 300% of the. I'm really three times the price.
16:27
Tom Stanfill
Yeah.
16:28
Scott Edinger
So Gary is able to point out for me, here's why the other approach won't work. It will push more air through the vents, but some rooms will still be uncomfortably warm, others too cold.
16:40
Tom Stanfill
Too cold. Yeah, it won't work.
16:41
Scott Edinger
So I won. But for every now, thank you for tolerating the story. Here's the kicker for me in the whole thing, and if you're listening and you sell anything that looks similar or maybe even the same in the eyes of your customers, this is important to you.
16:58
Tom Stanfill
The customer perceives it as a commodity.
17:00
Scott Edinger
Totally.
17:01
Tom Stanfill
Yeah.
17:01
Scott Edinger
Anytime you have that commoditized look and feel. Right, the other two companies could have sold me. Not just similar, they could have sold me the exact same thing.
17:12
Tom Stanfill
Great point.
17:13
Scott Edinger
Yes. They're all distributors of the same equipment manufacturers. They have the exact, I mean, not similar, not close exact same stuff. Right. Experience and similar installation services, sales experience. Right. So when you look similar, if not the same, in eyes of customers, valuable, compelling sales experience tips the scales in your favor. Right.
17:44
Tom Stanfill
Yeah. I would imagine that this is driven. Like, if you're looking at the kind of organizations you're trying to help build and impact, that had to help these executives become more growth leaders or even the head of sales, whoever we're talking about, maybe even the frontline leader, it starts with, they're saying, this is who we are and this is how we're going to market. Therefore, because this is our differentiator, then it obviously makes the sales experience important. And then everything they do supports that drives that. Because I even hear like a different process. You're teaching the reps a different process versus the first two reps followed the process of discover, then quote.
18:26
Scott Edinger
Right.
18:27
Tom Stanfill
Maybe even discover present, quote, and then close and negotiate.
18:30
Scott Edinger
Who knows?
18:31
Tom Stanfill
Whereas his process was assessment.
18:33
Tab Norris
Yes.
18:34
Tom Stanfill
Right. He went through a completely different process. So all of that's being driven. I could see that from the top of the organization down.
18:42
Scott Edinger
Yeah. I would offer you that there is a larger strategic context for why they behave that way also. And that is what they believe the purpose or focus of the sales function is. The other two companies had plenty of knowledge about HVAC systems. They could talk eloquent about the features, the benefits, the systems, their installation services. Plenty articulate. Right. This was more not about communicating the value of what they did. This was a strategy to create value in the sales process. That sales process makes it valuable. When you think about that as a strategy. Again, this is back to a mindset issue at the c suite. It becomes about mindset strategy, and then how do you execute that?
19:30
Scott Edinger
Okay, if you don't have the first parts about it, all the sales training in the world isn't going to help those other two reps to do what Gary did.
19:39
Tab Norris
Yeah, well, and to your point, and that's the assessment idea. That's what it's all about. This is who we are. We come assess, we focus. You talk about this in the book. It starts with a customer's problem you're trying to solve. Like, that's our strategy. Solving customers problems.
20:01
Scott Edinger
Without a doubt.
20:03
Tom Stanfill
Without a doubt.
20:03
Tab Norris
And when you do that, it changes everything.
20:06
Scott Edinger
Forgive me, Tab. I was about to jump out of my chair on something because you said something that was exciting to me here, and I did not mean to interrupt you. I want to make sure you finish. This particular idea is not new. The three of us, were talking beforehand, we have roots that go back into the sales training business in the 90s. So the ideas of consultative selling, the solution, sale, selling the value, these are ideas that have been around for 40 years. Lots of good training is predicated on these principles.
20:41
Tom Stanfill
Consultative selling, solution selling, all of it.
20:44
Scott Edinger
Yeah, but it doesn't happen with any kind of consistency, any kind of frequency. That's why you guys are so important to your clients, right? Because it's still not happening. And part of what we are talking about here is there is a missing link in that experience that starts at the executive level and how sales is thought about, conceived of strategically, and then how it is a part of driving the strategy.
21:11
Tom Stanfill
So talk to the learning people or the frontline leaders again, whether directors or frontline, and they're loving what they're hearing and they're like, yes. And so, Scott, help me, because you've been in these boardrooms with the biggest companies in the world, and you obviously have the credibility to be able to talk to them and have that conversation. How do they manage up, right? Give them some hope and some advice, or maybe what can they do in the world that they can control, right. If they got a team of ten or they're running a region, what can they do to drive the right sales experience to help their sellers?
21:54
Scott Edinger
Well, I would say this, there are pockets of success. The gary's of the world, your clients who do well in these sort of things. In the absence of executives who make it a part of the company strategy and who really connect with it and align strategy and sales, there are pockets of those kind of success. You can still behave that way and you can still lead your teams to behave that way, and you'll be more successful than everybody else. So that's the good news. There's nothing here that requires CEO stamp of approval, executive team stamp of approval for you who's listening here to go do it. Nothing stops you. Right? At the organizational level, though. You're like, okay, so what do we do with those executives? I say with a smile here.
22:41
Scott Edinger
I know it's an audio podcast, but I say with a smile, that's why I wrote the book.
22:46
Tom Stanfill
I wrote it here, guys. I'm not selling, but it would be called the growth leader.
22:53
Scott Edinger
Yeah. I would be remiss if I did not point to like, this is a resource for executives.
23:00
Tom Stanfill
But that's a good answer. It is a good answer. That is a good answer. Yeah.
23:03
Scott Edinger
I don't know of another way I can tell you this. If you're a learning and development professional, you are going to have a hard time going to your CEO to get something on the executive agenda.
23:14
Tom Stanfill
Right?
23:14
Scott Edinger
It's going to be very hard for you. If you are a sales manager and you see something happen in the field, it is going to be an uphill battle wearing lead boots for you to get something on the executive agenda. But the book has research, case studies, a focus, and frankly, I think an attention get like it's intended to be. What does Jackie Gleason and Smokey and the bandit say? I call that an attention getter. That's for the real old people who are listening. You can cut that for the millennial. You can cut that one if you want. The book was designed to get the attention on that issue. So as I say, if a CEO delegates it to you, don't just take it back to them and say, let's read it together. You could offer that same thing.
23:59
Scott Edinger
Here are ideas that may help us to compete more effectively, gain market share, increase our margins, and it might be worth a conversation about chapter one.
24:10
Tom Stanfill
Yeah, right. So you could leverage the book. I want to return back to the difference between, because you talked about this and you defined it well in the book, the difference between the way people think about solution selling, because I do think this is one of the things that the frontline leaders can control. I think this is in their sphere of, because the way you described how I think it was, what was the guy's name, Gary, that sold you the.
24:35
Scott Edinger
Yeah, I made him famous.
24:36
Tom Stanfill
You made him famous. You talked about in the book solution selling versus the way that you're talking about the sales experience and adding value and curating the solution and understanding the customer. It's not bundling products together and selling a solution, but it's a different way to think about solution selling. It's a different way to think about the sales experience, because people, again, have been talking about this, and I feel like we need to rattle the cage a little bit and say what is really difference between what you're promoting in the book and what we promote, by the way? And I want to talk to you a little bit about what you've learned about how to implement this, but describe it, and then we can talk a little bit more about how to drive it.
25:21
Scott Edinger
Right. Well, solution selling has evolved in the early days of the solution, despite the fact that it's been four decades. But the principles are solid. There has been a subtle evolution, and it's an important one. And that is when the ideas are first introduced around consultative selling and the solution sale. It's about understanding the customer's needs. Right. And what they're trying to accomplish, the problems, opportunities, whatever, and connecting that to how your solution solves the problem. Right. Ergo, solution, which is a vital part of it, if you want to be successful at that today, it is not enough to simply understand and connect. You can't just understand the value and connect the value. You've got to create the value. And in this way, I say, that's it.
26:10
Scott Edinger
The solution sale makes the sales process, the salesperson, the sales experience part of the solution, where it's diagnostic, where it's helping to think differently, where it's helping to identify issues that maybe the client hadn't considered. Or more likely, because clients are smart, they have considered it, but they haven't considered it like you have. And you know everything that's beneath the iceberg or just how big that problem is, they see it as small. Same with opportunity. So your ability to bring insight and expertise and value in the form of thinking differently about it and support and helping them to implement, well, now, salesperson sales experience is inextricably linked from the solution. And I often say to people, just because you combine products and services, that doesn't make it a solution that just makes it a combination of products and services.
27:06
Scott Edinger
It ain't a solution to anything which.
27:09
Tom Stanfill
Is going to be replaced by AI anyway.
27:11
Scott Edinger
Why not? Everything else is everything. I'm being replaced.
27:15
Tom Stanfill
My wife right now is investigating AI. I know she is.
27:20
Scott Edinger
Yeah. Well, I mean, you got a hint of sarcasm in that. I mean, there's lots of things AI will replace.
27:28
Tom Stanfill
No, but it will replace a lot of the things that the sellers are doing now will be replaced. Right. Some of the mundane kind of research type things. The forward of your book. I mean, he was talking about that.
27:41
Scott Edinger
Yeah. I certainly do not think that the elementary tasks of reciting features and benefits even the simplest of diagnostic, just asking questions about circumstances and situation, these things are not required. You don't need a human to do that anymore. But the higher order helping to think differently using your expertise, I definitely couldn't have had. I could have calculated the heat load myself, maybe with a do it yourself. Here's how you do it. I wouldn't have thought of that solution of the AC system in 100 years.
28:17
Tom Stanfill
Right.
28:18
Tab Norris
Well, it's kind of like when we work with the organizations that have sales engineers, or just engineers, and you watch their ability to sell. A lot of times they can sell more effectively than the salespeople. And why? Because of what you're talking about. They create the sales experience because all they're caring about is how do I solve these people's problems? And it's like, oh, this is how you're going to fix this. So it's so true.
28:48
Scott Edinger
Personality and charisma and game tickets and dinners and golf are nice, but they really are the old level of relationship selling. Yes. I wouldn't say it's value less. It'd be a far stretch to say it's value less, but it certainly doesn't carry the day like it used to. And these areas of what is value in the business relationship, in the sales experience, that helps us to think differently about our issues, consider different alternatives that work better. Well, that AI is not going to do, and at least I don't think it will. But certainly that's where the sales experience, I could argue even if AI takes it all over, you got to be thinking about how's the sales experience going to differentiate you, not just serve as a mouthpiece for all the things you do.
29:40
Tom Stanfill
Right. Which makes sense. Let's shift gears and talk about some of the research that you developed or wrote about in the book on sales leadership you talked about, I think you said six competencies and then there was another study that talked about eight, and it was very similar to your six.
30:00
Scott Edinger
Yeah.
30:01
Tom Stanfill
But there was a lot in the book that I could talk to you about, but I thought that might be maybe the best topic for people who are leading their team. What are some of the key things that you've learned about with all your years of experience and all the research you've done? What are the aspects of a leader that inspire people that drive change? Because a lot of this is about change.
30:24
Scott Edinger
Right.
30:25
Tom Stanfill
Doing things differently, which is hard for people to do or hard for leaders to do, is to get people to change.
30:32
Scott Edinger
Yeah. And I think some of the contrasting of research that I've been a part of from my first book, the inspiring leader, and contrasting that with some of the other studies on successful leaders who have led growth in organizations, you sort of line them all up. I joke that competency models for leadership, probably true of sales, too, and just about anything else. Competency models are sometimes an effort in renaming the periodic table of the elements. This one's called it character. This one called it integrity. This one called it trust. We're talking about lots of the same kinds of things here, right?
31:11
Tom Stanfill
It's just come up. Can we just come up with some consistent labels?
31:14
Scott Edinger
Yeah. And by the way, consultants, I mean, listen, we make.
31:18
Tom Stanfill
We're working with a company right now that has got two consultants in there, and they're trying to make sense of the two consultants table.
31:27
Scott Edinger
I just think a moment of empathy for that. So, in all of the research, like, if I synthesize everything and I try to distill it for our last idea here, it's clear that of all the areas of leadership competence, that nothing has the power or influence on achieving high performance than the ability to inspire and motivate.
31:53
Tom Stanfill
Okay?
31:56
Scott Edinger
This is by far the most valuable leadership competency. If you think about inspiring, it's about moving people to action. Right? It's greater performance, better results, more productivity, whatever it is. The number one behavior when you do a behavior analysis, and in that first book, were looking at over a quarter of a million 360 degree assessments of what behaviors leaders wow rated on. And the number one was the ability to use emotion, make an emotional connection. Quick time out here. I always pause on that whenever I'm talking to a business audience because I want to go out of my way, say, I'm not talking about wild display of emotion, excessive emotionality, sort of oversharing or group therapy.
32:46
Tom Stanfill
I want to tell you about my first.
32:48
Scott Edinger
Right in this world of emotion is sort of, there's a lot of conversation about this in business, but what I'm talking about is connecting as novel idea here. People, not task focused robots. And people are emotional beings. Very few decisions or actions are based on pure logic. As much as we'd like to say we're analytical reasoning, the old Maxim says, logic makes us think, emotion makes us act. Right? So how do you as a leader make an emotional connection? And there are a lot of ways to do it. We can dive into a few of the more popular ones, but that is what I would say. Your ability to inspire others to achieve a higher level of performance, your ability to make that connection with them. And I can share a few ways to do that here in a moment.
33:45
Scott Edinger
That's the heart of the matter. Okay.
33:48
Tom Stanfill
Yeah. And I do think that's the advanced skill. I think the logic connection is pretty easy. We all just working with a team yesterday, and they all knew the logical reasons why they were trying to get the organization to change. That was not difficult to come up with. Hard part was how to get them to experience. We talk about, for people to change, they have to experience the benefit. They have to feel it. They have to know what it feels like to do what you're asking them to do. And I also know you're talking about more of a connection related to maybe at a relational level as well.
34:18
Scott Edinger
But that's part of, well, emotions connect leaders to their organization. Right. They do it for individuals, for teams, entire companies. It's emotion that connects them. By the way, you're talking about logic and everything here, I separate being a great leader from understanding business, from making smart business decisions, from high intelligence that we're talking about leading people. So these things are great. I think you have probably worked with plenty of executives, of leaders who were very smart business people who were really awful leaders.
34:55
Tab Norris
Oh, yeah.
34:56
Scott Edinger
So I draw a real distinction.
34:58
Tom Stanfill
That's a good point. You're leading people, you're not leading ideas.
35:03
Scott Edinger
You'Re leading something else, unless you're leading others. When I talk about leadership, that is very clear that this is about people, not just understanding what should be done on a spreadsheet. That's a different skill. Not an unimportant skill, but different.
35:20
Tom Stanfill
That's good. I'm going to steal that.
35:23
Scott Edinger
That's really good.
35:26
Tom Stanfill
As I've always said, leadership, it'd be.
35:34
Scott Edinger
Nice if you stole it with attribution, but that.
35:40
Tab Norris
I spoke to this wise man one time.
35:43
Tom Stanfill
Well, I love that leadership. It's about leading people. That's just so clear. It's like we forget that because we're so consumed with coming up with the next best idea. We're so consumed with our dashboards, we're so consumed with all the information we're trying to process, and we forget that it's about leading people. We're not leading anything else.
36:03
Tab Norris
I love how you started chapter five. People are, of course what make your business go. Yeah, I mean, it's like, it's not that complicated. It's like this is it.
36:15
Scott Edinger
I feel like these are some of the things that are sort of common sense, not common practice.
36:21
Tom Stanfill
When I share a lot of that.
36:23
Scott Edinger
Ideas, I think that's simple but not easy. And it's hard for leaders to remember that is at the heart of the matter. And I don't want to dismiss the importance of all of those other things. Being a great innovator, thinking ahead of the curve, having great analytical skills and financial skills, these are important. I see how you could say they're elements of leadership. Yes, of course, these are all technical skills, if you ask me. But the purest of leadership, if you think about bringing energy and enthusiasm, nobody expects you to be the energizer bunny. But to bring vitality and passion to the work to be done, that creates confidence and hope and optimism. Or being able to be really clear about strategy and vision and help others to see their role in bringing that vision to life. Executing the strategy, that's inspiring.
37:22
Scott Edinger
I just finished an article on using anger effectively. Yes, even anger. Now I'm not talking. We've all seen leaders blow up and push people away, right? In fact, we've seen too much of that, and it's uninspiring. But really great leaders are able to get behind the anger, see what's driving it, and use that to communicate concerns, frustrations, their fears. Lot of anger is driven by fear of what's going to happen or what's not going to happen, and then to use that to improve performance or galvanize attention, and most importantly, do it in a way that draws people to them, not push away from them. Right. Nobody's positive or happy all the time. It's not real. So the ability to use anger effectively, the risk on that is most leaders use it incorrectly or overuse it. There's an emotional connection in developing talent.
38:22
Scott Edinger
When I ask people, tell me about the leaders you work for that are most inspiring. I always hear stories about someone who helped them to grow, fulfill their potential, advance in their career, builds great engagement and commitment. And then, of course, we all know the driving for results. Right? Inspiring leaders know nothing brings a team together like winning.
38:44
Tom Stanfill
Yeah.
38:45
Scott Edinger
They harness that and that helps them bring teams together and unite them in achieving a common goal, that they're in it together on something. So these are just a handful of examples that are all emotion. None of that is based on logic. All emotion. Emotion connects leaders to their business.
39:06
Tom Stanfill
I love it.
39:07
Tab Norris
Yeah, I love it.
39:10
Tom Stanfill
Maybe the last question I have for you, Tab. I don't know if you don't want to cut you out, if you've got something else, because I'm looking at the time you talked about right by three.
39:22
Tab Norris
That's what I had pulled that.
39:23
Tom Stanfill
Was that what you're going to ask? I really wanted to hear you before we closed. Yeah, you talked about the right, which I wrote down the B under the mindset. It was like the B attitudes. The mindset. Seats and people. So if you could quickly touch on that and then make sure everybody knows how they can find you, reach out to you. If you're cool with people following you on LinkedIn or whatever, however else people get in touch with you, I want to make sure we don't forget that as well.
39:51
Scott Edinger
Right on. Right by three. In the book, that equals right mindset. Right seats. Right people? Right people, right seats. Yeah. And I think everybody is familiar enough with the idea of right people. So I'm going to hit mindset and seats. When I talk about the right seat, I was very specific in this particular metaphorical model of right by three that I'm talking about. Does your chief sales officer, EVP of sales, head of sales, whatever you choose to call them, I don't care. Do they have a real seat with the C suite team?
40:27
Tom Stanfill
Got it.
40:27
Scott Edinger
And I think. I'm not talking about the extended table. With no disrespect to any other of the 80 proliferated C suite titles. Right from.
40:36
Tom Stanfill
There's 80 of them.
40:40
Scott Edinger
Everything.
40:41
Tab Norris
Now, don't you.
40:42
Scott Edinger
That's somewhere in the book. I linked to some articles in the book that show that these exist, and I'm just talking about analysis of Fortune 500 titles. That there are that many. Right. We know that.
40:55
Tom Stanfill
I'm chief environment officer.
40:57
Scott Edinger
Yeah, he's one of them.
41:00
Tom Stanfill
I always take care of the hotels, Scott. That's kind of my thing. Hotels and restaurants.
41:04
Scott Edinger
Chief environment officer. Chief first impressions officer, which all start from a good place. We're going to make something important. But I like Peter Drucker's formulation. A business exists for one reason, to create a customer. And if you follow that through, that means you need to make something sell something and collect money for something.
41:25
Tom Stanfill
Exactly right.
41:26
Scott Edinger
Two of those three are often represented at the C suite table. Sales, if they are there, is usually not in a strategic seat. So that's what I'm in, that part of it. I'm saying you need to involve sales, and you won't do it unless you've got the right mindset, which is this. The sales organization and the sales experience is not just about distribution. It's a part of the way we do business. It's a part of the way we win and why customers choose us. That is the value of the sales experience. And this piece around mindset is critical because too often sales is viewed as critical. I mean, everybody knows it's important. I'm not saying anything new to executives.
42:11
Tom Stanfill
Everybody goes, no, we got to sell something, and they got to sell it. But it's not our responsibility. We hired somebody to handle that problem.
42:16
Tab Norris
That's what you do. Your sales.
42:18
Tom Stanfill
It's almost like Amazon. We created a product. We're just going to put it on Amazon.
42:22
Scott Edinger
Yeah. So it's viewed as, listen, this is critical, but it's not strategic. And as a result, one of the definitions I offer in the book is of culture. I say culture is about the beliefs that shape behavior.
42:35
Tom Stanfill
Okay, I like that.
42:36
Scott Edinger
So what you believe about sales will influence dozens of decisions about who you recruit, how they'll be managed, how they'll be paid, how they'll be developed, how to be deployed in the market, all these things. And if you view sales as, you know what this is sort of, I've got this in some of the research, this opinion from the Wall Street Journal, this is a career that people seem to believe that either anyone can do or that you're born to do. Well, then you've reduced the job to stereotypical personality characteristics instead of a professional, specialized, sophisticated discipline that requires considerable skill to perform at a high level. That mindset, which, by the way, you could check, ask your CEOs, ask your executives, ask your mid managers. Tell me who you want in sales.
43:30
Scott Edinger
Are they giving you strategic guidance or are they saying, I need people who are charismatic. I need people who are hungry with fire in the belly. That'll tell you where your sales experience is going.
43:42
Tom Stanfill
Yeah.
43:43
Scott Edinger
So this bit about the right by three, I hit two of them because I think you can all put together the people part of it. And we did some with the leadership idea here. But that right mindset about what sales is for our company, what do we believe about sales? What do we believe is necessary for a strong sales organization. This will inform dozens of decisions throughout your business. Check that and you'll find a, you.
44:11
Tom Stanfill
Know, Scott, one of the things that dawns on me is I think here you talk about this topic, and the growth leader idea is how comfortable are these executives that we're talking about comfortable in a sales conversation? If you said, I had somebody talk about this, interestingly enough, before I even dove into your book about the executives don't want to be in sales meetings. They're brought in all the time. They're brought into some of these strategic meetings, but they're very uncomfortable. Have you found that to be maybe the driver behind their lack of connection is because they're uncomfortable with it. They don't understand it, so they just avoid it.
44:48
Scott Edinger
Without a doubt. But the research in the book says 28% of executives adopt a hands off policy. It's like, don't even get me involved. Most of the rest in ad hoc ways. Only 14% strategically engaged. So it's a combination of the things were talking about just a moment ago. I view it as critical but not strategic. I just need them to get the hell out there and sell. Pardon my language. You can edit. That's it. It's like, I just need to get.
45:15
Tom Stanfill
Them out of a podcast. We sell hell a lot.
45:19
Scott Edinger
Which really, by the way, is code for saying, I need them to tell, not sell. I need to just go tell. I need them to be the walking brochures or they're so unfamiliar with it, because I think I have this in the book analysis of where CEOs come from, particularly the larger company, it's mostly operations, finance, marketing, which I do. Sometimes marketing and sales are lumped together. They are not the same. That is a very different discipline. Right. So I think that you find that there's a total lack of familiarity with it, a belief that I just need people to just get out there and tell that anybody can do it.
45:59
Scott Edinger
All that right by three mindset stuff were talking about a moment ago, these things really get in the way of executives getting more involved and embracing the critical part of their leadership role in building a high performance sales organization.
46:17
Tom Stanfill
Gabby, anything to close this out?
46:19
Tab Norris
No, we covered that last topic. I wanted to. That was my last question.
46:27
Tom Stanfill
We're in sync. Scott, thank you so much.
46:29
Scott Edinger
This is really.
46:34
Tom Stanfill
When I read the book, there were certain things when I was reading it, I'm like, okay, that does sound something I'm familiar with. But then you would talk about it in a way that would really change my perspective on how you think about the sales experience and how the whole organization needs to get behind what's happening on the front line. And I don't think I've really understood it as well as you've articulated. So I think your book is going to make a huge impact. And I love the idea of if you're on the front line, buy the book and share it anonymously with your CEO.
47:06
Tab Norris
And just, you can open up that page and say, look, he said to do this. I'm just doing what Scott told.
47:12
Scott Edinger
I just, I feel compelled here. The book should never get anybody in trouble, so you shouldn't have to read it first.
47:18
Tom Stanfill
You don't need to get I was a joke, Scott. Thank you, my friend. I wish you much success and we can find you obviously link in the show notes.
47:30
Scott Edinger
So I'm easy.
47:31
Tom Stanfill
It's growth leader. You can find it anywhere books are sold. People always ask me about a book. Where can I find your book?
47:37
Scott Edinger
Whatever. Like you guys, I make it easy to be found. It's just my name. Scotteder.com stottedinger.com. You can find me on LinkedIn. Also. I hang out there some, but mostly website and link and of course anywhere books are sold.
47:57
Tom Stanfill
Anywhere books are sold. Beautiful. Thanks for joining us. And thank you for joining us for another episode of sales with Aslyn. Always remember to leave us comments and let us know how we can serve you better. Thanks again.
48:10
Scott Edinger
Thanks, John. Close.
