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Bill Lampton Ph.D.
Bill, Hi there. Welcome to the biz communication Show. I’m your host, Bill Lambton, the biz communication guy, once again, bringing you communication tips and strategies that will boost your business. But I’m not doing that solo. I do that with a highly qualified communication expert, and our conversation will reveal those tips and strategies that will help you excel in your business. Several years ago, I was attending a networking meeting in Atlanta, near my home base in Gainesville, Georgia. And we had as a guest presenter, Lisa Earl McLeod, who had just at that time come out with her new book, her first book, selling with noble purpose. She explained what the book was all about. We had a great discussion. And that has stayed in my mind, because I know how many of us need good sales advice. So Lisa Earl McLeod is the one we will hear from today. She’s the global expert on purpose driven business. She’s the author of five books, as I’ve said, including the best seller I just mentioned, selling with noble purpose, how to drive revenue and do work that makes you proud. Lisa helps leaders around the world increase competitive differentiation and emotional engagement. She developed the noble purpose methodology after her research revealed that sales, people who sell with noble purpose outsell salespeople who focus on targets and quotas. Lisa founded her own firm, McLeod and more, incorporated in 2001 she works with teams at organizations like Salesforce, Cisco, Roche, Volvo and Dave and Busters. I want to tell you, if you looked up the word productivity, I think Lisa’s picture would come up, because Lisa has keynoted in 25 countries and authored over 2000 articles. She’s also a regular contributor for the Harvard Business Review and Forbes. She’s made appearances on today’s show and the NBC Nightly News. And her firm’s work has been featured in The Wall Street Journal and NPR, and we’re delighted to feature her now on the biz communication show. Hello, Lisa,
Speaker 1
hello. Well, after that introduction, I feel like I better say something really good.
Bill Lampton Ph.D.
Yeah, you want to know that person, don’t you?
Speaker 1
As you’re reading that, I was like, wow, I’ve really done a lot. I guess it has been a decade, who is she?
Bill Lampton Ph.D.
One of the statements that I came across, and it caught me, as so many of yours have, is that you said that it’s time for us to restore nobility to the sales profession. Expand on that, please. What? What do you mean?
Lisa Earl McLeod
Well, it’s interesting, because there is this mythology around sales, sales people in particular. So every company wants revenue and every organization needs to buy things, but there is this particular mythology around sales people, that they’re pushy, that they’re sleazy, that they’re money grubbing, and that they don’t care about the customer. But actually, the research tells us that’s not true. The research tells us that the highest performing salespeople actually care very deeply about their customers, and so when I say restore nobility to the sales profession. What I mean is sales makes the economic engine spin. We can’t have commerce without sales. And instead of defining the profession by the people that do it badly, those are the pushy, aggressive don’t care about the customer people, the data tells us those are the low performers. Instead of defining the profession by the low performers, we need to define it by the high performers, and they’re actually the people that care very deeply.
Bill Lampton Ph.D.
As I remember, you discovered that difference a study of 10,000 sales people. Is that correct? Yeah.
Lisa Earl McLeod
So it. Started with a small study and then expanded. And it was actually, I was with a biotech company, and we were studying the difference between the good salespeople and the exceptional ones. And I didn’t have the language at the time. I hadn’t written the book yet. I didn’t even know I was going to write a book, but when we were trying to identify the difference between the two groups of salespeople, again, not good and bad, but good and exceptional. And that’s that’s really important, because it’s that qualitative difference. It shows up quantitatively in the numbers, but like, you can look at a good salesperson versus a bad salesperson, good salespeople know their territory, they know their customers, and other products, it’s like really concrete, but the good versus exceptional feels a little more gauzy. The numbers tell the story, but we wanted to identify what was the behavioral difference. And as it turns out, it started with a mindset difference. And the mindset of the exceptional people. Their true north was not the number. It was having an impact on customers, and they cared about the number. They wanted to hit their number, they wanted to get the incentive trip. They wanted all those things, but the true north, the organizing framework of their day to day, was making a difference to customers, and so it showed up in all these small ways. And I’ll give you an example. I can ask you the same exact question, and if my true north is closing the deal, you will be able to tell so let’s take a sample sales question, what are you using now? And what opportunities do you see for doing it a little bit better? In my mind, I’m the better. But if my true north is Improving life for you, I’m going to ask that an entirely different tone. So what are you doing now? And what opportunities do you see where it could be better? One is a tone of please customers say the right thing, so I can close the deal. The other is a tone of curiosity. And so there’s some distinct differences. It shows up in tone, but it also shows up in the questions they ask and how they present and all kinds of other things. But this mindset difference drove the behavior changes. And unfortunately, in most sales organization, the internal narrative is hit the number, hit the number, hit the number. And numbers matter. I coach CEO, so I know your board cares about the number. But if every day all the sales person hears is hit the number, hit the number, hit the number, the internal conversation becomes the external conversation, and they show up in a very transactional way for their customers.
Bill Lampton Ph.D.
I was thinking when you first started describing the I guess we could say the traditional image of sales people. I was thinking of how many like that I have encountered. Now, one of the things that I would assume from what you’ve said is that we’ve not only you and your work and 25 keynotes and 25 countries and your 2000 articles you’ve written and the many, many prestigious clients you’ve had, I would think one of the directions that’s important is not just talking with the sales people, but also you have to reframe the thinking of the sales managers and the CEOs and even the finance guys, right? Yeah,
Lisa Earl McLeod
the dance guys, that’s a tough one to grab, but I will tell you, it can be done. So I’ll give you an example, and it’s a very public example. It’s a project that I’m really proud of. We work with Hilton, and everybody knows Hilton. They’re a legacy brand. Conrad Hilton founded it over 100 years ago, and so, like a lot of companies, Hilton has pressure to hit the numbers. Hit the numbers. They’ve got to do public reporting. They need to get people in the rooms. They need to get them at a decent price. But the CEO of Hilton is a guy named Christmas setup, and when you talk to him, he knew if I walk around and just tell everybody, we gotta hit these targets. I’m not infusing any sense in my you know, team all the way through the organization. I’m not giving him in any sense, any way to show up for the guest. So what Christo sutta did, and anyone can do this. He did it at a global scale, and we helped him with it. But he went back through and he mined, why was this company founded? And he found in Conrad Hilton’s writing, Conrad Hilton said, our singular purpose is to fill the earth with the light and warmth of hospitality. So what Krishna said on knew was that. That the true north of this company, that needs to be the thing that everyone understands. So we went on a global tour with that, and he’s leading the charge. We want to fill the earth with the light, warmth of hospitality. Here’s our numbers that demonstrate how well we’re doing it, as the numbers are trailing indicator. And so our project was to get that into the hearts and minds of every single person around the world that works for Hilton, you know. So the guy that’s working the front desk at the Hilton, you know, Garden Inn in Vietnam, he needs to know more than that as a slogan. What we want those people to understand is, what’s my role in this. And so a lot of companies have clarity of purpose, but it’s like, wow, it’s on the website, it’s in the commercials, it’s marketing. That’s a good start. Not bad. Better than saying all we care about is money, but the language around how they make a difference to customers. And it’s always about, how do you make a difference to customers? Yes, be a good corporate citizen. Yes, don’t, you know, pollute the earth. All those things matter. The true north of the business. Your noble purpose is, how do we improve life for customers? And what you have to do is you have to have executives saying that they’re going to get comped and evaluated based on their ability to hit the numbers. That’s true, but it’s kind of like a teacher and test scores. If every day you come in and go, test scores, test scores, test scores, your students aren’t going to get any smarter. So what we did at Hilton and Christmas said it was a genius at languaging, this is put that out as the true north, but then went all the way through and identified how every single job contributed to that, and so I need to know, as an individual performer, here’s my company’s true north, here’s how we make a difference to customers, and that’s inspiring. And then a very practical level, how does my role affect that? And that’s where the magic happens when you bring those two together.
Bill Lampton Ph.D.
I remember many years ago reading Conrad Hilton’s autobiography, and it had one of the best, most appropriate titles of a book that I could possibly remember. The title was, be my guest. He became, of course, a giant in the hospitality industry. But like many, he started off very, very, very small, but he had, he had the savvy to get the expansion. It reminds me of Kathy with Chick fil A and the Atlanta area, where he started off with a tiny little place called the dwarf house.
Lisa Earl McLeod
I’m old, but I don’t remember that I read about it, yes,
Bill Lampton Ph.D.
yes, I don’t. I don’t remember when he started with it, but I remember seeing that I had the privilege of being with him on a couple of occasions. And as an author, you will enjoy this one evening he and I were speaking in the same venue, and that evening he held up his book, his newest book he’s got. Had three of them that I’ve got. And he held up this book, and he says, you know, my wife says about this book, it’s the kind of book. Once you put it down, you can’t pick it back up again.
Lisa Earl McLeod
Humility, you know, it’s interesting, because a lot of people like it’s easy. You know, Hilton had this legacy purpose. They have this inspiring leader. But I can also tell you, we’ve worked with a concrete company and some tech companies that are relatively new, and you don’t have to be a Conrad Hilton or true at Kathy. If what you’re selling improves life for customers, even in a small way, you have a noble purpose. I mean, we just did a thing. I’ll go ahead and give them a shout out for a company called airs basements, and you know, there was their big employee gathering day 250, mostly guys work boots. Everything show up. You know, they’ve got on their swag. They’ve got on their sweatshirt. I mean, these you look at their hands, these guys do some hard work, but they have a noble purpose, because your home is one of the biggest investments you’ll make. And they’re helping people. They’re helping them waterproof their homes. They’re helping them, you know, make sure their basements don’t leak. And it might not sound like the most glamorous thing, but if you have customers who are buying from you, you are helping them, or they would not be buying.
Bill Lampton Ph.D.
Yes, and you cannot succeed in the big things unless you do the little things first. Can you?
Lisa Earl McLeod
Yeah? And one of the things that a lot of companies make the mistake of is they come up with these generic value propositions. We empower people to do this, do this, do bla, bla, bla, bla, bla, really long and and they don’t mean anything. And so the thing about clarity of purpose and. Doesn’t have to be huge, and it doesn’t have to be particularly inspiring. We worked with one company, and their whole purpose was we help small businesses be more successful. They were an IT company. So you don’t have to have t shirts printed. You don’t have to do any of that. And if you’re a solopreneur, all you have to do is think about, how do I improve life for customers? What impact do I have on customers?
Bill Lampton Ph.D.
It’s a simple problem solution relationship, isn’t it?
Lisa Earl McLeod
It is. There’s a nuance here that I think a lot of people miss. A lot of people say the customer is the center of everything we do. We want to be customer centric, but what actually happens is they wind up reactive to customers, and the customer becomes the boss. And I actually don’t advocate for that. Instead of saying, What do my customers want? Henry Ford famously said, if I’d asked him what they’d wanted, they just said, Pastor horses. Instead of just thinking, we want to please the customer what selling, the noble purpose is about, is about, how are we improving the customer? Because there may be some ways that they haven’t thought about and the customer is not the boss. Customer impact is the true north. And so you’re in partnership with your customer, you get into some of these customer centricity, things where the customer always has to be happy. You are on a road to being cheap and commoditized. Yes, people are going to be indentured servants to the customer. Instead of pleasing customers, you’re focused on improving customers, and it gives your people a greater sense of agency. And you create differentiation.
Bill Lampton Ph.D.
Terrific. Lisa, we know that noble sales purpose is your overriding theme, and we’re going to talk about that in just a few seconds. Be right back. Do you wish
Michael Stewart
you felt confident about giving speeches? Do you want to deal with difficult people constructively and what about becoming more persuasive in sales? Then keep listening now to Dr Bill Lambton. He spent 20 years in management so he knows the communication skills you need for success. I urge you to call the biz communication guy today for a no cost, but very valuable, 30 minute discussion about your communication challenges. Call now 678-316-4300, again, that’s 678-316-4300,
Bill Lampton Ph.D.
we’re here with Lisa Earl McLeod on the biz communication show, continuing our conversation about sales. And before that short break, I mentioned noble sales purpose. Two things, Lisa, first of all, how did you come up with that which has become your trademark, I would say, and, and what really does it imply?
Lisa Earl McLeod
So thank you for asking. I’ll unpack the words and tell you why it’s so important. If you first I’ll say, if you ask most people what the purpose of a company is, they’ll say, to make money. And if that is your purpose, you are very likely going to be commoditized, because that is a take purpose. And yes, you want to make money. Yes, I work with publicly traded companies, but if my purpose is to make money, then it’s going to be hard for me as an organization to innovate, to differentiate, because if you sit in a room and say, How are we going to make more money, the ideas don’t really flow. You do things like, I know, instead of giving our customers 30 days, let’s give them 15. Like nothing that’s meaningful, but your noble sales purpose, I’ll unpack the words. Is noble. It is in the service of something bigger than yourself, your customers. It is about sales. It is rooted in the thing that you make money on, and it is purpose, the true north of the business. And I gave the example earlier, and I’ll go back and unpack this one. It company. We help make small businesses more successful. So imagine they are competing with another company, another IT provider, whose purpose is we produce high margin goods that help the world be better, that make us money. The usual version of we want to be the leaders in our space, and we want to make a bunch of money, and we want to be nice people while we’re doing it. Blah, blah, blah, blah. So these two companies both have a sales rep calling on the customers. One has this benign statement, but the other knows in this meeting, I need to figure out, you, small business owner, how I can help you be more successful that second person who has the noble sales purpose. Business help make businesses more successful. Small businesses more successful. They’re going to ask deeper questions. They’re going to have a different affect and, oh, by the way, when they go to present, they’re going to say, we talked about three ways that you could be more successful. Let me show you how our services will help you with that, versus the other one that’s going to come in with some dog and pony show that’s not even connected to what the customer is trying to do. So your noble sales purpose is a declarative statement. And again, you don’t have to put on your website. Don’t put on T shirts, just simply put. How do you improve life for customers?
Bill Lampton Ph.D.
Yeah, Johnny, Don one, you said the Orange County California court system says we unclog the wheels of justice. Now that’s that’s straightforward. It’s clear. And I’ll have to tell you that in in the last few months, I have made some, oh, some rather whimsical remarks about the typical elevator speech that somebody has, and my comment on it is that some of those elevator speeches are so long and complicated that I’m going to get off on the second floor
Lisa Earl McLeod
well, and they’re usually about you. Yes, they’re about you, and yes, you need to be grounded in what you do, but I really can’t emphasize this enough. So let’s take two teachers. It’s sometimes easier to see outside the world, and you’ve got two history teachers, and one says, I teach US history. I make sure the kids are going to do well on the test every over the course of the curriculum. I cover this, this, this. And I’m particularly passionate about the, you know, the Gilded Age, where imagine you have another teacher that says, I’m helping create informed, engaged citizens. And by the way, my kids develop such a deep understanding of our country’s history that they aced that AP test.
Bill Lampton Ph.D.
I know which teacher I would want, which teacher I want my children to have grandchildren,
Lisa Earl McLeod
right? And what I want to go to is that first teacher. I don’t fault that person. I don’t fault the seller who says we make a premium product that does this and this, that’s what’s coming from their company. And those things might be true, but what they’re missing is how it impacts the recipient, which in schools and students. In business, it’s the customer and and it’s how it impacts the recipient that’s always more interesting.
Bill Lampton Ph.D.
Very well said, we have time for one more question, and it’s, it’s extremely relevant to what we’re talking about, and that is, and you’ve distinguished between it, what is the difference between an aggressive salesman and an assertive salesman. What should we know about
Lisa Earl McLeod
that? So words only mean what we think they mean. One of the reasons sellers get a bad rap, and we tend to use the word aggressive, is if someone is aggressive, it’s usually on behalf of themselves. Yes, this deal. I want to close this deal. We got to get this thing in by the end of the month. Okay?
Bill Lampton Ph.D.
And sign here. Sign here right now. Yes, and that pressure is
Lisa Earl McLeod
very real. Having said that, sometimes people think selling them the whole purpose means, oh, just whatever the customer will be like, Absolutely not an assertive person cares so deeply and believes so strongly that they can help. They they assertively look for opportunities. They assert, they assert the desire to get to higher levels in the organization. And so if you think about those two words, there’s absolutely nothing wrong with being assertive. I want a team of assertive sales people, but I want them to be assertive on behalf of you know, I’ve had trouble with this customer. I’m having trouble getting in. I know we can help them. I’m going to try another way. Or I went to this guy. He bought on price. He chose somebody else. I’m marking my calendar because I think that was a bad decision. I’m coming back in six months, and I’m going to show it that we’re worth it. That’s assertive. Aggressive is, oh, if I lower the price, will you sign right now? Yes,
Bill Lampton Ph.D.
yes. Lisa, this has been so fascinating. It’s terrific to connect with you again. I remember so well the first time I heard you, as we’ve said, when your book selling with noble purpose, had just come out, and I was privileged to be in a group that heard you talk about it, and we discussed it, and the concept has been. Very important to me, and I’m sure it’s it’s helped people globally with the way you have spoken worldwide and with your prolific writings. I know that there are our viewers and our podcast listeners who would love to get in touch with you. So what’s your contact information, please. Best thing
Lisa Earl McLeod
is to follow me on LinkedIn. So follow me on LinkedIn. If you want to get in touch with me, you can send me a message there. You can go through my website. If you just google me, you’ll find me. But if people want more content, I put it on LinkedIn, put videos, put articles, put all that on LinkedIn. If they want to reach me, just Google noble purpose, you’ll find me. I speak at a lot of conferences. I’m an executive advisor to senior leaders, so if you’re interested in that, just find me on my website or message me on LinkedIn.
Bill Lampton Ph.D.
Thank you. Thank you. And since you’ve given your contact information, I’m happy to share mine, my YouTube channel. Bill Lambton PhD and I started recording instructional communication videos on YouTube in 2007 I looked the other day. I have more than 500 of them the last eight years. Many of those have not been my solo presentations, but there have been terrific educational conversations like this one with Lisa Earl McLeod. And while you’re on my YouTube channel, be sure to hit that subscribe button my website. Quite logically, since I’m the biz communication guy, my website is biz communication guide.com and while you’re there, you can subscribe to the website. Excuse me to the podcast. I would welcome phone numbers, phone calls from those of you who have communication problems and challenges that you would like to discuss, no obligation for an introductory call. The number is 678-316-4300, again. 678-316-4300,
I also want to give credit to my co producer, Mike Stewart, and you will find Mike Stewart on local internet presence.com, Mike Stewart has been my marketing and tech expert since 1997 he’s, as we would say in an old western, he’s my valuable sidekick. So I, I encourage you to get in touch with Mike, Lisa. We have now covered a wonderful topic and and what I would guess might be 30 seconds to a minute or so, how would you pull together? What we said, what? What do you want to leave with our viewers and listeners,
Lisa Earl McLeod
you don’t have to choose between making money and making a difference. You can have both. You deserve both. We create a false dichotomy between noble purpose and being profitable and making money, and the research tells us a very different story. You can make money and you can make a difference at the same time, we all deserve that.
Bill Lampton Ph.D.
Thank you. Thank you so much. Lisa Earl McLeod for being with us. I encourage people to contact you, to read your five books to go to LinkedIn. You’re a very valuable resource to me, to many other entrepreneurs and to many other CEOs and and leaders in all types of industries. Thank you so much for being with us. Thanks to those of you who were with us today on the video portion and also on the podcast, I’m Bill Lampton, the biz communication guide, inviting you to be with us on the biz communication show again Next week, again. Thank you and keep on communicating.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai
