MARKETING: Bridging the Gap Between Leadership and Sales for Exponential Business Growth

0:00And now, Taking Care of Business, your hosts, Craig Moen and Shai Gillad. Welcome to Business Owners Radio, episode 236. Our guest today is Scott Edinger, author of the new book, The Growth Leader, Strategies to Drive the Top and Bottom Lines. As a best-selling leadership author and business growth consultant, Scott helps Fortune 50 CEOs and leaders intentionally and strategically engage with the consumer experience to differentiate appreciate innovate cultivate loyalty and grow hi scott welcome to business owners radio oh thanks so much for having me i'm excited to be here it's great to have you on board and we've been looking forward to this we dove into your book and some of the reviews are fantastic so we really applaud you for that and we're going to do a little deep dive on you so which will be a lot of fun sounds Sounds like fun.

1:03It's going to be. And what we're looking at, you know, just spending some time with you and getting to know you and seeing what your experiences have been and give us more detail in the book. But first, I have to start out with what brought you to write this book? It's a major challenge. How did you succumb to taking on that challenge? Well, as I said in the acknowledgements, it went through three full-on rewrites, and I quit a half a dozen times on this one because it was hard. But what brought me to write it was a recognition of an issue that I continued to see with my clients and in the market when I would talk with executives about their frustrations with growth.

1:44And what I would continue to see is this troubling disconnect between the C-suite leadership, the strategy put forth by the business, and the lack of alignment and connection to the sales organization, those who were responsible for bringing the product to market. And it was like, these three things should have great connection, great synergy between them. And they were often completely disconnected and in the worst case, misaligned. So I'd continue to see that problem from a few different vantage points, having worked in both strategy, in sales effectiveness, and in leadership development. So I felt like I had a unique perspective on this one.

2:25So the reason I kept coming back to it after multiple quits was because I felt like I needed to write this book. It sounds like you ran into the same situations with clients over and over again, this separation within organizations and really the separation of the product and service with the leadership. How are you finding that intersection point between leadership and sales and sales effectiveness these days? Yeah, well, I think so many executives are focused on what they provide in the market, whether it's a product or a service, a capability, solutions, as they're called. I think we'll put a bookmark on that topic.

3:08But so much effort about what you're going to bring to the market, rightfully so, because of course, that's what people buy from you. But there's an absence of focus. It's sort of conspicuous by absence, the focus on how they bring it to market. What is that, as I write about in The Growth Leader, the sales experience or the connection to the customer experience, the sales portion of the customer experience, and how that creates value as well. So this disconnect is sort of looking at the importance of being able to provide value both both in what you sell as well as how you sell it. And that'll never happen because you just tell salespeople to get out and sell.

3:51So that's how I'd start to articulate that issue and the lack of connection in those things. I can relate to that through decades. I've been in the sales side, marketing side, leadership side, this disconnect. And my frustration being in the technologies industries is this lack of knowledge at the C-level of what the actual product solution service is. And it's just so many good stories about walking in and putting the product on the board of directors and C-suite table and say, show me how it works. And this blank stare comes up. And so I can really identify with this polarity as far as, well, we run the company and you guys go out and sell that stuff.

4:42But really, nothing happens till someone sells something. So the criticality becomes exponential. You mentioned creating value. Tell me a little bit more from your perspective what that involves. Well, if I can connect that to this idea of selling solutions, which I said, could we put a bookmark on that a second ago? You know, I end up talking with executives in a lot of companies where they'll say, well, we provide solutions in the market. And the conversation I like to dig into after that is to reveal this particular idea that I'll share right now. So you don't sell solutions. You sell products, you sell services, you sell capabilities.

5:22They don't become a solution until a customer, along with members of your organization, usually the sales team, but sometimes other customer facing contact. But it doesn't become a solution until it solves something for a customer, until it helps them to achieve an objective. until it helps them to address a problem or helps them to reach one of their goals. That's when you have sold a solution. Until then, you just have stuff. And the only time that that becomes a solution is in the sales experience. During the sales process, while your team interacts with your customers or prospects, potential members or clients or whatever it is you're selling, that's where it becomes a solution.

6:06when you help them to recognize, here's how we can help you to grow your business, to achieve your objectives. So when I talk about creating value, it's in the context of providing those solutions. And that value creation rarely comes from just pitching or closing. It doesn't come because a seller is a walking, talking brochure and can tell a client all about your great capabilities or products or benefits. The value comes from helping them think differently about how they can, I'll use that term again, solve the solution, how they can think about the solution, a problem that they hadn't considered or one that they had considered, but because of your unique vantage point, you help them to see it very differently and see the implication or the impact that maybe they hadn't considered or a way of solving their problems that they would not have taken on without your involvement.

7:00And in that way, you're creating value both in what you provide as well as how you provide it. It sounds like, Scott, you have to do a pretty good amount of discovery to really understand what this customer is trying to get done. You're right about that, and I think that discovery is a vital part of it. But there's a trap in that too, that I always want to warn sellers and leaders alike about. There's a real propensity to say, oh, we've just got to be consultative and discover and ask lots of questions. But if we just ask a lot of questions, then that can feel like a bit of an interrogation to a client or a prospect, right?

7:41It's like, hey, I don't need to just be here providing you with information. That's not really high value unless those questions form a conversation that's a back and forth about what they're trying to accomplish. And more importantly, your ability to add perspective, your ability to add expertise and insight to help them think differently about it. So I bring that up because in one of my old careers in selling sales training, I had a client who was a chief procurement officer who said to me one time, Scott, I can always tell when people have been through the consultative sales training, you know, sort of sarcastically here.

8:20I was like, really? How's that? And he says to me, well, instead of pitching features and benefits, they come in and they pepper me with questions and both are equally annoying. So the discovery, as you had brought up really important, but it's using the discovery to establish this conversation back and forth about what they're trying to accomplish and about what you see, right? Like we've all been to a client or a customer. We're like, oh, we've seen this movie a hundred times. I can tell you the mistakes they're going to make. And it's hard to just tell them that, but engaging a conversation that helps them to see it in the way you are seeing, well, then here we have the value and that's a value they'd be willing to pay for.

9:02So tell us then how do we craft the conversation, right? Because, you know, I totally agree with the potential pitfalls of a consultative approach where you're just endlessly asking questions and And they try to lose focus and confuse the customer. What do you recommend as an antidote for that? Well, there's two factors involved. If you own a business, whether you have 10 employees or 50 employees, and however many people are representing you and selling your products or services or capabilities in the market, then if you're a leader and a business owner thinking about that, the first thing is to consider where is the value in the sales experience?

9:39And your behavior on that will make a difference because the people who are selling for you and representing you in the market will pick up on that. Are you asking them to pitch and close and get business this month, quarter, year? And of course, that's necessary at some level. But unless you've got a clear vision that says the purpose of our sales experience that leads us to a customer experience is that we've got to create value and we've got to do it with insight. And we've got to help people think about things differently because that's where we come in. That's where we can do our best work and help them to address their challenges, capitalize on opportunities, solve problems.

10:21So that's the first part. Yeah, I think that makes sense. And then it all begins with making sure that we have a common language internally around what the value is and how to think about where we're creating it, how that's different. And then, you know, the part that you talked about how you sort of guide the conversation around. I'm really interested tactically on how you structure those types of questions. Yeah, I think I'm going to share a story here that will illustrate what excellence looks like on this. And it's a story that I do share in the book, but it's a story with me as the buyer in this particular case.

10:59So I live in Florida. Florida's hot. And, you know, buying air conditioning systems in Florida is a strategic purchase. It's a strategic like the early bird special. And I live in a hundred year old house. A hundred years ago, we didn't even know how to spell insulation, let alone build houses with insulation. and it's a one and a half story bungalow craftsman style house. Half story upstairs. This is a long way to say it is a maddeningly difficult house to heat. And my problem was is that with the unit that we had, that it would either be too cold downstairs and really hot upstairs. I could never get the balance correct here.

11:40So in my mind, I went to contact several different air conditioning companies. I got three referrals, so they all came to me equally. And I'll ask all of you a question here as you think about your business. Do customers ever contact you with a preset idea of what they need in mind and tell you what they want to buy and say, here's what I think I need. I want to buy that. Right. So just think about that. That ever happened to either of the two of you? It's interesting. That happens maybe 10 percent of the time. The rest of the time they're looking for quality advice. OK. Yeah, I would agree with Craig.

12:16It's definitely in the minority. yeah okay so everybody's a little different there some companies get a lot of that particularly if you sell a more commodity kind of thing in this particular case the three distributors i called all could sell the same air conditioning units they all had the same manufacturers they say all the same oems they all had the same equipment so i was just dealing with installation professionals here in my mind so i had said to them you know i think i just need a bigger unit and two of the salespeople confirmed this. They're like, yeah, yeah, we'll get a bigger unit. It'll pump more air through the house.

12:49It'll get more air upstairs. You'll get the airflow downstairs and everything will work. Yeah. But the third seller was a very different experience. Now here, I'm going to dig a little bit into this question you asked me, how do you guide that conversation? So we talk about the issues that I'm having in the house, a bit more depth about where the problem areas I have. Is there a time of day that it's more difficult or whatnot? And we have a little more of a diagnostic conversation. That's not wildly different. But what happens next is, so Gary is the name of the rep here in this case. And he ends up saying, hey, can I take about an hour?

13:29I want to do some measurements. I'm like, sure. I can tell you the square footage and everything. He's like, no, no, I want to measure some different things. And he measures every window. He's measuring to calculate something called heat load. And then he runs some tests on our duct work on how the airflow goes throughout the house. And he comes back about an hour later and he says, here's what I observe happening here. The thing is, is that you don't need a more powerful air conditioning unit. What you need is a less powerful air conditioning unit, except you need two of them. And here's why.

14:03And then he explained that the problem was how air flowed throughout the house and we needed to redo the ducting. this is a long way of my saying to you he came back with a solution that I had not considered on my own that was 300 % more than the other two providers and I was not excited to spend money on this but I did because it was the right solution for what I was trying to accomplish and I never would have thought of that on my own I just thought I needed a bigger air conditioning unit But Gary was able to explain because of his expertise and because he'd seen lots of houses like this before.

14:40Just like if you're listening, you've seen lots of client situations, just like the ones that are in front of you. And they're missing things and they don't recognize the potential bad choices they're going to make or the options that exist to them. He explains to me the bigger air conditioning unit is just going to push more cold air downstairs. and then it's actually going to get hotter upstairs because it's going to push the air further away unless I reroute the airflow. So his solution, 300 % more. And by the way, all three air conditioning sellers had the same stuff. So it wasn't about what he was selling.

15:16It's about the experience, the expertise that made me make the choice for him. So that was a little bit long winded there. Oh, not at all. I think that was fantastic. you know there's so many things that are interesting about that story and you know one of the things that i think is interesting is understanding like you said scott i feel like this is at the heart of your book is really understanding what you're selling how you can create value in the process and you know when you're in a market like that where there's still a lot of information or symmetry where you know the buyer part of what you have to get them past is they really don't No, they don't have the expertise and it takes expertise and taking that extra time to help them feel confident because they're already going to spend a lot of money on something they don't want.

16:05Right. Right. Nobody wants to buy air conditioning. Nobody's like every day looking through brochures for new air conditioning to buy. Exactly. I say the only thing less satisfying than buying new air conditioning is buying a new roof. Precisely, right? So if you go to that next layer, what would make you write, not just a check, but write a check for the best kind of situation? Well, clearly in your case, if you felt confident that it would actually solve the problem. Yes. And here's the kicker if you're leading a business. This wasn't about the what. It was about the how. It was about the expertise that came about during the sales process, right?

16:47It's about the insights that I didn't have. It's about the understanding of my unique circumstance that tailored a solution that, by the way, his competitors had access to, but didn't. And my understanding or my recognition, really, that he really understood what I was trying to accomplish and had a great option for me that would work and that would, in fact, be a solution to my problems. because before that, what everybody had was different air conditioning units and compressors and ducting and all of the stuff. But none of it was a solution until the sales experience, where we put that all together, connected it to what I was trying to accomplish.

17:30Now, that doesn't happen because someone is a great seller only. That happens because an organization says this is part of a valuable customer experience and a recognition that this is how we can differentiate. Because to tell your salespeople to do that, if you have two, three, five, a hundred, you won't get there by a declaration. You're going to need to help them to see their part in driving that and to get crystal clear on what it means for your business to create value. I love that, Scott. It brings up so much that happens with companies at all sizes and shapes and forms. I wrote down the word trust.

18:11And the one that develops trust has a significant lead over all the competition. And it's not a taut thing per se. It's the whole combination of experiences like you're relating to that I want to dive into further. Sometimes we have this golden sales experience as a customer, whether it be a corporate selling experience of buying a corporate requirements and doing subcontracting and so forth, all the way to the actual customer who has a home and is looking for things. That experience is what I think a lot of people are looking for because company-wide, small business-wide, individual-wide, we're being blasted with stuff, with information, with sales pitches and on and on.

19:03And how do we determine who we can trust that'll take care of our problem, that'll really dive into it and understand it and have a reputation for doing so? And we all can think of dozens of examples at all levels of business and even politics of exemplary great work, great imagery, great reputations, great ecosystems of products and solutions. And it makes our lives so much easier, whether there were contractors or major corporations buying and contracting for major equipment all the way down to the end user. And it's exciting to listen to this story because we can relate to this as being the experience is equally as important as the actual solution.

19:54You're assuming that the solution is going to work because they know what they're doing and that they build trust that they convinced you that they have the expertise and capacity and knowledge to do a first-rate solution delivery. Right. Now, if you are a business owner, like all of the listeners to this show, then you've got to be asking yourself, how do I get my people to develop that kind of trust? And I want to suggest that it's less about the kind of person you look for. I don't want to say that it's unimportant, but I will say it's less important than how you design their job and communicate their purpose to them.

20:39Now, I'm hoping that this is empowering to you as a business owner because you can play a huge role in whether or not your people operate in a way that builds trust. Here's what I mean by that. Do they think it's their job to go pitch and to close and to sell and to get revenue this quarter or this month or this week? or is that the result of going to your prospects and customers and providing a valuable experience based on insight and expertise and helping customers to solve their problems? I'm not saying for a second that the result of the revenue or the net income or the new customers aren't important, but I'm saying how you communicate their job, is it about just go get the result or is it go create value with our customers and we do it this way and of course every business will be different the air conditioning company has a different way of doing it than a high-tech company than an insurance company but here's how we do it and here's what it means for us and if you do that well you will win your share of business and we'll get the results right because the trust factor often comes in sales it often comes back at you when you pitch You try to close too hard.

21:54It's the reputation, the stigma around sales, getting people to buy things they don't want, don't need, can't afford. So are you as a business owner, as an executive leading your business, are you setting your people up to create trust in the market? That's the message on that. That lines up perfectly with the cost of sales. If you have to resell and recompete every time versus just getting a call for a reorder or the automatic de facto selection of a product, a solution based on prior good experiences with the business you're working with. I can think of major brands out there that people put their full trust into because they've been treated well.

22:42They have a great sales program. Their experience is fantastic. The products are fantastic. The follow-on services are fantastic. it's a no-brainer. So the cost of sales particularly goes down significantly, almost to zero. The other part is that everyone sells. For great companies, every touchpoint with a customer is a major important feature in that whole process. I'm sort of like kicking myself. I didn't bring this up earlier. You brought up cost of sale. Well, everybody today talks about customer experience, right? It's got its own great acronym, CX, magazines, conferences, but it's the sales experience that determines whether somebody has a customer experience with you or with someone else.

23:32And in fact, the research in the book suggests it's around 25 % of the decision criteria for new business. But for that existing account that you mentioned where the cost of sale really goes down, sales experience becomes over half, 53 % of the decision criteria in business to business clients. What that tells you is that if I don't invest in that and think about this as a way to differentiate, a way to win and to drive my cost of sale eventually downward, well, then you're missing a huge factor there. You know, Scott, you've given us a lot to think about today and some great examples. and I'm curious, you know, as a business owner, how can I ensure that my growth strategy is effectively communicated and implemented by my team?

24:18Yeah, I think this is at the heart of the matter. In the book, I cite some research that indicates 86 % of CEOs are hands-off or completely uninvolved with their sales organization. Close to a third are like, I don't want anything to do, just get them out there selling. Very few are strategically involved. And that shows up in my research when I ask executives, you know, like scale of one to 10, how well do you think your sales team understands your strategy? They answer it around a 6.4 that's in the book. But when I ask that same question to sales teams, they answer somewhere around a 4.6. They rarely even have a complete understanding of the strategy, which if you're an executive ought to be, or a business owner ought to be very troubling because it's the sales experience, every sales call that reflects the success or failure of your strategy in the market every day.

25:14Doesn't happen at your headquarters, doesn't happen in the boardroom, it happens on every sales call. So every sales call represents success or failure of your strategy. So I always like to make sure that when I'm working with clients that the connection between the C-suite and the front lines of sales connected by sales management emphasize a few different things. Number one, is it really clear where you need to spend your time? You've got a target market that you likely have designed your products and services for. Are you spending time with the right kind of organizations? And perhaps most importantly, are you spending time with the right level of contact in that organization that can make a decision to work with you?

25:58So for instance, if you've designed your services or your products for financial institutions, well, maybe Bank of America is a wonderful prospect and a great place for sellers to spend their time. But if they're engaged at mid-level or low-level that can't say yes to you, that could only say no, well, then those are sales calls you'd rather not even make. So there's a first part about connecting with them on strategy to make sure it's clear. I want you spending time only with our ideal client profile. There are people that we have to be able to move on from and to move on from quickly when they're not yielding for us.

26:32There's a second layer of that with strategy, which is, are you having the kind of conversations about how you can address issues for customers? The issues that they might be missing that are significant or the causal factors or unintended consequences they might not be aware of. Do we have solutions that they hadn't considered, right? Are we having conversations about the issues and their objectives that would allow our products and services to become solutions for them? Or are we out there pitching and closing? If you start with those two, that's going to lead you right towards your objectives of revenue and profit, number of products per customer, perhaps customer satisfaction of some kind.

27:15but all of your measures of results will show up in the achievement of those two things in every sales call. Is there any other topic that we should touch on before we're winding things up? I think there's one other that we didn't talk about that's incredibly important and it is the secret sauce in this. None of this will happen because you can command it. As a business owner, as an executive, you can't just tell people these things. You have to inspire them. And if you're going to inspire them, that requires you to make some kind of emotional connection. I'm always really careful when I say that.

27:54I've written a lot about this for Harvard Business Review. In the context of business, I'm not talking about wild displays of emotion or excessive emotionality or group therapy. I'm talking about connecting with them as people, as teams. and that requires some kind of emotion whether that be enthusiasm and excitement that's certainly one way to do it but being concerned or worried or even angry about something is a way to galvanize attention and to express that professionally so that you can draw people's attention your ability to have a vision and to paint people into that vision and of course your ability to use your expertise as a business owner to help develop your teams.

28:37These are ways you connect while doing the work instead of just giving orders. And I think if there's a missing ingredient for so many leaders and business owners today, it's the failure to really infuse their communication with inspiration to their people. Scott, thank you so much for joining us on Business Owners Radio today. Is there anything else you'd like to leave with our audience? Well, thank you so much for having me. I'm thrilled to be here. The growth leader was a labor of love for me. I'm a big believer that leadership is about results. And if you're leading a commercial enterprise, really a business of any kind, the results are almost always about growth.