Sales Culture Success: The Role of Trust and Autonomy
Jun 21, 2024
Corey Berrier
In this episode of the Successful Life Podcast, host Corey Berrier delves into the crucial role of leadership in both personal and professional contexts. Berrier discusses the importance of communication, transparency, and strategic thinking in fostering effective leadership. He emphasizes the need for leaders to adapt their style to different scenarios, inspire trust and loyalty, and create a positive culture both at home and in the workplace. Additionally, Berrier highlights the significance of empathy, active listening, and setting clear expectations to build strong relationships and successful teams. He concludes with actionable advice on improving hiring processes and maintaining a customer-centric approach.
00:00 Introduction to Leadership and Relationships
00:30 Balancing Personal and Professional Leadership
In this episode of the Successful Life Podcast, host Corey Berrier delves into the crucial role of leadership in both personal and professional contexts. Berrier discusses the importance of communication, transparency, and strategic thinking in fostering effective leadership. He emphasizes the need for leaders to adapt their style to different scenarios, inspire trust and loyalty, and create a positive culture both at home and in the workplace. Additionally, Berrier highlights the significance of empathy, active listening, and setting clear expectations to build strong relationships and successful teams. He concludes with actionable advice on improving hiring processes and maintaining a customer-centric approach.
00:00 Introduction to Leadership and Relationships
00:30 Balancing Personal and Professional Leadership
Welcome to the Successful Life Podcast. I'm your host, corey Barrier, and today, folks, we're going to talk about leadership and its impact on not only your personal and professional relationships, the complexity of relationships and how communication and transparency will help your sales teams. So when you think about leadership in relationships, you could look at this either as a personal relationship would be your family, if you're married, your wife, if you're not married, maybe your girlfriend, maybe your kids, and then you've got professional leadership and you got to show up to both of those things a little bit differently. Obviously, you can't show up at home like you do in your professional relationships. You probably don't want to show up at work like you do in your personal relationships, but I would argue that there is some crossover there. I mean, most likely whoever you are at home is probably who you are at work, whoever you are at work, but likely that person at home, and whoever you are at work, likely that person at home. So you know that's the pitfall of some a lot of good leaders or a lot of not good leaders, but a lot of leaders. So you know leadership and the influence of leadership is, you know, it's pivotal in both personal and professional relationships. Effective leaders inspire, they trust and there's a sense of loyalty with good leadership.
Speaker 1:
When it comes to personal relationships and personal leadership, or leadership in your personal life, you know, being able to lead your family creates a strong bond between you and your partner, you and your kids. If you're in, in, look, whether you're a man or whether you're a woman, we all have a level of leadership in our family and you know, look, you want to be able to have mutual respect for one another and you want to be able to hold space for one another. That's what personal relationships are about. And, look, I build relationships personally and professionally very similarly. I lead with my heart, I lead with doing the next right thing, I lead with going the extra mile, and I would hope that you would want to be, you know, I would hope that you would lead the same way.
Speaker 1:
So you know, when we're thinking about professional relationships, the dynamics do change a bit from personal to professional, and what I mean by that is you know you've got to have happy employees. Your employees need to be satisfied with where they work. You want them to look forward to coming to work opposed to hating coming to work, opposed to hating coming to work and a good leader in an organization has culture and when you have a good culture, people want to help you win as the leader. And I won't go into if you have a bad culture, because that's a real hard thing to fix, and also if you've got a bad culture you've probably got a lot of high turnover. You're probably wondering what it is, why it is you can't get things right, and I would just suggest maybe, like I've done, is I had to look in the mirror and see, well, where am I going wrong? What am I doing that could be causing these things?
Speaker 1:
So there's a lot of complexity in leadership. So if you think about, you know we have to navigate as leaders. We have to navigate complex situations and it involves multiple, multiple employees. It involves multiple, multiple managers. There's a dynamic there that you've got to embrace in order for the dynamics to work, to have a successful business. And one of those things is strategically thinking. Successful leaders strategically think, they employ strategic thinking and they're able to adapt and manage the complexities of a business. And look, it's not easy. I'll be the first to tell you, I've ran several businesses. It's not easy keeping everything you know, keeping that round tire rolling all the time and also you got to be able to problem solve. And if you use as a leader, both professional and personal, if you use your problem-solving skills to address challenges, make informed decisions, guess what that benefits the organization and the people inside of that organization.
Speaker 1:
So the next thing I want to cover here is transparency, and this is a tough one because sometimes in business it feels like it's hard to be transparent. You don't know what to say. It's hard to be. It feels like it's hard to be transparent. You don't know what to say, you don't know what you shouldn't say, because maybe you're thinking that people are going to you know, take what you're saying and use it against you. Those are really just your own thoughts, likely. But if you build trust with your employees, with your managers, you gain credibility through that.
Speaker 1:
And look, leaders that are open to you know they're open about their decisions, about the processes that they're using. That creates an environment for your employees of honesty, integrity, and that's what I believe you want. That's what I want when I'm working either with a company for a company or I have my own company. I want that transparency, I want that honesty, I want to feel like the company has integrity, which is really just saying do the next right thing. You've got to have open communication.
Speaker 1:
Transparent leaders encourage open communication where you know feedback is valued, not people are scared to give you feedback. And you know if you get concerns in your business, if your employees have concerns, your customers have concerns you want to address that stuff promptly because it really does make the person waiting for that resolution feel like you don't care. There's nothing worse in business than to have your customers or your employees feel like you don't care about what's important to them. And if you care about what's important to your employees feel like you don't care about what's important to them, and if you care about what's important to your employees, they'll care about what's important to you. And so the role of good communication as a leader and having well, having effective communication is the backbone of having good leadership. You know it involves clear, concise and empathetic interactions with your employees.
Speaker 1:
Right, another thing that I harp on quite a bit that I've employed in my own life and it's probably been one of the hardest things that I've had to learn how to do which is being able to actively listen, when leaders who listen actively, understand what the team's needs are, actively understand what the team's needs are, what the concerns are, and that in turn, fosters a collaborative environment. You may know what your employee is about to say, but I would have you think for a moment don't finish their sentence for them. If someone's talking, just let them finish. It goes the same way with your salespeople and your customers. It is the same exact thing with your wife, your girlfriend, your children, anybody. It's one of the hardest things that you can do, but it really does give you all the information that you're really looking for and you may think again.
Speaker 1:
You may think that you know exactly what they're going to say, and you might, but it's a mutual respect to let people finish talking before you interrupt them, and lots of times we get excited and we just want to talk because we're excited, but it comes across as rude, inconsiderate and, like you, only care about yourself. So also, good communication is vital for resolving conflicts inside of your business or inside your personal life even, for that matter. And look, good communication skills, mediate and resolve issues amicably, and you know you're going to have a better business if you can resolve issues amicably. You're going to have a better marriage. You're going to have better relationships in life if you can just learn how to do that. Also, if you're look, if you're the leader, you've got to be able to cast the vision for your team to see it Tommy Mello talks about this all the time a vision so big that everybody can fit inside of it, and I agree with that. But you've got to be able to articulate the vision clearly. You can't be all over the place and expect your team to be motivated and all filing in the same way, because that's an unreasonable request.
Speaker 1:
So how does leadership affect your salespeople? Well, a good leader is motivating. A good leader has the ability to inspire their salespeople to go out and achieve and provide a great service for your customers, and so you've got to be able to. You know you want to be able to effectively communicate that motivation not a rah-rah BS motivation, but something that truly ignites a fire inside of your salespeople to where they want to go out and win for you. There's nothing worse than having a leader screaming at you or yelling at you and telling you all the things that you've done wrong. Without positive reinforcement, you're beating your salespeople down. You're negating the whole reason that you're a leader by being what some would call a dictator, and that's a tough pill to swallow for a lot of people and that may have struck a chord with you or maybe you have experienced that inside of a business that you're working in, but it's something you really got to look at. As a leader, you can't motivate and beat people down at the same time. Beating people down is not a good form of motivation, contrary to what you might think. So you've also got to be able to coach and develop your sales team. You know leaders that offer regular training, regular development, for their sales team. It helps the sales team enhance their skills and really it makes their potential significantly higher.
Speaker 1:
And let's talk about culture for a second. You know all these things that I've talked about today. Being a good leader, it builds a positive culture, and I spoke about this earlier, but a positive and supportive culture is essential for sales success. Again, you cannot beat your salespeople up and expect them to go out, put a smile on their face and win for you. In fact, they're probably going to do the opposite. Most salespeople don't enjoy getting beat up. Most salespeople don't enjoy getting screamed at. It's really not that motivating. In fact, it's the opposite of that it's demotivating. And look when you're building a good culture, you've got to have an environment that people want to come into. If people don't want to come into your environment, there's a reason for that and that means the culture is probably not very good, despite what you might think.
Speaker 1:
Set clear expectations. As a leader. You've got to set clear expectations as a salesperson. You've got to set clear expectations as a salesperson. You've got to set clear expectations in your relationships personal relationships, romantic relationships. This is important. People don't like feeling like they're in the dark. Nobody loves surprises because there's a level of insecurity in a surprise. Some surprises are great, but a lot of surprises are not great, and only you can determine what a surprise means to you. I know for me I don't like being surprised with maybe my commission being lower than what I thought it was going to be. However, I do like being surprised with a gift from a partner or a friend right or a phone call.
Speaker 1:
So to empower your salespeople, you've got to let go a little bit. You've got to give them the autonomy to make decisions. You've got to give them the ability to let them fail, because it's going to happen and you can't control whether a salesperson makes mistakes or not, or employees or in your personal relationships. It's impossible to be able to control those things, and the sooner you recognize that people are human beings and they're going to make mistakes. Now, obviously, if they keep making the mistakes over and over and over, it's probably not a mistake, it's probably just a lack of awareness or maybe they just don't care because maybe you're that poor leader and I know that probably hurts to hear sometimes for a lot of people but on the other hand of that, maybe you do let people fail and maybe you do allow people to make decisions that could negatively impact them in the future, and that's OK. And that's okay when people fail. It builds confidence and builds their performance in the future.
Speaker 1:
I usually don't learn by let me back up. I usually learn by making mistakes and by failing and trying something and not working and being able to take my experience from that and do something different. So you know leaders that use data driven decisions also have a leg up on people that do not. So I'll give you an example. There's a company out there Jonathan Wistman, who's a good friend of mine called WhoHire. You should go check them out, whohirecom, and you know they use a data driven approach to present the best possible candidates for your company. So here's what I mean by that.
Speaker 1:
You know we've all gone through the hiring process and it's brutal. Or maybe you don't go through it, but maybe your HR person goes through, or somebody in your company, but the process is brutal. You know you've got you've got a bunch of emails back and forth. You've got to read a bunch of stuff. You've got to try to make a decision based on what they've presented, which usually isn't exactly 100% the truth. And so if you had the opportunity to use, like they do at WhoHired, this data-driven approach, the success rate's phenomenal. It's through the roof compared to whatever you're currently using. And they're the only folks out there that I know that have this database. I mean they've interviewed like 4,000 managers, csrs, service technicians, dispatchers, so they know how to effectively use that data to land the.
Speaker 1:
You know it's not employment or the rate of getting a good person on your team is significantly higher than it is you hiring someone and them fizzling out after three months or six months or whatever that looks like. And, by the way, it costs you as a company a lot of money. Let's just assume they're making $80,000 a year. It's going to cost you $40,000 to rehire that new person in lost revenue, in training, in equipment, in if you're talking about sales training, not to mention, you're going to lose customers because that person that left probably is burning calls and you may not look at these things because they're not right in front of you. But I'm telling you right now it is pretty eye opening when you look at the amount of money that people are wasting in their hiring process and this is just one piece of it.
Speaker 1:
So you know you want effective leaders, are customer-centric. They have a customer-centric mindset and their need and their ability to give that customer an amazing experience is important. And as a salesperson, you've got to be customer centric. You've got to be focused on what your customer needs. Also, you've got to listen to what they want, because sometimes customers think they need one thing but they really I'm sorry, they think they want one thing but they really need something else and you've got to be able to communicate that effectively with the customer so they can understand this may not be the right choice for you. This is probably not going to be good for you long term and as a salesperson, you've got to be able to handle rejection and be resilient after you get that rejection, and leaders support salespeople in dealing with resilience and providing encouragement afterwards.
Speaker 1:
You really want to be able to make sure that you can hear your employees and your salespeople when they tell you that they've had their teeth kicked in all day by customers and they've hit zeros all day long. It's not the time to browbeat them. It's not the time to be abrasive. It's just not the time. There may be a time for you to be a little bit more abrasive, but that's not the time. They're already beaten down enough. You don't need to do it even more. They're already beaten down enough. You don't need to do it even more.
Speaker 1:
So, and also with salespeople, look if you're a comfort advisor or you're a field supervisor or you're a service technician or you're a CSR, you're all salespeople and your communication and the transparency of that communication is vital to your success in this industry. Of that communication is vital to your success in this industry. People don't want to feel like they're being left in the dark and if you don't set expectations as I mentioned earlier if you don't communicate effectively, your chances of being successful are just not very good. Being successful are just not very good. And also look if you're working for a company that you're not aligned with, if you can't see the company vision and you're out trying to sell this product or service for that company that you don't believe in and you can't see their vision, it is almost impossible for you to be effective. And that's just the truth. If you're not aligned with the company's core values, if the company's doing things that doesn't feel right inside of you, you best listen to that inner voice. Because here's the thing You're never going to be successful in a company that you don't believe in. You're never going to be successful selling a product or a service that you don't believe in. You're never going to be successful in a relationship if you don't believe it's going to work.
Speaker 1:
If you go into any customer relationship, personal relationship, with thoughts of the past, with negative things that you've gone through in the past, and you expect those things to happen again or you project that those things are going to happen again, it's just like going into a house after you've just lost a sale and you think to yourself well, they're probably not going to close. You're right. They're probably not going to close Because your mindset has already told, you've already said to yourself. This is how it's going to be opposed to. You know, sectioning that thing off, sectioning that last experience off, whether it was personal, in a personal relationship, a marriage, a girlfriend, boyfriend, whatever, or a customer. You've got to not drag that stuff into the next relationship, the next phone call, the next house you go to. You've got to be able to compartmentalize the facts, and the facts are the last person didn't close, the last relationship didn't work out, the last two, three relationships didn't work out. That doesn't mean the next one is not going to work out. But if you believe the same things are going to come up in your next relationship or your next sale, you're absolutely right.
Speaker 1:
So this is where expectations come in. This is where effective communication comes in. If you're having those thoughts in a sales call, then call your boss and hopefully he's the guy that can talk you through this through that motivation, through active listening. If it's a personal relationship, have that conversation with the person you're in the relationship with. Like, at the end of the day, you don't want to project out the outcome without having a conversation, because really that's just you and your own thoughts creating the next outcome, and I don't know about you, but I've done that a million times and I don't really like that outcome.
Speaker 1:
I'd rather just tell you what's going on. You can either accept it or not accept it. You can help me or you can not help me, but either way I get an answer. It's kind of like saying to a customer hey, you ready to move forward today? And they go maybe, maybe is not an answer. Maybe maybe doesn't work for me. It's either a yes or it's a no, but either way I'm cool if it's a yes or a no. That way I have a definitive answer of how I'm going to move forward. Either I'm going to leave your house, and maybe they'd probably follow up with you.
Speaker 1:
But if you tell me, no, corey, we're not doing business. I'm not doing business with you because of these reasons. Why? Then you have definitive answer and you don't have to keep chasing that person. But if it's a maybe, or I've got to think about it or, you know, let me talk to my wife, or fill in the blank BS excuse that people give. All they're doing is stringing you along. Nail that right then, right there.
Speaker 1:
You know, if somebody says hey, I got to talk to my wife, I'm just curious if this situation was turned around and your wife was making the decision, what do you think she would say? You know, give it right back to them, and in a very polite way, in a, you know, empathetic way, in a helpful way, because at the end of the day, your goal is to be of service to that customer. Your goal is to be of service to another human being today. And so, look, I appreciate you listening to the show. I really hope you got something out of this today. I'm sure you did. And if not, then maybe you should look in the mirror and ask yourself what can I do better? Ask yourself, what can I do differently for a different outcome? Because likely it could be you, a lot of people have to look in the mirror and until you do that, the likeliness of you getting better is probably not very good. You're a victim. You blame everybody else. It's not their fault. Look in the mirror. I appreciate you guys.
Speaker 1:
Look, go, click on the link in the show notes for Housecall Pro. We're doing a giveaway and I would just encourage you to click on that link Schedule a call at Housecall Pro. They've got you know, they're one of the largest, if not the largest, field service software in the trades. They've got, I think, 4,500 or 4,500. Forgive me if I got those numbers mixed up, because that is a drastic difference 45,000, definitely not 4500. Companies within that software, so clearly they're doing something right. Also, lastly, do me a favor Share the show, give it a review, let me know how things are going. I appreciate you guys. We'll see you next week.