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Dennis Collins:
Welcome to another edition of Connect and Convert, the Sales Accelerator podcast, where small business owners tune in every week to hear some insider secrets about growing our business faster than ever. Isn’t that right, Leah Bumphrey?

Leah Bumphrey:
That is why we’re here.

Dennis Collins:
Good day to you, Leah.

Leah Bumphrey:
Hey, I hope you’re having a great morning. The sun is up here in Canada, so we’re happy.

Dennis Collins:
All right. I’m happy to hear that you have a sunrise in Canada. That would be not so good if you didn’t. Excellent. “Hey, boss. Can I talk to you for a minute?”

Leah Bumphrey:
I’m here. I’m here.

Dennis Collins:
“Of course you can. So how can I help you?” “I’ve got something to tell you, boss. I just got an offer that I just can’t refuse.” Well, Leah Bumphrey, I heard that not often, but once was too often when you hear that as a boss, your mind kind of goes blank for a second. Did they really just say that? Yeah, they said it. And now your mind races. And what did I do to screw this up? What did I do to cause them to be open to a new opportunity? Open to an offer? And that’s not always the right thing to think. It may not be anything you did or didn’t do, but that’s where the boss’s head goes.

Leah Bumphrey:
Did you ever think, thank goodness I’ve been waiting to get rid of you?

Dennis Collins:
Yes.

Leah Bumphrey:
Okay. I just want to give equal time there because sometimes we’re hoping,

Dennis Collins:
But Leah, you got to fake it. You go, oh no. Oh, you’re leaving. Oh, geez. But yeah, there were times when I said, you just did me a favor privately to myself. But today’s topic is called the Five Pillars of Strategic Recognition. And this isn’t coming from good old Dennis and Leah. This is coming from Gallup. They’re the ones that get out there there and really do the studies.

Leah Bumphrey:
This is serious science.

Dennis Collins:
And you know me, I apologize upfront. I am a nerd about this stuff. I like to follow the science. I’ll try not to make it too nerdy today. And I know Leah, you’ll help me make it not too nerdy.

Leah Bumphrey:
I’ll bring you back from the edge. I promise I will.

Dennis Collins:
So why do I start with that story? Because most of the days when you’re the boss are good days. I have fond memories of that. But that day, when you lose somebody you don’t want to lose, you start thinking about what is it? The culture, what didn’t happen, what did happen? All those thoughts whirling around. So before I go further, Leah, you’ve worked for a number of different employers in your career. What is it that keeps Leah in the game that keeps you from looking around for other opportunities?

Leah Bumphrey:
Before we get into that, Dennis, I have to tell you, there’s been a couple of other podcasters that they’ve come to me, they’ve seen us. I tried to bring you with me, but you know what? I’m afraid they’ve just made – No, I’m just kidding.

Dennis Collins:
So what do I got to do to keep you in the game, Leah?

Leah Bumphrey:
In real life, it’s an interesting question because people don’t leave jobs. They leave poor managers. They leave poor situations where they go, oh, I could do better. This fits for me more. This is speaking to my soul. Because when you’re at a position where you’re not just looking for a job to be able to pay the mortgage, to be able to make the car payment, when you finally get to that point where you’re good at what you do, then you have a different view of yourself. You have that different opportunity to look at what you’re doing and who you’re doing it for.

Dennis Collins:
Confidence, right?

Leah Bumphrey:
That’s right.

Dennis Collins:
It’s confidence. So there are a multitude of reasons for turnover. Some of those are preventable by the boss, by the company, by the organization. Others are not. In fact, we were talking earlier about a gentleman we know who is leaving a client of ours, and his reasons are not preventable. There’s nothing the company could have done. There’s nothing they could have done to save this guy. He has a game plan. He’s a young upwardly mobile guy. He’s got a game plan and he’s going to execute that game plan. And he outgrew the situation and he’s moving on. So what are you going to do? You shake his hand, you congratulate him and say, good luck.

Paul Boomer:
Whoa, whoa, whoa. Actually…

Dennis Collins:
Oh, Professor Paul, not just Paul, Professor Paul.

Paul Boomer:
I need my hat. You know what? As I was listening to that, and as you are talking here, something came to mind, and I don’t know if that’s in here in the five pillars, but in my own research, one of the top number one things that people want in jobs is the ability for advancement. And that is more true today in today’s generation, the younger generation, that they want advancement. So there is something that this company could have done, but they chose not to, but advancement. If this employee could have seen that coming, he may have stayed. Just a thought.

Dennis Collins:
That’s a good point. I mean, we may never know that, but it’s good idea. I do know this. There are certain things you can do to try to keep that day from ever coming. And so today I want to talk about the things we can do, not the things that we can’t do. I’ll tell you why. Because the implications, the consequences of turnover, I don’t care if it’s turnover that you encouraged or want or turnover that you don’t want. It’s expensive.

You know what Gallup says? Gallup says that to replace a leader in your organization, a leader, a manager, 200% of their annual salary, it costs you to find the new leader. 200%. That’s scary. And technical staff, 80% almost double their salary. Replacing the frontline employees cost 40% of their salary. So all I know as a guy who ran a business for three or four decades, it’s expensive to have turnover. So I’m going to listen to anybody who has an idea for me about how to cut it out. So I turn and put my nerd hat on. Boop, nerd alert.

Leah Bumphrey:
Nerd Alert. It’s spinning. It looks good, Dennis.

Dennis Collins:
Nerd alert. Here’s what the Gallup organization did. They’re always researching something, right? In a new project, they repeated observations over time of thirty four hundred and forty seven employees. This was recent between 2022 and this year, 2024, they were tracked by Gallup and WorkHuman. And what they did is they evaluated the relationships between one particular thing that could help stop turnover, and that’s recognition and turnover to see if there was a relationship. Alright. So what do you think before I disclose what they found? I can just share from my own personal experience. I really struggle with this as a manager. For instance, let me ask you, Leah, is there such a thing as too much recognition?

Leah Bumphrey:
For sure, there can be. I mean, even with your very best people, if you are putting them on a pedestal all the time, that might be helpful for them. But everyone else looking on it might be really disruptive for your team. It might make everyone else go, oh, teacher’s pet kind of thing. The other thing is if there’s recognition after recognition, what are you recognizing? Is it stuff that really matters? Are you giving someone something to strive for? Are the goals strong enough or is it just you want to make sure everybody feels happy and let’s all get a white ribbon and let’s all make sure that all it’s participation time. Here we go. Because that doesn’t feel good either.

Dennis Collins:
That’s a very interesting point. So the teacher’s pet syndrome, I like that. The teacher’s pet, that’s somebody who gets all the recognition or recognized for things that don’t matter that much. And I truly believe that a lot of organizations have a checklist. Here’s what they call their strategic plan, which is really not a strategic plan. It’s a freaking checklist. And they go down the checklist and say, sales training, check. They don’t talk about the quality of the training. Is this training building skill here? Recognition plan, check. They just check off boxes without really thinking about what kind of recognition.

Leah Bumphrey:
I know I told you the story when I was in a new position and it was a sales position, and the goals they had set for me were just too low. So I kept kicking them out of the park until finally I went privately to the sales manager and said, you know what? Just pull me out of the monthly competition here because this is becoming ridiculous.

Dennis Collins:
Now, how many people would’ve done that?

Leah Bumphrey:
But you know what the interesting thing was? I thought I would be recognized for recognizing that the recognition was not valid. It was too much recognizing.

Dennis Collins:
Invalid recognition.

Leah Bumphrey:
It was layers and layers here. And when that didn’t happen, it was like, so then every month for the next six months, for the rest of the year, when someone else was recognized, I’m thinking in my head only because I pulled myself out of the running. So you see, I knew it was kind of b.s.-y, but at the same time, I want to be at least acknowledged.

Dennis Collins:
Boy, that is a real catch 22 there, isn’t it? That’s a conundrum. Well, let’s not leave our audience here with all the negatives. I always like to come up with some positives, and our friends at Gallup have done that for us. Alright. To no one surprise, no one is going to be surprised that employees who receive high quality recognition are less likely to leave their jobs. Duh. I think we kind of know that. In fact, statistically well-recognized employees are 45% less likely to have turned over two years later based on the Gallup research. But here’s the question, Leah, just like you brought up, there’s some definitions that need to be made here. What is high quality recognition? What is it? I didn’t know as a manager. I had no idea what high quality recognition is. I don’t even know if they had a definition of that back in the day, but they do now. So let me tell you what Gallup says are the five pillars. I like pillar. That sounds strong.

Leah Bumphrey:
That’s solid.

Dennis Collins:
Sturdy. The pillars of high quality recognition. Number one, it has to be fulfilling. Number two, it has to be authentic. Number three, and here’s one that I struggled with. It has to be personalized.  Number four, it has to be equitable. And number five, and this is a biggie – embedded in the culture.

Leah Bumphrey:
I like that.

Dennis Collins:
Yeah. So let’s meditate on this for a minute. I think this speaks to some of the things you were talking about, authentic. If it’s inauthentic, if it’s just recognition because we’re checking a box that’s not authentic. No, that’s just because someone told us we had to have a program, right?

Leah Bumphrey:
Or you need to have a winner. I’ve worked at companies where, oh, we have no one for employee of the month. Who are we going to pick? And if nobody has stood out, or has been nominated by their peers or the criteria isn’t there. That means you don’t have an employee of the month.

Dennis Collins:
Yeah, but if it’s inauthentic.

Leah Bumphrey:
Is that authentic?

Dennis Collins:
No.

Leah Bumphrey:
Yeah. And it becomes the checking off of the box.

Dennis Collins:
Here’s the one – personalized. So one size to me and one size in recognition does not fit all. And here’s the main reason I say that. As you know, I am a student of a teacher, of a coach of social styles.

Leah Bumphrey:
Yes.

Dennis Collins:
So the recognition that I, as an expressive driver, would cherish, would absolutely turn off professor producer Paul, who isn’t amiable. The recognition that I would thrive upon is not for him. And the recognition, Leah, that you thrive upon is not for me. So let’s get real about recognition. If it’s not personal, it’s not meaning it’s not working.

Leah Bumphrey:
And that goes back to what I was mentioning before about people leaving jobs because of people, not because of the company or the position itself. If I know that you don’t really care that I don’t drink and you keep giving me a $200 bottle of scotch, it’s like what aren’t you hearing? I don’t drink.

Dennis Collins:
Well, send it to me.

Leah Bumphrey:
Just to clarify for our listener, I do drink that.

Dennis Collins:
So anytime you have a bottle of scotch you don’t want, you can send it over. If you can get it through Canadian customs or whatever, you have to clear out.

Leah Bumphrey:
I’ll do my best.

Dennis Collins:
Personalized. Now you spoke to being equitable. What’s equitable to me, that means not every little thing gets recognized. And it has to be fair. It can’t be the teacher’s pet people in organizations can spot that a hundred miles away when one person is getting the bulk of the recognition. That’s not equitable. So if your recognition program is skewed that way, you don’t have a good recognition program. Sorry, you don’t.

Leah Bumphrey:
And particularly in sales, because sales is very much in numbers driven. Now we know the numbers come from relationship and we know the right way to achieve those goals. But it is about you either sold 10 bucks or you didn’t sell the 10 bucks. And if you didn’t sell the 10 bucks, you didn’t make your goal.

Dennis Collins:
No. And sales is easy though. I mean, we’ve both been doing sales for a long time and it’s easy to measure performance. It’s easier to give recognition. The part as when I was in the radio stations in Miami, the problem I had was the non-sales people. I did a pretty good job, my team and I should say, of recognizing sales performance. We had all kinds of performance bonuses, et cetera. But what about the people who support sales? What about the people who support the programming department, the stuff that goes on the air? How do they get recognized? And we have all types of structures. We had a president’s club, we had employee of the month. I think we were somewhat equitable in the way we did it.

Paul Boomer:
I’m back in.

Dennis Collins:
We’re in trouble again.

Paul Boomer:
No, you’re not in trouble. I’m genuinely curious because I was on that side of radio industry.

Dennis Collins:
Yes, We were in the support team. Yes.

Paul Boomer:
Yeah, exactly. And they did an okay job. But I’m going to challenge you a little bit. What did you do? How did you choose to actually recognize somebody in promotions or in creative or something? What do you do?

Dennis Collins:
Interesting question.

Leah Bumphrey:
Some of the best things that I’ve seen have been when it’s a public recognition of let’s say a promotion has just been accomplished and the people that have worked on it getting called out by the rest of the staff and recognized. And you might think, oh, there’s no cash in pocket with that, but there’s a different type of reward when your peers are all clapping hands because you did a great job.

Dennis Collins:
That is one way that I used as well to answer professor producer Paul’s question. It is department by department. In other words, I had a team of engineers. Right now, engineers are the unsung heroes of a radio station. They’re working in the background. They’re usually high introverts. They’re not very expressive individuals. They don’t need to be around people. They are much prefer to sit in their little engineering room and work on wires and tubes and things.

Leah Bumphrey:
Paul, is that what it was like?

Dennis Collins:
He wasn’t an engineer.

Paul Boomer:
No, but I certainly helped with engineering. So yeah, that is very accurate. And by the way, what you’ve describing is not just for radio. Please understand that we’re all from radio, right? We have that, but this is very applicable to any business.

Dennis Collins:
Correct. But I’m going from what I know best, and you guys know it best too, but it is transferable to other businesses. But here’s the deal. So I had my team of engineers, I think I probably had five or six people in the engineering department, and I would recognize their department because they did a lot of amazing things for us. They had to rebuild an entire transmitter site. They had to rebuild 1, 2, 3, 4 studios. Do you know what’s involved in rebuilding four radio studios?

Leah Bumphrey:
Oh yeah.

Dennis Collins:
It’s unbelievable. So we had a celebration for them. We did monthly luncheons for the whole staff, and every month I would celebrate one of the departments and pick out an employee in that department who was the exceptional performer. We did have cash awards. Back in those days, we did a lot of trade deals. I don’t know if you guys do that up in Canada…

Leah Bumphrey:
Let’s not talk about this. The IRS, the CRAs listing, no, we never do anything like that.

Dennis Collins:
We didn’t say it IRS, but we did it legally. And so they’d get a certificate, a hundred dollars certificate to go to lunch or go to dinner, take their spouse to dinner. So again, it was personal to them. It wasn’t generalized gift. It was a personal gift to them. They could use any way they want. So I struggled with it, but I think we got some of that. I really do. And I think the Pauls of my team would, if you reached out to them today, would probably acknowledge that, yeah, they did feel recognized. They feel appreciated for their job even though they weren’t on the front lines. And that’s the key. That’s really the key.

Leah Bumphrey:
The other thing is goes beyond just it being part of the management team or the owner that has to do this. If you are in a small business and you are working on your own business as a personal salesperson, what are you doing to thank your support people? Maybe because I was a support person in my early days, I just think that’s so important because it establishes a relationship. Something as simple as making a point of saying, thank you, you did that. I needed it really quickly, and you did that.

It makes a difference. And that person who’s in a support position, I’m not paying their wage other than a little bit of it for the time that they’re spending working for me. They have to appreciate the fact that I’m a real person that needed help and they helped me. And they’ll do it again because recognize that they were a real person doing their job.

Dennis Collins:
I’m glad you brought that up because what I found, Leah, is the more that I led that from the top, the more that happened. For instance, our salespeople, we had 25 salespeople I think at one time. The three stations, they were extremely generous to our traffic department, to our copywriters, our production people. I mean, with their own personal money, they would give them gift certificates, they would take them to lunch.

But here’s what I think. I think it started because that’s the culture we had. Remember one of the five pillars? Is it embedded in the culture? And we embedded recognition into our culture and therefore everyone recognized everyone else.

Leah Bumphrey:
And then it goes even deeper. Because if it becomes an expectation, if this is like, boy, you better be giving me something, then all of a sudden there’s a pullback. For years, I was at a certain place. I worked, I was the catalyst, and literally for years, to make sure that all the admin staff were recognized at the end of the year. And finally I stopped doing it on behalf of everyone and collecting their 50 bucks from each individual person as. You know what, you go ahead and do your own. Because nobody wanted to participate or it became begrudging really. And that became an issue in the culture because then you would have individuals that were doing this as opposed to teams doing it together. And again, it becomes top down.

Dennis Collins:
I totally believe that. And my management team always understood the power of recognition. So maybe we got some of this stuff right, even though I didn’t have the five pillars at that time. I think we hit most of those. We tried to make it fulfilling, authentic, personalized, equitable, and embedded in the culture. The one good thing that Gallup does note is that more people are believing they get recognition more often. And well-recognized employees report receiving recognition that hits four of those five pillars.

Leah Bumphrey:
That’s impressive.

Dennis Collins:
So if you’re designing a strategy for recognition, keep that in mind. Hit four of those five pillars and that employee feels recognized.

Leah Bumphrey:
And one other very important thing is once you have a process in place, you can replace it with something else, but you can’t eliminate it without it really hurting you.

Dennis Collins:
We talked about that.

Leah Bumphrey:
I remember one instance, and it wasn’t the employees being recognized, but their spouses, their significant others. For several years in a row, those spouses were being recognized for the support they were giving to the people that were ultimately working for the company. Then there were budget cuts, and that stopped when the spouses recognized they were no longer getting that beautiful box of chocolates addressed just to them. Guess who they were upset with? They were upset with their spouse who was working for it because they were used to getting this beautiful box of chocolates. It’s a funny thing, recognition. People will say, oh, it doesn’t matter. It really does.

Dennis Collins:
Yeah, that’s an interesting one. We had a lot of events where we included families, we had family picnics, we had events where you bring your significant other or spouse. Absolutely. And I totally agree that recognition of family members, spouses, significant others totally personalizes the experience.

Dennis Collins:
Professor Paul…

Leah Bumphrey:
Is he there?

Paul Boomer:
I’m here.

Leah Bumphrey:
He’s always there. What do you want to tell us, Paul?

Paul Boomer:
Dennis and Leah, I want you to go back to the figures of how much it costs to replace employees. Because you’re talking right now about what a lot of managers I believe is soft stuff, picnics and this and that. Doesn’t matter. Who cares? It’s the last thing that’s in the budget and it’s the first thing that gets cut from the budget. But again, go back to those figures please. I’m actually asking you go back to those figures.

Leah Bumphrey:
200%. Even I remember that number. 200%.

Dennis Collins:
200% of a leader’s salary. Let’s just say a tech employee, somebody who is an engineer or a promotion specialist or something like that, almost double. So if they’re making 50 grand a year, it’s going to cost you a hundred grand to replace them in time, effort, search, et cetera.

Paul Boomer:
So I’m asking the business owners, would you rather spend a few thousand dollars on a luncheon or a picnic or whatever, or would you rather spend $50,000 to find a new person? Just say it.

Dennis Collins:
You said it right, Paul. I think Leah said it too. It’s the first line to go and believe me, having managed a lot of lines on budgets for years, it’s easy to cut that. But I am happy to tell you and proud to tell you, we never did. We never cut that one.

Leah Bumphrey:
That’s impressive.

Dennis Collins:
If I had to cut something, I would find somewhere else to cut it. I’d buy one less tube or one less wire or something. I dunno. The engineers didn’t like that. But anyway. Hey Leah, I forgot to ask you at the front of our discussion today, I was so excited to get into this. We have a special offer for our audience. Would you tell them what that is, please?

Leah Bumphrey:
We do. This is part of our appreciation and our recognition of the people that are supporting our podcast. Send an email, LeahBumphrey@WizardofAds.com or DennisCollins@WizardofAds.com with a request for our discovery call. It’s 60 minutes. It is an opportunity for us to sit down and talk about how we could further help your business, what it is that we do to help our corporate clients all over the North America, and really personalize that free. And did I mention that it’s free chance for you to ask us questions?

We always encourage people to send us specific questions that we’re going to answer, and we have one from a listener this week. But that discovery call is just something really special because it’s that opportunity to go, okay, this is the next level. What else can we do? Because it is really important to all three of us to help small businesses to make them shine, to see what they need to get to the next level.

Dennis Collins:
Absolutely. And we’re used to doing 2x, 3x, 4x your revenue. That’s what our mantra is. If we don’t see a pathway to 2x, 3x, 4x your current revenue, we probably aren’t right for you. So give us a shot.

Leah Bumphrey:
That’s our specialty. And being able to grow businesses, as you said, 3, 4, 5 times, that is a process that requires knowledge, expertise, and a bit of heart. Not that easy. And any business owner I know will attest to that.

This actually leads really well into the question we had from a viewer. Dennis,

Dennis Collins:
Let’s have it.

Leah Bumphrey:
It was specific to mentoring. And man, if I did not have Paul mentoring me on how to say, when to say, why to say it, you’d have kicked me to the curb a long time ago.

Dennis Collins:
Oh boy.

Leah Bumphrey:
It’s about mentoring programs. Is it more important to have a formal mentoring program or an organic one where I just like this person, I’m going to help them. What should business owners expect or want?

Dennis Collins:
That’s interesting you asked that. I happen to belong to an organization right now that’s dealing with this. Do we have an informal organic or do we have a formal? And you know what they have decided, and I agree with it. Formal. Sometimes the organic is a hit and miss. I know it’s a feel good. I like Leah. Leah likes me. Therefore, that would be a good mentoring mentee relationship. But it’s too informal. So what we’ve decided is we actually have a formal setup as to how often you are to meet. There’s some reporting back saying, okay, we had a meeting on 10/31 and we discussed blah, blah, blah. Now it’s not micromanaging. It’s just an accountability to make sure the job’s getting done. So maybe earlier in my career, in my life, I would’ve said organic. Today I go all in for formal.

Leah Bumphrey:
I appreciate your reasons for this. I think this is a topic for another podcast, but it’s not going to be today.

Dennis Collins:
Not today. We just hope that you enjoyed hearing about highly recognized employees and the five pillars. In fact, if you want more information, we’d be happy to do a deep dive on the five pillars in a future episode. So again, send us your comments. If you say, Hey, more of the five pillars, we’ll do more on the five pillars. If you don’t, we won’t. We’ll do something else.

Leah Bumphrey:
I love it.

Dennis Collins:
Okay, kids, that’s all the fun for today. We’ll see you next week. See you for the next episode of Connect and Convert.

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