Dennis Collins:
Hello again, welcome back to Connect and Convert, the Sales Accelerator podcast where small business owners learn insider secrets about how to grow your sales faster than ever. I’m joined again, thankfully, by my right-hand woman, my partner.

Leah Bumphrey:
Hey, good to see you, Dennis.

Dennis Collins:
Hi, Leah.

Leah Bumphrey:
Hello, hello.

Dennis Collins:
Back again for another fun episode.

Leah Bumphrey:
We are here.

Dennis Collins:
We will have some fun today.  Did I hear some crickets or something? I heard something.

Leah Bumphrey:
They’re following me, they’re everywhere.

Dennis Collins:
Is producer Paul messing with us?

Leah Bumphrey:
I think he’s having fun with us.

Dennis Collins:
He’s having fun. We want him to have fun. But before we get into today’s topic, can we take a pause to announce our opportunity for our small business owners who are looking for their next step? Leah and Boomer and I have created our Connect and Convert Discovery Call.

Yes, that is a call that’s waiting for you as a small business owner, a person who wants to take a step back and take a look at your business and see what the difference is working with a group like us. We’re fun, but we also understand how to make things happen. So email us. We’ll send you a questionnaire. We’ll arrange a 60-minute, yes, a 60-minute virtual conversation. Let’s connect. Are you ready for it, Leah? Let’s connect.

Leah Bumphrey:
I am. It’s a great way to meet people and a great way to just get to the next level, isn’t it, Dennis?

Dennis Collins:
And our emails were just flashed up there on the screen, denniscollins@wizardofads.com, leahbumphrey@wizardofads.com.

So what are we going to talk about today? This sounds negative, and I don’t like to be negative, but don’t kill the messenger. Now, we’ve all heard that phrase. I don’t know. That’s been bandied about forever. Yep. But what exactly does that mean? So, Leah, always like your stories. You’re such a good storyteller.

Do you have a story about, was there a time when you had to face that about, do I kill this messenger, or do I let it lie?

Leah Bumphrey:
I actually have a really funny one, and I think a lot of our listeners, viewers, are going to be able to relate to this one.

It cracks me up. It’s not about me being afraid… I’m going to tell the story.

Dennis Collins:
Go ahead.

Leah Bumphrey:
So, we live central Saskatchewan. My husband’s mom and his stepdad are down in southern Alberta. Beautiful country. For years and years, that’s a big part of holidays, to take the kids to see grandma and grandpa. Now, they have a beautiful condo on a golf course. It’s just stunning, and the way their condo works, it’s a walkout basement, so whichever family is visiting gets the whole basement. Really nice and convenient, except for this one little part. They had a flood down in High River a few years ago, so they had to replace all their furniture.

So, in the guest room, they got this really beautiful looking futon, queen-size mattress on it, can make it into a bed. It was the most uncomfortable mattress you have ever slept on in your life. As a matter of fact, I couldn’t do it. Sean, you can have it. I’m on the floor. I will sleep on the floor before I sleep in there. The kids are on sponges. I don’t even need that. I am more than happy. It was terrible. Everyone in the family, every couple that went, hated that, but in the morning, you get up and you go upstairs and you have coffee, and how’d you sleep?

Oh, good, good. How’s the mattress? Great. Nobody wants to tell until finally, George, my father-in-law, his son, Soldier Mike, we called him. He’s in the military for years and years. He slept on that thing once. He went upstairs. He says, that is the worst.

He took them out that day. They went to the mattress shop. They bought a new mattress. Nobody can sleep on that. So, then the phone call started happening. So, how good is that mattress? Really? Yeah, but nobody wanted to say it. We were all afraid of hurting their feelings. The reality is, they really wanted us to enjoy being there. So, that story always cracks me up because I was, and I’m not a, you know me, I’m pretty point and shoot.

Dennis Collins:
You’re pretty direct.

Leah Bumphrey:
This was my mother-in-law. I’m not going to tell her that this mattress made me sleep on the floor.

Dennis Collins:
Was she the kind of mother-in-law that when you deliver a bad message, you had a chance of being killed as the messenger?

Leah Bumphrey:
No, she’s the sweetest woman in the world. George and I get along fantastically. You love the guy, but you just don’t do that. You don’t complain. You are not that person. So, anyways, that is a huge lesson and everybody think about that for a while. I hope it brings you a few giggles.

Dennis Collins:
You know, it really makes the point of our whole discussion today is that even when we have a message that needs to be said, we fear that we will be killed figuratively as the messenger.

So, I’ll tell my story real quick too. This was a business story. I was a pretty young sales manager. The guy that hired me, he was my boss, of course, but he was also my friend. We were pretty tight. And one day he asked me for a forecast for a critical fourth quarter sales forecast. It was going to be a tough fourth quarter and October being the first month of it, we really needed to do well. And I knew a lot was riding on it. We talked about a goal. I knew it would be impossible. It would be difficult to impossible, but he trusted me. He relied on me. He relied on the forecast and based his remarks to the corporate owner on my forecast, it didn’t happen to say the least. My friend was shocked and angry, and rightly so, in my effort to kind of shine up the bad news, right. I knew that it was not going to happen.

And I let him down. I was afraid of being the messenger. I didn’t want to disappoint this guy. I didn’t want to be the messenger with bad news. You know, we should have discussed it up front. At least two good things could have happened. We could have tried to mitigate it or we could prepare his bosses for a potential problem.

So it made no sense, but that’s how strong that kill the messenger concept is. You know, nerd alert, I got to go back and research all this stuff.

Leah Bumphrey:
You know, you have some science to back this up, Dennis.

Dennis Collins:
This is a nerd alert. Oops, sorry. There’s actually a name for this. I found the name for this thing. It’s the Persian Messenger Syndrome. Back in the day, you know, they didn’t have texts and cell phones and all this. They had to run. The messengers were runners from city to city. And sometimes the news they delivered wasn’t good news. So in the old days, the story goes, I can’t confirm all the details, but the story goes that some of these messengers were actually put to death when they brought bad news.

Now, I mean, were they, maybe not, but that was the days, right?

Leah Bumphrey:
Those were the days.

Dennis Collins:
Yeah. And it could have happened. So the Persian Messenger Syndrome, whoever is the bearer of bad news is evil and they should be discarded. So that is still a deep feeling in our brains and our minds. So we don’t like being the bearer of bad news, even when we’re not responsible for the situation, you know, now in my case, I was totally responsible for that, but we just don’t like it.

And in your case, you just didn’t like it, even though you probably wouldn’t have had any consequences. Subconsciously, this is all in the non-conscious, subconscious brain. The messenger is linked with the negative news. So the aversion that we have to getting negative news can harm your business in many ways.

Can you say blind spots? So how does this hurt? You know, what if an employee of yours has some news that’s not favorable that you need as the boss to know, and yet they feel that the Persian messenger syndrome is in effect, that the bearer of the bad news is considered to be evil.

Are you going to get that news? Nope. And as a boss for three decades, four decades, really, I know that happened to me. Although I tried to be an approachable leader. But I know I was denied news that I needed until it became a problem. And then it was too late.

So what do we do about this? I quote Warren Buffett a lot, Warren Buffett, Berkshire Hathaway. I just think this guy is one of the geniuses of today’s modern business world. Let me tell you what he says when they hire a new person. Here’s a quote from Warren Buffett.

“We only give a couple of instructions to people when they come to work with us. Number one is think like an owner.” That makes sense. “The other tell us the bad news immediately because good news takes care of itself. We can take the bad news, but we don’t like it late.”

What do you think?

Leah Bumphrey:
Well, I think that is a perfect upfront contract. You have this with your employees. You’re telling them, I mean, he’s obviously telling them this is going to happen. There is bad news in real life. There are quarters we don’t make. So do this and it’s going to work out for you. Let us have a chance.

Dennis Collins:
But you said a key phrase there, Leah. And I wonder if our business owners do this. I hope they do. Make upfront contracts with your team. Make agreements. Don’t deal in fuzzy expectations.

I can’t tell you how many times I screwed up by not making an agreement and only having, well, Joe blow knows what to do. He’s a sales manager. Go ahead and do what you do. I expect Joe blow to do something that he has no idea what my expectations are. Craft specific agreements. What is your upfront contract? What is the upfront contract about delivering bad news? Say, take Mr. Buffett’s quote and steal it. We can take the bad news, but we don’t like it late. Wow. Later in my management career, I learned that lesson when I was the boss and I had sales managers reporting to me. And that’s the conversation I had with them. I don’t like bad news, but I can take it. And I don’t like it late.

The challenge really, you know, do your staff, do your team, do your employees feel safe in sharing bad news in the organization? Most small business owners says, but of course, we’re wide open. My door is open. I want to hear. Guess what I learned?

Just because your door is open, doesn’t mean you’re approachable.

Leah Bumphrey:
And this is where it’s important for small business owners to realize it’s not about what you say to your employees. It’s about what you show. It’s about what they see. And you like your science. I love my stories. If you tell stories to your staff about that time where someone came and told you this, and this was the result, sometimes it’s going to be a very negative result, but at least you knew it. Sometimes it’s a positive result because you’re telling them, “Hey, by knowing this, we were able to react.” Tell the stories, make it part of your culture. Culture is so important in this.

Dennis Collins:
I love what you just said. Make it part of your culture. How do you make it part of your culture?

Paul Boomer:
Yeah. No, you guys are spot on. And I’m going to, I’m going to take my comment about storytelling a little bit, a step further. And this is uncomfortable for most leaders, which is being vulnerable and yes, telling stories, but telling story stories of how you personally screwed up.

What that does is it builds trust and you have to have trust in able to have these upfront agreements and to be able to share these stories and be able to create wonderful and amazing cultures where you can discuss the oopses in the world. So sharing something where you screwed up with the team and don’t be, you know, humble about it.

And laugh at yourself and say, here’s how I screwed up. And Dennis, you did that today. And that was brilliant. That’s exactly what I’m talking about. Most leaders find that very challenging because they think they’re supposed to have all the answers. Let your team members have the answers. You as a leader, simply show them we’re going in this direction.

Dennis Collins:
As always Boomer. I mean, I want to track back to Warren Buffett again, because he teaches us a lot of lessons. And one of them is directly related to what you just said. You know, every year they put out a shareholder’s letter, you know, to all their shareholders.

And, you know, if you’ve ever read any letters from companies, they’re all glowing. We blew this number away. We did that wonderful thing and blah, blah, blah. You know, it’s full of positives as it should be. Those are accomplishments. But let me tell you what Warren Buffett does in his annual letter.

In every annual letter, he writes something that they screwed up. Something that didn’t go well. And let me say this to you, even in the years where they had an outstanding performance, which is almost every year, he writes something in the first few paragraphs.

Hey, in spite of our stupidity, and not quite these words, in spite of our stupidity and buying that shoe company that we bought three years ago, which we should have never bought. And we tanked it and it went bankrupt. In spite of that, we still had a good year.

He weaves that into every shareholder letter. Isn’t that amazing? Say something, be vulnerable. As good as they are, they still make mistakes.

Paul Boomer:
And as when you started to talk about Warren Buffett, just before that, my finger was on the mouse. I’m going to click. I’m going to jump. Oh, wait. He said, Warren Buffett. I’m going to back out. That’s exactly what I was going to say.

Dennis Collins:
Good on you, Paul, because that is a story that I tell often. Why? Because if it’s good enough for one of the highest financial geniuses in this world, it’s good enough for me.

If it works for him, why wouldn’t it work for me? And there’s a way to do it in another podcast. We’ve talked about this in previous podcasts, but I think Leah, another topic would be, how do you present vulnerability? How do you make yourself vulnerable without risking the farm? There’s a way to do it.

Leah Bumphrey:
We have our listeners, we’ll send emails in sometimes with questions, sometimes with comments. And one comment that was made to us over the last couple of weeks that I thought was fantastic. It’s an owner-operator down in the States. He owns a retail operation, men’s clothing store, and they have, do you remember the dreaded Monday morning meetings, Dennis?

I mean, back in the corporate land, we always have those meetings. But Joseph is using their Monday morning meetings. His sales meetings, he’s using our podcast as a launching pad. And as I’m listening to this, I’m visualizing and, hey, Joseph, hey, staff, we’re glad that you’re here. But listening to something like this, what a great discussion a team would be able to have afterwards of, oh, yeah, this worked and this didn’t. And I wish this would have happened this way.

Dennis Collins:
That’s a great point. That’s very nice. We’ll try to always give you plenty of good topics, Joseph, to talk about.

Leah Bumphrey:
Now, Dennis, I know you’ve been thinking about a breakout challenge.

Dennis Collins:
We always challenge our audience. And here it is. Let me recommend to you do this, how to do a five-point audit of your business. And again, you can get someone outside like us. We talked about that at the top of this podcast. We do stuff like that. But just you can do it yourself. Lead by example. Didn’t we already talk about this? It’s not what you say. It’s what you do. They watch how you handle the bad news. Number two, reward honesty. Make it okay to be transparent and honest, even when it’s bad news, just like the Buffett organization. Number three, actively listen. We talk to our sales clients about this all the time, but this is also for leadership.

Spend more time listening than talking. No interruptions, full attention. Do check-ins, regular check-ins with your team. Most managers do this. Most leaders do this. But what is in that check-in? Let’s talk about three things. Let’s have three things. What’s good? What’s going on that’s good? Number two, what’s not so good? What needs improvement? And number three, what fires do we need to deal with right now? What’s good? What’s not so good? What needs immediate attention? And last but not least, create stories about the value of early warnings. Have that as part of your culture.

Here’s what happened in the past when we got early warning about XYZ. We were able to do ABC to head it off. Stories are a business owner’s best friend, particularly stories about the value of getting an early warning.

Leah Bumphrey:
That’s very specific, and I’m hoping everybody was taking notes because I love what you detailed here.

Dennis Collins:
Good thing we’re not living back in ancient Persia, you know. Okay, kids, we’ve had enough fun for one day. We’re running a little later than we normally like to run, but that’s okay. We had fun. I hope you did. Please join us every week for the next episode of Connect and Convert. See you then.

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