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Dennis Collins:
Hello again. It’s Dennis welcoming you to yet another episode of Connect and Convert, the Sales Accelerator podcast where small business owners join every week to hear the insider secrets about growing business faster than ever. And my partner in crime. Hello, Leah Bumphrey.

Leah Bumphrey:
Hey, Dennis. How you doing?

Dennis Collins:
I’m doing great. I hope you are.

Leah Bumphrey:
Absolutely.

Dennis Collins:
We’ve got another great topic today that is, it’s been debated for probably centuries in some way, shape, or form,

Leah Bumphrey:
Haven’t they all?

Dennis Collins:
Profit or purpose? Profit or purpose, how best to drive business growth. Wow. But before we start, you have something of interest to share with our audience.

Leah Bumphrey:
Yes. It involves both profit and purpose for our small business listeners and viewers. And really the reason why that you and producer Paul and I are doing this podcast, and it is to help business owners get a handle on what comes next. Absolutely. You can email us at any time with a single question, but there’s the opportunity for our 60 minute free, I say free discovery call where we will set up a time so that Dennis, me, you, Paul, we will get together and talk about whatever subject interests you specific to your business and how we might be able to help your business grow. Don’t hesitate to take advantage of this. It is free. Email, LeahBumphrey@wizardofads.com or DennisCollins@wizardofads.com, and we will get you on the schedule. It will be 60 minutes very well spent.

Dennis Collins:
And if you’re in the US we’ll get you on the schedule. Okay? So just so you understand,

Leah Bumphrey:
She’s talking the Queen’s English dentist, the schedule.

Dennis Collins:
Yeah. She’s talking Canadian to us.

Leah Bumphrey:
I’m talking Canadian. Absolutely

Dennis Collins:
For you Americans. We’ll get you on the schedule. Okay. Either way, you get the idea. We want you on the schedule or schedule, okay. As a guy who was honored and privileged to lead a business for over three decades, I got to tell you, Leah, money is on your mind a lot. It’s sometimes the biggest or the only motivator. And that goes for big businesses, small businesses. It’s very easy to say, let’s get focused on something other than money. When you’ve got quarterly reviews, quarterly reports, monthly P&Ls, profit margin reports, net operating,

Leah Bumphrey:
Oh, it sounds awful.

Dennis Collins:
That’s the way business is measured these days. Except I found a book recently here. I’ll show it.

Leah Bumphrey:
Oh, I love books.

Dennis Collins:
Well, Paul probably will put it up there.

Leah Bumphrey:
Here’s Selling with a Noble Purpose.

Dennis Collins:
Selling With a Noble Purpose. This book is over 10 years old. I think it’s like 11 or 12 years old. Where the heck have I been. I have no vested interest in pitching this book other than it will change the way you look at whatever it is you’re selling. So let me cut to the chase. What’s the central premise of the book? Salespeople and organizations who focus on making a difference, not on making a profit, mind you, but making a difference in the customer’s lives rather than just hitting some sales goal or some profit goal or whatever, tend to be more successful in reality in the long run.

Leah Bumphrey:
I like that.

Dennis Collins:
Yeah. Lisa Earl McLeod is the author of this book and she says that having a noble purpose, she calls it a noble purpose, a mission just beyond making money, can drive better performance. Employee engagement, customer satisfaction. How about that? Sounds too good to be true, doesn’t it? She did the research on this. Okay, and I won’t spoil it for you. Science nerds and the research nerds, I won’t spoil it. It’s in the book. It’s in the book. But she proved that salespeople who sold with a noble purpose outsold those who just sold focused on sales calls. How about that? You believe that?

Leah Bumphrey:
I want to believe it. I think that speaks to the heart of real life. That’s who I am. That’s who you are.

Dennis Collins:
I want to believe it too. And yet, it is so hard, Leah, in day to day, when you have owners breathing down your neck, when you have investors breathing down your neck, when you have salespeople breathing down your neck, I need to make more money. I need more commission, it turns it into money.

So it takes, from what I’ve experienced, it takes a very disciplined mind. But Lisa Earl McLeod helps us here. So here’s some examples. The questions she poses are just amazing. What goes on in the minds of top performing companies and salespeople? What’s going on? Is it a profit motivation or is it a purpose? Motivation? Do you want to make a difference for your customer? Do you think what you sell, whatever it is, makes a difference for a customer? What’s the old story? There was some guy, I think this was in Europe somewhere, who was making a brick wall, and you’ve watched brick layers. They take the mortar and they slap it down, they put a brick down, they slap more mortar, they put it down, they slap. It’s pretty robotic, right?

There were two guys doing this, and he asked one of the guys, he said, Hey, what are you doing? He said, I’m laying bricks. That’s what I do all day long, hundreds, if not thousands of bricks. One, two. I just lay bricks. Good. He asked the other guy, he says, what are you doing? He says, I am building something to be a memorial. It’s going to celebrate certain things and people, I am building a testimonial to some great people and all that. I’m laying these bricks but it’s not about laying bricks. It’s about what this represents to people. It has a meaning. It has a purpose. And how about that brick laying? So one guy had a purpose, the other guy had a job. Interesting. So let’s, in my research, what I’m finding here, a software company, how do your products improve efficiency and work-life balance rather than just touting the features and cost savings?

How about a financial advisor? We all have financial advisors, don’t we? Some better than others. How about educating clients and helping them achieve their goals, not just selling a product. Well, here’s a stock you can buy, or here’s an annuity you can buy. No. How about healthcare? How about an equipment manufacturer? I have a good buddy who’s in the healthcare business. He sells a piece of equipment that helps nurses lift heavy patients out of their beds so they don’t break their back trying to do that. So he could sell that as a medical device. Now, what he sells that is, Hey, nurses, I can help save you time, effort, broken backs, days off work because you’re injured lifting heavy patients. I can make your life easier. So which salesperson, Leah, would you rather talk to?

Leah Bumphrey:
Oh, the person who’s painting a picture of the why for their product, not just the specifics of the product,

Dennis Collins:
But so few actually do this. What we’re talking about today is earth shakingly difficult to do.

Leah Bumphrey:
Dennis. It’s all about focus. The organization, the management team, the structure of a business is going to be focused on something. And it is really obvious to everyone working within an organization, salespeople, production, people, techs. If the focus is just on profits, then that’s what their profit is going to be on. 

I had a good friend who worked at a restaurant and people loved going. Their lunches were always packed, and it was working class guys like your bricklayers. And all of a sudden the management team decided that the kitchen staff were going to be paid on P&L, right? What was going out? All of a sudden, those plates with the mounds of french fries, which were very important to these guys that were coming in and leaving their shovel outside. Instead of it being a mound of french fries, they were pulling it off. They were, oh no, that’s too many. Oh no, we’re only giving this much. Oh no, this, oh no, that, even their glasses for pop, even though the small pop looked like this and the large pop looked like that, they were the same. People started realizing that there was only focus on money going into profits and she lost business.

Dennis Collins:
Cutting costs, cutting serving size.

Leah Bumphrey:
It’s not only your salespeople where this ends up happening. So if there’s going to be that kind of focus and that kind of training, it’s going to be what happens.

Dennis Collins:
So have you ever, Leah, in your wonderful career, that was detailed, by the way, if you haven’t heard her episode telling her story, you’ve got to look that one up. That was a gem. That might be one of the best. But at any time during that journey, did you ever have this concept brought to you? I mean, you may have thought it yourself, but did it ever come from the top of the organization that you were working with at the time?

Leah Bumphrey:
There’s a story that comes into my head, and it wasn’t for an organization I was working for, but for one that I was applying for, and it was an entry level sales position. I was really excited I was going to be doing this. And one of the questions they asked was, why did you apply for the job? Why did you want it? And I was talking about the product and about the company and how excited I was and how I loved working with people and everything. And they kept asking and kept asking. They told me after I didn’t get the job because I missed the answer to the question, the answer was supposed to be that I wanted to make money.

Dennis Collins:
Oh, yes.

Leah Bumphrey:
I’m awfully glad I didn’t end up getting that position.

Dennis Collins:
And you’ve already brought back some memories of that. That if that was the preferred answer, if you were interviewing for a sales job, I want to make money, instead of I want to make a difference.

Leah Bumphrey:
Yeah, never dawned on me.

Paul Boomer:
Can I interrupt you?

Leah Bumphrey:
Oh, hey, Paul.

Dennis Collins:
Yeah, here he is. We’ve done something wrong, Leah.

Paul Boomer:
No, not at all. I love that story. Leah should have seen my reaction. That’s a shame. Honestly. I’m going to tell a little bit of story myself in regards to one of my clients that had you read those mission statements and all those that kind of go, okay, whatever that mission statement. And we made it a part of the interview process asking for doing value-based interview questions. And that changed everything. And as you said at the very top of this podcast, Dennis, that it takes a disciplined CEO, owner, whatever, to go through this process. But because of that, and we can tie it directly back to the mission statement, the communication of the mission statement and the interviews that we did, they were growing over a six year period on average, about 32% over year, just based on that.

Dennis Collins:
And they were a purpose-driven organization.

Paul Boomer:
They thought they were purpose-driven, and they were, but we tweaked it some more to make it even more purpose-driven and even more poignant of, yeah, this is what we do. It is not about money. The money came after.

Dennis Collins:
But isn’t that such a hard, particularly for a person who has a commission sales job, there’s no base salary, there’s no income until you sell something, right? I don’t know today how many more of those are left. I know in the radio business that I grew up in, that was how the radio business paid salespeople. So naturally they didn’t eat if they didn’t sell. So money was very high on their mind, and it was very difficult to get them to say, oh, I’m here. This isn’t a package of radio spots. This is a solution to one of your biggest problems, and that is you need to be more well-known. Nobody knows who you are, and they’re not going to come in here unless they know who you are.

Paul Boomer:
And I’m going to add to that, Dennis.

Dennis Collins:
Wow, Paul’s ready today.

Paul Boomer:
Oh yes. This is a very important topic to me. So I’ve been doing research for a long time actually about, and both of you probably know about the book called Pendulum. It’s also based off of another one called Generations. One of the authors, the other author passed away unfortunately, has a new book out called The Fourth Turning. And in that they’re talking about, and this was already predicted that right now, especially with the younger generations, they’re looking for companies who put purpose first. I’ve heard that if you are not putting your purpose first, if you’re not putting it out there beyond money, it’s harder to recruit. You’re going to spend more money trying to recruit these people because they see the fact that this owner is about the money, not about the purpose.

Dennis Collins:
Say that again. They see the evidence that the owner is about money and not purpose. Is that what you said?

Paul Boomer:
That’s exactly what I said.

Dennis Collins:
And so that kind of supports what Leah was saying, is this starts at the very top, right?

Paul Boomer:
Absolutely.

Dennis Collins:
This starts with ownership, senior level management, sales management, et cetera.

Paul Boomer:
Absolutely. Yes.

Dennis Collins:
So Paul, Leah, in your opinions, you both have experience in this field, what are we doing wrong? And I include myself in this. What are we doing wrong? How can we get this message out there? Of course, having not even heard of this book until recently, that’s shameful to me, and I mean, I keep up on these things and I didn’t even know it existed. Okay, what’s going on that’s stopping it?

Leah Bumphrey:
I think that we have to get back to the basics of it’s not about telling, not about telling people, show me, don’t tell me. This will help you with your hiring process. It helps with what people see within an organization. If top down, it’s being shown that this is what’s important, making a difference. There’s a bit of a idea that you got to go up on your soap box, that’s not noble, that’s going this chacha,

Dennis Collins:
Leah, is that one of those soft skills that we hear about. We don’t train in soft skills, we train in hard skills that help us make money. That’s stuff about purpose and making a difference and all that woo woo stuff. That’s soft skills.

Leah Bumphrey:
But you know what? It always comes down to me, what you believe is what you’re going to do. So if you believe that you’re going to just continue to focus on money and you’re going to make money, but if you really do believe that by making a difference, you are going to be able to help people and you have a product that will help businesses, inevitably you will make money. That’s what Paul said. You make a difference. You make a name or you make money. Pick one, and I pick the difference.

Paul Boomer:
You asked that question, Dennis. One of the techniques that, again, it requires a lot of discipline on the owner’s part, is to let go, is to let your employees tell you what matters to them within the business, and what they hear in the front lines of what is the purpose behind what you offer. Let go of the reins and let your employees drive it. It’s scary, but it’s amazing.

Dennis Collins:
A lot of business owners are scared to do that, Paul, don’t you think?

Paul Boomer:
Absolutely, they are. And it’s because of the eras that they grew up. It is a societal thing for owners to be the boss, the guy, the woman.

Dennis Collins:
Yeah. This is my domain here.

Paul Boomer:
Yeah.

Dennis Collins:
Do as I say, not as I do.

Paul Boomer:
Exactly. Yes. And so for my experience with telling owners let go, yeah, they are scared crapless and they don’t know what to do. And that’s actually, now I am self-promoting a little bit, but you know what? Who cares? That’s where the three of us comes in in regards to helping owners understand and step through that process of letting go and by letting go. The profits come in. The profits start rolling in.

Leah Bumphrey:
We’re sponsored by wizardacademy.org, and part of the reason is this is taught that wizardacademy.org, but going farther to the roots to Roy and Pennie, when they started wizardofads.com, when they started that, they promoted free talks about how businesses could help themselves. They would rent rooms, they would supply coffee. This was about bringing people in. They would have free, there’s still lots and lots of free products that you can access that will help you get where you’re going. That’s where it started. This is a huge organization. They placed billions of dollars worth of advertising. It didn’t start there, but their motivation was absolutely to make a difference for small businesses. That’s where it started.

Dennis Collins:
An excellent example. Yeah, that’s an excellent example. I’m glad you brought that one up for a number of reasons. So let’s try, if we might to give our viewers, our listeners some action steps. You want to give it a try. Taking your business from good to outstanding, define that noble purpose. What is it that your product or your service, how does it make a difference, a positive difference in your customer’s life or in their business? How about Paul and Leah both said, align the team. It’s got to start at the top, but everyone has to understand and have buy-in into this. What I hear you guys saying is reframing conversations, reframing sales conversations, not what can I sell you? How can I help you? That’s a tough one. A lot of small business owners will not identify with that. No, baloney. It’s not how I can help you. What can I sell you? I have stories.

Maybe we’ll tell those in another podcast. And how do you measure the impact? I mean, it’s easier, isn’t it, guys, to measure sales? You either are up, down, or sideways. You know exactly where you sold more, you sold less the same, whatever. How do you measure selling with a purpose? Well, if Ms. Lisa McLeod is correct, you measure it in huge increases in sales. Her theory is, as Leah said, as Paul said, mind making the difference. The sales will follow. But it takes courage, doesn’t it? I’ll be honest with you, I never really wrestled well with that when I was general managing for all those years. We touched on it, but as I look back, that’s one of my regrets. I wish we had done more with that.

Leah Bumphrey:
And don’t beat yourself up, Dennis. It’s counterintuitive though. It’s like the person who is focused on being on a diet so they lose weight and they end up gaining weight. It’s because if you’re focusing on the wrong things, the ultimate outcome that you’re running for and wanting, you’re actually running away from it.

Dennis Collins:
That’s true.

Paul Boomer:
Wow. Yeah, a lot of things. I have one more thing to put in there. I have one more thing to put in there.

Dennis Collins:
Please.

Paul Boomer:
You talk about the finance, the growth and such. And one thing I love about what the three of us do and the other Wizard of Ads partners, but what we do is, of course, yes, we have those Uncovery conversations. We have our 60 minutes upfront conversation, Hey, we even, can we help you or whatnot? The way our fee is structured is a long-term discipline relationship. Our fees go up and down based off of the growth or the decline of our client. And I’ve had that a few times. Not very many, lemme tell you, but I’ve had a few declines. But our job is to help you grow. We’re not going to do anything we don’t believe in if it’s going to hurt us, because it does hurt us sometimes if we don’t do the right thing. It is a long term disciplinary relationship between us because it matters, because we know that the one thing that matters to a business is finances, is money. Can you stay in business? Our job is to help you grow faster. How do we do that? And our job is, we don’t focus on the money, but we get measured by the income. Nothing else.

Dennis Collins:
The transaction that we have to sell through is that making a difference in the lives of your customers makes a difference on your bottom line.

Leah Bumphrey:
Yeah,

Dennis Collins:
Okay.

Leah Bumphrey:
That’s exactly right.

Dennis Collins:
What a great discussion, guys. Thank you very much. I think we’re going to do more on this. I get the sense that there’s more we can say, especially for producer Paul. I think producer Paul has more, so we’ll work on some more episodes on this one. But any final thoughts? Leah?

Leah Bumphrey:
We have one really good question about new hires, but you know what? Let’s hold off till next time. We want to give everybody a reason to come back.

Dennis Collins:
Absolutely. A little mystique, right? Okay. Kids, it’s been, this wraps this edition of Connect and Convert. We release a new episode every week, so make sure you tune in every week to connect and convert.

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