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Dennis Collins:
Welcome to another episode of Connect and Convert, the Sales Accelerator podcast. Small business owners tune in every week to get the insider tips on just how to grow sales faster than ever. Hi, Leah Bumphrey!

Leah Bumphrey:
Fast and furious and yet just so focused.

Dennis Collins:
Focused.

Leah Bumphrey:
Oh, it is huge, what we can do. 

Dennis Collins:
Fast, furious, and focused.

Leah Bumphrey:
Absolutely.

Dennis Collins:
Three F’s,

Leah Bumphrey:
Version 4.1.

Dennis Collins:
I like that. That’s excellent. Well said. We got another great topic today for our listeners and viewers. This is one takes me back to my days in radio management, and I’m thinking right now as I sit here of three amazing people. And they were some of the best sales performers I ever met in my life, and I was fortunate to have them on my team for years, decades. But there’s an ongoing discussion in small business, and I had this discussion going on in my head. Let me share it.

Leah Bumphrey:
Okay.

Dennis Collins:
Managers should spend most of their time dealing with those who are not performing well, the poorest performers, and let the top people alone, let ’em do their thing. What do you think, Leah? You’re a top performer. How do you like to be managed or maybe you don’t like to be managed?

Leah Bumphrey:
Okay, first of all, there’s a lot of definitions of top performers. I think you’re talking about the people that are putting the puck in the net.

Dennis Collins:
I’m talking about the people who are making the damn sales, right?

Leah Bumphrey:
Okay. So you have those types of top performers. You also have people who are really good at helping you team build and doing other things. But if we’re talking just specifically about performers who sell, they’re bringing money in, I think that’s one of the worst things that managers do is just leave them alone. Now, I’m not saying you babysit them the same way. I’m not saying that you’re going on every call, but if you are not spending quality time with them, showing appreciation, learning from them, because the best managers are typically, they sure as heck shouldn’t be the best salespeople.

Most of the time, the best salespeople don’t make the best sales managers.

Dennis Collins:
But Leah, listen, there’s a guy that I respect a lot. His name is Daniel Coyle. He wrote The Talent Code years ago, one of the best books I had ever read in my life, and I reference it often. Let me give you a quote from Dan Coyle. Giving honest feedback is tricky. It can easily result in people feeling hurt or demoralized. Do you really want to take the chance of overmanaging your top performers and demoralizing them?

Leah Bumphrey:
No, absolutely not. But that’s a chance. That’s a risk. But you also are running the risk by letting them just do their own thing, that they are going to feel underappreciated, not connected to you, and willing to go somewhere else where they’re going to make more money,

Dennis Collins:
But they’re appreciated. They’re making a blank ton of money. They’re banking every month, wow, that’s recognition. That’s showing them that they’re doing a great job. They don’t need me to tell them that.

Leah Bumphrey:
Okay, and you had success with hanging onto those people.

Dennis Collins:
I did.

Leah Bumphrey:
So I can’t say that didn’t… If fly, be free, that’s fine. But I think that there’s still that necessary part of connectiveness that if you just leave them alone, there’s no connection being made.

Dennis Collins:
I used to tell ’em all the time, Hey, you rock. You’re a superstar. You’re the best. You’re awesome. That was connection. 

Leah Bumphrey:
If you were giving them specific feedback on a call, on a client, letting them know what has happened.

Dennis Collins:
I didn’t do that too often. I just gave them that affirmation that they’re doing great.

Leah Bumphrey:
But how would you feel if I just came up to you every time and just gave you just the high five. You begin to feel that you don’t really know what I’m doing. And then when you do have to talk to one of your great performers about, man, you lost that business. Oh, you had this attrition. So the only time you’re going to talk to them is when they mess up holy. Are you going to be in trouble again? I stress you’re not given the same kind of information, the same kind of focus on your key people, your senior people as your new people, but you still need to have connection and focus with them.

Dennis Collins:
But they don’t mess up very much. Again, I’m afraid if I get too involved, they’re going to start messing up because they might see that as micromanagement.

Leah Bumphrey:
I can see that, that there’s going to be things that are important. I’ve worked on a sales team and one of the gals, the gal who was the top performer, she just was killing it. She hated coming to sales meetings because they were all about the new people. She was tired of always having to go through stuff that she knew backwards, forwards, upside down, to benefit to mentor, to keep going. Now, if the sales manager had pushed her to come, this becomes a decision. You have to come. We need you there.

Instead, they came up with a part of the reason why she was struggling was she’s a single mom, had to take her kid to school every morning. So they came up with a balance of, okay, you can come a little bit late. And he tried to accommodate because of what she was able to bring in because of her mastery of her list and her sales and what she was bringing to the company. But at the same time, he was wanting her to be part of the team, and I think that’s important.

Dennis Collins:
Interesting point. Yeah, I tell you that little voice that we all have in our head. There’s that inner voice, maybe you don’t have one of those. I know mine is very active and it’s usually not very nice, and that voice was going crazy when I thought about giving feedback to some of my top performers. What if it puts them off? What if they don’t agree? What if they quit? What if they take it wrong? All those things are spinning around in my head. I mean, to me, giving feedback to a top performer was a risky situation.

I wonder how many of our small business owners feel that way. I would suspect it’s a pretty common feeling. Hey, don’t mess with something that ain’t broke, right? What’s the old saying? Don’t, don’t fix it if it ain’t broke. And the people that need the fixing are the lower end people. The starting off people. The people who are not performing well. So I’ll tell you, I had a moment of truth. I started losing one of those top performers. I started seeing them slip away. And some of the things, Leah, that you just brought up about connectivity, being a part of the team that started to hit me

And I said, maybe I’m doing this wrong. I’ve got to put my feelings aside, these feelings of creating problems, and reframe that. How can I make it better? I did learn that sharing feedback with top performers is pretty tricky business because of my fear and their ego, and I fear that I’m going to damage their ego, which may be the worst thing that could happen. Every time that I have a problem, I go, there’s a go-to solution for me. What’s that? Effective, active listening.

Leah Bumphrey:
Okay, yeah.

Dennis Collins:
I sat down with these people and just shut up and listened. Tell me, how are you able to achieve this? What is your system? What’s your plan? What’s your mentality? How do you prepare yourself mentally? What do you do? Let me go out on a few calls with you. Can I do some ride alongs with you? I’d love to see you in action. Effective listening, the single most powerful thing you can do to build a climate of trust. Yes, they may think it’s micromanagement. They have demonstrated their ability to perform, but it’s incumbent on me, the manager, almost losing some top performers. It’s incumbent on me to figure out how to do this. How do I make feedback for them?

Leah Bumphrey:
But you also have to look at the role of the manager and how the team is built because it’s different if you have a team where you have someone with tenure of 30 years and then everyone else is within the last two years, depends on the age of the manager. It’s always disconcerting to work for someone who doesn’t have the same amount of experience with you in an industry or in life when they’re younger.

I know of one sales team where the impression that the senior people have is, you know what? I make my money on commission. I don’t need to come to general sales meetings. If there’s something, you send me an email, let me know. I don’t need that desk there. I’m working from home and they’ve created their own world, their own business, and that can be very positive, but it can also kill the idea of a team in passing on information and what a manager is trying to achieve.

Dennis Collins:
That’s an interesting point. My salespeople in the radio business, all on commission, there were no salaries, there were no guarantees. Commission. And so that is an attitude. That’s again, one of the things you don’t want to disrupt. They kind of think they’re their own little business. Now, of course, they wouldn’t have a business if it wasn’t for the investment in the radio station and the programming and all that, but they see it as their own little business. I’m not costing you anything unless I sell something. That’s not totally true, but it’s largely true. So this idea of I’m independent, I don’t need coaching. I’ve been there, done that. That’s a tough one to get over sometimes. And I’ll tell you, you got to tread lightly, I think very lightly. However, to your point, ignoring top performers I think is a strategic error. You’re missing opportunities for them to improve.

You’re missing opportunities to help the other members of the team grow, and you’re risking retention because I found that out the hard way. I found that out the hard way. Luckily, I was able to patch it up. So I guess my message to our small business owners is, to your point, it depends on the team that you have agreed. Some teams, I think every team I ever managed had a three-tiered. Here are the very high top performer, experienced people. Here’s the middle ground who are aspiring to be the top performers, and then here are the newcomers, here are the new kids. But as a versatile manager, you have to be able to deal with all three of those. 

Leah Bumphrey:
And it goes even further than that as the owner of the business. So you’ve hopefully hired a manager that is taking on what you need them to, that is helping your top performers, and you’re not-so-top performers achieve sales goals, but I’ve seen situations where an owner has told the manager, leave that guy alone. I don’t know. Does that guy have pictures? Has that guy been there so long and he’s so good that you just leave him alone. Don’t bug him about this. He’s just this side of retirement or he’s threatening to leave. Let him do his thing. Those kinds of things will end up trickling down and figuring it out. Those are called the golden handcuffs for the manager. There’s nothing they can do, but that manager’s ego comes into play just like a senior salesperson’s ego.

Dennis Collins:
For sure.

Leah Bumphrey:
We’re talking senior salespeople, but what about the young guy who just came out of business school and knows everything because when you’re 22 and you’ve just gotten your marketing degree, there is nothing you don’t know about sales. Let’s put that on the table. And yet you’re seeing that you’re never talking to that person. That person doesn’t have to take part in this man. It’s a bit of a jumble.

Dennis Collins:
I had that situation. It’s interesting you mentioned that. When I was a young sales manager, way too young that anybody should have ever promoted me to sales manager, but they did. I had a group of guys. Back in those days, there were no women, believe it or not. My surprise, media sales is almost all women now, at least in the US. I don’t know how it is there. 

Leah Bumphrey:
Same in Canada. I was the second female salesperson that was hired in a radio group that I worked for. Now that’s not the case.

Dennis Collins:
But several of these guys were golfing buddies with my general manager, I mean, drinking and golfing buddies. So they were getting insider information just because they were social friends that I wasn’t privy to. And of course, they let me know that.

Leah Bumphrey:
Oh yeah, for sure, for sure.

Dennis Collins:
So how does that then affect my objective opinion of their performance? And of course, it goes right out the damn window if you’re interested in keeping your job, because again, these were the fair haired boys that were protected. At least you didn’t know that for sure, but you assumed that because they were personal friends, they were protected. And again, you manage those people differently unfortunately than you do others. And I don’t think that’s right, but that’s human nature. Leah, you’re not going to intentionally do something to cut your own throat. You know what I’m saying? At least most people won’t.

Leah Bumphrey:
No, but that’s why it’s important to look at, from the owner’s perspective, from the business owner’s perspective or the manager’s perspective, and then also the individual salespeople because they are building a business. So if you’re really good at what you’re doing or really crappy, you want help, you should want help. If you don’t, then it comes down to, as a manager, do you really want these people on your team? Are they really helping?

Dennis Collins:
That becomes the question. And all of a sudden when one of these so-called top performers or friend of the owner, friend of the general manager screws up, what do you do?

Leah Bumphrey:
I’ve seen it happen where people have been new and the proverbial phone book, here’s your list, go for it. Everybody that they’re calling on ends up, oh no, that belongs to this guy who’s been here for years. Oh, no, this belongs to this gal that’s been here for fifty.

Dennis Collins:
That happened to me. Exactly my story.

Leah Bumphrey:
And it’s ridiculous. So as a manager, what do you do?

Dennis Collins:
My manager did not intervene. I was totally on my own, but that’s a whole nother story for another podcast. But I guess the message that I want to get across is this. I don’t believe in leaving the top performers alone works. I think it’s a strategic mistake. It’s a mistake because you’re opening up too many unfavorable options that could happen. However, the way you go about managing the top performers is way different than somebody who is in the middle or just beginning, and your words matter more than ever.

Make that discussion more than ever. It’s a discussion, a partnership, not a monologue or not an interrogation. Don’t be passing judgment like you made a mistake, or you’re a failure, or you had a failure here known. I used to use data-driven insights. So that way it’s not subjective. Okay. Hey, Nick, can I show you? Lemme show you some information here that you might find interesting. A little bit about the strategy of your list, of how your account list is doing. Here’s your top 10, here’s your middle 10, here’s your bottom 10. Let’s talk about the relationships between those three groups.

So I use data-driven analysis that wasn’t aimed at saying, you failed with your bottom 10. No, my objective was to get the bottom 10 in the middle 10. If I told them that they are inadequate or failed to a top performer, that doesn’t usually feel too good, even though they might want to grow.

Leah Bumphrey:
So you and I, Dennis, we’re connected and our podcast is sponsored by WizardAcademy.org, but we were originally connected there, and it’s because of the type of training that is available for individual salespeople, for business owners, for managers, how to create these teams. And Roy Williams has said, it’s not about sales techniques, but it’s about what’s important, the how of it, which is why we’re so proud to be sponsored by WizardAcademy.org. This is why people have to give us a shout. If this is a topic or you have another topic that you want to explore more, we have our free – we’ve got to emphasize free – 60 minute discovery call email, Dennis or myself at wizardofads.com. That’s LeahBumphrey@wizardofads.com, or DennisCollins@wizardofads.com, and schedule a time with us 60 minutes to explore maybe how you should be and how you want to be organizing your team or your business. From there, we can go and see how else we might be able to work together.

Dennis Collins:
Do you have a question? Sometimes we have questions from listeners and viewers. I wonder if you have a question.

Leah Bumphrey:
I do. And it was specific to working with trust with your team, with your business team for owners. How do you work with trust managers and staff? And it kind of comes into… this kind of works, actually, when I look at the question, because you want your senior performers, you want your new people to trust what you’re saying, what you’re doing, but how do you emphasize that? To cultivate it? Specific tools? I mean, there’s a general feeling, and I can think of some tools, but Dennis, how did you make sure that your team trusted that you had their best interest at heart?

Dennis Collins:
That’s a great question. The first point is, you’ve got to find out what is in their best interest. Right? Here we go. One size fits all in this world. Leah, everything one size fits all,

Leah Bumphrey:
Absolutely.

Dennis Collins:
Wrong, absolutely wrong. We make that mistake as salespeople. We also make that mistake as managers. If we believe for one second that what worked with Jose is going to work with Suzanne, we got a problem. Sit down as a manager and have a conversation, not a formal conversation, a coffee conversation. Tell me about yourself. What makes you get up in the morning? What makes you run your race? What excites you? What are the things that are important to you? What are your hobbies? What are your sports? What do you compete? Where do you compete? How competitive are you? What’s competition for you? That is how what they want, and the more you give people what they want, the more they trust you. Isn’t that true?

Leah Bumphrey:
It’s very true. And also what they want, what you’re talking about, really resonates with me because it’s hearing what your people are saying. Don’t just ask the question and be ready with your next question. The biggest sale you’re going to make is to your people, and then they’re going out and then they’re selling your business. They’re selling on your behalf

Dennis Collins:
If they believe that you have their back –  In sales, as you know, we talk about the five questions, and one of the questions is, do you make me feel important? Do you understand my situation? If your employees believe that you make them feel important, that you raise them up and not draw them down, and if they believe that you understand their situation, they will trust you. Otherwise, good luck, otherwise. Good luck.

Leah Bumphrey:
Beautifully said.

Dennis Collins:
Is there another podcast here? Have we covered this topic, Leah?

Leah Bumphrey:
I think we’ve done a good job. I think I’m ingested to hear from our listeners what their experience have been.

Dennis Collins:
If we haven’t done a good job, meaning that we didn’t cover all the points that you’d like to hear about, you can always reach out and get us on track here. We want to hear if we’ve screwed up, if we got off track, let us know. We’ll get back on track just for you. Thanks, Leah, for another great episode.

Leah Bumphrey:
See you Dennis.

Dennis Collins:
To our listeners, our viewers, for tuning in to this episode of Connect and Convert. We’ll see you next time.

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