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I was walking through the airport on my way to business meetings in California

I saw a poster of a pair of hard core cowboy boots and denim with the word “Follower”. It immediately got my attention. The ad immediately confronted my expectations by playing on what we usually project when we think of a ‘follower’.

I was curious, who’s the leader? Sure enough, the next poster, “Leader” had a figure in a snappy suit, shirt and tie. That seemed to make sense but I wasn’t sure I saw the point.

But the ads weren’t done. The next set of posters came up, this time with the figures reversed. Now the suited guy was the follower and cowboy boots was the leader.

“Got me!”

Okay  so now I’m paying attention and I want to know who’s playing with my mind. I looked for the advertiser …www.hsbc.com. http://www.yourpointofview.com/page03.html

There was another set of contrasts on the jet way for me to chew on: a camping trip “stressful” or “relaxing” depending on your perspective. A party deck on a cruise ship, “stressful” or “relaxing” depending on your perspective.

Reminds me of conversations with many top performers and leaders.

Good performers stop or slow when it comes to the crux of labeling the moment with the client in front of them…

“close” “open”

“aggressive” “patient”

“support” “challenge”

They look for the right answer - either/ or.

But the best do it differently.

The best just plow through - they know the answer is both! New insight comes from the tension in the new spaces discovered by reconciling what looked like contradictions:

Open-close

Aggressive-patient

Tactical-strategic

Consistent-adaptive

If you can be in both spaces at once, holding the space for both to be possible in any given moment, then you are playing a top performer game.

When I was a kid, I had stacks of Batman and Superman comics in my room. While I enjoyed their stories immensely, I liked Batman the best. He was a person under that cape…not so much a superhero but a real guy - with a lot of cool gadgets.

With the huge release of The Dark Knight, and its themes of duality (Two Face is really two-faced!) it got me to thinking about how that same wrestling with duality shows up when we sell. It’s the dark and the light of selling - the positive aggressive focused energy needed to create action versus the selfless empathy who tunes into client needs. The one that wants to land the deal and the one that wants to help the client. How do you reconcile and integrate the two sides of yourself in one meeting?

While Batman’s “shadow” is more intense than most of us will ever experience, we do need to learn - like Batman and Bruce Wayne - how to wear one “hat” at a time. I say “hat” not “mask” because we don’t want to hide ourselves from clients, the way that Batman clearly feels safer doing. Because we’re not so intensely shadow-centric, we can be more balanced, more open with the differing roles we play with clients.

However, to successfully allow those different roles to emerge without sinking the deal, we need to know who we are “being” at any given moment during our meetings and interactions with clients.

• Are we being the empathic listener whose focus is to listen first and foremost to understand the clients problems and look for the best solutions, regardless of our self-interest?
• Are we being the specialized knowledge expert who provides value through applying that information for our clients’ benefit and elucidation?
• Are we being the action-oriented “progresser”of the sales relationship, leading our clients to how they might use our services to solve the problems they have?

It’s fine to wear all of these “hats” in one meeting. The trick is to know which hat to wear when and to be conscious yourself of doing so, so the “good” listener doesn’t suddenly morph into the “dark” enforcer at the wrong moment, who is suddenly perceived by the client as forcing the sale.

The first step is in knowing that we play all these multiple roles within our client relationships, so we can be responsible for each “hat”.

The second step is wearing the right “hat” at the right moment. Often sales professionals charge in ready to “progress” or download knowledge, before they’ve tuned into the client by listening to what’s up for them first.

The third is to read the subtle shifts of when the client is ready for the next “hat” - and which hat is required. That may be a bit trickier, which is why it’s nice to have a well-thought out Agenda in front of you (and the client!) that ensures you are asking the questions that create the listening space, but also hold space for the next stages as well.

Give a try in your next meeting. Observe yourself interacting with your client. Do you rush quickly through the client talking, proving you know your stuff without allowing them to fully express their issues? Do you allow time for an exploration or discovery of needs or changing needs? Or do you linger so long in listening to your client issues that you walk away realizing that no firm next steps were outlined?

Let me know what came of your experiment. What did you see about the way you wear your “hats”? How comfortable are you having two or more faces and how do you integrate them?

I never get why so many of us in business look for easy answers - a black or white declaration of where our business focus should be resting.

“It’s either productivity or excellence - which do you believe is the most important?”

Here’s what I think: it’s both.  And the tension of insisting on putting the emphasis on both forces us through the easy answer to find true insight.

Let’s set the parameters of this debate in the areas of:

• Managing results
• Activity management

Numbers or quality? The Two Sides

Managing results: No one is going to argue that results are essential and that it is critical that we set objectives and manage/measure to them.

The argument is that too often results are the only measure that gets focused on.  Basically, custodians of these businesses are driving while only looking in the rear view mirror.  It’s uncomfortable, you can’t go as fast, control of the car is harder to manage and you can only see where you have been.  Who knows what is in front?

Activity management: Business is quantitative, correct?  So let’s set numbers goals for activities.  The more activity, the more likely we are to get the desired results.  And as a general rule, that is the case. 

The risk, however, is two-fold:

• The team goes out with results-focused activity… every contact is a nail and they are the hammer. Ouch! Always being the “nail” in a conversation with a “hammer” leads to the risk of conversation-averse clients and potentials.
• Lots of activity…but is it the right activity?

Numbers or quality? The Pat Riley Approach

Pat Riley was a NCAA basketball player who was schooled at the University of Kentucky by Adolph Rupp.  Rupp was one of the most successful college coaches ever.  He was evangelical about excellence through fundamentals.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adolph_Rupp

Pat had a journey man career including playing with the Lakers, winning the NBA championship and finally playing with the Suns. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pat_Riley His coaching career was much more successful.  He has coached five NBA champions and is currently president of Miami Heat, who won the championship in 2006.

Pat had several key beliefs that framed his coaching philosophy:

• Players want to play at their highest level
• A good coach can count on players’ pride and their own drive to excel
• Every player knows their results, the league and the sporting press has reams of results data and statistics focused dominantly on results
• An unswerving commitment to focus on the fewest things that make the most difference

So his strategy fell out like this:

• Coach to the playbook
• Measure and reward “on target” performance and attempts
• Let results follow - professionals will succeed more than fail when they make attempts or “effort” at the right activities

He built a philosophy around “effort statistics”.  Once a team had the playbook down, he knew that solid, quality attempts would make the difference in end of game results.  Results and Activity. Productivity and Excellence.

So to get the most drive out of activity, he measured and rewarded:

• Attempted assists
• Attempted rebounds
• Attempted shots
• Attempted steals

Pat knew that the drive, competitiveness and professionalism of the players would be channeled through quality effort and as a consequence would drive results. If he gave positive feedback on the attempt, quality would eventually win out and results would follow.

Results are essential, but they follow. Excellence is driven through quality effort.

The key is knowing what to measure and not getting hung up on staring backwards at the results.

Smart attempts to steal the ball or bring down the rebound will pay off!

Put good things in and get good results out

Just recently, I had the extreme pleasure of working with a leading edge financial services company.

Is their market tough? YES!

Has it pushed them into a corner? NO!

First, let’s see what they’ve got going for them:

• Young, creative, aggressive leadership
• A clear and compelling vision for the future
• A powerful business model
• Edgy products pushing the market boundary
• A commitment to deliver “value-added” knowledge and consultation AND positive, measurable financial impact
• A solid energetic team of field professionals who care about the business and its success
• Those professionals are totally committed to the value of consistent processes across their company and with clients across the nation

In the months since the CEO launched our project, we have been coaching selected of their producing leaders and sales professionals. We have also been adapting our tools to their marketplace and co-developing approaches to leverage the value of the company, the people and the products.

A few of the key things we have focused on:

1. Professionals who are hungry to perform well and achieve lots are an essential part of the recipe for success that:

• Builds on their strengths and individuality
• Builds on the identity and potential of the business
• Promotes them to “be your best”
• Helps them make “value-added” concrete and practical

2. To succeed, you need to give ambitious and motivated professionals a framework. These guys and gals want a consistent process because they know that puts the company tone and identity front and center.

3. It’s not either~or: being “strategic” and “value-added” is not enough - they also need to be “transactional” and “gets deals done”.

4. Confirming and demonstrating that tools and processes do not have to be “ceilings for compliance” - that they should be firm to act as foundations for innovation and for enhancing the clients’ appreciation of individual and company strengths and style.

5. The power of repeatable patterns of dialogue and coverage will drive more meaningful conversations about client business priorities, heighten client expectations of us and create unassailable defenses against more transactional competitors.

It was one of the most gratifying and exciting workshops I have facilitated in years. I’m excited to observe how they make it their own and drive new results through the next few phases of coaching and integrating.

Now watch ‘em go!

When Walmsley & Co. meets with potential clients, whether they be selling professionals with responsibilities in a business or firm or independents with their businesses at a certain level of growth, we identify them as “Producing Leaders”.

What is a Producing Leader? Most people get “producer”- someone who produces great results. Most people get “leader” and think of it conventionally as a formal leader.

If I transported you to a floor of a services business or to get an helicopter view of professionals leading with their clients, engaging and influencing peers, service and delivery professionals… you would immediately recognize the “producing leaders” when you saw them in action.

They have drive… they have enough information to move the ball forward… they are fun and easy to work with … they make their clients and their colleagues successful… people want to be around them and they know that they will be more successful as a result!

So What’s a Producing Leader?

A Producing Leader is the high-performing selling professional who holds the responsibility for bringing in business results through sales and client relationships. They may be the head of an entrepreneurial company, a professional like a financial advisor or an specialist consultant, or someone who is the company “rainmaker” even if he or she also does the company business… i.e. a lawyer who also lands the clients, or a the head of a recruiting company who also does the placements, an executive who demonstrates the strategy every day rather than just talking about it.

You can tell the Producing Leader because he or she has some distinct responsibilities and drivers:

• Leads through results
• Leads the growth of the business
• Is Client focused
• “Makes it happen”
• Service, fulfillment and delivery professionals want to work with them and feel more successful when they do
• A producing leader’s team is explicitly focused on supporting the Producing Leader in creating results.

The Producing Leader holds the key expertise that is the trusted center of the business.

Producing Leaders have highly effective ways to connect with the lifeblood of the business - that being client relationships - while still reaching out to new ones, knowing each client is receiving the kind of care and attention needed to feel they have made a good choice.

They have a simple, effective process in place to be sure everyone is being “touched” regularly, and also “heart”… meaning that those “touches are meaningful exchanges” with clients, future clients and colleagues. The heart is where profit, pride and purpose connect; where the Producing Leader and staff are engaged and motivated.

They are positive AND progressive. People get engaged on passion and stay engaged on urgent, vital execution.

Are you a Producing Leader?

If so, ask yourself: is your business “heart” connected and engaged or are you too often going through the motions just to keep up with day-to-day business?

In future posts we’ll talk more about how to keep in the “heart” without losing effectiveness.