Marketing With Webinars With Tom Poland
Posted by John Livesay in podcast | 0 comments
One of the difficulties many businesses face is finding the perfect timing to pop the question and ask potential clients to take the leap. How do you make people have the confidence and trust to work with you? In this episode, multiple best-selling marketing author, Tom Poland, joins John Livesay to reveal his unique answer: webinars. Tom shares with us his book, Marketing with Webinars, to guide us into the key benefits of using this method and what you can do to successfully get people to your lane. What is the Goldilocks marketing? How can you become more relatable? What role does storytelling play in the process? Why is reciprocity the most powerful force in marketing? Tom gives the answers and more in this discussion.
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Listen to the podcast here
Marketing With Webinars With Tom Poland
Our guest is Tom Poland. He’s a multiple best-selling marketing author. Over the past 41 years, he started and sold five businesses, taking three of them international. He has led teams of over 100 people with annual revenues of more than $20 million. In his book, which is called Marketing with Webinars, he reveals the unique method that has helped thousands of organizations globally enjoy the fulfillment and prosperity that comes with a weekly flow of high-quality inbound client inquiries. Tom, welcome to the show.
John, thanks for having me.
Let everybody know besides your accent, where are you located in the world?
Just a correction first. I don’t have the accent, the Americans have. I am in the center of the universe, which is little Castaways Beach in Queensland, Australia.
It’s such a beautiful country. I’ve been up to the Barrier Reef. I know it well and lucky to be in all that beauty. Tom, I like to ask my guests to take us back to their own story of origin. You can go back to childhood, school, wherever you want to start the story, your interest in communications or marketing. It’s always fascinating to hear those stories are rarely linear.
[bctt tweet=”We’ve got to give people an opportunity to get to know us before we even pop the question of maybe talking about working together.” username=”John_Livesay”]
If I went and clocked back 41 years, I started out as a young management consultant. As a 24-year-old setting up shop as an independent management consultant. I was competing against the likes of the big fours that were then, the PricewaterhouseCoopers and Coopers & Lybrand. Way back then also, if you didn’t have a brick and mortar office with a receptionist behind a typewriter, you didn’t have a business. I had the overhead of a brick and mortar office and I had mortgages, three of them. I had children and I was broke. It doesn’t take too long to figure out that if you’re going to set yourself up as a 24-year-old management consultant marketing in competition against some big brands, you better get bloody good at marketing. You better get good fast. I bought every book, I went to every seminar and put everything in place. It didn’t work. I was going broke. Long story, I survived. I ended up thriving, but it was because I figured out there was one vital difference between almost all the marketing information and teaching that I was consuming and what would actually work. That one vital piece of information could be summed up by me saying, “When you’re marketing services advice or Software as a Service, it’s far more like you’re proposing marriage in your marketing than it is selling a washing machine.”
I was learning from people that were selling cars, real estate or dry-cleaning services. I was suggesting that a prospect enters into a long-term relationship with me so that I could give them advice. That meant the direct mail letters and whatever else we use back then, radio ads, “Come and get it, call this number and we’ll give you one.” None of that worked because I had to set up a scenario where people could have a first date with me. Before I propose, we talk about business. That first night became the event. It became the seminar, the workshop, the conference. I found that was a tremendously effective way to get new clients in the door. I reflected on that and I thought about the oldest, most successful marketing method in the world, which is speaking to groups of people.
If you have any doubts about that, ask yourself how many clients Buddha, Christ, Muhammad have. There are billions of them. All those three guys did was speak to groups of people and often quite small groups but it produced billions of followers. They didn’t even write anything. How I got to marketing webinars goes way back to that origin story. We’ve morphed from physical events into webinars mainly because I’m lazy. I got sick of running around the planet. I did have 500 physical events over those years. You’ll hire a conference center, send out direct mail letters, give everyone tickets, fill a room and struck your stuff on the stage for a couple of hours, hand out feedback forms and pick up the clients. It works well but it’s complicated. Long story short, when you’re marketing services advice or development software, you’ve got to give your prospect, your audience an opportunity to get to know you, much the same way as if I said, my now wife, I could have proposed to her at first sight, but I didn’t. I was only smart enough to know that that wouldn’t work. I asked her out for a date. One thing led to another. I think that’s analogous to the consultant, the coach, marketing services. We’ve got to give people an opportunity to get to know us before we even pop the question of maybe talking about working together.
For those first requests, I have found that the smaller they are, the easier it is. You don’t go from, “Fill out this form.” Maybe say, “If you want this free PDF, give me your email.” It’s like a little baby step. The risk is low and the reward is hopefully some good content as a sample.
It’s a bit like Goldilocks marketing. It could be too hot, it could be too cold. It can be just right. The right part depends on where the prospect is at because some of them want to know, where do I order? Almost literally they buy more of my books. I’ve got webinars. “Do we have to go through a consult? I want to work with you.” Those are the hot ones, and this is about 3%. Not a lot, but if you have enough volume, it can become significant. We find about 12% want to explore deeply. These are 12% of the people who comprised our audiences who want to explore deeply. They’ll read every word on a sales page. They’ll delve say for every second of a webinar or so on. That is what I call the explorers.
Marketing with Webinars
The 85% are the wanderers. They want to download the free PDF or the one-page blueprint. If you want to cater for the whole marketplace, you do need more than one marketing medium. The one I find that is the best, the Goldilocks. That’s about the right temperature is the webinar. If you align the title of the webinar with the benefit of working with you then you’re going to attract the right people. My webinars are about marketing with webinars. My book is about marketing with webinars, my program is about marketing with webinars and that’s an alignment. You think about this, we talked about how we’ve got to give people an opportunity to get to know us before we propose.
It’s like the first date. You can do speed dating. That’s not quite enough. That’s like social media. Six minutes and the clock goes, “Tell me all about yourself, I’ll do the same.” It’s not long enough to get to know someone. You could ask people to sign up for a six-week boot camp. It’s probably too much, but the webinars like the night out on the town. Let’s have dinner, let’s have a show, maybe have some coffee and we’ll go from there. They’ve got to register. It’s going to be an hour of their lives that they’re prepared to commit. If they’re prepared to put that much skin in the game, it’s about right for them at the end of that hour and 90 minutes, if everything’s clicked to reach out and book a time to talk with you about becoming a client. That’s why I call it Goldilocks marketing because we were hitting the sweet spot for the people that are ready to explore further.
I was doing one and somebody who’s a friend was listening, and he said, “Do you ever worry about giving away so much free good content that people might think?” I have my answer, but I would love to hear yours and I’ll share what I said to him. An open-loop we call that in storytelling. It’s creating a little suspense of, “I wonder what the answer is.”
My take on that is this. The simple answer is to give it all away, but there’s a caveat. I often start my webinars with a picture, a point of view photo of someone driving a beautiful car and you can see the dashboard and the screen, everything else. I said, “This webinar is going to be a bit like a test drive of the car.” Bringing them to the showroom. We can look under the hood and pop the trunk and fit you in the driver’s seat. We’re not going to build the car. We don’t have time to do that, but I can show you the car. If you want to build one together, we can talk about that later.
Don’t worry. You still going to get great value. You’re going to get lots of ideas and what to look like on a car. It’s going to be worthwhile. Please do understand that while some are paid to answer every single question, it’s not actually building the car. You will need help with that. If you want to work with someone else, work with me. I don’t mind. Please know that is a pivot to it. With that caveat, I’m happy to tell them everything.
[bctt tweet=”You don’t actually have to be smart to be successful. You only have to be smart enough to know how dumb you are.” username=”John_Livesay”]
The other thing to think about is what I say to my clients when they asked me this question, “Do you want to work with people who have the money to pay you and who are smart, or would you rather work with people that are broke or dumb?” It’s like, “It’s a no-brainer there, Tom.” If people are smart and they had the money having attended your webinar, they will want to work with you. If they don’t have the money, they can’t so give them lots of value because it’s good karma. I can help ignorant, but I can’t help stupid.
My response back to my friend who said that was, “I don’t worry about that because even if I show people step-by-step what to do, you still need help.” Everyone needs help. Crafting it, refining it, practicing it, honing it, whether you’re right. You’ve written a book, you need an editor. You don’t try to edit your own stuff. The same thing is true with everything. Reading a book on how to write a book, you don’t eliminate the need for the editor.
It’s like when we go out to the Australian Open watching Djokovic win it. I said to my wife, “I’m going to get his book because I’ve seen him play. I’ll go on the pro-tech.” I can see it how he’s done that. That doesn’t look too hard. I do always add that caveat, John, which is, this is not as easy as it might look.
I love that because you have to manage expectations. People either have one extreme or the other. They either think in the case of storytelling, “You’re either a born storyteller and I’m not so I can’t possibly learn it, or it’s easy for you because you are a born storyteller.” They don’t realize the skill, the training and the practice.
There are many subtleties and nuances to storytelling. To get to a level of professionalism, to get to a level of impact, you are going to need help from a specialist. It’s every other single specialization in the world, whether you’re a lawyer, an accountant or a software developer. It’s no good telling me how you do that. I’m not going to be able to do it. I would need your guidance. People that have money will want to reach out and work with you because they understand that.
Marketing With Webinars: If we can be humble enough to recognize that we only have to be smart enough to know how dumb we are, we can reach out and get help.
I took an Accounting class in school, but I certainly don’t want to do my own taxes. I watched somebody cut somebody’s hair, I’m not going to cut my own hair. It’s fascinating.
To finish this off, there’s a little-known secret of success. You don’t actually have to be smart to be successful. People think you’ve got to be like Bill Gates or Zuckerberg smart. You don’t. You only have to be smart enough to know how dumb you are. If you’re smart enough to know how dumb you are, then you get help. That’s what I’ve done for years. I’ve started trying to learn from the marketing masters because I knew I wasn’t good at it. I knew I was dumb at it. I needed to upskill on that. I think if we can be humble enough to recognize that we only have to be smart enough to know how dumb we are, we can reach out and get help.
That will be a great tweet. If you are smart enough to know how dumb you are, you get help. One of the things you talk about are these immutable elements. One is what you touched on about, you’re not Hugh Jackman. Most of us are not famous. Our brands aren’t famous and so forth. It’s a bit of hubris to act like we don’t need to flirt or date. That’s where we have these stages. You talk about these four Rs. Rapport, you get respect, relatability and reciprocity. Relatability, let’s double click on that word and we’ll go to the last one. What is something that someone could do to become more relatable, in your mind?
They should work with you and understand that the story is a great way for having an audience feel like you can relate to where they’re at, the before and after part.
Revealing some of your pain points and not coming across perfect is all a big part of that.
[bctt tweet=”Reciprocity is the least spoken about and yet the most powerful force in marketing full-stop.” username=”John_Livesay”]
You would know better than me.
This reciprocity factor, this concept of giving before you get is my definition of it. What does it mean for you?
It’s the before and after photo of the weight loss thing. You look at the photo before and think, “That’s me and I hate it.” You go to the after, “That’s what I want to be.” That’s a story I told you being a management consultant, having the overheads, going broke, reaching out for help, not working, and discovering, that’s part of my story. People go, “That’s where I’m at. I’m on a left-hand side of the Canyon.” I could see over the other side of the Canyon. It’s people who leads in and how do I get there? People can relate to that. The unpredictable nature of marketing, sometimes random acts of marketing, people can write to that. “I do that. I go run at a client, so I go to meetings and hope to get lucky.” Commercially wise. That’s the whole reliability thing. Somewhere early in the webinar, you want to be able to tell you the story in such a way that people can go, “He used to be where I’m at now and now he’s where I want to get to. I better listen up because he’s going to show me how to get there.” That’s a big part of relatability.
Reciprocity in my view is the least spoken about and yet the most powerful force in marketing full-stop. What is reciprocity? Let me tell you a story. A neighbor calls and I answer the phone, and they say, “Why don’t you come for dinner Friday nights?” “It sounds terrific. What time? What should we bring?” “Don’t bring anything,” she says. Me being a man goes, “She means what she said.” I said to my wife, “Are you up for dinner with Russell and Sally on Friday night?” She goes, “What are we bringing?” I said, “It’s okay. She said don’t bring anything.” My wife looks at me and she says, “Tom, are you so stupid? How old are you again? Eight.” It doesn’t mean don’t bring anything. We take wine. We take chocolates. We take flowers. Why? It’s because of reciprocity. Giving us a beautiful dinner, invite us into their home, but they’re going to clean the thing for half the day, if there is anything like my wife and so on.
She feels she needs to do something to even the score. The next morning, we wake up, on the front doorsteps there’s a pot plant because we went over the top and our neighbors have to even the score. This is like a perpetual giving machine. It never stops. That’s an example. Psychological reciprocity typically means it’s a fancy way of saying, “In our mind, we like to keep the score of giving even.” It is unconscious and it is powerful beyond belief. In the world of marketing, it means if I do something cool for someone else that’s genuinely helpful, they will feel unconsciously compelled to want to even that score up all other things being equal. If I have a Hitler youth party do something for me, I don’t want to even the score. When I say a lot of the things being equal. You’re interviewing me for your show, which is terrific. It’s a great example of reciprocity. At the end of the show, I would love to reach out and say, “How can I help you, John?” Reciprocity. It’s not going in with strings attached. It’s going in with extremely low expectations of a return on that giving, but a high expectation for the management of the giving.
Marketing With Webinars: Understand that the story is a great way for having an audience feel like you can relate to where they’re at, the before and after part.
The other thing you talk about is to be consistent in what you do. You alluded to that before. The book, your website, everything is about webinar marketing and consistency. I love it. Where I want to take you and the readers is when we get in a situation when someone asks us to do something for a famous company for a lot of money that’s not in our expertise, and you’re thinking to yourself, “Can I figure out how to do this? Can I suddenly become an expert in whatever it is that I am not an expert in so that I could shake and maneuver myself into this little box that they are describing, which I actually know somebody else who is good at that?” I was in that situation and I said to the event planner, “Here’s what I’m hearing you need. This, this and this. You want someone who’s comfortable entertaining people going out into the audience, 1,500 people and razzle, dazzling them, talking about customer service and getting into all of the nitty-gritty of operations and all these other things.”
I said, “My sweet spot is storytelling and an audience of salespeople, not people who run a quick-service restaurant.” I do know someone. That’s what they do, they perform, they’re an entertainer and they’re also a speaker. They’re getting everybody clapping. The irony was, they then started to change the parameters to fit my niche. “Maybe we could have you in a breakout room then.” I thought how funny. I’m like, “It’s not the number of people. It’s the audience and the topic that I was saying no to but, okay.” I’m curious if you’ve ever had people approach you going, “Can you also help us launch this product?” Whatever else they might ask you to do that you go, “I didn’t know how to do this well, but I’m not going to pretend I know how to do everything well.”
If I want the clock back 30 something years and you can have a look at my overdraft, and you asked me that time, “Can you do juggling on stage in front of 10,000 people for half an hour?” “Yes.” Realistically without wishing to seem too pure about it right now, I would say no to that request if someone asked me that exact same question. “Can you go through and make them laugh?” No, that’s not me. Call John. Way back when I was desperate for money, I probably would have said yes and figured out how to get paid and do the best job I can.
The yes-no response to that is dependent on how hungry I am. A beggar on the streets in Calcutta, if you ask them to do cartwheels for $10, they’d probably go, “Yeah.” I would say no right now because cashflow is pretty good. We’ve had a few years of successful business. I did have a friend of mine who did a lot of work on Twitter, LinkedIn and had millions of followers decided to focus on LinkedIn. She said she had a request to speak on Twitter a day after she made that decision to focus on LinkedIn. She turned down $25,000 gig. I would have said yes to that. She knew the subject. She had made a mental decision to make a break. That’s fine. Take the $25,000. You can deliver the value. It’s good money. It’s meat and drink for you. Go get them, girl. That’s what I would’ve done. People will draw the line in different places, but I have respected the decision all the same.
What I found fascinating with that, and I never tested it, was when you pull back and go, “I’m not sure this is for me.” Sometimes people pull in even, and they go, “I’m going to give you someone else.” “That’s the person we want is somebody who cares.” I phrased it in a way and I’m like, “I want you to be a success. If I’m not going to give you what you’re looking for, then I might not be the right person.” That takes a lot of awareness, confidence. You each decide, I heard Matthew McConaughey talking about his own career in these terms. That’s why I think it’s so relevant for everyone. Pick a niche, double down on it. He’d been known as the romantic comedy guy for years making all these movies with a shirt off making a lot of money. He decided he didn’t want to do that anymore. He’d made enough that he never had to work again if he didn’t want to. For six months he got more offers in that niche. He kept saying no and gets millions. He still said no. It was eleven more months for a total of twenty months before he finally started getting an offer for the serious roles that he’d always wanted to do. I thought, “We don’t all have that luxury,” but mentally it’s a great story in terms of consistency. If you’re in a box you don’t like to be in, it’s up to you to get out of it. It’s my takeaway from that story.
[bctt tweet=”You’ve got to make sure that the majority of your lead generation is in-house.” username=”John_Livesay”]
The big thing that helped him was the luxury of having millions of dollars in a bank account. That’s what I was referring to before. Years ago, my bank account was in overdraft. I was desperate. I probably would have said yes to about anything. These days you don’t have to. Where you draw the line might move. There’s a terrific book and I had a chance to have a preview of it. It’s the Greenlights, which is Matthew McConaughey’s book.
Your third element is, we must control our own oxygen supply. We’ve all heard that premise. If you are traveling with a child, put the oxygen mask on yourself first, not the child. It seems somewhat counterintuitive, but maybe even selfish if you think it through a bit. If you pass out, the kid doesn’t know what to do. In terms of business being leads, being a supply of oxygen, how do we help people make sure their lead supply doesn’t stop?
What I’m essentially saying there is that you’ve got to make sure that the majority of your lead generation is in-house. You can push the buttons and pull the levers. I’ve heard a lot, and it’s a tempting value proposition is, “Tom, if you could get me all the appointments, please. If you could set those up or if someone could do my marketing for me because I like to work with client,” which most of us do. The problem with that is if you outsource it to an agency, about 85% of the time, you will pay the money and they won’t get you the results. After 3 to 6 months you go, “I don’t want to keep doing that.” You write them the Dear John letter, “Dear John, I taught you, it’s me. I need to put this on pause for a while.”
Fifteen percent of the time would deliver results, you create a dependency. That dependency is dangerous. Someone once said the scariest number of businesses is the number one. One supplier, one client, etc. If you have one organization that you are totally financially dependent on for the supply of all your business and they go over or they sell, COVID hits, who knew? It’s like you’ve outsourced your oxygen supply. You wouldn’t outsource the oxygen supply to your body because if that third-party supplier fell over, you’re dead. The difference with the business is the death takes longer, but you’re still as vulnerable. By all means, if you have a great agency that can supply leads and they’re prepared to get started, especially if they’re prepared to give you a split of results that you pay them from a split of results, not money out upfront, do that. Make sure that they’re not supplying any more than 1/3 of your new business requirements. You’d have to have the rest of the house otherwise you’re vulnerable.
Any last thoughts or tips that you want to leave us with before we talk about how people can follow you? The book is called Marketing with Webinars.
The best thing people can do is buy the book, Marketing with Webinars because it’s the most prescriptive book I’ve ever written. It’s the sixth book I’ve written. It goes into the most detail. I go into all sorts of tech equipment to get and what not to get platforms. It will be going to things like titles and every single slide. When they get the book, they’ll have access to my 31 template slides, which is the same 31 slide template all my clients use. When I give it to my clients, I said, “When you bring it back, I don’t want to see 32 slides.” You can have any type of color font you would like, as long as it’s black, any background. It’s prescriptive. That’s what I’m saying.
They’re going to get a lot of value out of that, but other than that, I think the big thing is to make your strategic commitment to do your marketing and webinars. I do all of mine. It is the combination of the most efficient and effective marketing medium. It combines that oldest, most proven marketing message in the world, what I mentioned before, Buddha, Christ, Muhammad, billions of followers. I was speaking to groups of people with the world’s newest marketing medium, which is internet. It’s got the best blend of the old and the new in terms of marketing.
What’s the best website for people to find you?
Leadsology.guru, there are a lot of free resources there. There’s also LeadGenDemo.com because that’s where they can sign up for our monthly lead generation demo using marketing webinars. It’s completely free. People can come along. The website is a good place to start.
Tom, thank you for not only sharing wisdom but humor. What a fun way to have the medicine go down as they say. That’s why I’m sure you’re so successful. Thank you.
Thank you. All the best.
Important Links
- Marketing with Webinars
- Greenlights
- Leadsology.guru
- LeadGenDemo.com
- Better Selling Through Storytelling Method Online Course
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The Holistic Revenue Strategy With Mary Grothe
Posted by John Livesay in podcast | 0 comments
With every business opportunity, maximizing your yield is a no-brainer and that’s where the holistic revenue strategy comes into play. Mary Grothe, the CEO of Sales BQ joins this episode to dive into the details of how this strategy works. Recognizing that in the world of business nobody is safe from rejection, she gives some important tips and pointers on how to recover and cope. Mary also stresses on the role your mental mindset plays in this and how your actions are connected with your emotional state. Listen in as she talks about what it entails when you become a leader especially during this challenging time and what you can do to bring out the best in the people that follow you.
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Listen to the podcast here
The Holistic Revenue Strategy With Mary Grothe
Do you realize that the skills that maybe got your company to $5 million are not the same skills that are going to get it to scale to $50 million? Mary Grothe knows this. She is the Founder and CEO of a company called Sales BQ, which stands for Behavioral Quotient. She and her team just don’t come in and analyze what’s wrong, they also stay with you and fix what’s wrong so you can scale. Enjoy the episode.
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Our guest is Mary Grothe. She is a former number one mid-market B2B sales representative who after selling millions in revenue and breaking multiple records had formed Sales BQ. It’s a Denver-based firm of fractional revenue leaders who serve companies nationwide by profitably rebuilding their marketing, sales and customer success departments. They do this by getting to the root of revenue problems, rebuilding infrastructure, developing talent, and holistically growing their revenue at sometimes rapid paces. Mary, welcome to the show. Let’s go into your story of origin, which is always fascinating. You can take us back to childhood, college or wherever you got the concept that, “I’m good at selling or I’m good at figuring out problems.”
I became an expert problem solver in my childhood. I didn’t have the glamorous childhood that some people have. I grew up in the performing arts, which was one cool aspect of how I was raised. My dad was an actor and an opera singer. My mom was a classical pianist and choral director. I grew up in Northwest Indiana. I was on the stage every year in productions and musical theater. I chained triple threat, acting, singing and dancing. There were some neat components in my childhood. There were also some negative points. I had an alcoholic mother and there was a lot of abuse in my family growing up, and it shaped me. I learned how to be a complex problem solver. I have a high EQ, emotional intelligence, and I learned how to navigate through tough situations at a young age. The combination of having to fight for survival many times and figure out how to get myself out of situations. Couple that with the creative childhood that I had being on the stage and wanting to be performing in the lights. It was a unique combination to shape me into the number one salesperson. Who would have guessed?
It was a fourteen-year journey in Indiana and then my parents lost the performing arts school. They ended up filing bankruptcy, running away from a lot of problems. They threw us all in a moving van with little notice and moved us out to Colorado. We started our lives over, but they couldn’t afford to pay for my brother and me. I started working at a young age as a bagger at a grocery store out here called King Soopers. I started my first job on the day that I turned fifteen, which is a couple of months after we moved out to Colorado. By the time I turned sixteen, I was fully supporting myself. I look back at that time, and it was challenging and hard, but let’s talk about the good here.
I have time management skills and I’m fully financially independent. I had a work ethic like nobody’s business. I focused on my academics and ended up with a 4.2 GPA in high school. I continued dancing. Of the three talents, dancing was my strongest. Life has a funny way of happening. I did have a scholarship to CU Boulder to be in their dance program. I got a minor in dance and a major in molecular, cellular and developmental biology. It’s a good thing I ended up not doing that because I can’t even pronounce it, but I went for one semester. I got in a car accident in my senior year of high school. My poor body was damaged and broken from the car accident. I was broken on the inside. Because dance had been my identity, it was a safe place for me and I had great aspirations of being a professional dancer. It was gone and I had to reinvent myself. It’s hard to do that when you’re eighteen and you don’t have a strong family foundation. I was completely on my own at that point and it was scary.
Holistic Revenue Strategy: Whether you think you can or you can’t, you’re right.
I’m thankful because the world has a crazy way of raising you if you let it. I fell into some dark times and things that weren’t that great that we can fast forward through. When I was 22, I was welcomed into Corporate America. I had come off a few years of interesting part-time jobs. I was able to secure a position as a District Sales Assistant for a mid-market sales team of eight people covering three states. It was for a payroll company called Paychex, which is a big Fortune 1000 company. I went in as the DSA, District Sales Assistant in the Denver office. I happened to be reporting to the number one sales manager in the country and working with the number one sales team. I got put on the fast track for over two years. I had no college degree and no professional experience. I just went all in. I said, “I want to be on the sales team.” They thought I was crazy and they’re like, “Okay, sure.” I fought and fought. I learned the profession. I went out in the field and started taking on responsibility for the salespeople. I had all the hunger and desire to make it happen. I got put on the mid-market team two years in and I became the number one rep in 30 days, and I maintained that.
My first year’s quota was $150,000. I sold $758,000, more than numbers 2 and 3 combined. In the second year, they cut my territory in half. They doubled my quota and asked me to train reps and managers across the country. I sold $850,000 in my second year. At that point, I said, “I like sales a lot.” I went and took a VP of Sales and Marketing position with one of my clients. It’s a small company at about $125,000 in annual revenue. It’s still in the startup phase. I went on and took their products and services, repackaged them, and put them in a way that the target audience could understand. I took it to the market and the sales and marketing team quadrupled the company’s revenue in seven months.
I set them up and positioned them for investment. I got the heck out of there and said, “I want to do this for a living.” I started my first consulting firm for three years with 36 business owners. It grew all their companies. I wrote a book and that’s funny now that I look back at it because I was 27 and I knew everything. It’s super weird. I wrote this cute little book, Extreme Business Building: From Concept to Profit in 60 Days. I became a starving entrepreneur and I made a lot of rookie mistakes. I didn’t know how to charge for my services, how to delegate, and how to say no. I said yes to everything. I was working with startups and entrepreneurs that wanted to pay me in hope like gift cards, Chipotle or whatever.
Equity is my favorite offer.
[bctt tweet=”You have to get to the root cause of what the insecurity is, or what the fear is behind rejection. It’s different for everybody.” username=”John_Livesay”]
I was lucky to get the gift card. They all had the hope of a dream of equity and I fell for it a few times. I met my now-husband in 2013 and I was like, “I’m going to go back and be a top producer again. I’ll make a lot of money, buy a house, get married, have a baby, and then I’ll go be an entrepreneur.” That’s what I did. Three more years at the payroll company, I crushed it and sold millions. In my last year, I finished number seven in the country that I worked nine months out of the year. I had a baby and sold one of the top 10 largest deals in history. I sold it at a full price, no discount and I loved it. I love selling. I love paychecks. I’m thankful for the opportunity I had with them. The training there is tremendous. I turned out to be an amazing salesperson. Now as Sales BQ CEO, we’ve helped over 100 companies reshape their path to revenue. It’s the most beautiful journey I’ve had an opportunity to be on. Thank you for having me here. I know we’ll probably unpack and dig into a lot of that, but I want to tell you the story.
The first point I want to dig into is that your childhood taught you resilience and not being afraid of rejection, which are two of the biggest challenges young people have. We can probably spend the whole show talking about them but we won’t. I know this concept of fear of rejection because you and I have won awards for the best salesperson of the year. Condé Nast for me and you with your success in crushing those quotas. I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention that you have your own podcast called that. This concept of not taking rejection personally because we have to somehow frame that, what I have said is I don’t take it personally from the standpoint of, “I don’t reject myself nor do I reject what I’m selling if somebody says no to me.” My old way was like, “Maybe somebody else could have gotten them to say yes,” or “Maybe they’re right. Maybe this other product or service is better than what I have.” I realized that I’m not a bad salesperson and what I’m selling is not bad. It’s just not a fit for them. How did you handle the fear of rejection? How do you coach people to not be afraid of rejection?
You have to get to the root cause of the insecurity or the fear behind it because it’s different for everybody. When I started in sales, I had that momentous build-up of two years. I got the role and I went to two weeks of corporate training. I’m top of the class and had everything memorized. I could demo the product and have the script memorized. I was a bright young student back then. I get back to my desk and the reality hit. I’m staring at the phone like, “I have to do this thing called sales. I made it to this point. What do you mean I don’t just get the salary and the title? I have to earn it.”
I’m staring at the phone and sweating bullets like, “What do I do?” I was mortified. It wasn’t to make the call. It was, “What do I do if they pick up? What do I say to them?” I went into my manager’s office and had a funny moment. I’m like, “This is the day that I’ve been fighting for and I’m done.” I can’t move and I’m paralyzed like, “What do I do?” He’s like, “Go call ten of our existing clients with no sales agenda. Just ask them these three questions. Why did you choose the product and service? Number two, what’s the biggest gain since you’ve been here? Give me an ROI statement on what we’ve done for you. How is your life better because we’re in it? Three, why do you remain a client even when the competition is beating down your door? What’s the staying factor for you?” I didn’t get through all ten calls. I just got through a handful and it was everything that I needed. I realized that my fear was letting them down.
Holistic Revenue Strategy: Attitudes are contagious. Make sure yours is worth catching.
Stemming from the way that I was raised as a byproduct of my family situation, I believe in performance-based love. “If I do this well, I can get attention, and then maybe I will feel that glimmer of love that I was looking for in my whole upbringing.” The only way I could get attention in a busy family of four was I had to do something remarkable. I had to outperform everyone else and I was competitive. I was the youngest of four so I had to do something. I had an age disadvantage too and I had to do it better than everybody else. I always wanted to make people’s lives better because I was in it. Oftentimes, I did not earn that. When I did, the addiction to that was amazing. The opposite of that is I had a fear of disappointing people, being a nuisance to them, letting them down, and having them view me as anything other than a value add in their life.
The fear came from, “I’m scared to death that they answer the phone and I can’t deliver a talk track that’s something of value where they would say, ‘I’m glad you called me.’” I backed into it and listened to those Voice of the Customer interviews that I did to hear how our product and service brought value to that type of customer. I simply transitioned my thinking into, “We do great things here. People love us and we made their life better. Who doesn’t want to have that conversation?” My confidence changed and my whole outlook changed. My mental mindset shifted to trigger a positive emotional state and have excitement. I started making these calls and I’m like, “I hope they answer because I can’t wait to learn about these people. I don’t know if they’re fit for us or not but if they are, how much better could their life be?”
It was a complete shift for me. It’s not that telemarketing is my favorite thing to do ever but I removed the fear of it. If they declined my lovely invitation to have a meeting or conversation, I didn’t take it personally. I saw it as an opportunity to say, “When is the right time? When do you normally evaluate this? I’m fine and understanding if you’re set and you’re happy, and that’s great. I’m calling you and you’re not calling me. I would anticipate if it was good, it would have been an inbound email in my inbox, but you’re not. That’s fine and it’s okay today, but when is a more appropriate time for us to be having this conversation?” I’m inviting myself into their world but then connecting with them, learning about them, and genuinely getting to know my prospects and my clients. That’s how I’m getting over the fear of rejection, which is getting to the root cause of what was causing the fear of picking up the phone.
What you’re saying is what I teach when I give talks to sales teams which is, “No now doesn’t mean no forever.” That’s the concise way to say that. That’s a nice takeaway for everybody. How about resilience? Let’s talk about that. This ability to pick ourselves back up. I have studied this when I gave my TEDx Talk, Be The Lifeguard of Your Own Life! When you get laid off, how do you reinvent yourself and get rehired? We’re all dealing with the need for resilience during the disruption of this pandemic. Part of the research I found, and I’d be fascinated to know if this matches your experiences in working with many different companies, is it’s not about, will you get back up? It’s how fast you get back up. There’s been all this research even with real estate agents who lose a big deal, for example. The top performers are the ones that shake it off and go forward. The other people who are struggling to make their numbers keep talking about it for sometimes, months afterwards. They’re not even aware they’re doing it. I wanted to get your insights and tips on how do you help people become more resilient.
[bctt tweet=”There are going to be some circumstances that are going to hurt worse than others, but it’s meeting that problem head-on and identifying it.” username=”John_Livesay”]
I’m on both sides of this because I’ve had a couple of deals and situations that have knocked me back bad and is not typical for Mary Grothe. Those have knocked me out of the game for a little period of time more so than usual. I have a good bounce-back factor. I’m human and I’m real. Everybody reading this, there are going to be some circumstances that are going to hurt worse than others, but it’s meeting that problem head-on and identifying it. Let me explain this to salespeople specifically. An abundance mentality will help. If you are in desperation and justification mode, you’re holding on to a deal that you don’t even have anyway. You’re holding on to it and you’re looking at your pipeline. All of your eggs are in this basket and you’re saying, “I’m connected to the outcome of this.” It’s the wrong way to go about a sale. As a high performing salesperson, you should have many qualified deals in your pipeline and this abundance mindset that, “Even if I lose this one, I’m going to get more. There’s more coming to me.”
There’s a whole way of approaching a glass half full and a glass half empty. It’s your perspective. Resilience comes from your mindset. An abundance mindset helps us not get emotionally triggered in a negative state that will hurt our actions. I’m going to jump in here. BQ is Behavioral Quotient. If you imagine a wheel right now, at the top is the mental mindset. Your mental mindset triggers your emotional state, and your actions stem from how you are, emotionally. If you’re down because you lost a deal and you’re discouraged, upset, and you’re in this funk, what actions come out of that? Not good ones. You’re not in a mentality or in an optimistic and encouraging state that good things come out of that. You’re manifesting worse because you’re in a funk. When you’re in the mental mindset stage, you have a piece of information that enters your mind. When that happens, we tell ourselves a story. We’re human. We put out our frame of reference and we interpret the information that went into our mind. We start telling ourselves a story and that’s going to trigger an emotion. It could be positive and it could be negative.
Based on that is where the action stemmed from, and actions yield your performance. Your resilience and being able to bounce back from something is one, you have to separate stories from the facts. Yes, you lost a deal. The story may all of a sudden be, “I needed this deal. I’m already behind you. I don’t know how I’m going to get back after this. This is awful.” You start blaming other people. “If only so and so had done that. That guy screwed over my demo. I can’t believe that they brought in the IT guy into the meeting. You’re so negative. You discredited everything and threw me off.” You start making excuses and you go down a path. It is very woe is me.
It’s all about everybody else that’s out to get you and you get in this funk. You can’t create good from that. You have to go back to the top, change the mental mindset, change the attitude, and rework the emotional state to have strong resilience or bounce back factor. Going back to my comment about having an abundance mindset and a lot of deals in your pipeline. That will help you at the top because if a piece of information comes into your head that, “I lost the deal,” immediately, your frame of reference and story behind it can be, “I’ve got eight other deals that are slated to close this month.” You avoid everything that you went through. It’s a big cycle. It’s a big wheel. You just have to start at the top. It’s the quote, “Whether you think you can or you can’t, you’re right.”
Holistic Revenue Strategy: If you expect excellence, be excellence. If you expect kindness and grace, be those things.
One of the tweets we’re going to make is, “Abundance mindset allows you to be resilient.” Behind the mindset is not being attached to anyone outcome. It gives you such a sense of freedom. The other one I like is, “Don’t play the blame game,” which we’re going to make another tweet from what you said. There’s a lot of value here and this concept of calling clients up like, “Why’d you hire us? What do you like? Why do you stay?” When I was giving a talk to Jaguar Land Rover salespeople, you think, “They’re selling luxury cars. How hard could that be?” They still deal with rejection or another dealership is stealing their deal or whatever it is.
I said, “You’ve got to cleanse your palate like in a meal base sometimes between courses. The way to best cleanse your palate so the next phone call or the next person that walks in, you’re not negative, is to call up an existing person that bought a car from you and say, “How’s it going? What do you like most about the car?” Remember that feeling and be in that mindset. You’re not trying to sell them anything. Sometimes, they might even give a referral. Who knows? At least you’re resetting your own mindset that way. You and I are so much in sync on this. It’s fantastic. Let’s talk about your big clients. You work with companies that have grown from maybe getting to $5 million. The skills that got them there are not the skills that will keep them there. That’s another great quote. Enter Sales BQ. Tell us what is it you’re able to do for these companies who are stuck and probably coming from a place of fear that if they don’t figure this out, the board of directors might replace them.
There are a lot of different areas that they could be fearful of. It’s a fun conversation for us to have with the CEOs right out of the gate. When I first meet a CEO, there are two parts of the conversation. One is I’m doing my due diligence and asking myself, “Is this somebody we can work with, will enjoy working with and can drive great results?” On the other side, I’m listening to what they’re telling me but I’m trying to read between the lines to identify the root cause of the problem. One thing that we are experts in is identifying the root cause of the revenue problems and not trying to solve surface-level problems.
For example, I’m a huge fan of sales training. We do some sales training at Sales BQ. I got hired for great sales training engagements and I have great respect for sales trainers. Sales training is one component of the revenue ecosystem. You can train a rep and teach them something fantastic, but you put them back into their old environment where the marketing department sends over terrible leads. They’re on an old outdated CRM, don’t have any automation, they have to manually send emails, and the company doesn’t invest in a prospect database. Why are we training up a sales team? We have to solve the ecosystem problems first, then you train the salespeople to be these sales ninjas. You put them back in a high-performing environment, then you watch what they can do.
[bctt tweet=”Your mental mindset triggers your emotional state and your actions stem from how you are emotionally.” username=”John_Livesay”]
I listen to what they’re thinking the problem is, and then we have to dig into that so far to figure it out. For us, our process is we have a 30-day build phase. The first week is our kickoff and our observing shadow week, which could be anywhere between 20 to 40 hours worth of meetings. We are deep diving and learning the company’s product and service, their competition, and also who they sell to their ICP, Ideal Client Profile. We’re trying to understand the construct of the revenue flow through the organization based on the buyer and customer journey, and then we see how revenue is aligned with sales and into customer success. The underlying technology layer, which we call RevOps, Revenue Operations, is a combination of marketing ops, sales ops and customer ops.
We look at the whole flow through. We try not to silo separate like, “Let’s solve your marketing problem. That’s great. We inject a whole bunch of leads, and then the salespeople can’t convert them. That’s bad or we’ll change the salespeople first, but we didn’t fix the other problems.” You get the point. We go in with a holistic approach. We identify from all attraction methods for marketing through how we’re servicing a customer, seeking to grow our retention, have revenue expansion opportunities, upsell, renewal, etc., and everything in between. We identify all the core problems of why they’re not growing, and then we come back with this gap analysis. It’s a three-hour presentation. It makes people’s heads spin, but we do come through and say, “Here are the 27 different areas. Not the one you thought it was,” and then we have a plan of action that we deliver two weeks later.
The cool part about our team is we’re not consultants. We build a plan. We’re like, “Good luck. Make it happen.” If they were able to make it happen, they would have done it by now on their own. These teams are busy. They’re reactive to the needs of the business. They’re in the wits. They are present in the day-to-day, but they can’t pull themselves out of that to do things like build infrastructure to implement new technologies, build a training curriculum, and do talent development strategies. Also, to re-innovate how they’re doing marketing and go from an outbound funnel to a targeted inbound marketing methodology. They love those things like, “We were talking about that two years ago.” I’m like, “Did you do it?” “No, we don’t have anyone to help us with that.” Our team does the work and we become an extension of their team members and work side by side for five months after that delivery.
It sounds like your unique selling proposition is you don’t just point out what the problems are and leave. You point out what the problems are and stay to fix them.
Extreme Business Building: From Concept to Profit in 60 Days
We only exist to grow their revenue and that’s it. We don’t expect them to be revenue ninjas. We want to come in here, fix it and do right by them.
Any last thoughts or quotes you want to leave us with?
I do have a couple of favorite quotes. One stems from, “Attitudes are contagious. Is yours worth catching?” We’re in a challenging time and you look at what you’re bringing into the workplace because the tone that you set is the tone that will be followed. I’m noticing that with a lot of executives, no matter what size your company is, you’re the leader and they look up to you. Granted this works better in theory if you have more than yourself working for the company. Even though this could be stressful, or you’re looking at how to get to the next level, or you’re recovering from shut down that’s happened with the pandemic, or trying to reinvent yourself, or whatever it is, how you show up is the way that people will create perception around you and that becomes their own BQ.
The way you articulate, present yourself and set the tone becomes a piece of information that goes into their head that then they tell a story about, that triggers their emotional state, that dictates their actions and yields performance, so it does start at the top. If you’re looking at building that high performing team, it’s how you show up and how you are with your people. Don’t expect them to do anything other than what is a reflection of what you’re putting out there. If you and I want to have an excellent team, you have to put out excellence and be able to model that for them, be an incredible communicator, and lead with love, grace, kindness, support, autonomy, and empowerment of your people in doing a great job. I love that quote, “Attitudes are contagious. Is yours worth catching?” Remember that how you’re showing up is what is going to be caught by other people. If you expect excellence, be excellent. If you expect kindness and grace, be those things. They’ll see that as a reflection of you. From one leader to another, that’s the greatest recommendation I can make.
What a great way to end. Thanks for being on the show, Mary.
Thank you.
Important Links
- Sales BQ
- Paychex
- Extreme Business Building: From Concept to Profit in 60 Days
- Podcast – Quota Crusher
- Be The Lifeguard of Your Own Life! – John Livesay’s TEDx Talk
- Better Selling Through Storytelling Method Online Course
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The Talent War With Mike Sarraille
Posted by John Livesay in podcast | 0 comments
A business’ success lies upon the kind of people working behind it. Any business or organization that knows how to attract, develop, and retain great talent are well on their way to success, if not remaining as one. At the center of it all is a great leader who values the people they have. In this episode, John Livesay sits down with the co-founder, managing partner, and CEO of EF Overwatch, Mike Sarraille, to discuss how leadership skills are more important than a specific industry skill. He also talks about the importance of overcoming imposter syndrome and then dishes out on his book, The Talent War, which imparts some great wisdom from special operations around talent and how we are currently in a war to acquire the best talent. Join John and Mike in this conversation as they bring fresh insights around talent acquisition and leadership from the military perspective.
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Listen to the podcast here
The Talent War With Mike Sarraille
Our guest is Mike Sarraille, the co-author of The Talent War. He’s an expert at helping companies find the right people and specializes in placing veterans in corporate jobs. Of course, he’s been a veteran himself among many things, being a Navy SEAL. We’ll talk about the importance of realizing how to overcome the impostor syndrome you might be facing, as well as how leadership skills are more important than a specific industry skill. He said, “Great leaders are always there for the people working for them.” Enjoy the episode.
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Our guest is Mike Sarraille who is the Co-Founder, Managing Partner, and CEO of EF Overwatch. He’s a retired US Navy SEAL officer and he’s the Founder and Board of Director for the VETTED Foundation, which is an education platform. He’s also a graduate of the University of Texas Business School, and the leadership instructor and strategic advisor for Echelon Front, which is a management consulting firm. Mike served fifteen years as an officer in the SEAL teams and five years in the US Marine Corps as an enlisted Recon Marine and Scout-Sniper before receiving his commission in the Navy.
Mike served in the SEAL Team 3, Task Unit Bruiser alongside Extreme Ownership authors, Jocko Willink and Leif Babin, where he led major combat operations that played a pivotal role in the Battle of Ramadi in 2006. Mike was again deployed with Task Unit Bruiser in 2008 and led a historic combat operation in Sadr City during the Battle of Route Gold. Following his return, Mike assumed duties as the primary leadership instructor for all officers graduating from the SEAL training pipeline, taking over that role from Leif Babin.
Mike was then selected for assignment to the Joint Special Operations Command where he completed multiple combat deployments in support of the Global War on Terrorism. Mike is a recipient of the Silver Star, 6 Bronze Stars, 2 Defense Meritorious Service Medals, and a Purple Heart. Mike continues to participate as a Veteran Transition subject matter expert on panels around the world. Mike, thank you for your service and for being on this show.
John, thank you for having me. This is great.
I would be fascinated to know that’s such a huge, impressive list of things that we instantly know about you in terms of resilience, tenacity, and passion. I would love you to take us back a little bit into your own story of origin. You could go back to childhood or your early days. Did you always know you wanted to be in the Navy? Start wherever you think would be a fun place for people to get a sense of who you were before you accomplished all of that.
I will tell you no. I don’t come from a military lineage. Of course, my grandparents served in World War II. My dad was in the Army for a short while but service wasn’t the mainstay of our family. I was born and raised in the Bay Area. I loved California growing up and I loved Silicon Valley and getting to watch that become what it is now, but I was a little guy in high school. I played plenty of sports and my parents kept me active but I remember I wrestled during my freshman year at 119 pounds.
For a frame of reference, you look like you’re 190 of muscle or something.
[bctt tweet=”The definition of progress is inspiring the next generation behind you to be better than you were.” username=”John_Livesay”]
You cut me by about twenty pounds. I’m 210. That is twenty years in the military and working out nonstop in the gym. I had great trainers. The one thing my dad said later on, “I didn’t know what you were destined for but you had this disdain for bullies.” It’s a stupid story but in high school, there were classic bullies that were picking on little kids. I remember because my dad had to come to school and get me. I got a running start from about 75 meters away and hit the bully with my shoulder in his back. I put them down but ended up getting roughed up by his friends because they were picking on a kid. It was my high school. I didn’t like people picking on other people. Let’s be honest, it’s the best recruiting tool for the military. Do you want to talk about the best pitch?
Yes.
It’s Hollywood.
Top Gun or whatever, right?
Absolutely. What do those all have in common? There are bad guys out there doing bad things to innocent people, and then the heroes come in. You don’t understand the price or the cost of war when you’re watching those movies. You can’t recognize that but it drew me in. The greatest pitch since the title of the show is such that is I met a Force Recon Marine. Back in the ‘90s, Force Recon was the special operations community for the United States Marine Corps. I was eighteen and this man was physically built. He was handsome, articulate, humbly confident, and respectful to everyone.
There’s an eighteen-year-old that’s now weighing 130 pounds and you’re looking at this guy who’s 190 and everything you aspire to be. I’m like, “I need to be a part of that organization now.” You question yourself, “Do I have what it takes?” There’s only one way to find out. That individual helped me get enlisted in the Marine Corps and I eventually became a Recon Marine like him. Every leader I had in the military, from my drill instructors to the Recon Marines that I serve for, each made me aspire to be better. That is the legacy of leadership. If you can inspire the next generation behind you to be better than you were, that’s the definition of progress. Progressives don’t understand that. You’re leaving a better situation for those coming behind you and you’re training them to be better than you were.
I love that the legacy of leadership inspires the next generation. I’ve also never heard someone described as humbly confident because a lot of people think they’re mutually exclusive, and they’re not. What a great description of someone and something to aspire to as well. You went to Stanford and then you’ve got your MBA at the University of Texas here in Austin. Through that process, you were also in the service. It wasn’t like you went to school and then joined. It looks to me like it was all happening concurrently.
The Talent War: How Special Operations and Great Organizations Win on Talent
I enlisted in the Marine Corps, which means I did not have my college degree. America doesn’t know two things. One, we put a precedence on knowledge in the military. Unfortunately, Hollywood, the best recruiting tool, also paints us as if sometimes we’re people in the United States that have no option other than to enlist in the Marine Corps, so we pride knowledge. The Marine Corps looked at me after a few years and said, “Do you want to become a Marine officer and be in charge of young Marines?” This is pre-9/11 and the answer was, “Absolutely.” They said, “We’ll pay for you to go back to school,” and they did. I went to Texas A&M where I finished my degree.
John, this is interesting. I went to a Jesuit high school in Santa Fe called Bellarmine and I graduated with a 2.9 GPA in high school. I went back to college a few years later and I graduated with a 3.7 from Texas A&M. I didn’t get smarter during those few years. The Marine Corps taught me how to lead. They taught me commitment and discipline. It was a steadfast commitment in how to accomplish the mission. Before I went back into the Marine Corps as an officer, I’d served with some SEALs. It’s inspirational. I said, “I’ve got to see if I have what it takes.”
I went to the SEAL training. I made it through that and then towards the end of my career, that’s when I attended Stanford. It was a certificate program called the Stanford Ignite, a one-month program at GSB. I did that one month before I started my MBA at UT, which was humbling because I was 39, surrounded by a bunch of 27-year-olds that were smarter than me and I learned more from them as I did the professor’s because each of them was high-performing individuals. I don’t think without them helping me here and there that I would have graduated from that program.
For those who aren’t familiar, it’s difficult to get into the Marines more than let’s say the Army. That’s fair, isn’t it?
Yes.
The Navy SEAL is even more elite than the Marines itself, so it’s the elite of the elite.
That’s roughly accurate. Each is good at what they do. They have slightly different flavors.
[bctt tweet=”If you put a problem in front of a generalist versus a specialist, a generalist is more equipped to solve it.” username=”John_Livesay”]
Different skillsets and things like that. There are different tiers. Since you’re in the executive search world, you’re constantly looking at someone’s educational background. That’s why I thought it was interesting to start there. That full circle, now that you’re out of the service, you’re helping find people with military backgrounds and placing them in a business where they’re using that incredible leadership skill. There are different tiers of way to go to school. There’s the Ivy League. It’s not just a location at Harvard and Yale versus Stanford. There’s that league.
I happen to go to the University of Illinois in Urbana–Champaign, which is considered part of the Big Ten but it’s not an Ivy League school. I certainly feel like I got a great education and I’m proud of where I went to school but it’s not an Ivy League school. I would say the same thing with the Army. It’s needed, wonderful, and great like a Big Ten school and the Marines would be a little more Ivy League. Is that honoring everybody or not? Is that too controversial to say it like that?
I will set the facts right here. The Army is the oldest in the armed services. They’re 244 years old and the Army has produced more leaders for this nation than any other organization. I didn’t go to a service academy and I did not have what it takes. The Air Force Academy, Naval Academy, West Point known as the Military Academy, Coast Guard Academy, and Merchant Marine Academy are the equivalent of Ivy League schools. It is 24/7 for 40 years. Some of the smartest Americans and some of the best leaders come out of those institutions.
I don’t think the average person unless you’ve been in the service understands those distinctions. I’m thrilled you could clarify that. The Navy SEALs, that’s not an intellectual level as a whole, physically incredible like an Olympic athlete level of skills that are required. Yes?
It is. The military as a whole follows something called the whole person concept. We’re looking for people that are well-rounded mentally, physically, and emotionally. Someone who is balanced and proficient in all those areas to a greater degree with certain communities. SEAL training is some of the toughest training in the world. The attrition rate is high, anywhere upwards of 70% to 80%. The special operations communities that we’re not mentioning who I absolutely love is the Army Special Forces known as the Green Berets.
You have the MARSOC Raiders, which is an amazing group like the SEAL teams. The Air Force has something called Combat Controllers and also Pararescue. There are special operators that fly helicopters known as the 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment. To have served with all of them and to watch them on the battlefield is humbling. You want to talk about not feeling like you belong, and that’s the description of my career. Watching these guys on the battlefield and what they did, it was almost like, “How did I fool them to let me even step onto the playing field with them?” I’m not joking here.
Let’s talk about that, Mike, because if you’re talking to CEOs or anybody with a C-level job, if they’re being honest with themselves, we all have a little bit of the impostor syndrome from time to time. When you’re trying to convince someone maybe to take a little bit of a leap in their career at EF Overwatch where you are finding people who have amazing skills from their military background. Maybe they aren’t as qualified on paper as somebody else without that background, but they have more experience. How do you help them overcome the impostor syndrome because you’ve had to overcome it yourself?
The Talent War: The military, as a whole, follows something called the whole person concept. We’re looking for people that are well-rounded mentally, physically, and emotionally.
It’s focused on what you know and what you know well. In EF Overwatch, it’s what we call a specialized executive search firm. We focus predominantly on small to midsize businesses, which can be as big as 1,000 employees up to $1 million revenue, massive companies. We do vet the candidates as much as we vet the clients and for the clients, I have to hear one foundational belief. We value leadership over industry experience. Trust me, there’s a lot of SEALs with twenty years in the SEAL teams that have a lot of industry experience for that domain and are not good. Industry experience does not equate to proficiency.
For the candidates, we do explain to them. One of the books we have for them to read is called Range by David Epstein. He makes an argument that generalists make the best leaders. The reason for that to summarize it is that they’ve dabbled in so much that they have such a broad range of experiences to draw from. If you put a problem in front of a generalist versus a specialist, a generalist is more equipped to solve it. For the CEOs and the C-Suite because I worked for Jocko Willink and Leif Babin’s company, Echelon Front, which we are going to make the world’s finest leadership consultancy. We work with companies nonstop on the leadership foundation side.
The common thread I found amongst C-Suite leaders is that they’ll admit they were not the best in their specific domain. “I was not the best salesperson. I was not the best engineer. I was not the best marketing director, but I knew how to form a team around me that was specialized and good, and direct them in a certain direction and say, ‘That’s what we wanted to achieve.’” They let them execute. Others knew they’re on top of their game and they knew they were the best salesperson, but they could not work with others. While they may drive the most sales, they’re ill-equipped to lead a team because they can’t let go of control. That’s what I have found.
This line that you gave about the industry experience does not equal proficiency, it’s the safe choice. “You’ve done this, so you can do it again here.” If you go back in history and look at Steve Jobs’ decision to bring in Sculley from Pepsi to Apple, he had no tech experience. You see a lot of people in the entertainment businesses that are running networks and studios saying, “We want someone with a completely different perspective to come in here and look at this from a different angle.” I see what you’re doing.
Let me give you one example. Guns aren’t exactly a mainstay in California. I never fired a pistol or a rifle growing up, and then all of a sudden, I ended up in the Marine Corps. I remember there are kids around me from Kentucky and Louisiana and they’re like, “I fire guns all the time because the instructors asked.” They know that a lot of those guys are being bad habits. For the guys that never touched a gun, the probability for you to score expert on the rifle range is higher because if you are trainable, they’ll teach you how to do it well.
There are no bad habits to break. There’s no hubris. “I know what I’m doing. Leave me alone.” It’s like, “Show me the right way to do it.” I totally get that. I’ve seen it multiple times. The wonderful new book you’ve co-authored called The Talent War: How Special Operations and Great Organizations Win on Talent is something I am fascinated about. Let’s start with the concept of where did the title come from because there’s always been a talent war going on. Like the real estate industry, there’s sometimes perceived as a buyer’s market or a seller’s market. What people don’t realize about the executive search industry is you can’t just find someone who agrees to take the job. That person has to stay in that job for a while for it to be considered a successful sale. It’s not just getting the yes. It’s a longer-term process.
It is. The Talent War is the realization that we are all, as organizations and leaders of organizations, in a war to acquire the best talent. The war for talent is a term coined by Steven Hankin of McKinsey back in ‘97. We’ve seen all the transformations of our economy. There was a study in 2019 of 600 CEOs and something like over 800 other C-Suite leaders, and they asked them what’s their number one challenge. Unanimously, it was attracting, hiring, and retaining the talent to win the new guys a victory like the book or movie, Moneyball. This is why colleges put money and effort into NCAA football trying to acquire the best talent.
[bctt tweet=”When a company has a talent mindset, the priority is the people.” username=”John_Livesay”]
Google is doing the same exact thing. The last I checked, Google spends 2 to 3 times more than their closest competitors on talent because they understand if they can get the best coders, they can get the best leaders and the rest takes care of itself. When you have the right people in the right positions with your organizations, they will solve the problems, seize opportunities, and drive the vision of the senior leaders to achieve it. That’s why I’m fascinated with this. The book uses a case study example and special operations are the heart of the case study. Special operations, Navy SEALs, Green Berets, and MARSOC Raiders, let’s be honest, the business world is fascinated with them.
They become one of the most recognizable, efficient, agile, and adaptive organizations in the world. They don’t hire for industry experience because it doesn’t exist. By nature, it became good at assessing people based on potential or what we say attribute-based hiring. It’s like, “Mike Sarraille has never been a Marine but does this kid have drive? Does he have effective intelligence? Is he emotionally stable? Is he resilient? Is he a team player?” If you can set up a process that identifies the behaviors that drive the values of your organization and people are trainable, you can build a team that will dominate its respective domain.
We can’t teach people to be resilient or passionate. You can teach them a skill, but they have to come with that. I have three questions from what you said there. I’ve heard about EQ, emotional intelligence, but you describe something as effective intelligence. Can you describe the definition of what that means to you?
Each of the special operations communities have a set of attributes they’re looking for. As one military psychologist said, “Navy SEALs, MARSOC Raiders, and Green Berets are all looking for ice cream just slightly different flavors.” We did research and interviews and we’d love to have the MARSOC community to describe this. Brian Decker, who was a Special Forces commander who led the assessment selection is the director of player development for the Indianapolis Colts described it like this. He said, “It doesn’t matter what your IQ is. What matters is what percentage of your intelligence you can use effectively to solve real-world problems for which no book solution exists.”
What they found was a baseline intelligence requirement. If you talk to any business leader, they’ll tell you that intellectual horsepower matters. What they found is that over a certain IQ score, it did not equate to increasing performance. When they look at intelligence, as long as somebody hits that baseline, that gate closes and that’s no longer an assessment or hiring criteria. Now they have to see how they utilize that intelligence to solve problems.
That reminds me of the research where after you make a certain amount of money, you don’t get happier. If you’re making $100,000 and you’re living in a place that you’re not stressed out with your overhead and this and that, and then suddenly, you have an offer to maybe move to let’s say New York or something and make $150,000 or $200,000. You think, “I’ll be twice as happy.” The research shows you’re not, and then other things come into criteria.
The other thing you talked about was Google’s realization of how important talent is. When I was speaking at the Coca-Cola Summit in Silicon Valley, they had a partnership with Google, and we went and toured that. They had someone come and talk to us about why they feed their employees, free food, and amazing food. In other countries and cities, it’s cultural cuisines even, and how much money they spend on that.
The Talent War: The Talent War is the realization that we are all, as organizations and leaders of organizations, in a war to acquire the best talent.
It all came down to this one sentence which is, “You feed the people you love.” I thought, “They value their employees to be able to show them and not just tell them, ‘You’re valued here.’” Now, it’s a whole another level of how do you do that when a lot of people aren’t working in offices at the moment, but that stuck with me. I was talking with the CMO of Domino’s Pizza and I asked him, “What’s your biggest marketing challenge?” I expected a marketing challenge as related to market share or messaging to consumers or whatever. He said, “Getting tech people to work here because we’re not in Silicon Valley.”
Mike, you could have pushed me over with a feather. I said, “I never thought of a marketing challenge that you’re responsible for recruitment.” He said, “We used to say we’re a pizza company that has tech.” They’re known for their app that tracks the pizza. “Now we say we’re an eCommerce company that happens to sell pizza.” I go, “That sounds like Amazon having to sell books at first.” He goes, “Exactly.” I thought you’d love that reframing of how this whole talent thing is related on many different departments.
It doesn’t matter what industry you’re in. We talk a lot about talent mindset where a company has a talent mindset the priority are people. When you prioritize your people, the mission naturally starts to come first and the mission is accomplished. I guarantee Google feeds their people because that keeps their employees engaged and appreciative of the company that they do that. These companies overlook this whole talent piece, from the talent acquisition to the talent management. The indirect costs of a bad talent program within the company is what drives them to failure. The last statistic on employee disengagement was that a company that has bad employee disengagement costs the company $3,400 out of every $10,000 of salary. If I’m feeding my people and that costs me maybe $1,000 an employee and their engagement is higher, that’s a higher ROI. That makes total sense to me.
I know in the talent where you talk about this amazing formula that is applicable from your background as a Navy SEAL, which is talent plus leadership is where victory happens. If I had to describe to somebody why they should want to buy and read The Talent War, that would certainly be one reason that stands out to me. If you’re not using this formula, aware of this formula, and need examples of this formula in action, then that book would certainly make you a better leader and recruiter. Is there anything else? Did I nail that close?
You did. Here’s the thing. Do you know the Dunning-Kruger effect?
Yes.
The Dunning-Kruger effect is when somebody does something for the first time, their confidence skyrockets but their knowledge is low and they end up on Mount Stupid. That’s the description of my life. Maybe I’ll reach enlightenment one day. Twenty years in the Marine Corps and fifteen years in the SEALs watching how they approach talent and how they lead their people, I’ve gained a lot of experience and with that experience, a lot of humility and battle scars.
[bctt tweet=”Great leaders always made time for their talent.” username=”John_Livesay”]
Here’s what I’ll say to business leaders. It’s not your fault. When somebody is the CEO of a company, what are they concerned with? They’re driving revenue. Maybe they’ve got a board of directors or maybe they’re a publicly held company. People are down their backs to hit quarterly numbers. You’re focused on sales or marketing that you tends to forget about people. What do all CEOs say? People matter, but their actions don’t necessarily reflect their words. It’s because there’s limited time.
Great leaders always made time for their talent. If you read this book, it’s not a prescriptive book that’s going to be like, “Do X, Y, and Z and you will succeed.” What it’s going to do is you’re going to read this book with your senior leaders and you’re going to have a discussion. How special operations approach their talent? Getting the right people in the door plus leadership which is the talent management piece. How do you develop and manage your talent? Leading them to victory is what matters.
The feedback we’ve gotten from some prominent business leaders that we gave in pre-releases have been, “This is simple. You wrote this in such a simple way that this is good.” First off, I’m praised because you begin to hate your own book. I wrote it for two years and I’m like, “I hate this thing. It’s not ready. We’re not going to put it out there.” Eventually, my other co-author, we did have an industrial-organizational psychologist who does assessments for a living. They’re like, “We’ve got to get this out there. It’s ready.” I hope, if anything, it provides an impact. I’m not worried about the number we sell. I’m worried about if it provides some impact on 1,000 companies. That’s a victory for me.
What a great catalyst for conversations. This is such a great way to end the episode. Great leaders always make time for their talent. Mike, I can’t thank you enough. The book again is called The Talent War. If people want to find you or follow you, where should they go?
LinkedIn, of course, Mike Sarraille. You can find the book anywhere books are sold. John, I want to say thank you for the opportunity to speak with you. I’ve had fun.
Important Links
- The Talent War
- EF Overwatch
- VETTED Foundation
- Echelon Front
- Extreme Ownership
- Range
- Moneyball
- Mike Sarraille – LinkedIn
- Better Selling Through Storytelling Method Online Course
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