Don’t Be Afraid To Be Replaceable: Preparing Yourself For The Next Growth Level With Michael Van De Ven

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Are you afraid to be replaceable? Don’t be. John Livesay sits down with Michael Van de Ven, the National Sales Director for Vision Care at Bausch + Lomb Canada. Michael shares that being replaceable means, you’re a good leader and manager. Why? Because you succeeded in honing top talent that can take your role. When that happens, you’re ready for a promotion! Join in the conversation to discover valuable wisdom on passionate leadership.

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Don’t Be Afraid To Be Replaceable: Preparing Yourself For The Next Growth Level With Michael Van De Ven

Our guest is Michael Van De Ven, the National Sales Director at Bausch + Lomb Canada. He talks about how important it is to make fewer promises so you can make sure you keep those promises and without a story, you are just a commodity. Find out what he means. Enjoy the episode.

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Our guest is Michael Van De Ven, who was originally from London, Ontario. Michael graduated from Western University in 2011 and quickly developed his experience in the different fields of marketing and sales with the hospitality and consumer packaged goods industries. In 2016, he joined Bausch + Lomb as a Territory Manager, working closely with optometrists and opticians across the channels to build strong relationships and educate on new technology contact lenses.

In late 2017, he transferred to the position of regional sales manager for English-speaking Canada and developed the Bausch + Lomb Vision Care Canadian Program, which has played an instrumental role in developing the knowledge of the field sales team across the country. Throughout his time as a regional sales manager, he has continuously led and supported various projects within marketing, national accounts, development, and the education of student eyecare practitioners. Now he is the National Sales Director. Michael, welcome to the show.

Thank you for having me. It is a great honor to be on here.

You and I met because you honored me by selecting me as your sales keynote speaker for your annual sales meeting. From there, we realized that we share a passion for helping people tell better stories and how that led to us wanting to have you on the show to share your unique vision on what it takes to be successful in sales and sales and management. Why don’t you tell us about your own story of origin? You have a unique family background and then we will lead into how that led to you getting into the healthcare space.

It starts back with my parents. Growing up, I had a father. He worked 7 days a week, 12 hours a day. He made it a point with my mom to pay for the education of myself, my brother and sister, so we graduated from university. He said, “You will not have to work in the same environment that I did. I want you to be successful.” That is something that we all keep top of mind as we have continued to push ourselves and develop in our own careers.

When I think about where my career started, I graduated from university. I started in the hospitality industry as the marketing manager for a bar and restaurant in London, Ontario. Looking back at it, I have had different people say, “It was not that a waste of the first couple of years of your career.” It was interesting because the bar was owned by two very business-savvy gentlemen who had MBAs and owned different restaurants in London. They forced me to work at forecasting, come up with a marketing plan and learn all the different social media platforms, which was great. They were skills that I carried over into different businesses.

What was cool was I dealt with a lot of different people. I dealt with business school students, the average bar patron, corporate events, you name it. It allowed me to diversify my social skills, which has played a key role in sales moving forward for myself. After I took those skills, I left the bar and hospitality industry. I went into consumer packaged goods with PepsiCo. I sold on the beverage side and there was where I started taking some of those skills and integrating them more into a corporate environment. PepsiCo is a fantastic company for training, learning, culture, and everything like that. There are so many great relationships that I still have there. I was able to elevate myself into three different positions in a short period of time.

[bctt tweet=”Be curious and prepared.” username=”John_Livesay”]

Within that time, I was looking to break into the medical industry. My brother, at the time, had worked for Bausch + Lomb on the pharmaceutical side of our business. My sister is an optometrist. It was lots of eyecare already in my family. I have been trying for a while and I had interviewed a couple of different times, but I was unsuccessful mostly because I did not have medical experience. Finally, a role opened up with Bausch + Lomb in London for a new product that they were launching.

At first, there was some hesitation because I did not have experience, but I was able to make my way through the interview based on some of the values I brought to the table. In my very first year, I was able to win top performer in Canada. It was a pivotal point in my career where not only had I gone through the process and picked up other skills, but I have proven to myself that I could be successful in this medical environment, but also show the company that you can take chances on people if they have the right skillsets and develop them to success.

After about a year and a half as a territory manager, I was promoted to a regional sales manager for English-speaking Canada. I was 28 at the time. It was my first time being a manager. I had only been in medical device for a year and a half. I took the leap of faith. I wanted to build my foundation for success off of three things. The three things were always making sure that I am willing to lead my team into the fire with anything. I wanted to make sure that I could do everything well. I have done it myself so that I could teach them properly as I trained them.

The second thing was to make a few promises and keep them all. I only make a promise if I could make sure that I could follow through on it. The third thing was I always tried to fill the gaps that I faced for previous managers, which included investing more in development and coaching and everybody more than employee number but making sure that they had the opportunity to grow within our team. That is how I was able to develop and attract so much talent within our organization.

As I went to that position over various years, we had multiple product launches, revamped the sales team, and developed a lot of talent. Eventually, I moved into the role I am in, which is National Sales Director. As a National Sales Director, as someone that owns the strategy, it is important for me to maintain the culture that we have been able to build over the years, but further back from the front lines.

 

This has been a learning experience, but also it is cool to see that if I had been in this position earlier, the company would be feeling it a bit more from a personnel standpoint. I truly believe that we have developed top talent to a point where I am more replaceable. Some people say, “Never tell someone you are replaceable, so you can protect your job.” For me, if I am replaceable, that means that I am a good leader and I am a good manager. That is fantastic.

That is a good tweet. Do not be afraid to be replaceable as a leader. That shows that you are ready for the next level of promotion. Let’s take a dive into each of these three key things. The first one is about leading your team into the fire and not asking them to do anything you are not willing to do or have not done yourself. That builds a lot of trust with people, as well as you know it is possible because you have done it.

If I am asking someone to make X number of calls, for example, or start using storytelling in their presentations, you have seen it, done it, and seen it work. If someone is coachable, you say, “I know this is a new skill. It is like anything else. It is awkward at first, like riding a bike for the first time or driving a stick shift, but you will master this and the outcome will be worth it.”

This other thing is so valuable because whether you are a sales manager or a politician or anybody who has got to lead people, keep the promises you make. Therefore, to keep the promises you make, keep the number of promises to a manageable number. In other words, do not promise the world. I always tell people, “If you think you can be everything to everybody, you are nothing to anybody.” In your line of work, you are calling on optometrists. If you promise the optometrists 10 things and you deliver on 8, they are still going to be frustrated.

If you only say, “Working with us, we are going to promise you three things. We are going to help you find staff if you need it or we are going to help you be more profitable.” Those are some things that I learned of why the optometrists are using you from my interviews before I gave the keynote talk. The promises have value to them as opposed to, “The product will show up on time.” That is the minimum table stakes. I wanted to ask you more about that. If you agree with how important it is to keep the promises to a short, small number, but also that those promises have value to the people you are making them to. What do you think about that?

[bctt tweet=”Make promises that you can keep.” username=”John_Livesay”]

It works both ways, internally and externally. As a leader, everybody is always watching. Your margin for error is very small. With customers, especially a new prospects, your margin for error is extremely small as well. You want to make sure that if you are going to commit to something, you can follow through, and that is how you build the foundation for trust with your customers and your team.

When you have that foundation for trust, the business does not always go perfect in any world. When things are not going perfect, if you can show your team that there is a way forward and a light at the end of the tunnel and they have that trust that is already developed, that is how you are going to keep your horses riding versus seeing people deter to leaving the company or exploring other options.

Your third point about as a manager, a director, filling in these gaps, not everybody arrives with the same training, whether it is sales training or product knowledge training and how important it is to keep learning. Many people think, “Now I am out of university, I do not have to read another book. Maybe I have to learn a few new things about a product, but as far as my presentation skills, storytelling skills, or listening skills, I am done.” You are like, “No.” We talked about how you pride yourself and walking your talk on continuing to learn. Can you speak about that? You said before the show that you keep challenging yourself to bring some new, innovative ways of doing things that are resulting in people being successful.

I have a good story that can help us. When I first became a regional sales manager, I had six vacancies to fill. We already talked about how I was a 28-year-old first-time manager. Typically, we relied on our US counterparts for training and they did not have a training session scheduled anytime soon. I had to step up as a new manager and collect content and put together a training session in a short time. I always reflect back to that first session and it was perceived as great, but I knew it was not great compared to where we are because it was put together so quickly. Over time, it has quickly developed and we have changed the process. We have seen how different reps have learned. We have engaged with online learning versus virtual versus role plays. We diversified things to make it less didactic and more engaging.

We are going through a training process with a couple of new hires. What they are going through, I see some of the other leaders on the team be like, “I remember my training process and thinking it was great, but it has evolved so much now.” You can see that everyone is getting more comfortable and they appreciate that when you join a new company.

 

When someone joins a new company, that is your first chance to create that feeling of culture and wantedness within the company and put yourself in a good spot. It is going to make them want to be with the company for a long period of time. That evolution of the training program is a great example of innovation within our team and for myself personally.

I have some marketing background, but I have never worked marketing in terms of medical device. I reached out to our company. I said, “I want to take some brand management courses with Cornell University.” I decided to do that. I would wake up at 5:00 AM, go for a run, and work on my certification for a couple of hours three times a week. That was me trying to fill some of the gaps I had because I knew as I grew further and further in terms of my leadership positions. It is great for me to understand the different functions of the business. I can lead in a way where I understand all the different aspects of the business and make decisions that are going to best support every single function.

This concept of your own personal story, how other people see themselves in that story, and this ability to break into a new industry, whether it is healthcare or anything. The skills you develop as a salesperson, storytelling, listening, empathy, and problem-solving are in fact, transferable so that you won top performer your first year out.

It sets a precedent of, “The ideal candidate does not necessarily have to check off ten of these boxes if they have these characteristics in place.” When you are now in the place of giving someone a chance or a break, what characteristics are you looking for? That you say, “I can teach them the product knowledge, but I cannot teach them this,” and because they already bring that to it, the odds are they will be successful.

I look for the talent. I always hire the most talented person. There is a difference between talent and skills. Skills can be bought. Talent is something that you have inherently. Personable skills, from a personality standpoint, are you going to be able to succeed in the social environment in a very heavy relationship-driven industry? How is your curiosity? What kind of questions are you asking me? How much preparation did you do for the interview?

[bctt tweet=”Use your most positive face and bring the right energy because there are people out there who are living their best life. ” username=”John_Livesay”]

Your capacity to learn and develop, where do you want to go with your career? Are you asking me what the training program looks like and the expectations? For me, that is great. I want someone that is coming in and has all those different things. Having additional experience is always a plus, but it is never something that I particularly hone in on unless it is a rockstar candidate.

I have three quick examples. Sometimes I tear up talking about this because they are such great stories. One gentleman interviewed with one of our competitors and they told him that he did not have sales experience and did not give them a chance. I hired him as a maternity leave cover near Toronto. He did extremely well. He took a full-time job with us in Edmonton all the way across the country. He picked up and moved during the pandemic.

He proceeded to be a top performer in our business and then has been elevated to a team lead position with Ontario. I love that because that is somebody that had no experience. He had a degree, was curious, asked the questions, had the work ethic, and was so personable. I knew within five minutes that I was going to hire him. It is awesome to see how he has developed.

Another great example is that there was a rep that I took a chance on. She also had no experience, but she told me in her interview that she had sent twenty messages on LinkedIn to people in the medical device industry to make a connection every single day. She told me that story and I was like, “This person is hungry. She wants to win.” She showed that same curiosity. She has been extremely successful with us as well.

The last story is one of my favorites. This story was told at our national sales meeting. Different people on our team were in tears. The first person I mentioned who got promoted and moved to Edmonton, we still had to cover the remainder of that maternity leave. We hired somebody without an experience. She came in and was very curious, and then she finished her maternity leave cover.

 

We ended up finding her a job virtually covering another maternity leave, even though she lived in a different area of the country. After that finished, we hired her for another maternity leave cover virtually. She continued to cover. She loves our company so much and was so passionate about what she did. Eventually, a position opened up where she lived, which was in Vancouver. She got a full-time job with us. She told us her story about how she wanted to break into sales so badly and she wanted to learn and how we have taken a chance on her.

Sometimes in business, not everything goes your way and you can get caught in a rut. Her name is Krista. I think about how passionate she is to be here and have the opportunity. Sometimes it helps you reset yourself and be like, “Today, I need to put on my most positive face and make sure that I am bringing the right energy because there are people out there that are living their best life, working this job.” It is something that they want to develop further with their careers.

We have to hit our own reset button sometimes. We can focus on the problems or the challenges or the frustrations. We can focus on, “Look how many things I have to be grateful for, including being in this industry, working for this company, and the team I have surrounded myself with.” Once you start to have that, and then you get into interacting with a potential client or touching base with someone who is a client, they pick up on your energy.

My whole premise that we talked about when I was the sales keynote speaker for your team is that people buy your energy. It is up to us to keep that energy and our mindset at the right level of coming from a place of, “You are not another doctor to me. I care about you and I am looking for ways to make you successful and make your patient experience successful. I realize you got your own set of challenges that we might be able to help you with.” I love this.

One of the things I talk about is once you have your own personal story that people can resonate with and helps you attract top talent, it also helps clients feel like this is not something you happened to fall into. This is something you care about and the company’s story. The point is that Bausch + Lomb has a fascinating history of innovation that people may or may not know about and the culture it creates. Can you speak about how you use the Bausch + Lomb story to get the right talent and get the optometrists and doctors you are calling on to see the value of co-branding with you?

[bctt tweet=”Without a good story, you’re just a commodity. ” username=”John_Livesay”]

We are fortunate enough to work for a company that has been around for over 160 years. We have provided a lot of innovation across various different channels over the years. Most of our candidates who interview with our company have already heard of us in some way, shape or form. It brings that value.

When you talk about that history, it gives you that recognition right away where someone can feel proud that they are even interviewing for the company. Within the interview, I got great advice from a previous mentor. Even if you think you are not going to hire the candidate, you always give them the full 45 minutes of your time.

That interview, they might have stayed up all night excited or that this might have been their big break. To me, that is a human respect aspect that I took seriously. They are going to interview for Bausch + Lomb. They probably know the company and had done the research like, “This could be my big opportunity.” The brand does help create that environment. When we think about the progression where we are moving with our company, we are moving in a way where the company has growing pains at times. We are almost on this comeback. Everybody loves a comeback.

It is such a well-known brand. When you are putting a fantastic talent into your team and your system, and then you are launching new products, you have this great brand, it creates an amazing vibe. It allows the reps to passionately tell their story about why they work for Bausch + Lomb and talk about our products passionately or be proud in general. They work for a great company with such great people.

That culture is integrity, flexibility, and going above and beyond the minimum. Even if it is not your job, you still do it. Those kinds of characteristics create a culture of, “This is a fit for me or this is not a fit for me.” The final part of all this is when you are in those sales presentations, instead of talking about numbers and case studies, turning them into case stories that tug at heartstrings to get people to want to open the purse strings of, “This is something I want to buy. You are the rep I want to work with versus a competitor.” Since the talk I gave, have you seen people starting to use stories more? Do you have any stories to share on how it is making a difference?

 

The reason I originally had engaged you to be our keynote speaker at our national sales meeting was because storytelling has always been a foundational piece of how I have sold myself. I have taught the reps in our business to sell. When you came in and gave your presentation, it gives a structured approach to how you can integrate it and show it a lot of value.

Telling our story is a pivotal part to our business when we think about our strategy overall. When we think contact lenses, they are very commoditized and typically, an optometrist or an eye care professional is doing the contact lens fit. The patient is potentially purchasing from a different channel, and mail-in rebates are used to help keep patients into practice with optometrists doing the fits.

At Bausch + Lomb, we do not do mail-in rebates. Our story is we know there is low redemption and a hassle for the patient. We created a unique strategy. We are the only contact lens company to go this route to give patients instant value and differentiate. That independent eyecare professional who is spending the time to do the contact lens can see the fruits of their labor. As we tell that story to support independent optometry, so many great things get layered in. If you do not tell the story correctly, one of our customers might look at us and say, “You guys do not have rebates.”

If I see the reps expand the story and have seen it expand even further after the presentation you gave, they tell that story to the why. Why do we do this? We do this to support you because we want your patients to buy from you. We know that they take your brand recommendation. This is how we are going to support independent optometry to make sure they are also purchasing from your practice. It allows us to show our agility as a smaller company with a team that is passionate about what they do and everybody is behind the strategy. The storytelling part is key because without a good story, then you are a commodity.

That is true in every business. What I love about you embracing the storytelling concepts and structure for your team is it now can become an onboarding tool for the new site. That can not only start learning other people’s case stories to share, but the story of origin of each individual person is a great way for people to start to feel part of the culture of, “Your brother works here. Your sister is an optometrist, and your father taught you this.” They start telling their personal stories of what their childhood was like or their first experience wearing contacts. Whatever it is that makes them so passionate about this. Stories bond the team when people feel seen and heard and acknowledged.

[bctt tweet=”Stay open to learning and make sure that you stay passionate. If you’re not, you might have to check what you’re doing.” username=”John_Livesay”]

You do a stellar job of making your team feel that way. I see how well you work with the marketing department when you were putting on this sales meeting together in our preparation call. Marketing and sales, when they work in sync and everyone is singing from the same song and books, telling the same stories, expressing the vision in a similar way that, “This is what our brand is,” and what that means to you as an optometrist, it is no surprise you have got the success you have.

It does not come accidentally. It is you going, “Let me fill a gap and take a course in what this marketing stuff’s objectives are, and how that can make me and my sales team better, and that everything is working in conjunction,” that is part of the secret to your success. Do you have any last thoughts or a quote you want to leave us with?

One great thing with everything I have talked about is I talked about developing people and this training program. You mentioned how I worked so well with our marketing team. One thing that we are very proud of is we do a lot of promoting internally. Our marketing team is a team of two. Both of them were people that I took a chance on as reps. They have been promoted through the system.

Our managers and team leads have also been reps in national accounts. It shows the culture of developing from within and building up, which is a key reason why people also are enticed to work for our company. It is fantastic from a cultural standpoint, but also we get amazing support from our HR department.

My last quote is, “Stay open to learning.” Even with my experience, with everything that happens, I was at a training and I overheard it. Someone had been at the company for one week and said the line. I liked the way it sounded. I am going to integrate it into my presentation. I am the National Sales Director.

Make sure that you stay passionate, and if you are not passionate, then you might have to check what you are doing because you should always be passionate about what you are doing. People can tell when you are not. Stay passionate and stay focused. The last thing is always be understanding of different people’s personal and professional goals, and do your best to support it as a leader. If you do that, that is the difference of people turning around at 4:30 PM to go home or doing that last call before 5:00 PM.

That passion and openness are what drive the behavior to go the extra mile for your career and the clients. Thank you so much for sharing your wisdom. I cannot wait to see where the future takes you and your team. You can be sure that I am going to be watching and cheering you all on.

Thanks so much. I appreciate you having me on the show.

 

Important Links

• Bausch + Lomb
• https://www.LinkedIn.com/in/michael-van-de-ven-45788545/
• Better Selling Through Storytelling Method Online Course

 

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Tags: Bausch, Building Trust, hiring people, hospitality industry, passionate leadership, storytelling