Earning business and leading new team members is so different!...Or is it???

If you're reading this we are gonna start way back but i promise we are coming back to the present! Everyone who has been in sales for long time has heard this...and most who have been in sales for more than a minute has too. When i first started in sales( the car business) years ago... I always heard "78% of people buy from you because they like you." That percentage varied depending on whether it was Joe Verde or whoever was saying it. I personally have always thought it was 90% at least. Well the concept is still true today though haven't heard it said the same way in a while. The concept was if they like you, they will listen to you. If they listen to you, they will believe you(trust you). If they trust, you they will buy from you. So now that I've shared or reminded you of this concept keep it in mind as we move through time to today.

This morning our founder posted an absolute diamond of a list "5 things great salespeople do". So since leading our companies leaders is my responsibility my brain went right to how that related to leadership...so I came up with a list of "5 things great leaders do". Since, my brain is sometimes a random uncontrollable series of attempted connections and how things relate concepts...I was led to notice how some of my list and his list seemed so alike or similar. Thus the inspiration of this article.

Lets talk about the exceptions not the rule first. So even using my 90% from before means there are 10% who will do things like the following. Buy the car even if they don't like you. This usually has to do with having the car, product or service they need and you are just the "lesser of two evil" to them or the sole source to get what they want or need. Onto how this relates to leading a team. That 10% wont care if you have a good training program. As long as the product is good they will sale it, or "figure out how to do the job" even if they aren't trained properly. Some will have belief in a person, company, or system from the word go because they just take risks and/or let go of the past easier than the other 90%. Even simpler than that, some people adjust to change, break old and form new habits much more easily. I am super adaptable almost all the time. I recognize most people aren't. ( FYI, it is harder than i make it look lol). Whatever the case those are the 10%. So the first question...As leaders can we build a team, or a company out of those exceptions? Especially when you account for some of them being already successful and very happy where they are. With some of those 10% just not interested in what you do or sale? Or.. with some of the 10% having other traits that don't make them a fit for our team. I for one want exceptional, above average people in general. I feel much better about finding those people in a room of 90 vs 10 when its just random people we meet or have apply for a position. So onto the 90%...

To what degree can be argued, but people are heredity and experiences. So as leaders, teachers, and trainers we have to remember that not everyone thinks or feels like us. In fact, if we are in the 10%, most don't. So for whatever reasons people are often what a lot of us call "stubborn" or "hard-headed" or hard to train. But i think people are labeled these things too soon because they are "being" those things but its not who they are! Especially, when we just met them. This applies if its a potential client or a team member. This by the way is the first similarity. What is different about a new team member being resistant to a process that will help them succeed and a new client being resistant to something that does nothing but benefit them? Why don't all team members just go "Ok" and do it or why don't clients just buy or let you help them 100 percent of the time? The answer is the same....they don't trust or believe enough YET. I say enough because belief and trust come in stages and not everyone goes through those stages in the same time. When we have a client say "no". Do we lash out or force them to do business with us, no matter how frustrated we are? Of course not. We take our time, we visit them again, we take small gifts to them. We do things to connect as human beings and earn their trust. Or we educate them more on what we do enough to trust our product or service. Clients have to trust us as people and the product or service to do business. Or in a team members case, to "buy in" or be "all in". Why do we treat team members any different? Now I am not saying that it should take 5 years for a team member to buy in( maybe clients sometimes lol). But the time it takes does and should vary for each member. As leaders we fail them if we don't give the time to team members to see if they ARE unwilling to change or just need a little more from us to change.

So now on to what causes the problem. Why is it team members don't jump "both feet in" when what we offer them works, is proven to work, and even isn't complicated to learn? The answer is ....trust level! Now any of us like me , who have built training programs, or came up with processes where in our leadership roles, this is a sensitive subject. When we create something that's great from our experiences and and perspective it's easy as leaders, along with our emotional investment, to lose sight of the lens others view our creation from. Also, we tend to make it about our process only when often it's about much more than that. How good a process or product is or isn't often has very little to do with "buying in". Alabama football is a great example of this paradigm. Nick Saban was known for his process and the process was defined by Coach Saban. So, what made it great for so long was that respect and belief in Coach Saban resulted in belief in the process, and belief in the process resulted in belief in Coach Saban. This is one reason Alabama's new coach seems to doing so much better than expected already. He is one of those rare guys who has a great process, though different than before, and also is a person people seem inspires people to believe in him. For lack of a better term. Coach Deboer and Coach Saban just both seem to have that aura that makes you want to follow them. (Fyi i hope to one day have a fraction of that aura). So, i guess this sums it up. Whether the medicine is yummy or yucky, it's easier to swallow if you believe in the doctor.

Now every coin as two sides. So the challenges of "getting on the same page" with your team come from both sides of the coin. Lets look at the side of the team members first. So lets just get the low hanging fruit out of the way. Some people are so set in their way of doing things, they can't learn anything because they wont. Some people just won't believe in anyone or anything if you tried to get them to from now until the year 2100. Some people will believe in the system but are just too lazy to follow any system. Lastly on our low branches...Some people just have too many character flaws to succeed using any system or just don't have the personality or skills to do a particular job. Unfortunately, there are too many people in some of those categories. But what about the rest of them? Those that can be successful doing "what we do". What are the challenges to team unity that come from those people. One is past experience. Changing habits and shifting belief is hard for a person when they developed a way of doing things and it really did bring them success. This is even harder for people when they came from a place of little success and found it for the first time, or found it at a much higher level than before. The path that left someone trying many different ways, listening to many different people, and still led to struggle and pain often makes people grab on to what "finally" worked for them on a deep even subconscious level. This feeling is made even stronger if you watched things that didn't work for you, work for others before they found success. Sometimes it's not about belief that it will work. It's about will it work for me. So with people who have this experience, it takes overcoming fear, uncertainty, even confidence issues. Another challenge is just that for most people, change is hard. As leaders we can't expect someone who has been doing something a certain way for 10 years to change 100 percent in the same time as someone who has been doing something one way for 10 months. In fact those people with 10 years are sometimes a lot of extra work to bring around but once you have them you know that they will believe in your process and follow it long term. So if you got a ton of those people i say "bring them on" challenge accepted because of the huge upside to those people. So one more challenge i want to discuss before we get more personal. Is the overall view of the services and company. Sometimes the sales process is easy to believe in, but hard to follow because of the perception of other parts of the company. So, for someone to "buy in" whole-heartedly they have to see being on the team is at least likely going to be where i have a real future, at least for a foreseeable period of time. Here's an example in the insurance business since that's what i am in. If someone works for ABC Company and they have a sales process that closes customers at high rate, and they pay well. Let's even throw in their policies are better than most. Those things might get someone to believe in that process lets say 75%. If they believe in it 75% they will usually do less so they follow 65% of the process or follow it 65% of the time ( 100 % process requires at least 101% belief). Why only 75%? Because ABC Company has rumors of being sold. ABC Company is just new or does something no-one else does and at first team members wonder if it has longevity? That's only natural right? Everyone in business has heard about 95% of new companies crashing. Or Maybe ABC company messed up pay. Where is the belief level in a company for some? A lot less than 65% right? So lets say ABC company has none of those concerns. Now going forward keep in mind it takes at least 95% belief to be "all in" day in and day out long term. A little doubt is what helps companies and people strive to do better and pursue the unattainable perfection. So assume team members buy in to the process, and buy in to the company and that puts them at belief of 75%. So let's talk now about what else team members may need from us on a more personal level to be "sold". I use sold because this article is about how winning over clients and team members aren't so different. Well, at least that's the overall point. How do we get to that 95%. If i get into more than that...I did warn you in the beginning that i get to being a never ending stream of points i try to make because everything is related like a giant puzzle to me and i don't want to leave anyone looking for the lost pieces at the end. Thanks for sticking with me....I do believe this is all valuable. So to have a "sold" team. It does not matter most of the time how good the message is if nobody believes in the messenger. Sometimes without trust at a certain level, people will think the system looks great but what is it that they aren't seeing from the system? "What's the catch they ask themselves?" Because of the trust in the people with the system. As I said before it often has nothing to do with how good the system or product is. Another thing people need from us as leaders is time. They need to know we will communicate with them not just on day 1, but on day 1000. They need to know that if they have to miss work for a bit they wont be crucified. They need to know if there are issues with anything we will handle it with empathy and urgency. They need to know that you will keep your obligations to them. And sometimes these things all take time. And different amounts of time for different people. If you were in a foxhole with great equipment, great gear, even a fortress of a foxhole...doesn't who you are in the hole with matter just as much? Especially when its the shady people we believed in that do the most damage to us? Being an "all in" team member requires certain level of trust in our process, in our company , but most importantly in us as leaders. When should leaders expect someone to bring on friends and people they care about or strangers they commit to as part of their team? Now when should leaders expect the same time frame from someone who brought on people at their previous company only to have upper management not do the things they said they would do to help? Again short of real trust issues and the obvious negative traits we talked about earlier. People have a right to expect us to earn their trust over a period of time.

Now lets look at the issues we as leaders cause when hindering the process of "Buying in". So first up, the past experiences good and bad us as leaders have had. The good past... When "we've been there done that." and "it works!" or we went through so much trial and error and work to perfect our process our belief in what we do, especially if we came up with the process, puts our belief in it at 150% as it should!!!. If we came from companies or most people we trusted hadn't ever betrayed our trust enough that it hurt too bad ,or at all, we will find it easier to trust. You will always trust your own process more than anyone else. Sometimes as leaders we forget that and can't understand why others don't right away. Sometimes we can even get angry about it. Managers force things, leaders get people to buy in. Now to a real hard one to overcome. Let's be honest, high achievers and really driven people are rare. They are even more rare if you remove the high achievers who are ethically less than desirable in the process of achievement. So as leaders we go through a ton of that low hanging fruit from earlier in this article. It is so easy to get jaded, hurt, scared, angry at all the people we tried to give opportunities to that failed themselves and/or us. So we tend to take one who just needs more belief and are more stubborn as one who just doesn't want to ever grow or learn or buy in. This is even easier to do when the last 4133 people were just stubborn to the bone, lazy etc. The reality is if you want a team of people with a business owner mentality or partnership types, they will always want to do some things their way to an extent. With these people you have to show them that your way needs to become their way at least enough to be on the same page. If you want hourly employees who just do what they are told to get paid, that's awesome, those people need fulfilling careers as well.(They do need trust and belief too, sometimes just in different things and at different levels to succeed). As leaders we just need to remember if we want leaders who will take ownership of their team, truly lead there team, not need as much oversight and help now and forever, has had success before and knows how to achieve and maintain things, can attract people and grow, and more...that high achiever/leader is going to be stubborn to a degree, is going to take more time an effort to get bought in, Is going to often be our biggest pain and greatest joy, sometimes in the same day. Now granted, to be a good leader you have to be able to follow, but leaders need to know why they are following until it becomes all about who they are following. The point is, bishops, knights, rooks, can follow the king and queen well but they don't move like pawns! People who are both entrepreneur minded and employee minded do not exist. The mindset is too different. Often one or the other can win a battle but if you want to win a war and the next war it takes both! Another thing we do as leaders is let ego get the best of us. We believe in our way so much, and so many people failed just because they wouldn't follow our way, we completely lose sight that some people will succeed in multiple ways or in any way. If passing offense in football that were having a game where they were just not moving the ball in the air, could they still win running the ball if the O-line was good and they had Derrick Henry in his prime? But if we had only me at 48 years old running the ball, we'd just have live or die on a passing hill. So often different teams succeed in different ways within the same company. What I'm getting at is winning is about the people playing the game just as much as the game plan. Again, as leaders we hear so much from people we gave opportunities to who were professional interviewers, professional convincers, so we trusted them to advance our vision with more trust and freedom and it failed. My favorite is the ones who had success other places because someone else did the work for them. But moving on, these past failures can make it hard to give more trust to the ones we should. Or give more time to in getting on the same page. Something else as leaders we do is simply not have enough patience. Building a company or team is a process. Sometimes it's painfully longer than we ever dreamed it would be. That's how it works sometimes, the longer you're in a dark place, the brighter the light seems when it shines. Greater the valley, higher the peak. When life is scary, and painful, it gets real easy to want to push too hard to the finish line and realize we cramp up before we get there because we didn't accept the right pacing. Again finding the right people to build a company or team with is harder if the caliber of people needed is higher. So we can make it hard to build belief if we aren't patient with people. Sometimes we have to lead people from where they start. Last thing before i start wrapping up this article. Sometimes as leaders, we believe in the way we do things we stop listening openly to anyone. Some just need a better understanding of our process or just need to question it because they still have belief that isn't there but is growing. Sometimes people question things more because they want to be and are almost "sold" on the process. Sometimes the "stubbornness" is them asking you to help them be "all in". And again sometimes its about needing us to react a way that helps them buy in to us as leaders and people. When we as leaders stop listening we give the impression we don't respect our team members achievements and them as a person sometimes even if that's not the case. We have to remember, the traits, habits and process that made someone who was successful other places have become part of their identity and that has to be respected to effectively lead. So if we remember that changing part of a person's identity is process not done over night. And though i said it was one last thing. .this is the real last thing before closing arguments. When we have had enough of the wrong people come and go it's easy for leaders to get a "push them all" The ones who will great, the ones who won't fine.....if we don't have enough people, I'll do it myself" outlook. Remember, the reasons building a team was started haven't changed. And if we really don't want to do it ourself, we need our people. High achievers will always be more work when joining a new team, they will. But in the case of high-achievers we can't forget the reality is we need them as much or more than they need us. ( Also anyone who is willing to actually work hard these days shouldn't be written off to soon.)

So as a follower and a leader, I have done all the things, correct and wrong in this article. I hope that i am a much wiser leader today than I was when i did some of these things. Although i am excited that there are always new mistakes to be made and learned from. I wrote this article because i realize now more than ever in our world today people need leaders and not just managers. Leadership done right is definitely a "heavy is the head that wears the crown" situation. Although, for me the rewards are worth the weight. So i want to share anything that will help people lead and help other people succeed. I see how hard it is for anyone to find the right people for their business or school, or church leadership in todays time. I deal with it everyday myself. I often say fear and mediocrity are the two worst human diseases. So only strong leaders will help cure those diseases and if I can have a small part in it i will be happy with my life. So to close this and really drive home the point of my ramblings. When we deal with new potential client, we always want to close a sale as fast as possible and move on to the next. For great salespeople that happens quick sometimes, maybe even often. But for a lot of business it doesn't happen that fast. Don't we still want those harder to close clients? Of course we do! Almost every company recognizes ways of patiently yet assertively pursing those clients. Client relationships often take time. We know great salespeople and companies will do things to EARN business and earn it over time. If they don't believe in our system or product, we do whatever it takes to convince them. If they don't believe in us, we do whatever it takes to make them believe. Isn't that the same things new team members need from us? Of course it is! And yes, we can chase clients for years and we definitely should have a shorter timeframe for a new team member to buy in than it takes with some clients. However, we often give up on team members too soon. One thing team members and clients have in common is that the harder they are to close the more belief they have and the better assets they become. I guess leading clients to be sold on us and team members to be all in with us isn't really that different is it?

Thank you for anyone who stuck with me to the end. I know this is a long article for a social media page. Just remember Christian or any other religion, those we worship love us where we are, in spite of our flaws. Sometimes leading people means meeting them where they are and pulling them forward. Happy Easter!

As always, "Refuse to be average."-Me. And remember leaders. " You attract because of what you do, you keep because of who you are!" -Me.