High Performance Selling with Don Hutson
Hi, this is Ray Stendall, publisher of Customer Engagement Magazine. I'm so happy and pleased to have as my guest a very special person. Our guest today is one of the founding members of the National Speakers Association. He is a #1 New York Times bestseller. He is a member of the Speaker Hall of Fame who, together with the rest of his company, U.S. Learning, has served over two-thirds of the Fortune 500, with companies ranging from Aflac to Zenith, including HP, FedEx, General Electric, and many, many more. He is the CEO of U.S. Learning and will talk to us today about high performance selling and high performance behaviors that can really move your business forward. So without further ado, I welcome Mr. Don Hutson.
Don: Hello, Ray, its great being with you today. I love the opportunity to work with you and have the opportunity to meet via Skype your members and your subscribers. So it's great being with you.
Ray: Thank you so much, Don. Tell the audience a little bit more about yourself and give them a sense of where you've been and some of the work that you've done.
Don: I graduated from the University of Memphis with a major in sales, the only one in the world at that time. And because of that, I went to work for a sales training firm selling enrollments in seminars. We had to give speeches to small groups to do that, so my first three years out of college, I was giving 30-minute speeches. The first few were terrible, by the way. I had to pay my dues and learn the craft, but my first 1,500 speeches over about five years actually were to small groups of eight or ten people. But that's how I learned how to speak and to be confident in that arena. And then companies started asking me to speak at their company meetings and that type of thing. And later as a professional speaker and an expert in interpersonal behavior, selling skills and customer satisfaction, I began writing, and to date have written 13 books and done about 6,000 speeches in 34 countries. So it's been a fun four decades.
Ray: Wonderful. You have a lot of information that I think our audience is really going to benefit from. One of the things that you speak about and work with your clients all over the world has to do with what are some of the most important high performance behaviors that, when consistently executed, can lead to high performance results. Would you like to walk us through the model that you use when you teach these ideas?
Don: I'd be delighted to, Ray. It’s the number-one question I get asked: How do the high performers pull it off and consistently stay at the top? I've got a really good answer that took me a lot of years to figure out. And it's not a short answer, but it is a high-quality answer. The first thing is I have found that the high performers are up. Their attitude is one that's got them ready and poised for exceptional behavior. So they're part of the solution in every scenario rather than part of the problem. They have a positive attitude and an exceptional demeanor in working with people, and they are the individuals who have perseverance and a willingness to do what is required for them to keep a good, positive outlook on things. So being up, we think, is a critical part of the foundation for exceptional high performance behavior.
The other component is it's great to have the right attitude, but similarly, you've got to have the skill sets to go with the mindset. The skill sets are different for different job categories, but you’ve got to be skilled in what you're doing. And in the building of those skill sets, I think there's a mindset that's required of, “Let's have a hunger for knowledge.” We can't just do what we've always done. We've got to be cutting-edge in our thinking. We've got to expose ourselves to innovation and think about what we can do to be our best, especially as compared to the competitors we’re being compared to you every single day in sales and customer service, and so forth. So, you’ve got to be up, you’ve got to be good. So then, the logical question is, "Are the high performers up because they're good, or are they good because they're up?” And the answer, of course, is yes.
Ray: It's both.
Don: It's both. And the two feed on each other, because when you're really good, it's easy to have a positive attitude and demeanor. If you're positive, it's easy to have that hunger for knowledge to really advance yourself, and that's what creates what I call a positive momentum in an individual’s career. So they have these two components that are going for them psychologically and in terms of what they are expecting of themselves. They're always working on being cutting-edge.
Now, to delve into that with a little bit more detail, what is the psychology behind being up? On the positive side, I think it is the identification of one's propulsion factor. I love to ask people, “What makes you get up in the morning and go to work and do a great job? Why are you fired up about the career that you've chosen?” That is the propulsion factor. Like, for me, I love to read self-help books written by early experts. One of my favorites is Orison Swett Marden. I love the Napoleon Hill work, Norman Vincent Peale, Elbert Hubbard. I have an extensive self-help library with all of these people's works. I call them my literary mentors. I read a little bit every morning from a self-help book, and that is my propulsion factor. It's part of what really gets me going every single day. The propulsion factor is what gets you out of normal behavior and into the high performance realm. A strong propulsion factor is what will give you belief, confidence, proper focus, and the concept of going toward excellence. You're going to be higher energy, you're going to have a good work ethic, and that's what's really important to be a person of great caliber, in terms of determination, perseverance to be your best.
Ray: Let me just pause right there and emphasis a few of the most important points I heard you say that I want to make sure our audience captured.
Don: Okay.
Ray: When you wake up in the morning, you have to have a definiteness of purpose. There has to be a bigger reason for why it is that you do what you do, mixed in together with the right positive mental attitude that allows you to critically review and analyze what it is that you need to do to build the right skill set, so that you can apply yourself in the marketplace and add value that allows you and pushes you forward. So I just wanted to take a moment and emphasize that key point.
Don: You recapped it perfectly, Ray. You see, this is not something that is rocket science. It's relatively simple, but most people don't go that far with it. It's profoundly important that we go the extra mile in defining these attributes of who we are and what we're about and what our belief system is.
Ray: I agree with you. I think high performers have, I call it the ABCs and an H. It’s the right attitudes, the beliefs, character traits, and habits that they have cultivated over time. And it's really even just a small difference across a whole multitude of attributes that makes the difference between being great and being world-class.
Don: Exactly. And then we clarify that in the absence of a clearly defined propulsion factor what happens. What happens is gravity will take us down. It's just like an airliner at 37,000 feet. If you pull the power all the way back, it's going down. So you've got to have the propulsion to keep you going. So if you don't have that clarified propulsion factor, gravity takes over. And that can get really ugly really fast, in terms of defining the behaviors of somebody who's trying, supposedly, to advance their career, but it's not working. And it all starts right up here with the head game. It's the right attitude, the determination that we're talking about. So gravity takes over and it will bring us down, in terms of our productivity, our performance, and that means we're going to have a lack of commitment resulting in poor work ethic and lousy results. So, that's what we want to avoid.
Ray: Just to add onto that, I think from a psychological perspective, the top achievers are able to consistently keep their vision irrespective of their outer circumstances and conditions as they go through various roadblocks and barriers and find ways to get to what it is that they want and deserve, based on what value they provide. As you mentioned, if you don't have this propulsion, it's very easy for there to be a negative feedback loop, which basically tells your conscious and subconscious mind that things aren't working out and which hurts your attitude, which hurts your desire to acquire skills, which further pushes you down into a negative spiral.
Don: That's exactly right. You want to make sure you do everything you can to stay out of that spiral. Now on the other side of the illustration, we have the concept of the skill building that's required to be good. That means we've got to buy into the premise of constant training and development, seeking education, and doing everything we can to advance our knowledge in our chosen craft. And that means we've got to kick that hunger for knowledge into high gear. We've got to always be seeking new ideas. Because it's through training, development and innovative thinking that we're able to really do some cutting-edge things and impress our customers with the fact that we know a little bit more than our competitors do about this concept of how to go to the next level. We're all endlessly being compared to our competition. And one of the models we teach has to do with differentiation.
The differentiation piece is really key for us, because we need to endlessly be demonstrating how we are different from and better than our competition. That means giving our customers better experiences: solidly working on relationship advancement; having friendly processes so that our customers enjoy doing business with us; of being technologically adept at being able to respond to every need that they've got, and marketing differentiation. We don't want to go to price. We say that's a last-ditch effort. I like to talk about building value rather than cutting price. But also our offerings: How are we going to market? What's our value proposition? All of these are key and critical, and that's part of how we can add to our skill sets.
Ray: Don, let's dive in a little bit deeper and talk about how we can build value. I know you talk a lot about this with your clients, and you really help them in being able to communicate value in the marketplace. Let's talk about the different aspects of value and how we can communicate it.
Don: Okay. The one biggest problem that people in business today have is they get their value points down so that they can articulate them beautifully in the marketplace. But the only problem is, that's their perception of themselves. And the big mistake salespeople make is they do not fully understand how their prospective customer defines value. So always challenge people in sales and marketing organizations. Make a list of your top five customers. Go to them and then ask them, "What do you value most about doing business with us in the space that we're in together and what we have in terms of deliverables?” I guarantee you, you'll get five different answers, which plays to the fact that what you think your value points are is not merely as important as what your customers think your value points are. And we need to identify what those things are in the mind's eye of the customer, because that's how we're able to advance in our effort toward differentiation.
Now, if we're not doing these things I'm talking about here in terms of skill building, go to market with a clarified value proposition, differentiate clearly and that sort of thing, what happens is we go to market as a tired company and a tired representative of that company presenting old solutions. Basically, we've reverted to habit, and that can be deadly, if we just try to do what we've always done. Because if you do what you've always done, you're going to get less than you used to get, because the bar of excellence is rising on every single one of us. So let's don't just revert to habit.
Ray: A key thing that I wanted to emphasize here is that, when we talk about understanding value from the customer's perspective, it actually permeates everything that we need to do within a business; starting from how we go and think about what solutions are needed in the marketplace, how we go about building those solutions, and then how we communicate in the marketplace and nurture our customers through marketing campaigns, and then how we have an energetic and enthusiastic salesperson be able to articulate that value to help the customer make an informed buying decision. So, all of these things need to come together, combined with a support organization that understands what customers value and prioritizes those values to provide the right level of support to them.
Don: Bingo, you hit the mark right there. And that's key. A lot of organizations can be technologically advanced and have wonderful deliverables, but if they haven't gotten that customer focus keyed into their formula for success, they're not going to be as successful as they otherwise could be. So, this is part of the high performance model for individuals, but also it's a great organizational perspective, Ray.
Ray: One of the areas that we can maybe shift a little bit into is talking a little bit more about customer service. One of the things that we talked a lot about within the magazine has to do with Touchpoint Analysis; being able to really understand every touchpoint a person has as they try and get in contact with a potential company to do business with them, and how they go about finding them. How do they go about experiencing their branding and their messaging? How do they interact with the people who work for the company and ultimately make a buying decision? I know you have many stories that really hit the nail on the head, relative to people who have gone above and beyond to provide amazing service. Can you share a few stories?
Don: Well, a couple of thoughts; I agree with the experts who say that it's six times more expensive to get a new customer as it is to keep an existing one, so let's keep the customers we've got. You mention the term “touchpoint,” that's important for us individually. If we want to be a high performer, we need to take positive advantage in a win-win way of every touchpoint and every opportunity to be of value to the customer. But it's also critically important from an organizational perspective, because touchpoints organizationally usually include a multitude of people. And like a chain is only as strong as its weakest link, a company service model is only as strong as the weakest link in that service process. So we need to think clearly about that at all times.
I like the people who do everything they can to make their organization appear exceptional. One of our models is performing customer service miracles. The very word "miracle" sounds like something that's near impossible, but I think, to the contrary, we really need only two things to perform a customer service miracle. One is a good heart, because you've got to want to, and secondly, you've got to have a keen eye to be able to spot the miracle opportunity. If you basically are looking for the opportunities to provide and perform exceptionally, those opportunities aren't going to show up. We’ve got to know how to do it and have the right spirit and mind. One of the examples of the model, Ray, that I thought would be good to share with our audience today would be a story about an individual by the name of Keith Bennett, who's been a vendor of mine for many, many years, a long-time close friend. So let's share with everybody the Keith Bennett story.
Ray: All right. We're going to roll a clip of Don telling this story, and I think you are really going to enjoy it.
Don: For years, I've parked my car near the Memphis International Airport when I travel out on the airliner, the facility managed by an individual by the name of Keith Bennett. Keith Bennett is terrific. He's a great leader. He's got a great leadership style, great sales culture, great customer service culture. The guy is terrific. I pulled in there one day, got out of my car, got on their van. They loaded my bags, took me to the terminal, and I left on about a 10-day speaking trip. Two days later, my wife pulled in to park her car. She gets out of her car, gets on the van. They load her bags, take her to the terminal. She's going to meet me at Toronto for a long weekend. What she didn't realize was when she got out of the car, she left her wallet on the right front seat. Had her purse, didn't even miss the wallet, she's a happy camper going on a trip. They take her to the terminal. The guy gets in her car to put it in the parking place, he sees the wallet, takes it inside, gives it to the manager, Keith Bennett.
Keith Bennett looks through the wallet; Keith Bennett, by the way, heck of a guy. Keith Bennett is a guy who performs customer service miracles; talk about great experiences. Keith Bennett sees the name Hutson in the wallet, calls my office. Well, my assistant said, "Keith, I'm sorry, he's out of town."
He said, "Well, I'm running the parking facility near the airport, and Ms. Hutson left her wallet in the car. Perhaps you could help me. Do you have any idea what flight she's going out on?” And she said, "I'm sorry, Keith, I don't book her flights." He said, "Well who's your travel agent?" And she said, "International Tours." He said, "Who do you deal with over there?" She said, "Her name is Sarah." “Do you know the phone number?” She said, "Sure, I call it all the time. It's 345-1680." And Keith Bennett is writing all this down. He said, "Well, I'll call you back, Linda."
Now he's on the phone calling Sarah at the agency. He gets on the phone, he says: "Sarah, this is Keith Bennett calling. I manage the parking facility near the airport where the Hutsons park, and Ms. Hutson just parked with us. We've already taken her to the terminal. She left her wallet in the car. I'd love to try to get it back to her. Do you have any idea what flight she's going out on?" Sarah said, "Sure, she just picked her ticket up 20 minutes ago; hang on a second and let me punch it into the computer," and she did. She said, "Here we go; it's Northwest flight 268, leaves at 12:32 PM; it's a non-stop to Detroit with a connection to Toronto." Well, he's writing it all down. He said, "That's all at need for now, I'll call you back."
And with that, he jumps up from the desk, runs out into the parking lot, jumps in the first available automobile, speeds over to the terminal, parks upper-level curbside. What's a little risk for a really good customer, right? Turns on the flashing lights, jumps out, locks the door, runs inside, checks that front door monitor looking for Northwest 268. There it is: Northwest 268 leaving on time, 12:32PM, Gate B-26. He looks at his watch, thinks I've got just enough time," and with that he goes right through security. This was just before 9-11. How many of you remember the good old days before 9-11; easy security, right? He gets right through and goes into a full sprint down that concourse all the way down to Gate B-26. He gets there and he talks his way by the gate agent, runs down the jetway to the door of the aircraft. Then he sails his way by the flight attendant right down the center aisle of that aircraft looking for my wife, and he spots her over there. And he runs over to her, panting from his sprint. He said, "Ms. Hutson, here's your wallet. You have a great trip." And he gave it to her and he turned and he was out of there, didn't even wait for a tip.
Question: How long do you think I'm going to do business with Keith Bennett? One-word answer, starts with the letter F. We all know the answer. Let's say it aloud together now. The answer is Forever. Forever. I don't even have the wife anymore, and I'm still parking with Keith Bennett. It took me a long time to be able to laugh about that line, I'll tell you.
Ray: Don, that was an excellent video, I really enjoyed it.
Don: Well, Keith Bennett is an extraordinary human being, so he's a role model for all of us; because he's got that good heart that I talked about and a desire to do exceptional things for his customers, and his customers just keep coming back. I love to ask the question, "In your business, what would a customer for life be worth?" The number is probably incalculable for most people, it could be such a significant amount.
Ray: That's a great point that you bring that up, actually. In a previous issue, I did a whole training video all about the lifetime value of a customer, and not only factored in the value of a one customer, but all of the positive referrals that they provide to the business and at the same time to consider what would be the disastrous effect of having negative referrals that take away from the business, in terms of lost opportunity cost. So that's right on target.
Don: Yeah, it really is. I mean there are some people who, because of their lack of innovative and customer focused behavior, the prospects are staying away from them in droves. And they don't even know what their problem is.
Ray: Well, bad news travels very quickly.
Don: Yeah. You perform a miracle for somebody, they not only never forget it; they tell their friends.
Ray: Don, tell us a little bit more about the four different types of customers.
Don: Our model at U.S. Learning is that there are four types of customers. The obvious type of customer would be, of course, the external customers. Those are people who spend money with us for our products or services. And most of the things you hear about in customer service, Ray, are designed around the external customer relationship. But so often, that's to the exclusion of the other three, which are also very important.
Number two is the internal customers, and those are our team members. In terms of the team member model and the analysis, I think that at any given moment, everybody on your team is somewhere on a continuum. And that continuum has burden at one end and resource at the other and a midpoint in the center. I say that every time somebody just gravitates into being a burden to their team members, they're dragging everybody else down. They're slowing down the velocity of the organization. That's not fair. Everybody needs to stay on the resource side that meets positive attitude, helping other people. I love to ask my audiences: “If you generally close at 5 o'clock and one of your co-workers walked over and said, ‘Hey, Ray, I'm pretty well caught up; it's ten to five, is there anything I can do to help you before we shut her down?’ how many of you would have a coronary on the spot?” A lot of people laugh and raise their hands, because so often we're not attuned to the extent we should be on helping our team members do their job as best it can be done. So a spirit of helpfulness there, I think, is critically important. Be a good team member.
The third type of customer is what I call the paternal customer, and that's your boss. And most people agree it's a good idea to keep your boss happy. How do you do that? The number one thing is go to your boss today and say: "Boss, I just want you to know I've thought a lot about your vision for where we're going, and I want you to know that I'm buying in. I am energized about your vision for the future of this company. Let me know anything I can do to help you go to the next level.” You tell your boss that, he or she will be impressed. Now, that paternal customer could also be a maternal customer if, indeed, your boss is a female; so keep that in mind. But it's the person who you report to. Work hard to buy in, tell them so, and then demonstrate it with your behavior.
The fourth type of customer is what I call the fraternal customer, and those are the people who are members of your network. Everyone has a network. We need to be doing everything in our power to build our network and enhance our influence, and that gives us more relational capital to be good in whatever it is that we're doing. So all four are important, and you could argue that any one might be more important than the other, but I say, “Let's work on all four of those with exceptional, high performance behavior.”
Ray: That's great comments that you have, because all of this really feeds into employee engagement. If you're not engaged within your workforce, you're not going to engage well with your teammates, you're not going to engage well with your manager, your manager wants you removed, and, ultimately, your business partners and customers that you come in contact with.
I wanted to just highlight one of the key things that you mention, which is the paternal-maternal relationship with your direct supervisor. I think one piece of advice that was given to me a long time ago is that, as an employee in an organization, you have essentially one job. And that one job is, as you've said very clearly, to be a resource and to make your direct manager's job easier; easier to be a resource to accomplish whatever it is they're trying to accomplish within the framework of the business. And I think that if more people would really embrace that concept and realize that their job isn't carved into a little box and that's all that they do, and they would really embrace going the extra mile to really take to heart what we're talking about here, there would be a lot smoother relationships between employees and their managers. So I just wanted to highlight that as, I think, an important point.
Don: I think, Ray, you're absolutely on point; and when it comes to engagement, that's so critically important. I think there are two elements for a maximum, purposeful engagement. Number one is a willingness to engage, and that's attitudinal. And number two is the aptitude to engage, and that, of course, represents the skill factor; our interpersonal ability to get on target with people and to understand their point of view and to respond in an adaptable manner to their assertions in the everyday workplace.
Ray: I'd add to that, that as we go forward in helping our employees engage more, we have to have the ability to measure engagement. Many organizations I see implementing surveys which are very long and cumbersome, and, ultimately, the employees do not believe it's true and objective. And they feel pressured to answer in a certain way, which really defeats the whole purpose of building an authentic and transparent organization that is aligned with the corporate vision and the needs and desires of the employees that need to be part of the vision to move forward.
Don: Well said.
Ray: Don, let's go forward and take a look at what are some of the different roadblocks that we're likely to come across and the members of our audience here that are watching this, relative to Part One of our conversation and what we've just discussed. And then maybe we can go through and talk about some strategies to deal with these roadblocks.
Don: Okay. Of course, one of the roadblocks is we all know that when you go to work, things don't always go perfectly. There are things that get in the way from an administrative point of view, from a logistical point of view, from an interpersonal point of view. We get roadblocks thrown up all day long that keep us from achieving our goal or keep us from being able to accomplish as much as we had planned for that particular day. In selling, salespeople get rejected. I mean, we all have lost sales we thought we were going to make. And sometimes we'd already spent the commission; that really gets cumbersome. And then there are people in the service model where something gets in the way. You're doing your best for a customer to solve a problem, and then they get angry and blow up. These are problematical stress points that we have to deal with every single day.
So I would like to suggest that all of our audience today, Ray, keep in mind that we will continue to have the obstacles come our way. And the key is, stay positive even in the midst of adversity, because if you go negative, your productive solution is going to be weaker. Stay positive. Be a part of the solution, not part of the problem. I think we all grow strongest in the crucible of adversity. We need to realize that adversity is forthcoming. Don't treat it like it's something that's not supposed to happen, because it's very much a part of life, and we need to do everything we can to deal with that. So I think the people who persevere and have that high performance behavior going for them deal with the ambiguities and the negative eventualities much better than the others.
Ray: That's a great point that you make. As I think about my own life, and I'm sure as our audience thinks about theirs, each time that you move from one level in life to the next level in your path and on your journey, chances are it was because you hit some adversity that caused you to rethink, reevaluate, decide and recommit to what it is that you want to get to the next level. It probably also involved taking a little bit of risk, because without taking any risk, it's actually the greatest risk of all. Another point that just came up as I was thinking about what you were saying is, take a look at some people like Tiger Woods as an example. He is an individual who was on top of his game, went through a difficult period of life, and again is now on top of his game. It's because he's trained his mind from a very early age how to be a top performer, and betting against a champion or a top performer is really a bad bet, as we can see.
Don: I agree, and the key is to have stick-to-itiveness, because you never lose until you give up. And if you never give up, hey, stick around. I tell salespeople, “When you lose a sale, stay in touch with those people, because when the vendor who won that sale screws up, you need to make sure you're next in line; they might be your biggest customer someday.” So let's don't ever give up.
Ray: Exactly. As we're nearing the end of our discussion, there are a couple more things I'd like to cover. One is we're going to save that special video that you were talking to me about earlier on for the very end of this presentation, that we're going to insert. It's a secret and a little surprise for you guys, so stay tuned. But before we go to that, I just wanted to ask you, are there any resources or downloadable resources that the audience can take advantage of through going to your website or other sites you are a part of?
Don: They can go to www.donhutson.com and check out our bookstore there, and some of our programs are there. I'd say the most exciting thing we've done really in recent years is our new “Sell Value, Not Price!” virtual training program that we've just done the videos on, and it’s terrific. We would be glad for anyone to take a look at that, as well. That's the area in which I am considered to be the expert, is Sell Value, Not Price; what can we do to go to market in a manner where we can put that differentiation out there and do everything in our power to protect our margin and be our best. And that's always a challenge, but that's what the video clip that we were talking about is all about.
Ray: That sounds great. Don, we look forward to having more great content from you. What we're going to do now is I'm going to say goodbye at this point. We look forward to having more great content with you inside the magazine. If you have any last comments, let me know. Otherwise, we're going to roll into this awesome clip that you have to share with us.
Don: Ray, it's just been a real pleasure being with you and I appreciate the opportunity. You're a great guy to work with, and I'm glad you're enjoying success with your publication.
Ray: Thank you so much, Don. We really appreciate you being part of Customer Engagement Magazine. Now, everybody, get ready to share an amazing (video) clip that we really think is going to help you take your business to the next level.
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