Latest / I Used To Be Crap At Sales / Sales Leadership Is Stuck in the Past - And It’s Costing You | EP18 | Phil Putnam

Transcript

Sales Leadership Is Stuck in the Past - And It’s Costing You | EP18 | Phil Putnam · I Used To Be Crap At Sales

• 0:00
  Mark Ackers: Phil Putnam, a dynamic leader who helps
• 0:02
  organizations unlock top performance. Did you used to be
• 0:05
  practice house?
• 0:06
  Phil Putnam: Oh, yes. The way that I look at it is that in
• 0:08
  some ways I still am. There is no done. There's no finished.
• 0:12
  Growing, especially when it comes to sales. I'm the first
• 0:15
  person to put out a book that really looks at leadership in
• 0:17
  this specific way. Very typical situation for a first time
• 0:21
  leader, I was brought into a global role with a very large
• 0:26
  mandate and a very short period of time to deliver results and
• 0:29
  very limited resources. I'm going to have to get my team
• 0:32
  members to give me what I want, which is quality work on time,
• 0:36
  on a very regular basis, in order for me to deliver my
• 0:39
  team's number to my larger business, the majority of senior
• 0:43
  leadership, the ones who really dictate are from the Baby Boomer
• 0:47
  and older level of Gen X. The majority of the workforce is
• 0:52
  millennials and Gen Zers. So there's a big difference there.
• 0:56
  And I run into a lot of senior leaders that basically say,
• 0:59
  yeah, I get it, but I don't want to you literally cannot succeed
• 1:03
  without human employees. This is not a problem that AI has
• 1:06
  solved. There's no such thing as a global enterprise, entirely
• 1:10
  automated, machine driven business. It's one of the most
• 1:12
  important phrases. Any leader who's not in those two
• 1:16
  generations can hear millennials and Gen Z ers value their time
• 1:19
  more than they fear change. So the attitude that a lot of
• 1:23
  senior leaders have right now towards job candidates and
• 1:26
  hiring is that, well, I can afford to lose people because
• 1:29
  there's so many people looking for work, and people are so
• 1:31
  scared of not having a job right now that they'll stick it out,
• 1:34
  even when I'm not giving them what they truly need. That is
• 1:37
  not an accurate statement for millennials and Gen Z years. How
• 1:40
  should
• 1:41
  Mark Ackers: a leader that might have millennials and Gen Z
• 1:43
  change their approach to motivation? That's
• 1:45
  Phil Putnam: where the conversation really gets
• 1:47
  interesting. I arrive at a point where I ask the audience two
• 1:50
  questions. I ask them, raise your hand, if and only if you
• 1:54
  truly love your employer more than you love yourself. And I
• 1:59
  ask them, raise your hand if and only if you truly care more
• 2:04
  about your company meeting its goals than you do about yourself
• 2:07
  and your loved ones getting the life that you want. Now, I have
• 2:10
  asked this question now to well over 3000 people. How many
• 2:14
  people do you think have raised their hands yes to either of
• 2:16
  those questions? Go on. Tell us you mark,
• 2:23
  Mark Ackers: hello and welcome to another episode of The I used
• 2:26
  to be crap at sales podcast. I'm your host, Mark Akers, and today
• 2:29
  I'm thrilled to be joined by Phil Putnam, a dynamic leader
• 2:32
  who helps organizations unlock top performance and align their
• 2:36
  teams with the ultimate goals. Phil is a speaker, a workshop
• 2:40
  leader, a coach and now an author of desired based
• 2:43
  leadership. Phil has a rich career history ranging from a VP
• 2:48
  to sales name and to coaching executives. Phil is based in New
• 2:51
  York City, which you will probably hear elements of that
• 2:54
  in the podcast, because I'm already hearing taxis go past.
• 2:57
  Phil's got really innovative approaches and re methods to
• 3:01
  reshape how leaders should think about motivation and the results
• 3:05
  that it can bring. Phil, welcome to the I used to be crap at
• 3:08
  sales podcast. How are you and how is New York City this
• 3:11
  morning? Well, thank
• 3:12
  Phil Putnam: you for having me. I'm wonderful. I'm super happy
• 3:15
  to be here. New York is cold this morning and windy, but
• 3:19
  there is that kind of Bleak beauty to it. I'm lucky enough
• 3:22
  to have a beautiful view of one of the rivers in Manhattan
• 3:25
  outside of my window, so I get to kind of see that beautiful
• 3:29
  Mark Ackers: stuff. Well, Phil, we called the podcast I used to
• 3:31
  be crap at sales, because all of our guests say the same thing,
• 3:36
  and it's true for me as well. But my opening question to you
• 3:38
  is, Phil, did you used to be crap at sales,
• 3:41
  Phil Putnam: oh yes. And the way that I look at it is that in
• 3:43
  some ways, I still am, because there is no done like there's no
• 3:48
  finished growing, especially when it comes to sales. So I sit
• 3:52
  here today still crap at sales, at some things, and I delight in
• 3:57
  that. I've never been the person that needed to deny the reality
• 4:01
  of learning and of growth. I mean, that's part of why I've
• 4:03
  made a big chunk of my career sales and learning, when focus
• 4:07
  and enablement. So I sort of delight in being in process
• 4:11
  until the day we die. And that's
• 4:13
  Mark Ackers: a great answer, right? Like that growth mindset,
• 4:15
  I suppose when people answer the question of, yes, I used to be
• 4:20
  crap at sales, there's normally a moment that comes flooding
• 4:24
  back, that moment of realization, what was that for
• 4:27
  you? What was the moment when perhaps you were in sales and
• 4:30
  you realized you were crap? What happened? It's actually
• 4:32
  Phil Putnam: my very first well, my second sales job, my first
• 4:35
  sales job, I worked at a fast food restaurant, like a
• 4:38
  hamburger restaurant, like another version of McDonald's in
• 4:40
  the US, and that was in California where I grew up. I
• 4:43
  grew up in Sacramento, California. Then I graduated to
• 4:46
  retail clothing sales when I was in my last year of high school,
• 4:49
  and it was an Old Navy just think of like the H M of the
• 4:52
  90s, but far less stylish. And so I was interviewing for this
• 4:56
  job just to be a regular sales associate. And so one of. Parts
• 5:00
  of the interview, the manager said, go around, pick out an
• 5:02
  item of clothing that you think I might be interested in, and
• 5:05
  then sell it to me. So the first thing I remember is that this
• 5:08
  was a female manager who was interviewing me, and I go, and I
• 5:11
  picked a men's shirt that was not the right size for her. So
• 5:14
  right off the bat, no knowledge of the client's needs, no sense
• 5:17
  of, you know, fit, customer and product fit. And then I remember
• 5:21
  that I just basically described to her, like the color. And I'm
• 5:25
  like, I've tried to sell to her based upon the product itself. I
• 5:29
  didn't ask her anything about what she was looking for, what
• 5:33
  she needed, what she was trying to accomplish. I'll never forget
• 5:36
  it takes about 30 seconds for me to just like, flame out hard,
• 5:40
  just crash and burn so hard in this interview. And she after
• 5:43
  I'm done, she just chuckles, and she's like, wow, that was really
• 5:46
  awful. Was like, Oh crap, because I was 17, I wanted this
• 5:51
  job. And she's like, look like the best thing you can do before
• 5:55
  you decide what to try to sell, somebody is ask them, Is there
• 5:58
  anything specific that you're looking for that one moment of
• 6:01
  sales education was probably the most profound early piece of
• 6:05
  sales education I ever received is when she said, just start by
• 6:09
  asking me if there's anything I'm looking for. Feels
• 6:11
  Mark Ackers: like that was very much the Sell me this pen
• 6:13
  version in a clothing store.
• 6:15
  Phil Putnam: One thing that's great about Old Navy, they're
• 6:17
  part of gap Incorporated. So they own gap. Old Navy and
• 6:21
  Banana Republic, their sales acronym for their floor
• 6:24
  associates at the time was basic, A, S, I, C, S, I also
• 6:27
  like that the word itself made me like go back to basics. You
• 6:31
  know, begin with a greeting, ask what they're looking for,
• 6:35
  suggest a product, inform them about the product, continue to
• 6:38
  sell by adding on. I'm 45 years old. Now, I worked there when I
• 6:42
  was 17, and still, that's the power of a acronym. Yeah, that
• 6:46
  was their basic. Was their acronym.
• 6:48
  Mark Ackers: Let's talk about just if we scanned your career
• 6:50
  from then up until we sit down. Now, everyone's got a howler, a
• 6:54
  big mistake that they've made, that's that's cost them a deal,
• 6:58
  something that the audience listening to are going to laugh
• 7:00
  about, they're going to resonate with. What would you say is,
• 7:03
  like, one of your big mistakes that you look back on in your
• 7:05
  sales career?
• 7:06
  Phil Putnam: Okay, so this is a mistake I made earlier in my
• 7:09
  career, and then just two days ago, I didn't make this mistake.
• 7:13
  This is a success story. Several years ago, I was in a sales
• 7:16
  conversation. We had achieved product market fit. We'd
• 7:20
  achieved, you know, business value fit. And so the obvious
• 7:23
  question, the buyer has of great and how has this helped other
• 7:26
  customers? Before? Can you provide me with some data
• 7:29
  points? I just said no, because, to my knowledge, at the time,
• 7:35
  this product was new to the market, and I, as far as I knew,
• 7:38
  my company didn't have any data they could pull from. So I just
• 7:41
  said, No, we can't provide you with any data of how this has
• 7:45
  helped other customers. And of course, you know, I lost the
• 7:48
  deal. The follow up is that just two days ago, exact same thing,
• 7:51
  and this is now I'm running my own business, I'm selling my own
• 7:54
  products, and I'm with this decision maker and an in person
• 7:57
  meeting, and she says, and can you provide us some data on how
• 8:01
  this has helped other customers. In my head, I said, No, what
• 8:05
  came out of my mouth was, let me put something together for you.
• 8:09
  Because what I realized in that moment is the real thing that I
• 8:12
  needed was time. Like that's the first problem that I had to
• 8:15
  solve was get more time to find a way to give this customer what
• 8:19
  they're asking for. Because maybe there is data. Maybe I
• 8:21
  don't know yet, but I probably can solve this problem if I just
• 8:25
  create time for me to do it. And so then I was able to go home
• 8:29
  and figure out, how am I going to solve this problem?
• 8:31
  Mark Ackers: Like you say, I think it's that ability to you
• 8:34
  hear a question, and it's not that knee jerk reaction assuming
• 8:37
  you've got the answer. It's, let me get some time. Did you do any
• 8:40
  clarity around what it is they were looking for? Like when
• 8:42
  someone says to me, if you've got any data, that can mean lots
• 8:45
  of things? Yeah, so
• 8:46
  Phil Putnam: we'd already done that earlier in the
• 8:48
  conversation. This product that I was selling them is relatively
• 8:51
  new to the market, so I have a limited number of customers that
• 8:54
  are currently using it, and the first one started using it only
• 8:57
  four months ago. I knew the data was going to be limited, but
• 9:01
  also I know the problems that this product solves. I'd already
• 9:05
  made sure that this prospect I was talking to needed those
• 9:09
  problems to be solved in their business. So I we'd already
• 9:12
  zeroed in on a specific KPI that they were looking for, which was
• 9:16
  basically time and stage. They didn't specify the stage they
• 9:20
  wanted, but they just said, we're really looking to address
• 9:23
  our deal velocity challenges, specifically through time and
• 9:27
  stage. So that's
• 9:28
  Mark Ackers: why that stat, then was really helpful to you,
• 9:30
  because I think that was the bit that was just slightly missing,
• 9:33
  is that the data they were looking for. So Phil, how we got
• 9:35
  to know each other is Sarah brazier. Introduced us. She
• 9:39
  said, you'd be a great guest, and we started speaking. You
• 9:42
  shared, initially, a couple of chapters of your book. I've then
• 9:45
  since had the full copy, which I'm really appreciative of, I've
• 9:49
  done some reading. The book is called desire based leadership,
• 9:53
  and it come out, it was October. Wasn't it that you launched it?
• 9:55
  Let's talk about that book. First of all, who is this book
• 9:58
  for and how would. You describe it first and
• 10:01
  Phil Putnam: foremost, it's for leaders of people, so managers,
• 10:04
  and this could be a manager of any level, it's especially
• 10:07
  poignant for middle managers, like frontline managers and
• 10:10
  second line team managers, because they often get squeezed
• 10:14
  the most on the expectations from above, the needs from
• 10:18
  below, and limited resources to accommodate either set. So
• 10:22
  that's really who it's for, but it's really for leaders of any
• 10:26
  stage, and then the larger audience is an employee in any
• 10:30
  role in any industry, because it's really about your
• 10:34
  relationship with employment, and the fact that the motivation
• 10:38
  that leads to top employee performance at any level is a
• 10:42
  result of somebody's belief that they can get the life they
• 10:45
  desire from the job they have. That's about your relationship
• 10:48
  with employment. Also, one of the main things that helps
• 10:51
  leaders do is stop trying to solve behavioral problems with
• 10:56
  operational solutions. And so that's a little bit of a teaser
• 11:00
  about what's in the book, and we can really, you know, dig in
• 11:02
  together from there well and
• 11:04
  Mark Ackers: well, let's do that. I mean the book really, as
• 11:06
  you say, it focuses on aligning leadership with what people
• 11:12
  truly want. What inspired that idea? Well,
• 11:15
  Phil Putnam: very typical situation for a first time
• 11:18
  leader, I was brought into a global role with a very large
• 11:22
  mandate and a very short period of time to deliver results and
• 11:26
  very limited resources. And I had inherited one team member
• 11:30
  who was there before I joined the company. I was given, you
• 11:33
  know, head count to hire two more, and I knew with the
• 11:36
  expectations that were in front of me, I had to generate some
• 11:39
  big results in a very short period of time, I'm going to
• 11:42
  have to get my team members to give me what I want, which is
• 11:45
  quality work on time, on a very regular basis, in order for me
• 11:49
  to deliver my team's number to my larger business, which is my
• 11:54
  responsibility. It's how I keep my job, it's how I get my
• 11:57
  promotion. So I just sat down and did something I very
• 12:01
  normally do, I just applied some common sense, and I thought,
• 12:04
  well, what's the best way to get somebody to give me what I want
• 12:07
  from them, to give them what they want? And so I just asked
• 12:10
  myself, what do people want from a job? Why do people work? And
• 12:15
  the answer was so obvious and so quick and clear, people work to
• 12:19
  get the life they desire in exchange, that is everyone's
• 12:22
  number one career goal, because nobody truly loves their
• 12:26
  employer more than they love themself. And so I thought,
• 12:29
  well, if I'm going to use somebody's ability to get the
• 12:32
  life they desire from the job they have as a basis of
• 12:35
  motivation and also a basis of decisioning about who am I going
• 12:38
  to hire? I need to figure out. I need to discover the details of
• 12:42
  what that life is for each person. So as I was interviewing
• 12:45
  candidates or getting to know the person I'd inherited and
• 12:49
  learning how to mentor and develop her, I just would say,
• 12:52
  Hey, if you're comfortable, because this is totally
• 12:54
  voluntary, let's set aside the job for a second and just, I'd
• 12:58
  love to learn about the life you're trying to get in exchange
• 13:01
  for the work that you do. And then I'll tell you honestly, if
• 13:05
  you can get it here, because I genuinely believe that if you
• 13:08
  can get the life you desire from the job you have, that's party
• 13:12
  time, like you're going to be fundamentally motivated to bring
• 13:15
  me your best performance every single day with a minimal amount
• 13:18
  of friction. I'm going to get what I need from you. My
• 13:20
  business is going to get what it needs from our team, and we're
• 13:24
  all going to be happy. But the reverse is also true. If you
• 13:27
  can't get the life you desire, or you believe you can't get the
• 13:31
  life you desire from the job you have, you're going to disengage.
• 13:34
  Your performance quality is going to dip. And if I can't fix
• 13:37
  it in time, you're going to leave, and my company is going
• 13:40
  to have to pay the cost of replacing you, and the cost of
• 13:43
  replacement it is crippling to every company's profitability,
• 13:47
  and it's a major thing that's being overlooked by almost every
• 13:51
  company I'm aware of right now. It is kneecapping profitability
• 13:56
  all over the place. It boggles my mind. Why more companies are
• 13:59
  not concerned about this. Help
• 14:01
  Mark Ackers: me understand the time that's got on from this
• 14:04
  journey. When I asked you the what inspired this idea, you
• 14:07
  went to a very specific moment. When was that moment? What year
• 14:11
  it was? Late 2021 Okay, so I mean relatively recently, then
• 14:17
  right before then, perhaps not the way in which you were
• 14:20
  managing people, but you had that realization in 2021 is
• 14:23
  that, is that, is
• 14:24
  Phil Putnam: that what you're saying? Yeah, and it was a
• 14:26
  realization born of pressure. And
• 14:27
  Mark Ackers: since that realization, you've obviously
• 14:29
  had three years putting this into practice, and you thought,
• 14:32
  I want to write a book about this. What's been the reaction
• 14:36
  to this book from people that have read it and reached out to
• 14:39
  you? What have you heard from people. It's
• 14:40
  Phil Putnam: been really, really supportive, which is wonderful.
• 14:43
  There's two primary reactions that have come the first is,
• 14:47
  this is so obvious, but no one's ever talked about it before in
• 14:50
  this way. People are amazed that I'm the first person to put out
• 14:53
  a book that really looks at leadership in this specific way,
• 14:56
  because the fact that people are trying to get the life they
• 14:59
  want. From the work they do, that's a universal human truth.
• 15:03
  So when I say it, it feels revelatory to people because it
• 15:07
  hasn't been articulated in this way before to them, but it also
• 15:11
  lands with them as something that's always been true inside
• 15:14
  of them, and they just never really realized it before in
• 15:17
  this way. That's the first reaction. The second reaction
• 15:20
  is, oh, my God. The data, the research in this book, is so
• 15:25
  compelling. I was really fortunate to find incredible
• 15:29
  data from the world's most reputable sources on business
• 15:32
  insights. This is like Gallup Deloitte, ADP, pay scale,
• 15:37
  Mercer, like all these really, really top level, reputable
• 15:40
  sources, there's just so much information out there about what
• 15:45
  people want from their employment, what they are and
• 15:48
  are not getting from it, and the financial benefit or damage
• 15:52
  that's caused to organizations when leadership either
• 15:56
  prioritizes their employees desires and their ability To get
• 15:59
  it, or they don't prioritize it. And honestly, for me personally,
• 16:04
  there were four drafts of the book that I wrote, between the
• 16:07
  second and the third draft is where the research came in. And
• 16:11
  to me, that's where the book really became itself. I really
• 16:15
  didn't feel particularly confident with data, to be
• 16:18
  honest, before I wrote this book and before I researched it, and
• 16:21
  it turned out to be like a playground for me. It became the
• 16:25
  most enjoyable and most fascinating part of creating
• 16:28
  this book.
• 16:29
  Mark Ackers: Let's just pick apart something you said there,
• 16:31
  which I totally understand. People love their lives more
• 16:35
  than they love their careers, right? It just feels obvious
• 16:37
  when you say that out loud. Here's the question that I'm
• 16:40
  going to try and articulate, how does that change from generation
• 16:43
  to generation? And the reason I say that is when I look at my
• 16:48
  dad and his dad and their attitudes towards working
• 16:54
  careers, that work ethic, and that's that's even like
• 16:59
  academically as well, right? That is all encompassing. But
• 17:03
  then when I look at the other side of my face, kind of like
• 17:06
  two totally different mindsets collided. But then when I look
• 17:09
  at other generations as well, maybe like generated below me, I
• 17:13
  see more of that, like living their lives more I think COVID
• 17:17
  sped things up in terms of people realizing they can be
• 17:20
  more flexible. They can work from home. You know, you can
• 17:24
  have later starts, earlier finishes. Yeah, I'm going on a
• 17:28
  slight rant. But how have you seen this change generation,
• 17:31
  generation? Because my feeling is, the generations coming up
• 17:35
  are going to align with this a lot more than the generations on
• 17:37
  their way out. I would agree with that, and this
• 17:39
  Phil Putnam: is a great question, especially right now,
• 17:41
  because the battle over return to Office mandates is in a fresh
• 17:46
  round of heat right now, and it's a perfect microcosm of what
• 17:51
  you're asking about I did a lot of work with understanding each
• 17:54
  generation's relationship with employment. And then there's an
• 17:57
  entire chapter in the book that's dedicated to how to how
• 18:00
  to effectively lead and motivate millennials and Gen Z, ers, four
• 18:04
  generations, primarily active in the workforce, basically the
• 18:08
  younger half of the Baby Boomers, Gen Xers, millennials,
• 18:12
  which are also known as Gen Y, and then the older half of Gen
• 18:16
  Z. So right now, Gen Z is between ages 13 and 29 roughly.
• 18:21
  Ages 13 to 18, roughly, have not yet aged into the adult full
• 18:25
  time workforce, or like ages 13 to 2021, basically starting with
• 18:28
  baby boomers. Fundamentally, they are a loyalty driven
• 18:33
  relationship with employment. They believe in sticking with an
• 18:36
  employer even through the hard times, because it'll pay off in
• 18:39
  the long run. They also believe that loyalty to an employer is a
• 18:43
  mark of good human character. So you can't be a good person if
• 18:47
  you hop employers a lot. Also, all the benefits of loyalty were
• 18:51
  available to them. You know, pensions, lifetime benefits,
• 18:55
  meaningful employer contributions to retirement
• 18:57
  funds, unions, etc, profit sharing was also more common
• 19:01
  back then. Then there are the Gen Xers, which I am, by the
• 19:05
  way, I'm right on the cusp of X and millennial, but I function
• 19:08
  primarily as an excerpt. Our fundamental relationship with
• 19:11
  employment is that we inherited our baby boomer parents
• 19:16
  expectation of loyalty, but we didn't get a lot of the payoff.
• 19:19
  So our journey is often a 20 to 25 year journey to realizing
• 19:24
  that we can have agency in our relationship with employment,
• 19:28
  that we don't have to deliver loyalty to an employer who's not
• 19:33
  paying it back off to us. That's fundamentally what it is for a
• 19:37
  millennial. This is the biggest change in attitude in the four
• 19:40
  generations, the biggest change is between Gen X and
• 19:44
  millennials, millennials and Gen Zers. Fundamental relationship
• 19:48
  with employment is to find purpose in it without being
• 19:52
  beholden to it. The best way to articulate that is that they
• 19:57
  need to work in order to feel fulfilled. World, but when the
• 20:01
  needs of work and life are in conflict, they will choose life
• 20:05
  over work. So they value their time more than they fear change.
• 20:10
  And to say that again, because it's one of the most important
• 20:13
  phrases, any leader who's not in those two generations can hear
• 20:17
  millennials and Gen Z ers value their time more than they fear
• 20:21
  change. The reason why that's so important is because, especially
• 20:25
  right now, there's a lot of people who are looking for work,
• 20:28
  and a lot of leaders have led a lot of rounds of layoffs very
• 20:31
  recently, and a lot of leaders are continuing to look for ways
• 20:35
  to cut costs. So the attitude that a lot of senior leaders
• 20:38
  have right now towards job candidates and hiring is that,
• 20:41
  well, I can afford to lose people because there's so many
• 20:43
  people looking for work, and I can afford to underpay and
• 20:47
  people are so scared of not having a job right now that
• 20:49
  they'll stick it out even when I'm not giving them what they
• 20:52
  truly need. That is not an accurate statement for
• 20:55
  millennials and Gen Z years in general, those two generations
• 20:58
  value their time more than they fear change. They value getting
• 21:02
  what they want from their work experience more than they're
• 21:06
  afraid of the change of finding a new job. It's really important
• 21:10
  lesson for leaders to learn right now, I combined
• 21:13
  millennials and Gen Z ers. The best way to think about
• 21:15
  millennials and Gen Z ers is take what's true for millennials
• 21:19
  and just quadruple it, and that's what's true for Gen Z
• 21:22
  years. Now, there are some slight differences, but
• 21:24
  essentially, that's where we are. I find millennials and Gen
• 21:27
  Z years to be the most similar of the four generations that are
• 21:30
  in the workforce right now,
• 21:31
  Mark Ackers: I'm a millennial, and I feel like and maybe I'm
• 21:35
  only speaking for myself, but I know when I speak to my friends,
• 21:40
  both of them, we feel like we're the last generation that, almost
• 21:47
  we had that pressure from the generation above us about got to
• 21:50
  go to work the employer. We see that in some of our parents
• 21:53
  still work. You know that that loyalty, that pay off and you're
• 21:57
  grateful to have a job like, I know my mother in law, that is
• 22:00
  her attitude to my wife. BEC, well, you're just lucky to have
• 22:03
  a job to my wife. And it's like, No, she's not. You know, she she
• 22:06
  deserves that. She can't get another job any other point. But
• 22:10
  when I look at the generation below me, I see the change as
• 22:13
  well. And I I feel like Millennials are more in the
• 22:15
  middle than perhaps what you're saying. But that might just be
• 22:18
  my own reality. But, yeah, really interesting way in which
• 22:22
  you break that, you break that down. I think when I, when I the
• 22:27
  book that you shared over as I say, I could see that this felt
• 22:31
  like something that might change generation to generation. How
• 22:34
  does that shift in perspective change how leaders should
• 22:38
  approach motivation then? Because a leader right now might
• 22:41
  have what I mean myself. I've got millennials and I've got Gen
• 22:44
  Z. I've got both. How should a leader that might have
• 22:48
  millennials and Gen Z change their approach to motivation?
• 22:51
  Sure.
• 22:51
  Phil Putnam: Well, the first question if you're trying to
• 22:53
  change the way a leader handles their employees, the first
• 22:55
  question you have to help them answer is, why should they
• 22:58
  prioritize the needs of their employees over the needs of
• 23:01
  their business? That's the first honest question that any any
• 23:04
  legit leader is going to have to work through. Because most of us
• 23:07
  have been raised to believe that the employee exists to serve the
• 23:10
  needs of the business and not the other way around. I actually
• 23:14
  have come to believe it's the reverse. Because how do you
• 23:16
  think the business succeeds? It's when the employees deliver
• 23:19
  quality work on time and when their tenures are long enough
• 23:23
  that your operational cost of replacement and attrition is
• 23:25
  under control. I think the first thing you have to say is like,
• 23:28
  Look, you have to prioritize your employees needs, because
• 23:31
  still today, over 90% of any company's assets are produced
• 23:36
  and delivered to the market by their human employees. So you
• 23:39
  literally cannot succeed without human employees. There may be
• 23:43
  some business models that can, but this is not a problem that
• 23:46
  AI has solved. It's not a problem that AI will solve
• 23:49
  anytime soon, if ever, like, there's no such thing as a
• 23:52
  global enterprise, entirely automated, machine driven
• 23:55
  business. You need humans, and not only do you need them, they
• 23:58
  are over 90% of what you create. So that's the first reason, is
• 24:03
  you, you have to figure out how to leverage human labor, human
• 24:07
  intellect, human skill, to reach and exceed your goals. And
• 24:12
  that's how a leader keeps their job. That's how a leader pays
• 24:15
  their bills. Once you've accomplished that, then you, you
• 24:18
  look at the fact that what's universal across all generations
• 24:22
  is that desire to get the life you want in exchange for the
• 24:25
  work that you do, and then you just learn. Not just what does
• 24:28
  each generation want, but what does each individual want? And
• 24:32
  that's really what the heart of what the book teaches. The book
• 24:35
  is very useful. So there's a framework in there that I
• 24:39
  developed through my years of doing this that allowed me to
• 24:42
  very quickly and very scalably gather those details of the life
• 24:47
  that an individual person wants in exchange for the work that
• 24:50
  they do, and then analyze the likelihood of me giving them
• 24:54
  that life. And once I had those two outputs from this model, I
• 24:58
  could then make an. Informed decision on whether to hire
• 25:01
  them, or whether or not, whether to keep them on my team, whether
• 25:05
  to give them more development, because it becomes this. It
• 25:08
  becomes an understanding of, are they going to get the life they
• 25:11
  want from this job in reality, not in magical thinking that a
• 25:15
  lot of leaders like to employ in reality, is this job going to
• 25:19
  deliver on this person's expectations and needs, and if
• 25:22
  not, I need to not waste their time. So I'm very employee
• 25:26
  first, and I'm very frank about that. All I want is for every
• 25:29
  person on earth to get exactly what they want from the time
• 25:32
  they have a life that time is short, it's precious. It's also
• 25:36
  the only resource we cannot get back. Money is easy. Money
• 25:40
  comes, money goes, it's fluid. Time is not I think one of the
• 25:43
  most disrespectful things you can do to a human is
• 25:46
  deliberately waste their time and when in it, when a company
• 25:50
  really
• 25:51
  Mark Ackers: powerful words and phrases said there, Phil, that
• 25:54
  just just impossible not to resonate with the model you're
• 25:57
  talking about, obviously, is the life motivational discovery
• 26:01
  model, and I want to dig into that. I think, I think it'd be
• 26:04
  fair to say that most people that listen to this podcast will
• 26:07
  manage Millennials or Gen Gen Z. Here's the thing that I often
• 26:12
  hear when I speak to managers about motivation, is so the
• 26:15
  sales leaders, they manage sales people, and they find
• 26:19
  identifying true motivation difficult, and that can be for a
• 26:22
  few reasons. They sit down with millennials, or they sit down
• 26:25
  with Gen Z's and they say, You know what motivates you? And the
• 26:28
  top level answer is money. I want to earn money. I know
• 26:33
  you'll know this to be true as well, but that only motivates
• 26:36
  you for so long. As soon as you get pay rise, that makes you
• 26:38
  happy for a couple of days, very soon, you start getting used to
• 26:41
  that standard of living, like you spend what you earn. It
• 26:44
  doesn't motivate you, really. The other problem they have is
• 26:47
  perhaps the younger generation, Gen Z, I don't know. I don't
• 26:51
  know what I want, right? It's not like they've grown up
• 26:54
  wanting to be in sales. They've they've fallen into sales. One
• 26:57
  of the reasons I ask everyone on the Quick Fire hours, what do
• 27:00
  you want to be when you're older is, I want to see how many
• 27:02
  podcasts I can get into before someone's as a salesperson. And
• 27:05
  it'll probably be, it probably never happen. So when you
• 27:08
  imagine Gen z's, they're in a career. They didn't grow up and
• 27:11
  want to have. They didn't study at school, college, university,
• 27:15
  haven't got a degree in sales. They just fallen into sales.
• 27:18
  They become a slave to commission because they start to
• 27:22
  earn money, they realize they probably couldn't get that money
• 27:24
  elsewhere, but they don't necessarily know what motivates
• 27:27
  them, because they're still quite young. Is it as simple as
• 27:30
  a very common answer I want to get on the property ladder? Is
• 27:33
  that really what motivates them day to day? I suppose, in a
• 27:36
  roundabout way, what I'm trying to ask you is, how do sales
• 27:40
  leaders, and I know I'll be setting you up here for the life
• 27:43
  motivation discovery model. But how do sales leaders really
• 27:47
  understand what truly motivates their employees?
• 27:50
  Phil Putnam: You ask them, and then you accept their answers.
• 27:52
  It's really not complicated. Here's where most leaders really
• 27:56
  trip themselves up before they've even gotten going in
• 27:59
  this conversation, two beliefs that leaders have to stop
• 28:02
  believing and have to get themselves out of if they want
• 28:05
  to drive top performance from their people in today's market,
• 28:08
  they have to stop telling themselves that they know better
• 28:11
  what their people want than the people themselves do, and they
• 28:14
  have to stop telling themselves that they actually have a hand
• 28:18
  in scripting what their employees want. You have no
• 28:21
  place and no power to actually make somebody want something
• 28:25
  different than what they want. Your only power is to decide
• 28:30
  whether or discover whether you can give it to them or not, and
• 28:33
  then choose how you might proceed based upon the answer to
• 28:37
  that question. If you can't give somebody what they want, but you
• 28:40
  still want them to keep working at your company. Your only real
• 28:44
  options to do that are to manipulate them or lie to them.
• 28:47
  You have to convince somebody to stick around for less than what
• 28:52
  they truly want. That's awful human behavior, and it will not
• 28:55
  create a positive long term outcome. I understand
• 28:59
  Mark Ackers: it's an obvious answer ask them. I understand
• 29:01
  that. Let me just challenge that slightly. When you're asking
• 29:04
  someone motivates them, that is with the context of they could
• 29:07
  be really young. This could be their first or second job in
• 29:10
  sales. They didn't dream of this job. They could have self
• 29:13
  limiting beliefs, right? They don't know what is possible.
• 29:15
  They don't know what they could achieve. Do feel like you can
• 29:18
  get templated answers of get on the property ladder. I'm money
• 29:23
  motivated because they've become a slave to that commission. I
• 29:26
  suppose what I'm hoping you can share with the listeners here
• 29:30
  is, if you're sat with someone, and I totally get by the way,
• 29:33
  you can't want more for someone. They want for themselves, right?
• 29:36
  They they have to. You can't engineer something for them. But
• 29:40
  how do we as managers really understand the motivation beyond
• 29:44
  those templated answers, beyond those self limiting beliefs,
• 29:49
  beyond those they don't know what they don't know? How do we
• 29:52
  find out? And I say I'm hoping that's where the life motivation
• 29:55
  discovery model is going to come in,
• 29:56
  Phil Putnam: definitely. So life is an acronym, l, I, F, E, the.
• 30:00
  Letters stand for lifestyle, income, feelings, employment,
• 30:04
  and these are the four buckets of information that the answers
• 30:08
  that I would get when I was developing this model most
• 30:11
  commonly fell into. So let's talk about the I the income,
• 30:14
  since that's what you've asked about. First of all, I think
• 30:17
  that wanting to get on the property ladder or being
• 30:19
  motivated by money are completely valid motivations. I
• 30:22
  don't think it's my place as a leader to judge those or to
• 30:26
  think that they're somehow only partially informed. Can you
• 30:30
  recall a time in your life, regardless of age, where there
• 30:33
  was truly nothing that you wanted, that you were aware of?
• 30:36
  People always want something, whether it's a popsicle or
• 30:39
  whether it's a house this idea that someone would not be aware
• 30:43
  of what they want at that point in time doesn't line up with
• 30:47
  human experience and with human reality. I think the mistake
• 30:50
  that a lot of leaders make is they expect somebody to be able
• 30:54
  to say, what do you want forever. That's not the
• 30:57
  question. The question is simply, what do you want? Now,
• 31:01
  that's the need you need to assess. Can I give them what
• 31:04
  they want? Now, when it comes to motivation, the promise of
• 31:07
  someday is a motivation killer. You'll get that promotion
• 31:11
  someday. You'll get that house someday, if you stick around,
• 31:15
  people don't believe in that. So if you hire somebody and you
• 31:18
  say, Hey, you want to get a promotion, we can really deliver
• 31:21
  that to you, probably in two to three years. They're probably
• 31:24
  going to be okay with that, but if you don't deliver on that in
• 31:27
  two to three years, they're not going to stick around for
• 31:29
  another two to three years. And hope of that promotion money
• 31:32
  itself is almost never the goal. It's what money will do for the
• 31:37
  person, how they want to use it to shape the life experience
• 31:40
  they want to have, both with the things and the activities they
• 31:44
  do, the material part of their life, and then also the
• 31:47
  emotional reality. A great story to bring this to life is that I
• 31:51
  was doing, I was delivering this workshop at a conference a
• 31:54
  couple months ago, and I had people from every generation in
• 31:58
  the workforce in the room, so a really great discussion
• 32:02
  developed among us about the different ways that those
• 32:05
  generations look at their employment, and the woman who
• 32:09
  was from the millennial generation who spoke up, I had a
• 32:12
  person from each generation share their experience, and this
• 32:14
  brilliant woman named Ashley spoke up and said, Well, I
• 32:18
  entered the workforce right after the 2008 market crash, I
• 32:23
  did everything I was supposed to. I went to school, then I
• 32:27
  went to university or college. I did everything I was supposed
• 32:31
  to, that the world told me would make it possible for me to get a
• 32:35
  job and get into my adult life. And then I got handed a global
• 32:39
  financial meltdown, and yeah, I had to live in my parents house
• 32:43
  longer because there weren't jobs available and the economy
• 32:46
  wasn't favorable. It was the worst economy, you know, in
• 32:49
  recent history, certainly of her lifetime. And then I've spent
• 32:53
  every every day and every month and every year since then, being
• 32:58
  judged as entitled and lazy and unreliable by the senior leaders
• 33:03
  above me simply because of the date that I was born, and then
• 33:07
  what was happening in the economy at the time when I was
• 33:10
  going from college into the workforce. And that made such a
• 33:13
  profound impact on me when she shared that, because I don't
• 33:17
  think that most leaders today take seriously how disruptive
• 33:23
  and how challenging it was for that, that era of the millennial
• 33:28
  generation, to have to go from university to the workforce in
• 33:32
  the wake of the economic meltdown. Someone says, I want
• 33:35
  to make money. If I'm running the model, the life, motivation,
• 33:38
  Discovery model on them, I'm like, great. What do you want
• 33:41
  that money to do for your life? That's where the conversation
• 33:44
  really gets interesting and really gets going. One of the
• 33:47
  things I look for when I ask the money discovery questions, the
• 33:50
  income discovery questions is, do they just say I want to make
• 33:55
  X amount of money by x date or by x point in time? Or do they
• 33:59
  talk about the impact they want money to have on their life, and
• 34:03
  is that impact more focused on the material aspects of life or
• 34:06
  the psychological aspects of life? And I tell you, I have run
• 34:10
  this on 1000s of people now I have never, ever had a single
• 34:15
  person only say I want to make X amount of money by x point in
• 34:19
  time, not once. Over 95% of the time, what people talk about
• 34:24
  when they talk about money is the impact they wanted to have
• 34:28
  on their material life and, most importantly, their psychological
• 34:32
  well being. There
• 34:32
  Mark Ackers: was so much there, Phil that we could break into I
• 34:35
  think the thing that I was taking from this is, this is
• 34:37
  where it's changed for leaders that two to three years and that
• 34:41
  people aren't afraid of change. And I think if you're managing
• 34:44
  the older generations, you can almost spin that story, paint
• 34:49
  that long term picture, that vision that stay with us. This
• 34:53
  will happen wherever you're managing the younger
• 34:56
  millennials, the Gen z's. You really have got two or three.
• 35:00
  Years to help them get to where they want to get to. And if, and
• 35:03
  if you don't deliver on that, that's where they're not afraid
• 35:06
  to move on. Lots of people that listen to this will manage young
• 35:10
  sales professionals from the ages of 18 to 2223 and when they
• 35:14
  talk about, because I love to talk about motivation and
• 35:18
  understand what motivates their teams, etc. And they say one of
• 35:21
  the frustrations is they find that what they get back is, I
• 35:25
  want to earn money, I want to get the property ladder, because
• 35:28
  it's so tough and, and again, in England, that is, that is how
• 35:31
  you're brought up, in education from your parents, it's you've
• 35:35
  got to get a house, get a property ladder. And, and I
• 35:37
  think it's so difficult and almost almost unachievable for
• 35:41
  people now, growing up like I worry about my children. Will
• 35:45
  they be able to buy a house in 1520, years time? So my question
• 35:48
  is, when you've got someone so young that says they're money
• 35:51
  motivated to get on the property ladder, but we all know that's
• 35:54
  probably not achievable in two or three years, because even if
• 35:57
  they do exceptionally well at the business, they're not going
• 35:59
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• 36:01
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• 36:07
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• 36:24
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• 36:27
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• 36:29
  Phil Putnam: Great question. I'll go back again to say it's
• 36:32
  not the leader's place to judge the person's desires. It's the
• 36:35
  leader's place to learn their desires and then judge whether
• 36:38
  they can fulfill them or not, because that is the key to that
• 36:41
  person's motivation and the key to their performance. Also you
• 36:45
  have to remember that the place where you stopped learning is
• 36:48
  the place where you stopped asking. So if all you gathered
• 36:51
  from your employee or your this job candidate when you asked
• 36:55
  them what they were trying to accomplish in their career was
• 36:58
  money and the property ladder, that's because you didn't ask
• 37:02
  them any more than that, and you don't really have operable
• 37:04
  information if all you've gathered is that they want to
• 37:07
  make money and buy a house. So I think the onus is on the leader
• 37:11
  to continue the discovery to Okay, and what will it do for
• 37:15
  you? If you have money and buy a house, where do you want that
• 37:18
  house to be? What do you want that house to look like? Who do
• 37:21
  you want to have living in your house? Those questions alone, if
• 37:25
  you answered those questions. For me, here's what I would know
• 37:27
  as your potential leader or your leader. I would know if I need
• 37:30
  to worry about relocation for you based upon where you want
• 37:34
  your house to be. I would know if you plan to build a family or
• 37:37
  expand your existing family based upon what your answer to
• 37:41
  Who do you want to have in that home with you? And if you want
• 37:44
  to build a family or expand your family, more people, more pets
• 37:48
  means more money, more time, more anxiety, right? Also means
• 37:51
  a requirement of work life balance. I'm going to want to
• 37:54
  know that. I'm going to know about a person's level of
• 37:56
  ambition. I'm also going to know about what time scale they
• 37:59
  expect to get things on that's all really important information
• 38:03
  for me, then to analyze, well, these this is the constraints of
• 38:07
  my business. This is what I can pay this person right now. This
• 38:11
  is my company's personality when it comes to the pace of
• 38:15
  promotions and pay increases. So if the information the person's
• 38:20
  giving me would require meaningful salary growth within
• 38:24
  the next three years, but I know my company's personality on that
• 38:28
  historically is to keep raises slow and small. Well, then I'm
• 38:33
  probably not going to get top performance from this person.
• 38:36
  And is hiring them a smart choice for me? Probably not,
• 38:39
  because they're going to be unhappy, and then I'm going to
• 38:42
  be unhappy. That's an example of how the information the model
• 38:45
  gathers for you can be put into practice very quickly in a very
• 38:50
  important, very practical decision. Phil,
• 38:53
  Mark Ackers: that is exactly what I was wanting you to say. I
• 38:55
  was trying to push you down next. I wanted you to run that
• 38:57
  example. And
• 38:58
  Phil Putnam: here's the thing, though, the reason why there's
• 39:00
  so much conceptual conversation to have about this is because
• 39:04
  there is so much ideological growth that needs to happen
• 39:07
  among the current crop of leadership. And let me actually
• 39:10
  talk a little bit about why this is a really important insight
• 39:14
  for leaders to take away a very common question I get is, okay,
• 39:18
  sure, I get the business value of discovering what my people
• 39:22
  want, especially if they're millennials and Gen Z ers. But
• 39:26
  why does that really matter? Why do I need to prioritize the
• 39:29
  needs of these generations? Here's why, combined millennials
• 39:33
  and Gen Z ers are currently 53% of the global workforce. The
• 39:37
  younger half of Gen Z, ages 13 to roughly 20 have yet to age in
• 39:43
  to the adult workforce. So those two generations together,
• 39:47
  combined are on track to be two thirds of the global workforce
• 39:51
  by the year 2035 only less than 10 years from now. Also a
• 39:56
  current report and from early 2024 from manpower. Group, which
• 40:00
  is a global staffing, recruiting and employment insights
• 40:05
  organization, found that in 2024 there's a global talent
• 40:08
  shortage, regardless of the candidates that are in the
• 40:10
  market, and the influx of that after all the layoffs, they
• 40:14
  found that 77% of all companies across all industries globally
• 40:19
  are struggling to fill their open roles. The third thing I
• 40:22
  want to put on the table here, before I draw out the insight,
• 40:25
  is that, because still the majority of senior leadership,
• 40:30
  the ones who really dictate what happens at a company and how
• 40:34
  hiring and firing and compensation goes, the majority
• 40:37
  of those people are from the Baby Boomer and older level of
• 40:41
  Gen X, right? That's where the majority of senior leadership
• 40:44
  power is still currently consolidated, but the majority
• 40:48
  of the workforce is millennials and Gen Zers. So you have this
• 40:52
  significant generational divide ideologically between what an
• 40:57
  employee should do and should bring to the work and what they
• 41:01
  should be motivated by. So there's a big difference there.
• 41:04
  And I run into a lot of senior leaders that basically say,
• 41:07
  yeah, I get it, but I don't want to, I don't want to prioritize
• 41:10
  the way that the majority of the workforce looks at work. I want
• 41:14
  to do things the way I do. I want to do them and I want to
• 41:16
  get the results I want. Great. That's what you want to do. It's
• 41:20
  not going to work. You think millennials and Gen Zers are
• 41:23
  entitled and lazy? You're wrong. You're just wrong. They just
• 41:27
  have a different relationship with employment than you do. And
• 41:30
  if you want a successful business, the smart strategy is
• 41:33
  to not alienate the majority of the global workforce, because
• 41:38
  over 90% of your business assets are going to be created and
• 41:42
  delivered by the humans in that workforce. There is no business
• 41:47
  case. There is no valid business logic that supports continuing
• 41:51
  to alienate and undermine and mock the needs and desires of
• 41:56
  the majority of the global workforce.
• 41:58
  Mark Ackers: So Phil, what would you say to a listener who
• 42:01
  doesn't believe this, that they don't believe that the life an
• 42:05
  employee wants is a stronger motivator than the desire for
• 42:09
  the company to succeed?
• 42:10
  Phil Putnam: Great question. I first would say, you're probably
• 42:12
  not alone, but here's what I've learned over the years of doing
• 42:16
  this, I've spoken about this and taught this at conferences and
• 42:20
  and workshops within companies over the past several years. And
• 42:23
  there's something I always do. Every time I do this workshop, I
• 42:26
  arrive at a point where I ask the audience two questions. I
• 42:29
  ask them, raise your hand, if and only if you truly love your
• 42:35
  employer more than you love yourself. And I ask them, raise
• 42:39
  your hand if and only if you truly care more about your
• 42:43
  company meeting its goals than you do about yourself and your
• 42:46
  loved ones getting the life that you want. Now, I have asked this
• 42:49
  question now to well over 3000 people. How many people do you
• 42:53
  think have raised their hands yes to either of those
• 42:55
  questions? Go on. Tell us zero, actual, literal zero. I would
• 43:01
  have to imagine that if I was somehow wrong about this, at
• 43:05
  least one out of those 3000 people would have honestly
• 43:09
  raised their hand and said, No, I joyfully prioritize my
• 43:13
  employer's needs above my own. That's why I believe it, because
• 43:17
  not only does it land with me as a basic human truth, but it's
• 43:20
  been proven out now by 1000s of people that I've had this
• 43:23
  discussion with, what I
• 43:25
  Mark Ackers: think is a potential danger that businesses
• 43:28
  might be, might be like walking towards, is they might have very
• 43:31
  senior leaders that have got one eye on retirement, that just
• 43:35
  don't take it that seriously, they don't look to prioritize
• 43:38
  those younger generations. They they are of that mindset that
• 43:42
  they're lazy, they're entitled. But why change when you get to a
• 43:45
  certain age, you've got one hour retirement and you can have that
• 43:48
  real friction. Have you ever seen that play out? Oh yeah.
• 43:50
  Phil Putnam: And I actually very specifically address this in the
• 43:53
  book, because the reality is that, let's say you're one of
• 43:55
  those leaders. You're like, you know what? I'm retired in five
• 43:58
  years. I just want to write it out and not worry about it. I
• 44:02
  don't want to change. Okay. Well, when you retire, you're
• 44:06
  still a participant in the economy. So when you retire, it
• 44:09
  doesn't remove you from the economy. It just demotes you
• 44:13
  from being a driver of that car to being a passenger. You now
• 44:17
  have whatever you know, retirement funds you have, and
• 44:20
  maybe you're on in some paid board seats, or maybe you do
• 44:24
  other things. You have passive income, maybe of active income,
• 44:27
  but still, you're impacted by the economy. Also, most
• 44:31
  executives who have been executives for a while, a
• 44:33
  significant portion of their retirement investment portfolio
• 44:37
  is stock in the companies that they've worked for and led at
• 44:40
  along the way. So how those companies perform is going to
• 44:44
  impact the quality of those leaders post retirement life.
• 44:48
  It's going to dictate what the rest of their life is like, from
• 44:51
  the end of their career to their death. If you're a leader right
• 44:54
  now, if you're a senior leader, if you're a C level leader who's
• 44:58
  five years away from retirement, you. You have never had more
• 45:01
  power in your entire career to shape the way that the people
• 45:06
  who are going to run your company when you're gone are
• 45:09
  equipped to do so. Do you want to spend those five years
• 45:12
  ignoring them and under equipping them and basically
• 45:15
  setting them up for failure and then having negative impacts on
• 45:19
  your retirement portfolio, financially and your quality of
• 45:23
  life, or do you want to use the opportunity that you have right
• 45:26
  now for the next five years to invest in those people and
• 45:29
  increase the likelihood that the companies that your post
• 45:33
  retirement life partially depends on is going to be
• 45:36
  better? And
• 45:37
  Mark Ackers: I think on paper, you can't argue with that. I
• 45:39
  know a lot of people will struggle to make that real
• 45:41
  connection and put that into practice, but I think on paper,
• 45:45
  what you say clearly makes sense. Hey, sales leaders, do
• 45:48
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• 45:51
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• 46:03
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• 46:13
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• 46:17
  team to perform to their best visit my sales coach.com to get
• 46:21
  started. The link is in the description. Here's the other
• 46:23
  thing I'm thinking, what you're talking about here, like it's so
• 46:26
  clear talking to you and reading the book like you just you know
• 46:30
  exactly what you're talking about, and you say it's all
• 46:32
  research proven, it's data, data backed. And I think it's so
• 46:37
  clear anyone listen to this that, like, they should just buy
• 46:39
  this book, if they want to get better understanding and
• 46:43
  motivating their employees, it's just really clear that you're an
• 46:46
  expert in this. Therein lies the challenge, right? Lots of sales
• 46:50
  leaders are a sales leader because they're a good seller.
• 46:53
  That doesn't make them a good manager. They just get promoted.
• 46:56
  That happened to me? Right? It's not like I was identified as a
• 47:00
  great manager, I just got promoted from being an
• 47:03
  individual contributor, and that's what happens in sales
• 47:06
  leaders are former great former sales people. But how does a
• 47:10
  leader really learn all of this? Because it's totally different
• 47:14
  to being an individual contributor, starting to manage
• 47:17
  people and motivate people. How are they going to put us in
• 47:20
  practice? Like, let's imagine. They don't, they don't have your
• 47:23
  book. Let's imagine, right? Because this is a new book, how
• 47:25
  they meant to really navigate this. So
• 47:26
  Phil Putnam: here's the good news, regardless of an
• 47:29
  individual leader's personality or what they're great at and
• 47:32
  what they struggle with, one of something people can always
• 47:36
  choose to do is listen like, listening is a choice. Yeah, for
• 47:40
  some of us, it comes naturally, and some people are naturally
• 47:43
  better at it than others, but it's also something you can
• 47:46
  choose to do, and it's something you can empirically become
• 47:48
  better at with practice. Just start listening to people, just
• 47:52
  start asking them about what they want. That alone will be
• 47:56
  very transformational for a lot of leaders, because what will
• 47:59
  happen is, not only will you develop that muscle memory?
• 48:02
  Those that skill set of, oh, if I want to know, I should ask.
• 48:05
  But also you're going to start seeing patterns in and themes in
• 48:08
  the answers that you get. And so what listening does is it equips
• 48:13
  you with information that you can then use to form the team
• 48:17
  that you have at any given time into an optimally functioning
• 48:21
  group of people, right? You can also then make good operational
• 48:25
  decisions that will facilitate the best success of those
• 48:28
  people. And you can also avoid operational dangers and you can
• 48:32
  avoid bad hires. You can know when to move somebody on. You
• 48:36
  can know when to keep somebody you can know when to go fight
• 48:40
  for a raise, and use your very limited political capital within
• 48:43
  your organization on something that's going to be beneficial,
• 48:47
  not only to the person you're trying to help, but also to your
• 48:50
  own career. And also say, just from a personal standpoint, I
• 48:54
  was a terrible listener. I'm not a naturally gifted listener, but
• 48:58
  I become a world class listener, all because in the first six
• 49:02
  weeks of my first year at college, university, so I was 18
• 49:06
  years old, a friend I had at the time, one day, she looked at me
• 49:10
  and she said, You know what, Phil, you're a terrible
• 49:12
  listener. And I looked at her and said, You know what, Sarah,
• 49:15
  you're right. I am a terrible listener. It was the moment
• 49:18
  where I was ready to hear it. And so what I decided in that
• 49:20
  moment, I said, You know what? My number one criteria of
• 49:24
  whether my time in university has been successful will not be
• 49:28
  whether I get my degree. I'm going to get my degree. I know
• 49:30
  that's going to happen. That's that's not a problem. My number
• 49:33
  one criteria will be if when I finish and I graduate, I can
• 49:38
  honestly say that I've learned how to listen, because I just
• 49:40
  sort of knew by instinct at that point that this was going to be
• 49:45
  the most important skill a human could learn, and it was going to
• 49:49
  transform my life more than anything else. I don't know how
• 49:52
  I knew it. I just did so I followed that instinct and I
• 49:55
  spent, I did, five years in college rather than four. I
• 49:58
  spent all five years to. Just obsessively exploring what it
• 50:03
  means to listen. And it did, it changed my life. So it is
• 50:06
  something you can learn and it's something you can practice,
• 50:09
  whether it comes naturally or not, in all humility, I do very
• 50:12
  frequently have people express to me, you're a great listener,
• 50:16
  and I think why is because, first of all, I actually take
• 50:19
  the time to listen to them, but also I'm curious about people.
• 50:22
  And to go back to the question you asked, really, which I think
• 50:26
  at the heart of it is a question about, what are some of the
• 50:30
  characteristics that are essential to being a really good
• 50:32
  leader, right? That produces great performance from your
• 50:35
  people, and especially a sales leader, I think the curiosity
• 50:38
  about people is really, essential. If I was talking to
• 50:42
  you, what the day that your manager came to you and said,
• 50:45
  Hey, you should become a manager, because you're a top
• 50:47
  seller. And you said, Should I do it? Phil, and I was coaching
• 50:51
  you, probably the first and maybe the only question I would
• 50:54
  ask you, to help you decide is, how curious are you about
• 50:58
  people? Do people fascinate you when you're in conversation, do
• 51:01
  you find yourself asking a lot of questions about the person
• 51:04
  you're talking to, and do you want to learn about them? Does
• 51:06
  that come naturally to you? And then, based upon your answer,
• 51:10
  that would tell you whether you should go into leadership or
• 51:12
  not? If you're not genuinely, fundamentally curious about
• 51:16
  people, stay an individual contributor. You're going to be
• 51:19
  an incredible seller. You will make so much money. You will be
• 51:22
  so happy if you don't want to be a people leader, and you choose
• 51:26
  not to be a people leader, oh my God, you're going to have a
• 51:30
  great life and a great career. You have to want to lead people
• 51:34
  in order to be good at it. And a lot of sellers don't want to
• 51:37
  lead people, and that's completely fine. I actually
• 51:40
  think one of the ways that corporate and sales culture has
• 51:43
  really underserved and I think harmed a lot of sellers is
• 51:48
  there's this idea that if you don't go into leadership, you've
• 51:51
  somehow failed. That if you're over 35 and you're still an
• 51:54
  individual contributor, there's something wrong with you. No, if
• 51:58
  you don't want to be a leader, don't do what you don't wanna
• 52:00
  do. It's gonna be better for you and your employers. So I think
• 52:04
  one of the best things we can do for the sales industry is build
• 52:08
  out the reality that a lifetime individual contributor Seller is
• 52:13
  a completely valid, respectable career choice, and we should be
• 52:17
  encouraging it, rather than trying to derail those people
• 52:20
  into people leadership. I
• 52:22
  Mark Ackers: think you're totally right. But again, I
• 52:23
  think that's where Millennials are trapped, because they don't
• 52:26
  get that message from above, where maybe Gen Z will and
• 52:29
  there's more awareness around it. Let's talk about active
• 52:32
  listening. It's it's a vital skill for sales people, as it is
• 52:38
  for managers. You spoke about how you spend years trying to
• 52:41
  become a better listener? Let's imagine just you know, someone
• 52:45
  is listening to this right now, and they think, you know what? I
• 52:48
  know that that's a weakness of mine. What are some of the
• 52:51
  things that they can start to do to become a better listener?
• 52:55
  From your experience, I
• 52:56
  Phil Putnam: just started with what I knew. So I was 18 years
• 52:59
  old. I was a baby, so I just started with what I knew. I was
• 53:02
  like, What do I know about listening? It's looking at
• 53:04
  somebody. It's asking them questions. It's discussing
• 53:07
  rather than broadcasting, you know, it's making sure the
• 53:10
  conversation is two ways. And I just started there, and started
• 53:14
  with the tactical, empirical things, the behaviors that I
• 53:17
  could change on the surface. So I made sure that I was listening
• 53:21
  more, asking more questions and then giving space for the person
• 53:24
  to answer. I try to interrupt less often, which I still
• 53:27
  struggle with. I'm a chronic interrupter, but I'm working on
• 53:29
  it. So once I had like, the external behaviors together,
• 53:32
  then I started dealing with what happens in my mind while I'm
• 53:35
  listening. I went to internal and I realized that, oh, I'm not
• 53:39
  really listening to what they're saying. I'm just preparing my
• 53:42
  next response. That's not the best way to go about this. I
• 53:45
  actually want to process what they're saying. So then it
• 53:48
  became that, right? So it went from the empirical then to my
• 53:53
  mental posture when I'm in the action of listening. And then
• 53:56
  from there, it just got more deeper and more nuanced, because
• 54:00
  then it became like, Okay, well, what are the different ways that
• 54:03
  people give me information? Yes, there's verbal what's their body
• 54:07
  language. You know also, what am I sensing? What are my
• 54:11
  instincts? How much can I trust those instincts? As I started to
• 54:14
  get to that level, then I would ask people questions that would
• 54:18
  either validate or invalidate my instincts. Because what I
• 54:21
  realized about my instincts is they're right for me, but they
• 54:26
  may not actually be, you know, right in the situation, they may
• 54:30
  not get me the information that I need. So it was just like
• 54:34
  continued to develop that relationship, and what I
• 54:37
  discovered is that well over the vast majority of of what made me
• 54:42
  a better listener was not about the behaviors that I showed to
• 54:46
  somebody else. It was about my relationship with myself. And it
• 54:50
  was do I have the self confidence and the humility to
• 54:56
  prioritize somebody else? Do I have the confidence and the
• 54:59
  humility? Ability to prioritize what they're telling me over my
• 55:03
  ability to respond to it. That was a lot of where it got to
• 55:07
  very quickly. But those are some things that that somebody who
• 55:10
  wants to improve their listening skills can do. And is there any
• 55:13
  books that you would recommend? Yes, and this is where I am a
• 55:17
  little bit off the beaten path, off the typical thing when it
• 55:21
  comes to what books do you read to become a better leader or a
• 55:23
  better seller? I do enjoy sales and business books, but where I
• 55:28
  actually get my most profound insights for serving people as a
• 55:32
  leader is actually from fiction and from memoirs, and also from
• 55:37
  television and movies. The reason why is that I find that
• 55:42
  fiction and memoirs are far more descriptive and insightful about
• 55:46
  human behavior than business books often are. Business books
• 55:49
  are often primarily about operations, and even if they are
• 55:53
  written to address human behavior, they still are trying
• 55:58
  to solve behavioral challenges with operational solutions, and
• 56:01
  that's never going to be particularly effective. I'm
• 56:04
  drawn to media and fiction, memoirs, biographies. I love
• 56:08
  biographies. Biographies have changed my life because that's
• 56:10
  about human behavior, and that's about behavior in context. It's
• 56:14
  about history and also TV and film, especially large, globally
• 56:19
  embraced shows. They're the last piece of monoculture that we
• 56:22
  have. Culture has become really fragmented, but still our
• 56:25
  primary reference points that shape the way we respond to
• 56:28
  various things at work largely come from our life outside of
• 56:32
  work. I find those human themes and those cultural themes that
• 56:36
  define what people bring to their relationship with
• 56:39
  employment in TV and film and fiction and memoirs and
• 56:43
  biographies, far more than I find it in business books.
• 56:47
  Mark Ackers: What's the biography that's had the biggest
• 56:49
  impact on your life? Then there is
• 56:50
  Phil Putnam: a musician named Nina Simone. Her primary career
• 56:54
  was basically from the 50s until, really, until she passed
• 56:59
  away in the early 2000s her autobiography is called, I put a
• 57:03
  spell on you changed my life, and so I read it the summer that
• 57:07
  I was really becoming a songwriter, and she really
• 57:10
  helped me understand the kind of relationship I could have with
• 57:13
  my artwork, the difficulties. She really gave me a perspective
• 57:17
  on relationship with audience, with conviction about yourself
• 57:21
  and realities of fame. Those were just very, very seminal
• 57:25
  lessons for me at that point in not only my career, but also
• 57:29
  just my development as a human you know, I was really deciding
• 57:32
  what I believed about the world and what I wanted at that time,
• 57:35
  and when I was was 20 or 21 at the time, it was very, very
• 57:39
  powerful in forming my relationship with the world
• 57:42
  around me, and it was powerful for me as a leader, because what
• 57:46
  is your leadership style? What is your life, if not an
• 57:49
  expression of your relationship with the world around
• 57:52
  Mark Ackers: you? You know what I'm really enjoying, Phil, and I
• 57:54
  thought it's the same very way, like the formative years, but
• 57:57
  your formative years, like everyone, like when you younger,
• 57:59
  you tell a lot between the ages of 18 and sort of 2122 but
• 58:04
  you're so aware of those formative moments. And even at
• 58:08
  the age you are now, in terms of how long ago that was, you're so
• 58:10
  aware of your formative years. And I think lots of people don't
• 58:14
  really recognize the big things that have impacted who they are
• 58:18
  today. I love how you can just go back to then and recount the
• 58:21
  impact it's had on you. Here's a scenario I just I want to flesh
• 58:24
  out with you, right? So what about those people that work for
• 58:28
  big companies? They are middle managers, that they're they are
• 58:31
  small cogs in big machines, and they manage people that perhaps
• 58:35
  they're a mix of inherited, hired, etc, but they know they
• 58:39
  can't truly give the people what they want, but they can't let
• 58:42
  them all go, right like this is their job, and they've got their
• 58:45
  own motivations, and they've got their own desires, and they need
• 58:48
  the people below them to deliver on there so they can get what
• 58:51
  they want. Obviously, the advice can't just be well, you should
• 58:53
  let them go. This is cruel. You're wasting their time. What
• 58:56
  is that person meant to do when they are that cog, but they've
• 59:00
  got these cogs beneath them that report into them, these cogs
• 59:03
  above them. And you and they know that it doesn't all tick,
• 59:06
  but it does go round enough. What's your real advice there?
• 59:09
  Because it can't be to just let them go. The first
• 59:11
  Phil Putnam: thing you have to do is choose to embrace reality.
• 59:15
  Stop lying to yourself. Stop lying to your employees. Your
• 59:18
  Business constraints are real. Your employees desires are real,
• 59:21
  they either align or they don't. You just gotta get really honest
• 59:24
  with yourself about it. Stop being in denial, and stop trying
• 59:27
  to believe that asking your people to take a plate of scraps
• 59:33
  and behave like it's a buffet is ever gonna work. Then what I
• 59:37
  would do is I would run the life motivation discovery model on
• 59:40
  all of my direct reports. I would get the data, I would run
• 59:43
  the analysis, and then I would go to my senior leader, and I
• 59:46
  would say, This is what my people want. This is our level
• 59:50
  of ability to give it to them. Because of that, this is my
• 59:53
  forecast of what is going to happen with my team in the next
• 59:57
  six to 12 quarters. This is what we. Need to be prepared for, and
• 1:00:01
  this is what we need to build a staffing and a Results Model on.
• 1:00:05
  That's what I would do. There's a couple scenarios that will are
• 1:00:09
  most likely to play out. One of those scenarios is that the
• 1:00:13
  majority, if not all, of your team will turn over in the next
• 1:00:16
  two to three years because your business constraints are so out
• 1:00:20
  of line with the desires of your employees, that you actually are
• 1:00:23
  going to want them to turn over. You cannot get top performance
• 1:00:27
  from these people. That's what the data tells you. So you
• 1:00:30
  shouldn't try to get top performance from those people.
• 1:00:33
  You should try to turn them over, not in a vindictive way,
• 1:00:36
  but in a supportive way. Have that honest conversation with
• 1:00:39
  them. Say, I'm sorry. I can't give you the future that you
• 1:00:42
  want here. However, there are other roles at the company that
• 1:00:45
  I have found that could potentially give that to you.
• 1:00:48
  That's a great solution, because then not only does that person
• 1:00:51
  get the life they want from the job they have, but your company
• 1:00:55
  pays a far lower cost of transitioning that person. You
• 1:00:59
  also don't lose their institutional knowledge. So the
• 1:01:02
  overall benefit to the cost and profit of your company is
• 1:01:05
  better. But even if you can't give them another role at your
• 1:01:08
  company, I believe it is better to help them move on to a
• 1:01:12
  different company than it is to keep them because once they know
• 1:01:16
  they can't get the life they want, their performance will
• 1:01:18
  dip, and they will be dragging your results down for as long as
• 1:01:21
  they're there. It may be weeks, it may be months. For some
• 1:01:24
  employees, this goes on for years, giving subpar
• 1:01:27
  performance, and they're dissatisfied along the way. That
• 1:01:30
  is the most likely scenario when you cannot give your people what
• 1:01:34
  you want, and as a leader, you do not have the ability to get
• 1:01:36
  more resources to do so, like is very often the case at large
• 1:01:40
  corporations. The other, more hopeful idea is that, hey, like,
• 1:01:45
  I've got five people on my team. We're in range to give three of
• 1:01:49
  them what they want. That's awesome. So let's build a
• 1:01:52
  strategy that really plans on those three people having a
• 1:01:57
  longer tenure than the other two. Maybe you change your
• 1:02:00
  workload. Maybe you change your mandate. Maybe you go get more
• 1:02:03
  head count, whatever the case is, running the model and then
• 1:02:07
  being honest with yourself about what you can expect from your
• 1:02:10
  team members gives you information and gives you lead
• 1:02:13
  time to make a legitimate strategy for your piece of the
• 1:02:16
  operation. That's what I think are some viable options in this
• 1:02:20
  situation that you've described. What an
• 1:02:22
  Mark Ackers: amazing answer that was, Phil, and just some great
• 1:02:26
  advice. I love the idea of creating a forecast next six to
• 1:02:31
  12 quarters of look, this is what the team want. This is what
• 1:02:35
  is likely to happen. This is when it's likely to happen. I've
• 1:02:38
  got a plan. There are these three or five people, whatever
• 1:02:41
  it might be, and we could give them this, and I accept these
• 1:02:44
  two perhaps aren't going to perform at the level we want
• 1:02:46
  them to. That is when you become a real leader, right, where you
• 1:02:50
  really look after your team are planning, I think particularly
• 1:02:54
  in sales, which obviously I can speak more confidently about,
• 1:02:57
  given that's my background. But we're just so focused on the
• 1:03:00
  quarter, the hamster wheel, this quarter, this quarter, and
• 1:03:05
  planning that far ahead for your team just almost feels crazy. A
• 1:03:09
  really good answer. The other thing that it led really nicely
• 1:03:13
  to is kind of what you mentioned the start, and this is, I
• 1:03:15
  suppose we're entering the final stage of the podcast now, but
• 1:03:18
  you mentioned about retaining that person, right? If you
• 1:03:21
  believe that we can give them we want, perhaps not in this role,
• 1:03:24
  but you don't want to lose that person. You mentioned really
• 1:03:26
  passionately, very early on that we must talk about the cost of
• 1:03:30
  replacing people. And as I said, I know this book's filled with
• 1:03:33
  data, and you've done a lot of research, why don't you really
• 1:03:37
  have an open mic here to sales leaders listening when it comes
• 1:03:40
  to replacing people and the costs and why people should be
• 1:03:44
  more aware of this.
• 1:03:45
  Phil Putnam: So data, data, data, this is going to be the
• 1:03:48
  data data people section. I'm going to lay out very quickly
• 1:03:51
  some numbers for you. So Forbes and Gallup have both found that
• 1:03:56
  the cost of replacing one individual contributor could be
• 1:04:00
  anywhere from 50 to 200% of the salary of that role. The wide
• 1:04:05
  variance in that range comes from variance across industries.
• 1:04:08
  So the median of that is 125% of a role. The average cost of
• 1:04:13
  replacing a salesperson in tech right now is about 150% of their
• 1:04:18
  ote. Let's say you are leading at 100% company, and you're
• 1:04:22
  currently running 15% annual attrition. By the way, for a
• 1:04:26
  reference point, the average annual attrition amount in the
• 1:04:30
  year 2023 in the United States was 21% so if you're running 15%
• 1:04:36
  attrition, you're 6% better than the average good for you, let's
• 1:04:39
  say their OT is only $150,000 then you have to replace them.
• 1:04:44
  It's 150% cost to replace them, which means you're going to pay
• 1:04:47
  $225,000 US to replace that one person. You're going to pay more
• 1:04:53
  to replace them than it costs to pay them, right? And this
• 1:04:55
  factors in not only the full operational cost of filling that
• 1:04:59
  role. But then also nine to 12 months of limited productivity
• 1:05:03
  while that person's coming up to full productivity in the world.
• 1:05:05
  So that total cost $225,000 to replace one person. But you're
• 1:05:09
  in 100 person company running 15% attrition. So if your
• 1:05:12
  staffing plan is to stay at 100 people, you need to do 15
• 1:05:17
  replacements this year to stay at 100 people, $225,000 times 15
• 1:05:22
  is $3.375 million so do you have $3.4 million to throw away? I
• 1:05:28
  don't. And even if you do, should you the revenue
• 1:05:32
  organization exists to generate revenue, but that revenue then
• 1:05:35
  get calculated into profitability, and if you are
• 1:05:38
  spending millions of dollars on attrition that could be avoided,
• 1:05:42
  you are just increasing the distance between your company
• 1:05:46
  and their profitability, and this is a danger for any company
• 1:05:49
  model, whether they're privately funded or whether they're
• 1:05:52
  public. Then let's contrast that with the cost of satisfying your
• 1:05:55
  employees. So pay scale Mercer and ADP provide data that
• 1:06:00
  together tell us that the average salary increase across
• 1:06:04
  all industries in 2024 for top performance in the same role is
• 1:06:09
  4.5% in tech, the average is 3% for top performance as a bar
• 1:06:15
  setter, if you do a 3% raise on $150,000 salary, assuming 40% is
• 1:06:21
  taken out for taxes, investments and benefits, your actual
• 1:06:25
  increase in your pocket for a 3% raise for top performance is
• 1:06:30
  $225 per month in today's world, that is not a meaningful amount
• 1:06:35
  of money. Bottom line with 225,000 or $225 a month, you can
• 1:06:40
  buy a $25 meal nine times. You can buy 27 grande lattes at
• 1:06:46
  Starbucks. Because the average price for a grande latte in
• 1:06:50
  Starbucks, in the US is around, I want to say, like $4 or
• 1:06:53
  something. You can buy 12 and a half Big Mac extra value meals
• 1:06:56
  at McDonald's. That's what you can do with the entire monthly
• 1:07:00
  impact of a 3% increase on $150,000 salary. Mercer and pay
• 1:07:04
  scale, tell us, though NADP, tell us that a raise that people
• 1:07:07
  find satisfying, that will engage them in their work, that
• 1:07:10
  will deliver better performance, that will increase their tenure,
• 1:07:13
  is between five and 10% so barely above the average that's
• 1:07:17
  currently being given. So if you go hog wild and you give a top
• 1:07:21
  performer a 10% raise on an $150,000 pay, that costs you
• 1:07:26
  $15,000 rather than $225,000 and if you do that 15 times the
• 1:07:33
  total cost of satisfying 15 employees is $225,000 so take
• 1:07:39
  your pick. Do you want to pay $3.4 million to replace 15
• 1:07:43
  people? Or do you want to pay $225,000 to satisfy and keep 15
• 1:07:49
  people? The last thing I'll say is this, the beauty of this
• 1:07:52
  strategic pivot, funding the cost of attrition, to
• 1:07:55
  prioritizing the cost of replacement, or, sorry, the cost
• 1:07:58
  of satisfaction, is that the solution is immediately self
• 1:08:03
  funding at a multiple because if you avoid replacing one person
• 1:08:08
  at the cost of $225,000 you now immediately have the cash on
• 1:08:13
  hand to not only satisfy that one person that you saved, but
• 1:08:17
  to satisfy 14 others. Now, many listeners to this podcast right
• 1:08:21
  now are leading sales organizations that are less than
• 1:08:25
  15 people total. Your total ARR might be less than $3.5 million
• 1:08:30
  this could revolutionize your entire operation, and it's self
• 1:08:34
  funding. How many business solutions do we know that are
• 1:08:38
  genuinely self funding? I'd
• 1:08:39
  Mark Ackers: be sending this clip of the podcast to some CFOs
• 1:08:44
  please do if I was a sales leader, because obviously
• 1:08:47
  there's, as I said, I know that comes from a place of research
• 1:08:50
  and data as well, not just personal opinion and really well
• 1:08:53
  thought out argument. Go. I'm gonna, I'm gonna make this the
• 1:08:56
  last question, because I know we could continue talking for
• 1:08:59
  another couple of hours, no doubt, but sales leaders today,
• 1:09:02
  like everybody, really busy, but let's imagine they're going to
• 1:09:06
  read your book, but they they're only going to implement one
• 1:09:08
  thing. What do you think that one thing should be? If you only
• 1:09:11
  Phil Putnam: do one thing differently, ask your people
• 1:09:13
  what they want, not only will it give you the opportunity to
• 1:09:16
  potentially give them what they want and reap the benefits as a
• 1:09:20
  leader. But even if you can't give them what you want or what
• 1:09:23
  they want, asking them will revolutionize your relationship
• 1:09:26
  with them, because most people have never genuinely been asked
• 1:09:30
  what they want by any leader in their entire career. That alone
• 1:09:34
  is something that people find motivating. And the
• 1:09:36
  Mark Ackers: way in which you broke that down with if someone
• 1:09:39
  says, I want to get in the property ladder, the way in
• 1:09:41
  which you broke that down was exceptional. And I think just, I
• 1:09:44
  think people don't think to go beyond that, like, it's so
• 1:09:46
  funny. In sales, we talk about, get beyond surface level pain,
• 1:09:49
  get to the root cause. But I think in those conversations
• 1:09:52
  about motivation, we stick at that surface level, okay, they
• 1:09:54
  want more money, okay, they want a house, okay, they want a job
• 1:09:57
  title, but it's about getting you. Deeper and look sales
• 1:10:01
  leaders used to be good sales professionals. They should be
• 1:10:03
  able to run that discovery, but I think we sort of accept that
• 1:10:06
  surface level answer and don't really get to the root cause. So
• 1:10:09
  yeah,
• 1:10:10
  Phil Putnam: and here's the thing I want to close on. First
• 1:10:13
  of all, there is nobody more naturally equipped as a job
• 1:10:17
  function to do what I'm talking about than sellers and sales
• 1:10:20
  leaders, because if we're good at our job, we're great at
• 1:10:24
  Discovery. And that's all this is. It's discovery. This is the
• 1:10:27
  big reveal at the end, right? It's just solution selling.
• 1:10:31
  You're just solution selling the job experience to your employees
• 1:10:35
  or your job candidate. You're finding out what their needs
• 1:10:37
  are, what are the problems you're trying to solve in your
• 1:10:39
  life. Great news. This job, this solution, can solve those
• 1:10:44
  problems for you, and I'm going to enjoy the benefits as a
• 1:10:47
  result. Sales leaders and sellers, we're naturally
• 1:10:50
  equipped to do this, and so it's what makes it such an exciting
• 1:10:54
  thing for me, because also being a seller and a sales leader is
• 1:10:57
  really, really hard. It's really hard, and it's such worthy work.
• 1:11:01
  It deserves so much respect for so many different reasons, and
• 1:11:05
  it's a fascinating job to be in. If you're sitting there feeling
• 1:11:08
  like I want to do this, but I feel like I can't, I want to
• 1:11:11
  tell you, actually, if you're a seller or a sales leader, you're
• 1:11:14
  probably more ready and more naturally equipped to do this
• 1:11:18
  than most other job functions are. I
• 1:11:20
  Mark Ackers: love that. What a great way to end and the
• 1:11:23
  podcast, Phil, you have been an amazing guest, someone that is
• 1:11:28
  clearly just so knowledgeable about motivating employees
• 1:11:33
  understand their motivation. It's been amazing. And I think
• 1:11:36
  when people get to listen to this, they're going to take a
• 1:11:39
  lot from it and know they're going to want to buy your book.
• 1:11:41
  Just remind everybody again, what is the book called, and
• 1:11:44
  where can they purchase it from? It's called
• 1:11:46
  Phil Putnam: desire based leadership, and you can buy it
• 1:11:48
  on Amazon, anywhere globally. If you're in the US and you want an
• 1:11:52
  autographed copy, you can buy it from my website, which is Philip
• 1:11:55
  putnam.com I only ship within the US, and it's literally me
• 1:12:00
  sitting on my couch behind me in the screen, addressing envelopes
• 1:12:03
  and autographing books, but otherwise, globally, it's
• 1:12:06
  available on Amazon. Well,
• 1:12:08
  Mark Ackers: thank you. I've got no doubt people listening to you
• 1:12:11
  or will be absolutely convinced you know exactly what you're
• 1:12:14
  talking about, and we've just covered slivers of what is in
• 1:12:18
  the book, and I was really grateful that you sent me a
• 1:12:20
  digital copy. Phil, just want to say again, thank you for coming
• 1:12:23
  on. Thank you for sharing your knowledge and insights. Has
• 1:12:25
  taken you years to build up. Lots of data has been researched
• 1:12:28
  and read and put together, and you've articulated so well.
• 1:12:31
  Thank you for being a fabulous guest, and I hope you had a
• 1:12:33
  great time. I have thanks for having me.