Season 2, Episode 26: Lisa Earle McLeod

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Jack Hubbard: Okay, so

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Jack Hubbard: it's so fun to talk to people before we start the recording. I learned so much about Lisa. But I met Lisa through 2 people, 2 of my favorite people, Susan Bell, who perhaps attended a banking conference before the pandemic, and and met Lisa, and then Bryn Tillman

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Jack Hubbard: is very connected to Lisa. They know each other quite well. Lisa. Earl Mcleod, welcome, and thank you so much for being with us today.

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Lisa Earle McLeod: It's my pleasure.

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Jack Hubbard: Lisa wrote this amazing book, and I got to tell you her daughter

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Jack Hubbard: Elizabeth Litardo sent this over to me, was so kind, and we were talking about how powerful people that help you are, and Elizabeth is in indeed that, and is an author in her own right. And I just love selling with noble purpose, Lisa, and we're going to talk quite a lot about that today. But let's let's go to the Wayback machine.

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Jack Hubbard: And I'm old. So people who watched cartoons Rocky and Bullwinkle remember the Wayback machine. And so I want to talk about your your background in sales as an entrepreneur. Let's start there.

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Lisa Earle McLeod: So I was in sales. When I was in college. I sold advertising for my college newspaper, and we were an independent newspaper, so that meant we derived our revenues from advertising, not from the university, and when I got out of school I went to work in sales for Procter and gamble and was a sales manager and eventually a sales trainer for them.

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Lisa Earle McLeod: And it was funny because years later I so I had this job as a field sales trainer.

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Lisa Earle McLeod: Many, many years later I met up with a group of my buddies. By then we were all in our forties, and they talked about. It's called the Dfr. Job district field Rep, and they were like, Oh, God! Do you remember that? Dfr job? That was so awful? We just hated it, and I was like

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Lisa Earle McLeod: that was my favorite job in the whole company, and I found out I was actually the only person that liked it. But I ended up as an entrepreneur, because I I left P. And GI went to work for a small sales training company and ended up as their Vp. Of sales.

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Lisa Earle McLeod: And so I've had my own company

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Lisa Earle McLeod: for over 20 years. And it's funny. People say, you know, what was your vision when you started? What was your dream? What did you want to do? And I've

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Lisa Earle McLeod: I've learned through time that I'm best off just being candid about it. And the reality was. I was the Vp. Of sales. I had a heavy travel job. My boss, who I love dearly, got fired. I ended up working for a narcissist, and I had a baby, and so I was working for someone I didn't like. I had this baby, and I had this travel job, and I thought, surely I can do better on my own. So that's how I started my company.

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Jack Hubbard: And it's interesting how how people that start companies, they look at their previous company and everything they hated. And say, I'm just gonna do everything the opposite, and I'll be successful. And and you have been so your company. Mcleod and Moore did start 2,001. Talk about what you do there, and how you help your clients.

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Lisa Earle McLeod: So we, the thing that we're known for is the book selling with noble purpose. I've written a couple others, but the thing that we help our clients with is, we work as consultants, advisors, trainers, facilitators, driving 2 lanes at the same time.

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Lisa Earle McLeod: Revenue and

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Lisa Earle McLeod: sense of purpose, and the subtitle of the book is drive revenue, and do work that makes you proud. And what's interesting in a lot of companies, you'll have this big sales push, or you'll have this nicey, nice culture push.

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Lisa Earle McLeod: But what we have unearthed is that that sense of purpose that you're making a difference to your customers is actually what drives revenue. So the things that we look at the 2 metrics that we work at with our clients are revenue and emotional engagement. And I use that word emotional engagement

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Lisa Earle McLeod: very intentionally, because a lot of times the way people measure employee engagement is, I like working here. They're fair, and those are table stakes. But man, what makes an organization sing is that passion, that enthusiasm? And it's what drives, sales, numbers.

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Jack Hubbard: And I want to ask about the book. It is. It's a fascinating book, and one of the things I like about it is you tell a lot of stories which to me hold my attention, as you probably well know. And the second thing, it's incredibly practical.

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Jack Hubbard: But I got to ask. You know there's been a lot of talk, especially by some

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Jack Hubbard: bankers, Jamie Diamond, for example, who says you want to work for Chase? You come on back to the office.

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Jack Hubbard: I'm curious how you build and sustain a culture

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Jack Hubbard: in this remote or hybrid environment, where a manager, or even a CEO, doesn't see his or her people as often as they once did.

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Lisa Earle McLeod: As they once did, and the question that I often say, is not, are we in the office? Are we out of the office? But the question is, who do we serve, and how do we best serve them?

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Lisa Earle McLeod: And so what happened during Covid, initially is all the little nice culture building things, the latte bar, the the you know. Friday afternoon all those went away, and it was you and your laptop at your kitchen table doing your work. And so there's there's 2 groups of people that are asking questions. I'm going to go around about way to how do you build a culture? But there's 2 core groups of people that are asking fundamental questions about business.

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Lisa Earle McLeod: And the 1st is employees. And they're saying, Does our work matter? Does my work matter, or am I just a cog in your money machine?

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Lisa Earle McLeod: And I'm just a cog in your money machine. The only incentive for me to come back to work to back to an office is my paycheck, which is plenty of incentive. But we now have a transactional relationship.

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Lisa Earle McLeod: The second group of people which ties me. The second group of people that are asking a question customers are asking.

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Lisa Earle McLeod: are you here to help me?

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Lisa Earle McLeod: Or are you just here to close me

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Lisa Earle McLeod: and those 2 questions are connected. So if you want to have a transactional relationship with your customer.

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Lisa Earle McLeod: you have a transactional relationship with your employees, and that's what people often miss that that if you're if you treat your employees like a number, they're going to treat the customers like a number. And so the question of how do you build a culture? It's in the service of what

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Lisa Earle McLeod: what is our culture in the service of? And it can't just be in the service of hitting our numbers, or the whole thing will be transactional, will be non differentiated, and it also just can't be in the service of the employees, and we like each other. So I have a definite point of view on this. I do think you should treat your employees fairly, but the purpose of a company is one thing.

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Lisa Earle McLeod: improve life for customers in meaningful ways. And what a lot of companies don't realize is when you put that front and center. Here's how we actually make a difference to customers. I mean, you're talking to bankers. Banking is fundamental to people living their lives when you're clear on that.

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Lisa Earle McLeod: That's what the culture is built around. And then the question isn't, do I have to go into the office and sit on zoom all day, or, Oh, can I just do this stuff from home? The question is, if we want to make a difference to our customers, how do we best do that?

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Jack Hubbard: Yeah, and you and I are sales folks, and and so we don't. We don't really help customers so much by being in the office. Now I know we've both done virtual training and and all that, but I want my commercial bankers out belly to belly, nose to nose, ear to ear with clients and buyers, and so if they come to the office a couple of days a week, great one of the things that really bugs me, and I don't. I don't. I want to talk about sales meetings down the road because you write a great chapter about it is

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Jack Hubbard: Wednesday tends to be a really good day in banking to make sales calls, and and inevitably what I see from Banks is managers drag their people out of the office to have a sales meeting on Wednesday. What's the deal with that.

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Lisa Earle McLeod: Well. And the thing is, what happens in organizations is a lot of well intended people are just trying to do their job.

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Lisa Earle McLeod: and where we get silos and organizations is not because people set out to create a fiefdom or they want a siloed organization where people don't talk to each other. What happens is, everyone has their own metrics. Everyone has their own measures of success, and those done alone in the absence of something that pulls them all together.

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Lisa Earle McLeod: I'll start having sales meetings on Wednesday, but if we have you know, you and I've talked. One of our clients was Atlantic Capital Bank, and their purpose was we fuel prosperity.

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Lisa Earle McLeod: which sounds really simple. Put it on a T-shirt, put it on a tag, make it a tagline, but for them it was deep and real. And so, if our purpose is to fuel prosperity, what's the best way for us to do that is, have our bankers out with the customers on Wednesday. So it it seems like a small thing.

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Lisa Earle McLeod: But one of the examples often use. It's the difference between an educator who says

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Lisa Earle McLeod: I'm here to make sure all the students show up and take all the tests, and I cover all the material versus an educator who says my overarching, true and noble purpose is to create

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Lisa Earle McLeod: a love of learning and informed citizens.

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Lisa Earle McLeod: They're going to run a very different classroom.

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Jack Hubbard: Yeah, no doubt you're an educator. You've written 5 books. This is not your latest book, but it. But what's interesting about this is this is the second edition of selling noble with noble purpose. I believe the 1st one, maybe 1612.

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Lisa Earle McLeod: Hang a moment.

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Jack Hubbard: And this came out right during the pandemic. It's kind of interesting. I'm always curious from an author's perspective.

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Jack Hubbard: Why, why did you do this. You had written other books. But how did this come into your mind? And why did you decide at that point to write this.

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Lisa Earle McLeod: So tell you why I wrote it, and then I'll tell you why we did a second edition.

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Lisa Earle McLeod: It started with a very small study.

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Lisa Earle McLeod: I was

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Lisa Earle McLeod: tasked by a big biotech company to study their sales team and identify what differentiated the top performers.

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Lisa Earle McLeod: And it was a field-based study, and we looked at the good performers and the top.

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Lisa Earle McLeod: Because if you've led a sales team of any sort, you know the difference between the good performers and the bad performers. I mean, that's an easy. It's not always easy to find the right people, but it's a set of things that we know the sales skills. They know the customers they show up for work. They've got discipline like it's a replicatable, teachable set of skills. But what is often not as clear is the difference between the good and the exceptional

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Lisa Earle McLeod: shows in the numbers. But it's that gauzy thing that's a little harder to put your finger on, and that's what they wanted us to find out.

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Lisa Earle McLeod: And we were near the end of the study.

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Lisa Earle McLeod: I was with one representative. We've gone out in the field work with all these reps looked at you know how many calls. They made, what they talked about with the customers, what their backgrounds were near the end of the study. I was with one particular sales rep, and I asked her a question that wasn't on our list, and I said, Well, what do you think about when you go on sales calls? And she said, I always think about this one

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Lisa Earle McLeod: particular patient, and this was a company that sold a drug, a very life changing drug. And she went on to describe. I met this grandmother. She was taking our drug, she told me thank you and what emerged, and she said the word she said, that's my purpose. That's why I do this job.

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Lisa Earle McLeod: And this is back. 15 years ago, you know, people weren't talking purpose about purpose at work unless they were in a nonprofit.

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Lisa Earle McLeod: And so I went back and looked through the anecdotal interviews to see if I could find others with this sense of purpose, and I found 4 other reps, and at the end of the study the Biotech Company said, Well, you studied all our people. Who do you think the top people are? Because it had been a blind study? I said, I think it's these 5,

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Lisa Earle McLeod: and I turned out to be right.

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Lisa Earle McLeod: and they said, Well, how did? Why, how'd you know? And I said, Well, they had this greater sense of purpose.

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Lisa Earle McLeod: but I couldn't

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Lisa Earle McLeod: fully articulated them. And so that's what led me to study and eventually write a book is, I knew

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Lisa Earle McLeod: what I had seen was real, and if you've trained a lot of salespeople, and I have, too.

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Lisa Earle McLeod: the only the best way I can describe that moment when I recognize that was, it's like that moment in a movie where the person realizes their spouse is cheating on them, and they flash back to like a hundred other little things that now all of a sudden makes sense, and when I realized sense of purpose, I flash back to every sales training I've done and I've gone. That was it. There are some people showing up

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Lisa Earle McLeod: trying to do a good job.

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Lisa Earle McLeod: trying to do their best, trying to ask the right questions. But it is all in the service of closing the deal. And there are other people whose ultimate, true North is, I want to improve life for customers and subsequent research revealed across industries.

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Lisa Earle McLeod: It. The data holds up the people who noble purposes to improve life for customers, outperform the people just focused on targets and quotas. But what I recognized was.

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Lisa Earle McLeod: it's not just telling people that. Why I wrote the book was, you have to figure out how to identify it, how to scale it, how to put it in your sales meetings, how to put it in your marketing materials, and how to make it the centerpiece of your business. And that's why I wrote the book.

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Jack Hubbard: And then comes the pandemic in 2020. And you say, Okay, I got a good foundation here. I gotta make some changes. Why did you do a second edition.

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Lisa Earle McLeod: We did a second edition for 2 reasons, one, the world of sales had changed, and much more was being done virtually. That was one reason and the other reason candidly is, when I wrote the 1st book I had a couple of good case studies from customers.

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Lisa Earle McLeod: but by the time I'd written that was ready to write the second book. We had global companies that had adopted this and been wildly successful. And so the 1st book was based on some research that I had done and a few mid-sized companies that I'd worked with as examples. The second book, there was a lot more research, academically vetted research, which is not my forte, but it supported the original premise.

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Lisa Earle McLeod: But then we had lots more examples. It wasn't just me telling you how to do your sales meetings. It was. Here's 3 examples of how companies run their sales meetings since we talked about that. I'll mention it instead of starting your meeting with a number. Tell a story about how you made a difference to customers. You'll light up everybody's frontal lobe. You'll shift the emotional center of the meeting. So I wanted to get really practical on things like that, and I wanted to do it

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Lisa Earle McLeod: in a way that would work even when you weren't in the office.

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Jack Hubbard: Yeah, I I do want to talk about sales meetings later. But I remember coaching a banker in Indiana.

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Jack Hubbard: and I would go to these pipeline meetings and sales meetings, and they were just ungodly, terrible. And and I'm thinking, if if I'm getting up in the morning and shaving or putting on my makeup and looking in the mirror and go. Oh, God, I got to go to a sales meeting today. Right? So do you get to go, or do you have to go? So Dale is the guy's name. He's still a banker, and he always started his team meetings with, Tell me something good.

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Jack Hubbard: and it really set a very positive tone for the rest of the meeting, and a lot of bankers will say, Well, I'll do that at the end. By the end you

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Jack Hubbard: they got deer in the headlights because all you've been talking about numbers, and they can't think of anything good other than Oh, good! The meeting's over. So we're gonna talk about that, too. But so you mentioned. So you start the thing in 2,012. You write it again in 2020.

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Jack Hubbard: I had an interview right before you your program with a guy named Frank Cespidis, who teaches at the Harvard Business School, and he talked about sales management, and he wrote a book in 2020, and I asked him this question that I'm about to ask you.

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Jack Hubbard: 5 years doesn't sound like a long time, but it really is

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Jack Hubbard: if you were, gonna write this book today?

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Jack Hubbard: 2025,

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Jack Hubbard: what would you add to it? What would you take away. How would you change selling with noble purpose? In 2025.

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Lisa Earle McLeod: I would say the thing that I would add, and I would add it at the beginning.

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Lisa Earle McLeod: Don't wait, because the thing that I get from people is well.

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Lisa Earle McLeod: you know my boss doesn't really think this, or our CEO doesn't really think this, and the thing that I would add is.

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Lisa Earle McLeod: they don't have to.

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Lisa Earle McLeod: You have the ability

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Lisa Earle McLeod: to set your true North, and the research tells us, if you do that number one, you will be more successful. Number 2, you will be happier and number 3 often it's catching.

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Lisa Earle McLeod: And I just got a a Linkedin message from someone that said, you know, I was big.

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Lisa Earle McLeod: I was the top sales performer

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Lisa Earle McLeod: and loved my job. And over the last couple of years I felt like I was just going through the motions I was really focused on. Just how can I get these deals done? And I was still successful. But I just didn't feel the same way I was, and the thing is, if you start feeling differently, the numbers are a lagging indicator.

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Lisa Earle McLeod: It's only a matter of time before that shows up in the numbers, and she said, I read this book, and I used it to reset myself to reclaim my true North, to establish for myself why, I'm here, and and the reality is, you know, I've I've worked with a lot of Ceos. Most of them are well intended people. They're under a lot of pressure, but

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Lisa Earle McLeod: we often wait. We think we have to. Our boss has to be on board. Our marketing materials have to be right, or we have to get through this quarter. But what I would emphasize more if I were to rewrite the book is.

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Lisa Earle McLeod: you don't have to wait.

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Lisa Earle McLeod: You don't have to have the perfect conditions. Top performers operate and have a sense of purpose in the face of imperfect conditions. That's what makes them top performers.

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Jack Hubbard: Stick you. You've talked about this a couple of times, so I'll frame it this way

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Jack Hubbard: in banking a loan never goes bad until you put it on the books.

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Lisa Earle McLeod: Right.

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Jack Hubbard: In in a sales company, a bank pharmaceutical, whatever it might be. Your employee doesn't go bad until you hire them.

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Jack Hubbard: I'm really curious about what you're seeing in the companies that you're working with, that have adopted the Nsp process.

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Jack Hubbard: and how their hiring practices have changed.

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Lisa Earle McLeod: Okay.

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Jack Hubbard: Some people in sales would view your process as kind of soft. It isn't.

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Lisa Earle McLeod: Okay.

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Jack Hubbard: But but they could view it that way. Oh, I'm you know. My job is to earn commissions and build revenue and all that kind of stuff.

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Jack Hubbard: How have your companies that you've worked with, modified, changed, adapted your process to as they hire people.

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Lisa Earle McLeod: I'm glad you asked that. And I want to say this anytime we talk about emotions or improving life for others or making a difference. We tend to create a false dichotomy. I'm either focused on myself or focused on them. And I want to be really clear. Selling with noble purpose is about is for people that have ambitious goals, but they want to attract and retain

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Lisa Earle McLeod: great customers. And so what happens in a hiring process, and we often get into this with folks is sales. People have been trained to talk about how assertive they are, how they go after numbers, and and that

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Lisa Earle McLeod: we don't know what's in people's hearts until they tell us that's what the culture is trying them to say in an interview. So there's a very simple question you can ask in an interview. And

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Lisa Earle McLeod: it's this, tell me about a time when you made a difference to someone at work.

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Lisa Earle McLeod: and give the person a little bit of time, because they may go. Well, I made these big numbers for my company, and everybody was happy. Don't let that dissuade you. Say that's great, that's great. Can you tell me what impact that had on the whole company, or tell me a little bit about how you've made a difference, maybe to a customer at some point.

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Lisa Earle McLeod: and the right person will light up when they answer that.

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Lisa Earle McLeod: And what that shows you is that is within them

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Lisa Earle McLeod: top performers. It's front and center. But what we found if you think about people on a bell curve in middle performers, good solid middle performers that is within them, but it has not been part of the day to day life

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Lisa Earle McLeod: in work. And so the way it changes your hiring, and I want to use 2 words. Here we often interchange the words aggressive and assertive, but to me they usually mean 2 different things. A lot of times. People are aggressive on behalf of themselves.

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Lisa Earle McLeod: but they are when you care deeply, and you know that you can help a customer. You are assertive because you know that it's going to be good for them. And so there's a nuance there. Words only mean what we think they mean. But we are looking for people that care deeply about customers, and will be assertive about making sure they get in front of them, that they give big ideas to them, that they're pursuing them.

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Lisa Earle McLeod: And so so it's very important to understand. If you've ever met anyone who cared deeply about what they did, they're not shy and retiring about it.

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Jack Hubbard: No, that's true, and I'm so glad we're talking about selling because the book does go into other areas of the CEO involvement and etc. But I want to ask you if if you believe, and how you know

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Jack Hubbard: that selling is a noble profession, and I want to ask it in the context of a great story that you tell.

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Jack Hubbard: and I'll I'll certainly let you tell it. But I'll set the table. So you're near as I can tell. You're just getting out of college. You're at a party.

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Jack Hubbard: Somebody's asking you, you know, what are you going to do? And I'll let you finish the story and and bottom line is, I think, as you tell this, you looked at this the question as they're complimenting me, and as you heard more and more people talk about it, you think. No, they're not complimenting.

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Jack Hubbard: Talk about that.

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Lisa Earle McLeod: At this party at my then boyfriend. Now, husband's

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Lisa Earle McLeod: boss's house. Okay, so he's a couple of years older than me. He was already out of school. I'm graduating from college, and you know, if you're a college senior, if you have a college senior home, you know everybody says so. What are you going to be doing after graduation? And the week before the party I had finally gotten my dream job, I was going to be a sales rep for Procter and Gamble. I had gotten the offer I'd signed. I was so excited.

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Lisa Earle McLeod: and so we're at this party and his boss's wife, who I would have back then described as kind of a fancy lady. You know this is kind of this fancy party. He's like the youngest one there, you know the employees. I'm definitely the youngest one, and she comes up and goes. So, dear, I understand you're graduating college. What are you doing? And I'm just proud as Punch. I go. I'm going to be a sales rep for Procter and Gamble.

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Lisa Earle McLeod: and this woman goes. Oh, my!

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Lisa Earle McLeod: I don't know that I could ever do that.

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Lisa Earle McLeod: And I thought I was so excited about my job, and I was so naive

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Lisa Earle McLeod: that I thought she meant like I said, I'm gonna be a a bullfighter, or I'm gonna be a race car driver. I thought it was like, you know, firefighter or something where she's like. Wow! And I literally had the whole conversation. I go well, you know it was pretty competitive to get it. I'm pretty excited about it so, and she goes oh, my sales! That. My, I couldn't do that. So we have the whole conversation.

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Lisa Earle McLeod: I walk away thinking, you know, this is pretty impressive.

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Lisa Earle McLeod: It wasn't until I started going to more quote, grown up parties and talking to people and saying, I'm in sales, and people would say, Well, I could never do that, that. I realized

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Lisa Earle McLeod: they don't mean it as a compliment.

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Lisa Earle McLeod: They don't mean it as a compliment at all, and I've come to understand what they mean is

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Lisa Earle McLeod: their perception of sales is talking people into doing something that they don't want to do, and they could never do that. And what's interesting is sales is one of the only professions that we've allowed to be defined by the people doing it badly.

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Jack Hubbard: So is sales a noble profession in 2025.

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Lisa Earle McLeod: So I'll share 2 things with you. One piece of fact.

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Lisa Earle McLeod: the top performing sales. People care deeply about their customers, and they want to improve their life.

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Lisa Earle McLeod: You know, in every profession we've got bad teachers. We've got bad doctors.

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Lisa Earle McLeod: but we don't define the profession by that.

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Lisa Earle McLeod: In sales. We define it by the people who are pushy and grabby and lying, and the numbers tell us those people don't actually do very well.

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Lisa Earle McLeod: You know, they might in some short term thing, but they they are not the top performers for their companies. They're not the best rated by their customers, and they're definitely not the top partners. So the data tells us that the best salespeople actually do care deeply about their customers, and they don't create a false dichotomy between caring about customers and making money.

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Lisa Earle McLeod: But when you say, Is it a noble profession?

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Lisa Earle McLeod: I often get really annoyed at people that have disdain for sales, because there's not a CEO alive who doesn't want profitable sales.

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Lisa Earle McLeod: There's not a person alive who do doesn't want their paycheck

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Lisa Earle McLeod: to be valid and not bounce.

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Lisa Earle McLeod: And so this idea that we can have disdain for the thing that actually makes the wheels of commerce spin.

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Lisa Earle McLeod: There's not a customer alive who wants to exist with no vendors.

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Lisa Earle McLeod: I mean, it's kind of insane that we would have a disdain for sales when you look at people that have to buy big complex systems, people that have to do big, complex financial deals. They want a partner. They want someone to help them. We've just allowed that negative moniker on sales

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Lisa Earle McLeod: to be applied because of a small group of not

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Lisa Earle McLeod: ethical, not not good performing people. But it's it's actually, the research tells us, something very different.

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Jack Hubbard: Yeah, very true. And you had me at Hello. Your story about Atlantic Capital Bank was early on in this book.

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Lisa Earle McLeod: Yeah.

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Jack Hubbard: So because I work exclusively with with Banks. It really caught my attention.

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Jack Hubbard: Talk about Doug Williams, Atlantic Capital bank, and how your partnership with them came about.

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Lisa Earle McLeod: So I'll give away the end of the story, and then I'll go back. So the end of the story is, they dramatically increased their profit before taxes, and Doug Williams was named banker of the year, and was on the cover of American banker.

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Lisa Earle McLeod: Their employee. Engagement scores are through the roof and their customer retention scores were very high. So that's the punchline of the story. Where we got there. They were a good company to start with. They were a well run Commercial Bank, and Doug read the book, and Doug said.

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Lisa Earle McLeod: This is what I've always believed about banking. This is why we founded this bank. Yes, we want to make money. We also want our bank. You know. We're a commercial bank.

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Lisa Earle McLeod: We're helping people build out their dreams. We're helping build out the country. And so we worked with them. We adopted a purpose statement, we fuel prosperity, which we really liked because prosperity has that feeling that this is for everyone.

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Lisa Earle McLeod: and what we did was we went through, and we got each department lined up with clarity about how they contributed to improving life for customers to fueling prosperity for customers. We did extensive sales training with all their commercial bankers, and it became a real differentiator for them.

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Lisa Earle McLeod: And and there's a hundred small things that they did, that all were in the service of this, from the types of questions they asked to the way they ask customers for referrals to the way they presented their packages to the way they processed all of their paperwork to. You know the way the It department worked. So there was all of these seemingly small decisions, but when taken together.

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Lisa Earle McLeod: they became a powerhouse.

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Jack Hubbard: It's amazing.

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Jack Hubbard: And they became a powerhouse and were acquired.

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Lisa Earle McLeod: They were acquired.

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Jack Hubbard: Which which is great and fine. But

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Jack Hubbard: one of the challenges. My sense is one of the challenges that that happens when a when a bank or an organization gets bigger is, it's really hard to keep this Nsp process centered. But you also talked about a very successful company, a hotel chain

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Jack Hubbard: that actually has gotten better with this as they've gotten bigger. Talk about that.

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Lisa Earle McLeod: So the Nsp. Is your noble sales purpose. It's why you exist. It's noble, it's in the service of others. It's about commerce, revenue sales, and it's your purpose. And so one of the clients that we worked with was Hilton

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Lisa Earle McLeod: and Hilton is a global company. A lot of their properties are not owned by Hilton. They've got multiple brands, and they're a well-run company. Their CEO is a guy named Chris Nasetta and Chris Nasetta. Before he took over as CEO went back and read some of Conrad Hilton's writings, and one of the things Conrad Hilton said was, is our purpose is to fill the earth with the light and warmth of hospitality.

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Lisa Earle McLeod: And so you may think, well, that's nice again. Put it on a T-shirt.

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Lisa Earle McLeod: But Chris Nasetta said, that's going to be real

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Lisa Earle McLeod: and our challenge. We worked with them on a major consulting and training project. Our challenge was to take that thing that Conrad Hilton said 100 years ago and make it alive. And the guy greeting you at the Hampton Inn in Vietnam. So it had to go down a lot of levels. But I'll give you one example, and you may have seen some Hilton ads.

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Lisa Earle McLeod: for connecting rooms. So this is one of their technology. Piece of innovation. If you go on vacation with your family, you know you book. You don't want to have all your you know, your kids all in the room with you. So you want to book a room for them. But then, are we gonna be able to guarantee that it's in this, you know, on the same floor. So Hilton had this thing where and it's no mean feat to get this

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Lisa Earle McLeod: where you can have connecting rooms. You can book them in advance. You can book them on the app. The app has keys to both rooms. And so

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Lisa Earle McLeod: one of the ways that that came about was the innovation team sat in the room and said, If we want to fill the earth with a light warmth of hospitality, what would hospitality mean to a family if I was welcoming people in my home as a family. How would I treat them? And so you go from these seemingly gauzy concepts

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Lisa Earle McLeod: to something very real, and we went through the entire organization and and got it to the point where that person who's greeting you at the Hampton Inn in Vietnam

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Lisa Earle McLeod: is very clear on their role in the larger purpose, and as a result Hilton was voted a number one place to work by the employees, and it's the 1st time anyone in the hospitality industry has ever won that award, and you might think, well, that's nice, but check the earnings. The earnings are there, too.

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Lisa Earle McLeod: because this. They knew. Chris knew very clearly the way my people feel about our customers, the way they feel about our larger purpose here is gonna directly translate into innovation, into the guest, experience into problem solving. And he was right. And it took about 18 months. And it's alive and well

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Lisa Earle McLeod: all over the world.

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Jack Hubbard: Amazing. So you talk about Chris Doug Williams, both Ceos, I guess my question is, how

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Jack Hubbard: what have you found in your work with clients.

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Jack Hubbard: Where a CEO finds this process as much as you try to convince he or she a little mushy.

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Jack Hubbard: and it doesn't necessarily translate down to the next level, because they kind of find it mushy, too. How do you

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Jack Hubbard: interweave your process into a culture where the CEO and the senior executives might not view it as the way you want it. Viewed.

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Lisa Earle McLeod: Right. Well, the thing you have to understand. It took me a while to get here. But the thing you have to understand is how much pressure is on a CEO and senior executives, and their board is not asking them. So how do people feel when our customers describe us? What words would they use? They're not asking the CEO that they're asking

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Lisa Earle McLeod: what are the quarterly earnings?

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Lisa Earle McLeod: And the CEO is under a lot of pressure to deliver the numbers, for you know, if they're publicly traded company, or for the shareholders for their board, they're under a lot of pressure, and so that occupies most of their mind and most of their days, and the thing that

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Lisa Earle McLeod: I've come to recognize is so many Ceos have been so schooled in that I'll use Doug Williams because he's been very public. He says numbers money. That was my lingua franca.

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Lisa Earle McLeod: he said. I used to

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Lisa Earle McLeod: lead the business to the numbers, but I've changed now. I manage to the numbers, but I lead to the purpose, and so you don't have to abandon the focus on the numbers. You don't have to be completely convinced that I'm going to be a noble purpose person.

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Lisa Earle McLeod: All you have to do as a senior leader is, give voice to the idea that our work makes a difference to customers and speak to the truth.

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Lisa Earle McLeod: which is, the numbers are a lagging indicator. The numbers are the result of what customers think and believe about you.

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Lisa Earle McLeod: what customers think and believe about you is a result of what your people think and believe about you, what your people think and believe about you drives the innovation, the customer experience. And so

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Lisa Earle McLeod: I used to get frustrated when I got pushed back from Ceos, and I came to realize that

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Lisa Earle McLeod: they're doing the job they're hired to do. They are hired to deliver the numbers, and there's no denying that, and so make helping people understand that this is a vehicle to do that, that you don't have to create this false dichotomy. You don't have to give away the store. This is a vehicle to do that. Having said that

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Lisa Earle McLeod: if the CEO is disdainful of this.

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Lisa Earle McLeod: I mean, it's not gonna work.

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Lisa Earle McLeod: I mean, you can say we're gonna implement a new it system, if the CEO's disdainful of it. That's not gonna work either. So this isn't rocket science, you know.

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Jack Hubbard: True. Well, you talk about numbers I I go, and I'm sure you do, too. You see a lot of pipeline meetings or sales, meetings that are pipe, dream meetings or liars, poker meetings where you go around.

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Jack Hubbard: But I love your chapter called Sales Meetings that inspire action. How does how do your sales meetings that you put into place in a culture? How are they different than some you've seen in the past?

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Lisa Earle McLeod: Okay. So let's say, we have to have a pipeline meeting like that's real. We're not going to be loosey, goosey, my company, we have pipeline meetings. We're not going to be just like Oh, let's, you know, free to be you and me, and let the numbers fall where they may, we don't care. No, we care very deeply, so I'll give you 2 elements that will change a meeting, and they will give you a more accurate pipeline. So the 1st element is at the beginning of the meeting. Tell a story about how you made a difference to a customer.

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Lisa Earle McLeod: and what I mean by that is not. Here's how we helped a charity is not. Here's how we gave away something for free or wrote something off. No, tell a story about how the thing that you do. Here's the commercial loan that we closed at full fee. And here's how it's helping this business flourish. They're opening new chains. They're doing this, they're doing that our work matters. So you start

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Lisa Earle McLeod: the meeting with what we call customer impact story. The story about how the thing that you sell at full price made a difference to customers. Why do you do that?

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Lisa Earle McLeod: It resets the psychological center. It ignites everyone's frontal lobes. It's where belonging sits. It's where the sense of purpose sits. So we all know our work matters. So now you put people in a different headspace. Then, when you go through your pipeline meeting.

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Lisa Earle McLeod: I'll give you an example of one question that you can add. If I were to ask you, Jack, say you got 10 things, and I go. When are you gonna close it? How much is it gonna be? Are you gonna are you with the decision makers? Who's the competition like those are all normal questions. But let me tell you one more question that you can ask in pipeline meetings that will change them.

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Lisa Earle McLeod: How is this customer going to be different

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Lisa Earle McLeod: as a result of doing business with us.

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Lisa Earle McLeod: and what you will do is you will take that seller's brain from. When am I going to close it. How much is it going to be self

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Lisa Earle McLeod: which, showing up with that in your brain, does not increase your likelihood of closing it? When I say, how will the customer be different? You will open up a portal in that sales, reps brain where they're now thinking about the customer. And what's gonna happen to them, you'll make them more compelling. The other thing it does in a pipeline meeting is that they give you big Google eyes. I don't know.

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Lisa Earle McLeod: Then, you know, the likelihood of closing this is very small.

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Jack Hubbard: Yeah. And the likelihood that they need additional training is very high.

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Lisa Earle McLeod: Right if I if I say, how is the customer going to be different as a result of this deal? And you don't know you are on the road to being commoditized.

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Jack Hubbard: One of the things I love about this book is. It's a sales book.

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Jack Hubbard: It's a hiring book. It's a coaching book. And Lisa's done another book called Leading with Noble Purpose, which you should get as well. Lisa, you've got a great newsletter on Linkedin called work on purpose. How do we get that? Where else can we see you other podcasts? And how do people get a hold of you?

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Lisa Earle McLeod: So you can follow me on Linkedin. I put content on there every week, and if you're interested in working with our team, having me speak at an event or consulting with you. Just Google noble purpose. You'll find our website, and there's a contact button. There.

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Jack Hubbard: Outstanding. Well, Lisa, Earl Mcleod, thank you for this time, thanks to Elizabeth for helping to get this thing going, and the book is outstanding. You've got to get this book selling with noble purpose. Lisa. Thanks so much for your time today.

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Lisa Earle McLeod: Such a pleasure

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Lisa Earle McLeod: great.

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Jack Hubbard: Did that do what you wanted it to do?

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Jack Hubbard: Oh, it's great! How was I with questions.

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Lisa Earle McLeod: Great you. You read the book.

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Jack Hubbard: I know is that interesting authors tell me that all the time. Well, of course. Why would you send me the book? Well, they they people normally don't read the book. They go to chat, gpt, and ask. That's ridiculous. You've invested your time with me. I want to do the same with you. So 2 things really fast a week before the program goes on. Which, by the way, is

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Jack Hubbard: March 19th coming up? we'll get you. I can't remember what they call it, but it's marketing material where you can do whatever, and if you need it, a link to the whole thing for your purposes, you're welcome to to do it. The only other thing I ask is, maybe after the program is on. If you wouldn't mind doing a Linkedin recommendation for me. That would help. That's number one and number 2, if you know others

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Jack Hubbard: like yourself, who are well spoken, who have written a great book. Who I who could help bankers? Please let me know I would love to. I would love to interview them as well.

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Lisa Earle McLeod: Okay. Well, I know you went back and forth with Elizabeth. Her book leading yourself is great. And did she send you one.

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Jack Hubbard: She has not, but I

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Jack Hubbard: I'll ask her to. I'll ask her to send you one

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Lisa Earle McLeod: She. One of the things that she has done in that book

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Lisa Earle McLeod: is tackled the employee engagement problem from a different lens in that. So often we're gonna do all these perks, or we need our managers to be better. Her point of view is the only people who can really tackle employee engagement

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Lisa Earle McLeod: are the employees.

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Jack Hubbard: Good point. Well, I would love to get it, and I loved her story. Your story that you wrote about her story on.

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Lisa Earle McLeod: Right.

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Jack Hubbard: In the book it was. It was awesome. Well, thanks again, Lisa, for your time. I really thank you.

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Jack Hubbard: and I'm sure we'll be talking again.

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Lisa Earle McLeod: I enjoyed talking to you. Have a good day.

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Jack Hubbard: Best. Thank you. Bye.