IAM922- Author Improves Competitive Differentiation for Organisations

Lisa Earle McLeod is the author of Selling with Noble Purpose, she works with organizations around the world to improve competitive differentiation and emotional engagement. Her clients include SalesForce, Volvo, Roche, Pfizer, and Dave and Busters.

• CEO Hack: Reading novels
• CEO Nugget: Identify three things- how do you make a difference to your customers, how do you do it differently and on your best day, what do you love about your job
• CEO Defined: Powerful figure in the life of your employees

Website: https://www.mcleodandmore.com/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lisaearlemcleod/

Full Interview:

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Transcription

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00:11 – Intro

Do you want to learn effective ways to build relationships, generate sales, and grow your business from successful entrepreneurs, startups, and CEOs without listening to a long, long, long interview? If so, you've come to the right place. Gresham Harkless values your time and is ready to share with you precisely the information you're in search of. This is the I AM CEO Podcast.

00:39 – Gresham Harkless

Hello. Hello. Hello. This is Gresh from the I AM CEO podcast and I have a very special guest on the show today. I have Lisa Earl-McLeod, the author of Selling with Noble Purpose. Lisa, it's awesome to have you on the show.

00:49 -Lisa Earle McLeod

It's such a pleasure to be with you.

00:51 – Gresham Harkless

Definitely super excited to have you on. A pleasure is definitely all ours. And we're doing so many great things. What I wanted to do is read a little bit more about Lisa so you can hear about all the awesome things that she's doing. And Lisa Earl-McLeod is the author of Selling with Noble Purpose. She works with organizations around the world to improve competitive differentiation and emotional engagement. Her clients include Salesforce, Volvo, Roche, Pfizer, and Dave and Busters. Lisa, are you ready to speak to the I AM CEO community?

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01:15 – Lisa Earle McLeod

I am absolutely ready.

01:16 – Gresham Harkless

Awesome, Well, let's do it then. So to kind of kick everything off, we were having so much fun before I decided to hit the record button in here. A little bit more on how you got started and what led you to do all the awesome work you're working on now.

01:28 – Lisa Earle McLeod

So there are 2 stories to how I got started. So my background is in sales and a lot of people think that sales is kind of an icky profession. And I remember when I was in a senior in college and I was at a party with my then boyfriend, now husband, and he's a couple years older than I am And so he was already out of school and working. And if you've ever been a senior in college, you know the question everyone asks you. So do you have a job yet? What are you gonna do? And so, yeah, so we're at this party and his boss's wife asked me, so what are you gonna be doing when you graduate? And I had just gotten a sales job with Procter and Gamble. And I was so excited because I had an answer now.

I said I'm going into sales. And she said, nice that she could be. Oh, I could never do that. And at the time, I thought she meant, like I had said, I'm going to be a firefighter or something like that. Like I'm so, or I'm going to be a brain surgeon. Like she was so impressed. I kid you not. It was a solid 2 or 3 years before I realized when people said I could never do sales that they meant it was icky. I had no idea. But my background was in sales and I started my own company about 15 years ago.

I started my own sales consulting firm and I have been in sales, been in sales leadership, been in sales training, I'd been a VP of sales. The thing that was always interesting to me was this intersection between emotion and money, and how the emotions of an organization, of an individual seller, of a buyer impact the money, because the money is real and concrete, but the emotion is gauzy. And so when I started my own firm, it was going down that path.

03:16 – Gresham Harkless

Nice, yeah, I absolutely appreciate that as somebody who graduated and also answered the question in the same way, not for the same company, but I did start sales jobs. I know exactly what you mean because I got those exact same responses, but I love how you kind of broke those things down because I think Sometimes sales get a bad rap. After all, we don't really understand the nuances of it and exactly what it includes. So I love, you know, your book and everything that you're writing, but also the work that you do because it helps people to kind of really understand that.

03:42 – Lisa Earle McLeod

Well, the interesting thing is sales is one of the few professions that we let the people who do it badly define the profession. And if you're running a company, a lot of times people view sales as a necessary evil, but it might surprise you to know that our research and this is what Selling with Noble Purpose is based on, is that the salespeople who have a purpose bigger than money, who actually want to improve the lives of their customers outsell the salespeople focused on targets and quotas. And the same thing applies organizationally.

And I know you have a lot of CEOs and aspiring CEO types listening to this call, his podcast. And one of the things that's really important to understand is when your organization has a purpose bigger than money when you're truly trying to make a difference to your customers, you will beat out your competition. The challenge for a leader is to point the team in the direction of what we call the noble purpose versus pointing the team just in the direction of, you know, this month's number.

04:40 – Gresham Harkless

Yeah, and I think that you know as we kind of talked about you know talks, it puts a lot of different perspective on the leader because I think when you look at it from that perspective, I've even heard somebody, you know, when I, in my first, you know, sales job saying, you know, we, we get the gift and opportunity to be able to provide what we're selling to people so that they can improve their lives. And when you start to have that switch and you start to understand those things, you have that noble purpose, as you said so well, and do in your book, it starts to really change the perspectives. I think change the action and change the energy towards what you're trying to accomplish.

05:13 – Lisa Earle McLeod

Yeah, it absolutely does. And the data bears that out. So if the leader stands up there and tells the sales team, hit the number, hit the number, we gotta do, you know, hit the number this month, they'll do okay. And there's a lot of sales teams that do that. But when the leader crafts a different story and says, our job is to make a difference to the customers, Let's go out there and see how we can put a dent in the universe, and change the world. Those are the teams that beat out the competition. And you read the names of some of our customers, and they're a very differentiated group of people.

We've helped a bank. We helped Dave and Buster's corporate sales team. We helped a pharma company. We've helped software companies. And the thing that leaders often underestimate is what belief they are seeding in the hearts and minds of their teams. And if you are only seeding this is transactional, it's all about the money, and you will struggle with customer retention. Your deals will always come down to price. But if you are seeding in your team, a deep belief and it has to be true, that what you are doing is improving the lives of customers, whether it's in a small way or a big way, when a team has that belief, they become what we call the tribe of true believers. And they create a differentiated sales experience with the customers.

06:25 – Gresham Harkless

Yeah, absolutely. I love that. And then once you have that experience, you know, for the customers, the customers start to also, you know, create that environment for the people when they're advocating for you when you provide it in a really phenomenal solution. And so I know we touched a little bit on your book. I wanted to hear a little bit more about that. And then also too, how you work with your clients. Could you take us through a little bit more of what that looks like?

06:46 – Lisa Earle McLeod

So the latest book is Selling with Noble Purpose. What Selling with Noble Purpose does is it describes to the reader what noble purpose is and how you can name and claim your own. And it's based on a lot of research that we've done across a lot of companies. And the purpose movement is kind of having its moment right now, where everyone's saying we want a purpose, but where the purpose is often absent is in sales. And it's, oh, we've got this great marketing message. Oh, we're good to the community. But what happens is the sales remain transactional.

So what we did over the course of the last several years, my co-author is Elizabeth Lattardo, we have worked with over 2 dozen firms to help them improve, use this noble purpose concept to improve competitive differentiation, improve emotional engagement, and we've seen some of them double their revenues. And so what Selling with Noble Purpose does is it unpacks how we did that. And it's everything from naming and claiming the Noble Purpose, to how you talk to your team, to how your team interacts with customers. And so we wanted to get really nitty gritty into creating a template for leaders, sales leaders in particular that they could use to enact this over the period of a couple of months.

08:00 – Gresham Harkless

Nice, I appreciate that. And really what stuck out to me was really like, I always say we zoom over the human aspect of business. And I think so many times when we're leading with numbers saying, oh, let's hit our numbers. And as you said, a lot of times teams will perform better. It's great. But I think that we forget about that human aspect and what truly may motivate a person. And when you stick and talk to a person about their purpose and what can really truly motivate them, they start to exponentially perform better. So that's why I love all the awesome work that you're doing.

08:29 – Lisa Earle McLeod

And the data shows it. So I'll give you a really concrete example. We were working with a bank, and this is in the book, Selling with Noble Purpose, Atlantic Capital Bank. They're based out of Atlanta, they're a commercial bank. They were a really well-run organization. They were very successful, but they wanted to take it up a notch. They wanted to be one of those differentiated, exceptional companies. And so the first thing we did with them was we landed on their purpose, which is We Fuel Prosperity. Because when we talked about, how do you help your customers? It was all around, we're helping these businesses be more successful, we're helping entrepreneurs, we're making the economy work. So Fuel Prosperity became the North Star.

And then what we did is we cascaded that down through every level of the organization. So imagine the difference between if I'm a company and I'm looking at 2 different commercial lenders. And one comes in there and says, well, these are the rights, these are the terms and they lead with that. And the other comes in and says, well, our purpose is to fuel prosperity. Tell me about your business. So not surprisingly, over the course of about 2 years, they became a leader in their space. They became voted one of the top banks in America. The CEO was on the cover of American Banker.

They got voted the best place to work by the employees. And they didn't change their inherent business model but what they did is they drew the line for everybody in the company to say this is why our work matters. They reoriented the way they did sales calls. They reoriented the way they did customer action. So basic product, I mean, banking is kind of banking, you know, and then the rates are the rates. And so they started winning more deals, they started having more recurring customers, and their customers started to feel differently about them.

As I said, the CEO is on the cover of American Banker. And so for me, what I take from that, is it was really exciting to work with them because what that tells you is, that you don't always have to change your business. But if you can change your orientation to the customer and change the way your people interact with customers, sometimes that's all you have to do.

10:34 – Gresham Harkless:

Would you consider that to be what I call your secret sauce, the thing you feel kind of sets you apart and makes you unique? Is it that ability to see within leaders to see to their teams, that ability to be able to understand what that purpose is and to drive towards that?

10:48 – Lisa Earle McLeod

Our secret sauce is taking what's implicit in the business. Because if you're running a business right now and people are buying from you, I guarantee you you're making a difference to them or they wouldn't be buying from you. But our secret sauce is taking what is implicit in the business and making it explicit.

11:05 – Gresham Harkless

I definitely appreciate that. And I wanted to switch gears a little bit. And I wanted to ask you for what I call a CEO hack. So this could be like an Apple book or a habit that you have, but what's something that makes you more effective and efficient?

11:16 – Lisa Earle McLeod

It's a habit that I have, and it's reading novels. And I'll tell you why that's so important. So, I mean, if somebody watches the video clip of this, they'll see me in front of my giant bookshelf with a million books. And a lot of them are business books. But the thing is we find ourselves in stories. And I've always been a novel reader since I was a kid, since you got the little book club thing, talk to your parents and are buying, you know, 3 books for you. And the thing that novels do is they take you outside of yourself, and they take you into the emotional world of others. And as a leader, what you're doing is you're building a lexicon of personalities and emotional situations that will serve you really well as a leader.

12:05 – Gresham Harkless

I wanted to ask you now for what I call a CEO nugget. So this could be a word of wisdom or a piece of advice. It might be something you would tell a client or if you happened to be a time machine, you might tell your younger business self.

12:16 – Lisa Earle McLeod

So I'll tell you what I tell clients, which is the same thing I told my younger self when I first started my company, is you have to identify the 3 things. How do you make a difference to your customers? How do you do it differently? And on your best day, what do you love about your job?

12:34 – Gresham Harkless

I wanted to ask you now my absolute favorite question, which is the definition of what it means to be a CEO. We're hoping to have different quote-unquote CEOs on the show. So Lisa, what does being a CEO mean to you?

12:45 – Lisa Earle McLeod

So to me, being a CEO is the opportunity to make a difference. The words of the leader have a profound effect on people. And I'll tell you a story my dad told me. He said the first when I first became a manager, I was like 26 years old. I'd been passed over twice. If I'd gotten passed over again, I probably wouldn't have gotten promoted at all. And so I'd finally done it, and I'd gotten this promotion, I was a manager, I called up my dad, and I said, I did it! I finally got it! And he said, well, congratulations. You just became the most the second most important person in the life of your teammates, and people on your team. I said, What are you talking about? He said next to your spouse, your boss has the opportunity to make your life wonderful or make your life miserable.

And now that's you. And I was like 26. I was like, Oh, shit. I'm not ready for this. Can I give the briefcase back? I know, right? But I did it. But I remembered, I thought, Oh my God, I knew who my mom's bosses were. I knew who my dad's bosses were. We talked about them at the dinner table. I was a young, you know, married person. I knew my husband's boss, how much, and I thought, now that's me. Holy crap. And so to me, being a CEO, you can say everything you want about strategic direction and develop product development, whatever you want. But at the end of the day, you are a very powerful figure in the lives of your employees. And you are going to determine whether their experiences work is fulfilling and wonderful or whether it's benign or whether it sucks.

14:23 – Gresham Harkless

Nice, I definitely appreciate that. And it's extremely powerful to realize the impact that you have on so many different people and in the human lives of so many people that we're leading. So I appreciate that perspective and that definition because it puts everything under the real look of what exactly we're doing on a regular everyday basis. So Lisa, truly appreciate that definition and I appreciate your time even more. What I wanted to do is pass you the mic, so to speak, just to see if there's anything additional you can let our readers and listeners know. And of course, how best it could get ahold of you, get a copy of the book, and find out about all the awesome things that you're working on.

14:56 – Lisa Earle McLeod

So the best way to get ahold of me is to follow me on LinkedIn. We do a LinkedIn live every Friday afternoon. It's completely free. If you're interested in having me consult or speak with your organization, just Google Noble Purpose. You'll find me, put the contact button. It comes right to me. The last thing I'll leave you with though, is I was talking about the leader being so powerful in the lives of their employees. If you don't have to make everything wonderful for your people, you don't have to make everything cushy to do that.

It's really about showing your people the meaning of the work. And so the last thing I'll leave you with is you don't have to choose between making money and making a difference. The data tells us what most of you probably already know in your hearts to be true. The profit and the purpose are connected And you can have both and you deserve both.

15:49 – Gresham Harkless

Awesome. Awesome. Awesome. Well, we'll definitely have the link and information in the show notes just so that people can get a hold of you. But I think it rings true when you don't have to choose either or you can have both. And I appreciate you for reminding us of that because that's to me one of the laws of abundance is not to choose either or but choose both. So I think when we realize that we can be purposeful and at the same time be profitable and really exceed our profits, that's when we really go to another level. So I appreciate you for taking time out. Appreciate you for giving us the keys to how to do that. And I hope you have a phenomenal rest

16:18 – Outro

Thank you for listening to the I AM CEO Podcast powered by Blue 16 Media. Tune in next time and visit us at iamceo.co I AM CEO is not just a phrase, it's a community. Be sure to follow us on social media and subscribe to our podcast on iTunes Google Play and everywhere you listen to podcasts, SUBSCRIBE, and leave us a five-star rating grab CEO gear at www.ceogear.co. This has been the I AM CEO Podcast with Gresham Harkless. Thank you for listening.

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