Episode 403: Thinking Time - In a League of Their Own

Hey everyone, well, it's baseball playoff season. So randomly, you know, I talk about my kids a lot and share different things. So Cooper, my son, he's a huge sports fan at this point. You probably know, big Auburn person, right? Yes, season has been difficult, but he has kind of a lot of random professional sports teams that he follows. So for instance, he's a Ravens NFL fan, a Milwaukee Bucks basketball fan thanks to Giannis, and he's a New York Mets baseball fan. Now I'm probably going to get a lot of flack and messages from people of the fans of the Braves and other teams, etc. Hey, I welcome it. I think it'd be great to He actually has a really good story that he went, uh, with his grandparents a few years ago, saw the Mets play the Cincinnati Reds, and they walked it off with a grand slam home run. And from that moment, he, he's been a Mets fan. And so I've kind of adopted the Mets myself just because he's become such a huge fan of the Mets. Anyway, why am I sharing this? Well, as the season has now wrapped up, we literally witnessed history, someone who is in a league of his own, quite literally, was Shohei Ohtani. Now I'm going to tie this back, as I always do, to business. So I try— I think these type of things, these analogies, I mean, at times metaphors, help me to try to make sense of business. And so hang with me, I'll wrap this back around, even if not a sports fan, into something that I think is one of the few hills I'm willing to die on. And look, you may not agree with what I'm going to share, but, but let's see. So Shohei, there's— he entered what's called the 50/50 club, and that is 50 home runs in a season— actually, it had more than that— and 50 stolen bases. And the overlap of those two things, home runs and stolen bases, sounds like a strange metric. Well, it's because it is. There's so few people in— admittedly, I don't know, I think it's maybe like 6 or 7 people that are in the 40/40 club, if I'm not mistaken. Not very many. And because teams will typically either find talent that are big power hitters or people that are speedy base stealers. Now granted, for the baseball purist out there, I understand fielding and pitching and all those other kind of things, but from an offensive perspective, someone who is a power hitter to be able to help runs and at the same time also being able to steal that many bases and be able to move that quickly is a rare combination. Well, Shohei not only entered 40-40 club, he is the first player to enter the 50-50 club. So the question is, what's the application? Okay, Bradley, you're right, we did that, we saw that, that's interesting. How does this apply to me and my business to be able to help me? Well, when we think about in recruiting, and you think about just in any business regardless of the industry, you're typically going to have some sales roles, and then you're going to have some service roles. Okay, now in general, when I think about, uh, growing any business— and I've done a podcast on this before— I love the framework AAR: Acquisition, Ascension, Retention. How do we get more customers? Get those customers to be worth more? How do we get them to pay more? Number 3, how do we keep them longer? Retention. How do we get more customers? How do we get them to be worth more? How do we keep them longer? Well, when you think about that framework, then you take and you apply capacity, in other words, people, to those areas. So in acquisition, what do you get? You get a salesperson. You get a sales acquisition team member. Now, they may look like— they may— you might call them different titles for For instance, you may call them a sales advisor, or you may call them a sales representative, etc. But their job primarily, and oftentimes even exclusively, is to get you more customers. Then you have on the other side of that is retention. Well, what is their endgame? Their endgame is to keep more of the customers that you got. Now I'll get to the middle one in just a second. Well, those two characteristics to do those jobs well are incredibly different. You have somebody that loves to be able to check off, uh, a list on a daily basis. You love somebody who's very detail-oriented on the retention side. They love to come in, they're patient with customers, they are thorough with customers, they love the building of the connection and going deep and welcoming them and loving on them and, um, uh, all of those kind of things to give them great service. That's the personalized approach that makes their job great. And so, like, in, in a client success role, for instance, um, uh, Courtney on my team, uh, within Blueprint operates kind of in both roles, both in client success and also as my EA. And she'll share with me, you know, conversations she's had drive with a member and she'll, you know, say, oh yeah, we talked for 30 minutes, you know. Well, a lot of sales reps, they would say, oh my goodness, shoot me in the head. Like, my job is to go out and hunt, get somebody, bring them into the fold, and then go out and do it again. And that is typically the personality that you're looking for. I'll go as far as to say, for most people, when they say I want a salesperson, what are you looking for? You're looking for a stone cold killer. That's very different personality traits, characteristics, etc., than the person that's coming at it from a retention side. One's not better or worse than the other. They're different and they're serving different needs in the business. Now, a lot of people will then say, hey, I do want somebody that can give great service but then also surface and find opportunities, right, to get those customers to be worth more. Surfacing and finding more deals, opportunities, lines of business, uh, ability to ascend them, right? They're paying more because, hey, we've got you as a customer, we appreciate you as a customer, and we also see that there's some other gaps in what it is, whatever it is that you sell. So they are able to be ascended in your business. Well, a lot of people then will find some— like to find somebody who's maybe an account manager that has the ability to pivot or multi-line or cross-sell or upsell. Now, I'm using all those words in this podcast to be somewhat interchangeably, just to be representative of the different terms that people use. Typically, I like to sell— use upsell and cross-sell. Upsells is more of the same thing. Cross-sales is to a different product that you have. Okay, cross-sales, different product. Upsells, more of the same thing. That's the language I like to use. Okay, so when you have someone that's that personality, I think that, that you can find that. It's, it's hard It's not easy to do. You can find that person, but you can especially coach, train, and develop somebody who is typically in a retention role to do some of those activities. I don't think many people would argue with me on that. Okay. All right, Bradley, close the loop here. What does this have to do with Shohei Ohtani and my business? How does all this kind of fit together in this League of Your Own type thing? You can't go out and try to find a Shohei Ohtani. You don't do it. There's no recruiting, there's no analysis that then can spot someone who potentially could be the, the next one. The equivalent in our business is to find somebody that is a unicorn the needle in the haystack that you're able to find that can both— is a stone cold killer in sales, and at the same time they're incredibly patient, detail-oriented, structured, loving on the customers. They're able to do service, they're able to do sales, they're able to do ascension activities, they're able to do it all. Now before I get messages and saying, well, Bradley, I have that person, or I know somebody that does have that person. Yes, they do exist. A Shohei Ohtani exists. A person in the 40/40 club exists. The challenge, and what the purpose of this episode is, that is incredibly difficult, dare I say almost impossible, to actually accurately go and recruit Now let's say you use Autopilot Recruiting, okay? And I haven't talked to Alex about this, um, so he may admittedly disagree with me, but through my own anecdotal— meaning my own experience— but then also in working with at this point hundreds of business owners, um, since 2017, let alone other people back, I've yet to find somebody that is able to then say, not that they don't have one, but this is how I was able to go and find that type of person that's a hybrid role that can do it all. It is really difficult to find that. So because the difficulty of finding it, then let's go and look for the things that we can do. Let's go look for that stone cold killer acquisition person that's in sales, is hungry, loves the challenge, doesn't mind calling somebody 27 times to win them over, get the sale. They love the— they love it. And then they'll love to go do it again. And then let's also go recruit that incredible client success person who is detail-oriented, loves crossing things off the list, loves coming in and having their routine and their structure. They're incredible. Service to your customers and to your clients every single day. You can go recruit that, and you can even train them to do finding some opportunities. Absolutely, I do believe that you can find that, you can coach that, train that, etc., although still not as easy. But finding somebody that can do it all like Shohei Ohtani in the 50/50 club, I think, I think we're trying to find a needle in a haystack. I think trying to find people that are in a league of their own, while they do exist, very, very difficult. And so that's my hope for you today, is that you'll take that away, that when you go through your recruiting and you maybe even go to your recruiter, potentially at Autopilot Recruiting, that you let them know, hey, I am looking for this personality type, I'm looking for a sales killer, and over here I'm looking for somebody who is going to be an incredible account manager, customer service person, customer care person, client success manager, whatever title you want to use. They're going to be there to help retain our current customers. I hope that that is the biggest takeaway that you get out of today's episode. Hope you, hope you're doing well. Go be great.