When we all wake up every day, every single person in the organization has the ability to influence the outcome. I saw one light bulb burned out in the sign, and I would say that guy doesn't care about his business because one letter in his five-letter name is burned out. He's not here late at night, cuz if he was, he would see it. This guy comes when it's light and he leaves before it's dark. Would I be right?
You would be right. Absolutely.
See, now that's where you and I differ. Grinding and grinding and grinding and grinding on them. You have that ferocity about yourself, which is what your guys love about you. Their families, though, don't love that about you. The only reason that I can tell you all those things is because it's a microcosm of who I am, and it's not a great way to live.
Hi, I'm Jay Adelberg. And for the last 25 years as a business coach, I've been involved with about 80,000 separate small and medium-sized businesses. I had the esteemed experience of actually sitting down with Marcus Lemonis, TV host—you may know him from The Profit, The Fixer—he's an investor, philanthropist, an unconditional lover of small, medium-sized business. The content was a little off-brand. Obviously, usually I'm looking at techniques of making profit by design, but in order to be able to do that, there are techniques that are used obviously to get to the client. If you're in sales, it doesn't matter what you do for a living, actually we're all in sales at the end of the story. The debate and discussion went on to discuss different techniques of really getting in front of the client and connecting, and gaining rapport and trust. I think you'll enjoy it. Let's have a look.
So, let's start with this. Okay. Everybody in the company, no matter what their role is, generates or has the ability to either generate revenue or save revenue from falling away.
Because if I'm in the billing department, and most people that are big salespeople would look at the billing department and be dismissive—those are just the accounting people—
That's the overhead, quote-unquote.
Uh-huh. But when a client doesn't pay, and when the administrative office is talking to that client, finding out why it doesn't pay, we usually find out why: 'I don't like what I'm getting,' 'I can't afford it,' 'I'm in trouble.' And that relationship right there is almost sometimes equally as important because it's retention.
For sure, and better than the marketer itself because their relationship is the client always feels like they're going to be sold. Yeah. That relationship, they may pray upon empathy for what's going on with them at that particular... I see it. I see it.
So, I think that's the one shift that I would say to everybody in the organization is that when we all wake up every day, every single person in the organization has the ability to influence the outcome, and for me, the outcome is revenue or preventing it from being lost.
So, I want to start with that premise.
I like that. I can appreciate that. And of those 1,200 people, 600 of them are dedicated to sales.
Just sales. So the BCs, business coordinators—
They're the ones that set the leads, about five per salesperson peppered throughout the United States. We used to be United States and Canada. I'm originally a hire from Toronto.
Business development coordinator.
That's where they are, yeah. So they get all these leads—
Which is an underappreciated job, by the way. I do appreciate it because it is an underappreciated job. For all the salespeople that think that's not a hard job, that's a really hard job.
Yeah, 94% of the time being told no or hung up on, and so on and so forth. You need a certain personality to accept that, for sure.
So, there's a group of people that wake up every day trying to keep the lights on in the building by setting appointments so that the closers can come in—
To those businesses, yeah, and sell an analysis. That's what they sell.
So, that's the first step of revenue. Correct. And talk to me about that. What happens?
So, an analysis is structured as a two-day view of their business. Now, if you look at it from how they market it, it's we're coming in to look at how to improve your company. If you look at it from our side, it's kind of an intervention. I think you're going to kind of appreciate that. We're going in and, yes, there's a business side we're going to look at. We're going to look at sales, marketing, operations, finance, tax, all those different things. But the person in front of us, that is a whole trip on its own. We've got to figure out what drives them, what's going to change their behavior. You know, we're going into personality styles and how they make decisions. We're going into shadow driver story like the Carl Jung approach sort of thing, figuring out that shadow driver story and using that to weaponize possible tasks they're going to have to do to improve their company—
And how often do you find that it's themselves more than it is their company?
100% of the time. I don't want to be disparaging, but—
No, it's so true. Listen, even in my own businesses, when things aren't going well, it requires a really bird's-eye view in the mirror. It requires you to look at yourself. And when people say to me all the time, 'Oh, it's really awesome that you help these businesses,' it's like, I'm really not helping the business. I'm helping the business owners or the business leaders to learn how to be the best version of themselves to help their business. I'm not the one that helps their business. I'm not a mechanic, right? I don't know how to turn wrenches, but I understand that personality. When you think about the types of industries that you serve today—and I think 'serve' is the right word, right? We're there to serve them—give me an idea of what those look like.
I would say that depends if you want to look at it from a profitability standpoint.
Types of industries: auto repair.
Any trade whatsoever. Manufacturers, usually like a tier three manufacturer of some sort.
Yeah. We dabble in transportation. We dabble in retail. We dabble in wholesale.
Talk to me about dabbling in transportation. What does that mean?
I'm glad you asked the one I find most difficult. You know, being able to get a better sense... So, one of the biggest things we look at in a client, especially in transportation, is you've got this trucking company. The guy's gone out and bought a bunch of trucks, just tons of trucks because he's selling and he's brokering, selling and brokering, gets a bunch of trucks, a bunch of trailers—
Short haul, long haul type.
All over the place, yeah. And the issue is we walk in and they're almost addicts to that purchasing. Like we've got to kind of say, 'Do you understand how much profit your company has to make based off of all the decisions you just made? Because every debt payment is essentially minimum profit.' Exactly. So, being able to take that individual—that is the hardest part about the transportation—is make them to understand this is your debt service, this is your working capital, this is the minimum profit you have to make based on all the decisions you made up to me walking in the door. And as a result, we look at things like cost per mile. We look at things in terms of what's a break-even on each individual truck and all that kind of stuff. That's kind of how we look at it. When I say it's not my favorite one, it doesn't have enough moving parts for me particularly. I like a lot of moving parts, like a lot more labor-oriented businesses where there's value add by labor. I buy a piece of material, I add labor to that material.
The reason you like it is because it's the thing you know the most.
So let's unpack the thing you know the least.
Uh-huh. We'll say that. And you're not excited about it, but does it pay its bills the same way?
Are the margins different?
I think the duration of the projects are different. That's probably a better way to put it. They're much shorter project because of the lack of moving parts.
Is it contributory to the company?
And if it went away, would it be impactful?
Okay. So let's establish that. So, the trucking business, or transportation is what you're going to call it, but we can call it trucking because that's what it is. So, if I was driving up, are they dealers—
Are they trucking truck part dealers, truck dealers, or are they just movers of goods and services?
Movers of goods and services. Well, we do have obviously the truck part side of it and truck repair side of it, all that kind of stuff, but—
So if I had a trucking company in Gurnee—
Okay, got it, because there's a lot around there.
Yes. And I had a giant warehouse that I bought years ago, and I got excited and I went out and signed all of these fleet leases because I got put together, and instead of having four trucks at 100% efficiency, I have eight trucks at 50% efficiency, but my payments are on eight trucks, not four. Am I setting that up pretty good so far?
I got you. I'm following you.
And I walk in the door and the owner is the smartest guy in the room.
And the owner had built the business him or herself. They understand their craft really well and they have a lot of pride. Do I have that right so far? And so anything that points out their deficiencies or mistakes can be taken personally.
And very defensive. Yeah, they're very defensive.
And anything that you do to turn somebody off or make them defensive usually results in the first appointment and sometimes the last appointment.
Yeah, that's where the psychology comes in for us, right? I really have to understand our owners. We train our employees how to really get to understand that person and break down those walls.
Bluntly, we call it a come-to-Jesus meeting. That's the title. I'm not saying it's... but that's the title. And what we do—
How do you dress when you go there?
There is two types of looks, and we actually take the country, right? There could be jeans and a sport coat and an open shirt, that's one way. Other people feel more comfortable in suits, but at least you've got to look like—
Other people meaning the person who's pitching the product?
Let's say the analyst, yeah.
What about the person who's receiving the pitch?
They tend to dress obviously towards their industry, whatever their industry requires—
Which means they could have anything on.
They could have a greasy t-shirt and some jeans on.
How often do you meet business owners like that that are wearing a sport coat?
Not very often. But that is a certain personality when you see that, though.
I think I know where you're going with this. Well, I think you're saying like, are you right off the hop, or are you mirroring your client on their level, in some way? I think you're kind of maybe insinuating that.
I'm not insinuating anything, but what my message to the sales organization would be is that you have to start, in my opinion, what's worked for me is to become a chameleon and to adapt to the environment. And you know the old adage of like 'know your audience,' but what are the things that I need to know about somebody like that?
When we talk about knowing your audience, there's a certain personality style sitting in front of us, and we think of that as a language.
Is it a personality that you're—
If you go to like the DISC system, right, it is a lot, because if you have a driver personality who's a mechanic, he will dress up a little bit. Do you know what I'm saying? I've seen it over and over again. However, if he's an amiable-type personality, they're going to be in comfort overall. So we kind of have an opinion, I guess is the best way to put it, but experience that says, 'I'm going to find out the personality of that individual.' And a lot of these things come true when we walk in and see this organization: what kind of vehicle they have out front, what color is that vehicle, what does their office look like, do they have pictures, not pictures, how are the pictures facing? All those start telling us what kind of personality style is in front of us and the language they speak. So if we know they're uncomfortable based off of what we're wearing that particular day, whether it's a suit coat, whether we go to lunch and take the tie off, whether we come back in jeans the next day, those are kind of a morph that we do because it is a two-day process. But we do start off walking in not in a full suit, but at least looking professional.
And in your mindset, does that level of professionalism say to the potential client—because that's what I'm going to call them in the moment—'I have something you don't. I am something you're not. I possess something you don't have'?
I think if I showed up in a t-shirt and shorts, it doesn't matter what my acumen is at that point. I think that that client still would see me as not so professional and not receive the message credible.
Receive the message the same way.
So, I think starting off in that position... I did it for a decade, and I would walk in with a suit jacket on and very quickly take it off, especially if I could see they're not dressed like that and they probably are making fun of it in their head, I guess. I immediately—
'Who's the suit that just walked through my door?'
Exactly. Take off the suit, roll up the sleeves, just kind of a little bit of the mirroring, but still have that professionalism.
When I used to spend time in service departments, collision repair departments, light manufacturing, welding, fabricating, plastic extrusion, I would always dress a certain way, but I would go in and I would say to them, 'I just want you to know right off the rip, I dressed this way today because I want you to know that I have respect for you and your business.' It's the first thing that I would tell them, and I would wait for their reaction. And what I'm essentially saying is, like, this isn't how I normally am, but I did this out of respect because I take what you do seriously, what you have at stake seriously, and I didn't want you to think that I was being flippant about it. And then I would just be quiet, and usually they would give me the roadmap in that moment of exactly what they thought, because I would come in and say, 'Hey, I just want you to know, I don't know what you think about what I'm wearing, but the only reason that I wore this today is because it's a sign of respect to you and to your business.'
That's really good. And then what would normally happen after that?
There would be a... They would say, 'Yeah, it would be uncomfortable if you came in in this.' I think that would be the response. And so then it's almost telling you what not to do or how not to communicate with them: 'You know, you would look pretentious in our industry if you were wearing a suit.' That's what I think my response—normally they would say thank you.
Oh, for sure they would say thank you.
And then once they said thank you, which is maybe eight times out of 10 they would say that, because you said to them, 'I have respect for you, I have respect for what you do, I have respect for your business, and I have respect for your time.' And when you tell people right out of the gates that respect is the absolute framework of how the relationship's going to work, just from a physical appearance, your ability to broach other subjects starts to become a little easier. And so the next thing I would do after I would talk about how I dressed is I would say, 'Do you mind giving me a tour?' and I would say, 'Before we do that, do I have permission to ask questions? Because I don't know a lot about your business and I want to understand it.' But I would know a lot about their business, right? And so I did it on you, by the way, since we've been sitting here, where I started dropping little nuggets and terms that you would know that I didn't just read it somewhere, like I would talk about like a fab shop. I would use other terms, and I would try to take every misconception that that business owner would potentially have, particularly in what I would call a heartbeat profession.
And a heartbeat profession for me is that this country is really built on people that move trucks, build things, do plumbing, they do electrical, they fix things, they work with their hands. They don't care about their appearance. They work 12, 15-hour days. They're on their feet. They cut their hands. You can tell what a good hard day's work looks like. That's a heartbeat profession. And this whole country, in my opinion, was built on it. We've gotten away from it. They're typically patriots. They're typically ex-military or some connection to military. They typically grew up blue-collar. They did not have necessarily the advantage of extended education because they needed to go to work right away because they came from a family that did the same kind of thing. They're used to six and seven-day work weeks. They're used to not being with their family. They're used to a lot of different things. And the fact that you kind of understand who that persona is is back to that chameleon thing.
Something you mentioned about the company tour: we find that one of the most fascinating experiences in our relationship development with a client. Usually our relationship when we start off is educational, right? We're educating them about some business acumen along the way, which is important for us to do once we have some sort of rapport. But going on that company tour, we learn so much about the personality, the person, what they're proud of. And for us, when we ask questions, we want to learn about that product or service like it's the prettiest girl in the room, right? Genuinely.
Who are you asking the questions to?
So that's my second thing for you to consider. When I ask the business owner if we could take a tour, I typically ask them, 'Is it okay that I ask questions?' They're going to say, 'Sure.' And my next follow-up would be, 'Of everybody that works here? And I'll do it with you, but it helps me to understand their perspective.' Here's why I do that: the business owner has one perspective. And what perspective is that?
From the top. Their perspective.
And usually when there's a disconnect in a business, the disconnect often is between the folks that actually do the work and the people that own the business. And when if you and I were taking a tour and you were the owner and I was working for you—just pretend I work for you; you're two people: you're the owner of the business and I'm one of your sales agents—
I would want you to know if I was working for you that I was going to immerse myself so deep in that business that the way that I would demonstrate my knowledge is to have the business owner see me interact with other people in a way where I would drop all the vernacular and I would speak to those people as if I worked on the floor. I have one goal in that moment, in that whole first—how long is that tour? An hour, hour and a half?
Yeah, ours is usually about 60 minutes.
I have one goal, and that is I want that person to say to themselves, 'This guy's like one of us.' I wouldn't try to be the smartest person in the room.
I wouldn't give them any advice or opinions. I would just ask, excuse my French, a ton of questions, right? And then I would start to dialogue with people, and I would know that the interview that was happening in that moment was between you interviewing me watching me interact with him. So, I'm going to have you change roles for a minute. You're going to be the worker.
Pick a business that you want to go into.
Great. And what kind of warehouse are we in?
In terms of facility, we are doing let's say residential construction or electrical, so kind of a small... We don't really need a lot because parts are small, wires are small.
2,500-foot space. Exactly. What am I seeing in the warehouse? Anything?
Are you seeing inventory all over the ground, usually? Is that what you're asking?
Well, what people am I seeing and what things am I seeing? Because I can visualize it in my head.
Yeah, in my head what I visualize is you have somebody that's in control of inventory. There's a few trucks in the yard, whatever the yard means.
Single bay door in the back.
Single bay door in the back, exactly.
In a strip like industrial plaza, usually, yeah. One door in the front, small little lobby, a couple offices, and a small warehouse. Somewhere to do obviously bids. That's the biggest use of square footage is where are we going to do the bids? But yeah, that's—
Some parts inside, maybe a little bit of inventory.
A little bit of inventory, a lot of it on the trucks of course, and then to be able to refill. But yeah.
How many people are working there?
In that size, I'd say there is five in the field and five in the office, believe it or not. I think that's usually the—
And the field guys are out by 7:00.
Hopefully, yeah, definitely hopefully.
And so you're not really going to interact with them unless you show up—
Or you show up before they leave.
Are they dispatching from the office or are they dispatching from their home?
We prefer to tell them it's a good idea to dispatch from the office. We prefer that. But owners have kind of said, 'Well, we give them the truck to go home' or whatever. We don't like that for so many different reasons: asset protection issues, etc. But, yeah, usually it should be from the office.
I don't like that because we're not dispatching the right man on the right job. I don't know what his attitude is that day. I don't know how his efficiency is. I'm going to look at his efficiency and make sure he's making himself and me money. I want to understand what he did yesterday. I want to go over all his open work orders to make sure they're closed. And I only need to see him for five minutes. Does that happen in most businesses?
No, we know it doesn't. We know it should, but I don't see it happening a lot.
In the ones we've dealt with, for sure.
The interesting thing for me is even in our dialogue today, as I'm asking you questions, I'm hoping that you're saying to yourself, 'All right, this guy kind of knows a little bit about what's happening. He understands the visual. He understands what should happen versus what doesn't happen.' What's happening with you as the owner as I'm asking you those questions?
Well, if I'm just sitting here in first person right now, there are things that I'm picking up that I will kind of immediately put into my training structure with my analysts, believe it or not. Specifically how you approach the owner and what they're wearing very specifically, but the questions that you're asking on the floor during the tour. I actually really like that. We've kind of gone both ways a little bit, and everybody seems to like to do interviews with employees after, but I think learning about the product and the process and—
Have you ever seen my show?
And so when I go to a business and any kind of business, I know nothing about the business. Nothing before I go. When I say nothing, zero.
The business or the industry specifically?
I know nothing. I may have experienced parts of the industry before, but when I go, I intentionally don't educate myself, don't do any research, don't ask. I don't see any financials. I don't know anything about their story. I know nothing. And the reason is because I want the owner and the viewer, but the owner in this case or the other employees, to go on the journey with me. And I want to give you a TV term that we'll talk about tonight with your team, which is arrival and discovery. I'm very conscientious about understanding how that business functions, and I'm very conscientious about when I show up.
So, I'll give you an example. Give me any kind of business that you would go to in all the industries. Auto repair—auto repair is a good one. The time that I would show up to an auto repair shop for my first day would probably be around noon.
