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Speaker: Welcome back to yet another episode of The Commercial Leader podcast. My name is Bram Lagrou, and today we're unpacking the idea of going from good to great. You might remember this book here, Good to Great by Jim Collins. This book obviously has done very well over the years, and I think the idea behind it is a relevant one, especially in this day and age where many organizations are struggling to not only find good people, but keeping good people.
If this is, let's say the case for you, what would this idea, this whole notion of good to great, how would it help you?
When I start really, let's say, pulling back a little bit, and I've had conversations with senior leaders about this recently, it just shows to me once again how predictable people are [00:01:00] and how, preventable challenges we experience with people are as well.
So keeping good people or finding good people very often comes back to the same things, and it is not rocket science. However, most people, most organizations and managers, they don't get this piece right. The challenge is that managers don't tune in fully with the people that are working for them.
example, I think of this one manager who was managing one of his staff members interstate, and they were of a very different philosophy. He was one of the old guard, which is where basically the philosophy is, "Because I'm paid to do my job, I just do it, and I don't need a pat on the back.
I just get on with it and get the job done." And so this is a person who just [00:02:00] happily cruises along, does his work, and works really hard to get the outcomes so that, obviously he's doing what he's gotta do. And that's enough. That's fine by him. He gets paid really well, commissions included and so on, so the better he does, the more he earns, and that's fine.
But then he had a struggle with another manager that was reporting to him, and the challenge was that this person had a very different philosophy, a very different need psychologically speaking as a human being. This person was somebody who liked the spotlight, who liked to obviously also get a pat on the back once in a while, and other than making good money, just wanted to get public recognition and praise.
Now notice, one doesn't need it at all, the other one needs it. Now why is this important in the context of good to great? Well, what we found is that this second person was not [00:03:00] always performing as well as he could. Great potential, great track record, but it was really hit and miss. It was up and down. One month he would perform really well, another month it wouldn't be like that, and it would be very much of a rollercoaster in terms of results.
Now, the first manager, the one that I work with- It was becoming a concern of his, and he was just, you know, trying to figure out, like, how can I make this work? 'Cause really this is disrupting our business, potentially affecting relationships between people in the team and also with customers and the likes.
And so it was really a concern of his to make the other person be more consistent in terms of His whole demeanor. And the interesting thing, from good to great, if you think of the notion like all we need to know is to understand what people need, what makes [00:04:00] them tick, and give it to them. And typically, as we do, we can expect better outcomes, therefore go from good to great.
Well, here's what I found. I explained that to my client who I was coaching at the time, and I said, "Look, for you to get the best of this other person, and for this person to become highly effective as a manager to their team, you gotta go and give him a lot more praise, give him a pat on the back, and just really applaud him on a regular basis and see where it takes you."
Then this guy said, "Well, I don't really see why he would need that, 'cause he's paid well and he should do this." This whole philosophy thing came through again, which was working for him, but not for any other guy, clearly. And so as soon as he started doing this, the reports that I heard back from my client was, "Hmm, it's interesting.
He's a lot more consistent, he's performing a lot better, and he's a lot more easy to manage these days, just from that one [00:05:00] single change I made." And this is again going back to you gotta understand people. If you have a full understanding in terms of what makes people tick, you can treat them in a way that makes them feel good, and the better they feel, the better they perform.
imagine now this is just one isolated case where one manager manages one other person. But just think about this now through for a whole team and multiple managers with multiple teams. If you put all of these together, it's a lot easier to build a performance culture where everybody goes the extra mile, where they put in more hours, more effort, more time, more thinking, more feeling, more passion.
And as you add up one, two, three, four, five people, suddenly it all massively grows to a level at which you can say, "You know what? Reflecting back from where we used to be [00:06:00] and with all of the metrics that we had from a year or two years ago, we can definitely say that since we have started to treat people better, that we have gone from good to great," because the numbers don't lie.
They give a very clear picture.
So one person, another business now. I've seen, for example, how some people in the property game one person would create the same output than eight other people combined. Now imagine eight wages that you have to pay for sure 'cause they're a fixed expense, and then suddenly one person, one wage only, getting the same outcomes as eight people combined.
This is again an example of going from good to great There's plenty of other examples, right? Where I remember there's one lady in a financial services firm where she said, "I had this person working with me for the last two [00:07:00] and a half years. And since I finally understood what made him thic- tick," which was the result of one of my programs, right?
Communication mastery. When she finally understood What it was that this person valued, which was very different to what she personally valued, and she started to pick up more on what he valued instead, the conversations opened up and she got to see a side of this employee, who had been with her for already more than two and a half years, that she hadn't seen previously.
These are all just examples after examples that going from good to great is predictable. It's all about understanding in your head what makes people tick, and then opening up your heart to the opportunities that that brings. If you then really don't just, go in from an opportunistic way, but you actually go in with a very caring way [00:08:00] where you connect the head and the heart, and they've started becoming fused in one, people see that you get them and they feel that you genuinely care about them, and that is magic.
Put this into one person or more, and you go from good to great guaranteed. I've seen people perform so much better by simple tweaks that you could implement very quickly and easily, but it just means that you gotta understand people.
And so far, too few organizations truly understand where to start Now, I've developed a methodology that has been time-tested now in industries and organizations from small to large enterprises and anything in between, and it's industry agnostic.
Why does it [00:09:00] work? Because the common denominator is people. It's almost like a crash course in psychology, and I would highly recommend anyone that is, looking for how can we go from good to great next? Guess what? It just starts with what you already have.
It's the people, in terms of the leaders and managers, and your teams. You're already paying them all, so there's no extra expense there. The question is now, though, how much are those people generating in terms of output and outcomes?
I always like to refer back to something that I've noticed in the work that I've done in organizations, small and large, and medium as well, is that Average organizations, tend to have a certain output in terms of dollars, revenue, so to speak, per employee.
And back in the days when I did this research, it was roughly around 180 to $200,000 per employee on [00:10:00] average. Now imagine if you then lift yourself to an average return on per employee to, say, 400,000, now you're starting to get really in a league of their own. You're going from good to great. But the unicorns, they do it one more level up.
The unicorns that I've, analyzed, they actually are doing sometimes a million dollars revenue per staff member on average, which is a league on their own. 200,000, 400,000, and marching up towards a million dollars and more, that is just showing that certain organizations have found ways to get more done with the same or less resources.
And again, as a commercial leader, whether you're looking to reduce your staff turnover rate, or you're looking to reduce your recruitment cost and onboarding cost and, everything that is, let's say, in that realm, or you have certain [00:11:00] other things that are sales related, right? There's a lot of metrics that we measure there, whether it's average sales, output per salesperson, lead times.
We can shrink them sometimes by becoming smarter with our process and how we engage with customers as such, which is the whole sales effectiveness question. It also could be the question of, more increasing the average spend and recurring revenue. It could be also a matter of closing ratios.
I sat down with somebody just a moment ago, and their closing ratio is admirably at 33%. However, they're leaving money on the table. A lot of money, in fact. I can easily see an opportunity for them to do at least 50% more of that and take it, beyond the 50% in total of quotes and proposals that they generate.
The point of it is we have all these metrics, and those [00:12:00] metrics tell a story. And if you go back to your culture and your processes, it tells you a story as to how well it's working for you. And it also shows you, it gives you a glimpse, so to speak, it lifts the curtain about what you potentially might tackle next in order to get bigger bang for buck, to go from good to great and see it actually turns out in terms of revenue and all these other metrics.
But suffice it to say that people are predictable, and challenges with people are preventable, and all it requires is a very deme- deliberate, thoughtful, and caring approach as to how we deal with people inside our businesses and outside.
And as soon as you really start to make headway one person at a time, it's always a matter of the slogan, as we all have heard before, which is, "People don't [00:13:00] care how much you know. All they care is how much you care about them." And
so we gotta practice this a little bit better. And our research in all of the organizations that we had the pleasure working with in the last, sorry, 20 plus years or so across 25 countries, it's very unequivocal. Most people, all managers and leaders included, they have an Achilles heel. They have strengths that have made them to where they are, but they're leaving money on the table, missing opportunities, and potentially undermining the outcomes by having an Achilles heel.
And the sooner we become aware of what that is and do something about it, the sooner we can start lifting morale, lifting buy-in, lifting engagement rates. And as soon as you do that, all of the other metrics start to fall in [00:14:00] play. One other example here of metric is the number of sick days overall that you have in your organization, or even certain claims like work health and safety and wellbeing claims and the likes.
If you have any of those as well, they also can be tackled by the simple notion that I brought to you today.
I'd be very keen to hear what your thoughts are on this whole big question of how to go from good to great, and any questions that you have along the way, you're very welcome to reach out to us.
We're always happy to have a conversation with commercial leaders that wanna do things better, smarter, wiser, faster, easier, and make more money and save more money. And if that's something that is worth having a chat about, reach out to Lagrou Partners. I appreciate you tuning in again with us here today, and I look forward to seeing you again next time.
My name is Bram.
