How Creating A Playbook For Each Position Helps Cultivate Champion Employees

Recent studies have found that the average manager spends three hours a day on interruptions or activities that are not the most important for their organization. This is why we developed the playbook for managers – a simple system that helps busy professionals optimize their time and make the most out of every day.

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Scott Scully: 0:00

Welcome back to the growth show. I am here with my co hosts, Eric Watkins, and Jeff winters. Are you gentlemen doing today? Welcome back.

Eric Watkins: 0:10

Welcome back to doing great,

Scott Scully: 0:12

I have to mention, I had the incredible opportunity to have a conversation with one of our clients this week. And that particular client had been listening to the growth show and wanted to talk about a couple of the episodes, wanted to dive a little bit deeper into the map and the a player score. And God, we had just an amazing conversation. And that's exactly what we wanted to have happen. Right? We wanted people to plug in and just take a few nuggets away and make things just a little bit easier in in their path to growth. And I just wanted to open with that. Because it first of all, was an incredible conversation. Great guy, great business, we're lucky to be partners. And, you know, second, we set out on a mission for this growth show. And it's working. And we're hearing the feedback. And that's exciting.

Eric Watkins: 1:05

It's so cool to see it start to come to fruition, right? We I remember we were in that conference room over there talking about this idea of how can we put something together that would benefit our clients and our people here internally. And, you know, that's the that's a big step forward.

Scott Scully: 1:23

So without further ado, Mr. Winters, what do you got for us today?

Jeff Winters: 1:29

I'm getting good feedback on the segment. You should be people see what we see. They know what's going on. They know that people write and shit on LinkedIn. And they're like, What is this can't be right. Or this is genius. Let's start with some genius. This in our two truths and a lie segment from LinkedIn comes from Sean Gentry. Sean says Damn, what a finish to the quarter. My team was at 46% on Friday, and we finished at 96% by Tuesday evening. So obviously, you know, this particular quarter ended on a Tuesday. And I'll paraphrase some of the rest. It's it's not 100%. But if I separate process from outcome, I'm damn proud. This is truly the result of some heroic efforts. Yes, we saw some Docu signs coming back. But here's went on behind the scenes. And he lists a number of things that went on behind the scenes, but then he he capitalized one, nonstop positive thinking and optimism is the one he capitalized and there's some tactical stuff before it. In this day and age of sales. So much is made about the data, close rates, the meeting rates, the show rates, the this rate the that rate, you know what not enough is made out of the optimism. People lose when they think they've lost. They've already it's Oh, it's over. sales leaders under index on optimism and belief and how much power that creates

Eric Watkins: 2:57

truth. What's your optimism, right?

Jeff Winters: 3:01

Like lining Scott up like, like a ton of wound him up now.

Scott Scully: 3:05

Truth about optimism. But again, I gotta be honest, this one drags on me a little bit, because it's yet another person celebrating falling short of a goal. This is like the, you know, eighth grade soccer team that was down five to nothing at halftime, came back, they lose five to four. And they're celebrating and going out for ice cream for their loss. I think it's great that they came back by almost 50%. But I also think that it's what's clearly wrong around the world is we're starting to celebrate Mrs. And there's a lot of attaboys. And it's a 4%. Miss, I have difficulty not saying that. Because it's what's going on everywhere. The goal was the goal. I'm glad that they came back. I'm a huge believer in the fact that attitude, like got to keep a positive attitude. Their positive attitude certainly allowed them to get to where they got, but this guy's publicly posting that he's proud of his team to get to 96% I think I would have said it a little bit in a little bit different way. Because now I'm reading that post. He's proud of us. We came back. We didn't hit the goal. I could talk for a long time about this. I won't.

Jeff Winters: 4:25

Alright, but I'm going to push you on the optimism thing, because I know you've you're distracted by the gold thing. I know. But but on the optimism piece, can I can I center you on the optimism piece because you've I've learned from you in this area. Others should be the beneficiaries of

Scott Scully: 4:38

Yeah, but the people aren't running through the line. Like if you're on track when you when you're growing up. It's like you're working on form and breathing and all the stuff but a lot of people don't run through the line. So you literally sit there and practice running past the line sticking your chest out form all that and I think we're running through the line anymore. So yes, optimism matters. But can we tweak that? And can we keep a good attitude all the way through, but also marry it with, I'm going to hit the goal no matter what, instead of celebrating, not hitting the goal. I know, I knew I knew I was gonna I knew I was gonna piss people. I'm pissing our truth guy off,

Jeff Winters: 5:25

not disagree with the truth. That's fair. What I

Eric Watkins: 5:27

think is really important about this is when you're down as a leader, it's very easy to start pointing out all the things going wrong. So as the sales leader, okay, we're at 46%, you can dive in and point out, well, we're not doing this and you're not doing that, and that deals not coming in and that and then you define reality for everybody of like, we're gonna miss the goal. Yeah. And some of the best sales leaders that I've seen don't do that. They talk about why it's possible that get them to believe and why we can still hit the goal. I agree. 96% is not 100% 99% is the same as zero. But I do love the optimism, like relentless like, almost doesn't even make sense at a certain point. And I've seen it work like just it's there's so much belief involved in that.

Scott Scully: 6:15

I, you know, I gotta think in this scenario, at the dismal percentage that they were at real close to the end, that there's more shit that could have happened in the beginning of the quarter, being optimistic pouring into people doing things early to where they wouldn't have been behind by that much. And then you and then your goal as well. Right. Looks

Jeff Winters: 6:41

mixed reviews. Sorry, that the heart I think we have truth at the heart. But we were derailed by the

Scott Scully: 6:48

idea around it. I

Jeff Winters: 6:50

didn't want to point fingers. But you got your segment next. Scott, Eric, we're lucky we've got we've got we've got listeners of all levels of experience here on the gross show. And I think we talk a lot to the most experienced sure this is a truth. For some of our emerging folks in their career, maybe a little younger. This comes from Daniel Botero, he says your manager is more important than your paycheck. If you are a job seeker and looking for your first job, I would make sure you have the chance to meet or even interview your future manager, I sometimes get asked like, if you could go back and do anything differently, what would you do the first few years of your career to me, I would go back and I would take way less money. And I would have way more learning, like learn as much as you can from great leaders as quickly as you can. That's so much more important than, okay, I four offers, I'm going to take the highest paying job No, take the job where there's the most growth, take the job where there's the best leaders take the job, where you start, and you go, wow, in two or three years, I could soar. If I have the you know, the work ethic and I can do everything I can to be great in my career, like go work for somebody who's amazing. It'll set you on a totally different track. I think this is true,

Eric Watkins: 8:09

I am going to slightly agree and disagree. I agree. I would love to work for a new leader. But I think what's more important as you work for the right company that has growth and opportunity, because realistically, if you do go to a growth company, you're not going to be working for the same leader for a while you're going to be moving through different positions or different ranks. So yes, I would I would absolutely where possible, why not meet your leader. And make sure that you, you feel like this is somebody you're going to admire someone you're going to learn from but ultimately, I think get yourself in a position where you're going to have the ability to grow and your work is going to be rewarded. The effort you put in.

Scott Scully: 8:54

Yeah, I just say make sure to do the research on the organization you're gonna go work for, I guess, I think that's part of the interview process. Right, that you're asking questions as well. That's certainly what the person that's interviewing you wants you to do is to participate and ask good questions and be curious. And I think if you do that, you will find out what you need. And I would agree with Eric, if it's the right organization. It's not necessarily about your first leader. It's more about mission and values in that organization itself. And if you're confident in yourself that the person will be working for you. Definitely do your research on the way in and ask good questions.

Jeff Winters: 10:19

I think the point of this is, if you are a first time job seeker, don't go to the highest paycheck Right? Or only go to the highest paycheck whether it's leader or company, leader, sort of byproduct of the company. Don't go to the highest don't just take the highest paycheck like if I'm coming out of college. It's so easy to go this job I make 71,000 wasn't in this job I make 68,000 I'm gonna 71 It's like, no, there's more to that. And it's hard when you're 22 years old, 23 years old, 19 years old. To think a little bit longer term.

Scott Scully: 10:51

Make sure there are other positions. And a lot of growth. Yeah. And that you're going to learn

Eric Watkins: 10:56

focus on what what are you going to be making in five years? Yeah, not this year? Not this year, not even next year. None of that matters. What are you going to be making in five years? And what skill set are you going to have that's transferable? Through a lot of different positions

Jeff Winters: 11:12

are great truth. Now we come to this light comes from Mark. Mark says, hitting numbers should not give you any comfort during a riff or layoff, driven by macro economic challenges. In times like these, the big attributes are attitude and contribution to organizational improvements, not simply on delivering a number that's icing on the cake. No, that's wrong. That's wrong. When you're looking at people in the aggregate. To say, you know, in the unfortunate situation, you got to lay people off or what performance matters. There's no attitude quotient. There's no organizational improvement. quotient, you got to perform like if for people in a tougher environment, make sure you're hitting your number, it's not icing on the cake, it is the cake. But highest

Scott Scully: 12:05

performers don't get laid off period. They could even semi skew, not super great to be around and not get cut. If they're performing at a high enough level. I believe in the good attitude and teamwork and working well with others. But when you're at a crunch, and an organization, you need people to get results.

Jeff Winters: 12:27

Hitting numbers shouldn't give you any comfort.

Eric Watkins: 12:30

Yeah, that's a lot.

Scott Scully: 12:31

And I'd wonder why you're in a such a damn good mood missing numbers if our backs against the wall and we're potentially having to lay off? Yeah,

Jeff Winters: 12:40

I don't know. We're looking at a couple of different people. You got Eric who's crushing his numbers. But Jeff suchen. Come on, come on. Come on Mark. It's a lie. That's a lie,

Scott Scully: 12:52

Mark, you're a liar. As always good stuff. Glad you're out there. Finding the truth and calling out the lies. We are now to the 5050. I'm super excited about this one. This is something that we use across our entire organization. We've done it for years, it works. But before I get into it, I wanted to call out a couple of stats did a little research to support this. Did you know average manager spends at least three hours a day on unforeseen interruptions. Does that make sense? Can you see that happening?

Eric Watkins: 13:35

I could see that happening

Jeff Winters: 13:36

lines outside manager doors of people waiting to interrupt.

Scott Scully: 13:41

So I come into my day with the action plan in place. Maybe the best ones do, I guess the worst ones deal with their day as as it comes. And almost half of my day is interruptions and things that I didn't have planned, that's disruptive, that could seriously cause a lack of productivity. The other thing that I found in multiple places, and it ranged from, let's call it 72 to 80%. of total time in a workday is spent on things that are not the most important things for the organization 72 to 80% of all the tasks that people are doing, because they are not organized, right, because they don't have the right action plan. That's what's happening during the day, a very 20% of the things that people are doing are actually skewed towards being you know, the most important things that lead towards success. I think we saw that early on, we've got people that have a lot of things going on, they're wearing multiple hats, and you only have five days in a week, you only have you know, eight to 10 hours in a day. And so a long time ago, we got into time blocking, we call it our playbook. And then each time blocked within the playbook. We call that a play, then it's all about work in your playbook during the week and running the place. You know a lot of things that we've brought up. I know we talk we say when you hear this, you probably think it's we're being micromanagers you know what, what we're trying to do is put together an action plan and show people how they can fit everything into different buckets and actually get the work done by the end of the week. People feel overwhelmed. Everybody wants balance. And when somebody isn't you No running a playbook. And, and running the plays during that day. They're working 12 hours, they're stressed when they go home, you know, their loved ones see that they're not making the money that they could make. So let's take an account manager as an example. Like within our organization, they have 50 accounts. And there's a lot of things that go on with those 50 accounts. They're interacting with our fulfillment team, they're interacting with operations. They could be getting client calls, they're having client calls, they're preparing for client calls. They're going and training an SDR on client specifics. They're adjusting a list they're making sure Invoicing is right, they're going to best practices training. It's just it's a lot of things in a day. But if we take Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, and we put time blocks together, and we say okay, here's when you're listening to calls scoring them, here's when you're providing feedback to STRS. Here's when you're doing monthly results, meetings or client meetings, here's the actual time period where you would deal with any issues that may come up all those different blocks, and we train people to follow that schedule. And then we have standard operating procedures for the main buckets that key out on their major metrics, you can put all of that stuff that comes at you during the day into exact time periods. And if you stay committed to that you can murder the day, you know, so those interruptions, the three hours of interruptions that managers receive, maybe it shouldn't actually be three hours, but there are interruptions, those would go in an exact area, I would have a block where as a manager, I'm having my sessions with people, I would have a block where I'm dealing with client issues, or operational issues. So that's what we do. We design playbooks for every position in the building, we take all of their key activities, we time block them throughout the week. And then we manage to that. We coached them in following that exact playbook. And guess what, then all of a sudden, somebody can have a little balance. They're feeling better, we're being more productive. And our organization is growing. Yeah, have to do this. If you want to be able to manage growth and grow year over year, what do you what do you guys think, Jeff, what do you I want to talk

Jeff Winters: 18:21

about the a couple of really positive outcomes from this. But before I do, like, there's a, there's a temptation to not quite understand the logistics here, especially for higher level leaders. So for example, I designing in the process of designing my perfect playbook as the chief revenue officer of a, you know, soon to be 100 million dollar company. I'm designing my blocks on the one division sales floor, talking to the salespeople, that's not something you typically associate in your schedule, like people think of a schedule, they go, it's 15 minutes of email tasks, and then chat, and then this and then something, it doesn't have to be that way. It's the idea of blocking the time and space to do an activity. Even if it's a little fuzzier, quote, unquote, or more sort of important to the morale of the group, I think that's really important. I'll give you two quick things that I think a really good positive consequences of this, number one, managers become less of the easy button, it's so easy for me as a, as an individual contributor, to have an issue. And as opposed to just really thinking deeply and solving it, I'm gonna go to my manager, my manager solves it. That's it. And it's like, okay, that's bad. That's bad, not having the time and space to solve issues. And to delay, the time at which you can go to your manager's office is really an important thing. And a really good positive consequence of this. And the second is often you have issues that are cross departmental cross team cross manager, and then the amount of time the manager or leader spends on distractions multiplies, because my distraction isn't just you coming to me ask me a question. That question involves Steve and Susie and Joe and and Ina. Okay, well, now I gotta go get them. What are they doing now? I'm distracting those people. So the distractions multiply, as opposed to, you know, we're gonna block a time in the day or a time in the week, or we're all gonna get together, you're gonna save all the things you need to ask this group for that time. And you reduce distractions by an order of magnitude for all those people. I think those are some things that I've seen recently really help from a leadership perspective.

Eric Watkins: 20:30

That's a great point. And don't underestimate how many times a day your people are wondering what they should do next. And how much time that alone just waste So what I love about this, when I get really committed to it and doing it is I don't have to think about what I'm doing next, I know what I'm going to do. And then I'm focused on instead of what to do, I'm focused on, how do I do that thing really, really well, which creates efficiency creates productivity. And then the other thing is, you mentioned we talked about the distractions is any manager, you're going to like, that's the thing that's going to come up a lot and kill your productivity. Because it's not only the distraction, it has you switching back and forth from task all the time. And you don't just do that seamlessly. If you you're in the middle of something and someone comes in, you don't just magically pick it back up, it takes a little bit to figure out where you're at, etc. And that it's just goes into the multitasking thing, which is, is impossible. But I think initially, as you roll this out within your organization, it's gonna get a lot of pushback, they're gonna think it's micromanaging. But the The goal is for them to have a desirable future. The goal is, I want to make your life easier, and make you more money, you have more success in the position. And it's one of those things where you just have to sort of force people to do it. But when they come out on the other side, they love it, they appreciate it in people that come to our organization, and then leave, go and block their schedule at the next place that they go, because they've learned that habit, and it helps them for the rest of their life. So big, big deal.

Scott Scully: 22:07

Good feedback is so dependent on how long you've been listening, you know, you've heard us talk about a map, or best practices sessions or quote, unquote, forced recognition, or the a player score, you're probably starting to notice that all this stuff ties together, we've got a playbook or a schedule within that schedule is when I'm going to have a map with somebody when the best practices going to be there, the a player score is actually wraps up into this, you know, because if they're running their schedule, we do the Quality audits, and then that's part of the a player score itself, that they're actually doing the things that we laid out for people to do within the position, this works, I promise you, my homework would be this, think about. And just start with the positions where you have the most people in those positions, think about their top 10 activities. And, and time block those. Think about the things they spend the most time doing and just start with that. For the key positions where you have the most people within those positions, do that for a month. And let us know how it goes. I think you're gonna see ridiculous results, put it into action. All right, we, how are we going to get more leads.

Eric Watkins: 23:36

So in order to get more leads, you first have to clearly define success. And this is something that we talked about a little bit in season one, but it's so important, I want to hit on it again. And that is stop over qualifying your meetings. That is one of the biggest mistakes that we have made here internally over the years. And we've learned from it. And just based on our experience, this is how you should define a quality meeting. It's three things, it's really simple. Step one, right company, right company doesn't mean sweetspot it doesn't mean the perfect target, it means anybody that you would be willing to do business with a right company, be right person. And what right person means is anybody involved in the decision making process, we have stats now that say, on average, each deal is 3.2 decision makers that are involved in those meetings, you're going to have to work through different people to be able to get these deals closed. So you want to meet with anybody involved in the decision making process. Step three, clearly agrees to meet about the services you provide. So notice, I don't have anything about interest. I don't have anything about need. This is the right company, right person and they clearly agree to meet about your services. And here's why. First thing people don't buy because they're interested in something and people don't buy because they need something they buy because of pain they buy because they have a problem. And a lot of people don't know their problems. So the first thing I talk about the iceberg philosophy on a cold call on a cold email 10% of what comes out to a stranger that's on the phone with them at all, we're gonna get his 10% when you have that first meeting and you sit across from that prospect, you have the rest of that to uncover. Second thing. If you wait and you only want to set meetings with people that are looking to buy your service, all you have done is increased the competition that you're going at the further along they are in the buying cycle, the more likely you are to be running up against different competition. So we want to get in there early because we have a long term sales process approach. And then when that time comes, and they've realized that pain, you know, they would go to us. And then I talked about the decision makers per closed deal. I think this is a huge thing. I think, ultimately, I've been doing this for a while we all have. And if you're overqualified your meetings, you are losing opportunities. I've listened to 1000s of calls. I've read the emails, there's huge deals that we are closing where you would listen to the call, and you would have no idea.

Scott Scully: 26:19

I love it. I wish we could talk about this one thing on every show to you salespeople, here's why I would want to go out on every meeting, in addition to what Eric's saying, which is super, super important that you want to be in front of like all the people that influenced the decision, because then you can now take a little bit more time, now that you have a scheduled time to really uncover what's going on within their organization. But I don't think we think enough about how you are networking, you are building your tribe, there's nothing better than interacting with a salesperson that is respectful, asks good questions, even if you're not buying at that particular time, I appreciated the opportunity. And then when they do that, if I'm in the market later, great, but what about the referrals? You can crap? What about the fact that that guy or girls out on the golf course the next week, and here's that their friend that runs a business is in need of a particular service. And they didn't need it right now. But hey, I just met with Eric, he was an incredible guy really good. We just didn't need it right now. I'll connect you to you are building your tribe, great point, get referrals, your branding, your name, and your differentiators in the heads of all of these people, go see all of them or get on a zoom with all of them. It's amazing how these people that you don't sell will actually end up selling for you when treated the right way.

Jeff Winters: 27:54

Yeah. Eric in two successive, or maybe in a couple, maybe two or three that you brought us that the pyramid theory and then this was the Iceberg Theory is that what that was that was that was really nice, sort of a metaphor, because there's a lot beneath the surface, I was really good. That's what the listeners get baby, you come here you get real, intellectual, open minded, incredible deep. Thank you, Jeff, I want to follow to pile on in a different in a different way. The decision, I have to meet with the decision maker, only the person that makes the final decision, that is something that that we need to like lose as sales society. And I'll give you a few reasons. First, yes, there are lots of more lots more decision makers in a particular company. But now, the bottoms up this quote unquote, product lead growth is a very material and significant development in the way that people buy and the way that companies buy. What's happening now more and more and more as, think about Slack is the perfect example a chat tool, someone in the organization buys the free version, and then two people have it and then 10 people have it. And then it's bubbling up with such vigor that the leaders like this is great, we ought to investigate. If you can get influencers to go to their leaders and go, we got to have this and here's why. It's not the traditional buying cycle of let's go to the decision maker, the decision maker makes the decision drives it down to the people, everybody's happy. Like that's not as much how decisions are being made. No. So that's number one is this bottoms up significant change in the way people buy. Don't underestimate the influencers, your quote unquote, champions. Number two, I won't and I think I said this in our in another different episode as the CEO of sapra, when it was totally up to me, right? I'm never meeting with anyone on health insurance when doing it, pass it to my HR person. I said, Trust me, I'm never meeting with anyone to discuss health insurance. I want the best health insurance for my team members, I promise and for all their significant others and families and pets. I'm just not meeting with you about it. My HR person who runs HR, who's incredibly competent, and amazing and brilliant. She has full authority. She can make whatever decision on healthcare she wants. I'm never meeting with you on it. I bet there were people who would never take a meeting with the non quote unquote final decision maker and lost out on our health insurance business. Yep. Don't be one of those

Scott Scully: 30:04

people. Artists like that. You were thinking of people's pets.

Jeff Winters: 30:08

Always Always. Always. sighs personal care. It's an Iceberg Theory who you are on the top is you and then your me has surface pets family member Yeah, beneath. That's why it's beneath Iceberg Theory.

Scott Scully: 30:20

All right, we went mine and for growth. Cool. Thank you, Eric. We're going over to tales from sales can't wait. You are sitting on a pile of leaves Jeff. Howard, they're going to close

Jeff Winters: 30:33

so much beneath the surface. So today's tale from sales is all about A slightly different, more sales driven take on the old phrase, the riches are in the niches, the riches are in the niches. And there is a business strategy discussion to be had here. And I know that we will, at some point in Scotts 50 for 50, because Scott's extremely passionate about it, and built multiple businesses using this as a cornerstone of a strategy. But that's not what I'm talking about, and Tales from sales. What I'm talking about and Tales from sales is, as you are speaking to prospects in different industries, how are you talking their language? How are you ensuring that you as a salesperson, or your salespeople, as a sales leader, are able to make those prospects feel like you know, their specific pain, you know, their specific situation, you've been there, your team has been there, your account managers have been there, and you can deliver for them. The language you speak to a particular industry, the problem you solve in a particular industry, the way instead of saying revenue in some industries, its assets under management, the way you talk about, is this a good prospect? What makes a good prospect versus saying, you know, I know typically, you work with folks where the building is around 50,000 square feet, those little differences make enormous impacts in the minds of prospects. How do you do this? How do you get your team so that they can be experts in every industry? And the truth is, you can't do it, but you can, you can sure, help them. So we've been doing something as of late that I want people to take away as a tip that you can do today. There's this tool, many are familiar with an open AI chat GPT. It's a great tool. And it effectively like in an automated way uses artificial intelligence to write any number of different things, websites and emails, whatever. So we've been doing is we've been using this prompt that says, act as though you are an expert in X industry. And tell us what are the five most pressing issues you're dealing with right now. And it writes, and we'll put that in a spreadsheet. And then we'll go through, we'll have another few buckets for those particular industries. And we create in literally three minutes, what we call battle cards for each industry. So now when the sales reps are going into these calls, they're armed with these battle cards that have all the vernacular, we've got multiple different questions. And it happens in a nanosecond, and enables them to talk to these industries in their language. And it's makes an enormous difference in the mind of the prospect. So this is a riches in the niches take specific to sales, and a little hot tip for how to arm your salespeople with a surefire way to talk to prospects and in the language that they speak.

Scott Scully: 33:29

I love it. Just some other things to pile on to take it even deeper. And I do it if I were you if you're targeting particular niches is I've obviously having a web page for that particular industry. So on your website, I would have industries we serve. And I'd actually have a page for each one of those industries and flooded with your keywords, obviously, that's going to help from an SEO perspective, I'd have a case study, I'd have success stories in the industry. I'd have a video testimonial in that particular industry, a sell sheet for that industry infographic for that industry, and potentially adjust your pitch deck for that industry so that you can be so specific in their niche that like Jeff said, you're going to accomplish what you're looking to accomplish, which is, I know the seat you're sitting in, we specialize in your particular industry, and we can help you out.

Eric Watkins: 34:28

Sales is all about trust. And it's hard to trust somebody who you feel like has no idea what situation you're in and while you're going through. So think it's a really big deal. And I think the other thing is, as a sales rep, one thing you can do is don't just tell sell on these calls, dig a little bit, learn these industries, ask a couple questions. That's how our sales reps learn these industries. They just start calling them and they start asking questions. It's okay to be upfront about what you don't know, in some certain situations, as long as you're the expert on what you're selling, and the problems you solve,

Scott Scully: 35:02

you know, a different way to do this too. Because some people are listening and maybe they're thinking, Well, I just can't do it per industry. We've got 1000s of industry were were a piece of software that helps with productivity, but it doesn't have to be a particular industry. I think that you can still niche out and say, here's what I would do when you know dealing with marketing directors. Here's what I would do when I'm talking to, you know, VP of sales. Here's what I do when I'm talking to the CEO. Because instead of saying I know the IT industry and I know the chair you're sitting in, I can make it Like, look, I deal with lots of CEOs and I know the things that you have to deal with on a daily basis. And here's how we help you run your organization more effectively and get you some more sleep at night. Does that make sense? Like, if you can't do the actual niche, you got to find something to niche. So it might be the actual role that you're selling to

Eric Watkins: 36:01

persona Lusatian

Scott Scully: 36:04

Here you go.

Jeff Winters: 36:04

Personalization. The other thing that's got, I just don't be intimidated by the number of niche, you know, like, I get that too. I definitely personas but don't be intimidated by the number of niches, do five at a time and then do a few more when somebody's talking to me. And they know and I can tell they know, marketing lead gen. And we're diving into the talk, you know, talk to me about, you know, your contact rate talk to me going okay, this is somebody knows what I'm talking about they I feel good having this conversation? Sure.

Scott Scully: 36:35

That's good. Well, we are there. We're at everybody's favorite section to do. We're not today.

Eric Watkins: 36:44

Okay, but I think I have a good. And I love that I never just for the listeners out there. I never tell them what it's going to be. I like to surprise them just to see see their reactions. So I have my cousin's wedding today. And, you know, I have my own wedding coming up. And I wanted to ask, do you think you should be on the dance floor for the first song? Like the all the stuff is done? It's time for everybody to come dance. Should you be on the dance floor for the first song? Scott, you're up first.

Scott Scully: 37:23

Okay, can I ask you a question? Yes. So are you saying should there be like the first dance? Or are you saying now that all that's happened the bride's dance with the Father and everything?

Eric Watkins: 37:35

Yep. You're the guy. You're the guest at the party?

Scott Scully: 37:38

Yes. Because you go through the different series of dances, and then they call everybody out your dance a song or two, and then you, you know, sneak out it's like, yeah, like you not out of the place. But you've got a lot of things to do at a wedding. Unfortunately, you would think that you wouldn't have to make it about everybody else that's there. But you do. So you dance a couple of songs, and then you go and see grandma and aunt and your great aunt and your cousin you haven't seen forever, for you gotta be out there for the first song or two.

Eric Watkins: 38:11

I respect that.

Jeff Winters: 38:12

Yeah, no, no, no, no, I, I need to kinda see what's happening. You know, I need a bird's eye view. So as soon as the music comes out, it's like, that's bug repellent. I'm I'm the other way. I'm gonna go to the bar. I'm going to kind of lean I'm gonna serve a may have a drink or two or three. Then I'll kind of get ease my way in. He's not going and ideally, I'm not dancing at all. i Hey, I'm a bad dancer. I am not good at it. I don't know where my arms are going. I'm bad. I'm bad. I'm a bad admittedly bad dancer. And my wife is good at but I'm not I'm not like she can't find me for the first couple of songs. I've gone somewhere. So I'm I'm a No You're no I'm a no on the floor. I need to let let the good dancers go dance like you should fill up the dance floor. Be excited for that. Amy. I have.

Eric Watkins: 39:06

I have a hot take. It's more embarrassing to be a good dancer than it is to be a bad dancer. Like they're, you know, at the last wedding I was at there's this guy doing his thing, like doing these little breakdance thinks and it's like, cool for a song or two. But when you're out there for 10 songs. Nobody wants to see that anymore.

Jeff Winters: 39:23

Are you good dancer? No, I'm

Eric Watkins: 39:24

not a good dancer.

Jeff Winters: 39:26

Are you like wedding? Like,

Eric Watkins: 39:28

here's my thing. If you're gonna pay for me to come to your wedding, which is a lot of money for a lot of people. I'm going to be out on the dance floor for the first song. I'm not going to be one of those people hiding at the bar. Like Jeff,

Jeff Winters: 39:39

you said hide. Yeah, I said Hang. Hey.

Scott Scully: 39:43

You literally coward. You left your wife with cousin Eddie on the dance floor.

Jeff Winters: 39:48

I'd be thrilled. I'd be thrilled with other men dancing with my wife on it. That would be that would make my night I don't care who it is. be thrilled. Couldn't care less. Mind if I cut in mind who throat cut in? Where are you then? Yeah.

Scott Scully: 40:06

All right, good stuff again, as always on the gross show. We'd like to invite you to subscribe, like, share, comment, interact with us and as always, be kind grow and grind.

Jeff Winters: 40:21

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