How To Succeed at Creating an Encore Experience with Your Team

Speaker A: Hi, it's Dave Matzon. Welcome to the how to Succeed podcast. A, uh, podcast designed to get you to the top and to stay at the top. I've asked some of our worldwide trainers who, uh, just excel in helping organizations and people scale, to talk to their guests about what does it take to succeed? And we're going to focus in three areas, which we call the success triangle. Attitudes, behaviors and techniques. So we're going to peel back the onion and really understand how people think, how they act and how they behave to get to the top of their game to help you get there too. Let's listen in.

Speaker B: Hi, I'm Jim Marshall. Um, I'm with Sandler Training in Tampa, Florida. And if you're familiar with Sandler, you know that we work with companies and organizations that are driven to excel. They really work at being the best in their field. But when business is down and they're not hitting their goals or their projections, a lot of companies think they have a performance problem. Sales are inconsistent, engagement is low, turnover is creeping up. So they respond the only way they know how. More incentives, more pressure, more accountability. But what if none of that is actually fixing the real issue? The real problem? The problem isn't performance. It's the experience of showing up for the job every day. It stops being meaningful. It stops being energizing or worth repeating. So the question becomes, how do you create a workplace where people don't just perform, but they actually want to come back and do it again? So today we're lucky and I'm pleased to be joined by Greg Offner. He was a keynote speaker at our Sandler Summit in March. He's a world class speaker. He helps organizations improve performance by identifying what actually drives engagement, what drives ownership and results in the workplace. So I don't know if he's going to break that out for us today, but Greg, welcome to the how to Succeed podcast.

Speaker C: Jim, thanks for having me. It's a pleasure to be here.

Speaker B: Well, we're looking forward to our conversation. As I mentioned, you, uh, were a keynote speaker at our Sandler Conference and our Sandler Summit in March. And I want to kind of pick up where we left off there. But for a lot of people that weren't there and might not be familiar with you, what do you mean by encore experience? How do you explain that in simple terms?

Speaker C: Well, we've all been to, let's say, a concert. And maybe if you've not been to a concert, you've been to a restaurant. If you've not been to a Restaurant. I don't know what you got going on in your life, but we've all been to some sort of event or had an experience which left us feeling excited to do it again. Maybe the meal was so good, we looked around at our companions and said, God, uh, we gotta come back here. Let's put our next dinner on the calendar now. Or we're at the concert and we don't want to leave. We're having so much fun. So we and all the other folks around us are screaming, one more song. One more song. That is an encore experience. And I believe that those shouldn't be limited to restaurants and concerts. In fact, we're doing ourselves a disservice if we're not actively trying to create encore experiences each day through the work that we do, the people for the people we work with, and even for the community around us, our friends, family, probably most importantly for the person we see in the mirror each day.

Speaker B: Well, you know, that's. That's a. That's a pretty big concept, uh, to get our arms around. I'm trying to think of how many workplaces I've experienced or companies that we work with where they can say they're actually having and encore, um, experience. Not too many places, I think, can describe themselves that way.

Speaker C: That's correct. And I believe you mentioned the attrition and employee retention issue that organizations are having. If we look historically, for the last 30 years, organizations like Gallup and others have been tracking employee engagement. And for the last 30 years, it's sort of hovered around 70% of workforces are disengaged. And a smaller subset of that are what we call actively disengaged. So the folks who are disengaged, they sort of clock in. And check out the folks who are actively disengaged. They clock in and they are looking for opportunities to make the company worse, like they are actively trying to make things worse in the organization. So, yes, this is absolutely a problem that employers are wrestling with. And at the same time, it's an opportunity for the ones who are doing it well, who are having great engagement, who have a culture that is thriving, to say, okay, you know, to steal a line from an author, if things are good, how can we make them great? And I believe that this focus on the experience and creating more encore experiences is both the prescription for what ails these organizations and the propellant to take those organizations who are doing well, take them from good to great.

Speaker B: So when you say disengagement, you're not talking necessarily about Involuntary disengagement. Like Meta just laying off 1800 people. We're talking about disengagement by choice, correct?

Speaker C: Yeah, I, I, I can't speak to the Meta situation or some of those other organizations that are doing rifts or layoffs or, or, or whatnot. Um, although I would certainly advise those people who are just laid off to take this opportunity to decide if I'm creating something each day. And I believe that we as human beings are driven to create that. That's what gets us excited. And in the keynote, I share a story about my daughter when she was 18 months old, playing with sidewalk chalk on the front porch, and how I realized that in that moment she was discovering something that is fundamental to our human experience. And in fact, this was written about and studied by an Austrian psychologist named Carl greus. At about 18 months of age, human beings learn that we can be the cause of something out in the world. And this brings us joy. And so in the story of Frankie and the sidewalk Chalk, she realized that by putting the chalk on a wobbly table. And then the chalk fell off the table and I bent over to pick it up. That repeated itself a couple of times. And Frankie started to realize, oh, I can make daddy do stuff. If I put the chalk on the table, the chalk falls off the table. I, I can make daddy bend over to pick it up. And this big smile appeared on her face because she discovered the joy at being the cause. We all have. This, we discovered around 18 months of age. That's what the psychologist Carl Grus realized. But we lose sight of the opportunities to be the cause throughout our life because we're told, you got to go to work, got to get a job, got to make that money, got to pay the rent, gotta, gotta, gotta, gotta. Work becomes an obligation instead of what I believe it could be, which is an opportunity, an opportunity for us to create something each day. What I love working about, working with Sandler and folks in the sales environment, is that you are literally creating customer relationships. Sales is the engine that drives organizations growth and sustains the organization. So if we're going to create that each day, we're going to create some sort of experience. How do we rank? Like, what becomes the best experience we could create? I believe that's where the encore experience comes in. I believe the best, most profitable, most enjoyable type of experience that we can create is one that leaves the other party, the other person going, God, I can't wait to do that again.

Speaker B: So you've heard about companies that they attempt to create that Experience, but maybe it's just kind of a one time thing. It's, it's maybe an event, maybe it's some sort of a retreat or something. They go back to work and everything settles back down to the norm. So what is it that that separates a one time performance in their culture to a culture more that is an ongoing cult? Uh, an encore, uh, culture. Not just a one time event, but something that's continuous.

Speaker C: It's really a reimagining of two basic things that we're doing. Anyway, so the folks often at the end of my keynote come up to me and say, wow, I didn't realize this was so simple. And uh, it really is. This is something that you don't have to change everything for everything to change. When you start looking at each interaction as an opportunity to create an encore experience, what you need to do is meet the audience where they are and then add something that is uniquely yours or that they get to add that's uniquely theirs, depending on how the, uh, experience itself is situated. And we'll talk about that in a moment because I'm sure that might leave some of the audience members scratching their heads going, what does he mean by that? I'll come back to that. But that's simply it. In every interaction you find out what is it that this other person wants? What can I do that would help make this experience, this interaction, an 11 out of 10 for them? And then find out, well, what can they add to this experience to make it unique? Or what can I do that makes it feel unique to them? Uh, and that's it. When we start doing that over and over and over again, we notice that the quality and caliber of our experiences start to change. And then the final piece of the puzzle is we reflect back. And I know that folks in the sales industry are great at doing that. Whether it's a post call review, we even do our pre call plans, whether it's at the end of the week, reflecting back on our calendar of appointments and how things went. Um, sales are great at that, but lots of other people aren't. We just sort of go through Monday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, keep moving on through the week, taking a moment to pause, reflect and go, okay, of all the interactions that I've had this week when I tried to run this encore experience playbook, where I'm meeting my audience, where they are, making the experience relevant, adding something unique, which ones went well, and then taking a moment to say, okay, how can I repeat whatever happened in that experience over again next week? And so we're always refining our approach to this. And this, by the way, is the same thing you mentioned. I was a dueling piano bar performer. This is the same thing I would do with audiences in the piano bar. Every gig was an opportunity to both apply this framework and then learn from. Okay, hey, that first set, it went kind of well, but there are some things I can improve on. Or that second set, man, we crushed it. The audience was so into it. How can I bring that same energy? What did we do? What can we predictably do again that's going to create that result?

Speaker B: So we should interject here, by the way, for our, for our, for our viewers and our listeners that Greg knows of what he speaks. In addition to being a world class keynote speaker and an accomplished doing, uh, pianist, he's also led world class sales teams. So we're not just talking about theory here, we're talking about practical application.

Speaker C: The.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker C: Um, and so if we go back to the beginning of this process or how do we build a non core experience? It starts with understanding who's in your audience. And that term audience feels unique to the world of theater or the world of musical performance. But I believe that each day is a performance. No matter what industry you're in, what product or service you sell, what role you play in your company, you are delivering a performance. I don't mean that you're pretending or that you're acting, uh, like somebody else, but I mean, it's an interaction. That's really what a performance is. It's, I step out on stage and I have an interaction en masse with, you know, several thousand people. You, you may be doing it one on one. Maybe if you're in a sales role and you're doing a board presentation, it's you to a group of 10 or 20 or 30, however many people. But when you step into your role, when you step out of your car and into your office, like that's your stage. You are now performing. And so the person on the other side is an audience member. Now, we're going to go a bit into the weeds here, but I think your audience can take it. Um, as salespeople, we're always taught a sales call should not be a monologue, it should be a dialogue. And in fact, you should often listen more than you speak in a sales call. So the audience takes on a bit of a different role in the professional sense than they might in a theater. But your prospect is your audience member. For the leaders in the room, for the employers that are listening. You have Two audiences. You have your external audience, which are your customers, and you have your internal audience, which are your employees or your colleagues. So who's in your audience? That's the first question that we start with. What I've learned is that there's three types of people in any audience, whether it's a group of 10, a group of 10,000, just a group of one. There's three types of people. I call them keepers, leapers, and sleepers. Now, they each have different attributes. The keepers kind of love what they do, who they do it with. They're the folks at the piano bar that they're googling before they even book their airline tickets for a vacation. They're googling where the best piano bar is in the city that they're taking a vacation to. Right. They love what they do and who they do it with. The leapers, in the professional world, they're building career capital. They may, your company may not be their forever home, but they're there for a reason. Just like at the piano bar, our leapers were birthday parties or bachelorette parties. They came in because they wanted to have a good time, maybe kick the night off right, or end the night on a high note. But they've had other destinations in mind throughout the evening. And the sleepers, both in the professional world and in the piano bar, they're folks who showed up because they thought they were going to get one experience and then started to disengage because they didn't believe that where they were was going to give them the experience they wanted. Because whether we're in the professional world or at the piano bar, people don't just wake up in a job. People don't just wake up in a piano. I mean, maybe in New Orleans, people wake up in piano bars, but generally, people don't wake up in piano bars. They have to go through the door. They have to pay the coverage. Just as in the business world, they have to go through an interview process, they have to get hired, they have to show up on day one. So I think sleepers are the most interesting audience archetype because they are our greatest source of trapped value. These people represent opportunity for us. We often say that we want our customers to have a strong opinion of us. Like positive or negative have an opinion of us. The most dangerous customer is the one that's like, uh, whatever. You got sprockets, they got sprockets. I'll just go for the cheapest price. No, we want our customer to have a strong opinion. And if it's negative, we want to know that so we have an opportunity to change that opinion, to improve, to, to augment, to change what we're doing.

Speaker B: It's interesting you say that because I'm thinking about what you just said. With keepers, leapers and sleepers, sales professionals,

Speaker D: you don't need more theory, you need transformation that drives performance. At Sandler, we go beyond the book. Our psychology based selling system, backed by behavioral science and 50 plus years of proven success, gives your team data driven tools and a reinforcement strategy that ensures lasting change. See it firsthand, crash a class today, visit sandler.com podcast that's sandler.com podcast Sandler built for sales professionals who demand results.

Speaker B: Quite often, top performers in a lot of organizations are the first to disengage. Do you notice that, uh, at all? Why does it. Sometimes top performers, you think they're on board, but a lot of times they're going to be the first ones to find fault. They're going to be disengaged and maybe they're looking over their screen to someplace else. Maybe there's a better opportunity out there. I don't know if you witnessed that.

Speaker C: Well, I think. All right, so first I think that if people are noticing areas of opportunity, uh, areas for improvement opportunities, I think that actually is a sign that they are engaged. So the leader ignores those conversations at their own peril. Someone actively raising their hand and going, hey, this doesn't make sense. Hey, I think we could do that better. Is it irritating sometimes in the fog of battle, you know, daily that we're going, yeah, sure, okay, we've all got a lot of stuff on our plate, somebody piping up with unsolicited ideas. I get it, it's irritating. I've had that experience as a manager myself. But that is a sign that they are engaged, that they are interested in this company growing, evolving. So you ignore that at your own peril. I believe if you do that too often, if you ignore that too often, once or twice you can just say, hey man, we're really, really busy. Not something we can address right now, like, let's circle back at your next performance review or whatever. If that happens too often, the employee, the team member, stops believing that you're interested or able to help them grow, to help the organization grow. And now they start looking for a better place to apply their talent. So I actually think that if you've got a high performer, they could be either a keeper or a leaper. In both cases, I think that's actually where our high performers reside. And that's why I'm so fascinated by sleepers, because as I said earlier, they are our greatest source of trapped value. Like, they're the ones who we're not getting their best from. You're getting your best. You're getting the best from leapers because they're interested in building their career capital. They're building their resume. They're either trying to justify an internal promotion or an external move. So they are actively engaged in their career. The keepers are actively engaged because they love what they do. They love what they're doing. Now, again, both have the potential to turn into sleepers if they stop believing that they are able to make a difference, that they are able to be the cause of something, or if they stop believing that their leadership, that their organization is able to help them get what they want from their employment experience. And I think that we like another risk, another, um, challenge that I see leaders run into. A mistake that I will say they make, that I have made too. A lot of this is hard earned from experience. Um, we just assume that money is the primary motivator. And while while income may fix all things on a corporate balance sheet, to an extent income, it does not interpersonally. In fact, there's studies that show that a happy person who you give more money to will be happier, but a miserable person that you give more money to will be happy for a very short period of time, and then they will revert back to being miserable. So money doesn't always fix the problem. We've got to get at what I call the root goal, like what someone is truly after in their employment. And so if we look at your keepers, I break them, I break down. There's really like two subsets of keepers. There are the rock stars. They're the ones who love to see their name on, in. In lights, on. On the leaderboard. You have a. You have a. And, um, we're talking sales now. Uh, you know, you have some sort of sales competition. They are driven. They want to be number one. They just got to.

Speaker B: They're.

Speaker C: They're highly competitive. Um, and they'll probably be the first to put their hand up and say, I want a promotion. I want more responsibility. I, uh, want. I want, I want, I want. But there's also this other subset of keepers that I call rock. They don't really care if their name is in lights. They're not necessarily looking for more responsibility. I mean, they'll take more money. Who wouldn't if you offer it to them? But really they just want to create for them, it may be more of a lifestyle job where they love that they get to come in at 9, work with people they love, do something that they find interesting or that they find meaning in, and then they clock out, uh, whenever the day's over. And every once in a while you can count on them. If you need a little extra help, sure, they're in it. But if you start trying to push that rock solid to want to be a rock star, they're going to start to disengage. That has the same effect as not listening to someone who puts their hands up and says, I have an idea for improving this. Here's something that I think we could do better.

Speaker B: You know, you bring up an interesting point. Uh, and I love what you said about motivators in particular, because one of the things that we believe, again, when we're talking about top performers, the top 10% in any sales driven organization, there's actually studies on this, and you're probably more familiar with these than I am, but the studies show that for top performers, money in terms of motivators only ranks third in the pecking order. Third?

Speaker C: Yeah.

Speaker B: Second is public recognition. They love the, you know, the parking space and the trophy and the salesperson of the month and all that stuff. What do you suppose the number one motivator is for top performers? I was surprised.

Speaker C: Yeah, I'd imagine it's upward mobility.

Speaker B: Um, well, I thought that too, until it was pointed out that top performers, if they continue to do what they do, upward mobility is going to take care of itself. I was interested to hear that. According to this one study, the top motivators for the top 10% or something called Private Strokes. Private Strokes. Bringing your person into the office, sending them down and saying, bill, you did an amazing job on, uh, that pitch. This. I don't know how you walk me through how you closed that deal. That was unbelievable. They just like to have their feathers puffed up and they can walk down, strut down the island, say, here's another one. I don't know if you agree or disagree. This is just according to the one study that I saw.

Speaker C: Well, I mean, that's, uh, so I would have called that recognition. But I think maybe you're delineating between external recognition, like your name and lights versus the private one on one sort of conversations. Yeah. That then leads to the second part of the encore experience playbook. So you've, we've talked about the first part, which is understanding who your audience member is or, uh, who's in your audience because at the piano bar and in the professional world, you know, we talk about, in a sales call, building rapport. And it's not like, hey, look at that big fish. I guess you like to fish, Mr. Jones. No, it's building a meaningful connection with someone. Because both at the piano bar and in the professional world, if we don't create that connection, the whole experience collapses. So making this conversation relevant and that when we talk about recognition, man, nobody needs a fleece with your company logo on it. That's not meaningful recognition. That is not a meaningful reward. Unless maybe you're sending them to Alaska for a week and they're going to need something to keep warm. We want to make sure that what we're designing for that audience member is relevant. And that's where I see so many organizations miss the mark, is they go, well, I'm trying to meet my keepers, and here's what I want to build for them. But is it relevant? Is it relevant for them? So let's assume that we've done that first part. Now we move to the second part, which is what's so special about that recognition is that it becomes unique, individual. So I, um, did a program in Puerto Rico for this manufacturing alliance. And a guy pulled me aside after the program, and he said, greg, you made me realize something about this lunch that I take employees to. So what do you mean, lunch? He said, well, so I run this manufacturing facility. I have about 50 employees that work for me. And, um, every week I'll take a different group out to lunch. So I take my accounting one week, I'll take some folks from manufacturing the next week we take a couple. So it's easy to sort of do every week. And then we reset, and I came out one day. I was taking some of my off. He called them office girls. I was taking some of my admin staff to lunch. Excuse me. And I saw two of them standing by my car taking a selfie. I said, what are you doing? They said, oh, my God, we're going to lunch with the boss. We can't wait to tell our friends. This is so cool. His comment to me was, I never thought it was cool. I'm, um, going to lunch with my employees. But this was such a big deal for them. It was special for them. It didn't need to be unique to him. It was special for them. And this is really the magic of the request slip of this second part of the playbook, which is now we've met our audience where they are. We're going to create A relevant experience, and let's do something to make it unique. Whether it is unique or feels unique, whether it is special or feels special, I think I use those two words interchangeably. Special and unique. He was doing something that for him was just, I'm going to lunch. But for them, it became magical. And in the keynote, I shared a story of taking my kids to a restaurant, and I use that term very loosely. This restaurant was actually a bar with a liquor store attached. And they just happened to serve some food. And my daughter having a bit of a tantrum. She was three and a half at the time. The server did something that completely ended the tantrum and changed the entire tone of our meal. And I don't know whether that's in her, like, playbook. She pulls it out every time a family comes in with a toddler that's having a meltdown. I don't care. It made that experience so special and unique for us that now every time we go down the beach, down the shore, we go there intentionally. She's created a customer for life because she built something unique, something special into it. So for recognition, pulling someone aside one on one, saying, hey, I know we're going to celebrate you at the quarterly dinner like we always do, but I wanted to pull you aside just one on one and let you know how much your performance meant to this team. You know, you might not know this, but VP was really putting pressure on me to deliver. And you helped me out a ton. Like that conversation. Maybe the boss has that with everybody at some point when they do a great job and they wind up on the, whatever you call it, all star list or, you know, whatever for that quarter. But if it feels unique to the individual, that makes a difference.

Speaker B: Interesting. So we're talking to Greg Oftener, world class keynote speaker, um, the author, the founder of this thing called the Encore Experience. And I want to kind of follow up on that from a, uh, leadership standpoint, Greg, and specifically as it relates to sales driven organizations, that's who Sandler works with. So in those types of organizations, I'm curious, in your view, that Encore Experience, where does that break down the most? I mean, what are the early signs that it just ain't happening? They're not conveying that Encore Experience to their team, to their employees. What are some of the warning signs?

Speaker C: Yep, it's under pressure when organizations are focused more on getting the sales across the line this month, this quarter, versus taking a long term look at building sustainable sales processes. Like, I believe depending on what you sell, there's a big caveat. Um, depending on what you sell, the decision to buy again starts. Starts the moment they sign the order form for the first purchase. Like, that is our job as salespeople is to make sure that that entire experience sets us up for the next sale or for the renewal. So I get it. And I, as a business owner, I have had this challenge too, where sometimes I'm looking at a quarter and the numbers aren't where they want to be. And I'm going, all right, I need to get some revenue moving. I need to get a deal across the finish line. I get that pressure. But when we stop delivering an experience and we start facilitating a transaction, we devalue not only the product or service we're selling, but the work that we are doing. People don't. I mean, this has got overused in the sales world. People don't like being sold to, but they love to buy. And the thing people will buy again and again is an experience that leaves them going, oh, uh, that was awesome. Let's do that again. And the sales process, the sales transaction can feel like that, but it breaks down when you've got someone who is more short term focused than long term focused.

Speaker B: So given the number of organizations that you've worked with, we talked about organizations that struggle to get it right. Can you think of an organization? You don't have to name any names, but can you think of an organization that they get it, they do it right, they're intentional about promoting the soundcore experience. Any come to mind off the top of your head?

Speaker C: Yeah. And here's the best part. It doesn't have to be something huge. One of the things that I struggled with in the professional world when I was working, running sales teams and as a salesperson is man. I would look around at what some of my friends were doing and what some other organizations were doing, and I had a really hard time believing that what I did actually mattered. Like, sure, I was making money great. But I had this feeling what I was doing really wasn't that important, that it wasn't that special. And it took me a long time to realize that that came from some external conditioning that we all fall victim to. Because the news doesn't show stories of people who do everyday stuff every day. They show stories of big things. This donor made a hundred million dollar donation. Oh, my God. I wasn't doing that. So it didn't feel like I was doing anything that mattered. What I've learned is that you don't have to do big things to do Big things. In fact, the things that mean the most to others, the things that matter most to others, often come as a result of us just doing the thing we do each day. We don't get to control when our actions create a, um, meaningful moment for someone else. We don't always get to control it. And so I'd been searching for that. I was like, I want to make sure that everything I do is meaningful. But the truth is, just by showing up and doing the thing that you can do, the thing only Jim can do, whoever's listening to this, the thing that only you can do each day, just by showing up and doing, uh, that, you get the opportunity to change the world for somebody else. And as leaders, it's our obligation to spotlight those moments, to pull them out, like you mentioned, with that private one on one conversation. It's also an opportunity to recognize in front of the team, hey, this thing happened last week. I know it just felt like what we do every day. But let me explain why it was a big deal. I worked for an organization that every month we'd have an all hands meeting and our CEO would bring in one of our customers and they bring in hopefully, hopefully the CEO, but a high ranking person from the organization. And sometimes they brought in an individual employee. This organization I worked for, uh, we sold human capital consulting. We also had an employee benefits arm, a uh, property and casualty insurance arm, sort of like this multifaceted organization. And I will never forget this conversation. A CEO came in with one of his employees. They were customers of our employee benefits brokerage. And the employee said, my daughter has a very rare disease and needs a cocktail of medicines. Some of them are incredibly expensive. And when I went to the drugstore, they said this particular formulary, this particular, uh, drug was not going to be covered by insurance. I was told it was supposed to. They said it wasn't. My daughter desperately needed this. And this drug cost me well over $1,000, which for me was almost impossible. I mean, we're talking massive impact on this individual's quality of life. And then she went on to tell the story that just like her HR person said, you flip over the insurance card, you call the number on the back, and that was our number. And you talk to the person who runs the account. And so she did that. And our person called our CEO, his name's Marcos, called Marcos. And Marcos said, here's my amex number. We're paying for the drug. We're going to get this taken care of. That was huge for this woman. And that was just built into the culture of what we did.

Speaker A: Share.

Speaker C: Another example, there's a, um, pet food company. The name of it escapes me right now, but often these organizations are trying to get their customers on auto ship. It's just more predictable. It helps with inventory management. It helps with a whole host of things too. Plus, who likes running out of dog food? What a pain in the butt to wake up in the morning and realize you got to go to Petsmart at 7am so they have these things on auto ship. Uh, but as happens with all living creatures, unfortunately, sometimes people's pets pass away. And so when a pet passes away, what they've had happen in the past is an owner, the former pet owner, you know, calls up or sends an email, sort of furious, sometimes brokenhearted, that, you know, I just got billed for a bag of dog food, and, uh, my dog died last week. So, you know, can you reverse the charge? And now this company, because this happens often with living things. This company developed a policy where when a customer's pet passes away, if we've shipped a bag of food or whatever we shipped, we not only refund it, but we ask them to keep it, donate it to a shelter, donate it somewhere, and then they automatically send a bouquet of flowers and a condolence card to that owner. Maybe it costs the company 50 to $100, but what it wins that company in terms of endearment, that creates an encore experience for that customer. It's very, very easy to do if you run this playbook, understand who your customer is. That's what the dog food company was doing. That's what the brokerage that I worked for was doing. Our, um, audience member needs this. How do we facilitate it and do it in a way that is uniquely ours? That's the opportunity that lies in front of us each day. Whether you're in a leadership role, whether you're an individual contributor, whether you're the person that sweeps the parking lot, we are creating something each day. I believe what we're creating is an experience. Forget the product, forget the service, your seller that you build, you're creating an experience for the people you work with, for the people you work for, and for the person you see in the mirror each day. And I believe if that's really what we're doing, if we're creating an experience, we owe it to ourselves to create the best kind of experience. That's what I call an encore experience. And the framework is pretty simple. You meet your audience where they're at, you inject something that's uniquely yours, or you allow them to contribute something that's uniquely theirs. You reflect on how it went, you repeat the things that went well, and you start all over again. It's a new way of approaching each interaction.

Speaker B: So, Greg, I'm guessing that there's probably some people listening or watching this now that are saying this is a pretty powerful message, but maybe they're scratching their head and they're wondering, what's a simple framework that I can use as soon as tomorrow to design better moments to create that encore experience? What's something they can do immediately?

Speaker C: Well, I think it's starting with what are the experiences that we're actually creating? Um, so let's sort of move out of sales and move into human resources. To an individual in hr, hiring a new employee becomes pretty formulaic. There's papers they need to sign, there's things we need to do like set up their email account, get them a badge, et cetera, et cetera. It kind of becomes a process. But to the individual on the other side, this is a massive life change. This is a big deal. There's an opportunity to build an encore experience. So if you're listening to this and you're going, all right, I love the idea, I want to start to implement it. The first thing to do is just take a moment, open up a new Google Doc, take, uh, a piece of legal pad out and just start to write down what are some of the processes, some of the interactions that happen every day. And you can separate it. Internal, external, what's happening with my customers, what's happening with my people. And then when I. So a lot of times I get brought in to work with organizations to help build better experiences. And I say, well, let's, let's focus on the lowest lift, highest impact ones.

Speaker B: Sure.

Speaker C: There's ones that we could design that are really, really. I think you mentioned like off sites or retreats. Yeah, there's a lot of work that goes into that. It better be an encore experience. If you're spending that much time and money to do a retreat. Yes, but you're not going to do a retreat every day or else work won't get done. So great. That's uh, a once in a while experience. What's the everyday stuff that's low lift, high roi. And just before we get any further into this and, um, I'll come back to it, you mentioned something earlier about folks raising their hand and pointing out opportunities, problems at the piano bar. We have this tool called a request slip. And that's what allows the audience to select songs. But the thing is, a request is really two pieces of paper. It's the slip that you wrote down, the song you want to hear on, and then it's another piece of paper that's green, kind of presidential. You know what I'm talking about? Talking about money, folks. Right? So there's two pieces of paper.

Speaker A: Why?

Speaker C: Because if all you give me is a piece of paper with the song you want to hear, that's not a request, that's a suggestion. And I think the challenge at work is that leaders are getting way too many suggestions and not enough request slips. So when you're in leadership, if you're in hr, one of the areas that I encourage my clients to start to develop first is how could we build more of a request slip into this process for employees? Because employees want to feel like they're not just automatons being told what to do and then released out into the world. They want to contribute their ideas. They want to experience the joy at being the cause, not just of making a sale, but of making this company grow, of putting their imprimatur, their stamp on the organization. And there's an organization in the human services field, um, who did a great job of this. They, uh, built effectively their own internal shark tank. So an employee who had an idea for improving a process or procedure would send an email to, like, a. I think it might be like, processimprovementyz company. They had set up a real simple mailbox for it to receive it. And it was a sort of template that they'd have to fill out, which is, one, what's your idea? Two, um, how is this impacting you negatively or positively the way we're doing it now? And three, how would this impact us positively? By changing it? And so what they were looking for is, can this person articulate the problem? Can they articulate the business problem this creates for us? And can they articulate business opportunity from solving it? Because what they wanted to minimize was one, and let's be honest, there may not be any stupid questions, but there's definitely some stupid ideas. And two, people that are just saying, well, this would make my life better. I don't know about my employees. They wanted things that would make the organization better. And so I think it was weekly, maybe bi weekly. Somebody, uh, would review the inbox, and as long as it wasn't a, uh, stupid idea or went against their company culture, it would get forwarded to the innovation team and sort of put on this list. And so every quarter, they Would invite employees whose email made it through the first screening process and got put on that list. They would invite them to pitch the sharks. And this innovation team was made up of leaders in different areas and different hierarchies from the organization. And it didn't need to be a pitch like we've got this much revenue, like it wasn't a very technical pitch. Some of the people making these pitches might have been in very non technical roles, right? Like maintenance or maybe it's their first month on the job. It didn't matter. What they wanted to know was, can this person articulate the issue? How interested in being a part of the solution are they? And this is that second slip of paper. This is that skin in the game. Because leaders, we don't have time for suggestions, but we got time for requests. If you see a problem and you want to help be a part of solving that problem, we could do that together. I could maybe be an executive sponsor. I could mentor you. And that's what wound up happening is after you pitched the sharks, the ideas that they would then rank, you know, how do we get the biggest business impact, lowest lift from these ideas and the ones that they couldn't act on right away, they would just acknowledge, hey, that is a great idea. It's not getting on this particular to do list, but we're keeping this on the back burner. And please circle back with us. We'll circle back with you. Keep the conversation going. So it's important, if you got a suggestion, if you got a request and you can't do it, you got to acknowledge it. But then they would assign one of the members of the innovation team to be the executive sponsor with the employee who had the idea. And now they start to work on, okay, at a high level, this sounds like a great idea. We can see the business impact, we can see the business challenges it's creating. Is it realistically feasible? Is it financially feasible? Is the juice really going to be worth the squeeze? And as this process is playing out, the employee that's now paired with the executive sponsor is getting mentorship. They're getting a peek at the deeper workings of this organization. They are learning and growing. So even if the idea doesn't wind up fully coming to fruition, they're getting a ton of value out of this. The organization is also now creating these relationships throughout the organization. There's executives that you can go to. There are studies that show if you don't have at least three people at work that you can go talk to about an issue you're at high risk of leaving. And so now they're not just saying, all right, your co worker is one of those people. This executive over here is one of those people. So this was a huge benefit for the organization, and it's a way of turning suggestions into request slips.

Speaker B: So let me follow up on that. We're running short on time, but I want to get a couple other thoughts from you. Um, again, as I think about the people that we're talking to today. Leaders, uh, CEOs, business owners, things like that. A lot of times when we conduct training here at Sandler, we often end our sessions with lessons learned. We talk about things that they're going to start doing. What's the one thing, if you had to put your finger on something, what's the one thing that leaders should stop doing immediately in this context? And then what's the one thing they should start doing?

Speaker C: Yeah, leaders should stop using their title as a reward and start using it as a tool to remove obstacles for their employees. Uh, I'm not saying everybody who's listening is doing this, but I was guilty of this. Certainly in my first leadership posting, I had finally become a sales manager, and, damn it, I was the most special thing since sliced bread. Let me tell you, Jim, it was the award of a lifetime that they finally recognized what a great guy Greg Oftener was.

Speaker D: Was.

Speaker C: And I'm in charge of this sales team. And let me tell you all how this gets done. What I learned the hard way, after losing three people on that team that I was assigned to in the first six months of getting assigned there, I learned that that was not a reward, it was a tool that I was given, a lever to move obstacles for others. And I hope everybody listening is like, yeah, duh, uh, that would be fantastic. But I know that some people are listening, are going, wait, really? The best thing you can do for your team is to stop using your title as the thing that goes on the desert. Gregory Offner, sales manager. Start becoming, uh, I want to say juggernaut, but I don't know if that's going to get through. You know, juggernaut, the guy who, like, once you stop, he started running. You couldn't stop. He'd run through walls. Like, that's what leaders should be for their people. Create the opening for your people to succeed. And by doing that, it elevates you as a leader organizationally. What we can stop doing are ignoring those people who raise their hand are, ah, saying, you don't have time for that. You don't have seniority come back to me when you've been here for a year and you understand how things work. Uh, understanding how things work is the problem. The person who's newest sees things with the clearest vision. Now, there may be a couple nuances they don't understand and, and this becomes an opportunity for you as a leader to teach them those nuances. But the whole sit down, shut up mentality is gone. That is not the world we live in today. People have access to more information, they know more about the company coming in because they've been on your podcast, they've listened to your YouTube, they've watched the videos they've seen. Like they have ideas. And if we can elevate those ideas, if we can take them from suggestions and turn them into requests, we can build those keepers. We can build an army of keepers inside our organization.

Speaker B: That's powerful. That's powerful, Greg. Lots to think about here and my guess is that a lot of leaders listening right now. I'm guessing that some of this might be a little bit uncomfortable for them. I can't see myself doing that. Mhm. Because what we talked about today challenges a lot of the traditional thinking around performance and motivation. What works and what doesn't work and what does it really mean to lead a team. So I'm taking notes here and I think that if there's one thing that I keep hearing from you, it's that you can't build a sustainable, high performing organization if you're only focused on results and if you're not paying attention to what's driving those results. Fair.

Speaker C: Yes. With the caveat that I don't want anyone to walk away from this thinking. Greg Oftener doesn't believe results matter. No, I absolutely believe results matter. But I think if we're not getting the results we want, it's less, as you said in the opening, Jim, it's less about performance and what we're doing and it's more about the how and the why. And I believe that if we approach each interaction with the goal of yes, a sale right now would be nice. Yes, a, uh, win right now would be nice. But let's make that sale. Let's create that win in a way that gets the other person so excited to have that experience again that they can't wait to come back and buy from us, that we're missing the opportunity that we're actually setting ourselves up for long term failure. The transaction economy is dead. We're in the transformation economy. We're in the experience economy. That's our opportunity each day is to create these transformational experiences for both our employees, our customers, and most importantly, the person we see in the mirror each day.

Speaker B: So there's probably some questions that leaders should be asking themselves now. So I'm thinking that if any of this hits home, a suggestion would be to take a minute and think about where am I creating misalignment on my team? Am I driving ownership or just accountability? And which, if any of my people, my best people, are actually at risk right now. So just some things to think about. So if you found any of this valuable. Go ahead, Greg.

Speaker C: I was going to say, and think about who wants ownership. If we go back to keepers, leapers and sleepers. There are some keepers that don't want ownership. They don't want responsibility. They want to know what I'm supposed to do, how you want it done, let me do it, and then see you later. Great. Don't try to turn them into rock stars. Let them do their thing. Great. Companies are built on rock solids, rock stars and leapers. And then our opportunity is to take the sleepers, the ones who are disengaged, and help them. And I believe there's really, really, when we do this right, there is no such thing as a sleeper. Like, that's sort of a temporary designation. You've either got a leaper or a keeper who just hasn't made a decision yet. They haven't figured it out. So our opportunity as leaders is to have those conversations with them and either help them make the leap, help them get to their next destination, or give them the conditions that allow them to stay and thrive.

Speaker B: Great stuff, Great stuff. So, gang, if you found this valuable an idea, might be to share it with other members of your leadership team. Share with another business owner or maybe someone that you think needs to hear it and might have their blinders on. So, Greg, let's wrap up if anybody wants to learn a little bit more about building this thing called an encore experience. How can people get a hold of you? What kind of resources would you have that they can take advantage of? How would they reach you?

Speaker C: Yeah, the thing that I'd love to share, um, and we'll put a link to it. I'll make sure you get it. So you can put a link in the show notes is I've built this archetype playlist. So the keepers, leapers, sleepers that I mentioned, to boil it down, I'd say it's kind of a swot analysis of each of those archetypes of each of Those personality types and how do you interact with them? What I found working in the business world was that we had all sorts of personality assessments and I'm not going to besmirch any of them, but I just didn't feel they were useful or actionable. They were so detailed and so deep that I couldn't really put it into practice each day. And it needs to be simple if we're going to do it because we're all very busy. And this idea of keepers, leapers, sleepers, what's going to get them excited, what's going to turn them off, what are the dangers, what are the opportunities? Though that's really valuable information for leaders and even for individual contributors. If you're just a salesperson and you're listening. So I'm going to make sure that you have that resource to share with your people. Secondly, um, I'd say if you want to connect with me, um, my email is on my website. I think it's pretty much everywhere. Uh, if you just Google Greg Offner email, you can probably find it, um, or on social media. Egregoryoffnerjr, uh, Instagram, LinkedIn are sort of the two places that I hang out and I respond to all my messages myself. It's really me. Uh, so if you drop me a note, I'm happy to respond and have a conversation with you or see what I can do that would be of value.

Speaker B: His name is Greg Offner. He is a world class keynote speaker, uh, author and uh, architect of the encore experience. And he plays a hell of a keyboard as well. Greg, thanks for being here. Appreciate your time and good stuff.

Speaker C: It's been a real pleasure, Jim, thanks for having me.

Speaker A: The how to Succeed podcast is copyrighted by Sandler Systems LLC and protected by US Copyright laws. For more information on Sandler Services, please consult with your local Sandler trainer or visit www.sandler.