Sales Leadership Is Stuck in the Past - And It’s Costing You | EP18 | Phil Putnam

Mark Ackers: Phil Putnam, a dynamic leader who helps organizations unlock top performance. Did you used to be practice house? Phil Putnam: Oh, yes. The way that I look at it is that in some ways I still am.

There is no done. There's no finished. Growing, especially when it comes to sales. I'm the first person to put out a book that really looks at leadership in this specific way.

Very typical situation for a first time leader, I was brought into a global role with a very large mandate and a very short period of time to deliver results and very limited resources. I'm going to have to get my team members to give me what I want, which is quality work on time, on a very regular basis, in order for me to deliver my team's number to my larger business, the majority of senior leadership, the ones who really dictate are from the Baby Boomer and older level of Gen X.

The majority of the workforce is millennials and Gen Zers. So there's a big difference there. And I run into a lot of senior leaders that basically say, yeah, I get it, but I don't want to you literally cannot succeed without human employees. This is not a problem that AI has solved.

There's no such thing as a global enterprise, entirely automated, machine driven business. It's one of the most important phrases. Any leader who's not in those two generations can hear millennials and Gen Z ers value their time more than they fear change. So the attitude that a lot of senior leaders have right now towards job candidates and hiring is that, well, I can afford to lose people because there's so many people looking for work, and people are so scared of not having a job right now that they'll stick it out, even when I'm not giving them what they truly need.

That is not an accurate statement for millennials and Gen Z years. How should Mark Ackers: a leader that might have millennials and Gen Z change their approach to motivation? That's Phil Putnam: where the conversation really gets interesting. I arrive at a point where I ask the audience two questions.

I ask them, raise your hand, if and only if you truly love your employer more than you love yourself. And I ask them, raise your hand if and only if you truly care more about your company meeting its goals than you do about yourself and your loved ones getting the life that you want. Now, I have asked this question now to well over 3000 people. How many people do you think have raised their hands yes to either of those questions?

Go on. Tell us you mark, Mark Ackers: hello and welcome to another episode of The I used to be crap at sales podcast. I'm your host, Mark Akers, and today I'm thrilled to be joined by Phil Putnam, a dynamic leader who helps organizations unlock top performance and align their teams with the ultimate goals. Phil is a speaker, a workshop leader, a coach and now an author of desired based leadership.

Phil has a rich career history ranging from a VP to sales name and to coaching executives. Phil is based in New York City, which you will probably hear elements of that in the podcast, because I'm already hearing taxis go past. Phil's got really innovative approaches and re methods to reshape how leaders should think about motivation and the results that it can bring. Phil, welcome to the I used to be crap at sales podcast.

How are you and how is New York City this morning? Well, thank Phil Putnam: you for having me. I'm wonderful. I'm super happy to be here.

New York is cold this morning and windy, but there is that kind of Bleak beauty to it. I'm lucky enough to have a beautiful view of one of the rivers in Manhattan outside of my window, so I get to kind of see that beautiful Mark Ackers: stuff. Well, Phil, we called the podcast I used to be crap at sales, because all of our guests say the same thing, and it's true for me as well. But my opening question to you is, Phil, did you used to be crap at sales, Phil Putnam: oh yes.

And the way that I look at it is that in some ways, I still am, because there is no done like there's no finished growing, especially when it comes to sales. So I sit here today still crap at sales, at some things, and I delight in that. I've never been the person that needed to deny the reality of learning and of growth. I mean, that's part of why I've made a big chunk of my career sales and learning, when focus and enablement.

So I sort of delight in being in process until the day we die. And that's Mark Ackers: a great answer, right? Like that growth mindset, I suppose when people answer the question of, yes, I used to be crap at sales, there's normally a moment that comes flooding back, that moment of realization, what was that for you? What was the moment when perhaps you were in sales and you realized you were crap?

What happened? It's actually Phil Putnam: my very first well, my second sales job, my first sales job, I worked at a fast food restaurant, like a hamburger restaurant, like another version of McDonald's in the US, and that was in California where I grew up. I grew up in Sacramento, California. Then I graduated to retail clothing sales when I was in my last year of high school, and it was an Old Navy just think of like the H M of the 90s, but far less stylish.

And so I was interviewing for this job just to be a regular sales associate. And so one of. Parts of the interview, the manager said, go around, pick out an item of clothing that you think I might be interested in, and then sell it to me. So the first thing I remember is that this was a female manager who was interviewing me, and I go, and I picked a men's shirt that was not the right size for her.

So right off the bat, no knowledge of the client's needs, no sense of, you know, fit, customer and product fit. And then I remember that I just basically described to her, like the color. And I'm like, I've tried to sell to her based upon the product itself. I didn't ask her anything about what she was looking for, what she needed, what she was trying to accomplish.

I'll never forget it takes about 30 seconds for me to just like, flame out hard, just crash and burn so hard in this interview. And she after I'm done, she just chuckles, and she's like, wow, that was really awful. Was like, Oh crap, because I was 17, I wanted this job. And she's like, look like the best thing you can do before you decide what to try to sell, somebody is ask them, Is there anything specific that you're looking for that one moment of sales education was probably the most profound early piece of sales education I ever received is when she said, just start by asking me if there's anything I'm looking for.

Feels Mark Ackers: like that was very much the Sell me this pen version in a clothing store. Phil Putnam: One thing that's great about Old Navy, they're part of gap Incorporated. So they own gap. Old Navy and Banana Republic, their sales acronym for their floor associates at the time was basic, A, S, I, C, S, I also like that the word itself made me like go back to basics.

You know, begin with a greeting, ask what they're looking for, suggest a product, inform them about the product, continue to sell by adding on. I'm 45 years old. Now, I worked there when I was 17, and still, that's the power of a acronym. Yeah, that was their basic.

Was their acronym. Mark Ackers: Let's talk about just if we scanned your career from then up until we sit down. Now, everyone's got a howler, a big mistake that they've made, that's that's cost them a deal, something that the audience listening to are going to laugh about, they're going to resonate with. What would you say is, like, one of your big mistakes that you look back on in your sales career?

Phil Putnam: Okay, so this is a mistake I made earlier in my career, and then just two days ago, I didn't make this mistake. This is a success story. Several years ago, I was in a sales conversation. We had achieved product market fit.

We'd achieved, you know, business value fit. And so the obvious question, the buyer has of great and how has this helped other customers? Before? Can you provide me with some data points?

I just said no, because, to my knowledge, at the time, this product was new to the market, and I, as far as I knew, my company didn't have any data they could pull from. So I just said, No, we can't provide you with any data of how this has helped other customers. And of course, you know, I lost the deal. The follow up is that just two days ago, exact same thing, and this is now I'm running my own business, I'm selling my own products, and I'm with this decision maker and an in person meeting, and she says, and can you provide us some data on how this has helped other customers.

In my head, I said, No, what came out of my mouth was, let me put something together for you. Because what I realized in that moment is the real thing that I needed was time. Like that's the first problem that I had to solve was get more time to find a way to give this customer what they're asking for. Because maybe there is data.

Maybe I don't know yet, but I probably can solve this problem if I just create time for me to do it. And so then I was able to go home and figure out, how am I going to solve this problem? Mark Ackers: Like you say, I think it's that ability to you hear a question, and it's not that knee jerk reaction assuming you've got the answer. It's, let me get some time.

Did you do any clarity around what it is they were looking for? Like when someone says to me, if you've got any data, that can mean lots of things? Yeah, so Phil Putnam: we'd already done that earlier in the conversation. This product that I was selling them is relatively new to the market, so I have a limited number of customers that are currently using it, and the first one started using it only four months ago.

I knew the data was going to be limited, but also I know the problems that this product solves. I'd already made sure that this prospect I was talking to needed those problems to be solved in their business. So I we'd already zeroed in on a specific KPI that they were looking for, which was basically time and stage. They didn't specify the stage they wanted, but they just said, we're really looking to address our deal velocity challenges, specifically through time and stage.

So that's Mark Ackers: why that stat, then was really helpful to you, because I think that was the bit that was just slightly missing, is that the data they were looking for. So Phil, how we got to know each other is Sarah brazier. Introduced us. She said, you'd be a great guest, and we started speaking.

You shared, initially, a couple of chapters of your book. I've then since had the full copy, which I'm really appreciative of, I've done some reading. The book is called desire based leadership, and it come out, it was October. Wasn't it that you launched it?

Let's talk about that book. First of all, who is this book for and how would. You describe it first and Phil Putnam: foremost, it's for leaders of people, so managers, and this could be a manager of any level, it's especially poignant for middle managers, like frontline managers and second line team managers, because they often get squeezed the most on the expectations from above, the needs from below, and limited resources to accommodate either set. So that's really who it's for, but it's really for leaders of any stage, and then the larger audience is an employee in any role in any industry, because it's really about your relationship with employment, and the fact that the motivation that leads to top employee performance at any level is a result of somebody's belief that they can get the life they desire from the job they have.

That's about your relationship with employment. Also, one of the main things that helps leaders do is stop trying to solve behavioral problems with operational solutions. And so that's a little bit of a teaser about what's in the book, and we can really, you know, dig in together from there well and Mark Ackers: well, let's do that. I mean the book really, as you say, it focuses on aligning leadership with what people truly want.

What inspired that idea? Well, Phil Putnam: very typical situation for a first time leader, I was brought into a global role with a very large mandate and a very short period of time to deliver results and very limited resources. And I had inherited one team member who was there before I joined the company. I was given, you know, head count to hire two more, and I knew with the expectations that were in front of me, I had to generate some big results in a very short period of time, I'm going to have to get my team members to give me what I want, which is quality work on time, on a very regular basis, in order for me to deliver my team's number to my larger business, which is my responsibility.

It's how I keep my job, it's how I get my promotion. So I just sat down and did something I very normally do, I just applied some common sense, and I thought, well, what's the best way to get somebody to give me what I want from them, to give them what they want? And so I just asked myself, what do people want from a job? Why do people work?

And the answer was so obvious and so quick and clear, people work to get the life they desire in exchange, that is everyone's number one career goal, because nobody truly loves their employer more than they love themself. And so I thought, well, if I'm going to use somebody's ability to get the life they desire from the job they have as a basis of motivation and also a basis of decisioning about who am I going to hire? I need to figure out. I need to discover the details of what that life is for each person.

So as I was interviewing candidates or getting to know the person I'd inherited and learning how to mentor and develop her, I just would say, Hey, if you're comfortable, because this is totally voluntary, let's set aside the job for a second and just, I'd love to learn about the life you're trying to get in exchange for the work that you do. And then I'll tell you honestly, if you can get it here, because I genuinely believe that if you can get the life you desire from the job you have, that's party time, like you're going to be fundamentally motivated to bring me your best performance every single day with a minimal amount of friction.

I'm going to get what I need from you. My business is going to get what it needs from our team, and we're all going to be happy. But the reverse is also true. If you can't get the life you desire, or you believe you can't get the life you desire from the job you have, you're going to disengage.

Your performance quality is going to dip. And if I can't fix it in time, you're going to leave, and my company is going to have to pay the cost of replacing you, and the cost of replacement it is crippling to every company's profitability, and it's a major thing that's being overlooked by almost every company I'm aware of right now. It is kneecapping profitability all over the place. It boggles my mind.

Why more companies are not concerned about this. Help Mark Ackers: me understand the time that's got on from this journey. When I asked you the what inspired this idea, you went to a very specific moment. When was that moment?

What year it was? Late 2021 Okay, so I mean relatively recently, then right before then, perhaps not the way in which you were managing people, but you had that realization in 2021 is that, is that, is Phil Putnam: that what you're saying? Yeah, and it was a realization born of pressure. And Mark Ackers: since that realization, you've obviously had three years putting this into practice, and you thought, I want to write a book about this.

What's been the reaction to this book from people that have read it and reached out to you? What have you heard from people. It's Phil Putnam: been really, really supportive, which is wonderful. There's two primary reactions that have come the first is, this is so obvious, but no one's ever talked about it before in this way.

People are amazed that I'm the first person to put out a book that really looks at leadership in this specific way, because the fact that people are trying to get the life they want. From the work they do, that's a universal human truth. So when I say it, it feels revelatory to people because it hasn't been articulated in this way before to them, but it also lands with them as something that's always been true inside of them, and they just never really realized it before in this way.

That's the first reaction. The second reaction is, oh, my God. The data, the research in this book, is so compelling. I was really fortunate to find incredible data from the world's most reputable sources on business insights.

This is like Gallup Deloitte, ADP, pay scale, Mercer, like all these really, really top level, reputable sources, there's just so much information out there about what people want from their employment, what they are and are not getting from it, and the financial benefit or damage that's caused to organizations when leadership either prioritizes their employees desires and their ability To get it, or they don't prioritize it. And honestly, for me personally, there were four drafts of the book that I wrote, between the second and the third draft is where the research came in.

And to me, that's where the book really became itself. I really didn't feel particularly confident with data, to be honest, before I wrote this book and before I researched it, and it turned out to be like a playground for me. It became the most enjoyable and most fascinating part of creating this book. Mark Ackers: Let's just pick apart something you said there, which I totally understand.

People love their lives more than they love their careers, right? It just feels obvious when you say that out loud. Here's the question that I'm going to try and articulate, how does that change from generation to generation? And the reason I say that is when I look at my dad and his dad and their attitudes towards working careers, that work ethic, and that's that's even like academically as well, right?

That is all encompassing. But then when I look at the other side of my face, kind of like two totally different mindsets collided. But then when I look at other generations as well, maybe like generated below me, I see more of that, like living their lives more I think COVID sped things up in terms of people realizing they can be more flexible. They can work from home.

You know, you can have later starts, earlier finishes. Yeah, I'm going on a slight rant. But how have you seen this change generation, generation? Because my feeling is, the generations coming up are going to align with this a lot more than the generations on their way out.

I would agree with that, and this Phil Putnam: is a great question, especially right now, because the battle over return to Office mandates is in a fresh round of heat right now, and it's a perfect microcosm of what you're asking about I did a lot of work with understanding each generation's relationship with employment. And then there's an entire chapter in the book that's dedicated to how to how to effectively lead and motivate millennials and Gen Z, ers, four generations, primarily active in the workforce, basically the younger half of the Baby Boomers, Gen Xers, millennials, which are also known as Gen Y, and then the older half of Gen Z.

So right now, Gen Z is between ages 13 and 29 roughly. Ages 13 to 18, roughly, have not yet aged into the adult full time workforce, or like ages 13 to 2021, basically starting with baby boomers. Fundamentally, they are a loyalty driven relationship with employment. They believe in sticking with an employer even through the hard times, because it'll pay off in the long run.

They also believe that loyalty to an employer is a mark of good human character. So you can't be a good person if you hop employers a lot. Also, all the benefits of loyalty were available to them. You know, pensions, lifetime benefits, meaningful employer contributions to retirement funds, unions, etc, profit sharing was also more common back then.

Then there are the Gen Xers, which I am, by the way, I'm right on the cusp of X and millennial, but I function primarily as an excerpt. Our fundamental relationship with employment is that we inherited our baby boomer parents expectation of loyalty, but we didn't get a lot of the payoff. So our journey is often a 20 to 25 year journey to realizing that we can have agency in our relationship with employment, that we don't have to deliver loyalty to an employer who's not paying it back off to us.

That's fundamentally what it is for a millennial. This is the biggest change in attitude in the four generations, the biggest change is between Gen X and millennials, millennials and Gen Zers. Fundamental relationship with employment is to find purpose in it without being beholden to it. The best way to articulate that is that they need to work in order to feel fulfilled.

World, but when the needs of work and life are in conflict, they will choose life over work. So they value their time more than they fear change. And to say that again, because it's one of the most important phrases, any leader who's not in those two generations can hear millennials and Gen Z ers value their time more than they fear change. The reason why that's so important is because, especially right now, there's a lot of people who are looking for work, and a lot of leaders have led a lot of rounds of layoffs very recently, and a lot of leaders are continuing to look for ways to cut costs.

So the attitude that a lot of senior leaders have right now towards job candidates and hiring is that, well, I can afford to lose people because there's so many people looking for work, and I can afford to underpay and people are so scared of not having a job right now that they'll stick it out even when I'm not giving them what they truly need. That is not an accurate statement for millennials and Gen Z years in general, those two generations value their time more than they fear change.

They value getting what they want from their work experience more than they're afraid of the change of finding a new job. It's really important lesson for leaders to learn right now, I combined millennials and Gen Z ers. The best way to think about millennials and Gen Z ers is take what's true for millennials and just quadruple it, and that's what's true for Gen Z years. Now, there are some slight differences, but essentially, that's where we are.

I find millennials and Gen Z years to be the most similar of the four generations that are in the workforce right now, Mark Ackers: I'm a millennial, and I feel like and maybe I'm only speaking for myself, but I know when I speak to my friends, both of them, we feel like we're the last generation that, almost we had that pressure from the generation above us about got to go to work the employer. We see that in some of our parents still work. You know that that loyalty, that pay off and you're grateful to have a job like, I know my mother in law, that is her attitude to my wife.

BEC, well, you're just lucky to have a job to my wife. And it's like, No, she's not. You know, she she deserves that. She can't get another job any other point.

But when I look at the generation below me, I see the change as well. And I I feel like Millennials are more in the middle than perhaps what you're saying. But that might just be my own reality. But, yeah, really interesting way in which you break that, you break that down.

I think when I, when I the book that you shared over as I say, I could see that this felt like something that might change generation to generation. How does that shift in perspective change how leaders should approach motivation then? Because a leader right now might have what I mean myself. I've got millennials and I've got Gen Z.

I've got both. How should a leader that might have millennials and Gen Z change their approach to motivation? Sure. Phil Putnam: Well, the first question if you're trying to change the way a leader handles their employees, the first question you have to help them answer is, why should they prioritize the needs of their employees over the needs of their business?

That's the first honest question that any any legit leader is going to have to work through. Because most of us have been raised to believe that the employee exists to serve the needs of the business and not the other way around. I actually have come to believe it's the reverse. Because how do you think the business succeeds?

It's when the employees deliver quality work on time and when their tenures are long enough that your operational cost of replacement and attrition is under control. I think the first thing you have to say is like, Look, you have to prioritize your employees needs, because still today, over 90% of any company's assets are produced and delivered to the market by their human employees. So you literally cannot succeed without human employees. There may be some business models that can, but this is not a problem that AI has solved.

It's not a problem that AI will solve anytime soon, if ever, like, there's no such thing as a global enterprise, entirely automated, machine driven business. You need humans, and not only do you need them, they are over 90% of what you create. So that's the first reason, is you, you have to figure out how to leverage human labor, human intellect, human skill, to reach and exceed your goals. And that's how a leader keeps their job.

That's how a leader pays their bills. Once you've accomplished that, then you, you look at the fact that what's universal across all generations is that desire to get the life you want in exchange for the work that you do, and then you just learn. Not just what does each generation want, but what does each individual want? And that's really what the heart of what the book teaches.

The book is very useful. So there's a framework in there that I developed through my years of doing this that allowed me to very quickly and very scalably gather those details of the life that an individual person wants in exchange for the work that they do, and then analyze the likelihood of me giving them that life. And once I had those two outputs from this model, I could then make an. Informed decision on whether to hire them, or whether or not, whether to keep them on my team, whether to give them more development, because it becomes this.

It becomes an understanding of, are they going to get the life they want from this job in reality, not in magical thinking that a lot of leaders like to employ in reality, is this job going to deliver on this person's expectations and needs, and if not, I need to not waste their time. So I'm very employee first, and I'm very frank about that. All I want is for every person on earth to get exactly what they want from the time they have a life that time is short, it's precious.

It's also the only resource we cannot get back. Money is easy. Money comes, money goes, it's fluid. Time is not I think one of the most disrespectful things you can do to a human is deliberately waste their time and when in it, when a company really Mark Ackers: powerful words and phrases said there, Phil, that just just impossible not to resonate with the model you're talking about, obviously, is the life motivational discovery model, and I want to dig into that.

I think, I think it'd be fair to say that most people that listen to this podcast will manage Millennials or Gen Gen Z. Here's the thing that I often hear when I speak to managers about motivation, is so the sales leaders, they manage sales people, and they find identifying true motivation difficult, and that can be for a few reasons. They sit down with millennials, or they sit down with Gen Z's and they say, You know what motivates you? And the top level answer is money.

I want to earn money. I know you'll know this to be true as well, but that only motivates you for so long. As soon as you get pay rise, that makes you happy for a couple of days, very soon, you start getting used to that standard of living, like you spend what you earn. It doesn't motivate you, really.

The other problem they have is perhaps the younger generation, Gen Z, I don't know. I don't know what I want, right? It's not like they've grown up wanting to be in sales. They've they've fallen into sales.

One of the reasons I ask everyone on the Quick Fire hours, what do you want to be when you're older is, I want to see how many podcasts I can get into before someone's as a salesperson. And it'll probably be, it probably never happen. So when you imagine Gen z's, they're in a career. They didn't grow up and want to have.

They didn't study at school, college, university, haven't got a degree in sales. They just fallen into sales. They become a slave to commission because they start to earn money, they realize they probably couldn't get that money elsewhere, but they don't necessarily know what motivates them, because they're still quite young. Is it as simple as a very common answer I want to get on the property ladder?

Is that really what motivates them day to day? I suppose, in a roundabout way, what I'm trying to ask you is, how do sales leaders, and I know I'll be setting you up here for the life motivation discovery model. But how do sales leaders really understand what truly motivates their employees? Phil Putnam: You ask them, and then you accept their answers.

It's really not complicated. Here's where most leaders really trip themselves up before they've even gotten going in this conversation, two beliefs that leaders have to stop believing and have to get themselves out of if they want to drive top performance from their people in today's market, they have to stop telling themselves that they know better what their people want than the people themselves do, and they have to stop telling themselves that they actually have a hand in scripting what their employees want.

You have no place and no power to actually make somebody want something different than what they want. Your only power is to decide whether or discover whether you can give it to them or not, and then choose how you might proceed based upon the answer to that question. If you can't give somebody what they want, but you still want them to keep working at your company. Your only real options to do that are to manipulate them or lie to them.

You have to convince somebody to stick around for less than what they truly want. That's awful human behavior, and it will not create a positive long term outcome. I understand Mark Ackers: it's an obvious answer ask them. I understand that.

Let me just challenge that slightly. When you're asking someone motivates them, that is with the context of they could be really young. This could be their first or second job in sales. They didn't dream of this job.

They could have self limiting beliefs, right? They don't know what is possible. They don't know what they could achieve. Do feel like you can get templated answers of get on the property ladder.

I'm money motivated because they've become a slave to that commission. I suppose what I'm hoping you can share with the listeners here is, if you're sat with someone, and I totally get by the way, you can't want more for someone. They want for themselves, right? They they have to.

You can't engineer something for them. But how do we as managers really understand the motivation beyond those templated answers, beyond those self limiting beliefs, beyond those they don't know what they don't know? How do we find out? And I say I'm hoping that's where the life motivation discovery model is going to come in, Phil Putnam: definitely.

So life is an acronym, l, I, F, E, the. Letters stand for lifestyle, income, feelings, employment, and these are the four buckets of information that the answers that I would get when I was developing this model most commonly fell into. So let's talk about the I the income, since that's what you've asked about. First of all, I think that wanting to get on the property ladder or being motivated by money are completely valid motivations.

I don't think it's my place as a leader to judge those or to think that they're somehow only partially informed. Can you recall a time in your life, regardless of age, where there was truly nothing that you wanted, that you were aware of? People always want something, whether it's a popsicle or whether it's a house this idea that someone would not be aware of what they want at that point in time doesn't line up with human experience and with human reality. I think the mistake that a lot of leaders make is they expect somebody to be able to say, what do you want forever.

That's not the question. The question is simply, what do you want? Now, that's the need you need to assess. Can I give them what they want?

Now, when it comes to motivation, the promise of someday is a motivation killer. You'll get that promotion someday. You'll get that house someday, if you stick around, people don't believe in that. So if you hire somebody and you say, Hey, you want to get a promotion, we can really deliver that to you, probably in two to three years.

They're probably going to be okay with that, but if you don't deliver on that in two to three years, they're not going to stick around for another two to three years. And hope of that promotion money itself is almost never the goal. It's what money will do for the person, how they want to use it to shape the life experience they want to have, both with the things and the activities they do, the material part of their life, and then also the emotional reality. A great story to bring this to life is that I was doing, I was delivering this workshop at a conference a couple months ago, and I had people from every generation in the workforce in the room, so a really great discussion developed among us about the different ways that those generations look at their employment, and the woman who was from the millennial generation who spoke up, I had a person from each generation share their experience, and this brilliant woman named Ashley spoke up and said, Well, I entered the workforce right after the 2008 market crash, I did everything I was supposed to.

I went to school, then I went to university or college. I did everything I was supposed to, that the world told me would make it possible for me to get a job and get into my adult life. And then I got handed a global financial meltdown, and yeah, I had to live in my parents house longer because there weren't jobs available and the economy wasn't favorable. It was the worst economy, you know, in recent history, certainly of her lifetime.

And then I've spent every every day and every month and every year since then, being judged as entitled and lazy and unreliable by the senior leaders above me simply because of the date that I was born, and then what was happening in the economy at the time when I was going from college into the workforce. And that made such a profound impact on me when she shared that, because I don't think that most leaders today take seriously how disruptive and how challenging it was for that, that era of the millennial generation, to have to go from university to the workforce in the wake of the economic meltdown.

Someone says, I want to make money. If I'm running the model, the life, motivation, Discovery model on them, I'm like, great. What do you want that money to do for your life? That's where the conversation really gets interesting and really gets going.

One of the things I look for when I ask the money discovery questions, the income discovery questions is, do they just say I want to make X amount of money by x date or by x point in time? Or do they talk about the impact they want money to have on their life, and is that impact more focused on the material aspects of life or the psychological aspects of life? And I tell you, I have run this on 1000s of people now I have never, ever had a single person only say I want to make X amount of money by x point in time, not once.

Over 95% of the time, what people talk about when they talk about money is the impact they wanted to have on their material life and, most importantly, their psychological well being. There Mark Ackers: was so much there, Phil that we could break into I think the thing that I was taking from this is, this is where it's changed for leaders that two to three years and that people aren't afraid of change. And I think if you're managing the older generations, you can almost spin that story, paint that long term picture, that vision that stay with us.

This will happen wherever you're managing the younger millennials, the Gen z's. You really have got two or three. Years to help them get to where they want to get to. And if, and if you don't deliver on that, that's where they're not afraid to move on.

Lots of people that listen to this will manage young sales professionals from the ages of 18 to 2223 and when they talk about, because I love to talk about motivation and understand what motivates their teams, etc. And they say one of the frustrations is they find that what they get back is, I want to earn money, I want to get the property ladder, because it's so tough and, and again, in England, that is, that is how you're brought up, in education from your parents, it's you've got to get a house, get a property ladder.

And, and I think it's so difficult and almost almost unachievable for people now, growing up like I worry about my children. Will they be able to buy a house in 1520, years time? So my question is, when you've got someone so young that says they're money motivated to get on the property ladder, but we all know that's probably not achievable in two or three years, because even if they do exceptionally well at the business, they're not going to earn enough money to get to that.

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Visit mysalescoach.com use the link in the bio and start achieving your goals today. Phil Putnam: Great question. I'll go back again to say it's not the leader's place to judge the person's desires.

It's the leader's place to learn their desires and then judge whether they can fulfill them or not, because that is the key to that person's motivation and the key to their performance. Also you have to remember that the place where you stopped learning is the place where you stopped asking. So if all you gathered from your employee or your this job candidate when you asked them what they were trying to accomplish in their career was money and the property ladder, that's because you didn't ask them any more than that, and you don't really have operable information if all you've gathered is that they want to make money and buy a house.

So I think the onus is on the leader to continue the discovery to Okay, and what will it do for you? If you have money and buy a house, where do you want that house to be? What do you want that house to look like? Who do you want to have living in your house?

Those questions alone, if you answered those questions. For me, here's what I would know as your potential leader or your leader. I would know if I need to worry about relocation for you based upon where you want your house to be. I would know if you plan to build a family or expand your existing family based upon what your answer to Who do you want to have in that home with you?

And if you want to build a family or expand your family, more people, more pets means more money, more time, more anxiety, right? Also means a requirement of work life balance. I'm going to want to know that. I'm going to know about a person's level of ambition.

I'm also going to know about what time scale they expect to get things on that's all really important information for me, then to analyze, well, these this is the constraints of my business. This is what I can pay this person right now. This is my company's personality when it comes to the pace of promotions and pay increases. So if the information the person's giving me would require meaningful salary growth within the next three years, but I know my company's personality on that historically is to keep raises slow and small.

Well, then I'm probably not going to get top performance from this person. And is hiring them a smart choice for me? Probably not, because they're going to be unhappy, and then I'm going to be unhappy. That's an example of how the information the model gathers for you can be put into practice very quickly in a very important, very practical decision.

Phil, Mark Ackers: that is exactly what I was wanting you to say. I was trying to push you down next. I wanted you to run that example. And Phil Putnam: here's the thing, though, the reason why there's so much conceptual conversation to have about this is because there is so much ideological growth that needs to happen among the current crop of leadership.

And let me actually talk a little bit about why this is a really important insight for leaders to take away a very common question I get is, okay, sure, I get the business value of discovering what my people want, especially if they're millennials and Gen Z ers. But why does that really matter? Why do I need to prioritize the needs of these generations? Here's why, combined millennials and Gen Z ers are currently 53% of the global workforce.

The younger half of Gen Z, ages 13 to roughly 20 have yet to age in to the adult workforce. So those two generations together, combined are on track to be two thirds of the global workforce by the year 2035 only less than 10 years from now. Also a current report and from early 2024 from manpower. Group, which is a global staffing, recruiting and employment insights organization, found that in 2024 there's a global talent shortage, regardless of the candidates that are in the market, and the influx of that after all the layoffs, they found that 77% of all companies across all industries globally are struggling to fill their open roles.

The third thing I want to put on the table here, before I draw out the insight, is that, because still the majority of senior leadership, the ones who really dictate what happens at a company and how hiring and firing and compensation goes, the majority of those people are from the Baby Boomer and older level of Gen X, right? That's where the majority of senior leadership power is still currently consolidated, but the majority of the workforce is millennials and Gen Zers. So you have this significant generational divide ideologically between what an employee should do and should bring to the work and what they should be motivated by.

So there's a big difference there. And I run into a lot of senior leaders that basically say, yeah, I get it, but I don't want to, I don't want to prioritize the way that the majority of the workforce looks at work. I want to do things the way I do. I want to do them and I want to get the results I want.

Great. That's what you want to do. It's not going to work. You think millennials and Gen Zers are entitled and lazy?

You're wrong. You're just wrong. They just have a different relationship with employment than you do. And if you want a successful business, the smart strategy is to not alienate the majority of the global workforce, because over 90% of your business assets are going to be created and delivered by the humans in that workforce.

There is no business case. There is no valid business logic that supports continuing to alienate and undermine and mock the needs and desires of the majority of the global workforce. Mark Ackers: So Phil, what would you say to a listener who doesn't believe this, that they don't believe that the life an employee wants is a stronger motivator than the desire for the company to succeed? Phil Putnam: Great question.

I first would say, you're probably not alone, but here's what I've learned over the years of doing this, I've spoken about this and taught this at conferences and and workshops within companies over the past several years. And there's something I always do. Every time I do this workshop, I arrive at a point where I ask the audience two questions. I ask them, raise your hand, if and only if you truly love your employer more than you love yourself.

And I ask them, raise your hand if and only if you truly care more about your company meeting its goals than you do about yourself and your loved ones getting the life that you want. Now, I have asked this question now to well over 3000 people. How many people do you think have raised their hands yes to either of those questions? Go on.

Tell us zero, actual, literal zero. I would have to imagine that if I was somehow wrong about this, at least one out of those 3000 people would have honestly raised their hand and said, No, I joyfully prioritize my employer's needs above my own. That's why I believe it, because not only does it land with me as a basic human truth, but it's been proven out now by 1000s of people that I've had this discussion with, what I Mark Ackers: think is a potential danger that businesses might be, might be like walking towards, is they might have very senior leaders that have got one eye on retirement, that just don't take it that seriously, they don't look to prioritize those younger generations.

They they are of that mindset that they're lazy, they're entitled. But why change when you get to a certain age, you've got one hour retirement and you can have that real friction. Have you ever seen that play out? Oh yeah.

Phil Putnam: And I actually very specifically address this in the book, because the reality is that, let's say you're one of those leaders. You're like, you know what? I'm retired in five years. I just want to write it out and not worry about it.

I don't want to change. Okay. Well, when you retire, you're still a participant in the economy. So when you retire, it doesn't remove you from the economy.

It just demotes you from being a driver of that car to being a passenger. You now have whatever you know, retirement funds you have, and maybe you're on in some paid board seats, or maybe you do other things. You have passive income, maybe of active income, but still, you're impacted by the economy. Also, most executives who have been executives for a while, a significant portion of their retirement investment portfolio is stock in the companies that they've worked for and led at along the way.

So how those companies perform is going to impact the quality of those leaders post retirement life. It's going to dictate what the rest of their life is like, from the end of their career to their death. If you're a leader right now, if you're a senior leader, if you're a C level leader who's five years away from retirement, you. You have never had more power in your entire career to shape the way that the people who are going to run your company when you're gone are equipped to do so.

Do you want to spend those five years ignoring them and under equipping them and basically setting them up for failure and then having negative impacts on your retirement portfolio, financially and your quality of life, or do you want to use the opportunity that you have right now for the next five years to invest in those people and increase the likelihood that the companies that your post retirement life partially depends on is going to be better? And Mark Ackers: I think on paper, you can't argue with that.

I know a lot of people will struggle to make that real connection and put that into practice, but I think on paper, what you say clearly makes sense. Hey, sales leaders, do you want a cost effective way to develop your team skills and help them smash their quotas? My sales coach offers team memberships for just 20 pounds per month per individual, plus VAT. This will give your reps, access to small group tactical coaching sessions, daily power hours and exclusive events, all led by world class sales coaches with over 25 group sessions to choose from monthly there's something for every role we have.

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Here's the other thing I'm thinking, what you're talking about here, like it's so clear talking to you and reading the book like you just you know exactly what you're talking about, and you say it's all research proven, it's data, data backed. And I think it's so clear anyone listen to this that, like, they should just buy this book, if they want to get better understanding and motivating their employees, it's just really clear that you're an expert in this. Therein lies the challenge, right?

Lots of sales leaders are a sales leader because they're a good seller. That doesn't make them a good manager. They just get promoted. That happened to me?

Right? It's not like I was identified as a great manager, I just got promoted from being an individual contributor, and that's what happens in sales leaders are former great former sales people. But how does a leader really learn all of this? Because it's totally different to being an individual contributor, starting to manage people and motivate people.

How are they going to put us in practice? Like, let's imagine. They don't, they don't have your book. Let's imagine, right?

Because this is a new book, how they meant to really navigate this. So Phil Putnam: here's the good news, regardless of an individual leader's personality or what they're great at and what they struggle with, one of something people can always choose to do is listen like, listening is a choice. Yeah, for some of us, it comes naturally, and some people are naturally better at it than others, but it's also something you can choose to do, and it's something you can empirically become better at with practice.

Just start listening to people, just start asking them about what they want. That alone will be very transformational for a lot of leaders, because what will happen is, not only will you develop that muscle memory? Those that skill set of, oh, if I want to know, I should ask. But also you're going to start seeing patterns in and themes in the answers that you get.

And so what listening does is it equips you with information that you can then use to form the team that you have at any given time into an optimally functioning group of people, right? You can also then make good operational decisions that will facilitate the best success of those people. And you can also avoid operational dangers and you can avoid bad hires. You can know when to move somebody on.

You can know when to keep somebody you can know when to go fight for a raise, and use your very limited political capital within your organization on something that's going to be beneficial, not only to the person you're trying to help, but also to your own career. And also say, just from a personal standpoint, I was a terrible listener. I'm not a naturally gifted listener, but I become a world class listener, all because in the first six weeks of my first year at college, university, so I was 18 years old, a friend I had at the time, one day, she looked at me and she said, You know what, Phil, you're a terrible listener.

And I looked at her and said, You know what, Sarah, you're right. I am a terrible listener. It was the moment where I was ready to hear it. And so what I decided in that moment, I said, You know what?

My number one criteria of whether my time in university has been successful will not be whether I get my degree. I'm going to get my degree. I know that's going to happen. That's that's not a problem.

My number one criteria will be if when I finish and I graduate, I can honestly say that I've learned how to listen, because I just sort of knew by instinct at that point that this was going to be the most important skill a human could learn, and it was going to transform my life more than anything else. I don't know how I knew it. I just did so I followed that instinct and I spent, I did, five years in college rather than four. I spent all five years to.

Just obsessively exploring what it means to listen. And it did, it changed my life. So it is something you can learn and it's something you can practice, whether it comes naturally or not, in all humility, I do very frequently have people express to me, you're a great listener, and I think why is because, first of all, I actually take the time to listen to them, but also I'm curious about people. And to go back to the question you asked, really, which I think at the heart of it is a question about, what are some of the characteristics that are essential to being a really good leader, right?

That produces great performance from your people, and especially a sales leader, I think the curiosity about people is really, essential. If I was talking to you, what the day that your manager came to you and said, Hey, you should become a manager, because you're a top seller. And you said, Should I do it? Phil, and I was coaching you, probably the first and maybe the only question I would ask you, to help you decide is, how curious are you about people?

Do people fascinate you when you're in conversation, do you find yourself asking a lot of questions about the person you're talking to, and do you want to learn about them? Does that come naturally to you? And then, based upon your answer, that would tell you whether you should go into leadership or not? If you're not genuinely, fundamentally curious about people, stay an individual contributor.

You're going to be an incredible seller. You will make so much money. You will be so happy if you don't want to be a people leader, and you choose not to be a people leader, oh my God, you're going to have a great life and a great career. You have to want to lead people in order to be good at it.

And a lot of sellers don't want to lead people, and that's completely fine. I actually think one of the ways that corporate and sales culture has really underserved and I think harmed a lot of sellers is there's this idea that if you don't go into leadership, you've somehow failed. That if you're over 35 and you're still an individual contributor, there's something wrong with you. No, if you don't want to be a leader, don't do what you don't wanna do.

It's gonna be better for you and your employers. So I think one of the best things we can do for the sales industry is build out the reality that a lifetime individual contributor Seller is a completely valid, respectable career choice, and we should be encouraging it, rather than trying to derail those people into people leadership. I Mark Ackers: think you're totally right. But again, I think that's where Millennials are trapped, because they don't get that message from above, where maybe Gen Z will and there's more awareness around it.

Let's talk about active listening. It's it's a vital skill for sales people, as it is for managers. You spoke about how you spend years trying to become a better listener? Let's imagine just you know, someone is listening to this right now, and they think, you know what?

I know that that's a weakness of mine. What are some of the things that they can start to do to become a better listener? From your experience, I Phil Putnam: just started with what I knew. So I was 18 years old.

I was a baby, so I just started with what I knew. I was like, What do I know about listening? It's looking at somebody. It's asking them questions.

It's discussing rather than broadcasting, you know, it's making sure the conversation is two ways. And I just started there, and started with the tactical, empirical things, the behaviors that I could change on the surface. So I made sure that I was listening more, asking more questions and then giving space for the person to answer. I try to interrupt less often, which I still struggle with.

I'm a chronic interrupter, but I'm working on it. So once I had like, the external behaviors together, then I started dealing with what happens in my mind while I'm listening. I went to internal and I realized that, oh, I'm not really listening to what they're saying. I'm just preparing my next response.

That's not the best way to go about this. I actually want to process what they're saying. So then it became that, right? So it went from the empirical then to my mental posture when I'm in the action of listening.

And then from there, it just got more deeper and more nuanced, because then it became like, Okay, well, what are the different ways that people give me information? Yes, there's verbal what's their body language. You know also, what am I sensing? What are my instincts?

How much can I trust those instincts? As I started to get to that level, then I would ask people questions that would either validate or invalidate my instincts. Because what I realized about my instincts is they're right for me, but they may not actually be, you know, right in the situation, they may not get me the information that I need. So it was just like continued to develop that relationship, and what I discovered is that well over the vast majority of of what made me a better listener was not about the behaviors that I showed to somebody else.

It was about my relationship with myself. And it was do I have the self confidence and the humility to prioritize somebody else? Do I have the confidence and the humility? Ability to prioritize what they're telling me over my ability to respond to it.

That was a lot of where it got to very quickly. But those are some things that that somebody who wants to improve their listening skills can do. And is there any books that you would recommend? Yes, and this is where I am a little bit off the beaten path, off the typical thing when it comes to what books do you read to become a better leader or a better seller?

I do enjoy sales and business books, but where I actually get my most profound insights for serving people as a leader is actually from fiction and from memoirs, and also from television and movies. The reason why is that I find that fiction and memoirs are far more descriptive and insightful about human behavior than business books often are. Business books are often primarily about operations, and even if they are written to address human behavior, they still are trying to solve behavioral challenges with operational solutions, and that's never going to be particularly effective.

I'm drawn to media and fiction, memoirs, biographies. I love biographies. Biographies have changed my life because that's about human behavior, and that's about behavior in context. It's about history and also TV and film, especially large, globally embraced shows.

They're the last piece of monoculture that we have. Culture has become really fragmented, but still our primary reference points that shape the way we respond to various things at work largely come from our life outside of work. I find those human themes and those cultural themes that define what people bring to their relationship with employment in TV and film and fiction and memoirs and biographies, far more than I find it in business books. Mark Ackers: What's the biography that's had the biggest impact on your life?

Then there is Phil Putnam: a musician named Nina Simone. Her primary career was basically from the 50s until, really, until she passed away in the early 2000s her autobiography is called, I put a spell on you changed my life, and so I read it the summer that I was really becoming a songwriter, and she really helped me understand the kind of relationship I could have with my artwork, the difficulties. She really gave me a perspective on relationship with audience, with conviction about yourself and realities of fame.

Those were just very, very seminal lessons for me at that point in not only my career, but also just my development as a human you know, I was really deciding what I believed about the world and what I wanted at that time, and when I was was 20 or 21 at the time, it was very, very powerful in forming my relationship with the world around me, and it was powerful for me as a leader, because what is your leadership style? What is your life, if not an expression of your relationship with the world around Mark Ackers: you?

You know what I'm really enjoying, Phil, and I thought it's the same very way, like the formative years, but your formative years, like everyone, like when you younger, you tell a lot between the ages of 18 and sort of 2122 but you're so aware of those formative moments. And even at the age you are now, in terms of how long ago that was, you're so aware of your formative years. And I think lots of people don't really recognize the big things that have impacted who they are today.

I love how you can just go back to then and recount the impact it's had on you. Here's a scenario I just I want to flesh out with you, right? So what about those people that work for big companies? They are middle managers, that they're they are small cogs in big machines, and they manage people that perhaps they're a mix of inherited, hired, etc, but they know they can't truly give the people what they want, but they can't let them all go, right like this is their job, and they've got their own motivations, and they've got their own desires, and they need the people below them to deliver on there so they can get what they want.

Obviously, the advice can't just be well, you should let them go. This is cruel. You're wasting their time. What is that person meant to do when they are that cog, but they've got these cogs beneath them that report into them, these cogs above them.

And you and they know that it doesn't all tick, but it does go round enough. What's your real advice there? Because it can't be to just let them go. The first Phil Putnam: thing you have to do is choose to embrace reality.

Stop lying to yourself. Stop lying to your employees. Your Business constraints are real. Your employees desires are real, they either align or they don't.

You just gotta get really honest with yourself about it. Stop being in denial, and stop trying to believe that asking your people to take a plate of scraps and behave like it's a buffet is ever gonna work. Then what I would do is I would run the life motivation discovery model on all of my direct reports. I would get the data, I would run the analysis, and then I would go to my senior leader, and I would say, This is what my people want.

This is our level of ability to give it to them. Because of that, this is my forecast of what is going to happen with my team in the next six to 12 quarters. This is what we. Need to be prepared for, and this is what we need to build a staffing and a Results Model on.

That's what I would do. There's a couple scenarios that will are most likely to play out. One of those scenarios is that the majority, if not all, of your team will turn over in the next two to three years because your business constraints are so out of line with the desires of your employees, that you actually are going to want them to turn over. You cannot get top performance from these people.

That's what the data tells you. So you shouldn't try to get top performance from those people. You should try to turn them over, not in a vindictive way, but in a supportive way. Have that honest conversation with them.

Say, I'm sorry. I can't give you the future that you want here. However, there are other roles at the company that I have found that could potentially give that to you. That's a great solution, because then not only does that person get the life they want from the job they have, but your company pays a far lower cost of transitioning that person.

You also don't lose their institutional knowledge. So the overall benefit to the cost and profit of your company is better. But even if you can't give them another role at your company, I believe it is better to help them move on to a different company than it is to keep them because once they know they can't get the life they want, their performance will dip, and they will be dragging your results down for as long as they're there. It may be weeks, it may be months.

For some employees, this goes on for years, giving subpar performance, and they're dissatisfied along the way. That is the most likely scenario when you cannot give your people what you want, and as a leader, you do not have the ability to get more resources to do so, like is very often the case at large corporations. The other, more hopeful idea is that, hey, like, I've got five people on my team. We're in range to give three of them what they want.

That's awesome. So let's build a strategy that really plans on those three people having a longer tenure than the other two. Maybe you change your workload. Maybe you change your mandate.

Maybe you go get more head count, whatever the case is, running the model and then being honest with yourself about what you can expect from your team members gives you information and gives you lead time to make a legitimate strategy for your piece of the operation. That's what I think are some viable options in this situation that you've described. What an Mark Ackers: amazing answer that was, Phil, and just some great advice. I love the idea of creating a forecast next six to 12 quarters of look, this is what the team want.

This is what is likely to happen. This is when it's likely to happen. I've got a plan. There are these three or five people, whatever it might be, and we could give them this, and I accept these two perhaps aren't going to perform at the level we want them to.

That is when you become a real leader, right, where you really look after your team are planning, I think particularly in sales, which obviously I can speak more confidently about, given that's my background. But we're just so focused on the quarter, the hamster wheel, this quarter, this quarter, and planning that far ahead for your team just almost feels crazy. A really good answer. The other thing that it led really nicely to is kind of what you mentioned the start, and this is, I suppose we're entering the final stage of the podcast now, but you mentioned about retaining that person, right?

If you believe that we can give them we want, perhaps not in this role, but you don't want to lose that person. You mentioned really passionately, very early on that we must talk about the cost of replacing people. And as I said, I know this book's filled with data, and you've done a lot of research, why don't you really have an open mic here to sales leaders listening when it comes to replacing people and the costs and why people should be more aware of this. Phil Putnam: So data, data, data, this is going to be the data data people section.

I'm going to lay out very quickly some numbers for you. So Forbes and Gallup have both found that the cost of replacing one individual contributor could be anywhere from 50 to 200% of the salary of that role. The wide variance in that range comes from variance across industries. So the median of that is 125% of a role.

The average cost of replacing a salesperson in tech right now is about 150% of their ote. Let's say you are leading at 100% company, and you're currently running 15% annual attrition. By the way, for a reference point, the average annual attrition amount in the year 2023 in the United States was 21% so if you're running 15% attrition, you're 6% better than the average good for you, let's say their OT is only $150,000 then you have to replace them. It's 150% cost to replace them, which means you're going to pay $225,000 US to replace that one person.

You're going to pay more to replace them than it costs to pay them, right? And this factors in not only the full operational cost of filling that role. But then also nine to 12 months of limited productivity while that person's coming up to full productivity in the world. So that total cost $225,000 to replace one person.

But you're in 100 person company running 15% attrition. So if your staffing plan is to stay at 100 people, you need to do 15 replacements this year to stay at 100 people, $225,000 times 15 is $3.375 million so do you have $3.4 million to throw away?

I don't. And even if you do, should you the revenue organization exists to generate revenue, but that revenue then get calculated into profitability, and if you are spending millions of dollars on attrition that could be avoided, you are just increasing the distance between your company and their profitability, and this is a danger for any company model, whether they're privately funded or whether they're public. Then let's contrast that with the cost of satisfying your employees.

So pay scale Mercer and ADP provide data that together tell us that the average salary increase across all industries in 2024 for top performance in the same role is 4.5% in tech, the average is 3% for top performance as a bar setter, if you do a 3% raise on $150,000 salary, assuming 40% is taken out for taxes, investments and benefits, your actual increase in your pocket for a 3% raise for top performance is $225 per month in today's world, that is not a meaningful amount of money.

Bottom line with 225,000 or $225 a month, you can buy a $25 meal nine times. You can buy 27 grande lattes at Starbucks. Because the average price for a grande latte in Starbucks, in the US is around, I want to say, like $4 or something. You can buy 12 and a half Big Mac extra value meals at McDonald's.

That's what you can do with the entire monthly impact of a 3% increase on $150,000 salary. Mercer and pay scale, tell us, though NADP, tell us that a raise that people find satisfying, that will engage them in their work, that will deliver better performance, that will increase their tenure, is between five and 10% so barely above the average that's currently being given. So if you go hog wild and you give a top performer a 10% raise on an $150,000 pay, that costs you $15,000 rather than $225,000 and if you do that 15 times the total cost of satisfying 15 employees is $225,000 so take your pick.

Do you want to pay $3.4 million to replace 15 people? Or do you want to pay $225,000 to satisfy and keep 15 people? The last thing I'll say is this, the beauty of this strategic pivot, funding the cost of attrition, to prioritizing the cost of replacement, or, sorry, the cost of satisfaction, is that the solution is immediately self funding at a multiple because if you avoid replacing one person at the cost of $225,000 you now immediately have the cash on hand to not only satisfy that one person that you saved, but to satisfy 14 others.

Now, many listeners to this podcast right now are leading sales organizations that are less than 15 people total. Your total ARR might be less than $3.5 million this could revolutionize your entire operation, and it's self funding. How many business solutions do we know that are genuinely self funding?

I'd Mark Ackers: be sending this clip of the podcast to some CFOs please do if I was a sales leader, because obviously there's, as I said, I know that comes from a place of research and data as well, not just personal opinion and really well thought out argument. Go. I'm gonna, I'm gonna make this the last question, because I know we could continue talking for another couple of hours, no doubt, but sales leaders today, like everybody, really busy, but let's imagine they're going to read your book, but they they're only going to implement one thing.

What do you think that one thing should be? If you only Phil Putnam: do one thing differently, ask your people what they want, not only will it give you the opportunity to potentially give them what they want and reap the benefits as a leader. But even if you can't give them what you want or what they want, asking them will revolutionize your relationship with them, because most people have never genuinely been asked what they want by any leader in their entire career. That alone is something that people find motivating.

And the Mark Ackers: way in which you broke that down with if someone says, I want to get in the property ladder, the way in which you broke that down was exceptional. And I think just, I think people don't think to go beyond that, like, it's so funny. In sales, we talk about, get beyond surface level pain, get to the root cause. But I think in those conversations about motivation, we stick at that surface level, okay, they want more money, okay, they want a house, okay, they want a job title, but it's about getting you.

Deeper and look sales leaders used to be good sales professionals. They should be able to run that discovery, but I think we sort of accept that surface level answer and don't really get to the root cause. So yeah, Phil Putnam: and here's the thing I want to close on. First of all, there is nobody more naturally equipped as a job function to do what I'm talking about than sellers and sales leaders, because if we're good at our job, we're great at Discovery.

And that's all this is. It's discovery. This is the big reveal at the end, right? It's just solution selling.

You're just solution selling the job experience to your employees or your job candidate. You're finding out what their needs are, what are the problems you're trying to solve in your life. Great news. This job, this solution, can solve those problems for you, and I'm going to enjoy the benefits as a result.

Sales leaders and sellers, we're naturally equipped to do this, and so it's what makes it such an exciting thing for me, because also being a seller and a sales leader is really, really hard. It's really hard, and it's such worthy work. It deserves so much respect for so many different reasons, and it's a fascinating job to be in. If you're sitting there feeling like I want to do this, but I feel like I can't, I want to tell you, actually, if you're a seller or a sales leader, you're probably more ready and more naturally equipped to do this than most other job functions are.

I Mark Ackers: love that. What a great way to end and the podcast, Phil, you have been an amazing guest, someone that is clearly just so knowledgeable about motivating employees understand their motivation. It's been amazing. And I think when people get to listen to this, they're going to take a lot from it and know they're going to want to buy your book.

Just remind everybody again, what is the book called, and where can they purchase it from? It's called Phil Putnam: desire based leadership, and you can buy it on Amazon, anywhere globally. If you're in the US and you want an autographed copy, you can buy it from my website, which is Philip putnam.com I only ship within the US, and it's literally me sitting on my couch behind me in the screen, addressing envelopes and autographing books, but otherwise, globally, it's available on Amazon.

Well, Mark Ackers: thank you. I've got no doubt people listening to you or will be absolutely convinced you know exactly what you're talking about, and we've just covered slivers of what is in the book, and I was really grateful that you sent me a digital copy. Phil, just want to say again, thank you for coming on. Thank you for sharing your knowledge and insights.

Has taken you years to build up. Lots of data has been researched and read and put together, and you've articulated so well. Thank you for being a fabulous guest, and I hope you had a great time. I have thanks for having me.