How To Become Irreplaceable To Your Customers with Scott McKain

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[00:00:00] Scott McKain: I would rather have 200 loyal, committed customers that I’m serving so deeply that they can’t imagine replacing me. Because when they can compare you, they can replace you.

[00:00:12] Scott McKain: when you’re bringing something that you stand for that is so unique and so powerful in building relationships, then that’s when you become distinctive. That’s when you become irreplaceable.

[00:00:21]

[00:00:35] Lee Brumbaugh: Welcome everyone to another episode of Sales Against The Odds. My name’s Lee Brumbaugh, CEO of Sales Xceleration. Very excited to have Scott McKain with us today. Scott is a professional speaker of the Hall of Fame, a member of the Professional Speakers Hall of Fame, and also a member of the Sales and Marketing Hall of Fame.

[00:00:53] Lee Brumbaugh: His work focuses on Distinction, customer experience, and lasting relevance. His latest book, which I strongly recommend, which I ordered, is Beyond Distinction. It helps, leaders remain relevant in an AI-transformed marketplace, which is a lot of what we’ve been talking about through the course of the podcast.

[00:01:09] Lee Brumbaugh: Scott, thank you so much for joining us today.

[00:01:11] Scott McKain: It’s a real privilege. Uh, thank you. I’m, I’m excited ’cause I know you share a lot of very interesting, uh, topics. So I’ve, I’ve learned from listening and, and watching. And so, uh, it’s great to be a part of it today with you. Thank you

[00:01:22] Lee Brumbaugh: I appreciate that, Scott.

[00:01:24] Lee Brumbaugh: So, as I told you, we were, Scott and I were just chatting a little bit before we, we hit record here, and both from small towns in Indiana. So I actually, I love to start typically with our guests on really the, the story behind it, right? So I’m gonna go early with you.

[00:01:37] Lee Brumbaugh: I, was prepping for this and I researched that your parents had owned, in a small town in Indiana, a grocery store, and they started to see competition coming in, and you had to… That really formed how you saw Distinction. So just talk to about how your early experience, even before, you know, going through college and those types of things, prepared you for the leadership, thought leadership you’ve done around Distinction.

[00:01:57] Scott McKain: I appreciate that, Lee. Crothersville, Indiana is my hometown. It’s about 30 miles or so north of Louisville on Interstate 65. And, uh, there was one grocery store, and it was our store, and I’ll never forget the day that, uh, the guy that owned the clothing store across the street told Dad that they were clearing the field on the north end of town to make way for the construction of a new supermarket. I remember Dad’s knees kind of halfway buckling. And, but I w- I was too young to understand all the ramifications, you know, what that really meant. But I did notice as the supermarket was being constructed, our, family fears and anxieties were rising about the same pace. And, one of the things that Dad realized…

[00:02:34] Scott McKain: Yeah, it’s, it’s amazing how much smarter your parents get the older you are . You know? And, uh, o- you know, Dad didn’t have a marketing degree. Dad, you know, never went to college. Uh, but he just had this innate sense of, making connections with customers and that to me is the essence of sales and it’s the essence of the customer experience.

[00:02:54] Scott McKain: Dad realized they were always gonna beat us on the price of a loaf of bread and a gallon of milk. there was no way that, he could scale and, and compete with them on price and have the margins to keep the store open. But what he said is, “They might be a supermarket, but we can be a super service market.”

[00:03:09] Scott McKain: And we joked if somebody came in and bought a pack of gum, we were gonna offer to carry it out to the car for them You know, it didn’t matter what, what it was. Dad fixed up this panel truck, and we would deliver groceries. I mean, I… Good grief, he, he was

[00:03:23] Lee Brumbaugh: You were the first DoorDash it

[00:03:24] Scott McKain: Yeah, no kidding. I mean, I, I wish we would have, uh, seen the potential future of that.

[00:03:29] Scott McKain: But, think of it in any small town, there are a lot of folks who are, you know, widows or shut-ins or whatever that needed, that help. and that wasn’t in the system, particularly of, of a larger chain store. there were ways that we could serve them and serve our community that just wasn’t in the playbook of, another competitor.

[00:03:49] Scott McKain: therefore, it established connections that transcended transactions. when, uh, Dad’s health, uh, years later had him sell the store, he sold it to a, a guy who, who when he was 16 years old, this guy’s first job was bagging groceries in our store. So he, he vowed to Dad he was gonna continue to, to operate the store in that manner.

[00:04:07] Scott McKain: the supermarket later closed their doors and left town. you never hear about the mom-and-pop store beating out a big box,

[00:04:14] Scott McKain: but it, but it happened in our community. And I mean, now there’s pressures. That, that little store still is open to this day with now different owners. and there’s immense pressures in terms of, you know,

[00:04:25] Scott McKain: back in that day, going 20 miles to Seymour seemed like a long drive. Now people, it’s nothing to go there to, to Sam’s Club or to Walmart or whatever. But, but there’s ways that you can serve and, sell and overcome those objections.

[00:04:43] Scott McKain: And, and so that really became the foundation of, of everything that, I started speaking about and believing about and, and learning from, is that everything, not just the customer experience, but selling, comes down to the personal connection.

[00:04:53] Scott McKain: and I’m in a B2B business, right? I mean, I’m, selling my business advisory services or my consulting or my, keynote speeches, to corporations, not to individuals. But yet it’s always an individual or a group of individuals that makes that decision. and when I start thinking I’m selling to a company as opposed to an individual or group of individuals, when I’ve tended to mess up and miss the mark.

[00:05:14] Scott McKain: it’s always about the person. It’s always about the people that we create relationships with

[00:05:19] Lee Brumbaugh: Really like that, Scott.

[00:05:19] Lee Brumbaugh: I’m gonna go down that vein a little bit because we will have, we have a bunch of sellers that, that listen, B2B individuals. And so much of today’s marketplace we’re talking about our ideal customer profile and our value proposition and the features and benefits, all those types of things.

[00:05:32] Lee Brumbaugh: But what you just, what you just connected with was that customer experience and really how they go above and beyond to be distinctive to that customer in a way. Where do you find like salespeople typically miss? Where they, they get lost in, you know, telling the features and the value proposition and they, forget the part to really go back to that experience and connection with the customer.

[00:05:53] Lee Brumbaugh: Where, what gets… Where’s that ball get dropped?

[00:05:55] Scott McKain: Lee, that’s a great question, and I’m, I’m gonna take kind of a side road to give you the answer to that if you don’t mind. I’m doing some work in, in healthcare and in the medical field, and one of the things that fascinated me, I’m doing a lot of work in the dermatology field right now, and one of the things that fascinated me as I was learning about that to be able to help them, is that you can get a medical degree, you can become a doctor, and never once take a course on bedside manner,

[00:06:20] Scott McKain: you can go all those years and become a surgeon, b- become a brain surgeon, become any, you know, and never take a single training course, educational course on how to communicate with your patients. I think sometimes we make that mistake in sales training. it’s not that we’re, we’re bad people.

[00:06:38] Scott McKain: I don’t, I don’t mean that at all. It’s not that we’re uneducated. I don’t mean that at all. we are proud of the features of our product. We are proud of what, what that product can bring and can represent, but that pride sometimes gets in our way because we start unloading all of the aspects of our product without first understanding what’s important to the customer.

[00:07:01] Scott McKain: I was doing from work years ago for Procter & Gamble and, one of the things they told me was about a bump in sales of Tide, that happened. And I said, “Well, what happened?” And they started laughing saying, “Well, all of our chemists thought they developed a better version of Tide. It got your clothes whiter, and we knew that was what would make the change.

[00:07:19] Scott McKain: And, and so then we did some customer surveys and it was, we changed it and put a handle on the, on the bottle, right?” And what, now, now think about, you know, the, the, I don’t mean to be stereotypical, but think about the housewife, at the supermarket, and she’s got the loaded Tide or she’s putting it up.

[00:07:37] Scott McKain: Having the handle made it more convenient for the customer, but yet they were so focused on the chemistry of the product and having a better detergent than the competitor that it never occurred to them that the handle is what made for the, significant bump in, in sales that they experienced.

[00:07:54] Scott McKain: And I think that’s indicative of, of what happens a lot of times for all of us in sales. I make the same mistake over and over. We, we are so focused on what we can do for you, what our product, what our service can do, we don’t pay enough attention to where is the friction for the customer and how do we solve that

[00:08:10] Lee Brumbaugh: Yeah. I mean, we do all these, there’s all these different sales methodologies out there, right? But it, it does start with the relationship side, understanding what’s important to the customer, building some type of bond. And if you don’t do that at the onset, you don’t capture the audience.

[00:08:22] Lee Brumbaugh: I think that’s really, really well put.

[00:08:24] Lee Brumbaugh: you were talking about the word, so much of what you teach is around the Distinction. I was looking through some of the work, and you’ve got that word Distinction. What, what do companies that do that really well, what does that look like when you, think about going from good to great as far as how you’re distinctive with your product, how you go to marketplace?

[00:08:40] Lee Brumbaugh: What does that word mean to you in, in some of what you teach your leaders?

[00:08:43] Scott McKain: Well, I think there are three levels, Lee, and, one level is the one where nobody wants to be, and that’s sameness. and at that level, you’re a commodity, it’s really based around pricing. if a customer can’t see a, a difference between you and the competition, why wouldn’t they buy the cheapest?

[00:08:59] Scott McKain: I mean, and that’s part of what we have to do, obviously, in selling, is to illuminate the, differences for our customers’ benefit. But the second level is differentiation. And we hear a lot of talk about differentiation, but the reason I came up with the word Distinction to use instead is there’s a lot of differentiation that really doesn’t have meaning or traction for the customer.

[00:09:22] Scott McKain: they talk about some of the things they do to make us different, but if I slap every customer in the face, I’m different But, right? But it, it doesn’t mean they’re gonna buy anything from me. and so what we have to do is to find ways that set us apart that have meaning and have value for the customers that we seek to serve.

[00:09:41] Scott McKain: And that meaning and value, that’s the space that you find the difference between differentiation and distinction. So the distinctive companies are those that have created meaningful, from the customer’s perspective, differentiation. you can find that in a number of ways in a number of organizations.

[00:09:59] Scott McKain: And, you know, sadly, I think part of what happens is sometimes those organizations become cliches because they’re talked about so much. Goodness, how many stories do we hear a few years back about Southwest Airlines, which by the way is kinda losing the things that made them distinctive in the marketplace.

[00:10:14] Scott McKain: It’d be interesting to see that, what happens to them. but you know, we hear about Apple, Amazon, all the, things that, are like that.

[00:10:27] Scott McKain: But the example I’m using a lot right now, I, I got this email and it’s, it’s in the new book, Beyond Distinction. I got this email from this guy, and he said, “Uh, Scott, your principles were one of…

[00:10:31] Scott McKain: I, I had like three books that I used as kind of my Bibles to start my business and build my business.” And he said, “Everything that you talked about, is part of what I used to start my business, and I’d love for you to come out and see the business and let me show you what I’ve used of what you talked about.”

[00:10:44] Scott McKain: Signed, Jesse Cole, Savannah Bananas. I went to Savannah, and, uh, we see the fun they have on the field, but what I was just thoroughly amazed with was how granular they are about the customer experience and, that from the very beginning. Because what they said is, “If we’re gonna sell tickets-” our model customer, let’s look at a mom and dad bringing two kids to a baseball game.

[00:11:10] Scott McKain: and where is the friction and where are the problems, and how do we eliminate that? Because if we can eliminate that, then we’re gonna sell more tickets. W- we do market and when we do sell, it’s congruent, we’re not saying one thing and delivering something else.

[00:11:25] Scott McKain: But then also, you know, we’ve heard this forever in sales, word-of-mouth marketing is the best selling you can get, our customers will help us sell. So they analyzed every aspect of that along the way, everything from the tickets and the ticket prices to parking, to food and beverage once you get in the stadium, to what that experience is like,

[00:11:46] Scott McKain: they analyzed that very scientifically, and I think that’s part of what we need to do in sales is to step back and go, we write about the customer journey, but we often do that from our perspective, what we want that journey to be so it fits into how we’re used to selling. They flipped the script and said, “Let’s analyze this journey that, a fan takes at a ball game.

[00:12:07] Scott McKain: And if we could make every step of that along the way friction-free and put fans first, then what would that turn out to be?” And that’s how they’ve created what now, Jesse showed me the picture of their apartment where they slept on an air mattress ’cause they’d sold every stick of furniture to put it back and, and build this team and build a game, and it’s a great success

[00:12:28] Lee Brumbaugh: Sell out every stadium. Absolutely. Don’t matter where they go. Yeah. Sell out every stadium. You know, one of the things that, that as you were talking through really resonated with me is you know, a lot of our, people that will be watching today are SMB owners. It’s a $4 million company that a lot of times they’ll build that customer experience maybe tied to, like you said, either what they think is the right customer journey, or it’s really for one, you know, it’s one company, right?

[00:12:51] Lee Brumbaugh: They, they don’t map to like what that ideal customer profile… I like how you started too at the beginning, you said Savannah, it said that mom and dad, like you could picture it. It’s a mom and dad with two kids, where parking, it just may not be feasible. They want to have an experience. They want their four-year-old and their 11-year-old to have a good time, and then they have some fun as well.

[00:13:08] Lee Brumbaugh: So you could see it.

[00:13:10] Lee Brumbaugh: How do you, how do you encourage companies to really look at not only creating that customer experience, but creating it for that ideal client profile, candidate profile, however you want to describe it, that ICP that they’re looking for? How do they match those two together?

[00:13:24] Lee Brumbaugh: And my second question, can you go too broad? Like, do you want to be more like, do you want to own that certain ICP with that customer experience or, Sorry, this is a very fascinating subject for

[00:13:35] Scott McKain: Oh, thanks. Well, no, and, and it’s, it’s really penetrating questions because, y- I think all of us, I’m as guilty of this as anybody. I really try to practice what I preach, and I know that I’m guilty of this as well, is, you know, it’s, it’s that old psychological principle, if the only tool you have is a hammer, every problem’s a nail, right?

[00:13:51] Scott McKain: And so, I tend to think that, that training and education and, and getting together people at meetings and talking about our problems, that, that’s gonna help your company and solve your problems, right? Simply ’cause that, that’s how I get paid. That’s what I do, right? But I recently wrote a blog about what I wish the, uh, the, the soon-to-be departed CEO of Cracker Barrel did.

[00:14:11] Scott McKain: she should have gone to Cracker Barrel and got coffee and sat down at the table with some customers and looked them in the eye and asked them, what could we do to get you to dine here one more time a month?”

[00:14:21] Scott McKain: not dine here every time, right? But if we could get you to come back, if you could get your customers to come back one more time a month, what would that have to be?

[00:14:28] Scott McKain: And I promise none of them would’ve said, ” Take Uncle Herschel off the logo and use a sans serif font.” You know? So the- w- there’s nothing, nothing that replaces sitting down and asking the customer. and it’s not like, “What could we do better?” they’re gonna say lower price, or they’re gonna give us something that, you know, is very stereotypical.

[00:14:49] Scott McKain: But when we shift that question and say, “What would it take to get you to one more, come one more time a month? To purchase one more, uh, time a quarter?” Whatever is relevant to your specific industry. and listen to them and think about how can we provide that. getting back to, to Jesse and the bananas, it’s like where, where are the friction points?

[00:15:10] Scott McKain: What would make you come to more ballgames? That to me is the fundamental question that we need to be asking our, our customers, and I don’t think there’s anything that we… We, I mean, we can look at all the data points. We can have AI run all types of evaluations, but I don’t think there’s anything that really, as sales professionals, gives us more value than sitting over a cup of coffee and asking a customer, what would help you the most?”

[00:15:34] Lee Brumbaugh: Yeah, and I love how you say that because a- again, so many, so much in the B2B world we hypothesize with our clients of what we think is wrong with our customers, what we need to do, change features and benefits. And we don’t just take the simple what you just described, just ask them, right? You, you mentioned the Cracker Barrel sitting down, but how many of our B2B clients say you’ve got 40, 50 of your key clients.

[00:15:55] Lee Brumbaugh: How do we find a way where we get meaningful engagement on them and what’s important? And then how do we take that information and actually shift our business to a way that’s, that’s impactful? So many times we get the information, we synthesize it, but then we don’t adapt and evolve off of that.

[00:16:07] Lee Brumbaugh: So,

[00:16:08] Scott McKain: Well, and I think, Lee, uh, uh, pardon me for interrupting. Uh, you just made it the, probably the most critical point, it’s funny, the knowledge that we have is growing so rapidly with AI and everything else, but I, I’ve said for a long time, I don’t think it’s we have a knowledge gap as much as we have a do gap, right?

[00:16:25] Scott McKain: That, that gulf between the, the knowledge that we have gained and what our frontline and, what we’re actually doing and making happen. … When I deal with customer experience, I say the biggest gulf, in the world is that gulf between what the C-suite wants the customer experience to be and what the frontline is delivering for customers.

[00:16:44] Scott McKain: And, The organizations that really make it happen are the ones that make it congruent. Customers judge us on only two criteria, and that’s promise and performance.

[00:16:53] Scott McKain: what did the marketing and the sales professionals say that we were gonna do? What did they promise? And from the customer’s perspective, what did we deliver?

[00:17:00] Scott McKain: And when those are congruent, now you not only build repeat business, you build the referral business that everybody wants, which helps salespeople ’cause people are talking about you and saying great things about you. You’re getting great reviews. but when the performance doesn’t match the promise, then there’s a disconnection, and that’s, that’s when customers start looking someplace else

[00:17:20] Lee Brumbaugh: Most companies don’t have the bandwidth to build a high functioning sales department to allow them to meet the revenue targets with Sales Xceleration they don’t have to. Our experienced fractional sales leaders consult and implement your sales strategy, infrastructure management, and team development.

[00:17:37] Lee Brumbaugh: Discover how we deploy these proven sales solutions to address your sales challenges. By going to our website, filling out the contact form, we’d love to hear from you.

[00:17:49]

[00:17:49] Lee Brumbaugh: Well, I want to go down that, that thought process too, because you said earlier, I want to talk about kind of commodity pricing because we’re talking about AI, we’re talking about once the customer, we do make the promise and we deliver. But a lot of times we know in the AEO, SEO world, they’re, they’re looking, right?

[00:18:05] Lee Brumbaugh: They’re using AI to make judgments. They’re, they’re saying, “I want, uh, I want a fractional VP of sales that can help my organization grow.” And they put it in a ChatGPT or Claude, and then it pops up an area. So how are we using, in this AI-driven marketplace, how can we make sure that we’re not… You know, I think you mentioned it.

[00:18:23] Lee Brumbaugh: I was looking at a quote, you know, some of the, what you put is not being commodity-driven and using AI to enhance kind of that value that we see early on. How are companies doing that well? They’re, they’re using AI, they’re using all of these searches are going on to drive differentiation early so that they’re not just about price and commodity

[00:18:41] Scott McKain: a line I use a lot is that, uh, tasks are for te- technology. the repetitive tasks AI does incredibly well, but where we find it lacking is in relationship-building. And, you know, there’s a reason they don’t call it artificial wisdom, right? I mean, it’s artificial intelligence. It gives us great information, but what we have to do as, sales leaders is then to put it all together and use our experience and use our insight, to deliver wisdom.

[00:19:16] Scott McKain: and that wisdom is what will truly help customers and help organizations. You know, you’ve seen it over your career, Lee. I mean, there are some organizations that they just seem like they’re flying by the seat of their pants, and there’s other organizations that are so data-driven they can’t make a decision ’cause they always need to, uh, you know, do one more survey.

[00:19:34] Scott McKain: And there’s no silver bullet to this. The magic’s in the mix, but what we have to do is to leverage what AI is incredible at, which is compiling data, bringing information to us, putting things together, but then we have to use our experience and our wisdom to build the relationships that make it happen.

[00:19:52] Scott McKain: I can have every data point, on what I need to be doing in terms of increasing sales, but until I go out and talk to customers or until I help build a strong sales team, it ain’t gonna happen. the task can be handled by AI, but the relationship and the engagement and the wisdom, the deep wisdom, I think is still our, our human domain

[00:20:14] Lee Brumbaugh: Yeah. It’s, it’s interesting. No matter whether you’re talking about customer interaction, lead generation, all of this is so much, we have so much information, but using the information to make intelligent, timely decisions, using it to drive relationships. I mean, if I’ve got a customer insight, if I’m engaging with that customer when that problem is at the peak for what we can potentially solve for them, and I’m, and I’m sharing insights and I’m coming in with building a relationship early on of what they al- already know about them, it’s, it’s so much better than, than the cold– Like, the cold doesn’t work, right?

[00:20:45] Lee Brumbaugh: We all read Predictable Revenue. It was about how many emails or calls you make. Now it’s about driving insights with our customers at the right time and engaging in the journey when it’s impactful to them. So I think that’s really well put of how you use AI to, to enhance the journey, but not eliminate it, so to speak.

[00:21:01] Lee Brumbaugh: So…

[00:21:01] Scott McKain: May, may I give you a quick example?

[00:21:03] Scott McKain: Um, had an interplay on, on LinkedIn with somebody, and, they sent a cold email, The email even said, you know, “I’ve, I’ve gone through your profile, and from looking at that, I know…” I, I’ll tell you w- what. Uh, “Have you ever thought about writing a book?” Well, I wrote back and I said, “Hey, I got, I got nine of them out there from major publishers, you know, so if you’d really read my profile, uh, it would…” And the guy writes back and he says, “Hey, I’m in sales, and it’s a numbers game. And AI told me if I send so many out, I’m gonna get so many responses.” And I wrote back and I said, “You know, there’s a part of that I don’t disagree with about sales being a numbers game, but the problem is you didn’t give AI all the numbers.”

[00:21:46] Scott McKain: Because depending on what study you look at, and Lee, um, you know this better than I, but I mean, sales are made on, and depending on industry and the, and the price of the product and service, the sale is made on the fourth or seventh or ninth call. It, what number that person didn’t have is how many people like me that were irritated by that first contact, and now this guy doesn’t have a chance to make the second or third or fourth.

[00:22:12] Scott McKain: So I don’t disagree that there’s sales that’s a numbers game, but if AI doesn’t have all the numbers, then the advice, you know, it’s the old garbage in, garbage out thing. and so what we have to understand is that’s where our wisdom comes into play, I suggested to him, “If I was doing this, I would, you know, I would stop and think, what should a message say that would encourage more, give me more chances to make more calls, rather than fog a bunch of stuff out and try to close it on the initial cold outreach?”

[00:22:44] Scott McKain: somewhere along the way, we’ve gotten away from that, you know? And, and I think we need to get back to that as soon as we can for the, for the success of the folks that you and I work with

[00:22:56] Lee Brumbaugh: Oh, I mean, I, I would much rather when I have a– when we have entry-level salespeople that are starting, I’d much rather them say, “Look, I’ve got a really good defined top 200 customers that we, we solve for something that they need. I’ve researched them. I, I know how to connect. I’m gonna take the time.”

[00:23:12] Lee Brumbaugh: Yes, we may use AI send something out originally or keep in contact, but at the end of the day, we’re doing something distinctive because they’re in my top 200. I’d much rather have– You’re gonna find much more likelihood of success than the top 2,000 that you send out that’s a spray and pray campaign.

[00:23:25] Lee Brumbaugh: It just, it doesn’t work anymore, which is what makes it fun, which is what– why we will always have salespeople and the need for executive sales leaders to be successful in this marketplace, so

[00:23:36] Scott McKain: You remind me. one of the newer things I’m saying when I’m, I’m giving a keynote speech is, you know, I’ll, I’ll ask an audience, you know, we’re, we’ve been talking about AI, and I say, “Have you noticed in today’s AI world, you find yourself more frequently shouting at your phone, ‘Representative, representative?’”

[00:23:52] Scott McKain: I mean, I was trying to buy a car the other day, and I got caught in this loop of, you know, “What are you looking for?” “Well, can I speak with someone?” You know? “Well, first of all, I need more information.” “Well, that’s why I’m calling you is for information.” What do you know? And you, and you get caught in this endless loop, and then you realize they don’t care.

[00:24:11] Scott McKain: That’s the other thing. I was on a b- with an airline. “We care about your business. Thank you for being one of our Medallion customers. Current hold time… Y- Your business is very important to us. Current hold time is 34 minutes.” What? Are you kidding me? If you cared about my business, you’d hire more operators.

[00:24:29] Scott McKain: And so that’s one of the funny things. I think so many times in sales, when we’re at work, we have on our sales hat, and then we walk out the door or we go to a store, and all of a sudden we become a customer, and for some reason we find it hard to flip the script and think as a customer thinks.

[00:24:47] Scott McKain: it keeps coming back to that question: If I were the customer in this situation, if I was being treated the way that I’m treating this customer, would I find that to be an ultimate customer experience? I think that starts whether it’s a fractional or whether it’s a, a C-suite sales officer, what- you know, wherever you are, uh, that’s one of the most important questions that you can ask is, if I were being treated as a customer the way that my team is treating our customers, would I find that to be an ultimate customer experience?

[00:25:16] Lee Brumbaugh: you come into these organizations, right? And Scott, you’re working with them and you’re, you’re guiding them along the path, and they’re bought into it, leadership’s bought into it, next level’s bought into it. Where does it, where does it fall down?

[00:25:26] Lee Brumbaugh: I’d love, like, just from in all practical real world terms, you get buy-in. How do you, how do you have it disseminate into the culture, uh, spread across the entire organization? And when that does happen, what do you see really transform within the company?

[00:25:40] Scott McKain: what a great question. And, and there is no one single answer, a- as you might imagine. sometimes leadership says that they’re bought in, but, uh, the rest of the team knows that it’s this year’s fad. You know, next year there’s gonna be something else, and next year. And they, and they’re just, “Hey, let’s just hunker down.

[00:25:57] Scott McKain: We’ve got, we’ve got through previous initiatives. Let’s just hunker down. We’ll get through this one, too.” as opposed to saying that this is going to be part of the DNA of our culture. one of the points I make in the new book is it used to be about standing out. Now it’s, it’s more about what do you stand for?

[00:26:15] Scott McKain: standing for is what separates you today. and backing that up with congruent action. So sometimes it falls down with leadership saying they’re for it, but not putting everything, the resources and everything behind it to say, “This is a commitment. This is part of our values.

[00:26:29] Scott McKain: This is what we’re doing.” Second place that it falls down is, uh, inconsistent leadership. what you tolerate is eventually what it’s perceived that you endorse. my buddy Larry Winget talks about that a lot. sales manager that tolerates, uh, inferior performance, has kinda endorsed that that’s the acceptable standard.

[00:26:49] Scott McKain: Uh, so sometimes it falls down with, with management. And then at the end of the day, every salesperson is responsible. You know, taking that individual personal responsibility. And that’s one of the things that fascinates me when I work with sales teams, is, uh, you’ve done this numerous occasions as well, I’m sure, where, uh, you’ll, you’ll talk to one salesperson and they’re blaming the economy, and they’re blaming the product, and they’re blaming, it doesn’t matter what it is.

[00:27:14] Scott McKain: And then there’s another salesperson going, “Man, I’ll tell you what, I’m killing it out there in the field. Things are going great.” Uh, well, it’s the same product. it’s the same, same service. So if one’s doing it, why isn’t the other? And it’s, That’s one of the things I love about sales is at, at the end of the day, so much of it comes down to are we encouraging our people to take individual responsibility for their results and their achievements?

[00:27:36] Scott McKain: I love the word consequences. we tend to think of consequences as being a negative term, but it’s really not. It’s a neutral term. if I work at this, if I make my calls, or if I’m a sales leader and I encourage this kind of here’s what we stand for, here’s our values, here’s what we’re bringing to…

[00:27:54] Scott McKain: One of the companies, that dermatology company I was talking about, you know, they say first and always about the patient. It’s first and always about the patient. that’s what we stand for. Well, now what has to happen with their sales team is when they’re talking and selling, it’s got to be about this is the benefit for the patient, because we are all about the patient, and bringing all that so that it goes throughout the organization.

[00:28:16] Scott McKain: Because we, we respect those organizations that are very clear about what their values are, It’s not just a poster on the wall. It’s, it’s what they do every day. it’s the execution that makes all the difference in the world when it comes to that

[00:28:28] Lee Brumbaugh: Gosh, I mean, you’re bringing back to my… I mean, I started in the pharmaceutical industry in sales and leadership roles, and I will tell you that, you know, we would do all these datas and all these studies, and you get 60 seconds with the doctor and you’re given this data and they– your eyes glaze over.

[00:28:42] Lee Brumbaugh: But then you paint the picture of what this means, what this pharmaceutical actually means to their patient, and being able to sleep through night and those types of things, and all of a sudden they start writing scripts. So it really is distinct. The other part I, really loved about it is that, you know, I’ll give you an example of a past client I had when I was advisor.

[00:28:58] Lee Brumbaugh: if you ever see the green and orange trucks drive around for moving college hunks, right? So Nick Friedman and Omar, the, the founders of that company, like they put it into practice. Like it is in their core values. It is in every meeting. If a manager is not, centered around customer experience, that manager won’t be there.

[00:29:14] Lee Brumbaugh: Like it is every part of… And you can feel it. Like when it’s in the company, you’re right, the leadership not only preaches it, sings by it every day, but it, it resonates all the way down to everything they do. So, and then I’ve seen other companies that say it lip service and don’t do it all. So I think that’s– I think that paints a really good visual for us

[00:29:31] Scott McKain: I,you explained it perfectly, and that’s one of the things that drives me crazy is when, when you see leadership that talks one game but then the whole organization knows they’re playing another. our employees are like a, our greatest asset.

[00:29:44] Scott McKain: Well, how come you’re treating them like an expense, right? I mean, you know, an asset’s what we nurture and help to grow. An expense is something we’d want to reduce and to minimize. And, and you can’t say you’re our greatest asset then treat them like an expense. I mean, there’s got to be congruency between the, again, the promise and the performance

[00:30:00] Lee Brumbaugh: It’s all about customer experience until we have one bad month at EBITDA, and then it’s all out the door. Like, that’s what, that’s what we’re trying to avoid. And it happens, and we’ll tell ourselves it doesn’t.

[00:30:16] Lee Brumbaugh: So Scott, last question for you, and this has been great. When you think about, you know, there’s been a lot of shifts in the marketplace, you’re obviously working with large organizations, leaders that are trying to create, you know, as we’ve described today, big shifts, big change in how they treat their customers, how they stand apart, how they differentiate, how they, how they’re distinctive, as you, you so well put.

[00:30:30] Lee Brumbaugh: what has your attention? What are you seeing smart leaders shift to? What are they doing differently that’s really standing apart, and what you think as an SMB owner that’s watching today for that $5 million that’s stuck, how does that translate to something our SMB owners could use in their day-to-day?

[00:30:47] Scott McKain: That’s a great question because it’s almost like bringing this conversation we’re having like full circle because I go back to that little grocery store in Crothersville, Indiana. a long time ago, a guy named John Naisbitt wrote a book called Megatrends, and I don’t know much, remember much of what he wrote all those years ago, but I do remember, uh, the opening line, which is, “The more we become high-tech, the more we will crave high touch.” it’s, you know, history repeating itself. And the more that AI is, is coming into play and becomes a very useful and powerful tool, pendulum swings too far. And one of the things I see of, of organizations that are, are really improving during the, this time of…

[00:31:28] Scott McKain: You know, and I, I quit calling it change. I call it turbulence now. it’s so, unpredictable. It’s, it’s so, uh, crazy. You know, a, a quick example. You know, Rolex was worried about Patek Philippe. You know, they were worried about other luxury watchmakers. They didn’t think Apple was gonna come in and take a, a chunk out of, uh, a market share, right?

[00:31:46] Scott McKain: You know? taxi drivers never predicted Uber. you don’t even know where your competition is gonna come from it right now. But here’s what we can control. We can control the relationships that we have with our customers. And what you said earlier about, how many people say, “Oh, I’d rather have 2,000 customers than 200”?

[00:32:03] Scott McKain: two sides to that coin, right? I would rather have 200 loyal, committed customers that I’m serving so deeply that they can’t imagine replacing me. Because when they can compare you, they can replace you. And if all we’re doing is, is dealing with data, if all we’re doing is dealing with, with those kinds of things, then it’s always gonna be compared to your competition.

[00:32:26] Scott McKain: But when you’re bringing something that you stand for that is so unique and so powerful in building relationships, whether as a leader building that with your team, or whether it’s your team building that with your customers, then that’s when you become distinctive. That’s when you become irreplaceable.

[00:32:40] Scott McKain: I know it’s easy for me to sit here and talk about, and it’s incredibly breathtakingly difficult to do out there in the field, but that is the essence of what makes the difference for now and for the future. friends don’t fire friends

[00:32:54] Lee Brumbaugh: That’s right. All right

[00:32:55] Scott McKain: you know, I, I don’t call up a buddy of mine and say, “You know, I’ve been looking.

[00:32:58] Scott McKain: I’ve got, I’ve, I’ve got one too many buddies, so pal, I gotta let you go.” You know, we don’t, we don’t do that, right? and the deeper the relationship, the more significant it is. I, I have business that I know I’ve sustained over years, that if it was a different management team, they would find another consultant, another trainer, another speaker, another whatever.

[00:33:17] Scott McKain: But I know them, and I know their hurts. They couldn’t bring in anybody new that would recognize deep needs and maybe unspoken needs that the organization has like I have because of the experience. And, and that’s what I said earlier. there’s no such thing as artificial wisdom. It’s just artificial intelligence.

[00:33:38] Scott McKain: What we can bring is the knowledge and the relationship and the skills that provides a wisdom, that we in sales can offer that transcends transactions

[00:33:48] Lee Brumbaugh: Yeah, really well put, Scott. And you’re right. As you’re saying, I’m like, I know my, my State Farm agent. He’s always gonna carry my car insurance because he’s built early. But it is. to that level, so.

[00:33:57] Scott McKain: Yeah

[00:33:58] Lee Brumbaugh: Well, Scott, thank you so much for joining me. This has been great. Obviously, I think there’s so many tips that the SMB leaders can take in really mapping out that customer journey, being distinctive.

[00:34:07] Lee Brumbaugh: I thank you so much for joining us. Everybody, please join in in another two weeks where we’ll have another thought leader, business leader like Scott, who will challenge us on how to transform our business. Thanks, everyone