Stop Leading Alone: Build a Self-Running Team with Brent Robertson

This has been generated by AI and optimized by a human. 

[00:00:00] Brent Robertson: We’ve got people out in the field making decisions on the fly you know, it’s an architecture firm, so you got contractors, you’ve got billion dollar budgets on some of these projects.

[00:00:07] Brent Robertson: You think they’re going to make a decision in the field that could affect the whole project without clarity on their authority to do so. And so what did we do? We got quick about creating. Clear language around, what authority and autonomy

[00:00:20] Brent Robertson: or agency does everyone in the organization have, and what decisions do we want to come up to the principle level. 

[00:00:41] Lee Brumbaugh: Welcome everyone. Thank you for joining another episode of Sales Against the Odds. My name’s Lee Brumbaugh, CEO of Sales Xceleration. Very excited today to have our next guest. Brent Robertson is with us. He is the CEO and founder of Be Generative, where he works with leaders and organizations on how to unlock their teams, grow, and get the most out of leadership.

[00:00:59] Lee Brumbaugh: He’s also been a TEDx speaker. Brent, thank you very much for being with us today.

[00:01:04] Brent Robertson: Lee, thanks for inviting me. I’m excited about our conversation.

[00:01:07] Lee Brumbaugh: Absolutely. Well, Brent, let’s jump in. I know a lot of those that may be joining may not be familiar with Be Generative. Talk us a little bit about where your company focuses and how you, how you really founded it. Started it and got into it.

[00:01:18] Brent Robertson: Yeah, you know, the company, uh, came as a result of really my fascination, curiosity as a result to human beings and human systems. And over the past 25 years, I’ve been an entrepreneur since 2000. And then working with companies of all kinds over that time to really figure out like where is it that we spend time has the greatest leverage.

[00:01:39] Brent Robertson: Where is it that if we apply effort creates a, a force multiplying effect within an organization? And where that sort of led us is to. What are the patterns that if created inside of an organization or the conditions, reveal, uh, the most, resource that’s available to us through our people.

[00:01:57] Brent Robertson: and then how do we use, our ability to create new conditions that really elevate, uh, the capability and capacity of the team? we’ve seen, you know, as a result of many things, the biggest one being sort of a historical narrative about leadership, is that if we. Focus on setting certain conditions, we can dramatically change the performance of a system.

[00:02:20] Brent Robertson: And I think that kind of may lead into one of your next questions around, how it is that we move performance forward.

[00:02:27] Lee Brumbaugh: We will have a lot of SMB owners driving and watching, listening today. Talk a little bit about, for that $5 million company, that’s kind of stuck, you know, how does your passion for. Helping them get unstuck and drive clarity and transformational leadership. Talk to us a little bit about how that starts with kinda that SMB space.

[00:02:46] Brent Robertson: Yeah, absolutely. there’s a prevailing narrative about leadership, which is about 150 years old. It was born in the industrial age. and it is really this idea that leadership is about controlling circumstances. It’s about, you know, relentless efforts, personal answers, and where that’s led us is to a place where, the overwhelm of leading is causing record.

[00:03:11] Brent Robertson: High cases of burnout. where, you know, increasing burden is left onto the shoulders of the leader, and in most important, the burden of carrying the vision alone. it’s like Sisyphus, right? Trying to push this thing up a hill, um, and do it all yourself and use words like, we gotta get everyone on board and lined up in this thing.

[00:03:30] Brent Robertson: Um, and those are all vestiges of the past. And I think one of the things that, to the surprise of a lot of leaders we introduced is you’re living in a narrative that was inherited. It was a made up story about leadership and we can create new ones that allow us to, uh, be able to do more with less.

[00:03:47] Brent Robertson: for someone who’s leading an organization, a founder, one of the things that we encourage is to pay more attention to the environment and conditions and experiences the team is having. Every behavior inside of an organization is perfectly designed based on how that organization occurs to the person inside of it.

[00:04:07] Brent Robertson: And so when we start to get curious about the behavior we’re seeing. You know, the old leadership narrative would argue that we need to deal with it directly. I call that drive by management. You know, we roll up to a behavior and we yell some words at it and hope it goes away and it doesn’t, you know, it comes right back.

[00:04:22] Brent Robertson: what we’re focused on is understanding that those behaviors are a deliberate response, or to the person it is the natural response they would have based on how that organization occurs to them. Now that kind of insight unlocks, a whole arena in which leaders can work, which is okay, what would happen if I get really curious about how my team is experiencing this organization?

[00:04:46] Brent Robertson: How are they experiencing me? And when I see behavior, I want to encourage what’s true about the conditions that’s available to everyone that has that behavior be the way that it is. How do I create more of those conditions? And conversely, if, if there’s a behavior or, you know, limited performance or lack of accountability going on, it is caused by how the organization is occurring to that person that has them believe that’s the logical choice in what they’re doing.

[00:05:16] Brent Robertson: And so through that examination, we can start to get some insight about our, our organizations. That’s incredibly powerful. I describe it as taking a choreographer mindset. A choreographer is one who, looks to create an environment or set the stage for their teams to enjoy the performance of their lives, and then sit back and bear witness to the delight and surprise that happens when teams perform beyond what they even thought was possible.

[00:05:44] Brent Robertson: Those are all conditional environmental things that allow that to happen. And so fundamentally what we’re talking about here is, you know, we tend to like, think of things top down, hierarchical in nature, pushed down. It’s all about force. and command and control, those kinds of things. But what if we look at the organization from the bottom up?

[00:06:03] Brent Robertson: What are the tenants that, um, have it exists the way that it exists, and then if we start to adjust those tenants, then we can expect a change in performance, a change in behavior, and. What it requires, is it requires leaders taking on a whole different domain of listening to be insatiably curious about, what’s going on in the system.

[00:06:26] Brent Robertson: Curious about what are the conditions people are operating in, what information do they have access to or don’t have access to? And I think one that’s really important is what’s clear and not clear. There’s a lot of inside of organizations bound up potential in implicit ideas, meaning things that are unspoken, but we assume like the idea of common knowledge, right?

[00:06:50] Brent Robertson: Well, they should know this. Well, just because you know, it doesn’t mean anyone else knows

[00:06:56] Brent Robertson: it. 

[00:06:57] Brent Robertson: what’s supposed to be common knowledge in our organization. Is that actually codified anywhere? Is there a reference point that any one of the organization understands and has access to the thinking that should be prevalent throughout the organization and.

[00:07:11] Brent Robertson: You know, this sort of takes us down another road here, but one of the things that I see, a lot of leaders really focus and fixate on, and, and look, I get a chance to be in front of 150 leaders plus a week all over the world. And, what I’ve found is that 90% of business conversations have to do with fixing problems.

[00:07:29] Brent Robertson: And it’s all about, you know, what’s occurring today that we gotta fix

[00:07:32] Brent Robertson: totally reactionary. And look, you know, fixing problems is really something important, but the problem is if we see everything as a problem, that we’re just whack-a-mole our way through the day. And you know, often facing the engineer’s dilemma, we fix problems that have nothing to do with our future, and we can spend all our time there.

[00:07:50] Brent Robertson: Most things that show up as problems are symptoms of underlying conditions. the vast majority of things that show up as problems are as a result of something missing, there’s something missing. And so leadership is much more, you know, there’s sort of three tenets of the leadership narrative that we’re bringing into existence.

[00:08:09] Brent Robertson: One of them is to be a choreographer. setting the stage for your team to, enjoy the performance of a lifetime. The other dimension is to be a creator, to be looking for what’s missing. And bringing those new things into existence with your team. I’ll give you a sort of clear example of this.

[00:08:27] Brent Robertson: in working with, a legendary architecture firm recently, one of the complaints from leadership, and this is a, you know, it’s a small but mighty firm. one of the complaints from leadership is I wish the team would, make more decisions on their own. So many of the decisions and answers roll up to leadership, which of course is a stranglehold.

[00:08:43] Brent Robertson: If you’re the leader fixing all the problems, you’re actually in the way, right? You’re, you’re paying a waiting tax and all this other stuff. so that was the complaint. I wish our teams were more proactive, making decisions on their own. Instead of everything having to roll up for our permission or us to make the decision.

[00:08:59] Brent Robertson: And that complaint had been there for a long time, and within 90 minutes of spending time with their team, it became really clear. It was as a result of something missing, not that anything was a problem. And what was missing for the team was absolute clarity on what authority do I have, what decisions should I be making on my own?

[00:09:21] Brent Robertson: How am I well equipped to make those decisions at every level of the organization? And because that was missing. We’ve got people out in the field making decisions on the fly with, you know, it’s an architecture firm, so you got contractors, you’ve got billion dollar budgets on some of these projects.

[00:09:36] Brent Robertson: You think they’re going to make a decision in the field that could affect the whole project without clarity on their authority to do so. And so what did we do? We got quick about creating. Clear language around, what authority and autonomy or agency does everyone in the organization have, and what decisions do we want to come up to the principle level and what decisions can be made below?

[00:09:58] Brent Robertson: And creating that clarity. Clarity is a precursor to confidence, immediately released the burden of all these decisions. Out to the core team as opposed to them having to roll all the way upstage. And you know, I always challenge leaders. You know, I’m in rooms a lot with leaders and I challenge them to say, how many text messages or emails did you get in the last three hours?

[00:10:19] Brent Robertson: decisions that were coming to you or problems coming to you, that is a sign of something missing in the system. And if you continue to play that game, you’re going to be in the way of your organization. there’s a, amazing, arithmetic around this, that let’s say you have a team of 10 people.

[00:10:36] Brent Robertson: If they’re waiting an hour a day from a decision from you as the leader, it’s costing you $350,000 a year in wasted payroll. That’s the waiting tax. And so it’s like mathematically it’s really clear. And so I say all of this to encourage leaders to really think about, okay, well, what is it I’m noticing about the behaviors in the system where people are taking ownership, where they’re not taking ownership, and then what’s missing for them that has it be that way?

[00:11:04] Brent Robertson: I would say almost always, it’s lack of clarity. There’s sort of an implicit narrative that’s far from explicit. And when we have an implicit narrative operating in the system, we favor a cult of personality culture that doesn’t scale very well. It’s kind of like, I know it when I see it, or, so and so is performing like I do.

[00:11:24] Brent Robertson: Right? And so they’re special and these folks don’t perform that way. And so there’s a problem there that’s not true. there’s a way in which people engage in their work in organizations, and everyone’s a little bit different if we are mindful of what it is that allows people to be at their best.

[00:11:40] Brent Robertson: And we’re sensitive to that, then we can expect a high degree of performance elevation as a result.

[00:11:47] Lee Brumbaugh: a couple of our last podcasts have focused on exiting too. Right. And so much of. Of what you look from an exodus, the first concern anybody’s going to have when trying to purchase you is how much of that business is tied in the founder. And if all of those decisions are bottlenecking with the founder, with the vision, with the clarity, and that goes away, then there’s a concern.

[00:12:04] Lee Brumbaugh: So the more you can have that, the more your company has value as well. I wanna go back to, You’re that business owner, you’re listening today. And this is resonating with you, right? You’re thinking of we lack clarity comes through me. We bottleneck from our front lines, people in the field, like all of this is hitting home, but you’ve been doing this for 10 years this way, right?

[00:12:22] Lee Brumbaugh: So it’s, I’m sure it’s a little bit daunting to think about how do you make that switch? How do you find that companies that have been doing it the exact way you just described for a long period of time, start to dig in and make that kind of cultural shift to what you’re alluding to.

[00:12:36] Brent Robertson: Well, it, it comes down to, a series of things, but number one, and this is something that is core to everything that we do. If you want to change your reality. Or change your future in any material way, you have to change where you’re thinking from first. When we go about, working on our organizations, we tend to do it thinking from where we’ve always thought from.

[00:12:58] Brent Robertson: And that place that we’ve been thinking from typically is, the space between. What are we know and experiencing right now and what have we known and experienced in the past? And that certainly is a way of thinking. but it perpetuates the same dynamics going on in an organization over and over again because it’s an echo chamber where we sort of dive into the filing cabinet of our past to deal with issues in the future.

[00:13:19] Brent Robertson: So we need to change where we’re thinking from and. one of the first things we do with our clients is, are you thinking through the story of the future you want? Are you thinking through the reality that you’re in? When we start to bring into existence a story about an organization’s future, often known as vision, though vision is a very distorted, um, and misunderstood, phenomenon.

[00:13:43] Brent Robertson: Vision is simply a story about the future that we want to be true, and it’s not true today. If we think through that story, we automatically become strategic. And so this is one of the things that’s missing in most organizations is that their team don’t have a relationship to the story of the future. And when we don’t have a relationship with the story of the future, then the behavior will always be, I’m going to focus on what’s right in front of me or what I’ll get into the most trouble for not doing. And if that’s the behavior you’re seeing inside of your organization, it’s not a result of your people not being strategic, um, and not thinking ahead.

[00:14:20] Brent Robertson: It’s the absence of an understanding of what’s the story of the future we’re trying to create. And this goes back to, you know, some of the biggest misconceptions around how we create vision, which is, you know, the vision, creating a vision is the role of the leader. And it’s their job to, articulate the vision and then force it upon everyone else.

[00:14:40] Brent Robertson: We take a radically different approach, which vision is best when it’s created by all the voices inside the organization, that we invite everyone to share their ideas about what is and what could be, and then find the patterns in that story. And this kind of goes to, you know, one of the other questions I know that you were thinking about.

[00:14:56] Brent Robertson: when we want to create owners, people that act from an ownership mindset, meaning this is mine too, and I, and I have a part to play in this. then if we invite them to be authors of the vision from the start, they automatically become owners of that vision. ’cause they’ve got a part in it too. They’ve got skin in the game on this thing.

[00:15:15] Brent Robertson: And I find it’s really funny, I see a lot of leaders afraid to even ask their teams because, gosh, I don’t know what they’re going to say. And what if it’s not what I want? Right? and in the fear of that, we tend not to ask the question, and then when we don’t ask the question, we don’t invite everyone into that conversation.

[00:15:31] Brent Robertson: Now the best futures are ones that include the voices of everyone, and they often go beyond what the owner, founder sees as possible. I do a lot of work in succession in exiting, with privately held companies, high performance ones. what the vision can do is it can carry the team beyond what the founder was able to do.

[00:15:50] Brent Robertson: So when we take on succession planning and exit strategy, we actually see it as simply a catalyst. There’s going to be a change in the system, and that change happens to be leadership. Or ownership that is a catalyst to then maximize the impact of, we typically approach exiting and succession from a, how do we minimize disruption?

[00:16:11] Brent Robertson: That’s a way to look at it, and that’s what we end up with. but what if we look at it as a catalyst? And so when we see it as a catalyst, what we. See as a result of that kind of approach, where the vision goes beyond where the owner could take it, but the vision is deeply meaningful for those that are going to be taking over.

[00:16:29] Brent Robertson: We see a doubling and tripling of companies during transition and succession, and that’s what we aim for. Doubling and tripling. Why not? Right. And part of, you know, something you were talking about before, which is kind of fun, like a framework for leaders that are planning an exit is you go from being essential to the organization.

[00:16:49] Brent Robertson: Two, a mentor on demand that doesn’t get any phone calls. Their company’s sale numbers go way up because they are now, um, non-essential to the function of that organization. They’re that mentor on demand that no longer getting any phone calls, which means you’ve created a system that can operate on its own.

[00:17:07] Brent Robertson: Without your leadership, and this is the part that’s really exciting, an organization that performs beyond what you were able to do in your time as leader, it isn’t that the ultimate expression of leadership, right? And it favors a way higher ticket price when you sell on the other end. And just to underscore something, I don’t think we’re paying enough attention to this.

[00:17:26] Brent Robertson: We’re about to experience a fire sale in businesses. There are more businesses for sale than ever in history. And, if we’re not doing the work of becoming non-essential to them. When you look at all the buyers, right, they’re going to look at these businesses and the condition of them and which one has the highest ROI.

[00:17:42] Brent Robertson: The ones that have the highest ROI are those that have done the work to allow that organization to generate itself in the absence of the leader’s interventions or control. 

[00:17:52] 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.

[00:18:09] 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.

[00:18:21] Lee Brumbaugh: obviously there’s so many owners out there and they think their value of their company is X and they go to to look at it, and all of a sudden that multiplier is. A four instead of a six. so you’ve gotta go back to how do you, again, get more out of the company from the team and value creation, those types of areas.

[00:18:36] Lee Brumbaugh: And that’s hard if all that vision has been coming directly from you. So let’s say you get this alignment, right? You’ve got your team aligned. They’re aligned to the story of the future, they’re bought into the ownership of it, and they start to make these transformational shifts. What do you typically see happen in kind of that value creation?

[00:18:51] Lee Brumbaugh: You talked about really that transformational growth. How does that team working together really drive that value creation? How does that tactically lay out?

[00:19:00] Brent Robertson: there’s a couple of things there. the spirit of all this is to create, the stage. In which the teams are able to have the performance of their lives. And, what that means is elevating agency for people to make decisions on their own and create things that are needed in the organization.

[00:19:20] Brent Robertson: And also, and this is critical to break things that are no longer needed. In the absence of that mindset of my job is to not just. manage what is my job is to be mindful of what is and how do we change it in a way that allows for something greater and gifting or deputizing, that authority to 

[00:19:41] Brent Robertson: break stuff, in service to making room for what’s needed and what’s next? a way to say it would be the, the gravity of the status quo is a very seductive thing, and we will always settle on it. Given our own devices, we will always settle toward what is, because we know it, it’s comfortable, even if it’s not working.

[00:20:01] Brent Robertson: At least we know how it works and we can compensate for it. Is why there’s so much fire drilling. What we wanna encourage inside of an organization is, to not be satisfied with the status quo, not be satisfied with the prevailing narratives that operate the organization, and to have the authority to create new ones and be experimental in those things.

[00:20:21] Brent Robertson: But it’s important even if vision. Or the story of future is prevalent in the hearts, minds, and actions of the team. We tend to work, the world we work in now is, typically pretty abstracted, right? You can go through any given day and you kind of did a bunch of stuff and you wonder what difference did any of this make?

[00:20:38] Brent Robertson: Right? One of the jobs of the leader to then mentor others to do is we need to pay attention to that last mile piece, which is making a tangible connection between what you’re doing and the difference it’s making. And oftentimes we’re not sure what that is. And leaders have a unique perspective ’cause they’re typically looking outward.

[00:20:59] Brent Robertson: they’re paying attention to sort of externalities and those kinds of things where the effect takes place where people on the inside of the organization focused on what they’re doing. They aren’t able to have the environment to bear witness to the effect it’s making. And so sometimes we need to make that connection.

[00:21:14] Brent Robertson: Until they can make that connection on their own, because it’s a pretty defeating experience when we’re working really hard and then at the end of the day, we have no evidence. Directly of, did it make any difference for anyone without that feedback loop, without that direct connection? And there’s all kinds of cool ways you can do that by inviting your customers to come in and share their stories of how what you did impacted them, to have a constant feedback loop with each other and your clients and your partners to say, Hey, what are we doing that’s making the difference for you?

[00:21:44] Brent Robertson: What is it you would love us to take care of that we’re not? how is it we’re operating with you and what do you notice about that? These feedback loops are what give us the clues to direct our energy toward what actually makes the difference. So many organizations spend all this time on a meticulous kind of thing where they’re putting a lot of effort into it, and only a couple of elements of it are making the difference for the client.

[00:22:07] Brent Robertson: So why are we spending time on all this other stuff? So it’s all about, you know, setting the stage where those connections are really clear internally and externally. on behalf of the vision. As I act this way, as I break things and create new things, what are we noticing about the difference it’s making?

[00:22:21] Brent Robertson: Not just within my department or within my role, but across the organization itself and our clients.

[00:22:27] Lee Brumbaugh: as you’re going through and you’re, you know, breaking shit, you’re making changes and those types of things, how does that then roll in? ’cause again, a lot, we’re going to have a lot of sales teams that are listening to this. How does that directional change those pivots that are hopefully customer centric?

[00:22:41] Lee Brumbaugh: How does that roll down to the team and when the sales team sees this and says, Hey, this is right, or this is wrong, or this isn’t working, like how do you see those adjust made? How does that all kind of transform into where your sales team directionally goes?

[00:22:52] Brent Robertson: Yeah, well look, you know, let’s, look at what does a sales team want more than anything. Bigger promises they can make their clients that allow them to create a delta between what you cost and what you charge. I mean, that’s the dream of sales, right? and to be able to trust that those promises will be delivered on.

[00:23:11] Brent Robertson: And so I often see like a conflict between, you know, I hear it all the time, like. Conflict between sales and operations. Those that are making promises and those that are delivering on promises, and it’s not a conflict, it’s a competing influence. The job of sales is to overwhelm operations’ ability to deliver.

[00:23:29] Brent Robertson: That’s how we grow a company and operations’ job is to create new things. That sales can promise their clients. And that’s the, the virtuous relationship where both rise together. And so that really invites a much more thoughtful integration between sales and whoever’s responsible for delivery to be generating new stories and experimenting with new things that they can deliver until those things are reliable, where then the sales team can assert.

[00:24:00] Brent Robertson: things with evidence to support the claims they’re making. And that all happens through deep listening between what’s going on with our customers, what is it that we’re not doing, that we could be, what is it They’re not saying that we could maybe bring something to their attention that they’re not paying attention to.

[00:24:15] Brent Robertson: that feedback coming into sales and that, that going back into the team to say, okay, look, here’s some things that, are opportunities for us. What do you think about that? And how could we add an adjacent. Either service delivery enhancement or a new service altogether that could satisfy those things.

[00:24:31] Brent Robertson: And also just look at the status quo, whatever it is you’re offering today, that feedback loop really helps operations understand what is it we’re delivering that’s making the difference and what’s not that we can let go of.

[00:24:43] Lee Brumbaugh: Yeah, that, that makes a lot of sense. And as, as you’re talking it through, and I want to, I want to ask, how it kind of feels, I mean, I, I wrote down the word kind of chaotic and I think that’s maybe a little bit stretched, but shouldn’t there be some between when you’re going through and you’re transforming based around what the customer needs between sales and ops, it should be a little uncomfortable, right?

[00:25:01] Lee Brumbaugh: it should be this constant little bit of tension of not good enough, not, I mean, you should always be stretching for more, correct. Am I thinking about this correctly?

[00:25:07] Brent Robertson: Always, I mean, it’s always an opportunity. Look, if it’s not uncomfortable, it’s probably not very powerful, you know? And, and if it doesn’t push right, you know, you’ll remain trapped and satisfied in what it is you’re delivering. And we know the world changes quickly, and we know that a competitor is going to swoop in who is doing this and they’re going to eat your lunch.

[00:25:26] Brent Robertson: Right. So it’s all about, you know, opening up the aperture to say, okay, what is it that we could become for our clients that were not today? One of my favorite things is, this is one of my favorite questions to ask clients of my customers is, um, if you were to describe this company to a stranger, how would you describe them?

[00:25:44] Brent Robertson: Because then you get access to the story that you are for them, and that gives you some really great clues. Are we satisfied with that story? Or do we want to have a bigger, more meaningful story as it relates to who we are for that client? And, you know, so much of this, you know, we talk about chaos, like the creative endeavor is, is chaotic at first always.

[00:26:04] Brent Robertson: But as a choreographer, what we can do is we can create conditions like, be clear about, Hey, we want to try and experiment. these would be the criteria to satisfy the experiment. Meaning saying the experiment was successful or not, and these are the conditions we’re going to operate inside of. These, and then what are the commitments we’re going to make as a team to try these things?

[00:26:23] Brent Robertson: We have to take on an experimental mindset and try stuff, see if it makes a difference or not, and we can hatch these experiments in little ways. Even the way, you know, we’re working with a 110 year old logistics company. We’re changing the language in which they greet their customer when they meet them in the field.

[00:26:40] Brent Robertson: To create a unique language for how is it that we talk to our customers, how it is that we greet them, and how do we respond to their questions that are uniquely this organization? And it makes it clear. They’re thinking beyond the job at hand. They’re thinking about the future of that client. So it’s in these little places we can do something interesting and it causes a massive change.

[00:27:01] Brent Robertson: It’s really about sussing out, what could we try and let’s see what difference it makes. often it’s in the relational side of things or the delivery side of things and how we, communicate the touch points, how we conduct ourselves in conversations. That’s where real values generated.

[00:27:16] Brent Robertson: in fact, we’ve been able to take, professional service firms that are, you know, bumping along at like 12% profit margins into the 20% range, not by changing their core service. But changing how it is, they conduct themselves in the conversations that lead to a satisfied client. The margin was there and they didn’t know it.

[00:27:35] Brent Robertson: It was all, you know, technical focus on, you know, the components of the delivery instead of how do we conduct ourselves in conversations that the client feels more confident, like every time we work with them, it just goes, well, what the heck is that about? It’s how thoughtful you are in the, conduct and curation of that relationship.

[00:27:52] Brent Robertson: That’s what sells value beyond, the transactional elements of, you know, tit for tat. What did you deliver and how much did it cost? That’s the icing on top.

[00:28:01] Lee Brumbaugh: It is the little things of how you stand apart to a customer. Because again, if they have the confidence and trust and they see you as a partner of helping them grow their business versus features and benefits, you can drive more margin, more price, you get customers sticky it all correlates together.

[00:28:14] Lee Brumbaugh: So kinda last year I want to to hit is, you know, as your teams are buying in and they’re getting this clarity and they’re thinking differently and they’re challenging the status quo and doing things a little bit outside of the box, how are you finding they’re using technology to kinda harness those ideas?

[00:28:28] Lee Brumbaugh: To capture them how is technology bridging into, whether it be AI or just how we keep track of customer relationships, how is that folding into this kind of, these different elements of growth?

[00:28:39] Brent Robertson: Oh man. You know, I’ll, I’ll say, technology that we’ve got available to us today, a way to think about it is an accelerant. how can we use it to get us there faster so that we can spend time on the more meaningful things, which is the interactions between us and the client. we conduct a lot of workshops to help organizations understand how can we use technology, ai, those kinds of things.

[00:29:03] Brent Robertson: I see a lot of organizations hesitate ’cause they think, oh, I have to implement some grandiose giant thing, which is pretty daunting. No. Use it to, create a dossier for your clients so that you can actually articulate a proposal that’s much more fit to them. use it to analyze contracts for anomalies, use it to, process lots of information in a way where you can extract the themes out of those things quickly.

[00:29:26] Brent Robertson: There’s lots of really subtle ways we can use technology, which builds our confidence and work our way toward using them in more dramatic fashion. Have a. Quick story on that. just through a three month experimental workshop we did with a a client, we were able to generate $12 million in revenue by using it in subtle ways.

[00:29:46] Brent Robertson: And one of the things they were able to do is shrink the time, between, uh, the completion of the month and the closing of the books so that they could have a more accurate understanding of. how well their proposed work was doing as far as profitability going Before that, they had a pretty big latency between closing the month and closing the books.

[00:30:05] Brent Robertson: And so in that month, they were still sending proposals that they were losing money on and didn’t know it. So just by shrinking that timeline, they were able to say, well, why are we pitching it this way? If we’re going to lose money, now we have a better, accurate understanding of where we’re winning, where we’re not, and we can adjust proposals much more real time.

[00:30:22] Brent Robertson: And to this day, what they’ve done is close that gap to zero. They have real time understanding at any moment how we’re doing on any job so that they can be much more thoughtful about how is it they can find efficiency measures, but also making sure that they’re proposing things that maintain the margins that they’re looking for.

[00:30:39] Lee Brumbaugh: Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. And when, when we find from a sales perspective, the teams are utilizing it, the best is, is again, challenging how we interact with the customers, how we, everything should be about, how do we efficiently make ourselves more nimble to the needs of the customer and create that higher value gap.

[00:30:53] Lee Brumbaugh: When you do that, good things happen.

[00:30:55] Brent Robertson: even if you like pull up any, any of the brands of AI, ask it that question. Here’s the client. Here’s what we’ve been doing for them. what else do you see? What, how could we be more nimble and or adaptive to a client like this? See what it spits out.

[00:31:11] Brent Robertson: I’m telling you, it’ll just, you’re like, it may validate some points you have. It may lead you in directions you never considered and that you can do in 10 minutes.

[00:31:20] Lee Brumbaugh: that is the part you’ve gotta always be stress testing, thinking differently and evolving and technology definitely helps us do that if we do it correctly. So, Brent, any last thing? So again, you’re that $5 million, $10 million business, you’ve been stuck, you’re listening to this thinking, I’ve been doing this way.

[00:31:33] Lee Brumbaugh: Any last thought of, of where they can as they look at trying to meet goals in 2026? Any kinda last takeaway that you see with that type of size company that really makes that most impact?

[00:31:43] Brent Robertson: Spend time with your team and have a curious mindset about them and the experiences they’re having if you simply and hear them. Don’t judge, Don’t leap to conclusions. Don’t respond at first. Find out, Make it safe for people to share their reality and then gather that information. And see what you see.

[00:32:05] Brent Robertson: You will see obvious patterns that if you start to adjust those patterns or make things available that weren’t in the past, it will dramatically change your organization. Spend time listening to your team, particularly those in the front lines of interactions with the field or your customers or the work that they do, that we tend not to hear.

[00:32:24] Lee Brumbaugh: our community with our 220 plus advisors. They are the ones interacting with the SMB companies. And so how we evolve our tools, how we deliver value to those clients. If we’re not getting that pulse, I mean so much. What I do is I wanna talk to my advisors because they’re the pulse with our customers, and we as a company always are trying to evolve to how we deliver and drive more oi.

[00:32:43] Lee Brumbaugh: And if we don’t listen to our advisors, it all falls off. So I think that’s really good advice. So, Brent, thank you so much for, for joining us. I’ve learned so much today. Again, you get us to radically think different about how we approach it, how we listen as teams. So I really appreciate all you’ve brought to the podcast today.

[00:32:59] Brent Robertson: Thank you Lee, and thanks for the opportunity.

[00:33:01] Lee Brumbaugh: Everyone. Thank you for joining another episode of Sales Against the Odds. Join us again in two weeks. We’ll have another thought leader that challenges the status quo and how we grow our company. Thanks everyone.