How to Apply Business Acumen in Sales and Leadership with Ben Cook

Understanding business acumen is one thing.

Applying it in real conversations, decisions, and leadership situations is what actually drives results.

In this episode, Ben Cook, President of Acumen Learning, breaks down how to use the five business drivers in day-to-day work across sales, leadership, and team alignment.

Most professionals understand their role, but struggle to connect it to what the business is actually trying to achieve. That’s where this framework becomes practical.

In this conversation, Ben explains:

• How to prepare for sales conversations by understanding what actually matters to your customer
• Why most sales pitches miss the mark and how to adapt your message
• How the five drivers help you think through industry, role, and business stage
• How leaders use the framework to align teams and execute strategy
• Why framing strategy correctly can change how teams respond and engage
• How individuals can use this thinking to communicate more effectively and accelerate their career

This episode moves beyond theory and shows how business acumen becomes a practical advantage in real situations.

If you want to lead better conversations, align your work to what matters, and operate at a higher level, this is where it starts.

To learn more visit: acumenlearning.com or check out our books Seeing The Big Picture & Business Acumen for Sales Success

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:06

Last episode, Kevin Cope walked us through the five business drivers, the framework that's helped 34 of the Fortune 50 see the big picture in their business. Today we're gonna go to the next level. How do we actually use this thinking day to day to sell, lead, and execute on strategy? And to do that, I'm joined by Ben Cook, president of Acumen Learning, who's worked with some of the world's top sales and leadership teams to put this model into action. So if you've ever wondered how to lead better conversations with executives, influence decision making, or get teams truly aligned around strategy, this episode hopefully will give you a playbook. So I know that's a that's a tall order, Ben, to go over all that, but but you're you're you're equipped to do it. So I thought I'd first want to kind of jump in on the sales side of things. I know that you've worked with a lot of sales teams in some of the top companies in the world. So so I wanted to ask you, Ben, when you're in sales conversations, if someone's having a sales conversation, how do the five business drivers change the way that a salesperson prepares um to lead a sales, a sales meeting or discussion?

SPEAKER_00 1:23

Yeah, I appreciate the question. Um, because oftentimes when you're going in to meet with somebody, there are a few things that that really you should have thought through before you get there. One is trying to understand from the other side of the table from you what's real for them. They're trying to run a business, they've got priorities, they're making trade-offs, they've got pressures. What fundamentally does your product or solution offer them within the world they live? Oftentimes it's easy to say, well, understand your customer's business. But well, actually, what does that mean? What is in the minds of that company in that industry with its priorities? And most of the time, salespeople come in and think, well, um you as a business want to grow. Let's talk about how we can help you grow. That's not always the case. And the person you're talking to, given their function, they may not be spending a lot of time thinking about growing the business. They're thinking about operating more efficiently with the business. They're thinking about innovation, speed to market in the business. They're thinking about kind of attracting uh and retaining top talent. And the five drivers actually really help you understand if you're talking to a COO or a CFO, growth is a part of the way they think about things. But in a lot of ways, they're operating with the mindset of efficiencies, cost management, um, process improvements. They're thinking about ways they can better align and drive operating leverage. And growth is an is maybe an outcome of the efficiencies that they're trying to drive. And so, unless you understand those things, you come in with assumptions that actually aren't probably relevant or don't typically land very well. So these five drivers tend to be a lens to apply it to the function of the person that you're meeting with, the industry that you're meeting with, and even the business stage that they're in, right? If they're an early stage business versus in a in a hyper growth stage or an early mature or late mature, these five drivers actually play out to their priorities, you're going to be very different from each other. And so thinking about through those multiple lenses better prepares you to adapt what you have to offer through the lens of what they actually care about versus what you assume that's just, oh, they want to grow. Um maybe, but that also may be its own challenge to them.

SPEAKER_01 3:57

So, Ben, let me, I will another question I wanted to ask you was what mistakes do salespeople make when talking to executives? And again, how do the five drivers framework help help avoid those common mistakes?

SPEAKER_00 4:10

Yeah. That's a great question. Um one of the largest mistakes that we find is that the pitch a salesperson has got uh doesn't change with who they speak to and what business they're selling into. The pitch is the pitch. I've got my product solution, I've got kind of case studies on how that's impacted uh prior customers that have been using it. And it's the same pitch they offer to everybody. And that reality is really uh unfortunate. Because if you're working with a business who is an early stage business, for example, they're going to be dealing with a speed-to-market innovation differentiation mindset, not necessarily a cost efficiency mindset or process improvement mindset. If they are in an early or late mature business, you're thinking that, well, every business thinks about growth. Well, that's very, very difficult in that stage, given that you've got probably three, four, five different competitors. You've got a mature market that you're in, you need to operate much more efficiently or finding new ways to drive operating leverage on the PL. Those realities and the way you pitch your solution has to be through that lens. And so that concept of what stage is your customer in, the function, as we talked about a bit before, the function that you're speaking to has a very distinct set of priorities and pressures. If your questions don't reflect the challenges they themselves are probably most pressed to have to answer, and you're just giving this rote story around how my solution has helped others, not couched in what it means for me in my role, in my industry, in my business stage, given my priorities and my strategies as a business, as a function leader, then it doesn't land well. So be good at adapting your story to what they on the other side of the table would care most about and put in the work. The five drivers tend to be very helpful on how would the five drivers be ranked to a CFO who's in tech versus a CFO who's in consumer goods or retail or hospitals. How would a COO think about things if they're in oil and gas in relative terms to then if they are in pharma? Those are going to be very, very different challenges, priorities, and pressures. Think about that before you come in because the questions you ask have to reflect the situational realities and pressures that they themselves are feeling now. And then make sure you're really good at then couching out your solution better aligns with what they actually do care about, and have some really good kind of adaptive phrases and questions that are clear that you've done the thinking before you came in. For example, oftentimes the question is so what keeps you up at night? My contention would be you should have well thought through that before you ever got there. Given the nature of the business and the industry and the challenges, and likely the latest press release, latest the latest 10Q or 10K, or listen to their analyst calls, or thinking about this function, you should have a pretty good sense of what keeps them up at night. So your job is to try to validate what you think already likely their challenges are, help them validate one way or the other, or shape a little bit of your thinking that helps you understand them better and then shape your solution to that end. But just a what keeps you up at night may be a good way to start a conversation, but it feels a bit lazy that you probably haven't done the work on the front end.

SPEAKER_01 8:13

Yeah, and I what what I'm what I'm hearing you say, Ben, is I mean, it's it's important for salespeople to have business acumen and actually understand the businesses that they're selling into. I've I've seen a lot of people talk about it, about uh, you know, like sales thought leaders out there where they're like, you need to do deep account research. You need to understand your customer. And I think the uniqueness of the five business drivers and and what what we teach at Acumen Learning is this it just gives you a simple framework and model to help you understand um these different different businesses and clients that customers are selling into. Um do you have any do you have any examples where you've implemented or taught the five drivers to a sales team at a company that directly influenced a deal or a sales team or any any come to mind that that stand out to you over the years?

SPEAKER_00 9:05

There's a lot. Um we go with one uh initially. Um so this was a kind of sales director in the Southeast. They were going to go visit a really large company in Miami. They were a bit early, and so they were passing by another kind of potential customer that they really hadn't called on. Looked like they were a bit smaller in size, but because the person had some time, they decided to swing by, right? This is a medical device sales director selling into hospitals. So he visits a smaller, more regional hospital system. Um, thinking through the five drivers, thinking through the realities that we had talked about in the class on what hospital systems themselves are really challenged with. Thin margin, capital-intensive, highly regulated, difficult reimbursement kind of realities. He goes in uh and wanted to meet with the CFO of this regional hospital system. So he he got an audience, right? This is a big brand medical device company. So he got audience with the CFO and sat down with the CFO and he said, just to get the conversation started, he said, uh, I can only imagine the kind of challenges that you're dealing with within your system, given the nature of regulation, competition, labor constraints, reimbursement challenges. But my interest here is to understand what are your business biggest priorities and challenges. And as this person kind of reflected back this story, the um CFO had said, man, um my costs are going up extensively, my labor is challenged, our reimbursements are being pushed. Um there are a lot of things that are challenging us as a business. And then this med device sales director said, it sounds like that you have some constraints and challenges around the cash flows of your business. And the CFO, as the person kind of reflected back to it, said the CFO kind of looked up and said, that's exactly my challenge, is a cash flow challenge. Because the reality is cash flow fundamentally uh is uh a vital element for hospital systems and the challenges around reimbursements and their expenses and labor costs and thin margins, all of that plays into cash flow problems. And so the CFO said that's exactly what my challenge is, is the cash flows of the business. And then the sales director was able to pivot the conversation to how leasing and financial products that they might have could alleviate some of the cash flow challenges the hospital themselves were dealing with, right? Tying it to cash flow, tying it to the CFO's primarily challenges and the financial kind of products that they had to support it were a really important element to really speak the real language the CFO of this regional hospital system had. And I thought that was a really cool way to not um to not just push a um a solution, but really understand first and then adapt that solution to the story that the CFO most needed to solve for.

SPEAKER_01 12:27

That's a great, a great story and a great example because again, he probably had an idea of what he was going to pitch going in, right? And and have have pre-prepared. And anyone who's been in sales meetings, you kind of have a plan going in. I think everyone's seen it or either been on one side or the other where someone just pitches to you and you're like, okay, this is just a canned pitch. Uh clearly this person is doesn't really understand what what I'm what I really need, what I really want. So that's that's that's an amazing um amazing story. So so Ben, shifting gears a little bit, um uh away from sales, is I wanted to ask about how the five drivers can help align teams and specifically around uh maybe a leader that's wanting to execute on a strategy, how how the five drivers help that person align their team. So, what happens when leaders use the five drivers to communicate their strategy?

SPEAKER_00 13:25

You know, what's interesting about the five drivers, it's a simple, easily to understand model, but it really is an MBA in five words. And every business, public or private, for-profit, not-for-profit, US, outside the US, regardless of the industry, these five drivers are embedded in the way businesses fundamentally have to think and act. So now, as a leader, there are a few lenses with which you probably have to think through how do I use this in a way that drives maximum impact. If you think about the five drivers, a little bit like there are five plates on five sticks, and the executive team is spinning these plates and in different um pace and different set of priorities, right? For example, and businesses, let's say, for example, are doing MA, they're spinning up the growth plate, but the cash plate tends to wobble because they were using their capital for the uh for the acquisition, or now they have a duplication of cost and they've got to integrate the acquisition, right? So you gotta start getting a wobbling of the cash of the profit plate. So then the team has to kind of work their way over and start to spin up a little uh more the profit plate over the next, say, six to 12 months to try to work for uh, you know, integrating the business and looking for duplication of costs. And so, and then once you kind of spin up the profit plate, you may have some wobbling on the people plate. What's happening with a morale, what's happening with um, you know, personal development, uh, if you will. So then you're gonna have to work over and try to spin up the people plate. So the leader needs to understand what priorities, which plate is getting most focused now, and then do the heavy lifting that says, what does my team do or could do to better align to that, right? Because if you're not linking what you do to what the executives are really trying to steer the company toward, the challenge really is those that are either going to be funding the initiatives or gonna support your uh your approach, um, you're getting a real disconnect from what they are really thinking about. It's almost like the quote from um Animal Farm by George Orwell. I think it was the pig who said uh all animals are created equal, but some animals are created more equal than others. Uh, with this five-driver model, I think is the same kind of thing, right? All five drivers matter, but at different times you really have to be attentive uh to different things. And so for you as a leader within your function, understanding it from a macro perspective, and then the connection between your priorities and your initiatives within your function, and how does that then better align? And so what we're trying to do as acumen learning is helping leaders, regardless of the function they're in, to reflect on their company and then their function, and then they themselves, from a macro to a micro, how do they build this alignment between where the company is going and how do I best support that? And so there's multiple ways we help leaders think through and align and then and then even place action plans against the macro to the micro. And then as you communicate that to your teams, they start to see their impact to the macro. They start to see the kind of impact they can have to the bigger picture, as opposed to thinking they're just a number, they're just uh someone just doing a job. The reality is we can actually see their link up. Boy, the meaning that comes from that is really powerful.

SPEAKER_01 17:06

By the way, if you like what we've been talking about, you'll love our book, Business Acumen for Sell Success. It's the ultimate guide to more strategic deals and starting to think like a business partner. It's gonna change the way you sell.

SPEAKER_00 17:31

Yeah, we work with uh seven of the top 10 largest pharma companies in the world. And one of the interactions we'd have, but again, there's probably a lot I could I could pull here, but uh, we were working with a very, very large, very, very global, very prominent, very innovative uh pharma company. And their initiatives around innovation obviously were deeply embedded and everybody understood, and everyone was really inspired by the innovation-mindedness that the company brought. However, given different challenges they had in trying to get products to market, some of the programs that they had had hadn't worked their way through phase two or phase three trials. And so now they were starting to deal with some margin compression. And then the company was then starting to focus on ways they can drive more and more efficiencies, how they can streamline their costs. And the company's uh mindset had been an innovation, and then they were hearing a cost, cost, cost thing. And they were really challenged with trying to communicate to people who were really inspired by the innovation and patient outcomes, but now they're hearing a cost, cost, cost story. So there's a huge disconnect culturally from what inspired people to what the initiatives sounded like. So then they had they had needed to pivot a story from a, we're looking for ways to cost out in the business and pivot to how does the freeing up of resources that can be found through efficiencies, through streamlining, through automation, through standardization. How does that free us to reinvest even more in the early stage pipeline into the expansion and launching of new products and new solutions that drive kind of patient outcomes? And the pivot from a this is a profit thing, to offering up resources for the patient benefit thing. Now you started to get people thinking creatively about ways they can operate more efficiently and effectively, not for the sake of driving bottom line profits, because in some of the functions, it felt like even a bit of a dirty word to be maximizing profits, right? They weren't focused on that. They're focused on outcomes, they're focused on innovation, they're focused on population impact. And that's what they cared about. But when you position from a say a people, uh profit story to a people story, that then found their ways to operate assets more efficiently over time that freed up the cash they would need to invest more in their pipeline, which then could allow them to grow and expand while also driving profitability. But it but it just was a bit antithetical to most of the people's real kind of hearts and minds to be thinking about padding pockets around profitability. That's not who we are, that's not what we care about. We care about patients. And the shaping of this five-driver narrative differently really drove the hearts and minds and passions much greater than they would have had by just pushing a cost out story. It was a patient impact story.

SPEAKER_01 20:46

Love it. Great story. So my next uh kind of question is around how how do we how does a company embed this type of thinking so that it actually sticks? I think we all know that one-off training rarely changes behavior. So, how do you help leaders make this kind of a part of their culture? What's what's your experience been around that?

SPEAKER_00 21:10

There are lots of different ways that we do this and adapt it for different customers, but um there are a lot of ways where we'll actually have then the attendees themselves before coming into the class, coming with a challenge or a business uh priority that they have coming in that they haven't solved yet. And they start to use the five driver model in a way to very specifically use that model to solve the challenges they're having to navigate now. So, in that way, it's a way to think about which of these five drivers does this problem uh solve? How do they go about it? With what resources would they need? How would they quantify the impact? Who do they need to bring in to drive more support for this initiative? So it can be real world initiatives. Initiatives that they bring in. That's one option that we do quite often. Another one is a cadence of staying connected with these concepts. Most of our clients are large publicly traded companies. And so having them listen to their quarterly analyst calls through the lens of the five drivers, applying the concepts we had gone through the class. And we have them think about several things. One is listening to the analyst call of your executives, rank top to bottom right now, which drivers are most important down for the company right now. Then the second thing they need to come thinking through then is what are me and my team doing that best aligns with the strategic priorities that the company is focused on right now? And then have the leaders then, in their one-on-ones with their employees, have their employees come in talking about what their priority is and what actions they're willing to take that best aligns with, say, for example, growth, if that's the primary initiative for the business. And so when you start to think about HR, thinking about how do we enable a growth mindset and how do we align and drive compensation structures and kind of hiring timing? And how do we think about uh people development through the lens of a people driver? Now you start to get from the executives to the leaders to the individual contributors, assure that there is uh alignment associated with that. So on a quarterly basis, you can come back to this and have them reflect are there any shifts or tweaks they maybe need to make to assure that they're best aligning with what the strategic priorities are of the company. With the sales group, by the way, what's kind of interesting is that we'll actually have them either weave in, uh, not only uh listening to their company's endless call or their competitors' endless calls, but I think really cool is pulling down their customers' um, kind of executive messaging, the financial performance of the company, and for them thinking about if I were to meet with this company next week, which of the five drivers are they most focused on? What successes are they seeing as a company? What are their biggest challenges either financially or strategically? And then put in the heavy lifting on what solutions can I put in place or speak to that likely best reflects the current priorities of the customer that I'm selling to? And so there's lots of ways where you can kind of play around the five drivers, but using an application, real world for them, their competitors, their customers, um, and get more and more comfortable with that. It starts to be a kind of a crawl, walk, run process to where after a while this becomes really second nature for them.

SPEAKER_01 24:48

What's the role of leaders, the leaders at the company in reinforcing the five drivers with their teams?

SPEAKER_00 24:56

Boy, there's a that's a real kind of critical important step is that oftentimes, even when we're gonna have maybe a population go through some kind of a learning journey, we will bring the leaders of those people before we can begin that journey and have those leaders understand what are the key concepts that their people will be going through, ways that they can then better support the learning and pull the learning through through their one-on-ones, through their strategies, through their um maybe questions and return report kind of uh elements that they can kind of weave into uh pull the lessons through. One thing that we also have that in each class, we have, as they've gone through the class, there'll have been multiple places where the learner is connecting. What could they do differently or more of in their role to impact cash profit assets growth or people? And then their task is several fold. One is they have partners that they exit the class with, where they will then meet with periodically and do a return and report with them. They're also then supposed to then meet with their leader and talk about out of all the ideas that they had come with out of the session, what do they feel like the most actionable steps forward that can best impact the company's perspective and pitch that to their leader to get the leader support or guidance in a way that helps that the concepts and the ideas are happening in the class actually get implemented with the support of the leader. And so, really, that merging of the leader and the uh attendee and participant, bring those together to really drive business impact to real specific things that they could go do that best aligns with the priorities of the company. Now you've got some real impact and alignment from top down, gets it all the way to the end of the role with the organization, makes for a much better alignment and connective tissue between what someone does every day and really um how it impacts the broader, more enterprise-wide performance of the company.

SPEAKER_01 27:07

I want to bring it down now to the individual level. So we've talked a little bit about how um the five drivers can help in with sales teams, uh sales conversations, a little bit about how it can help from a leadership standpoint and aligning your team to your strategy and how you can reinforce the learning. Now, bringing it to like the personal impact. Um, you know, for someone that's not in the C-suite, how can how can thinking through uh, you know, with the five drivers in mind change how a person shows up at work? I'm I'm thinking in terms of their engagement and terms of their um how it can accelerate their career. You know, you do you have any stories or examples around hey, this this type of thinking can just change a lot of things for a person. Just curious your take. You can go any direction you want on that. I know it's kind of broad, but that's a great question on that.

SPEAKER_00 28:03

I you know, it's also interesting for the individual themselves to have them be thinking about up, down, and across. The idea is if as they understand the five drivers, their ability to have um more confident, more strategic conversations up, because as you communicate up, that's the kind of language that is expected for you to adopt as you're communicating up. But also as you're maybe communicating down if you're a frontline manager and you're trying to communicate down to the individual employee, to not only have a strategic and more financially confident conversation up, but being able to then translate what the executives are asking from the organization, how the executives are talking about the business performance of the company, and be able to translate that information down to the individual employee, or if you're an individual employee without people management responsibilities, being able to hear how the executives are speaking about the business performance and connect their roles to it is important. But I think that up and down, strategically minded up, more tactical and more um practical steps help then to connect uh how do I impact within my role in a day-to-day basis. Now, but it doesn't stop there. I think as you then interact with uh your peers in other functions, have an understanding about their uh uh their careabouts, their concerns, their priorities, better allows you to partner, better allows you to shepherd initiatives, better allows you to understand if I make a decision, how does that ripple affect you to positively and negatively someone else and help drive some of these initiatives and ideas that you have? And here's one example of this. So um there was a fortune, I think probably 70 uh client of ours where they had taken um kind of their um director level group through this year-long learning process. And we were a part of that year-long uh process. And I've been able to stay connected with the um uh, you know, the uh alumni of that group. And so that group was directors. Now a parts of that group are now group presidents of that company. And I was speaking to one of the group presidents in his reflection of the impact of that learning experience and and more particularly kind of where we had played in. And he had said a really kind of cool thing. He said, because he was in sales. Now he's a group president, but when he went through the session, he was a director of sales and he said, Ben, what the what the mindset that you brought allowed for me is that as soon as I um understood that as a salesperson, me pitching more sales, more sales, more sales, and assuming that that's a business case in and of itself to do what I'm asking for the organization to do, as soon as I realized that's an insufficient pitch, likely, but it needs to contemplate much more than just drive the top line, the more credibility I gained, the more I could connect the sales role to the cash flows of the company, the sales role and supporting of product launches and pricing initiatives and other operating efficiency initiatives to driving greater profitability of the business, driving operating efficiencies of the business, the more credibility, the more well-rounded of a business person I became, the more business uh trust I got from my peers, the better I could see a business idea through the lens of the five, not just through the one. It was always through a growth mindset, a growth, how we can ultimately drive more sales. But at the end of the day, you've got to be balancing all five. And the more he adopted that, the faster his progression as a career came into a group president's role. So it was really heartening to hear a little bit of how those five drivers really played a role for him and his career.

SPEAKER_01 32:21

That's amazing. Um, yeah, so this, I mean, this framework, it's not just theory, it's practic, it's it's a practical lens for in that example for for sales, as we've talked about, leadership, execution, and then on an individual level as well. So, Ben, this has been great uh talking with you about all this. If, you know, maybe just to end, uh, what what's one thing you hope every leader takes away from today's conversation? Or maybe not even necessarily a leader. Let's just say anyone that's listened to this conversation, is there a uh you know, maybe one takeaway that you would want to leave people with before we before we end?

SPEAKER_00 33:01

One of them is for me most people in any business have their sphere of control, and that's their job, and they're trying to drive as as much impact as they can within that sphere of control. That's fantastic. You gotta do it, right? And you want to bring excellence to your day-to-day responsibilities. What's what um I would ask someone to think about is how does excellence in that enable the company's ability to succeed? Most people don't tend to think about that. They think about if I do my job well, I'm assuming somewhere down the line it helps us succeed. But oftentimes they may be working on something, but it really is actually pushing toward a direction the company is actually not putting as its highest priority. But if they would have shaped a bit differently their approach that better aligns and adapted it that way, now there's much more either not only credibility, but much more business impact that everyone's rowing in the same direction. So that's one thing, which is how do I connect what I'm doing every day to business success? And at the same time, what could I do differently or more of in my role that would help me be more impactful to the business success of the company? That's one is thinking about my role and how it kind of links up and connect to that bigger picture. Second is I would argue that in using these five drivers, um, as you um uh as you're interacting with people, internal or external, think through before you meet with them which of the five do you think they are most focused on? What are their biggest priorities? Because uh people are looking for partners who can help them in their role. So the reality is oftentimes you come with how do I bring people and they can help me. But in a lot of ways, you can help them while you understand their priorities and you start to build some kind of linkage between what your priorities are and theirs, so as you assure that you're not working in isolation, that you're actually working together for the bigger picture. So think about it for you to the executive, to the enterprise, to the bigger picture, and you and those others that you work with. And how do you work better together using these five drivers to shepherd business impact in your role, which you'll ultimately see to the bigger picture and the kind of meaning and connection you and your team can feel, the satisfaction of the impact that you're having with your company and your customers can be fantastic. And we see it every day at Acuan Learning, the kind of impact those that understand this stuff, and then apply it in their role. The kind of impact and the satisfaction and meaning that comes when they can see the impact of their work is stunning and exciting.

SPEAKER_01 36:01

That's great. Thank you, Ben. Word words of wisdom from Ben and a great way to end. Thanks everyone for tuning in. We'll see you soon. Thanks, everybody.