Episode 2: Managing Expectations When Operations Can't Stop

When operations are under pressure, managing customer expectations becomes just as important as solving the problem itself. 

Join Vince Enright, CGO at Sentinel, and James Silberstein, Head of Commercial at Trivest, as they discuss communication, trust, and what separates service providers that customers trust from those they simply use.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:11

This is episode two of Access Granted. Um, very excited to have you here, James. I think um what we want to talk about today really is about um customers' expectations. Want to get into a good conversation about what that actually means, the difference between what they expect versus what we think they expect, all that fun stuff. Um, we'll kind of see where it goes, but I think to kick us off, why don't we start with you giving just a brief introduction or a long introduction, whatever you feel like today, and uh who you are, where you're from, and what you do.

SPEAKER_04 0:45

Thanks, Fenn. So I'll try to keep it relatively brief. So, James Silverstein, I'm the head of commercial for uh Tribest partners. I wear a couple of different hats uh within that role. So I help lead our portfolio support group, which is our ops group that that support the companies within our portfolio. And then I also um do some of the commercial work within the portfolio. So I get to work with folks like Vince on our executive teams on everything from code market strategy, marketing, sales, pricing, revops. Um, and then the last part of my job is that I lead the commercial function internally. So TriVest Business Development, TriVest Marketing, TriVest RevOps. So I'm in this position where I have to give advice, but I also have to take it.

SPEAKER_00 1:32

And how long have you been with TriVest for?

SPEAKER_04 1:34

Been with TriVest for four years. And then prior to that, I was doing revenue growth consulting for a number of private equity firms. And then uh originally I started my career in in business development and sales and marketing.

SPEAKER_01 1:49

Right. That's a lot.

SPEAKER_04 1:52

Yeah, very, very uh densely packed.

SPEAKER_00 1:55

It is, it is. Well, that's good. I think you're kind of the the perfect guy to have in this conversation, James. And I know certainly over the past, I guess, almost 17, 18 months or so um that we've been working closely together. Um, we've had many conversations um on a bunch of different topics. So, you know, as as these podcasts continue to evolve, I find it's always it's interesting trying to figure out who we want to talk to. You're one of these guys, so I think you know, insert topic here. We could probably get into it and have a real interesting conversation on a number of different ones. But today, uh today you get to be uh you you you get to sit down and talk about um expectations with us. So let's just dig dig right in. Um as I mentioned, just kind of conversational. We'll go back and forth and kind of see where it takes us. Um all right. So when we when when we throw out this term kind of customer expectations, specifically related to the service industry, what what do you think people are actually talking about?

SPEAKER_01 2:58

What are they referring to?

SPEAKER_04 3:01

You know, it's a good question. I think probably in general, people as you used it, writ large, don't think enough about customer expectations. This is probably true of us, uh true of all of us in our personal lives as well. It's kind of the professional version of the Dale Carnegie, you know, if you want to be interested and be interested. Uh, I think we could all benefit more from thinking about our customers and the way that they likely perceive us as service providers and partners. When I talk about customer segment or customer expectations with our companies, I'm really talking about two things, which is value proposition, what is the actual thing that you're delivering, uh, and why does it matter? And then the consistent communication of it. So it's really both of those parts. And what I mean by that is when you think about customer expectations, uh I'm giving you some amount of resourcing in return for a good or service. That's really the value proposition. And it's contextualized, of course, by how unique it is in the market, how much I need that product or service, um, so forth and so on. But then I think the part that a lot of people end up missing is the constant communication of it. And again, this is kind of having that reflexive uh instinct to engage with your customers and think about things from their point of view. So if I am, if I say that I'm going to deliver something to you as part of the value proposition, how do I make sure that at every stage you know where I am in that delivery, how I've delivered things, that you have the visibility and transparency you need to know if I'm holding up my end of the commitment? Because your end is very tangible. You're giving me money. So I need to figure out some way to get as close as possible to that same tangibility from my side as a provider.

SPEAKER_00 4:50

Okay, that that's super interesting. Like, what what do you think we miss there? So when I think of, you know, I'll put put ourselves, we're we're a service provider. What do you think most of us miss, you know, as it relates to that? I think the communication piece you spoke about um is really, really interesting because what what what I've seen, and I'm not, I don't want to answer my own question here, it sounds like I am, um, but what I've seen is you know, our ability to communicate tends to potentially lessen um throughout that sales transaction. And certainly after you know, maybe the quotes come back and it's signed off and we've performed work, uh, there's still a relationship there, there's still an expectation. So, what do you think it is that we miss um from a from a service provider perspective there?

SPEAKER_04 5:39

Yeah, two two big misses, and you nodded at one of them. So the first, but I'll go in in sort of reverse order here. The first is this idea of making the implicit explicit. I have rarely run into a service provider where I've thought, yep, they did a good enough job creating clarity in their customer environment. You are almost guaranteed to be under-communicating to your customer. Uh, and that doesn't necessarily mean that you need to be sending the push notifications all the time or you need to sort of set a priority for yourself to be top of their inbox. It's more having this uh this kind of sensibility that you never want your customer to have to ask what's happening in the relationship. And whether that comes from explicit communications, whether that comes from publicly available dashboards, um, or you know, whatever your mechanism is, just making sure that at every stage, if the customer needs the information, they never have to go searching for it. That feels sort of directly available to them. And I think if you, you know, I think if you audit your processes, you'll find that that most service providers are falling short of that standard, uh, which is honestly great news because that means you can differentiate yourself by rising to the standard. The second piece is the one that you nodded at, which is we often see a lot of focus on customer expectations, communicating effectively against them, and communicating effectively against them at the beginning of the sales process, right? So we're very clear in our marketing material. And then when we get into the discovery phase of sales, you tend to have salespeople fairly well drilled on well, this is what you can expect when you sign up with Sentinel or whatever company it is here. And then eventually we move into the contracting phase. And what you see from really good salespeople is that they continue to reiterate the customer expectations. There's this old hat in um consult in the consulting world where you go, tell them what you're gonna tell them, tell them, and then tell them what you told them. And I feel like good salespeople just consistently recycle that, uh, where the customer is never sort of out of sorts in terms of what's happening, why am I doing this? Why is this important? What do I need to communicate to my bosses, et cetera? However, where almost all organizations fall off, uh, particularly those providing some sort of physical service where maybe this motion isn't quite as native, is what you said in the account management side. It's what happens after the ink is dry when you're onboarding a customer, and then ultimately when you're continuing to build that customer relationship post facto, how do you make sure that you're maintaining customer intimacy, that again, you're in a situation where a customer never has to ask what's going on, you're never unsure of how the customer is feeling from your side. That's what creates the predictability and revenue, it's what creates the strong customer relationships, it's ultimately what creates a differentiated business.

SPEAKER_00 8:41

Yeah, it's super interesting. There's two things I kind of picked up there. One, when you talked about you never want the customer to kind of ask what's happening. Um I I just sent this out to our Salesforce three weeks ago. I talked to our regional VPs about this. Um it's so important that we get out in front of the customers with our sales reps. I've been using this one, you know, I don't know if it's a technique. I think it's just something I like to do for my entire career and I won't stop doing it. When you're out with the sales folks in front of the customer, um, you get to experience just that. Is the customer the one driving that conversation? Asking your sales reps for, hey, where are we at with this? You said you said you were gonna get me this quote back within 48 hours. Where are we at with this? Our supplier was delayed on that, or is it reversed? Are our reps the ones in tune with what that customer is expecting and providing that information? That to me is a very, very easy way to find out the I don't want to necessarily say the quality of sales rep because I think that's a broad net to cast, but certainly how in tune they are with that specific customer.

SPEAKER_04 10:00

You know, it's it's such an interesting uh framing, and I it spurs two thoughts. The first is if you have any doubt about how important this is, if you've had to manage people before, think about the ones who you enjoy getting on the phone with, who generally get good performance reviews, et cetera. You know, we had we both got to work with Jeff Miranda, who's on a very talented guy on my team. And one of the things that I love about Jeff is he's got six million things going on. He comes to me with here's the five things that need every week, here's the five things that need your attention, what I need from you, and exactly where I'm stuck. That makes it so easy to move the ball forward. And so you think about it, if you have a customer, they're looking for that same sort of leadership, because that's really what it is, uh, from you. The second thing that I'll say there is every once in a while, you'll be a service provider in a business where the customer knows as much or more than you do about the service or the product. But that's pretty rare. Most of the time, because you do you you live and breathe this in a different way, you know more about your product or service than the customer does. And so if you go into a meeting with uh, you know, a construction manager or somebody who's managing a big build or something like that, the the overhead door piece is a part of their day. It's your whole day, right? And so what they are looking for implicitly is your authority. They are hoping that you come into the situation and go, Vince, this is how you should be thinking about this problem. This is the reason you're running into the challenges that you're running into. And here's what we're gonna do about it together. The reason that customer intimacy or setting the right customer expectations and managing them is so important is not just because it's an easier way to do business, but it's because it's the easy signal that you should be trusted, that you have credibility in the interaction as a whole. If I come in and I'm disorganized and you don't know where things stand and you need to pull them out of me, then my credibility, not just as a business partner, but as somebody who knows what they're talking about with regards to that specific product or service, is compromised. And the flip side is I can convey a ton of credibility that I get to borrow in the specific content area if I just am hyper-professional and do a good job of managing relationships.

SPEAKER_00 12:33

100%. And we're, I mean, the the beautiful thing about what you just said there is we're in control of that. Yeah. Right? It's not, and I understand there are there are some folks that are, I can see this in our platform who are inherently organized and and and planners. And there's some folks who are not, but there's nothing stopping us from becoming that, right? It's just a muscle we need to develop. Um, so it's uh to me, that's low-hanging fruit. It's that minimum, you know, viable product that I think we can all adopt from a sales perspective with our with our customers.

SPEAKER_04 13:07

Well, and I'm I'm curious, Vince, because you you had to scale very, very quickly. And one thing we talked about a lot was how do you drive success and performance at a team where you don't get to directly affect the outcome? You know, occasionally you're in big customer meetings, but the the vast majority of your success is dependent on getting other people to raise to a certain standard. What was important to you in sort of manifesting that reality?

SPEAKER_00 13:39

Yeah, I think the first the first thing which would have been the case no matter what, um, irregardless of industry, in irregardless of the amount of time, um, was finding the right people. First and foremost, none of this is possible without being able to look across my sales organization and say, all right, the brilliant jerks, we found a place for them to go, which wasn't in our platform. And I can confidently say we've got more good human beings than we have, you know, the whatever else we want to classify them. So that was the first thing is just really trying to find great people and then certainly simplifying what the ask was. We were not asking people to, hey, you need to create a pipeline of accounts, and that pipeline needs to generate you know, X amount of millions of dollars, and your conversion percentage needs to be Y. Oh, and by the way, we need to focus on service and preventative maintenance and installation, and don't forget, oh, these product training. It was no, we we simplified it all down to two metrics it was 10% organic sales growth and 80% recurring revenue. We hammered that in, and I have our oddly enough, this was not scripted, but we had our we have it everywhere. So that's what success looked like for our folks. And then because we, you know, I you know, in my opinion, anyway, we are winning the quality of sales rep out in the market versus our competitors. Um you know, we just had such a, I think, and still have such a great advantage where our folks know what success looks like. Um, the outcome, um, you know, whether they land the contract or whether they don't, um, the outcome we're we're gonna deal with. But what we get to control is we get to control, you know, certainly from my perspective, making sure I've got the right players at the right positions. We we we let them know what success looks like, and then you know we we get out there and we get to work. So it was really trying to simplify things as as much as we could because I think for us with all the different brands we have, all the acquisitions happening month over month over month, there there is a you know baked-in ability for distraction. Yeah, and that is just there's nothing worse you can do for salespeople than distract them.

SPEAKER_04 16:08

And I think that's you know, working closely together, that was one of your superpowers, which was really being the shield for all of that incoming noise and making it very simple for people. And you know, I know we talked about the ways in which you might eventually add more sophistication to the performance management and so forth. But I just I always loved your very simple, very codified, as you showed on the the coaster there, uh thing of we've got these two metrics, we're gonna go win that. And then, you know, from there we can make evaluations. But it just kept everyone focused at a time that could have been, you know, pretty tumultuous.

SPEAKER_00 16:47

Oh, for sure. Yeah. Okay, so here's a switch gears a little bit. When you think of again the customers in the service industry, and perhaps you know, we can we can broaden the scope there a little bit. How do you think over the last four to five years their expectations have changed? And then let's get into what we think is really driving that uh either the need for change or just the change in general.

SPEAKER_02 17:16

Yeah. I think I think the core has not changed, right?

SPEAKER_04 17:25

There it's not as though all of a sudden, you know, Jeff Bezos used to have this great thing of uh I I try to think in 10-year horizons about what's not gonna change. People are never gonna want slower delivery, higher prices, that sort of thing. So I can kind of aim at the inversions of those. And I think similarly, it's like people want good customer relationships, they want to like the person that's sitting across from them, and ultimately they want to have a good, defensible product uh that helps them do their job effectively. However, I think expectations in general for the level of service that you receive are higher. And they're higher for a couple of reasons. One, uh, we have distributed access. So you guys have a, you know, you're still a little bit in the um geographically bound game, right? You have to be close in order to do your work, but the world writ large doesn't have to be anymore, right? You can order products or materials from anywhere in the world. You can get it at your doorstep the next day, right? Because speaking of Amazon, that's the that's the sort of Amazon problem that they virus that they've infected the world with. And also information is instant, right? I I can sort of go to this thing in my pocket and instantly find out anything that I need. And certainly AI has amplified that. And so you have this externality in terms of the way that customers think about their service providers, which is I am used to now fast, specific, and best in breed. And so, because of that, you have this, you know, sort of increased burden of customer expectation. So it's the sort of things I mentioned dashboards earlier, where it's like you want to have quantitative visibility for your customers. You know, we see a lot more of that than we used to uh five years ago, a sort of shared uh uh dashboard or repository where customers can see exactly the performance or the the whereabouts or whatever the their sort of key metric or information is of how their service provider is performing. I think there's a lot more because uh because you can text people, because you can email them, because that's such a sort of normal way of responding to people now, because the pandemic increased the sort of rate of virtual contact. I think there's a lot more. If I have a question, I expect instant response to this. And again, that's some of the AI customer service stuff has certainly uh accelerated this as well. However, all of that being said, whenever you have a system and that you have either external or internal uh inputs that change, it changes where the the constraints are, it changes where the opportunities are, it changes where the table stakes are. What we just talked about is the table stakes rising. One thing that I think is interesting to point out here is that I've also noticed across our businesses that the opportunity for being likable and a highly sort of connection-oriented person has increased. And you talked about uh getting the brilliant jerks out of the organization. You know, maybe there's a sort of moral dimension to that, but more specifically now, I think there is a real business case for it in a way that's even more salient than it used to be, because we just don't have as many friends. We're more disconnected from people. The trust, you know, the sort of trust barrier has gone up. And if you have some, and we kind of live in this constantly sort of moving, fast-paced transactional world. I think if you get people who can really connect with other people, who make that a core part of the way that they operate, there's a the sort of starvation for that. And, you know, I've seen it pay dividends, dividends, I'll embarrass you. For you personally, I think that's a that's been a big weapon for you. Uh, but I I also just see it at our companies that that sort of being like nice and generous with other people is has been a real winning strategy.

SPEAKER_00 21:38

Yeah, being kind is never a bad business strategy.

SPEAKER_04 21:41

It really isn't. It's not. And it never has been, but like especially now because of the counter things.

SPEAKER_00 21:47

Yeah, I think it's interesting. You know, what I've seen in in our industry specifically, right? The dock and door, you know, primarily service business. Um certainly from a technology perspective, we Are not Uber, Amazon, we're not there yet. Um, some of our branches are are further ahead than others, but that does not appear to be the secret sauce. So where we have a more robust set of technology or stack of technology where we do have the ability to communicate quicker, whether that's updates that, hey, our technician is on the way, um, get invoices out quicker, that doesn't necessarily translate to more profitability for us if we're missing that high level of authentic, genuine customer service on all sides of that customer experience, whether it's the human answering the phone, whether it's the sales rep going in to address the problem, the technician who shows up at the back door. So, what what I've seen again is is service still trumps. Now, what what I what is happening is that gap is it's quickly, quickly lessening. Um so the the expectations of that customer are okay, yes, hey, I love your service. I pick up the phone, the technician shows up, they do a great job, they're a good human being. However, you know, I can't have 35 weeks for you to send me an invoice.

SPEAKER_02 23:23

Right, right.

SPEAKER_00 23:24

So that it's the the the the race is getting a little closer. Um, and then the other thing I think that was interesting, and you brought up AI. I I I'm noticing this bit of a opportunity for you know, almost call it like an analog focus, where it's there's certain things where we can lean into the human side of it, you know, really saying, yeah, we're gonna we're gonna adopt AI to help us with the speed of what we can do for certain levels of of you know transactional communication. But if we couple that with old fashioned showing up at your door, knowing what's important to you, you know, I'm not bringing I'm not you brought up Jeff, I'm not bringing Jeff a uh a set of Patriots tickets because he's gonna kill me. I have to get him some crappy ravens tickets. So knowing what's important to our customer, um, you know, the way that I feel, I I think that's we've lost a little bit of that over the years. Um, but yeah, that that combination of getting the tools and the technology we have to provide certain things at a uh a higher rate while still kind of almost considered slowing down a little bit to understand our customer and what's important to them is I think that's a special sauce.

SPEAKER_04 24:43

That last sentence is I think the most important one that you've said. One thing that AI has done is it has obliterated the scarcity of information, and it is starting to railroad the ability to build, right? You think about quad code and some of the other AI tools out there, you can now spin things up very quickly. And so it used to be that the real sort of challenge of differentiation was what can I do that other people can't do? And I have found now that it is much more about selection. What do I what should I be doing with this sort of abundance that I have? And an area that almost every company that we have seen misses at one level or another is they do not talk to their customers enough. You have to be talking to your customers. Do not build a product, a service, a process that nobody asked for and nobody wants.

SPEAKER_00 26:05

Our whole business is built on something going wrong, right? Right? That's the business. Doors not working, it's minus 40 out. Come fix the door, right? So the ability to have a conversation outside of the the transactional part of the business, just sit down and say, Hey, if we were to, what do you think about this? And get their input. Yeah, as long as you've got as long as you're speaking and asking those questions to the right people at that business, which again, that's that's our job as salespeople to just make sure are we selling the door to the person who has the ability to buy the door? That's probably an important first step. But what a great conversation to have. So much easier.

SPEAKER_03 26:50

Yeah, great.

SPEAKER_00 26:52

Okay. Um let's talk about kind of expectations and how those tend to break down. So where you know, from from your perspective, where do you see a lot of these expectations? Um and and I guess the resulting customer relationships, where do you see those breaking down most often?

SPEAKER_04 27:16

Yeah, so I think let's try to do an order of operations here because we've we've been talking a lot about the customer interaction. The the most upstream variable here is the product or service quality itself. And if you have an issue in the way that you are actually delivering the product or service, that is the number one thing that's gonna run you off the road. I say that because I don't want anybody to go, well, I've built a beautiful distribution system and I don't understand why revenue is solved because you have a have an upstream issue. But assuming that you you solve that, then I think the the big categories of breakdown are uh cultural and uh well, I'll say maybe three, cultural uh process and uh lack of intimacy with the the market or the customer. And so we'll sort of take those in in order. The cultural one is well, I'll go in reverse order. So lack of intimacy with the the product or the customer or market is what we talked about a little bit earlier, which is if you just don't know how the market is changing underneath you, if you don't know how customer expectations are changing, if you don't know to use your example that it's no longer acceptable to send an invoice three months after uh work was completed, you will run into issues there. And that's just sort of a cadence issue. Uh, and it sort of leads into the second one, a process, which is you want to structurally raise the floor, right? Particularly if you have a big distributed sales team. You want to make sure that you have processes in place where people are interacting with customers based on their priority level a certain number of times a year, that they have a set way of interacting with customers, that you basically aren't making mistakes or having breakdowns uh just out of sort of lack of organization. And I'm kind of talking through that quickly, but that honestly is the biggest issue that we see across our companies. It's it's not sort of a lack of goodwill or effort or anything. It's just it is hard to manage complex systems. And if you don't have good, rigorous organization around it, if you don't have managers that are trained how to implement uh performance management uh processes effectively, you're just inevitably going to run into scale issues. And I think that's honestly something that you pointed out pretty early with Sentinel that we worked a lot on is how do you have the right systems in place to deliver you, Vince, the data that you need in order to drive performance management throughout the systems? And then in parallel, you were working with all of your reports to make sure that they knew, hey, this is what good management of a territory looks like, this is what good management of an individual looks like, so forth. So that's sort of the key second one. The first one is you just lose touch with the market. The second one is you just don't have rigorous enough organization in place to be able to catch all of the things going on. And you do a group of good things, but it's just insufficient at the scale that you want to be at. The third one is cultural, which you guys have never had a problem with it. And I don't know if it's your your sort of uh Canadian pathos or or where it comes from, but I genuinely meet a lot of people who do not care about their customers. And I don't mean they don't care if their customers pay them money, I mean they do not have a meaningful empathy for their customers. And when I moved into more leadership roles, I was working with an executive coach who gave me a great trick. And she said, when you get on the phone with somebody, if they're a direct report or um, you know, the equivalent of a customer in my world or something like that, you need to go in with the mindset of you are their biggest fan. You want them to succeed more than anything. And she's like, Because if you try to teach, if you try to remind yourself of the mechanics of good leadership, or you try to remind yourself of the mechanics of sort of good customer interaction, you're gonna be screwed. It's like taking somebody step by step through a golf screen. It's like you can't do it. There, if your brain just doesn't work that way. So you need some sort of subconscious shortcut. What she said to me is you're everybody's biggest thing. And that just puts you in kind of the mindset of I'm gonna do whatever it takes to deliver for you. And I think it's easy. I've been a salesperson. You get on the phone and somebody is talking about the problems they have, and it's your fault, maybe fairly, maybe not. And you know, it's one of 14 calls that you have that day, and you're late and you're hungry, and all of this kind of stuff. And your instinct just naturally is to be like, I just get me through this problem. And you have to have this sort of constant refrain of, I am your biggest fan, or I am here to solve your problems, or the customer is what matters most within the company, because that's how you sort of get to this institutional level buy-in of we are here to solve problems for our customers. And if you want to talk about jumping from a transactional uh client relationship to a true, nearly immovable partner, it's about developing that level of I want you to succeed.

SPEAKER_00 32:53

I think you that's so much you hit on there. I think it's it's really interesting as I look at our different branches, and our most successful branch, which is five minutes up the road, um gets more customer complaints than anyone else, yeah, which is amazing. And they're not customer complaints to say we're leaving, you're horrible. It's they're calling to let us know that something didn't go as it was expected. What more do you want? Yeah, that is exactly what we want because the worst thing that could happen is we make a mistake, which we know we're gonna make, right? We all make mistakes, and our customers also make mistakes and know we make mistakes. Sure, there's a there's a ceiling to how many of those we're we're allowed to make in a certain time frame, but the worst thing that could happen is one of those mistakes you know happens and they don't call us and they don't let us know because now we lose the ability to fix it if we can, but certainly learn from it. And then to your point, okay, is this a was this a cultural issue where someone just ignored it or they made a made a poor decision? Was this a lack of process? Um but what what what an opportunity it is for us to find out when things are going wrong, yeah. Um, you know, uh we all love compliments, it's great, sure. But if we're sitting in a room and all we're getting is you know people telling us how amazing we are, yeah, we're in the wrong room.

SPEAKER_04 34:33

Yeah. A hundred percent. I mean, you're a dad, you're a more experienced dad than I am, but we're both dads, and you know with your kids, problems are opportunities. Now, you know, in both environments, you don't want so many problems that like that's all you're dealing with, but you also don't want no friction because to your point, the friction is the learning opportunities and it's also the communication opportunities to strengthen your relationship, be that professional or personal, to you know, show a better way of going forward and to demonstrate to the other party also that you're going to be there regardless. And you said, you know, you don't want your customer not calling you in the same way, you don't want your kid not calling you if there's a problem.

SPEAKER_00 35:13

Absolutely. Yeah, and you know what's really interesting too is you think about processes for us, right? We are a platform that has scaled very quickly, we're going to continue to scale. Yeah, that inherently means the processes we have today are going to need to evolve as the business evolves. So there needs to be underlying processes around that. So we're going to our customers and saying, Hey, Mr. and Mrs. Customer, I know this has been working. However, this is going to be the new way we're going to be doing this. And hopefully, to get back what we talked about earlier, hopefully we've connected or consulted with some of those customers first to make sure we're not changing for the sake of changing, but changing in a way that's going to be beneficial to them, beneficial to us. I think sometimes we forget that in this process mapping where we sit down and it's, yep, finance needs this and operations needs this, and our coordinators need that, and check and have we talked to the customer?

SPEAKER_04 36:14

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 36:15

Probably an important step.

SPEAKER_04 36:17

I I mean, such a good point, Vince. And it this the whole thing of self-surgery is really hard. Uh it, you know, I have enough self-awareness to know that I don't have as much self-awareness as I would like to have. But if you ask the right person the right question, you don't have to do self-surgery. They'll tell you. And that's how you keep evolving.

SPEAKER_00 36:39

For sure. Okay, here's a we'll try to make this one a quick hitter, but I got a hunch it'll turn into another good conversation like we've had. Um what is worse for uh the trust with us and our customers?

SPEAKER_01 36:56

Executing poorly or communicating poorly.

SPEAKER_04 37:02

Uh executing poorly is punished more, but over a longer time frame. Communicating poorly will be punished quickly. Because again, it is it is generally difficult to switch providers, which is sort of the ultimate punishment, right? If you're a service provider that a client can deliver you under normal circumstances. And so what they will attack is they will go after communication earlier because it feels like a betrayal of trust that's worth addressing, and they're going to want to get involved with it before having to do the sort of full disconnection of we're going to cut ties. And so the reason that I say that is you cannot get away with a bad product or service, like we talked about, uh, over an extended period of time. And great communication, but great communication will buy you time. However, if you don't have good communication, as soon as you have a blip in your product or service, you're going to be punished for it. Because somebody doesn't know what's going on. They don't know if you feel the thing. You know, it's the they feel like a victim. They're trying to transfer some of the victimhood to you because it's just like, this thing hurt, you hurt me. Why are you not saying anything? Like there's just a very basic sort of mammalian reaction there. And so I think it's the sort of thing where it's like, look, if you could only fix one, fix your product or service first, because that's upstream of everything else. But that's also tapes things. And particularly in a service business like yours, you can win the day on having great communication.

SPEAKER_00 38:54

Yeah, no, it's a good point. What what about maybe a situation where you think we can lose trust with a customer? And I guess this is going to speak to the communication piece where we've we've nailed the technical side of it, right? The product is on time as prescribed, performs, yay. How like can you maybe speak to situations where you can see trust still eroding, even though it's like, yeah, it's a great product, but we didn't perform?

SPEAKER_04 39:21

Yeah, that's a that's a great question. Uh so I I think there's a basic communication element to it. I would say in general, when you are selling somebody something, they have a boss to whom they're reporting. And the number one way that you can lose trust is by putting them in a position that makes them vulnerable to their boss. And so if you are late responding to everything, if they don't have clarity about when something is coming or what's going on, if they don't have cost transparency, if they don't know what next steps in a process are, these are all sorts of things where you can be executing perfectly. But if their boss comes to them with a question that they can't immediately get an answer to and that makes them feel vulnerable, you're in big trouble.

SPEAKER_00 40:10

Yeah, that's uh, you know, that really does come down to um, you know, how curious are you as a salesperson? Yes. And as an organization, um are we arming you with the tools you need to be able to ask the right questions? I I think I I got told a long time ago any salesperson worth their salt can ask a good question. It's the second, the third, the fourth question that really you know sets the the high performers um you know in a league of their own versus the average salespeople. And it and it really is are you interested? Um, you you you brought up earlier being being their biggest fan. Okay, well, what does that mean? Yeah, if I was sitting at my home office right now, we know what that would mean. That would be Tom Brady everywhere, yeah. And so there's things I know about that individual because I'm a fan, I'm curious, I'm interested in it. And it's not a it's not a manufactured curiosity, which as a customer is probably my biggest pet peeve. I can deal with you know, a mistake or gets dented, um, you know, my meal is cold. I I can deal with that stuff. What I cannot deal with is that inauthentic individual where you know they're trying. I I guess people always you know refer to that sleazy car salesman, these car salesman. That that's one thing I cannot deal with. I can literally deal with anything else. You don't know how to sell anything, you're a good human being, you're genuinely interested and curious in people, we can figure it out.

SPEAKER_04 41:51

I love the Tom Brady example, even though I don't love Tom Brady, because Interview. You wouldn't, I mean, it would, you'd have a million questions. And it's because of that deep curiosity. And I think that's why it's so important to go in with the mindset of I am your biggest fan. I want nothing more than for you to succeed, because it it drives the curiosity that, as you pointed out correctly, is the kind of precedent to being a good partner.

SPEAKER_00 42:32

And that I know that's not what this conversation is about, but as leaders in businesses, whether it's sales or or any department, you've got to get rid of those. I call them brilliant jerks. You have to, if you've got a great performer or an average performer or below performer, whatever, um and and they fundamentally are that negative, toxic individual, yeah, you cannot win in the long short term, long term, you know, sure we could argue there, but ultimately, if your organization, and I'll let's just talk to sales here. If if my sales organization today were to look at people inside their branch and say, that guy or girl is just they're just mean, they don't live the values, um, they don't they don't care about customers, it's they just do what they want and we allow that to exist. Well, that's the standard. So then our ability to now go and try to, hey, we want you to be curious and ask questions. Well, why should I? Because you need me to do it, but it's okay for this person not to. It is there's I I could argue there's no bigger decision, yeah, you know, if you're in a business that relies on people.

SPEAKER_04 44:00

We have talked about on more than one occasion the importance of the business model and the strategy aligning. And that can take on a bunch of different forms. But basically, what it means here is it doesn't matter how brilliant a thing is in the abstract. You know, you have the most charismatic, smart, individual salesperson. If they don't fit what you're trying to do, if they don't fit your strategy, they will not succeed because you are going to set up your institutions in a way that are not sort of synchronous with their skills or not harmonious with their skills. And I think that's something that's really, really hard, particularly for more junior, less experienced leaders, to apprehend, to have the confidence to move people out of their the org who may be a players, but if they're not the right A players for you, even if it's not, they're not malicious, it's but if it's just not culturally right, they will not be successful. And you know, we talked about sports earlier, but you can think of any number of examples where it's like the collection of great talent was insufficient for success.

SPEAKER_00 45:18

Yeah, it's it's so important, and it's it's important to define that. What I've noticed in this industry um is it's important to teach people, leaders, how to insert skill here. In this case, how do you identify you know what great looks like? And not just from a definition perspective, that's easy enough, put it on a piece of paper. Here it is, great. That's no different than slapping some values on a wall. Yay! Yeah, you should live them now, right? They're on the wall. Nope. It comes down to like what are those actions? What are the things that people need to do and or not do to be a part of this team? Yeah, it's the training the people, investing time, dollars, um, into that is it's it's one of those things where you what ends up happening if you don't, you run into an issue down the road, and then oh well, I wish I would have. Yeah, yeah. So yeah, no, it's an important piece. Okay, we've got a couple minutes left here. I got a few more questions. I'm gonna try to narrow them down to the ones that uh that I think we can we can finish on a high note with. So when you think about our our customers, and let's just we'll say our our kind of dock and door business. So a lot of these big facility managers, what is one piece of advice you would give them today? If you could brought, you know, you could send out a message to all of them as it relates to this conversation we've had around expectations. One piece of advice you would give to all these facility managers across the country.

SPEAKER_02 47:02

So these are people who are advice for people who are buying from Santa. That's right. That's interesting. Um relationships are two-way streets.

SPEAKER_04 47:22

And when you get into a buying and selling dynamic, I think it is easy to forget that if you're the seller. Occasionally, you know, you're I'm sorry, if you're the buyer. Occasionally, you know, we have circumstances where there's such a scarcity of resources that buyers are are very aware that that they need to, they're in a two-way relationship. But you will get, if you're a buyer, you will get better prices, better service, better customer relationships, more fulfilling time spent, all of the things that you would want to get. Um by being a good customer, doesn't mean you need to relent on you know, valuation or the things that matter to you or standards or anything like that. But in the same way that we're asking our sellers to um be on time and deliver clear expectations and so forth, it's extremely frustrating uh for a seller if a buyer doesn't reciprocate that. And you will get preferential treatment just naturally if you are a good buyer.

SPEAKER_01 48:28

I like that.

SPEAKER_00 48:29

It's a good piece of advice. Okay. Well, James, I want to always great connecting with you. I know this was a little more structured than we we typically have done over the past year and change. Um, but we really do appreciate you taking some time today to chat with us. Uh, any last thoughts you have before we sign off?

SPEAKER_04 48:50

I'll just recall something that you said at the beginning, which is that this is a controllable variable. There is so much in the world that is out of your control. And I think both in reality but certainly in perception, the rate of things that are the rate and weight of things that are out of your control feels like it's accelerating. I mean, that that's the when you live in a more global world, a connected world, a world where now AI is this sort of uh emergent super force, it is really easy to feel like you're just getting kind of tossed around. If you can anchor yourself and your organizations on something like I'm always going to be my customer's biggest fan, or we have a certain standard in the way that we deliver uh customer service or the way that we set customer expectations, those are the sorts of things that not only are evergreen and sort of value levers that you can control, but also create these kind of cultural lodestones that center the business and give you a sort of more steady progression.

SPEAKER_00 50:08

Could not agree more, sir. All right. Well, again, thanks for your time, James. And I appreciate it. This is our second episode of Access Granted. We got more to come. So I really do appreciate you taking the time out today.

SPEAKER_04 50:19

Of course, Vince, it's always great to see you.

SPEAKER_00 50:21

All right, take care of