Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Professionals owning their calendars. That is a giant point of friction for people. Because when it comes down to time management, if you are weak in that area and it falls in line with the. With the prepare, plan, practice and play, if you don't take that time and you just have all this white space on your calendar where it's not deliberate and intentional, you're going to get nowhere.
[00:00:25] Speaker B: I'm Dennis Sorensen and this is the Think Big Win Bigger podcast. This is the podcast for sales leaders and salespeople who know they're capable of more and are looking for a system that is predictable, repeatable, scalable and forecastable for growth. It's not theories, it's not motivational speeches. It's an ambitious way to operate your business.
Hello and welcome back to the Think Big Win Bigger podcast. I'm your host, Dennis Sorensen and today's episode kicks off a first part of a two part conversation with my good friend, Blaine Civbey. I've had the pleasure of getting to know and work with Blaine over the past several years and I've appreciated his approaches to leadership and to problem solving.
He has a unique perspective that was shaped by his experience in the United States Marine Corps where he served as an officer and as well as his current role as the Chief Revenue Officer at Zenith Roofing.
[00:01:22] Speaker C: One of the biggest ideas that I
[00:01:24] Speaker B: learned from Blaine and have taken and applied in our work here at Horizons west is the concept of at the point of friction. And throughout the conversation, Blaine and I will explore what that means and how it applies to sales and sales leadership and why identifying and removing points of friction from your sale as well as your sales system is really key to the growth of the organization. I think you're going to enjoy this conversation. So let's jump into part one with my friend, Blaine Civbey.
[00:01:52] Speaker C: Blaine, thank you for being here and really glad to have you.
[00:01:56] Speaker A: Really excited to be here, Dennis. I appreciate it. What an opportunity. Always a good time to connect.
Thank you very much.
[00:02:03] Speaker C: I have really enjoyed our time working together and getting to know you. And one of the key takeaways for me from the time that we spent working together was this concept of the point of friction or at the point of friction that you taught me. And it's something that I've adopted as sort of a motto for our Horizons west company. And the reason that it really resonated with me was I think that so many times in sales organizations there are all these points of friction throughout the sale or the sales process that sales individuals or individual Contributors have to deal with that. Sales managers have to deal with. You know, and it's just inherent to businesses and to companies all these different points of friction that they encounter. And that's one of the reasons why it resonated with me was that I really think about what we do at Horizons west in that we try to engage with our clients and help them to really remove those points of friction from their sales process and their sales operations. So I'd love, love it if you would just maybe share with the audience the concept of the point of friction and where that came from for you and how it applies for you in what you do.
[00:03:23] Speaker A: The point of friction, it comes from MCDP Tac1, which is a Marine Corps warfighting publication, and it's in war fighting. It's the very first thing that we learn as young lieutenants when we go to the basic school. And basically where it comes from and it's the point of friction is any place, system, a moment, or a decision maker that really, it's like where weakness is applied. Okay. And it's where we want to create a disproportionate disruption to the enemy. But sometimes that enemy can be ourselves. And the way that I've always applied this is, I mean, let me ask you, like, what do we as salespeople constantly focus on making our number right on sales? Right. Sales is a fuel item, the way that I look at it. And that's something that I learned in this program with the National Roofing Contractors association called Future Executives Institute. Great professor out there at Kellogg, and he had this whole class about fuel versus friction. And sales is a fuel item. We're constantly focused on it. What we tend not to focus on enough is the friction. And that friction, you know, based on Marine Corps World, is anything that makes the seemingly easy very difficult or the seemingly difficult virtually impossible. And so, and when we think about these things and applying it to our positions and whatnot, you know, what are the things? And we talked about this in ambition planning. Right. You know, what has to be true, there were no obstacles in the way. I mean, every obstacle that we talk about, those are points of friction, whether, you know, and I'll apply it to me. In my industry, we have a lot of transitions between getting an opportunity to just getting a proposal and then finally a sale. So when I'm dealing with stuff like that, and I'll explain that process as, you know, a salesperson or a business development person creates an opportunity. They have to qualify it. That qualification step, in and of itself can Be a point of friction if you have a weak salesperson who is not taking the time when we talk about our four P's right. You know, they're really not taking that time to plan. That in and of itself becomes a point of friction because you've now wasted time, effort and money and it becomes an obstacle in and of yourself. The trickle effects down the line is a chain reaction of events that can be virtually catastrophic for an organization, for a, for a salesperson's career, anything, just because we are not focused on those enough.
[00:06:09] Speaker C: One of the things I think is I thought about it at, as I said, the individual seller level and I thought about it as the sales leader level.
And then like I said, even at the level of the CEO of the company, thinking about how as a seller do you best address or remove those points of friction? How, as a sales leader do you best address and remove those points of friction? How did you do it yourself in your own sales career and how do you do it as a sales leader?
[00:06:43] Speaker A: I think for me, as an individual seller, when I started doing that was I noticed all these transitional pieces which I deal with leaks.
And every transition, whether it's on a roof or a wall or building, whatever it is, is a weak point in the building and it is a potential leak. It is the same in any system that we operate in. And that is a leak of information, It's a leak of communication. Whatever it is, something is leaking out there. And that becomes a point of friction for everybody involved. So what I mean by that is so I, the other sellers on the team were reliant on somebody else to go and look at an issue, somebody else to diagnose it, somebody else to then estimate it, somebody else then to propose it. And then, then they just had to deliver this package. Hopefully they knew what they were talking about. Hopefully they knew and understood the customer's pain point beyond. Well, they got a leak in their building.
So I took that on board and I said, I have to learn this stuff. I got to know what is going on here. And I went out and I did all the technical stuff myself. I learned, took that upon myself to learn it. I took my, my time to learn how to made it not only for my own personal growth and whatnot, and the future leader of the company, but it was important for me that you know the old adage, knowledge is power. Okay? And if you know your product and you know your service, you're going to be so much more confident in your ability to deliver that message and understand what is going on with that customer and why it's important to them. And then after that you build your body and rapport and you have your relationship and whatnot. And it's really kind of easy from there as long as you're taking care of business. And that's how I did it as an individual seller. Now at the sales leader level, it's harder. The organization has grown, it's become more complex. Lots of friction there because now we're dealing with the human element, you know, whether that is personalities, conflicting, different skill levels, you name it. I mean, these are all obstacles in the way that I have to overcome and I have to have to look at it and say, okay, where's our time best spent? Because what's going to, what's going to make us the most money at the end of the day? So it's a, it's a constant reevaluation and balancing process. But I'm always looking for ways to really cut down those, those transitions between information because that just seems to be where the rub is, the interface between departments or systems. So if we can cut that stuff out and make it more fluid and seamless, then you're going to have a better process and it's going to be able to be easier to close the deal.
[00:09:28] Speaker C: What do you think some of the almost self imposed points of friction are from, from a sales perspective or from a sales management perspective?
[00:09:39] Speaker A: Something that you talked to me about and I have it written down in the notes and it was about professionals owning their calendars. Okay. That is a giant point of friction for people. Because when it comes down to time management, if you are weak in that area and you are not, and it falls in line with the, with the prepare plan, practice and play, right? If you don't take that time and you just have all this white space on your calendar where it's not deliberate and intentional, you're going to get nowhere. You're going to be that, that duck underwater looking calm and cool, but on the, on the, underneath the water, you're just flapping away. I recently watched the Replacements last weekend and that was a Gene Hackman line that he talked about. Footsteps Falco.
[00:10:26] Speaker C: You know, if you get an example of that that you can share with as an example from where you've seen, where you've seen that happen with any of your sellers or with yourself as a seller.
[00:10:38] Speaker A: Yes, I've seen that time and time again. And I'm going to continue to harp on the 4PS because it is something that, you know, you taught to me and that I have embodied. And I talk about and preach to my team all the time about not spending too much time in play when you don't own your calendar and you're not taking that deliberate approach to sit there and look at your top 25, your white space accounts and whatnot, and coming up with a strategy on how you're going to attack these things and doing your research with your clients or prospects, I think that that becomes a point of friction itself, because what ends up happening is. And this is in my line of work, and I'm sure there's lots of others out there in the audience that feel this way. I'm in a service industry. I'm not.
It's. I'm lucky in the sense that they have a problem already. I have the expertise to fix it. Okay? It's not like while there's a lot of competition out there, really, they rely on us for trust, to trust us as consultants and whatnot. And as professionals, I have the benefit of being in a company that's been around for 46 years. So in all honesty, it shouldn't be that hard for me to sell them anything. But if you don't do your planning and preparation and your qualifying steps, you end up wasting a bunch of time. And so with our model and the way the transitions go between handing it off to a technical expert and somebody going out there to estimate it, you create a point of friction internally. Okay? And what I mean by that is, is somebody calls and say, hey, I need a bid for this. Okay, yeah, that's great. Let's get out there and give them a bid, guys. Go, team, go. Right? But do they ever buy anything? When you start looking at people's numbers and how much stuff that they're putting out there versus what they're actually bringing in, you know, you start to get a trend. And it's all because they may have the. The pipeline, but. But it's a weak pipeline. And is it a. You know, then you look at their weighted pipeline, things like that. I think all these things become points of friction because now your team doesn't believe in you anymore. And once you've lost the confidence of the team, they are no longer to willing. Willing to be a jock strap and support you.
They just don't want to do that for you anymore because it's a waste of their time, it's a waste of their effort because they think that you're garbage. So that in and of itself becomes a point of friction because now you've lost You've lost credibility.
[00:13:02] Speaker C: One of the things that I think about is, you know, I've said this over and over again to my sales teams is, you know, sales is just math. And you know, what I mean by that is sales is really a numbers game in a lot of different ways. It's a numbers game in terms of an individual in their pipeline. Right. And making sure that they've got the pipeline coverage that they need. And then what you mentioned a minute ago about having really a good weighted pipeline.
And I've had a couple of different people who've said to me, no, no, sales. Sales isn't about math. It's. It's about relationships. And, and I've said to them, well, well, how do you build a relationship? And they, they said, well, you, you. You basically do this and you do this and you do this and you do this. And I think about it in terms of, of, you know, what I said to him was, well, basically what you're telling me is you, you add together a number of really important things and they're like, yes. And I, like, that's how. Why I think about it in terms of math. And then when we do things that, you know, we make mistakes or we do things with the customer, that sets us back. Well, that's subtraction. We're subtracting from that relationship or we're adding to that relationship. Sometimes we can multiply that relationship.
So, like, one of the things as you were talking about the pipeline and those activities is I was thinking about this concept of sales math, and I wondered what, what your thoughts were on what I just shared.
[00:14:30] Speaker A: No, I think that's a great point. And as you were talking, I'm sitting there thinking, okay, talking about building a relationship and the steps that it takes. And the first time you go and have a meeting with them, a lot of times that might be a lunch and who's paying. And that's part of that math, you know, and that investment into that relationship. And do you ever do any other activity outside of business with them?
There's all kinds of stuff that we're doing to build that relationship. And I love that point. And I'm sitting there thinking in my mind, like, how do I capture this in a CRM, right? Like, how do I capture individual investment of time, money and effort?
I think that's awesome. Thank you for that. That little revelation for me.
I couldn't agree more. Bottom line. And I think that you have to continue down that path because we always say at zenith, we are a relationship based Company.
I am a firm believer with you that sales is a numbers game. And I've never really quite merged the two.
So how do you do that and how do you calculate that? What is this? And I think that going into our white space analysis and whatnot, what is the total potential for each account and what is it going to take? So when you take all that stuff, all that time and energy and the lunches and the dinners and whatever it else that you're doing to spend time with these people and build relationships on a personal and professional level, going out and presenting, I mean, that's a, that's an investment of time and energy too. That's company money that's being spent. That's an expenditure. So the, the time that it takes to drive there and the fuel that it takes to get there, all these things go into that sales math. So thank you for getting me down that road. And I think it's going to keep me up at night now until I crack this nut.
[00:16:32] Speaker C: You can add it to your notebook.
[00:16:34] Speaker A: I love it. I love it.
[00:16:35] Speaker C: Because in my mind, and you know, I'll bring it back to, I'll bring it back to kind of the topic of the point of friction. Because the first thing that you're doing in that relationship building is you're removing friction. You're removing friction in that relationship with the customer. So in my mind, that building of a relationship starts to remove friction because you know as well as I do,
[00:17:02] Speaker B: when you're first cold calling or first,
[00:17:05] Speaker C: you know, whether it's on the phone or you're walking into a business to talk to them, you know, the very first thing you get is friction. In most cases you run into, you get to a receptionist or you get to that gatekeeper who's going to, who's gonna try to stop you. And that's friction in my mind in the sale. And so, you know, it's you as a seller having the skills to be able to recognize it as friction. And 2 then have strategies for how you're going to overcome or remove that friction. And so as you were talking about relationship building, in my mind it's about removing friction from the sale. So like when you were saying, you know, thinking about how you inspected in your CRM system, I was thinking, well, in my mind, how we would inspect it would be through our RPA process. Because in my mind it goes back to activity.
So is the seller doing the things that they need to be doing? Are they adding together a set of activities that are going to lead to a Certain outcome. If. Or are they just randomly conducting activity that's not going to add up to anything or that's the living in play part that you and I talked about a little bit ago. You know, are they just living in play or are they adding together the right kinds of activities? So one, you can inspect it in that activity.
That's one of the reasons why I think inspecting activity is a very important part of the results pipeline activity accountability meeting. But then the other place that you can see it then is in that pipeline because it's, you know, once somebody's got a really good qualified pipeline, in my mind, it's then about their ability to progress that pipeline and what they're doing to progress. It is they're. Then they're adding together again another set of the right activities which remove friction from the sale and continue to move it through the process or through the sales motion. You know, the various steps and stages that we need to take, take in the sale, to move through, create, advance and close of the sale.
[00:19:19] Speaker A: I love that. And a quick plug for you. I mean, I gotta say something that you've always done really well here and for me specifically, just in terms of how I internalize things, is you create compartmentalized labels on stuff to where you can identify it later. Like just talking about the numbers and then the sales math and then talking about this activity and what kind of activity it is really important because you can really lose momentum if you're not taking the time to have quality activity and inspecting that. And it's something that I just think that maybe because again, we're focused on the fuel and if we don't take that deep dive as a sales leader like you're talking about into the activity and actually inspecting it. Now, the Marine Corps term, inspect what you expect, right? And that's how you're going to get the results that you want. But if you don't do that, then how do you really know? If you're just looking at it from a baseline and saying, okay, well, you've made 50 calls this week, you've done this many appointments, but you don't get anywhere beyond the surface level of that, you're going to have a big issue. And I think that's so important the way that you just talked about that. So it's something that I'm going to be able to talk to more eloquently, I guess, with my team just filling the space with good activity and quality activity and looking at it and saying, how much time are you actually investing in what are you doing for this investment to be successful? That was really good. Thanks, Dennis. Thank you.
[00:20:58] Speaker C: You're welcome. I had the opportunity to work with another company, and I had just, I walked in and met their, their new sales leader, and this individual had come and revamped their compensation plan.
There were several things in that new comp plan that I thought were problematic.
And one of the things that really stood out to me was that he had changed the compensation plan to not pay the sales reps on the result or the close of the sale. He had changed the comp plan to start to pay the reps based on how many meetings they scheduled.
And I'm sorry, it made me laugh again. I.
When I heard that, I thought, well, that's exactly what he's going to get, is a bunch of meetings. And it won't matter.
It won't matter if those meetings ever result in anything or if they're any quality.
It's just you're going to end up with, you know, a whole bunch of meetings. And while you were talking just a second ago, that's what came to my mind was that interaction.
Would that individual say it? Because again, what I want to be looking for in activity is 1. Is the activity progressing? So am I adding 1 plus 1 plus 1 plus 1 plus 1? So the activity is progressing and my outcome is increasing, or do I just have a random set of ones that aren't really being added together? So, living in play.
And so I think connecting what, you know about the point of friction to that whole exercise is the activity that the sales rep is performing.
Is that activity removing friction in the sale, or is the activity creating more friction in the sale? I mean, so, so there's kind of two different areas in my mind. One is, are you removing, you know, friction?
Another is, are you creating more friction? And then really the third track is your activity just not doing anything?
Is it just not. It's not removing or adding friction to the cell. So it's just sort of that living in play.
[00:23:17] Speaker A: I think that is a recipe for disaster and so many levels, because I immediately start looking at the human element of, of greed, right? And I mean, if they're getting paid on these things, what's the stop people from being like, hey, you know, you got a meeting with your buddy, hey, book me a meeting with this guy, this guy, this guy, and I'll. I'll spiff you on these things. You know, I mean, that'll sink in organization. But that. To the, to your next point of making sure that you're moving forward, going to. Going back to friction with that. So, I mean, one of the core messages here that I would say about removing friction is, you know, the organization that maintains the initiative usually can control the outcome. So you're only going to maintain the initiative if you gain momentum and continue moving forward. You can't just stay in the same spot and pray that the results are going to be there. It's got to be leaning forward. You got to be trying to attack the objective and you got to be able to close it. And the other thing that going back to what we were talking about, like that initial first meeting, I remember hearing a guest on your show a couple episodes back, and he had said this really resonated with me. And it was because I always heard this and he said it, and it was, people do business with those that they like, okay? And so you can be liked and you can make a good impression on that first meeting or whatever it is. That's a point of friction. But the next level down, right, to go deeper to that is people do business with those that they trust, and earning that trust is a big point of friction. You might have surface level trust, right? However, you got to really garner that and work to gain true trust and confidence in yourself as a rep or as an organization and whatnot. And it can be destroyed pretty quickly. So that is a level of friction that I'd like to talk about or just mention because I think it's really important to remove that. And that's a place that. That's at very beginning of the sales process when you're meeting with folks that you want them to trust you and know that you are reliable and dependable.
[00:25:37] Speaker C: How do you think you establish that trust?
[00:25:40] Speaker A: For me, I think being number one, obviously, being personable with people and being able to connect with them in different ways, I mean, you have to build the old Sandler bonding and rapport, I think. As for sales reps, right, you want to be genuinely curious about them and their business. Something that I just try to practice, and I practice this even in my personal life. I mean, I try not to talk about myself and I try to ask about them or their business or their industry. How did you get into that? What's the story here? Just understanding where this came from or I'm always genuinely interested in, you know, the jobs that you don't really know about that make the world turn is sort of how I phrase it. There's so many things out there that you have no idea even exist. And when you Come across that. It's interesting to me because there's so much nuance to everything. There's similarities, but there's differences.
So. And I like to understand about those differences. And then just being in our line of work, right, you ask about, well, what's what.
What kind of. What kind of issues do you deal with? You know, I think I'm always at looking for people's pain just naturally because of what we do. So. And people like to talk about that and sometimes it becomes a venting session for them, little therapeutic. I mean, have you ever felt that you find yourself in those kind of conversations with people?
[00:27:10] Speaker B: I have.
[00:27:10] Speaker C: And I think that. I think that you said it a minute ago when you said you have to be genuinely curious.
And so I think there's two parts to that. So one is you gotta be genuine.
They gotta feel that you actually have their best interest at heart. So that's gotta come across that you're not there.
[00:27:32] Speaker B: I mean, certainly we're all there to
[00:27:35] Speaker C: be able to make the sale that we want to make. But I think that, that the client or the customer's got to know that you're genuinely interested in them having a really good outcome from whatever the interaction is that results from the sale.
And I think the other part that you said is curious. And I think that curiosity is an absolutely critical skill and criteria for really good sellers. Because I think that you're absolutely right when you say you get, you know, genuinely curious because it's that curiosity that really just sort of says I never can really know enough about the customer's business.
And so I'm constantly going to be looking for ways to learn more either from them or from, you know, things I learn in the industry or things that I hear from competitors or things that I hear from competitors of theirs. Like, I'm constantly going to be wanting to learn as much as I can about their situation so that I can be more effective in really helping them. And then in my mind, that's what builds that trust, is that the outcome from that. Is that really that trust that the outcome that you create if really what you're trying to do is bring value. And value comes from, in your world, delivering a really great service and performance in the work that you guys do. I think that, you know, you. You got their trust, you earned their trust in order to get that opportunity. And then when you have the opportunity, you actually did what you said you would do, and you did it in the way that you said you would do it. And that's. That sort of then completes the equation that solidifies that level of trust in that relationship.
[00:29:27] Speaker B: Thank you for joining us for this episode of the podcast. Special thanks to my good friend and special guest Blaine Sibby from Zenith Roofing. Look forward to having you all back on the next episode of the Think Big, Win Bigger podcast. Until then, just win.
