Special Guest Dr. Andrea Hollingsworth

0:03 Thank you for joining us on the Winning and Selling Podcast on Professor Scott Plumb of the Minnesota Sales Institute and with me is Bill Hellkamp of Reach Development Systems. Selling and Compassion. Do these two concepts really fit together? Should a sales manager be a compassionate leader? And do they even have the capacity? These are interesting and difficult questions. If you want to find the answers, stay tuned as Scott and I welcome Dr. Andrea Hollingsworth, award winning author to discuss can compassion fuel sales success on episode 645 of the Winning and Selling Podcast.

0:37 It's great to have Andrea back on the show again. Before we get started with the conversation with her, there's no book club today. So next week we're going to be continuing with new sales simplified by Mike Weinberg. Just a couple weeks after that. Yeah, we'll wrap it up. Chapter 14, so it's coming timely with the calendar. And then the next book is, and I'm sure some of our listeners have read this, is The One Thing by Gary Keller.

1:12 And we'll start that as soon as we're done with new sales simplified. And that's Gary Keller of Keller Williams. Exactly, one of the founders. That's right, yeah. Before we get to our interview with Andrea, let's hear some expert selling advice on the sales tip from Anthony. And Joy and Learn from the Sales Tip from Anthony by Anthony Enorino, a highly respected international speaker, best selling author, entrepreneur and sales leader.

1:39 Hey, it's Anthony Enorino. Okay, another prompt for me. All difficult here at the end of this list. Best practices for delivering bad news. Listen, everybody's going to have bad news. So you have to go tell somebody we are giving you a 12% increase on our price. Or we're not going to be able to deliver this the way that we've delivered it in the past. So you have to say these things. And what I would want you to know is that everybody has to do this.

2:08 Your competitors have to do this. But even more than that, your customers have to do this. They have to give people price increases. They have to fire clients. They lose clients. So I wouldn't worry so much about delivering bad news. If you want to be a trusted advisor, if you want to be somebody that people look at as a consultative salesperson, then what you need to do is always be candid and tell them, we had to do this because without this investment, you're not going to get the same results that you got in the past.

2:42 And my job is to make sure that you do get those results that you need and that you get them in the same way that we've always done over the last two to three years. Okay, do good work. Don't be afraid to have this conversation. You need to know that your clients are having those same conversations with their clients and that's just how it goes. This is called economic adulthood. That's what it is. So if you're an adult, then you have to be able to have these conversations.

3:09 See me at thesalesblog.com or come out and say hello at LinkedIn. See you soon. We really bring up a good point and that's having tough conversations when things go bad. But if you really want to be that trusted advisor, I think it's important to be up front with people. I don't always like to say to be honest with you. I always like to be to be completely up front with you. You know where with you. This is a this is an eat the frog type of thing, right?

3:37 It is not going to get better. Bad news doesn't age well. Right. It's good stinkier and harder to deal with. So it's like a it's like a lead. It doesn't get better over time. So get out there and get it delivered and see what happens. Exactly. Exactly. All right. Well, I'm very excited to have Andrea back with us again. She is going to be talking about can compassion fuel sales success. She is the founder and CEO of Hollingsworth Consulting, author of the best selling and award winning book, The Compassionate Advantage, How Top Leaders Build More Humanizing Workplaces.

4:09 I think that's something we could all look forward to and a leading global expert on compassion and self compassion in life and leadership. Dr. Andrea spends most of her time inspiring leaders and teams to use the Compassionate Advantage to build supercharged organizations through cultures of care, especially in times of challenge and change. Andrea, welcome back to the Winning and Selling Podcast. It is such an honor to be here.

4:36 Thank you. Thank you both for inviting me back. I love talking to you. Oh, that's great. You're so kind. As Scott was saying, we don't generally have too many people that come back, but we were happy to have you back when you wrote this new book. Yeah. Well, I was listening to all of your intro stuff and you had this comment, bad news doesn't age well. And it got me thinking, I'm like, oh, there's this whole section I have in the book on how to have hard conversations with heart, how to be a compassionate leader, but then how to talk to somebody about mistakes or underperformance and things like that.

5:11 And so I thought maybe that's a direction that we could go if you want to build on that. But we can go wherever you want in this conversation. We're talking about sales and compassion. And I think there's a big connection between those two things. Well, I want to just acknowledge you just won three awards from the same book program, the Goody Book Business Book Awards. And that must be a great feeling. Yeah, it was pretty wild.

5:36 I was really surprised. I mean, I applied and I couldn't believe I got three. So I guess they made me something they call a top impact author. So what were the categories then that you received awards in? It was HR and leadership. It was psychology and health and it was psychology and wellness, well, well-being, emotional well-being. So well, this seems to be a pretty hot topic. Maybe people are so stressed out. We're coming out of COVID and still dealing with the ramifications of that.

6:09 What are you seeing that's really causing maybe this compassionate revolution? Yeah, you know, COVID was such a traumatizing time for all of us. And I think there's this wish that we all have that wouldn't it be great if all that was behind us, if all the hard stuff was just done and over with and we are, you know, back to the good times if they ever did exist. And, you know, our imagination of what it used to be like.

6:35 Exactly. It's always better looking back, right? But I don't know, doesn't it seem like this stuff just keeps coming at us. It keeps getting harder out there. There's, you know, of course politics. We've all been through a big, a big hula-bulu here in North America this year, but then there's the economy and there's mental health crisis and there's lots of hard stuff out there right now that's impacting people's ability to show up and be present, be effective, be productive, be high performing, you know, workers and salespeople just because of suffering.

7:15 What's that first noble truth, you know, of Buddhism is life is full of suffering and it just seems hard for a lot of folks right now. So that kind of like life sucks and then you die. Is that kind of the Buddha version of the bumper sticker? Pretty much. Yeah, that's another thing. Thanks for the uplift. Andrea, that's great. I know. I'm getting at that. What I like about this topic, Andrea, and our audience of salespeople, sales managers and business owners is when a salesperson acts in a compassionate way that I think they're really exercising empathy and when they exercise empathy, they're able to see a situation from a prospect's point of view.

7:54 And in doing that, they're really able to hopefully come upon an emotional solution that people love to buy, but you know, they hate to be sold and they justified intellectually. And that's one thing that I really like about your title and your topic is, you know, how can salespeople, you know, sales managers exercise more compassion? What are some of the tips that you can give them to implement the behavior? Yeah. Well, I just want to go back to the point you made and just emphasize it again that, you know, being able to really understand the needs of the client.

8:27 You know, compassion means to suffer with. It comes from the Latin roots of kum and pati to suffer with. When we think about selling something, think deeply about that, you're meeting a need that somebody has because some aspect of their life isn't optimal or maybe it sucks and you've got something that can actually help them, right? And so what I think, my proposal here, is that really developing the kind of attention and listening skills that's going to get you deeper into that need is going to help fuel a human connection in a relationship of trust, of genuine human care so that the sale is almost an afterthought because you are meeting a human need.

9:20 You are helping to alleviate suffering. You know, I was watching that. I just had a conference yesterday and we're working with very technical sellers and we tried to convince them you have to get into the motivation. You have to go beyond just the surface problem, how do I fix this thing? To what does it mean to you if we fix this thing? Yes, that's exactly what I'm talking about. So I was watching Shark Tank last night.

9:47 It's one of my guilty pleasures. I love Shark Tank. That's good. There was this family that came on and they got great funding. It was fun to watch. But they had developed a boogie board that was a tandem boogie board. And so interesting, two people could get on and ride the waves together. And this will connect with what we're talking about, I promise. We're going to go down the boogie board rabbit hole here, but that's okay.

10:13 Yeah, I know. I'll get there. I'll get there. That was because there are people out there who are afraid of the water and who are afraid of boogie boarding with big waves and they need somebody else on the board with them to help guide them into the water and give them assurance and help them. Now they developed this product and this is their sales pitch. It's around like, hey, for kids, for people who are not as confident in the water, this is your solution.

10:42 The confident person can't get on, the adult can get on, and then the kid can get on too. Or the person who's a little scared can get on too. And it's been wildly successful, this boogie board. Well, if you think about it from a sales and compassion vantage point, this family, there's probably a story where there was somebody who was scared to get on a boogie board. It's like, hey, why don't you come on with me? How can we develop this?

11:09 And they are tapping into a need. They're tapping into people's fears and they're tapping into people's needs to, you know, experience fun and to join their friends or their family despite their fears. And you know, it's been successful. So that's a story of really understanding a pain point at a very personal level and then being able to help solve a problem. And I think that's what it's about. You know, it's interesting because as you were going into that, I was thinking that you were going to make a metaphor for sales that this is what a good salesperson or good leader should do is not just yell instructions from the beach, right?

11:54 Yeah, that's great. But get on the problem with me and help me solve this together. Oh, that's beautiful, Bill. I love the direction that you took that works. That works really well too. Because you know, compassion is not the same as empathy. I don't talk about empathy as much as compassion because empathy just means to feel with somebody. You know, someone's on the struggle bus. Maybe you get on and you give them a hug, but then you get off the bus and they're still on the bus.

12:24 You're like, hope the hug helped. Compassion. Compassion gets in there. Yep, gives the hug. Empathy is part of it. But then it's like, let's figure out a way together to get you off this damn bus. You know? And so it's a process of helping to alleviate pain and suffering. Not just, you know, not just feeling it with a person. And I think, Bill, that's what you're talking about with a leadership from a leadership perspective.

12:49 If there's somebody on your team who maybe is struggling, there's underperformance, there are mistakes being made, there's a lack of confidence, maybe there's just a lack of understanding. It's a matter of, like you said, it's not barking orders from out here. You know, where all the action is happening. You better work harder. You better work harder. Exactly. It's like work harder. Yeah. But it takes time. It takes slowing down, doesn't it?

13:19 And that's the hard part. It takes slowing down, understanding what the pain points are, what the suffering is, you know, what the lack of knowledge is or confidence. And then really joining with that person so that you can teach them, mentor them, build a trusting relationship so that they can get that human connection going, which is going to give them the confidence they need to move forward. As you've studied this, is there a situation where something has caused us to lose compassion or because of changes in the world, we just need more compassion?

13:53 What is there kind of a change over time and how people are relating to each other that you've noticed? Yeah, there definitely is. One of the things that, I mean, the first thing that comes to mind is just the quality of our attention. Our attention gets hijacked every 10 seconds by these little black boxes. I'm holding up my belt right now. It's like all the bells and the lights and the whistles and the red dots. It just makes me feel like a caffeinated squirrel in a nut factory.

14:25 I can't focus on anything because these digital distractions are training my brain. They're in a different direction. So it takes, I think, so yeah, that's impacting our ability to simply listen, to ask good questions and to keep our attention present on people, to slow down our mind and just focus on one person, one problem, one need at a time. That's where the good stuff happens. We all think we're great at multitasking.

15:07 We suck. Computers are great at multitasking, but actually, we've not been created to multitask very well. We just bounce back and forth faster and faster between projects, right? We don't really multitask. There's not two things happening at once. We're just losing attention to try to recapture it someplace else. Exactly. One of the first steps of becoming a more compassionate leader, a more compassionate salesperson, I think is learning to train your attention in a different way so that you can see suffering, so that you can see problems, and so that you can tune into them, feel them, and then ask yourself, what can I do here to solve?

15:50 Because you're never going to see avenues for solving if you don't slow down and really focus on the problem. Bill and I did a nice full day program yesterday, and we talked about the relationship and how important it is to listen to a prospect. When you listen to a prospect, then you empathize and you have compassion and you care for them, that strengthens the relationship, and then that prospect knows that they can rely on that salesperson.

16:17 When they can rely on the salesperson, they feel more comfortable picking a risk and sometimes it's buying something that they've never bought before or it's replacing something that they bought from somebody else. That's how I really see compassion working in a conversation is really being attentive and listening. When you apply that with compassion, it's amazing what kind of answers you get to the questions. When you prepare for them, of course, you have to prepare for the interview and the conversation with questions.

16:41 I'm going to add on to that, Andrea. Yeah, one of my favorite philosophers is Simon Bey. She was a Jewish turned Roman Catholic 20th century philosopher and she has this profound question that she offers as one of the most profound questions you can ask someone, what are you going through? What are you going through? Now, there's many ways to ask that. It doesn't have to be those exact words, but I think there's such power in asking what are you going through and then stopping and listening and being able to then relay back what you're hearing.

17:23 So what are hearing is let's say that you're in the financial industry and you're working with clients on their retirement plans and maybe they got started a little bit too late. And you're doing some deep listening around how they're anxious about the future and they really need to fast track their investments or whatnot. If you can put in your own words back some of their anxieties and really restate to them, I hear you like you're worried about X, Y and Z.

17:57 At that point, they trust that you get it. You get exactly why they are suffering in their heart and in their mind and why they're losing sleep about when they think about their retirement. And at that point, you've got them. You've got a relationship with them. And then when you say, look, here are some of the very concrete tools and solutions that I can offer you that are going to help you. I want you to sleep better at night knowing that we're going to do all we can to build up this nest egg so that you're going to have a comfortable retirement and future.

18:35 And suddenly it's like, wow, this isn't just about an interview with a financial advisor. This is a human connection where you are solving very human problems because you took the time to really hear their worries and their anxieties. Yeah, I guess it matters which philosopher we choose because I kind of chose Yogi Berra and he said, when you come to a fork on the road, take it. Yes, you might be talking to deeper, thoughtful people than I am.

19:08 But thinking about sales management, one of the challenges we see in relation to compassion and being able to be as we create the metaphor on the boogie board with them, we see too many sales managers managing through metrics. They're looking at their computer, they're seeing how many leads are started and what those leads turn into and they've got their dashboard up there from sales force and then they're making phone calls and as we chuckled, work harder, work faster, get more deals, do more things and they're not really getting in there with them.

19:44 Doesn't it show compassion when we get side by side with that person and say, tell me what went on in your last sales call? What went well? What didn't go well? But just tell me about the metrics. Absolutely. Taking the time to sit down and have that conversation and foster that really human connection with that person, that's what's going to make them feel safe and supported because you can be sure that they know, they understand that there's under performance happening.

20:19 At this point, it might be good just to talk about how to have those difficult conversations when there's under performance. You want to go that direction? Sure, that's a great idea. Okay, I have a story to tell you to start this out. It's a true story. I've changed some details but my friend Kate is the CFO of a company that makes snack foods for kids and a while back a member of her team really screwed up royally. See when you're making snack foods for kids, there are certain ingredients that you can't include in the recipe because they're toxic and they're illegal.

20:56 While someone sent in an order, one of her employees sent in an order for all these snack foods, huge order to be made in their overseas manufacturing facility failed to notice the toxic ingredient. When the products arrived to the US shoreline, it was immediately discovered this toxic ingredient and the whole lot had to be confiscated and discarded. It was a $2 million oversight. Wow. Yeah, it's not a huge company and she's the CFO.

21:25 So I asked her, I'm like, Kate, how did you, she's a good friend of mine, how did you handle this meeting with this employee? You know, with this mistake that this employee made? And she said, well, I just follow my points for corrective conversations. And I was like, well, what are they? And so now I share them. I share them with people. Anybody who's needing to have a difficult conversation with a director port. So the first one she said, she gets all of her, she does catharsis first and elsewhere.

21:59 All of her swearing, all of her screaming, all of her kicking. If you're a sales manager and you're looking at these metrics and you're going, why, why, why? Do all of that elsewhere, not with the person. I've been in practice as a therapist for many years and you would be amazed at the number of people who have experienced verbal abuse at the hands of their manager. It's not okay. Oh, sure. Totally. Totally agree. But the second thing she says is she says, I have to have a difficult conversation with you.

22:37 And I really respect that because she doesn't beat her on the bush. Compassionate leaders say hard things and they don't flinch. It's like what Bill was saying earlier about bad news doesn't age well. I have to have a difficult conversation with you. Just say it. Good setup. The person knows anyway, just say it. I have to have a difficult conversation with you. And then she, the first question is she really, she asked them like, help me understand.

23:07 And she doesn't do it in a pejorative way. Sometimes there matters out there who like, help me understand. It's not like that. She really wants to know what are the factors at play? What happened here? In this case, my friend Kate learned there were some other people that should have been overseeing the ingredients list that were not doing that. And she had to have several other conversations. But I think when someone on your sales team isn't performing well, really saying, you know, help me, help me understand, you know, what are some of the roadblocks that are in your way that I can help remove so that you can perform at your best here.

23:50 And that leads me to another point. It's like, you don't reduce them to their underperformance or their mistake. You know, you see the best in them choosing to view, you see the best in people is really a powerful way to help them step into what they're capable of. And so she'll often say, she'll say, you know, we hired you for a reason. And that's another great phrase. We hired you for a reason because we see something in you and we know you have potential.

24:18 So what are the roadblocks standing in your way that can help you, you know, that I can help remove as your leader that can help you step into your best here? And then that's getting on the bogey board. That's like, you know, like we're going to do this together. Do you need more information? Do you need more confidence? Do you need to, you know, do you need to shadow me for a little bit and kind of learn about how I talk about our product?

24:47 What do you need? What are the roadblocks? And then finally, just show people how they can improve. What do you need to do to make the situation better? So going into this meeting with some very concrete things that they can do, not just like go sell more stuff. Like that's not, that's obvious. The person is trying to sell stuff. But getting much more granular about the things that they can do to develop themselves as a salesperson.

25:21 And maybe it is work on your attention. Maybe it is. Like I see you distract it all the time. You're always on your phone. You're, you know, you've got your head right. Where's your attention? You know, we'll work on that. Or maybe it's working on their listening skills. You know, you're always talking. You're always talking. What if, you know, let's work on listening, some listening skills. I don't know what it is. Sounds like so much of it, Andrea, is intent.

25:50 Yeah. Well, how do we go into that conversation? Do we go into that conversation with a customer to win and to make the sale no matter what? Or do we go into it to help them overcome whatever the issue is? Do we go into that conversation with somebody who's made a mistake with a, with a, an intent of demeaning them and making them feel bad about their mistake as a goal to, you won't ever make that mistake again because I made you feel so bad about it.

26:17 Or do we go into it with a, with an opportunity to say, here's a learning opportunity. Right? I remember his story. I think he was, might have been in how to win friends. It's in something. IBM had a vice president of South America that maybe lost, you know, millions of dollars on a deal and they called him back to New York and he thought he was going to get fired. He said, fire you. We just spent a couple of million dollars training you.

26:42 So why should, you know, when you lost that money, that was, that was part of the education program. So let's learn from that and move on. So it seems to have a lot to do with it. Absolutely. And you know, your comments raised another point, which is how powerful it can be in those conversations where the leader chooses to be vulnerable about their growth process. I, you know, I bet you as a leader, a manager, you've got some stories about, and about the bumps in the road that it took to get you to the point where you are.

27:18 And really normalizing the growth process can be a really, really powerful thing. And if you can find the courage to be vulnerable about some of your, some of your story and some of the mistakes that maybe you made as you learned, that's also a very humanizing and compassionate thing to do as a leader. And it just normalizes the process and it can give people confidence. That's great. Well, we're unfortunately coming up close to our time together.

27:46 I know Scott has a final question for you, but I just want to ask if there's one message you want people to remember from the book, what would it be? It would be a give yourself permission to care. Give yourself permission to care. There's this unspoken role in a lot of business life that were, you know, were strictly business. And you know, work isn't, isn't therapy, of course. That's not what I'm advocating. But I think, you know, there's so much research showing that when workplaces become more humanizing and when more personal, trusting, you know, connections are made between people at work, including between managers and their direct reports, it has a direct impact on the bottom

28:30 line. It translates into business success. And so give yourself that permission to care about people, especially the people on your team. Excellent. Thank you so much, Scott. You got one more question. I'm curious if you can just change, Andrea. I think you know what I'm going to ask. What book has had the biggest impact on your personal or professional life? I'm curious if the answer has changed. Oh, my goodness. You know, I wasn't predicting that book or I wasn't predicting that question.

28:55 Okay. I think last time I said, didn't I say something by Brené Brown? Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. You know, I would say it was actually, I am going to change my answer. I'm going to change my answer. And it was when I read The Color Purple by Alice Walker. Okay. Now that is the story of someone experiencing trauma and suffering and some people coming alongside of her throughout her life that uplifted her and brought her into the very best version of herself.

29:28 That's a synopsis of the story. Wow. But it's also anchored in a lot of faith. And at the end of the day, I think that to be a compassionate leader, there has to be a greater purpose and a bigger why for your compassion to suffer with. Is there an element of faith? Is there a bigger reason or a bigger force or a bigger power, you know, whether it's God or the universe or who, you know, whatever, whatever that can feel your why for being a compassionate salesperson, a compassionate leader?

29:59 Tap into that, ground yourself in that. It's so important. Wow. Great. Super great advice. Well, thank you so much for being with us on the show today. Just great information, great advice. And we want to make sure people can connect with you if they want to learn more. They want to get your book. Is there a link or a place we can send them? Absolutely. Just head on over to my website, Hollingsworth Consulting dot com.

30:25 And that's, I've got a book tab, but I also have a tab on my speaking and my consulting. All right, super. Hollingsworth Consulting dot com. So that's great. The great resource. Scott, you want to go into our golden nugget? Yeah, our golden nugget today is love and compassion are necessities, not luxuries without them. Humanity cannot survive by the Dalai Lama. That's appropriate for the topic and having Andrea on the show.

30:49 Yeah, that's great. Yeah, mine would be, if you don't know where you're going, you might wind up somewhere else and that's why you'd be better too. So if I could throw a third one in there in my morning reading today, I heard this great quote. I read this quote. We should not have a fear of failure, but of succeeding in the wrong things or the wrong direction by Francis Chan. That's like you might not, you might wind up someplace else.

31:17 It's the same word as Yogi bear, but he made it sound nicer. Be careful what you wish for. All right. All the information we talked about today, the links to Andrea's website is at winning at selling.com, winning at selling.com. This is episode 645 next week. Our topic is going to be educate them on what and we'll be doing the book club new sales simplified by Mike Weinberg chapter 14. So please subscribe and share this podcast with your colleagues and on social media.

31:48 Go out and get better one skill at a time. Joyful selling.