Critically acclaimed as the leading expert on the power of business relationships, Ed Wallace speaks for companies and organizations around the world with a client list that is a Who’s Who of Fortune 500 companies. Ed is the #1 bestselling author of The Relationship Engine and has written three other books on the power of relationship capital – Business Relationships That Last, Creating Relational Capital, and Fares to Friends. In addition, Ed is currently on the executive education faculty of Drexel University’s LeBow College of Business and Villanova University’s Masters in Human Resources program.
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Applying Relational Capital: Make every interaction with your customers truly matter With Ed Wallace
When it comes to relationships and transforming contacts into relationships, this is the guy. We have a lot of awesome content today, and I recommend that you grab your notebook and take notes. If you’re listening to this in the car, hit pause and record voice memos because this is some great stuff. Before we jump into it, I haven’t heard the story yet, so you have to tell me this story about The Rolling Stones. You opened for them?
Yes. I actually opened for The Rolling Stones once and I’ve never played a note of music in my life! First of all, Curtis, it’s great to be here with you and your audience, and I appreciate the chance to spend this time with everyone and talk about relational or relationship capital. We’ll get into all that. I give a lot of keynote speeches, and we have talked about that. I was invited to do one in Las Vegas at the Bellagio, which is always my favorite spot. My wife, Laurie, she rarely travels with me because I’ve been doing this a long time and I said, “Hey, come on out. It’s just three days. I’m working one hour.” So she agreed to come along with me. We headed out to Vegas, and on the day of my speech, I started at 3:00 in the afternoon and finished at 4:00. We had lunch together, and I left her for the casino or something. I headed over to prepare, because I had to get miked up and they had to do the sound check and all that stuff. It’s a big ballroom, it’s for a large association, and it’s the conclusion of their conference.
Sometimes I kick off, sometimes I close; this day I was closing. So I’m on from 3:00 to 4:00. I got there and the fellow who hired me, his name is Clark, shows up and he says, “You’re never going to believe this.” He said, “But you’re going to get interrupted by the end of your speech.” I’m like, “Why is that a good thing Clark?” He said, “The Rolling Stones are doing a soundcheck rehearsal right on the other side of the ballroom wall where you’re speaking.” I’m like, “No.” He goes, “Yeah.” I go, “No way.” He goes, “Way. Call your better half, have her come down here. You’re going to hear them playing right after you’re done talking.” So I text Laurie and I said, “Hey, The Rolling Stones are right behind me at four o’clock today, come down.” And she goes, “No way.” I go, “Way.”
Now I’m giving my speech, it’s around four o’clock and Laurie shows up in the back of the room. She’s heard my speech so many times and she’s like… I could tell she was waiting; she came away from the table and there is no Rolling Stones. I gave my close to my speech and now I’m book signing, and she’s sitting next to me, totally not wanting to meet all these conference people. When I finish signing the last book, about a half an hour later, all of a sudden the song “Tumbling Dice” comes through the walls, as if we were right there on the stage with them. They’re talking to each other in between songs, you can hear their voices. So cool, it was just my wife and I; there’s no one else around.
They opened up one of the doors in the back of the wall and I saw the back of Ronnie Wood’s head. They played two more songs and they’re finished. My wife was duly impressed with me, and after all these years, she says, “You know what? You should put that on your speaking page.” I said, “What?” She said, “You should put that you opened for The Rolling Stones. You did.”
I did. I opened for them. I think on my LinkedIn page, we say, ask Ed about when he opened for The Rolling Stones. If we don’t, it should be on there. That’s how I opened. That’s my Rolling Stones story. This close to being famous.
What a great story. One of the things I want to share with the audience is that you’re actually the first podcast guest who asked to have a meeting prior to our podcast. That was really cool because you’re a relationship guy. Because of that initial meeting, it’s like we know each other after having a nice chat. I do appreciate that big time. There were pieces of a story, regarding relationship capital, helping businesses and individuals, involving a taxi cab. I know that you’re awesome with stories. If you don’t mind sharing either a condensed story or whatever you want to do, that story will help our audience understand the path that you’ve taken here.
Of course. Well, it’s interesting, all kidding aside, to comment on your point, let’s talk about the five steps of a business relationship. The first of the five steps to personal relationships, is finding something in common. We call it establishing common ground.
I wanted to get to know you a little bit. I was very impressed with your business, Appreciation Marketing®. It’s so aligned with what we talk about and what we do in our training. Really, I’m glad to hear that. I wish more people did that because you’re a delightful guy, a lot of fun. I know our relationship is going to extend beyond this podcast. But anyway, to your question, it all started in 1990. I had a lot less gray hair in 1990, and I wasn’t wearing glasses and I’m a CPA by education. Did you know that Curtis?
No, I did not.
And did you know I’m in recovery?
In recovery?
That’s an entire other story. They don’t get any funnier than that one. But anyway, part of my recovery process from being an accountant was I took a job in sales, and the company I worked for gave me a territory in the Midwest. Now, I live in Philadelphia, so I had to get to my territory every single weekend, at least three times a month. I set up a schedule. I would leave my house at 5:00 AM, take a taxi to the airport, get to Chicago. You pick up an hour, spend Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday in Chicago, come back Thursday afternoon. Pretty much the same routine every single week. One week it might be Michigan, one week it might be Minneapolis, one week it might be St. Louis, whatever. The reason I got up so early and left early, was our first son, Brett, was a newborn and he was just starting to sleep through the night. Anybody who has kids, nieces, nephews, we all know, Curtis, right? You don’t want to interrupt that process. I would try to get out of the house before anything happened.
It’s a typical Tuesday morning, I’m packing my bag, it’s almost 5:00 AM. We have the screen door open. I get distracted and the taxi driver comes and he rings the doorbell. I sprint to the door and our house was really small so it was like two steps. I gave him the hi sign. He didn’t ring again and just took my roller bag, started wheeling it down the path towards the taxi. I paused to see that Laurie’s asleep, Brett’s asleep; okay. I gently closed the door behind me, and we’re off to a great start on this beautiful Tuesday summer day in Philly.
Now, I’m used to taking a cab company called the Bennett Taxi Cab Service, a big white, American-built taxi. If you can picture a big white car with the Bennett logo in green on the door, right? I’m walking down the driveway, I’m waiting to see the Bennett cab. This guy shows up in a London taxi. If you can picture one of the black London taxi cabs in a suburb of Philadelphia, pretty cool, right?
As I get to the cab, he’s holding the door open for me. None of the drivers ever did that! They either came up and tried to disturb the baby and went back to the car or just blew the horn. He’s holding the door. and as he closed the door and came around, I noticed several things that were pretty distinctive about this cab that has me talking to you at this moment, all these years later.
First thing I noticed was the cab was really clean. I had been taking Bennett cabs, and Bennett was a wonderful family business, but sometimes the door pockets were sticky, the seats had cracked plastic vinyl with duct tape all over them, the duct tape stuck to your pants. This London cab had spotless, beautiful leather seats, lots of legroom, no dispatcher, no radio, no sports talk station. On the seat next to me, Curtis, he had a little plastic bottle of water. This guy thought of everything. I think he invented Uber before Uber, right?
As he came around, he got in, he immediately turned and introduced himself, extended his hand and said, “Good morning Ed, my name is Max. How are you doing today?” As I reached for Max’s hand, I’m wondering, gee, how did he get my name? Now we’re heading down the road to the airport. It’s about a half an hour ride. Max starts asking me questions, “Ed, what do you do?” “I’m in sales.” “What do you sell?” “Software.” “Where do you do that?” “In the Midwest?” All typical questions that a semi-interested driver might ask. Now, remember, I’m in sales, and here’s his fourth question. “Ed, do you have a sales territory or do you sell to a name that counts? Do you have a sales territory or do you…” Curtis, what do you think I’m thinking when I get asked that question by a cab driver? There’s audience participation, Curtis. You have to come join the story.
I would be kind of shocked that a cab driver would be asking that type of question.
He got my attention though. I said, “I have a territory Max.” He goes, “Well, tell me about your quota.” “My quota? I’ve got one.” He goes, “Well, I’m sure you do. How was it constructed?” “Well, what do you mean?” “Well, how much of your business comes from new business and how much comes from existing friends? Are you a hunter or a farmer?”
Now, as you probably know, hunting and farming was not even in mainstream sales training yet and this guy is using these terms. I said, “I’m supposed to be a hunter Max. The cupboard’s kind of bare, I’ve tried the customer formula, it’s not working out for me. I’m thinking about going back into accounting.” He said, “Ed, why is that happening to you?” I said, “Well, I don’t know. I just have so many things going on.”
I said, “Max, what’s the secret to success?” And he held his fingers this far apart and he said, “It’s the little extras that turn fares into friends.”
We arrived at the airport. I gave him a great tip, and said, “Max, that was awesome. I’ll see you next Tuesday at 5:00 AM, just assuming I can get back in your car.” Max looked kind of sad, and said, “I’m really sorry. I can’t take you next week.” I’m like, “Well, how come? I mean, did I offend you?” “Oh no.” He said, “I have a lot of fares and I have a lot of friends and new friends; it takes me a few weeks to work them into the rotation.” “Rotation for a 5:00 AM ride in the summertime in Philly when everybody’s at the Jersey Shore?” He replied, “I have a lot of friends, Ed.” “So when are you available?” He replied,
“Curtis, if I were to ask you, do you like to be sold by someone or do you like to buy stuff, what would you say?”
I like to buy stuff.
We all like to buy stuff. None of us likes to be sold anything. Was Max selling or was I buying after one ride? Everything we talk about when it comes to relationships, is, how do we create an experience for the customer? This doesn’t matter if you’re in sales. It could be if you’re a business leader, you’re a manager, you run a team in some company; what kind of experience are you creating that creates success for you through the experience you create for other people? That’s what I learned from Max.
Fast forward, I’ll finish the story. Two and a half weeks later, Max shows up. Oh, by the way, I had to travel on a Thursday instead of my Tuesday and it was the Thursday of Labor Day week, which meant I had to come back on the busiest Friday of the summer, but I took it when he offered it.
We’re in the car, I start asking him, “Who fills up your cab? Why did I have to wait so…” Well, he’s a pretty humble guy so, “Come on, Max.” He goes, “Well, all local executives ride around with me and I get to pick up their colleagues when they come to town.” “Who else Max?” “Salespeople like you going back and forth to the airport, when families go on vacation, the kids love to ride with uncle Max. Sometimes children are afraid to fly and I try to make it fun for them and I become so busy.”
Now here’s a sales rep who’s not doing anything and I’m not busy and this guy’s driving a taxi, a commoditized, regulated business, right? I’m selling sophisticated software and he said, “I started the tour business for elderly people from the nursing homes on the weekends.” I’m like, “Oh my gosh, he’s a good citizen too, right? He’s not just a good salesman.” That’s when I asked him… I said, “Max, you said the secret to success last time was the little things that turn fares into friends. Is it the beautiful taxi cab, is it the pleasant conversation, is it the knowledge of sales and the questions you ask?” I listed five or six other things. and Curtis, his answer was yes.
A collection of all of it.
A collection of all those things. When I think about your business, I know we’re not here to talk about your business, but I was so attracted to your business because one of the things we talk about in, actually, a couple of my books back here, is about the personalized note.
A lot of times people love that idea, right? Now sometimes because of the environment, you can’t do personalized notes, but most of the time you can and you make it easy. You create a very easy way. First of all, you’re very easy to work with and it’s very easy for your members to get notes that look like their notes out to people. Again because that overrules when I hear people say, “Well, I have terrible handwriting.” Right? Well, there’s got to be other ways around that. But I think that’s a little thing and we don’t know what that little thing is. If you think about Max, well, I’ll just rap on Max now, he thought of everything, right? He started with a London taxi in the United States, and the taxi was spotless. Most taxis weren’t spotless. They’re little things. Then the environment inside. Curtis, do you think he asked executives a different set of questions than he asked salespeople?
Absolutely.
And kids versus elderly people? He aligned, we call it a targeted conversation. He aligned and targeted his discussion around that individual person. Again, one of the things we talked about is, what are people going to take away from this podcast?
Establishing common ground.
First is identifying what we call the relational GPS of the person you’re with. Over time, we’ve evolved this concept of, hey, almost anything you share with me, Curtis, is a business or personal goal, a passion or a cost, something you really care about, or struggle with.
Relational GPS stands for business and personal goals, passions and struggles and if you can locate… Again, it’s not that hard to locate it but you just ask questions.
Max was great at that because he asked questions aligned with the audience and almost anything you share with me, Curtis, we toured your business, I got an idea about how passionate you are about it, we talked earlier today that, “Hey, this is such a busy time for us because everybody’s sending cards out, right?” It showed appreciation to people. That’s a struggle, right?
Again, we could talk for half an hour and I could say you just shared a goal with me there and let’s talk about sales, all a really great salesperson has to do is be curious and ask great questions.
Max was great at asking questions and he always delivered. We’ll talk about Max as we go through the five steps of relationships, but that’s where GPS came from. Max was a master at identifying the GPS and remembered it somehow and was able to have part of the discourse the next time.
There was a time that you actually thought about starting a taxi business?
I’m sitting around, I literally, I don’t recommend this to anyone, I quit my job. Now, this was in 2006. I had been established. I had worked there for 16 years after those initial Max rides, I had a nice job at the same company. I was VP of business development at that point and my youngest son actually had a fall off a skateboard and it was one of those jolting moments. He’s fine today. He’s a college baseball player, all that stuff, but he was medevaced to our children’s hospital here and in the context of that whole experience, I decided I’m going to start this business. That’s when I started writing books and I was an accountant and a sales guy and I never wrote a book before, so the first thing I did was I read a book on how to write a book.
Again you just keep pushing forward. I don’t recommend anybody to just quit their job and go start a sales training company or go start a flower shop or whatever it is you’re interested in. You should have a plan. I was lucky. I didn’t have a plan. I just had a cathartic moment push me and it just kept pushing me and pushing me and here we are talking all these years later.
That’s amazing. Tell me about that start before we get into these five steps. I’m curious because there are a lot of listeners who are probably in that position. They may be in a sales job but want to bust out on their own. Tell me about that process and what are some of the things that you did to kind of help launch your business into speaking?
Well, I was traveling on pure emotion, which again, I do not recommend. We had this traumatic thing, but there was something that struck me. I had the Max stories from all those years before and I always thought there’s applicability in all kinds of business to the approach he took, right?
But that’s all I had, was stories. While in the hospital when my son fell off his skateboard, my wife got to go on the helicopter with our son. When we got to the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, CHOP for short, we had to go into this big atrium and there is a staircase that kind of cascaded. We looked up, and there was a woman there with a lanyard on, holding a clipboard. She looked up and said, “Are you the Wallaces by any chance?” I said, “Yes, I’m Ed Wallace; this my son Grant.”0
She said, “Oh, I’m so-and-so. I came to find you and to let you know Brett is stable and I’m going to take you to where we take our helicopter kids.” As serious as that moment was, her warm approach, with an almost whimsical tone, completely relaxed us. It didn’t strike me until weeks after that hospital experience; the hospital system had what we call worthy intent. Worthy intent is putting the other person first, right? The golden rule, all the cliche things. But here’s the thing about worthy intent, it’s not having it.
I mean, your business is all about worthy intent, right? When we first talked I said, “Oh my God, this guy’s all about worthy intent.” But how do people know that you’ve got good intentions?
The only way you know is by their behavior coming back to you. We have a principal, it was Max’s foundational principle, we call it displaying worthy intent. The worthy intent is manifested in the response that you get. If you think about Max, right, referral business, repeat business, bigger tips, rescheduling, all those things. It was easy for Max to identify the fact that people got his good intentions.
Back to our story, Laurie switched both kids to that health system. That’s a pretty good display of worthy intent. She referred CHOP doctors. We donate to that health system. I don’t think the health system was looking for that. I think that’s just the way they are or were and still remain, and it’s certainly nice for them to see some results coming from that. I call that green space for business relationships. if you don’t approach every interaction with good intentions and believe the other person has them coming back at you, you’re never going to have that relationship. That’s where that whole concept came from and that’s what triggered me to start the business, that incident.
Then I just started writing books sitting in coffee houses. I was able to engineer a nice package to get out of my old job, to help support us for a while. Again, I just started doing free speeches in church halls and Elks clubs, and to people who would never buy a thing from me. I didn’t know what I was even selling. Then this book here, Business Relationships That Last, the Max story that is in that book, that’s the one that kind of got us on the map.
That’s when Dow Chemical- big company, large sales team-embraced the concept, and that’s what got us going. You need that one big first customer, and they’ve been a customer since 2009, so I’m fortunate in that regard. That’s how it all started. When you get a customer and they start telling you, “Hey, we need this, we need that,” the next thing you know you start building stuff and here we are.
Wow. That’s a great story. I’m glad that I asked because that hospital experience really was kind of a pivotal time for you to break through and put everything all together. If you don’t mind telling me a little bit more about, the relational GPS and sharing the five steps for turning contacts into relationships, well, relationships that really last?
One of the things that I started thinking about is if you’re going to have a business, you can’t just tell stories unless you’re just going to be a keynote speaker. I wanted to do more. When I was running a sales team, I would find a guy like Ed Wallace and he might’ve been really fun and made us feel good at our sales meeting, but then how would we implement his approach?
One of the things that I always promised myself was this business will allow people to implement if they so choose, right? Every buyer’s different as you know, every one of your customers is different and I’m sure anyone listening or watching is thinking the same thing. It has to be value first for that particular buyer.
Some of my customers, they just want speeches. Great. Those are fun. Some of them want a workshop. Some of them want 90 days of training and coaching, all those kinds of things, so you have to have a process.
When you think about it, we do go through a process where we build relationships. I always like to say, and I’ll get challenged, I might be training at a company and a sales person will raise their hand or a leader will, “Well, that sounds like a manipulation.” I’ll say, “Well, hey Charlie. When you first meet someone do you have to find something in common?” “Well, yeah.” “And then when you start doing stuff together do you start building trust?” “Well, yeah.” “And then when you’re spending time together, is it time well spent?” “Well, yeah.” “Do you help each other along the way.” “Well, yeah.”
“I just wrote all that down for you, Charlie, because that’s what you just naturally do.” We called it the relational ladder and the relational ladder is five steps that we say transform a contact in a high-performing relationship. Everybody starts off as an acquaintance. There’re three dimensions to the ladder, so picture a ladder with five rungs, right, and three dimensions along the side. Everybody’s an acquaintance when they start. We want to become peers and eventually advisors to each other, right? Those are the three dimensions that you can rise up and down, right?
Then if you picture the ladder kind of tapered because it’s harder down here and it’s easier up here, right? On the first rung it’s called establishing common ground. If you think about Max, he was so great, so skilled at finding something in common. There’s a great Max anecdote in one of my books about my neighbor, this older gentleman, Mr. D.
Mr D. had a vegetable garden. Now, I used to get up and run every morning and Mr. D would not pay attention to me. I’d try to say hello. I just thought he was this reclusive man who didn’t want to have any friends. One day I came out to get in the taxi, and Max and Mr. D are chatting. Max is handing him a little bushel of his own tomatoes over the fence. Little did I know over all this time, Max and Mr. D had bonded over his vegetable garden.
As we got into the taxi, I said, “Max, he’s not really a nice guy. He replies, Ed, you can always find something in common, even in a vegetable garden if you really try.” That told me that we can always find some common ground with somebody. The first step is “finding that common ground”. How do you get off that step? Curtis, are we going to be in common ground our whole business relationship? Well, the minute you asked me to come on this podcast, we’re moving into the next dimension. Now I get a chance to display integrity and trust, the second rung. It’s establishing common ground, displaying integrity and trust. This is where I needed to be on time, I needed to be prepared, I needed to answer your assistant’s questions prior. You needed to be on time, be prepared to put on a great podcast for your audience, and that’s where we started doing stuff together.
That’s when you can actually do what we call displaying integrity and trust. It may not be a quid pro quo, where I’m doing something, you’re doing… I may do 10 things, you may do one thing, but we’re making commitments to each other. I call the second rung “keeping your promises”. If we think about it, if I can’t get off of that first rung, then we generally say I’m not credible with you, Curtis. I’m not believable.
A business relationship really starts with credibility, not integrity. It doesn’t start with, well, we trust… “Well, wait a minute, oh, he is a trusting face so I…” That’s not the way it works in general, right? There’s no absolute so we need to be deemed believable, which is how we find common ground. Again, I know we didn’t prep for this, so if you don’t have the right answer, it’s okay, but I’m going to challenge you anyway. How do you think Max developed credibility with me? What made him so belvable to me?
I think that right away, the presence of the car, the cleanliness, the water bottle sitting right there, I think it probably opened you up a little bit to be more responsive to his questions. Just the little things that added up, and then of course, he was interested in you. That was probably the biggest part. He asked questions about you and you felt that he was authentic.
Exactly. He was locating my GPS the whole time and then think about it when he refused my ride-
That was back before GPS was even a GPS.
Exactly. And then he refuses me for the following Tuesday. How believable did that make him like, “Wow, there’s something going on in this taxi, I’ll schedule around him.” Again, you just mentioned the third quality. There’re three qualities that go into play on these first couple of rungs.
The first one is credibility. If you pictured a Venn diagram, credibility here, integrity here, you just mentioned the third one and we call it authenticity. Again, Max developed credibility by asking great questions plus all the other things you talked about, then he showed up on time. He was engaged and I started engaging as well. That was integrity. The third one was just feeling comfortable, being myself with him. I’m a struggling sales rep. I was vulnerable. I had a mortgage, a new baby, my wife was not working outside the home any longer. I wasn’t doing well at my job. The second year I rode with Max, I got Salesman of the Year.
And you felt like you didn’t have to impress him. You could just be you. He made it very comfortable that way.
He was amazing that way. Oh, by the way, he was a retired engineer. I think that was his recovery process when he retired. Those are the first two rungs. The third rung is again, let me just cover a couple more things in the first two rows for everybody. How do you go about finding something in common? You got to be prepared for the interaction. I think I demonstrated a little bit of that to you. You played it back, “Hey, Ed wanted to ask me questions.” You want it to be brief. We can do that in any interaction. Look up something about the person you’re meeting on LinkedIn. That’s the easiest place, and by the way, if they put it on LinkedIn, it’s okay to talk about it, right?
You’re not trolling them as they say, like, “Hey, I see you’re interested in the arts. I was checking out your LinkedIn profile.” “Oh, thanks for connecting.” Next thing you know, you start talking about something they posted. Now you’re going down a rapport piece of common ground, right? You get through the common ground rung and you start doing stuff together, now, when you’re doing stuff together, we move to the third rung. Now we’re in a dimension called a Professional Peer.
Professional Peer, there’s no role or hierarchy. Let’s think of a scenario:…two business people working on stuff, that’s really what a peer business relationship is. We believe this is the sweet spot of your ladder, even though it’s only the middle. You can’t get everybody to the top. You don’t have enough time, so how do you prioritize?
We say, get as many people into the middle of this ladder as you possibly can. What do peers do? They meet a lot. Curtis, I’m going to ask you, if everybody worked 20 days a month, now sometimes we work 22, I’m talking time sheets and reporting for payroll, not the actual amount of time we work, which is much more than that. But if your timecard read, you worked 20 days this month, how many of those days do you think you spent in meetings if you’re the average business professional?
In meetings?
In meetings.
It depends on probably what type of professional but I would say maybe 10 to 15%
Try 60%.
In meetings?
In meetings.
You’re talking about a sales call meeting somebody, that would be meetings as well, not just meetings to talk about your meetings?
Right. Think if you’re a business person in a corporation, right, and you talk to vendors and you have your team and all… You’re meeting to meeting to meeting, now you’re Zoom to Zoom to Zoom, right.
If the effective meetings people, I researched this stuff, right, they… and I only provide resources that support my premises, by the way.
That’s my second joke. My wife doesn’t think I’m funny either. Anyway, so if we spend 12 days a month in meetings, the effective meetings people say that the average executive, middle manager, or director-level person loses five days per month because the meetings they attended were not needed, they were not well conceived, the wrong people were there, they went too long, nobody knew what happened, all these things that go into the poorly run and conceived meetings.
Peers, we’re back to the latter, third rung, using time purposefully, that’s the third rung. When they’re together that meeting feels like an investment, not a use, not a cost. One of the things we stress is for almost any meeting you’re having, have a plan. Have a plan for the meeting. It doesn’t have to be mailed, emailed in advance. It could be and is simple. We have a process we call P-O-P. We mentioned, hey, what can people actually use for this podcast? Hopefully you’ll use GPS, right? It’s very simple, not complicated. When you’re working with somebody, write down GPS vertically on a page, start filling in stuff, start asking questions about that stuff. Resurrect it the next time, bring it back up.
The second tool we call POP, P-O-P. POP stands for purpose outcome process. Three steps to putting together a great meeting. The purpose is what am I trying to do in this meeting and why will the people coming to the meeting benefit?
Everybody wants people to come to their meetings because we have to accomplish something. But why should I be excited about going to Wallace’s meeting and Wallace has the staff meeting every week, we talk about the same stuff, nothing ever seems to get accomplished? It seems like he’s just checking the box that he’s meeting with us.
That challenge is the person putting the meeting together. Why will people benefit? I almost call the purpose statement a value proposition for your meeting. Hey, what am I doing today to deliver a webinar with Curtis so that his audience can learn and grow their business relationship? A meeting that’s at a high level, probably worth your time today.
Again, it’s almost a checkpoint. If you can’t write a purpose statement, forget about the meeting. If you can’t create a reason for people to come to your meeting other than what you were trying to do, then don’t call that meeting. You’re not ready to call that meeting. But once you check that box, the second step is outcomes, POP, P-O-P. What are people going to leave the meeting with? You say, “Hey, what are you going to leave this podcast with? I say, “I’m going to give you two or three tools.” And you’re like, “Great.” Right?
Hopefully you’re leaving with some great feelings about Max, you’re leaving with an idea about how to prepare for an initial meeting and learn GPS, and then how to hold all your follow-up meetings. We’re in the meeting business. We don’t practice meetings and it kind of blows my mind, right? I mean, LeBron James every year gets better at something he doesn’t have to. We are in the meeting business yet we don’t practice meetings.
I’ve yet to hear from a company and I’ll generally ask in front of all the executives, how effective is your company at meetings and they all start turning away and rumbling. Well, why not just try to get better at meetings. Then the third item in POP is process. What are we going to do to be effective in that meeting? How are we going to achieve the purpose and the outcomes? It’s purpose, outcome process and again, I can go on and on about the process, but the first step of the process is get the audience talking first. That’s the first step. What did you do? You got me talking first and you have me to get a word in edgewise.
That’s the way it’s supposed to be here. That’s good. I want to hear from you and our audience needs to hear from you. So purpose, outcome, process; can you just touch on the process again?
Sure. It might be called the agenda, but we’re taking an agenda to a much higher level. What are we meeting about and why, that’s the purpose. What are people going to actually leave my meeting with? Then how are we going to get there? It’s the journey to get the P and the O, the purpose and the outcomes
First step is get the audience talking. Now, I don’t say that when I put a meeting on. I’ll say, “Curtis, update the team since our last meeting . Charlie, tell us how business has been the last two months. Can you give us an update?” Now you’ve got Charlie engaged because business owners love talking about their businesses, right? Then you’re going to have some meeting topics and again, it’s really five steps in that process.
The first step is something in common to get the other person in the group talking first, right. The second one is topic. Curtis explains the topic. Curtis has the stage, right? Group dialogue, conclusions, agreements and commitments. Then you do it for the next topic. Ed discusses topic number two, shares the challenge, group dialogues, agreements and commitments, three. Then the fifth step is closing the meeting. They don’t have to be complicated and it has to be time boxed.
A couple of tips, start your meetings at 2:15, 3:15, 2:10, 3:10. Everybody else’s meetings are ending on the hour, how can they possibly get to your meeting on time? It starts what’s your cab ride like? It starts showing people, hey, when you’re working with me, I understand your time is important. I know you might need a break from 2:00 til 2:10 or 2:15. You’re going to get a lot of scratching chins in that first meeting like, “Why did you schedule the meeting for 2:10?” “That’s exactly the response I want you to get. Charlie, where were you at 2:00.” “I don’t know, wrapping up a meeting. “I wanted you to be able to get here on time.”
End the meeting early. If you can’t get it done in 45 minutes, you’re not going to get done in an hour because you didn’t structure the meeting effectively. Those are a couple of tips. We have another last two rungs yet, but those are my tips around the third rung.
Where would somebody be able to get all of this information? We’ll go there and then we’ll wrap up.
Oh, sure. I’ve written several books, Business… Just look up Ed Wallace on Amazon or go to the AchieveNEXT website, find out about it. Wallace or Google Ed Wallace on LinkedIn, connect with me please. Please connect with me on LinkedIn. I think you’ll get a kick out of my Ed Wallace and the last three numbers of my LinkedIn because there are a lot of Ed Wallaces, so check that out. You can get all that in my books. You can go to, there’s my website, Relational Capital Group. I’m involved with two businesses. If you go there, there’s a whole pull-down on resources and there’re videos and tools and templates on how to hold POP. You don’t have to buy my book, but if you do, you can download them really inexpensively these days.
Then the other thing you can do on the website is, you can take a free assessment. The last two rungs of the ladder are for a respected advisor, offering and asking for help. Those are the fourth and fifth rungs. We’re offering help along the way, but people really don’t want a big offer of help when they’re first meeting you. They’re still trying to like the gel in your hair or the background in your taxi cab. They’re still assessing that. They don’t want to hear like, “Well, my other customers do this and I help them with that.” They want to see how much you care at that point. But now you’ve been working with them for a while, you’re peers and now you can say, “Hey, I’ve been thinking about your business courtesy, I’d really like to introduce you here to some of our other executives. I think there’s some benefit for our marketing people to understand what you do.”
Well, you pay attention to that then, versus, “Oh, this guy Ed Wallace, I don’t know what he’s after. He wants me to talk with this company.” Or you can make a big request for help at that point. The five rungs, establishing common ground, you’re an acquaintance. Displaying integrity and trust usually time effectively, you’re peers. That’s where you really want to be with most relationships. Offering and asking for help, respecting advisors, tough dimensions to get to. If you want to take a free RQ assessment, go to the website, you click a button, they send you a code. It’s free. We don’t call you back unless you want to talk about your report and you can find out how strong your top five relationships are and where you stand in the ladder with that person and what you can do about that. There’s a nice little report that comes out.
And that’s AchieveNEXT?
Well, you would go to Relationalcapitalgroup.com for the assessment and the tools.
AchieveNEXT, if you’re looking for me to speak or those kinds of things…
I wonder if it links too in the blog as well as below the YouTube video. We’re going to make sure we get this out to all of our audience. Now, just a couple of quick questions and I want you to leave our audience with whatever parting wisdom that you would like to share. One thing that comes to me though, is that there are a lot of people out there in sales who say they have the “It Factor”. Oh, it just comes easy to them. They got the gift of the gab. They can make friends with anybody. Then there are the people who really want to take this whole concept of what you have to the next level, but kind of struggle internally because they don’t feel…maybe they’re an introvert but they want this. What kind of advice do you have for that person?
Well, the first thing I would say is to the eagles, those 10% that you’re talking about: don’t read my books, don’t mess up what you’ve figured out! But for the other 90%, and we do a lot of training of technical salespeople, engineers, chemists. If you’re in technical sales or if you’re… and again, introverts sometimes make the best salespeople because they ask great questions, and extroverts, we’re thinking as we’re talking and sometimes that annoys the customer, right?
Again, please don’t feel because you’re an introvert that you can’t be a high performer or what we call an eagle, in sales. You can absolutely be an eagle because you think about Max, Max was a little bit of an introvert and he led with his intelligence and his savvy around the audience. He figured it out. He figured out a process and that’s where I think we’ve been really effective.
Because technical salespeople or maybe folks who are a little less animated, a little less outgoing, they can follow a process. A process is like practicing putting or practicing a musical instrument. The more you practice, the more confident you are. Well, it’s easy to follow a process if you’re inclined to follow a process. We try to help people learn from stories. We try to help them learn through theory and principles like worthy intent and GPS and tools and then ultimately process and measurement is the ultimate for the sales rep who’s looking for what you’re talking about, Curtis.
Awesome. Well, thank you. That’s some really great information. Now, what kind of parting wisdom would you have for our audience? Anything that you would like to share.
Wisdom’s the last thing that I usually get asked about. No. Well, I think that we have to think about our own taxi cab ride. You might look at that rock star sales person and it’s just natural for them and that’s their taxi cab. But you can create your own taxi cab. We actually do an exercise where everybody builds a taxi cab and they put their strengths in the engine. We have a picture of a London cab. They actually write in their strengths in the engine, what little things
they think are effective. They start building up their confidence. They start building up their muscles and now virtual muscles, right? We need both. The engine has to be pretty full of all kinds of skills and competencies. Then we ask what’s in the trunk of your taxi that you want to get better at and they’ll put a couple of things in there. And if you had to name your taxi cab the experience you’re trying to create, because your success is through that experience, what would the name of your taxi be?
I’m going to put you on the spot before I finish the answer. What would you call your taxi Curtis? What two or three words or phrase would describe… I know what comes through when I talk to you, but I want to hear what you… On the spot here, what would your taxi cab company be called?
What comes to mind, well, the first is impact. Because one of the things we talked about is stop making an impression, start making an impact.
I love that. I go right back to what you say, achieve greatness through gratitude.
Achieve greatness through gratitude. But we ask everyone, and again, you can do this exercise as soon as this podcast is over. Think about this is Ed’s taxi, what words describe Ed’s experience versus Curtis’s experience? Who cares what Curtis is? Even though he’s a great guy, this is what you’re taking customers through and this is how you’re going to treat those customers and this is how you’re going to win that business and keep that business and referrals and all those great things that happen.
It’s your own taxi cab. It’s the cab that you watch someone else driving around because every cab is aligned with your own GPS as well.
Thank you so much for taking the time to share. We’re going to have to get you on again sometime in the future here. Like you said, I’m excited to get to know you more and to also repay the favor and introduce you to some of the contacts that we have as well. Thank you so much, I really appreciate having you on another episode of Referral Secrets. Thank you.
My pleasure Curtis. Really great being with you and looking forward to watching and listening.
Awesome. Thank you so much.
Important Links:
- Relational Capital Group
- The Relationship Engine
- Business Relationships That Last
- Fares to Friends
- Creating Relational Capital
- AchieveNEXT
About Ed Wallace:
Ed Wallace is President and Chief Relationship Officer of The Relational Capital Group. He consults with and speaks for corporations and associations across the globe with a client list that is a Who’s Who of Fortune 500 companies. He is the author of Fares to Friends, Creating Relational Capital, Business Relationships That Last, and his most recent The Relationship Engine. Ed has become critically acclaimed as the foremost authority on business relationships and their impact on performance.
In addition, Ed is currently on the Executive Education faculty of Drexel’s LeBow College of Business and Villanova University’s Human Resources Master’s program.