“We need to be really, really careful in considering what type of environment we’re creating for our team members and can we do certain things that make us the attractive destination for those other organizations that are continuing to do it wrong and losing people by the handful.” – Todd Caponi in today’s Tip 890
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Transcript
Scott Ingram: You’re listening to the Daily Sales Tips podcast and I’m your host, Scott Ingram. Today’s tip comes from Todd Caponi. Todd is the author of the 3x award-winning & best-selling book, “The Transparency Sale” and a top-rated keynote speaker & trainer as Principal of Sales Melon LLC. Here he is:
Todd Caponi: Hey everybody, Todd Caponi here. Three months ago, I’d issued what I call a severe turnover binge warning, kind of like a weather warning that all of the behavioral science that I was seeing and then just reading the tea leaves from the conversations I was having with executives and sales reps, I could see that turnover was coming. And here’s why. From a behavioral science perspective, I kind of equate it to your streaming TV service. I know that sounds like a weird analogy, but stick with me for a second.
Ten years ago, we had cable TV, right? So wires coming in from the ground into cable boxes throughout the house. We had five of them. We had DVRs on those cable boxes. So my kids’ favorite shows are recorded and there was no way to get those shows off of the DVR. So our physical cost to change, meaning if we are going to change providers was high, we’d have to rewire. The alternative was a satellite dish, so big plate on the roof with wires coming in and the emotional cost was high because we would lose all those shows that the kids loved. Right? Because we couldn’t take them off of there.
Well, fast forward about eight years. So just a couple of years ago, we finally just got to the point where we started streaming everything, right? So little Roku devices on the boxes or smart TVs. Physical cost to change then becomes very minimal, right? Because there’s literally no wires, it’s all wireless, and the emotional cost to change is very small because now all those shows my kids love are on-demand everywhere. Like, you just subscribe to a service and they’re all there, not just the ones we recorded.
The point being that in March, so just three months ago, we had gotten an increase from our streaming TV provider. It was AT&T and they said, “Hey, due to the increased costs of programming, your cost is going to go up 9.99 a month.” Within one hour we had unplugged from AT&T and plugged into Fubo, which gave us all the same channels that we loved and actually at a lower cost. It was so easy, no physical cost, no emotional cost, and done in an hour versus before when Comcast would raise our cable prices, we just eat it because like, Oh gosh, it’s going to take us a ton to rewire. We’re going to lose all this stuff. So we’ll just eat that cost increase.
Now, let’s take it to the world that we’re living in today, where we’ve encountered a very similar circumstance where the physical cost to change jobs before was pretty high, right? We had commute times and just the logistics of all of the stuff that was going to be required for us to go move out of an office and move into a new one and reacquaint the commute. And the timing of involved in that and the emotional cost before was, gosh these are all your friends. These are people that you’ve built something with over the last two or three, however long you were there. Leaving a job back when you used to spend all your lunches with them. Sometimes you commute with certain people, you do happy hours with them. There was a real emotional connection. Changing jobs is hard.
Well, now you fast forward to right now. And we’ve entered an era where the physical cost to change jobs is practically nonexistent. Right? You don’t even have to change your commute. Maybe you get a new laptop. And the emotional cost to change jobs is also nonexistent, and we can argue all day whether or not Zoom calls can equate to the same type of emotional connection you build with your teammates that you would hanging out in an office with them every day and doing these big happy hours like the real ones and going to lunch with them. But from a behavioral perspective, your emotional connection with people you’ve never actually physically met is much less. And as a result, the triggers by which individuals will decide to change jobs are very tiny. I mean, before you get a higher quota, your territory would shrink a little bit. Maybe you’d lost the deal and your pipeline didn’t look so good. Maybe your buddy was making a bunch of money down the street, but your feeling about changing jobs because the physical and emotional cost was high was, you know what I’m just going to hang in here.
But today, quarter raise, territory shrink, new manager. You lost the deal. Your pipeline doesn’t look good. Your buddies making a bunch of money, having a blast, and they’re hiring. It’s just like the streaming TV service. You just unplug here, plugin there, and off you go. And as a result, companies that are not making that transition and understanding that from a true clinical, empathetic perspective are basically treating sales leadership the way we did two years ago. However, the cost to change is so much smaller that even the slightest trigger is causing people to leave.
So it starts there. I will talk more about some of the things that you can think about and do to help equate for this situation. But for right now, you’ve got to recognize it for what it is. The triggers are much less than they were before. And as a result, we need to be really, really careful in considering what type of environment we’re creating for our team members and can we do certain things that make us the attractive destination for those other organizations that are continuing to do it wrong and losing people by the handful.
So let me know what you think about that. But the true behavioral science perspective about why turnover is so high and why we should have expected it and why it’ll probably continue unless we make some changes here pretty quickly. Thanks!
Scott Ingram: For more from Todd including the video version of this tip, a link to his book: The Transparency Sale and to connect with him on LinkedIn. Just click over to DailySales.Tips/890.
Once you’ve done that. Be sure to come back tomorrow for another great sales tip. Thanks for listening!