Host - Pat Sweet: This is the engineering and leadership podcast with pat sweet episode 37. [inaudible] Welcome to the engineering and leadership podcast. The show dedicated to helping engineers thrive today. I speak with Gary Williams, founder and CEO of quest us about sales and business development

Host - Pat Sweet: For engineers. [inaudible]

Host - Pat Sweet: Hey everyone, my name's pat, or welcome to the show if this is your first time here listening to the engineering and leadership podcast, I'm super, super happy to have you here. If you've been here before. Thank you for coming back. This is an an absolute blast, an absolute pleasure to have you here time and time again, to share some time with me and learn a little bit about leadership and management and productivity and all of these things that really help elevate engineering management career. So again, thank you so, so much for joining me here in Nova Scotia, where I'm recording from. We are just on the verge of sending our daughter back to school at the end of what felt like a very short, very strange summer break, but I'm very excited about that. She's very excited about that.

Host - Pat Sweet: It's good to feel like some sense of normal is on the horizon. I realize we're not out of this pandemic yet. But it's good to feel like we're making progress. So I hope where you are. Life is good, you're staying safe and that you'll, you'll get a chance to return to normal soon. The next thing that I wanted to say here is I've actually got some really exciting news that I want to share with the engineering leadership community. I'm not, I'm not quite ready to spill the beans yet. I'm very, very close. There's lots of exciting stuff on the horizon for me and for the podcast and, and for my business. So do stay tuned for that. Hopefully in the coming weeks, I can share a little more, but for now let's jump right into the main content for today.

Host - Pat Sweet: Sales and business development are key skills for engineers who want to grow their careers for many senior engineers and engineering managers helping to grow their company through new business is an absolute necessity. The problem is for most technical people, the only sales or selling they've ever been part of is on the receiving end. And for many, those experiences have been pretty bad ones and it leaves a pretty poor impression of an entire profession that when you really think about it is critically important to all business today, Gary Williams is here to not only dispel the myths, many engineers have about sales and selling, but to show that growing a business and helping potential clients is something engineers can and should get involved in as they grow their careers. It's not as complicated as they may think. Gary's the founder and CEO of quest us a business development consultancy, passionate about helping clients develop processes skills and behaviors that will result in increased sales and improve margins. Here's my chat with Gary, Mr. Gary Williams, welcome to the engineering and leadership podcast. Thank you so much for joining me today.

Guest - Gary Williams: Thank you for having me. It's a pleasure.

Host - Pat Sweet: This, this is going to be a lot fun because this is what we're talking about. Sales today, demystifying sales and selling. So this is a topic that we've not yet covered on the podcast. This is all new territory, new territory for me as well, maybe to kick things off. Could you, could you tell us a little bit about your business and what you do?

Guest - Gary Williams: Absolutely. Yeah, so I set questers up 10 years ago, 10 years ago. We we've set up a business on that was going to be focused on the engineering industry but not just the engineering industry engineering construction, where we were aiming at people who worked in the built and natural environment who are first and foremost technical people, you know, experts in their field. But those experts need to be able to contribute to the growth of the firm that for which they work now, they might be a small business, or they might be a person within a huge business either way. When you hit a certain level in your, in your career, you have to contribute to growth. And what that means is you need to win work. What that is, is sales and selling, even though that's a dirty word for a lot of my clients.

Guest - Gary Williams: But it, it, you, you talked about, you've sort of labeled this today as demystifying, and that's actually kind of what we do a lot with our kind of particularly first get involved. I joke about sales and selling, being a dirty word. And actually what we, one of the first things we find we have to do is to take away the stereotypes, you know, take away the shiny suited sales man or sales woman for that matter people who are, you know, the sec or the used car sales or photocopier, you know, the foot in the door type sales person. You gotta, you gotta, you gotta smash that myth to pieces and sell the concept that a it's something that everybody does and has to do and be recognizing some people are quite reluctant at that and, and find it quite unnatural. So our business is all about focusing on those individuals helping them develop the skills, the, the, the hit the tips and the, I don't want to say tricks because that sounds like it's inauthentic in some way, but, but developing a skillset that helps them to become confident in those situations where they're talking to clients about what the client is trying to achieve, and ultimately motivating that client to continue to choose them or to choose them for the first time.

Host - Pat Sweet: Right. And, and I'm really glad you, you get that front and center that this, this song, this concept, this myth of sales as being a dirty word. And I, I don't, I, I don't really understand personally what, where that comes from, why, why, why this whole profession is linked to, you know, the, the, the, the used car salesman persona. What, where does that even come from that this is, this is a fundamental function to all business. So how could it be good or bad compared to accounting, for example, right. It, it, it doesn't make a lot of sense to me.

Guest - Gary Williams: No, and it doesn't to me because I've been involved in sales and marketing my entire career and got into sort of the training of it even before it's at quest. So I've been training it for 20 years, but you know, when I first started out in my selling career at very, it was, you know, ABC always be closing. I don't know whether you or the listeners know the movie, you know, the Glen, Glen, Gary, Glen Ross movie, you know, the real estate salespeople and being hammered, like, you know, give me the good leads and always be closing and how brutal that environment was. Well, it was pretty brutal when I first started out and I got hit over the head with that that same sort of mantra. I just think it's a product of a society of of, of how I think that the bad seller, the bad sales person, you know, whether it's been in financial services or whether it's been in housing or in, in, in many kind of industry sectors has been portrayed as somebody that people are quite fearful of, you know, that they've got these, these, these techniques that they're kind of gonna mind bending techniques that you're going to make you say yes, even though you don't want to, before you do at your party with your, with your money.

Guest - Gary Williams: And so I think there is that there is some sort of fear about about what sales and selling is, and that's why we often use the term business development. And actually that term I came to in my description of what we do, what we call it, this thing is motivating the client to buy. Because if you think about that, that swaps the whole thing around about 180 degrees, because this is more about the motivation is, you know, you, you doing what is necessary to pull them towards you of their own free will, rather than being any in any way, cushy and trying to push your services and your agenda on others.

Host - Pat Sweet: So th that's, that's an interesting turn of phrase, you used business development, and this is something I wanted to ask you about is, is this link between sales, business development and client relationship management. And I think, I think a lot of technical leaders have, have heard these terms. Is there, is there a distinction here between these three? Are they fundamentally different things or are they all part of the same basic process?

Guest - Gary Williams: The problem, the same family because the family is growth. That's, that's your umbrella. If you like, it's, it's about growing your business and how do you grow your business, where you need to, you need to win work from new clients. You need to continue to win work from existing clients. And so therefore you've got to look after those clients. That's where the relationship management comes in and you need to be referred to do other clients as well, which is, I guess, sometimes that sort of hits upon the marketing thing. Now, some organizations look at business development as moving into other areas, so existing services into new markets, and they might be new regions. It might be new industries, but that's kind of under the heading of business development, sales and selling is sometimes what people do. If they have a role that says they are salespeople.

Guest - Gary Williams: Now, most of, most of the people we work with adopt a sort of seller doer type approach, which means they don't have a separate Salesforce. They rely on their technical people to build the relationships and the trust. So the, ultimately their clients want to buy from them and to continue to buy from them, continue to work with them. So, I mean, there is a sort of black and white answer here, pat, but what's the difference between them that they all, they they're just labels, but ultimately they're everything that you need to do in order to help you grow the business.

Host - Pat Sweet: And glad you mentioned that the seller doer mindset, and that's something that a colleague of mine, Anthony Fasano from the engineering management Institute, fantastic organization in the states really pushes that idea as well. This whole concept of, for many organizations, they, they simply aren't big enough to, to accommodate entire departments dedicated to particular things where you know, a lot of people, especially technical people need to wear multiple hats. So that, that, that makes a lot of sense to me, for someone who's not familiar with the sales process, the business development process what does someone who's involved in sales actually do in the run of a day? How, how does, how does someone take an organization or an individual from someone who's completely unknown to someone who's a happy buyer? There seems, there seems like it's a bit of a black box, especially for technical people who who've never witnessed this before.

Guest - Gary Williams: Yeah, that's a good question. So first of all, let's just, let's just assume that we're talking about an organization where they have a seller do a model. And what that therefore means is that pretty everybody who's client facing has a role to play in, in winning work and and managing the client relationship. Most of these organizations, if they're of a certain size. And by that, I mean not very big, you know, even those with 2030 people will have some kind of marketing. So the first thing that has to happen is that you have to be able to understand your market. So who, who is your marketplace? What is your marketplace? Do you have a clear understanding that? And do you have a brand in that marketplace? Now, when I say brand, I mean, do you have a reputation? Do people know you, do they know what you stand for?

Guest - Gary Williams: What you're famous for now, that's the kind of thing that almost needs to precede what the individuals need to do in terms of their efforts for winning work, because you need to warm your client base up. They need to know that you have a track record in their world. They need to know that you have the expertise to help them achieve their problems. And ultimately they, they need to be motivated that word again, to want to, we talk about motivating your client to get to the table, you know, which is about they, they want to have a discussion with you about some of your, your expertise. And so if that, that reputation is, is in place, then that will, that allows you to do is to contact your target market to say, okay, these are the kinds of things that, that we're doing.

Guest - Gary Williams: And case studies and things like this. Now we get into the realms here, which is a whole huge subject on its own about building your reputation, both as an organization, but as an individual. And you do this online, through social media posts, by, you know following people that you'd like to work with by posting really good, valuable content. Research, for example, in your client's world is, is one of the best things you can do to get noticed. And all of these things will put you as a good, strong blip on their radar, if I can put it that way. And what that means is that when the client is looking for the kind of things that you do, hopefully you've made enough noise in their world, or even better, you have been referred by someone liked them, that they already trust that they say, right, I'm ready to have a conversation with you.

Guest - Gary Williams: So the initial conversation, isn't really the starting point. It's sort of some way, some way into the whole process. That conversation is absolutely key, that initial conversation. And that's where we do a lot of work and structuring the client conversation, particularly for engineers, with the mindset that that we have. I don't want to stereotype everybody, but, you know, if you, if you can apply a structure, it does, it takes away some of the nervousness about the unknown and this, this structure is all about digging into the client's world, understanding what, what they're doing now, understanding where they want to get to. We really get people to turn up the listening skills really listen, really understand and ask good questions that are based in professional curiosity, but genuine, authentic curiosity that gets the client engaged and excited and motivated because you're clearly keen to understand, and you're clearly interested in them and you're not necessarily interested in making a sale either.

Guest - Gary Williams: You're just genuinely wanting to learn. And the other thing about this conversation is not to be impatient and not to do as we call somewhat jokingly, but it's real that professional pounds, which is something that happens when the client says, you know what? I have big fears and the engineer said, oh, I can do that. We don't have a thought. We're great at doing that. We do that all the time. The way we do it is this one. Then we do that. And and before they know it, that kind of what I would say in the UK, they're flogging their butts off that they're going to full sell mode. But everybody meantime, it's just kind of enthusiasm, but you see that's in impatience and that doesn't necessarily lead to a good longterm relationship. It might when you a quick bit of business, but what we want to do is we want to understand this client so we can help them achieve their goals, their objectives.

Guest - Gary Williams: So it's learning this process and being patient for it to kind of go with the pace that the client wants it to go to because clients here's a stat for you. Only 3% of our target market are ready to buy at any one time. So we're talking to a lot of people and w we're kind of touching a lot of people through our marketing, but if was not saying the right thing at the right time, if we're trying to sell too soon, they're not at that point where they're ready to buy. So we need to understand that we've got, we're working a lot of people. And ultimately when the time is right for them, they might go to tender, but they might want you to win by this point. Or they might just invite you to come along and, and negotiate how you can, how you can help them. And then ultimately, you know, they, they then become a client. And as you say, hopefully they write you the check as well. Right? I want

Host - Pat Sweet: To, I want to jump on something you said about going to tender, but, but before before we do, I, I think you said something really, really important here. It's something that, that didn't totally occur to me is that engineers are already involved. Technical leaders are already involved in this business development process before anyone is sitting down with anyone else over coffee, to talk about anything that, that building of the reputation, right? Writing white papers and publishing it for the world to see, going to conferences and presenting, even though it's a very technical audience here, you're building that reputation and establishing expertise for your organization. So I think, I think probably a lot of people listening to this will realize how much they've already been doing for their organizations in terms of establishing that reputation. So that that's good news, right? That's that, that, that, that allows, that allows technical people to operate in this area of strength, which is their technical expertise to, to help promote things. So that that's that's fascinating.

Guest - Gary Williams: That side of things is, is vital in order to develop a strong reputation. So one of the things I would, I would encourage your listeners to think about if, if they are doing all of that stuff is to make sure that it is coordinated, that we haven't got lots of people doing lots of good stuff, but because it's all quite random and not kind of lined up strategically towards a collective objective it will have less power,

Host - Pat Sweet: Right? So an organization has to decide how they want to appear in the minds of their target market. If, if you really are experts in a certain field, you, you want to, you want to be shouting that one thing from the rooftops I, or that that's what I'm gathering from what you're saying here.

Guest - Gary Williams: Yeah, absolutely. First of all, decide who the target market is then decide, what is it, what is it that we want one to be telling this target market, then you can go to, okay, what are all the different channels that we're going to use? And what are we going to be saying when we are talking at our marketplace?

Host - Pat Sweet: I think it's probably important to point out here too, is that an organization shouldn't just be picking something at random to try to position themselves as you, you, you really ought to be, or you need to be an actual expert in a particular field before promoting yourself as such. So but, but if you do have that technical expertise then great, then, then you do, you do want the rest of the world to know about it. That's, that's important. Otherwise your business won't be a going concern for very long.

Guest - Gary Williams: Well, you know, there is a there's a very simple equation in terms of, of brand, and that is reputation plus visibility. So, so reputation is, you know, what are you known for? And the visibility is how many people know you for it. So it's often, we're often given the challenge of how do the client says to me, how do we win more of the high, you know, the, the, the, the, the industry that, the work that we want to win, because we were up against competitors who are just like us. So how do we differentiate? Which is, which is the right kind of challenge. And my response to that is actually, it comes down to the people that you have, who are client facing. And it is, there was a mechanic not long ago that talked about the, the key battle ground in the, in the coming years is actually in managing the client experience. So what is it not, how good are we at the services we provide, but how good is the experience that we give the client? And it is there that will keep the client coming back to us. And it is there to touch on something I said before that they will be happy to be our marketing by referring us and telling the world how wonderful we are. And, and, you know, those sorts of things I think are where the differentiation, the lie lies and where people can really do some tangible things to, to develop that.

Host - Pat Sweet: Right? So, so that points to the difference between what you do. And even if you do what you do very, very well, technically how you do it and how you engage your clients is, is, is it's a bigger package. The, the, the, the, what you do is part of that, for sure. But it's got to go beyond that. That's, that's interesting. That's very interesting. A few moments ago, you were talking about how only 3% of your target market is, is ever ready to buy at any one time. And that's not a number I'd ever heard before. That's very small, it's a shockingly small. One of the things I wanted to talk to you about is, is this decision to go to tender and actually solicit some kind of product or service from someone in, in my mind, in an engineer's mind, the sales process is, is fairly black and white.

Host - Pat Sweet: Someone needs something, they write up a spec and they choose a provider who can deliver that thing at the lowest cost. It's all, it's all very simple. It's black and white in reality. I'm, I'm sure that that's not the truth. And, and I think, I think what you mentioned before about, about that that decision that you are ready to go out and procure something is, is part of, that is part of that that secret sauce. So how does, how does sales and business development influence that whole purchasing decision? Which, which on paper is, is, is, is pretty binary.

Guest - Gary Williams: Hmm. Yeah, no, that's, I love it. It's a good one because it comes up, it comes up quite a bit as, as you might imagine, in terms of, you know, being a training company, the client is rightly asking me, how do we, where are we going to get better? What are the things that you're going to measure so that we know that the training is working? And this is, this is one of those areas. The first thing to talk about that is that at the point where the client puts the tender out into the marketplace, that if that is the first time that the service provider knows about it, it's too late.

Guest - Gary Williams: So a lot of your listeners will have a, a go, no go sort of process bid no bid as we call it in the, in the UK. But, and, and there were a lot of questions there and they're good things, should we go for this? Or should we not? Is it going to be profitable? Is it going to be you know, trimming resource? It is it strategically aligned? You, there's a number of questions. I think there's probably two questions you'd need to be asked before are answered before you can move on. One is where are we expecting it? You know, did we know it was coming? Second one is, have we got relationships with the people who wrote it? Not necessarily just with procurement people, but the people in the business who need this service. And honestly, if you haven't, if you can't answer a kind of a real strong yes.

Guest - Gary Williams: To both of those, I think your chances of winning, I'm not saying you won't win it. Your chance of winning are quite slim because one of your competitors knew it was coming because one of your competitors had got in there and had been talking to them. It was on their radar. Like I referred to earlier who had been offering up the the, the, the, the white papers and maybe doing things that, that gets the relationship built well before the client goes to tender. So you have to understand that that, that tendering point is sort of halfway through the buying process. So that's the first thing I would say. And then and then secondly, the we'd need to make sure that if we are going to be going for it, that we are able to either, either we've w we're going for the cons, we've got the relationship in place.

Guest - Gary Williams: And we understand that all the drivers they've got, because price is only one thing, and yes, price is important. And, and I sometimes get accused of sweeping the price thing under the carpet. I don't, I'm a realist. I know it's important, but I think many clients still buy on, on value. In other words, one of the things on the criteria they have when they, when they're seeking a provider, is how well do you get me? How well do you understand what it is that I'm trying to do? They're thinking, what is it gonna be like to work with you? So you have to kind of, there's an emotional aspect to winning this work. And if it was just a pure black and white data-driven tender process, which it can be for some products then you, you, you, you remove that. But I think the business that most of your listeners are in is a people business. And therefore the emotive side of it comes in. And even I would go as fast as that, even the public sector where as much more formal procurement process. And I know for a fact, because I've spoken to people who used to be in public procurement many of them know who they want to win before they put the tender out. The,

Host - Pat Sweet: The phrase that comes to mind hearing you say, all this is, is it's important to dig the well before you're thirsty.

Guest - Gary Williams: Right, right. Absolutely good one.

Host - Pat Sweet: Yeah. And I know in, in, in previous previous industries that I've been involved in I personally have been involved in helping as part of industry consortium's develop countries national standards for particular products, right? A lot of, a lot of places, a lot of governments, a lot of organizations need help understanding what's out there in industry and how to specify something, how to procure something before they ever actually need that thing. And what you're saying makes perfect sense is if, if my company is involved in helping write the spec in the first place, the chances that I'll be able to help that same organization later on down the road are much, much higher. So I think we've established that the sales process isn't like you said, sales is not a dirty word. It's a fundamental part of, of business.

Host - Pat Sweet: And we all rely on business being healthy and growing for, for our own livelihoods. So, so that's one thing down. And the other thing that we've established is that it's, it's not quite as black magic key is a lot of technical people probably think it is. It's not all schmoozing. There, there are some real concrete things that, that you can and should do in order to establish a position in your, your target client's mind. So hopefully by now, a lot of people listening are thinking to themselves, I really should learn more. I really should start to develop some of these skills, both for my own career and for the health of my organization, for those people. What kinds of things would you recommend in terms of, of, of skills development and acquisition of knowledge in order to, to improve those skills, those sales skills and business development skills?

Guest - Gary Williams: Well, I guess it depends what the starting point is. W where, where are they? Because I imagine that a lot of your listeners are pretty good at this. Anyway, you know, they're engaging with clients, they've got some good client relationships that they, they win work. But, you know, we can all improve can't we it's as Stephen Covey says, you know, we can all show up in the soar. And I think what I would recommend is that first of all, overcome any doubts that you might have, that you can be good at this because there is, there has been studies. That was probably the most reason that I know of it. In 2013, I studied based on your personality type and your ability to be good at at selling. Now it was a, it was a more refined title that, but that, that was kind of the context.

Guest - Gary Williams: And it talked about in introvert and extrovert personality types, and there is a, a, a belief that you need to be extrovert to be good at sales. So in other words, you need the gift of the gap, so to speak, you need to be able to, you know what I mean? Like you've got to work a room. You're, you're that person who's, you know, very confident you're, you know, we all know them. They, they, they kind of worked through through rooms that they're big personalities. This is not true. You do not need to be a, a high extrovert to be good at selling equally. If you are a few or a high introvert, and you're, you know, you, you, you don't, you, you can't come out of your shell, you know, you've, you're very happy with, with your own person and you find it very difficult to engage with others. That's probably not going to help you either. What this study showed is actually it's those who are in the middle somewhere. And I think they call them, I don't think this is a real word, but I think it was called ambivert.

Guest - Gary Williams: It was, I remember rightly, but it doesn't matter what the word is. The point is, you've got some of that of each kind of extremes, if you like. And so what that means is if you consider yourself a extrovert, you need to time turn it down a bit and, and, and be a better listener and be more patient and, and not be the loudest voice in the room, but be better, be more curious about people, you know, anyone really dig and learn and go to that point where you go, have I got a deal for you anywhere near, as quickly as you might have done. So that's what I would say. If you're of that type of personality, if you're the opposite and you, you are more introvert, then what you're gonna need to work on it. You need to develop a skillset.

Guest - Gary Williams: And the kinds of things that we can do is so some of the things that we do in our training is putting people in, in client simulations. So where we have a sort of a, you know, a case study, you're going to see this client. This is the background. And then we, we teach people some of the methodology that we talk about and we get them to practice it. And when they realize that actually the key to this is being a good listener, then as introvert personalities are naturally better at that, that, and then if they can layer on top of that, that natural ability to be more patient, to be a better listener, but it can lay on top of that, some good questions to ask the client and the ability to be able to then once they have got all of that learning and understanding, they convinced them apply it.

Guest - Gary Williams: They can talk about the sorts of expertise that they have in the context of the client's world that draws the client close to that builds the trust because often your client is a similar sort of personality as well. And we need to make, we need to make sure of that. So there's lots of things they could do. But I think the first step is just recognizing that, that anyone can do this. And you first and foremost, you need to kind of be a good listener. You need to be curious, you need to be authentic and you need to be confident enough to show this might shock some of your listeners vulnerability in those conversations. So I don't know everything, but I do know someone who does and I'll come back to you, you know, and that's, that's important to build trust. It's

Host - Pat Sweet: Amazing to me, how much of what you've just said, parallels what I teach people about leadership, the importance of listening, the importance of being curious, the importance of vulnerability, Bernay brown is a world world-class leadership researcher. This is, this is one of her fundamental messages, is that, that importance of vulnerability. And I'd like to know, Gary, I wasn't planning on asking you this, but, but now that I see these parallels between business development and leadership, is that, is that a, is that a surprise to you? Is that a natural pairing in your mind?

Guest - Gary Williams: No surprise at all. No, it's, it's absolutely natural because what is leadership, if it's, if it's not motivation, you know, and, and, and building a a following it is the same in, in business development. You know, we want to motivate our clients. We want a loyal fan base. We want clients who love what we do, who tell everybody how brilliant we are, you know, that's, that's what leaders get when they really achieve some of the, you know, some of the most outstanding leaders they're in the same sort of, I had the same fan base, if I can put it that way from their, their their own people, their own organization. So, yeah, absolute parallels completely. That,

Host - Pat Sweet: That, that's awesome. And I think that'll be really good news to leaders who are listening to this, who by and large have a lot of these skills and hopefully can see that they can take advantage of their, their natural curiosity as, as technical folks, right. And, and natural skills as leaders and listeners just applied in a slightly different venue with people outside of the organization, as opposed to inside the, this, this is really exciting, actually, I think it's a much shorter putt, so to speak, to, to develop those skills then than maybe I once thought for people who would like to learn more you, and about what quest does, does maybe want to, to really dig into developing themselves in, in, in terms of business development and sales skills, w what's the best thing for them to do.

Guest - Gary Williams: Yeah. Well, thanks for that. And then, so the, probably the best place to start is our website questers.co.uk. There's there's some interesting guide, some free stuff in there that I think people will find of interest. So when I talked about that, that structure, that meeting structure, there's a, there's a free guide in there that talks about that. The other thing your listeners might be interested in is that we have recently launched our academy. The quest is academy and in fact, the website request us academy.com in there. We have a 12 week program, which is 12 modules delivered by some absolute experts in their field where we get groups of people from, from the industry, from the construction engineering industry, different organizations coming together, going through this program, learning all of the, the fundamentals, whether it's reminding yourself or reassuring yourself that what you're doing is good and learning new things. And also what I really loving about it is, is develop allowing that cohort of people to develop a network across, across businesses, within the industry as well, and sharing some of their own challenges in this space. So I'm real excited about about that. So, and, and would love, and any of your listeners to to come and ask me more about it. Very happy to share. Well,

Host - Pat Sweet: That's great news. I'll be sure to put links to all of those resources in the show notes, make it very easy for people to find again, Mr. Gary Williams. Thank you so much for joining me today. It was an absolute blast.

Guest - Gary Williams: I really enjoyed it, pat. Thanks for having me. Thank

Host - Pat Sweet: You. Once again, Gary, for enlightening us for the really entertaining, really interesting conversation. I know I learned an awful lot, which it was very, very, eye-opening a lot of really actionable stuff, really interesting stuff. A few of the things that stood out to me as I was going through the editing process and really listening to this conversation with Gary was that this whole used car salesman view of sales is inaccurate. It really doesn't represent what people do in sales roles, in professional organizations, in engineering organizations, and the sooner we can kind of clear that view from our own minds as, as technical leaders, we can join that process to, to the benefit of our own careers and also to the benefit of our organizations. One of the things that Gary mentioned over and over again is that the selling process, the business development process starts way before anyone ever sets up a particular sales call.

Host - Pat Sweet: The organization really needs to establish its own brand its own reputation in the minds of its potential customers before any of that can happen. And what that means is, is engineers really do have to strut their stuff and do their thing and present at conferences and write white papers and be the reason that an organization has a reputation. This is critically important. So, so again, that whole idea, I think Gary was talking about the, the, the photocopier salesman that that's not the profession. That's not the person that we're thinking about here when we think of sales. So very, very important to get that out of your mind. What are the other things that I thought was, was really interesting toward the end of the chat was he don't need to be what Gary called a high extrovert to be a good at selling. In fact, being overly extroverted can be a turnoff that that can actually, you can go too far with that.

Host - Pat Sweet: And for obvious reasons being overly introverted can be problematic as well. The sweet spot is somewhere in the middle, which frankly, most of us are somewhere in the middle. We're not, we're not too hot, we're not too cold. We're just right. And, and that's good news because what that means. And I think the bigger picture here with respect to what Gary was saying was that you don't have to put on a show. You don't have to be that guy or that girl working the room, which is great, because again, that feels unnatural for most of us that feels uncomfortable. And that means more of us should be more comfortable in participating in the sales process by being our authentic selves, by being our normal natural cells. That was super, super encouraging to me. And finally, the, the big breakthrough that I had at the end of this conversation was, was this link between business development and leadership and some of the common themes that come up in both these fields and Gary put it pretty well, is that if, if you're a leader, if you're, you're able to exhibit leadership skills for the world outside your organization and help people understand what your organization is all about and what it's striving for at allowing yourself to be curious and vulnerable, and really want to learn more about your clients, which are all, all the same kinds of things I would encourage you to do as leaders within your organizations.

Host - Pat Sweet: Then the natural extension of that behavior is business development is establishing good relationships with potential customers and partners. It it's, it's a really fascinating link that I didn't expect at all. So really, really just, just absolute pure gold for me as always, you can check out all the links and resources mentioned during the interview at the show notes, that's at engineering and leadership.com/episode 37. Next up we've got the engineering and leadership mailbag.

Host - Pat Sweet: Well, my friends, you know how this works, this is the part of the show where I, your messages and answer your questions. I promise to read absolutely everything you send me. And I promise to read my favorites here on the podcast this week. An excellent question came in from Wilhem Lou of a pronouncing that correctly, Wilhelm it reads in part anyway, I'm sorry. Wondering if you have any advice for those transitioning into the engineering world from a non-traditional background, you often talk about moving into engineering management from a solid technical foundation at additionally, I was wondering with your experience in the field, what potential obstacles are there for someone trying to conduct more of a lateral transfer into engineering management that they may need to prepare for will help. This is a really interesting question. And it's one that I don't often get. I often get questions about people within engineering looking to go into engineering management or engineers who would like to add some sort of additional element to their technical careers.

Host - Pat Sweet: So this is really fascinating. I guess, I guess in my mind, in order to make the move into engineering and eventually engineering management, there's no real magic. I don't think honestly, w what you would need is the same thing. Anyone else might need. You need the knowledge, the skills and the experience required for a particular position. And from Wilhelms message. I didn't read it here on the show, but he did explain that he's pursuing engineering education at post-baccalaureate level with plans to move on to a master's degree as well. So, so the educational piece that that foundation is going to be there. So I think that's an important first step you would like to get into engineering, frankly, you need a technical education, the real trick. I think when moving from non-engineering to engineering, it is figuring out how to use the experience you do have in a, in a productive way, in your new role.

Host - Pat Sweet: I've had the experience relatively recently, in fact, coaching folks who, who are now engineers, who used to be in other fields, how to navigate this, this fact that, you know, you may have this long illustrious career in some other field. And just because that field wasn't in engineering doesn't mean that, that none of that work is transferable to your work as an engineer, ideally, you would find a technical role, an engineering role. What, once you have the, the underlying credentials that would allow you to take advantage of your previous experience, then you're not starting from scratch. Then you're starting from a position of strength. And if nothing else, just knowing how to work, knowing how an office works, knowing how meetings were knowing how professional communications work is a benefit that, that puts you in a position well beyond what I would expect of a new graduate.

Host - Pat Sweet: So finding ways or finding an organization that gets your previous experience is super, super important. One way to approach a transition like this is to make the move more of a, a long-term strategy. And what I'd recommend is, is ultimately a, that process when making a career transition, you should only ever change either your role or your industry. You shouldn't do both at the same time. It'd be very tough to get ahead job where you're transitioning both at the same at the same time. Anyway, I, it's hard to imagine someone actually giving you gig. So for example, if you are a project manager in the pharmaceuticals industry and you would like to move into aerospace, for example, maybe become a project manager in aerospace because you already get project management, but you don't necessarily get aerospace. And then from within the aerospace industry, once you've been a project manager for awhile, then you can transition to some other role, maybe product management, right?

Host - Pat Sweet: And it may all be technical. It may all, it may not, but you can, you can kind of stepwise move into different roles, different industries, but trying to do both at the same time is going to be very, very difficult. And even if you do get the job, it's going to be very tough for you to thrive. You, you really will be starting basically from scratch as for getting into a management role. You know, th the same rules apply. If you want to be a project manager or a product manager, depending on the specific project or product, you may not actually need particularly deep technical knowledge. Now, again, it depends. It depends on the size of the team. It just depends on, on how much support you have from technical staff. It depends on the kinds of decisions that you'll be making.

Host - Pat Sweet: If it's a particularly large project. Some project managers really are focused on resource management or communications management or budgets and finances. So their need to get into the weeds with respect to the technical is, is much smaller. Again, this will vary from situation to situation, but many of the best project managers that I've worked with in the past, for example, have been people who were, were technically right, very strong, and that they understood what we were building and why they understood the process assesses, but there weren't engineers and they weren't going to be called on to size of bolt or a cable or a circuit breaker. That, that just really wasn't something that they needed to know how to do. One of the, one of the interesting things that comes to mind with this question for me is, is an overall truth. And, and that is that at some point as a leader, as a manager, if you progress and you're leading larger teams and more complex projects, eventually the people you lead will know more about their work than you could possibly know.

Host - Pat Sweet: And if you look at the extreme, if you look at a CEO or a CTO of even a medium organization, there's no way they could know the day jobs, people who are working for them, it just, it just doesn't make sense. So you need to get comfortable trusting your people, allowing your people to make decisions, allowing people to advise you on what's going on and making decisions based on the advice of the experts you employ. This is very hard for a lot of engineers who start as, as you know, a grass roots engineer size, those wires size, those circuit breakers. They get to a certain point where they're leading technical teams and they really do know a lot about the work that's going on. And as a result, it's tempting to get into the weeds. It's tempting to micromanage. It's tempting to force solutions on people who don't necessarily need you to do that.

Host - Pat Sweet: When you come in cold, when you don't have a deep technical background, and I've had this experience myself, leading teams, whose whose background and an expertise and line of work was very different from my own experience, you learn to rely on your people, and that's incredibly important too, because it, it forces you to get out of their way and let your people do their thing, and to allow them to bring roadblocks to you so that you can deal with those roadblocks. So again Wilhelm, very, very interesting question. I wish you the best of luck, very excited to hear about how things go both in your, your education and your career. Please do write, write me again. I'd love to hear how things go. Thanks again, to all those who reached out. If you'd like to chat or leave a comment, please do find me on LinkedIn or leave a comment on the episode, show notes, and I'll be sure to get that.

Host - Pat Sweet: That is all the time Tom, we have for the show today. I'll be back very soon with our next episode. If you enjoyed the show, which I hope you did, please subscribe. And please also leave an honest review and let me know what you thought was most interesting for today's show reviews, help me make the show better, and it helps other people find the show as well. So I really would appreciate that for more information and links to the resources mentioned today, just go to the show notes@engineeringandleadership.com slash episode 37 until next time, this is pat sweet reminding you that if you're going to be anything

Host - Pat Sweet: Excellent. [inaudible],

Host - Pat Sweet: You've been listening to the engineering and leadership podcast with pat sweet. If you'd like to learn more, go to engineering and leadership.com where you'll find more free articles, podcasts, and downloads to help engineers thrive. That's engineering and leadership.com.