Lead In 30 Podcast

The Best Ways to Communicate with Your Team & Customers

• Russ Hill

Share episode

Please tell me you're not using email as your main communication tool for both team members and customers? It's time to innovate if that's the case.

In this episode we walk through why technology matters and what you might be missing out on in the ways your interact most frequently with your team members and your customers.

--
Get weekly leadership tips delivered to your email inbox:
Subscribe to our leadership email newsletter
https://www.leadin30.com/newsletter

Connect with me on LinkedIn or to send me a DM:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/russleads/

Tap here to check out my first book, Decide to Lead, on Amazon. Thank you so much to the thousands of you who have already purchased it for yourself or your company!

--
About the podcast:
The Lead In 30 Podcast with Russ Hill is for leaders of teams who want to grow and accelerate their results. In each episode, Russ Hill shares what he's learned consulting executives. Subscribe to get two new episodes every week. To connect with Russ message him on LinkedIn!



Speaker 1:

How do you communicate with your team and with your customers? Some of you are stuck in like 1985. This is the Lead in 30 podcast with Russ Hill. You cannot be serious. Strengthen your ability to lead in less than 30 minutes.

Speaker 1:

So a few weeks ago I went over and, with the owners, the, the, a couple of the leaders, couple of the leaders, executives running a, uh, a jewelry company, a jewelry store I don't know if you call it a jewelry store, a jewelry brand, I think, because it's not a really a store. Most of their business it like, I think, 95, I don't, but maybe 98%, the vast majority happens online and and this company is generating a good amount of revenue, like it. They're, they're definitely successful and I was impressed, I was super impressed. It's a, it's a young leadership team and um ambitious and they, they've just got a great vibe in their office and and it's a long story how I ended up there anyway I so I'm chatting with them and they're really struggling. They're really struggling with um, people working from home and you get these two camps right. You get one camp that's like everybody should be in the office every day of the week and you can't be productive if you're not sitting in the office, and you get that camp. And then you get this other group that's like no, I think everybody could work from home, like just, yeah, I think we all should, whatever, and why can't I take my laptop to my kid's soccer practice, right, and and you get. You get these two very passionate arguments on both sides. This group, even though they're young, age-wise, they're in what I consider to be more of the old school of everybody at their desk, you know, hands on the computer every day. I'm exaggerating, obviously, but they lean that way and so, and to their credit, then they, they know that we wrote the book Remotability several years ago when the pandemic happened, and it's a book I don't talk about a lot, but it's how to lead remote teams. And then in the podcast I've done a good number of episodes where I talk about the way we work has changed. And then we wrote the Great Resignation book and the power of the individual versus the power of the institution. If you haven't read that like that, that book's not really about people resigning as much as it is the future of work and how things have changed.

Speaker 1:

And so we're putting this content out. Folks, whether or not you're reading it, consuming it, that's up to you, and and it's debatable how much value it's bringing. But we and we're I've got a meeting on the calendar I think it's tomorrow or the next day with the ghostwriter for our next book that's coming out in Q1 of 2025. And it's going to be our best. Yet it's going to be unbelievable, and so we're putting this content out right. It's up to you whether or not you're you're fine at valuating it and anyway. So we're talking.

Speaker 1:

So we did, we've done all this research on the way the way work has changed, and so these folks invited me in to push to their credit. They invited me in to challenge their way of thinking. So I'm sitting in their boardroom, their conference room, in in their office here in Arizona, and they're like okay, we, we, we lean this way. We want you to challenge us, push back on it. So I'm like wow, like that's impressive, that's really really good. Like that's what our clients do as consultants, like people pay us a good amount of money, hire us, and we come in to challenge them, to help to challenge the team. And I had a CEO say to me um gosh, this is two weeks ago, a couple, a couple of weeks ago, and he said rush, you know, the value you really bring to us is in a pro and in an appropriate way. You push on every member of my executive team. You're like are you sure about that? You know he was kind of acting out how I, how I am in the room, cause we've got a meeting coming up there in the Midwest, located in the Midwest, and we're going to be out there um late next week at the time I'm recording this and he's like the thing I love about you when you're in the room, russ, is you're just like, well, why do you feel that way? What causes you like you're pushing back in an appropriate way, so that that that's a sign of a good leader, right, curiosity and and humble confidence, right, and so, anyway, so this team is, is there.

Speaker 1:

It got me thinking. By the way, one of the things that this team was saying is like, man, the culture of our organization is really the result of these interactions that happen in the office place. And if we were to allow people to not work in the office place, and how do we? How do we even have a culture, and all that goes away. And I'm like, oh my gosh, that is. And so it got me thinking, like I, those, those executives, know what's best for their organization. What's best for your company is not what's best for that company, what's best for that organization or that team or whatever. So I just, I just throw out a lot of things for you to think about and then you will know. You will know what's best for your organization and and so, because of the industry and all the all of it, okay and and so, um, but they got me thinking.

Speaker 1:

Because our team has no like, our firm has no head like, we don't have an office building, and there are numerous organizations in our industry and other industry where that's that's the. I remember in our previous firm, when they hired a CEO, the private equity company came in. They hired a CEO who lived in another place where the than the corporate office was. And the new CEO came in and he's like, yeah, we don't really have a corporate office. And we were like, whoa, wait, so you're not moving, cause every other CEO had moved executive moved to this where our firm's headquarters were. He was like, no, I work out of my home office. And he happened to work. Anyway, he worked in a certain area and he's like, no, I'm not moving, I can totally do the job from here. And and he ended up just like they, they still have a corporate office now, even.

Speaker 1:

But it went from like I don't know how many people were there 50, 80, whatever it was down to like. I think there are like 10. I don't know for sure, cause that's years ago, but, and, by the way, that worked fine. It worked incredibly well. I was even a little unsure about it, but it worked great and um and so. So it gets you thinking about well, how do you create the, the, the culture of, uh, and so I've been thinking about that. Well, in our firm, we don't have an office, there's not interactions in person, um, in our office. So how do we create the culture? And in this episode, I want to talk to you about that, and I want to talk about the tools and the method you're using to communicate with both clients and customers, because a lot of you are way outdated on this, okay, so I'm going to give you some tools and ideas of things that you could use. Okay, welcome into the lead.

Speaker 1:

In 30 podcast, in less than 30 minutes, in each episode, we give you a model, a framework, a best practice, a story, an example, something for you to think about, implementing in the way that you lead, upgrade the way that you lead and your value in the marketplace goes up dramatically. I'm Russ Hill. I make my living coaching, consulting senior executive teams and some of the world's most amazing organizations. If you want to find out more about our 30-day leadership course and, wow, we got a lot of exciting stuff coming in that in the next few weeks and months, but for right now, you go to leadin30.com. Leadin30.com you can find out more about our 30-day course. Many of you have been through it, by the way. Yeah, the name of that course is Lead in 30 because it's 30 days where we transform a manager, an executive, a supervisor's ability to lead others.

Speaker 1:

We teach three core competencies clarity, alignment and movement. Great leaders, the leaders who scale, know how to create clarity. They know that alignment is different than awareness. They know that most people are good at creating awareness, but they suck. They've never been trained, they have no ability, no idea how to create alignment, and teams and organizations that are aligned function dramatically differently than teams and organizations that are aware of a strategy, a policy, of result, whatever, and and and. Then the last core competency we teach is movement. You gotta be knocking down the barriers and the blowing apart the boulders that exist on the path from here to wherever you're taking us Clarity, alignment, movement the third leader is what we teach. If you have no idea what I'm talking about, leadin30.com is where you can find out more.

Speaker 1:

Okay, so so I'm thinking, after this meeting with these jewelry um brand, uh executives, I'm thinking well, how, how do we create the culture and how do we communicate with our team? And there's an app sitting right on one of the monitors. I have multiple monitors right on my, on my, on my desk. I'm looking at one right now and there's this program called Slack. Now, this isn't a podcast about Slack, this isn't an episode about that, but our culture, our organization, is like.

Speaker 1:

The heartbeat of our organization is in Slack. It's right there. Our team's talking to each other. They're in different places. They're walking to airplanes, they're on airplanes, they're in meetings, they're they're, they're on, you know away with their family, whatever. They're walking to airplanes, they're on airplanes, they're in meetings, they're away with their family, whatever. They're. All different places doing all kinds of different things. But that's the heartbeat of our organization. Jokes and the birthdays and the honeymoon wishes and the this, that and the other, and then people are uploading this and you can do videos and image. I mean like it's all there and it that is. There's no question that our organization would not have the culture it would be, or the, the, and I know, as one of the owners, the founders, one of the founders of the firm, that I've got to create part of that heartbeat. I got to be in there and I got to be communicating things and I got to be reacting and laughing and posting things and like a lot of that's determined by me as the leader, and so you know that that's where it is.

Speaker 1:

So my question to you is where does now, if you're all in the same office I think it's still even applies, especially in a digital age You've got to have something online where your organization lives. That's the heartbeat of it. And what is that for you? Is it Slack? Is it teams? Is it something else? I don't know what? Another tool that you've got, but where is it?

Speaker 1:

And, by the way, if you say salesforce, like, I'm coming after you, because salesforce is robust and that that's where all the data from your customers is. But that tool, salesforce, sucks. It's so bloated and it doesn't suck as a CRM, it doesn't suck as a way to manage clients or you know, whatever, whatever, the, what is it? Hubspot, all these different sites that exist that are managing kind of client. We've got that too. We've got, we've got a system that we use. What do you use? Salesforce? But a lot of you do, a lot of your bigger organizations do you got some tool that, if you're going to that thing, that's where the heartbeat is? Maybe, maybe there are some. I mean, I know salesforce has like a message board and you can communicate whatever. So I shouldn't beat up on it that much.

Speaker 1:

Um, especially for large organizations that are listening in, like that might be best for you, but you, you better be using it in a way that I've never seen it used, where there's lots of dialogue, there's lots of exchange, there's like and people like using it. It feels innovative, it feels fresh and light and I can use it on my phone easily and all that Like it's gotta be innovative and and contemporary and the UI matters. Like if I gave you an iPhone and it was bloated and the experience was like kind of 40 million different fields and it didn't look that great, you wouldn't pay what you pay for it. So wherever the heartbeat of your organization is, does it look innovative, contemporary, modern? Do people like being in that app? And and Slack, I think, is the best. I don't know if there's anything better out there. Teams probably has some of that stuff, but my, my point is um one. That's where you're, the culture lives, and it's got to be online. You all I don't care if you're all in the same building, but most of you are spread out of over multiple sites. Where you got people coming and going, you got to sell. If your sales team is sitting in the office and your executives are sitting in the office all the time listen to the last episode your bubbles too small, your world's too small. You're holding back your team's ability to grow. Anyway, you've got to have some tool. Now what?

Speaker 1:

We made a conscious decision as a firm to move 90% of our email communication to that messaging platform. So we we like, and when we first started it, I'd be replying to emails all the time. I'd hit a reply hey you all, let's take this over to Slack, shutting down email. Email is painful, painful. It's the least effective, the least enjoyable way to communicate. There is no one that gets excited opening up an email program. So if most of your communications in your organization are happening in email while you're outdated, so I'm just challenging you you could listen to me and say well, we're going to stick with it because that's what works. That's fine. No judgment, you do you right, you know what's best. I'm just pushing back on it to cause you to think a little differently and to at least consider some alternatives before you lock in on it. So so we've moved.

Speaker 1:

I get like hardly any internal emails in our organization. Email to me is for customers. It's for external or vendors, external communication, and we try to move as much of that into it for us at Slack. Whatever that communication tool is for you, we try to move as much of that into it. For us it's Slack, whatever that communication tool is for you, we try to move as much of it over there as we can. Even with vendors or like different contractors. We use different companies that we contract with. We put them into our messaging platform, just message me on there, and if they go well, what's Slack? Then we know, okay, not innovative, not really someone we probably want to be interacting with, right? So we try to reduce the volume of email because it it just is the least effective way to communicate, and so we move it over to the messaging, and then email is for some of the customer interactions and those sorts of things.

Speaker 1:

Now let me say something about that too. One of the things that I learned years ago and most of you have already learned, this that the most effective way to communicate with a customer is not via email. It's through what. It's through what? What do you think I'm going to say? What platform, what tool, what technology? What do you think I'm going to say? What platform, what tool, what technology? Yeah, it's a text message. So if we've got a prospective client or a new client, one of the first things that I'm doing with that executive, that CEO, that senior vice president, whoever it is that is the top leader we're working with in the organization is get their cell phone number and then I send them a text because emails are going to sit there.

Speaker 1:

I suck at email. Some of you live in your inbox and you're listening to me indict email. You're like I don't get it Cause I love email, and I'm like, well, okay, well, cool, that's you. And you're like you just like, right, with the permanent mark, get out a sharpie and write 1999 on your forehead, because that's you right. I'm kidding, I'm being extreme, just uh, just to kind of push on you, but um, so so I know that an email to one of our clients is not all of them, but for a lot of them it's just going to sit there, but a text message they're going to see.

Speaker 1:

How many unread text messages do you have in your phone? If you're 16 years old, you probably have 150 because you're part of all these group chats. Right, you looked at your kids' phones and and I mean they got tons of. But if you're over 25, how many unread text messages do you have on your phone? Like hardly any. And the only reason you have some, if you do, is because you've been in a meeting for four hours, but otherwise you're in there and you're in that and and and there's short messages. It's like Twitter communication, right, it's 30 characters or less. It's just boom, boom, boom.

Speaker 1:

So, with customers, why are you emailing them, text them? That's where a lot of your communication should happen. Why think about the psychology of it? The psychology of it is we text people that we're we're, we're friends with, that we've allowed into our inner circle. We view the people we text with differently than the people that only have access to our email. So, even subconsciously, there's so much value to you being on my phone and in my text messages. So you can't say, if I'm your client and you're sending me a ton of text messages, yeah, you're not going to be my client for long, or I'm not going to be your client for long, right, so you're selective about it, but that's the best method. So let's talk about internal versus external, and then I'll wrap.

Speaker 1:

Internal communication should be on a messaging platform, not an email. Make it innovative, fun. Direct message, emojis, all that sort of like, all that is in the platform. I can't get that in an email. It feels stuffy, old school, slow, whatever. So, internally, what messaging platform are we using? That's where the culture of our organization or our team lives, and if it's, if you're on a messaging platform, you're already there and it sucks. It's because you, or whomever, as the leaders of the team, aren't making it what it should be, should be fun, should be light, it should have whatever, it should have value. And so you set the tone, as the leader of the team, as the executive team or as a leadership team of of what that's like, and I would strongly encourage you to use that. Okay. So mess some kind of messaging or communication platform. That's where most of the internal communication happens. And if you're not up to date on all the ability, like there's, it's channels for every client, channels for different departments. You, you've got to build that and fine tune it and make sure that it's right, and then it's just unbelievable.

Speaker 1:

And then email is for kind of the. You need to, you need to attach the agreement, you need to send the PowerPoint deck unit with a client external, with the vendor, and then my, my, real in my, my hey, what do you think about this and do you want to do a call next week and whatever that's in text with the clients and customers. I got to get on their phone, I got to get into text messaging because it's just viewed differently, the relationship is different and I know I can get them. I email the CEO of an organization. I hear back in two or three days. The CEO of an organization. I hear back in two or three days. I text them. I hear back in two or three hours max, right, and it just feels different and you want them knowing they can get you that way. Just, I can ping you that way. So that and and and, by the way, your team too. Now, we had a time just last point, real quick, just something else that we've. We've kind of learned just something to share with you.

Speaker 1:

Sometimes we would use text messaging internally, so then you get like 40 different groups going because the people on this account in that department, you start tech text messaging is not a great platform for internal communication. Why? Cause you don't have a record of it. And then you go oh, somebody sent that, or they said that, or they sent the ad. Where was that? I don't even know. Was it in email, was it in text, was it in Slack or Teams, or where was that? No, so and you want a record as an organization, I want a searchable database that other people can go through. That they are, they are Everyone's not having to search in different places or wondering. So we, we were doing email.

Speaker 1:

Then a lot of text messages were trading back and forth between people in our organization. We we said try not to do that, move it over to for us slack, so it's searchable and it's there when people need it or whatever else. And then text messaging for us is if I just need to ping you real quick or it's something that I. There's just a reason why I need to do that rather than in Slack. So setting those ground rules and and kind of establishing how it works. That's critically important. So this is the way that modern, modern organizations like anyone in in in silicon valley or tech company that's listening to this are like, uh, like duh to everything I've said, like they've lived in this um for so long.

Speaker 1:

By the way, the ai abilities that are coming, for instance, slack now has an ai feature and it's called recap and it's got a couple of other things like threads and it now summarizes. So I'm off for three or four days. I hit this button called recap and the AI has now transcribed and put into bullet points what I missed over the four days or five days that I was gone in that message thread or in that. It saves me an enormous amount of time. So AI is coming to all these things as well. By the way, I just started using an email platform. Oh my gosh, is it unbelievable. And it's AI. It's got AI built into it in the most impressive way. I'm not going to tell you what tool it is, because I haven't used it long enough yet to advocate for it, um, but, but so far, oh my gosh.

Speaker 1:

So I go into the AI and I say, hey, what time is my flight to New York next week. It goes oh, uh, russ, thanks for asking that here. Uh, your flight is on Delta's flight number. Whatever you're taking off, your landing here, um, and. And then it. And then it has you guys, this is so crazy. Then it has a footnote which is the source, and then, if it's multiple emails, it's drawing from cause. I can also type into the email Um, what's my flight and do I have a car reserved for New York? And the AI goes through all of my messages in my email and says yes, and then it has footnotes that are the sources, which, if I click on them, they're hyperlinks. Those are the links to the individual emails that contain the information. Oh, my gosh, like mind blown, unbelievable. Or the other day I was in there. I'm like to the AI you hit a, you hit a keystroke. I'm like, hey, what's so-and-so's email address? And it says, oh, you're looking for so-and-so at this particular company. Here's his email address and here are the last 10 messages interacting on real.

Speaker 1:

So my point in saying the AI piece of it is you've got to move these things to platforms that are searchable and it's going to blow you away. For instance, I'll give you one last tool, and then I got to. I got to wrap like meetings. If you don't have an AI tool taking like taking a transcription of your virtual meetings and then automatically summarizing in bullet point form what was said in the meetings, what the main points were and then what the action items are, you are behind the times, like all these virtual meetings that are happening in your organization. You, like you, I take notes, but then I have AI generated piece to it and it just it blows your mind where AI is going to go in just the next year or two. It's so fun. You all like. There's never been a better time, never in the history of the world has been a better time to be an executive, a leader of an organization, the tools at our disposal to communicate, to get data, to summarize, like we are, we have the ability to be insanely effective, efficient. It's awesome. I love it.

Speaker 1:

So, hopefully, I gave you a few things in this episode to think about. You be you, you do you, you know what's best for your organization. What I was hoping to accomplish in this episode was to push on you, to get you thinking about different things. If I missed out on something, you're like man. There's this tool that Russ didn't mention that we've been using for like the last three months or three years. It's unbelievable.

Speaker 1:

Will you just direct message me? Go onto LinkedIn the links in the show notes, right Go over to LinkedIn and send me a direct message. And um, which, by the way, actually it's not the best way. I don't know how, I don't know how else, cause I'm not giving them out my cell number on on a podcast the LinkedIn direct messaging. Could somebody just innovate on that? I get 90% of what I get in direct messages, just spam, just people just destroying my inbox. Talk about an end effect anyway, but that's the best way for you to communicate with me right now. Send me a direct message If I miss something that you're thinking. Man, this is a tool that Russ should have mentioned, or a way we do it at our organization. Or do you want to push back? Uh, send me a DM on LinkedIn. I might not get to it right away. Want to push back? Uh, send me a DM on LinkedIn. I might not get to it right away, but I will see it.

Speaker 2:

Um, eventually All right, that's what I got for you in this episode of the lead in 30 podcast. Share this episode with a colleague, your team or a friend.

Speaker 1:

tap on the share button and text the link Thanks for listening to the lead in 30 podcast with Russ Hill.