Are Your Motives Aligned With Your Values and Actions? with Todd Davis [Episode 802]

Todd Davis is the Chief People Officer for FranklinCovey and author of, Get Better: 15 Proven Practices to build more effective Relationships at Work.

What I enjoyed about this conversation with Todd is that you’ll learn that building relationships with your team is very similar to building them with customers. We dive deep into building credibility and how you demonstrate character and competence. Plus, we discuss motivations – keeping in mind my favorite quote from Ralph Waldo Emerson, “What you do speaks so loudly I cannot hear what you say.”

Episode Transcript

Andy Paul: Todd Davis. Welcome to the show.

Todd Davis: Thank you, Andy. Appreciate being here.

Andy Paul: So where are you sheltering in place?

Todd Davis: I, live in salt Lake city, Utah, where, I work for a company called Franklin Covey and our headquarters are here. And I live not far from our headquarters.

Andy Paul: Short commute if you had one

Todd Davis: It is. Back when I went we used to have them. It was pretty short, 20 minutes.

Andy Paul: So has this been a big transition for you to, to the work from home environment?

Todd Davis: With our organization, we have in the US and Canada, we have about nine, just under 900 employees and, probably 700 of those 900 have been home office forever. That’s the nature of how they’re structured our corporate offices, where I work. This has been a new thing for us.

And so we’re all adapting. We actually had a flood in our building several months before the coronavirus hit and we had to leave the building for several weeks while they repaired all the damage. And so we had a dress rehearsal for working from home. out well.

Andy Paul: Yeah, get people accustomed to it. So for sure. We’re going to talk to you about, one of your books that you’ve written called Get Better: 15 Proven Practices to Build More Effective Relationships at Work. And I pick this up originally a couple of years ago, because my philosophy of sales is that it all starts with the human to human aspect of sales, making that connection, building that relationship, which quite frankly, is not in fashion with some people in sales these days. What I thought was interesting about your book, or one of the things is that when talk about building teams, what you’re really talking about is building yourself.

Todd Davis: That’s exactly the approach I took. I’ve been, as I mentioned, I’ve been with Franklin Covey for about 25 years. In the last 16 years I’ve been in the role of chief people officer. And in that role, I’ve observed and coached leaders and others at all levels within the organization. And while we talk all the time, how important it is to hire the right people have the right people on your teams and your organizations. It’s actually the nature of the relationships between those people that is, any organization, certainly a sales organizations, a true competitive advantage. And so that’s, that was the premise for the book.

And that, we are most effective in influencing others. When we start with ourselves, there was, a play written by John Paul Sartre, back in 1940 and the play is called No Exit and he just very quickly, he, the play begins with these three people, these individuals in the afterlife, and they’re in this room. Trapped in this room, why it’s called No Exit. There’s no doors, windows are bricked up and they start to irritate each other as is any of us would. And because they irritate each other, they try to change each other and it doesn’t go so well. And it only escalates their frustration and they slowly come to realize that, they’re in hell. They thought hell was fire and brimstone, but no hell is actually other people. And in his play, he makes the point that in this room, there are no mirrors, meaning that what would benefit these people best as if they would look in the mirror and decide what they need to improve upon or where they need to change or where they need to get better. As I titled the book, to most effectively influence the other person

Andy Paul: And this idea of influencing others is  bi-dimensional. You are building a team inside the company. And there is requirement as an individual to be able to influence others in order to get your job done. And just as you have to influence your buyers and your prospects to help them make the right decision for purchasing your product.

Todd Davis: I agree a hundred percent. When people hear the word relationships, you’re building effective relationships, many think, that’s a nice to have, but I’ve got a lot of work to do, or I’ve got a project to complete, or I’ve got this revenue I’ve got to bring in and don’t really have time to stop and talk about relationships.

But just to your point, unless you are, I don’t know, a pro golfer, or maybe you run a company where you are the only employee. The rest of the world, we all get our results with and through others. And so developing and continuing to improve upon these effective relationships is much more than just a nice thing to happen. It’s really foundational to achieving every one of the important goals that we’re all trying to achieve. Because again, we all get results with and through others.

Andy Paul: Relationship is one of these interesting words that has become freighted with meaning that in some cases in sales, you hear people write about, Oh, you don’t need to have a relationship with a buyer because they think that a relationship connotes a friendship. so I’ve started using the word connection versus relationship to serve take some of that, fraught, meaning away from it. So people understand that you need to have, this connection at a human level that, and we’ll get into some of the characteristics behind that connection, but it ultimately boils down to influence.

Todd Davis: You’re right. It’s a great point. But whether we call it a relationship or a connection, it’s the level of trust. In my opinion, it’s a level of trust you’re able to build between the two of you in the Seven Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen Covey talked about your EBA. And in fact, it’s one of the, it’s one of the practices of the 15.

I titled it, Take Stock of Your Emotional Bank Accounts and much like a financial bank account in our relationships or our connections as you’re calling them with others, we make deposits and we take withdrawals, unlike a financial bank account, we should never be making deposits with the intent of taking a withdrawal, but our EBA, our emotional bank account with others is all about the level of trust we have with our clients, with our sales colleagues, with everyone else.

And when that level of trust is high, then work goes so much smoother and so much more productive and effectively when that trust is low, then just the opposite happens.

Andy Paul: And so it starts, and you’re talking about this the book, with credibility. Which without credibility, there’s no trust and credibility. Two things that I talk a lot about is character and competence. And character is one of these things, again, that I think we don’t talk enough about in business and certainly in sales. And when they’re interviewing people, oftentimes you talk to managers, how do you assess someone’s character? Are you asking questions about their character and their values? And the answer often is no.

Todd Davis: No, that’s a great, it’s a great point. Character is foundational. and as you say it didn’t, as we say it in the book, you must have both to be truly credible, but character I liken is to the roots of a tree. It’s foundational. And it’s, but it’s the thing we can’t necessarily see much. Like we can see the competencies or the skills of the person.

And, but the root system in a tree is the thing that makes all the difference that weathers, the storms that helps it intertwine with other trees. And so this character, your integrity, your, honesty, quite frankly, your intentions of what it is you’re really trying to accomplish all plays into someone’s character. And it is, just like the roots of a tree. It is foundational to anyone’s, effectiveness and success.

Andy Paul: There’s an old expression about character. You talk about it in the book, as well as its characters, doing the right thing when no one is looking. And I think that’s so important is just, as you said, it’s foundational as who you are. And I have found over decades in sales and selling to people around the world, different cultures and so on one thing people really glom onto really quickly is your character, right? This first perception of who you are is really based on her character.

Todd Davis: I agree. We’re a sales organization as well and we have the term we use for our sales people, where many call it Account Executive, we call it client partners just to reinforce what you’re talking about. Does the client feel like you’re really here to help me? Or are you here to sell me something? Are you really my partner? Are you really looking out for us? And seeing what we need, what gaps we need to fill or where we need to improve on. And are you really my partner? Or are you selling something to me? So you can make a commission or whatever?

Andy Paul: Which, and you refer to in your book, Stephen MR Covey’s books, The Speed of Trust. And he’s been on this program and a favorite book of mine. And we’re going to touch on a few themes from that later. You had an interesting story in the book about how character doesn’t mean that you’re perfect. And I think that this is something people oftentimes mistake as think, if they’re in sales and they think, Oh, if I make a mistake, I’m just going to screw up. And they, so then become paralyzed by this idea that they can’t act in a way that’s authentic to them because they’re afraid of screwing up and so if you don’t mind, tell us the story about the missing contract.

Todd Davis: Yeah, I’m just chuckling because it was an embarrassing time, but it was a huge lesson in character to me, I used to work in the medical industry and I was in charge of putting contracts together with physician groups that we would use. And this is again, I’m not a spring chicken and this was back in the day when we actually use typewriters and there were not electronic files. And this particular contract is going back and forth between our company and the contracted physician group. And we were making changes and edits. We had a deadline when we needed this group to start seeing our patients. And again, I was a young manager and all of a sudden we’re down to the final wire. We have a couple of days left and the contract went missing and nobody could find the contract and they, or they had given it to us and we swore we had given it to them. I remember specifically seeing it and giving it to this woman by the name of Linda Meek. If she’s ever hears this, she’ll never forgive me, but I remember giving it to her. And anyway,  everybody was frustrated, a lot of work had gone into this, and there was no copy of it. With the clock was ticking and so we just all throw up her arms and said, okay, we got to quickly put another contract together. And fortunately at that back then we had good memories. And so we put in a lot of work some long days to recreate this 20 page  contract. Got it all taken care of in the nick of time, people got over their frustration and did we got it in place and this group of physicians started seeing our patients. Several months later I was working in my office. Now, again, I keep reminding you, I was young at the time. Okay. I was young. And I was looking for a particular folder or something. I went to pull th se papers out of my desk and paper clipped to the back of these papers was the missing contract. And I was sick to my stomach. I just thinking about all that anger and those people that have do all that rework, including me.

And I joke when I’m telling others this, my first thought was, I wonder how Linda Meek got this put back in my drawer. But anyway, that night I went home thinking maybe I should just throw it away, everything’s moved on and I don’t want people to know that I’m the. I was the culprit, but I don’t know why I say this with humility. It wasn’t cause I was some high integrity person at the time, but the next morning I picked up the contract and I walked down to my boss’s office, his name was Al Yenchek, Dr. Yencheck. And I went in there and I said, dr. Yan check, you are going to kill me. And he said, what? I showed him the contract. And he looked at the contract and then he looked at me and then he looked back down and he says, okay, I’m impressed with you, Todd. I think I would have just thrown it away and we both laughed. And then he, we talked about, the mistake I had made and the way he treated me that day, and more importantly, the way he treated me going forward after that day, just taught me volumes about character.

That to your point, Andy, it’s not about being perfect. It’s not about never making mistakes. It’s about owning up to your mistakes. It’s about having the integrity to do the right thing and to admit when you’re wrong and to do your best to try and not make that mistake again. And I’ve never forgotten that lesson and I’m far from perfect and I continue to make mistakes, but I do try and own them. And I try and do the right thing the next time and learn each with each mistake.

Andy Paul: And such an important lesson for sellers because in the course of selling any product or services, we say a lot of words. And it’s hard to get through a sales process without inadvertently misrepresenting something that you do. Maybe have a, a spec wrong, or maybe you misdescribe what a feature does and the benefit they might get from it. And too often sellers just want to cover it up. And if when you do that, then you just get lumped into pile of sellers that everybody thinks the way sellers act. Instead of distinguishing yourself by saying, yeah, I, yesterday and this, yeah I apologize, that’s not the way this works. Let me explain to you and walk through you, walk through it with you, how this does work and what you’ll get out of it. Customers remember that and it accrues to your

Todd Davis: I just couldn’t agree more. In fact, you’re, when we go into recovery mode from a mistake we’ve made often we will build more trust than if we hadn’t made the mistake in the first place. Now, ideally we don’t make mistakes, when with clients, but when we do and the way we handle that, and I think about my own experience with, places that I’ve bought services from or goods from, and when mistakes or errors have been made, the way that they have gone or not gone about recovering from those has a tremendous influence on my wanting to be an advocate and a cheerleader for them going forward.

Andy Paul: Yeah, I had a boss at one point, suggested that you should actually deliberately make mistakes in order to accomplish exactly that. You create a situation where you have inject some errors and then come back and say, look, we made a mistake. I wanna make sure we covered this. I don’t think I ever did that intentionally, but yeah, you can see where it might work.

Todd Davis: Yeah, that’s a good point.

Andy Paul: So we talked about character and competence, makeup, credibility, and you had a good story, a sales related story, actually in the book about competence, but you start saying that people think that strong character can make up for a lack of competence. And I agree with you that’s not the case.

Todd Davis: Yeah. These are some of the, again, client partners, as we call our account executives that I work with. And I worked with one who was amazing at just all of the nice things that you want people to do for you; remembering your birthday, asking you the last time you talked, even if it had been six months ago saying, “Hey, now, your son was ill with the flu. Did he recover? Is he doing okay?” or whatever it was, this person just had this amazing memory and very thoughtful, extremely thoughtful. And that was a great quality. But what I started to learn, the more I worked with this person is that they, I don’t know if it was intentional, but their whole life, because they had been that way. They hadn’t spent as much time or energy focusing on building and developing their skillset and their competency. And I bet in certain situations, they were able to get by with just this tremendous amount of thoughtfulness and consideration of others, I made everybody like them. And so they continued to have work and.

Be hired, but it got to a point in our organization where clients, had their, this was a consultant and clients had their choice of consultants and they’d been working with this person and another consultant and they chose the other consultant and this person was quite upset. But again, when I could see and they couldn’t see as clearly as just the other consultant certainly respectful and nice. Maybe not off the charts considerate and thoughtful, like this, one consultant was, they had the skillset and had kept and continued to invest in themselves and up on their skills that they could really provide that value. And so it’s why I make the point that, you got to have both character and competence and a whole lot of one doesn’t make up for a lack of the other.

You’ve really gotta be strong in both. and alternatively, we’ve had, I’ve worked for salespeople who are masters at their product knowledge or their consultative abilities, but they’re, I just about being thoughtful, but they’re, there maybe don’t have the integrity that you would hope everyone would have, and that doesn’t work either.

And so it’s, what’s really a careful balance of both.

Andy Paul: Yeah, you and your story about, Craig and Marta in the book about Craig, who they were up for contention for taking on a project and Marta won over Craig. When you said that Craig had allowed his competence to wane and this is such a critical thing for sellers and I spent a lot of time on my soap box on this show, talking about it is this idea that you mentioned is investing in yourself. This is, we all have. If we don’t invest in ourselves, we all, I have expiration dates sell by dates and I think it’s as true or maybe more true in sales than anywhere.

Cause oftentimes you’re working with, selling products and services that are continually evolving. Your buyer’s behaviors and the way they can access and process information is changing. And if you don’t acknowledge that and say, I need to invest in myself. I can’t rely on anybody else. it’d be nice to my company trained me and they give me content or read training.

Great. But at some degree of weight, and to me, this is a character issue as well as do you have the character to admit. Or have the intellectual humility to say, yeah, I need to keep investing in myself in order to be relevant to what I’m doing.

Todd Davis: so critical. again, referring back to seven habits, which was, which is our operating system at Franklin Covey. One of our, one of our foundational solutions habit seven is to sharpen the saw. And it’s about renewal. In, the body, heart, mind, and spirit, and, you’ve seen the studies, I’ve seen the studies and I used to scoff, not scoff at them, but wonder how true they were but boy, they’re proving true. And that is that within it’s predicted now that like within 15, 20 years, 40% of the work that is done by human beings will be replaced by artificial intelligence. And we see it happening all around us. And it’s just one of many indicators to me that. Boy, if you don’t continue to invest in yourself, if you don’t continue to learn and grow, regardless of your age, regardless of your, professional level, you are going to be obsolete.

You are going to quickly or slowly become obsolete and less relevant. And yeah, and so I think we owe it to ourselves. We owe it to the teams we work on or the companies we work for, to continually be investing in ourselves to staying up on new trends and new products and new services. And just keep that continual renewal going.

Andy Paul: And I think it’s really important for people to understand that what that renewal constitutes. When you use that statistic about, jobs being replaced by artificial intelligence is that they’re not taking on. The jobs that require complex thought that require building nuanced relationships with people, or, synthesizing information in real time to prevent know new solutions or new opportunities for customers.

It’s the repetitive stuff, the lowest sort of the lowest level tasks, the low hanging fruit. And so if you’re in sales and you’re kicking along and at the bottom of the chart in terms of performance, yeah. You can sell stuff just by sort of going through the basic steps. But at some point, those basic steps to your point, may be able to be automated.

And so you got to look at higher level skills. One of the things that you can invest in yourself, is not just going to be knowledge as much as sometimes about how you think, how you perceive the world.

Todd Davis: Exactly.

Andy Paul: Okay. So we’ve talked about that. and credibility, this whole idea of reinvention and renewal.

When I talked with Stephen MR Covey on the show, we, I forget the stat he used, but it’s, the number of times as you basically have to reinvent yourself.  I think you use the stats in his book is every two and a half to four years. Something like that. You pretty much have to reinvent yourself in order to stay relevant. And I think that I like that term reinvention perhaps better than renewal, but because maybe it’s more descriptive in my mind, but I’m not looking at my own career as is in sales over decades. Here is I’d counted out the other day. I think I had maybe eight or nine significant reinventions on myself, from being a field salesperson, to being a marketing person basically, too working at my first startup that I’d never worked out before and building a sales channel to, being a VP of sales at a high growth startup, all these  steps, alongwithd being a consultant, being a podcaster, these are all things that require investment. And if I hadn’t done it, I would have been, yeah, irrelevant a long time ago.

Todd Davis: Left in the dust. Yeah, no, it’s, it is a continual, and I love the term reinvent as well. It’s a continually evolve, ongoing  And it’s not, when we say we’ve reinvented ourselves every four years, it’s not okay, we do this and then we stop it on this day. Here we go. And now I’m switched again. It’s this ongoing, evolutionary thing week to week, day to day. Where we, smart people, take their time as they put together their weekly plan, what they’re going to get accomplished, that they block out time to, read that journal or read this additional book or take this course or whatever.

And so it’s this ongoing process that I think benefits everyone to really buy into and be participating in.

Andy Paul: Another big theme in the book. And you alluded to it earlier with when talking about integrity, being so important, and that really gets down to your motives, right? Your motivations and how transparent you are. And this idea is such a big thing in sales is that we’re still struggling with sort of as a profession, is that, we say, yeah, we’re buyer-centric and we’ll go to a buyer and say, here’s, we’re trying to be very transparent in our motivations here, we’re just trying to help you. We’re here to help you make a good decision. And then we get to the last week of the month and it’s yeah, but if you close in the next five days, we’re going to give you a big discount.

Todd Davis: Yes, I think we’ve all been there.

Andy Paul: Right. That’s endemic to the way we do business and sales.

Todd Davis: Now it’s such a key point.

What you’re communicating to the buyer is, eh here to helpAndy Paul: you not so much. And it doesn’t mean they’re not going to end up buying from you, but they’re under no illusions from that point forward is what the relationship’s really about.

Todd Davis: Exactly. Practice number nine, as you mentioned, is called examine your real motives. And what I have found in working with people is that more often than not, we don’t intentionally have bad motives. A healthy motive, uplifts you, and those around you in an unhealthy motive does just the opposite.

And I don’t meet many people who go to unhealthy motives intentionally. I think we go on, at least my experience has been, we go on autopilot and we actually lose sight of what our real motive was or is. And so my counsel and my suggestion to myself and to others is to pause and step back. And I have to ask myself now, what is really driving me here?

A simple example that I use in the book, I might be in a meeting and and my colleague Marla says something really smart and I’m thinking, Oh man, okay, I gotta say something smart. Cause I want my boss to think that I’m smart too. Mark is always coming up with a smart strategy.

That’s a motive. Versus we’re in the meeting and the discussion goes around to something that I’ve had some experience with. And I think, Oh, I want to share this because it may help contribute to the course of the conversation. Two different motives and these are very subtle examples, but you do have to pause because we all are so busy and we go on autopilot, you have to pause and say, now here’s my real motive here?

Do I really do, am I really passionate about helping this customer and the services or the product that we provide? Do I see the benefit. And do I really want her to experience this? Because I know it will really improve, XYZ and their company or I really want to do this because we’re going to buy that new car next week. If I can just get this last commission and then I’ll have enough money to do that. Yeah. The project will help her, but my real focus is on getting one more sales. So I hit the next benchmark in my, in my forecast and all that.

So it’s yeah, it’s something that we have to stop or at least I think wise people stop and check themselves on all the time.

Andy Paul: Yeah. I always talk about sales as a deliberate act. It’s to your point about autopilots, you want to stay off autopilot. You want to be very conscious and in the moment, but it occurred to me as you were talking that, Oh, so often in sales or whatever profession is, people always talk about having a passion for what you’re doing, but what they don’t talk about is the motives.

Because based on what you’re talking about is really what animates your passion is having the right motives for what you’re doing. And I think, people talk, I need the passion I need to be in love. Start with, are you really of in love with your motivations, for why you’re doing what you’re doing?

Todd Davis: Yeah, it’s such a great point. You bring up Andy. We see these usually they’re actors, but people that are on talk shows, watching some night talk show and some actor will be talking about her experience or his experience. And they say, And I hear the phrase often, and I can’t believe I get paid for doing this. And I think about that. I think, what a rewarding career that you’re in, whatever you do, whatever sales role you’re in or anything, if you, at the end of each day, it doesn’t mean it’s easy, but that your motive is because you enjoy. Bringing insights and help to other people. And so you go to bed at night thinking, wow, I love what I do because it’s connecting with what really motivates me and that’s in helping others. So great point you bring up between motive and passion, the correlation between motive and passion.

Andy Paul: And you had your three clues for assessing your motives. But the one that I wanted to focus on the time we had was declare your intent, because I think that aligns very closely with it. And you write about again from Stephen MR Covey about declare your intent to express your agenda and emotions, then be true to your intent. And I think this is a part where sellers really are hesitant to go, which is to. Tell the buyer, what they want to have happen and how they’re going to help them.

And I learnedTodd Davis: this valuable approach and concept from our good friend, Steven MR Covey, that’s the gentleman who actually hired me, 25 years ago at what was then called the Covey Leadership Center. So he was my first boss and he’s just amazing. Human being an amazing author and really the expert on trust, a global expert on trust now but I learned very early on in my career with Franklin Covey that this importance of declaring your intent upfront. Now I’m in, as I mentioned, the Chief People Officer role at FranklinCovey. So I get to have a lot of challenging and difficult conversations with people who are maybe on a performance plan or there’s been some other big issue involved.

But I have found, and it plays out true with customers as well. When you’re in a sales role, if you will begin every conversation, at least every emotional conversation with declaring your intent. When I’m sitting down with somebody to have a tough conversation, it will be, Hey, Cindy, I want you to know what we’re going to, we have some tough things to talk about. I want you to know my only intent is to help you be wildly successful in your role. You’ve done a lot of good things on our team, and there’s some things that I think might be a blind spot for you or something you’re not aware of. And so I just want you to know while this is going to be, difficult to talk about. My only intent is to help you be successful.

And I think it transfers right over to what you’re saying with salespeople, talking with their clients, that people we talk about, EBA, your emotional bank account and the level of trust you have nothing earns you more trust than saying right up front. Hey, I want you to know. I’m here to help. Yes. in a sales role and we have a product or a service that I think is magnificent. It’s why I choose to spend my time doing this, but I want you to know, my only intent is to see if this service will be of benefit to you and your organization. I think it will, based on all the pre-work I did, I think it will. And so if we can have a few minutes to talk and I can explain this to you, and if we agree together that it doesn’t help. Great. I don’t want to waste any more of your time, but I want you to know my only thing intent is to share with you what I think will be really beneficial to you and your organization.

I’m making that, but something like that would buy a lot of trust with me. I get called on by a lot of vendors in my role. And that would just, if I had that dialogue right up front, I would say, wow, I’m dealing with this straight shooter here. This is great.

Even the sellerAndy Paul: takes it a step further and S and says what they get out of it, if they’re able to help you make that decision, what do they get out of it? You’re talking about being completely transparent about your motivations. Adam Grant talks about this in Give and Take, you can be a giver with an agenda and that’s okay. As long as you’re clear about that.

Todd Davis: Absolutely. Sure. Yeah. That’s a great point. this is how I make a living. but my only goal is to it while I’m making a living at this is to make sure I’m doing things that benefit other people.

Andy Paul: Yeah, you had a great line in the book. I think it’s really important for sellers to hear and remember, which was we judge ourselves largely on our intentions, others judge us by our behavior. And it’s that gap between the two that really speaks so loudly.

Todd Davis: No, I’d say thank you for remind me that I learned that, I didn’t invent that phrase. I learned it from someone else, but that’s the essence of declaring your intent because we think, you should know what I’m thinking. You should know I’m doing judge me on that. And yet I’m going to judge you on your actions. And so by declaring our intent, it lets them, into our mind. And what are our real motives that our intentions are.

Andy Paul: Yeah, one of my all time, favorite sayings is from Ralph Waldo Emerson. One of my favorite sayings come from him, but his, “What you do speaks so loudly, I cannot hear what you say.

Todd Davis: So true.

Andy Paul: Yeah. Sales words to remember. And then last point to cover is just, you talked about starting with humility and this is such a big one because, I think we have this, intellectual hubris, if you will, in sales or people think, they get a little bit of experience, a little bit of knowledge and, the Dunning Kruger effect that people talk about as, we’ve acquired enough just to sort of be dangerous and we think we don’t need to learn anything more, but that is really the lack of humility is talking about. It’s not this self-effacing self-deprecating definition of humility that we talk about is really an intellectual humility.

Todd Davis: Yes. I agree. A hundred percent. I find, I have found in my career that there are people who actually, they don’t say it this way, they act as if or think as if humility is a weakness. Humility is actually the greatest strength you can have because it says, I don’t have to have all the answers.

In fact, I don’t have all the answers and, but I’m going to get there the answers for you and I’m going, but I’m not the end all be all. And it does happen in a lot of, in a lot of roles where a lot of industries, but it happens in sales a lot where you know, this is how I show my credibility. Is that I know at all.

And that I’m, I’m the guy or the woman with all the answers and that’s just accomplish is just the opposite of what you want. it’s a false sense of credibility. And again, you can’t be the awshucks, I don’t know anything kind of guy and you know, the martyr, that’s not it either, but humility is this quiet strength that says, look, I’ve really paid the price to learn as much as I can about your company and what your needs are, but I don’t have all the answers.

I have integrity. And I’m going to make sure that we, deliver on what we promise we can deliver and things that I don’t have answers on or where we make mistakes. We’re going to, we’re going to make it right. And all of those are actions of humility.

Andy Paul: You have this phrase in the book that humility keeps me curious. And that is so true it triggered a thought in my mind is that, you said that keeps you in a state of continuous learning your humility, and this is what we need to have as professionals, certainly in sales.

And it’s one of the topics that I talk about frequently in the show, is that there’s not enough investment of self in this continuous learning. And I don’t mean just continuous learning from an experiential standpoint. Because this is what a lot of people default to is. Hey, I’m in this job, I’m experiencing lots of different things. I’m learning, but that’s not enough. You have to seek knowledge and other dimensions in order to make you better at what you’re doing in your job.

Todd Davis: I couldn’t agree more, Andy. I do final interviews with our finalist client partners before they, the hiring manager makes the decision to bring them on. I meet with each one of them and we call it, the different competencies we look for consultative selling, which everybody looks for, but how I look for consultative. Someone who’s very consultative is just what you said, their natural curiosity. They ask a lot of good questions. Not because every sales course tells you to ask questions, but because they’re naturally curious, and that speaks volumes to me about how consultative they’re going to be. And honestly how humble they are.

If they’re naturally curious that they’re asking these questions, they really want to know. Cause they don’t know. And that’s the essence of humility? No, I don’t know. I really want to know, no. Why do you do this way? Why did you, why do you have this process or how come you do it? And I’m genuinely curious and interested in you and in your company and your, in your operations. And that’s a great strength and it’s all founded in humility.

Andy Paul: Yeah, I thought one of the great things you’re talking about in the book was, this link – you said researchers find the link between humility, and again, we’re talking about this as an intellectual humility, not as I said, this self-effacing behavior – this link between humility and your ability to maintain your self-esteem, which is very important.

Todd Davis: Sure. Absolutely.

Andy Paul: It’s the humility that gives you the open mind and to my mind, the resilience to withstand the tough times.

Todd Davis: Yeah, I agree.

Andy Paul: Excellent. Todd, it’s been fantastic to talk with you.

Todd Davis: I’ve learned a lot from you. I really appreciate this opportunity. Thank you for asking me.

Andy Paul: Thanks for coming. So if people want to connect with you, how would they do that?

Go to the Franklincovey.com Todd Davis: website. As you mentioned, I’m on the executive team. And so you can find me there. And then specifically to the book, it’s, getbetterbook.com and then there are links there as well to connect with me and more content on the book.

Andy Paul: Perfect. All right, Todd. Thank you very much. We’ll look forward to doing it again,

Todd Davis: Thank you, Andy. Good to meet you.