Selling With Noble Purpose. Lisa Earle McLeod
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a transactional relationship with clients and becoming a commoditized brand. He wanted to differentiate.
When we interviewed teammates, managers, customers, and the executive team to uncover ACB's points of competitive differentiation, we discovered that others shared Williams' sentiment. Working with the executive team, we crafted ACB's Noble Purpose: We fuel prosperity.
In an industry where other banks talk about building personal wealth, ACB chose prosperity because they wanted to communicate a shared commitment to a more holistic ideal.
The executive leadership team got specific about how their purpose drives strategy. We created purpose maps articulating ACB's Noble Purpose, target customers, points of differentiation, and leading indicators of success. For every employee, the story was clear: we are the team who fuels prosperity.
The activation plan included personal messages from Williams, leadership coaching, and integrating ACB's Noble Purpose into recruiting, hiring, onboarding, marketing, and sales behavior. A critical element of the rollout was training the sales team and the sales managers. Instead of the traditional product‐focused approach, the team learned how to connect with clients in a deeper, more meaningful way. ACB cofounder and Executive VP Kurt Shreiner says, “We changed the way our people think. You focus on the client and helping them achieve their dreams, versus I'm going to sell another product. Our internal and external conversations are entirely different.”
In a matter of months, the culture shifted. The team became more engaged. Fueling prosperity was at the core of customer conversations, decision‐making, and daily operations.
A year after launching their Noble Purpose initiative, ACB's year‐over‐year continued operations before-tax income increased by 81%. Williams and his team say there's a new energy in the air. Clarity about ACB's purpose enabled the executive team to make a smart divesture without belaboring the process. Backstage teams are more customer‐oriented, and bankers are proactively pursuing new clients.
Atlantic Capital Bank
We fuel prosperity
81% increase in continued operations income
Voted Best Place to Work
In 2019 ACB was voted a Best Place to Work in Atlanta, based on anonymous employee surveys. They were also chosen as one of the Best Banks in America by American Banker Magazine. As mentioned earlier, Williams was featured on the cover of American Banker with a story describing his team's dramatic transformation.
Supportworks: Redefining the Home Contracting Industry
Attracting and keeping top talent is a business imperative. It's even more challenging when you're hiring blue‐collar workers, in the middle of Nebraska, to muck out people's basements.
Supportworks (and their sister company, Thrasher) is an Omaha‐based concrete and foundation repair firm that wanted to establish competitive differentiation for their brand in a bigger, bolder way. Their products aren't sexy, but they're the best in the business. The leadership team needed to help their national network of dealers break out of the price trap that is so common in the home service industry.
In our first session, the leadership team talked about how the contracting industry had a bad reputation. When you call a contractor, you never know whether they're going to show up or not. Pricing is often sketchy. Contracting firms are also notoriously poor employers.
Supportworks wanted to change that. They wanted to redefine the home contracting industry for the better. They wanted to set a new standard for how customers are treated in the industry. We landed on their Noble Purpose: We redefine our industry.
Supportworks decided they were going to be the company that changed the frame for what customers expect, and the company wanted to become a destination employer in the process.
Because they sell through dealers, Supportworks couldn't mandate a top‐down approach. They had to get their dealers excited about implementing the Noble Purpose with their own teams. We created a plan to help dealers link each employee's job to the greater purpose of the business, and gave them tools to establish differentiation in their markets.
Convincing a rough and tough crew of predominately male leaders to talk about purpose and praise their teams was no small task. We knew the connection between purpose and recognition had to be accessible, be easy, and not require a long speech. Supportworks created Purpose Citations: peel‐off pads for managers in the field to give quick positive feedback about how employees were living their purpose. Managers could check off things like “enviable smarts” or “contagious do‐goodery.”
As of this writing, Supportworks' purpose training is lauded as some of the most differentiated training in the contracting world.
Supportworks has also become a destination employer. They've been voted a Best Place to Work multiple times. Employee engagement has soared. Revenue has exploded as they've added dealers across the country who want to become part of their movement. Their team will tell you, Supportworks is unstoppable.
Supportworks
We redefine our industry
Record dealer expansion
Voted Best Place to Work
CMIT Solutions: From Techies to Trusted Advisors
CMIT Solutions is a franchise organization that provides managed IT services for small businesses. When CEO Jeff Connally took over the business in 2006, he began to shift the team from hourly billing to a managed services, fixed‐fee model.
Most of CMIT's franchisees have a technical background. They were used to being on call and billing their time for client requests. Few of them had any sales experience.
When asked to describe themselves, they typically say, “We provide IT service.” Yet our interviews with their most successful franchisees revealed that CMIT does much more than simply provide IT services. The best franchisees were advisors to their clients; advisors who alleviate and prevent some of the biggest headaches in business: system problems. Their team landed on an NSP that reflected their aspirations for their customers: We help make small businesses more successful.
Connally says, “When we went from ‘We sell IT services’ to ‘We help make small businesses more successful,’ it changed everything. That seemingly simple reframe pointed our team in an entirely new direction. Now our guys feel like the white knights of the IT world. They're going after new business with a zeal they never had before.”
CMIT launched their Noble Purpose during the recession. Despite a tough economy where clients were cutting back on outside vendors, they grew sales by 35% the first year. Changing their focus from the services they provide to the impact they have on clients created a shift in the way their team approaches customers. Connally says, “Our people are technical, so their tendency is to jump right into the tech stuff. Now, instead of [taking that approach], we take a step back and address the situation from a business perspective.”
He continues, “We pulled our NSP to the front and center of everything we do. It helped move our franchisees from simply being IT providers into a trusted advisor/partnership role.”
Post‐recession, CMIT held fast to their NSP, using it to drive exponential revenue growth. In a world where organizations aspire to increase earnings by 10x, CMIT's earnings have increased by a multiple of 36x. They're driving outsize earning because they're attracting and holding on to the right franchisees.
CMIT's franchise churn rate has gone from 39% when they launched their NSP to below 4%—an almost unheard‐of number in the franchise world, where anything below 12% is considered very good. The team went from selling franchises to awarding them. They've now become the largest managed services provider in the mid‐market space.
CMIT