We Need To Talk - Webinar Audio

first of all i want to say thank you for everyone who's joined us um and i'm going to say a pre thank you to everyone who's going to watch this and all the uh channels that it's going to be put out on this is a really important topic because we do need to talk that's why john named this we need to talk so what where i want to start is to tell you a little bit about what the format's going to be like and then i'll have everyone introduce themselves so the format today is going to be based on the surveys i'm hoping that most of you participated in the surveys and provided us with unbelievable feedback and unbelievable stories that are heartbreaking and eye-opening and all that stuff but we're going to focus on buckets of conversations one is going to be hiring and promotion how to address that issue another is going to be um how to speak up and another is going to be about double standards so it's going to be a panel discussion and we've got some great feedback um before we get there though i would love my esteemed panel members to introduce themselves so let's start with the token mail in the crowd mr john barrows well the token mail the token white mail here so um yes john barrows j barrows consulting sales training been doing this stuff for you know for a while now um yeah and just trying to trying to level up sales our our mantra here is sales done right so because i genuinely believe when sales is done right it's the greatest profession in the world when done wrong it's the worst and and this is a huge part of what sales is and when it's done right and when it's done wrong so that's why i'm super excited for this conversation all right laurie richardson hi i'm laurie richardson uh you can probably tell that i'm dialing in from my hotel room i happen to be in las vegas i don't normally have a bed in my in my shot i'm i'm the president of women's sales pros and it's an organization where we have a group of sales experts and we also have a community where we help companies get more women into sales and sales leadership it's something that we think about every day and i'm so thrilled to be a part of this it's been tremendous to hear people's comments and to read all the all the things that people wrote we read everything all right casey jones i'm casey um ceo of better growth which is a sort of marketing and sales consulting firm um i started my career in sales moved to marketing but my specialty really is helping sales people that's kind of where my heart lives um so again super honored to be part of this panel and with this incredible group of people and to be talking about an issue that i'm super passionate about and yes she is so i'm trish bertuzzi i'm the ceo of the bridge group we are an inside sales consulting and implementation firm as you can see and i'm also the author of the sales development playbook but for purposes of this conversation i am a woman who has been in sales for 30 years so seen all kinds of iterations of this topic and i'm really looking forward to finally putting some of them to bed today so before we get to the topics at hand though i'd like to turn the um stage over to john because john i want to talk about the impetus for this because this was really something that something happened you felt strongly about it and this is all based on that reaction so can you talk to us about that impetus yeah absolutely so you know i've with the proliferation of social and everybody now on linkedin doing videos i've been starting to see kind of the and i labeled as the bro culture kind of creeping back into sales like kind of wolf of wall street type scenarios and i don't think it actually is but i think the loudest voices right now are getting the attention so it's been a little bit of a concern for me over the past six to 12 months and then i went to the drift con uh conference uh hyper growth here in boston and grant cardone was speaking now i have my opinions of grant cardone but i've only seen the very surface level stuff of his because he's starting to get on linkedin too and i personally my perception was he's everything that's wrong about selling and it's the bro you know go go go but because drift was having him at their conference i was like well they must i talked to arm in their vps sales and he's like you know what john i know he's a little over the top but he i went to his conference and it was good stuff so so i was like all right i'm gonna give this guy a blank slate come in with no judgment i then went and then mainly just to see him speak and he did exactly what i thought he was going to do is oh you know stuff into the list hit the list and i'm like okay whatever this is exactly what i was expecting but then he started talking about his wife and his wife was in the crowd and you had come and it's actually true to remember you actually came up right before this happened and you were like hey how is he i'm like yeah he's at as advertised but i did not think it was going to go in this direction and he literally said hey uh stand up there sweetheart you know hey take a look at her look at you know and just started objectifying her in the in the most insane way you could tell she was uncomfortable he wanted her to come up on stage she was uncomfortable with that and then he he referenced her as it he referenced her as that he he called her a dumb dumb and then he talked he talked about what he was going to do with her uh on his jet at 30 000 feet leaving the conference and i was i mean i'm you know me trish i am rarely speechless i was fucking speechless i i was just like what and you saw some some people trickling out like just but there was also just some nervous clapping going on to being like holy shit i know this is wrong but and then david who came out afterwards from from um drift uh he was like well you could tell he didn't know he didn't even know what to say after that and and then it then i tweeted something saying hey you know i didn't think my opinion of grant cardone could have gone any worse but hey congratulations it did and i and i hashtag drift hashtag fail and it exploded it was the biggest trending tweet of the whole conference um to dc's um to the ceo of drift to his credit he absolutely jumped on every single comment apologized for it and that type of thing so i do want to give him credit even though they brought this guy in celebrity yeah um they did kind of jump on it some people say they didn't go far enough but he at least as a ceo he addressed every single tweet which i thought was great of him and then i was just so sick of it so i came home and i did a linkedin post and i was like we got that was the tipping point for me i'm like we i have to say something about this we gotta stop this bullshit bro culture like when it all costs go go go go go and we need to do something and that post i've never done a linkedin post that caught fire that fast we're currently trending at 200 000 views 2000 likes 500 comments and i you know if i get 30 40 50 comments on one of my posts if i get you know you know 50 000 views i'm psyched right so 200 000 views obviously struck a nerve and then that's where you know this whole thing came together and we decided we at least got to have this conversation because you know for and by the way i want to make sure that there's a lot of macroeconomic shit going on right now and in the world that is not we're not trying to solve those problems the four of us care deeply about this profession of sales and want to see it elevated and so that's what we're going to be focused on this isn't a mail bashing thing this is purely elevating the conversation because we need to be far more inclusive than exclusive and that's why i'm super excited to be here um with you women to to try to have this conversation and level up here a little bit yep yep so i mean thank you john seriously um i know you're an advocate for women i love the way you talk about your wife and your daughter i just you know i've known you for a long time and i and i've always respected you but this is something special about you that i i really want to say thank you for um at the same time i want to point out because i think drift kind of got caught in this maelstrom or however that word's pronounced and i want to tell anyone david cancels the ceo of drift he wrote a post on medium completely taking responsibility for this and if you want to see what a ceo should look like go read that post man up man man man or woman own up man up he did a great job with it so i just wanted to put that out there too so we have some you know the survey got and john i don't even know how many questions and responses hundreds and hundreds and hundreds from both men and women it wasn't just women who responded i thought the most interesting sometimes were the male perspective on this so i think we want to start off the conversation or our first sort of topical area we should start off with is um around double standards and casey you volunteered to sort of lead this conversation so i'd like to turn over to you for that topic yeah thank you so when we talk about double standards just so everybody understands what we're talking about is this idea that some of the qualities the personality characteristics the behaviors that men are praised for women are criticized for so and this is particularly true in sales right so men are often i mean we look at sort of an aggressive assertive you know uh bold salesperson when it's a man as um a leader as you know someone kind of making bold moves and and we really laud that as a um kind of style in in terms of sales but when we we when a woman has all of those characteristics um she is often called not very very nice names she's criticized um okay she's often called a bitch um and she's often criticized for um being too tough being too difficult um she's often sort of put in the corner as someone who isn't sort of easy to work with or someone that is too pushy right and you know there's a great story that actually john shared with me and i forget what conference this was at but he was i think it was dream force for cheryl and cheryl sandberg was speaking and she said she asked the audience okay men men in the audience how many times when you were a kid like how many of you when you were a kid were you called bossy and like three guys in the audience raised their hands and she said okay women how many of you in the audience when you were a kid were called bossy and practically every woman in the place raised raised their hands and bossy is an insult for women and so we're we're consistently told that we need to kind of be be nicer or be sweeter or friendlier and when men aren't told the same things and that's not necessarily what's going to make you good at your job and so part of the reason why i volunteered to talk about this is big shocker um i have absolutely been um criticized for being assertive um you know i had one job early on in my career when i was out selling the seven other men on the team combined but i would get full page memos about from the the senior vice president of sales about how i didn't smile enough in the office and so one of the things that i kind of wanted to share is even though i had experienced all of that i realized a few years ago that i was actually doing the same thing to women and somebody i had um uh a female like a female mentor kind of give me a really good way of looking at this and she said if you're ever if you're ever criticizing a woman at in the workplace for her personality not for her results not for her the work that she does the even the way she interacts with people in the office but it's about her personality you're holding them to a double standard because we don't do that with this in the same way with men and so you know one of the things that we all talked about leading into this conversation was that it's not the big things there's lots of big glaring kind of awful um experiences that people have and and um like really unfortunate situations but what we've really realized from reading through all of these all of this survey data was it's the little things it's the all of the tiny little actions all of the tiny little things that add up over time that becomes so difficult and i know laurie is going to talk about this when it comes to speaking out because what winds up happening is every little thing you don't want to necessarily bring up um but it isn't always the big things it's the little things and so i really encourage everybody out there when it comes to double standards notice when you're getting frustrated with a woman because of her personality and not her work or her results or criticizing a woman because of her personality and not sort of her results and as women i think it's it's really really challenging when you're in a position where you're being criticized for being too assertive or um you know giving too many right answers in a meeting i've been criticized for that in the past too um and you and on some level you have to really learn to kind of stick to your guns but yes you've got to you've got to listen to feedback and and be able to absorb if there is a lesson to be learned but you have to also recognize that there are times where you're going to be criticized for things that you're aren't wrong yeah and that's the hard part i think someone casey someone just put on here about behavior they call them microaggressions and i and i think that is a fabulous fabulous phrase that we need to think about yeah and a couple things came to mind when you were talking one is if someone calls me bossy i say thank you i'm a boss that is awesome what would you like me to tell you to do next you know sometimes you have to use humor and then the other thing about communicating with women i'm starting to think we're starting to cross the line that men are going to be nervous about communicating with women because there's so much that's going on in the world we communicate differently we are much more emotional when we communicate we use different inflections we use our body language more so we just have to understand the difference and sort of let them understand the difference we just communicate differently and it's not wrong there's no right or wrong way to communicate just listen to the message and not the method so i want to chime in here with is something very direct because i want because a lot of this what are we talking about like tactical things right i think brought up casey right there which is fantastic is i think every dude and that just struck me as you were talking to every guy who's about to give feedback to a woman should immediately before a word comes out of their mouth they should think if this was a guy would i give the same feedback yeah and by the way there was a research study done google it i will i will send it to john so he can put it in the show notes it's really phenomenal where they compared i think it was was like 300 um uh performance reviews for women compared to for men and it was this isn't the most scientifically um sound because people volunteered to submit them but they basically said look you're probably only going to volunteer to submit it if you're actually sort of proud of your feedback and it was really interesting um the words assertive and aggressive were almost exclusively used for women and negative feedback in performance reviews was like two or three times as much for women as for men so all the bosses out there keep that in mind when you're giving performance reviews are you are you applying the same kind of standard for the women on your team compared to the men somebody just brought up an interesting like on the is is it is it based on men's fear um of why why we kind of look at a strong powerful women and and try to put them quote unquote in their place because we're scared of that or is it just a cultural thing that this is how we've grown up i think it's way more complex than that i think it's cultural things i think it's personal things sometimes it's fear like i think there's just so many different things that come into play but i would say most of it is we were trained this way you know and i think of where we are i wouldn't want to be a guy now trying to deal with a lot of this there's i mean fear is real i can see that in the comments in the chat section like having to think about everything you say and do because someone can just come at you with maybe it's a female bias i mean there's two sides to this coin and i'm and i just want to make sure we recognize them both especially since so much of it is coming out in the chat section so i think we just have to all think about our unconscious biases when we communicate whether we're male or female or someone as someone mentioned in a diversity situation and just trying to be human just human well that's why like i'm gonna put this one to bed any dude who right now says i'm afraid to even talk to women or i'm afraid to get into an elevator with them you're a fucking douche like if you think if you just can't have a normal conversation with a woman then you have bigger problems than anybody's going to be able to solve if you could just now i get it as far as being a little bit off the cuff and saying something and having something taking it the wrong way or something like that or saying something that historically has been bad and now isn't you know we've used a lot of phrases in the past that were just part of normal culture but now you know they have a certain connotation so it's like watch out for that but any man who's like i'm just gonna i'm just not gonna talk to women i'm just like you're you're you suck it's it's the it's the small stuff that is the like okay but and that's what i want to talk about like how do i as a man because a lot of the comments were in there about you know i say something it was or the women said it was it was came across as a joke and then i and i thought it was appropriate and so i addressed it and the guy was like oh that's not that big of a deal that's not how i meant it and and and lori i wanted to kind of ask you be based on how ingrained you are in in this whole world like how does how do we address that situation where it's the inappropriate thing that that a dude might not have recognized as an inappropriate thing that that somebody took offense the woman took offense to and addressed it first of all how to address that in a professional way but then right how should the guy then like dictate yeah like oh come on versus ooh that was i probably shouldn't do that well so i know lori's more about this but like it is about how you address it and women need it's about a teaching moment rather than a like criticism oh sorry yeah you know it's it's tricky and i think it goes back to what trish said about being human you know just ask ask you know did i understand you correctly or could you say that again and you know don't be defensive i think the first thing is that if we're if you're looking for trouble you're going to find trouble um on all sides and and i just i've learned you know through dealing with family issues and things like that there there are ways you can say things because words are so important there are ways you can say things that don't say you did this or you know it's more like you know john when you said that i felt like whatever and and it it softens the blow of me accusing you of something it's also um i've also found that talking to someone one-on-one is much better than in front of other people because it can it nobody wants to be embarrassed or accused of something in front of other people and and i think it's important i also think it's a leadership issue and sales leaders need to set a tone for their sales team and you know what's appropriate what's not appropriate it's black and white there's no gray and good sales leaders do that like my friend shep shep maher in san francisco um is very clear cut and you know you know that it's not a locker room anymore and and like trish i've been in sales for 30 years and um you know it's a professional workplace yeah so casey i have a question for you in my lifetime if i had a dollar for every time someone said to me when i told them what i thought oh my god trish why don't you tell me what you really think i would be a billionaire does that happen to you yes it does but you know i i think that one of the things that i kind of wanted to bring up about this topic in particular very much to laurie's point is as women i think we need to also um use these these moments as like teaching moments not as you know public criticism and one of the things that i think has been really tough and i'm i'm seeing this more i think with some of the younger women that i've talked to because they're they're they're kind of pissed off about sort of some of the things that they're dealing with and so they have a little bit of a knee jerk anger and when a man says something that they don't like or that they think is inappropriate or is rude and usually they are totally justified in thinking that they and i think we've got this incredible say that again yeah you i'm sorry my fight here is a little spotty so i think that women are too quick to write men off when they say something inappropriate and instead let's let's come together and say hey you know you made me feel this way and i'm i'm sharing this with you as like a colleague as a friend as someone i respect because i know you you got to give them the benefit of the doubt at least the first couple of times they say inappropriate things so you say like hey you know i know you don't want to have this or i assume you don't want to have be taken this way and this was the reaction i had and you know let's kind of work through this and very much to laurie's point like you gotta you gotta give someone the opportunity to save face a little bit but also the opportunity to learn and over the past few years i've worked a lot harder at not in a in a really public forum not being super aggressive about the things that um when i disagree with someone or when i think somebody is doing something that i think is sort of messed up or or inappropriate so that we all have this opportunity to kind of come together yeah so let me say this first of all john i don't know if you're reading the comments they are phenomenal and there's a ton of articles and books that i'm hoping we can share in in the resource section so trish yes the the non-violent communication by marshall rosenberg that uh samantha posted that's the book where i learned that wording so thank you for sharing that samantha it's very it works with family too if you have any family issues nobody does though right yeah it's very helpful yeah all right so i mean lots to be learned about the double standards um thank you so much casey you know we could listen to you all day long talk about this topic but let's segue to the next because i think you know we have to get to actionable things just like you provided in the double standards section so laura you wanted to lead the conversation around hiring promotions that type of thing so why don't you write what you'd like to share right i'm going to look down at my notes a little bit because we had we had a lot of comments about hiring promotion and again this could be a full hour our unto itself um we talk about this a lot on women sales pros and you know i would say that you know nothing is true of all women and of all men and so i always try to say that ahead of time that you know not all women feel a certain way and and we're all different those of us on the panel we're all different um when it comes to hiring promotion some of the the things that people asked about was about mentors versus sponsors uh another thing was how leaders can develop more women leaders and and i'd like to kind of focus on those also the first the big one is that many in technology staff companies a lot of people say we don't even have women that apply or there aren't any women to hire so that's a whole nother topic we can talk about this sometime but there are women to hire it is a very tough market for everybody to find good sales people in general and um there are tips and strategies and i'll be sharing those um as a follow-up too so um keep that in mind but how leaders can help develop more women leaders i'm gonna say a couple things one that i've had questioned a little bit but i believe it takes extra effort especially in sales now here's the great thing about sales sales in sales unlike many other um things you can do in a company you're judged by your performance and i love that that's why i wanted to get into sales because i wanted to be paid based on my accomplishments and i want to be paid the same as my male peers and and i think that so i intentionally at a young age got into sales for that and numbers talk so if you're doing your numbers if you're hitting your numbers and if you're exceeding your numbers you've earned the right to say something and and i believe that you know when you're new and you haven't been overly successful you know you kind of need to learn keep your ears opening and and learn from others so hitting your numbers is a great way it gives you a bit of a platform and a company it gives you a lot of other things in in a sales role um how leaders can help help develop more women leaders is by giving identifying people who they think could be good in a role and then doing some mentoring with them helping them to um you know help with ideas on how they might want to develop or what skills they need to have uh if you're a woman and you want to be in leadership first of all not all people do when you're in a sales role i was very happy in a sales role and just being a senior sales rep was a great promotion for me because i could control my income but to be a leader it takes the support of of the people around you uh you need a mentor who can speak on your behalf in in a meeting because we all know that a lot of decisions are made in a company where you're not even present but everybody agree to that that's a it's a very common thing so as opposed to having um uh you know i'll even use the word sponsor because sponsor is someone that can go into one of those closed door meetings and say you know trish is really good at this i think in addition to you looking at john i think you should consider trish and or if we don't have anyone uh let's see who we can develop and i think trish has a lot of those capabilities and i'm going to speak on behalf of trish that's what a sponsor does as opposed to a mentor who could be more of a peer or maybe one level of sponsors have some amount of power i mean yeah sponsors have some amount of power that can help you and i think that's one of the best things uh that you could focus on is to learn about that and and have people help you if i want to be better understanding business and return on investment for example maybe i'll go to john because john knows that and i'll ask john can you just help me with this one area as opposed to asking someone to be my mentor you know casey could you be my mentor you know it's a hard thing there's no start or end casey doesn't really know what i want what i need so come to someone specifically for help so that's what women can do and men be supportive of it you know help help support women that are working to improve and who want to get to that next level can i chime in just real quick here because i have a very specific question that came through on some of the comments and also people talked to me about which is the lack of women in sales specifically um what tends to happen is say there's some woman who's a leader an executive that type of thing anytime a man has a problem with a woman they say oh go talk to her you know what i mean i don't know how to and so what a lot of women leaders who i've actually interacted throughout this process have told me it's it's exhausting because i'm getting women from all other parts of the organization that i am not responsible for asking me for my advice asking me for my help and i just don't have time so it looks like little like oh i don't want to help you but they do it's just they got to do their job so how do we address that where every man kind of throws up their hand they're like holy shit i got an emotional woman here in front of me she's got problems go talk to the woman because i don't know how to fucking deal with it like how do you how do we address that well i think we all have comments about that i will say for me um you know roll up your sleeves and you know don't don't just back away and think that another woman can help a woman because one thing that a lot of women don't like is to be matched up with someone because they're a woman you know you you want to you want to i want to be mentored or sponsored by someone because i think they're awesome and they could be a man they could be a woman um so i think again be human and try to understand more about what it is specifically that they need and then help them find someone to do that i know women that are still uh contacted even after they leave a company because they were so good at helping people and talk about you know having baggage on your on your shoulders but yeah let's spread the wealth out a little bit i also think that internally support groups are becoming more popular and denise yes i read your comment um and i know that you run one at your organization so i think internally this is becoming more brought to the forefront a lot of our conversations and support groups are being formed which cover not just sales but all aspects of the organization i mean this should be right at the top of any hr organization's list of things to think about for sure and externally you know there's there's um girls club that lauren bailey has championed there is the national association of women sales professionals there's um a lot of things that are cropping up barbara giamanko has great podcasts with a lot of women talking about a lot of topics so there's more resources out there how so can i ask like but how can we make sure that support groups like women since there are so few women in sales and and all of a sudden they go you know i've heard through the comments you know women now you know they want to sit next to other women they want to work with you because they want to feel like they're at least being supported in some way shape or form but that further separates them from the larger group how can we make it so support groups aren't seen as oh now you know what i mean like from and i'm coming this at this from a male perspective here so you know i could easily see how oh you know yeah there they go again they're going to go talk about all this shit that you know and complain about us how do we make sure that that isn't the case and it's a and it's a positive thing all the way around not just for the support group but but for the organization that says no we need this you know is there a communication thing where once that group comes up with something they translate that to everybody else like how can we do that well no one said the support group has to be female only i mean there was look how many men are here on on this webinar there is a ton of men who care about this issue and they are absolutely read their comments it's amazing um to know how much they care and they want to be more inclusive and they're looking for help as well so i think you have to look at your corporate culture because this is where this all stems from and laurie i think that's what you're saying um one thing you did say laurie that i would be very interested in understanding a bit more is the difference between a mentor and a sponsor people are comfortable asking people to be a mentor although i love your suggestion be super specific with it how do you find a sponsor uh you know it's it's a matter of watching who's making things happen in a company i mean you know something i learned years ago that success leaves clues so look at who's the the most successful in an area that you want to be in and and talk to them you know go go to lunch or have a coffee or have sit down you know meeting with someone who seems to get things done um politically in the organization or you know they've just been successful for a number of years and and i would ask them for their guidance and their insight and that can lead to sponsorship um yeah i don't think you just tap somebody a senior executive and say hey would you be my sponsor yeah i'm that easy well and i think uh a lot of people know about the practice of doing informational interviews when you're when you want to make a move to another career or to another company so basically setting up an interview before a job is available if you use the same kind of model and there's tons of articles about how to run informational interviews but you do it internally at your company so you find a much higher up person that's a great point um damn she keeps locking up but i have coffee and ask you a bunch of questions yeah i'm just saying keep locking up there but i'm going to jump on that because i think that's fantastic like i always used to do that just just in general for my own personal development was i would go throughout organizations and anybody who i saw even if they were a pure one or above it didn't matter if i saw they were successful or if they were really good at something that i wasn't and i wanted to learn that i would say hey would you mind if i just grab an hour of your time and i would prepare for it just like a meeting with a client you know what i mean i would do my homework i would come up with very specific questions for them based on what i knew about them and that always opened up the door for a follow-up conversation so i think that's a fantastic tip for people to say for women to start navigating internally organizations having hey help me understand how'd you get to where you are like what you know what makes a good this type of thing how do you interact with sales and then they can gauge how that and if it's a man they can gauge how that how open and and supportive that man is with their feedback and then potentially circle back to that person to have a little bit more of a sponsorship conversation yeah but maybe maybe we look at it differently though maybe instead of saying how did you get to be who you are we turn the conversation back on ourselves and say where do you think i am with my skill sets what are my strengths what are my weaknesses and what do you and how do i address those weaknesses because i think we're so busy asking other people to give us that hand you know that hand up that we don't become self-analytical and people who are analytical those are the people that win so i think you have to have kind of both conversations i agree i would also say though that i think you should take the do that work yourself because oftentimes you're those higher up people don't know you well enough so if you do a lot of that research you take some assessments you really think about it and then you come to them and you say i think i'm weak in this but i want to go in this direction what do you recommend and they will appreciate the fact that you've that you are oh yeah kind of taking that self sort of aware self-critical uh kind of approach make it easy make it easy for them then for the sponsor potential sponsor bear in mind when we're self-analytical in a silo yeah our own perceptions about ourselves kind of cloud it so i think i think you're right casey i think you have to do both i agree yeah lori could you chime in on just real quick on the on the resume piece or i'm sorry on the job description piece and also like when you because we're talking about hiring for your piece like when a woman walks into a sales organization she sees all like the football and the this and the that like because people are saying hey how do i attract more women a lot of it is job description and visually what they see when they walk into an organization isn't it yeah it's part of it first of all it is having a job description that will be as attractive to you know everyone not just men and i'm going to throw out a resource called textio t-e-x-t-i-o it's a site you can go to and run a resume there i'm sorry run a job description through it and it will show you male focus words and female focus words and give you suggestions so that is something i i highly right they of course they do it for service you can think you can do a couple for free and try them out um i've seen it affect uh hiring so i know that it works really well also you know trish we we've talked in the past about male focus words a war words you know kill them we're looking for aggressive closers crush kill yeah yeah that doesn't attract women and it doesn't mean that we're not good at closing business and so that was something that was touched on earlier that i just want to mention is that women like we were saying earlier women have a different style i'm seen as a very nice person but i can close business all day long and and they're not mutually exclusive i just have a different style and i don't have to kill people and i don't have to smoke cigars and i don't have to go to strip clubs and you know i don't have to do all that stuff to be successful so um younger sales managers or newer i don't mean to say young but if you're newer in a sales manager role you need to understand that the women on your team sell differently than men do sometimes yeah sometimes paint us all with the same brush because i sell probably right differently than we also know what i said at the beginning yeah and not we don't all do the same things but a lot of women i've i've heard sales managers say i don't think she's going to cut it she's too nice well we got survey responses from men saying that people that they found out that there were rumors in the office that they were gay because they weren't super aggressive and they're they're producing they have great numbers but you know people assume these like big things about their background and personality because they had a different style and i think we need to recognize that everybody it doesn't matter who you are what your gender is you might have a different style and we've got to look at results and potential not at you know these sort of niche little personality quirks yep good point there casey all right john i want to make sure we um leave enough time for by the the way everyone resources will be provided to you um via email post this event uh the team has compiled an amazing list of resources i'm sure we'll be adding a lot of what's in the comments to that because thank you everyone who's contributing um on in the comments but john you wanted to focus on speaking up like it's easy for us to say you know you should ask and you should assess and you should do this but sometimes it's harder than it sounds so i'd love to hear what you interpreted from the surveys as issues around speaking up and then um any recommendations you might have yeah this was the one that came screaming out loud to me which in casey actually uh commented on this earlier it you know the overtly sexist stuff or just completely ridiculous things that's kind of one of those like if you have a leader that is overtly sexist i i don't really have much uh to to recommendations other than go find that's a toxic environment go find another job you know what i mean but i think the bigger issue is all the little shit that happens along the way that in that if you if that if a woman brought up every single thing that was uncomfortable or they thought was inappropriate like even to me i'd be like come on every single thing you know what i mean like give me but so if you bring it up in in as individuals it little small but as you add them all up yeah it's a big issue right and it just puts micro aggressions i love it and so i think the thing for me was like the the what came screaming through the comments was how do i bring this up like how do i say to somebody that you having that conversation about what you did with that girl at the bar last you know what i mean was like made me feel uncomfortable because you had it right here in the bullpen with me or the joke that the boss gave during the meeting about oh you want to go get us some coffee and how that was like significantly demeaning to me and but if i just brought that up like they'd be like come on i didn't mean it that way so that was what to me was the the like holy shit eye-opener for me because i you know look i consider myself a pretty empathetic guy my wife my daughter i will say straight up i thought i was super empathetic until i had my daughter and then when i had my daughter my eyes went holy shit like the way that we market to the way that we treat like so you know even that woke me up but this survey woke me up even more and and i you know and it's hard to say especially if you're one woman within a group of 10 dudes you know what i mean with a male like leader i guarantee you in my career as a leader as a manager i have done things that have made women feel uncomfortable just because i'm like ah it's funny and because i'm a nice guy because you know hopefully they think i genuinely care they probably didn't say anything to me you know what i mean because they were like to casey to your point like you know you don't you know gotta give somebody a chance in the sense that if they say something once i have a three strike in your route rule so here's something tactical for everybody i have a very i have a three strike in your route rule let's use vendors you fuck up once as a vendor whatever i'm going to let you know about it but everybody screws up once you screw up twice you're on notice you screw up three times we're done like i just go find another vendor and i i think the same could should and could hold true here for making comments about stuff like address it separately with a man say hey what you just said there this is how i took that i know you don't want to be like that like the way laurie expressed it second time here's another example third time come on dude like this is getting ridiculous one of the tactical things i'd love you all feedback on this because laurie starts with leadership a hundred percent but an exercise that i did with a friend who that i think can apply here my friend of mine was she was she was very she was on a downward spiral she was not happy everything was negative and i told her kind of tony robbins type stuff here change your state and i said hey do me a favor take a notebook and i want you to go around today and i want you to write down every single little thing that happens to you that's positive right i don't care how small it is you somebody opened the door for you you made a green light on the way to work that type of thing and then i want you to come back and tell me at the end of the day what happened right she came back with three pages of shit was like oh my god you know my like and and i've looked at all this stuff and and then that kind of got her on the right track i almost say that my my thought and i would love your feedback on this is write down all those little examples that are happening and then when they get to an aggregate amount that's when you can kind of bring it to your leader and say look i'm not trying to cause an issue here but for the past two weeks i've been just jotting down the small things that make you know women in general but me a little uncomfortable and i just wanted to share them with you as a learning lesson about some of the things that you might not be aware of that that make me feel a certain way can we have this conversation and i just wanted to see kind of what your thoughts were on that approach as opposed to like the reactive approach of that just happened i need to talk about it i'm pissed off because it i'm i'm thinking it might but might subside the reaction and and say okay let me kind of plan this out a little bit more from an approach standpoint and i know as a leader you know i had a hard time a lot of women were asking i'm in this toxic situation john um how do i address it with my leader and i'm like my male leader and i'm like well i can tell you how you would address me but i have no idea yeah more male leader is like if i tell you to do something and you go ahead and do it that male might be a completely different perspective from me and might be straight up say screw you you're fired type of stuff whereas somebody you know whereas i would be like oh my god i didn't know i made you feel that way you know let's talk about it so i'm trying to figure out some tactical ways to help women speak up without it being this nitpicky little thing and also without it being this leads to this big like holy shit reaction type of thing you know because i think that's what's happening is like all these little things and then they pop yeah so if i could spin what you just said though john because you know i think i loved the first analogy or the first story about the woman who wrote down everything that positive that happened to her in a day as a matter of fact i'm going to do that because sometimes you got different life is good right and sometimes we forget it so i'm actually going to take that advice but as opposed to writing down all the things that bothered me during the day and taking it to someone that's a negative frequency i think what might be an interesting alternative would be to write down all the positives like i had a conversation with john barrows today it was enlightening for this reason or i worked with paul smith on a deal he took 20 minutes out of his day to coach me things that can be replicated as best practices kind of like we talked about in our sales process i think might be a different way to still speak up but not be like here's my wine list and yeah or maybe both right like yeah yeah yeah i would say do both because here's what i notice happens and i put myself in this boat too sometimes the little things add up it is the straw that breaks the camel's back and you will kind of have a meltdown over something super minor you wind up bringing that to someone's attention and they're like this and then are do you you have any other examples and none of them come to mind and you wind up kind of looking difficult and really dramatic and all this stuff and if you can to john's point kind of make a case where you say hey look and i think trish that's a phenomenal advice of kind of of having both where you can say here are all the things i think we're doing really well and i want us to figure out how to maximize and here are the things that are taking away from that and i know that we are the good stuff like at our core so how can we really craft and like cultivate a culture that focuses on those but we got to be aware about all of these little things that that we need to fix and i think bringing both to a manager's attention one you're it's gonna make them a little less defensive because you're talking about good and bad two you'll be a little less emotional because you basically have made a case yeah you know and and you've got this like data to back it up and and people sometimes have no idea that something they said was offensive it's you know it's really true and and you know we have to again we have to step back and and the other thing is as john was saying earlier if if you're if you're a woman and you feel like you're in a hostile environment or you feel like your opinion is not respected no matter what and you're you're not being valued as a contributor on your team even if you're doing your quota or above uh there are many places i know trish would be happy to talk to people i would too we hear about places every day that would love to have a woman on their team leadership or rep level so no one should put up with that kind of an environment and just to chime in on that from a male's perspective you're not going to change that guy i'm sorry if you have a douche like if you have a grant cardo-esque and and they're what's up hit the lid you know that type of thing and especially if they're 30 40 50 like there's no way what you say to them is going to change their they might placate you and say oh sorry we need you know we'll we'll take care of this you know what i mean well but they'll it'll never they'll do some surface oriented things but they will never fundamentally change the culture um so that that talks of a toxic environment you know and i can i can tell you i've especially lately i've talked to several different women that bring these issues up to that kind of leader the leader tells them in the moment we are absolutely going to fix this you deserve to be promoted they say all these things and then no joke i've talked to three different women that like two weeks later they get they get fired yep or pimp well that's a whole different issue that's a whole different issue yeah yeah yeah it is casey you had a good point it's a straw that breaks the camel's back like i don't get offended by anything i swear to god it's almost statistically impossible to offend me it's a defect in my personality i'm well aware but there's one guy on linkedin who makes me crazy and he will remain unnamed he's a young go-getter ceo of his startup and he gets on there sitting in his car who hates car videos raise your hand i hate car videos he's like it's five o'clock on a monday morning i'm on my way to the gym i'm going to the gym and then i'm gonna get to the office by six and i'm gonna kill a crush it it's monday get your number there's 22 silly and i'm like dude a you don't have young children because if you had young children you can be up at five o'clock in the morning or b you're married your poor wife is taking care of your young children while you're busy in your car shooting your video by the way i doubt you're going to the gym you're in your garage right i'm telling you it's those kind of things and this guy's a young guy that to me straw that broke the camel's back i had it took everything i had not to reach out to him and shred him yeah okay i feel better thank you but that's but that's my thank you for listening the grant cardone was my straw right in the sense that i've been seeing a lot of that that i know exactly what you're talking about too i've been i've been seeing a lot of that and and i'm like okay and the shame here is is that that again the loudest voice tends to get the most attention right so if i scream it well even though if you disagree with it's kind of like the old howard stern stuff where you know like people who like howard stern listen for an hour people who hate howard stern listen for three hours you know what i mean and it's and it's those people that that get the comments going that get the threads that get the popularity that get the views and that's what's so concerning to me because i genuinely do feel even though a lot of these comments that have come in have you know made me realize how much of a how far we really need to go but i really do that there are some great things happening out there you know what i mean there are there are some really positive things but i don't want the blowhards to be the ones that that are ruining it for the rest of us from a perception standpoint because this profession and this is what this gets all back to i think we can talk again about you know all the macroeconomic things but sales without question teams that are more diversified and laurie you have the statistics on this teams that are more diversified they have more different types black white uh gay women you name it right the one that they they succeed more they they just sell more and they sell better i mean laurie you have the stats or you i mean you've seen it yeah yeah and that's what this is about yeah it's leveling up and being more inclusive than exclusive and and i know we're running short on time here we got you know we can keep talking by the way but we can't because these people need to go to the bathroom before their next meeting so but we have so much to share with them you guys john casey laurie talk about where they can find the resources what they're going to get after this session how this continues how you guys are staying involved go yeah laurie why don't you kind of share like all the stuff that you're doing and where people can go we're going to put this all in an email later yeah very specific places where you want to continue this conversation so so please go to women sales pros we're at women sales pros on twitter uh you can go to women sales pros.com we have a blog um i will personally talk to anyone one-on-one that has a situation that they're worried about or anxious about or whether whether you're male or female i'd be happy to talk to you uh just reach out to me laurie at women sales pros and we'll be posting resources so and you'll get email with some really good ideas and articles awesome casey yeah and so um everybody john and i just we had a lot of conversations about really wanting to keep this conversation going there were so many amazing things that kind of were uncovered in this survey not just about women in sales but about how we can build better sales cultures period cultures where people can really thrive no matter their background no matter their gender you name it and so we want to keep this conversation going we're going to have a bunch of announcements for this but we really encourage all of you to go to sales done right dot io we are announcing this community that we're going to build it's going to be everything from connecting all of you to one another um connecting you to thought leaders and and um you know kind of experts in the space but then also providing a lot of both tactical and kind of higher level advice and content so that we can really drive kind of our industry forward and and you know strengthen our strengths highlight the things that we do amazingly well as an industry and make this a more kind of inclusive and um supportive environment for all of you so again sales done right dot io add your name to the list we'll be doing a big announcement so that you can get access to this community and we would love love love to see you there all right john bring us home buddy yeah so after this um once we get this recording rendered um we're going to send out an email to everybody who's registered here with the recording it's going to be on youtube uh we'll make a podcast out of it so you can share it there and actually i would recommend by the way for those of you who are trying to figure out a way to start this conversation feel free to forward this along to whoever you think might need to listen to this conversation um i'm also we're going to take all those resources that laurie and casey just talked about put them in that email and there will be a survey i know somebody asked for that because we want more of your feedback and what i think i'm going to do and ladies tell me if this is the right thing to do since the survey that we put out before this was anonymous um i i learned so much just by reading the comments i i was thinking about just putting a google sheet together and just putting it out there to hey say hey everybody like if if you're a man for instance and you don't think that you know you want to see some of the questions that that type of thing go take a look at some of this is that you think that's appropriate to do um because i don't want to overstep my bounds here with what people because there's no personal information in this and it's totally anonymous but i thought it'd be i just thought that that was like uh if you want to see what the issue is you read those comments and you know there's an issue i think let's take a look and make sure there's no comments that's could be figured out who gave them but i think that the vast majority of them would be amazing for public consumption and would be a really great exercise for so many people out there okay so let's scrub it and and that'll be part of the email so expect the email i want to make sure that this has everything in it so expect the email probably by friday um you know we're going to render it tonight i'll share it with you you and figure out what's you know what we can put in there and then we'll round it out on friday with everyone yeah awesome one final one final comment and then we'll sign off ladies if someone tells you you're bossy here's your answer fuck yeah and actually i love this what my what my what kim does right when instead of yelling at charlotte for being pushy or bossy she's like stop you know you're you're you're representing some really good ceo quality charlotte but you need to so she talks to her and like from a ceo instead of being bush you're like so love that around be like instead of scolding her she's like okay i know those are ceo quality but you need to really kind of make sure and so mom is ceo for now exactly exactly right now you're at the manager level all right so lot thank you all so much i've loved working with you throughout this process i've learned a time that you've reinvigorated my interest in the topic yay and i think there's no place to go but up and i hope i can help same here yeah thanks everybody all right take care everybody thanks bye you oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh