Episode 23 - The Magic of Mentoring
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Richard Ellis: [00:00:00] Mentoring isn't just encouraging. It drives real business results. Employees with mentors are 40% less likely to consider quitting, and they're far more satisfied in their roles with 91% reporting, overall job satisfaction, and over half saying they're very satisfied. But the benefits go beyond retention.
Richard Ellis: According to the Association of Business Mentors, 65% of business leaders say that mentoring led to increased revenue and 64% saw a boost in profits. Mentoring also enhances decision-making, mental health and leadership confidence. Today, consider some goodness around how mentoring shapes strong leaders and how those leaders in turn shape resilient, high performing teams.
Richard Ellis: Welcome to some goodness where we engage seasoned business leaders and experts to share practical guidance and tips [00:01:00] to help new and future C-level leaders maximize their impact. My guest today is Chris Strammiello, chief Revenue Officer at Lean Solutions Group. Chris brings more than 25 years of experience in sales, marketing and strategic operations, and he's known for building high performance teams and mentoring emerging leaders across global organizations.
Richard Ellis: He's led transformations. Built market first cultures, and most of all, he's passionate about helping others grow. Chris, welcome to the episode.
Chris Strammiello: Hey, great to be here with you, Richard. Thank you.
Richard Ellis: Yeah. So as we were kind of talking about what we want to dive into today, you know, this idea of really leveraging others, mentoring others, getting mentored by others, I'd love to just dig into that topic with you, if you don't mind.
Richard Ellis: No,
Chris Strammiello: it's a great topic and you know one that's real close to me because. Mentors have really been what's allowed me to find some success and to make some great relationships, and I really look at that as the cornerstone [00:02:00] of my career so far.
Richard Ellis: That's excellent. Let's talk about your career a little bit.
Richard Ellis: 'cause it's a little bit unique. It wasn't kind of a straight line to sales leadership, I don't think. Right. You've held roles in training and marketing and strategy and sales and m and a. So kind of a multidisciplinary background, how has that kind of shaped your perspective as a business leader and a sales leader?
Chris Strammiello: Sure. As you say, maybe not the most traditional uh, sales leadership path, right? I came in with a lot of different go to market type functions and some stops in strategy and a long stop in product management and marketing. But ultimately with sales, I found my home. I found the thing that. I appreciated the most and in having so many different stations that I stopped at sales felt the truest, the truest outcome, the purest outcome, and I was really attracted to that.
Chris Strammiello: I. But I will say having all of those different [00:03:00] roles that proceeded sales, I think helped me to understand how people work, how an organization works. Mm-hmm. What really looks like a win in a lot of different functions. And I think that's really helpful in sales, I think, to understand how your counterparts within your own business view success.
Chris Strammiello: Helps you understand how customers and prospects can individually view success. And that can be a lot of different ways. And then I think it also maybe taught me that you can't do it on your own. That the success of a sale, even if you get to take the victory lap as a seller or a sales leader. You know, it's really that culmination of the work of your entire organization and you start to understand that intimately when you have a lot of those different stops.
Richard Ellis: Yeah. That's great. Well, and you know, you and I have worked together for a little bit in some different projects, and of course we've worked with a lot of leaders and o one of the things that I've observed is. That those sales [00:04:00] leaders, business leaders, marketing leaders, are those that really have been intentional about gathering the perspectives of the different parts of the business.
Richard Ellis: Because selling's a team sport, right? It all comes together. Sure. All the pieces have to fit in the right way. And even if a leader doesn't have that varied or multidisciplinary background like you did, they can leverage others to kind of fill the gaps and give them those insights and perspectives. And I think you.
Richard Ellis: Coined this phrase kind of the value of triangulating wisdom of others, right? So tell me a little bit about that.
Chris Strammiello: Yeah, I mean, look, in any good organization there's typically a lot of intellectual horsepower around you, a lot of experience around you. And some very different mindsets. And very different approaches.
Chris Strammiello: And you know, if you are humble enough leader and you're really focused on driving great outcomes. You gotta find a way to bring those perspectives and insights into the mix for you and your team. I [00:05:00] certainly never believe I have a monopoly on good ideas or even my best team members do. And so I, I wanna bring in people's perspectives.
Chris Strammiello: I wanna bring in the wisdom of the broader organization. And then, you know, and maybe this is just. Growing up in a Sicilian family, I wanna argue things to the finish line, so I wanna debate it. I wanna interrogate people's conclusions, and I wanna have a little bit of maybe even disagreement until we get some alignment on what we feel is the best perspective, and everybody feels good that they can rally behind it.
Richard Ellis: I like that. I love that you brought that to mind. Just the idea of kind of pressure testing some ideas, right? And not just running, okay, let's, let's go give that a shot, but let's really debate this. And the perspectives of different people and their backgrounds and experiences can certainly play a part in that.
Richard Ellis: I. So triangulating the wisdom of others, as you mentioned, not only internal resources, but external resources. But here's one thing I'd like to ask. I think the idea of having a [00:06:00] mentor is a tried and true practice, and it's a great thing. We've talked about it on prior episodes, but shifting from being mentored to mentoring others.
Richard Ellis: It is kind of an interesting dynamic. Tell me about that process when you went through that and did you go through imposter syndrome where you're like, who am I to now be mentoring others? I mean, tell me a little bit about your history there.
Chris Strammiello: Well, you know, it's funny, Richard, because away from work in my personal life.
Chris Strammiello: Like I became a mentor relatively young. You know, I got involved with Big Brothers Big Sisters organization when I was 22 years old and began mentoring someone outside of work at that age. And then I got involved with another great organization, which is Year Up Organization, which was a few years later.
Chris Strammiello: And you start to mentor people with lesser opportunities, you start to mentor them professionally. It's a fantastic organization. So. On the personal side, I understood the value of mentoring and giving back. But I have to say, I might have been a [00:07:00] little slow on the uptake on the professional side because I had people, while it wasn't an active mentoring process, I had people that I was learning from people that were really providing me with something to model and, and they were taking the time to mentor me.
Chris Strammiello: I just didn't maybe fully realize it as a younger professional. And I think also. It just took me a little longer to realize, you know, as a individual contributor and maybe a manager of small teams, that force of will only goes so far. Hmm. And so, you know, you get in this trap where you're achieving good outcomes, you're doing it through your own efforts.
Chris Strammiello: But once your team gets a little bit bigger, you realize they've gotta get it all done. If you don't give them the coaching, if you don't take a different approach, if you don't let them benefit from what's been shared with you, what mentoring has occurred in [00:08:00] your life. You're just not gonna get to a scaled up outcome with a larger T.
Richard Ellis: Yeah. And I love borrowing some of your phrases. And another one that comes to mind is you've said there's magic in getting things done through others. Right. And I think that's important for us to recognize that mentoring doesn't mean do it all yourself. Right, but it's equipping those around you to be able to get things done and ultimately creating scale for yourself as a leader.
Richard Ellis: And you've led some small teams, some big teams, right. Tell me a little bit about leading different kinds of teams and maybe some, you know, differences or observations you've had with just the culture or maybe the tenure of the teams, et cetera.
Chris Strammiello: Sure. Well, just speaking for a moment about people around you.
Chris Strammiello: You know, it's important to mentor your team or your key leaders or have a tailored approach for different team members. I think it's also though, important that you've gotta create a tribe of mentors for your [00:09:00] team, and that's one of the ways, Richard, that. You and I came to work together originally, which is I've got a certain set of coaching points I wanna deliver to my team, but I understand the value of outside experts like yourself, give them a different coaching perspective or from a different perge, and then also getting them connected with.
Chris Strammiello: Other execs inside the company to give them some mentorship in different areas. So I think one of the big items that is important to emphasize is as a sales leader, it's not just about your mentoring or your coaching of your team, it's kind of the tribe of mentoring and support system that you can put around.
Chris Strammiello: And there's a lot of different perspectives and ways to benefit. Just transitioning. You asked a question about different types of teams, and it's true. You know, I started working in product businesses and then spent a long time in software businesses. Now service [00:10:00] businesses and I worked with large teams, maybe 250 sellers and smaller teams, you know, 10, 12, 40, 50.
Chris Strammiello: And I think one of the keys is stratifying the type of team, type of sellers, type of managers you're working with. So I, I had some software teams that were deeply expert, seasoned, enterprise selling professionals. And so with those folks. I've gotta put them in position to win. My primary job is to let them shine, bulldoze any obstacles that are in their way, get them the support and the enablement they need and put them in position to win.
Chris Strammiello: But I've also still gotta do some behavioral change, some coaching, some mentoring. And so to do that, I've gotta build up enough trust with them from the onset. That they know I have one thing in mind, which is a great outcome through them. And I think if I can do that, then the little bit of [00:11:00] change, you know, the degrees of change become a lot easier.
Chris Strammiello: Right. With a smaller team or more earlier in their career type team and, and that's the type of team I have now. Like that's very invigorating. That's probably what I love most because they're so receptive to the coaching, and I think you've seen that with us working together. It's a wonderful feeling for someone to be so open and then to see the positive benefits of the change.
Chris Strammiello: But you've still gotta focus on building that trust right from the onset. I think it's most satisfying, at least to me, everybody's different, but most satisfying to put some of that coaching in place, give people a tribe of mentors around them, and then watch the satisfaction that they receive. With the really incredible quick rate of progress and that the organization receives from that too.
Chris Strammiello: I know you're a fitness guy, so you know, like if you're lifting weights, those [00:12:00] first years of changing a program, you know, you make these incredible gains. And then it's more about the incrementality of the gains.
Richard Ellis: Yeah. We call those newbie gains, but you can have a lot of progress with not a lot of work or effort or even consistency.
Richard Ellis: Those gains come, that's funny that you draw that parallel, but same, I've worked with younger in their career, maybe not as I. Seasoned or new to an industry, and there's just this hunger there of I wanna learn, I wanna soak up everything I can from you and I, I want to know what I don't know, all that good stuff.
Richard Ellis: And so it's just a delight to serve those, but I don't want to discount the seasoned software sellers that we work with. It brings me to a particular client in mind. I was training and these. Ladies and gentlemen had been, you know, selling 20 years. Right. And one particular guy, it was so funny at the beginning we were having coffee and we're getting ready for the, the kickoff and he comes up and he was like.
Richard Ellis: Just so you know, I've been through like five sales methodology trainings and this, that, and the other. Right? He was just kinda warning me [00:13:00] that you can't tell me anything. I don't know. Right? And so I just kind of took that as a personal challenge. It's like, I'm gonna keep him in mind. I wanna do something to just wow him.
Richard Ellis: And you know, long story short, at the end of this session, he came up and he was like. I need to shake your hand. And I was like, okay. He was like, I guess you can teach an old dog new trick. He was like, I told you in the beginning, you know, I've seen it all, but I learned some good things today. And so, you know, that was great.
Richard Ellis: Just a reminder that we can always learn something new. And I think it's a challenge to us leaders that sometimes for the same approach doesn't work for everybody. And you need to kind of figure out where they are in their acumen in their. Expertise and their knowledge and their discipline, and just kind of find what they need, then you can personalize that coaching and really delight them.
Chris Strammiello: I think that's right. I think that's one thing that you've been great at as we've worked together through the years, is creating the case for change. Hmm. And you know, you typically teach that at the seller level when engaging with customers and prospects. Right? They've gotta make a change to [00:14:00] adopt your product, to adopt your service.
Chris Strammiello: But you know, when you're talking about those seasoned sellers. You've gotta create the case for change on why they should do anything different, why they should embrace a process change, why they should embrace a positioning change, why they should embrace fine tuning a sales methodology. So I think that same approach to customer is one that you take with, you know, seasoned excellence inside a company too, which is create that case for change and show 'em what's in it for them.
Chris Strammiello: And clearly in that example, you've done that, but that's what you gotta do every day.
Richard Ellis: Yeah, absolutely. Well, and one of the things that I've seen you do well too, is, I mean, it's pretty standard in any kind of sales training event or whatever to start off with what's in it for you, right? Okay. More revenues, more closed deals, bigger pipeline.
Richard Ellis: Right? Faster sales cycles. And so it's kind of obligatory for us to do that. Right? But what I've seen you do, and what we try to do kind of in the trenches is personalize that for each individual. Seller, leader, manager, et cetera, that we're working [00:15:00] with is like, why should they change, you know, specifically and what is it that they need to focus on changing, right?
Richard Ellis: So that you can really tailor it to that individual, and I know you do a great job just on the mentoring and coaching of younger, less tenured team members to, of just really understanding where they are in their career path. Where's their opportunity for growth in doing that?
Chris Strammiello: Going back to marketing world, like you learn pretty quickly in marketing that the more you're able to tailor and personalize that message, the higher your response rate is and you start to get a very clear view of the mathematics of personalization when you do that.
Chris Strammiello: And you know the same is true when you're managing and coaching your team. Like the more personal you make every point, the more you understand your leader or your seller or any team member I. The more that you're going to get that response rate driven up and that engagement and buy-in. So making everything deeply personal, [00:16:00] even if that takes a bit more time, it makes all the difference.
Chris Strammiello: And then again, like mentoring your team to make it that personal with their team, which isn't always instinctive for people, but it's just a game changer when it comes to buyin.
Richard Ellis: Yes. I love that and and you just kind of brought to mind just the recognition that a lot of our sales messaging principles of leading with insight and connecting to value and focusing on why do something different and why now that we put in practice for selling to prospects.
Richard Ellis: It's the same kind of thing you put in practice in coaching a team member to do something different and get to that next level. There's a selling that goes on to that. There's some messaging. It needs to be tailored. That's really good. A hundred percent. Absolutely. I want to talk a little bit about, and we're almost outta time unfortunately, but taking the mentoring to that n level of scale or multiplying the effect or the impact.
Richard Ellis: Right? And so tell me a little bit about coaching your leaders to be good [00:17:00] coaches and mentors. 'cause that's a different dynamic, right? Because they might not be a natural coach or even think of themselves as having enough experience to be a good mentor, but they need to shepherd their own team, right? As you're working with first line managers?
Richard Ellis: Sure,
Chris Strammiello: sure. What I really try to do with my leaders, and again, it's very personalized and I have guys on different levels. I've got 30 year career veterans and I've got guys who are really high aptitude going to be future high flyers that are coming up. So I wanna personalize that, but. I try to give them learning blocks from the people that mentored me.
Chris Strammiello: Okay, so for example, we might do a block on preparation. I had a guy named Mike Rich, who was the CEO of Equitrac, who was one of the tribe of mentors that I benefited from, and he really taught me the power of preparation. And that went very deep from call planning to scenario [00:18:00] planning around track questions and overcoming objections to the way you craft an email, to the way we wanna have multiple people interpret a message and how we debate issues.
Chris Strammiello: And so in learning from him, I created kind of a huge framework. To over prepare for any scenario and that serves you well, whether you're dealing with a board of directors, whether you're dealing with a, a multinational Fortune 100 company, or whether you're just dealing with the management of your own team.
Chris Strammiello: And so I try to create, for example, a preparation block, and then I'll tailor that to the level of the leader that I'm working with at the time. And I try to build those blocks and then I have enough trust that we can have really open and honest conversations. But I also know people need free space to learn and work that's not directly with their manager.
Chris Strammiello: Hmm. And so that's where working with a company like Revenue Innovations or giving them a stretch assignment with another leader, I. Allows them [00:19:00] some space to learn that's not directly under the microscope from their manager, and that's helpful even when you have a deeply trusted relationship and even when your thought partner's on an issue, it's still incredibly helpful to have that free space to learn and stretch and expand.
Richard Ellis: Sure. And just kinda give them the comfort, uh, even though you say, Hey, this is a safe space. There's no wrong questions, all of that good stuff, they still have this, you know, whether they've stated it or not. This feeling of I don't wanna let my boss down, I don't want That's right. Dumb. And so to give them opportunities outside of just your one-on-ones, I think is really key for development.
Richard Ellis: Yeah. It's a big one. Yeah, that's a good point. Well, we are out of time now as we think about mentoring, coaching, mentoring others, being mentored by others, you know, kind of the whole ball of wax there. Is there any other tips that you wanna share with the listeners that you've learned that we haven't covered?
Richard Ellis: I.
Chris Strammiello: Well, maybe just two quick things, which is one, do it really intentionally in a structured way. You know, [00:20:00] there's a lot of ad hoc mentoring that occurs, and sometimes people are really learning from you, and you don't even necessarily know it. But follow that up with a really structured development program.
Chris Strammiello: Understand your leaders, understand your individual sellers what they need, and build it for 'em. There just isn't enough of that where people are custom designing a curriculum that their team members need, and it goes really far. And then I would also say like, I'm still a mentee. I'm still learning from all the people around me, so just stay curious and keep learning.
Chris Strammiello: I, I'm passing new things that I learn onto my team every day. I think that's a big one.
Richard Ellis: Yeah, I do too. That's really good. Stay curious. Well, I know you've listened to some of our episodes before, and so thank you for that, but I always like to wrap up with just some extra goodness that has nothing to do with what we talked about.
Richard Ellis: So anything in your personal life or professional life that doesn't have anything to do with mentoring that's brought you a little goodness recently?
Chris Strammiello: Okay. Well, I'll tell you a really quick and simple one. [00:21:00] I, I made a, a weightlifting metaphor before, and I know you and I share like a love of fitness and discipline.
Chris Strammiello: I spent my whole life constructing workout routines, running lots of different experiments, trying to be really methodical about it. And you know, I have a passion for fitness. I've run an experiment in the past month. Where I've eliminated everything I do and simplified it to one exercise, which is the weighted carry, where I literally just pick up something heavy and I walk down the street in my neighborhood and when I can't hold it anymore, I put it down, I pick it back up and I keep walking.
Chris Strammiello: So one exercise, and it has showed that sometimes when you. Absolutely simplify. You can get some incredible results. So I'm stronger on every exercise that I do simply from doing one exercise. And so I've made more progress in the last month doing just one thing. I made in the previous three months doing, you know, a very precise [00:22:00] and methodical approach to a lot of different things.
Richard Ellis: So I love that. Oh, that's a provocative idea in just so many ways. I'm gonna have to call you after this and find out what you're carrying and what else you've tried because I love that stuff. Absolutely. Thanks for that. I love the idea of experimenting and then focusing on just that single thing.
Richard Ellis: Really cool. Thanks for sharing.
Chris Strammiello: Great to be here with you, Richard.
Richard Ellis: Yeah, great time. We're gonna let you go. But again, thanks for, uh, being a gracious guest with us and sharing your insights. Thanks for having me.
Narrator: Some goodness is a creation of revenue innovations. Visit [email protected] and subscribe to our newsletter.
