David Horsager:
Welcome to the trusted leader show it’s David Horsager and I have a special guest in a special place. We’re doing a special episode today from high point university. And if you’re watching today, you’ll see the cool studio here. We’ve got a team of four or five people in studio. So I’m grateful for each of you around studio. We’re grateful for high point university. As many of you know, I serve on the board of the university, but at high point, I’m the expert and restaurant trust, expert and residence at high point university and love what they’re doing here. At high point, we’re having a great day together speaking, sharing about trust. But today in this moment, we get a learn from a great professor here. She started her career at Xerox. She spent 17 years at Johnson and Johnson. She was a consultant at Allergan. She has a fascinating life and loves fitness, loves family, and loves her work and her new career teaching here at Highpoint university. So please welcome Alyssa Haynes, Lyssa Haynes, Lyssa. All right. You got it right now. All right. Well, tell us just a little bit about your background.

Lyssa Haynes:
So you’re right. You’re absolutely. I started with Xerox, like the department chair here. So that’s a wonderful training ground for anyone. And then most of my career was at Johnson and Johnson in multiple different positions. I started off as a sales rep and then went from there into a position at Allergan working across the nation with a wonderful team. And then from there I went into working at a hospital in business development, and then I came

David Horsager:
Here and along the way you had some kids and now you’re at high point.

Lyssa Haynes:
I did have some

David Horsager:
Kids by the way, people can look it up. It’s a really cool spelling of Lyssa. So yes, my, my wife’s name is Lisa too, so I’ve got that down, but it

Lyssa Haynes:
Is unusual. I changed it in high school because nobody could say it

David Horsager:
Yes, no, it’s it’s great. So tell us this. Let’s let’s jump into sales. We’re gonna get personal a little bit later. We’re gonna talk about a few different pieces on sure. Leadership teaching sales, but tell us, what did you learn those first years? You’re going into Xerox. You became, you joined the $2 million club really quickly. What, what do you think it takes to be great at sales?

Lyssa Haynes:
Perseverance? Okay. I would say when everybody loves to connect to people, that’s a lot of the reason why students are interested in going into sales. But I think a lot of times they don’t realize how much true grit and true work ethic. And you have to self motivate those days when you really don’t feel like going out and talking to 15 different offices, you gotta make yourself do it. And it’s so it’s, it’s hard work, but you just keep going. It’s perseverance.

David Horsager:
Think we, we talk about, you know, one of the pillars of trust is consistency. Yes. We talk about sameness consist. I’d rather have a salesperson that is the same will do the same thing every time. Correct, consistently. And we’ve the, what do they say? The, the, the follow up is key. The funds are in the follow up, right?

Lyssa Haynes:
The funds are definitely in the follow up. Yeah. You can have the best plan. And I talked to my marketing students about this too. You can have the best laid plan, most beautiful marketing plan or sales plan that you’ve put together. But if you don’t follow up on it and you, you have, you know, you connect to somebody, but then you don’t get back to them for a month. Well, they’ve already forgotten who you are.

David Horsager:
We talked about listening a little bit ago. Tell, tell us what, what, what makes a person a great listener? I think I saw the research recently that we listen about half the time or are supposed to and yet people are trained on listening. Maybe 2% of the, of, of sales leaders and people are trained. Maybe only 2% of them are even trained on this amazing skill. What, what are some tips to be a better

Lyssa Haynes:
Listener listener? I would say for the primary thing is picking up nonverbals because, you know, if you’re really paying attention to somebody and looking in their eyes, you know, if they’re really picking up what you’re laying down or they’re like a lost and somewhere else. So I think picking up the nonverbal that people are hearing you, and if they’re not, then you gotta change it up a little bit. And what you’re saying. And also you’re listening not to continue to speak. You’re listening to try to get them to speak because as a salesperson, it doesn’t matter what I say. I’m not learning anything about my customer by talking, I’m learning by listening. So and then I know what they need and then I can help them.

David Horsager:
So how do, well, how has sales, it’s changed a little bit over the last few years now, we’ve got digital and everything else. What are some of the things we should be thinking about as we sell today in this new digital A.I. M.L. World?

Lyssa Haynes:
Well, I think in a way we were just talking about prospecting in my count in my class last week and prospecting today, I think with social media is much easier because you don’t have to rely on data directories and the phone book and knocking on just random doors. You can actually learn a lot more about people through LinkedIn and through various social media, business pages, Facebook business pages. You’re often gonna have more information there that’s current than what we used to have to deal with back in our little files, do that. We

David Horsager:
Flip, if we say, we need to answer the phone, how are we gonna get them to answer today? It seems like, oh, it’s a tough time. Sometimes actually getting their attention. What can we do

Lyssa Haynes:
Well when trying to get people’s attention often, it’s, you’re not gonna get right to the person you wanna talk to. So we just talked about this this week as well, you know, at that gatekeeper, that first person that you’re talking to and an officer on the phone, you’ve got it. They’re your first customer. So you gotta treat them just like you’re gonna treat the CEO that trying to actually talk to, or the surgeon that you want to be in front of, for me, for most of my career, they, if you’re not nice to the people along the way to get there they’re the ones that are gonna help you each and every time from that point forward, if you make that work,

David Horsager:
I was in salt lake city just two days ago speaking, or I guess I flew in yesterday and I was eating dinner with a friend of mine, amazing sales gentleman, but we sat down and next to us was the CEO of a massive company. And they run a huge foundation. And I won’t say that the, the name’s here to get us off track, but we just happened to sit down and notice something there and, and say hi to them. And they’re, they’re getting older, but they were celebrating their I think it was 47th wedding anniversary. Wow. And, and we just had a great visit, great encouragement time with them. And now it sounds like they’re coming to our trusted leader summit in Minnesota. And what, what I thought the interesting, what my friend Randy Garn said across the table from me said, be nice to everyone. You never know who they are. Absolutely. And, you know, be nice to everyone, be kind to everyone notice everyone. So

Lyssa Haynes:
You never know what influence that they have. So, and, and they everyone’s important

David Horsager:
Every absolutely. Yeah. In spite of what they can ever do for you. Yes. Every because of who we are. I, I like the idea. I remember this story when, when you know, this, the, there’s a story about this gentleman you know, tipping his hat to the prostitute. And the, the, the person with him said, what did you do that for? She’s a prostitute. Do you not know who she is, what she’s doing? And the, the gentleman said, well, I don’t tip my hat because of who she is. I tip my hat because I am a gentleman and a gentleman always tips his hat to a lady. Wonderful. So who, who we are matters. Right, right.

Lyssa Haynes:
You’re representing yourself. You’re your own brand. Exactly.

David Horsager:
Yes. So let’s jump to marketing for a moment. You know, marketing’s changed a, a, a lot, lot in the last years. What, what are some of the changes you see and what are you teaching about how to deal with those changes, especially as we’ve gone. So digital, and as an example something we’ve seen in the data we put out one of the biggest studies on trust and leadership out of north America, the trust outlook. And we see continually online testimonials, as example, as an example are tanking because nobody trusts or, or review

Lyssa Haynes:
Anymore

David Horsager:
Of reviews. Right. So what, what do we do? How do, how do we deal with this change in marketing? What are you teaching?

Lyssa Haynes:
Well, one is, you’re absolutely right. It has changed dramatically. The impact of social media continues to grow E each and every year in the pandemic. I think it took some really big leaps. And that’s a way for the message to get across. It’s also a way for companies to get a pulse on what people are thinking and it’s, and yes, the testimonials and reviews nowadays can be purchased. And you’re paying for somebody to say something that, so they’ve lost some impact, but the, the, the interchange and the information that’s going back and forth on social media is real. And it’s in real time and people are talking, they just have to be making sure that they’re hearing it and that they’re responding quickly. And they’re you know, social media is all about frequency and responsiveness.

David Horsager:
So how do we, there’s so much now, I mean, we talk about trust and authenticity and all these things. And yet he’s like, is that really, that person that’s answering for me, E even for me, I can’t watch everything outta the Institute, or even people that are right. David HK. And in one of my biggest challenges, when we’ve had marketing companies just authentically, we’ve had some marketing companies help us. And in my opinion, they put a dent in our brand because they said something on behalf of the Institute or this trust, it doesn’t fit. I wouldn’t say it that way. I wouldn’t do it that way. And so we were, you know, trying to share this message we care about, right. And believe in and believe can impact the world. And yet we need help sometimes. So you hire some marketing or help, and you want them to have our voice. We want them to help share this message so that we can impact the world greater. But it’s a, it’s a tough thing. What should we look for when we’re looking at or I should just say it this way, what are the best marketing people online doing differently?

Lyssa Haynes:
Well, I’d say back to the consistency, I think you’re definitely looking for a consistent message. So whoever’s doing it on behalf of you has to, has to be completely trained and 100% understand and have a passion for what you’re doing so that they are trying to say it better. And more like you would say it because they are bought and sold in that idea as well. And they’re representing you the way that you want to be represented because you can’t, I mean, you know, one, one person is just a one person. So once a business becomes so large, you’ve got to have people that are there and representing your message. And I would say, you know, just trying to make sure if it’s not consistent with your brand, that you’re going back and revisiting, Hey, this is not, this doesn’t sound like me. This would’ve been the way I would’ve answered it. So constantly trying to bring those two closer together.

David Horsager:
One thing my brother always said, he said, never give your voice. When you have a strong brand, like we’ve tried to build over 22 years, right. I’ve never give your voice to someone else. Never give the marketing to someone else. So we are, we’re thinking about what do we have help with and what don’t we, so that it is right. Truly all us, as far as this is the same reason, I’ve always believed in, you know, writing your own books. You know, there’s a lot of people, I, I couldn’t believe it when I heard of how many books are ghost written. I don’t doesn’t mean I don’t need help to have editing or that kind of thing, but it’s like, if you’re gonna put your name on it,

Lyssa Haynes:
Don’t you wanna write it yourself?

David Horsager:
Yeah. Not ought to be you. And I think that’s wrong to have all these people, especially like I don’t have people, you know, I don’t want them writing certain things or being certain things on my behalf. I want that. That’s gotta be me. If I’m gonna have my name on it. Now outta the Institute, we have a bigger, bigger thing going, and we can go beyond, beyond me. But so tell me now you’ve got these students, they’re gonna be a, maybe they’re gonna be a sales and marketing leader. You’re you were a sales and marketing leader. What would you say? What are some of the key things to learn right now? What, what do people need to learn? I mean, we know they need to learn how to learn, because everything’s gonna change again in five years, right? What, what should we be learning? What should, and for those that are out there today, the, the sales and marketing leaders, what should they be actively learning? We, we talk about the competency, pillars, staying fresh and relevant and capable. How should they do it today?

Lyssa Haynes:
I think you know, obviously coming out of the pandemic for all of us, that things have changed to a degree. I see that you know, what their experience has been in learning has been different. So I think they’re more flexible with that, but they also need to understand the importance of preparation. And at this age I think they, they are in tune with social media and they are in tune with education, like as we were with education, but understanding that a large amount of preparation that it takes to go into any career. But for sure, sales and marketing, because you are the outward voice of your organization, you are the one that’s representing that culture and that brand. So you’ve gotta be prepared every time that you get into a situation. And, and when you’re new, it’s very difficult to wing it.

David Horsager:
Well, one thing I love about Highpoint university is there are plenty of PhDs and research based folks here, but in the sales department and in many the departments, there are people that have actively done this. Like you just joined the, you know, team of professors in sales, but you were a real salesperson. You didn’t just study it, you did it. Right. And so, but now you become an educator, you’ve become an academic, right? Yes. Wow. So how do you teach it in a way these days that sticks, that makes a difference? How, how, what are you thinking about how to take what you’ve learned all these years to be a top salesperson, right. And how are you gonna transfer it to these 20 year olds?

Lyssa Haynes:
I give them a lot of examples of things that I did and lessons that I learned, but I also make them for instance, you know, part of a marketing job is, well, every marketing job is writing a great marketing plan. So that’s what my students had to do this week. They had to write a marketing plan. They could pick the company, they could work together, cuz team is often done in a marketing setting. So I’m trying to give them real world experiences to the best that I can, or at least exercises. I had them create a social media content calendar, so they could, you know, what are the posts gonna be for the next week? And what are the, what are they gonna say? What’s the image gonna be? Or is it, are you gonna use a video? So they had to kind of plan all that. So they’re, they’re actually doing it. Instead of just hearing about it, because I think often especially young people, I think they gotta do to, to kind of digest it and really get it learn

David Horsager:
By doing yeah.

Lyssa Haynes:
Learn by doing, I, I liked the, the act of doing when I was learning, I felt like I could, it sunk in more and I retained it better.

David Horsager:
So we didn’t get to go through the questions ahead of time. So I’m just surprising you as we go. But tell us about a lot of times we learned from failure. A lot of us have had plenty of it. Right? What, what’s a big failure had sales market,

Lyssa Haynes:
A big failure. I had, I would say gosh, that’s a really good question. I’m trying to think of a very specific example. That would be most powerful. I would say that at the hospital that I was at most recently every year we made sure that we were making the plan for the hospital and, and achieving what we wanted to. And obviously when, when the pandemic hit, you have to completely all of your plan, your well laid plans have to be scrapped overnight and you have to turn around and come up with a new plan. And yes, it was a difficult time and yes, it was different. But I really thought that the new things that we came up with to do, and the new ways we tried to connect with people without being in front of them would work better than they did. It took more time than I expected. And, and it was a real big disappointment to me that, that so many people it just, they were just kind of frozen, not only our team, but the people we were calling on, it was just kinda like everybody was kind of scrambling with what to do. And I felt like I always felt like I could’ve done something better.

David Horsager:
Did you think of anything? I wish I would’ve done this differently. What would’ve I done? Is there something you would’ve done reacted?

Lyssa Haynes:
I think I would’ve started the, the, you know, it took probably about four to six months for people to get used to online meetings. And I think I would’ve pushed that sooner, than trying to come up the curve on that a little bit. I mean, we were doing it already to an extent, but I think if it would’ve been a little bit more seamless than maybe we wouldn’t have lost as much energy out there.

David Horsager:
Yeah. So let’s make a big jump here to personal what we’ve noticed about great leaders and people. Yes. Is that they lead themselves well, and while we all do it imperfectly I know you’re big into fitness and other things, but what

Lyssa Haynes:
I am passionate

David Horsager:
About it, what are some things you’re doing to lead yourself well, so that you can be a great leader, a great professor and a great example to others?

Lyssa Haynes:
Well, I do, I do passionately believe in fitness. It’s been something that I have done since I was very young right outta college. I started teaching fitness because it was, it was enjoyable to me to, to bring everybody into that world. Even the people that don’t think they can. But for me, it gives me energy. It makes me happy. I don’t do it for anyone else. I do do it for myself and not personally the way that it, it makes me feel. But I think sharing that with other people is also I really get a lot of enjoyment out of somebody who says, oh, I just started working out and I it’s really I’ve found something. I like, cuz it doesn’t matter what you do. As long as you enjoy doing it. You’ll do it again.

David Horsager:
Well, that’s, I believe in that, but I love to fly fish and I love to downhill ski and I only do ’em once a year. Yeah.

Lyssa Haynes:
It’s those are hard to do. So how do I, every day,

David Horsager:
Because I think the big excuse, isn’t a lot of the great sales leaders today that I would hear this an excuse from would say, I love to play this and love to play that when I was 20. But then I got so busy in my sales career, I’m flying three times a week, I’m doing this and this and this. Right. How did you do it? How did you preserve and prioritize time? You’re a mother of twins. You did all these things. You were had this career the whole time. How did you make time for it in the busiest times?

Lyssa Haynes:
Well, I’m a huge scheduler. I love to set up a plan and set up my time. I, I always schedule my time and it was part is just like an appointment. Like it was an appointment with for my time and that, you know, the thing about, I allowed people think with fitness, you’ve gotta dedicate all of this tremendous amount of time. You really don’t a daily, 30 minutes will work. If that’s all the time that you, you had, how did you, when you’re on road, even if it it’s 20, it’s better than

David Horsager:
None. So let’s take you on the busiest days you were on the road, you gotta show up with that surgeon. You gotta show this device. You gotta deal with this workflow of patients. Yes. How, how did you, how did you schedule then? Was there a best time right away in the morning later? How did you do it?

Lyssa Haynes:
I was in evening workout. I like to do it at the end of the day. A lot of people like prefer in the morning because they go ahead and get it done. I’m just already kind of on my day and thinking about my day. So that’s when I could kind re-energize myself is at the end of the day. So that the evening was you know, I had the, it gives you energy. A lot of people don’t think so, but for me it gave me energy. So that kind of revved me back up. And

David Horsager:
So, so there’s people listening and they, they believe in work. Of course, fitness isn’t born, of course is, but they’re not doing it right. What’s the first step. What can they start doing? What should they start doing?

Lyssa Haynes:
Carve out 10 minutes, carve out 10 minutes. Cuz most of the time, even if like, if you’re going to the gym, you say I’m just gonna go to 10 minutes or I’m just gonna go outside and walk for 10 minutes. Usually they won’t walk for 10 minutes, they’ll walk for 15 or 20 because they actually it’s the act of getting there. Mm starting that’s the hardest part.

David Horsager:
Just keep the

Lyssa Haynes:
Workout clothes on. That’s the hardest part is getting going. Like I tell when I would have fitness classes that would come and I’d say, you’ve already done the hardest part you got here and that’s the thing just get started and you don’t have to do anything. You know, a lot of people start a fitness program. They want to, oh, I’m gonna, I’m gonna do three days a week and working out and an hour of cardio and two days a week, I’m gonna lift for 20 minutes. You know, maybe that’s too much to start, like start with a little bit. And, and then once you start that as a habit, then you can grow from there.

David Horsager:
Any other habits that have helped you be a better mom or a better leader?

Lyssa Haynes:
I would definitely say communication, you know, making sure, you know, I knew what my kids needed. I knew when there were events that I needed to be there for them. I knew you know what my boss needed. I knew, you know, just keeping tabs with everybody, frequent communication as well as quick response. I was always one to, and I feel strongly about when people send you a message you wanna hear from you, then you need to get back to them because they send it to you for a reason, yeah. Even if it’s, Hey, I’ll get back to you. I got your message. I’ll get back to you cuz you didn’t have time to really thoughtfully think about the answer. At least you’re getting back.

David Horsager:
So you’re a, you’re an educator now you’re this in this academic world, what do, what are you learning? What are you curious about these days?

Lyssa Haynes:
Wow, this, I, I would say this definitely pushed me outta my comfort zone cuz after a long career and doing what you’re doing, you can do it in your sleep. It, you know, seeing students every single day and teaching them and sharing them everything that I’ve gotten up here that was different. That was definitely new. And you have a certain curriculum that you’re teaching. So I had to make it mine. So learning that, how to take the curriculum that we have and adapting it to what I know. So, you know you’ll have a whole PowerPoint in front of you and you’ll scrap the whole thing and write your own so it took more time, but it was now in a second semester doing it. I it’s it’s funny. I looked at something I did last semester yesterday cuz I was gonna present it today and I said, oh wow. I just and I didn’t have my notes in front of me and everything I wrote down was exactly the same thing I would’ve said before. So it’s, it’s learning about what connects and what works too. Yeah. Because you know, if you see a sea of students out there listening to what you’re saying, and you’re not, you, you just know they’re not hearing it. Yep. Then you gotta change. You gotta adapt

David Horsager:
Contextualizing. And we know our work. What we’re constantly thinking about when we teach even facilitators and coaches is thinking, okay, that’s really great content. That’s really good ideas. But what does that mean to them? Correct. Right now? Correct. What does that mean to them right now? We even talk about there’s a lot of people call himself thought leaders and we, yeah, we do all this research and stuff, but you’re thought leader, once you take that new research and ideas and, and adapt it mean something to them in that boardroom or that classroom.

Lyssa Haynes:
Right. And keeping it current. I mean, EV you know, they don’t wanna hear always what happened 20 years ago. They wanna hear what’s going on now. Yep. And what’s gonna mean when they get outta school. Yeah.

David Horsager:
Yes. Great. Well, you can find more about Lyssa Haynes and the other great professors here at high point university at high point university. Tell me, like I said, at highpoint.edu. All right. They might cut it. They might not, but you’ll never forget it. Highpoint.edu, you can see all of the experts in residence from a host of them from Wosniak to Sandborn, to McCain and other dear friends, the founder of Netflix and the CEO of the Dallas Mavericks. It’s been a treat to be a part of high point. You’re gonna just, it’s an amazing campus. If you ever get, get, come on campus, it’s a an amazing place. There are amazing professors. It’s been a treat to be with you, Lisa,

Lyssa Haynes:
Thank you so much.

David Horsager:
And the last question is it’s the trusted leader show, right? Who’s the leader you trust and why?

Lyssa Haynes:
Well, I would say my boyfriend who was major general for the United States army and he has, he’s retired recently and people from all over continue to call him for advice. People that worked under him, colleagues of his it’s the trust that they had in him. They want to hear what he would do in a situation. He was great in a crisis. He was great as a mentor. In fact, when he retired, the guy that led that was under him immediately under him, flew a flag across all the stations that he had worked. And in his whole career, even the one at the Pentagon. So to, to have somebody really be that passionate about their leader was to me, incredible. I certainly didn’t have that for anybody that did it for me, but you know, connecting and trust was key for leading people in very precarious situations for a very long time. So I hope to be that kind of leader someday. And I think that’s what leaders, I think that’s what it means to be a leader.

David Horsager:
Sounds like we need to have on the trusted leader show at some point.

Lyssa Haynes:
I think that would be fascinating.

David Horsager:
So another time, thank you, Lyssa Haynes. This is David Horsager and it’s been the trusted leader show until next time stay trusted.