Alex G. Sciulli isn’t afraid to ask questions, especially when it helps him get to know employees and customers.
“A lot of people think, ‘Well, if I ask a question, they’re going to think I’m really dumb,” says the president and chief operating officer of RJ Lee Group Inc. “It’s a good thing to be aware that you’re not going to know every answer.”
Through questions, Sciulli investigates people’s personalities — a mindset not far off for the $35 million company, which he calls an “industrial CSI” because his 250 employees are investigators in materials characterization and forensic engineering.
Smart Business spoke to Sciulli about how locker-room chemistry affects the game.
Q. What skills do leaders need?
What makes a good leader is not IQ but EQ, or emotional quotient. Let’s face it, Mr. Spock was a valuable asset on the Starship Enterprise, but he had no emotions, little empathy. Leaders need to exhibit a self-awareness of their skills and limitations. They must have the interpersonal and social skills to address the needs of the customer and the key staff providing the service.
You have to be a good listener. How does the customer differentiate your company from another company? The first way is through your interpersonal skills. You have to pass that test first. Then the second thing is that you have to take their problem on as your own.
Q. How do you teach employees to interact with clients?
When I’ve gone on sales calls with junior people, they want to say something about the company or something they’ve done previously. What the customer really wants is, ‘Tell me how you would solve that problem.’ You wouldn’t be sitting here if they didn’t think you were qualified. So at that point, you turn off the sales pitch and you’re on execute mode. Ask a lot of questions about how do you define the problem, what are the biggest issues that you face, what keeps you up at night, if you had a perfect world, what would you do?
You try to get [employees] exposed to how you approach a customer. Sometimes it’s as simple as when you’re in a client’s office, you have to be very observant. You have to look at the pictures on the wall. You have to look at the degrees. What did the client think was important to put on his wall: a hole-in-one certificate or pictures of the family? These things start conversations, and then you start to become a confidant.
… I tell [employees], ‘When the customer begins to talk, let them finish. When the customer mentioned the following, that was a good opportunity for you to interject about this.’ So it’s coaching done in a constructive fashion. You give them some encouragement and you say, ‘Here’s some things I would have done maybe a little differently,’ and then they grow.
