Ep 125 - "#1 Reason Salespeople Fail"

0:00 Wow. How many of you have listened to the Head Heart and Boots podcast? I can't tell you that reaction, how much that means to us. Welcome back to the Head Heart and Boots podcast. I'm Chris. And I'm Brennan. Join us as we wrestle with what it takes to transform ourselves and the businesses we lead. This new camera angle makes my arms look smaller than yours. I'm noticing that and I really appreciate it. I thought you did that on purpose. No, I don't. I didn't. And I am not happy with it. Hey, y'all. Thanks so much for listening to the show. Hey, if you're not already following, please do so. And ultimately share, right? The coolest currency that we have in terms of supporting this is share it with a friend, share it with somebody, a colleague, a peer, one of your downline team members.

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1:25 And at the end, it'll assign you a health score to let you know exactly where your business stands right now. So go check it out, floodlightgrp.com forward slash audit and take the BOA. It's a great way to get a pulse on your business. Right. Dude, sometimes our pre... Our preamble. Our pre-record conversations. Someday I'm just going to get brassy enough to go ahead and record those portions too. So dude, I'm really excited for those that maybe aren't on YouTube right now. I'm really excited about the new studio setup. We're starting to really professionalize things, but I have a... I'm looking at it right now. It's kind of driving me crazy. The way the lighting's working, the one side of my mustache has a little bit more of a... That's so funny.

2:08 I've recognized the more video and photos and stuff we're in just because of the nature of running a business these days, right? That I prefer to expose the right hand. I feel like the right hand side of me is more attractive than the left. And so the more ideally I would be in your seat and you like- Maybe we got to flip. I guess I'm just having to become less, I probably just need to care a lot less about that. Maybe that's- Question is really quick before you get started. Yeah. Do people like this blue backdrop or should we go red? Oh. Because- You're offering up red, huh? I don't know. The red has kind of a- You thought it looked a bit like a gamer type of deal. I'm about it. Anyway, I just switched it up. All right, let's get on with it. People are going to get bored really fast. That's right. Where are we going? So here's the deal.

2:48 Dude, you went red. You changed it. I did it on purpose. So anyway, direct messages. Let us know. Yeah, send us an email. And then I can- I think the blue is more- Can you let me move on? Let me move on. So last week, I did, I think it was last week, I did a LinkedIn Live. I believe it was this past Friday. I think it was part of our Blood Life Friday live stream. And I talked about, I titled it the number one reason that sales reps in our industry fail. Oh, yeah. And it was a very well-received post. There was tons of engagement on it and a lot of reshares and a lot of comments, including from operational leaders that were like, man, this is so important. This is so good. Thank you for talking about this. Well, of course, you and I talk about this all the time.

3:29 It just doesn't always make it out to our public-facing conversations, but this is a constant drumbeat with our clients. So I thought, let's unpack that concept a little bit. I'm really excited to have you here to speak into that conversation too as an operational leader, because I actually think that this is one of the most prevalent problems that holds back restoration companies in our industry today. Period. Especially as the industry is grappling for more diversification, growing commercial sales, trying to figure out commercial sales. It's really brought this issue, I think, to a head to where a lot more restorers are feeling the tension between their production and operations field teams.

4:12 and their salespeople. And if it's not dealt with, there's just a ton of negative downstream effects. Not the least of which is we can't get our direct sales revenue actually spooled up and building momentum because our salespeople just are not producing the way we want them to. And so if you're listening to this, I think maybe it's helpful, first of all, to define what a successful sales team looks like. It's just helpful, I think, for us to start from there. Because the then people can gauge, okay, where is my team at? And is this potentially a problem that's holding us back? Okay, so the model, or I guess the KPIs that you and I have sort of customarily taken on from our experience running an independent restoration company to our time at Belfort, and then the visibility we have into dozens of companies of various sizes all across the United States.

4:56 Yep. we've more or less landed on a sales rep should stabilize in terms of annual production around a million and a half bucks. Do we want to get them to two? Do we want to lift the whole team as far as we can go? Of course. But when you do the math, based on what average salaries around the country in terms of base salary, commission comp, and everything else, We want to get our team to somewhere around a million and a half bucks average production. And then, of course, hopefully acquire and develop a couple high flyers, right? Of course, all of this is dependent on scale. Okay. So there's a total swag. But does that seem like a... Yeah, I think that's... It's still a reasonable number. I think it's fair. I think it's minimum, right?

5:36 Like I think what you're saying is the floor where you can be like, this person has a permanent role on my team. We're not questioning the validity of the ROI. Of course, comp being in context there. I think 1.5 is a great floor. Especially if you've got multiple team members and they're extremely consistent, then it's a solid number, right? Now, there's a million variables. You know, are you heavily commercial? That's different. Totally. Are you heavily storm chase? Different, right? Fire chase? Different. But yes, I think... Now, here's what I know, though. Safe starting. With that number... I think it's safe to say, and we would both agree on this, that anybody who's listening, the vast majority of the people listening to this right now will hear that number and be like, whoa, I don't know if I have any salespeople that are hitting that right now.

6:16 Potentially. Okay? And then some of you are like, that's it? Okay, yeah, we get it. Yeah, so we know, we've seen, we've worked with sales reps that do 5, 10, 15 million a year. And obviously, that's the target, okay? But real numbers. Okay, so anyways... If you're not doing that or better, this may be one of the things holding you back. So the whole idea came from this. While we've been talking about this for years, I had a moment of clarity where I revisited this. I was watching Alex Hormozzi. Alex Hormozzi has a video out there that's really great. It's called like the best... sales video training you'll ever see or something like that. You can Google it, Alex Hormozy. And one of the things he said is that of all the reasons why salespeople fail in their role, he believes the number one reason is because they lack confidence in their product or their service.

7:06 And even though I've thought that, I believe that it's rooted in a lot of our training and guidance and consulting with our clients. For some reason, it really hit me between the eyes. And I realized, okay, that is not just a problem. I think it's actually the biggest problem. As I mentioned when we opened. Yeah. Can I give a story or example? 100% transparent, right? Do it. But okay. Our business is not about me. I'm tired of being the center of attention here. And it is. I'm going to say it that I'll ask for forgiveness later. Yeah. One of the things that's a reality, and I think you and I have tried to be really diligent about not skirting this, is we're building a consulting company. We're not 13, 15-year veterans being consultants.

7:47 That is new to us. It's new territory. One of the things that our business has gone through transition, and we're thankful of and honored that the fact that so many people within the industry are seeing our brand and trusting us to be their partner for consulting is... That it's forced you and I to begin developing other consultants and onboarding and selling the relationship to Floodlight, knowing that it wouldn't be you and I being the primary consultant for these newer clients. And of course, that was our goal from the very beginning. We wanted to create a scaling business. We didn't want to just be self-employed. And that's the story of probably 90% of our listeners in terms of entrepreneurs. business owners. Anyways, long and short of that, you and I, not even that long ago, were working through this transition of, and this isn't saying anything negative about our consultants.

8:31 In fact, you and I have been very open about the fact that I think often Scott and Mike are both far superior consultants to us in a lot of different ways. But it's different and it's not like I'm vouching for another human being. It's no longer vouching for ourselves. And I say vouching. Is that? Yeah. Is that right? I think you're trying to say vouching. Vouching. I'm vouching. What is the other word that you give me shit about all the time? I can't remember. Oh, it's. I don't know. I think this is army shit that you. What, dude? Here's what it is. It's. There's a little bit of whiskey tango in all of us. And I have a larger reserve than others. All right. So thank you for dismantling my self-confidence, my English skills. So I'm vouching. You're getting ready to talk about me.

9:12 We're safe. setting the stage. Get your cuts in now while you can. Okay. So Fau Ching for these lads on our team, you went through a moment where there was a little bit of hesitation. And again, it wasn't validated per se. It wasn't directly connected to a specific controllable concern for the most part. It was you just working through the process of now I'm selling someone else. And so I think what's my point in that is, and obviously you've worked through that, but in that moment, there was some friction. There was some breaks. There was, you weren't as aggressive in your commitment, right? And in fact, we were just talking about this in our own as leaders. Like when the strategy, for instance, isn't crystal clear and you're not totally convicted by it, it makes it hard for you to burn the ships at the shore and just go all in.

9:59 Well, that's what you're talking about. It's no different for our BDs, for our sales folks, when if there's any friction, if there's any confusion, if there's any gray in terms of how consistent will the service delivery be, look like, and feel like, it's very realistic then for there to be even some unspoken friction in the sales process, which has to eventually be reflected in the outcome or the production. That seems totally reasonable. And I think we see it in lots of different facets of our business. Right. Yeah, 100%. That's an example of it's just, it's going to happen that your salespeople from time to time are going to second guess the operations team's ability to deliver on the promise that they're being told to go make out in the field, right?

10:47 Like, yeah, go say great things about us to other people to bring some business in, right? It's in effect, kind of the basic message we give a salesperson, hey, we hired you, go get some business. Yeah. And then we give them some version of onboarding. Generally, we do a really shitty job. But we give them flyers, we give them trifolds and folders. And we might even if they're lucky, we might go out in the field with them and give them a little bit of word tracking and how to talk about our company and so forth. But then ultimately, it's a very simple expectation. Hey, go tell people this, bring the business in, you know? Go sling the promise and see what happens. And to one degree or another, most sales reps are going to be like, oh, okay, but there's a tentativeness where they still aren't sold themselves.

11:30 Yeah. on your team. And in fact, somebody coming in from outside the industry, they may be very aloof to what actually how hard it is to deliver on this promise. And so they're even more primed for disappointment because they don't realize what's going to happen when that first FNOL comes in or what potentially can happen. Right. Yeah. And I think this becomes especially true in commercial where it's often never twice the same. Yep. It's part of your onboarding as a sales rep. Again, I think an ideal scenario, that sales rep is rotating and spending some time out in the field, getting on some trucks with some technicians, seeing some residential job sites, rolling up on some commercial work that we're doing, spending some time with department heads and so forth.

12:11 I think that's a great part of a healthy onboarding for a sales rep. But they really, they're still developing their confidence in route to that first notice of loss, that first job. And hopefully the first job goes great, but it may not. And I think a lot of times as restorers, as leaders, we have a knee-jerk response when job goes sideways because we're so used to it. It's such a normal part of our business. We've said it before many times, it's almost impossible to do a perfect job in our industry. Especially every time. Yeah, like I know that some of the literalists are listening to what you just said. They're like, well, oh my gosh, we're a quality company first and we do everything awesome. Yeah, blah, blah, blah. We're just saying, hey, in reality, this is a complex business with a lot of moving parts.

12:53 You could probably say it about just all aspects of retail construction as well. Like something's going to go wrong. The countertop's going to be back ordered, right? The flooring, they won't have the full square footage we need for the project. And we wait or we switch to something else. Like there's always something big or small that's going to go wrong. And of course, there's a lot of people in the process as well. And so I think it's just this moment, this kind of moment of truth I had as I was listening to Hormozy, I think it's an opportunity for us to step back and say, okay, how deep does this truth or this reality impact our businesses right now? And in my experience of working with all the teams we work with, I mean, gosh, we probably have upwards of 200 sales reps that our clients in some fashion we're working with across the country right now.

13:38 And I observe this to be... Like doing a quick calculation, like you're the one. I know. I observe this to be the primary issue. Okay, so what do we do about it? And how do we dig into this within our own business? Well, I think first of all, there's an opportunity for reflection. If you're a department leader, you already know. You're already thinking about your sales team and you're thinking about the squeaky wheel on your team. Every team, at least we've always had a squeaky wheel on the team that's more tuned to this. I was one of the squeaky wheels. And so think about the most recent interactions you've had with them. What were the jobs that they griped about, screamed and yelled about, got engaged on, created drama? You know, because this is, I was just talking with a restore this morning. Right? That was commenting on how one of their sales reps has a tendency to get sideways with the production and field teams.

14:22 And so I think this is a good chance for those of you listening to say, Okay, think about that last time when your squeaky wheel riped about a job or the way a job was going or feedback they got from a client. And ask yourself... First of all, how do we react to that criticism? Second of all, what did we do in terms of service recovery to address the primary complaint that that sales rep is bringing to us? What did we do in that scenario to try to make things right with that client and bring the customer experience full circle? Sure, yeah. And then number three, what did we do as a team to understand the root cause of that failure to try to fix it from a system standpoint? And not just do service recovery, because I believe the best of companies that we see out there often stop at the service recovery.

15:09 They do a great job of apologizing, discounting the invoice. I mean, obviously, that's not where we want to go automatically, but there's ways we do things, right? To rescue the experience, to get people, win people back over and so forth. So whatever that was, a well-timed bouquet of flowers, a discount to the invoice, we'd scratch a line item off the invoice. Whatever we did to accomplish that service recovery, Did we do anything else? Because the missing piece in my experience with sales teams, and this is not just true, obviously, of restoration, is that if we never circle back with the sales rep and say, hey, we think we figured out the problem of why that happened, why we fail, why the customer got pissed off, why there was a misunderstanding from that email that was sent.

15:50 We think we got down to the root cause. And here's what we're going to do about it to try to make sure that that never happens again. I think you're leaning into an important point. And I think if we kind of back out off the specifics of that one example and look at it more from kind of global principle. I think what you're saying is that we often perpetuate the silos. You and I talk about that a lot. I don't think it's new. Everybody has their version of these silos between our operational divisions and team members within the organization. But I think what I see often, and I was susceptible to this and made the same mistake many times, more times than I like to admit, is that we allowed there to be this segregation between sales and operations.

16:32 And it becomes this whole battle of you stay in your land, I'll stay in mine. You do what you're good at, I'll do what I'm good at. And I think to a certain extent, in terms of day-to-day activities and principles and priorities, that is true. But I think what we're talking about is strategically as an organization, we have to be playing from the same playbook with the same clarity in terms of what the commander's intent is. What is the outcome we've been charged to produce? And what are we doing as a team to be unified in that charge and produce the outcome by carrying our end of the load, right? Our part of the wait. And I think what you're referring to is this idea of we owe it to our sales staff, probably more specifically if we're talking about like from a leadership team seat, we owe it to our sales leader for them to be incorporated in the problem solving strategic initiative shifts that we're responsible for on the operations side because it keeps them informed.

17:25 Mm-hmm. And when we're informed, just like it works in every kind of human relationship, if we're informed, there's less room for us to create stories in our head. And those stories in our head is what allows this separation or segregation between our divisions to completely stay open and or get worse or widen. And that's what you're talking about. Like if I have a sales team member that's really confident because their sales leaders coming back to them after their weekly leadership meeting and saying, look, hey, here's what the team's doing. It's on point. They've addressed a handful of things in the service offering and our systems and our processes. They're tweaking. You guys are aware of our workflow process. Here's what they've done to address that. I think it's going to prevent this 99% of the time.

18:06 It's respectful. You and I ran into this before where I try to make a decision without talking to the team members that it's going to influence the most. And sake of speed, right? You stay in your lane. Yeah, we both have. Classic mistake. Yeah, it's classic, right? And the outcome is, wow, I'm blindsided by whatever the hell is going on or I just don't know. Anyways, this is still different. Yeah. It's a matter of respect, I think. Well, okay. So I want to take it a layer deeper though, because I think there's also an argument to be made that unless as a team, we've intentionally sat down and said, okay, what do our customers want? Now, this is particularly relevant as you start to get into commercial again. And the reasons will become, I think, obvious as we walk through this. But you could make this case also for those of us who live off of referral partners and so forth.

18:51 But I think there's this deeper level here, which is to say that unless we've taken the time as a team to identify what the common pain points are within the commercial segments that we serve, take, for example, multifamily property management. There's a very specific set of challenges and objectives and frustrations and things that they deal with relative to damage events that are not entirely unique to multifamily. There's versions of it that exist in senior living and hotels and municipalities and everything else. But there's a collection of, there's like a personality to that industry. And unless we've thought thoroughly about, What are the common pain points here and how do we solve for them on our team XYZ restoration?

19:35 Our sales rep doesn't really have anything concrete to sell. So this speaks back to sales strategy. And this is not just floodlight sales strategy. This is like classic B2B sales strategy, which is the most effective way that we can sell is by solving for pain points that a customer has. And in order for us to do that effectively, we have to think through and identify what are the systems, processes, or procedures that exist in our business that we've intentionally put in place or potential people that fill a role that solves a customer problem. If we don't think through that stuff, we are essentially just telling our sales rep to go promote our business.

20:16 Go scream from the rooftops how awesome XYZ restoration is. You have an expense card, take people crumble cookies, do the donut drops. Essentially what we're equipping them to do in the absence of that conversation of here's the common pain points we experience in these verticals. And here's the systems processes and people on our team that solve that problem. Absent that conversation, we're essentially deploying our team out there to just cheerlead. Yeah. to do candy and smiles. We're depending on the attractiveness, the charisma, and the enthusiasm of our salespeople rather than, I think, the fundamental business practices that we're deploying to solve our customers' problems.

21:01 And I think even as I say that out loud, people listening to this, they get it. One is very thin. and superficial and utterly dependent on personality and entertaining and being nice and all that kind of stuff. And one is really predicated on being professional. Well, and I think what you're saying is it's like the veneer is, I like that word that you use. It's pretty thin. It's thin ice. Like we've built this castle on very thin ice and And so it takes very little to shake that or to remove what minimum or little confidence there was in the first place, right? So if we're promotional selling like you're talking about, and that's not backed up by a system, a process, by commitments, by answers to actual pain points, then I really don't have anything to support me when the wind blows in the wrong direction.

21:52 And so I go out and I hear something from someone. And this is, we saw this all the time. Whereas if all I'm doing is promotion selling and I go to talk to my client and really it's not built on anything substantial and they tell me, hey, X happened, or this is my perception of what's going on right now. You're going to see sales folks because there's nothing for them to refer to to give them confidence. They're going to fall apart. They're going to jump into the corner with the client. They're going to start heaping on, piling on. They're going to make statements like, that's not how we should do it. And right, like instead of them being strategic and saying, okay, this is a possibility that we had a snub nose on this or a bruised cheek. But I'm confident that normally our team is executing this way.

22:35 Because they follow a system and a process. And I provided you solutions for your pain because these are concrete things my business does. They're way more built and ready to take on those things that are from time to time going to happen. And I think it goes all the way back. And you said, hey, sometimes a service delivery failure is going to happen. My salespeople aren't going to lose everything. All the trust in my team, if it's built on concrete solution services, right? It's like, hey, shit does happen from time to time. But even they can go back to that client with confidence and say, Norman, my team does XYZ. Something happened here. I'm going to go to work to find out more and follow up with you. You know what I mean? One of the things that is a little bit different for salespeople that I think sometimes operational leaders and operational doers, right?

23:23 Like our downline staff, our frontline people, the crew chiefs, the project managers, the estimators, right? The tradespeople, et cetera, don't experience in the same kind of way is that when a salesperson leaves your shop and goes out in public, they're really putting their personal face and name and reputation out there. They're joining it. They're joining it with your brand and they don't own the company, right? But they're acting as though they're an owner of the company. I know you've gotten this a lot and I got this a lot early on in my sales. I didn't own the company, but everybody thought I did because of the way I carry myself and the way that I tried to sell and promote and represent the company, right? So we're asking people to go represent us and the best ones will represent us.

24:05 as if they own the business in terms of their conviction and clarity and intentionality and all that stuff. Right. And so when a sales rep is putting their reputation on the line and a customer comes back and is unhappy with the product that that sales rep pitched to them, it's quickly destabilizing and it quickly causes them to retract. And I know because I felt it and I know you've even felt it. It's a matter of, boy, I don't want to feel this way again. I better figure this out. And until I figured it out, they're not necessarily verbalizing this, but this is what they're thinking. We got to figure this shit out. And until then, I can't keep going whole hog out here and set myself for more of these failures.

24:48 That's the internal thought processing that a sales rep has. Even if they're not consciously having it. At minimum, there's a subconscious sabotaging that happening. And this is one of the things that occurred to me because I work on coach sales reps all the time in our role. Again, we have dozens and dozens of sales reps right now that we're engaged with. And I'm getting to the point now where I can see it. Like I can... You can hear it. You can hear it. You can see it in their eyes. there is something that's holding them back. And I think nine times out of 10, it's this. They're just afraid to be the squeaky wheel. They're afraid to complain because oftentimes when our salespeople complain, we minimize their complaint or we entirely invalidate the complaint.

25:30 We explain to them why the customer is messed up and doesn't get it and the customer's confused and that that's the customer's fault. And there's really nothing here. Move along. There's really nothing here. Get back to work. Go back to bringing us in business. We'll take care of this is a fairly common response. And I think in addition to that, the other thing that's missing, even from those of us who have a very healthy response, which is, you know what, I'm going to look into this. I'll get back to you. We engage that sales rep in a service recovery process. But again, what we often fail to do is circle back, diagnose the real problem, right? And then ultimately loop that sales rep back in and present the concrete and specific solution that the team came up with to try to avoid that thing ever happening again.

26:16 Yeah. Liftify.com forward slash bloodlight. You've heard Brandon and I talk a bunch of times about the importance of Google reviews. Maybe you even heard our episode with Zach Garrett, the CEO and founder. Recency, consistency, two of the most important things when it comes to maximizing the benefit from your Google reviews. Why not use an outside partner? Liftify is targeting 20 to 25% conversion, right? So if you do a thousand jobs a year, you ought to be adding right now, 200 to 250 reviews a year, every single year. If you're not doing that, you owe it to yourself to get a free demo from liftify.com. See their system, see how it works, see how affordable it is.

26:56 I promise you, you'll thank us. Liftify.com forward slash bloodlight. Yeah. You know, we spend a lot of money and a lot of attention trying to get that first call. And one of the things that we do once it happens is sometimes we leave it to chance, right? Who picks up the phone? How do they respond? How do they walk that client into a relationship with us? Well, one of the benefits of partnering with a team like AnswerForce.com is we can systemize that. We can make it more consistent. We can also have backup for when our teams need that help, right? Somebody goes on vacation. Somebody's out sick. You know, we get a storm surge. We get Cat Event. All sorts of things can have an impact on how we receive that client. But the most important thing is they need to know that they've chosen the right team.

27:39 And so AnswerForce.com can support you, be a bolt-on partner to help you consistently produce an awesome onboarding experience with that first call with your client. So AnswerForce.com forward slash... blood light. That's great. CNR Magazine, we're friends with all the folks at CNR. Michelle and her team, they do a great job of keeping their ear to the ground and reporting all the important information from our industry. Right? You want to stay up on all the M&A activity and what the latest best practices are for selling your company successfully. Right? She's got that. Great articles about all the four quadrants of our business. Right? CNR is constantly pushing out great material and leveraging great writers and subject matter experts in our industry.

28:22 It is the water cooler of our industry. So if you're not subscribed, go to cnrmagazine.com. Follow them on LinkedIn. Follow Michelle on LinkedIn. Trust us. If you're trying to stay on top of everything happening in the industry, your best destination is cnrmagazine.com. You guys, many of you have already heard about actionable insights and the training and the technical expertise that they bring to the industry. But how many of you are already leveraging the actionable insights profile for Xactimate? That's the game changer. It's essentially an AI tool that's walking alongside of you as you write your estimate, bringing things to your attention that should be added, that could be considered.

29:02 All of them items that increase our profitability, increase the effectiveness and the consistency of that scope. And it can do anything from helping a new team member assimilate some estimating best practices. And it also helps the grizzled vets add back that few percent that we've just forgot over time. So actionable insights, get insights.org forward slash floodlight and take a look at what the actionable insights exactimate profile could be doing for you and your team. I think our sales reps learn very quickly. Well, if we're having the appropriate conversation with them. They have to sell with humility. Like we never want to come in and as we're learning about a prospect's pain, we never want to coach our sales reps to be like, oh man, you had that bad experience with XYZ restoration.

29:50 Oh God, I can't believe that. Well, you just got to give us a try. Well, that would never happen with us. And there are unfortunately a lot of restorers that sell that way. But we would never want to do that, of course, because there is always an opportunity for us to get a black guy in a job. And oftentimes, it's not even necessarily something of our doing, right? So, you know, I think that it's really important for us to, first of all, I think, develop the right relationship with our sales rep right out of the gate. One of the things I like to tell my sales reps is, look, you're brand new. You're going to hear things. You're going to be inclined to ask certain curious questions of clients. You're going to hear things. You're going to see and observe things. You're going to notice things when you're walking through the shop in the morning, in your training.

30:34 You're going to notice and overhear things that other team members are saying that I just don't even hear anymore as VP of sales. Like it just, I'm so used to all the things happening in our business that I don't see it as well. And so I remember oftentimes when we would onboard people, that was one of the things I would tell them in their onboarding. I'm like, look, your perspective is really valuable. A lot of us here have been here for a long time. There's certain things we don't even see and hear anymore because it's so normalized. But to you, you're going to be like, what the heck? why would we respond that way? Or why do we do it that way? Or why would we react that way to that situation? And that perspective is invaluable. So I think part of it is inviting our sales reps at the beginning, telling them part of the value you have is communicating intel from the field.

31:20 It's You bringing that outside perspective as a new person on the team so that we can put attention on some of those things because sometimes we become numb to it. Right. And then likewise, when we're out in the field, right, our salespeople are the ear to the ground or the entire rest of our operations. because if our sales reps are hearing something about our competitors, that needs to make its way back. We need to know and understand how are people talking about our competitors relative to us when they talk to our customers or prospects in the sense of maybe somebody that used us years ago. Sure. And they hear a horror story about, well, we tried you guys three years ago. Yep. That is still important for us to know and hear about, right? Because one, there may be some service recovery that never happened.

32:03 And we need to go fall on the sword with that customer on the off chance that we can win them back over and have another chance, right? But if we have this adversarial relationship with our sales reps, like we often do, especially before they've proven themselves, we're ultimately going to sabotage what we're trying to build with them and with the team. And it's not malicious intent. No. It's just normal. This is normal stuff that pops up in the process where... We just get defensive. Like I remember even as a GM, like when our salespeople would come back with a critique, when you would come back. Yeah, preach it, bro. It's like it just my gut instinct. My gut instinct is you don't understand. You don't know how hard this is. Like you, you know, and then again, it's like I almost cringe when I hear things like the client's just unreasonable and things like that.

32:48 I had this one. I'm not even telling the story. Anyways, yes, it is common and it's not malicious intent. I never did that from the perspective of I wanted to belittle or not care about what my people were telling me from the field. You just get sucked in to that day-to-day cadence and you begin to lose contact. So I think you're right. I think it's vital that we onboard correctly and we communicate, like you said, effectively right from the beginning. Your opinion matters. I think the flip side to that then is we've got to have kind of this accountability or coaching culture built into our organization where when we receive feedback, our team looks at that, listens to that and says, and I think you've used this terminology or phrase before, what about this is true?

33:30 What about this could we have a different impact on, right? That's Jim Dethmer, right? And there's a subtle thing there that you just said that I think is really awesome. when we get critical feedback from anybody, and this is something just a life skill that I've tried to start to adopt, both of us have, is when somebody gives us critical feedback, instead of automatically starting to validate, is what they're saying true? Or can I trust their feedback? Does their perspective, is it actually valid or useful? Instead of starting there of, who is this person? Are they senior to me? Do they have more experience than me? And sort of like filtering that inbound critique that's, is instead starting from the place of investigating how is what they're saying true?

34:15 Not is it, but how is it? And if we start from that place, we apply the proper focus, right? And we tend to discover things that otherwise we would have easily glossed over, skipped over, not noticed, right? I think another element to this, I mean, I think this conversation could technically go on. for a really long period of time. But I think another element of this is, okay, let's just dial this all down to kind of a single concept or a single word. And that's trust, right? It's like, what are the things that we can do to proactively and intentionally build trust between our counterparts? And I think when it comes to a sales team member, there has to be in it just a real deep sense of trust in the team. And one of the ways that we do that, regardless if the relationship is old, seasoned, whatever, is we do it with systems and process.

34:57 Mm-hmm. not tribal knowledge. And this is kind of the, you and I talk a lot about, and I'll be 100% honest, I'm not even sure that it's the correct context, but I use this term opportunity cost. And it's this idea of us evaluating the cost of things that may not necessarily sit straight on that spreadsheet. So an opportunity cost, I feel like in this situation, is it could be that our team is growing. Our sales are growing. We're doing a lot of business. We actually get a lot of really great Google reviews. And so we would say to somebody, a third party, yeah, we really have our systems and processes dialed in. But there's zero documentation. There's no memorialization of that. There's not a consistency in the training and onboarding process.

35:38 So they're through tribal knowledge, osmosis, they're picking up on these things or ways that we do stuff. But again, if we're talking about a relationship that varies from brand new to seasoned, the only way that we can really do that consistently is by memorializing those systems and process. They have to be formalized. And that's like the bedrock of trust. So again, I think you touched on a lot of different elements from that. sales side and from our side, but there's opportunity costs, even if we're winning to not giving attention to systems and processes. And the opportunity cost is we could be slowing trajectory of sales because we're unable to build trust and confidence with our salespeople because they're talking about smoke and mirrors.

36:19 Like they know that when they walk back to the shop, Jojo could go up to your job and bang it out of the park, but Timmy could show up and his version of what we do because it's tribal knowledge only might be a couple of degrees off. And by the time they hit the end of the job, those couple of degrees might make all the difference in the output or the relationship altogether. Yeah. You know, I think that's a pretty solid example of where is another area? Well, take the time to formalize and memorialize your systems and processes so that it becomes common language. It's consistent. You can count on it because those are one of those areas then of trust that we can build where a salesperson could be on for 30 days. Yeah. But they see the training room.

37:00 They see what's happening during a morning tech meeting. They know where our teams conduct after action reviews, where we go through our workflow did our team do what we said we do? Did we follow our process? Yes or no. If they see that, their confidence will go through the roof in the initial phase of their relationship with you, right? And another piece of that too is when they see how the team does service recovery, the commitment to getting the relationship back on course. Yeah. When they see that and they see the practical steps of, we did this, we met as a team, we talked about the issue, we devised a solution, we presented it to the customer. They didn't like that. We negotiated this.

37:40 And at the end, the customer was really happy and felt great about the situation. When the sales rep is looped in on that stuff- 100%. And they can really see not just what was done, but the response and attitude and behavior of the leaders on the other side of the company. Yeah. That is what builds confidence because then they have a greater sense of knowing. Well, I know that Matt or I know that Brandon or I know that Corey, when things go sideways, they are really good at resolving that customer situation. And that builds trust and confidence. I want to add one more piece to that. Yeah. I think it's important. Okay. It's the communication chain. Yeah. Right. Like we talk about this, like maybe we already touched on this. I don't know. I'm a little tired today, but again, trust.

38:21 This is about building trust so that our people can be confident in the team. And I think one of the things that we see all the time is that keeping our salespeople in the loop is like this other thing that we have to do. I was just doing a project management module with members from one of our larger clients. And one of the things that we talked about as part of that process is, you know, there's just this reality that if I'm not proactively engaging my communication, the timing of that sets a completely different precedent, right? And we've talked about this a lot, like where if I go and notice, I do a quality control check on a job, I'm a project manager, and I have a plan. I see something I don't like, it doesn't meet our standard. I start talking to my subs, I have a plan. But then I don't tell my client before I leave the job.

39:04 And now it's 6.30 at night, my client comes home. They see the shoddy work and boom, my phone starts blowing up. And I pick up the phone. I'm confident. I'm like, hey, sir, ma'am. Yeah, great. Yep, I saw that too. Yep, I have a plan. I've already called the subs. Here's what I'm doing. I should have it taken care of in another day or two. What we did didn't change. The only thing that changed. changed was I didn't tell them proactively. So when the client called me at the end of the day, even though I had some answers, the client had to protect themselves. And then it's their job to determine if my answer was satisfactory or not. However, had I had the same experience and I proactively called my client before I left the job and said, hey, This is what I saw. This is what I found. It does not meet my standard. Here's what I've got planned.

39:45 I'll follow up with you as soon as everything's locked in the concrete. That client is going to receive that message or hear you say that and they're going to say, they're looking out for me. Trust, not trust. Two completely different outcomes just by the timing of our communication, right? Being proactive in that communication. Think about our sales team. Think about it this way. If my client's watching me communicate to my client the entire time. Your sales rep is. Yeah. If my sales rep is hearing me, watching me being a part of the communication proactively on the job, they see that 24-hour job reports are going out on the commercial stuff. They see that we've had multiple occasions where we've called out special items or attention to the client to prevent or to head off certain pitfalls or challenges.

40:32 Even if our best attempts don't remove the thing from becoming a thing, my salespeople, my BD, they watched what we did. Yeah. There's zero question mark. There's a zero lack of trust. And in fact, now they can go and represent my entire team as a backstop and they with confidence can speak to, hey, I just want to point back to some communications you've been a part of. This is that section right here where we actually brought this up. I know it's unfortunate. I know you got a lot going on. Things happen. I know things get lost in the mix, right? XYZ, blah, blah, blah. But my point is, is that it's the proactiveness, like the whole difference between a rock solid project manager and just a okay seat filler is those who run projects from a proactive position and those that react to everything.

41:22 Well, we can do the same thing with our salespeople, Matt. Just bring them in during the process. And then all the trust we need is right there because they've been a battle buddy with you the whole time. Hey, you just brought up a topic that we could easily kind of rabbit trail on. And I think this is really relevant. I think that while you also have squeaky wheels on every sales team, you also have that foot dragger project manager that is not proactive ever. And you have that restoration company that has maybe two, 3 PMs, 4 PMs, and one of them or more of them not proactive at all. And you know what reputation they start to get within the company is salespeople dread that person getting assigned one of their jobs.

42:03 Yeah. It's a very, very common problem. And of course, the calculus on the part of the leadership group is, oh my gosh, it's so hard to find great PMs. This guy is so great with construction timeline. So great, has a great base of subs that they work with. Their communication sucks. but they're really great at quality. And when they're in front of the customer, they're good, but they suck at communication. And so we make excuses out of desperation brain and not realizing the direct correlation between the confidence of our sales team and that crummy B-list PM that we're allowing to stay on the team. It goes back to opportunity cost. Yeah, man.

42:44 I think that is a perfect example. Straight offs. You're saying no to something else because you've said yes to allowing that person to stay on the team, right? And you're right. That's a whole other show. But those are all these little variables that contribute to this ability for us to accidentally set the stage for our salespeople to have zero confidence or to lose confidence. And once they do, it's a game ender. It's very hard. It's very hard. That's when they go to one of your competitors. Because if they're good and they like the industry, they like the role, they're just going to go find somebody else and somebody will happily snatch them up in this day and age for sure. So I want to paint a picture just practically. So we talked about the basic problem. The number one problem is that our sales reps aren't selling because they don't trust our team.

43:25 They don't trust the team. They don't have confidence in the team to the extent that they want to go out and find opportunities because they're excited to put our team in front of that new client. Right. Right. Yep. And so how do we solve for it? Well, we just talked about the connection between the quality of our people on our operations side and their level of commitment to our process or procedure, the way we do things, the service level that we're trying to offer our clients, etc. Sometimes that's a PM that doesn't quite meet standard. We keep them on because of desperation brain. We talked about that. We also talked about at the very beginning of the call, how important it is to draw really clear lines for our salespeople between here's the context Common problems, challenges, frustrations, pain points that our commercial clients experience.

44:13 And these are the specific and concrete systems, processes, and procedures, and in some cases, people on our team that we employ to solve those customer problems. This is what makes us special. I was talking with one of our clients the other day, a $15 million client, a fairly good-sized team. And we were talking about this, that one of the things that's changed over the last 15, 20 years with Google reviews and online testimonials and all that kind of stuff is that people's expectations... of service providers have gone way up. Yeah. We talk about this a lot. We talk about how people's expectations of service companies have gone up. It used to be being honest, on time, good follow, do what you say you're going to do at a fair price.

44:57 Yeah. Like you're in. Yeah. And now what I think all of us recognize is that is the minimum expectation that every single person has of every single company they deal with. And so we talked about this reality that they're expecting that already. And the only thing that we have to differentiate with is the added layer that we add on top of that that's unexpected. Yeah. The only way we differentiate ourselves as a restoration company or a plumbing company or a restaurant or anything else is saying, okay, what is the expectation the customer has of every single restoration company that they deal with? Because that's how they think about it. Deal with by they're required to work with.

45:38 And then what is the service level that our team is going to deliver? And that's the magic. And nine times out of 10, it's all about the feel felt found. It's all about how did we make them feel as we were delivering certain parts of that project timeline. And so I think one of the tools that we use with teams, and somebody can steal it right now off of it. You guys can create this on a piece of notebook paper in your next leadership meeting. invite your sales manager in or invite your sales team to join the leadership meeting and just grab a piece of scratch paper and draw a line down the middle of it. And on the left-hand side, together, brainstorm. What are the common pain points, irritation points in our service delivery as a restoration company that we know of?

46:22 We know of because customers have complained about it in the past. We've had two three-star reviews in the past because of this thing we did or didn't do. And then also the sales team can speak to what they're hearing from insurance agents, what they're hearing from their commercial targets and everything else. And as we list those things out specifically, then together, we identify with the sales and ops team there. Okay, what do we do to solve that one? And we don't stop when somebody says, oh, well, communication is one of our company values. That's our answer. No, it's not. That's what everybody says. Everybody has communication as a core value if you own a service company. But what is the system process procedure person that ensures a particular level of communication, right?

47:05 And you go on and on down the list. Here's one other sort of nuanced example because there are so many things that can go wrong in our industry, but here's a really specific one. You and I, we had a big fat mold job we got from a hotel client. And that hotel client had a past experience with another restorer for a similar problem. And I know you remember this meeting. We're in the war room with that client and their chief engineer. And they said, hey, we've had this happen before. And this particular case was microbial growth. And they said, what happened last time is one of the employees of that company, when they were on our property, ran their mouth, got all of our employees and our guests all worked into a frenzy, which resulted in bad TripAdvisor reviews referencing this thing.

47:48 Yeah. It involved HR issues of workers' comp stuff. Oh, I think I've got headaches. And I think this turned into an absolute fiasco. And so we don't want that to happen again. It's actually a very common pain point. Insert multifamily apartment complex. Yeah, right. where a technician is spouting off what we're doing in the unit next door to the other tenant, you know, adjacent. Right, right. A very common problem. Okay. If my sales rep hears that from a property manager or a hotel owner or manager, what are they going to say? I'll tell you what they're very likely to say, unless you do this, what we're talking about. They're very likely to say, Oh my God, that's horrible. Well, that would never happen with our team. But I'd love for you to try us on your next loss.

48:30 I mean, God, that's shocking that they would do that. When in all reality, their team did that the other week. And they just had, they were totally unawares because it didn't blow up into a scandal, into a whole fiasco. Listen, there is no problem that somebody else is going to comment about experiencing with another restoration team that has not happened on your team. There's a reality. Right? I don't care how good you are. At some point in your history, and it's probably more recent than you like to think. Like we all make these mistakes. But the question is, do we make them less because we've actually addressed that pain point or problem with a system or procedure or process? That's the big question. And so in context here, here's an example of that.

49:11 Here's what they should say. And what you want your sales rep to say when they hit that pain point. Listen, boy, I'm sorry that that happened to you. That sounds like a nightmare. And I wish I could say I haven't encountered that issue before with other people that we've talked to. And listen, we're not perfect either. We're a team made up of people. But can I tell you about a system we use to try to ensure that that would never happen with one of our technicians? We call it our 45-day training outlines. And we have one for every single role that we onboard to our team. And in fact, I have it. Let me pull it up in my account here. It's all of us have access to these training plans. Our technician training plan in their 45 days, you can see here day 10, we talk about what to say and what never to say when we're on site at a job.

49:56 And it outlines here that unless we're given explicit permission by our direct decision maker on site to speak to another employee or another tenant, we don't say anything. See, it's right here in our 45-day training plan. Now, all of a sudden, I have specifically and concretely taken a customer pain point that was very real and very consequential to them in their mind. It was a nightmare for this hotel guy. And one that had he not been really awesome, their hotel may have had trouble recovering from. Bad trip advisor reviews, sink hotels in their market, right? And so anyway, major, major pain point. And now I have come full circle. And another thing we teach the sales reps, ask the golden question.

50:40 Hey, Mr. Hotel Manager, if that company you worked with previously, if they had had a training system like that, where they had covered that with their tech, do you think that would have blown up into the situation that it was? Probably not. Right? Obvious answer there. That's how we want to sell. And that's how you want your salespeople out there selling. So essentially, that's what we have to create. If you have not made it really clear to your sales rep, what systems process it, what makes us unique? when it comes to these common problems that our prospective clients and our current clients have, if we haven't drawn a clear line, if we haven't done that pain solution table, which is what I described to you, where on the left-hand side, it's the problems and pain.

51:21 On the right-hand side, it's our systems, processes, and people. It's all those things. If we haven't been deliberate about that, Our salespeople are just going to be scrambling to try to give a compelling answer to that customer. And most of the time, it's going to be a weak, uncompelling answer that everybody else says, which is, Oh my gosh, really? Oh my God, I can't believe they did that. Try us. We would never do that. That's not how you want your people representing you. Instead, we want to be able to really clearly and confidently say... And the cool thing is, is even when things go sideways... Once we've laid that groundwork with our sales rep, they can know in the back of their mind, okay, something went wrong. Yeah, this isn't a company.

52:01 This is not the standard experience. Yeah. Because I know our HR team oversees the 45-day training plans and the department heads sign off on it because they've been shown the system and why that system is so important to the service level we're trying to evangelize and guarantee in our market, right? Yeah, there's where they trust it. It's how trust is built and confidence. And so, so anyway, really, it is unshakable. And you and I got there. It took us a while to get there, but as a team, but once we got there, it's like, even when things go sideways, because they will always continue to go sideways at some interval. Yeah. When it does happen occasionally, your sales reps is going to know that they know that they know in their guts.

52:44 Okay. I know the system that supports that, which means we must have flaked on the system. And in which case somebody had a bad day. Somebody might be going through a divorce. You know, somebody's having trouble with their kid and they didn't follow the system that day. Well, that's fixable. And I can explain that to the client because my client has people that have bad days. Yes. And they flake on their systems. Right. So as a sales rep, I can do service recovery and talk my client through that. Hey, listen, I'm sorry this happened to you. It was bound to happen to somebody because we're not perfect. But let me tell you where the system failed and what you can expect from us in the future. What I've seen over and over and over and over again, I'm sorry that you are the receiver of this bad debt. Which those are just not arguments your salespeople are going to be willing to make when they're doing it on the weekly.

53:24 Yep. Right. So I think you're spot on. I think those are all some really fundamental ways that we can support in a very proactive way. It's kind of more unshakable confidence because we are in a complex business and things are going to happen. That's right. Shit's going to happen. Yep. Right? Yep. I like it, dude. A couple things before we let people go. First of all, If this stuff is resonating with you, none of these issues. So if you're struggling with your sales team, it's never in a vacuum. There's ideally, there's other things that are happening in your business or not happening. There's other systems maybe that you're lacking that are contributing to some of these other presenting problems. If you'd like to know where your business stands, like maybe some gaps that you're just unaware of that you could take action on that would improve your business, you'd like to Check out our high value floodlight business opportunity audit.

54:09 This is something we used to use as an onboarding tool with all our consulting clients. And we decided to make it public and allow other companies just to use it, see where they're at. You go on there in 15, 20 minutes. It's going to take you through all four key areas of your business. And it's going to assign you a health score. It's going to let you know what are some of the major things that you could start prioritizing to level up your business right away. So check that out. Floodlight GRP forward slash audit. And then if you're getting value from any of these episodes, the best way that you can thank Brandon and I and the Floodlight team is to share it. Share it with your employees. We get feedback all the time about people sharing episodes. Share it on your socials. Share it with your other business owner, buddies, and friends. But that's one of the best ways you can help us and put some wind in our sails.

54:52 That's right. So yeah, thanks for hanging out with us. Until next time. We'll see you next time. All right, everybody. Hey, thanks for joining us for another episode of Head, Heart, and Boots. And if you're enjoying the show, but you love this episode, please hit follow, formerly known as subscribe, write us a review, or share this episode with a friend. Share it on LinkedIn, share it via text, whatever. It all helps. Thanks for listening.