Ep 71 - "The Hard Reality Of Sales"

0:07 Welcome back to the Head, Heart & Boots podcast. I'm Chris. And I'm Brandon. Join us as we wrestle with what it takes to transform ourselves and the businesses we lead. Man, I love this industry. Chris, how are you, sir? It's Sunday morning. Exactly. And actually, it feels really good just coming to the office just to record. Yeah. Yeah, we've gotten out of our groove a little bit with travel and holidays and stuff. So I feel pretty chill. Like Sunday mornings for me are usually... Yeah. I try to keep them very relaxed. We're pretty intentional about protecting Sundays. Hey, just total side note, but I just finished our sauna.

0:48 Wait, what? I bought it when we were doing our remodel. I bought a sauna kit from Costco. You did? I didn't know that. I put a barrel sauna outside our master bedroom off our deck. Oh, man. No, sauna, not hot tub. No, sauna. Yeah, yeah. Stixman barrel sauna. Wow, interesting. And it's all cedar lined, right? Isn't that what those are? Yeah. So I've seen at an Airbnb that my wife and I went to in Washington. Yeah. We went to a place where they had these tiny houses. And there was a barrel sauna and a barrel hot tub, bull cedar based. Dude. Unbelievable. Oh. Like the smell coming out of the water and everything. Oh, it's so great. Yeah. And you mix in a little essential oil like, you know, cedar wood or something like that in it too.

1:32 And it just, or tea tree oil or whatever. Oh my God. It's so fufu. It's so... I just... Yeah. You get a mani-pedi. Don't judge me. You get a little mani-pedi and throw some essential oils in there. You'll have to come over for a soak, man. It is super relaxing. Right on, man. So anyway, I'm feeling great. Had my first sauna soak last night. Yeah. Yeah. All right. I'm buying that. Before, I've got a topic. All right. And it's one I've just, I've kind of been wrestling with. And yeah, I'm excited to bat it around with you. But before we do that, let's thank our podcast sponsors that make Head, Heart & Boots possible. That's right. First of all, Liftify. If you listen to our podcast every week, you've heard the last few ads.

2:14 I mean, Liftify is one of those vendor partners that when we met Zach and his team, the CEO, We were instantly, this guy's for real. Like he's clearly a subject matter expert, comes from that digital marketing background, and now is hyper-focused on converting Google reviews. Right. And you and I have had our own experience with Google reviews. And on average, both from our experience and what he said, is people typically only get about 5%, 5% to 10% maybe, of the Google reviews they ask for. Yeah, I think 10% would be really high. That'd be real high. And even with some of the professional platforms, like the digital platforms that are out there doing the same kind of thing, and with Liftify, they're seeing 20% to 25% conversion, which is massive.

3:02 Huge. And at a very low monthly cost. And so we've started recommending Liftify to every single one of our clients, literally. And most, if not all, have onboarded them up to this point. So getting great results. It's driving more organic search traffic for our business, for Floodlight as well. For sure, yep. So Liftify, check them out, liftify.com forward slash floodlight. Go sign up today. It's one of those things. The price point, it's a no-brainer. The results, no-brainer. Yeah, yeah. They're a massive benefit and source for the business, for sure. And then, of course, our other friend, other friend in the business is Michelle and her team over at CNR Magazine. Again, one of the oldest and largest platforms, media platforms, specifically for our industry and our trade craft.

3:44 we kind of laughingly refer to as a friend of the industry. She just is cool. She's a great person. Our heart's in the right place. What she's trying to do for us and the information that she's trying to provide us as restorers and the business owners and technicians out there in the world is... It's pretty valuable, man. I mean, she is... She's kind of one of those persons now where CNR has become... If anything's coming to the industry, if there's anything of relevance and impact, it's going to have a position on their stage, whether it be in their print format, digital formats, the different groups that she leads. I mean, everything from webinars to print issues. And it's all information for us that we can use and leverage to make our teams better, to make our businesses better.

4:28 candrmagazine.com. And it's literally and. So candrmagazine.com. Just go get signed up. It's worth it. It's valuable to you and your team. And for those of us that do need to advertise as part of us creating opportunity and feeding our friends and families, what an amazing platform. It just talks to all the businesses that are specifically being led and finding opportunity in our industry. So CNR Magazine, thank you, Michelle, for your continued friendship and partnership. So all right, man, let's get into this. So you have a topic that you've been wrestling with. And my understanding now, a little bit, is you were a little cautious on this because you love talking sales, but you don't always necessarily love talking about the things where you feel gray or maybe a little lack of comfort in the topic.

5:17 Well, when we were operating, you can go to conferences and events and stuff like that and chat sales, talk shop with other sales leaders and executives in our industry and just bad ideas around. But when you take on that role of consultant, there's this internal ego pressure of, I should have the answers all the time. Now, of course, that's not real. It's not true. It's not even really the role of the consultant, to be fair to myself. But I feel that. I feel that ego pressure. So yeah, when it comes to sales in our industry, I have a pushing 25 years of background in sales. And I'm There's something really unique and frustrating and special about our industry in that the sales process can feel really ambiguous.

6:04 We don't know exactly where we're at with a client. And it's such a competitive landscape. There's so many of us in the industry knocking on our commercial client's door and insurance agent's door and so forth that... It's a different sales environment. And we've been talking about this since we met. Of how difficult it is to hold sales reps accountable in this industry. In the service sector, it just kind of stands on its own as a really unique environment. Because we never know when the sale is actually going to record in our books. Yeah. Yeah. Whereas when I was a contract sales rep for Cintas, once that person signed the contract and input their payment information, it's on.

6:50 And I knew I had a win. And the next day or the next week at sales meeting, I had a thing to report. I had revenue that I could book. Well, in our industry, numbers, I say this all the time, numbers don't tell the full story. And it's especially challenging when, as a sales manager or VP of sales, whatever your role is, when you're hiring salespeople, it's difficult to know what expectations to set. Because every market is different and that's real. And every sales rep we hire has a different level of capacity and aptitude. And then there's the other complicating factor of when we recruit somebody from outside the industry, there's some pros and cons to that of them coming in without experience.

7:30 But then, of course, there's the opportunity some of us have to recruit somebody that already has a, quote, book of business. Yeah. And that's a whole other messy situation because it's really difficult to predict when somebody says, Hey, I did $2 million or I did $2.5 million at XYZ Restoration this last year for the last three years in a row. Well, how much of that business is actually going to follow them? Yeah, that is true. What could we reasonably expect? And sometimes it's 100% real. Sometimes they're under-reporting what's going to come over. But most often they're over-reporting what's going to come over. It's over-reporting. Somebody says, I did $2 million at XYZ company last year. You might see $250,000 of that or you might see nothing.

8:12 You might see $1.5 million. It's really hard to say. So sales is a bit of a black box. And that's hard for me to acknowledge after having been either in restoration or pushing 10 years now. It's a black box and it's frustrating to me sometimes because of course, when we're working with clients, they all want to know, what should I expect? What should our monthly goals be? And I've always fallen back to just generic KPIs that somebody told me at some point coming up in the industry and I've just kind of stuck to it. But I think a lot of owners and leaders in our industry are just like, man, they're always scratching their head. Yeah. You know, it's funny because I can see where the hesitation is to kind of like unpack a subject matter like this because It does place you in this position where it's like you, even as the professional, as a sales professional who is being hired in some cases to work and help develop sales teams, this lack of confidence or this not lack of confidence.

9:10 What you don't want to do is show a sign, right? Yeah, it's like ensuring this. The impression, yeah. Yeah, it's like when I was with CentOS, for example, there were very clear closing metrics. Because there was such a defined sales process, you could look back in a CentOS branch, and there's like 150 branches around the US, and the one I was based out of Eugene, Oregon, They had history. They could show pretty definitively what the average sales track and growth pattern was for reps. Based on activity, you can expect this amount of results, this kind of closing percentage, this kind of longevity on the accounts. They had so much data. Yeah. And it's a lot more difficult, I think, to assess in our businesses, especially new restoration companies.

9:57 If you're less than five years old, you may have just hired your first sales rep a couple of years ago. You just don't have much data. It's so individualized to the market. Are you in a weather-prone, cat-prone zone? Do you have a heavy winter season that leads to all kinds of stuff? Are you in a more temperate climate? All that stuff matters. It does matter. Yeah, population densities, competitiveness in the market and all those things. So here's, as a friend and peer and business partner, here's one of the things that I've watched you do as you're wrestling with this topic, not just for the benefit of clients, but for the benefit of yourself and your understanding of the role and the tradecraft is you and I have had and been having a lot of conversations over.

10:42 around heavily leaning into leading activity and why those are so important. I'm going to let you unpack some of those. I think today's show, I'm going to do a little bit of interviewing, I think. No, I love it, dude. Yes. But in the midst of that, I think, and maybe just set the tone so you can speak to this is, even after we have very upfront and honest conversations with folks that we may be doing some kind of direct or indirect sales work with, we still see them not prioritize that leading activity. And here's what I mean by that is we say, hey, we've got this digital learning that your folks can have access to. And really, it's not the silver bullet. It's the baseline. It is to establish a foundation so we can begin having dialogue from the same side of the table.

11:27 And one of the things that we're really trying to do and talk about in that is, and again, I'm not going to speak for you. I'm just trying to set the stage. Oh, yeah. There is this hyper-focus on leading activity A, and B, there's a hyper-focus on becoming a student of the industries you will be selling into. And the reason that you're saying that, the reason you're hyper-indexing on that is because those lagging numbers, that measurement of revenue generated is so dynamic. It's so difficult to control. Yeah. that we really don't have a choice. So even though we start most relationships from that and we really hyper-index on that, you still see sales leaders and business owners say, yeah, yeah, yeah, nod their head.

12:08 Uh-huh, uh-huh, no, I agree. No, that totally makes sense to me. And then we immediately discount the level of effort as a leadership team we pour into. Mm-hmm. understanding, leading through discussing that leading activity, and really monitoring the depth of our knowledge of these markets. And how do we create a peer partnership with somebody if we really don't know enough about their business to be there to serve them for the sake of them? Yeah. So anyways, I just say that partially because I want listeners to understand that even though you're brave enough to question some of this, because that's you being honest, Yeah. It's not that we haven't really given that very consistent, intentional thought, knowing that our industry sells different, right?

12:53 So I don't know where you want to start with that. Well, yeah, leading activities. I mean, that's ultimately the solution that we've come up with in the face of this ambiguity. Mm-hmm. And it's, it is, it's, it's a difficult ego conversation and not just for me as a, as a sales consultant, which is one of the hats that I wear in our business. But I think it's difficult. Again, it's difficult for the whole industry. We want to have answers on the operations side. It isn't as though it's a ton easier. You know, there's the chaos of operations has its own challenges, but I think there's clear answers. Yeah. we can apply, I think, a much clearer framework to the challenges we have on the operations side.

13:34 It feels more procedural. More procedural. Yeah. Whereas sales is so nuanced. I mean, it's so predicated on the person and the place. What's our environment? What kind of person do we hire to go talk to our prospects? But yeah, here's what I'm thinking. There's a couple ways I think we can think about this. And first of all, those of you who are listening, don't expect... We're not going to tie a pretty red bow on this at the end of this chat. Probably not. Yeah. This is really to help you think about how you're approaching sales, the quality of the leading activities, and the consistency, and the volume of leading activities that your team is doing. Because at the end of the day, I think we'll probably all conclude that that's the only thing we have precise control over.

14:16 Yeah. I think we can obviously impact our closing rate with the type of training and support and engagement that we provide our sales reps, the way that we really tie our sales reps in with the rest of our operation and some of the intentionality and stuff. We can certainly contribute to a higher closing percentage and positive result. But at the end of the day, it's those leading behaviors that are really critical, right? And also to think about how we're managing our cost of sales. And again, at the end of this, it's difficult to connect all the dots in an honest way. But let's talk about cost of sales. Because again, the whole reason why this creates heartburn for all of us is because we're spending money on sales reps.

15:02 And we have a hard time generating a consistent return on investment from those sales reps. And that's what gives us angst. It's like, hey, I've got this guy or gal that I'm paying. You plug a number in. $45,000, $55,000, $85,000, $100,000 in salary. We've seen all. And depending on the size of your business, those numbers are going to give you a different level of heartburn. If you're a $20 million company paying a sales leader $100,000,000. isn't quite the stressor it is if you're at $2.5 million and you're trying to pay a sales rep $100,000. So the numbers are all relative. But one of the ways that you and I have tried to get our arms around this and be more disciplined around this cost of sales is by comparing it to what we spend to bring in other business.

15:46 So for example, PPC, Google Ads, social ads, and so forth, are a really common sales tool right now. And what's our cost of sales? We can monitor that. We can monitor leads that came from Google, jobs that came from Google, how much revenue we collected on that against the cost of those leads. And that can give us a percentage. We can do exactly the same thing with the cost of our sales reps. We do that with TPAs. We know when we sign up for a TPA, they're going to send us business. We also know we're going to pay at least 4.5%, 5%. And really, we're probably paying a lot more. A lot more. Probably double digits. Probably double digits. Yeah, when it's all said and done. And then we have our sales reps. And we can apply that same cost of sales calculation.

16:29 So for example, I have a sales leader in one of our client markets. They came in with prior B2B sales experience. They had a real high salary requirement. And they adapted to that $90,000, $100,000, including bonus. How much business do I need them to generate to maintain a reasonable cost of sales? So this conversation at least helps us establish some framework, some bookends on the cost conversation. So if I want to stay, let's say, at 6.5% cost of sales, if I've got that sales rep all in with bonus and so forth at $100,000, I really need them to generate $1.5 million in sales if I want my cost of sales for them to be 6.5%.

17:15 Now again, I'm not calculating payroll burden and all that da-da-da-da-da-da-da. But it gives you at least a rough idea of where you need to get that person. Because until you get them to $1.5 million, that $100K sales rep, the cost of that sales rep could be 12%, 13%, 14%, 15% of your revenue if they're only doing $700K, $800K, $900K. Everybody with me so far? So I think in terms of hard numbers, accounting, managing our business in an intentional way, that's one way we can at least have a sight picture of where we want to get a sales rep based on what we're paying them. So that's helpful. And of course, there's a lot of wiggle room there too. I mean, some of you are growing really quickly. You're willing to invest and pay a higher percentage of sales to get somebody up and running.

17:56 And you need to plan for that. You need to, while our target is 6.5% cost of sales. Because that number, just like TPA business, if you're playing the TPA game, it can be kind of addicting. because you can start to bring in that business at what appears to be superficially of a 5%, 6%, 7% cost of sales and it becomes addicting because it's like, hey, they're just sending me business. I'm giving them 7%. Not really accounting for the fact that they grind you down in your numbers and all that stuff. But if you can get a sales rep to where their cost of sales is 6.5%, you can just... you can almost indefinitely expand your sales team at that rate. Yeah. Because your ROI is ridiculous. Yeah. It falls into a rinse and repeat.

18:37 Now, of course, the rest of the conversation centered the challenge of actually doing that. Of actually doing that. But I think what I want to highlight, as you're talking through this organically, man... That's what I'm going to try to do. I'm going to attempt to kind of get... You're trying to bring some order to the conversation? That's good. So I think this is huge. So what you're trying to do right now is establish an answer to, or at least not an answer. Let's call it a foundation, a starting point. That's right. For context, for how we value or determine what we need to see production-wise from a salesperson. Because you're right. This is one of the big vague areas is that what they produce varies so drastically. Yeah. And then as sales leaders or business leaders, we evaluate the performance of, let's call it two or three different sales reps, and it's all over the board.

19:18 And then we don't really know how to be decisive. Yeah. Yeah. We don't really know if it's winning or not winning. And so I think this is just a simple starting foundation. Just to create context, to try to do what we can to remove some of the gray. It's not going to remove all of it. But you identifying right now a starting place of let's shoot for 6% to 7% cost of sales. for a sales rep. Yep. So you're doing some quick math on somebody that's making 100K, right? This is where you need to be. That's, it's just, it's a starting layer to create some clarity. Yep. Some foundational understanding here. I think this is really important. It tells me where I need to go as an owner. If I'm going to spend 100 grand on sales, I need it to produce one and a half million bucks.

20:00 If it does, that's a sustainable return on investment where obviously we want people to grow. We want their income. Most people want their income to grow. Some don't, but... If we can get them there, it's sustainable for the business. Now let's go back to leading behavior. So then what? So you've invested in a sales rep. You've got their pay and their compensation dialed in to where you want it to be. But now you got to get them to that production level to make it work. So what can we focus on? In my experience, a lot of sales trainers, they have a pat answer in terms of how many sales calls somebody needs to make in order to produce XY number of sales meetings in order to produce so many numbers of sales.

20:41 It was certainly that way in CentOS. It was when I was selling knives for Cutco and training sales reps. It was all about that. You make X number of calls, you have a number of meetings, you're going to get so much sales. And of course, you can refine your closing percentage based on skill training, right? Right. But a lot of that is predicated on a thing. There's a two-step, three-step flow. I have a thing to sell you right here. I can create pain in the moment and I have the solution to the pain you're feeling now right here and you can buy it and solve your problem. Yep. In our business, that's not true. It's different. I mean, there's a few things. There are a few aspects of every business. Let's get this straight. Some of you do carpet cleaning. We have the ability to close on a piece of business in front of us when we're selling carpet cleaning.

21:23 Of course, right? Dug cleaning, all of that stuff. Some of these ancillary services we sell, including... Now, mold is a different conversation. Yeah. Mold can be a different conversation. It's direct pay. There's an immediate need. Sometimes we can discover in our sales work and solve that problem immediately and know if we got a sale or not. But even mold can be a bit of a black box in terms of closing on mold. So if we walk ourselves back, we've got a cost established, like a framework that we want to hit. How do we manage the leading behaviors? You know, I think part of it is aligning our people around a consistent process. One of the big mistakes that I've made, and I see companies make all the time, is they hire somebody for their general attractiveness.

22:08 And I don't just mean physical appearance, but just we hire these charismatic people. And we think that they're going to be able to sell purely on personality and appearance. And some do. Yeah. That's a trap that we fall into in sales. All people that hire salespeople is we get wooed and enamored by this charismatic figure. We all know what I'm talking about. There's generally some level of above average attractiveness. They know how to talk. And some salespeople succeed wildly based on their personality and insurance. But it's unreliable. And we can't build a business around that. And I think that's the mistake a lot of us make in the restoration business is just hire the most charismatic, attractive person.

22:51 Well, the problem is, is that most operational leaders and decision makers hate meeting with salespeople. That's one of the dynamics in our business. And that doesn't just go for commercial people. That also goes for insurance agents, if they're honest. And if you're having an honest conversation with an agency owner, which I've had more than a handful. And had them. And I have been. I have been that insurance agent. What's funny, this takes me back. This is kind of an important part of the whole conversation. Yeah. When I was a State Farm agent, I had five team members on payroll, five full-time team members. I had a fairly big team compared to other agents, to many other agents.

23:32 And this is before I even really gave a care at all about the restoration industry. I knew it was sort of a part of our industry, but I was so driven by my compensation contract with State Farm... as all new agents are for production and new business, that when it came to claims, I had an expectation for my team to provide great claim service. But outside of us doing a great job of collecting loss reports and being kind and empathetic with our clients, I just was not aware and in touch with the restoration part. The only thing I really was aware of is how they would drop in and interrupt my team and jaw jack with my team standing around at the desk When I had $100 an hour in payroll cost that I was racking up, which is a small business, it's a lot of dough.

24:23 It felt like a lot of dough, a lot of pressure. So when I'm in my little windowed conference office area and I'm seeing my front office of desk of this person chatting it up with all of my different service and sales reps, I never felt good about it. Yeah. Ever. Yeah. What's the real value to you as a business owner for that to be happening? Yeah. And the only value was they were showing my reps and my employees a good time. And yet, that had very limited value as far as I was concerned trying to run a business. So I had a very negative perception. And I think a lot of times, we think people care as much about restoration as we do. And the fact of the matter is, they don't. They don't.

25:03 They don't until they have to. They don't. And so that really throws a monkey wrench in that whole throw in a good-looking, good-talking sales rep out in front of theirs. First of all, it's a struggle a lot of times to get in front of the people that actually make decisions because they don't want to meet with sales reps. Now add to that the inertia that you have to overcome to get anybody to make a change. And this is true of all sales. But it's a little bit different when you have that product, that solution, that widget there that they can see and touch and feel and be like, oh my God, this will solve my problem. Yeah. You can almost make an impulse sell. You can make an impulse sell. Yeah. You can gin up their emotions. Yep. And it's just, here's where you are now.

25:44 Here's where you could be. Look at this shiny object. Yeah. This will solve all your problem. And then you sell. Well, in our situation, it's not like that. And yet, we tend to treat restoration as that shiny object. So we have our folder of sales slicks where we show a photo of our fleet of 40 vehicles or five, whatever your situation is. But we're showing our features and benefits. Yeah. And it's not the same because the customer, they don't realize they have a problem to care about. Most of the time when we first approach them, they aren't just conscious of, yeah, we've had shitty service from restoration companies. The last five jobs we had, some are, some are, we'll stumble into those situations. We're like, oh, restoration, thank God we hate so-and-so.

26:26 Okay. Whoa, sweet. My lucky day, you know? Yeah, yeah, yeah. But most of the time, it is not top of mind for our target customers, including insurance agents. We think insurance agents and team member staff are always thinking about the last nasty claim that went silent. They're not. They want to sell. There is massive pressure for insurance agencies to produce, not service, frankly, not even make happy customers, if I'm honest. Right. And that's why they're being pulled out of that claim experience process. So I can tell you this as an agent, and I was a fairly successful agent. The vast majority of my energy and my thought life and my team's thought life and our conversations were on how do we create a great buying experience for our clients?

27:11 How do we educate them in a way we differentiate ourselves? We help them. They feel heard. All those things. We ask good questions. But it's all centered around educating them, helping them make good decisions. That was a mantra in my office. Hey, we help people make good decisions. Claims, claim experience was on a reactive basis. I had a claim going sideways with one of my large households, one of my cherished, valued households. I would, behind the scenes, lose my shit. Yeah. Because not only is it money, but it's a relationship. I stuck my neck out. I made promises to that client. I set up their coverages. And if shit's going wrong in a claim, I was excitable. Yeah.

27:52 I was very emotional about it. And when I had auto claim accidents, we had goodie bags. I would personally go to the emergency room. Like I cared about claims when they were present. But again, it is not top of mind growing the business was okay. So we make that mistake a lot, that we can just go show and tell, dog and pony show, do the thing at the Chamber of Commerce event, and people are just going to be attracted to it and we're going to make sales. And the reality that you and I found over and over again is that unless there's pain... Nobody's making any changes. Yeah. And even in the face of that pain, depending on how friction full that transition would look or feel like, that could delay that decision even longer.

28:36 Yeah, let's think about that, right? You're trying to get a portfolio manager that oversees, let's just say on average, 20 properties. They have 20 multi-million dollar properties that generate, in some cases, millions of dollars worth of revenue and some unknown amount of profits. And millions of issues. And not only that, but they're serving not only institutional groups of investors, but individual mom and pop investors that depend on that portfolio or that section of the portfolio for their livelihood and their family wealth. They don't care until they have to.

29:16 And oftentimes, for them to make a change, they could have experienced a fair amount of pain. Oh, yeah, with the frequency you communicate, we never know what the hell is going on when we bring a restoration company in. It's sometimes days before we hear stuff. All of that pain can be present. But think about what it means to them to change a vendor. They have 20 properties. Every one of those properties has a community manager. Every one of those properties likely has an on-site maintenance manager. He or she also has a regional maintenance manager that is in charge of ongoing planned maintenance, capital improvement projects, and stuff for that portfolio. There's not only a series of emails that they have to send and very clearly explain why we're changing vendors, because some of their individual properties, they love the vendor.

30:00 And there's going to be pushback, which means drama. Exactly. Every business has drama when they make change. It doesn't matter how big or small that change is. 100%. I've heard it's ridiculous that things like a controller or a business manager comes in and changes to a different kind of tape dispenser in their office and somebody's going to complain. Because they got a better deal from Staples and this, you know, you know what I mean? Change creates drama in most operational leaders unless there's a very good reason to make a change where there's going to be a significant change to the bottom line or to their own personal stress level. They're not going to do it. And we underestimate often what it requires to get somebody to really move.

30:44 And here's the other thing that makes this so difficult in our industry. is that when they don't want to make a change, they'll tell us they're going to make a change just to get us out of their office, to get us to stop calling. Many operations... Because we're all selling to these people. This ain't the first time they've talked to a restoration sales rep, many of these folks. And they have learned over time, if I tell them yes... Yeah, we'll give you a shot on the next one. 90 days. It'll buy me 90 days or more. Or then the next time they call me to check in, hey, just checking in to see how you're doing. I mean, how many sales reps have? How many of us have made that call? Hey, just what we're really thinking is, dude, you haven't freaking sent me anything.

31:27 You said you have 150 units at your complex and you haven't said, you have 20 properties. You haven't sent me anything in three months. That's what we're really thinking in our head. What the hell? You told me. And then when we call them, we say, hey, just checking in, doing that whole passive deal. Because we don't want to really say what we're thinking and call them to account. Hey, you told me you're going to send stuff. I know you've had stuff. You have 20 properties at 100 doors each. Yeah. It's like, I know. I know you've had a unit fire or a smoke out and somebody... I know you've had something. No, we don't say that. And I'm not advocating for us to say that. But right. We do that tepid. Hey, so how's it going? Yeah. What's going on? We might even go as far as to say, hey, you had any damage events lately that we could help you with?

32:08 And the easiest way for them to get rid of you is to say, no. No, you know, we just... Yeah, I don't know what to say. A couple of minor things we just handled. A couple of minor things we did them in house. Oh, God. Everybody's just pounding their fist on the dashboard right now. But it's true, right? And the reason why we struggle to get people to change is because as an industry, and you and I were certainly guilty of this with our sales teams until we weren't, until we figured it out or started to... The quality of the conversations that we're having with our prospects is the most important thing. The second most important thing is our activity level. And there's no replacing hustle and volume. And so the framework that we've landed on, absent the clarity that all of us want in our industry, we all would love it if somehow...

32:57 We could do a step 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 and close business. And we could be super data-driven with our sales expectations. But the reality is, is right now, all we have that we can specifically control is activity. And so we've laid out this framework... where we say, look, in order for us to be successful, we need to create pain. We need to identify unmet preferences. We need to understand what their past experience with other restoration companies has been. Because then and only then do we have something to sell to that they might care about and that might cause them to listen. And the other reality too is at times it's not enough and it takes a long time and it's a waiting game and it's a game of keeping in touch with the pain they have given us and continuing to track with them until there's additional pain.

33:48 There's enough pain there that they're ready to make a change. Yeah, it's heavier than the cost of not knowing. And so in our master course, we address this with how do you build a pipeline? And how do you know where a customer's at in the pipeline or a prospect? And we talked about this idea of defining our prospects as cold targets. That's before we've ever met them. We know who they are. We know who our cold targets are in this business, who our high propensity clients or prospects are. Senior living, property management, hotels. Many of you in other markets, hot customer segments or other things. Yeah. Might be schools, government, military bases, etc. But you know what your target customer segments are.

34:28 So focusing on the right customer and then moving them to a superficial, making contact with them. And that's having enough activity every week of reaching new people, meeting them face to face. This can be done in networking meetings. I love to sell in networking environments, events, trade shows, etc. But it's having enough contacts per week. And this is where a lot of reps fall down too. And actually, most sales reps, they start to fall down on their leading activities when they start to have some success. First few jobs roll in. Oh, now I'm doing job follow-ups. I'm doing site visits. Now I'm doing check-ins with my customer. It can be a real crutch. Mm-hmm. It can be a real easy excuse. And so one of the things that we talk about with our teams is, look, we need to be generating 10 fresh contacts a day, every day for the rest of our life.

35:16 Some of those are going to be phone calls. Some of those are going to be LinkedIn, new connections we're making. And then others are going to be cold calls. And people hear that number, they're like, 50 fresh contacts a week. They're thinking, holy shit. Yeah. Some of them, other B2B sales reps, by the way, they're used to making 100 calls a day, dialing for dollars. Okay, so listen, we're not asking people to do something that's that terribly hard. 10 fresh contacts a day is usually three, four cold calls a day while they're in market. And then three or four phone call outreaches and nine or 10 new contacts and pokes at people's LinkedIn profiles. Anybody can do that. Yeah. But it's critical and yet we don't do it.

35:58 Oftentimes we don't do it. Hey friends, hey listeners. We're doing something a little bit different with our ads. So you've been accustomed to hearing some ads with our favorite partners and companies in the industry. Now we actually have a product page, our partners page on our website. So floodlightgrp.com forward slash partners. I want to give you a quick rundown though of the people that we're partnering with and we believe in. That is really go-to resources in the industry. The first one is restorationerp.com, right? ERPs are an important part of our sales process, our customer development process. And why reinvent the wheel? The Restoration ERP platform is awesome. It can be customized to your business branding and all that kind of stuff. It has all the components to really create a value add for your commercial client.

36:41 Accelerate, job management software. Everybody needs job management software. And we have just found Accelerate, not only is their team just really great to work with, when they get ideas from customers, they throw it into the product roadmap and they implement it. They're really advocating for the contractor and trying to create a software solution that works for them. Actionable insights, we recommend actionable insights all the time. All of us as restoration operators are looking for turnkey resources and training solutions that we can take our team to the next level. And AI, when it comes to estimating and Matterport and a lot of the other essential tools we're using, they're an awesome resource.

37:21 And they're always coming out with new great stuff. Yeah, super influential in the industry. Super Tech University. Soft skills development training for your technicians, for your frontline personnel. Let's face it, frontline personnel are the heartbeat of our company. They are the ones that connect with our clients and create the customer experience. There's no better investment than investing in... the ability for those individuals to represent themselves, our clients, and our brands well. So Super Tech University, Surety, they essentially are cutting down this life cycle between delivering service and then getting paid, stepping in, removing the middleman in terms of mortgage companies, refining that pipeline, making sure that there's as least friction as possible.

38:04 So we can go out and do a great job and then our businesses don't suffer while we're waiting to get paid. The money's coming and it's coming quickly. And then the last one, guys, is Liftify. It's kind of a newer entry to the industry. They're driving Google reviews. So they're a turnkey partner that we can literally go out, provide a great customer experience, hand that name off to our trusted partner in Liftify and have them go chase that Google review. 25% conversion rate, which is industry-wide. People tend to average 5% of the people you ask for review actually convert. Liftify bumps that to 25%. We were such a big believer. We were a customer and they've been generating all of our floodlight reviews. And in a matter of a week and a half, we're up to, I don't know, close to 15 reviews in just a short period of time.

38:46 And I think people just underestimate what happens organically with your SEO search activity when you're getting these new and active five-star reviews from our clients. And we just can't let the pedal up on that because of the effect on our business. It's a big deal. So check it out. Check out our partners page. Do business with them. You won't regret it. We're confident in that. floodlightgrp.com forward slash partners. Thanks, guys. So what is it? So when we can have a conversation about leading activity, show the value in them as an example, really get agreement. Because we get this all the time with business owners, with sales leaders, right? And we go, okay, this is our perspective. This is why.

39:27 This is what's created that perspective. Here's why we value or place a lot of weight on leading activity. Yet the follow through or the commitment, it feels like from both leadership and the individual to really weigh heavily on this leading activity as the thing, as the priority, it's very hard to get traction with people. Like, I think that's just one of the frustrating things that you and I, if we're just being candid, we'll talk about a lot behind the scenes is... We get nodding heads. People say, yeah, we agree. That's been our experience as well. And they're like, okay, I see the value in that. But then we don't see the follow through.

40:08 We don't see that commitment to why this is so important, really unpacking those pipeline conversations. From your perspective, and I know this isn't silver bullet hour, why do you think that's happening? Well, I think there's a number of things. Apart from tracking people's GPS, it's a little bit of an awkward, micromanaging kind of conversation or can feel like that when we're inspecting what we're expecting, right? Yeah. So when I go back and I look at somebody's calendar, let's say, our framework is 50 fresh contacts, a minimum of five anchor appointments per week, and a minimum of one networking meeting per week.

40:48 This is not rocket science. It's not complicated. It's not even, frankly, compared to what some B2B environments require. It's not even that crazy of an activity level. But it works in our industry if we follow it. But when I go back to audit somebody's calendar, there's so much nuance that's going to be to our business and the people we're selling to that we start to dig into somebody's calendar. And without me being out in the field with that person, I can't really validate what I get back from that rep. You know what I mean? Yeah. And it puts me in this awkward situation as a sales manager where... In the back of my head, I might be questioning the quality of the interactions they're having because they're having difficulty. Like last week, they only got four appointments.

41:31 They didn't have their five anchors. Ideally, we want three appointments per day is where we want to get to. But we've established this baseline of at least one sales meeting per day is a baseline that is sustainable and we can grow from there, right? And I meet with somebody and they've only had four. And they say, you know, everybody, I made so many calls. I got my fresh contacts, but I only got four sales meetings because nobody wanted to meet. Everybody was busy, all this stuff. Well, as a sales manager, an owner, a GM who's interacting with their rep, in the back of your mind, you're like... I can't necessarily argue with what they're saying. Like, I just don't know. Is this, did I hire the wrong person? What's going on here? It just feels like a black box, right?

42:11 So here, I think there's a little pushback here, maybe. And this is often easier for me to say on this side of the table than it is necessarily yours, just our background differences. But I think what I hear people say, or when I, I guess my knee-jerk response to your perspective there is, then I feel like that's where the problem is often landing. Yeah. Is, okay, we've said the uniqueness about our industry. And quite honestly, if you talk to long-term sales gurus, they're still going to tell you the activity is the magic. Oh, the activity. It's consistency in the activity, right? So it's not like we're saying something that's magical. Yeah. Yeah. But I think if we've got agreement that the leading activity is the thing that we can proactively manage, that we can measure at least, and again, there is some gray, but I think if we're digging in and really inspecting what we expect, we should be able to validate this activity.

43:06 Yeah. But then we don't, or we allow that perspective of this feels like micromanagement to then sway us from hammering on the importance and the follow through and the focus on those activities. Yes. Then we're perpetuating a problem that we haven't given our system enough time to prove will work. Yes. Right? I totally agree. So I'm just painting the picture of like, okay, this is how it feels. Yeah. Right. You know, to owners, leaders that are managing a salesperson in this business. Yeah. is it feels difficult to validate what's going wrong here. And I think a lot of times it's not that I don't trust my sales rep because you try to hire people that you trust, right?

43:48 It's more so it just is this big question mark and you don't know exactly the best way to respond. Here's the other thing too in sales management. In some industries, it's a little bit different than others, but it is tricky to do field training. in sales, especially for leaders that don't have a professional sales background. It's very tricky to do field training where I'm like going along with a sales rep into a cold call. Inherently, a two-person cold call is going to feel different and get a little bit different result. It's also, it's a performance environment for that sales rep, new or otherwise. When their leader is there.

44:28 I've taken you on sales calls. Oh yeah. And I'll be honest, right? There's a performance measure there that's like, I want to sound good, look smart, and I want to get the sale. That could have been the number one best sales day that you had all month in terms of your level of effort. Yeah. Because I was with you. Might have been. And also though, it also can tend to cause people to push harder because they're trying to look good in front of their manager and actually create a negative result from that cold call or that interaction with that customer. Yeah. because you end up acting a little bit different. There's a different kind of urgency that you're bringing to the conversation. And urgency isn't always the right thing to bring to a sales meeting. Right? Yeah. And so these are all the things at play.

45:09 And hopefully, the audiences that are listening to this, they're like, totally. Or maybe it's just me. That's always the fear, right? Yeah. No. So those are the challenges. So where have we landed thus far? Well, I think what it points back to is consistent training around the right behaviors and the right language. Yeah. And in the master course, we talk about how do we find the pain? What are the types of questions? What kind of conversation do we have with people on a cold call, at a networking meeting, at a trade show, at some kind of industry event, like when we're... What kind of conversation do we want to have with people and being hyper-focused on drilling that as a team?

45:53 And there's a lot of different ways that we can do that as a sales manager. But in our master course, and we believe the master course is a great turnkey tool for that. But in the master course, we spend so much time talking about this pain solution selling model and how to ask curious questions. The kinds of questions that can generate the pain and get people tuned into what that experience was like with XYZ restoration on their last damage event and the consequences of it. How did that experience affect their team as they were dealing with that damage event? Right? How did that affect their relationship to their owner client if they're a property manager, that last damage event?

46:36 What were the underlying problems or dysfunctions that was going on there with that current or previous vendor that was driving that? And then ultimately having an opportunity to position our unique process or the people on our team or the resources that we have that solve for that issue, that pain point. Ultimately, what you and I found is our best success platform in sales is driving that methodology. 100%. And training every single person on the team around that methodology. Because what we found too is it gives you a platform to hold people accountable on as well.

47:19 So coming full circle, when a sales rep comes to a sales meeting, they've been out selling, they've been out having these conversations with clients, they've been getting their 50 fresh contacts in. What are we accustomed to hearing in sales meeting? Here's the old school thing we've been accustomed to. Sales reps who go around the table. Hey, so talk to me about your leading activity. Everybody reports on how many meetings they had, all this kind of stuff. And then we start to get into a pipeline discussion. That's what we call it. Where people are talking about the stuff that their hottest prospects. Oh, hey, I had this really great meeting with senior living company XYZ and they've got 14 locations. And they said they're going to give us a try. They're going to use this on their next loss and give us a try.

48:01 Yeah. You and I joke about this occasionally on the podcast. If I had a dollar for every time I heard from a sales rep, or frankly, I came out of my mouth earlier in my career of, oh yeah, I had a great meeting. They're going to use this on their next loss. Totally unsubstantiated. And a lot of times we get caught up in it as leaders. We're like, oh heck yeah, 14 locations. We're seeing dollar signs. We're like, this is awesome. This sales rep is finally going to pay for themselves. Right? And we get caught up in it. And instead of us thinking critically, and asking some good follow up questions, and reinforcing the model and the methodology, we just get caught up in the, oh my gosh, my sales reps got a hot prospect that's going to produce.

48:47 And instead, what we've learned to do over the years is to discipline ourselves to ask for clarity. And for our sales reps to want clarity or to recognize the need for clarity. So now, when I have a sales rep on a sales call, and I have several sales meetings I attend every week now with our consulting clients, when I get that statement, I'm like, hey, that's awesome. Right on. Because they might have. And we may get that loss. But I say, why? Why? Why do you think they're going to use us on their next one? Oh, well, they just really... I told them about this and I told them about that. And they really liked it. Okay. Why do you think they're going to send us their business though?

49:28 Well, just like I said, I told them about how we have the largest fleet in town. And we have this app we use for tracking their claim and how they can see what's going on at any time. And I told them that we have the most experienced project management team in the Valley. And I talked to them and they were nodding their head and they were like, That's awesome. We'll give you guys a try. And then I say again, Why? Why? Because everybody is saying that about their teams. FYI. It doesn't matter what the truth is. Everybody is saying their team is the best. Yeah, nobody rolls in and tells you the truth. Oh, I mean, come on. They don't tell you, well, actually, we're kind of hit and miss. About 70% of the time we deliver.

50:08 All of your competitors, your sales, they're all selling aspirationally. They're all selling for what they want to be. Yeah. Right? So we're all sending the same message. We're going to take care of you. We've got the capacity, the experience, all this stuff. And so then we start asking more critical questions. Yeah. You get that deer in the headlight look from your sales rep, like they're kind of pissed off. Like, why aren't you excited about my sale? Well, because we don't have a sale yet. We don't have a sale yet. And then from your perspective, we don't even have a qualified prospect. We don't even have. Even though they've made that comment to us. We don't know what we have. Right. We don't know what we have. Yeah. So then I started asking some follow-up questions like, okay, tell me about the last damage that they had. When was it? Oh, I'm not sure. We didn't get around to that.

50:50 Who are you talking to? What's their role? Sometimes they don't even have the answer to that. Or they were talking to a maintenance technician. Generally not a decision maker in terms of vendor change. They may be a caller. Yeah. They may get first notice of loss. They can get business, but they aren't necessarily a decision maker that switches vendors, right? So oftentimes, they don't know the answer to that. What's their role? What do they do? What's their level of authority? Do they make decisions at that local property? Or does the portfolio manager ultimately have say over that? Oh, I don't know. What was their experience on their last damage event? Did you guys get into that? Did they happen to tell you who they used? Did they happen to talk about how many damage events they typically have every year?

51:32 How many units do they have at that complex? Oh, I'm not sure. What management company are they a part of? I'm not sure. Do you know who the portfolio manager is that oversees that property? Oh, no, I'm not sure. Okay. I mean, this is real. Yeah, it's normal. This is real. This is very normal. Well, and I would say this. I would almost add this layer. It's normal in the sense of that's the facts that we actually have in terms of our level of knowledge of that particular prospect. But those questions aren't necessarily being asked and we haven't unpacked it normally in our conversations and our oversight. Well, and many people listening to this say, here is the fundamental problem.

52:13 This is the wave. This is the evolution that's happening in our industry is that we've largely been smiles and candy route sales. And listen, when I say smiles and candy, I am kind of intentionally being disparaging because it's a fading strategy. At best, right? It is still, people are still working that whole route sales model around the country and still seeing some revenue from it. Yeah. But most markets are seeing a significant decline in the revenue they're receiving from it. And it still may be part of your sales. Absolutely, absolutely. Now, the smiles and candy piece though, that interruption advertising, I would say, is dead and we should kill it if we have it. But route sales in general and having people on our team that are focused on cultivating referral partners, yeah.

52:58 that's not dead necessarily. It may not be your best investment in people and money, but it is still an investment that a lot of people make and get a return on. But the problem is, is that what we've been doing these last few years, most of us, as we've started pursuing commercial, is we've essentially been applying the same route sales methodology and training and equipping we're providing our people and then throwing them out and telling them to go apply it to commercial. And it just doesn't work. Right. And in fact, not only does it not work, but you may quickly flame out that sales rep because they're doing that interruption advertising to facility managers, chief engineers, and they don't have time for that bullshit. Yeah. Because they see it.

53:39 They burn the bridge. Oh, yeah. They burn the bridge. So again, it's a mission critical turn that we have to make where instead of interrupting people, we are investigating our prospect accounts. We're trying to understand and learn. not just a cursory like level of information about their business and their industry so that we can be intelligent in our questions and conversations. But it's, it's even, we're really trying to understand to the cadence of that person's business. I have a great story for this. This is an embarrassing, it's a slightly embarrassing story. But when I first got into selling commercial, hotels was the second customer segment we started to get into.

54:20 And Jennifer Williams was this young, hotshot GM at a large hotel at the airport up in Portland. Jennifer Williams, she's an impressive leader. She was like 27 years old and was GM of two very large airport hotels. Just an absolute riser, achiever. And I wanted her business. Because I knew if I got her and I could name drop her account and her name around the area, people would know and I'd get into other accounts. And so I'm chasing that business. And I must have been on my second or third phone call drop-in follow-up with her. And it was like the third of the month.

55:01 And I said, hey, Jennifer, listen, I was just wanting to schedule a time. And I had my next step of the process. I was going to follow her on something. And she said, hey, listen, Chris, can I just educate you on something real quick? And I thought, oh no, it's over, dude. She's going to hammer me for something I did wrong. And she said, listen, Chris, I like you. We've had a good conversation going here. I want to continue it. I said, but look, you got to understand something about this business. As a general manager of a property, at the first of the month, I'm doing closeout for last month. I got three conference calls scheduled between the managing partner and investment group that owns this, the management company that I work for. I've got a third conference call with another vendor I'm dealing with as I close out my financials.

55:47 I am absolutely consumed. And my guess is, Chris, is every other GM in this market right now that you are getting ready to call is probably mired in the same thing. Their knees deep in their financials from this last month. I was like, oh, okay. Well, hey, I kidded. I don't want to interrupt you. I said, what's a better time? She said, listen, here's the framework, Chris. For hotel leaders, the first week of the month, they're working on closeout on top of everything else they have. Then about the middle of the month, I have this window of like four or five days where all is right in the world. That is the best time. The middle of the month, Tuesday through Thursday.

56:28 And ideally, between 10.30am after morning check-in and morning stand-to's with all my crews and like 2.30 in the afternoon, there's about a three-day window that is optimal for me as a GM to talk to vendors. And I'm like, Jennifer, you are the best hotel person in the world. I'm so appreciative. Thank you. Thank you for telling me this. I will move forward accordingly. And so I penned out to call her on the 14th on a Tuesday. And we ultimately got that business. And it ultimately led to us getting another hotel there at the airport and another hotel. It was exactly what I thought it was going to be. But I could have screwed it up if it hadn't been for her educating me.

57:13 And I'll tell you, that's only happened once or twice in my... Where they offered it up. Yeah, where they educated me. Yeah. Yeah. But that also shaped where you ended up developing that peer partnership perspective that you talk about a lot. Yes. You said, okay, to yourself, and I remember some of the follow-up conversations surrounding even that. Where it was you just kind of processing out loud of, okay, so now that I know this, I can deploy this consistently across this target, this target market, and it gives me the highest chance of success. And you often refer to that as being kind of one of those first moments where you began to be a student of the industries that you were going after, after these target markets.

57:58 Because it ultimately completely changed the way that you spent your time and interacted with them because you knew better their decision processes, the timing of their business, the cadences, all the things that had nothing to do with restoration, that had only to do with how they were successful in their own industry, their own tradecraft. Yeah. Which is really impressive. Yeah. Yeah, well, you know, the other thing that I was able to do with that then is I could apply it to all the other customer segments. Of course, it wasn't going to be the same necessarily. Right. But what it did was it gave me an excuse. It gave me a reason when I started pursuing more of my senior living accounts. to ask them the same kind of question. Hey, you know what? I had an experience with one of my hotel customers and they educated me on the flow of their business.

58:43 Can I ask you the same question? As I'm following up with you after we have a job or in order to schedule our next meeting, what is the best time of the month or the week to call you where you're least likely to be busy with conference calls or staff meetings or other kinds of stuff that you deal with? And they would tell me. And then I knew exactly when to follow up. And by the way, when you ask that question too, it puts you on the same side of the table with that customer. It's like, look, I don't want to bother you, badger you, harass you. I don't want to sell you something you don't need. I just want to get to the truth of what your situation is. And if it's something I can help you with or introduce you to somebody who can help you with that, that's my goal.

59:23 I want to partner with you. I don't want to interrupt you and badger you. When you can get to that kind of conversation with a customer, they are eventually going to be a customer. I think the interesting thing too, though, to add here, and again, I know for sake of time, there's probably 50 rabbit trails here that we could take, but I think one of the things that's really important there is you deploy that tactic right out of the gate, though. You don't spend... multiple opportunities BSing. Yeah. And just thinking, well, if I just chew on their ear for a little while, then we'll open the door. You are very intentional about being clear about why you're talking to them. Yeah. What your goals and aspirations with that conversation are. And then how do we best have this conversation in a way that's valuable for you and me?

1:00:07 And again, we just keep going back to that peer thing. It's how you prospect. It's also how you qualify them. Yeah. So you don't stop in and nervously ping pong around the conversation to include, and this is a huge thing, entertaining a bunch of discussion about secondary or non-primary services that your team could or possibly produce or provide. You wouldn't spend a ton of energy. At the beginning, you did. But over time, you got better at it. We're like, well, we kind of could do that for them. Yeah, but that's not why you stepped into the shop. You didn't talk to them to find out if you could help maybe provide some plumbing support on XYZ floor because of this thing.

1:00:50 Yeah. No, you went to develop a peer relationship so that you guys could be the primary vendor for emergency services. Yeah. And you stuck the conversation in that spot by being very black and white about why you're there. And your goal to make that a win-win. And it's weird to me, but I see a lot of salespeople. They are absolutely afraid to come into the conversation that way. But when I watch you, the reason you do that is because the type of people you're selling to want to be talked to that way. They do. They don't want to sit around and bullshit with you. No. They don't want 15 minutes of BS before you get to the heart of what's important. Virtually every chief engineer that I've met with has a radio on their hip.

1:01:35 And it's always going off. And they never know when it's going to go off. That's the environment of a lot of the people that we're selling to. Is that they have so many things tugging at their sleeve that in their head is of far more critical importance at all times. Even after they become a client, we have to remember that. This damage event that they're dealing with, we're really grateful that they're using us for it. But it's still a damage event that's getting in the way of their normal operations that they're held accountable for. We forget that a lot in this business. We're just so happy to have a customer. We bring that enthusiasm to the conference. And I think sometimes we're... We can get a little bit put off by just how matter of fact or direct or how short our decision maker contacts are with us during a job even.

1:02:21 And it's like, look, they just want to freaking get it over with. It's just like when we're busy and something else lands on us. Yeah, glad you're doing a good job. That's why we switched to you. Yeah. Now I need to move on and get back to it. You know what I mean? So we just forget. Nobody cares about restoration as much as we do. Yeah. Okay, so dude, let me help you with something here. Yeah. Help you. Maybe that's not the right word. All right. Oh, I need some help. I want to guide this a little bit as we get approaching a pretty significant time slot here. Okay, so where you started with this conversation was just an openness, a transparency about the fact that, look, even those of us with a lot of experience in this, we still have moments of gray because it is a difficult industry to sell in because there is no widget to close on.

1:03:05 Granted, MSAs, red alerts, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. We all know how concrete and closing those are. So you started out with this position of, okay, so there's that difficulty. There's also this difficulty of very many... Most of us don't have context for what's an appropriate amount of revenue for one of our salespeople to produce. Yeah. To quantify their role in the return on my investment. Yeah. Right? So, okay. So that's where we started. You immediately went in on this. And again, these aren't not numbers set in concrete. It's just to give us a starting place in the conversation. Roughly 67% cost of sale. If you could get a salesperson to produce enough revenue that their total burden is roughly 6% to 7% to the cost of the revenue that they generate, that's healthy.

1:03:55 You're in the right zone. So I think that's helpful for us to gain some confidence around. Yep. Yep. Then there is this kind of, what I hear you say is this hyper-indexing on, we can't control this close necessarily. Now that's different than operational sales, meaning I show up and get a contract. We're not even talking about that. So we have to hyper-index on this leading activity. So here's what I'm, hopefully I'm not derailing it, but this is what I'm thinking would be valuable. Land the plane with, what do I do as a business owner then? If I understand, okay, my goal is to shoot for somewhere in the 67% cost to sales zone. And then on top of that, my goal is, or my understanding is, I have to hammer on leading activity.

1:04:39 Okay, now what then? If you were to land the plane, it's not going to be completely black and white. What do I do? Where do I spend my energy and my attention? How do I fall as close to effective as possible with that? Well, so I think probably as the sales leader, whether you're the owner, GM, or an actual sales manager in this industry, I think you have to have a specific methodology that you're teaching your sales reps. that all of them are deploying at the same time so that you can actually hold them accountable to the types of conversations that we're talking about, right? So you need, if you don't have a sales background, a B2B sales background, you need to get that education.

1:05:21 And we've talked about the digital master course. That could be a great platform for you to do that with. Consulting. Consulting, yeah. Get a coach, whatever, to teach you guys a framework And I would argue that has to be a pain solution selling framework. And so if you've never done that as a B2B sales rep, then that would be the first step. The second step is to apply that framework in your follow-up coaching. And I talked a little bit, I hit on this a little bit of that why question. The why question uncovers the quality of conversations and questions we're asking the customer. And so naturally, sales reps are going to get kind of pissed off. You just keep saying, why, why, why, why, why? But... Along with anybody else. But the point is, take them back to the model.

1:06:02 Yeah. It's like, and the accountability comes with, you don't know who the property management company is associated with that prospect that you said is going to send this business. Yeah. You don't know enough about this prospect for them to be qualified yet. And maybe the industry. Right. I.e. their industry. Yeah, exactly right. Right. So we can hold them accountable to those things. And again, those are part of the leading behaviors, right? So if a sales rep comes to me during a sales meeting and says, Oh, I got this hot new prospect and I start asking questions. And they haven't gone to that prospect's website. They haven't looked up key decision makers on LinkedIn. They haven't checked the about page on the management site to see who the portfolio leaders and the financial leaders, just all the leaders are.

1:06:43 Well, then they haven't done an adequate job of prospecting that client to qualify them. And so we can call it what it is. Like, hey, sounds like you got more work to do on XYZ property management. I think that has been the most effective methodology for me over the last several years as we've been making this transition into this dedicated pain solution selling model is... Just being consistent, not walking past a, hey, I got a hot one here, which is so easy to. Yeah. Trying to get your reps out of the field. Because you don't want to deflate them either. No, you don't want to deflate them. And you also, it's like you're in sales, you want them out in the field. And so there's also this tension in sales meetings of, I don't want to go on this huge, long rabbit trail.

1:07:26 And so we'll walk past those comments. And the moment we walk past those comments, we're validating... That, oh, sweet, you got a hot one. Okay. And then we're allowing that ambiguity back into our sales process in our business. So the most powerful thing that I think people can do coming out of this podcast they're listening to is... is to one, take some steps to establish a standardized process, methodology, and language for your sales operation. If you don't have that right now, and it's just kind of a cobbled together version of how we've done route sales, and some excerpts from some sales books you've read... Or just leaving it up to the individuals, whatever.

1:08:07 Leaving it up to the sales reps to just use their own methodology. That's step number one, is you need to get a framework for your business that you feel like is effective. And I believe it should be a pain solution selling model. But then from there, it's just you committing as a leader to not allowing that ambiguity in our conversations. We are going to get lucky sometimes. And I remind my sales leaders of that. I'm like, look, you may be right. They may call us on the next one, but we can't build a business on that. So we need to understand who their management company is. We need to understand what their past experience with vendors has been. Until we get that, we're on very shaky ground. We don't have a strong pipeline.

1:08:48 Unless all of my qualified prospects in the pipeline, I have a base level understanding of their business and their situation. Otherwise, I got nothing. And unfortunately, a lot of you listening to this, you have a pipeline, but you have no idea where people are at in that pipeline. Are they still really essentially a cold target because your people aren't actually seeing and doing the activity you think they are or they say they are? Are most of them in your pipeline superficial prospects? Prospects that we've talked to, that we've smiled for, that we've filled their candy jar, that we've done a donut drop for? And they said they're going to use us, but we really have no idea who they are and how they operate?

1:09:31 Or is my sales pipeline full of potential where I understand the pain theme from their past experience with other vendors? I understand the decision-making process behind the scenes. I've had a conversation with them about their team and how their team's been affected by damage events that went sideways. Right. I understand the pain. If you can get your team to a place where your pipeline, each of your sales reps pipelines are full of those prospects, you cannot help but win. And we've seen it over and over again. That's right. Over and over again. And while it's not science, it's not data like Salesforce has with their sales crew.

1:10:16 It's like they either sell the software or they don't. We may never get that kind of clarity in our business. But if you can get your team to have a pipeline where every single prospect they come to the table with and say, I got a hot one, and they can back that up with information, you and them are going to sell as much as you need to sell. Yeah, that's huge. I think that's an excellent way to land that plane. I would just maybe just add this from the operational side of... The best thing that you can do as you're developing these sales teams that are creating peer partnerships is be comfortable with the fact that none of the conversations will feel sexy.

1:10:58 It's not going to be the box that you paid 50 grand a year for to get everybody to the U of O game. Does that stuff pay? Yeah, probably. Sometimes again. But a lot of times it's icing on the cake. A lot of that time that is just making it harder for someone to choose somebody else. But the reality of it is, is that as sales leaders and operational leaders, we need to remember those conversations, the cadence of it is the same. Why are they a qualified prospect? What did our leading activity look like? Do you? and then get really excited when the work does come in, when it comes in, but heavily index your attention, your focus, your teaching, your training, your inspecting on all those leading activity.

1:11:39 And don't drop them. I got a couple more things. I have a couple just nuggets, some actionable nuggets. But first of all, yes, and I would say too, just on the heels of what you said, when you get the business come in, don't stop questioning the why. Because sometimes we'll get surprised. Yeah. This does happen. You'll have a rep that two weeks ago, they had a meeting with the property manager. Really, it wasn't that rad of a meeting if you dig into it. And a call comes in. And a call. And then we get a job. And so when you celebrate that, it doesn't have to take the wind out of the sails. But hey, remind me, why do you think we got that job? Why did they send that to us? And if we don't know, that's part of the opportunity. And if we don't know, we still have work to do because then the goal is to deepen the customer relationship to make it that much more likely they're going to send us all their jobs now.

1:12:23 Right. Right. 100%. Okay. So one last thing I want to say is that often in our industry, we still rely on these old school sales methods like handling objections. Hmm. There's a few, there's sales coaches in every industry and books and stuff like that that people read and get all hot on. And handling objections is one of those things that's just really, it's like, it goes in cycles and it feels like it's kind of in vogue again right now for some reason. But I got a question from one of our sales leaders and they said, Hey, I keep, I'm trying to get in front of this VP of operations guy. And every time I call him, he's like, man, I'm just so buried. Yeah. I'm just so buried in XYZ project or something like this.

1:13:05 Can you call me like the end of August? And then the end of August comes and you call him back. And he's like, oh man, you just caught me. I just had my director of Blotty Blot quit. And so I'm like, can you, I just don't have time. Can you call me? And he's like, what do you, how do I handle that objection? He keeps telling me he doesn't have time. And I paused and I made it a really long pause. I said, no. There's nothing you can do. There is no answer to that objection. What it means is you don't have a prospect right now in that guy. And I just let that. Yeah, but how do I fix it? And he's like, and I said, listen, what it means is, is he's not your entry point into that account, right?

1:13:48 You need to go find another advocate. Because if you don't find pain, you're never going to get that guy engaged because he doesn't care. That's why he's pushing you off. He just doesn't care. It's not important. Yet. I said, but what if instead of that portfolio manager, what if you went and gathered some intel from two or three community managers at a local property? What if you uncover some pain there and you go back to that person? Hey, listen, I know you're really busy. But I talked with Sally at XYZ Property Community. I talked with Joanne at XYZ Property of Yours. And I talked with Mitch at XYZ Property of Yours. And there was a theme that to what every single person brought up. And I just want to put it in front of you.

1:14:28 It may not be something you want to tackle right now. But do you have time for a quick stand-up? Can I swing by your office next week and I'll just go through it with you? And if it's something you want to deal with, great. If not, we'll table it. Now I have a chance to get that guy engaged. Because now three of his downline people have communicated a problem to me. And now I'm taking the problem to him that his people told me. How likely am I to get a meeting? Much more likely. Yeah. So that's a strategy that right now, any of you salespeople listening to can deploy because it's real and it works. The last thing I would say to you, and this goes back to leaders and managers, one of the most common things that we see in our industry, and it's because of that whole route sales mentality, is that when somebody is not interested, or they already have somebody they like, this is the other response we get.

1:15:15 Oh, we use Belfort. Great. Yeah. It's a great company. Awesome. Listen, tell me about your experience with them. We have some clarifying questions. What is it about their people or the process that you really like? Yeah. Most of the time, we stop when they say, we use Belfort or we use SurfPro or we use Chris and Brandon Restoration. They're like, oh, oh, bummer. That's what we think internally. Your typical route salesperson, when they hear that, they're like, oh. And then they either stop seeing them more frequently or they just keep pounding on that door with the same show and tell message. Very slight modification that you can train your reps on right now.

1:15:58 Your next sales meeting, not Sunday morning, but your next sales meeting is be the backup. So when I ask that question, what is it about their people or process that really makes it better for you and your team when you have a damage event? What am I doing there? Well, one, I'm not bad-mouthing their incumbent, which is obviously important. But the other thing I'm doing is, and a lot of times I'll follow that. I'll say, listen, here's why I'm asking that. Because clearly you're being serviced well by them. And I would never want to take somebody away from somebody who's servicing them well. We appreciate our loyal customers. I said, but if we get another regional storm event or something like that, or for whatever reason, things change. I want to be a good backup for you.

1:16:39 And if you say you like how they do X, Y, and Z, I want to make sure that our team is doing that. And if not, I'm going to take that message back to my team. So what is it about Belfort's people and process that just makes it easier for you or better for your owner clients or better for your staff or less? What is it? Yeah. What is it? Because I want to take that back to my team and try to imitate that so we can be a good backup for you. I cannot tell you how many sales leaders I've trained on that that have come back a week later, two weeks later, and they've gotten work almost immediately because they didn't badmouth the incumbent, but they also didn't stop. They did the whole, I want to be a good backup.

1:17:20 What do you love about Belfort? I want to make sure we're imitating that. We're not so proud that we can't change our process. And if you say there's something you like about Chris and Brandon restoration and we aren't doing it, I'm going back to my team and we're going to start doing it so that you can count on us if there's a time where whatever situation has occurred and you need someone... I can't tell you how valuable that strategy is. I think all of this points towards just a higher level, a more sophisticated sales process. And I know we almost use the term to the point where it's a little kitschy. The peer partner. But that's what it boils down to.

1:18:00 We're not selling shit. I mean, and that's part of the problem is that we don't have this thing to sell. You're selling a partnership. And the only way that you can sell partnership because that's a relationship is to understand your partner, the person on the other side. Yeah. So I love it, dude. I think this was good. I think being transparent where the question marks is like, okay. And I think the reality of it is with a lot of these topics is it's that processing out loud that gets us all better over time. And there is no black and white to a lot of the issues that we try to solve as business owners and leaders. And this is another zone where not everything is black and white, but there are some things you can hang your hat on. And if we index on that side, you're likely going to get the return that you're hoping for.

1:18:42 Good job, man. There we go. All right. We'll see you later, guys. All right, everybody. Thanks for joining us for another episode of Head, Heart & Boots. And if you're enjoying the show, but you love this episode, please hit follow. Formally 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.