Sales Team Secrets: Your Guide to Hiring, Training, and Retaining Top Performers

0:01 Welcome to The Coaching Equation, brought to you by Empire Partners and hosted by Ryan Lang and Brooke Bishop. Our mission is to help you build a profitable and impactful coaching business by cutting through the noise and all the expert advice to deliver tried and true, actionable insights that you can deploy in your business today. Each week, we bring on expert guests, unveil cutting-edge tactics and strategies, and share the secrets and stories that we've gathered from working with the most successful coaching companies on earth. Welcome back to the Coaching Equation Podcast.

0:42 I'm your host, Ryan Lang, CEO and co-founder of Empire Partners, alongside my co-founder and co-host, Brooke Bishop. And today's episode is yet another one on a topic that we get asked about all the time and probably one of the single most misunderstood topics inside of business in general and especially in the coaching industry. And it centers around how to actually successfully hire entrepreneurs train and maintain a badass sales pro. And in this episode, we're going to give you our step-by-step guide for how we've done this successfully over years and years and years of experience.

1:22 And it's super valuable for you. whether you're making your first hire, whether you've hired and maybe not been successful, whether you want to audit your hiring process, or whether you're a solopreneur coach or business owner, and maybe you don't have designs of hiring a salesperson right now, but you really want to understand at a foundational level... the standards that you need to set, even if it's you that's doing the selling. Not to mention, we kick things off with a bang in this episode by answering the single most important question you're ever going to ask yourself when considering this hire. Buckle up and let's get after it. This is episode 47 of the Coaching Equation podcast.

2:06 Welcome back to the Coaching Equation podcast. I'm your host, Ryan Lang, CEO and co-founder of Empire Partners, alongside my co-founder and co-host, Brooke Bishop. What's up, man? What's going on? This has already been a busy, crazy day and week and... This episode in particular is one that we get asked about a whole lot. And it's actually partially inspired by something that we're working with one of our consulting clients on literally right now as we speak. And that is how do we successfully hire a salesperson for our team? And that's exactly what we're going to do on this episode is we're going to give you the full blown guide.

2:50 So here's the one thing I want to kind of kick us off with. The first key to hiring a salesperson and doing it right, right out of the gate, is number one, knowing... If you should in the first place, most people don't stop to ask themselves the question, should I? They go, can I or do I want to? And that's what drives their decision when they typically bring on their first one. And in so many cases, they are not ready for it. So. How do we know that we're ready to actually bring on a salesperson?

3:35 Yeah. So I'm going to consciously mismatch. See, most of the time I'm not consciously mismatching. So I'm going to be intentional with this. You are always intentionally mismatching. It's so funny because I see so much of my son. He's like mismatches all the time. And I'm like, where do you get it from? And I'm like, son of a... Uh, okay. So where I was going to go with it is what I wanted to highlight more than anything is the biggest mistake you, because you have friction or frustration at doing specific tasks in your job. That is not the right reason to hire somebody. And you and I've talked about this a bazillion times, right? Like the number one thing we hear from, especially coaches, I want to hire a salesperson.

4:20 So I don't have to do this. For whatever reason, I shouldn't even say for whatever reason, I just answered my own question. But the main reason that coaches want to go there first, they don't want to have to sell anymore. They want to get off of the phone. They think that somebody else can do it better than them because that's where all the doubt in business comes from is that moment in time when somebody has to make a decision. And if they don't say yes, they take it personal. So they want to offload that feeling to somebody else and put that doubt on somebody else's shoulders instead of their arm. So yeah. moreover than when is the right time. Just want to be really, really clear that it's not, uh, if that's what you're trying to get away from, that is not your like, Oh, the universe is telling me I need to go get a salesperson because it feels uncomfortable.

5:00 Nope. It's not. Okay. 100%. I would also say this, just from a numbers perspective, one of the pieces that people, I think from a numbers perspective, people think that they're ready way earlier than they actually are. Most people get to 10K a month and they're like, oh, I'm ready for a salesperson. No, you're not.

5:41 And there are a couple of reasons why. Recurring, not just like, oh, I've had three months where I had three people. Yeah. Yep. Yep. Yeah. So there's the recurring piece. And I think this is the other huge component. We have another client who actually, she brought on a salesperson, in my opinion, a wee bit too soon. lead volume. So not just the revenue piece, you know, CYA in regards to making sure you've got enough revenue to sustain, but you've got to make sure that you're setting that salesperson up for success. And there's going to be enough leads coming through that they actually have an opportunity to be successful. It's one thing when you're the business owner and you get to keep 100% of what you kill.

6:21 It's another thing when you bring somebody on there, maybe they're getting 10% or 20%. Like, are they going to have enough to actually earn a living and make it work? Or are you going to push them into scarcity? A hundred percent. Yeah. And we're going to get into kind of like the environment that you need to cultivate and craft in order to do it right and all of that stuff. But you bring up a point too, though, Brooke, with regard to the revenue. I mean, here's the thing, guys. You're listening to this right now. And if you run a coaching business, you know that this is not it's just not easy. It's like running any other business. It's hard. Yeah. And when it comes to growing and scaling your revenue, it's something that you absolutely have to protect.

7:04 And it's one of the reasons why we actually recommend that sales is one of the last things that you hire somebody for, like hire things in all other areas of the business other than the area that generates revenue for you. Because here's the thing. You know, some, you might be listening to this right now and thinking, okay, well, I feel like I suck at sales and if I just get somebody who was, you know, awesome at it, blah, blah, blah. Look, we have worked with so many people who think they suck at sales and they just haven't had the right training, they just haven't had the right coaching or they just haven't fully committed themselves to mastery because they just, you know, they're fighting that fight of I wanna be a coach, I don't wanna be a salesperson kind of situation.

7:51 Here's the deal. The ones that do commit themselves to mastery, because that's what this is about. This is not about I'm good at it. I'm not good at it, blah, blah, blah. This is a learned skill. And if you commit yourself to mastery, most of the coaches that we know that are high performing solopreneurs still selling their own coaching can convert anywhere between 50 and 80 percent. Let me say that again, 50 and 80 percent. On the flip side of that coin, when you look at bringing on a salesperson or a sales team, look, we're hitting a gold standard if the sales team as a whole is somewhere around 20%. Okay. And that's after a while.

8:33 And that's after good, solid training and having the right people and all of the things. Most sales teams don't touch that. And most salespeople, especially when you bring them on initially, we're looking at 8%, 10%, 12%, that kind of stuff. So it's a mega drop off. So just make sure that you're considering that. Make sure that you know that it's the right time. And I would just say, while there's no perfect moment per se. we would just encourage you to hold out as, as, as long as you can and hire for support positions around you, hire an executive assistant, hire a VA, hire somebody to help you with your marketing. Um, because ultimately if you commit yourself to mastery, nobody's ever going to sell your program as well or better than you do.

9:20 At some point there's going to be a time to pull yourself out of that seat. And, uh, with all that, um, Let's do let's just say that you're in that moment. You're ready to pull yourself out of that seat. You've listened to all of the expert advice that you hear on this podcast. You're like, hmm, game on. I'm ready to do it. Let's make it happen. You've got an interesting perspective that I want to get that I think is going to shock a lot of people. What where do where do top producers really come from? And what's your mind on that? It's fascinating. So when I was really early in my sales career, my mentor had me read a book.

10:00 So by a gentleman named Peter Kine, and I believe is A-Y-N-E. There might be an H somewhere in there, but if you look it up, you'll find it. But the book's called The Go-Getter. So some of you guys might've also heard of the book, The Go-Giver. This is The Go-Getter. And the thing that was really fascinating about the book, for if you guys haven't read it, First off, I encourage everybody to pick up the book. It's maybe a hundred pages long and it's profound. I think I cried three times reading it. And that was when I was 18 years old. So that can kind of give you an idea of like, you know, in my peak of masculinity, I was still super emotional. The whole concept and the context behind the book is an unsolvable problem.

10:45 So there's this gentleman who wants to go work for this very wealthy man. He wants this opportunity. And the wealthy man gives him an unsolvable task to see how is this person going to show up to what he gives him? Is he going to fold the cards and go, I can't do it? Or is he going to jump through the hoops? Is he going to? And so without letting the cat out of the bag, who we are shows up when we're put into a pressure cooker. And when there's trying times or when there's chaos or when there's trauma or when there's an emotionally heightened moment, our true nature, our core values are going to come to the surface and that's going to show us how people are going to play.

11:27 And so as it relates to like, how do I find really good salespeople to bring on? And I want to highlight this because this is really, really critical. If you have a family member that you're like, oh, I think they could do sales for me. I'm going to turn them into a salesperson. Yeah. Get ready for the grenade. Not only get ready for the grenade of your business, but also get ready for the grenade of your relationship. Because one position that's so strict performance based, you're going to be having hard conversations pretty frequently. Yeah. And if you think your own voice in your head of, am I good enough? Am I not good enough? The person now dropping that hammer on a close friend or family member.

12:07 It's a, it's a tough way to go. So here, here's our kind of our first little principle here. Amazing salespeople are found, not created. So why we highlight this and why we position it in this way, go find somebody that's already kicking ass in sales. I don't care if they're just kicking ass in sales, waiting tables or selling cars, or doing something that's already in a position of influence. But if you're taking some of their whole life has been in customer service, and you now think you're gonna turn them into this like beast of a salesperson, going to be a tough go. If you think you're going to take somebody who's an accountant and go, oh, you're going to go crush it now on selling my high ticket coaching offer. Like Houston, you're going to be in for a rude awakening.

12:51 Yeah, I agree with that 100%. And I will also say, and I want to give a... I'll be the mismatcher now, buddy. I can play that game. The one thing that I would say, the one little caveat that I would give to that is that, you know, a perfect example of this. You know, when I was back in my oil and gas career, I... Part of what we would do in our business is we would we would go and research the actual title to the mineral rights. And I'm not going to dive into like exactly what that is. I'm not going to bore you with that nonsense.

13:32 But essentially, it's a similar process to what happens when you buy your house. You have a title company, go to the courthouse or do used to be before they had online records. I'm dating myself now is to go into the courthouse and get these fucking enormous books and go. Yeah, crazy. So anyway, but it's the same process that that you go through to some degree when you're buying your house. You have to verify that you have a clean title. The same thing goes when we're talking about mineral rights. And so one of the things that, you know, that I used to get really excited about is when I would be hiring people and I was constantly hiring people.

14:15 I used to get really excited when I would find an attorney because there are title attorneys and that are really used to doing this work. I felt like the fact that they were an attorney held a certain amount of weight with me. And I'll tell you what, if I hired 10 attorneys, maybe one, was anywhere close to meeting my expectations, you know, in terms of preparing the product that I wanted them to prepare. It was remarkable. So after a while, I stopped getting super excited about that.

14:56 Similarly, the one thing that I would say is with regard to sales, You know, when we're talking about high ticket coaching sales specifically for just a second, because we do have people that are listening to this right now that run other types of businesses and other types of sales teams and that kind of thing. But specifically for high ticket coaching sales, the one word of caution that I would give you is that Lord have mercy. We have had some of the. The we have had some super high performing people that have 20, 25, 30 years in sales for major sales organizations. And they walk in the door with all kinds of swagger and they'll tell you all the right things and they'll be gregarious and they'll tell you how much money they're going to make and they're going to break every record in your record book and blah, blah, blah.

15:48 and then they walk in the door and they get their ass handed to them. Why? Because this is a different type of sale. And so the one caveat that I would give to that, and by the way, it doesn't mean that you shouldn't hire somebody who's got wonderful sales experience, but this is the key. You are looking for someone who is willing to empty their cup and they are proud of their accomplishments. They have pride in what they've done and what they've created. They're also ready and willing to leave that at the door so that they can learn how to do this type of sale in a way that's going to get them and you and the client the very best outcome possible.

16:31 Now you're on the money. So we have a little sneaky way to kind of suss some of that out. So when it comes to that recruiting window of time... We like to put some of those, some of the hoops for people to jump through, but there's a clutter way to figure out, is this person going to come in with all bravado and ego, or are they going to come in and actually be able to be empathetic? Are they going to be coachable? It's another huge piece of this puzzle. I don't know how many people you and I've coached over the course of time. We're like, a lot. You're not a salesperson and you're stuck and you're not coachable and you're not going to go beyond where you're at. Those people are tough.

17:11 So one of the things that we do, so when it comes to the recruiting side, we're really big on giving people a couple of hurdles. Number one, I always recommend the salesperson go read the go-getter. Like literally we telegraph and we go, go read this book. We're literally telling them what we're doing to see how they show up. And it's very clear whether or not they do or don't read the book. Okay, the second thing that we have them do is in order to come into our world to even have an interview, they've got to send in their resume. Okay. They've got to send in their DISC personality profile because we want to see, you know, what's what's their communication style like how. And again, DISC doesn't tell us if this person is a salesperson or not. It just tells us how they will function in the role based on what their profile is and how they're going to communicate and what their values are.

17:57 And then the third part of that, as we ask him to send in a 30 second video as to why they believe they're the best person. If they're unwilling to do any of these, by the way, anyone who's ever put job postings out on like Indeed or wherever you're posting, it is insane how many people will hit that first thing of sending their resume and how few people will do step two and even how fewer people will do step three. Right. Right. It literally will weed out probably somewhere around 80 to 90% of the applicants because people aren't willing to participate in their own rescue. They want somebody to pick them for being their greatness versus them earning it. Well, guess what? This role is not a pick me because I'm the greatest. This role is I got to earn my seat on the bus.

18:40 Okay. A hundred percent. Yeah. No, go ahead. Go ahead. You're good. Oh, I was just going to, the only thing I was going to add into that is that first interview, we offer people the opportunity to have a 30 minute coding call to walk them through what we do. If they don't take you up on that 30 minute call of added value to go, Hey, if you can show me how I need to do this job, if you don't, if they don't take you on it, you're coming to the table with an arrogance thinking that they already have the answers and they're not going to be coachable. So I can just tell you from, I don't even know how many thousands of people interviewed and hired every single time. If they don't take the coaching call guaranteed, they're not going to be coachable down the line. So that was that piece. But what were you going to add to that, bro? No, I, I, I love this.

19:22 So just really quickly, let, let, let's just recap. So, so essentially we're going to, we're going to start by requesting resume. We're going to request We're going to request kind of like video, you know, kind of showcasing like, you know, who they are, why they're interested in the position kind of a thing. And then we're going to offer them a coaching opportunity to actually get it right and kind of see where they land. I was going to add one one component. Yeah. So add one in. We had so this when managing one of the sales teams for Tony Robbins, we had I was overseeing the outside sales team called the FSR.

20:04 And Tony's like heart is with this team because that's what he did for Jim Rohn for I don't even know how many years before he launched his own thing. So this sales team really does require the like most skilled salespeople to come in the door because they're front of room. They're selling to groups. They're selling to an audience. This is not like you can't hide behind the phone. You can't hide behind Zoom. You can't just, you know, go shake hands and do one on one. Like they're in front of whether it's 10 people or 100 people or a thousand people. So they've got to have a really dialed in skill set. And so we're recruiting heavily for that team because there's a real high turnover. And we had, I just had video after video. Somebody just came out of the gym. So by the way, how much energy they put into the video is another big tell.

20:47 But I get this dude, yeah, I'm sending you my video because it said here I need to send this in. And, you know, I'd be the best because I've been a really good salesperson. It was like literally you'd be amazed at the craziness of what people would send in for their video. Yeah. Well, and dude, she turned her, her room into a studio. She went and rented light lighting. She went and did the Costco rental program for a badass video camera. Are you familiar with the Costco rental? Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Okay. If anyone doesn't know, you can go to Costco, buy the stuff, use it, and then you can take it back. But anyways. We did not, by the way, legally tell you to do that. That is not advice.

21:27 It's just we've heard that people do that. We've just heard it. Just explaining what Chuck GPC told you a Costco rental program. Yeah, that's all. That's it. Yeah. So... So she set up the background. She strategically got Tony's books and like did the whole bookshelf. She even put TR plus her initials like on like in the little letters. She had things so pimped. She then edited all kinds of music into the thing. And she I don't even know how many times she ran the video. Wow. When I got her video, I literally went. This is the best applicant we have ever had in the history of the company. And here's the crazy part. She blew out every fucking record that was ever done. She blew out everybody for 40 year run. She then became his sidekick and ran his events for him.

22:10 Like that's how, and she was like 26 years old. So that's incredible. The value of this is so huge because the energy that people put in, whatever they're going to put in on the front, that's how they're going to show up for you and your brand and your product and your client. So just popped memory of just, yeah, her name was, her name is still Carissa. So we called her KK, but she just, that's, she rocks, man. That's freaking awesome. Well, you know, one of the things that I want to highlight in all of this process, everything that you just kind of listed off. Look, it's important that you are showing up as from without being an asshole about it. your position here, you need to be the buyer in this situation.

22:51 One of the biggest mistakes that we see people make is they show up to the hiring process as the seller. We're falling all over ourselves trying to sell somebody on why this is such an amazing opportunity and why they should want to be here. Not the way you want to start that relationship. You need to show up as the buyer. Now, what do I mean by that when I say show up as a buyer? I'm talking about... being willing to walk away from the table if you don't get exactly what you want. All right? It is the equivalent of walking into the car lot, knowing exactly what car you want, exactly how much money you're willing to pay for it, and exactly what features you want.

23:32 And when you don't get it, You get up from the table and you walk out, even if they do want to bring their manager over to talk to you. Right. So you got to be willing and able to show up as a buyer. One of the things that you just talked about that I want to touch on, because I don't want to leave it as a totally open loop, but. You know, we know that obviously disk is really about how we're hardwired. So is there if for people who understand disk or are learning disk, are there profiles in your mind that are better for a sales position than others? And is there any profile where when we see it, we ought to be like, whoa, danger. Well, Robinson, don't go there.

24:13 I mean, my profile is the best, but it's so funny because I am not your stereotypical salesperson by any stretch. So here's the way we look at it. It comes actually back to what type of product offering you have. What type of client profile do you have? And it's going to tell you more of like where the strengths of the person that's going to show up. So put kind of context on that. If you bring in somebody who's a high D, high D's are going to drive to an outcome. And they're going to want to move fast. They're not going to have any fear of asking for the sale. But they're going to push and they're going to put, they'll push people out of their comfort zone. Right? Yep. So that can be fantastic depending on your product line.

24:55 But let's say you have, let's say you, let's say you have an offer for women who are burning out. And you put them on with a nuclear high D sales. That could also blow them out of the water and can hurt them too. Yep. Right. And it's not that they can't do the job. It's just that if they have to radically throttle their personality, they'll end up losing energy in their, their job versus with high eyes. High eyes are fantastic for building rapport, but high eyes really struggle to ask for the sale. Yeah. They don't want to lose that rapport. Right. High S's you'll get if you get a high S, by the way, it depends on what you couple it with. But high S's love consistency. They're going to want to build out systems.

25:35 They're going to want to find a way to be have predictability. If you've got like crazy good amount of leads and then shitty ton like shit, low amount of leads, you're going to melt that high person if they come into that sales sales role. Now, as far as their strength, they're going to give massive amounts of certainty to the consumer. So depending on your offer, that can make sense. And again, high C's, because I know how many times have you and I heard that high C's can't do sales. It's not true. No, that's what you are. I'm not an SC, don't you put that on me. I'm kidding. But high C's, they tend to be more cautious. They want details. Well, if you have a very engineer type offering or you have a very detailed type offering that requires all of those specs, like a piece of technology, they're fantastic at selling that.

26:23 If it's a super emotional sale, high SC's are going to have a tough go. Yeah. Yeah, so... When we look at this, I love your thought around the offer and the ideal client profile and making sure that you pair that with the right type of salesperson. And I also think that there... I think it's like being willing... If you feel like... Here's one thing that I want to say. We talk a lot about disk around here, and it's a very, very useful tool. But... We also find that there are other people that really live and die by disc, and they don't leave room for unique situations and unique people and unique skill sets.

27:18 And I think that one of the things that I would simply say is that, you know, just look at the disc and see what you can understand from it. But also be willing to trust your gut a little bit on, you know, the personality profile, how they show up, what kind of hunger they show. Are they curious? Are they humble? And the other thing that I'd love to touch on really quickly is. is when you go a little bit deeper just beyond the actual disc score, the motivators are huge here. This is one thing I think we would both agree on, is that if you have somebody who has a really, really low economic value, on their values, like that is a major problem in sales because you can get somebody and man, they will tell you all the right things.

28:14 They'll tell you how they wanna change the world and they just wanna help people and all of these things. And meanwhile, They don't care enough about money to really get after it. And that's one thing that in sales, I think, and tell me if you disagree, but I think that generally speaking, we want to see high, we want to see people with higher, at least it doesn't have to be like a hundred, but at least higher economics, because they're going to drive a little bit harder to try to hit performance goals and metrics. Yeah, I would say at least needs to be above 70. But yeah, you're absolutely correct. If their economic scores in the toilet, be prepared for them to have money psychology issues. You don't be afraid to ask them when somebody says, oh, I don't have it.

28:57 They're going to buckle immediately. So yeah, I agree with you a bazillion percent. It's a number. So let's just say that we go out and we are we're looking for for somebody who's shown some kind of, you know, performance. They have some kind of performance track record in sales. We find somebody. How do we if we're not a Tony Robbins right now and have some enormous, super high level organization, how do we create an environment that a top performer is actually going to want to come to? Great question. So and this has a double double meaning.

29:40 Certainty sells. And so going back to your piece of like, okay, you're the buyer in this engagement. Like you have to be really looking at it to go, okay, if, if this salesperson I'm looking to bring on, they're looking at my world. I'm looking at their world. Like it's, it's a dance. It's a, it's a dating prospect, to be honest. You've got to have an environment that is better than, than where they're currently at. This doesn't just mean that they get paid more, by the way, but they need to have an environment where there's more opportunity, where they have more of an opportunity to grow, where there's the chances that they could level up or that they could maybe perhaps they really just fall in love with the product So if certainty sells, this is going to be true for you.

30:27 If you're like begging and pleading, think, think about it from dating. Please go on a date with me. Like if you're the whimpering person, like, like you're so clingy. I don't want to work with you. But if you're confident and you own the value of what you do, not, not to the end being arrogant where you think your shit doesn't stink. And it's like, you know, but be real about what the opportunity is and be real about what's going on. Yeah. Yeah. And here's the key piece. What I've seen with everyone, all the top producers we brought on, we gave them so much certainty of how we would support them and how we would bring them on the team and how we would support them down the line. That meant more to them than whatever the percentage of commission was.

31:10 Yeah. And we had a vested interest in them. That's right. Yeah, there's so much to what you just said. And going back to that certainty, here's the other thing. I mean, let's have some appreciation for the fact that in a sales role, people are going to eat what they kill. You're listening to this call right now, or this call, listening to this episode right now, and... it's likely you're not yet in a position to be able to pay a salary to a sales to a salesperson. So one of the things that's most important is you have to be able to give them certainty and giving them certainty is also about real, actual certainty.

31:54 It's not what you think is going to happen. If you're in a position right now where your lead flow is a little wonky and you're going to work really hard to try to figure that out and that kind of thing, you need to present it exactly that way. And if somebody doesn't want to join your team because of that, then so be it. But you need to tell them the truth. Don't feed them bull crap about, oh, I'm going to give you six calls a day and then you can only muster two and they have to find out in the middle of it that you're still figuring out your lead flow. Listen. There are few things that will turn a salesperson sideways faster than a lack of certainty. That's a lack of certainty in opportunities. That's a lack of certainty in the product or the program or its ability to deliver to people.

32:39 And that's a lack of certainty in terms of leadership in general. All three of those things will pretty much melt a salesperson really, really quickly. So you got to be awfully careful about that. So... So we create this environment where we create some certainty. And generally speaking, I personally, I want to hear your take on this because I know I have my opinion. Personally, one thing that we get asked a lot is like, OK, well, what if I can only afford to bring a salesperson on part time? Should I do it or should I not do it? And for me personally, I don't love that. I don't.

33:19 And there are a couple of reasons why. Number one, I think that when it comes to sales, it's hard enough. And when you're not getting the reps and you're giving a salesperson one call, two calls, I hear this all the time. Oh, my gosh, my salesperson is not performing. How many calls are they getting? Oh, like, you know, like one a day. What? Well, you can't perform on one a day. What like what are we talking about here? So I feel like there's that it's lack of repetition. There's also lack of focus because more often than not, when you do that, this is now a side hustle and you're competing with somebody's other full time job or some other half, you know, part time job. Um, and so personally, I, I feel like I would rather not hire somebody at all period until I could afford to bring them on full time.

34:08 And we could talk about how to do that. But I don't know what, what is your, what's your take on that, man? Do you feel the same or do you disagree? I, no, I totally agree with you. And it's honestly going back to the relationship metaphor. You know, it's like, okay, imagine you're out there dating. And then all of a sudden on your end, you're like, oh, like we're in a committed relationship. And the other person goes, oh, no, I'm still in an open relationship with you. And as soon as you get emotionally vested and they're still out dating other people, like be prepared to have your heart broken. And it's the same way where, when, especially as it relates to sales, you have to be so all in, you have to be all in. I mean, we just did a training last week about owning your desk, right?

34:48 With one of our consulting clients with their whole sales team. Like you want CEOs of their desk. And if you've got somebody who's part-timing it, like if you guys ever had a part-time CEO, it doesn't work. No, I'm kind of, I'm kind of committed, but forget about it. And so there's, there's this element. It also, it totally dilutes your leverage. So, you know, I'm sure everyone's heard that, you know, higher, slow, fire, fast kind of concept. If you put them into a part-time position, what ends up happening, the reason that most people do that is they go, I've got a little bit of lead flow here. Come on board. I'll give you this thing if you can help me out. And so your positioning is totally bass backwards.

35:29 And so now guess what? If they're not enrolling, You're going to go, oh, the reality is I'm not really giving them enough leads. And you start to make all these justifications to keep them on. And then guess what? Now you have no leverage in the relationship. And you go, hey, I need you to convert at this percentage or I need you to bring in this many enrollments. They're going to go, yeah, but you're not giving me leads. And it's this tug of war. It makes it really, really have to have a two-way street. Yeah, I agree completely. That was my long answer. Yeah, no, everything you said is spot on. And I would just say this, one thing to just kind of put a loop on, or close a loop on this one in particular, is the way that we recommend doing this is actually bringing somebody on and initially you continue, this is another big mistake, we're weaving in some of the mistakes here as we talk about what to do.

36:15 One of the other big mistakes is, oh, I just hired salesperson, I have stopped taking calls altogether. Salesperson, here's all my calls. Don't do it. Huge mistake. So the way that we recommend doing it is you continue taking calls and you give some of the leads, preferably if you got leads that look the best, you take the best leads and you keep doing those deals and closing them. And you allow your salesperson to train and to get up to speed while taking a few calls. And you slowly but surely adjust the volume so that you throttle yourself down over time and you throttle your salesperson up over time.

36:56 And by doing that, you're not going to have a huge cavern in your revenue if you do this right. You're still in the mix. And God forbid, by the way, this person doesn't work out. It's not like you've now fully extricated yourself from the thing altogether and you got to try to jump back in the seat and, you know, get yourself warmed back up. So that's a key thing. One of the other things that I would just simply say is that relative to the environment, again, you know, certainty, tell people the truth about where things are at, paint an accurate picture of what the opportunity looks like. But in addition to that, make sure that, and we could do an entire call on this specifically.

37:36 Why do I want to keep calling it a call today? I'm in sales mode now. You can see my face. I guess that's what it is. Yeah, I know. I can. We'll have to do another episode on this specifically. But, you know, have SOPs baked out so that when you bring somebody in, it feels like they're, you know, it's not just. You've got your shit together. Right. Yeah. You didn't just randomly decide that you wanted to grab somebody and rope them in here. You know, have have some SOPs and some things prepared and ready. If you've got scripting, be ready for that. You know, set yourself up a calendar of how things are going to play out. Again, going back to that certainty, one of the best things that you can do is when somebody walks in the door to basically say, hey, listen, over the next, you know, two to four weeks, this is exactly how things are going to play out.

38:26 And week one, we're going to be doing this next week. We're going to be doing that, you know, so on and so forth. And you have little checkpoints and you also let them know, going back to the idea, uh, going back to the idea that, um, uh, that, uh, you, uh, uh, uh, going back to the idea that you want to make sure that you give, you know, the right expectations that everything's all buttoned up, you know, make absolutely certain that, that you have checkpoints where you can say, look, if we, you know, this is kind of what the milestone is that we need to hit. If this goes well, then we're going to move on to the next phase of the onboarding process. Okay.

39:07 Um, because that in the absence of that, if you're just pushing through and they don't actually have to hit any milestones, it's really hard to know if they're actually ready. Um, they're, you know, rites of passage that you kind of want to set up as you, as you, uh, go along. So touch on this, you know, you've got, you've got a saying, recruit, train, maintain, um, break that down just a little bit. We talked a little bit about recruiting, training, and then maintaining. Yeah, so there's something we used to say, an old sentiment, which was the way you bring people into your world is exactly how they're going to leave your world. And anyone who's ever worked somewhere and you left that job, you can attest to that, right?

39:51 And when we look at it from a sales standpoint, the way you recruit is going to trigger the quality and the caliber who's going to come in the front door. The way that you manage them and the way you train them up and the way... to them and the way you coach them and the way you feed them, they're going to reciprocate the same way. They're going to reflect that energy back as well as to your clients. And then as far as the maintain piece, if attrition is high, I mean, we've worked with a couple of clients, they're recruiting and bringing people on. Literally, they're doing onboarding every other week. Why? Yeah. Think about the maintain piece of the puzzle. If you've got good culture, if you bring people on in the right way, if you train them up effectively, if the opportunity is there for them, if they feel your heart and soul, like this goes back to, I keep using the relationship metaphor today.

40:40 Is it Valentine's Day? No. But in a healthy relationship, If you're happy and you're getting all your needs met, you don't have anybody that cheats in the relationship. And the same thing in a sales relationship, if they're happy, if the opportunity's there, if they're in a happy, loving relationship, they're not gonna go look elsewhere to get their needs met. So having... for all three of those buckets is paramount. If you really want to have like, and again, could you have salespeople that come on and enroll? Absolutely. But if you want like a bad-ass high performance team that crushes that you're not having to re recruit every single month, focus on those three core areas.

41:22 I love that. And I think one of the things too, as we talk about both training and maintaining are setting very specific standards. Too often, you guys, we walk into a consulting gig where the proper standards have not been set with a sales team. And there's an issue with performance. And now we literally have to recreate, we literally have to like, start from square one with brand new standards. And that's very difficult when you're trying to do that midstream. So just make sure that you've got really clear standards about what performance is supposed to look like, what's gonna happen when people don't hit their metrics. how you're going to coach them up and train them up.

42:04 Or if you've got, you know, people like Brooke and I or a program like Close Everyone, what they should be doing with their coaches or trainers to get coached up or trained up. Make sure that you have that ready to go and in place. And then lastly, I would just simply say that relative to environment, remember, people will always do more when they feel like they're a part of something. One of the biggest mistakes that you could possibly make with regard to your sales team is treating these people like they work for you. You are there to serve your sales team. Newsflash. So serve your sales team. Give them what they need. Provide them a quality environment. Get them ingrained in the mission and in the client results and in the results that are possible for them.

42:47 And you will... you'll create and cultivate something that very few people have because very few people and business owners do this right. So with that said, my man, This was dope. We are out of time for today, but we're going to dive in. We'll take this a little bit further with some of the SOPs and getting a little bit more specific on some of the things that we do. But for the purposes of today, this is your 101 guide to hiring a salesperson. Don't forget that you got to start by realizing, is this the right time? Is it not the right time? And from there... you know, take this episode, make sure that you put it into play when you go to hire your first salesperson.

43:30 And my brother, with all that said, thank you, man. Good stuff today. Thank you, dude. Great episode. Thank you for listening to this episode of the Coaching Equation podcast. Until next time, take care. Thank you for listening to this episode of The Coaching Equation. Please hit subscribe wherever you listen to your podcasts. And if you got value out of this episode, we would be so grateful if you would share it out with a friend and leave us a review on iTunes or your favorite platform. To learn more about Empire Partners or to inquire about working with Ryan and Brooke, please visit www.empirepartners.io forward slash go.