Episode 063: Case Study – The System That Revealed Millions in Missed Deals with Sage

So on top of what you just said right there, when looking at the certain KPIs, if you're not looking at a scorecard or anything like that, because Brandon at this time was actually above minimum expectations with the deals he had, but had an offer per deal ratio that was not acceptable or trending in the wrong direction. So if you're not at least tracking that you might think, Oh, this dude's on fire. He's doing great. And then three weeks later, now you're wondering where all his deals are at. Are you a driven real estate investor? Tired of inconsistent deal flow and ready to scale your business. I'm Tiffany. Hi, and I'm Josh. Hi. And this is the results driven podcast where we share proven strategies to build systems, master sales, grow your team, and create a self-sustaining business with predictable income. Whether you're a one person operation or building a team, our mission is to give you the tools, support, and mindset shifts you need to succeed. Let's dive in. All right. We've got Sage back with us today. Our sales manager here at Heals Homes, the guy who's in the trenches every day with our closers, watching the numbers like a hawk and making sure the team's firing on all cylinders. In this episode, we're going to break down a real case study from inside our own acquisitions team. One of our closers had an offers to contract ratio that was off. And instead of guessing at the problem, we use gapology and our sales scorecard to pinpoint exactly where things were breaking down. Then Sage stepped in with the right coaching and training, and the results came fast and big. You'll hear exactly what we saw, what we changed, and how we turned that performance around so it stuck. If you've ever wondered how to catch a sales issue early and fix it the right way, this is the playbook. Let's dive in. All right, Sage. Before we dive in, what I want to do is we're going to talk about one of our closers today and how one of the metrics on the scorecard was off and the process we go about to overcome it. But I do want to set the stage first on gapology and what is it. So I'm going to give a high level overview if that's cool. So gapology is a management framework that we use in our office and we use it to, it's a management framework used across all of our companies. And if anyone on here is like afraid of conflict when it comes to leading people, I think that this really helps alleviate conflict. Do you agree? Yes. Yeah. It helps you have tough conversations and it's really about just driving the company forward and it puts responsibility on both parties, both the leader and the employee and more on the leader, in my opinion, which is good. So there's three boxes and I'm just going to give a quick summary. There's three types of gaps. There's the knowledge gap, the importance gap and the action gap. And as the leader, it's important that we check every box before it's the employee's problem. And so under knowledge, that's the first box, right? So if something in performance is off, the first thing is, well, do they even know how to do it, right? And that's on us to make sure they know how to do it. So it's like, did I put the right person in the seat? Did I onboard him properly and do I train them properly? For today's case study, the answer is yes. We've checked all those boxes. This individual has been with us for years. We have the right person in the seat. We've onboarded him. He's been a high performer. We train him every day. The second box is the importance box, which is, did we set the priority? Does he understand that it's a priority? Are we setting clear expectations and are we communicating effectively so that they understand and then take action? The third box is action of, are we building the culture? And yes, I believe we have a great culture. So in this case study today, that is not the issue. We have, for anyone that comes out to Shadow Day or attends our two-day workshop, I think one of the biggest takeaways you'll take from our office is culture. We have high energy. We embrace in developing people. We don't shun down on mistakes, all that kind of stuff. Then it's accountability and gaining commitment. So we want to gain their commitment, get their buy-in to what we're about to do next, and then really hold them accountable. Sometimes people say, oh, go do this, but then they don't get their buy-in and they don't ask them how they want to be held accountable. And then the leader doesn't even follow up with accountability. So today we're going to walk through a case study of how we leverage this framework along with another framework on fixing a performance issue. And so we're not going to go over the whole scorecard today, but the scorecard, what's really important to understand is that our scorecard follows along with our check the box sales process, right? And so when we have a sales process from left to right, right? From the beginning of the call to the end, we have a framework that we use. And so when we do a sales call audit, they have to check every box and that's how you performance manage folks. So we know what went wrong in the call. If you're just winging sales calls, are you kind of following a script and kinda not, then it's really hard to performance manage someone against any level of process. And so our scorecard metrics match that process. And one of the core ones of those metrics is offers to deal. So in our company, one of every two offers is a deal on average. And so if someone's creeping up above that, Sage knows immediately, it turns red on our scorecard and it identifies what we call a red flag indicator. And then we dive in and we follow a process to figure out how do we fix this gap before it gets out of control? So walk me through what you saw from one of our closers, and then let's talk through how we close that gap really fast and what it resulted in. So around the same time I recognize this in the scorecard is also when that team member brought up to me that their performance is shifting and they can tell and they could feel it. Okay. So that's, and we can say the name is cool. That's important to bring that up. Just so you guys know real quick, our closers are Connor, Brandon, and then we have a few follow-up specialists. So they're both high performers. They've been with us for years. Um, and we're talking about Brandon specific. And I think it's really awesome how Brandon also came our way to close this gap in the results. So that way you don't have to keep saying, you know, gotcha. Yeah, that makes sense. So, um, with Brandon, you know, I, we reviewed the scorecard every single day. So what I did notice is that reviewed in the huddle, right? It's in the huddle. And then as the team lead, I'm also reviewing it on a consistent basis. That's, I mean, that's how I make my decisions. That's how I know how to handle one-on-ones is, I mean, that's the, where it all comes from. The main thing I look at is that offer per deal. I noticed that Brandon was sort of creeping up to that 3.0 mark, that 3.0 mark, once it hits above that, I mean, it's going to snowball out of control. So we want to get ahead of that sooner than later. So you're not waiting for it to like get to one of six or no, no, you know, that something's off right away, right away. And that's why the accountability piece, typically this can be fixed within a week. Usually within a week, you can get your offer per deal up. As long as you just get three to four deals in that week. So let's walk through the process. You saw on the scorecard, we have a color code on the scorecard. So up at the top left, there's a benchmark. A number. So for offers to deals, it's probably two on ours. I assume. Yeah, we want to be one of every two. Once it gets to like 2.5, it turns red. Okay. So, yeah. So in the formula for our scorecard, it says, Hey, if someone gets to over two and a half offers to a deal, the cell itself turns red, we call that a red flag indicator. So it draws our attention to the number that needs to get fixed. We follow a six step KPI framework to figure out, okay, what is going on that this number is off. So let's walk through that. Step one in the six step process is first just identifying that it's red flag. Our scorecard said that. What's the second step? So are you talking about like in the scorecard? What would I look at next? So we identify this red flag, right? So we're going to go in and we're going to do a CRM audit. So we're going to go, okay. So he obviously has an issue with offers and it was during a particular time. So we're going to go to the CRM and pull any offers that was not accepted during this time period. And then from there, we are going to diagnose, we're going to do call audits. So that's step three. So we're going to review the calls. So Sage, I'm assuming went back and said, okay, what's happening on these calls that his offers per deal is going up. Right. Specifically in this, in this part of the process, it's the offer calls that we're looking at. Yep. So he pulls offer calls. He diagnosed and then step four is he's going to diagnose what the problem is as he's listening to these calls. And so sometimes, you know, we've had examples where other closers, it's like they skyrocketed offers per deal. And then all of a sudden they might've choked on one specific type of objection. So like, sometimes you'll have a closer that just falls off the process on someone that says, let me think about it. And so, or maybe it's the price. And so that's the training we got to go do. But what happened in this scenario that you saw? So in this scenario, we came across two things. So the first thing we found, cause of course I was directed right into the offer calls. Uh, we're listening to offers and we found, Hey, the objection handling really needed some work. And not necessarily, I think it was just a good mix. I would say it was the specific. Resistance sellers where they didn't seem like there was a lot of rapport either. And that's what I'll get to the second piece. So on top of it, feeling like the seller didn't have a lot of rapport with you. There was no trust in this, in Brandon. There was a lot of not confidence in the way Brandon was presenting himself. There was a lot of things that I found in this first portion that I thought we could help out with Brandon significantly. I'll talk about that in a little bit, but specifically it was heavy resistance sellers, not a lot of rapport, objection handling, very poor. The next thing that I found is due to, there was not a lot of rapport. I'm like, man, Brandon, it sounds like these people don't really like you. It sounds like these people are not wanting to talk to you. What that tells me is that in the process call, maybe we didn't build enough rapport. Maybe we didn't set expectations and break down a wall. Maybe we missed a box. So that's when we started pulling the process calls and in the process calls, we're checking those boxes. We found out that in motivation, in resistant sellers, there was very poor performance in that section. Okay. Very poor. So then walk me through, you guys identified that. I'm assuming, did you communicate this through a one-on-one? Yes. Okay. So we have, we do one-on-ones. Yeah. No, I'm just trying to, I want to make sure that the crowd understands the process. So we're in a one-on-one. We, he's already done the due diligence of listening to the calls, diagnosing the problem, and now he's going to address it with Brandon in our one-on-one process, and then I'm assuming then from there, the next step is you developed a training plan. Hey man, here's how we're going to overcome this. Did you set like expectations, a timeline? Yes. So there were some things that needed to be addressed immediately. So for example, the motivation part, there is very few excuses that would be acceptable on our team for somebody who's been doing this for this long to really just drop the ball and the motivation when someone gets resistant, we deal with these people very often, like it's very common to have these types of conversations. So that immediately, like that next process call I reviewed that had to change and what that change was is that we needed to make sure that if there's a heavy resistance seller, we're doing our proper framework around the, am I going for no here? Am I using tactical empathy and all of those things. And then also making sure that we're asking those three impact questions on top of our situation questions per our process in order to make sure we're getting enough motivation out. Okay. So on top of addressing resistance and diving deeper into motivation that had to happen immediately. Okay. So then how did you develop like what you are going to do training him over the time period that you expected him to change it? So I asked, I specifically asked Brandon in this case, let's say, is there anything specific that you don't know about this? Cause like I said, when it comes to motivation, we've been doing this for so long. My expectation is that this should not be an issue at all whatsoever. I wanted him to tell me if there was an issue with it. He told me that there was nothing. He understood how motivation worked. He understood what to ask, when to ask that he needs to make sure he dives deep and that whenever he's facing resistance in the motivation section to remember that he can go for no, he can continue to use tactical empathy. So he said that he didn't need any specific training around that. And in the next process call, that actually was true. He did much better with that. Okay. So I would say just some feedback is I always compare everything back to sports. So everyone knows that. So like Michael Jordan and all these elite athletes, they're going to fall off the process. It's human nature. Like they've been in the game for 20 years. That doesn't mean they're going to have a really bad game and miss free throws, but that doesn't mean that every day before the next game, they're not going to practice that every day to build muscle memory and build it back up. So regardless, if he knows how to do it, it would be a quick five, 10 minute thing in the morning. I'm going to throw this at you. I want to make sure that you're ready for the objections. Muscle memory, muscle memory. So we already role play every day. Yeah. Yeah. So that's specific to his issue. Not everyone else's issue, if that makes sense. So I would throw him like, Hey, five minutes, man, we're going to do this. So that way you get used to it for the phone call sake, because you might be covering something else on your training for the team that week, if that makes sense. So anyways, when you have that one-on-one now it's about like, okay. It's an importance gap is what I'm hearing. Like he knows how to do it. He wasn't making it a priority. It wasn't necessarily that it was actually a knowledge gap. You just told me that he said he knew how to do it, which is why we need to see. Oh, for the motivation. The motivation portion was the secondary coaching point we found. There was actually like the first portion about the objection handling and the PR and the offer call, like after the offer, that was actually where the big coaching and the following up. And actually due to this, Josh and I now have a different SOP when handling potential objections at the end with that. I don't want to go too deep into that, but due to just, I don't want to sound like I'm coming at Brandon at all or anything like this, but Brandon came off very not confident whenever facing these objections at the end of the offer call. There was, and to me face value that came off as there was a lack of knowledge and how to handle this, which is a drop the ball on my part. However, when role-playing he was approaching it the right way, but in the live on the field, in the call, the performance would drop so significantly. Why do you think that is? Uh, well, it was confidence in himself for whatever reason. I don't want to dive too deep into it, but whenever that situation happened at the end of the offer call, serious lack of confidence in himself. Yeah. So then that just takes reps typically. So we had specific reps that I worked on them individually with, but I mean, that all makes sense because like, that's how far we had to take it for the accountability to get into place, but it also kept brought to the knowledge. And this also helped the rest of the team. And we learned that, Hey, we may not have dove deep enough into our confidence, like into our, our knowledge behind objection handling. And then we just dove really deep into it. We role played significantly with it. I had Brandon go and seek outside of work and this was accountable. I asked him if it was okay that I held like, this was okay. I asked you to do this outside of work that he needed to during his breaks outside of work. He needed to now familiarize himself more in depth with certain situations when it came to objections that people had, if sellers were objecting because they wanted, you know, holdbacks or probates, or maybe they're going through foreclosure. Brandon had to educate himself on all of these items so that he could better be a more, for lack of a better term, a better expert in the field. So I know we cover some of that in onboarding and he's been here for a long time. So do you think that maybe. Rebrushing on some of that throughout time. So it helped him. I think when we did it recently, I think that helped him significantly. He sounds a heck of a lot. I mean, I don't know about you, but if you, if you hear calls from him, maybe last year compared to him now, uh, he is much more confident and now that he's super confident is because he's more of an expert in his field. He's more knowledgeable on the situations. I noticed that in the calls, it starts to break down whenever. Weird situations happen. Remember not every call is going to go exactly the way you want it to go. And that's where it would break down for him. He does great job when following the process to a T following the script, sellers don't take you off, but when resistance was hitting him in motivation, when resistance was hitting him at the end of the offer call, that's where it really fell apart. Yep. And so confidence comes from lack of reps, in my opinion, and everyone, whether it's sales, it's sports, you know, talking to girls, talking to guys, like, it's like, you're uncomfortable with something that's newer to you. And so even if you've done it for a long time, but maybe you didn't have to do it for a week because that week no seller gave you a certain objection and then you got to get it the next week, heavy, like it's normal to feel appalled process. But the biggest thing is muscle memory reps build muscle memory. And so that's why I had mentioned to Sage, Hey, every morning, like let's get him comfortable, get him comfortable with the talk track. So it builds his confidence and he gets out the mistakes in the morning. So that way, when he gets on the calls, he's already repeated them over and over. Some things that we also helped out with that as well. When it came to like role play, I would sit with him. I still actually do. I did this with him the other day. For some of these very resistant sellers, or maybe the offers way too off, or if he feels he's not confident, him and I will sit down and we'll put that offer recap together. We'll put that all together. He'll hear me. I'll read it to him in the way that I think it should be presented. He will practice it that way as well. So like role-playing that, I mean, that's super crud, like critical, I think, before even going in to make that offer, because if he's more confident, I think he performs a heck of a lot better. Yeah. This is why I think it's crazy that people teach one call closes. I mean, there's like a million reasons why I can tell you that they're not good for you. But, um, anyways, I'm not going to go down that rabbit hole. So let's just recap. So we, we identified a red flag, so we saw it was offers to deal. So we went back to the CRM. We pulled all the offers that didn't get accepted. Step three, we did call it. It's on them. Step four, we diagnosed what the problem was on that. We created a level of training with him and then we executed it. Now the fun part of this one specifically, because this is why I really, really just want to like push that leadership is the key because I have students that come in and they're like, oh, this person sucks. I fired him. And it's like, no, you might suck as a leader right now. We need to fix that. Because most people might've just looked at that and let go of Brandon. If he screwed up some type of opportunity, which I think, you know, it is what it is part of the game. And instead it's like, Hey, we come your way. We're going to get you the reps. We're going to fix the problem. The KPIs told us the gap. We know where to focus. We're not just like, Hey, you got to get your performance up. We're like, no, your performance is lacking in this one specific thing. And once it was fixed, what was the result? For, he ended up closing and top tier for quarter two, uh, 300 over 300,000. Yep. And he ended up beating Connor out. So, yeah, so that was huge. And it was really awesome to see that. And a lot of work on, on Brandon's part to really prioritize bettering himself. And again, a learning from my perspective too, is it took me a while to really find out where the gap was, like it was an, it was a, just a base knowledge and confidence and an expert in his field gap. Once we educated more on being an expert in your field, like knowing more about real estate and being more confident, man, he just sounds so much better on the farm. So now what we're working on is our tonality. Yep. Yeah. So I really encourage everyone in your onboarding, right? Your onboarding should be structured videos and assessments, and you really want to give them a background of real estate and then what we call the ideal customer profile. So if someone is going through probate or divorce or debt, whatever the situation is, they need to be, you know, knowledgeable to get started in the role as they develop in the role. We need to continue to put resources in front of them so that they understand deeply our local probate process more deeply, the divorce process, but like that comes with time and this is where we put development plans in place. But at the end of the day, it does need to be a crash course in their onboarding, which is why Brandon has been with us and still been successful for years at this point. But that doesn't mean that we're not going to fall off the process or maybe something got thrown at us that's a little bit more advanced or tricky or whatever. And it's our job as leaders to close the gap. And it's also our job to have tools like scorecards in place and things like gapology to manage people by and onboarding things to set someone up for success. It's our job to do that. Yeah. Because so on top of what you just said right there, when looking at the certain KPIs, if you're not looking at a scorecard or anything like that, because Brandon at this time was actually above minimum expectations with the deals he had, but had an offer per deal ratio that was not acceptable or trending in the wrong direction. So if you're not at least tracking that, you might think, oh, this dude's on fire. He's doing great. And then three weeks later, now you're wondering where all his deals are at. All right. Well, thanks for coming on Sage. I'm going to wrap this up and that's guys how we spot gaps, fix it fast and get our closers offers to contract numbers climbing again. This is the kind of thing we do every single day. Watch the scorecard, catch the problem early, coach it the right way and get results that stick. If you want to build an acquisitions team that runs like this, where you know exactly what to track, how to spot issues and how to coach a rep. So they perform at a high level. You've got to check out the ultimate acquisitions team building guide. It's free. It took me six months to build for you all. It's the exact playbook we use to hire, train and manage an acquisitions team that closes hundreds of contracts without me or Sage taking every call ourselves. The links in the show notes. So grab your copy and start building a team that can perform at this level on their own so that you can finally gain some time back. See on the next one. This episode has come to an end, but your journey continues. Subscribe to the podcast so you never miss an episode. If you want direct help from us, join our free community by visiting the resultsdrivenpodcast.com. That's the resultsdrivenpodcast.com. We'll see you next time on the Results Driven Podcast. We'll see you next time on the Results Driven Podcast.