You Are Responsible For Making Your Team Better | Ep 959
23m 52s
The transcription discusses the challenges faced in a window replacement business, particularly focusing on training difficulties and high turnover rates among sales representatives. The conversation highlights the importance of effective training methods such as role-playing and replicating real-world scenarios to better prepare employees for their roles. Strategies for talent acquisition, training, and incentivizing employees in a door-to-door sales business are also explored, with an emphasis on setting up training environments that closely resemble actual sales situations. The text also touches upon the significance of building a network, attending conferences, and leveraging outreach methods to attract deals and grow a real estate development business. Additionally, advice is provided on starting small in real estate through wholesaling and gradually scaling up the business.
Transcription
5035 Words, 26809 Characters
because they have to have an appreciation for the craft as the sale on them is like how hard are
we selling them on this is a skill that you will use for the rest of your life and you're going to
have to get good at it here or somewhere else but you might as well get good at it here and get paid
to do it. Trab diggity dog, Trab City. All right, tell me about the business. All right, sounds good.
So, we are at about four million a year in revenue. Awesome. 20% net, residential window
replacement, so the homeowners and our biggest bottleneck as far as I see it is with our model,
so our primary customer acquisition method is door-to-door to two-part sales that are closer
model and it's a high-turn role like we know how to sell windows, we know how to do it well.
But getting reps higher trained and retained has been a huge challenge and so we can't just like
and there's kind of levels to that, right? There's getting people interested enough to say yes to
the job, there's getting them to stick past week one and then actually producing. Our biggest fall
off right now is literally just from showing up day one to making it at the end of week one,
where they just get in and realize, oh gosh, I can't hack this. Yeah, what do the top closers make?
16 to 20k a month. Yeah, okay, I think I make good money. Okay, so I want to give you a couple
frames on this and then we'll dive in. So frame number one is that this is a feature, not a bug,
it's the nature door-to-door. So instead of saying like, man, I think there's something wrong with
our business, like it might be just like we need to do way more of it. Like at the very most basic
level, like it could just be how do I do 10 times more of this and I deal with all the numbers I
currently have. That's like thing one. Thing two, it might also be an avatar selection issue. So to
pull back the thing that I was just talking about, these applications just like leads that you have
for a business, like I'm sure it's like we have to have at least this many windows or they have to
have a home that's valued above X or whatever, right? You look at certain neighborhoods when you
go door-to-door, right? Yep. Right, so the same degree is you might be, you might be knocking it
to give you a, you know, a one-to-one example. It's like, if you're going into the projects or
the hood, right, where home values are lower, the likelihood that they're going to buy a higher
ticket thing is lower, right? Sure. Right, and so you might still be attracting apps for SDR or,
you know, doorknockers, whatever, for the setters from figuratively the quote "low income" part of
the internet, right? And that doesn't actually have to do anything with income, but I'm just saying
just to give you like an analogy here. And so the question is what do the people who make it have
in common? Balls. Well, yeah, sure. But what we want to do, no, no, you're good, you're good.
What we want to do is look at, we want to look at what are the behaviors. So I look at demographics,
just like you would with a customer. What are the demographics that have higher
likelihoods of success? Is there age ranges, things like that, right? Number two, is there any kind of
past experiences that they had that make it more likely for them to succeed? The next is going to
be the behaviors, right? What did these people do, just like we'd have activation, now you're not in
a service business, well, you kind of are, but it's a little bit different. It's not like the
customer has to do something, right? But if you were in a business where a customer has to do
something, we'd say like, what are the behaviors that a really successful customer did? And then
we say, okay, we want to force that activation path for everyone. So what percentage of people who
are starting make it past week one? We have two small offices and it does vary per office. One of
them is significantly worse currently with this issue. But ultimately, I don't know. But that,
like, not a lot. And again, it's more, it's less of a like, they couldn't see results. And so they
fizzled out because they need to pay their bills because it is 100% commission. And it's, right
now, more of a, I don't get past day three because I realize once the rubber meets the road and I'm
on the doorstep by myself, I can't hack it. It's kind of worse. Yeah, I hear you. How much role
playing do you do with these guys before they get out there? So we've got to have the script
down. And we do, you know, we meet daily for an hour or two. And so that couple hours a day is...
Do you have like two makeshift doors that you have at your facility where they like knock
on it and open and there's nothing on the other side of it? We've got the office door and we
will either just not use a door or use that door. This is going to sound silly, but I am 100% right.
You want to approximate the conditions of the sale as closely as humanly possible in the training.
Something as simple as them not actually knocking on the door will have a very meaningful
difference in their ability to retain the information and actually deliver it in a comparable
setting. Okay. Yeah, we have definitely not focused on that. Right. So you have a training
issue. Like to me, this is a training issue. It's a training and expectations problem. So
obviously there's some element of like, who am I bringing in? That's going to be one component
of it. You know, if you look at 10 people, I'm sure right off the bat, you can probably be 50-50
on like, I can for sure tell you that these three guys aren't going to make it, right? But there's
some guys who are like, I'm not really sure. Well, it's like, let's just take out the guys who we
already know aren't going to make it. And then let's get the other 50% and try and approximate
the training. So what I would do is I would set up two or three free standing doors inside of your
facility. And the reason I would want to do that is because I want them to learn to run. I want
them to learn to hustle between doors because it's a huge difference in terms of their doors
knocked per day, right? Yeah. Right. So I want them to practice like they play. So you're going to
knock on the door, you're going to do it. We're going to hit the script. And if they mess it up,
we say, stop, step back, knock again, do it again. Because the thing is it's going to be so muscle
memory for them, like literally like their hands, they're going to knock the same number of times,
they're going to say the same words, the same spot. And that will approximate so much more
closely what they're going to experience there. I would also encourage you to have basically
the rowdy customer because it going mediocre, okay, is not what they're afraid of. That's not
why they're not, that's not why they're leaving. It's like, we have to have people slamming doors
in their face. We have to have people not liking them so that they can get used to that.
So repeat kind of what you were saying there. Like I got 90% of what you were saying,
but the missed a punchline. You're saying, yeah, yeah, no, you're good. Three free standing doors.
Yeah. They are the responses that get in the world. Yes. I want them to be okay. I want to
role play out what someone losing their shit on them is like, so that they stop having this big
fear around it. It's like, it's going to be okay. You're going to survive. If someone calls you
a rodent, guess what? You can knock on the next door, baby. The only person who knows how the last
door went is you, right? And so where it gets nasty from a training perspective is when someone gets
hot, someone gets on fire because everyone's been there, right? You're like, man, I feel like I can
close everybody today, right? They actually talk differently. They move differently. Their tonality
changes. And then what we want to do is be as granular as possible about what those tonality
changes, how their body moves, how they comport themselves to maximize likely to get more closes
in a row. But this to me is like, thing one is you should absolutely set this training. Like,
this is like a tomorrow thing. Like, set the three free standing doors up so they can practice one
knocking on doors and also quickly transitioning between doors. Thing one. And that way they can
also have a bad door, good door, bad door and still know that, hey, I'm going to get one out of 20
doors who opens. I'm going to get, I'm going to get a set, right? And we have to set expectations
of like, listen, we need you to be doing 10 doors an hour or whatever, you know, whatever your
numbers are, right? It depends on how far apart the doors are or whatever. But like, we should set
these number of doors knocked per hour goals so that we can just, they have to look at it as a
numbers game. Yeah, cool. Yeah, I agree that it's, I mean, there's levels of the, that it's a training
issue. You know, there's the week one training issue. Well, it's for sure, because one of them is
doing way better than the other. So we know one of the trainers is already doing way better than
the other location, right? Between the two that you got right now? Right. So already there's a
discrepancy. So we know that like, if the bad location was doing as well as the good location,
we already know that's 100% possible because it's already happening, right? But I'll bet you
both could lift. And I also think part of this is, do you have the ASQ sales, the Closure Handbook?
Yeah, I would have them read the, what it's like to be the top 1% and what is selling those two parts
of the Closure Handbook. And I would use that to set the frame for what this experience is going
to be like for them. And what is selling? Because they have to have an appreciation for the craft.
And I think that if they, if like, again, part of this is just going to be the sale,
it's the sale on them. It's like, how hard are we selling them on, this is a skill that you
will use for the rest of your life. And you're going to have to get good at it here or somewhere
else, but you might as well get good at it here and get paid to do it. Well, so for me, the selling
is like, if you sell, if you sell with the correct messaging, it will attract the right prospect.
So you've probably heard of the Shackleton ad. Have you heard of that? So this was,
this was the ad that he ran that was like, whether it was him or not, it's become lore.
So the ad said, men wanted for hazardous journey, small wages, bitter cold, long months of complete
darkness, constant danger, safe return, doubtful honor and recognition in case of success.
That was the ad. And he was overwhelmed with people who were into it. And so it's like, we want to,
we want to state the facts and tell the truth. And the truth is very compelling,
which is that this will be a skill you will learn for the rest of your life.
And it will take you 30 days. If you make it 30 days, you will have an experience that you will
remember forever. Any person who's ever done door to door will tell you about their experience
doing door to door. It shapes you, right? And so we need to paint that picture truthfully to them,
but truthfully explain why it's in their best interest to stick it out.
And we want to have as many reward cycles as possible. So are there ways that we can give
a scoreboard that are like, I want somebody who gets an award for most doors not most doors open,
like we want other ways of giving them recognition early and fast so that they could see that they're
at least on the right track, right? So if I were to, if I were to zoom all the way out,
thing one is going to be, I want the types of people who have higher likelihoods of succeeding
in this based on demographics, past experience and the behaviors that demonstrate in the
application process. Thing one, this will be online too. So if you're like, I'm not writing
fast, that's you're good. Yeah. Yeah. Thing two is that I want the training environment to approximate
reality as closely seemingly possible. I want to have multiple doors. I want them to knock every
time. No one just says the script. You knock every time because that's how you do it in the
real world. Thing three, as soon as they do begin, I want you have multiple ways for them to win
that are ideally approximations or on the way to them getting their first set or multiple sets.
I want to award them for knocking the most doors. I want to award them for having the most doors
open. I want to award them for the biggest cuss out that they get, right? I want to make this
fun. I want to take the pressure away. Just make it a game. Yeah. Game of five. Yeah. Okay.
We do that and you have leaderboards just for the setters beyond just sets. I want to have some
of the other metrics that are there. Just closes is one thing, but I want to have who did the most
dials. I want to say who did the most pickups, right? Who had the most calls that lasted
past two minutes, right? Same idea. Yeah. Cool. Love it. Is there anything that you feel is worth
mentioning as far as just like the overall talent acquisition funnel or this is going to trump that
regardless of where and how we're bringing people in? I mean, we've talked about the how.
Yeah. Doing more. I mean, doing more in general, this is kind of the feature bug thing of like,
well, what does it cost you to get an activated rep? Are you willing to spend more for that? If so,
spend more so you get more of them. Like, if we change nothing, it would still grow the business
if we just had more reps. Like, if we change nothing, if we change these three things and
spend more, it'll be double, double. Yeah. I guess I was more asking like, because right now,
yeah, 99% come from just like an indeed listing. And obviously changing what that indeed listing
looks like and sounds like can obviously change who we're attracting. Totally.
Well, I think the copy that I just kind of outlined, again, state the facts and tell the truth.
But I would just try and make it look like a hardcore life opportunity, which is what it is.
Like, you're not selling Windows. You're selling a skill that they're going to learn
and get paid to do, which I think is pretty compelling. For sure. I would also strongly
encourage, because almost every door-to-door team that's very big has a three-step process for the
career progression. Step one is learn how to sell. Step two is learn how to get one person to sell
that you taught. Step three is recruit a team. So I think that you probably are missing step two
and three for your team. If 99% of your dudes are coming from ads, you're missing out on the
entire referral component of them bringing their friends and getting an override on teaching their
friend and then building a team. For sure. Yeah. Right now, we're at a spot where we need this
base level of momentum to even do two and three, but yes. And I've recently made some changes there
that makes it compelling towards like, not just to, oh, yeah, I can make a little bit extra with
bringing a friend in and be more sticky, but I can make a side hustle just bringing my friends in,
even if I don't sell. Yes. It's a career path. Yeah. It's a recruiter. It's another set. Just
selling a different opportunity. Yep. Yeah. That's step one, two, three, and then obviously do more,
the unspoken fourth. Rock and roll. Appreciate you, man. All right. Talk soon. Bye-bye.
Okay. I have a screensaver on my screen, so I can't see the chat. All right. Here we go. We're
back. All right. So Richard Ferris. Hermosi, I have a real estate development business. We
do value add deals. How do I apply your principles from $100 million series
to this business? Okay. You're scaling ACQ, which is private equity is very similar to my opinion.
Yeah. So, okay. So if you're in the development business, do you see your leads as the deals,
reduce your leads as the investors? So maybe if you guys can scroll down, we'll be able to see
Richard's answer. He's here. Richard, where are you at? Give me an answer here, man.
You see both as leads. All right. So we're on right now, but yeah, do you see,
which one are you, are you not getting leads for? Use your own capital. Okay. So you really want
more deals then. Okay. So I guess from the development perspective, you're looking at
tear downs and or land. Okay. Yeah. So I mean, this is going to be just an advertising thing
straight up. It's like, all right. So can I build a brand around this? So this is going to be all
this book. It's going to be all blue book, right? Yeah. Land and conversations. So I would be looking
at me. Hmm. Things is so targeted. I would probably be using an outreach method, and then
having a base level of content. So I wouldn't expect that content was going to bring me like
tons and because you're probably so specialized because it's, you know, has to be certain size,
certain area, all that kind of stuff. I would be making sufficient content that people would know
that like, I'm legit and I do this for a living. But outreach would be my primary method of trying
to attract deals. And as silly as this may sound, kind of like I was saying earlier with Sharon in
the, in the real estate industry, like he did 260 something events, like in industries where it's
super small and very aggregate at the top, the conference or shooting them in the barrel method
is one of the most effective ways of doing it. Like if I had to like start over tomorrow in
the industry, I would be at every one of these conferences and I'd be meeting every person that
I possibly could there because it's not the person you meet. It's the person that person
introduced you to. Like that's the, that's the game, right? And so that's kind of like an investment
that I would be looking at in terms of increasing number of conferences that I would attend. I'd
be like, can I do one a week? And then outbound and follow up would be the next thing, but it's
going to take a lot of violence for this. But once you have, you know, a few good deals and like,
I'm sure, I mean, if this is the main business that you do, you having a few good big wins will
attract more attention and more capital, obviously. But a lot of the deal stuff is like building out
the broker network. Like that's what we have in our, because we do a lot of real estate,
we just have a network of brokers that we've done a lot of deals with. And so over time, we've just,
you know, it's a long business, right? And so it's like for the last, like we've been focused on,
you know, one market, particularly for like six years. And now like most of the brokers come to
us with all their off market deals first, because they know we can close. And so some of that takes
time, but it's also like kind of how it works. So I know that was a little bit less of like,
here's let me tell you this one secret, but I think you already knew there wasn't going to be a
secret method. And so yeah, that's the deal. And I will not respond to spammers. We do not negotiate
with spammers in the chat. That is our, that's right. That's right, Duke. That's right. We do not.
All right. Senado Sinani, Alex, I'm from Albania. My question is, in real, Jesus,
here we go again. Can I grow the business with little connections and no big capital?
Yeah, you just start wholesaling. I mean, yeah, that's what you do. You get, you get deals under
contract for less than their worth and sell them to people who are willing to spend more,
you make the difference. That's the zero down, zero capital play when you're in real estate.
Then you build enough capital that you start taking those deals down and then you just,
you work your way up the, from minnow to whale. Just takes time. All right. Prince Gemini,
I have a janitorial business. What kind of lead magnet my ideal avatar? Need help attracting
and nurturing clients? Appreciate it. Well, dude, if you're in the janitorial business,
it's going to be commercial, you know, commercial building owners, right? And so lead magnets there
are, I mean, it's going to depend on the size of the buildings that you're looking at. If you're
looking at smaller buildings that you're doing, you're really just looking at business owners,
probably. I would imagine like the, the first and most likely path would probably be a Google
PPC campaign. So pay per click campaign on anyone that's searching that in your local area. That
would be like the fastest first method of getting leads. They'll be the most expensive, but they'll
be the most qualified. All right. So that's kind of like thing one thing too. In that space is I
would probably try to think about, I mean, door knocking would work. Okay. It depends on the size
of the building again. So I don't have as much, like if you have smaller buildings, door knocking
work, if they're bigger building, then it's going to be outreach to building managers,
which is going to work better off of LinkedIn outbound strategy. So I'd be looking at building
managers who are actually, who are the decision maker for, for those services, and I'll be doing
outbound on LinkedIn. There was a business that I looked at, not that long ago that had, they went
for whales and they only were talking to building managers. They did it all exclusively on LinkedIn.
So there's two strategies that I would do. And in terms of lead magnet, I think the lead magnet
actually matters less for like this type of business. It would probably be more like, what
is my offer rather than what is my lead magnet? So I'd be focused more on like, what's my more
compelling way to pull cash forward, which might be like, I get paid quarterly and I get paid in
advance. So that'll be one of the like ways that I would pull cash forward and decrease churn.
But in those businesses, churn is almost nothing. So it is definitely the acquisition game
of getting customers. David Kisley. I'm a pro viable player. I have 150,000 followers across
platforms. Any tips for monetizing my audience? Yes, I have tips. So many tips. Many, many tips.
The frosted, the most frosted of tips. Right now only taking one off brand deals.
Well, dude, a couple of things. So I think one of the things is hard for a lot of kind of like
celebrity or sports people is understanding what business they're really in. So if you want to be
like, basically you are a media company. Like fundamentally, what are pro sports and sports
in general? They're entertainment. That's what they are. Right? So they entertain people. What
is the point of entertainment to get people to continue to watch? That is what the point of
entertainment is. And so really good entertainment gets lots of people to keep watching. That's
what good entertainment is. By the way, that's what the news is too. Crazy. Anyways, so if that's
the business that you're in, you need to make the decision. Okay. So first off, you're in the media
business more than, until you are a performer, you perform a specific skill, people watch you and
that's how the game works. Okay. Now, from there, you kind of have two paths. Path one is you keep
going in the entertainment direction, which you can do by just showing more and more clips of you
playing, you spiking and doing all sorts of stuff and probably interweaving stuff about you, which
will then kind of build some depth to the audience rather than you just being some trick shot guy.
Right? That's path one. And the primary way that you're probably going to monetize is the way
you currently are, which is that you're going to have to do outbound via sponsorships. But I see
that as relatively limited. The alternative path is to become more of an education business. And
so I'll give you a shout out to Trevor Bauer. He was, if you don't know who he is, he was one of
the best pitchers of all time and had a really unfortunate situation that came up where a girl
lied and whatever, I don't want to get into it. But, and I'm saying that because she came out later
in situ. But it ruined his career and he basically wasn't allowed to play pro anymore. So what did
he do? He couldn't, he couldn't play pro anymore. And so he had to find another way to monetize.
And so one is he shows people how to pitch. So I think you showing people how to do volleyball
stuff and do it the way that you do it is a really good one. So it's like, can we develop an app or
training program that you could sell digitally to show people how to jump higher, spike more,
run faster, the workouts associated with volleyball, all that stuff would totally work.
The second is that you can sell kind of like high, like it depends on how much clout you have in the
space, but like you signing balls, you signing shorts, you signing shirts or having merch associated
with a brand that maybe it's like, you know, high level spike or maybe you're a serving specialist,
whatever your thing is, right? I would have training around that and I would have merch around
that. Now when you do that, you kind of transition more into an educator and less of a entertainer.
But from a monetization perspective, I would be strongly looking at that. Now door three is that
you just find a company that you really like a lot and see if you can negotiate a deal where you
can get a percentage of the company from an equity perspective and maybe even a tiny slice of royalty
based on the traffic that you send where you become a brand spokesperson and then you hope that
that business eventually exits and whatnot and you just focus on making content and playing.
So sponsorships is going to be more passive. Obviously you just have to sell and then keep
making content. When you become an educator, you have to do more work because you have delivery.
Now you could just sell pure digital. That would make you less money, but it would be less work.
If you sold digital and then also services in terms of you looking at people spiking,
giving them feedback that's like basically a personal trading business that's focused on volleyball.
So that works for any kind of creator that's kind of in any of those niches,
but those are kind of the paths that I would be looking at and all those are different ways
so you can monetize. But if you guys dug this, it helps the team know that we'll keep doing this
stuff. You guys rock. This was a ton of fun. I love doing this stuff. This is the kind of
content I enjoy making because I could literally do this all day because I like business and if
you like business, then you will like this stuff too. All right, keeping amazing. Yeah,
I'll see you guys on the next stream. Rock and roll.
Podcast Summary
Key Points:
Discussion on training challenges and high turnover in a window replacement business.
Emphasis on training methods like role-playing and replicating real-world scenarios.
Strategies for talent acquisition, training, and incentivizing employees in a door-to-door sales business.
Summary:
The transcription discusses the challenges faced in a window replacement business, particularly focusing on training difficulties and high turnover rates among sales representatives. The conversation highlights the importance of effective training methods such as role-playing and replicating real-world scenarios to better prepare employees for their roles. Strategies for talent acquisition, training, and incentivizing employees in a door-to-door sales business are also explored, with an emphasis on setting up training environments that closely resemble actual sales situations.
The text also touches upon the significance of building a network, attending conferences, and leveraging outreach methods to attract deals and grow a real estate development business. Additionally, advice is provided on starting small in real estate through wholesaling and gradually scaling up the business.
FAQs
Set up training environments that closely resemble real-life conditions, provide role-playing opportunities, and establish recognition systems for achievements.
Focus on building a brand through targeted outreach methods, attend industry conferences to network, and gradually expand your broker network.
Start by wholesaling deals, then reinvest profits to gradually scale up from zero capital to acquiring deals independently.
Implement training with multiple practice doors, emphasize consistent door-knocking, and provide recognition for various achievements.
Consider offering a lead magnet tailored to your ideal customer avatar to attract more prospects.
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