If you want to have a consistent, world-class sales team, the process has to always go above the player.
No one is above the process.
And I do think that 95, maybe 98 of sales teams have no idea how sales training, how sales culture, how any of this stuff works.
They just hire a bunch of people, see who closes deals, fire the rest.
And so then you just have a bunch of mercenaries who work for you. but there is no culture.
There is no team and it's every man for himself.
And that is what creates this volatility in sales.
And some guy says something and he closes a deal and the other guy's like I'm going to try that now.
And there's no consistency across the board.
And that also gets you in trouble long-term, because they start promising things and making deals that you can't cash.
Hey Alex.
What's up?
My name is Francis Aguilo.
I am a real estate wholesaler.
Okay.
Um, We're currently averaging about $450,000 a month in revenue.
I would like to be at a million.
That's your spread?
That's what you're making?
Or that's like house volume?
That's gross.
Okay.
So what's your spread on that?
What's your pay come on that?
So we're at 40%.
So right around 250, 240.
Interesting.
Weird.
That's high.
What are you wholesaling, all right.
So here's the um.
He's like he's heard of brothels, so imagine a brothel, but now it's all midgets.
Okay, keep going, you're good.
Okay, but here's the challenge.
Uh, we're running, so we're currently at 450 average.
Yeah, we've had 700k months this year already.
Okay, The challenge is, every time we get to those numbers and I try to Hey, you know what?
It's time to ramp up.
Uh, for some reason we tend to tank to, you know, 200 to 50.
Okay.
Um, I'm sick.
I I have cause to believe it's the sales team, and just you know they have those power months where everyone you know takes home 20, 30 grand.
Uh, and then the month after it's like, are they pure commission or is it split?
So there is a base salary.
Okay.
What's the split between commission and base?
So they're at 42 base per annum and then 10% of the assignment fees.
You have an ops issue, which is sales ops.
And so it's like this is going to be much more weedy in terms of like tactics to answer this question.
But it's like there's probably like 20 things that you need to be doing and you're probably doing like 13 of them.
And the other seven are going to be the thing that make the difference in creating the consistency of the team.
That's at the service level, at the, at the, at the deep root of this is who's the leader of the sales team?
I do have a sales manager.
Okay.
So he or she is the problem because like sales at the end of the day is a culture game.
Well, everything's a culture game, but like sales, you can feel it so quickly when things are good or not good, because the performance, the feedback clips are so fast.
Um, But for whatever reason, you do not have a culture of consistency within your team.
I would wager that script adherence is low. because you have such variability in close rates.
Unless there's a change in lead quality, which would be something else.
But are the leads the same, like this month as last month?
Yes, the leads are the same.
Yeah, so it's a sales discipline issue, which then comes down to the training cadence, the scripting how people are being managed on a daily basis and weekly basis in terms of their career goals.
How you're doing morning.
This is all sales ops.
I could just start talking about sales, but...
Like this is a pure sales ops issue.
And so at the, like there's, there's a two step, like I would approach this in two steps.
Step one is we should do all the stuff that we are not currently doing or we should be doing.
Everyone should be reading the same script.
If they're not reading the script, why are you on this team?
Right.
We need to have training that's every day to make sure that they are saying things the right way.
We need to make sure that everyone memorized the script.
Some of you guys might've seen the YouTube video I put out like two days ago about this.
But they have to breathe the script.
If they were not saying the script word for word, you cannot be on this team.
You cannot take these calls.
I'm getting these leads and not for you to go cowboy and make shit up.
And then if we cannot solve that problem because, for whatever reason, you keep trying it and they don't adhere and they go off script because they just want to close the deals, it means you have a cultural issue, which is a leader problem.
Because it means the leader is reinforcing behaviors that get people to go off script and there's no consequences for doing it.
And so if you want to have a consistent, world-class sales team, the process has to always go above the player.
No one is above the process.
And I do think that 95, maybe 98 of sales teams have no idea how sales training, how sales culture, any of this stuff works.
They just hire a bunch of people, see who closes deals and fire the rest.
And so then you just have a bunch of mercenaries who work for you, but there is no culture.
There is no team and it's every man for himself.
And that is what creates this volatility in sales.
And some guy says something and he closes a deal and the other guy's like I'm going to try that now.
And there's no consistency across the board.
And that also gets you in trouble long-term, because they start promising things and making deals that you can't cash.
That makes a lot of sense.
I, um, up until now, I mean, we have scripts, but they're more of suggestions.
Yeah.
I mean, I've done a lot of sales.
Um, like this is a straight out of the book checklist problem.
Like we have to do all of these things.
If we do this entire checklist, we will get this outcome.
If we can't do this checklist, the leader is the problem, because they don't know how to reinforce culture, which then means that they're not able to get the right people on and the wrong people out, which sometimes means we might have to fire half the team to get the right people in so that we can build the culture we need to get to where we want to go.
Because you are in like, I showed the shapes of businesses.
You are in a sales and marketing business.
There's functionally no delivery.
Like.
You're just basically like are you, are you guys doing outbound, or like smiling and dialing, or do you buy leads from setting teams?
Inbound is Google ads.
Google ads.
Yeah.
Okay.
So you have inbound leads that are coming in and then you close.
Like that's the business.
Like you buy media, you sell shit.
And so, like this has to be a core, like you have to be world-class at this if you want to be world-class at wholesale.
Gotcha.
But that's the constraint.
In the events that I have to let go of half the team because it's just not good enough.
Where do you suggest I look for?
It's not about where, it's about how.
So it's not like I'm going to find The better you get at training sales and creating consistent sales processes, the less skill someone can have and create a consistent outcome within your team, which becomes the arbitrage of your business.
Just like I said, the cleaning thing before, if the whole constraint of that business is going to be finding, you know, basically taking a human being and then turning them to a great cleaner that actually shows up on time, you have to take the raw input of somebody who has no skill and just has work ethic, just has energy.
And in 14 days, you can get them closing deals on wholesaling.
That box is the value that your company, that is your IP.
That is the trade secret.
That's how your company is valuable.
And so when I say who versus how, like where do I find these people?
You could run Indeed ads and find like for this caliber of salesperson, they're everywhere.
The issue is then what is the process and what are the expectations we're setting for those people as they walk in?
And so typically when you're doing high volume sales, like you are, how many guys you have on the team?
Um, currently 17.
Okay.
So when you have that that I mean you know midsize uh, someone comes in uh, usually you get constrained because the amount of churn you have and people quitting leaving is about equal to what you have to hire.
And that's what keeps you stuck.
Right.
And so it's a process issue kind of on the demand gen side for talent.
And so usually we look at that and say, okay, what part of this can we screen ahead of time?
So it's like, let's send them the script before they even show up.
So people apply, we send them the script.
And then send us a 60 second video of you saying the script.
And then from the 60 second videos we're going to invite people to a group call, not one-on-one, because we don't have time for that.
And we're going to go quick drill, say the script, give a piece of feedback, see how they do it again.
If they can take the feedback well and they were prepared, great.
It means they're coachable.
They have work ethic.
Awesome.
Now we can take you to a job offer call.
If somebody has attitude on the coaching, they're out.
If someone doesn't show up prepared, they're out.
Very easy screening.
And so you take 10, you pick two, pick three, they go to the next one, you make job offers.
And that's the flow.
But the entire sales process of selling them on selling for you, sets the frame for how the company operates.
How disciplined you are and how militant you are in terms of how you set the frame, for this is how we fucking do things here.
Either get in or get out.
I do not care, but we win.
If you can set that frame, you will attract winners.
And winning is not for everybody.
And so that means that on the team, there's probably some losers.
And it's not for everybody.
So that's the decision you make, and that's from top down.
So there's the tactics, and then there's the root issue.
I would try this first.
If this doesn't work, you have to probably gut things.
Thank you.
I know he's the only person struggling with sales here.
I saw like more notes.
Like, okay.
Group interview.
Yeah.
Go ahead.
Okay.
So my name is Sasha.
I sold designer bags and sunglasses.
Cool.
And we do about 6 million a month.
No, sorry.
A year.
Sorry.
6 million a year.
Oh, cool.
And I would like to do 38 million.
Precise.
Yeah.
38 million.
Okay um, and what's stopping me is why 38 um?
Just because i figured you know a hundred thousand a day, something like that.
Round up down, something like that okay, and got to round about um and um.
I mean obviously more.
Yeah okay, but yeah, i was thinking 38 would be fair.
That works um, And it is just recruiting.
Oh, recruiting is the bottom line, because you're saying?
Yeah.
Okay, got it.
My house cleaner was my first employee.
And because I consumed yours and Layla's content so much that I was like I'm going to be these two people in one.
That's me.
I'm going to be these two people.
And as a result, I have a great team, a really great team.
And it's just a matter of being militant in the recruiting process.
We do sell on whatnot quite a bit.
So who do you have what's stopping you?
So you make money, $6 million a year selling handbags.
And sunglasses.
And sunglasses.
For you to sell more handbags than sunglasses, you need more people to do that?
Yes, because we only go live for about five hours a day because we get tired.
I have three salespeople, but it's just we get tired.
If we were live more often, we could create more.
You're going live on like your Instagram page or your what?
On whatnot.
Okay, got it.
And do you have like a big following there?
110,000.
And so you're just selling to that same base?
And if you just sold for longer, you would make more?
A lot more.
I could do a hundred grand in the show.
Okay.
So you just need like two more salespeople to go on camera?
But yeah.
And then the recruiting as well.
Recruiting for what?
Packing.
Because we do a lot of... You do your own 3PL or not third party, but like you do your logistics?
Why?
I didn't know you could have other people do it.
Boy, oh boy.
Yeah.
Step inside.
Uh, yes.
So, so functionally like, because of the nature of the business that you're in um, we have to think like cause, we have to, we have to consolidate resources.
I'm not normally somebody who's like uh let's, let's cut, you know, parts of the business out, but unless your shipping is some key differentiator that you have, uh like Amazon, shipping became a competitive advantage right.
Um, but unless that's like some differentiator, then shipping for the most part is pretty commoditized.
And there are people who all day long they think about like saving 15 cents on cardboard boxes and tape and packing peanuts and all that shit.
Um, and I think that that you having to like think about that and run a functionally a warehouse at the same time as running a marketing and sales and talent business, slash media.
That's not where the value is, the values in the distribution and the sales.
And so I would say like, can we outsource this, the logistics part so that you can just go all it.
Cause all we had to do is you get two more salespeople and you get to a hundred thousand a day.
We should do that.
We have to physically show the product.
Like, I'm not saying you don't have like some product on hand.
You just don't need a warehouse.
No, we do need it because it's like, go, go, go, go.
Okay.
We run probably about.
So you're like, we sold this item to this person is how you do it.
Yes.
Okay.
Got it.
It's kind of like a warehouse.
Yeah.
Okay.
That's fine.
All right.
So you just need to hire more people.
So what's stopping you from hiring more people?
The talent.
The talent to hire more people?
Well, I'm learning now.
That's why I'm here.
No, you're good.
You're good.
So I'm saying like you have two sets of roles.
You've got warehouse folks and you've got people who can get on camera.
Right.
So what are you currently doing to get each of those people?
Well, we had ads on Indeed.
Okay.
But I didn't realize how militant I had to be until I came here.
It makes a lot of sense.
Right.
I know that there's that many interviews that are required.
And that's more for the warehouse side, correct?
Yes both, because sales is.
I think that you'd be able to find sales people like i would probably look at amazon affiliates.
How much would you pay them percentage?
Well, that's the thing not, it's so okay.
So it takes skill to do what we do.
Yeah, it takes skill like agreed, like um, for example, my girl is better than me great, it's better than me.
And it's like not only is it motor skills, it's um presentation and entertainment like i.
I get it.
I understand.
I did a live for three days.
I got it.
So finding and training that uh, that's definitely a process and takes time.
Yeah, the question is whether you want to buy or build.
Do you want to buy the town or build the town?
Building the town is cheaper, takes longer, harder.
Buying the talent is faster, more expensive.
Which one do you, which one feels right for you?
We're not always, so we are profitable per show.
Yes.
Okay.
Profitable per show.
But sometimes what ends up happening is like, let's just say it's a Wednesday.
Are you on cash based accounting or accrual?
Probably cash.
Yeah.
So you might like if basically, if you run a physical products business, which you do here, you're like okay, we made money.
Now let's take all of that profit gross profit that we had, and go buy more shit so we can sell more shit right, right.
So this is where like, you probably have what's your like, what's your financial, the financial side of the business, the financial ops.
Look like my accountant handles it.
You're who?
My accountant?
Oh, your accountant does it.
Okay yeah, you will need to have soon a relatively strong finance person Who can give you better forecasting so that you can it's not just like how much cash we have in bank account, let's go buy more shit.
It's like we can only afford to buy this much given this growth rate that we want to have.
Otherwise, you will get into these probably cash crunches that you're feeling right now.
It's not that the business isn't profitable because I'm guessing the headcount's not super high.
So our, so our shows will make anywhere from like five to seven thousand profit, depending on the volume that we did that day.
So we know the profit like per show.
However, that's where the skill comes into play.
Like, if a show is not going well, we need to have that person trained to be able to do the do the thing.
And and so that's why not knowing how much to pay them is.
Well, I mean, I think doing a percentage would make sense.
Percentage of profit.
Yeah.
Like a salesperson.
Okay.
And so you can buy or build that, right?
So you buy it, as I would just go to mini micro influencers who are already like on Amazon hawking stuff and be like well, they already do live streams and they already do sell shit.
And I bet I could teach them to do this for me.
That is a buy version because you already know it's already proven.
You're just saying, hey, do it under my umbrella.
The build version is that you have to kiss a lot more toads and try and look for who has already built in a bunch of soft skills.
And then you can hire for the small skill deficiency that you know how to train.
Okay, so amazon affiliates well, you could do either.
But like yeah, i mean, obviously this would be a lower risk thing, and then you'd have to have some agreement that they're gonna only sell for you for x period of time.
Like a contract.
Yeah, like a contract, thank you yes, but i would.
But big picture, because i want to make sure that you're good um the indeed, warehouse stuff, that's just like commoditized.
I mean, you have a warehouse, maybe you have to have it for your business, but like i don't see that as like That's not a core differentiator.
You're not different because you have a warehouse behind you.
That's not special.
So the roles that you have there, it's like they need to be like have a pulse, have a good leader there.
Let them just deal with it.
Your star factor is going to be your ability to train people to sell.
Mm-hmm.
And so that's like what is the true pinpoint of where the most value gets created for you as the founder, the entrepreneur, is that you need to be able to take somebody and teach them to sell.
And you have to break it down in terms of the most concrete language you possibly can.
And so think of everything purely in terms of behavior and do not use any amorphous words.
So it's like, I need you to have higher energy.
That means nothing.
I need you to raise your voice.
I need you to talk faster.
I need you to have your shoulders back.
You have to describe things that people can see.
And then other people will describe them as having high energy, having charisma, having confidence.
And so if you want to teach someone to present, you have to tell them what to do with their body and their voice.
And it will be far faster for you.
And what you'll find is the training glass.
The reason it takes so long for people to train where they can, where they can't train salespeople or presentation people, is because they literally do not use words that other people understand.
Like, this is the problem.
This is why most companies cannot teach people to do shit because they say, have more charisma.
And then the person listens and is like I'll translate that into what I think charisma means, which who fucking knows what they think it means.
Right.
And then we're just playing this telephone game where no one agreed on.
What are the behaviors I want you to do?
That will compress the amount of time that will take you to get some one up to speed and two long-term.
If you can develop the sales training then you can have a stable of stallions that are on 24 seven for you working in your in your barn.
So that I don't know why it's animals now, but let's go with it.
So that that's actually, that brings up the point.
So I, I have, so my girl, like I said, she's my house cleaner, shows up at my door one day.
She's like, hey, I want to be you.
Yeah.
And she's like, I'm a copy and paste of you.
And she became me.
Yeah.
Now there's a little bit like a little bit of a how can I?
Because obviously I had to learn the care part, like from Layla.
So I learned the care part.
And now I have it.
But then I've seen her.
I mean I've seen situations kind of like not go the way they should because she's too.
She's a copy and paste of me from yesterday.
So I'm starting to see those.
What's the problem?
We'll just put her in front of the camera, have her sell and get her out of the building.
If like, if she can sell.
Yeah.
So let her sell.
Don't have her manage people.
Have her sell.
Got it.
Understood.
Thank you.
Got it.
Good talk.
Yeah.
Alex, my name is Sebastian.
Four years learning.
Thanks for everything.
Yeah.
Thanks for coming out from Australia.
Melbourne.
Yep.
Melbourne.
Melbourne.
Sick.
Blue Sense Digital.
We sell... paid ads, and growth advisory to eight and nine figure econ brands.
Sweet.
We do three and a half.
Okay.
We'd like to be at 10 and 20.
Okay.
Feel super clear on our top priority against our supply constraint.
Oh, talent?
Yeah.
Okay.
Talent acquisition and... first getting LTGP on talent.
Something that's unclear is we've just established this past 12 months our leadership team.
So we have two team leaders, a head of growth and a head of strategy.
They're all just on salary at the moment, but putting together or building an incentive, a great incentive plan for them as a group to carry us, as we two and three, X headcount.
Um, I would just go profit share pool 10 to 20% and then they get slices of that slice.
So it caps.
So basically it's like if you say, like simple math, a hundred dollars a year profit, 20 is always going to be allocated, or 20 is always going to be allocated to all leaders.
Um, and so they get slices of that pool, but then you always have 80.
And then they think like you do, which is like, if we're going to bring this leader, and we, But they should be able to grow the pie, which is the exact same math that all of us do when we bring someone in.
And so it gets them thinking more like owners.
That's the simplest way I could break it down.
Are you planning on trying to sell the business anytime soon?
Potentially, yeah.
Okay.
If you want, you can include a profit's interest in the sale which you can have be proportional to their interest.
Yeah.
And then if they leave, it comes back to you.
How would you apportion that percentage split against those different roles?
So, first off, you're going to want to leave probably two thirds for future talent if you want to go big.
And so do not be like okay, I'm going to blow my whole like slice of pie on these people, because the best talent is in the future.
It's not right now, but I'll give you the pitch, or the walkthrough that I have with um, with somebody who's in this position, is that and this will probably apply to half of you who here has somebody that they were considering tying into your business?
Okay.
So I'll give you quick, quick, big picture advice.
If you never want to sell the business, don't give shares away.
The only thing that is guaranteed 10 years from now is that you will still be in the business.
That's it.
Everything else is not guaranteed.
So I would not encourage you to give real shares away.
Thing one.
Thing two, there are four things that equity provides.
One is cash flow.
The second is sale bonus, sale dollars.
The third is risk.
And the fourth is control.
And so when I have a conversation like this, I'd be like, okay, cool.
So do you want any risk?
And they're like, no, I don't want any risk.
And you're like, okay, cool.
So we don't want that. uh, I'm not going to give you control.
So that's off the table.
So all we have left are cashflow and the chance that we sell.
And that's what we're going to do.
And so um, I'm sure in Melbourne I know the legal situation, but like there's a version of, we'll give you a profit share which comes off bottom line.
And, uh, in the event of a sale, you'll get a sale bonus.
Now the issue with that is it's going to be taxed as income.
At least it is in the U S if they have a sale bonus um rather than capital gains.
But there is no real other alternative because either they have to take on risk and not get control and pay taxes, um on you gifting to them, or they have to buy it and give you money.
Most people don't want to do either of those things.
And you have to agree on evaluation.
It's a whole fucking mess.
And so it's easier to say, I'll give you some money today.
And if we sell it, you get money tomorrow.
And if you leave, you get neither.
And then that sale, you know, I've just said that the sale number predetermined.
There's a zillion ways to slice this, but the simple way is like if you have a 10 profit share, like for the whole company, right?
And somebody, let's say gets 10% of that.
So they have 1% of the profit.
You could say, when we sell, you will get a proportional amount relative to the total for that 1%.
So they get 1% of the sale.
Sure.
Yeah.
And when you write that, make sure that it's the percentage of cash not calculated on the total value of the sale.
Yeah.
The head of growth is pretty much the sole sales guy, or our first sales guy, not the founder-led.
He'd be at this table.
Commission on Clipper sales plus this percentage of profit share, or it's one or the other.
Is he a founder?
No.
It just sounds like he's your sales guy.
Correct.
New role for us, yeah.
Well, he gets commission.
He's at the leadership table.
The other guys at the leadership table.
Does he do marketing?
He started to, yeah.
He's backfilling that head of growth role.
Giving equity to sales guys is one of those day one mistakes that I'd prefer you avoid.
If that guy's really ambitious and really hungry and smart and you think that he's going to be there long term, I would say I want you at the leadership table.
I don't think you're ready there yet.
This is what I would need to say and just make it quantifiable.
Yeah.
You need to get like you needed master demand gen, which creates five deals a week, five deals a month, whatever that number is that you'd like.
If he actually did this, you'd be like you earned it.
So whatever that is.
Sweet.
Thank you.
Yeah.
You bet.
My name's Trenton.
We sell roofing in the Metro Detroit market.
We're going to do about $3 million this year.
We'd like to be at $10 million.
Quick context, we were primarily a storm contractor.
Storms have kind of vanished in our market.
Global warming back here, you know?
Climate change, whatever.
Actually, the best thing that ever happened because it allowed me to step into retail.
Okay.
So over this last year I've really had to like rebuild my business, because right before that we had hit 5 million two years in a row.
Okay.
And now we're seeing this drop off.
So my biggest constraint, or what's stopping me, is that Um, for the last, you know, eight years, all of our lead gen has been from weather, from doors.
Okay.
So it's been a hundred percent, uh, door to door lead gen.
And now, when we're trying to knock for retail, it seems to be like like heavier of a weight on the team.
When you say retail, what do you mean?
So, uh, like just people in market that need a roof.
So like residential residential.
Okay.
Yeah.
And when you were doing door knocking before you were knocking on residential doors.
Okay.
So it was, but we were getting funding from the insurance company.
Got it.
Word.
Okay.
Yeah.
Okay.
So keep going.
So now um, with me being a door to door guy, like purchasing leads and all that was like sacrilegious to me.
Okay.
So there's some limiting beliefs there.
Um that I started to you know, explore last October and We bought
I just want you to be lead curious.
That's all I'm asking.
Yeah.
I am.
I'm very lead curious now.
And, uh, but I basically got slaughtered learning this acquisitionary binary, you know what I mean?
Like be non-binary with your leads, like as many as you want.
Yes.
No, that's what I'm trying to do here.
And when we did purchase leads and the unedited version, by the way, go ahead.
And when we started to, you know, stack the guys' calendars, there was a big culture shift.
Yeah.
Where we actually saw like more buy-in from the guys, but then like the door knocking just went.
Yeah, because it was easier.
It was way easier.
Yeah.
But like our CAC and all that was absolutely horrid, right?
So I'll spend like $7,500 just to acquire one customer over the summer.
Okay.
And it wasn't sustainable.
What do you make from a customer?
On average, $6,500.
So that does not work.
No, it doesn't work.
Yeah.
And it was just like a lot of the marketing agencies that we worked with were like younger people.
They were like using AI tools, go high level.
So we decided that we were going to build it in-house.
So, with that being said, now it comes into you know, a leadership issue, because I need somebody that like, knows how to you know market better than I do so that i can focus on training.
And can i pause you real quick?
Yes okay cool, so you're at three.
You want to get to 10.
You rebuilt it from storm chasing to just straight up door knocking whenever fine, i think it was a good idea.
Um, you had a door knocking team.
You took the same sales guys, brought them on leads that you got them.
They got lazy, fat and don't want to do door knocking anymore.
So great rule number one outbound and inbound are separate teams.
Yes.
Inbound is what you graduate to.
And so if you're an absolute savage, like you just take children's souls and just rip them out every day because you're a terrible person, but you're just unbelievable at sales,
Then, and only then, do you get the opportunity for me to feed you leads, because these are the most expensive leads that we have to work very, very hard for to make sure.
And like, we cannot waste them on anybody who cannot close everything.
And so thank you.
I hope that was an amen.
And so so, first off is the team should be separate, but you're in this mix now.
You're in a little bit of a mess.
And so my, my two cents would be like, take that.
Cause I'm sure their commissions have gone down since they now are selling nothing basically.
Yes.
Yeah.
So I would say guys, my fuck up.
I went to this thing.
He told me I did this big boo-boo, which is inbound and outbound.
We're together, which is not how it should be.
Everybody get back on the streets.
You guys do that.
And then for the absolute savages of you, because you can usually have far fewer people on inbound.
That becomes the Christmas tree of the career path.
Because on inbound, I can feed you and you can do like five sales a day.
You can't do that door knocking, right?
But you can do it if I'm feeding you leads that are already qualified, already set, already gone through a VSL, whatever in the sales motion.
And then those guys can absolutely clean up.
But you earn the opportunity to get that level of commissions.
Now the commission structure should also be different on inbound, because you have to pay for those leads right.
So it's a different role.
They graduate to it.
It's more volume, lower per, but it's more reliable, which guys with families, things like that.
If you have a bad day, you close two and a good day.
You close seven.
It's different than you have a bad day.
You can close zero, zero, zero, right?
It's much more, uh, it's much more stressful.
And so guys will be happy to even give up.
They'll even make the same money, but just have to be more reliable.
There'll be make, and you don't have to be in the sun.
So, so then we should hire for inbound sales, right?
Yeah, or take one of the guys you have who's really good at it and put everybody else back on the street, so you just funnel everything to that guy.
Because then you can iterate faster because you're new on this.
And so you never want to have too many news.
Because, kind of like the brick analogy I gave at the beginning, the more news there are, the more likely something's going to fuck up.
And so it's like, I know this is an absolute savage salesperson.
If they're closable, he'll close them or she'll close them.
And so then the only variable we have is just what offer slash lead source am I getting?
And what process are going from lead to talking to them?
Those are the only variables you have to play with.
It's much easier to iterate on that and then get it to go faster.
So then I want to hire...
A marketing director or leader to manage that.
Now, Tim was blowing our minds in the workshop.
He does do that.
Our Asian Clark Kent.
Yeah, it was... Racist today?
I was almost going to say he was a ninja, but I didn't want to...
Anyways.
He's Chinese.
I'll have you know.
Samurai.
Samurai.
But he was talking about when another guy was talking about a constraint and he was talking about the trade-off of okay, so you, you know you could spend 6000 a month.
You don't want to spend, you know, basically a hundred grand to replace the person.
What I'm trying to figure out is I think I've answered my own question.
I won't keep going here.
Um, it's, I've been working on the wrong problem.
I think is what the situation is.
And I'm trying to buy this for you.
Outbound team goes out.
Inbound team becomes the one guy you need to hire a marketer person who actually knows what they're doing.
Probably pay more than you expect.
Um, but then that person will be worth it.
Your entire business is sales and marketing, so you should have the core elements of the business in-house.
Okay.
Excellent.
If you need help with the sales process, we can help.
Excellent.
Thank you.
So my name is Evan.
I sell duct cleaning supply to duct cleaners.
This year we will do 12 million in revenue, and I think I'd like to be around three and a half.
Okay um, and i think what is stopping me is just being clueless.
Okay cool, so let's, let's give you clues.
So let's do one more.
How do you get customers now?
Uh, strictly organic, can you take more customers than you have?
Yes okay, so you don't do anything.
That's why, all right so um no, i mean, like it's word of mouth, there's no, like demand gen.
That's happening.
All right, I've got good news and bad news.
The good news is that your business you probably are good at what you do because you've been relying solely on word of mouth.
So that's the good news.
The bad news is that you're going to have a steep learning curve for what you have to do next.
And so you basically have to pick.
Do you want to do outbound as your way of getting customers, which could either be door knocking, it could be emailing, it could be cold calling, or you got to be Instagram DMing it could be anything but outbound.
You could do paid ads to get customers or Um, you can have affiliates.
So you do those things to get affiliates or you can post content.
Those are your options.
Which of these do you feel like you are best equipped to do?
Um, probably paid ads.
But one of the things I was thinking like is creating a higher value per customer, a good option of trying to get more customers.
Okay.
Um, I don't know which route to go, I guess.
So you'd want to double how much customers are worth.
I guess utilize my existing customer base with more consumables.
So there's more repeat orders.
So like they're ordering more.
So duck cleaners go clean ducks.
Yeah.
Correct.
And you sell them.
We sell them the cleaning supplies, which is really high profits.
And then we started selling some consumables, but they're low profits, like They might buy 500 a year, but it's only like 6 a unit or something.
So there's not too much money in that yet.
Okay.
But are they buying regularly from you?
How many customers per month are new customers versus repeat customers?
We average 80 new customers a month.
Okay.
So you do not have a lot of repeat business.
No.
No.
How?
Unfortunately.
But fortunately the equipment I sell is really good, so it doesn't break down frequently.
But on the consumable side, are all those repeat customers?
Consumables, yeah, those would all be repeat customers.
Even though the margins are well, you can't make so much selling a $6 product.
Um, so I don't know, if there's a way uh, I don't know maybe through selling them education to.
Maybe that'd be.
No, I mean, fundamentally you have a, you have a normal business.
Like there's a zillion businesses that work this way.
Auto dealerships work this way.
Large equipment works this way.
Like ink and printers work this way.
You sell like you have three, you basically have three wheels of revenue in this business.
You've got.
You sell the machines.
Uh, You sell the stuff that the machines use and you sell the service around the machines.
That's the three-pronged approach.
And so your ability to extend the customer LTV is going to be around the second two.
I mean most people will even like the more sophisticated business will sell these at cost or at a loss, because all their margin is on the consumables and on the service.
Now you can sell bigger customers so that those 6 things times 10000 of those starts to add up, or we can sell more on the front end.
But, either way, the core focus of your business like if I had a two-step approach for you core focus number one is we have to know that we're retaining 90 95 of those people on an annual basis, on all the consumables.
So every year I should know that 95 of those people are.
They have to buy it from somewhere and they should all buy it from me.
And so what ends up happening is your business starts that becomes like the annuity of the business.
So you acquire these new customers to sell machines for whatever.
And then this base of service and consumables just continues to rise over time.
And that's super profitable.
That's the game now.
You said that you wanted to grow the business by making them more valuable.
I think you will have a hard time making the individual more valuable.
I think it would be easier for you to sell a higher tier customer.
So somebody who cleans more ducks?
Uh, so that they can buy in higher volume or buy for entire fleets whatever, that would be the path, but it'll be a different sales motion than you currently do.
And so you have like, you're at a crossroads where like, if you want to have significant growth, you'll either have to have a new acquisition,
Well, you'll have to have a new acquisition system, basically either way, because you're either going to have a new acquisition system for a new type of customer or a new acquisition system for your existing customer.
If I had my druthers, I'd probably rather you start with new acquisition system, existing customer, because you already know that flow.
Once you have that, then I'd be willing to go out and market.
Gotcha.
So would a good first step be to reach out to our existing customer bases with, like explaining to them we have consumables, like we don't do any outbound to existing customers.
That would be an excellent idea.
Gotcha, we have things available for purchase.
You should purchase them from us.
That makes yeah sense and so realistically you should probably get them on a cadence or subscription with the sale of the initial product.
So i don't know what the offers that you use is probably beyond the scope right now, but like that's that's where a lot of the alpha is right.
There is, like What kind of maintenance programs are we selling up front?
What kind of incentives are we getting them for subscriptions up front?
Like the entire business.
And again I have more good news for you is that you've been making the money that you are with none of the actual pieces that make your business.
Make money, make money.
Which is great news.
And so we just have to put these other two wheels in place and then develop the motions around those.
And like the profitability of the business will go up a lot.
Like a lot, dude.
Like you've got the front, you've got the hard part of a profitable business without the profitable part of the profitable business.
So we just, we just have to bridge that mode.
That's it.
Yeah.
That makes sense.
Yeah.
I think that's my only question.
Okay, great.
So sales motion changed, offer change, and then there's going to be a re-engagement on the back.
And those are the three things for like today.
All right, cool.
Thank you.
Appreciate you.
