Bonus Episode: Are Salespeople Built or Born?

[Music] hello everyone welcome to the 21 hats podcast I'm your host Lauren Feldman it used to be that best practices in sales were pretty standard across the board but since the pandemic and with the Advent of artificial intelligence says Lance Tyson founder of the Tyson group sales consultancy it's like the wild west out there suddenly everyone's playing by different rules and the best sales approach can vary depending on the seller the target the industry the region of the country the keys Tyson says in this week's bonus episode are to pay attention and stay flexible along the way he also addresses a host of Hot Topics in sales how important is it to see a prospect face to face is cold calling dead will AI replace sales trainers what's the right balance between base and commission how do you handle the salesperson who can't or won't be a team player how do you get salespeople to take maintaining their CRM seriously even in Good Times owning and running a business can be a lonely Pursuit our hope is that these conversations brought to you by our sponsor the great game of business will let owners know they are not alone in facing challenges same thing with our daily newsletter the 21 hats Morning Report which in magazine named the best newsletter for business owners and which you can subscribe to for free at 21h hats.com where you can also find transcripts of our podcast episodes and lots of other articles and interviews joining me on this episode is Lance Tyson founder of the Tyson group the episode is titled are salespeople built or [Music] born welcome Lance it's great to have you here tell us uh tell us a little about your business what do you do thanks for asking Tyson group is in the business of working with sales leaders and their team to help them compete in a complex World essentially our Direct customer is usually the leader in a small to midsize business that could be the CEO that could be the president of a company the founder and a you know a small a midsize business that could be a vpa sales Chief sales officer I mean it's really anything that that is relatable to sales too so if you think of cousins to sales right so service is a is a is a cousin to sales account management is a cousin to sales right so sales leadership that sales leader if you think about it really there's several factors that they have underneath their purview or their architecture it's how they lead What's the culture of sales they have in an organization or how they manage which is what they how they measure kpis then you know you have things like what kind of sales process is being applied from something you know very simple to complex methodologies are in there then you would have Effectiveness enablement right now is really big I mean there's a lot of industries that are trying to apply this this fast moving sled of AI die into how they manage accounts how they you know you know what I mean sure and then the last thing the age-old uh question is getting the right talent and and then the bottom bottom line is you know are sales people build or are they born you got a quick answer to that one I do it is my firm opinion that it's statistically improbable for a salesperson these days to be good at everything you would need to be good in for sales so I think they're built I think you got to decide Do you have a salesperson who is really good with the people side of it and then you have a salesperson that could be really good at the process side and and the key is you know I guess that the people side of it would be more art the process side would be more science and I think you're looking for an an architect so nothing's built to scale so it's s is half art and half science so I still think it's statistically improbable for somebody to be good at everything yes I would concur there are some people that are just really good at dealing with people right and we gravitate to that but that doesn't always make the best salesperson though that makes somebody good with human relations there's so many things I want to dive into with you but I want to hear a little bit more about uh Tyson group uh you you have a focus on Sports don't you is that right yeah actually it's it's I would say it's where we cut our teeth I I would say the sexy part of our business is probably everybody likes to talk about sports and you know you and I are pretty much Philly guys so we started off our conversation talking about Philly sports and you said hey Lance who um who do you cheer for and I would say uh whoever's the bigger customer at this point that's where we we go I think I think today we have a trainer in in Minnesota we have one in Dallas with one of the Dallas teams we have somebody with the Los Angeles Dodgers and and a sales and not salesperson trainers one in um Cal with the Calgary Flames right amongst another nine projects that are outside of sports but Sports tends to be interesting and you know what do you train Sports people on well like anything else they have multiple products right if you're a fan of the Philadelphia Eagles they have media and naming rights to sell and that you know you know people aren't just ready lining up to buy that stuff that all has to be sold right um you know you have premium seats that are sold to B2B if you were the Philadelphia Phillies so I'm just bringing up those teams right now because they're in the Metro that you and I have in common but they have the same challenges that everybody else do they have talent challenges they have product challenges they have Marketplace challenges they have postco challenges right how did you develop that expertise did you seek the sports teams to specialize in or did it just happen I cut my teeth in the training industry I was in really into personal development back in the day so like I remember reading Stephen Cy's book when I was really young entering a business I was an Anthony Robbins fan and then a buddy of mine said hey if you really want to be good at anything in life including business you got to read this book by Dale Carney called How to Win Friends and Influence People remember going to the king of pressure mall I bought the book and then I was like I I want to be in that industry and I actually started my career with Dale Carnegie training in Philadelphia wow and um I literally kind of rose up through the ranks here in the Philly area um I learned how to train and sell sell training and we had a deal going with the Philadelphia Chamber of Commerce that we were co-sponsoring the Dell Carnegie class and um I got a trade with the Philadelphia Eagles actually ironically enough that we would train all their salespeople and we would do sales training for for tickets access to tickets at the time the Vice President of Sales was a gentleman named Len karosi and he put everybody through and then I had left the Dale Carnegie operation in Philly and and and bought the invested in the one in in Cleveland and Len then became the acting president of the Cleveland Cavaliers and from there that kicked off a domino effect of of relationships and now we we probably own 48% of the market share in Pro Sports just as a Rel training and Consulting but that's not the only thing what percentage would you say of your business is is the sports side 2018 we launched Tyson group and um under that we quickly went after Pro Sports as a go to market strategy I had a good name the system had a good name so that at one point was almost 90% of our business and right now I would say it's about 60% of our business we have a good strong foot hold there um I would say it um very good relationships there and different markets Market but we do business with all kinds of B different manufacturers different supply companies all kinds of businesses so there's tech companies uh medical supply companies we have two pretty large pharmac gos we work with so what our customers all have in common lar is um there is an opportunity or a challenge or a problem in how they're trying to do business through sales and we literally do a do a gap analysis we look what needs to be adjusted the most and we help them develop a new strategy toward it that's our goal can you give us a sense how big the business is yeah we're we're about 25 employees we're north of about five million and um so and and we we're growing at about 35 40% a year wow I think we have employees in 15 different states we we learn we are we are truly a remote organization even though we're based in Columbus Ohio Dublin Ohio actually um I think we have two people in Dublin Ohio three people in Ohio proper we we are in every time zone in the US at this point um and one of our one of our marketing people is moving back to India so we will be in a different time zone actually we have one of our Associates um on our social U media team lives in France also he plays some Pro Hockey uh over there but also works about 30 hours a week so we're we're truly a very Geographic graphically diverse organization was that true before Co yeah you know what it was Co not being in the office didn't affect us negatively how we manage the organization this about any version of what our company was like when we were in Dale Carnegie in 2005 I can remember we' had five different off four different offices from Cleveland to Indianapolis and we were on I can remember then being on Yahoo messenger kind of like it you know almost using it like a slack at that point so we've never been really challenged we have a certain etiquette a certain process we we run our internal meetings on we're very kpi driven you know we have a very simple formula with how we run the business people need to be able to communicate why their job exists what the major goal of their job is everybody has multiple goals in their job what are the kpis or performance standards you need to get the job done and and every we're very transparent about that being extremely transparent helps with being so remote everybody knows what the number is like we have a we have about seven isms in the company and one of the one of the number one isms right Tyson isms or whatever you want to call them I guess our value statements is you can't win if you don't score everybody knows what the score is a Tyson group they know what our growth numbers are they know what our profitability numbers are they're tied into those things did demand for your services increase with the pandemic no you know I I would there is um we panicked like everybody else everybody had as their version of um tragedy in in the uphill battle and slaying the dragon I was at Madison Square Garden and I was there that day and they were having the Big East tournament and I I kind of remembered like I remember 911 and I had hurt my back and I was leaving early because my my back was really sore and they were canceling the Big East tournament they started to cancel some games I think Marquette was playing and remember being leaving the hotel and parents just being pissed off by the time I landed in Columbus I got a text from one of my staff members Sean that said they just canceled the NBA season I go come on I couldn't even believe it I remember that day so at that point going in the pandemic right and you know my boards always challenged me hey you never want to have one client that's too big you never going all eggs in one basket we had started to divers diversify a little bit um in different verticals and but a lot of our business was tied up in sports and sports just literally other than the NFL but there was no fans there right so it just shut down so we we hit the Panic switch so I would say we went down to a very very low number good news is we had decent cash reserves um I wouldn't say we were pandemic proof but we made good decisions before that um but we we immediately like everybody else did we made adjustments to staff very quickly we insulated up and then what we did what we did in the pandemic is we just literally took all our clients just offered free training and coaching whether they were under contract or not and we just like gave we were going from noon tonight and there you know there are some markets that didn't even participate in the pandemic you know and I'm not being sarcastic every Marketplace had a different view like Arizona had a different view than Texas than Florida than Pennsylvania New York so we just tried to accommodate as much as possible and it was right right in the middle of the pandemic Madison Square Garden teed up it was starting to show life or they getting ready and we signed a contract right in that summer and it was a sizable enough contract I would say that that gave us a little breathing room but since then it's it's slowly grinded back up but it's different now really really started to do a hell of a lot more Consulting and coaching than just more of a purely training solution so much has changed because of the pandemic and I think that's true with sales the the most obvious thing being the the the Zoom versus travel issue tell me about that do you have things really changed or are we back where we were before the pandemic no I I I think it's it's different it's it's it's just different I think then how people do businesses that's changed dramatically not very long ago I think it was six months I was on the phone with a manufacturing company and the president's manufacturing firm really kind of got into it with me and he suggested and I'll paraphrase Lance if you're trying to sell us this hybrid selling model it's not going to work we don't need that I don't want that and I said his name was was Jeff and I said Jeff with all due respect it doesn't really much matter what you want it's it's what your prospects are asking for and your prospects based off of the conversations we've had with your salespeople with looking at different data points you might think you need to be face to face with everybody but your prospects and your buyers are saying no so that's fine you can keep pushing this you got to be face to face but it's not what everybody else is telling you and then we kind of had a longer conversation and and I said why why does this this whole concept get you so fired up and he went on to say that he felt the age of his his seller couldn't accommodate as much as these conversations that we're having in a hybrid way and and that hybrid way is not face to face if you think about it now one of the biggest challenges in sales is this fragmentation because you're having conversations with people over text over email over voice note over voicemail face to face and it's this combo of things and he just didn't think that as salespeople were going to be able to move the needle on some of these you know manufactured products he has older sales people who might not handle the technology well yeah and I said look I said your problem's not the technology your pro problem's talent and you know you can teach an old dog a new idea right you can if if that's what it comes down to and then you're going to have to hold these folks accountable and then slowly deal with this but you can't keep sending them out people don't want to be out like part of your sales process is going to be hybrid and I think what's happened for most is you know sales leaders decisionmakers H have to make a decision about how they're going to address the marketplace so their sales process methodology and people are going to have to be adaptable or appliable now there's a secondary factor to that too there's an expectation of employees and this is any where of you know people have learned to you know there's another side of life right I can get my job done for my house I don't need to commute yeah I don't need to be there and that's affected negatively in some case especially around sales culture and so some some leaders don't know how to deal with culture if people aren't right there with them you know because there is a look you can't argue that you know these people aren't control freaks but there is a method to having a huddle room and just bouncing ideas off each other there's a lot of synergy there there's a methodology to managing by walking around right not everybody's to hold people accountable to a goal or to a performance standard you know and some businesses are different so that's affected the culture piece and so we spend a lot of time there also so I think it's both from the sales leadership and motivation standpoint to also the methodology and process do you think a salesperson can be as effective uh virtually as they are in person listen if I were going to put money toward it if you're going to ask me if I was going to bet like look it's it's a he a lot more forgiving if you and I are face to face with each other having a cup of coffee right like sure there's a 360 element there that you know we are let me say it this way your EQ goes up dramatically if you're all your senses are being um addressed right like I'm a few feet from you there's Synergy there's smells there sights there's different sounds right and and it's way more forgiving I can make way more mistakes so if I were going to put a th to if you said Lance do you think somebody's gonna get a sale more because they were on a zoom call or or more because they're face to face I give it to the face face I said but you're going to have to be agile and you might not be able to do that so then then let's let's go to I I i' take a zoom call over a phone call any day of the week and twice on Sundays it's hard to imagine that we you know you know back in 2019 we were still on conference calls I can't even imagine a conference call this morning I was literally calling people today and it still feels weird you're usually on a zoom right you can see people yep but the the the thing that has to be addressed if you're going to go into this hybrid selling or any kind of business even if you're negotiating with a vendor it wouldn't really much matter face to face would be better in a negotiation than than you know in writing or over technology the skill set though through this through a zoom call the skill set really becomes the onus becomes more on verbal economy with your ability to really facilitate the conversation because you got to really facilitate if you're on this you don't have the time you can see them you don't know if they're paying attention and then your ability to ask check-in questions or evaluative question like hey what are your thoughts on that or opinion seeking questions you got to be really good at that to move the conversation on because I can't tell if I'm on a zoom with somebody training them trying to sell them something I can't tell if they're really paying attention I mean they could be watching YouTube for all I know you know what I mean so sure and you know when somebody their background you can't even see that I mean there's all kinds of weird stuff that goes on and you just got to be really alert you mentioned before that when you uh take on a client they come to you because they have a problem and you do an analysis to see what you need to do to address that problem are there one or two most common problems that you see so one thing that our clients have in common is they're trying to improve the productivity of something right so they're trying to increase sales to either hit budget to meet growth initiative so there's an increase in productivity or the secondary problem is to reduce something so we were we're doing uh some business with a company that was competing against um neelon ratings and it was a technology solution and their sales process their technology was better than the way neelen did business and I'm still under non-disclosure to even kind of bring it up who it is but very well thought out company but but the amount of time it was taking them to make a sale was probably three times as long because they lacked The credibility so they had to kind of solve it in the sales process because that sales cycle time was driving cost up right so it's usually those they're usually the two primary things something around an increase in productivity or a reduction in the amount of time it takes to do something and then the last thing usually kind of that lagger is to increase quality of something like the quality of the relationship or the quality of the individual ual but usually the two outcomes have to do with productivity or time or cost base those sound like pretty fundamental issues if I had asked you this question before the pandemic would you have given me pretty much the same answer absolutely I would say it's it's not as much about what's different as more about what the same is what was acceptable with how we did business was pretty standard so if you took a semi complex to complex B2B sales process there were things that were pretty standard there were certain times that you'd have a conference call but there were bigger parts of the sales process that you would you you would you would do in person now it's it's the wild west I mean it could be anything right it goes back to that manufacturing example we need to be face to face well what you need and what your clients and customers want and Prospects want might be something different so what you need to be is pliable right so could you have done as much over Zoom before the pandemic as it's being done now if you try if you thought to try it or or were people just not ready for it back then oh I you know what I mean there are so many conversations one thing for our business doing hybrid learning and coaching on Zoom smaller sessions shorter more Focus sessions I mean it's driven our profitability it's helped dramatically you know sometimes you know Innovation comes out of just necessity and we figured it out and record time and I'm sure a lot of other companies did too so I don't I don't think by any chance you know we found the Cure but for our own business we did and you know we did because we had to and it was that technology was there yep wasn't like it wasn't there I mean we were using it like a hybrid we were using something called an enablement tool using clear slide which we still use which had a component of being able to deliver a deck or proposal through a virtual way and um we we still use portions of that that software but I I would say we could have we just didn't which which that's actually made us as a business more alert to technology options I I would say we that's why we are so on this AI kick right now we're like wa we're already in development ready to launch a tool that um would take all of our IP and you'd be able to talk to it and it would coach you right just based off our content our philosophy I we're already invested in it it's another company but we've invested a big because we want to be in front of it as much as possible tell me about that you you've taken the the the things you've learned the things you've been training salespeople sales teams on for years and you've partnered with another company to create an AI solution that will that somebody can it's essentially it's it's learned all of our IP so essentially the it's learned um like our foundational book selling is an a away game it's ingested all that so this could be launched from a learning experience platform they could ask a specific questions like how do you resolve an objection and it would actually come back with our methodology coach at live what does that do to our trainers I still don't think it does anything to our trainers I think still think people are going to want to engage with humans I think the more AI gets out there the more we're going to kind of question a little bit right and and I I I think it's going to be a blended experience but we're way in front of that where before I don't know I I don't know if that I would have had so much speed to put the put that that investment toward it I mean we put some serious money behind it and and it's it's something we're probably going to launch to other training companies through this other party it hasn't it hasn't been fully launched but it is it's it's go to market in the next two months it's a f it's moving speed wide do you have a sense what your profit margins will be for the AI product versus a human product I sense our net profit on that would probably be 60% where we're pretty disciplined with our net profit but it would be probably twice as much as what our normal stuff would be and it's repeatable it's scalable and it's sellable wow are your employees nervous no cuz they're CU because at some level they're they're involved in and acknowledging how it needs to be done right I mean we fully have integrated the use of AI and I mean think about this way um and I'm not here selling AI I'm just oh I understand I I'm I'm literally telling everybody on here that don't be the last of the buggy whip sales people right like I mean like I mean I'm assuming when the calculator came out everybody panicked that was accountant right so um I don't think there's a reason to panic at all and I think if you if you're watching the news I mean depending on what news you watch or all of them they're going to cause some kind of panic right sure let me take put this in perspective chat gpt3 has an IQ of 155 okay Einstein had an IQ of 160 chat gp4 will probably be three to five times that and it's probably three months away so it it's not as easy as just plugging some in you actually have to know what you're talking about to ask it a good question to get the answer you're searching for and then nine times out of 10 in the business we're you're still going to have to deliver the information anyway right so it can give you guidelines so that's like having a copy a person rates copy for you so what I can have somebody help me with the copy of my one of my books but I still got to go out and figure out how to sell it get the market blah blah blah and talk about it all right fair enough you also have to read that copy before you publish it exactly how did you dive into this Lance what uh what what got you started down the AI Road first of all you know I'm like anybody else like you know you're you're watching things happen there was a um I I think what got me on to it so quick is is I have been fascinated and um there's there's a book called The Last I know was the last Testament the last um it was written by a and I will think of this before it's over um there was a there was a professor at Carnegie melon and he wrote a book was it the last lecture yes I can remember that he was talking about gamification of learning and I've watched my kids for years play Call of Duty and all these things and so I've always been fascinated how we integrate that into learning whether it be a Sim or something like that so once AI hit I'm like this is like perfect like this is going to I don't think it's going to revolutionize I don't think it's I I don't I'm not a Believer it's going to put things out of business as and people out of business I was the front end of the internet like email like I started a business when we started to use email right and then websites and stuff like that and it was going to put learning out of business and training out of business for years and it's done nothing but grow it so I just don't I just don't I I can't foresee that happening but my Fascination probably started with the gamification of things and because I think AI kind of enhances all that is there still a place for cold calling oh yeah like one of our good customers is Fleming's private dining great customer of ours right so it's these folks that sell private dining experiences for big meetings and board meetings and stuff like that and Flemings is a great place to have stake right well they cold call right and I would say to the most complex media companies that we deal with those people call call now the vehicle which you get in touch people changes right so I would say nine out of 10 of our customers that are semi complex to a complex B2B sales process their sales people have a kpi for cold calling now if you're thinking of cold calling like in it's like walking out the door and knocking on doors I'm not saying that's it but I but I I counted this summer we'd had nine different residential service people knock on our door either sell painting extermination long cutting or whatever I don't think it's died I don't think it's any less than any other time and I think how you communicate whether it's your Cadence has changed a little bit right you're still cold calling reaching out calling people that aren't expecting a contact from you whether that be through Linkedin a phone call an email all the above personally I I haven't answered a phone call from a phone number that I didn't recognize in in years am I am I alone in that um are there still people who who pick up the phone whoever calls I called a executive today per so I was just about three hours before I call call an executive from an NFL team that I'd never met before who did not have my number and he picked it up maybe out of curiosity or whatever and within three seconds I was able to get his attention so he picked up has the number going down yes now if you're thinking it from a residential standpoint I think there's a difference between a um a busino business call resident or residential call but I think I think you don't think of the activity as isolated down just to a phone call I think you go to you got to kind of soften it up right so I think there's a Cadence to things there's having a reason to call so maybe that that's coming through with some marketing emailing or note or an offer right then there's in B2B you could be hitting people up on LinkedIn right there could be a text in there but I would say the phone's still being used is I've yet to see with any of our clients and we have some sophisticated clients where people weren't on the phone now some of their their marketing has gotten better some of their lead gen's gotten better or they're doing more of other stuff but it's still a piece of it I think every business owner thinks that he or she sells better than any salesperson they could ever possibly hire and they're probably right about that I'm guessing well so there there's something to be said to the entrepreneurial Soul so I would say say you gave birth to this product or service or this business there's nobody that's going to sell it with your passion Vigor perseverance that you do I think the problem starts when the founder president owner tries to hire sales people there's some more of them I think that is where the mistakes made oh interesting similar to them in what way nobody is as passionate about Tyson group as I am sure my name's on it like it's just it's it's my signature on it so like I inher it's part of my it's it's an organism to me right it's living breathing and um and that's kind of that entrepreneurial mindset or that entrepreneurial Soul so I think that's hard it's hard to hire people that would have that kind of passion now could I hire somebody that was good at qualifying Elite yeah could I hire somebody that was good at asking questions yeah could I hire somebody that was a kickass presenter yeah could I hire somebody that was like dauntless when came to like negotiating yes but to put them up against me is not fair to the individual just it's not so I got to I got to look for ways to hire that person there's another entrepreneur though that thinks that sales people are born so on the they're on this mission to find this this person who is just perfect and then when they hire that person who's just really just a really naturally good salesperson then they kind of get held hostage by that person too so the person ends up they Cal tell to them a little bit they cater to them so I think you got to be careful with that and I think when you're in if you're in a business that has it has to be sold where you have to sell contracts or you have to convince you know somebody what's different between your product or service versus somebody else other than the price you think that's when you have to go into that growth mode is when you start thinking of that where you you have to duplicate your efforts right um where if you you brought in a half million how can I find somebody can bring in 250 now remember if if the founder brought in a half million dollars in new business you're going to be hard pressed to find somebody that's going to be soell with your passion so you can't stick them exactly at the goal you are because you're going to do things in act different ways that somebody hire is never going to be able to do you keep mentioning passion is is that the most important thing you look for when you're hiring a salesperson I think no I think it's coachability I think it's somebody that's coachable we have an ism internally we believe you can't or be led if if you if if you're not willing to be coached I I just think sales is so Dynamic right now that you gotta like my my vice president of sales Gina I have a call right after this with her and um she is the most coachable person now she'll debate with me and she'll disagree with me at the end of the day she's coachable and and I and I would measure Co somebody being coachable is did they make the adjustment I have three sons Zack Jared and Cooper my son Zack la if you if you talk to him he's a great listener but he's a donkey you think coachable but he's just he is about and it makes him successful and it's his thing you would confuse his listening skills with his ability to be coach now ultimately he will make a change but he digs in now if you met my son Jared my middle son Jared he would give you all the nonverbals that he was a horrible being coached like he'd make faces he'd rub his head I'll tell you what he'll make the change quicker and zwell right so there's a huge difference between being coachable and listening it's the coachability it's coachable to execution I would look for that more than anything in sales passion it's hard to measure do you have any advice for someone who's trying to decide if it's the right time to hire their first salesperson yes I do I would say whatever the highest goal you have for them while you're bringing them on chop a third off of it because the expectation High two I would say are you able to trade them in a way that gets them to understand the business the product or service and and you're going to have to acknowledge you know are you're hiring them to close deals or you're hiring them to bring opportunities to the top of the funnel you got to kind of decide there and the last thing I would do is everybody puts their best act on when they interview not everybody that's a great interview is a great hire right I would look for some kind of assessment that would measure personality traits there's a lot there I mean there's two types of Assessments you can do you can do a descriptive index which is kind of like you know look at personality traits like you your Myers Briggs and your discs and stuff like that or you have a predictive index right one um one that we we actually sell um is is chally which looks at sales skills either or both I I think I think if you're going to hire somebody you want to kind of get to know them especially for sales what are you dealing with right because the Sal job is different than any job it's it's not your controller it's not your operations person and very rarely can people do both um and so you don't want you if you're hiring a salesperson haven't focus on sales right all the activities on sales some of the skills you're looking for in a salesperson I think have changed uh in recent years and the way you go about finding people and hiring people has changed uh with with new technology how do you find a good salesperson today there's so many ways to unpack that one um I think if I'm recommending and I'm thinking about my own business here of course um I'm looking to bring them in young and hiring hiring somebody younger and kind of bringing them up to the system that's that's kind of our way we look for and we're always looking we I mean like in our business we look we look at servers all the time because we actually be servers have the have probably everything you want you're talking about restaurant servers servers are restaurants yeah like literally you know are they able to facilitate the conversation are they able to be in the conversation without dominating the conversation being the center of attention do they demonstrate good listening skills and stuff like that they say that servers and air traffic controllers have the two most stressful jobs on the planet right I actually believe that so that's where we we're looking all over right I'm typically looking at three factors right do they have a level of EQ where they're trying to connect with you and understand you are they good at building Rapport not relationships report the people skills and do they present themselves with every they whatever they do as a credible source and so that's that's where so we're looking all over the place at all times we're always trying to recruit have you actually had a good restaurant meal and turned to the server and said would you be interested in a sales job I just literally recruited um down in Dallas last week um we were sitting at a table having some having some drinks at this restaurant at a at a boutique hotel and she was our server slash it was a bar so she was serving food but drinks too um I literally offered her job where are you standing these days in terms of salary versus commission I think you got to be careful the commission is no greater than 40% of the total take I I think the expectation with this younger group is is there's some certainty there because there's so much uncertainty or the opposite I know very smart people who don't believe in commission yeah and I and I struggle with that too because I think sales people have to I think it's I think your expectation is different I I think it should be a split I think there should be upside because most people are hiring to grow so you want somebody with like a growth mindset so I I think you got to be careful so I I think there's a 7030 split you know 70 70% spase 30% commission or um but but I like to see a little heavy arm base these days just just because of the market I think the people who talk about eliminating commission and just paying salary are convinced that that's the way to hire team players who will fit in well with the company culture and not cause resentment among other people see but the challenge there is this is where from a sales leadership standpoint Lauren like I I think sales leaders getting it wrong like I asked 150 people last week do you manage do you sales lead your team more as a football team basketball team or a track team or wrestling team and I got a bunch of why and I and a lot of people were like yeah it's like a football team and I I'm like nah it's actually not you need sales people to behave more like a wrestling team that they're actually more concerned about their weight class their own kpis their own territory their own product that they're selling and and let them take care of that in compensation drives Behavior right about a little over 50% of the behavior is driven by how you compensate somebody you need salespeople that get there go out there and get it that are willing to kind of to fight for like against an objection things like that and if you just pay them a big base they're not incentivized or comped to do the things you need to do the response you sometimes hear to that is almost everybody has a story about a salesperson who was a very talented salesperson but solely focused on their own success and didn't necessarily care about the problems they were creating for other people in terms you know could be deadlines but I think that like that that that's why you put support around them I mean look I I have salese on my team that are high maintenance high performance so so okay I have trainers are high maintenance high performance I I think how you manage around them and and at times like in some of these markets you want a catalyst you literally want a catalyst is there a place where you draw the line is there something that you will not accept so yeah I would draw the line as as long as whatever they're doing is not illegal and moral and ethical that's where I would draw the line everything else has to be on the table especially in sales cuz it is a different job it it is just different say you worked at a hotel right and and and you got somebody coming in that wants to use your hotel and your banquet services for a wedding well you're gonna you got to deal with an emotional potential couple you got a couple different buyers there who's going to pay for it you got competitors that you know is this more about price or is this more about experience is both I like you got to get people to defend it you got to be able to negotiate like you kind of like and and you want to make sure you pay them so they fight a little bit themselves and let me let me kind of end this segment with this I I hired a CFO right before the pandemic her name is Laura um I said what I want you to do is I want you to look at the books I want you to look at our processes and and make some recommendations well she did what most good CFOs would she told me all the areas in the company that she would address so she immediately Lauren goes and says your salespeople are being paid too much money I go where I said salary base goes look we got to drive better profitability I would actually hit some of the commissions here I said okay fair enough um she goes you going to do it I go well I want you to kind of experience sales process and see what they do before you make the recommendation at that at that point we had owned this call center so we had invited these these potential prospects to our office to look at the look at our process so Laura was in the meeting my VP sales was in the meeting who was driving the sell myself and we had about four people with us um that we were selling to and they start to negotiate heavily because they had we had kind of put some pricing in before they came to the meeting and I turned to Laura and I said hey Laura and this was an active negotiation I said what are your thoughts on this price point and what should we take out of the deal or put it in based off of what you know about the business L's really tall and she kind of looked up very dignified very classy and she looked up and she paused and she goes I I don't know and I go okay so I jumped in and we landed at at a reasonable place and we ended up winning the business so they walked out we shook everybody's hand and we're going to get an S so over Lura as they walked out of the conference room um asked my VP if she could have a moment with me she closed the door she called me every she made up names I never heard never so embarrassed you blah blah blah I'm like whoa whoa whoa I was like settle down and I go why are you so frustrated and she goes I was unprepared for that I was uncomfortable with that I feel like you put me on the spot I go listen Laura I've hired you because you're articulate you have a good business I was like she goes I just felt I was being pressured to make a decision right there I go oh right so the pressure the pressure of the situation got you I said so hey I I do want you to recognize because I'm accepting what you did and I probably could have prepared you but I wanted to see how you did in the moment our sales people deal with that or version of that every single day how do you feel now about C their commissions what did she say she gives good point I mean she still had some other points there and we we landed in a place and you know our relationship you know she great person blah blah blah blah blah but she did acknowledge that that's different being in a pressure cooker and having to respond in an impromptu and extemporaneous way was hard and I said is a couple percentage points really worth it or when our people ready to go and be very ready to go situationally and have some skin in the game so they fight right so that was that was kind of the point you talked before about the cousins of sales and I'm curious I assume that when you sell your own Services you focus on the sales process naturally but I assume you also use other forms of marketing and I'm wondering how you think about integrating other forms of marketing with the sales process you've created ironically enough we had a meeting about this earlier with our VP marketing chip and and and Gina VP you know we we campaign so we'll get a lot of our IP out there you know we we Market with with books like you know my books are in Hudson News you know and every airport somebody we pick it up we enter into a company you know through we call it spider webbing so we typically we'll go at a sea Suite because sea sues are always concerned about Topline and bottom line growth right so we'll go after them we'll go after a level two decision maker whether it be the you know a chief sales officer when you say go after how are you going after them yeah so so we target them sales people Target people with with pretty we have a a strong ideal Prospect profile there a certain type of organization a level person we go after and and when we Prospect an organization we we don't Prospect one person we Prospect three right but but are you doing this through email through phone calls through yeah it's it's Cadence is it's all over it's it's usually Outreach with a marketing email campaign an invite to a webinar they visit our web site that goes into the top of a funnel we start funneling down as there becomes more engagement right or the salesperson will look at a company from a referral standpoint and start prospecting directly through email then a follow-up phone call everybody on here needs to know that pre pandemic it took six day touches to contact a prospect in most businesses since the pandemic it's 9 to 12 according to our research Partners so your touch points is increased by almost 30% why do you think that is I just think people are harder to get a hold of now they're hiding out the good news is with everything though is most phone systems corporate phone systems because of the pandemic go right to somebody's cell phone so texting when once you get somebody's phone number the chance of you actually have their cell phone number or whatever number you has goes right to their cell phone number is significantly High I never thought of that that's really interesting yeah and there's actually one little hack right now that's really working it's kind of interesting if you have an iPhone if you want it to text somebody right there's little things you can do at the bottom of a text right and there's a blue squiggly line where you can leave a voice note and you can actually send instead of sending somebody a text you send them a voice note that gets deliver via text and you if you have an iPhone you can tell if they actually listen to it are you active on social media yeah we are we are really act I think the big thing about social media too if you're in selling right now you almost have to treat it a little bit because you can message people like that is part of the conversation and that's what fragments it like we have we have one uh salesperson on our team he's our senior director and everybody at Tyson group sells at some level he is extremely good at having conversations with people on LinkedIn and Facebook and then he moves the conversation to an email so he like fragments it out and really leverages that so he's just exceptional at it have you figured out a way to get your people to actually do what they're supposed to do in your CRM yeah first of all our as a company our philosophy is we own the prospects and since they're owned by the company they're not owned by the individual if if if you don't have all the information filled out in CRM you run the risk of not getting paid your full commission that sounds serious I mean there's a carrot and a stick you're not going to carrot everybody right there's a consequence if you run a stop stop sign there consequences you might get a tick it if you don't fully fill out everything that's needed tell me if this is your experience I hear this is constant problem nobody uses their CRM to its full potential and it's really hard to get people to take it as seriously as they should yeah I think that's I think that's an expectation problem I here let me give you an example I was sitting down with a couple Executives and with an NHL team and it was a small sponsorship team and I was having breakfast with a guy let's say a guy named Cam and a guy named Ryan and they were talking about their culture and things like that and I and I said and and this actually came up and they were talking about are people will not gauge in CRM I go why I don't understand why they wouldn't and what have you done to get them and they're like you know we literally talk to them you know about all the reasons why they should how it's good for the business how it's good for them we've had contests we've incentivized we rewarded them I said okay so there so what you're telling me is you have five people or six people that are insubordinate that's what it sounds like I mean so you know what they do in a ship with insubordination just make people walk the par I we're not going to do that go right I said so they go what could we do I said you you can bring a horse to water but you can't make them want and they said drink I go right but you can put salt in the roads so I said just just make an announcement that hey here's the expectation for CRM that in order to to have a deal these are these are these are the absolutes and just make an announcement that that if this isn't filled out completely these are the parameters that you run the risk of getting a delay in your commissions or a reduction in your commission and they go HR will never buy that I said I didn't ask you whether HR was going to buy it or not I said you just make the freaking announcement and I said just trust me run the test I just just put it out put it out in an email and make an announcement the next week they had 95% of compliance wow right but but the point is like the expectations there some of your audience might be like wow Lance you're so hardcore I'm actually not because if don't judge what I'm saying on on one minor thing that that you don't have high engagement in I mean I would tell you even in my own company the average you know we have 25 people the average length of person's been with us um the longest has been 20 years I've had four people that have been with us you know all the way from the time they got out of college they're 35 years old I I had I had a former VP leave to go you know to raise her children she says hey I think this is it blah blah I said Jess you're I'm just going to put you on sabatical she's been on sabatical for three years she just came back yesterday well I've really enjoyed this my thanks to Lance Tyson and of course to our sponsor the great game of business which helps businesses use an open book management system to build healthier companies you can learn more at Great game.com wait wait don't leave yet if you have a question or a comment that you'd like the 21 hats owners to address send it to me by replying to your Morning Report or by email at Lauren 21h hats.com that's l ren21 hats.com do it now before you forget and don't be afraid to tell Jay what you really think he can take it and if you got something out of this conversation help us reach more business owners tell a friend subscribe and review us wherever you get your podcasts follow us on Twitter subscribe to the morning report at21 hats.com this episode was produced by Jess Theron founder of blank word Productions okay now you can leave thanks for listening everyone [Music]