Why the Setter-Closer Model Still Wins (And How to Build One That Actually Scales)

wearing a sales costume. No real onboarding, no document a process, no playbooks, a sales manager

“who was just the best rep in the room six months ago, and a marketing team optimizing for the”

cheapest lead instead of the right one. Today I'm sitting down with Josh Troy. Josh has spent over a decade inside high ticket, high velocity sales. He's built and run out sore sales operations for some of the fastest moving companies in the space and he thinks about sales the way I do, not as a conversation but as an operating system. We're getting into the setter closer model, AI and sales operations, the war between marketing and sales, and why the person you call a sales

manager is probably three jobs you haven't filled yet. This is the vault unlocked. Let's unlock it. Josh, welcome to the show. What's up, Cavan? Well, I'm excited because I know we're going to be talking about something that's obviously very dear to my heart, which is sales because that's everything I've actually built my entire career on. But before we go into that, because I know we're going to get in the nitty gritty, I just think it's important. Tell us a little bit of who Josh is

and where, you know, what you've done to end up where you are today. Totally. Yeah, and that's always

such a broad question, right? There's so many different things I could start with and I don't want to be too long-winded, but I'll kind of tie it together to thread that's most relevant to this podcast. But real quick, before I even do that, like we were just talking about, I just had my first baby super excited, not really taking any calls, but I was like, dude, I'm not rescheduling this podcast with Cavan because I know we're going to be able to take this deep. So I'm excited for the

content we're going to get into. Anyways, my name's Josh Troy. You know, I've been in sales

“and high ticket, high velocity sales, literally my entire career far over a decade now. I think”

it's like 12, 13 years or something like that. And, you know, my story really starts off in outbound sales. And so I started my first company when I was 21 years old. Fun fact about me,

not really the purpose of the podcast, but I got sober when I was 20 years old. So I've never

even had a legal sip of alcohol. I've been sober for over 13 years now. And that's a big part of my story. But, you know, I turned 21. I started my first video production agency. And, you know, I know, when you hear video production, there's such a wide range. I wasn't doing these, like, short little social media reels. We were producing commercials. Our average ticket size was between 25 to 50 K towards the end there. The highest I sold was 300,000 for 60 second spots. So it was

really like high in high value production. And so when I first started that business, first of all, I didn't know anything about marketing. But second of all, I didn't have the money or I didn't think I had the money. And I, I say that now with some business maturity because if I knew what I know now about reinvestment, I would have grown that company a lot faster. And I probably would have started marketing from day one. But at that time, it ended up being great because even though I didn't

have a budget for, for marketing, I had a lot of willpower. I was willing to do whatever it took. So

“I was in my mom's garage. I remember it was summer time. It was like a hundred degrees outside.”

I'm freaking stripping sweat. Actually, I'll even tell you this, I usually leave this detail out, but it's fresh in mind since I just had a baby. At that time, I was living with my parents. I just started this business. My inside the house, my older sister, she had a baby and my mom was helping, you know, kind of razor. My, my, my sister was a nurse. Anyways, the point is, I was inside the house and the freaking baby was crying all day. So I couldn't make cold calls there.

I'd go in the backyard and her dogs would park the entire time because they were put outside because of a baby. So it was so much chaos. I ended up being in like a shed in her garage, dripping sweat cold calling. And so all I had was a bunch of willpower and, you know, Google. I didn't even have like zoom in, faux, or follower any of these data providers. I would just call straight down, you know, with search queries. And that was how I built that entire company.

I've hung up, I've got hung up on more times and most people have made dials. Yeah, I'm sure you know how that goes, right? Like, I have been hung up so many times and, uh, in through something, it was really interesting. Everybody hates cold calling for the most part. And I learned to absolutely love it because it was a, a very unique superpower of mine. Like there was very few people that could decide that they needed business, pick up the call and find it.

And so to me, it became the truest definition of generating money out of thin air. And so, um, to skip through a couple highlights that brought me towards today, uh, built the company based on outbound, uh, even towards a point of me selling it, just to be right size. It was a very small

known as curvy on blue. I already had the company. And I was pretty far removed from that business

“and it was more of a distracting asset than anything. So, uh, I sold that and even at that time,”

the number one source of business was still outbound. And so, uh, built it based on outbound. At that point in time, I realized that digital marketing agencies, uh, they, they ran the media for the ads that we produced. So, my thought was if we could make partnerships with them, uh, you know, we'd be able to produce a lot more content because they already have the clients. And kind of the value exchange was a said, hey, uh, you know, we want to learn how to do outbound sales. We're marketers.

We don't really have the outbound sales engine. A lot of marketing companies were really interested in that. And I said, okay, well, I want to learn direct response and bound marketing, because I couldn't even imagine cave on, you know, spoiled closures are these days. Well, look at a calendar full of endbound leads. Yeah. I mean, now, I, I, I wanted to let you keep going before we get in there. But yeah, you, you said it yourself, like, back in our day, I'm going to say,

even when you said cold calling, we didn't get a list, or I don't know what you got. I never got

a list. Like, I had to actually go do the work to find the list. There wasn't internet back then, or even, hey, I, for sure, where you're like, hey, give me the list of the 10 top real estate agents in the, you know, in this local area. Like, I was calling real estate agents and mortgage brokers. I had to come up with a list. I had a dial the list. Absolutely. So when I look at that, now back in the day, people call that, um, you know, outbound cold calling what you want to call it.

I, I actually call that business development, like, depending on how far you take it. Like, for me, it was cold call them, book a meeting, get a meeting in person, meet them. Yeah. Well, yeah, market them, close the deal. That, that's the full cycle. Right. That is not 100% right. In fact, like, that, that, that, that, when I started selling it again, we're not talking about

decades ago. This is 12, 13 years ago, and it's crazy how much has changed, but when I first started

selling zoom did it exist. Or maybe it had existed, but I didn't know a single person that like zoom is not a thing that people are like, what's a zoom meeting, right? Like, nobody was on zoom. And so it was a phone call to, to an in person meeting. And my follow up wasn't just like some virtual blast. It was sending like cookie cakes that, you know, random thoughtful stuff to try to penetrate the decision makers. But very, very different time. It is. And so you made a comment like sales

reps today. They just getting in. They have no idea. I feel like when we say that, you know, I say that, we sound like those old farts. I'll tell you, you know, it's so true. Like, I mean, we both run sales agencies and the complaints I get from these sales people, I just shake my

“head and I'm like, you have no idea. Like, that's what changed my world. Now, the problem with”

is I've turned lazy to like, I don't like cocoa. And I think it's like, why would I cocoa? When I know how to do digital marketing and drive quality warm lead to a book call, I just think about the reward, the effort versus reward is it there or not. But what I do believe in, I'll just say this, is there's nothing better than cocoa. Like, I mean, if you want to get to someone quicker faster, essentially cheaper, uh, cocoa is, uh, is where it hits at. Like, my original sales trainer,

or say mentor in all sales, till this day, he won't even go digital marketing. He tried it for like a year. He's like bullshit. He still peer hammers the phones day in, day out, making millions. I mean, this guy's a multi-multi millionaire. Yeah. Three companies all from the single phone. And that's it. That's crazy. Well, I mean, it's, you know, at that time, it's actually funny. I paid a, I do feel like a dinosaur when we talk about this. And it's funny, because we're

“young guys relative to this, right? But I remember I paid a full stack web developer to build a”

bought, which was like some automated system where it would take a key word in a Google query. And then it would, it would run the search results. And it would look for certain things on the

website. It was basically its own scraper. Like a custom scraper. I had to build that.

And, and I had all these little fancy things. And what's so funny about that is I called it an, an, an artificial, sorry, artificial intelligence, lead generation bought. And it, and like, it was funny because AI didn't exist back then. And it had nothing to do with AI, but I heard that turn somewhere. Yeah. I ended up calling it. But anyways, after that man, it was like, you know, learned to direct response, learn inbound marketing, got into, you know, a lot more high tick,

eye velocity. And I realized how much faster you could scale if the lead flow component was more predictable. So, that's absolutely short. Which I love you to say, the lead component is more

like to do that anymore, because it's not leverage enough for my time. And I think that's exactly

it, right? A common, I don't know if you've ever dealt with this, a common question I get is, well, why do you have a set or closer model? Why don't we just have the Closer's dialing also? And it's interesting because it all comes down to that question of, well, what is their time worth? And so, I build activity models out, right financial models show economics, activity models show capacity. And so, the question is, what is worth the time for the skill set and the talent and

the responsibility set of, you know, the sales reps. And so, when you break it down, if you have really good closers, it is not leverage enough, the dollar per hour activity. It's not leverage enough for them to be dialing. Plus, if they're any good, they're going to fill their calls with their

calendar with calls. Now it's this up and down lead flow faucet. It's like roller coaster lead flow.

“And so, for so many reasons, that what you said exactly that, that's why there's an SDRA or a”

set or closer model that works the best. Well, I mean, that model has been around forever and there's a reason for that. And you just nailed it. I like how you said the activity. If you have your best closer, and they're going to take an hour, where do you want them with the hottest lead, or coal calling people, right? We know that answer. Just hearing you speak, I love it. Tells me that you know something called sales operations. Oh, yeah. When I say sales operations,

what does that mean to you? Who's interesting? I don't typically define it, but I guess if I did, I would say it's the systems, the processes, the methodologies, and the frameworks, the overall orchestration of the revenue motion. And so, you know, when so many people think of sales, they just often talk about what's set on the phone, what's set on the call. Maybe objection handling,

“maybe someone throws in a follow-up or two in the conversation. But when I think of sales operation,”

it's all the connective tissue. So it's everything from the call models, from the to the sales process design itself to, you know, lead to close ratio, CRM systems, reactivation campaigns. It's, it's how to be the most efficient and maximize revenue from the leads that you generate, not just what's set on the phone. And there's, there's a whole host of things that are under that term. There is. And I agree with you. I mean, just just the operation side of like, even the finance side,

all the reporting. I mean, everything that go, the dialies, the dollars, the connection rate, the, all of the things that happen is all underneath that. Yep. So when we go in that conversation, now, because I know that's kind of your, your expertise. What do you see right now just in today's world, today's marketplace? I mean, even with all the new CRMs, like, my favorite CRM, I just logged in the other day, because I don't really get into the CRMs anymore where I'm at my agency.

And I, yeah, they have a full AI bought. I've never sounded anything better than I've ever heard

of my life. And it's like, it is fully sits there and says, who do you want me to call for you? Yeah. I go. Okay. With automation, obviously, automated email, automated SMS, automated basically dialing, even though we can say, oh, it's not the same as humans. No, it's not. But is every human going to call every lead? We know that answer. Right. I don't care how good your product is. I don't care how good your operators. You know, if you're at a big scale level,

you're not calling every single lead. Now we have bots. I can call every single lead. What is there? Like, what do you even need a salesperson for? That's where I'm looking at going. My God. Yeah. Well, it's an interesting question. And also, I'd be super curious with the tool that you and we could talk offline about. I'm super curious to tool that you're actually using because in my experience, I have just not found an AI dialer that is that great at all. And I think it

depends on the actual the industry in the use case. Right. If you have like a really, very, very, very low connection rate type of dialing motion or a very low ticket product that doesn't require much trust, like it's more effective. I haven't seen a lot of great use cases, but what what I'll highlight is what you're saying, which is the fact that the output. So the best AI enablement use cases right now for sales operations are things that massively increase coverage

and capacity. And so it creates so much leverage. And so one of my favorite ones that we build is the call an AI enabled call analysis. Yeah. Same exact concept, man. It's like, you used to, you know,

“when we were first getting into sales, the only way to get an insight from a sales call was to”

listen to it and it's hard because all of everything you want to know is on the sales calls. And so the whole concept of taking that qualitative data and turning it into quantitative touch points and data, that's like the most valuable thing. For example, instead of saying, because you're

let's say it's an example. You're a sales manager. You have five sales reps. Eight calls a day. That's

“40 calls a day. 40 hours roughly, maybe worth the calls. You're a sales manager. You have eight hours”

in the day and other responsibilities. You never listen to 100% of the sales calls. But what AI allows

us to do is run all of those. And if you have a proper configuration, you can say things like out of the last 32 calls, 17 of them gave this objection. Now, that's so much more actionable. The feedback loop to marketing is significantly different other than saying in the past. Well, out of the couple calls we heard this came up, but I don't really know if that's the reason that sales are lower right now. So now what I'll say when I talk about AI call analysis or, you know,

the umbrella term call intelligence, I'm not referring to like the gongs of the world and you know, all these other solutions out there because there's, yeah, well, the issue with them is it really good to head start a few years ago. They were super impressive. But I can't even count how many people that I've met that, you know, deployed one of those call intelligence tools and

never really used it for anything other than more efficiently scrubbing calls. And so the reason why

is because they're all trained on generic LLM. So it's just it's comparing and evaluating your call and your process and your tactics to just generic stuff online. So what we do and really just this year got to the point where, you know, we can do this at a really robust level is we build out all the costum context engineering in our own AI call analysis models where now it's like the processes documented, our scorecards are regimented. I mean, it's really like a CRM. It's only as good as

the configuration you have. And so that's helping us take things to an entire new level. Now what does that do for a sales organization? Well, a manager that let's say that could only manage eight reps can now manage 20 as an example. So you get so much more leverage that leverage and

topics, you know, the operational leverage drops to the bottom line. And so those are some of the

most exciting use cases for us right now. Yeah, I love that. So let me ask you this, how do you get, oh, when I say compliance, I'm going to say compliance on the sales reps because here's a thing, yeah, the AI can listen to the call. Yeah, I can break down the call. The AI is, you know, can send the the sales rep our an email and a text message and a PDF with everything that went wrong on that call. But still, there's the compliance of the sales rep to actually open the email,

read the PDF and actually take the training or, you know, want to learn to grow to bring it to the next call. Yeah, I mean, you know, we call it a dull babysitting for a reason, you know, that's that's

“what it, that's what sales management is, man, it's just repetitive mundane things over and over and”

over and over again. I mean, to a certain extent, you just have to have consequences in a sales organization. You have to have those. And so if people aren't following process, they're terminated, right? That's one of the short answers. But the more in-depth answer is, I have found a long time ago that most sales reps want to follow process. They do especially, by the way, if you have earned their trust in confidence that you know what you're doing and that the thing you're telling them to do

will get them more results, therefore more income. That always is the prerequisite. But if you do that, I am convinced that they want to follow it. So the question becomes, well, why aren't they following it? And what I've learned and what I've observed managing dozens of sales teams and consulting with a lot of different companies is they have so much complexity in their organization. Now, let's start with the basics. First off, they don't even have proper onboarding. They don't even have a

training sister. They don't, or sorry, training center. They don't have playbooks. They don't have

“the process documented begin with. So how can you enforce something that was not standardized to start?”

So I think it starts with really, really good process playbooks and training. And then the enforcement piece is the sales management motion. And so we call this the rep development motion. And the way it's different, then performance management, right, because like maybe they're performing, but they're not following process stuff. And so the rep development motion every single week we create what's called a sip. It stands for a success implementation plan. Not to be confused

with the pip. Lip is typically assigned with someone who's not performing. The difference is a sip. They might be doing well, but the theory is the concept is there's always room for improvement. So the sip every rep has that. It's basically an individualized development plan. And every Monday, it's kind of reset with what their focus is for that week. And so what I have found is the more specific you can be in the development instruction, the better the results.

And what you're talking about right now is a really big thing. Like I am convinced that sales

rep that got promoted, right? They don't have any professionalized management training. Yeah. Yeah. I mean,

so now you're coming into what I say there's like three different really, you know, people hire a sales manager not realizing that there's actually three buckets that I call them. And number one is there's actual true sales manager. Yep. There's a sales trainer, which we were talking about before the show. And then there's what I call as a sales coach. And those are my very, very three different people. And I tell people that they, oh, I know someone who's all three now. No, no, no, like

you, you find me someone who's all three of those, truly all three of those. Those are the unicorns. Let's let's go capture them. Let's bring them in and do studies on them. It's a building. Hey, as a sales manager, that's the reason that, you know, the brother term, which one of those are you truly? And then as a business owner and or business knowing what department or what what your team needs more of. Now, if you have some of my view, which sounds like you run a very

tight ship of sales operations, let's say, and there's lots of, and a lot of hand holding through systems and processes and policies, maybe you don't need so much of a sales manager. Maybe there is that room for where you need more of a sales coach. Because I don't think AI is ever going to be a true sales coach, right? So, well, what is a sales coach? Well, exactly what, say, it's coaching the players to be better at their job. A sales coach, like we have it in house coach, every single

time a sales rep goes to the coach. We'll say, hey, go to coach Terry. They leave coach Terry

make a sale. Coach Terry ever wants to talk to them about their sales. Never talked about

the product. Never talked about the service. It was coaching them as the human beings. Because I know sales is the wrecked reflection of the sales person. That's 100%. And you bring up a really good topic here. I never called it the sales coach specifically, but like we have a corporate trainer as an example, in addition to the sales managers. And one of the, this is actually one of the biggest topics that I like to discuss with potential people that, you know, one outsource sales.

Because in marketing, it's so commonly understood. Nobody even thinks they're going to build a marketing team and hire one guy or you know, one girl, one person to run marketing. Nobody thinks that. They know it's a graphic designer. It's a media buyer. It's a funnel builder. It's a copywriter. It's a lifecycle marketer email marketer. There's so many different specialties. But for some reason, they'll look at a sales team or a sales organization. And they'll say, let's hire sales manager.

“And it's like, there are so many different functions and responsibilities. And by the way, that's why”

there's so many failed sales manager hires because the playbook, the responsibility set to begin with is completely incorrect. Yeah. We break it down to the core four. We call for a sales manager. We call it call analysis, rep, or sorry, call analysis, pipeline management, performance management, and training center optimization. Because training centers were all the leverage of everything, you know, comes into. And then the thread through them all is rep development,

right? But then we have recruiting, then we have sales enablement, then we have training, right? We have so many different things. And you also have systems inside, like, you know, systems, and then the rev ops team, right? That's what we think. Yeah, then you got to have numbers. And then you got to understand, even the new wants is like, how many days is it taking for someone to book a call? And what happens when it gets to point like for us, we know after two days,

the no show rate goes a 50%. So who's watching that number all day? And then what are the

“triggers that you need to do to prevent that number? Because people just think it's more sales people.”

But that's not necessarily the truth. So, you know, I'll give you a popular opinion. And I think you'll agree with this. The funny thing about what we do in outsource sales is because there's a, you know, there's a premium on how we charge it. I think the misconception is it where way more expensive than doing it in house. And the funny thing is, if they really compare the accurate numbers, there's no way they could do what we actually do in house for less. We have the efficiencies.

We have the economies of scale. And we can have these fractional players where they're full-time FTEs for us, but they only need 5% of their time on that account. Because what typically happens is, oh, I could hire a sales manager for less than that. Well, yeah, that's a very small piece of

the puzzle. And what about everyone else? Well, then I always go, okay, so who's going to be the

hiring manager? Who's going to be the interviewer? Exactly. You're your system. You're a ops person. Who's going to be the manager assistant to the, for the sales manager? Okay,

“who's going to be the trainer? Who's going to be the, it's just like it goes on and on and on, right?”

Because I, I, I, I, I, I, I deal with that. As you know, the agency, we deal with that all the time. And it's, it's interesting because they don't see all that. They don't see, like, I'm basically your HR department, your recruiter, your developer, your sales trainer, your sales manager. And

director and a CR over your company. And even accounting dude, it goes with everything. Yeah, the foundation, the accounting compensation accounting is like the most challenging type of accounting. Maybe the one exception is like a really complex business that has really in depth, whip schedules, you know, work in progress and complicated stuff. But typically sales compensation accounting is one of the most challenging. And, you know, we do all of that. So

anyways, we could go back into it. But I just, I had to say that because when you're on the concept, there are so many different hats to run a proper sales function. And everybody groups it together

“and says sales manager. Yeah. And this is one of many of a sales department, right?”

So let me ask you this, because I know you work, and this is the, the fight that I always have.

And I actually try not to have it. It just seems like it's always there in the business for some reason. Is the sales versus marketing, the MQL versus SQL. It's just on that. We have a slide on it. I always like to say, if we have a slide on it in our engagement deck, it shows how important it is, because it's like it's literally an expectation going into the engagement of like, hey, you know, working with our clients, there's a very clear line drawn in the sand. You know, the one of the

most expensive things is the gap between marketing and sales. We have to have a really strong feedback loop, and we have to have a clear line of separation. So it's super important. I'll also say that we have something we called the Golden Formula, which is lead flow time sales performance equals revenue. The importance of that is there's only two variables to get to the desired outcome. And each side has to own their variable in a really, you know, regimented way. And we have to be on the same page

with the accountability. So there's a few things that I found to make a significant difference in smoothing out that relationship. And by the way, most of these big problems, you ever heard of the difference between problems and polarities, by the way. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, it's explained to us. Well, you know, that I love this. I read it in some book. I can't

remember what, but it made a big difference to me, because I was always frustrated solving the same

things. Like, why isn't it fixed yet? And I read in some book that problems are things that can be resolved and come to a final state. Polarities are things that will always be there and you'll always have to manage for the optimal outcome. So so many of these concepts we talk about in sales operations and the one you brought up between marketing and sales, it's just a polarity. It will never go away. So how do you manage it for the optimal outcome? And there's a handful of things that I found

that make a really big difference. One of the first things is, uh, remove the word lead quality from your vocabulary, because it's not helpful for anybody. It's very subjective. Nobody knows

“what to mean, what it means and it's not actionable. If you say, oh, the lead quality is low. How?”

And what do we do about it? And how do we correct it on the marketing side, right? So for sales, we take a lot of ownership. I don't want anybody to say lead quality. Now, you can address lead

quality, but it needs to be a specific thing backed by a lot of data. So the second thing we have

is what we call a validation sequence. Validation sequence is a process of exactly how it sounds validating lead flow or a new process or a new offer. So when we come into a brand and they have a new offer or a service or whatever, it needs to be validated. And so the levels to the validation sequence are number one lead quality, right? Now again, we don't use lead quality like poor lead quality, but as a topic, we need to validate that. So in other words, do we have the right

ICP on the call? If we have the right ICP and we're talking to the right people is the sales rep performing. So sales performance is number two. This is where everyone gets stuck though. A lot of the times they'll have good avatars, good prospects, pretty good sales reps, and they're still not getting the conversions that they want. And they get stuck. Well, at that point, number three is pitch

“design. You have to transition and iterate through multiple versions of pitch design. I have sold so many”

things in my career where nothing about the offer changed, but the way that we pitched it did. And that's what made all the difference. So you have lead quality, sales performance, pitch design, which could also mean process like tweak in the sales process. And the last thing is offer design. If you've really exhausted those options, you might not have an irresistible offer that's resonating to the degree that you want. So two more things on this topic. So first of all,

remove the word lead quality. Second of all, run a validation sequence. Third of all, use a validation matrix. So the sequence is the concept and the methodology of how we do that. A validation matrix is how we document this because it's all about data. So we'll take that concept, lead quality, repl performance, pitch design and offer design. We break that out. It's a series of columns in a spreadsheet and they'll grade a few dozen calls with every single one of those touch

30 calls. 25 of them were actually good calls and pretty decent conversations, but half of them

had this same objection when it came to the pitch and the thing that blocked the moving forward. So it gives you that clarity. That is super helpful in sharing that information with marketing makes all the difference because it gives them the visibility. Right. Like, it's not, I used to say a long time. Like, why is it just a sales manager's job to listen to sales calls? Why doesn't marketing do that? Because it's the same data that they need. And there's two parts of a sales call,

rep insights and lead insights. And they need the lead insights and how to optimize the campaigns. So since I don't manage marketers, this is a process that we follow to give them the data that they need to make the right decisions. The last thing, cave on, I know it's a long answer, but you said it's

“how important it is. The last one, man, is a form. You have some sort of disposition form in the actual”

CRM. You have a non-subjective way that you qualify lead that team has to be trained on based on some simple criteria. And after every single call, they fill out that disposition form in the CRM. So now you, again, have quantitative data linked to actual contacts that marketing knows now how to optimize for it. And so that kind of combination of things. It's not a problem that will be resolved. It's a polarity, but you'll do way, way better with it. Yeah. Everything you're saying is like,

sounds all great. You're assuming the marketing's doing that and taking that in listening. Right. So the challenge is, I find, if marketing is trying to get it for instance, oh, cheap is a book call. 100%. That is, people are not the, they grow, like, markers can cheat row as so easily and like literally harpoon the back end of the business. We'll so let's stem off with that though. After we just talked about the process and kind of the best practices,

now you actually have SQLs. So if you have a smart marketing team, and if you don't,

“you have to communicate this stuff to them, they can start optimizing the media buying and the”

campaigns based on the SQLs, not the cheapest leads. Yeah. If you're optimizing for SQLs or once you get enough data, you're optimizing for actual buyers. Now you're going to be paying more for people that are a lot more qualified. And so, but listen, we don't, we, in our company, we say control the controllables. We're not media buyers, but since lead flow times sales performance

equals revenue, it's our most important relationship. And frankly, if there's a media buyer

that we know, because we've done this for a long time, if we know that they suck, we got to bring somebody in that's advanced and knows how to run this the right way. Yeah, I agree with you. I was going to say, if you believe this or not, I was, I, and I love this, because this was a marketing conference. And the marketer on stage said this and I was, I wish everyone of my clients was here, because it's different when in sales person says it as you know,

but he's, he said this, what he said, he's still on stage. He said, listen, if your sales team has to do marketing over the phone, marketing isn't doing their job. If marketing can get the sale, like, you know, can't produce leads, quality leads for the sales

teams, but basically, like you just said, the offer product is not doing their job.

I'll tell you what, man, I agree 100%, but I have a couple of caveats to add, but I agree 100% it's so important now. Before I say what the caveat is, one of the most frustrating parts about that, it's really hard to explain to people why it's not the same when they come to the call with little marketing, like because you know, what do the clients say? Well, then just communicate the stuff that the ads would have said or why don't you just spend more time with them, work

along their sales process, do XYZ. There's something about it that is so hard when you start right back here, and now you're spending so much time with them just to get in the point to actually have the sales conversation and dialogue, but it's frustrating for people because to them, they're like, it's the same person, just a little bit less awareness, why can't you just increase awareness and now it's the same thing? But it's hard because of a concept called peak interest, right?

“Peak interest is super important, and that's why speed to lead a so important in sales.”

Peak interest is, and peak buying state is what you want somebody in to have a sales conversation. It deteriorates quickly. So if somebody's not in that peak interest state, they don't have the level of awareness. The interest dies off as the sales rep is in the process of trying to take them there. I think a lot of people fundamentally don't understand how marketing actually works. It's not like they saw one add or one video most the time that got them to that level of awareness.

It's been over a period of time with they've been conscious of it to make it really a good lead, right? So even if we do that on the sales call, it doesn't completely solve the problem. So that's the

important thing. But we have a training called 10 steps to wires from strangers. That's like our proprietary selling methodology, right? And we have a step called step zero. And step zero is exactly the topic you're talking about, where it's like, hey, in an ideal world, yes, our conversions will be much lower if marketing doesn't do their job. But if it hits your calendar, we're not flush and leads down the toilet. No, you gotta do the very

best you can. And so step zero is the concept of doing that marketing piece, basically increasing

level of awareness and then taking them into a sales process. It's how to modify our process to take a lead that's less aware or not fully ready. Yeah, absolutely. So what do you see in some things in the marketplace today? You know, the marketplace is changing a little bit. I personally have seen, for instance, no shows or just on average. I've talked a lot of people. They're seeing a little bit more increase in no shows. Yeah. I just think the market is just where

it's at today, just where everything going on. But what do you see in some things sticking out right now when it comes to whether the lead, I'm not going to use the word lead quality, but the leads that are showing up and or the conversations that are happening, the offers that you're

“working on, is there any common threads that you're seeing that's changing from the last couple years?”

Yeah, you know, funnels in sales topics kind of come in and out like clothing trends. Yeah, I think you and I have may have talked about that once before. You know, it was like in 2020 VSLs were all the rage dude. Yeah. You're getting 25k one call closes and yeah, and it was a surge in a perfect storm of so many things, right, ad costs, red and all time low. Demand was at an all-time high because people were staying at home. They didn't have much to do. There's for an uncertainty

with the current job, like there's so many different factors that made a lot of people just want to spend more money online because we're talking about remote sales operations, of course. And so one big thing, obviously ad costs, if you look at it with meta, and this is one of the frustrating things or a public company, they need to continue to increase their own, you know, what is it? Shareholder value. So you don't have a year where ad costs are lower.

So one thing that's been challenging, which is a difference, is that people are paying way more

“for the same leads and the same opportunity. And so I think that it's a much more important”

or more attention needed on the efficiency. You can be pretty inefficient in prior years, call it 2020 to 2022, the end or early 2023, you could do really well being pretty inefficient. And I think that companies are really realizing like that's not going to cut it. We need lead to close rates to increase. We need reactivation campaigns. We need really strong setter motions. And we have a big focus on expansion revenue, which is, you know, upsells and

ascension for existing customers to be able to increase LTV, which also helps with the company profitability. So that's a big, big change. We work with our clients on rolling out expansion revenue because most the industry and most these companies are so focused on front in profitability. It's like, if they don't, it's feast or famine, you know, if they don't make all their money on a front in row as they're screwed. And I just don't like that business model. We like to give our clients

a lot more sustainability. So we help build out that back in an expansion revenue. That's one big theme in itself. The other theme I would say, and these are the two that come to mind for me right now, is trust is a real big thing again. And let's say the trust is the trust man and like credibility in authority is very different. We're leaning a lot heavier on sales enablement and conviction assesses what we call them in the actual sales process. People want a lot more

proof. They want a lot more time with you. And they want to know that you're the real deal. And so I actually believe that a lot of the company, because there's different philosophies out there. I've

always sold with what we call a closing deck. Always 13 years. I've always used a closing deck.

And a closing deck, I just told the deck like, yeah, actually a share screen and wow. We see we from a 13 years cave on. And I love it. So when I'm going to say you've done probably, if not, I mean, I'm going to assume over hundreds of millions of dollars like I have in my agency.

“Yeah, I think it's really interesting, right? Like this is where I want people to hear this is”

here's an amazing, you obviously, you have an amazing operation. I was actually talking to someone the other day. And I was like, there's only two people that I know that run a good operation. And you are one of them. Thank you. I appreciate that. Two others that I'd say outside obviously I would say myself in another group. But yeah, it's interesting because I've done like we've

done over 500 million in the last like six, seven years, never once used a deck. I don't use the deck.

process. It's what works is what I tell you. It's what works and what feels good for the sales

people. We call it Jedi mind tricks. Our chief sales officer, my partner, Raga, he always says

he says is Jedi mind tricks, whatever you believe is going to work as the thing that does. And so I totally agree with that. But here's the funny thing, too. There's so many different ways of skin in the cat. You seem like somebody like myself that always wants to be the best. Like

“that's why we're obsessed with the details. So dude, let's be honest here. I'm sure it's the same”

for you. You know how many times over the years I've questioned should we get rid of the deck? Yeah, you probably considered at times should we use the deck? 100% I was going to 100% I was talking to someone the other, I was talking to my manager there a day. And I'm like, you think we should turn this more into a SaaS sale? Like where you do a demo? And he was like, oh, it's not what we do. I'm like, good point. Okay. But yeah, let's let's let this is interesting. Let me share it because I

even know Cole Gore and I've talked him about this. He teaches no deck at all. I mean, like in his training, it's like the teacher's like the Google Doc bullet point thing. Now, I agree anytime I get into the conversation of don't use a sales deck. I agree with all the points they make. But then I say, but why don't you still use a sales deck? And not do any of those things. So the most common thing to simplify it is they say, don't use a sales deck because it's a

quickest way to create objections because you'll talk people out of deals because it seems to salesy because it's a little bit too fabricated because it can't flow organically. It's a little bit too rigid. It's all the same stuff. But for us, we have a very simple deck. You do not want to have too much content because I agree all of those things. And we practice something called pitch personalization. And so pitch personalization is how to use the same sales presentation, but go

through it and pitch it differently to every prospect you talked to. And that's all about just tying back and anchoring to the court desires and the dominant buying motives in the discovery. So it's the same stuff we just do with the deck and there's very little content and it's minimal so we can kind of share the narrative that we want on it. So we have a certain way we do it. But so when people say, don't use a sales deck because of these things, I say, I agree with those things. Therefore,

I use a sales deck and I make sure to not do that. Yeah, I want to make another comment, but

speak to that real quick. Oh, I think I think what you're doing is incredible. I think it's great.

Like I have not like it comes down to like what you just said is like the conviction and it works. Like if it's work, like I would say if it's working, why, why racket, right? So you from the sounds of that you guys have nailed obviously a sales presentation that works and it's personalized per, you teach it to everyone in your reps. So your reps are coming in and they know this is what we're going to sell. So when they show up, they're not having that belief that, oh, this is sales

e, oh, there's going to be objection. They have the belief that Jesus is what needs to sell. And thus, it works. I was going to use an example of even one that's even more my new than deck, no deck, right? Because that's a pretty big, you know, a big fundamental change. Yeah, price before off or price after offer. Right. That's a whole other one. And show every price point or just lead with one and have some pocket drops. There's so many lists. So I've mastered the one call close.

“That's what like more what we do now. The today's maybe two calls now, but you know, we ideally”

is the one call close. Yeah. And when it comes to price, it's I owe it's one. You don't offer, I have like, I know there's all like we had an expert come in and offer three are closing rate Kate. Taint. One. We offer with exactly what the price is. And then after if the, like, there's nothing left, then you go, okay, suppose. Can't make any promises. Suppose we can, I don't know, turn this into couple, you know, monthly payment plan. Would that make a world of

a difference for you? Right. Then I'm going to introduce that. Because here's what I believe, maybe it's what I believe, right? And what I believe is the energy put out sales reps will always find a way to go to the cheapest price. To give them an option, they'll go to the cheapest price, especially rookie sales people, right? And like, begin, you know, sales people. Absolutely. So I always one price is what it is. It's clear. It's, it's that now when it comes to presenting, I don't do the

value style. It's here. And I, I've tested this personally for me. And I tell my sales reps,

“if you're so gungo that you have to put the value then the price go, I'm not going to change your”

juju in record sale. But I can tell you right now, I've tested both ways multiple times.

And I'm price first and I'll tell you why price first. Then I go in and here's what you can

expect. And it's just a little bit of details anchoring everything to obviously the dream land and where they are to where they want to go. And then you shut up and you just, you shut up and

as they hear this shock, 20 grand, and you're saying, oh, you're going to get X and you're going to

go, why they can start justifying that a little bit to themselves. Okay, that makes sense. Okay, that makes sense. So then when you get to the price, they can put that, they can actually put the value stack themselves instead of me showing it. I had the itkies. Like, hey, and he's the word if he's like, I can't handle these. I know it. Like, the value stack. Oh, you're going to get this. And it's valued at $3,000. That works on webinar and on stage. Yeah. You that want to

want to, or I couldn't do it. I couldn't agree. We don't, we don't value stack at all a signing

“of value. Listen, here's the thing with what you're the subject you're talking about. For me,”

makes no difference. I would sell both of those. Now, you know this more than anybody, right? This is what I've experienced. There are some things that I personally may do differently on a sales call, but I have to optimize for what's going to work at scale. Yeah. That's like so important because like, I'm not my entire sales force. Yeah. Like, obviously, we have a lot of sales reps. And so they're like, there's ways that I might do things. And then I think how hard is that going to

be to teach in scale and duplicate et cetera. So I like what you're saying and I've played with

all of this as well. I like what you're saying about price first and then justify the value.

For us, what I've just, what I've landed on is what the sales team, the way that we feel for the most part, is that when you go through the entire offer and can tie them down on the actual thing itself before price, now it's, it gives so much more clarity that like the price is the objection.

“Right. So I think it's a way to separate like, hey, let's tie down on each piece here. And if they're”

bought in and then they object, it's like so clear to me that it's the price. So I love this. There we go. So the way I eliminate that completely in my sales process is before I even go to price, before I even go to product. I asked a very simple question, how committed are you to changing XYZ? Not, I want to be very clear. Not committed to buying my product. Right. Right. How committed are you to actually change in the situation you are or how, you know, how important is so that eliminates

all the objections. Every objection, it's price. Here's what I find though. And because we have

commitment, questions as well and we do that right before we transition into the pitch. See, this is fun, man. We got to do this stuff more often. We do that too right before we transition into the pitch. What I find though is they say, well, I am committed to solving it. I'm just not convinced that this is the solution because they're committing to something without having any of the details. And I know you specifically said it's not to the program. Yeah. But my point is,

well, that's the thing I want them to commit it to is like the actual details of this program of this offer. Now, again, to go back to my main point here, I think that you could be like, to me, this point can be successful either way. It's, well, we've proven that. You know,

“that's what we said. This is why I, why I'm happy about this conversation is like,”

all these people, it's almost I want to like, you know, we talked about these sales trainers sound, this bullshit. Like, all these people saying, I have the secret formula. There is no secret formula to sales. There is formula to sales, but it changes based off of the target, based off of the product, based like, there's so many factors and there's a process, but like, there's no secret sauce. There's more, as you said, this goes back to what we started the podcast with when we said,

like, we're laughing at like sales trainers, not laughing or mocking like there's talented people, but when we're talking about the difference, sales trainers are talking about like, objection handling and discovery questions and all this stuff. This is still under the sales ops umbrella, but we're talking about right now. It's all the specific process refinement in the order and the sequence of how you do things that can really change and increase clothes rates, right?

And so, so this is the stuff I obsess over and we just have so much data that we can validate things so much faster than any individual, you know, sales team. Now, back to the point, though, real quick, on the, on, you know, talking about price point, we do a ton of training on what we call a funding waterfall. And our number one metric that we measure a rep on a CDPBC, which is collected dollars per book call. We don't look at clothes rate. We don't look at gross revenue because

those are, we call it AAV average point value. But yeah, 100%. That's the actual payment exact. Just gave away the secret sauce of any sales organization right there. It is that is like, and nobody knows that clothes rate means nothing. It's for dollars collected for every every book call sign booking sign, exactly. Why do they showed up? Whether they canceled, whether they're good lead badly, dog got sick. Someone ate my homework. If it landed on your

calendar, it's being counted. 100%. So it's return on rep. It's row has on an individual level. And so

because it's like, what do you do when that goes down and what's the reason and what rep do you look at it? Like, there's so much to it. But what I was going to say is in collected dollar per book call, it takes everything into consideration. Like we said, show rate, close rate,

“revenue average sales price, collection rate. And so you have to train and optimize for all those”

metrics. And so, and it's, it's a little bit different than just like sales training. And so when you talk about price point, the way I'd finish that is, um, when I have to talk about collection rate and funding waterfall, because so many sales reps, like you said, if you have pocket drops, we call them, which are down sales that aren't initially showed, or if you have payment plans, uh, you know, and in ways to break it up, the amateur reps, the not best reps,

the differences they dropped to those almost immediately, and they don't know how to position around it. And so we train the order of we call it a funding waterfall of how you maximize collections and how you maximize the average sales price. So regardless if you do price before pitch or after pitch, now it's like, well, what is the process to collecting the money? And I think that is like a really heavily missed thing as well. We explain that. What do you mean the missed thing, the process to

collecting the money? So what I mean is, uh, that's interesting. All right, so, so what I mean is, let's say that it's, uh, you have payment plans. You offer it's a 10k price. Yeah, or sorry, let's say it's 8k painful, or it's 12k spread over six months. Yeah. And you can do what you can do a full pay, a two pay, a three pay or a six pay. Let's say those are your options stacked that you have.

What I'm suggesting is that the first time people get met with resistance of like,

wow, that's too expensive for me. They don't have a regimented strategy of how they go through those things. And so all the sudden, I literally watched a call today. I needed to give an opinion on something. And, uh, he literally said, I mean, it went from this guy, I fully believe we should have been a full pay. And this person put him into a 12 month payment plan. And there's no strategy around it. Yeah. And so, how do you, how do you go about that talk track to maximize collection rate

upfront without blowing out a dealer making it awkward? There's a lot of strategy in that. Yeah, yeah, there is. I mean, I, I, I said my strategy is I, I don't talk about any other prices except the, until it's near the, until like, you're about there about to hang out, like you already mean, like what if, but what if, that's my whole point though, what if they say that they need a payment plan, like right if you present price, you show them it's 8k and they say, oh, there's no way I could

afford that upfront. Okay. Well, before before we go into that, let me ask you, if, if, if you had the 8k, would you be comfortable moving forward? Yes or no? Okay. So there's nothing about the product, right, so get eliminate abduction handling to start living right. Well, I don't call that abduction and I call it eliminating eliminating all the abjections. I eliminate all the bullshit that they could say. So now it's just price price. And then that's when I, it's a little different than I do and I go,

I can't make any promises here, but suppose, I don't know. I mean, would you be comfortable spending $2,000 a month so that you can x, y, z, x, y, z, and then you just hold.

That's the second drop, right? Like, so what are the second drop? And you hold and they might go,

“oh, it's a lot. I go, go, let me ask you, what, what would be comfortable to you?”

That didn't come up with it, right? And then obviously, that's like, you know, two cheap and you're like, well, listen, you figure that out, but yeah. So what, so what you're saying is very similar to how we do it, my point is exactly that though. What we're talking about right now is very often missed. Yeah, 100%. It's 10%. This is a lot of people care, we're talking about, see, we're two seasoned sales reps that done this. We've got our 10,000 hours, right? Oh, yeah, I totally, I totally

hear you. And then the idea though, this is what's, so let's actually take that because this is actually very important because we run sales teams, you're running sales teams at volume. Well, how do you solve for that? Well, very simple way what you have right now is AI call analyzer, which was one of the triggers. When x happened, what, you know what it means? So like right away, they get the train. Hey, you're not doing that. The training goes to the manager. Manager knows John is keeps

humbling, humbling. Hey, John, we'll keep working with you working with you. Hey, you're fired because you're not learning. You're not growing. You're clearly not, right? Like so we do have you, I mean, obviously, I know you have those things in place. But here's a coolest thing like you said,

it's never been easier than ever to have these things in place. Right. Right. Right. Well,

“so here's the thing though, going back to that one even one more step. So what you said is,”

and I know you're just giving an example, right? Like there's so many examples we could get, but what you said works really well if you only have payment plans. But then we have what we call the funding waterfall. So these days, pretty much every offer, or if they don't, they should, but pretty much every offer has a bunch of different financing sources. Yeah, funding. Yeah.

Funding. We don't, people finance their cars. Okay. We fund people's dreams. Okay. Right. I love that. Yeah. Right. I tell them I literally like, that's like, so if they use the word financing and it gets like, when we used to use gong, for instance,

“gong is, I think you and I both know what that's about. Right. One of the words was like,”

if they use financing trigger. Yes, financing actually triggers, especially the lower conscious people that we were speaking to. Sorry to say that. Like, these are a little bit lower conscious. Like,

they think financing, they, in their brains, they're always raised. Oh, financing's bad. You

don't, you don't take cover. You know, right, right, right. No, I get that. And that's, again, Jedi mind tricks, right? Because like, I agree that those things can make a difference. The, the wording doesn't bug me that. It's like when people say, never say the word contract. Say a agreement. Yeah. Yeah. I've never lost a deal in my life because I call it a contract. Yeah. Yeah. Or you never even say a agreement. You say a simple agreement. To send you a simple agreement,

easy. No issues. Exactly. So, you know, I agree with what you said. And I, I also, what was that? Sorry for saying a thing. It's not to be rude. But yeah, some of the, some of the lower sophisticated avatars and I don't see that to be rude. There's just people in

different situations. And we respect that. But some of them do have those triggers that are

“that are important. You have to be a little more careful with them. But what I was saying was,”

so funding your dreams options, you'll have a painful cash pay, right? Yeah. And let's say they have, you know, we won't, we won't name our sponsors. I'm joking. But we won't do the names. But let's say it's like funding option one, funding option two, funding option three. And then if they can't qualify for any of those, then it's in-house financing or payment plans, right? Yeah. Are you going to, are you going to the big party next week in Miami for one year? I did get invited in it sounded

really fun, but I just had the baby talking with you too. I want to go, but to fly from our side over to Florida for one night just doesn't make sense. Exactly man. I probably would go though if I didn't

have the little, the little guy here. But anyway, so, so you have this stack, right? And you have to

prioritize them based on different things. And typically, it's whatever will net the most amount of money for the client. That's what you want, right, for the business. And so if you have those options, though, well, then, you know, there's other options depending on what you're selling. Some things would be sort of inappropriate because it would just be not a place. But then you have credit cards. We call them sick. Yeah. Zero interest credit cards. Yeah. You have Helox, right? Stock accounts.

So you have all the different things where they can liquidate money. And so if you have all these options on how to find money as a closer, when somebody says I can't afford it, the question is, you literally don't have the money or it's like not in the bank account. We're talking about right now.

“So you have to do what open wallet and have the conversation to figure out where is the money?”

How would they find it? Before you just drop into, and so I cannot tell you how many times, we just will get a zero interest credit card and there are a Piff in a couple days. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. We've been, again, in hopes that they obviously have, you know, a good credit everything, right? It is a massive one on that. So, and that's the importance of the funding waterfall because if they don't have the right credit and they can't qualify for the zero interest

credit cards, then what's your next option? That's probably the prime lender that will, you know, that will qualify high credit, but slightly below the criteria. Yeah. You have to know which order to consistently go through and you train the reps on that. So it's like clockwork every single time other than just going up expensive, uh, three pay, you know. Yeah. Yeah. Well, we, I tell my, I mean, I tell my clients now, like because of the options of credit cards and all the options we have,

I don't, don't do it now in house, fine. If you're doing it now, it's fine. It's fine. It's in max three months. That's the same one here. Not a fee in a long finding. Why would you in house when someone else is willing to give their money up? So, he, so this goes to the, why I'm out of the, I get an out of my business here, right? Is, is in, going to different clients, I'm done and I'm just saying I don't, like, I'm done working with clients that are selling to people that are in that position

where they came in a forward $5,000, $8,000. Like getting the business of helping winners win more, your conversations are so much better and easier. Oh, absolutely. And like even in our training on funding, we train on the difference between, like, somebody that needs help getting creative and somebody that would actually put them in a poor financial position. Yeah, that's a whole difference. Yeah, I mean, that's the whole last dollar rule. Like, we're not trying to, we, we have a

couple of funny lines we even say on the calls that kind of soften the, the move, but we say, like, hey, if it's going to take the cheese off your macaroni, you know, if it's going to turn off the hot water, this isn't for you. So, like, yeah, so we're not doing it for the right, the rent next month,

guys, there's so much power in saying, no, don't get paid for it, but I will tell you there's so much power in that. And that power you bring to the next conversation to the person that should be

“saying, yes, that's what happens. It creates, it's the mental frame, the posture that they can”

or knowing that at the end of the day, they can hold that. That's, that's all the posturing that they need. And I even tell them, too, and if you sell somebody to financing, and they get denied, that's a sale in my books. Like, you know, I mean, that's nothing that you're, I'm so a surprise slash happy you said that we actually created a term we call the technical close. And so what that, we track it separately now, where if somebody closed a deal, but they got rejected for financing,

we track that data separately to say, they're effective closer, what have actually been acts. Yeah. And that's another thing that going back to the conversation with marketing for the feedback loop. Well, yeah. Like, look at, oh, you went X row as we could have had that if the leads were

better. Hunter, and I love it because at that point, like, and I told them, I always say this,

this says, because if there, if the client has an issue, you better believe I'm going to have

“your back because if you had sat on the call, convince them the buy, then convince them go outside”

their comfort zone to put in their social security number into some website that they don't even know the appris entered. And then you went through the whole process, they submitted the paper work, and then they got denied that's not on you. I don't care what anybody says. That's a marketing problem. Absolutely. So not separate tab that tracks on. Yeah. I don't do that. I love that. Like, actually what you're like, I thought you're going to say, my brain went to, and maybe every five,

would you call it the technical close, the technical close? Because they technically closed them, but they're almost like, hey, for every five technical close, you get a little bonus or something like that. Like, you don't even mean like, because here's why though, there's two things.

So first of all, so helpful for marketing, like, and the client, too. Like, a lot of what we do

cave on is cover our ass, right? And it's like, I want to, and by the way, like, if the data's

“against me and it's accurate, I got to live with that. That's what it means. Absolutely. We have that”

detailed of data that can need to feed and they didn't know what I stand by it, but the other thing outside of marketing and client optics, it's due to it's so important for the sales reps. Because now, when we talk to a sales rep instead of them complaining about, oh, financial capability, it's like, dude, you didn't even get a technical close. Like, they bailed out before you even talked about money. I mean, what do you mean financial capability? You don't even know for sure

because you didn't take them there. So it solved a lot of problems for us by measuring this whole technical close metric. Yeah, I think it's, I think it's, I love it. Like, I love the fact that you're going that nitty-gritty. And again, I could tell that you're as why you said you love sales operations, your data, your more of data scientists kind of brain and you're an air-free little nuanced matters and you, the levers. These are all little levers and they do matter. And I do love

that you can take that. It's such a just a safety net with a client, but you can also take that back out the marketing and be like, hey, you know, and then reality is this how many of those actually happened, right? Like, when you think about five, six hundred book calls a month, like 10, 20 of those, it's the, the significance not there. If it's a lot, I personally would be, there's a marketing problem. But yeah, that's when you start the conversation. I just know, because when you're on a

good product, like, I've been on good. Like, one of my clients right now, we're doing about two, five a month. Like, there's no, whatever object, the, the close is easy. Like, we, I don't even need to have great salespeople. And that's like, that's the biggest thing, too. I was going to mention this is, is when marketing is done right, sale, you don't need a 10 out of 10 closer. And you don't want to build a business out of 10 out of 10 closers, right? It's a scary business to build a zero selling.

If you're a hero seller, it's going to be impossible to scale, because you just need these unicorns

to be able to close the lead types. Exactly. That's not where you want to be. So I always tell people,

like, a good business, it's a mix. It's a mix. The marketing's good. And like, and sales isn't hard. If sales is hard, I get to our grind. There's something going on. And it could be the sales process for sure. It could be the salesperson. But I'm saying, if all of those things have been checked out, truly checked out, then, you know, so then I always say this. So I had one client. Oh, you're getting me going now, man. I just one client. Yeah, I said, we will hold on pause real quick,

just a quick line. It goes back to the slides. Again, we were talking about. So I have a slide that says, a pretty good sales rep with great systems will be the great sales rep with bad systems any day. Yeah, 100%. It's because exactly what we're talking about. 100% agree with you. 100% agree with you. Is, and what you said, pretty good rep with great systems will be a great rep with poor systems. I couldn't agree more. I couldn't agree more. The only way that works is if you're in the

But here's the challenge with that. You and I, we don't go and become salespeople. We're going

“to build these things. Right. So I couldn't agree with more. But what I was saying was,”

one of the challenges I saw was we had, we had a client where we built like a 100% sales team for them, right? And the leaves were just, they promised they would get better and they were not great, right? And then they start kept out, oh, you're a guy's sock. And then I started thinking, maybe our guys do so. We got to go back and like, okay, what is going on? Our guys with leave, they go in other people's accounts. And they go become to our losers on those accounts.

Yeah. And it happened not once again. We've had it internally for ourselves. A client's all pits at this rep can't close a deal. We're like, well, they're a great rep. We put them on a different offer of our own and they crush it. Yeah. Now, now, by the way, some of that to just take some ownership is not all rep sell all offers equally. Well, I was just going to say, right? Yeah. Like, but, but let's let's assume that it was the right. So we we call it ICP and hiring. Yeah,

“I'd ideal client profile, ideal candidate profile. So you have to have the right hiring avatar”

for the business. But let's say it was the right fit. It still happens exactly what you said, where it's like, they're not performing that well. But then they go crush it, somebody else, somewhere else. And it really does tell you a lot about the offer in the marketing. And it happens time and time again, man. And also the closer though, like so, so I'll tell you a story that happened with me. Yeah. And this was like, and you know, when my earlier days when I was

closing, I was on a couple of counts. And this one account, I just was like, I couldn't, the leads were good. Like, the leads weren't bad. But I just couldn't get it to be was hard. It wasn't easy like the other ones, right? So like, my close rate was like 15, 18% instead of 34% type of thing. And, and I'm talking about a mentor. And he's like, "Kave on. Do you like the prospects you're speaking to?" I'm like, "No, man, they fucking drive me really analytical." They were like,

“they was a, there was a 4x trading. There was a 4x trading. It's all analytical people, right?”

I'm not analytical person. I thought, especially back then, right? And he goes, "Do you know anything about 4x trading?" Like, nah, and then you just, and then I just said, I just thought, and I'm like,

"Oh my God." Like, I never, like, just because you're good at sales doesn't mean you sell everything.

And I always tell people, "We've got to sell the thing you're in alignment with because when you do absolutely become embodied with it." Yeah. And then you actually ooze it. And then now, you're selling, here's someone, a person, a sales rep with a little skill with a 100% conviction, a sales, some sales rep with all the right skills, zero conviction. App stood 100%. And it's not even just a prospect congruency. It's the, the offer itself. Yeah. They're not fully bought in on the offer

for whatever reason, then they're screwed. And it's an energy thing, man. They could be doing all the right things, but for some reason, they're not getting people across the finish line. And I'm not going to say the name because there's just enough people that would know who I'm talking about. And I respect and like this person, but we had one client where it just didn't work out with. It was what I would consider the only time in our business that we had a team that did really

well with numbers. We tried it. They didn't do as well. Then they left and they started doing better again. And I spent so much time on it because it was the only time that that had happened to us. And I'm like, what could have been the reason? And dude, week, we did not feel in alignment selling to the avatar. It was, again, I won't describe the avatar, but it was like, it was a very, very broccoli with a specific background. And the sales reps felt like they were taking advantage.

And it was just like, I don't know. We couldn't figure it out. Even me, I just resonate with what you said because it was like, I'm like, why can't we do this? And you look at it and I'm like, I don't know if I would have wanted to take that guy's money either. 100%. No, 100. You couldn't, I couldn't agree with you more. Again, the member said this power and saying, no, I had a much to watch a little bit, but we had a client where like it was going to be a massive contract.

This is going to be like a 60 grand, just a month to just a, what do you call, like a recurring fee just to have us there on top of our commissions? Like this was a big one. And I was like,

and I pulled it the last second. And everyone was like, well, you different crazy. I said,

no, I said, like, they were, they were using religion. I'll just say this. They were using religion to feed us. Oh, dude, at a certain level where females are and their lives and then where they're going through, you know, changes as they get older and their harmonic changes, right? I'm just trying to be very PE, right PE, I whatever it is right now, PC. And, and I just, and I was like, I can't, I can't, like, just just I can't do it. And it was, we've had that happen recently. Very, I'm faith based,

that's irrelevant. I don't like using faith, type of stuff and conversations, it feels manipulative.

I just feels like the wrong time to bring that stuff up. I know some people at works well, if like, that's their community, they just, they want people to know that that's their community, but they're not using it in the actual sales. That's a different story. Yeah, it's saying. And hey, we're, we're a Christian faith community. All right, that's very different than,

hey, God wants you to do this. Exactly. If you'll take a second and just pray, what's God telling you?

“Well, and let's go 100% and that's what I'm saying as well. Now, let's take it one step higher than that.”

Even outside of religion or whatever it is, I was literally on the phone with somebody yesterday about this, and to be fair, like, I've talked about it a ton of times, but just yesterday, I had a conversation with somebody, and he couldn't comprehend why wasn't going to take on this brand. Because again, it financially, it was a pretty large relationship. And he's like, I just don't understand, like, they literally are ready to start today. But one of the things that I have learned is like, you can't make a selfish decision, cave on, on behalf of yourself.

I personally, yeah, I would like the additional income as a business owner,

“but I have to make that decision on behalf of my team and my sales management and my sales reps.”

Because at the end of the day, I know if there's all these problems or, you know, there's these, it's just a bad offer or bad energy. Nobody's going to want to work on it. And I'm not going to be able

to force the success there. I always say that, you know, people often talk about culture internally,

but they don't talk about culture and alignment and partnerships. And enough. And for me, it's like, are we a culture fit for the client? And, you know, if it's not a culture fit, I just know it's going to be chaos for everyone involved and we don't take it. We part of it. Yeah, no, I couldn't agree with more culture. I mean, it's everything. It's, it's especially with the sales, like this sales reps got out of the managers, everybody. The whole mechanism,

the, it needs to be aligned and work together and on both sides. Like one of our core pillars is one team. Like it's, we become one team, right? Because it doesn't work when it's their team. Our team is just, is there's division, division, it causes chaos. We say where you're outsourced in how sales team.

“Yeah, same. Yeah. Where that's why I love it. I mean, we've gone over here, man. I think there's a part”

two coming up. What do you say? Yeah. I would love to. We could talk a little bit. Here's what I want

to do because I think it's super important. I think we should do a part two. We're going to get this live. We're going to put the show notes. So anybody wants to work with you. We're going to have all your links in there. But most important. We're going to take the time to say congratulations again. Congratulations to you being a father this week. That's massive, man. Like, this is a huge, as a father of two daughters, two and a half and four and a half. Like, I'm going to tell you,

your life's going to change in all the greatest ways. And I'm just happy and excited for you of what's, what's to come. Thanks so much, dude. I couldn't be happier and thanks for an awesome conversation. This was good of it.