How To Increase Impact And Income with Cole Gordon

In this episode, you are going to learn how to increase impact and income with Cole Gordon.

Hi, I'm Beverly Simpson, former fitness manager turned online personal training business owner. And this podcast is where smart fitness professionals, including trainers and clinicians, discover how to increase client performance in movement, package and position their products and services and get out of their own way so that they can increase their revenue to live a life that they love without sleazy sales. Welcome to the PT Profit Podcast.

Welcome back to the PT Profit Podcast. My name is Chris and I am giving you your intro for Beverly's episode with Cole Gordon, a veteran in sales industry with nearly a decade of experience. In this episode they discuss various aspects of the sales profession, including longevity of a remote closer, the importance of a positive work culture, and strategies to help salespeople overcome ruts. Cole emphasizes the significance of compensation, effective sales training, and a supportive environment for retaining top talent. He shares insights on ensuring a successful one call close, the essential conditions for hiring a remote closer, and the importance of a founder led sales in initial stages. Cole advises business owners on how to attract and retain high quality sales talent, emphasizing the necessity of being proactive, maintaining a qualified lead pool and having efficient sales operations.

You're going to get a lot of.

Value out of this episode, so I hope that you enjoy and if you listen, be sure to give it five stars on Apple podcasts or Spotify or wherever you listen to your podcast. Let's get started.

What's up, Cole? Thank you so much for joining me on the show today. How are you?

Good, good. Happy to be here.

I'm super pumped to dive in. Stain and stutter and all stains.

I know. Just fresh, fresh, fresh, fresh water on the shirt, you know, just for the aesthetics. Oh my gosh.

Okay, let's go ahead and I'm just gonna dive right in. So as someone who's been in the industry for almost a decade now, starting in 2017, right. And you first started as a closer yourself, a remote closer yourself to then go on to start and scale two profitable businesses in the sales sector. So with that said, what would you say is an average life of longevity for a closer to a good offer? How long can a closer stay on a good offer?

Well, that's a good question. I mean, not a lot of people ask that. I would say it really depends on the closer. You know, there's certain people, like the people that I hire that are very experienced. Sometimes you're only going to get a year to 18 months because they've kind of climbed to the top of the mountain. And I'm like the top of the mountain, so to speak, in terms of the learning and growth. But you know, there, there's been people that have been doing it for three, four, five plus years. I find generally for companies, if you're, if you have a good system, right, like if you have good leads, you have a good offer, you have good close rates, you have good comp and you take care of people and you have good culture, you know, I think 18 months to three years is honestly very, very reasonable. But it also depends on the person and you know, it depends on a lot of things. But you know, people who experience less than that chronically usually are tripping up either with their offer, their comp, the growth that they're allowing people, their culture or something like that. And if those things get shored up, I mean people do stay a long time.

So what are some of the things for the people who do stay 18 months and beyond? What are some of the things that need to be in place as a business owner, as a CEO? What is the culture environment that needs to be in place to keep a closer happy?

Yeah, it's a great, it's a great question again. So I would say that number one, I mean, you know, there's obviously the comp, right? So like the encompasses what the actual offer is and then also you know, what is like the leaf flow and the effectiveness of the offer and how good is the actual sales training that you're giving them. So you know, if people, it's industry to industry, right? But if people are making at the top end of their industry then, and their peers, then that's a, a box you can check to where generally people aren't going to move on as much. Right? So I'll give you an example. Like in the Internet type industry with like coaches for instance, you know that number is generally 20 to 30 grand a month. But it could be, and, and that's, it's, it's honestly pretty similar in a lot of industries. But for certain industries that could change. I mean there might be certain industries where it might be 10 to 15. It could be certain industries where maybe that's 24, right. Like you know, so that, that can kind of vary depending on your industry. For culture though, you know, a big part of it is just the growth, right? So a lot of people will move on when they feel like they're not getting better. You know, especially sales people, the good ones, very personal development oriented, they feel like they're constantly getting better, they're sharpening their skill set and so on and so forth, then they're, they're more likely to stay. So like, what I like to tell our managers is like, you're always should be in your communication with them, showing where they are now, where they want to be. The same way you sell people, right? I mean, the same way you kind of retain people. And so like you're always kind of trying to give them, hey, here are the things you need to be working on. Here's the things you need to be working on. Here's the things you need to be working on. And if you get to the point where you're like, man, I don't have any feedback for this person, that's honestly the red flag of where, you know, eventually they could churn. And sometimes it's, you know, but if you have no feedback for the person that's a good candidate at that point, if they're that good to, to move into maybe managing the sales team or being like a team lead or something along those lines, which opens up a whole new can of worms of things that they could get better at, right? So that's a big piece of it. And then in terms of culture, I mean, just doing all the things that have a good culture, you know, like we just had a company off site that is really, really motivating for a lot of the folks. So if you have one or two of those a year, preferably like two that are in person, that's great. You know, just certain things you do with team wide meetings, how you conduct the meetings and how the one on ones are, and just the team camaraderie, you know, those things are very effective as well.

So good. So now what I'm curious about is what do you do when you have a sales person who is in a rut, but you don't want to speak that they're in a rut into their brain, how do you help them see that they're potentially in a rut and get out of it?

Well, first of all, I'm against telling them that they're in a Ruth could just be like you're in a rut, you know, done that recently. So there's nothing wrong with that in terms of when people are in ruts. I mean, the number one thing for sales is, okay, you know, what were you doing pre? So, you know, go back to the time where they weren't in a rep and it's what were they doing then, what are they doing now? What's changed? Right? And so having them self Diagnose that and even helping them diagnose that by reviewing some previous calls and then reviewing the calls now. That that could be it right then and there. The other thing is, I always tell my closers to review a close if there's a day. And this could be just something they listen to at 2x speed in the gym, but kind of like taking a call that they were really proud of, maybe it was a hard, like a tough close at the end or something like that. And just listening to that on, you know, again and again and again, I mean, obviously they can go through. You know, I kind of had like a greatest hits list for me that I used to. I would filter through, you know, 10 or 20 different ones. And so that's a. I mean, that sounds like a small thing, but that's a really effective thing. I mean, the next thing is making sure they're doing all the things that are within their control that lead to consistency. So, you know, with sales especially, like, you know, if they have like a morning routine, are they honoring that? If they have a certain fitness routine or health routine, are they honoring that? You know, what else is going on in their life outside of work? Is that affecting it? So looking into that and then finally, like, that's sales management. That's the name of the game. Your cost and reviewing game tape. And so sometimes it's just like I can tell what it is by the call. Most often what it is is especially when people are in the motions of taking a lot of calls a day. And it's like, a lot of calls, a lot of calls, a lot of calls, a lot of calls. They get tired. And, you know, what our brain tries to do is sort of conserve energy and avoid conflict. So it's two things. So it's like if you imagine yourself at the end of the call and, you know, somebody's like, oh, you know, I got to get the funds together or what have you, and I'm going to get back to you on Friday or whatever. We conserve energy and avoid conflict. Okay. Well, I could, you know, they're not consciously thinking this, but this is kind of a subconscious conversation is like, I could push and ask hard questions and challenge this person, what have you. And that's gonna, you know, number one, I have to confront the person and I have to have an uncomfortable conversation, which again, subconsciously we kind of try to. We tend to avoid. And then also it takes more energy. You know, it's less energy to kind of just go with the flow and hope the follow up Works out right. And so it's those two things. It's conserving energy and avoiding conflict. And so they, you know, generally the easiest thing to do to break people out of that is to bring their awareness to that and making sure that they know that the, the call really starts at the end. And that doesn't mean that, like, you're going to one call, close every person. Sometimes it's not the best to one call, close certain people. It's like, hey, that could ruin the sale. But oftentimes when people are in ruts, it's like they're not being aggressive enough. And when I'm, when I'm saying aggressive, I'm not saying like, you know, you're like yelling at the prospect and, you know, hard closing them and grinding them into the dirt or something. But it's like having like a challenging conversation and challenging their thinking and like, and, you know, having a conversation that is uncomfortable, it's where me, you know, one out of 10 or 20 times, yeah, somebody might get mad, but usually they don't. You know, it's like people respect you when they challenge them. But a lot of times when, when people, like, you got to think from the closer's perspective, you know, they're taking eight or ten calls a day. Every single day. Every single day. Every single day. Every single day. And so they kind of get through this, like, robotic kind of going through the motions type of thing, and it's exhausting. So they start to conserve energy and then sort of just like they, they, they, they settle for, oh, follow up, oh, pipeline. Oh, follow up, oh, pipeline. I think these people are going to come in. They don't come in, you know, and it's funny, like new closers without any training, they almost, if, if they're the right people, of course, and they know how to do this, they almost never do that. Like, they get this one call and they're like, I'm closing this one today. You know, I want to impress the team. So it's like when they're new, a lot of times as they get into it, they start to do that. There's some other stuff. Like sometimes what happens is people just have a bad string of calls and get very in their head and then they start to like, change stuff or do different things. So, like, that can be one as well, where again, it's just like, hey, just go back to the basics. Just boom, just do this, you know. And so those are a few things I look for. And like, you could just coach them out of it through. That is what I would say.

So it's also interesting, I'll share too, that as the. The closers that I've worked with, the ones that start to do those 8 to 10, and it just becomes so robotic. One of the things they stop doing is they stop listening and they start assuming that they're going to hear the answer that they've been hearing the last seven days. It can be really challenging to just press reset on every single call.

Yeah, well, what really helps is meditation. For that. That's like what I would actually recommend that like Wim Hof breathing or meditation. You know, when I was selling full time, that helped a lot. You know, I don't do it as much anymore, but when I was selling was like, I had to do it. It's because it just really helps you stay present. But again, like, this is something to where you have to treat every single person like you don't know their situation. So I'll give you an example. It's like in the book, I think it's what great sales people do. But, you know, Neil Rackman, who's the guy who wrote Spin Selling, they did a study and the study was all about why nine. You know, they found that reps, nine months into the job, they would, you know, have a steady increase in performance. At nine months, they'd plateau, and then like month nine, 10, and 12, they'd start to dip down. They would do like the, you know, it was like this, and then it was like this. You know, they wouldn't go down to like beginning performance, but they would drop down like 20%. Right. And so what they found is that because, like, they're having so many of the same conversations every single day, repeated every single day, that they started making assumptions and not listening, which is exactly what you said. So they started making assumptions, not listening. Because, I mean, if you, let's say work with health coaches and that's all you work with, and you're talking to health coaches with the same problems coming from the same place every single day. It's kind of one of those things where it's like, you know, the person could probably come on the call and within two minutes you do kind of know everything that they need. Like, you almost know more about this person than they do. But it's not about you knowing it, it's about them feeling that. So you still have to ask those. It's not about, you know, what, you know, it's about what they say out loud. Because a big part of it is how they feel and creating consistency bias, you know and certain things like that. So you're totally right.

So now with that said, something that you were talking about was the one call close versus the you know, follow up pipeline and, and two step closes. What are some of the things that need to be present in order to increase the number of one call closes?

You know, you might not not be able to get around that sometimes. I get it. You know if somebody's doing like you know, over a million bucks a year and they have partner like they're probably not going to move forward on a big investment with other parts partner. So that, that, that's fine. There could be like certain logistics. Whether it is like a real timing thing like I have selling I for whatever reason I remember this but I was selling this lady one time, I mean who literally was like well you know, funny, you know, tomorrow I'm actually going off the grid for a month. And I was like what do you mean off the grid? Like off the grid off the grid. No phone, no nothing. Like in the Amazon forest. I was like okay, well you're probably not going to buy like right now. Like there's just nothing you could really do now. She did come back and she bought late. I was like oh this person's never going to come back. No, she came back right after the Amazon forest while later. So you know there's certain things like that, but that's about it. I mean we deal in my company with a lot of two call closes because there is a lot of business partners or like sometimes there's a board or like investors or they're not doing it themselves so they kind of want sign off from the team. But it is kind of like a real thing outside of that especially business to cons, you know, business to consumer and business to solopreneur. It can do it. You know, unless there's a crazy financial thing. But you know usually with finances if you have that person there, you can at least get like some sort of refundable deposit or some sort of thing. Right. So what does the closer need to be able to do that? That's kind of a separate thing. So when the opportunity is there, I mean the number, number one thing is there's two sales in every sales call. There's the sale on sort of your thesis or methodology and there's a sale on your product. So the easiest example to give when I always tell about this is like Russell Brunson, if he's selling click funnels, you know it's. He doesn't sell you on click funnels. He's at least back in the day when he was really scaling it, he would sell you that on the idea that funnels was the newest, most effective best way to create customers online. Right. And because the status quo was like websites and he was selling you that funnels was like the new way. But if you believe into that, right? And he talks about this as being like the domino belief. And this has been around in marketing a long time. It used to be called the central marketing thesis. So if you believe in that or if you can knock down that domino, then the only natural conclusion is buying the product. So I'll give you an example. If I'm on a sales call and somebody wants to scale their business and they're doing low ticket and I know that they can definitely triple their business by doing high ticket and having some setters and some closers and calling the leads that they're low ticket leads and having a backend program. If I can just get them bought into that, that strategy and that idea, I know we're gonna make the sale. Because if they're a hundred percent sold that that strategy is the right thing. I'm kind of a one of one of like where I'm going to get that strategy because I provided that insight and no, and they weren't ever thinking about that before, if that makes sense. So there's two sales in every sales call. So the first thing is I need to get them bought in on like my thesis or my methodology. And also like the plan, like whatever, you know, sales call I'm having, whether it's helping somebody start a business, helping somebody lose ways, helping somebody get, you know, dates or helping somebody, you know, add a certain type of software to. It's all about the idea. You know, that's like 80% of it is I got to get him sold on the idea. That's why, you know, Jordan Belford in, in his sales book, what he talks about is like one of his objection handles is, you know, he's selling somebody on the stock and a certain investment. But if they give an objection, he's like, yeah, that makes sense, no problem. But let me ask you, like, what do you think about the idea? Do you like the idea? You know, that's exact. So, so it's, it's kind of a, you know, good, good conclusions are corroborated. It's, it's very similar type of thing that he's doing there. So you got to get them bought in on the idea or the Thesis of what's the plan of getting them from A to B, then the rest of it really at that point is logistics. And so number one, it's through good discovery and good pitching is like getting them really bought in and tied down that this is the right thing, now is the right time. Okay. Because if you're 100% certain that the plan works truly, then really the only thing that can keep them doing it is logistics. Does that make sense? So at the end and obj and the objections phase, the only things that we have to do is if they're first we have to see if they're bought in. That's why no matter what they say, I almost say no problem, we can go over that. Let me ask you this, that Aside, do you 100% believe this is going to work for you and this is what you need to blank and then okay, and then if they say yes, gotcha. So that aside, you're 100% in. So that's. I call that pacing the first objection, but it's a double tie down. So you can see how like the first thing I want to establish is that are they a hundred percent certain that this is the right thing, now's the right time, that this is going to be what they need would want to do to get the blank. So at the end that's the first thing I got to nail down. And if it's not there, I have to deal with what other whatever uncertainty is keeping them from being there. Okay. Now once I have them 100% certain on the plan, it can really only be some sort of logistical money or timing money thing. Logistical timing fin or they gotta check with somebody else who's not on the call. Right. So with each of those, like we have different strategies to handle each of those. A lot of times with money if you just ask the right questions and you get to the truth of what's actually going on, you can find a creative way to really navigate the logistics and get them started today where normally they didn't think they could. You know, this could be as simple as like going from a pay in full to like a 2 pay or a 3 pay. This could be something where they think they got to move money around and it's going to take three days. But hey, okay, what do you have right now? Why don't you put down this downtown payment, we'll get you onboarded, then you can pay in full Friday when you're going to pay in full anyways. If it's timing, you know, again, I Got to kind of see, is it a real, like, are they literally, like, is it like a real timing thing? Like the Amazon forest thing? That's a real timing thing. Or is it like they just think that they can't, they don't have the time for this right now, Which a lot of times, you know, obviously the one to that is like, well, if we just establish this is number one biggest constraint in your business or biggest constraint in your life and that this is the most important and this is a thing that you think is going to get you out of this constraint and fix this, then what other things would you be spending time on? Like, this is the most valuable thing you could spend time, and you likely need to spend time on this so that you are in a place where you don't have time, you know, so it's kind of a chicken and the egg thing, but that's a, that's a big thing. Or sometimes if it's like the holidays right now, sometimes we just might add on time to the terms to negate that objection. So, you know, if it's December 11th and they're like, well, this is great, but I'm leaving for two weeks, we've got family stuff and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. I'm like, okay, well look, I don't think the best thing for you is to hop in right now, like timing problems and you're going to be on vacation and doing all this stuff. But also like, you do have time to work, you're going to run your business. And I also think the best thing for you is do nothing. So what I'll do for you is I'll extend your time so you can start now. But your official start date will still be January 3rd, when you're going to start anyways. And then that way you can come in now and by January 3rd, which was your start date anyways, you could really hit the ground running. So if I was willing to do that for you, are you willing to move forward right now so you can handle it that way as well? With obviously spouse and partner, that's a whole other thing. But, you know, there's different strategies to handle that. I'm kind of like glossing over the objections. I'm not going into the full strat. I'm happy to, but like, you know, you got to navigate those. And a lot of times just from a mentality standpoint, it's, you know, it's number one getting the tie downs and this is the right thing, now's the right time. So there's no uncertainty, because if there's any uncertainty, you can't go through logistics. But, like, it's first, like, making sure they're certain on the plan, and then number two is navigating logistics, because if they are certain, it's only logistics. So at that stage, it's just. It's just time getting, isolating it down, asking the right questions, getting clarity on what's actually happening, and then getting creative. And sometimes that means you do got to mess around with your terms a little bit to get them in or you just got to coach them out of, like, that's not a real logistic. That's just. This is in your head. You need to do this anyway.

One of the biggest things that you said, I think that a lot of people miss is that most people, or most people that are doing their own closes or they are closers, whether they're new or have experience, they tend to overcome objections without realizing what the real resistance is, what the real objection is. Because people will say it's money or logistics, but that's not the real thing that they're objecting to oftentimes. So the people want to be quick. So people want to be quick to like, oh, I know what to do to overcome objections, but. Or overcome money, but we haven't really uncovered or exposed the real objection.

Yeah. So I'll give you an example. So it's like, if somebody's like, oh, this. If I give the investment at the end and somebody's like, well, this sounds great. I just got to come up with the money. So what I would say is gotcha. So money and everything aside, is there anything else that people keeping you from being less than 100% certain that this is what you need to be able to scale to blank or to get X result? And they're like, no, this is what I need. Gotcha. So that aside, are you a hundred percent in? All right. So you see how, like, that's tied on one, tie down two. And so that. And I do that very strong language like that because I want to root out any uncertainty. Like, I. Again, the first thing I'm trying to establish is like, are you sold? Basically, And I'm not necessarily sold on you're going to pay me right now, but sold on the idea that you need to do this. And I'm very upfront about that. And it's a very, like, I can be very aggressive about that because I'm not asking for money. I'm asking like, do you think it's going to work? Do you think this is what you need? Like, I need to kind of nail down that because then it is just logistics and then everything else is much easier. But then, you know, they might be like, well, you know, they might say stuff like, you know, well, everything sounds good on paper, but you never really know until you do it. Okay, you know, what do you mean by that? So you see, that's like, not certain. But if, you know, amateur, they're just, oh, but it sounds great. Like, I just figure out the money and then they start going in about money and doing payment plans and all this stuff, and then you're doing all this stuff and they're just not sold. So you have to do those double tie downs in the beginning and make sure they are actually sold, that this is the right thing, now's the right time, and it really just is logistics and not fear, uncertainty, et cetera.

Okay.

Okay.

So as someone who's been through your training and worked with your closers, who are excellent, one of the things that I have realized from working with your closers is just their incredible ability to take personal responsibility for result. I think that's really powerful and really good. And I also know that there are other things at play for their success that they don't have control over, like, for example, offer and lead quality. And what I found is that sometimes they still own that responsibility of, oh, man, I'm not closing. This is my fault. This is my fault. How can you recognize and know the difference between, is this an offer problem, is this a lead quality problem, or is this a closer problem?

If it's the closer or if I'm like the business owner.

Give me both.

Learn well, you know, so, you know, if it's the business owner, there's. There's three things at play. There's the sales team, there's the sales ops, and there's the marketing. Right? And so those are the three things that need to be working and firing in all cylinders for it to work. So the marketing, it's like, number one, are we filling the calendars? Okay, if yes, number two, you know, are we filling in with marketing qualified leads? So, like, are we grading applications and are the applications qualified? Right. Simple. And then number three is, okay, the reviewing the calls, are the people actually showing up, people that, you know, if it's you or maybe it's your sales manager, whatever, people that I could close and I mean, usually you just kind of know that by listening to the calls. The easiest thing, if you're kind of unsure, take a day at Calls, you'll just know, like, you'll know in a day. Rather than like wrestling around with it for like, you know, a month. Just take calls for a day. You'll know. You'll know right away. So that's marketing. Sales ops is really, you know, that's who they're in charge of. Kind of the. If you think of marketing and you think of sales, sales ops is like in the middle, right? And so they're in charge of basically managing the calendars, grading the applications, lead scoring, you know, all those things. Are you single booking? Are you going to double book? What are you going to do? So sales ops, what they need to give you KPI'd on is how many live calls per day and really how many offers per day the closers are making. It's really live calls per day, but it's also kind of offers calls per day. Because they're not totally in control of offers per day, but they are of live. And the magic number is like, if you can get people making three offers per closer per day, that is what I found to be the good metric. Right? So to be able to do that, you need people to show up and you need people who are qualified, Right? If you can get more than that, that's going to be amazing. But even three is fine. Two is a little low. Three's good right now. If that's good, then, I mean, first of all, it's like, if those two things are good, then it's probably kind of how you know it's your sales team. But also it's like, again, that kind of goes back to the marketing thing. Is it quality or is it the sales process? Well, number one, if you take calls for a day, you're going to know. Number two, or if you're reviewing calls constantly and giving feedback, you kind of know as well, like, are they doing the things that I would have done? Or if you don't know, it's kind of like, well, let me take some calls and figure it out, you know? And so that's kind of how I look at it in that lens. If you're a closer, you know, I get what you're asking. It's like, how do you kind of keep things within your control? Oh, you know, when I was a closer and I was really good, I, like, just brain myself brainwashed myself that everything was in my control. So, I mean, I just didn't even, you know, I just, I just had a way of just. It was all me, you know, and sure, like, did lead quality or Lead volume sometimes play a part in it. Yes, but you have to, you kind of have to accept the belief or choose the belief that's going to be most empowering to you. And so if you choose the belief that everything is your fault and it's all extreme ownership, as long as you don't just like cry yourself to sleep at night and it doesn't dement you and like you're, you're not, you're not like freaking out and you, you feel like a complete failure and it is probably the most empowered. So I'll give you an example. Like I just had extreme ownership with this stuff and there would be days where, and you know, I had a really good manager at the time, otherwise I just never would have pushed myself to do this. I mean there would be days where I'd have one call on the calendar and I'd hit three deals, you know, and I would be able to do that because I was so good at working my pipeline and I was so good at just create. If I just sat there all day with my pipeline, I could just like make stuff happen. You can only do that for so long until like you have like, you've literally just killed your pipeline. But you know, I was very good at that, you know, and, and so I was able to just make stuff happen out of nothing because I just was always focused on new opportunities. So I think that's the biggest thing is like knowing that and something that's always within your control is like the business owner you're looking for, working for probably has a list of numbers. You, if you have nothing to do and you've worked your pipeline to the brim, you just call people now. I used to just call the setter's leads and I didn't even care. I was like, I'm gonna call your leads and you know, look like, is that the most efficient activity for me to do? No. But the very fact that like I'm not just gonna sit on my hands, I'm gonna do something, it just puts an energy out into the world where stuff happens and like if it, and also as a closer, if you self set your own deal almost always it's a, sometimes a twice as high closing ratio as somebody else setting for you or from ads because you're only gonna, I mean just think about it. You're only gonna set yourself a deal that you think you're gonna close. Right? Like you kind of know, you know, and so there's that there's pipeline. So I, I just always would control the controllables. And at the end of the day, if I got to the end of my day and I could honestly say that, number one, you know, every single consult that I did take, the person was a hundred percent sold. Now they might have had 500 in the bank account. They could have done, couldn't have done anything right. But if they were a hundred percent sold, and there's some qualifications to kind of know if they are or not, that's the first thing I want to look for. The number two, the free time I had, whether I was a no show, whether I had no space, nothing booked. Did I work pipeline effectively or did I do outbound? Because you can always do outbound. You can always pick up the phone and calls, you know, unless you have no leads that they gave you. It's probably unlikely. If I utilize my nine to five hours correctly and every single person I talked to was as sold as I could get them, I could feel pretty good about my day even if I got zero units. So that's how I would think about as a closer.

Do you think that that is skill that is taught or do you think that's just innate in your personality?

No, no. I mean, I, I, I had to get a, you know, I had a really good manager who just beat it into me basically. But, you know, and just, you have to kind of get pushed, do it. And, but, but the thing is, is what flipped me is I didn't get it until one time I was like getting berated pretty hard. And I had, it was that time I told you I had like one on the calendar. I hit three that day. And then I had an epiphany of like, oh, I can like make stuff happen without calls on my calendar. I just never even thought of it that way because I just came from kind of like, well, you know, it's, I'm gonna work with whatever the marketing can give me. And I knew, you know, follow up and whatever is important, but I didn't realize how well I could actually do it. And when I was selling, I mean, I was very good. You know, 50% of my deals probably would come from like longer term pipeline, you know, like longer term pipeline activity. And I say that, I don't mean like, oh, yeah, I had the call with the guy last week, or I had to call with the guy two weeks ago. I mean, sure, I close those people too, but like, I mean, there'd be people I'd be working for nine months, six months, and like, I was so diligent with working it that it's not as much like I was doing or saying anything special. I was just putting out such a massive amount of activity that, like, people would just. I went through this spree where I would just, like, it was like two weeks straight. I would just get a random text from somebody, and they'd be like, I'm ready to go. And I'd be like, perfect, because I needed a deal day. And so, like, I would just get, like, that type of stuff happening. And it was just because I was putting out so much activity where it's like something is gonna just come in out of this, like, hundreds of people I followed up with or hit or whatever. And so, no, I mean, you definitely learned that. I don't think it was natural. I think my, my personality is very, you know, predisposed to that. You know, I, I, I, I, I don't. I think I, I enjoy doing that type of stuff, but I kind of had to be pushed into it a little bit. I just didn't. Wasn't in my awareness that, you know, having the control to make those things happen was a possibility instead.

Were you ever on an offer that was not. That didn't convert well?

Yeah, but it was the first one that I was on. I didn't know any better, so I thought it was just me. So I just. I stuck it for a year, and I. I closed the worst leads imaginable. So then after that, it was like, it's kind of like swinging a bat with a weight on it. And then when you get up to the plate, it's like, oh, it was like, light as a feather. That's kind of how it was. It was like I. It was the worst leads imaginable in hindsight, but I'm telling you, not for a moment when I was there, I thought, the leads are bad. I thought the leads were. I was like, these leads are good. They're leads. You know, Like, I never let me take your money. Yeah. It was like I never thought of it for a moment that bad leads. But I just had no. I didn't know any better. And it wasn't like, bad leads, like, oh, I was a primadonna, you know, again, when I was there, I never said the. I didn't even. Didn't even cross my mind. I had no idea. No idea at all. And because eventually I laughed and went to with somebody, somebody else had left, and then they had hit me up one time, and I'm like, hey, why'd you leave, bro? Like, what's going on? And they were like, dude, I'm on this other thing now. It's insane. You know, like I'm. I'm doing twice as much as I used to. I'm making this. And I was like, oh. That's when I realized, like, okay, well, like, I don't even think I thought the leads were bad. Then I just was like, oh, must, there just must be better stuff out there. And I was like, well, I want to make more money, so this, that's what I want to do. So then I left. And then when I once I started taking some other calls, I was like, oh, like, that was bad. I didn't know it was really, really bad. There's some funny stories around it, but it was so bad. But I just stuck it for a year. I just had no idea. So it actually helped me be pretty good in that experience.

So now as a business owner, how can you, how can you be competitive to acquire really good talent and keep talent.

For sales or just in general?

I'll say sales, but you give me in general, I'll take whatever you want.

Well, yeah, you know, I mean, what really helps us is in our industry, we're very well known and we're. Even though, you know, I'm not like a organic social media brand. Brand, so to speak, people know who we are if you're in the space. So I mean, that is the biggest superpower that you can have. I can only imagine if I had like, you know, her Moses following or something. Oh my gosh. Like he probably gets the craziest talent you've ever seen in your entire life. So I would say, like, that is the biggest thing that you can do out of that. I mean, you know, like a lot of it is just having good recruiting. I mean, I, you know, part of, part of. If you're asking me personally, I mean, I run a recruiting business, so I should probably be pretty good at recruiting, right? And so, yeah, and so like, you know, when you have 16 full time recruiters, you could probably find some good people, right? And so like between executive typical executive search and between, you know, we have a. Our database of salespeople is 200,000 people. Like I better be able to find some good salespeople out of that. I mean, I'm gonna get the first. I'm going to cherry pick the ones that are the best. Like that's what I would do, you know, so obviously that helps. What can the average person do? Well, you could hire a recruiter, you know, plug. But also you like one of the best Hires we have a business is outside of sales having an internal recruiter for all the other positions. And then as you scale, you might need another recruiter. I mean that is a huge thing. Because what most business owners really mess up with is they just don't do enough interviews. There's not enough volume, they don't know where to go. So the quality is bad. They're running. Indeed. Or they do this or they do that. So it's like you probably need way more interviews than you think. You probably need to try different platforms than you think and you probably got to do more outbound than you think. And that's a lot easier when you have a internal hire. So somewhere around probably 300 to 700amonth, something along, you know, in those, in that frame, if you can afford it, it's a really great hire. It's like one of those hires where if you've ever hired a chef or like a cleaner for your house and you're like, oh my God, what was I doing before I had this? That is one of those hires. It is a really good hire is an internal recruiter for all your positions because they can manage all your job boards. Then they can manage group interviews from the job boards, they can manage one on ones and they can facilitate just way higher volume than you're ever going to be able to do. And then you can just take the best people. It's just a no brainer. It's like, it's like getting a salesperson, you know, but for recruiting. So it, it just sounds simple, like common sense. But how many people that you know are recruiter? Probably like none of them. Like it means it's very few, unfortunately.

Yes, well, and then it's going to save you time, save you time and money because the amount of time it takes to onboard somebody and then when they leave and then you're redoing it. It, it's can be expensive.

Yes.

In resources, time and money. Okay, so now in terms of if someone wanted to hire a closer, what are some of the. When would you say someone's ready to hire a closer and what are some of the biggest mistakes that business owners make?

Well, I mean the biggest thing is, okay, so you have to have two fundamental. You have to have two fundamental things. One is a validated offer. So like you know, you know what I'm talking about. But for people who don't, I mean, do you have something that people who have no idea who you are are buying repeatedly. Right. Your cousin. It's not your cousin or like your soul, you know, and some people could get trip if you have a small social media following, you know, you can get tripped up on that because you might be like, well you know, some of my people out of my Instagram are buying it. But that could just be people who really like you. You know, like, do you have something that's like really like hitting and resonating with the market? You know, have you sold it 20 or 30 times on your own? And it's like standardized, right? So like that and then also like an optimal selling system. So like some sort of, think about it like a conveyor belt. Do you have a consistent, consistent, predictable, repeatable, scalable way to generate interest or leads and then a consistent, repeat, scalable way to convert that interest and do clients otherwise like a sales process, Right? Like do you have those things like systems like set to where it's like a conveyor belt to where when you do plug somebody in, they could be talking to the same type of person with the same problems, coming from the same place, needing the same solutions every single time on a repeated daily basis multiple times a day. Right. So if you have that and it's like a conveyor belt, like that's the analogy I like to use. And it's like same person, same problem, same, you know, same look at all of that. It's much easier obviously to systematize the sales process and then plug a salesperson and win. So like the easiest way to explain that is the antithesis of this is like you're a. If you're a digital agency and you do like everything for everybody, like you'll do anything, you'll do website, PPC, Google, Facebook, TikTok, this that the other like you'll just do, yeah, I can do it. And then maybe you contract it out or somehow you fulfill on it internally or et cetera. Those people hiring salespeople really struggle outbound or inbound because you know, how do you expect the salesperson to just like figure out, you know, you're talking to all sorts of different people and all sorts of different industries. They have all sorts of different problems and they're wanting all sorts of different stuff. Can a salesperson do it? I'm not saying they can't. I mean some of these businesses that are full service do hundreds of millions a year working with Fortune 500 company, I mean there's a way to make it work, right? But for the average, like the people who I see struggle, the average small business who's 30k a month, full service agency, they'd be much better off getting a more specialized like kind of niche offer at least on the front end to bring in new customers. Then they can do all that full service stuff on the back end. Right. When, when you already have the relationship with the person. But like to make it a consistent scalable acquisition, it's a little bit easier that way. That's why the ones that don't do that, that are really big, that are full service, they work with huge corporations and they, and they usually just work their way up there through referrals, acquiring employees who have those relationships, which is great. So like it can work but they're not doing this like sales model. You know, it's, it's very different. So those are things you have to have in place. And then once you have those two things in place, you just have to have them make sure you have the right amount of leads. And so you know for a closer you want to be able to fill up the full calendar. That's going to be at least four calls a day basically or more. For a setter it's around really, it depends on the type of lead you're giving them. But you need to give them enough leads to hit about two to four sets a day. Okay. I would say if not more. All right, so and these are MDRs and inbound closers. Right. So this is all assuming you have a front end marketing system. And so the amount of leads you would need to do that depends because it depends on the quality of the leads. Right. So it could be anywhere from like 300 to a thousand leads a month. A thousand would be like if you got like basic opt ins to like a VSL or a webinar or something like that, you're going to need more. If you have like low ticket buyers you could only maybe need 300 to 400% per month. If you have like really good quality quiz applications it might be like two 50 or 300. Right. So you kind of got to just kind of figure out easiest way to figure it out. Take a, take a couple days of calls yourself. But you kind of got to figure out like what's hit the sweet spot of two to four sets a day. Ish. That's kind of what you need for the setters. Now that's all the inbound side, right. Inbound closer, inbound salesperson or mdr which is like an inbound setter. That's what we call setters now also just keep in mind outbound is much different. So in outbound you're Always going to do basically a 60, 70% salary plus a commission. So with outbound, obviously you're not giving them leads, so there's no lead requirements. But what I recommend is that you have some sort of best practices and you do have a system that's winning, that works, that they can take over. So for instance, what I probably wouldn't do is hire a outbound sdr, give them a salary and then just say go figure it out. Like that's. Unless you're, unless you're hiring somebody that is like they've done it before in a previous role, they know exactly what to do, then okay, maybe that's fine. But then you're probably also hiring like a more of an SDR manager who's going to validate it first and build out a team under them. So that could be one thing. But generally like if you're hiring an average SDR or an average outbound or like outbound account executive type person, usually you need something for them to like a system that's like, here's what's working. You just need to do this. Whether it's cold emailing this amount of people, whether it's LinkedIn, outreach of this amount of people a day, and then setting through this script or whatever, as long as you have, it's working. And then usually you got to pay them a base because the volume's not going to be there the same way as inbound, then it's fine and you can kind of ascend them up that way. So that's kind of how hopefully that works on the inbound and outbound side just to kind of give a scope.

Do you think that the business owner needs to be able to close their own offer before bringing in a closer?

Okay, so here's how I would answer that. In the Internet, okay, so in most industries, especially like the Internet industry, coaching, consulting courses, stuff like that, which is no knows probably most of your audience, you don't need to do anything. Like I can find a counter example of somebody who has not done that, who has succeeded. Right? So it's not like, yes, that is the way. Now what I can say is like I've observed through colleagues, friends and 3,000 plus clients over the past five years, 98% of the time, the people who succeed the most often, that is the path they follow, which is they did the sales themselves, then they replace themselves, then they build a little sales team, then they replace themselves a sales manager. And you just kind of got to grow because you kind of got to know what business you're in and the marketing, direct response, coaching, consulting courses type world agency, small business, you know, small business type services. You're really, a lot of times you're in the marketing and sales business. You know, like it's very much how well can you market, how well can you sell and how well you can you scale those functions of your business. Now that does not to say like if you're, that's not your forte, is it possible to find somebody who can like who's a very experienced sales director, what have you and have them come in and start at the ground level and kind of build it out from the ground without you doing anything? Yes, it's possible. But if you're the average small business, probably not like how do you attract that person? It's probably not going to happen. You're not going to attract somebody good enough to do that unless you make them your business partner. So the scenarios where I do see that happening is more of like I'm famous on social media, I have a million plus followers, I have all of this traffic, I'm going to launch this offer. Sales director comes in from the beginning and we give, you know, we give them a small override on the, those are the people who I see kind of are able to pull it off. But to be quite frank, I would still do it the other way around if I was me. Now in other businesses, you know, look, look, if you're in the, in the SaaS business, the SaaS business is much more of a product business than a marketing and sales business. And if you have a great product, it's also such an established industry to where you have a higher likelihood of being able to find somebody who has been there, done that, maybe equity to kind of build out your sales floor from the ground up. Now I do know people who work in SaaS and SaaS, coaches and people who, that's the market they serve and they, they still recommend the same thing. It should be founder led salesperson, you replace yourself. But I do think there's a higher likelihood of a working out in a business like that, especially if you have like funding and a really great idea and great backing. Like you could probably attract really, really good person. So there's no one size fits all rules. I think it's a best practice especially for your audience. But is there exceptions? Yes. You know, you gotta kind of figure out what's best for you.

I think one of the biggest mistakes that coaches will make though is they'll say I'm a coach, I'm gonna hire someone to do the sales, but they're just throwing money at a problem. And then when the salesperson comes in, even though they're trained, they still need training and insight from you and you can't provide that as the business owner. Then, then what's your plan?

Right, well of course, yeah. I mean and especially in the coaching business, right? It's you, it's, it's heavily a marketing and sales business. It just really is. I mean sure, you could, I'm not saying you couldn't have clients stick with you for a long time and have great LTVs like I've seen that many, many times. But you know, you gotta acquire the clients and to be able to do that, you gotta be good at front end. Case in point. If you look at the people in the market that are doing the best, that's what they're doing. So you know, it's like that is a very core function, an essential part of your business and therefore that people who do lean into that core function and learn it tend to do the best. And then you're right. Even if theoretically they do find somebody who is good who can do it for them. Well, like again how good of a person are you going to find if you don't even have a validated like the track a really good salesperson is to be like hey, I was closing the leads at this rate based on your comp structure, if you close even 80% as good as I do and based on the comms and based on how many leads I'm going to give you, you would make this, that's a way to attract a really good salesperson also, hey, you know I'm doing really well with this. I know this offer really well. I can coach you and help you grow and blah blah blah blah. And so like they're going to get the growth, they're going to get the income they have the certainty it's going to work. It's kind of hard to be like hey, you know, can you come help me build my business? You know, I, I, I haven't figured out the sales at all. So can you come help me build? Like you're kind of asking for like a business partner, you know what I'm saying? So it's, how do you attract so again the people who that can do that? You know, maybe you're like have, you know, maybe you have 800k on Instagram, you can just load traffic so maybe you can attract somebody like that. But mo the average person no like they need to do it themselves, learn the skill and build up. And also it's just such a life skill. Like you can learn it. You don't have to be as good as me. But like, it's not. Being a great sales trainer is much harder than like being an expert at selling your product and service. And that's not a big hill to climb. You just gotta be the expert at selling your thing. You don't gotta be expert at selling. Like I gotta be the expert at selling everybody's thing. You don't gotta be the expert at selling anybody else's thing. You just gotta be the expert at selling your thing. And that's not a big hill to climb. Like you can do that in a couple of months. And so like, and it's a core function of your business. Why would you not learn it? So I just again, you know, the, the amount of people I see who outsource it or whatever, who succeed, very low. Unless you, you know, I, I could name off some people, but like, you know, unless you are really big brand or something, and this is like a, you know, a side business for you, but you can drive all the traffic. Okay, sure, maybe that makes sense for you. But like how many people are that are listening to this podcast? Probably not very many.

Right. Okay. So I want to be very mindful and respectful of your time. So last question. As someone who's worked with business owners basically from ground up, also from, from six to seven figures and seven to eight figures and multiple eight figures in these phases of business growth, what are some of the biggest differences in people's mindset and in their experience that have catapulted them to the next phase that you feel like people miss?

Yeah, well, you know, it's so interesting. So in the beginning, so in the beginning you have to be good at marketing and sales, right? Like so zero to like 200 grand a month. It can be some of the hard. It, it could be the easiest or the hardest thing because for me it's super easy because I'm good at marketing, sales, duh. You know, but like for the average person, it can be very tough because they don't have those skills yet. So like, you got to figure out like, how do I get leads, how do I close the leads and how do you close cold leads? So that is sort of the fundamental skills there. Most, the majority of people obviously, like, you know, how many people, what percentage of people even have a seven figure business? It's like less than one. Way less than 1% of the country, way it might be like less than 3% of, I think, total businesses. Even, like, I mean, there's not very many people. So, like, that's the fundamental thing is like, you gotta know how to get business after that. You gotta know how to really, at least in this business model, which is like coaches and a lot of your audience, you gotta have to know how to create a scalable product by service or coaching program or what have you. That's not a huge hill to climb. I mean, that's pretty simple. But some people don't even do that, right? It's like there are certain people who scale something up to 200 grand and then they do something else, scale it up, do something else, scale it up, do. And they're just promote, they're just promoters. They never get out of the promoting thing. So the next kind of phase is like, you got to create a scalable product that's around usually 2 to 300 grand a month. Obviously you got to have a product before that to get there. But a lot of times you don't know what your product's really going to be until you sort of like get up to that level because you need feedback from customers. The next phase is probably the biggest thing, which is like from 2 to 300 to like, it could be 600, it could be a million. A lot of it depends on your business. Economics is management and just frontlines management. So how do you manage salespeople? How do you manage client success? People? How do you manage people in general? Right. And how do you coach them how to be high performers? How do you make sure you even have the right people? Recruit, hire, train, manage, et cetera? Right. Most people, especially in the marketing and industry, not good. Okay. Majority, not good. And it's, and it's, it's tough because fundamentally, I mean, not many people teach it like it. And it's. I was decent. I mean, granted, I've learned a lot, but I'm not saying I was perfect by any means, but I was decent coming out of the gate with it because I had worked for companies before and so, like, and I've worked for companies with really bad leadership and then pretty good leadership. So I had learned through osmosis. And I think it's the best way to learn it is go, go work for a really good company who has great teams and you'll, you'll kind of get it, you know, but it's tough to learn out of a book. It's tough to learn out of. There's not like a lot of Programs who are going to like really kind of help you. I'm sure they're out there, but they're not as they don't, unfortunately they don't sell as well as the marketing programs because people just want to learn marketing. And so a lot of times like the management people get a little, little fizzled there and then they just go, they try marketing. So then like, oh, I'm gonna do a new promotion, I'm gonna do this. So that's kind of the problem. So, so the management is a big issue now. The next issue is even harder, which is like leading leaders. So like building out like an executive team, that doesn't happen all at once. But you know, that could be anywhere from let's say 600 to 2 million a month. You know, it could be anywhere between that. It kind of becomes a range a lot of times depending on your economics, which when I say economics I mean like your price point and your back end and how your business model works. Like it could vary, you know, and so that's like how do you recruit, hire and train and manage your client? Success director and your, you know, sales director, you know, all those positions. And it's not like you just flip a switch and hire them all at once. Like it's, it's gradual and usually pretty slow. You know, some people just think flip, switch, hire them all at once. That's not a good idea. It's kind of like you, you, you do. But leading leaders is even harder because now instead of one step removed, your two step removed. And the quality of your business is the quality of what's happening on the front lines. And so like really when I say the quality of your business, the quality, what happens on the front lines is all of the customer facing parts of your business. That is what dictates the quality of your business is those customer facing parts and the performance of those parts. So how well your marketing is and what the customer sees about your marketing, how well your setter calls are and what they're doing and what your customer interfaces with them, how well the sales calls are customer facing, how all the onboarding call is in the handoff, customer facing, how well the fulfillment process is customer facing, retention, customer facing. So it's like QC and high level performance and coaching to the people who are in charge of the front lines, that's what dictates that high level performance. So the question becomes when you're a leader of leaders, how do you, you know, coach your coach your managers on how to do that? Well, thankfully, hopefully you were just doing it so you can try to teach them what you were doing. But it can be a little bit tough. And most people, again, like, even me, you know, I. I think about all the time, man, there's more I could be doing that that I'm not doing, but I'm kind of, you know, doing this other thing. So it. That's a struggle a lot of people go through, but if you can nail that, man, then you could really just explode. And then after that, there's some other challenges I could go through that, know, my theory's there, but, you know, that's kind of like, I've definitely eclipsed that level. And now I'm in a. In a different tier of, you know, stuff that we could. We could talk about that if you want to, but there's different challenges you have to face after that, in my opinion. But, you know, most people get. They get hung up on a lot of those things. It's like it's a smaller percentage of every single one. Like, not most people can't even market and sell, but the few that can, they can't manage. Then the few that can manage, they can manage, like salespeople and client success people, but they can't manage a leader. Like, they can't attract one. And a lot of times it's not that they can't manage them. They can't attract them because of them, because nobody wants to work for them. That's actually good. And that's a tough problem. I mean, that is a tough problem to work on. But it's true. I mean, I know a guy, I'm thinking about him right now. We'll say his name, but nobody worked for this guy. You know, it's just like, he just. Why would you want to work it? Just because people, like good people like that, the leaders, they only want to work for people who they can grow from. Otherwise, like, they might start their own business. They might take another opportunity. Like, these are good people, right? And they're not going to mess around with your bullshit. They're not going to. So you got to be, you know, it's a lot. You know, you got to personally develop yourself high enough to where those people feel like they can grow under you. And then you also have to cast a vision big enough, and that vision can't be about your bank account. So, you know, there's a lot of the challenges, and it's just like a smaller percentage get to each level. I mean, it's not like it's like a pyramid. You Know, if. If more people could figure out management than could figure out marketing and sales, then what you would see is, like, you wouldn't see any. It would be like, there'd be more people. You'd have this, like, Gap, and then there'd be a ton of people doing like 800 grand a month, and then the rest would be doing like 50, you know, but that's not how it is. It's just a gradual thing. So that's kind of my synopsis of that. It was a good question.

So good. Okay, so thank you so much for pouring into me and into the listeners. For those of you who want to go deeper with you and learn more about you and your services, what are some of the best places to send them?

Yeah, so, yeah, I mean, the easiest thing is Just Closers IO, our website, or my YouTube channel, Cole Gordon. I mean, we help with basically three things. We help with marketing systems. If you need to generate leads. Right. And you need to figure out sales calls, we help with that. We help placing setters and closers. And then also we have a mastermind on just how to scale basically from 100 grand a month to a million a month. So if any of that interests you, that's where to go.

Okay, cool. We'll make sure that we link all of that up in the show notes.

Cool. Thank you.

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