A short interview between Jim Johnson and a guest about the challenges of hiring a salesperson. The guest emphasizes the personal risk felt when hiring (impact on a hire's family and income), the importance of presenting a reputable company to give new salespeople credibility, and the need for focused training to reduce "time to money" so recruits can earn quickly.
Yeah. What was. What was the biggest challenge with bringing on a salesperson?
For me, it was, will I be able to. You know, this was a guy with a family. Right. He just gotten married, and it was and still is for me. Anytime I hire somebody, the challenge for me is, okay, I'm. They're putting their life in my hands, and will I give them the opportunity to succeed? And can somebody actually succeed at this? Really, back then, the model wasn't so well known. Right. We didn't know that a Salesman can make 100 grand in a year. So here you are thinking, oh, my goodness, this guy is going from a job where he knows his income. And here I just offered him a job, and I don't even know how I came upon it, but I decided he'll be paid commission. Think I gave him a small base, but it was mostly commission. And he said, yes, I want to do it. And I'm like, oh, man, he wants to do it.
He found the right guy. It sounds like he was hungry.
Yeah. And, you know, I very specifically remember, soon after he started with me, I took a trip with my family to South Africa to visit my parents. And I was so concerned. I'm in South Africa, he's over here. He's supposed to sell a few jobs while I'm gone. And, you know, well, it happened. You know, back then, communication wasn't so smooth as it is today. As far as getting on, you know.
Text back and forth between South Africa and Texas.
Not those days. Those days, you probably paid $5 a text. Now it's $5 a day, I think, for everything. But communication was. Was more of a challenge. But, yeah, I remember, you know, me and my dad having some talks about that. You know, that was really. I considered my first high risk move in business. Everything else I had covered, you know, but hiring a salesman for me was a big step because I felt like he needs to make good money and can I, you know, what did you.
Do to ensure that. That he made it or did he? I guess that's a.
He did.
He did. Okay, good.
He very much did. You know, what did I do to ensure that? I'd say, as I would say today, you know, when a salesman comes to work for us, he doesn't have to. He doesn't have to apologize for our company, so he doesn't have to worry about our reputation. I think that's a huge thing. If I'm gonna go sell for a company, I don't want to have to apologize for them on every turn. And so I say, what did I do for him? Well, I gave him a good company to sell, you know, a good name to sell. We, we were not, you know, we. The little bit of size we had was. We were reputable, you know, and we could, we could list our references and we could. He could walk into the supply houses and know that we pay our bill and so forth, you know, So I, I'd say I gave him a credible, you know, visible.
A brand with a reputation he could trust. Yeah, yeah, that's pretty awesome.
And he helped us build it, you know, then from there on, it's a snowball effect, you know, you work with that.
So he came in, he starts, did you give Supply some training of any kind? Did he already have some background in it? Like, what did that mean?
He did. He worked. Worked as a salesman, but it was a salary position at the company called Tough Shed. They build sheds. Are you familiar? Oh, yeah, yeah. He worked for them for a year. Yeah. In fact, I think the way that it worked is he worked for them, we were friends and he said, man, this is what I do for Tough. I think I can do this for you. Ah, you know, I think, I believe that's kind of.
That was kind of the God's providence right there.
Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
Most guys don't get that lucky. That's not usually the way it goes. It's like, hey, will you come to work for me? Yeah. You got some sales history. Yes, I do. But then there's this training. You got to get them all this, like, knowledge that they didn't have before and you hope they make something out of it. Yeah, I think that's a big struggle for a lot of guys, whenever they first start is, yeah, you know how to sell it. Because you have all this experience. You've gone through the ringer on a lot of it. You've got a bit of a personal reputation. So now your word of mouth stuff is taking care of you. But this new guy doesn't have that. How do you, how do you get that to him quickly?
Yeah, Today it's easy. I send them to you.
I did not pay you to say that. But I was nice.
No, no, but I mean, I look, nothing like that existed 15 years ago. Not that I knew of. I mean, not that I knew of. You were in the industry. Was there anything like that?
Only in my. Only my building.
Yeah.
Yeah, we had created it, we put it, you know, we had a wholesale training manual put together, videos to go with it, like that kind of stuff. Like, I knew If I going to scale, I had to get salespeople making quickly. And so it wasn't about teach them everything all at one time. It was teaching them what they needed to do to get to the point of making money. So we call that concept time to money. How fast can I get somebody up to speed on something that may not have any kind of at least construction background, maybe some sales ability, but not some construction background. So they gotta learn your, you know, what's the difference between a flat roof and a pitched roof or steep slope? And what does slope even mean? And what are asphalt shingles vs. EPDM vs. Built up and those type of things and rafter systems and truss systems and you got all this knowledge that you just go, everybody should know that, right? Well they don't and take some time. And that's what I think most small contractors run into whenever they're trying to go from solopreneur to like scaling their business is they think this guy is going to come in and do really well right from the get go. They don't all get lucky and get some guy that has some construction background. And so they do this ride along training like watch what I do and mimic me and then you start doing that yourself. But that takes a long time to learn that.
You know, I was fortunate this guy was a self learner, you know, but. And then ride alongs and just getting introduced to the industry. But man, today it's so much easier. I mean you guys do this and I guess there's a few others, but so nice you have platform. I just, you know, they log in, they go through the courses.
Yeah, if you can't do it with.
All this info then yeah, might not.
Be the industry for you.
