The Best of Contractor Radio Season 1

Hey, I'm Jim Johnson, your host here with Contractor Radio, and I want to thank you for taking the time today to listen to our show. And our show is all about you, helping you get control of your business so you can grow your business and find that personal and financial freedom you're after. So hang on tight. Episode's about to start. We have an amazing special guest. He is the maven of marketing, the wizard of words, the creator of copy, Frank Kern. What do you think about door knock? Like these guys, there's a lot of guys that are out there in this roofing world that from a insurance restoration side of things. So thousands of homes get damaged by hurricane, they get damaged by hail, whatever it is. There's these armies of sales guys that go around these neighborhoods knocking doors saying, hey, you've got damage. Let me take some pictures. I'll do a free estimate for you. I work with you, your insurance company. Get everything taken care of. And so that makes a lot of sense, knocking doors. I mean, it's ready market. Go knock doors. And you're probably going to get some people if you're, if you can breathe pretty well, it's like, hey, somebody else is paying for it. So let us do your roofing. Right? But in a retail aspect of things, like going out, retail wise. And what would you do? Like, would you even suggest door knocking? Because low cost marketing, it doesn't cost anything.

Yes, dude. And there's a great technique for it which is called the surgical strike method. So let's say that we're gonna go out and we're gonna target this mythical Turtle Creek subdivision.

Okay?

So that's who we're gonna set loose and we're gonna send Tim and Eddie out, and we're gonna send them out from the 1st to the 10th. And that's their job. They're gonna canvas Turtle Creek. So in the two months, not two months, I'm sorry, two weeks leading up to the 1st and the 10th, would create Facebook videos that are shown just to people in Turtle Creek that have Tim and Eddie in them. And they're designed to be shown on the phone. And it's gonna say, hey, I'm Tim. And I'm Eddie and we're gonna be coming to your house and I just don't want to alarm you, but the reason we're gonna be stopping by is we're with Crazy Frank's House of Roofing. And chances are your roof has been impacted by yada yada. And here's what we're going to look for. And I just want to give you a friendly heads up. So when you see us, here's what the truck looks like. Know that we're not a couple of weirdos or anything. We're actually here to take care of this roofing problem. And by the way, if you already know that you got a roofing problem and you want it fixed, do this. So now when Tim and Eddie show up, Mabel, who's answering the door there, she's like, oh, I saw you guys. Because this sucker right here is the television now, right? This is the new tv. So they're watching video on this guy. And so you can show it on the Instagrams and on the Facebooks and on the YouTubes and just like a TV ad, you know, being shown to him. And now it's giving that familiarity. So you're essentially building the trust, or at least some sort of familiarity. Before Tim and Eddie show up.

Wow.

That.

That right there was the golden nugget of the day surgical strike method, I.

Think I use it. I got the metaphor from the invasion of Normandy. It was like you shell the beach first, then invade the beach. This is a polite way of shelling the beach with, like, goodwill and trust. You know, you're softening them up before you go in there.

Yeah, we teach something somewhat similar, but yours is way better, of course. Like, we do, like, flyer the neighborhood first. Give some education who you are. You've got a picture of you on it and that kind of stuff. You go put it early in the day, and then you come back that afternoon, and you know who to knock on because the flyers are missing.

Like, they're gone.

Like, that means they walked in the house and grabbed the fire. The ones that are still there come back to those later and hit all the ones where the person has already picked it up and they're a little bit warmer. They at least know who you are. It's not like you're just cold door knocking somebody. But.

All right, so this one, this isn't my invention. This comes from a guy named Dean Jackson, who's freaking brilliant at marketing, and he helps realtors, and he does a similar thing where they'll mail a postcard to a neighborhood, and they will correspond a Facebook video campaign with the mailer, and it'll have the realtor, and she's on video, and she's like, hi, this is Vanessa McClelland standing outside the gates of Turtle Creek subdivision where residents are currently receiving and curious to about this very interesting yellow postcard. Now, on this postcard, when you get it? You're gonna see blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And so now it's setting them up to want to look at the damn postcard. And then she gives the same call to action that the postcard has, which is. I forgot what it was. Go here to get a, you know, comps report for the neighborhood or whatever. So you could totally do the same thing. Hey, this is Tim and Eddie from Crazy Frank's House of Roofing standing at the gates of Turtle Creek neighborhood where residents are receiving right now as you watch this, a flyer that looks like this now. And then go over to the actual flyer. So now they're looking at the flyer on, in person and on video and they're seeing Tim and Eddie. So I would do that in. What's the word? Conjunction, I guess at the same time is what I'm trying to say as the other videos as well, because that video stuff is real cheap. You're gonna have a hard time spending a lot of money reaching them because it just doesn't cost a lot to reach.

That's my favorite thing in marketing. Cheap marketing. That works. That's pretty cool. So I know I only had you scheduled for an hour and I'm sure lots of people are gonna have lots of questions and things like that. We'll get those answered on the Facebook Live feed and here in the webinar and we'll probably send something out to everybody afterwards. Matt has a comment here. So it seems to me that the key there would be to make the postcard a bright color or. Or otherwise stand out from junk mail that they might be receiving. Tim and Eddie should be wearing something distinctive as well, something identifiable to filter through the noise. Would you agree with all that? More statement than question. Okay, cool. Yeah.

But all of that will not make up for frequency. So the big name of that game is frequency. Don't send them just one postcard. Don't show them just one video, you know, well, you can show one video but like keep that video playing all the time in front of them so they see them. Because your Facebook guy. Let's see if I even have it on my phone. Weirdly enough, I advertise a lot on Facebook, but I don't use it so well. I'm not gonna demonstrate how well, let's see this damn thing gonna work. Alright, so your Facebook person is looking at Facebook just like this all the time, just scrolling. So if they see like if that little thing that you're seeing right there is the video, they might not watch it. So you're gonna want them to see that thing like a billion times until they actually watch it. And Facebook will tell you when somebody watches it and you can say, okay, if someone watches, you know, 30% or 50% of this video, now show them a different one, you know, and all that stuff is automated and it's automated within Facebook. It requires no special tool or anything to do. So frequency versus fancy is definitely the key there.

So that was actually something you taught to us the very first time we were there because a lot of us, we don't want to be the spam guy, right? Like you don't want to be. This person is like, oh man, I'm sending stuff to them all the time. And you were like, no, that's completely wrong. Like the people got to see you this many times and like, if they're interested in what you have, they'll keep looking and they're not looking at it all the time. Can you kind of clue these guys into like how many times people need to see stuff and like why you should keep marketing. Marketing marketing with the frequency and why it doesn't. As Matt said, it doesn't have to be genius, it has to be frequent and valuable.

Yeah, absolutely. Okay, so the average. Damn it, I forgot the stat. Okay, hang on, I've got these. Ooh, I've got them in my other monitor here.

Hang on, I'm going to get you.

The actual statistics, assuming that I can find this without it taking forever. So hang on, this is a big deal. And the stats I'm gonna give you again, assuming I can find them, are.

From Nielsen, which for everybody that's listening, Nielsen is the ratings company, like you would do with TV ratings and stuff like that. They rate a lot of different things though.

Yeah. Now weirdly, I don't have the stupid stuff out all kinds of other stats, but I don't have this one. So these, like one of these numbers is going to be wrong. The average time from seeing something to purchase is like 32 days or something. Alright. So the average time it takes an average consumer to see the pair of shoes and be like, huh, I'm thinking about getting a pair of shoes to actually buying the pair of shoes or whatever it may be is 32 days or something. This data actually comes from a company called C3 Metrics, the founder of whom worked with or for Nielsen. That's where this data comes from. During those 32 days or whatever it is, there are typically 20 something, let's say 23 touch points from the brand during that consumer journey. So if you're like, just thinking they're going to see you one time and be like, hot damn, I'm going to call it, unfortunately doesn't work that way anymore. And what we as marketers fall into the trap of believing is that they're actually paying attention. So it's not like they see you and they look at it and they consider it. And then you keep hammering them is you keep showing them because they're doing the scroll that I just showed you, so they might physically see it. And that's called an impression in the online ad world. That doesn't mean they paid attention. Now, if they pay attention to video one, for example, you can make it where they don't see video one anymore. And if they respond and fill in the form, they're taken out of that whole thing. But if they don't respond and fill in the form, they see another ad. And all of the ads are everything in this formula or everything in this process is based on one simple formula, which is goodwill plus offers times frequency equals money. So if the ads that you're showing create that goodwill, which in this case a classic example was, hey, you know, you ever notice, like, you get a brown spot on your ceiling and then you hope it goes away, but it doesn't and it gets bigger, well, here's three ways you can tell where the brown spots coming from. That's building goodwill. During that same piece of content, you make an offer, which is, by the way, if you want some help and figuring out what's going on and maybe talk about fixing it, give us a call over here. Go to crazyfrains houseofroofing.com that's the offer. The more you do that, the more money that you're going to make. And if you wrap your offer up in goodwill, it doesn't really feel like a pitch. So you're not really spammy. You're just being very, very helpful very frequently. And frequency breeds familiarity, and familiarity breeds trust. And trust breeds money.

Man, man, man, golden nuggets there thing. We brought that home pretty good. That was well done. Brooke even commented. So do I. That was. I like that equation. We will make sure we get that written down and posted it on our walls here for our marketing. And like you said, the scroll thing, I related that to my email. Like my email, I like click the button and say delete all of them at one time. Like, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, delete. Right? Because I'm just busy and things are rolling. But you know, It's Sunday afternoon. I'm staring at a bad football game. Go check my email. And, hey, there's a cool email from Frank Kern or a cool email from whoever it may be, or Crazy Frank's House of Roofing. And I actually read that thing for the first time, and I had, you know, 17 other ones that might be similar to it. So keep that in mind. You know, folks, as you're out there marketing, they. They really aren't that focused on you, and they really aren't. Like, you're gonna have to be in front of a bunch before they pay attention.

Man, if they paid as much attention to us as we thought they did, we'd be really rich.

Exactly. So you've hung out with us all this time. I really appreciate it from number one. You've been awesome, amazing. I think there's a lot of really good, valuable stuff there, and I'm super thankful for it. So thank you very much for that. I got one last question for you.

Now, this is the one you wouldn't tell me. You're like, okay. I'm, like, kind of dreading the question. It's like, what's the worst thing you've ever done?

No, no, I decided to stay away from that one because I was a little scared of it, what that might be. So I asked you earlier, what's the greatest thing or the best thing that you've achieved at this point? So now it's all over. You're there in the. In the casket, people walking past. What do you want people to remember you for?

Oh, just being friendly and helpful. Good old Frank. You know, I don't care about all of that. Oh, man, this guy was. He made the biggest impact and all that kind of stuff. They were like, that guy helped me a lot. That's plenty for me. So that's awesome. I had something, like, cooler sound.

No, no, that. Like, it's funny.

He was great. I remember that one time I was in trouble and he helped me. That's it for me.

That's actually so simple. It's awesome. And it's why I'm aligned with you. That's my answer, too. Like, I just want to be that guy. Help some way shape, form, or fashion and you didn't hate me is hopefully the goal in the whole deal. So, Frank, thanks a lot, man. Really appreciate it.

All right, y', all, thanks for having me. Merry Christmas, or what's the proper. I came up with a really good, politically correct way to say it. Happy. Oh, what was it? I acknowledge your right to decide whether or not to celebrate this gender neutral, spiritually agnostic period of optional celebration.

That's a perfect finish to this week's contractor training room. Once again, Frank, merry Christmas and thanks for the Christmas presents you shared with everybody today. We really appreciate it.

All right, homies, I'll see you all later.

All right, Bye, guys.

Bye.

Everybody. Jim Johnson here, the head coach at Contractor Coach Pro. And I couldn't be more excited about the guest that we have today because it holds. Holds kind of a special place in my heart is kind of how everything got started for me was sales and learning the skills, learning some of the art that goes along with sales. And this guy that we have today, Ryan Groth with Sales Transformation Group, has been a student of the game himself, not only in sales, but in baseball as well. Former baseball player, played for the Angels in their system. So that's super cool. We have a lot in common because of those things and we're super happy to have him on board with us. Welcome today, Ryan Groff.

Hey, thank you, Jim.

Awesome. Awesome. That's. Man, it's so crazy. Like, the similarities between you and I across the board. I grew up also with parents that had zero interest in sales. Like, that was not the thing.

It was bad. It was like, those are bad people, right?

They're bad guys. You need to, you need to get a real job. You need to start at the bottom, work your way up, either go in the military or go to college, that type of thing. And very against this whole sales thing. But I got real lucky on a neighbor across the road that noticed that I was fairly competitive with sports, basketball, baseball and all the stuff I had done with that as well as like selling stuff. Like you said, all the little contests you have at school, fundraisers and things like that. I can remember this will tell everybody how old I am. There was a tv and that TV was about this big by this big with a little tiny screen on it, had like this little 5 inch screen, black and white screen on it. That was a top prize if you sold the most in this fundraiser. And I was adamant I was going to win that. And sure enough, I did. Like, I just, I mean, I kept going, kept going, kept going. And it's that competitive drive. I think that's what it really is. It wasn't about could I sell the most. It was more about could I win? Like, I wanted to win. And that's been always my attitude as a salesperson. Like, how many times can I win? Now as I've gotten older, I'VE seen some other things that go along with that where I want it to be a win win, not just for me, but for my client as well. So, yeah, man, a lot of interesting similarities. So, Ryan, there's always a question that I ask early in one of these conversations. And so I'm going to go ahead and ask you now, what's your biggest achievement to date that does not involve family? No. Getting married, having kids, any of that kind of stuff. We all know those are our biggest achievements. But besides that, what would it be for you?

I would say it's kind of a. I'm going to blanket it in a subject and then give maybe an example or two. I would say it's my ability to, to have assembled mentors in my life. My dad did pass right after I got married with a drug overdose. There was a lot of challenges with my own upbringing. So for me, I always felt a little orphan y, you know, like always kind of looking for some approval. The coaches, when they said I was good, I was like, oh, I'm doing good, you know, because I lacked it, you know, a little bit early on because my dad was broken and challenged in his own regards. So I think my greatest achievement that is creating so much abundance, success, confidence is my ability to first identify and assemble a series. I have three specific predominant mentors that have helped in different phases. Actually, now I've got like five. They're all kind of sequential, like stepping stones. But it's my ability to submit my life, my mind, my heart, my actions to them and actually listen and honor them when I didn't agree or that chapter was turning well. And so I think that that's my greatest achievement, assembling mentors, that skill. And then one of those was my pastor for 10 years now, the act. The next one was a gentleman who told me I'd be great in sales. He's like, you know, he's 40, I'm 33, so. And he's 40. 41. Incredibly, incredibly impactful for the way I view the world. Business, my family, myself, you know, both of us reconciled with our fathers. I mean, so many things. And then, and then Greg Wallach of Best Roofing, who wrote the CRM as your ACCU Links founder wrote for his company and turned it into a business. He and I, I submitted my business, even my personal self, we're having, we're hanging out this Saturday. I can't wait. Like, he's a friend, but he created, he was a mentor in a father like way in the business world, which can get hairy. But we navigated it incredibly well. And he changed my life so much. In fact, he gave me all of his relationships, all of his knowledge, all of his expertise, all of his mistakes. He shared with me for five years. And there's no way some baseball player who had no idea anything about business, who had an inkling of desire to do something special, could become something and make an impact in an industry and have a wonderful family and provide well and have options and freedom without mentors. So it's my ability to assemble mentors and submit and listen, like, as a student and be. Think of it as like my life. Like this is, this is like the goal, this is the manna, you know, straight from above that's gonna feed me for generations. All my children and children's children are gonna benefit from who I listen to today. And so whenever I open my heart and my mind to mentors and navigated it without some like, oh, you know, you've seen people get coached and something, they get challenged and then they bounce, right? They leave, they check out. They're like, screw that guy. But for me to not say screw that guy as much as I home, my wife and I were having those conversations. We almost said it hundreds of times, but got back in, opened up, changed it, set me up. And for that, I'm eternally grateful. And every single time I see him, it's a thank you, thank you, thank you. So that's my answer.

Ryan. That is extremely impactful. If the people are attending today and watching this video in the future, listen to podcasts, as we put that out, if they could just take that one nugget and say, hey, I'm going to search out mentors, I'm going to search out people that are smarter than me and submit myself to learning and listening. It'd be shocking the amount of difference that it would make in their lives as they grow and learn. Very similar again, like a broken family. So I grew up with a stepdad, did not know my real dad, so I was always kind of looking for that approval to those coaches, you know, every time you say, hey, good job, great shot, whatever it was, that was awesome for me because I didn't quite have that. So there's a lot of similarities between the two of us. All right, so let's get to talking strategy. We've got these guys on. That's what they're here for today. So let's just start high level. Like, if you were just to look at it from like 50,000 foot view, what would you Say your overall strategy from a sales leadership perspective, like your. You're leading a sales team. What does that look like? What is that strategy that you try to help your clients transform their sales teams with?

Well, great question. I think when I answer this, you're going to be amening me because of how similar we are. But I would say you are. If you're looking at. My strategy as a sales designer, is to look at it like a professional sports organization. Like an absolute. Like, are we. What are we the Bad News Bears? Are we. Okay, here we go.

Oh, wow.

Are we the Washington Nationals? Which one are we? So we got to decide, you know, kind of organization we're gonna be. If you guys know what's going on here, then I'd love to see your comments in the chat. No. So. What we got here, Jim? Yikes. Have you got any video cameras under that sombrero? Okay. All right, I'm taking this off. That was rough.

Oh, man.

That was. Ryan, that was harsh, man.

I'm sorry, man. I had. I had to do it. I had to do it, so. No, but to bring. Bring it back, you know, any organization, you got to look at what they're doing. And what I see is a very. So many similarities, right? And when you have a company with the sales leaders, like, I'm the offensive core coordinator or the head coach of this specific set of talent, whether they're former guys off the field, like, I've seen technicians from the field transform an amazing salespeople, a. Because their product knowledge is great. They're disarming with their appearance, and people trust them, but then they learn the skills. And when you look at your organization like a professional sports organization, that's what I know, right? I got this shirt, it says pro sales athlete, because I believe that we're athletes out there. We're competing. We either win or we lose. Either win or you lose, either when. And then what head coaches do is they're able to say, we're going to win this championship or we're going to lose this championship. In sports. What I love about our ability in business is we're able to design what our championship looks like and create a culture around that, because when a sports team loses, it's because they knew they were going to win or lose. They had a goal from the onset. In sports, as a leader in the strategy, you want to create a team, not a bunch of individuals that just play for themselves, but are actually supporting each other, playing together. I could tell you if you and I were on the same Sales team and I make a sale, you should be happy because I'm bringing in money that's feeding us with marketing, with product, with delivery of materials, with. I mean, all the stuff that makes you have the ability to be successful. So to create this sense of we have a bunch of superstars on a team working together toward a common goal is really actually super complex. It's not that simple. So to be able to, though, think of it like, take a complex situation, like when we build a sports team for a sales team, it helps us anchor the learning. Like, hey, anybody who's played even high school football or high school, anything with a team knows that the spirit, the camaraderie that comes with that. And then you're probably looking, depending on how developed your organization is, you look at the Orlando Magic. When they started their franchise, they didn't have anybody that great until somebody named Shaquille o' Neal came on and it changed the game, right? And so you're not going to get your Shaquille o', Neal. Maybe right away. You're probably the owner and you're doing everything, and then the sales leader comes and he gets. So over time, as your organization develops and there's a rich heritage of high performers based on the standards you create, people will rise to that. And not everybody's going to make it. The players who were there in the beginning didn't last their entire career there because everything's getting upgraded to a championship caliber. And I could promise you that I'm down in South Florida. So the Dolphins, right? I guarantee, if Tom Brady came to the Dolphins, everybody on the Dolphins would get better right now. Everybody. Because it's because of who he is and the general he is on the field. So to really put it super simply, without getting into detail, think of your sales organization like a professional offensive unit who's going out to win or lose against in your market to be the best. And there are different variables of what you would consider were the best. But I know in sports, you win the championship, you're the best market. It could be a couple of other things that you say we're the best at. Maybe it's top line, bottom line, customer experience, results, number reviews on Google, you name it. Bottom line is look at and say, I want to be the best. And we have to determine what that looks like. And look at sports as our guide, because look at analytics, numbers, tracking, you know, you look at process, playbook, you look at how many times they look at film, you look at how many times they coach you look at taking the best and applying the fundamentals with every athlete, but not changing everything to be exactly the same, because then they become robotic. Right? You have all these variables. So that right there, point blank, makes it simple to understand that.

Again, awesome. Well said. And you're right. I agree with you. I believe that this is. This is a competitive sport, this whole sales thing. And you do, you either win or you lose. And you can win the right way or the wrong way. As we can see, based on your example that you just gave us, kind of zinged me with. There's a right way to go about doing it and a wrong way to go about doing it. And that example, like the Astro, super disappointing. I mean, my own son said, man, I'm considering getting rid of all my Astro stuff like that one failure, that one thing that your actions didn't align with your. Your values and who you seem to be versus who you really are can make such a difference. We were talking before we hopped on this morning about this idea of brand, and everybody thinking brand has to do with the logo on your hat or the slogan that you use. But it's not really. It's your reputation. That's what your brand is. And up until about three weeks ago, I was like, man, I couldn't be prouder to be an Astros fan. Which their culture is great, their egos are in check, their fundamentals are solid. They all work together to achieve the same end goal of winning a World Series. And one thing can take all that away. I think it's a great example to all of us, you know, making one bad decision in our sales strategy of, hey, we're willing to do this just to get that particular sale can cost us pretty tremendously. You mentioned a couple of things in there I thought were interesting. It's not just that championship. There's steps on the way back from there. You know, it's winning a playoff game, it's winning your division, it's crossing, you know, winning a game, it's crossing a goal and scoring a touchdown. It's getting a first down, or it's baseball and you're getting to first base, you're scoring a run, you're winning a game, you're winning a playoff series, you're winning a championship. Whichever way you want to look at that competitively. It's all of those things that build off of each other that gets you to that championship level. And we believe strongly in that same type of strategy is you got to know what the end is. You mentioned a bunch of different possible endings or championships. Right. These things that you might be after as a contractor or sales leader in your organization. And once you know what the end is in mind and you get buy in from everybody that that's what we're trying to accomplish, the egos usually will come into check because everybody's, as they say at University of Minnesota, rowing the boat in the same direction. Right. We're all trying to get to the same place together. So I thought that was really cool. Well said, Ryan. So that's, that's, I guess from a high level strategy thing, like how are you approaching this as a leader? One of the other things that we talk about with strategy and I would love to get your opinion on this. I'm a big reader. Okay. So I like to read about sales, learn about sales, learn about leadership, learn about management skills and those type of things. And there was a study done about successful businesses. Like what was the one most important factor for those businesses? Success. And it came down to really one factor. Their sales leader. Whoever that person was that was driving and pushing and directing their overall sales strategy and their ability and capacity to handle more was the determining factor of their success. And so I'd like to get your opinion on that. What do you think about that? Like, I've seen several cases like there's these consulting type companies that will come in and help you with your business, right? They come in, they walk in, they say, okay, we're going to take over and help you with your business. And several of them, the comment they make, they always fire the leader. Whoever the leader is, like, they just fire them. There's no if, ands or buts about it. And so you ask them why they fire the leader. Well, that person obviously wasn't doing what they needed to do. So we need a new leader. I don't know if I necessarily believe in that. I believe in that either that person needs to go or I need to get better, or whoever I have leading needs to get better, needs to grow in their skillset and their abilities as well as their capacity. You touched on a few things there that I thought were actually pretty insightful. Like your sales leader, if you're looking at it as an aspect of your team, that guy is usually like the quarterback or your shortstop. I hate interrupting, but this thing is something that every contract should have. It's CompanyCam. It is the one piece of software every home service contractor should use to document their jobs. Every picture you ever take is associated to the address you took it. It's like instagram for every project that you have, give a link to the homeowner. Share it to them while you're doing your inspection. Win more sales. If you want to find out more about CompanyCam, check the description below. Save a few bucks by following our link. You know that guy that's the, the star athlete, but he's the guy that's also pushing coaching and teaching internally while you're on the field. And in playing the game, you always hear, you know, coach on the field or coach on the court type of situations when it comes to sports that that person can take what the coach has taught fundamental wise and what the goal is and translate that on the field. And I can't agree more that that person is extremely important. Whenever I'm not getting what I want from my sales team, I might have one of those superstars, but he's not the coach on the field. He's more about him than he is the team. I have to look more at myself at that point as that sales leader or sales driver in our business, the head coach, whatever you want to call that person for your team, that I have to look internally is my skill set. Where it needs to be is my coaching. Where it needs to be is my leadership where it needs to be. And as that person, you know, that person leading the overall aspect of sales for your business. I really think there's three things that as far as strategy goes that they should focus on. They should focus on recruiting, training, coaching, recruiting, training, coaching, recruiting, training, coaching over and over and over again. If you really want to break it down to like a sports team, think about being the coach in high school, right? You're the varsity. Let's use basketball as our example. We've used baseball and football. Let's use basketball. I'm the varsity basketball coach and I've got the varsity team. I got the JV team and I got the freshman team. And so that would be my sales team, right? I got the top players, mid players and then the bottom players. And so as the head coach, I spend the majority of my time with my varsity team. They're the ones that have proven that they're ready to play the game, ready to help us win, help us to accomplish that championship. The B team, the junior varsity team, we're scrimmaging against you guys all the time and seeing, hey, who's getting good enough that they can come up to that varsity team now, that freshman team or that C level team? Those guys I'm not scrimmaging against, I'm saying Hey, you got to work just to get to the JV team. You got to work hard just to get to there. And we treat that. And that's a lot of the strategy that we teach behind ourselves. Sales leadership is this. You've got different levels of sales guys. Where should you really focus your time? Really, that A and B team probably is where you should focus most of your time. But how do you feel about that, Ryan? Is that something that you would coach as well?

I really like that. I don't know if I've ever seen it from that angle, so. Thanks for sharing that. Yeah, you know, typically you have coaches for those levels, but, you know, if you're. But at the end of the day, it's the varsity coach's decision as to wherever this person's gonna go. And, you know, it's funny, like at freshman level, you're just kind of testing their commitment level, aren't you? You're even seeing, are they gonna show up to practice today? Are they gonna get their grades done? You know, are they gonna get their, you know, be able to pass this year? You know, who's that? How are their character? What else are they playing five other sports? Are they're showing commitment? Are they trying to ask to leave every day? Like that's kind of what you're doing when with a 14 year old, you know, and in business you have a. Have somebody coming out of college, you know, they maybe dabbled in waiting tables or doing this or that, and now they want a job, they really start ready to start making some money. You want to test their commitment level, especially if you have a group of producers. So I think, you know, some companies I deal with don't even have a freshman team because they're just assimilating, you know, their varsity team is a JV team and they're trying to get it to where they're competitive. But if you have an established team of players who contribute, sales guys who are hitting their numbers quarter over quarter, you know, they're setting the bar high, they're breaking records. You know, they're. They're bringing confidence to the whole team, the whole system, the whole program, the whole organization gains that confidence. And the younger ones, the newer ones are the ones who are on the fence and they're saying, man, this is cool. I could see myself being like, Jim, who's killing it this month or this quarter, he's been doing it for a year. He got the award. We even have awards, you know that. I know our prayer program. I know how much he's making, you know, I can think of myself making that kind of money, right? So all these ideas, all these, you know, if you're a freshman kid, you're like, hey, that kid got drafted. Hey, that kids going D1 or hey, this is our, you know what I mean? Like that success output is occurring because. Only because, only because your top producers are doing well.

So a couple comments. There was Ben Van Curren. He says alignment is important. The system and the culture has to be built well. And yes, you have your overall business strategy and then a part of that strategy is your sales strategy and how does it align with your business and your culture and what you're after as a team? Because it may not all be just totally sales focused. And then Brooks says, losing me a little on the sports analogies. Not a sports person. And so as a comment to that, I completely get it. We work with all kinds of companies and in each one that we coach, it's up to us to kind of figure out who they are, are they really competitive and sports oriented and those type of things. Your strategy may revolve around that. On the other hand, you may have a very professional organization looking for like C level executives, very corporate. It's still competition. If you look at any business structure that's out there, it's still competition. There's competition between Apple and Google. There's competition between Amazon and Google and Netflix and all the different things that they compete on. There's competition between Amazon and Walmart. It's all competition. It's all winning and losing is really what it comes down to for each one of those businesses. It's not the end all and be all though. Okay, so I want to be really clear about that. Your version of winning could be completely different from somebody else's version of winning. Just because Amazon and I believe. No, he just changed. He's the second richest guy in the world. You got Bill Gates the richest guy in the world, Microsoft and Amazon. Just because you see those things that may not be that necessarily their definition of winning. I know it's not Bill Gates definitely definition of winning. Bill Gates definition of winning is impacting the world in a, in a much grander way than just how much money can he make? And so it's defining what that, that goal is for you. This, hey, what do we want to accomplish as a sales team? Do we want to be this really competitive thing? Do we want to be more friends and family? Do we want to be very relationship oriented? Do we, how do we want to use that Top line strategy to build the tactics that we need to be a part of it so we can track it, measure it, make sure that we're constantly improving, getting better every day. So, Brooke, did that help?

A little bit.

I hope it does. In how we kind of explain that. Ah, cool. Good. That really helped. Great. Good. Matt Varnell says, I just made that a rule. Must been something we were talking about, like Coach O. I don't care if they succeeded or failed. So Ogeron, the LSU coaches who he's talking about, I know he's from Louisiana. They're going to be critiqued until they do everything perfectly, 100% perfection is the goal. And I would agree that that's a goal. I also believe that it's not an achievable goal. There's only one person ever walked this planet that was perfect. But on our way to perfection, we can achieve mastery. And so if we can master it, you look at anybody that you think of that's ever mastered anything, the greatest salesperson, the greatest artist, the greatest musical talent that you've ever seen, they can always point out to you where the little mistakes were in whatever it is that they did and accomplished as their greater achievements. And so realize that perfection is truly not attainable, but mastery is. And that's what we're striving for. Striving for perfection is as important as achieving it. Go ahead, Ryan.

I just want to comment and say yes, yes, yes. Those who are top performers, what makes them the best in the world of what they do is the fact that they never think they've actually are and they're not good enough. They're like, they're not good enough here or something needs to work. So like, like Kobe Bryant watched his games losing, Like Tom Brady watched his games losing, Like Beyonce Knowles. Soon as she does a performance, she goes, not even goes to sleep, looks at the recording and says, how can we get better on our performance right away? And she's killing it. So it's about the journey of insatiable hunger for flaws as a feedback mechanism so that we can improve. And I've been, you know, I'm constantly improving. I feel like my game gets better and better as a coach and as a salesperson, because I'm coaching and teaching it and I'm just like, well, it's because of reps and because of feedback and because of the environment. So shape it. You can either have a really slow, poor feedback environment or a really great feedback environment. It's up to you. If you obviously need help with that we're good at helping with that type of stuff. But yeah, my point is those who 100% is a beautiful thing to say. And I think. But it's. You're always thinking, I could have done that better. And it's the humility, that insecurity that we all have, at least the best people have, they have a little insecurity. It's like, man, I didn't do something. Or else what drives them to keep changing? What drives them to keep growing. So anyway, that's my comment there.

Yeah, that's awesome. I couldn't agree more. Like, I never feel like I got it figured out. I'm not perfect. I'm not going to ever be perfect. And that's what keeps driving me because I would like to get there. I would absolutely love to achieve perfection. But there's problem with that. The second you think you're perfect, perfect, you've achieved everything you can achieve, you quit, you can become complacent and everybody else comes and gets you. So yeah, I think that drive for perfection and knowing that along the way we'll achieve mastery can be very important to your success as a salesperson. Andrew asks a very good question. Is there a go to question that you teach? And if so, could you give couple and this is a pretty easy exercise to go through. Sit down, you know, with you by yourself, if that's all you got, or if you've got a team of guys and identify everywhere where a prospective client struggles, you know, with making this choice, the type of materials that they choose, the contractor, and those experiences with contractors like home protection, cleanliness, safety, installation. Make a list of all those things that you think that a client struggles with. And then for all of those things, develop a question that you can ask to that client to get their answer about that thing. For example, Ryan mentioned one, you know, the situation of, you know, early on the process. One of the things I might ask them is, you know, have you ever worked with a contractor before? And most people have that own a home, they've had something that they've had done. And then I will ask them, well, you know, what was that experience like for you? And they'll usually focus on the bad. And so they'll tell you all the bad, they weren't clean on time and all that other good stuff, you're just shoving those in your pocket like, okay, I know where to talk about that and what it is I'm going to accomplish with this homeowner. But then I'll think a lot of contractors they hear all that and that's where they stop. But they don't ask a second follow up question. What was the greatest experiences you've ever had with a contractor and why? And so they tell you all the things that you need to do that they've had done for them with other contractors in the past. It'll help you to start doing that presentation as you move forward. So it's things like that. And you can do it on anything. You can do it on any part of where you think a customer struggles with making a decision. Develop a question to get the answer that you're looking for. Here we go, let's get rocking and rolling. Leadership and culture. You know, we've been doing this, like I said, for six and a half years. And the one thing that's really stuck out like a sore thumb, like, we coach you guys, we watch you and we sit there and go, all right, those guys are going to kill it. And then we go through with some other ones. We're like, man, I don't know, I'm really concerned. And there's some weaknesses here. And really what that comes down to is this idea of leadership and culture. So before you say, hey, I'm going to go and grow and scale my business, we're going to be awesome. We're going to generate millions of dollars and be the top dog in the, in our market, our state or region or country or whatever it may be. We've got to have the leadership ability to do it. So who's going to do that? Who's going to lead your organization? And really and truthfully, who's going to lead it from a sales perspective? Don't get me wrong, there are other areas of the business that are super important to lead. But there's been several studies. We can get you the documentation on this. I spent a lot of time looking it up. I know Nathan asked me for it, but there was a study done on over 15,000 companies. And the number one determining factor of a company's success or failure was the leader in their sales department. Whoever was driving the sales from the very highest level. That person, that individual had more to do with the overall success of that company than anything else. So we got to figure that out. Who's going to lead our company? Is it going to be us or do we need to find somebody that is that person that is able to grab people to be a part of your organization? They have the capabilities to do it, they have the skill set to do it with and that they're motivated the right way, with the right methods. And we talk about this at our conference as well. So that's the how will they lead? That's kind of your leadership part. Who's going to do it and how will they do it? And then why do you exist? This culture part of things. Why are you in business in the first place? And just to make a bunch of money? Well, that's fine. A lot of people get started that way. But you don't usually see a business last for a long period of time if that's the only thing they're after. And so if you can figure out why you exist, you can actually get other people bought into this. And you align your culture and who you work with, much better if you can figure that out. And then who will you be? So why do I do what I do? And then who are we going to be in our community, our market, our region or the country? And so we got to kind of figure those things out first from a very high level. That's what we're looking at and establishing first and really evaluating are we the type of company that we can build our strategy around these four things? Who are leaders going to be, how are they going to lead, why do we exist and who will we be? If you can get that part figured out, just that one piece, you can go a long ways with your business guys. Would you agree with that? Like, Nathan, you've coached a lot of companies now. Would you agree that this is the number one factor that determines whether they're going to be successful or not? I would, I would agree with that 100%. As a matter of fact, I think.

It'S also one of the things that causes companies to figure out that they're.

Not necessarily in the business that they think they're in.

When somebody ends up saying, well, we.

Happen to be a sales organization and.

We just happen to install roofs or.

Do fencing, or somebody says we're, we're actually a leadership building organization.

We just happen to do this other thing.

It comes from that why that they develop and from their culture. Yeah. One of the others I've liked as we go through that exercise with our clients is they realize that they're not a roofer or even a contractor. They're a recruiter. That's what they are. They're a recruiting machine. We recruit, we recruit, we recruit, recruitment, recruit, because that's what we're great at. All we gotta do is plug them into the machine to do the roofing or whatever else it might be that you do. As a contractor. So this. That's the fun part of doing this. Once you actually know why you exist and who you're gonna be, it makes everything so much easier to accomplish because you have a goal that you're after. So that's kind of the first step of getting your strategy put together, like figuring out that part of things. Hey, Jim. And this is from Robert Wood. Hope all is well. When doing job costing, do we understand above the line and below the line? Should our field labor be added above the line? So when you say above the line, this.

Jenny.

Yeah.

This sounds like your wheelhouse. Let's.

I will take this. I may need a little piece. When you say field labor, are you talking about employees that you have doing labor on your team or subcontractors?

Right.

Yes. Thank you. Or are you just talking about your yes or sub. Okay, well, really both. It is the right answer. The complexity with field labor that are employees is a little different. We worked through what I feel like is a great system. Absolutely. The cost that you have, any sort of labor, whether they're sub or employee, should be above the line. When it's a sub, it's pretty black and white. You get an invoice, it's for a particular job, you book it to that job above the line. When you have employees, there's a lot more cost hidden to an employee that you can't directly attribute to a job necessarily. Maybe you offer benefits. Maybe you have different unemployment insurance rules that are only on a portion of their wages or workers comp. You have all those costs involved. That what I call it is more of an allocation factor. Yes, yes, yes, I knew that. So, yes, absolutely. Get it above the line. But. Okay, so what do we mean by above or below the line? Right there. Above the line is really what we say as direct cost of goods sold. How I see it, it's a cost that can be directly attributed to a job. You may have costs that come into play on a lot of jobs. Maybe you're doing like marketing, for example, is a cost that typically, unless it's a specific lead generation fee, they're always below the line. Any of your admin costs, those are all below the line. Meaning overhead. When Jim's referring to overhead. Those are all below the line costs.

All of them. Every single one of them. Not this 10% thing that people put there and say, that's overhead. That's just me setting aside a number that it might cover my overhead, but it's not reality.

So just to touch fast back on that employee labor you may have all those costs booked below the line, but you're moving them, you're allocating them up above the line to the jobs. So there is some complexity there. But again, that's what it really gets you down to, the accuracy of your numbers. You need to assign those laborers to jobs as they perform that work.

All right, any other questions, guys? I'll give it like another 30 seconds for you to type one in. Brooke, how much of your budget should go to things like marketing.

To take this one? You know, when we dive into that, I would love your take on this, Nathan or Jim, as far as what you see as standard on your side.

Nathan, any input or you want me to go? I'll go right ahead. All right, so it really depends on what type of marketing you're doing. What are your goals in marketing? So if you really want to be what we call top of mind marketing, and I can. You can, I can tell you exactly what top of mind marketing is. If you know of an attorney in your area that he says a phone number and he has a tagline and you see him all the time on your TV and it just drives you crazy. You hear him on the radio and everywhere like that. That's top of my marketing. Spending a tremendous amount of money to get that name recognition. You see contractors do this too. Those of you in Houston, Texas, and maybe even throughout the country, you may have heard of Peterson Dean. Peterson Dean is heavily marketed. They're top of my marketing. They set aside between 8 and 10% of their overall revenue strictly for market. That's it. And that's a big number. I mean, think about what that is of your business now. Some of us aren't in a position to be there. I see companies grow into that over time. They start off with a lower percentage, maybe 2 or 3% of their revenue because that's what they can afford. And they really attack it from a. A more door to door direct marketing. Maybe a little bit more of the guerrilla marketing. Things that don't cost as much but still get great results for low cost. And then as they grow, they'll start to add more percentage. And that would be a way to grow as over time start adding an extra percentage in for your marketing. But I find it kind of interesting, like this thing that we spend a little bit of money on to get us to where we are so we can spend even more money on marketing. Why do we quit doing that little thing that was doing so well for us? It's always like, why spend more money if I don't have to. Or combine it up and make it really powerful. Oh, you're still here. Well, you must have thought it was great. Make sure to like and subscribe to contractor radio and never miss an episode, because we're here to help you get better at what you do.