The Hero Sales Culture - Rebooted

Nathan Thibodeau (Contractor Radio) delivers a rebooted keynote/podcast titled "The Hero Sales Culture - Rebooted" (YouTube). He contrasts three business pillars (sales, production, administration) and describes three sales-culture archetypes: prima donna (entitled salespeople who dominate resources), monkey (order-taker mindset where product is assumed to sell itself), and hero (salespeople who 'stand in the gap', serve teammates and customers, sacrifice for the company). The episode includes personal stories, sponsor messages, and practical leadership guidance (departmental communication, leaders must translate pressures across departments).
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Foreign. And welcome to this week's episode of Contractor Radio. I'll be your host this time and my name is Nathan Thibodeau. And I'm really excited that that you're listening to this and thank you for participating and enjoying some of the content that we put out. This week is a little bit of a different week. It's been, gosh, close to two years ago now that the first Hero Sales Culture podcast was released. Now, that podcast was about 30 minutes long and it was myself really trying to express this concept that I'd had on my mind for a number of years. After we aired that podcast, the reception that it got from people was significant. The message that it has resonated in the hearts of a lot of different people in their organizations and in their lives. And as a result, the Hero Sales Culture podcast that we did is still continuing to be the most downloaded and listened to podcast of all of Contractor Radio's content. Thanks to you folks and resharing it and talking about it and many of you integrating that concept into your businesses. Well, due to that overwhelming reception of that message, we actually expanded the Hero Sales Culture content and I turned it into a keynote presentation. And that keynote has been delivered a number of different times in a number of different places. And some of you may have seen it and some of you may not have, but it occurred to us that maybe it would be a good idea to do a little bit of a reboot on that content and on that podcast to include the expansion of that content that you would find in the keynote that we did. And so here it is. I'd like to try and present to you guys the expanded and continued version of the Hero Sales Culture. But before I get into doing that, we are going to take just a real quick break. For one of our sponsors.
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So book your demo today@getthereferral.com welcome back to Contractor Radio. I am your host this week, Nathan Thibodeau, delivering a reboot on our most popular podcast ever with some expansion on that content. And so I'm going to kind of get into talking a Little bit about this concept. So some of the background on this concept is it's been in the works for before I delivered that initial podcast, probably close to two years worth of trying to develop this idea that I had in my mind. And it came from my experience in being a member of a number of different sales organizations, as well as working with hundreds of contractors around the country, and just having this thing start to bubble up in my mind. But it took a long time for me to be able to express what it was I was seeing and what it was that I had experienced and the differences between some great phenomenal sales cultures and some that had a lot to be desired. And so before I really dive into kind of the meat of this concept, I need to set the table a little bit so that we understand some of the importance behind the real. The real crux of this thing. So before I dive into this thing, I want, for everybody who's listening to this to put a couple questions in the back of your mind. The first question I want you to put in your mind is, what kind. If you're in sales, what kind of salesperson am I? So as we move our way through this, I want you to have this question in the back of your mind. What kind of salesperson am I? I also want you to be asking the question, what kind of sales organization am I in? And if you're a sales leader or an owner, you should be thinking, what kind of sales culture have I cultivated? What kind of sales culture have I built? And what is the prevailing culture and attitude amongst the people in the sales department of my organization? So with those questions in the back of our minds, as we move forward, let's talk a little bit about some of the fundamental components that they're going to help us address. This. The. The first component is that every single business that exists, no matter what size or what it produces or what it does, has these three pillars. And those three pillars are sales, production, and administration. Now, production, sometimes it could be delivery, it could be installation, it could be fulfillment. There's a lot of different components that go around to the concept of production. But no matter how big your organization is, you have those three pillars. Now, you might be saying, well, we've got a bunch of different departments inside of our company. We have hr, we have marketing. We have a finance department, all these different departments. And that's true, but you also have sales, production, and administration. And most of the other departments usually end up breaking off of those one of those three pillars as the company grows. Now, each One of these different pillars has a different role inside the company. Okay, different role. They have different things that they're supposed to do. I've always typically seen the sales department as the face of the company, not the head. Cause that's where the brains are. I'm just kidding. I'm just kidding. But they're the face of the company. They're the people that are usually out in the public. They're doing home shows, they're doing networking events, they are running appointments. They are seeing people. People see the salespeople. And so oftentimes when they think about your company, they think about that salesperson because that's the person from the company that they know. I see production as the hands of the business. Production, delivery, fulfillment, installation, whatever it is. These are the people whose job it is to deliver the thing that the salespeople sold. Right. There's a lot of responsibility that lays on these folks because all the promises that you made to this client have to be given to them by our production folks. Now, I also see admin, the administrative side of the business is kind of like the body of the company. Okay? The body of the company. Because no matter what happens inside of a business, it will almost always flow through administration one way or another. These folks are dealing with accounting, they're dealing with technology, they're dealing with communication, they deal with payroll, they deal with customer communication and satisfaction. Administration does all kinds of things. That's why oftentimes when. When somebody says that so and so is the glue of the company. They're the people that hold this place together. They're probably an admin person. Now, why is this important? It's important because the sales pillar of our business is unique. It is unique very much to the rest of the company. And it's unique because the sales department has the ability to set the tone inside the business. Not only do they set the tone inside the business, they can set the tone outside the business as well. Sales has the ability to set the tone outside the business with regards to its belief or the salespeople's belief in the product that our company delivers or produces and provides. The degree to which our salespeople believe in what we do is the degree to which our clients will also believe and desire the thing that our company does. So if you have this attitude that, well, we sell windows, and you know what windows are windows or windows and you can buy them from me or you can buy them from somebody else, our clients are going to feel exactly the same way about it, which makes us A bit of a commodity. But if we truly believe that our product is incredible, it's unique, it is, it satisfies the needs of its clients, then our clients will feel the same way about it. Sales sets the tone externally with regards to the fact that we are generally the public or a prospect's first impression of the business. When it comes down to meeting people, people are generally meeting our salespeople. And so the first impression they have of our business when it comes to a human being is the sales group. They haven't generally met any other humans inside of our organization before they meet a salesperson. So we are that first impression as a sales organization to the rest of the world. And that will set the tone with what the company expects and thinks of the company going forward. We also set the tone externally with expectations. Salespeople are the ones who are normally going to communicate to the prospects and to the world what our product is like, what it does, how it works, what it's going to do for you, how it's going to be delivered, when you're going to be communicated with, how long it's going to take to produce it, how often you're going to hear from us, how that whole process is going to go. Our customers expectations of our company are generally set by the sales group. So they set the tone externally. They also set the tone inside of our company. They set the tone inside of our company. One of the ways they do that is the way that salespeople view their customers and the general public. The degree to which your salespeople love your pete, love your customers and are committed to them and are excited about helping them, will create an infectious environment inside of your business around how much the rest of the team is excited about our customers and excited about what we're going to do for them and how we're going to help them out. I can give you an example of this in the inverse. If you've ever, if you, if you've been a salesperson or you've ever seen a salesperson come into the office with a brand new sale in their hands, super excited because they closed a deal and they flopped this sale down on, on the desk and they go, man, this customer is going to suck. I know I've been guilty of that before. The thing is, is that nobody else in the business knows anything about that person who is now a customer of ours, except that they suck. Do you think that might have an impact on the way the rest of the team sees this person who they've never even met? Before, I think it might. Salespeople set the tone inside of our organization due to our work. And so what I mean by that is if the sales department is doing great, we're killing it. We're closing deals, we're advancing, we're bringing in revenue and jobs and customers, and the company's growing and we're hiring people and everybody's got a lot of work to do. That's a real positive thing when salespeople are doing well at what they do. But we can also set the tone from the perspective of how well we do our work. So if we're turning in incomplete jobs, we're over promising with our customers, we're not doing our jobs to their fullest, which means that somebody else usually ends up picking up the slack. That's going to have an impact on the culture inside the company as well. The salespeople aren't doing their jobs and they're leaving a bunch of loose ends for other people. That affects productivity, that affects efficiency, and oftentimes it affects other people's job reviews. When you're having to do a lot of other work that you shouldn't have to be doing, do you think that might create a little bit of frustration inside the company? I think it might. Salespeople also set the tone internally. From the perspective of sheer numbers, salespeople or the sales department are oftentimes the number one or number two largest of the departments in a company. Not in every case, but in most cases, I would venture to say. And so while we may be able to deal with one person who tends to be kind of grumpy or tends to be a little annoying, or tends to be kind of down or negative, we may be able to deal with that one person who's like that. Because Gus is grumpy Gus. Right. If your name is Gus, I apologize, but we can deal with one grumpy Gus, but 2, 3, 4, 20 grumpy Gus's, or people with a bad attitude, or people with a certain way of seeing the organization or our group that's going to eventually begin to wear and tear on the people. And so the overwhelming or prevailing attitude that's carried by your salespeople just gets reinforced over and over and over again because of how many people are normally in the sales group. So sales is unique because sales sets the tone in almost every case, quite frankly. Now, in my experience, I have discovered, discovered or experienced or seen, however it is, you want to phrase it, two primary types of sales cultures that I see in the world. One of these Sales cultures is significantly more common in the construction industry that I see than the other one is, but the other one exists as well. So I'm going to deal with the most common one that I see first. I call this most common one the prima donna sales culture. The prima donna sales culture. Now, you might be picturing in your mind a specific person, and if you're in the same room as that person, try not to nudge them or look at them or make it too obvious. The prima donna sales culture are those guys who just. They just think the world can't exist without them. That company can't do anything without them. They're the most important thing there and that everybody else should be catering and serving their needs because they're in sales. Now, some of the signs that you're dealing with a primadonna sales culture would be that the sales team tends to push everybody else around. They walk into the office and they act like everybody in the office are their personal staff. You do this, you do that. This is how this is going to go. You go, get me a cup of coffee, whatever it may be. They walk in there and start pushing everybody around because they're in sales. One of the other things that you'll see in a prima donna sales culture is that they usually get what they want. So if you work in a different department of your company other than sales, and you've ever found yourself in a situation where you're kind of at odds with the sales group over time, resources, effort, direction, in a prima donna sales culture, you're probably going to lose. In a prima donna sales culture, the inmates are normally running the asylum. They run the place. They're the ones who tend to decide what happens and what doesn't. By deciding it and proactively doing it, or by just deciding they're not going to do what, whatever it is that the current directive is on the business. They run the place, they'll run roughshod right over the owner. When we decide we want to instill some. Some standards, some. Some better protocols, some better ways of doing things, some organization in a prima donna sales culture, if they don't like it, they don't do it, and everybody else just has to get over it. The reason for a prima donna sales culture, I believe, is fear. We have fear. We are afraid of our salespeople. We're afraid that if we do anything to upset that our sales organization, it's going to impact our revenue, and we have to have revenue. If we don't have. If our company doesn't have any money. I mean, frankly, nobody has a job, right? The answer is yes. And so if we, if we try to instill these standards, if we try to enforce certain things, these people might leave. God forbid they leave. Our million dollar sales producer walked out the door. They're afraid that if we do these things, it'll slow them down, they'll get pissed off, they won't produce or what have you. And so we're held captive by our concern over our revenue to these people who walk around acting like they own the place all the time. Probably the most common sales culture I see in our construction industry, the home service trades. Now, the other type of sales culture is a little bit different. The other type of sales culture is the one that I would call the monkey sales culture. Now I'm going to have to explain this one just a little bit because it is a little more unusual. The monkey sales culture is what happens when ownership, product development, production management, the leadership all believe that our product is so good, it's so tight, it's so clean, it's so desirable that all we really need are some monkeys to go out there and make a phone call or run an appointment. And as soon as their prospect finds out about this amazing product, these people will just throw their money at our monkeys and that our product basically sells itself. I have actually been experienced myself to monkey sales cultures. I was actually sitting at one point, I was sitting next to my sales manager at one point, and the guy who is in charge of our product was talking with my sales manager, with me sitting right there. And the head of product development looks at me and he says, no offense Nathan, which we all know means that whatever it is he's about to say next is probably going to be offensive to me. But he says, no offense, Nathan, but we all know that the real talent in this company are the people who develop and create our product. Now having sitting there and being a bit of a smart aleck as I am, I said, well, I tell you what, I'm not going to disagree with you. However, last week I did a couple of demos on your amazing product and it crashed three times while doing that. Yet we have some new clients from last week. This is kind of the epitome of this concept of the monkey sales culture. So some of the signs that you're dealing with a monkey sales culture would be that the salespeople are not seen as particularly talented. Because if a product sells itself, how talented do you have to be to sell something that sells itself? We're not really Interested in salespeople. We're interested in order takers. And order takers don't really have to work that hard, and therefore they're not really that talented, which means that they are replaceable, they're expendable. We can get just anybody to do the job. One of the other signs that you're dealing with a monkey sales culture is that the folks in a monkey sales culture get their compensation messed with regularly. Some of you who are listening to this may have experienced a monkey sales culture at some point in your life, and you probably nod in your head right now, because if our. If these people are not particularly talented, then why would they make good money? Because what exactly do we pay monkeys? We pay them bananas. And so in an organization where your bunch, where your quote unquote order takers, your monkeys are doing really well, we can't have that, because why would we pay people who aren't very talented a really great wage? And so they're consistently getting their compensation screwed with all the time. I can attest to this. I worked at a place where I had my compensation messed with. I had this probably three or four times in two years. The last sign that I identified is that in a monkey sales culture, these people are seen as a necessary evil. Nobody really likes them. Nobody appreciates them, because once again, they're not that talented. And since all the real talented people are too busy creating and delivering our product, we just have to have some monkeys to pick up a phone or run an appointment because these other people are too busy to do that. The reason that I believe you might deal with a monkey sales culture is pride. Pride and maybe some hubris or some arrogance about our product or believing that it's so special that there aren't any other competitors against us because we're just so amazing. I might also venture to say that one of the other reasons we deal with a monkey sales culture would be greed. Because if all we have are a bunch of monkeys, we really don't need to pay them all that much. Now, you might be thinking to yourself, well, this sounds terrible. Nathan just laid out these two options, and are these the best thing that we have? Is this it? You're either a monkey or a prima donna. Neither one of those sounds particularly good. And honestly, if it came down to choosing between one or the other, many would probably rather be in a prima donna sales culture than a monkey sales culture. Okay, is this the best we can do? Can we really only have these two terrible options? Well, I say no, and I'm going To tell you a little bit more about that in the form of a story. But before I tell you this story, I'm going to take just a second and I am going to introduce you to one of our sponsors for our podcast. We love our sponsors. They make our podcast possible. 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Welcome back to Contractor Radio, the Hero Sales Culture podcast rebooted. Okay, so we left off with talking about these two different options we have for our sales cultures. Neither one of them are particularly appealing. One of them sounds kind of appealing to salespeople, but not so appealing to the rest of the company. The other one is not appealing to salespeople whatsoever, but might be kind of appealing to some of the rest of the company. Okay, but I'm going to tell you a little story. So a number of years ago, I had just left one of the sales organizations that I belong to that was a bit of a monkey sales culture. And I found myself at a new company in a new sales organization selling a completely different product. It was pretty radical change from what I'd been at before. Super informative though. So I'm in this position, I'm the new guy and I'm building my pipeline and I'm making some waves and having some fun and meeting all these people. And it didn't take too long before I had my first run in with my team, my, my fulfillment team, my installation team. I had closed a deal and I had really pretty, really good, excuse me, some pretty good communication with our client in understanding their expectations, their timelines, what they were looking for, how they wanted this thing to go down or what worked best for them. So I was trying to communicate these things to our fulfillment team about what the customer was expecting and what was going on. And our fulfillment team kind of shut me down. They said, nathan, we don't, we don't do that. It doesn't Work like that. That's not how we do things. That's. That's not. That's not the way this is going to go. Now, having just come from a monkey sales culture, I was kind of like, okay, you guys are the experts. You know, your job, whatever you do, you. I just kind of wipe my hands of the thing. Well, long story short, it didn't go very well. The customer ended up pretty upset, pretty bothered by the way things happened. Unmet expectations, poor communication. It just went downhill. And it didn't. It didn't. It didn't go the way that it could have gone. Now we got it all smoothed over and taken care of because it wasn't the end of the world, but we had it all kind of figured out and done. A couple days later, one of the senior sales people from this organization comes over to have a conversation with me, and he says, hey, so I hear you had your first run in with our team the other day. I said, yeah, I did, but we're all good. We got it figured out and taken care of and everybody's happy. He was like, okay, cool, good. And he says, so question, though. Why did that happen? Why. Why do you think that happened? So me wanting to be upfront and transparent and honest over this whole thing, I said, well, our team dropped the ball. They didn't communicate with the customer well enough. They didn't meet the timelines that he had in mind. They didn't get the back and forth. Some expectations weren't met, and they kind of. It kind of, you know, dropped the ball on this one. And the customer wasn't real happy about that. And so he said, okay. He says, they don't really do that very often. That's kind of unusual for them. I said, yeah, it is. They're a great team. They normally do a great job. And he says, so why do you think it happened this time? Ha. Right. So little warning light in the back of my head starts blinking a little red light, and I'm going, okay, something else is going on here. So I thought, well, let's walk through this just a little bit. I said, I closed the sale, customer, and I had a great communication over expectations and timelines and all that kind of stuff. I tried to communicate that to the production group. The production group gave me some pushback on. On whether or not they do or don't do any of that. And then I thought this. But instead of standing up for the customer, I backed out of the whole situation. And because I didn't stand up for the Customer and the customer's communication and expectations with me. I allowed our team to go down a path that was destined for failure. And I thought, oh, this is my fault. The fact that I didn't give the pushback, that I didn't put a little more effort into working with my team on behalf of the customer. Not only did I let my customer down, but I let my team down because I allowed them to do a thing that I knew probably wasn't going to work out. And I thought, oh, no, this was on me. Then this senior sales guy said something to me that changed the way I viewed sales for the rest of my life. He said, nathan, you might have noticed that the salespeople in our organization walk around our building and around our office and. And they're looked up to, they're supported, they're loved, they're cared for. And the people in this building, for the most part, would do anything they possibly could for the salespeople that we have. And I said, yeah, I have noticed that. It's kind of weird, but it is cool. Like, so. So what is that? He said, the reason why this company loves their salespeople so much is because the sales people here understand that everybody else in this building has jobs, has bills, they have children, they need food, they need savings, they need vacations, they need school supplies, they need they medical bills. And all of those things that everybody else in this building has and needs is dependent on them. Our salespeople understand that everything that this organization needs is dependent on us as salespeople to provide. And so if you want somebody on our production team to get a really great employee review from their boss, it's up to you to make it possible for them to do their job well. Boy, if you want our company to be able to hire more people or not have to fire more people, you have to do your job. If you want your clients to have the best experience possible and have the best product possible, you have to do your job. And the better you do your job, the better your team, the people you see every day, the better they do and the better their lives are, and the better your customers are. And the better their lives are. He told me, if you strive to shift your mindset to serving this company, they will treat you like a king. That changed the way I saw sales forever. And honestly, I walked away from that conversation with him feeling two things that were really incredible. Number one, I felt a weight. I started to feel this bit of a weight on my shoulders that it wasn't just about me. Making sales and making commissions and trying to make some decent money for myself and my family. It was about the families and the people all inside that building and about my clients out in the world. And that started to feel like a bit of a weight on my shoulders. The other thing that it made me feel was it made me feel humble. I felt humbled by that conversation. The fact that I have in my hands and in my power the opportunity to be that guy for this company and for my clients. This was what I eventually called the hero sales culture. The hero sales culture really comes down to a shift in mindset. There's an adjustment in the way that hero salespeople and this organization had hero salespeople. And it involves a shift in your mindset as to how you see your job and what your job is and what it's all about and what you're supposed to do and who you're supposed to serve. So what do hero salespeople do? Well, first of all, they sacrifice hero salespeople. They sacrifice their time, they sacrifice their resources, they sacrifice their money. They sacrifice their ego, which might be the hardest one of all. And we'll get back to that. Hero salespeople also take the hit. Here's what I mean by that. In my circumstance with that team, I failed to take the hit. In other words, rather than facing a little bit of conflict with my team and a little bit of conflict maybe with my client, and working that out, I decided to step out of the way and let my team and my client go to battle with each other. Instead of being willing and having the courage to stand in the gap, stand up for the customer, and set up my team for success. I ran away from that conflict in. In. In a bit of a cowardly way, quite frankly, and I'm not. Not proud to admit that. But a hero salesperson stands in that gap. And if the customer is really upset at your team, you take that hit. And if your team is really upset at the customer, you take that hit. Sales. The hero salesperson is honored to be in their position. The fact that everyone else's lives are pretty much dependent upon us should come as a weight of responsibility and an honor that we have the chance to provide for people, for client, for our team, for our clients, for our community in the way that we do. But what do we do instead? We use it as an opportunity to feel entitled. That's what we do. We feel entitled to be treated a certain way or talk to a certain way or have things done for us because we are in Sales. And quite frankly, without sales, this company wouldn't exist, which is true. But I'm going to tell you something. If you're in sales and you're listening to this, I want you to understand, when a company starts going through problems, when a company's going through financial struggles, do you know who they fire? They don't fire salespeople. If you're at least hitting quota, doing the bare minimum, they won't fire a salesperson because you add to the revenue. But when you start to suck at your job, they fire an administrative assistant, they fire a production person. They fire somebody who adds to the overhead, not to the revenue. And so when you suck, somebody else loses their job. Now, you might say, well, I've been fired as a salesperson before, and that's true in a lot of cases. It may be because of an underperformance. But like I said, if you're hitting the bare minimum, the company asks from you, they're not going to fire you. They'll fire somebody else. That should come as an honor and as a weight to us and as a responsibility. We'll talk a little bit more about that. But fundamentally, at the end of the day, the hero salesperson stands in the gap. We stand in the gap in our economies, we stand in the gap in our communities. We stand in the gap for our clients, we stand in the gap for our team. We might be the difference between somebody getting a job and somebody not. Not. And we should be willing to take the hit. Now, I hope that some of you out there hearing this right now are thinking, I would really like to be that guy. Because that's what I thought when I first heard this. I want to be that guy. And so from that point forward, I endeavored to be. I started thinking about my job as an opportunity to give everyone else opportunity, and that the better I did, the better they would do. So it was really important that I would do well so that they had a chance. And I can tell you this, with that attitude shift that I had, my man, my senior sales rep guy, his name was Matt was right. That company opened up to me like a flower. Those people supported me. They took care of me whether I asked for it or not. They would do anything to help me and help me be successful. As a matter of fact, I even had one of the people on my production team, her name was Kim, and she came over to my office and we were talking a little bit about a client and a situation and just making sure we had these things hammered out. And before she walked away. I said, kim, I just want to let you know I am super grateful to you for all the work that you do. Thank you for taking care of this. The customer is going to appreciate it, and you guys do a great job, and I just want to let you know how much I appreciate that. Kim says to me, nathan, you and you and the guys in here, you're the top of the food chain. And if you guys aren't successful, none of us are. And I am excited to help you be as successful as you can be. And she turned around and walked out. I mean, I was. I was borderline tears at that point. I couldn't believe it. Now think about this for a second. You think I made a few extra phone calls that night? You think I sent out a few extra emails? I tightened up my proposals. I did a little extra work to try and make sure that Kim was taken care of? You bet your ass I did. That's what a hero sales culture looks like. Now, if you're like me, and I know I am, I'd be asking, okay, how do I do that then? How do I create a hero sales culture? What do we do in order to try and foster and create this environment inside of our business? If you're familiar with any of us over here at Contractor Coach Pro, who are the people who put on Contractor Radio? If you're familiar with us at all, you probably realize the first. The first thing I'm going to do is I'm going to hit the leaders, okay? So we got to put on our big people pants here, and we're going to talk about the leadership first, okay? So leaders, if you're listening to me right now, and you're an owner, you're a leader of some kind. Production leader, sales leader, marketing, doesn't matter. If you sit on that leadership team, one of the things that is incumbent upon you is departmental communication. Here's what I mean by that. It is on you, not your team, to communicate to the rest of the team the ins and outs and the frustrations and the difficulties and the necessity of the other departments. So here's what I mean by that. It is your job, Mr. Sales Manager or Mrs. Sales Manager, to go to your sales team and communicate to them how hard it is to be in administration or in production. You're dealing with labor shortages, massive price increases. You're dealing with weather complications. You're dealing with upset customers. You're dealing with the little tiny minutia things, and there's a ton of it, especially in a Larger organization that's doing a lot of volume. There's a lot of complicated, complicated things going on on a regular basis. So think about this, Mr. Mr. And Ms. Salespeople. All the projects that you're sending into production, depending on the number of salespeople in your organization, multiply that by the number of salespeople in your organization. They're not just getting the number of leads or, I'm sorry, the number of sales that you're sending in. They're getting everybody's. And all the complication involved in every single deal we sold from every single salesperson, that's hard work. It's stressful. There's a lot that goes into it. And administration is dealing with communication back and forth and trying to calculate commissions and pay the bills and make sure that everything's working smoothly and on time. And all of those components, sales leaders, owners, managers, you need to communicate to your salespeople how difficult the jobs are of the other people in the organization that should come from you to your team. Similarly, you as the leader, need to communicate to the rest of the team the ins and outs and the difficulties of being in sales. Think about it. If you're a hundred percent commission salesperson, sometimes you're not necessarily sure how much money you're gonna bake. You could, you could put it 8, 10, 12 hour day, and you could do it days and days in a row and not make a dime. We don't get paid by the hour. It's hard to be in sales. Sometimes you're on a hot streak. Sometimes you're in a, you're on a cold streak. And you can't, you, you can't, you couldn't close a door. Clients oftentimes question your character before they ever even meet you. Just because of what you do for a living. There's some difficulty and some complication that goes into sales, and there's a lot of stress in it, too. And so, leaders, you need to communicate to the rest of the team. It's, this is not an easy position. And these people are critical, by the way. These people are so critical that if we didn't have them, you wouldn't have a job. And the reason why leaders need to communicate this is because we do not allow our teams to go to war. And I'll give you an example. If you don't think that you need to communicate this to the team, to both sides of the team and all sides of the team as the leader, I want you to try this tonight. I want you to go to your significant other today, tonight, and I want you to look them deep in the eyes, and I want you to tell your significant other how lucky they are to have you. We'll see how well that goes for you. Right now, you're going. Ha. No, I'm not gonna do that. Then don't let your team do it. Which is my second point.










