Motivate Your Sales Team

Foreign.

It's Louis Massaro. And welcome to another episode of the Moving Mastery Podcast.

All right, my friend, this is Luis Massaro, and welcome to the Moving Mastery Podcast. The purpose of this podcast is to help you take your moving company to the next level. Reduce stress, increase profits, live a better quality of life. I've got my main man Chris with me today. What's up, Chris?

What's up? What's up?

So these episodes, what we've been doing is we have been taking questions that come in through social media, whether it's, you know, LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube channel, or through support. And usually, I don't know what the question's going to be ahead of time, but I happened to see just now, two seconds before we went on the question. So I have a little bit of a head start today, but not much, but I'll let you go ahead and ask the question because all I saw was what you put as the title for the video.

Okay, so you. All right, well, yeah, I'll give you a few more details here then. So, yeah, this question came in from. From one of our followers, and he's having some issues with his sales team. So his. His first question, his first initial question was, how do I motivate my sales team? They don't want to follow up on leads. Okay. So I. I kind of commented back with him, I wanted to get some more details. And he wrote, he says, listen, I give him a ton of leads. They don't seem to want to follow up with them. I have four moving consultants, no sales manager. All right? Last year, we did just under 2 million, but I'm trying to get to 3 million. And he just wants to know, how can he kick his sales team into full gear, into high gear?

Okay.

All right, so for sales consultants, here's the deal.

Your team's got to be motivated, right? Because it's. It's no longer a reactive game. It's no longer, hey, the phone rings off the hook and we pick it up and we book moves.

Right?

You've got to be able to deal with leads. Whether you're buying leads from moving lead providers or they're just leads coming from your website, there's outbound calls that need to be made, and you might not always get them on the phone. All right? So the way that you structure your sales process and your organization and. Or your call center, whatever you want to call it, has to be on point in this modern day of moving in order for you to, you know, be ultra profitable.

Yeah.

Right. Because if Not. I would have it. I. I would just guess to say that his profits aren't nearly where he wants them to be either. If he's got four consultants, they're doing under 2 million. He's got nobody managing.

Trying to go to three.

Right.

The real. I mean, because at the end of the day, it's like, what are the profits?

Right.

We don't. We didn't get that. We didn't get that information. Next time we'll dig a little deeper. But you didn't get that, did you?

No. Okay. No.

So, yeah, you know, the thing is, when you're spending money on leads, okay. And when I say leads, I'm talking about any form of advertising, any form of marketing, Right. So, you know, whether it's pay per click, direct mail, billboards, you know, moving lead providers, Yelp, it doesn't matter. That's all a lead. Okay. You need to have a solid sales team, and they need to be motivated to go after these leads because it's very proactive, what they need to do. Right?

Yeah.

And, you know, a lot of times what I see companies do is they cast a vision for the business. Here's where we're going, here's what we're trying to do. We're going to go from 2 million or just under 2 million to 3 million.

Right?

Guys, come on. This is what we're going to.3 million, which is good. That's part of the equation.

Yeah.

Fire them up.

Fire them up. But that's only part of it.

Yeah.

So the next part is, what's in it for them? You know, we. We. Because I used to make the same mistake.

Believe that our employees are just as motivated and excited for the growth of our company as we are.

Ah.

And it's. It's not the case. They might show it, they might act like, yeah, let's go, we're going to 3 million, right?

Yeah.

But they're not that motivated. So, you know, you've got, hey, what's in it for the company?

Right.

Then you got it. Like, what's in it for them?

Right.

If they book more jobs, if they follow up on those leads, what do they get out of it? And then you also have what's in it for the customer as well.

Oh, right.

So, you know, if you're out there, we didn't find out. That's everything you got on him, right? I'm not gonna.

Yeah. I mean, he may have method messaged me back before we started, no problem.

Yeah. So, you know, what's in it for the company. What's in it for me? The salesperson.

Yeah.

What's in it for the customer? So, and what I mean by that is if the sales reps on the phone, moving consultant, whatever you want to call them, and they're quoting that customer and trying to book that move.

They need to believe in their product.

Yeah.

Meaning they need to believe that.

They'Re gonna send crews out that are gonna do an amazing job for that customer. And if they believe that. Right.

Yeah.

It's your job as the owner or the sales manager to let those sales reps, those moving consultants, know that, hey, it is your duty to make sure that we book these jobs, because we need to make sure that these customers that come across our path are in good hands.

Yeah.

We know some of the competition out there. We know some of the horror stories of the things that happen. We do a great job. Not only are you gonna make money for. You make money for the company, but you're also gonna save these customers from any potential problems that they might have if they don't go with us. And I know we're not the cheapest, but you need to be able to explain to them why it is that we're not the cheapest.

Right. Yeah.

So they need to see those three dynamics to get the ultimate, you know, not only motivation, but inspiration.

Yep. Right.

And to feel like they have a. More of a purpose than just, you know, selling a move. Like they're actually helping these people. They're making their lives better.

Yeah. I mean, you know, and a lot of. A lot of even moving company owners, you know, don't realize that they are really helping people.

Yeah, Right.

Yeah.

If you go. When you do a good service, you don't realize it because you don't get the thank yous. Right. Like, you don't. There's. It's hard to get the good reviews.

Yeah.

Right. Nobody's sending you a box of chocolate and flowers and saying, thanks so much for the great, great move.

Yeah.

Right. If something goes wrong, you hear from scratch or you're going to hear from.

That, but if it.

If it goes great, you don't hear from them. But when you. When you do this so much and you see the difference and, you know, the stress that people go through when they move and you're able to perform a good move for them.

You don't realize what that can do for. For their stress levels, and then from that, what that does for their family, what that does for their job, what that does for their health.

There's lasting Effects.

There's lasting effects of it.

Right.

So just because you're not getting the thank you and you're not getting the hey, you're changing people's lives, don't think that you're not changing people's lives.

Right.

That's really cool. You don't think about that very much. But you're right. I mean, I can't remember the last time I didn't use a moving company to move, but I mean, I would never not, you know, using moving yourself is. Is rough. It's hard, you know, and when you have a good company, like you have somebody come in and they do a good job, they're professional about it. I mean. Yeah. That, that alleviates a lot of stress when you're moving. Yeah.

But you know what? If you had a couple of bad experiences, you'd probably be looking for a U haul and some friends to do it yourself.

Yeah.

You know what? I've tried that professional mover route.

Yeah.

That's not good. Right. So when you think about it like that, too, it's like, hey, if we. This customer has come across our path, Right.

Yeah.

We've got to make sure that they get a good move. It's good for our business. It's good for the industry as a whole. Because if they go out there and they get a bad move, Right. They get duped into one of these low prices.

And they have a bad experience, well, what happens next time they want to move.

Yeah.

And they just want to rent a truck.

Yeah.

Right.

I mean, that's what hurts the industry more than anything. Right. So again, back to what we thought motivating his salespeople.

Right. He wants them to be fired up, not only to, to, you know, be excited about being on the phones or whatever, but, you know, he's got a goal in mind. He wants to reach 3 million.

Okay. You know, well, each one of those individuals. We're talking about four individuals.

Yeah.

They all have a goal too. Right. And if they don't have a goal, it's his job to give them a goal.

Yeah. Right.

You know, a lot of times, first of all, they need to be on commission. There's, there's, you know, hands down, there's no doubt about that. They need to be on commission.

Okay.

But they also need goals to reach. Right. At a minimum, they need monthly goals that they're trying to hit revenue numbers. Okay. I like to do revenue and not amount of jobs booked. Right. Because I, you know, I want them focused on what I'm focused on and What I'm focused on is like, if I've got an opportunity to call this little one bedroom apartment, or I've got this opportunity to close this big $5,000 job.

Yeah.

As a company, if we're one collective mind, I want them focused on the $5,000 job. So I want their goals to be based off of revenue. So, you know, and a lot of times you'll hear people say, like, well, they get a commission. They should be.

You know, they should be incentivized, they should be focused. That should motivate them enough just to get the commission. But what happens with the commission is, you know, if you've ever gotten, like, you know, and I know you have recently, like, if you've ever gotten more money or. Or a raise.

Yeah, yeah, right.

Anybody listening? Like, you know, you wanted to. You had a certain goal in life to make a certain amount of money.

Right.

Like, you know, originally when I first got in the business, I'm like, all right, I need to be. Before I got in the business, I was like, I want to be able to make a hundred thousand a year. Right. It was like, in my mind, it was actually, I said 10,000amonth, which is 120. Once I got in the business, I was like, okay, I want to make 400,000 a year.

Right.

And so now I look at, you know, I look at a hundred thousand a year, and I'm like.

You'Re not motivated? You're not pumped up about that?

Yeah, yeah.

And so the point is that it's the same thing when you get a pay raise. It's like you're all excited. You got this raise, or as an owner, you're. You're making more profit.

Yeah.

But then you get accustomed to that amount.

Right, right.

And then you're no longer motivated. Now it just becomes the norm.

Right.

That's. Excitement wears off.

Yeah, yeah, it wears off. So by having goals that they could hit every single month and then tying those goals to bonuses that you pay them, it changes it up every month. The number that they need to hit is different. The number that they get is different.

Yeah, right.

They need to know what's in it.

For them when it comes to those kind of bonuses. I mean, what, what. What did you pay your. Your salespeople as far as bonuses go?

You know, it would be.

Something that was basically, you know, I would sit them down and look at what they did the month before. I would look at where we are currently, right. Like, okay, we're coming out of slow season. We're Going in the busy season, things are gonna naturally pick up anyways.

Yeah.

Right.

So let's say you did 60,000 last month. And I'm looking at it and I'm like, okay, you know, the lead volumes up, you are closing your leads at this percentage.

Right.

You should be able to book, you know, 72,000 this next month.

Okay. So you, you give them a goal.

What I would do is I would sit down with them and then later on I taught this to my sales managers and they would do it.

Yeah.

But I would sit down with them and say, look, here's what you did last month. Kind of talk about it a little bit.

Right.

You know, there's a whole process for this that we teach at moving sales academy. One on one goal setting meeting. There's a whole framework for it. But essentially we sit down and kind of go over where they are and say, like, what do you think you could hit this month? Right. So instead of me giving it to them, I'd be like, you know, Kris, what do you think you could hit this month? You did 60,000 last month. What do you think you could do?

Right. Right.

And depending on what you say, if I think what you say is out of reach or I think it's too low, I'm going to challenge you one way or the other.

I see.

You see what I'm saying?

Yeah.

So if you're like, hey, I think I can go to 62, I'm gonna like 62. You did 60 last month. You know, every month you've been getting better since you've got here. And we've got season coming up. The lead, you can see the leads are coming in. There's more leads coming in. I think you do 72. And I'll tell you what, if you hit 72, I'll give you 350 extra this month.

Yeah.

Okay.

You know, and they're like, ah, I don't know. Okay, I'll tell you what, how about 70? I'll give you 200 extra.

I see.

And you, you just kind of, you know, like, don't get caught. Like, don't get caught up on the percentage and the amount. It's just, you know, it's something that's significant enough to make them move.

Yeah, right.

You're talking about, you know, $350. That's a car payment.

Yeah, right.

That's a, you know, that's a significant amount of extra money for a sales rep to make sure that month that they wouldn't normally make.

Yeah.

And so once you have that agreed upon amount. And the goal is that. The key to the goal is that it needs to be attainable.

Yeah, right, Right.

Don't dangle some carrot out in front of their face that they're never going to get because then it loses its effect.

Yeah. They lose their motivation.

Yeah. You go a few months and you keep setting these goals that are way too high.

They won't care anymore.

They won't care anymore. So don't be cheap.

Right.

You've got to be able to say, like, I'm willing to spend some money to get them to move, to get them to do the things that I need them to do.

Yeah. Right.

So. But now you do that every month. They get used to that too.

Oh, right.

So it becomes. Okay. They've gotten accustomed to the commission. That's just part of their pay. Right. They're just, they're used to it. Right. Because, you know, typically people will kind of level out at a certain amount. You'll have a, you know, somebody there, this guy, he's a, he's a 40,000amonth type of guy. Then you got somebody else, you know, she's $120,000 a month type of gal. Like, okay, you know what I'm trying to say? Like, okay, so they could get better and they could grow. But they usually, like, you know, will hit. Become who they're going to be within like that first six months.

Okay.

If you're coaching them and you're working with them and you're, you know, you're guiding them through the process, they'll get to that point that's helpful.

I mean, they can become sort of predictable. So you kind of know where you can, you know, what you can rely on.

Yeah. I mean, you, you know, because ideal, you know, you don't want to just hire somebody, train them and then, and then send them off to, you know, swim. Swim or sink.

Yeah, right.

You want to have what we call in moving sales academy enhancement training.

Oh, yeah.

You want to have the process of taking them through and making the existing reps you have better.

Right.

But there's, there's certain key points that you focus on to make them better. But after, you know, six months of doing that, it's kind of like, okay, we kind of know where they're at.

Yeah, right.

However, you know, if there's somebody that, let's say they're in that 6D, you know, they're kind of like 60,000amonth type person, consistent, doesn't mean you, you can't push them to go to 70.

Yeah.

You know, you take, you take four, four reps and you push each one of them to do an extra 10,000. That's 40,000.

Yeah, right.

That's what, 400 and what is that? 480,000 a year?

Half a million. Almost.

Almost half a million dollars by getting those reps to book an extra 10,000. When, when you talk about an extra 10,000, I mean, what are we really talking about?

Right?

So let's say, you know, let's say.

You'Ve got maybe like an extra seven moves each or something.

Yeah. I mean, let's say you have a thousand dollar average move. It's an extra 10 moves a month.

Yeah.

A month.

Yeah. Right.

So you're talking about like an extra two and a half moves a week. So you're telling me that if you didn't, if you had them motivated, you gave them the coaching, you gave them what they needed and the incentive to hit it, they couldn't book an extra two and a half moves. Yeah, a week.

That's attainable.

Right.

I mean, if you asked all of your sales reps, right. If you're listening this, go ask all your sales reps. Hey, you think you could book an extra two jobs or three jobs a week?

Yeah.

You know, if you just focused a little bit more, if you try to, like, without even giving them tools and without even giving them motivation, they could do it. You give them the tools, you give them the motivation, you give them the coaching and, you know, manage the sales process. I mean, that easily could double.

Do you feel like in this guy's situation, that jump from just under 2 million to 3 million in revenue, is that something that you think is, could be done with those same four salespeople and just, just by incentivizing and motivating that team, I mean, is that something that's possible?

I mean, he might need another, you know, one or two salespeople.

Yeah, right.

I don't know how these particular salespeople are performing. I don't know what his lead volume looks like, but yeah, it's totally attainable. I mean, it's total to go up from, from 2 to 3 million. Yeah, you know, it's, it's just in the tightening up of the sales, I mean, you've seen it. We've, I mean, all the, we get the success stories, we hear them.

Right.

I doubled, I went up from, you know, 3 million to 6 million. I went from 2 million to 4 million. Like it's.

Yeah, it's doable.

It's doable.

Yeah, yeah. That's good. Is there? What else would you do to motivate them? You know, just day to day. Do you, do you. I know you had talked about having meetings every day, right? Like sales meetings.

Yeah.

What's that look like?

Well, we call it the morning huddle.

Yeah. Right.

And basically you start off by, you know, essentially it's, it's just, it's just a meeting in the morning to get them going, to get them fired up, to get their head in the right place.

Yeah. Right.

If you think about, you know, if you, if you're listening, you think about your, your team, your sales team in the morning in the office.

Right.

And without anybody kind of guiding them, they're at the coffee machine making their third cup of coffee.

Yeah.

Right.

They're a little slow to sit down. They're putting on their headset or whatever to situation.

Yeah.

They're hungover, you know, whatever.

Right.

You've, you know, people, most people don't do the work to get their mind in the right place every morning, every day.

Right.

You know how important. I mean, for me, like, that's my whole morning set up on getting my mind. Right. Most people don't do that. You can't expect your team to do that. You've got to come in and help them get their mind Right. On the mission for the day. And the mission for the day is to book the move of every call that you speak to every person you speak to. Right. So it's, it's basically a little pump up session to get them committed.

Yeah.

To what the day is gonna look like.

Right.

What their goal is for the day, what they're, you know, and also acknowledge, you know, some of the successes from the day before and encourage them. Basically fire them up.

Yeah.

And get them on the phones. Like you, you got to think about it and like, I didn't want to do this back in the day. Like, I'm not like, you see me, I'm on camera or on stage and doing what I do because I have a mission right now.

Yeah.

When I had my business, like, I didn't want to come give a big pep rally.

Yeah.

Right.

I wanted to like, come in and like go to my office and like not say hi to anybody and close the door and like do my own thing. It's what I wanted to do. But I knew what was necessary. I knew there was a whole day ahead of the team and somebody had to set them off in the right trajectory. Right. Somebody had to get their mind going towards booking moves okay, Right, okay.

What's something is there I know you had talked about before, like setting the mood in the office, not just with the morning huddle, but also like I remember you talking about, you played music.

Yeah.

You know, what are some more things like that that can kind of help fire them up?

The tone of the office is so important.

Yeah, right.

For me, you know, one of the, one of the rules of, you know, setting up your, your sales department is have it as far away from dispatch as possible.

Uh huh. Right. Huh.

If you think about, you know, what goes on in dispatch, they're dealing with the day to day of the business. This guy didn't show up. Somebody's calling your truck, cut them off in traffic.

Right.

This customer's calling. They've got an issue with some damage. Right. Whatever. The piano fell off the 10th floor, like whatever it might be.

Right.

Sales doesn't need to hear that. Sales needs to be in positivity, like everything's all good. I believe in my product, selling my product. If they're constantly hearing about all these little things that happen. Right. It's just, it's part of the logistical thing. I don't care how good your company is, there are things that happen in dispatch that makes that a stressful position.

Yeah.

Don't put that stress on the people that you want to be out there fishing for customers.

Right, Right.

So that's number one. Next thing is keep, keep the, keep it upbeat. Right. Play some music lightly. Like we had, you know, speakers installed in the ceiling.

Right.

You don't have to get fancy with. You get a couple, you know, wireless speakers, you put them in the office, but. And played music to where it was loud enough that they could hear it, but low enough that the customer couldn't hear it on the phone.

Right.

And it just helped with the energy in the office.

Yeah, right. Yeah.

And so, you know, different days we'd play different types of music. You know, it could be one day it'd be like dance music. Another day it would be like old school, you know, Motown, R B. Yeah, right. Another day it'd be like hip hop, like whatever it might be. And then, you know, if it's like the afternoon time and everybody's dragging, you might have to turn it up a little bit, add some, get some more BPMs going in there and like. Yeah, really, you know, turn it up to get them fired up for the day.

Yeah, right.

Another thing that we did was.

Every day we did a 2 o' clock stretch. And so at 2 o', clock, I Played a song, and when that song went on, everybody in my office had to get up. And for the entire, like, I don't care if you were on the phone with a customer, it didn't matter, really.

Right.

You had to stand up from your desk when I came out of my office too. Yeah, you had to stand up. And if you didn't want to stretch, you didn't have to stretch, but you had to, like, move around, move your body. Because when you. When you sit all day, by 2 o', clock, you just like, oh, yeah.

That afternoon lull kicks in.

Yeah. So, you know, we would do that and then. Spiffs.

Spiffs, Spiffs.

Okay. So a spiff is.

You know, an incentive that you just arbitrarily come up with, you know, whatever it's going to be.

Right.

So I'll give you an example. So a spiff would be, you know, hey, hey, guys, whoever books, you know, 10 jobs today, you're gonna get 20 bucks.

Right.

Hey, guys, if we book a hundred jobs together as a team for the week, I'm gonna buy everybody lunch from. On Friday from your favorite restaurant.

Yeah.

Right. Or I'd walk in, take a hundred dollar bill out of my pocket, tape it on the wall and be like, hey, listen up, whoever books the first five jobs, go grab that hundred, that's yours.

Nice.

Right?

So, you know, the thing with spiffs, though, is that you can't use them every day. That's your secret weapon. They expect the commission.

Yeah.

They expect the monthly goals. If they expect the spiffs, they lose their effectiveness.

I see.

Right, okay.

So the spiffs are like, okay, I see. You know, the energy's low. Everybody's been kind of like.

Right.

Like, they're not, they're not seeming motivated.

Yeah.

I need to come in and give them that shock factor.

Yeah.

And get them motivated again.

Okay.

Whether that's like, first thing Monday morning, you just want to get the momentum going or whether it's like by Thursday everybody's just kind of dying off and you need to, you know, get them.

Yeah.

Excited again.

Yeah.

It's got to motivate them. It can't be expected.

And.

And you've got to be able to change it up.

Okay.

Right. Like, you know, make it fun. Like we used to, you know, put a spinning wheel, a wheel of fortune in the office. Whoever, you know, books the next. Whatever, you get to go spin the wheel. Right. And I'd have all kinds of, you know, prizes on there. Whether it was, you know, 20 bucks 100 bucks. You know, I had, I had tickets to the Dolphin, season tickets. I had club level seats. Like, you get two club level seats to the next game.

Yeah.

Right.

You've got to keep the excitement up. Right. You've got to keep the, you know, and it doesn't always flow over to the other departments, but your sales is different.

Yeah.

Right. You've got to keep them fired up and you've got to keep them wanting to go out there and chase down these leads and get these jobs booked.

Is there like, what's an ideal schedule for a salesperson that's going to get them to perform at their most? Like, because I, I could see how they could get burnt out, you know.

Yeah.

Is there like, do you want to.

Only work them certain time of the day, certain hours, anything like that?

No. I mean, you know, it all depends on where you're located, how many offices you have. Right. If you like. For me, you know, we had, our call center was on the east coast, but we had offices on the west coast and all in between.

Okay.

So I had to have two shifts going on. Right. So that we could be open from, you know, 8 to 8, 9 to 9 at one point.

Yeah.

So I don't, I don't think that necessarily matters. But it is important that they, you know, have certain criterias. Like, you've got to have certain, you know, we're kind of getting into managing them now.

Yeah.

You know, which is a little bit different than keeping them motivated. But, you know, the idea is, you know, with, with their goals.

Right.

You want to make sure with those goals that like there's, they know where they're at. Right. So whether you send out a weekly progress report email to everybody that says, here's where you're at in relation to your goal, or, you know, if you're using, you know, if somebody's using smart moving, you know, I'm found co founder and smart moving, if you're using that as your CRM, then you've got, you could have that all on your dashboard right there, you know, or you have a whiteboard in your office and you could kind of, you know, show the progress of everybody where they're at and turn it into more of a competition.

Yeah, right.

There's a lot of other things you could do with challenges and face offs and, you know, you've got to keep it exciting. Like we had all kinds, what I call carnival games going on in the office too.

Right.

Like we would do the Wheel of Fortune, we would do a little basketball Hoop we would, I'd had a, had a putting green in the office and I'm like, look, first person to book, you know, whatever it might be, right. Whatever. The spiff is 10 jobs, you get the putt for a hundred dollars.

Nice.

And so they, they would.

They would go and I'd say, listen, I'll give you 10 bucks right now.

Yeah.

Or you could putt and get 100 if you make it in or 0 if you don't make it.

Yeah, right.

But the whole office would gather around like nobody was going to take the $10.

Right.

And it just created excitement for everybody. So even if the person that was doing it.

Like didn't make it or you know, the other people weren't involved, they're still involved.

Yeah.

There's still excitement.

Yeah, right.

It's not a boring like job. Right. So you know, when that, when that, that's the natural state of what will happen with your moving console. So what he's experiencing is the natural state of what will happen if you sit somebody down at a computer with a phone, say here's some leads, call them, talk to them about their move, listen to everything they have in their house, and then guide them through the process of booking with our company. Oh, and when they say that your price is too high, then you've got to come back and you've got to say this to them. If you just leave them alone and let them just do that, the natural state is going to be.

Yeah, right.

I mean, they're not going to want to do it. You've, you've got to cultivate that environment.

Are there, are there signs that can kind of let you know ahead of time when, when the, the morale is kind of getting low or I mean, besides the numbers obviously, but I mean, is there something you could look at a salesperson and just see in them that, you know, they need some, some incentive, some motivation.

Yeah. Well, obviously you have, you know, the numbers.

Right.

You're tracking how many calls they're making and you know, how much talk time.

You could tell just by their, you know, demeanor.

Yeah, right.

And.

If you don't have like this guy doesn't have a sales manager.

Right.

Someone has to wear the sales managers hat.

Yeah.

You know, because there are certain things that need to happen in order to keep them running and you know, keep them fired up, keep them on point. But you know, if you've got to, you know, grab one person and pull them aside. Hey, what's going on? What's up? I see your little, you Know you're not quite into it and just like talk to them like a person to find out what's going on, give them some encouragement.

Right.

And then like send them back out on the field.

Yeah, right.

You've got to, you know, give them some encouragement, talk to them, see what their issue is and you know, make sure that there's, there's not nothing going on in their head that makes them like not motivated anymore.

Well, and they can, that, that can be contagious. Right? Like they can infect the rest of your team.

Yeah, absolutely. Like you can't let it linger.

Yeah.

You know, you've got to be able to identify. You don't, you don't identify it one day. Okay. You don't identify it like after like three, four days. You let somebody go a week, fine. You let it go longer than that. It affects the people around you.

Yeah, right.

And that's that it affects them. If they're just like minding their business and they're just like.

But if they start talking negatively, they start complaining. Now they're an infection.

Yeah.

An infection will take down your whole company.

Right, right.

From the inside out. So you've got to be able to talk to them and see what's going on. And if you can't reverse the infection, then they've got to go.

Yeah, yeah.

I wonder, you know, in this guy's situation, his initial comment was saying they don't want to follow up on leads. Is there something that he can do? Just maybe they're, they're, you know, making their initial dials and stuff. But when it comes to the follow up, maybe it's. Could it be something in his process with it that's keeping the salespeople down? You know.

Well, what I'm thinking when you said that is probably there is no process.

Uh huh. Right.

He's probably barking orders and saying, hey, follow up with them, follow up with them, follow up with them. But that doesn't work.

Right.

So. And I say it because I've been where he is. I've been at four consultants with no sales manager.

Right.

Asking them to follow up. And then I've been at 60, 70 consultants with four sales managers. And you know, and they're all doing it. Right. So like, you know, if you can't get four people to do it, but you could get, you know, 60, 70 people to do it, what's the difference there? Yeah, the difference is you've laid out something that is systematic, that they just have to follow. They know what's next. They get off the phone with one customer, they know what to do next, they know what the priority is. They, they know which lead they should call, they know when they should call that customer back when they get off the phone with them. Like when you have all that lined up.

They'Ll do it. And all you need is just somebody to just make sure that they do it. You know, you pull up, you could see it all in your CRM, Right. You know, you pull up smart moving or whatever you use, you could see what they're doing and you can, you know, identify it and have a talk with them right away and coach them right away.

Yeah.

You know, but typically what I see is that, you know, people don't have a follow up process.

Yeah.

So they bark the order and then the reps just don't know what to do or when to do it or how to prioritize what's in their, their lead inbox.

Yeah, yeah.

One of the other aspects of this is he was saying, I give them a ton of leads and you know.

With the leads, obviously if they're not following up, he's sort of just, they're burning through his leads.

Yeah, right.

Costing him a ton of money.

Costing them a ton of money. You know, with those leads, do you want to.

Obviously there's going to be some salespeople who are better than others, right?

Yeah.

So do you.

Reward the people who are, you know, doing well with good leads or do you give the good leads to the guys who are struggling to make them, maybe have an easier job booking the book in the move?

Which one of those options, I'm going to ask you, which one of those options lead to the company making more money?

Yeah.

I mean, obviously you're just going to give the good leads to the good salespeople and get them booked, right?

Yeah, yeah.

I mean, you know, you don't want to starve out somebody new and not give them a shot.

Yeah.

But you know, you know, and you know, we teach a moving sales academy. It's called skill based routing.

Yeah.

And with phone calls and with leads, it's about getting the lead to the person that's got the skill to be able to handle that lead. So whether it's a bigger job or whether it's a job with packing or whether it's local versus long distance or a hot lead source versus one of the ones that doesn't convert high, you want to be able to route those based on that information.

Now let's say he.

Decided to get a sales manager.

What are the qualities of a good sales manager. And how can a sales manager step into this situation and, you know, make a difference?

So, you know, like, for me, the first time I. When I. When I first set up the call center, when I realized, like, okay, I've got four offices. Everybody's booking themselves, right? Each office handling their own calls. Some were crushing it, some were struggling. Said, all right, I need to set up a central plate place to handle all of the calls. So I, you know, open it up. I opened another office there, too. So I made it the fifth office plus the call center.

Yeah.

And went out and looked for, you know, a call center manager. Right. I hired a recruiter. I looked for a call center manager, brought somebody in, highly qualified. They came in, and it wasn't. It wasn't impactful.

Why not?

Right. He said, you know, he was like, I. Great guy, by the way. But it just wasn't. I didn't. I didn't have it set up for him properly. So he came in, he's like, I need an assistant manager. So, okay, all right. I didn't know anything at the time about call centers. Like, this was me learning it, right. And so I hired another assistant manager to help him and realized, like, I was expecting him to develop and put all the processes in place.

You would think he would know how to do that. I mean, that's.

He's a. Yeah, but that's. But. But it's not the case.

Yeah, right.

It's not the case. Like, so what. What I say now. So what I decided to do after I let him go was I developed all the processes myself, right? I started really studying. I started learning sales psychology. I started going to call center conventions and learning all the different tools and everything like that, and put all the processes together myself. Hired. Took one of my moving consultants who was, you know, awesome on the phone, made him my sales manager.

Right.

And then mentored him and guided him on implementing those processes. So now I was like, here's what needs to get done. Manager. Here's what needs to get done here. Go make sure it gets done.

I see.

Right.

Yeah.

So the key is. And that's. That's what, you know, a lot of people do. You know, they get like the moving sales academy online course, for example.

Yeah, right.

And what they'll do is they'll give it to their sales manager and say, go implement this. I mean, you know, I can name a few, you know, a few people that. Their story, right? They're like, I didn't want to be bothered. I Got it for the sales manager. He took it and ran with it, and we had great results.

So the idea is, like, when you bring a manager in, that manager's role is to manage the processes.

Right.

If the manager is managing processes and managing people as an afterthought, they're more effective and their job becomes easier. If you bring somebody in and, like, manage these people and they're unruly and they're not doing what they. It's not even that. They're not doing what they're supposed to do. They don't know exactly what to do. You've got to give them instruction. You've got to tell them, here's what needs to get done, here's when it needs to get done. And then a sales manager just needs the ability to make sure all that stuff's getting done, you know, to show up every day, pull up the CRM, see who is following up with their leads, who's not asking them about it.

Right.

Blocking time on their calendar for enhancement training, to listen to calls from reps and take them through. You know, we had the moving consultant evaluation guide. Take them through that, see where they're lacking. Is it in their intro? Is it in going through the script and painting the picture? Or is it going for the clothes and asking for the business? Find out where they need some help, coach them, work with them, make them better.

Yeah.

Put them back on the phone, see the improvement.

You know, along the same lines as you were talking about hiring the call center manager.

Is it. Is it better to. I know. I know the answer, but I kind of wanted you to just talk about this. It's better to hire. Sometimes better to hire somebody without experience than it is to hire somebody who's got 20 years of sales experience to come in and start selling for you.

Right.

I mean.

I don't know, talk about that a little bit. I know the answer, but I feel like.

It'S never too late to, you know, I mean, would you recommend he start over?

I would recommend if he wants to go to 3 million.

Yeah.

That he gets himself a sales manager.

Yeah.

Whether it's he goes out and gets it or makes one of his moving consultants the sales manager, or he becomes a sales manager. Okay.

Yeah.

Because part of that, too is the hiring, the training, the make, you know, like, you can't let your sales machine break down. If you're trying to get somewhere. Your marketing is the fuel that goes into the vehicle. The vehicle is the sales machine. That's what's going to get you there. So you need the fuel. But if the sales machine breaks down or slows down.

Yeah.

You're not going to get to your. To where you need to be. So that needs to be a focus. They need to be managed.

Right.

You need to be able to hire quickly. You need to be able to fire quickly.

Yeah.

Right. You hire, you train, you get them in the seat. Right. You bring them through both phases of training, then you continue to do enhancement training to make sure they're good. You've invested in this person. You took the time. Nobody likes hiring.

Yeah, right.

Nobody likes having to put an ad and bring people in or ask somebody if they know somebody and it's someone that are they going to work out, are they not going to work out? So once you do that and you've invested in them, like, let that first phase of training in the second phase be like, you know, they've got the training wheels on, and then you finally take the training wheels off. But that doesn't mean you, you know, if they're a little kid, you don't say, go right around the neighborhood, into the big major streets and do what you want.

Yeah.

You still guide them and show them how to do things. And you want to do that with your sales team to build them up. But I missed. What was the. What was the original question? I mean, I. We went off.

Yeah. I was just thinking, you know.

You.

Were saying, do they need experience?

Yeah.

Experience coming in. If they got a bunch of moving, if they got a bunch of sales experience, is that good or not good?

Right.

Sales experience can be good. Okay. Now, if they've sold for another moving company, you want to be like, doesn't mean they're bad, but does not mean they're good either. A lot of people like, oh, yeah, look. No, they did it. They have experience with the CRM. They know that. They know how to do an inventory. They must be good. But the reality is most people aren't doing it the right way. And so you might have to retrain somebody, but somebody comes. So, for example, that sales manager that hired it didn't work out. Wasn't his fault. Right.

Okay.

I was just expecting him to build my processes and build my business the way that I wanted it to be built.

Yeah, right. Yeah.

So had I brought him in after I established, you know, built my, my moving sales machine, if you will, and said, here's what it is, here's the processes, here's what you need to do on a daily. Go and run it, he would have done a fantastic job.

Right, right.

So like, I just want to make that, met that distinction to where it's not that he was experienced, he wasn't good. It was that he came in. There was nothing for him to manage except people. And those people had no processes to follow, so they became very hard to manage. When people have a process to follow, all you need to do is guide them back to the process. What is that person supposed to be doing right now? You know, guide them back to that. Yeah, that makes sense.

Yeah. Do you.

Is that the route that you recommend for a moving company once they get to a certain size that they should, you know, if you have multiple locations, should you have a call center?

If you have multiple locations.

And they're all owned by you? I would definitely have a call center because it just, it gives you more. When I say call center, like let's say you have one office and then, you know, this guy, he's got four consultants.

Yeah.

He's doing 2 million approximately. Let's say he opens another office. You know, maybe he needs to add another consultant for that. Yeah, but he's already got this. You know, he doesn't sounds like he doesn't have them yet, but like once you get the systems and the processes going, you. It's easier to control out of one location than it is out of multiple locations. So you don't need to have people on the phones in another location. You might need an on site estimator and that's okay.

Yeah, right.

That you could book appointments for out of the main location. But what do you need there? You need trucks, you need movers, you need somebody to control and operate the movers and the trucks. But you know, keep your, your sales centralized.

Yeah, yeah.

I'm thinking back to. Well, I'm not thinking back, but I want you to think back to, to some of your biggest sales days coming up. Do you remember any of those days where, I mean, was there excitement in the air, people jumping up and down? Were you having big days?

Yeah, there were days. I mean, we definitely had like.

Hundred thousand dollar days.

Wow. Yeah.

You know, but, but you know, you're talking about multiple locations. You're talking about, you know, local and long distance.

Mm.

You know, there was a time period there where we were kind of hitting that, you know, on a, on a, you know, pretty, pretty regular basis. Not every day, but it was, it was definitely a big deal.

Yeah.

And it was super fun to sit there.

Yeah.

And just hit refresh on the CRM and just watch that. And watch that number just climb and climb and hear the excitement and just like, you know, go out and rally everybody up. But that was a result of a well orchestrated sales process. That's it. There's no, I don't. It's not that I have any type of superpower or anything like that. It was, you know, from early on it was like, all right, things need to be done a certain way. Right. If you're going to grow and you're going to scale, you can't expect every person to figure it out. Right. You know, you've got a small shop, it's you and a couple people and you all sit around and you kind of, you dispatch and we both do sales and you handle customer service and we're all just doing a little bit of this and that's where we're at.

Yeah.

Okay. You could get away with, you know, I do it my way, you do it your way.

Yeah.

But you start wanting to build the business and grow. It's got to be uniform. It's got to be the same. Right. And when, you know, the stakes are high, like for me, you know, you're spending a lot of money on marketing.

Yeah.

You're spending a lot of money to hire and train salespeople.

And then pay them to be there.

Yeah.

Plus phones, plus managers, plus directors, plus everybody that's in there, plus you're there to make a profit. The stakes are high. So for me it became every little micro adjustment meant a significant amount of money. Every little improvement we can. So. So you look at all these processes. You know, a lot of people have been to either moving Sales Academy seminars or even, even at my, you know, like the current seminars, any, you know, moving Mastery Summit, moving CEO Live. We teach sales too.

Sure.

Right. In addition, everything else. But all those processes were all developed out of the realization that little micro improvements make a big difference.

Yeah.

You know, we show the example sometimes of like what a 5% booking increase can do to the bottom line.

Yeah. Right.

And we show the example and it's like for a small moving company, like a $300,000 moving company, I believe the number is like $156,000 more for the year. If you increase your booking percentage by 5% for a mid sized company, it's doing like a million. I believe the number was like $450,000 more a year. By increasing your booking percentage by 5%.

Yeah. Now you're getting bigger.

For a large company, like I think it's a two million dollar company. The example we use. Right. 2.5. Like which is a good size local only, you know, 5% booking increase. It's a million dollars more a year. So when the question comes like, louis, where should I put my focus?

Yeah.

Or, Louis, how'd you build a $20 million company?

Sales.

Yeah, right.

Because it's not. It's not what? Leads, Leads, leads. Listen, take the same leads and book them at a 5% higher. You know, if you're booking at 12%, get it to 17%.

Yeah.

Do the mat. Do the math for yourself. Like, run those numbers for yourself and be like, okay, if we. Instead of booking it, you know, whatever you book at, if we went from, you know, 25, it doesn't. 12 to 17. Doesn't matter if it's 20 to 25 or if it's 30 to 35. Like, wherever you're at, whatever your booking percentage is.

Yeah.

Run the math on what it would be if you increased it by 5%.

Big difference.

Right. And then. And then just look and go. Yeah. I could see that there's some inefficiencies here, and I could see it's possible. Like, I use that small example because it's a small example.

Yeah.

Right. People are like, well, how'd you help that company double their sales? How did they go from 3 to 6 million? Like, it's not that hard once. Once you realize all the little loose screws in the sales.

Yeah, yeah.

When you tighten that up, it's a whole different business. Yeah, it's a whole different business.

So for this guy, you know, we know you. You recommend for him to get to 3 million, you said, you know, he's gonna need a sales manager for sure.

Whether it's. Whether he hires somebody or whether he steps into that role.

Right.

You know, he's at that point where he could do it himself or something. You know, somebody. He's got. Somebody has to wear that hat.

Yeah.

If you're a little bit smaller, you could wear the hat part time.

Yeah.

At his level, wanting to go to three, you can't just, like, wish your way to three and don't buy more leads just to get to three. You might need more. I don't know. But the key is tightening up that sales process.

Yeah. Right.

So, yeah, I would say he's going to probably need another, you know, at least another rep and somebody to be.

The sales manager.

Yeah. And that's, you know, that's talking about, you know, upping his revenue to the goals that he has. As far as his specific question about incentivizing and motivating his Salespeople. What are some specific things he can do specifically?

I mean, basically, make sure they're all on commission, because we don't know that they are.

Yeah, Right.

Make sure that they're all on commission. Give them a.

Weekly check, either hourly or salary as a draw. Then give them a commission on the moves that they book. Keep them incentivized by, but also keep them with some weekly pay so they're not waiting till the end of the month. That's number one. Number two is set monthly goals and tie those to bonuses every single month individually for each rep. They don't have to be the same.

Right.

So, like, if I'm setting your goal for 75,000, because you're at currently at, you know, 68.

Yeah.

Right.

But Susie over here is at, you know, 42, and I'm setting her for 50. Right. It's not about fairness. It's not about, like, oh, why does she only have to hit this goal and I have to hit that goal? Because I'm pushing you to be better.

Yeah.

And reach more from where you're at.

It's an individual thing.

It's an individual thing.

Yeah. Right.

So set those goals every month. And then when you feel the energy lacking. Do the spiffs.

Yeah, right.

Do the spiffs walk in. Hey, whoever books, you know, five jobs today. Whoever. The first person to book X amount of jobs, you know, so it's like whoever books X amount of jobs today gets this thing, meaning anybody that does it gets whatever.

Whatever it is. Yeah, yeah.

The first person to book this many jobs.

Yeah.

Gets this thing.

Yeah, Right.

That sets them off to the races. Like, you want to get somebody going quick in the morning, the first person to get there. That's what they get.

What's. What's the biggest spiff you ever gave out?

Well, I've done. I've done a few, like, yearly spiffs. Oh. You know, one of the. One of the things we did was, you know, we call, and I always try to kind of have a theme around it, too, just to make it exciting. Right. Something new, something they're talking about. Something to break up the stagnant.

Yeah, yeah.

You know, we did the Rolex 500.

Oh.

And the thing was, it was like.

The first person to hit $500,000 in sales.

Right.

It was going to take them a few months to do it.

Yeah, Right.

The first person to hit $500,000 in sales. I'm buying your Rolex.

Damn right. Awesome.

And so, yeah, that. That you want to talk about like getting them fired up, you know, depends where you are. Right. Like I was in South Florida. Like, I had a bunch of, you know, hungry, you know, guys that, like, that motivated them.

Yeah. Right.

Yeah.

And so we did. We probably gave away, I forget. At least two or three. We did that.

That's cool.

We did. You know, whoever books the most this year, at least a million dollars for the year, gets a trip to Vegas, all expenses paid.

Nice.

Plus $5,000 in spending money.

Awesome.

Second prize gets.

2,500. No trip.

Yeah.

Third prize gets. No, wait, second prize, I think got $5,000 also.

Oh, okay. But no trip.

But no trip. And then third prize got 2,500. No trip. If you ever do like, winner gets this.

Yeah.

Do a second and third place. Because what will happen is.

You know, even at that time, like, everybody kind of knew who was going to win.

Yeah.

Because one guy was just like crushing it.

Yeah.

So if you put out this, hey, whoever hits the number one person gets this. And everybody goes, we know it's going to be this person.

Like, give them something to shoot for a little bit, man. Well, I might be able to get second place. I might be able to get third place. It's not about the destination, it's not about the amount, and it's not about, like them. You, you want them self driven going after something.

Yeah.

If they don't feel like they can get it, they're not gonna go after it.

Mm. Yeah.

So that's what I would do.

Do.

Do you do the rock stars that you had in the past.

Did you promote them? I mean, at some point, do they just keep being awesome salespeople or do you kind of bring them up at some point?

Well, it depends. I mean, if you, if you take somebody from sales to management, typically they're going to take a step back and pay.

Oh, yeah.

If they're, if they're rock star.

Yeah.

Yeah. So it's, you know, the people that I did, you know, my, my. The one sales manager that I kind of mentored and brought up, I mean, he went from being a salesperson to being a sales manager, took a little step back, but then went beyond where he could have went.

Oh, cool.

Right.

So, you know, he's a sales manager, moved into director of sales, was making over $200,000 a year.

Yeah.

You know, wasn't going to be able to do that booking moves. But you know, even the other four sales managers that I would have during that time frame at the same time. Right. Because all those people require quite a Bit of sales management.

They had to take a step back in order to first step into that, in that position with the hopes of growing with the company. So if somebody's like an ultimate, ultimate management. Just because you're great at sales doesn't mean you're going to be great at management.

Right.

And just because you're terrible at sales doesn't mean you'll be bad at management. You might have somebody that's, you know, really organized and they're really good with people and they've got some management experience, but they're just not a closer.

Yeah.

That might be able to run your processes. I say, you know, and then if you have someone that's just a rock star on the phone and now you take them off the phone and you're having them just do a lot of administrative stuff, it could hurt your sales.

This is a good question. Just being able to recognize that those abilities in people, like if he's gonna go to 3 million and he's gonna hire some more salespeople, what should he look for in salespeople?

Well, first thing is they need to sound good on the phone.

Right? Right.

So, like, before you even, you know, during a phone interview, if they don't sound, they sound like they just crawled out of a dumpster, like, they're not for you.

It's not the guy.

Right. Because that's. That's the first perception that you.

That your customers hear. Right. So they need to sound good. They need to be hungry, but they need to want to make money.

Yeah. Right.

They need to be coachable. Right. They need to be resourceful.

Right.

They need to be someone, you know, because you're also helping these customers. The way that, you know, the way that we teach to sell is to provide excellent customer service, but then lead the customer to booking with our company and rolling into that reservation asking for the business. So it's not salesy, salesy, salesy, salesy. It's not that at all. Like any. Anybody listening that knows our processes and using our process, they know it's not, you know, the customer doesn't feel like they're being sold. The customer feels like they're getting excellent customer service.

Right.

It's just, you know, the person on the phone knows, like, I'm now leading them to book the move with our company. So those are some of the characteristics that. That they want to look for.

That's cool. That's good. I think we're going to really help this guy out.

Yeah. I think if he does that, he'll Be, he'll be right on track. And I mean, you know, not to, to put a plug in there, but I would highly, highly recommend that he enrolls in our Moving Sales Academy online course or join us at Moving CEO Live coming up.

I'll tell you what, if he, if he just applied a small fraction of some of the stuff in Moving Sales Academy, that 5% increase is done deal.

Yeah.

I mean, yeah, that's very, very easy and attainable to do.

Yeah. I mean, we tell, you know, we tell people when they look into, it's like, look, you know, you try it, you don't see the results, in 30 days, I'll give you your money back.

Yeah.

Like, no big deal. So. And I just want to, like when I say that, Chris, I, it's, I'm thinking, how could I help? I'm not thinking, how could I sell him something? Of course. Yeah. I mean, you know that. But I'm just saying. I know. It's like there's only so much that we could talk about in, you know, a podcast episode.

Yeah.

You know, but to get the step by step processes, you know, there's a place where I have that.

It's all laid out.

It's all laid out and you know, it's, it's. I, it's just crucial that the people have that sales process.

You know, that's what's great about Moving Sales Academy and here I am plugging away too. But it's, it's the program that we offer that you just see instant results.

Yeah.

I mean, it's immediate as soon as you start implementing stuff.

Yeah.

You know, yeah.

So it's cool to hear, to hear the comments, you know about it. If some, if anybody wants to learn more, you just go to Louis Massaro dot com. There's probably a link on there somewhere to.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

They'll put a link. But yeah, I mean that's, that's, that's like how you take what took me, you know, 16 years to develop. Right.

Yeah.

On a, on a high level and apply it to any size company.

Yeah. Right.

You've got your book and moves yourself. There's, it's there. What you need is there for you.

Right.

You are, are, you know, you've already got a call center. Right. You know, we've got a lot of, you know, bigger clients as well that, you know, everything you need is there.

It's the same.

Right.

Yeah. And you start, you start dialing it in and you start taking the step by step. You know, we call it Learn and implement style. Like, just learn it and implement it. You'll see the results. But, you know, for the sake of the podcast.

Make sure you're paying them a commission. Set up those goals every month, get some exciting spiffs, and make sure someone steps up and into that role of sales manager, even if it's the owner.

It's a perfect time right now. We're coming out of winter, getting ready to go into moving season. He could implement a few of these things and. And have a really great spring.

Well. And not assume.

Yeah.

See that? The big mistake people make is they assume summer's coming. Yeah, I'm going to make money.

Yeah.

It's all good.

Right?

But the reality is, can you waste less leads? Can you raise your price and book more jobs so that end of the summer, there's more left, there's more money for you.

Right.

So that you've got that money to, you know, get you through whatever you need. So, yeah, you got to go out there. You got to focus on building that sales machine for sure.

Awesome. Awesome. Well, yeah, thanks for helping this guy. I'm sure he's going to be happy.

Yeah.

All right, guys, well, thanks for being here. Listen, if you like this episode, do me a favor, go to itunes Moving Mastery podcast and just leave me a review. Let me know what you thought. Let me know what you think. If you have any questions at all, just hit me up on Instagram. It's Louis Massaro or at Lewis Massaro at L O U I S M A S S A R. Shoot me a dm, ask me a question, and we'll try to get it here on the podcast to answer it for you. And until I see you next time, until I talk to you next time, go out there every single day. Profit in your business and thrive in your life. My friend.

Sam.