Behind the scenes at a sales agency - CIFC Episode 130

All right, welcome back to another episode of Coffee is for Closes. I'm Pat Stewart. I'm joined by James once again, James Sackle. Because Matt's still gone.

Yeah.

Someone's got to.

Someone's got to carry the load.

Someone's got to herd the sheep when the. When the shepherd's gone, mate.

We did an episode last week and.

We got stiff analogy wasn't is what it is.

We did an episode last week and. And we've already got feedback on that, despite the fact that it's actually not out because people that got to pre listen to it. Although it is out now.

We have pre listeners.

Yeah, Jake would have heard that before it came out to the real world.

I thought you meant like we had some sort of elaborate system in which we have a select very good subscribers who buy stuff probably from our merch store here and all these other places.

Yeah.

That as a perk, get to listen to stuff early.

No, we don't have that. Maybe, I mean, we could.

Yeah.

Just add a layer of complexity to a system we're already failing at.

Yeah.

Patreon, if you want early access. Patreon, ex special forces sniper turned entrepreneur. I've scaled numerous businesses to eight figures. My name is Matt Rider.

This is my podcast, and I'm telling.

You to put that coffee down.

Yeah.

All right. So we did an episode last week and we got some feedback on that. There's some interesting things to pull from that about sort of more your role in what happens behind the scenes at a sales agency, specifically this one. But I think it's relevant to sort of, you know, the. The sweeping industry as a whole.

Yeah.

In that the sales guys have their calls booked for them. They, they. The triage is done, they are on the phone, they close the deal. And it seems to them like that's what this place is. Or, you know, let's not even think of it just in terms of sales sniper, but any, you know, big done for you, done with you. White label sales agency or any real.

Business where a sale is made.

Yeah, exactly. So tell us about some of the things that the actual sales guys don't know anything about because it happens in the background without them having to worry about it by design. So that they just do the selling.

What sales guys don't know about. Well, depending on the agency, sales being one of them. Okay, so.

Well, if you want to learn more about that, do we probably have a group they can join or something?

It was a. It was a more thrown shade at some other people just because. Why Not I think, think particularly when, when I was still doing sales there was kind of this mindset that you get credit card details, press a button, job done, and then whatever happens, there's like a, a little workshop, bunch of elves sitting around there putting presents together that go and make all these products and they send them out and send and delivers it.

Yeah.

To all the good little boys and girls.

Yeah.

And then life is groovy and that's all that happens. But the reality is there's a of lot, a little, little more to it from an administrative purpose, from a wanted delivery purpose, from a follow up purpose, from a just general client service, you know, making sure that that person's happy. And like I said, when I was doing sales, I was oblivious to all that. But to be fair, probably at that stage in a career I was maybe doing sales for people that didn't have very advanced systems. And okay, it was kind of just, ah, you know, like the wild wild west is just make the sale and see what happens, you know. So we'll talk about some of the things that happen in, in our business.

Sure.

And then I'm gonna go ahead and guess what happens in other industries like cars or whatever. You know, you make a sale.

Right.

Pretty simple. What happens to that information.

Right.

In some instances when you make a sale, a sale isn't always complete. There needs to be typically, typically two things that would happen for that to actually be complete. A contract or some sort of agreement needs to be signed and money needs to exchange hands.

Right.

Now typically our guys take money on the phone. If we have instances where there are specific contracts they need to be signed. That's typically done in nice small, easy agreements. You know, as you sell bigger, more complex things, those service agreements get very different because of agreed upon deliverables. I. E. If you're, if we're selling a consulting agreement like for a corporation, a large company, we, you know, they just don't pay. Like it's not how it works.

Right.

We would send them a fact sheet saying, hey, this is what we're going to do.

Right.

We're going to deliver X, we're going to deliver Y, we're going to deliver Z as a part of that from you. We are going to require xyz, this is what the cost is going to be. Right from there they'll probably take some time to read it. You know, they'll probably go speak to their lawyers or get their NDAs, their agreements and whatever that they need back to us for us to countersign. And then we'll send them an invoice and they'll pay that hopefully within seven days, you know, so that's an example of what would happen at a like bigger, larger, more complex deal. Typically, like for the majority of our listeners, they're not doing as big, complex deals. It's more so, hey, this is the product we have. Would you like to buy it? Yes or. Yeah, great. Sign up here. Here's your, here's your receipt. You know, now from, from there, it's like, great that has come in. If you're a, a decent business with good operations, when that payment takes place, you should probably have a number of integrations, a number of automatic systems and processes set up to make the next steps simple. One, you are going to have to get the information of what you've just sold the person to the person. That could be course access, that could be admission into some sort of group. For example, closing code. You can click the link here to join. It's great Facebook group.

The best.

You'll see this there. So whatever the deliverables need to be, you know, that could also be booking in an onboarding call with one of the coaches to show them how to deliver the product, how to access the product, how to do assessments, how to. Whatever needs to happen for the receiving of what that person just bought. Right. Now, as a sales guy, at that point in which you make the sale, it's really your job done. Right. To a point. Now, if you're a sales guy and you've signed someone up to three payments of $5,000, you probably getting commission. You're not getting the Commission on the $15,000 of the contract value.

Yeah, sure.

Getting commission based on when that cash is received.

Yeah.

You know, so a regular sales guy, they would see their job done there. If I was to go back in time and I had knowledge, I probably lost a lot of money. Well, I never took commission.

Right.

It was for our company who put the money back into the company, of course. But I probably would have earned the company more money if a lot of those people continued to pay.

Right.

And that's like a lesson is like if you've got $15,000 worth of contract value, your job as a professional, not a sales guy, is to ensure that that client is happy so they continue to pay. Your job isn't done once you've made that initial transaction. Your job is done once that person has got what they've asked for, what you've promised to them, and you've got all of your money.

Right.

Or you've got all your commission.

Yeah.

So as a sales guy, you probably wanting to set up notifications within your CRM to reach out and touch base with these people at certain time frames. As a sales guy you should the product that's being delivered.

Right.

One, to sell it better. But two, to understand where is it going to some of the friction points going to be so that you can check in with these clients because it offers you two things. One, you're going to collect the rest of the cash that's on that payment plan. Plus two, you've got the opportunity to get referrals. You've got the opportunity to. To give them upsells to make further more money making opportunities.

Right.

That is something that typically a system doesn't automate too well or it can automate to a point, but it's always going to be better with human interaction.

Right.

Then from there some of the other things that you don't notice is one, how does that get processed?

Right.

So the person's in the program, they're doing great. What happens like how do you actually get paid?

Right.

There has to be systems around the, the invoicing. So typically. And you know who you are. All of you guys don't track sales very well or are very adamant with administrative work. When I was first a sales guy still in the gyms, I was pretty bad at it based off the fact that I never earned commission. It was just my job to make sales. I didn't know you could get commission on things at that point in time. Commission was a word that, you know, car sales guys get. I didn't think that was.

So you were just on a salary.

Exactly. Right.

Didn't matter whether you sold one or 100 during the day. It was, I mean you had KPIs, but. Yeah, exactly the same.

Yeah, well, I mean I didn't track them for a commission purpose. I, I tracked them probably more out of an ego thing so I could say, yeah, nailed today I got to this level.

Did I? I remember hearing somewhere that you used to allocate your commissions to like your sales to other people because they were getting paid commission. Yeah. Did you do that with Marco or someone?

Yeah.

Yeah. So the, the story that goes.

I remember laughing my ass off when I heard that.

Back when we're selling gyms, I was manager. I sales was part of my job. But a lot of the phone sales that were done, we'd have to make certain amount of phone sales on like the cheaper products. However, in the more advanced products that that cost A lot more people would have to physically come into the gym. So Marco could sell them to the point, but they would physically have to come inside contracts, exchange money. He wasn't taking the money on the phone at that point.

Sure.

So there I would take the money, but I would also have people call me all the time.

Right.

So those people that call me all the time, or people walk in off the street and I would sit down and take them through the sales process, sign them up.

Right.

Most of the people that Marco sent me though pre sold, they're just like, all right, give me the paperwork. Let's. Let's do this.

Yeah.

But occasionally that wasn't. Occasionally they misunderstood what he said with, with the accent. And occasionally people would walk off the street or I'd call people and book them in, or some other dude would do it. And when I would make those sales, I would just say that Marco sold them over the phone.

Right.

I wasn't getting commission. Someone should.

Yeah.

So it would all go to him. And the funny thing was that, like, I didn't have a very good relationship with this company at that point in time.

Yeah.

Right.

So I didn't give. Fuck.

Really.

It's like, you know what? They could.

Hey, like, they can pay.

Yeah, yeah. Not. Not that well. They. Technically they couldn't because they were insolvent. Pretty.

Right.

Pretty hard. But. Well, I mean, I assume they're insolvent. They were later.

Right.

It's like, he's a good kid. He should get paid. Why not? He's helping me out.

Yeah.

And. And I just didn't like them. So I was like him. It was really funny. We'd go through a cycle of like, hey, you're on a warning. You're about to be fired because you haven't hit any KPIs. My, you know, Marco's KPIs might have been like 40 in the month. Mine might have been like 10.

Right, right.

Just because it was his full time job. It was definitely not mine. So I'd have zero for one month. They'd be like, oh, you haven't hit your KPIs. If you don't hit them next month, you know, you'll be out the door. So I'll be like, okay. Then I'd hit 10, very easy to do. And then the next month I'd hit zero again. Because all those, those, you know, could have been 13, 15. You know, Marco's making his 30, but on, on paper, he's making like 45.

Yeah.

So those extra ones that I make would all, all go to him. Because you know, why not? I like the guy and that's how we got a good relationship to begin with.

Well, here you are.

It's the only reason to come to work for us because of, of that. Otherwise he would have just went, ah, I'm not, not leaving.

Right?

Yeah.

So I could never get fired because every time it got to the point where there'd be a hey, you have to hit this or you go. And I'd just like okay. And I just would have a chat with Marcus, say hey buddy, I have.

To take 10, I have to take that.

Yeah, yeah. And what's he gonna do? Say no? You know, like it's like, well yeah, yeah, yeah. The let me keep 10 or you get none.

So you're doing those sales, it's a contract, it's physical, they've. You gotta sign it all up. Most sales guys don't really sort of experience that.

Right.

Like that's a handover to somebody else.

Yeah.

You said something really interesting about how you know, the sales are paid in install. Like if, if the purchaser is buying in installments, the commission will come in in installments. And that follow up piece, I'd never thought of that. In that being proactive and actually touching base with the people prior to that installment being due and sort of doing it. Hey, how's it going? Another touch base. Another sort of. You are going to make that payment, right? Like sort of thing?

Yeah.

Or, or would you, would you recommend that people are ahead of that and say like hey, that payment's coming up. Just want to make sure everything's going well and if they say yeah, I'm going to make it, then you say okay. Got any? Since it's going so well. Do you know anyone? Is there any referrals you could give me in regards to that? Or is it a wait and see if it goes through and then touch base if it doesn't?

Yeah. So apologies might have misconstrued. I would just be touching base to keep a relationship.

Okay. Right.

I wouldn't call someone say how are you going to make this payment? Because if things aren't going well, then no, they're not.

Yeah.

Like you write yourself out, right?

Exactly. Like you're giving someone an out. Well, I mean as long as you can talk to. But. But yes. So you just want to keep that relationship moving forward because there's a potential for them to purchase other things, refer you people. But also in good conscience, you've got that relationship there. So if they did fail for whatever reason, the bank account that they first paid with is no longer active at that point. You've still got that good relationship there, so you can go follow up that be like, ah, you know what, I'm sorry, I just made this mistake. Or you know, I've had a bad month. Do you mind if I put this through in a week? Like, yeah, sure. We can make that happen with that relationship. It makes it much easier to do so. So I say probably no in that system.

Yeah.

But yes, for a different system approach.

Yeah, I get you. Yeah, so do we. We have here something that follows that up.

Right.

Like if people do fall out of the system, we do contact them. We do have a team that like recover those lost sales.

Right?

We do now. Right, yeah, it's, it's more of a recent thing. Okay. We, we expected our guys to be able to do that. The problem is it is incredibly elaborate to get to that point where we can have it for our clients, one for us as an internal company. Yes, that's very, very easy to do and we can put those systems in place. But there's, there's one piece of missing information that we have is that we don't have access to our clients bank accounts, nor should we to see when payments fail.

Right.

So the only way that we're notified is if they tell us.

Right, right.

Or when we go to create our invoice and we invoice the client, hey, you know, these are all the sales we made. These are the sales that we have on a payment plan. We're assuming that they happened. These were the dates scheduled. You're going to have to tell us if they did or didn't.

Right.

So because of that massive gap, like I don't ever want access to our clients books, that opens up a whole can of liabilities for us.

Yeah, absolutely.

Yeah.

Only at a point in which we get to the end of the month, we have our invoicing. And if the clients are late and delayed and they don't communicate with us, we don't know if someone's failed a payment or not.

Right.

So from a systematic point where in the process of building out things that are far more complex so that we can have that more consistent communication with the client one so that they pay us quicker and so that it's accurate and now we're working towards a system where we check off everyone, every sale that we've been made, when it's come through, when it's been paid, if it needs to be pushed out and if it's something that we have to remove from an invoice, we can have that conversation with the client as to why. It's like, did they just ask for a refund because your product was shit? That's the case. We delete them from our system.

Right.

There's no further information needed. If it's because they did fail a payment, then great, we mark that off. We'll create some automations that goes back to the team, back to the person who made the sale, contact this person. If they struggle to contact them, it then goes to a list of people where they just have a big list where they're essentially like a. In the same way that a company would hire a. One of those companies that goes gets cash like a debt collector and we then we have essentially a debt collection team, right? They're not there to go and hound people saying yeah, you know, we're going to take your car. It's like, hey, you know, you've made these payments. How can we get to a point where we can get you there? Is there anything we need to know and just ideally bring that in because that's commission.

So do you think that's like a function of growth? You know, because.

Yes.

Yeah. So this is that the, the business has now gotten to a point where you're like, okay, where, where can we recover without having to grow anymore? Like without having to take on more accounts, without having to sell more products? How can we make more money, right? Like how can we make sure that we're not leaving anything on the table that we can really make the most of what we have?

So there is points where you'll go growth focused and when you're in a growth focus phase, you're not focused on, on that things, you're focused on how do we make more money. And it's good to have those. But you need moments of growth stability. Growth stability. Growth stability. If you're forever growing, when you grow, you break shit.

Yeah, right.

If you always break and shit, it leads to some, some pretty big problems because everything's always broken and you can't keep up. Sometimes you just need to chill, not shoot shoot. Everything that you can, you know, is the same as like food. You know, sometimes you want to go out to a nice restaurant, but you can't do that every single night or you get fat. Yeah, right. Pretty bad analogy. But you get the point. So that, that's a point of optimization right? Now if you were to go into another company, you would go in and have a look at plans you would plan is like, okay, like let's just say if I was to buy company xyz, I would want to look at where they're at now, where that previous history is at. What is the potential to have growth? What is the potential to optimize things so that we can adjust it, get to a better profit margin in a certain period of time to decide whether or whether or not the cost of that is worth it based on growth purpose and the ability to optimize and shrink things, cut things out that's unneeded, replace it with our infrastructure that might work better. And then squeeze the juice from all the, the, the areas that are probably not being squeezed now. You'd also want to do that in your own business at some point when you get into those stability stages. So like, let's focus on getting the systems tight. Let's tighten things up. Let's get them more optimized so that we can squeeze the juice now that we've got a lot of that juice squeeze, we've got the infrastructure set up, let's go into a growth phase, let's break some things and then let's tighten them up in the next stability phase.

Yeah, yeah, I got it.

I think it's definitely something that. It didn't occur to me until it came up here recently that that idea of recovering people who have fallen out of the system, but even after a sale, like, because what I've heard quite a lot about is, you know, how to make sure that like, you know, every lead turns into a call and if they, if they're not going to buy today, they're followed up with their, you know, they're like, we've been good to my understanding of, you know, making sure that nobody falls out of the system when they haven't bought. But I think it's interesting now to that to hear that you've brought a focus around to the idea of like once people have purchased, to make sure that we stay in touch with them, keep tabs with them and make sure that the purchase is complete, all the payments are done and you know, as well as exploiting referral networks and whatever else from those people.

Yeah, it's, you're absolutely right. Like you want all that stuff, but also you want to, you want good relationships with that client so that they speak highly of you.

Right.

Because at the end of the day we're representing a client, so we're not that prospect. We're not selling them into our program. We're selling them on behalf of A client, what our sales guy do in that relationship with that person, you know, they're going to tell that client that, oh, you know, we've had an excellent experience with, with that sales process and that looks good for us and that's what the client deserves when they hire us. You know, there's been instances where we probably dropped the ball there at certain times. And as every company would with, with Growing Pains. And when we say squeeze, squeeze the juice, it's not just like a financial squeeze that you're looking for. You're also looking to how can we squeeze the juice to deliver a better product and deliver a better service? 1 on behalf of our client, but also on behalf of their clients. That's important.

It's interesting to think of it as you just did, in that there's two layers to clientele, that our clients are actually the service providers, the people who we're selling for. But because it appears as though the sales guys work for them, they do work for them.

Yeah.

Ipso facto, their clients are our clients as well. And there has to be some level of hierarchy there.

Right.

Like. Of like, who are you more beholden to?

Right.

And obviously it's the people paying, but we're not paid by the individual consumer consumer. We're paid by the employer who's selling the product, who the sale goes through, and then the money comes to us. So I suppose that's the kind of a long way of getting around to the idea that we represent these people, but we aren't these people. And have there been any, like, issues involved in that that you can speak to or like, anything where, like, you know, the sales guys are not working for the company that they. They're working for, but they are not part of the company that they are representing?

Yeah.

Has that ever come up as a problem? Is that ever sort of hit any teething issues? Is that ever sort of had any sticking points?

Absolutely. And it's really important for our staff to have with that prospect, have the relationship there, because, like, and one of the main things there is we. We have an obligation to the people that we're selling into our client to make sure that our client is doing a good job. Because that relationship works both ways. Now, if our guys are continuously in conversation with the prospect or the guy that have sold onto the program and there's a lot of complaints, like that's a conversation, we're going with the client and going, what the fuck are you doing?

Right.

You've promised xyz if you can't deliver on that, like we have to pull our guys out one for the prospect's sake. Like we're selling them into something that they, they're not getting. Like one that's gonna make the sales guy feel like shit. They're also not gonna want to sell that, neither are we. And that, that poses a two prong approach, right. One is the sorry, three real main points. There is the issue with the sales guy. They're not being satisfied and feel like that selling a scam or they're a used car guy. Then there's the issue for the, the client who's not getting what they've paid for. But the also issue is there is risk for us as a company, right. If we're in a position where the client isn't delivering on the service, right. If whatever reason, if they, they could go after, they could start a class action against that client, there's potentially some liability that falls back on us. And that's why we get, we need to put very strong contracts in place or service agreements between the client and us. Is really interesting. One of our clients has, they sell some investing stuff and they've come back to us. They wanted to do an audit with some lawyers around how the, the FTC would see that product, right. And those lawyers came back with some pretty, pretty strong advice as to the words that we use, right? So for instance, that client in their marketing, not a client of ours that we do the marketing for, they have some really good testimonials from clients who have made a lot of money doing that, right? And that's all great. That's a good way to bring people in. But that's their best client, not their average client.

Yeah, right.

Sometimes that there needs to be a shift there in the way that they market it as to how you don't use the best case scenario, use the average case scenario. And at that point all we're doing is saying facts. Our average person achieves X, Y, Z results. You've never dissuaded, you've allowed them to make an informed opinion whether they would want to choose an investment option with outline the risks, outline the benefits. Now we could potentially be at fault if we're telling them that hey, average client, they might make a ROI of 8%. Mm, yeah, I'd be happy with 8%. Pretty good. However, we need guarantees from that client that the information that they're providing us, that 8% is real and justified.

Right.

So we're putting an agreement in place right now that if for whatever reason that client, their results start to go down or they start to go up, we have to be notified of that so that we're not making false presumptions to the client. Because that 8% might now be 4.

Yeah, right.

And that gives us protections because the sales guy's done nothing wrong. It all falls on that client for providing us only factual advice and only what we can go off. So it's really important. Like we fired many clients because they were a great company. Then all of a sudden they started to go downhill. You know, they tried to squeeze that barrier too much to the point where they aimed for profit margin. And whilst aiming for profit margin, don't get me wrong, there's a great thing to do. Profit margin over service leads to a very short term business.

Right.

Then there is a fine line between how much profit you make and how much of a good service that you deliver, which really affects the longevity of one. And offer a company understanding, you know, like you look at all the companies that have been around for a very, very long time, they offer a lot of that stuff where they have really good service delivery and they've been able to last for a long period of time. Whereas you, you know, you probably can't think of any right now. But you see all those companies that you remember that had really shit service delivery.

Yeah.

And now they don't exist anymore.

Yeah, exactly. But I think that's really interesting, mate. Like, it's kind of my brain's going a million miles an hour thinking about the sales guys being responsible for the testimonials of another product. Like if they're a true testimonial. See, this is one of the things, like you see those billboards and it says shot on iPhone 12. Well, it wasn't shot by some Jono on iPhone 12. It was shot by a photograph photographer using an iPhone. And it wouldn't matter. Like considering the lighting that he's using and his knowledge of composition and all the different things and probably the editing skills, he could shoot that on a Polaroid and it would look better than the average person's able to shoot on their iPhone 12. So I think that is interesting when you say if it's a, a product that people can make money from, right? Like learn the skill, they make the product, there's going to be outliers and to the who are exceptional and probably came in like, I know Matt gets used for example, as a testimonial in other people's coaching programs. Right. But it's like he had a huge amount of skill prior to that.

Yeah.

Or not even the seventh level ones, but others. I know that he's been used as a testimonial for like look at the skill, look at what he was able to achieve having done our course. Yeah, but he's done a lot of other courses and he has a high skill set before he started it.

He's not an idiot.

Yeah, exactly. Right. He's probably an outlier to the capability, but it's still the truth. He did do the course and he did produce that outcome. So it's interesting to me that like a more you're saying that people should be selling off of a more sort of an average use case rather than the outlier case.

Yes and no. I think yes, in circum circumstances.

Okay.

Knowing others.

Right.

I'll give you. I'll flip the script as to where I don't think that's the case. Fitness, right, Right. I've sold a lot of people a lot of fitness products. I know for a fact a lot of the time people are going to fail because they're lazy and they don't give a shit. And like I remember signing people up and going, you know, I'm going to sign you up but I think you're going to fail. Like prove me wrong. You don't always say that. Actually sometimes I did. I was pretty harsh on people if they needed to hear it. You know, they come to a point if it's something like that, you know, where it's not a really financial risk. You know, you buy 16 weeks of training and you know the only thing that can happen is good.

Right.

You're either going to, you're going to be shit and lazy and not do it and you've maybe made some progress to how might not have been now but like it's a step in the right direction.

Right.

In that instance, knowing that, you know, maybe that person doesn't have perfect genetics. Maybe they're not the most motivated, maybe they're not the most knowledgeable. Their movement patterns aren't great. Like you get someone in there's got great genetics. They have a structure, they've been been lean before. They know what to do, they understand their body. They're going to get way better results of course. But the other person, they may not have that. They might be under a very stressful time at work and they may have lots of baggage. Could be binge eaters like whatever that might be the case. If we're looking at that black or white, you don't sign that person up. If I think that that person's probably going to fail. I think you should sign them up anyway based on the fact that you've given the opportunity to be better.

Yeah, exactly.

So it's very like, well, specific.

Right.

I think that's the blurry zone in sales thing is like you're not a life coach. Maybe you're selling people into life coaching.

Yes. Yeah.

But like your determination is, is this product good for you? And if you were to follow through with it, would you say successful?

And if the answer is yes, do it.

Yeah, yeah. And, and I think how can you know that of someone in a, like in a 30 minute sales call or something? You're not getting to know their whole life and motivations and all that kind of stuff. You learn enough to be able to, to shape and mold and guide their opinions, but you're not like you don't know when that, when that zoom meeting ends, you don't know what they turn around and say to the person that you couldn't see off camera.

Yeah. You know what I mean?

Like you don't know what's going on. But I think it's very interesting. It's something I hadn't thought of in that if the service provider changes the deliverables, who's accountable to that? Right. So like if, if the sales guy then says, hey, the product involves X, Y and Z, but it doesn't anymore because they change that on Monday and now people who are being sold into it on Tuesday before it gets to the sales guy are buying ABC and they get into the product, the program and they're like, hey, this isn't what I signed up for. Who can be like, whose fault is that? And is there a liability piece there, like legally that anybody needs to worry about?

I mean, maybe, I guess it's a complex question that would, it'd be a case by case. Right. So as a general point of view, that's absolutely the client's fault.

Right.

If they've changed everything, people have signed up to get a certain service. Right. If you sign up for something on the premise, you're going to get XYZ and you don't get it, you're full entitled to a refund.

Right, Right.

You were sold on something, they didn't deliver it. Now that poses a problem to us.

Yeah.

Because if they're on a payment plan, they get a refund. We're not collecting the rest of that money, we're not getting paid for it. And that's kind of for our sales guys that have done nothing Wrong, They've done the right thing. And then a client has gone and changed something that has prevented their income. So we've had that in the past, particularly very, very early on and acknowledge that that's a problem. So one, to protect our sales guy, but also to protect us and to protect the client. Like if I was that client, I'd be asking for a refund or I'd be having a discussion and seeing, hey, can we add this on, can we take that out? Or you know what, can we negotiate to get to me? Maybe they've changed the program for the better. Yeah, they might have taken something.

Yeah.

I mean, things change, right? It's not a big deal.

It's like, I found a better way to do this. I don't need to do this with you anymore because we'. This, that's way better.

Yeah.

Or I was like, hey, I've signed up to this education portal. It's like, I'm giving you a better education portal that has everything you wanted, plus some more in it. You know, that's a positive thing. But let's just say you promised a one on one session with X person once a week and they go ahead and change that to once a fortnight. If it was me, I'd be like, hey, fuck you. I'm not. I paid for, for once a week. You're either going to give me the once a week or I'm going to pay half. Yeah, but that's, that's what I would be saying.

Right.

And so we've got things in place that we won't give them their money back. That client, if they've gone ahead and changed things and that person has been refunded just for them doing a shit job. Like I won't give that client their money back if they've paid us commission on that and that person's refunded because they've done something wrong.

Right.

The only way we'd ever give money back for a refund is someone signed up within a couple of days, they've decided to pull out at no cost. Like nothing's been delivered.

Right, Right.

So like if a client goes through a program, they go, this sucked. This quality was terrible. That's a loss for the client, not for us because we've done nothing wrong. Like I'm not going to lose money for, for someone's incompetence.

And so the individual sales guys.

Yeah, they know. So they.

Yeah, right, that's what I was gonna say. So like they probably would they be very aware that that's even happening, are they? Inch they are. Right. So, so when money gets clawed back through the company, the, the actual sales reps that sold the person, they are aware that that happened. They, they know how it went down.

Maybe most of the time, like if you're selling 100 people a day and one personal refunds, you're probably not going to know about it.

Yeah.

Unless they directly tell you. I'd say in most of the cases, like we rely on our sales guys to, to give us a bit of a feel as to what's happening with that client. How good. Because ultimately if that client's not fulfilling in a certain area, or maybe like we've had cases where we've just been too good at sales and pumped too many people into that person's business, that delivery and their back end systems as we spoke about at the start, couldn't keep up. Maybe they need to hire someone, they need to train someone to go in and send all the onboarding book in the calls and, and whatnot with the client. The delivery could be suffering because of that reason. That's the case. We can work with the client, say hey, look, we're gonna, we suggest you pull back marketing. We're gonna give you a couple months to fix these things. We're gonna still make sales, but we're not gonna make as many sales. Ie, we're gonna generate less leads to be able to put into that because you can't keep operating in this fashion. Otherwise you'll be a business in. You develop a reputation that'll make a very, very small relationship with us and for your business. So that feedback from our staff is quite crucial to us because in instances we can go in and say, well, this company's got great potential, they deliver an excellent service, but they're failing XYZ areas. What if we were able to come in and take over those XYZ areas, improve them for a better, stronger, longer term relationship and a better ethical relationship with the prospects being sold into it.

Yeah, yeah.

And because we've put those processes and systems within our business and other people's business, typically we stick within the same niche of people that we do sales for or very, very similar companies just delivering different products to different people.

Yeah.

A lot of those systems that we have and that's why we bought an operations company so that one we can systemize us as we do these processes, but as our clients are going through those processes as well, we can come in and replicate some of those aspects of the system and say, okay, well we've been at your level. We've got four other clients that are exactly at the same level as you. I foresee that in three months you're going to run into XYZ problem.

Right.

You can either take my word of it, we can put something in place to make sure that doesn't happen, or in three or six months. Exactly what I told you can happen.

Yeah.

Right.

And we've done that with enough companies, particularly in the same niche, delivering a similar service to be able to see those warning signs and be able to put things in place to prevent them from happening.

Yeah.

Because from a business perspective, if those clients hit those snack points and then all of a sudden we can't make as many sales. That's a problem for us now. Income as well.

Yeah. Yeah.

So it's at our best discretion to provide that advice.

Yeah.

And convince them to make those changes on the back end, which is, again, is more things that those sales people don't. Don't see.

How's that usually received? Do most people see that as exactly that? We people go, oh, okay, you know something? I don't. And you want to keep this machine moving forward, so, yes, let's bring in your processes and set all that up.

Yeah.

Or do you get much resistance against that? Like, obviously, we're a sales agency. We can talk people into doing it, but what sort of resistance is there against that?

I think typically there was a lot of resistance earlier on, but I think as you. You build that authority. Evidence, Right, Exactly. Right. So, like, if. I mean, at the end of the day, it's like that choice, that business, they cannot do it if they want, but ultimately, if they're not willing to grow and for them to grow as a client, like, there'll be someone else who is.

Yeah.

I think that's one of the interesting things, especially, you know, like with the coaches and stuff.

Yeah.

They are their business. Right. Like, it's. It's their product, it's their ip. They've often, you know, work their whole lives to get to where they are. They're proud of their thing. I imagine that some of them would have some resistance against, like, feeling like maybe they're losing control.

Yeah, yeah. That happens a lot.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And, you know, sometimes I think you. When you say to people, but you can make more money. Money isn't everything. You know what I mean?

Like, sometimes you don't want to make more money.

Yeah.

Right.

Because if making more money is that next step up the hill, with that comes more risk because you've Got to employ more people.

Yeah.

You've got more liabilities on the table from a business. And if your company is making more money, but you're at a 20% profit margin, making 300 grand and you're taking 30 grand out every month as the owner, as a personal thing, and you grow to 6, 600, but your profit margin decreases because you had to put a whole bunch more people on.

Yeah.

And you only ended up taking 35k a month home.

Yeah.

Is it worth it?

Yeah, that's it.

Right.

To, to me. Yes.

Right.

Because I'm willing to sit with that risk. And there's ultimate plays. Once you get through some of those, then you can start squeezing the barrier. Bring that profit margin up.

Yeah.

And an extra 1% at $2 million a month is a huge, huge thing. So. But it all, it depends on risk tolerance and like, how much stress do you want?

Yeah.

Right.

Because like, we could scale things back at any stage. We could keep our two best clients, we could have significantly less staff, significantly less overheads, no cost for podcast guys and probably take home a lot more money. But from an ambitious point of view, it's like ads. It is not, not the deal that we're here for. Like, yeah, I'd rather win, progress a company, progress a career, but that's each their own. So we absolutely get guys like that, that, that see it that way, or are just scared of like what the next step is. They're comfortable, they're in the comfort zone and that's fine.

Right.

It's only a problem if they're expressingly wanting to get to the next stage. Yeah.

If they're, if they're saying they want more sales but you're saying you can't handle more sales.

Exactly. Like, nah, I can't give that to you because you're going to do a poor job to you.

Yeah.

Like, you have a, you have a responsibility for the people you currently have in and future people to get these things.

Right.

But on the other hand, we also have people that come to us and say, hey, like, I just want to give you the keys. Fucking make me famous.

Yeah, mate. So one of the things that I did want to ask you about, and it's relevant to the sort of feedback we got from last episode, is those back end systemization, they're sort of the glue that holds the company together beyond making the sales now, like, that's the spear tip. Making the sales is. That's where the money comes from. But keeping the money in the bucket is, you know, the the, the processes behind the scenes. Which one of those now do you do or you know, are in charge of or, or have set up the systemization of whatever that you just didn't even know was a thing like when you were making sales that you were like oh, I didn't even know that this happened, let alone that I was later going to be the one doing it.

The payment stuff.

Right.

It's like how do you get paid?

Right.

I just made that. I just made this sale. How does that end up in my bank account? Like there's a. Without boring people, it's not going to be an accounting class. But there's a whole thing that you got to look for is like one. There needs to be bookkeepers. Things need to be put onto the P and L in the right place. Something needs to be cog. Something needs to be opex. Like where does this fall on the sheet for specific countries? Like what tax treaties is there? If we make a, if we have a client in the US Obviously we're not charging gst. If we have clients in Australia, we're charging gst. Then from there payment processes are we using that have the lowest forex fees, that have the lowest transfer charges. Then when you grow to a company like before, we would just pay people however they wanted to get paid for their invoice and probably not check their invoice and probably overpay them and just assume it was right. Big problem. Right. Early days. But now because there's so many people like that, that's multiple full time jobs.

Yeah.

So we have to select our systems in which we charge the client where that money comes into very selectively. But it also has to be reasonable for them. If they don't have that in their business, there needs to be some, a couple of options. Then we have to, to make all those payments go through for that money to end up in our staff's bank account. We have to batch everything. Like you can't just sit, sit there and go okay, I'm gonna like at a market with cash, I'm gonna pay you this much.

All right.

You, you did 14 hours. Six bucks an hour. Is yours, is yours, is yours, is. We have to get all that compiled, put it into a payment process to, to pay all those people into their bank accounts or into wherever they receive it or all from the one thing where it can just be one button. Approve all. Otherwise it's going to take us six days to physically. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So payroll is like, it's, it's A whole department.

Yeah.

And I suppose actually the money changes hands quite a few times, doesn't it? So like there's the, the purchaser, he has a conversation with the sales guy, but when he pays, it goes to the person in charge of delivery, then comes to this place and then goes to the actual sales guy. And there's checks and balances along the way. And so I imagine that people are like, hey, how come take to them to get paid?

Like, yeah, because you're an idiot. And you didn't tell us you made this sale because you didn't feel like.

Right?

Yeah.

So there's, so there's a lot of administrative bullshit that just has to be done along the way before. And money has to change that minimum four hands in order before it goes back to. Felt like a one to one transaction.

Yeah, there's also like a lot of he said, she said.

Right.

I give you an instance. Let's just say you're the sales guy. You've set this guy up on a payment plan. He's on six payments of a thousand dollars, but you've called him and said, hey mate, you want to make your payments sooner? Yes. Yep, sure. Here's an extra two grand. How does that, that payment plan get adjusted? People informed to stop charging them when they should have. How does our accounting team know to then say, oh, by the way, here's the extra 2,000? Because the client might not see that. It could have been a wire transfer. Let's just say we take a wire transfer on the 29th, we invoice them on the 30th, money hasn't hit their account, we got invoice and they're like, what are you talking about? This guy didn't pay. Like, okay, well I guess we're going to have to take that off the invoice. Sorry, we were wrong. We thought he paid. Then you go back to the sales guy, sorry, okay, now we're paying you for these guys, but we can't pay for this one because he hasn't paid yet. He'd be like, yes, he has. Here's a screenshot. It's like, okay, well that actually hasn't, hasn't landed yet. So we haven't been paid for it. Therefore we can't pay you because it could bounce back. It might not hit their account.

There's lots of things that could go wrong between now and then.

So like we now, like that's not a huge risk in itself that we've paid you when money's not received, but when you Amplify that to thousands, thousands of sales. It, you know, that's becomes a big problem.

Yeah.

Thousands of sales across hundreds of people. That's. That, that really could do you a mischief. Yeah, it's interesting mate. I think that there's, there's a lot more to it than is obvious. And what we typically talk about here is the, you know, the actual selling.

Right.

Like the actual, like this is how you talk them into it and this is how you overcome this objection and this, that kind of stuff. But in reality to be as successful as you guys are, it. There's a lot of back end process that is in play beyond the sale. Like the, the sale is just the tip of the spear. There's a lot before the sales guy actually gets that money in his hand. There's a lot of things that, that's got to happen.

Yeah, I guess. Like what I would say if I was to go back and give my advice. Let's just say this company ended tomorrow and I went and got a job as a sales guy in a large automotive company selling Ford Fiestas.

That's the dream. That's, that's where you head.

Oh yeah, yeah. It's the next step, you know, okay. It's up on a pedestal. Knowing what I know now, I would, as a sales guy I would want to be more professional and take full ownership over that process of making the sale to money hit my account. In the same way that if you were a buy in crypto or buying stocks, you wouldn't just send the wallet address and not check whether it actually came to your other wallet. Like you would have those checks to make sure it is. And if it didn't come, you'd lodge a complaint, say why didn't this happen if you look at it like that. And the same thing I would want control over the process from I've made the sale to I've collected this. And knowing now like my admin wasn't the best ever, but it would be now if I was to step back into sales, knowing everything that happens, where things could be wrong, I'd document everything. I would engage in the conversations, I'd update my stuff the second it happened. So there is no wiggle room. Because one thing that I found that sales guys do a lot is if they don't get on top of their admin filling out what they did. One, they don't know their numbers. So they don't know what their conversion rates are. They don't know how much space they have for sales calls. They don't have a way to get to the goal income that they're doing because they haven't kept on top of that tracking. Therefore you can't put a real strong training process in place to get better at the areas that you weaker in sense or be able to fix the sales process that you're engaged in. Maybe I need to adjust my text messages. Maybe I'm calling this person too often. Maybe it's not enough. I would want control over all of that. And the way that you do it is by efficient admin.

Right.

As well as one of the huge things that the guys do is they made a sale. They're not putting the details in of exactly what happened in that sale. And therefore they get to the. The end of the month. They've. They've got their tracker with all their commissions on it and the sales guys forgot to put three or four of them on there.

Right.

You know, like it's, it's a, it's a common thing like sales guys forgetting what sales they made. Those things I would want to get right. Knowing I've done that. I would meticulously track that stuff and have the evidence to support it in case, you know, there is like a dispute between client and.

Yeah.

And finance team.

That makes sense. You've given me an idea for a YouTube video. I think that will make something to teach people how to do that, how to track that, how to set that up and how to, you know, keep that data themselves. Because I think there'd be value in that. If people aren't doing it, it's probably because they don't know that they should or how to. So we'll, we'll make something about that.

And for that, like I track my, my like net worth and income pretty. Pretty heavily, really.

Right.

Yeah. Yeah. So. And a lot of the sales guys have come to me and asked about how I do that and I've shown them some things.

Right.

Like if I'm a sales guy on a commission basis is pretty easy when you're on a salary and other. Multiple other.

Yeah.

Workings of income. If I'm a sales guy, I'm tracking exactly what commission I made from each client on a monthly or a weekly basis even to compare and look at. Okay, well, where is the most of my income coming from? And then I would personally, I'd be matching that against how much time I'm dedicating to certain things.

Yeah.

Right.

So you can see what goes up, what goes down, exactly what commission I made from each client on a monthly or a Weekly basis even to compare and look at, okay, well, where is the most of my income coming from? And then I would. Personally, I'd be matching that against how much time I'm dedicating to certain things.

Yeah.

Right.

So you can see what goes up, what goes down. Then all of a sudden if you get to a point where you're in a slump, you can review what you were doing that made the most income or if your income dips, go and look back and like, okay, well in February, I'm, I hit career high numbers. What was the case? What did my calendar look like? What were my other activities? What was I doing in. In day to day life that was making me happy? Or did I. Was I just less busy and my calendar was optimized so I had the ability to take stacks on. Stacks on sales calls? Or is it something out of my control?

Yeah.

And then tracking that stuff and understanding where your income is coming from allows you to really plan.

Yeah.

And then plan to improve and start increasing that and making more sales and doing things. It can also allow you to make decisions as to where you spend your time.

Yeah, that's definitely something I've learned since I've been here is, you know, tracking just data points, more of them and looking for the trends in lots of different ways. Stand by on that. We'll definitely come up with some sort of video on how to do that.

Yeah.

I can't remember the name of the, the billionaire that said it, but the quote is he who owns the data owns the world.

Yeah.

And it's, it's so true.

Yeah.

And if you can't own your own man, it's Europe. You're in struggle street.

Perfect place to end it, mate. Hey, nice one. Thank you for your time.

Thank you. As always.

If you like the show, hit us with a, like, give us a comment. Tell us what, what you'd like to see. Probably it'll be back to Matt next week. So from me and James, goodbye.

Adios. Put that coffee down.