Behind the Scenes - Looking Back on the First Ever Sales Sniper Retreat

Hey guys. Welcome to another episode of Coffees for Closers. Special episode. Today I have Will Hinkson with us. He is the number one recruit over the last six months here at Sales Sniper that we bring into the organization essentially to keep the wheels moving forward and to keep me and Matt and Marco in line. The voice of reason. Will, why don't you introduce yourself and tell us what exactly you do here because you can explain better than what I can.

Oh man. I don't want to know if I want to claim responsibility over you gu, and those decision making processes as a voice of reason, but I am the head of sales here at Sales Sniper.

Oh, head of sales. I know you are Head of human resources. Isn't that.

Yep. You ever seen a helicopter?

A helicopter? I don't believe maybe you could.

That's weird. I'll explain it later. I'll show you in person. So basically what that means is Marco and I kind of work right hand, left hand at managing all the done for you sales accounts with all of our client facing stuff as well as probably most importantly our rep facing stuff to make sure those guys are developing, everything's on track and everybody is just smashing it.

Awesome. Cool. And why we've got a nice face. Cue the intro.

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The reason I wanted to jump on with Will today is we had something very, very exciting happen where I just got off the plane Yesterday from the U.S. will was in charge of organizing the first ever Sales Sniper retreat. And that happened over in the in the States, in Scottsdale, Arizona, right where as we opened up our new office. So I flew over as a surprise to go to meet people. We're ideally going to have Matt come, but it was very short notice. As some of you guys aware, Australia right now has very heavy restrictions and they opened the borders last minute. So I got on a plane and Will was responsible for running the show, organizing the show, and we thought we would jump on and talk a little bit about that behind the scenes. So Will, as you were responsible for organizing things, why don't we start with like from, from your point of view, the intention of what we wanted to do with the retreat, why we did it, and how much effort it took to organize something like that on the back end.

Yeah. So too long. Didn't read more effort than I thought it was going to be. And it was kind of fun. Oh, my God. Yeah. So let's start at the beginning. Right? So Matt was like, hey, man, we're thinking about throwing a retreat for all the US Guys. It'll be first two days, we'll come in, we'll have Jeremy Miner speak. Like, we probably just rent, like an Airbnb, and then everybody will stay there. And then the last three days, we're going to run a sales derby. We'll give prizes away for cash collected. What do you think? I was like, yeah, it sounds like a great idea. And then the next phrase out of Matt's mouth, I think before my last syllable got out was like, cool, you're cool for organizing all that. I said, sure, of course I am. Of course I am. Having never done something like that and maybe underestimating a little bit, like, props to, like, those folks that are wedding planners, event coordinators, all of that stuff that do this for a living, you have a skill set that probably does not necessarily fall into mine, and I respect the hell out of you now.

Yeah, now I can see how hard it would be. What did. What did we initially set as a budget?

I asked that question. I was like, hey, so, yeah, I think it was on one of our management meetings. I was like, yeah, what do you think for, like, a budget for this? And it was like, I don't know, like, probably like 30 grand, but, like, we could go up to 50. And having never.

Actually, I never looked at, like, the full bill. I haven't seen it.

Yes, it was like 114,000 all said and done. So I went just a little bit over budget because it turns out. Well, we had a bigger response than I thought. Right. So we ended up having 40 plus reps out there with all of us that were there. If you've never tried to book an Airbnb for 40 people, it doesn't exist. Uh, so that. So that's the thing. So, yeah. Or maybe it does, but it's probably 60 grand in and of itself for the week. So we ended up renting a hotel. We ended up having. Locking on a caterer doing all this stuff. The food. I mean, you. You got a chance to be there, which was. The food was off the charts good.

See, I've never been to the States before. I was just expecting, like, the caterers to bring out cheeseburgers all day, every day.

You Know, I was shocked to learn you didn't ride in on a. On a kangaroo. It was weird. It was weird to hear you. I figured there was some sort of swimming that went on. It was. My whole perception of Australia was. Was off, apparently.

Yeah. Wedge tail, eagle.

Exactly.

But they're eagles fair, so.

Yeah, so it was cool, man, because we kind of, as we went down this. As it went from, like, this idea of like 30 to 50 grand, hilariously, like, the catering budget was 18 grand. To put that in context for the week, I think between the catering budget and just purely with the Breitlings, the cash prizes, everything else, like that alone was 30 grand before we even talked about housing and everything else.

I see something on your wrist there.

Oh, this little guy. You and Matt were kind enough to send this my way. Couple months ago, I think, for my birthday, actually, which is nice.

Funnily, we bought those and had them shipped here. I don't know. Matt ordered them. I'm like, why didn't you just ship them straight to Will? Anyway, so I get down to the post office to send them across to you. They're like, you need all these forms. You need to apply for an export license because it's over $10,000. I was like, what a headache. So we just bought more and got them sent here.

Yeah. The answer at some point is like, yeah, we'll just buy more if that's easier.

Going over budget on everything, to be fair, I. I'm significant.

That doesn't even include the extra Breitlings. I'm not even including the extra two that are sitting with you and Matt right now.

Yeah, yeah. Well, I think one of them's on his wrist. Yeah, I would have taken one, but they're a bit. Bit big for me. I'm like, I need like a 41 or under. These are like 40, I think, size 43 face. So my I got little bitch wrists. I can't wear them. I look stupid.

So it happens. It happens.

Yeah. Okay. But let's break that down. Right, so back to the retreat. We split that up into two areas. One, we wanted a couple of days of education. Then we wanted to run a sales derby. So for reference, the guys listening, we had switched off the calendars for all of our guys for the first two days of the week. So Monday, Tuesday, calendars rough, right? They were there purely to learn there was no DM setting happening in place. We pushed hard the week prior to have the Wednesday, Thursday, Friday filled back to back with sales calls. Right. Then from Wednesday onwards, we split up the guys, everyone moved around the Airbnb. Some guys taking sales calls in the pool, other guys taking sales calls in the kitchen, other guys taking sales calls on the front doors just so that they had enough space where there wasn't hurt. And we pumped as many sales and as many additional bookings for the week following week on those three days. Right. And we ran a competition, which I'll let you explain the structure of the prizes and how that worked. But the whole intention was to get everyone pumped up, get them more better skills and get them into an environment where you could hear other people doing things so that they could crush sales. And based on the numbers, it seemed to work really well. So I'll let you.

Oh, it works very well.

Yeah, yeah.

And to even set the stage a little bit more, right. So we rented out this mansion, this Airbnb where we were at there in Scottsdale. So for two days we had Jeremy Miner speaking, Spencer Burnett, one of our partners as well. And then my talk got got thrown in there, as well as a B team pull up, minor league pull up, since Matt couldn't be there. So we were able to fully train everybody up on this stuff. And I will tell you, having gone through Inner Circle directly with Jeremy, even having the access to all the amazing training we have internally at Sales Sniper and do with our teams, there is a special sauce to going with Jeremy Miner in person, watching him do that and how that unfolds for him in person, that is cannot be replicated anywhere else because I've been through all this stuff. That's how we all got connected as I came through Inner Circle. So everybody's ramped up. Everybody is just like buzzing with energy, electricity. Like, I mean, we came off those two days of training, came straight into the Sales Derby and like, not only did they come off the training, but Jeremy was there. I was rocking around. You were walking around like, we're tweaking guys sales processes and giving them real time feedback while they're on the calls there. Like, it was. It was incredible. It was electric inside of the house. So the prizes were this. The sales derby that ran was for anybody that is in one of our alphas who are closing. They're closing deals. Bravos as well. We did the highest amount cash collected for the week, right? For those three days. Yeah. So Monday and Tuesday didn't count because obviously nobody's taking calls because they're absorbing information. But for those next three days, we went highest amount cash collected. Now, spoiler alert. We had somebody that did $800,000 contract value, not cash collected but in a single day. So it was off the charts. But the whoever ended up doing the most cash collected one in Breitling. And then for our folks, whoever had the most sets, we gave them $1,000 cold hard cash. And then as we were going through the week we noticed so many people that were showing up early, staying late, living and breathing the core values of Sniper that you looked at me and you were like hey man, we, we have to have some like spirit of sales Sniper awards. Like we have like let's do it a hundred percent. Like what do you want to do? You're like I don't know, 500 bucks. Like yeah, let's go 500 bucks.

Oh that's right.

Because it was a thousand dollars originally, wasn't it?

Yeah. But we ended up, we did, we got a thousand dollars at and we announced them and I was like oh, but we missed Chris because he was equally deserved. So I gave him, I think I just gave him all the cash that I had in my wallet because we run out of the, the actual prize envelopes. I just slipped some money into his pocket. But yeah like Patrick Ellen Jones won the. The first place prize with most cash collectors was contract value. $800,000 in a single day. Contract value is massive. He, I think he finished with like $78,000 cash collected.

Yep, he got a 78,000 wire in a single day. By the way, he had some other stuff he had to leave to on Thursday, Friday.

Yeah, he wasn't there for the Thursday, Friday. But to put that in perspective as well he would have. He has collected significantly more of that cash. With deals that size you don't put them through a payment link. They are wire transfers. He had payments go through. They didn't land in the bank account to be able to be confirmed during that day. I think by the, I think by the Monday there was about 380 of that cash that had physically been collected as well. So huge effort. Usually with big deals you make the sale in a day. You don't technically collect that cash. A lot of people when you're spending $300,000 you don't really want to risk your cash stores. Most of the time you'll get external funding and borrow from assets you already have that way to diversify your income. So you do have cash stores if necessary for other things. So there's a lot of minutiae surrounding deals of that size. Then the three runners up that we had there was Road, Talos and Will. Maybe you Want to run through their numbers if you can remember them off the top of your head?

Yeah. So everybody was roughly around 55k cash collected for those three days. So it was like, I think somebody was 51k, somebody was 58. And then I think Road might have been. Came in at like 62. Something like that.

Savage, like that much gas collected. Yeah.

And I think the important thing to note too, like. Cause I think you hear those numbers right, and you're just like, oh, I need to be that closer. Like, the reason why we went with most sets as well and also kind of like Spirit of Sales Sniper is like the lifeblood of anybody that's closing at a really high level is the fact that they have calls, and those are set really well. So I want to recognize as well the rest of our team, because everybody put in massive effort. I mean, you look at somebody like J.D. who was there just making the dials. Like, I forget how many sets he did, but it was extraordinary who won the most sets. I'm trying to remember now as well. It is a little. Yeah, yeah, exactly. I'm so sorry. If you're listening to this. And I totally forgot. I can't remember if it was JD.

JD1, Spirit of Southampton, along with Luke Van Hollen and Chris Kavanaugh.

Yeah, that's right.

I think it might have been Valeria.

Possibly could have been. Totally could have been.

At the last minute, out and I'll take over. That's cool. Anyway, so those were who won the awards. Huge, huge efforts from expectations from our end, we collected a lot more money. We got significantly more contract value than I was going in expecting. So maybe it was worthwhile to overspend on the budget because it seemed to work. We got a pretty good roi.

We did. And I remember talking to Matt halfway through it, and Matt was. He was missing out so much. He was like, ah, show me around. How is that? Like, you tell, like, you know, like, when, like, all of your friends are going to do something, but you can't. Like, I remember years ago, I had one of my old teams from the special operations community. They all went to Vegas for the week, and I had gotten really, like, sick, like, in the hospital sick, like the day I was supposed to fly. And I remember, like, two days later, like, calling him up. I'd, like, been on an IB and O2 and all that stuff. I was like, how is it? How is it? And like, I heard the same thing in Matt's voice. It's like, how's everybody doing? Like, what was it, like, what's it? I was like, I really, truly feel that that week, for almost everybody that was there, leveled them up one or two spots in their career development in a very short amount of timeframe and for a lot of different reasons. Not only was it the education and training that we put together, but I think the environment as well, with being primarily remote for everybody coming in together, meeting most of these people you've seen on Zoom for sometimes years in person for the first time, and just being able to come through and crush that, like, side by side. There was something special with that.

Like, so that. That was one. Like, what are the other reasons you think people leveled up?

Yeah, I mean, I think it's one thing where it's like, you see it from afar. I think it's another thing when you're inside of a group of people where you have the culture and the standards that we do. I mean, the. The secret sauce of sales temper, in my opinion, you might disagree with me, but is really what we have in terms of our standards and our core values.

Right.

Like, what we truly hold to be like, everybody we hire and fire by these core values and the standards that we hold. But when you come in together and you see somebody else doing a little bit better than you or something a little bit better than you, and you're there in person, and everybody has one or two things there that they do better than everybody else, but also can learn a lot from everybody else.

Yeah. For me, and like, this is something that went through my head was sometimes when you see people on tv, you see, like, you know, Jeremy's level of success, like, you see Elon's level of success, it kind of feels like a fairy tale, right? Yeah. You get into an environment where you now realize that it's like, ah, you see road crushing it, right? You're like, I'm no different to that guy. I can do exactly what he's doing right now. And all of a sudden that fairy tale becomes real. And now everything that you've thought, like, I would like to have that in the future. It sets in stone that that's now possible because, like, he's just a normal guy that it's happened to. He's done the exact same things that I'm doing is just a couple of steps ahead. So now it's no longer a fairy tale, but it is, like, composed in reality. And you get that level of conviction that it's like, okay, I just have to keep doing exactly what I'm doing. And then you generate, like, that level of self belief where it's like, mate, cards are rough. I can do that. Like, they're not.

Unless you're trying to be as big as Road. Road's a pretty big dude in person.

You don't have to start lifting. Yeah.

Good luck. Good luck with that. But in terms of closing at the level, Road that can close at that you can attend. Yeah.

It's just another human being. Right. And once you realize that, it's like, I can do exactly what that guy does. I can model him. I can take the same standards. I can take the same process that got him to this level. I just need to figure that out for me. And I think, like, that level of assurance, when people realize that, it's like, oh, that's actually possible. It's not a fairy tale dream. Makes things happen very quickly.

Yeah. And I think it's an interesting thing you just touched on too. Right. Because, like, I would say everybody kind of like our top level closers, if you will. Like, everybody has a little bit different style, but everybody's looking for the same outcomes from their sales process. And I think that can be a little confusing in the beginning, but I think the magic of. Part of the magic of what we saw there was all of a sudden you had everybody with their own style. And especially those first couple of days, like, we had those role plays with Tallis and Road, and they're two of our top level closers. Right. Like, they're doing massive numbers per month. And then Jeremy would slide into that seat, and then you're like, oh, that's what it looks like 20 years later doing this. But his outcomes that are. He's getting are the same exact things that Taliesin Road are going that we all use. But it's. You start to realize, like, oh, I can't skip steps. I have to know what I'm looking for. And I shouldn't try to model anybody until I actually understand the process of what's going through. Like, I. Or I shouldn't say model anybody. I shouldn't try to change what's working until I get to such a level that I understand the outcome of every single question, every process in the sale.

Yeah. Okay, that makes sense. I guess, like, we don't have much, much time left. What did you take away from the retreat? And then I'll go after you. Is like something that you learned or something that blew your mind? I'm. I'm kind of curious, like, what you got out of it as an individual. Yeah.

I mean, besides a bunch of good night's sleep, having to plan everything up. And once it went, it was there. And I could address anything there, I think more than anything, more than ever. And I was already pretty bullish on us, as you well know.

We had some fun conversations with our pants off after a few years.

I mean, my pants are on. Were yours off?

Oh, yeah, they were.

That's weird. I didn't even notice. No, I think for me, like, it just. It reinforced what I already kind of knew, which is like, we have something that is incredibly unique here that I do not think, like, should we ever all retire, I don't think you can replicate this team again. I think it is a mix of experience, a lot of humility, even regard. Everybody has a lot of fun, but, like, there is a level of humility there as well, and just pure talent that I don't think anybody else can replicate. I think people with series A, series B Series C funding try to do and still miss the mark. I am more bullish than ever on Sales Sniper just taking over the planet.

Yeah. Yeah, I agree with you. For me, it was like, I didn't necessarily take anything major away except for reiteration on what I believed and what's the right word? I'm looking for confirmation, probably more so bias than anything, but definitely some confirmation on bias on what I already thought. And walking in and seeing everybody that had never met each other before almost as if they were family. It. It really ingrained the fact that what we set up from the start and what we tried to achieve was by building a, you know, a family and a culture that supports each other and pushes people to borderline their limits actually is happening. And it's not just like a thought in my head that, like, you know, oh, you know, we got this good culture, but seeing it live and seeing how much care that everyone had for each other really put it into perspective and humbled me to the point where I've never been that humbled before to see how much people actually care about what we've done and believe in what we've done. And I think that was amazing. So it's motivated me. I'm not a very motivated guy, although people tend to think. So I just wake up and do what I got to do. Like, I don't think you need motivation to do that if you enjoy it, but that actually motivated me to make things happen quicker and put even more effort in. So I thought that was amazing.

Yeah, I. I'm looking forward to the next one. Like, it's. It's only up from here.

And on that note, to sort of display that a little bit, your buddy Eric sent us a few files. I think it might be cool to import that into this podcast as, like, a closing statement. So with that being said, will, is there anything that you'd like to add on about this whole experience before we leave it there?

Yes. Next year, my strongest recommendation would be for us to bring in an event coordinator that will do a much better job than I did.

Last night. Spencer was there. I was having a big chat with him. Spencer runs sniper operations. He runs the operations side of our business, which is yet to be released. So a little sneak peek there, and he mentioned he goes, oh, why didn't you guys just ask me to help? I used to be in events. All this time, I was like, thanks, Spencer. Maybe you should have said that a month ago.

I could have made us so much more money by focusing on all the rest of the stuff we have going on instead of getting the logistics in place.

I mean, sometimes you got to touch the stove to know it's hot. You got to break a few eggs to understand how to cook an omelette. And I'm good with going over budget, figuring things out on the fly. It's kind of what we do, and that's how we learn.

So to be fair, as we go further and further, if I'm helping to manage that, then I know what to look for at that stage. Yeah.

Awesome. All right, well, I appreciate you taking the time, Especially with COVID You didn't have to, so thank you for that.

Of course, brother.

And cue the outro. Thanks, guys. Bye. The best thing about working with sales sniper is the ability to grow. Grow as a person, grow as a human being, Grow your skill set, grow.

The level of income that you can.

Actually make, not only for yourself, but.

For your family and the people that you actually care for. Being a part of the eternal sales sniper team. For me, it has developed my sales career because it just shows me, like, where that standard is here. I don't find that standard or that skill level anywhere else.

To me, saless sniper is an opportunity.

For me to see what I'm capable.

Of by simultaneously being surrounded by people that are all trying to do this same objective.

For me, sales sniper is the future.

I think the way sales should be done. Not only a great way to make a living, but also an excellent way to do something fulfilling about the sales career. We're transforming lives. You basically kind of see the whole process from beginning to end. So starting, like, top of the funnel, setting appointments through messenger conversations, actually speaking with people over the phone. And then going into closing, you get to see like, prospects don't just come out of thin air. Like business owners spend their time, money and effort.

For me, I look at it as part personal development, part personal investment, because we're inspiring others to take action on the things that they want to take action. You know, sign in with the program and realize like, how serious this, this type of training was. So it's been literally helped me go from one sale a month to being able to close for one of our big accounts.

When I say salessniper has opened up a lot of opportunities for me, it's not only in the cool projects that I get to work on. I literally have tripled my income in the last year and a bit by working with them. I think that my favorite part about.

The culture is that everybody is there for you.

No one's judging you.

Everybody's there to help each other be better. And as long as you put your hand up and you're vulnerable and you're open and ask for help, then there's always somebody that's going to come in and say, you know, whatever they can.

Do to help you, they'll do.

And the most important thing is the culture behind the company that we work for. They really believe in you. They give you an opportunity. They provide you with the best resources, the best assets that somebody in sales can actually have to succeed.

We would recommend saless sniper because. Because we're going to teach you the right skills. Even if you're a seasonal professional, we're going to teach you how to go.

From here to here. If you're a beginner or newer in sales, we're going to give you the.

Right foundation so you can go all the way to the top. And we're going to place you in.

The right opportunities where you can succeed.

The whole premise is we hire on culture and train people. Once you've got sales training nailed down, it's very easy to get people to a certain level, provided they have the right attitude, mental capacity and ambition to do so. And there is one credential that we take, and if I saw that on a resume, I'd immediately be like, you're in. And that's. I gauge our, our hires on whether or not I would sit down and enjoy a beer with.