Has COVID Changed the Sales Industry Forever?
Matt Ryder and James discuss how COVID reshaped sales across industries. They cover business pivots, workforce challenges, and why some companies adapted faster than others during the pandemic.
All right, guys, what's up? Matt and James here. Another episode of Coffee is for closers. For those of you who've never been here before, this is a podcast about all things sales business. And we decide to talk about.
Yeah.
And rants. I hope you like rants because rants are. Rants are good. We're just getting used to these microphones.
Well, I just. All the microphone stands are in my house.
Why?
Because I forgot them. Yeah, that was a cool story to that. No, I just forgot them. Yeah, yeah, yeah. What we're gonna be talking about today. So I actually just got over Covid. So we're going to be talking about COVID business sales. Like, what kind of effect it's had on different industries that we've seen, what people are currently doing and like, what sales guys, I guess, are seeing from it, different objections you get and all kind of things. You know, I'm sure you guys haven't had enough of it, but we're going to be talking about COVID Please don't cough.
If you listen to this podcast, you will make your first million within three years. I'm going to repeat that. You will make a million dollars within three years of the first episode you listen to. We don't want pikers. We're not here to save the manatees. We're here to make podcasts. You really want this? You listen and review. Put that coffee down.
Last I heard, like, two weeks ago, you were completely immune and you were never going to catch it.
I was pretty. I was not gonna lie. I was pretty. I was pretty confident.
I was somehow immune.
No. So. Because I've been to a bunch of different places, so I've been to Disneyland. Didn't get it. Wasn't careful.
You're in West Taiwan for a while.
Yeah. Yeah. And then.
And then we came back here, and then everyone was getting it here and then. Didn't get it. And then I went back over to Scottsdale. Everyone and everyone had it while I was over there just before. And I was like, hanging out with everybody. Didn't get it. And then I came home, got off my wife.
There you go.
And she had it for a few days. And I was like, I can't get it.
Next minute.
Next minute I didn't feel very well.
Yeah, yeah. It was.
The funniest thing is you're just so confident, like, ah, you know what? I've caught it. I'm immune. Even if I do catch it, it's not going to affect me. Next minute, you're crying like a Baby.
Get away, get away. Yeah, I'm glad. I'm glad I've had it now, you know. But no, it, like it didn't. It like it's in everyone's personal experiences may vary. It was unpleasant, but it wasn't as bad as the flu. For me personally, it was sort of a cross between a cold and the flu. The only thing I had was like the shakes with like the fevers and stuff like that at night, which was unpleasant. So I had a few very, very unpleasant nights. But now I've got like, my lungs are not working that well. But that'll just probably take a couple weeks. It's getting better and better each day. But I feel like I'm on. I feel like I am at altitude.
Yeah.
Okay, you should take. I just bought a packet of those nasal strips. They're meant to open up the airflow.
I've been taking ventilin.
Okay.
But yeah, so like, I think we're lucky to have a business that runs fairly well, you know, without, you know, being too linchpin or anyone individual. Well, especially not me. Um, you know, there are other people where if they went down, it'd be much more of a significant issue. But yeah, like, you know, from. We have like 100 people, maybe 110 people or something like that. And like, we haven't noticed too much of having any particular size of workforce down at any one time. Like, we've always had a couple people that have got it, but it hasn't ever been like a significant part of the workforce.
Yeah.
One of the worries that we had when we were bringing people together for the seventh level challenge.
Same as the retreat.
Yeah. It was everyone getting. So we had to. That was a bit of a calculated risk and it sort of panned out. We're lucky. We have a pretty young population. If I had like a group of 60 year olds, I probably wouldn't do that.
I absolutely not be miserable. To be honest, I think like probably 3 to 5% of our workforce at any given stage over the last say 12 months has had Covid.
Yeah.
Hasn't really impacted because there's been so few. Because everyone obviously works remote, they don't spread it like they would in an office, I. E. Like being here. So it hasn't been much of an impact. But like from your end, whilst that seven days or whatever, it was six, five. How do you feel? Like, did you get any work done? We just.
Yeah, no, I got. I got work done. I took like probably a day and a half completely off.
Yeah.
Because I was like, I just don't feel very well and I'd rather rest and not worry about it. My brain is still not working 100%, I think because of the oxygen. My oxygen sets got down to like 93, 93%. Whereas usually it should stand around anywhere from 98 to 100.
You know, James can was trying to convince me to buy a, a hyperbaric chamber for an hair can. Get them for like 10 grand. You just go sit and have a nap for 20 minutes with pure oxygen.
Yeah. Right.
This would be awesome for performance. I'm like, it would be. I don't know if I want to go and buy a hyperbaric chamber, you know.
Jesus.
But I like your dedication to human performance.
Yeah, we used to have one of those at the unit that I was in at an altitude chamber and also. But yeah, so it's been interesting. But to be perfectly honest, like for us and I think for a lot of the coaching and consulting industry, I mean Covid's been a massive boom. You know, like it's, it's sort of in moonshot. Like fitness business coaches. I mean, my God. Oh, they would have crushed it. Like they crushed it. Like, remember we were selling for a fitness business coach and their business like 10x because of COVID Gym business coaches.
On the other hand, if they didn't transition.
Yeah, we watched a couple of that happen too. That was super interesting watching like, like, so I was a full time sales guy when Covid first hit off.
Yep. Right.
Selling to trades people. Which like not a great thing to be selling when Covid is happening because like there was so much like, what are we allowed to do? What aren't we allowed to do?
Talk about this.
Like people were getting like, you know, all jobs were stopping. Now it's totally different. Like now that industry is actually like they're so busy because of COVID but there are supply chain issues. So it brings in sort of other, other issues. But like it was really interesting to watch because like I was doing the sales for one business but we were doing the sales for a few other ones at the same time. And watching the pivots was very, very interesting. Like we were, we were. Remember we were selling for a fitness business coach that exploded.
Yep.
We were selling for a business coach that did predominantly physios, massage therapists that imploded.
Yeah, right.
Like that was. That tanked. I think that they managed to recover it, but that, that took a huge hit.
Yeah, they lost like they had I think like three quarters of their client Base wiped out because they're all physical in person.
Yeah.
They couldn't trade, they couldn't pay the bills. So they paused or canceled their recurrence.
Yeah, exactly. There was that business coaches that did predominantly gyms. They got really badly hurt and I know a few. And really watching them try to pivot to online was interesting because they didn't really have the skill set to do so to be able to help people get leads for online training. And so it was sort of like they were had the same level of skill as what their students were. So none of those really lasted that long, you know, which kind of like sort of shut down a big chunk of that industry. And then it was like online marketing companies boomed.
Yep.
Like that. So yeah, there were like, you know, lots of. It was interesting watching the different decision making processes and there was like, there was the businesses that were like, we're just going to hold fast and keep doing what we're doing. And so, and so like when I was doing the sales, that was sort of what was happening. I was like, we need to make some pivots. You have to adapt. Like it's now a different market that no one's ever heard of. Like people are not thinking opportunity, they're thinking fear. So we need to have an offer that reflects the time.
Yeah.
And I remember first hearing about it when it first come out of China and we had many conversations on the phone like happening here. Like, what do you do? How's this going to affect us? And we, we essentially just doubled down and go, okay, well let's look for clients that service online people rather than in person because they're the ones that are going to get leads. Let's focus on bringing them in. Let's ramp up salesforce to those particular guys and work within their marketing teams. And that's what really got us working with the marketing teams of businesses. Knowing that there's going to be such turbulence through the next period and at that stage not knowing how long it's going to last.
I'll tell you what was really interesting during that time from a business perspective. The people who decided to go balls to the walls was how much market share they grabbed in such a short period of time. And like where, where one of those people, like we just went, let's go harden the paint. Let's spend more money on ads, like on ads on content. You know, I mean like we don't really do ads, but we do content so we can get market share. Like, let's just, let's just do more. And then like there was a huge group of people and it was like there was two camps. There was the group of people that reverted and they just, they, they went boom. Let's just protect the clientele that we have. Let's not spend any money on ads, let's not spend any money on branding. Let's just protect what we have. And then there was the businesses that went all in and decided to go, let's just go for it. And they literally. And this was in every industry. I was seeing this in builders, I was seeing this in gyms, I was seeing this in brick and mortar businesses, everything. Because I was selling a few different offers at the time, one main one, but a few different ones. And really there were just two camps of business owners.
Survival.
Thrive. Exactly. And so everyone who went all in, not everyone obviously, but I saw everyone.
Did that, had skill set and they.
Gained some market share and that mark, and they're still killing it. And a lot of those businesses that kind of backed off, they shut down.
Yeah.
Or they just never quite recovered. It's really difficult if you're going like 6, $700,000 a month and you drop down to a hundred, that's hard to rebuild.
Yeah. Well, I mean, a lot of those people there, they've got employers that they have to get rid of because they can't afford them. Like, there's so many structural changes and a lot of them try to hold on probably for too long thinking that it's going to be better because then the governments were announcing specific things. It's like, we'll get back out at. On these dates. And those dates never came. It's like, we'll get back out on these dates. And then we had that phase, probably seven or eight months where everyone was free back into the public. There was no lockdowns. And then a second wave come and the guys that were in that survive mode, that hoarded cash, didn't spend anything, started putting money into the business during that phase where they all come out because it looked like greener pastures. Then a second wave came in and bankrupted them.
Yeah.
And I tell you who it really, really over, which is sort of, I'm not really mad about, is the people who ran their businesses in ways. So the people who like, went all contractor instead of employee.
Right.
Like, or they had all casuals.
Right.
Because like, so you look at like restaurants, for example, or even gyms. You look at gyms as perfect, right?
Yeah.
Like people who did the right thing and they actually employed. So for those of you in the US the difference in like a 1099 and a W2. Because in Australia there's lots of rules around like how much percentage of money they make. But a lot of gym owners like kind of skirt the rules and just pay people as contractors on a per session basis. But you didn't get any competition compensation for contractors or casuals. You only got compensation for part time and full time employees.
Government incentives.
Yeah, government incentives. Right. So like the gym that I used to own or the one like not the big conglomerate but like the one that was individual, that gym was set up to where everyone was an employee. Everyone.
Yeah. Right.
Even like, even part time, whatever. And so like they would have got full rent assistance.
Yep. Right.
And they would have got all the, all the, all of their wages.
Yeah, yeah, they. Right.
Plus they would have got the rebates and all the bass and they wouldn't have to pay any tax. Right. So we got free rent. So basically. And they were running sessions outside.
Yeah, yeah.
Right. So even though their income would have gone down by probably half, I would say.
Right, right.
They would have had no expenses.
Yeah.
They would have able to maintain profit because of government.
Yeah. During that time they probably made more money.
Yeah.
And it's funny because the ones that had all the contractors, all of a sudden now the government was handing out money to people that lost work. Right. Because they couldn't, they weren't employees. They were getting government incentives like the Centerlink and stuff.
Therefore they couldn't get it back to work.
Yeah, they wouldn't go back to work because they were making more money on the government incentives than they would have went in working their casual shifts.
Yeah.
So they couldn't get anyone to work with for them without hiring full time. And at that stage you'd. The risk to hire full time to them was like, if that shuts down again, like they're done.
Yeah.
And you didn't get the government assistance on new hires.
Exactly. Because it's a new hire.
Yeah.
So super interesting. So I was kind of glad about that. I was like, well it serves you right for running a dodgy business in like, in my opinion. Yeah, that really would have affected like. So I hope like from a business perspective that brings out like a bit of a change in certain industries where people are probably treated a little bit better and probably given the contracts which they deserve, which gives the leave and the entitlements and stuff like that.
You know what I think was like a massive like flow and effect from that is the amount of People that saw like, oh, employment is not going to work, you know, that's not safe as to what it once was. So a lot of, a lot of those people that, you know, were potentially let off wanting to take things into their own hands, starting their own side hustles, starting their own courses, doing a lot of the biz op which blew up, the coaching and consulting biz op start industries because there was that scarcity. It's like, well, you know, you never know what's going to happen is on.
Shopify, lots of, lots of industries have sort of come out of that. I mean these things were around beforehand but like they have like taken off to a different degree. People selling done for you, Amazon stores, done for you, Shopify stores. Like we sell a couple of those and some of the offers are fantastic. Like you know, buying cash flowing stores. Like we saw one that's a cash flowing store where you essentially you buy it for a percentage of EBITDA.
Right.
So you might buy it for two, you buy it for 2.4 times EBITDA. You know, they, they buy it for less than that. But what they do is they buy it and then they, they rebuild it. Yeah, they get a cash flowing. You get pnls tax, the whole bucks and dice. And we're selling those for anywhere between 70 to about $1 million.
Yeah. Depending on how much cash flow.
Exactly.
Right.
And then you might pull different investors in and then from there they can flip it again, you know, so they get it, they buy it for 500 and then all of a sudden they build it even more. Sell it, sell it again. You know, so it's, it's super interesting, like a lot of that stuff's happening. But yeah, and then from like, from a sales guy perspective, I think like you know, having a look at some of the more recession proof industries like being more diversified, like insurance sales seems to have just skyrocketed. Like maybe I'm ignorant, maybe it's always been massive and I just haven't known about it. But it seems to have, it seems to have blown up to where like the IMO's. The like. So like the way that it works is like you have like your, your agency, you have your insurance provider and then what they do is they don't like having single agents, they want to have an imo, which is an Internet marketing organization below them, which then gets the percentage and it all kind of goes from there. Yeah, so what they do is they'll provide.
