The Untold Secrets to Recruiting Your First Sales Rep | Matt Ryder

Welcome to the MoreBusiness.com podcast. My name is Raj Khera, I'm your host and I'm joined today by Matt Ryder. He's the CEO of Seventh Level Group based out of Sydney, Australia that they provide sales training and sales enablement. Matt, welcome to the podcast.

Thanks man. Good to be here. Yeah.

The topic that we're going to talk about today is hiring your first sales rep. It's something that many companies consider they do. Sometimes they misstep and have to get rid of that rep. So what we're going to talk about is what you can do to make sure that you got your sales rep hired the right way and that you make them successful because that makes everybody more money. Let's start by talking about the timing of hiring your first salesperson. How should somebody think through what the timing seems, when the timing seems right?

Yeah, I think obviously it depends on the type of business. If you're venture backed or if you're bootstrap and everything or. But I think like the way that I look at it is you have to be able to look that person in the eye and say this is a good move for you and your family. That's always the way that I've looked, that's always the way that I've gone about it. And whenever I've come in and either fixed a sales team, replaced a sales team staff as a sales team for a company or even taken over the sales and more of like an agency capacity, the thing that I've always done is a really in depth assessment as to the not only the efficacy of the product but also the like the ecosystem which a salesperson is going to come into. A salesperson is taking a risk in the business which is why they're usually the highest rewarded of all the people in within the business. Especially if it's like a commission only role. If it's a salary plus commission, bring them in. You know what I mean? That's really like a risk tolerance level from yourself. However, a lot of businesses want to have a low sort of base compensation or no base compensation and then all like commission based. And so you have to be able to really look at the ecosystem from a very unemotional standpoint and go, is there enough coming in? Is there a combination of lead sources? Is there enough things to sell enough people who want to buy it where right now that person can support a family and if it's a no, then it's okay, what type of salesperson am I going to get and what are the Compensation methods that I'm going to put in place. Understanding the risk of coming on because everybody wants an A player, but not many people have a business that would attract an A player.

Yeah. Matt, I really like what you said about making sure the ecosystem is ready because I've seen people hire a sales rep, but they're internally just not ready and they don't even know how to get that sales rep to do what they hired them to do. And so as a result, they end up with these false starts and unfortunately have to part ways a little bit sooner than they initially thought they would.

Yeah. And I think one, one of the sort of pitfalls is to think that you're going to hire someone who's going to make the system for you. And that's just. It's not a reasonable assumption. You know what I mean? It's okay. Like, I've had plenty of conversations with our sales training side of the company. At least on average 4 to 5,000 new clients per month. And we have an ecosystem of. We have a mailing list of well over a million sales reps that's active and people want us just to recruit all the time. And the answer is always no, because I don't want to get into that game. But also it's a lot of due diligence to do it properly. Yeah. I mean, and then they don't want to pay me to do the due diligence. But like asking someone to come in and create a sales ecosystem for you is asking for someone with a pretty awesome talent or a lot of experience to where they can do that. And that's going to come at a pretty significant price. So you have to make the call whether or not you want to pay the price for someone to come in who really knows what they're doing and to be able to develop that system, to be very transparent. Hey, this is a, almost like a business development kind of role where you're going to come in and establish the, like the tracks and establish the pathways for clients to come in and then test and make all the emails and make all the processes and all that kind of stuff and then map it out in CRM. That's a very particular skill set. And usually the best sales reps are not going to have that skill set just in terms of their selling efficacy. Because people who are really good at process are generally not as skilled. And people who are really skilled are generally not as good as process because they don't have to be. If you can find people who are both and for Me, I was one of those salespeople who was both. But I was a very highly paid sales rep. I was a sales rep just, just by myself doing a sales rep, I was making seven figures a year. And so when I came in, I would develop my own ecosystem and do all that stuff. But I would demand a very high comp plan and usually I wouldn't tell anyone what I was doing. I'd just make it myself. And then when I left, it left with me, you know.

Okay, let's talk about like how you figure out who that person should be. Sometimes there's a thought process where it should be a senior level person that can help you build out a team. And others say no, that's too, you don't want to hire that right away. So when a company thinks, and let's say we're talking to small technology based companies, could be a SaaS company, it could be a managed service provider. What, what, who, what kind of person should be that first sales hire?

I think one of the biggest mistakes that all businesses make is becoming too top heavy too quick. A pyramid has a strong base for a reason. And a lot of businesses are upside down pyramids, like all C suite. And no, it's all thinkers, no doers, right? So I think what happens when you do that is that you put people in a position where they ultimately have to fail. Because if you hire a senior person first, like they're not going to do the doing, they're going to, they're going to build and manage. That's what their skill set is with their job is they've already done the doing, they're over it, they're sick of it, they don't want to do that anymore. And so asking them to build it and then do it, it's just gonna, it's, that's not gonna be the conversation when you bring them on. The conversation is hey, we're looking for a senior guy to build everything out and do all this kind of stuff. And the guy's gonna go sweet. And they're gonna go, oh yeah. And you've also gotta do your own outbound, your own prospecting, your own closing. Now this is crap. And so it just ends up being a bad relationship straight away. I, I've, I've made that mistake myself. Like building out like high level sort of management first you just end up with an extraordinarily high operating expense. And then from there you have a whole lot of thinkers thinking. And unless you have an extremely clear direction, directive, vision, mission values and everything's really dialed in from like a. Like an executive level. The chances of that not going catastrophically wrong are pretty low. And then you're just gonna have to fire everyone anyway.

Yeah. So what's the right. What's the right level? Because if you bring on somebody that's too junior, that might also not be the right move for you too. So what's a good level for the first hire?

Yeah, I think you want someone that's going to want to be able to do the job, but also grow at the company. So what you're looking for is the person who has done something one level up at a much larger company or at the same level of a much larger, more established company. You're like, obviously, you've probably heard of the Peter Principle, right? Promote people to a state of incompetence. And one of the things that I believe in my business is I'm very transparent. I have a few friends of mine that work for me, and he came to me and he said, how do I become a CEO of this business? And I said, chances are you don't. And he was like, what do you mean, skill? I was firm for 20 years, and I said, man, you're learning on the job, and you've done a phenomenal job. If I keep you in there, you're just gonna. It's just become like an echo chamber of the same thoughts. So you would need to, like, as much as it would pain me, quit, go away for two years, become the VP of office of a much larger company, then come back as the COO of a smaller company. Like that makes sense. That's a genuine progression. Right. So if you get someone who is, like, looking to either move one level up or move one level across from the position they currently have at a. At a bigger, more established company, I think that's probably the right way to do it. So figure out what the job description is. Because no hire is going to be successful without a really clear job description. And we spent a lot of time going over our job descriptions, especially for salespeople. And it's an evolving, shifting matrix that kind of happens over time, depending on the size and scope of the company, that kind of stuff. But I really think that you should go, let's have a look at the job description, the actual doing that is going to be required. And then get someone who's done that at a bigger company and just bring them straight across, or get someone who's like a junior at a much bigger company and then bring them up to the next Level So they get a little bit out of responsibility but then they get to pull from all the stuff and then you get the benefit of sort of probably utilizing a lot of the systems that person has been using day to day freshly. Like they've been doing it recently. So that's how I would look at it. Like we're like when we're looking for kind of a high level sales manager at the moment. And that's the route that I've taken. And so my final candidates are someone who is from a software company and a point of sale company that are much larger in terms of similar in terms of lead volume. Cause we generate about 35,000 leads a month. So similar in terms of leave volume but much larger in terms of reps. Because we're looking to build out a larger team. And so I need someone who's already done that. The days of having someone learn on the job browser over.

Yeah, that's hard for a small company, period I think to do because it's a very expensive way to bring someone on board. Let's talk about how you compensate somebody then. So what are the key elements of a compensation plan?

When you structure something, I think from a. I think it's important to understand that you will always get it wrong. So that's one thing that I learned and it made me feel very good for someone who knew more than me to tell me, hey, don't worry, everybody screws this up. Like my mentor is, it was the CEO of Smirnoff and he was the CMO of Allied DAC and Yamaha. And like a, like a very high level executive when I'm putting together comp plans like I do it with him because he just is a smarter older guy than me. He's always told me he's mate like you. No, no company gets this right and they're always changing. So. And I think that being transparent about that is important. Hey, like I tell my team, hey, this is the bonus structure for the year. It may be awesome, it may be terrible, but this is what we think reasonably will happen at the moment and it'll probably change and evolve over time because like it has to. Right. And then the explanation as well, especially when you're bringing like a new rep, is that there is a, there's a sort of, I don't know, like a thought process that if you come into a business early then you're taking a risk so your reward should be higher. Which is why like brand new companies can steal good reps because they can have like Crazy compensation packages. Like we lost a rep to a company that's paying 30% commissions. Right. 30% commissions is lunacy. Right. For any established business. Like basically the only people who can do that are scams and like people who aren't fulfilling or they have some sort of business model that just doesn't require. It's just. Or they're not doing any. It's completely self generated leads from the salesperson's perspective. Or there's gotta be a catch. Right. Because 30% on commissions is insane. Like we don't have a 30% net operating profit. You know, I mean you're paying your sales reps more than you are tax. That's just a odd conundrum. But like it's a brand new company then that's how they entice people. But they're going to have the conversation of that can't stick around because as you build out your fulfillment or you build out your opex, or you build out your finance team or you build out executives or whatever, as your business gets bigger and more established and it becomes a better business, that kind of money is no longer available because it'll just bankrupt or stifle the company to where it can't grow. Right. Having that understanding, if you are bringing people on under a higher comp plan, having that conversation earlier, hey, let's ride the wave. You're going to get paid a lot more money. But this isn't sustainable like forever. So don't think it is. And that's a really important thing. But the way that I do it is first of all, I guess figure out like how you're going to employ them. Are you going to do W2 or 1099? Right. That's an important distinction and it's going to change what you can get that person to do. Yeah, like quotas are harder to enforce on a 1099, whereas they're easier to enforce for W2. But if it's a W2, you're going to be expected to do certain things. Right. Like we have, like the way that we make our company attractive is by having a really good healthcare plan. Like that involves the family. So we have, we have all the, we have all the things. Yeah.

All the benefits that you need to have.

Yeah, exactly. So we have all that which is unusual for our space and then from there we provide lots of training. Right. So that's an important thing as well. Now we're a sales training company. So I think it is important. I think it goes a long way for reps. When they know that there's an established.

Training regime, I think that's a really key point. I just want to hone in on that because I've seen a lot of companies make these hires and the salesperson comes in and there's the phone and there's your T shirt. Go get them. Unfortunately, that's a recipe for disaster.

Yeah, like you have to provide sales and persuasion training. Like product knowledge is not sales training. The amount of companies that we'll go into and be like, so how do you train your reps? Well, we do this and this. No, besides product knowledge and company history, what do you do? And they'll just sit there with their mouths open. I just go, this is a skill based job. It'd be like having a basketball team and then having no plan, having no shooting coach. It's like, how do you expect you guys to stay good, to be the best they can be if you're not providing the coach And I'm sorry, Mr. Business Owner, you're not the guy, you're not the guy, you're not the girl to provide that because you're not good enough and you may have had a good result. Right. But they can't sell it like you can. Right. It just doesn't exist. The, the, the way that a founder can sell is not the way that a sales guy can sell. They're just, they're different authorities. And so it doesn't work like that. So you have to have a system in place or have some sort of given them a budget or something where they can go out and buy some sales training or get better or provide something for them. I think that's really important. And then from there, once you've decided that, then you can go, is it going to be base plus commission or like commission only? I do commission only for our like closing like our sales guys. And they're on anywhere. They're on a staggered tiered system on 11, 12 or 13% of the cash value of the sale. Now that if they do it over five payments, they get paid for every payment, if that makes sense. But if it's a, they get, it's minus fees. That's one thing that I think a lot of companies don't do, which I think they should, is that they should take the fees out, especially if someone's doing financing or something like that. Right. There's an external financer or if there's like credit card processing fees of 3%. Some smaller companies are getting hit with quite high processing fees because they're Like a high risk. So if you're getting hit with 4% processing fee and you're not minusing that and you're paying commissions out on money you never received, then it's a difficult thing. And that then incentivizes the behaviors that you want, which is wires or something like that. You know what I mean? So I try and sit down and create a comp plan that has a pathway forward. You can have an OTE of at least $250,000 a year. If they can't make 250, you'll never hold anyone. And then from there, try and create something that promotes the behaviors that you want, right? If you want a lot of. If you want a low cost of acquisition, then what you want is referrals, upsells, and cross sells, right? And what you want to do is create a comp plan that incentivizes those. If they get 12% on average, give them 17% on a referral. And then from there, like your bonuses, right? Like you're. Let's say you do a quarterly bonus, which is what we do. They only hit it about half the time, but the numbers are very clear, right? They're not easy to hit. They require a, like a team effort and also like an individual effort. I'll just move out the way real quick. So that's. Yeah, so we do. Yeah, so that's how we do it. So we do a tiered system based on, like, production for the month, so they can go up the tiers. And then from there we do a quarterly bonus, which is based on numbers, essentially. And then we do higher commissions for behaviors that we want.

Now, doing a commission only and getting an OTE of 250, that's a lot of selling. And I've heard a lot of comp plans actually have some sort of base or draw component built into it. Is that something you include too, or.

Is it strictly common? Right. Because again, the ticket price isn't usually very high. You know what I mean? So it's like, really that. That's a game of building a. Building a book of business. So in mine, in. In our business, it's not really like that. We don't really have a book of business. Does that make sense? Because it's a lot of, like, business to consumer. We do have a B2B side, but it's not something that we've massively focused on. So a lot of our stuff has been around the sort of more business to consumer, but we have put draws in place, right? So if we're like recruiting someone who is a bit older with a family, then what I'll do is for the first like 90 days or 4 months, I'll put in like a 7k a month draw. Right. And so that allows the person to establish themselves. And I think to pretend that you're going to have the exact same comp plan for everyone is not the truth. Have a look at an MBA team. That's how sales works, right? Special people get treated specially. It's just the way it is.

Yeah. So you mentioned something interesting which was always have some sort of training program in place and if you're hiring your first rep and you're the business owner, the founder, chances are you won't be able to do that training for that person. You might be able to come up with standard operating procedures on what they're supposed to do, product knowledge, things like that. But in terms of that ongoing coaching, how to improve the conversations, how to get faster, buy in, things like that requires some outside training. So could you talk to that for a minute about how a small business who doesn't have in an in house training program could actually get their reps ramped up, trained to really succeed?

Yeah, for sure. There's no lack of sales training out there. Right. Like we provide it. But I'll keep this podcast relatively agnostic in terms of like we provide sales training at seventh level. I just think, I think it's important that there is a pathway for the person to learn things about. Objection. Handling and things about like tonality. Right. Just for an example, there are some really, you, you really control a conversation with how you say things. And, and so if I go, raj, why is that important to you now though? Okay. And if, but, but, but if I go, okay, but Raj, but why is that important to you now though? If I ask those questions, you will answer those exactly how I want you to. The first one you'll answer in terms of time frame. Why is that important to you now though? Right? You're always going to do that because I've cued you to answer it in terms of time frame. So if that would benefit me, I would answer, I would ask it that way. Now if I go, why, like why is that important to you now though? Right? You're going to enter in terms of the. That so the tangible that we were just speaking of. And so that's how good sales reps always make it sound easy. That's why Steph Curry, when he shoots a three, it looks effortless for him. He's just better, better than you are. Like that's the key, right? He's trained and practicing better. And so when you hear really good salespeople sell, it's always, oh, that person's just a lay down sales. No, they're just doing things that you don't understand because communication is an art form. And so if you understand the art and the science components of it, then you can control a conversation effortlessly. And it looks like the person's in, the other person's in control but they are doing exactly as they are being cued to do. And like the key things that people need to train on is first of all having a set structure. Everyone should have a script. It's, it is, I, I will dare say incorrect to say otherwise. I've never, I, I'm sure there are, but I have not met a seven figure earning sales rep who does not use a script. And I know a lot more than most scripts are essential to create consistency across process. So when you're looking at optimizing anything in business, the key is eliminating variables. And so what you can't do is have a sales team where everyone says different things. It will make it impossible to figure out what's going right and what's going wrong. It's just, just from the, just on the face of it, it's impossible to figure it out. Then if you had a sales team of 30 people, you'd have to individually problem solve everyone. And that would go back to the marketing and the lead source because they're saying different things along the way. None of the data that you have, right, none of it makes any sense on a group level because if one guy just picks up the phone and screams like a Wookiee and then there's three of those guys and three guys who are amazing and three guys who scream at the guys and three guys who are just really way too laid back and passive and afraid to ask questions and all that kind of stuff. Then you're not going to get any sort of level of accuracy across that assessment. And so then you have to break it down person by person, which means that you can't make any sweeping changes to marketing. You can't make any process changes. You're just stuck in a paralysis analysis because you're trying to figure out what's working really well over here and not here and here and here and here. So you have to standardize the way that you do things across the board. That's where the military works. I was in the military for a long time. I was in special operations. That's why you're taught everyone does the same thing. The reason is because then you can problem solve really simply and easily. And there's a level of assumption. You have to be able to make accurate assumptions when you're trying to fix things. I know the guys are doing this now. Obviously you'd want to check it to make sure. But you're like, okay, cool, I've done a spot check. Everyone's doing that thing. That thing is causing this outcome. Why let's. Do we make a slight tweak to that? Do we tweak that? And that's how you get a really good sales process. And same with marketing, Right. You know what I mean? If everybody saw a different sales copy because you had some sort of weird thing where everyone could see different sales copy, you'd never know how to change your sales copy. You never know how to fix your market.

So the script, very critical part of everything. Yeah, but I guess the. There is going to be. There are going to be some nuances with the way the person delivers it. Or do you try to standardize the way they deliver the script as well? A standardized pauses standardize all that.

So the scripts are not written grammatically. Scripts are written, I guess phonetically might be the right way to say if there's a word for it, but as spoken as spoken. So for me, I even put in stutters. Now I have a very advanced sales team. So our sales scripts are quite advanced. It would look like gibberish to most people. So that's not how we write them for people who are like, not being trained every single day, every single week for years. But I'll put in, so why is that important to you now? And. And then it will be like dot, which like indicates a pause and is. And then what we'll do is like italics means speak faster. Spacing out the letters means speak slower. Bold means emphasize. Right. The ellipses means pause. And then from there, we have a tonal cue at the end, right? Which is like skeptical. So if you want to have a curious tone, you go up at the end of a question, like, why is that? That's a normal question tone. But if you want to sound more challenging or skeptical, why is that? And you go down at the end, right. So that's gonna. It's gonna invoke a different emotion. And sales is all about how to get the person to feel what you want them to feel. It's just acting. And so that's why all people sound scripted. There's a good actor And a bad actor. Right. Like George Clooney doesn't sound scripted. So if you sound scripted, you're just not very good at it. And that's just the reality of people just don't like that. They just don't want to accept it. People are just better than you at this stuff. And. And so, like I always say, the formula, like Steph Curry, like, I love basketball. Steph Curry has a 93% free throw shooting average for his career. I think he's in year 15 of his career, 93%. Right. And the formula is there for everyone to do. It's not a secret. At the end of every practice. Right. He's been doing this for 15 years. He shoots a hundred free throws. He has to make every single one or he starts again from scratch. Right. And then the last 10, none of them are allowed to hit the rim. And if they do, he starts back at one. And he's been doing that for 15 years. And that sucks. It really does. That would be an extraordinarily annoying and hellacious process. And he's done it for 15 years. And that's why he is the greatest free throw shooter ever, right?

Yeah.

Yeah.

There's something to be said for repetition. Practice. You can't get around it, right?

Exactly. It's just automatic. That's why scripting and having a good. Having a really good program in place that's very deliberate and understands that selling is just a series of skill sets. No one's born with it. And if you think they are, they're not. Right. Some people are naturally better communicators. But those people who are like that are generally not as good as salespeople at the top categories because they're like, they can make two to $300,000 a year and not have to try that hard. Like, they don't have to get really good because, like, they're just naturally a good, like, communicator and quite personable. But those people are usually capped, right? You've heard that, like, the talent but doesn't have the work. That's most people. And the. The most arrogant salespeople are the ones that make $250,000 a year. Always. They think they're killing it, and they're always the best and all that kind of stuff. And then you come in and tell them that you make five times what they do. And usually it's, oh, what are you selling? It's just better. It's, no, I'm just better than you. It's just the way it is. You know what I mean? Like they're like, Elon Musk is a far better business operator than I am. It's just how it is.

Yeah, like let's, let's.

I'm fine.

Let's go, let's go a little bit deeper into what you're talking about, which is how do you attain specific goals for, for the rep? What, how do you set, how do you set up the goals and how do you evaluate performance?

Yeah. So our key indicator is roi. Again, that's how much money have I put into you versus how much I get back. And for us it's because we have a quite a heavy ad spend. We're a B2C online. We don't have a widget, we don't have a surfboard that we're selling. We haven't done R and D for software. So our product is an online based sort of training program. Generally speaking, most of our cost of goods goes into advertising. So if I'm paying $200 per booked call, let's just say that. And I book you out 100 booked calls, I've put $20,000 into you. If you return me a hundred thousand, you have a 5 times ROI. If you can't produce me that, I don't want you. My top guy last month was a.

15, 9, 15.9x ROI. Wow.

He's my top dude. Right. Average was about 7. So that's what I'm looking for. Anyone who below a 3 gets put on performance management. So that's like my main metric. We used to really do like cash collection and contract values and this and this. But I found that it wasn't really like promoting the activities and the culture that I wanted. Now we are, I'm going to preface this by saying we are still figuring some of this stuff out because as a business grows and changes, like what you need from a team is just different. And so like the answer, if we were to have an interview in a year's time, the answer will probably be different. The reason being is because as our business grows, last month we had 35,000 leads. That's a lot of people. It's a lot of human beings. Right.

And these are all from your advertising. Your ad spend generated that much? Yeah, A lot of money you're spending on ads too.

We get a lot of organic, we get hundreds of thousands of people on our website every month. We get so like we get a lot of traffic. The, the face of the company is Jeremy Minor. Like he has a huge social profile now. We built that very intentionally we built the whole thing over the last three years. So it's all kind of a machine that works together. But we're spending hundreds and hundreds of thousands of dollars a month on advertising. I think we probably spend six to seven million dollars a year on. Right across all different platforms. But again, like when I was just concentrating on cash and contract value, what the guys were. Were doing, you could see the behaviors. And the behaviors were like, like double booking themselves and doing this and doing this to increase that metric because that's what got them like the, the monthly. We do every month we do a top producer and they get a watch, they get a Breitling. Right. So like they wanted it. So they were adjusting. And then I was like this, that's not actually that good for us because they ended up like becoming very expensive because the metric was how much cash can you produce? But they were costing us a lot of money to get that. So then I shifted it to roi and what that did is it meant that they had to think twice about like where they were like, okay, can I get some things from over here and over here? And so just changing that metric, it changed the way the sales team was acting and which is really interesting. And then for next year, my plan is to bring in a couple different comp plans that, that kind of incentivize different behaviors and allow people to choose from a different couple styles of being reps. Like more. More inbound only and then more like comprehensive rep that does their own outbound, their own this, their own this, their own this. And then like they, because they're going to be generating a lot of stuff themselves, they get a higher comp plan because they're going to be a much cheaper rep for me. You know what I mean? But they have to do a lot more. Right. Playing around with different things. And really the idea for a comp planner for setting targets for reps is what behaviors do you want? And again it's going to shift and change because the behaviors that I wanted a year ago are not the behaviors that I necessarily want now.

Yeah.

And. But that's a learning curve and I don't think that will ever change. But we're in a position where we're, we have a lot of leads and that's it. It's a, it's not actually that easy of. It sounds like a great problem to have. But it's. And it is, but it's actually a very complicated problem because you gotta qualify the leads.

Right. Because not everybody's gonna be Qualified.

The issue is like turning down ads to get less leads actually ends up screwing up demand curves and stuff like that. So like you it's. And the way that our business works is like the money that we spend now doesn't really make us money for two to three months. And so that's our sales cycle. Right. And a lot of our, A lot of about 10% of our leads are buyer leads. They've bought something. They bought a product. We have a couple of products like $27 97. Stuff like that goes through different sales systems and scripts and all that kind of stuff. And figuring out how to create an effective and cost effective and like efficient mechanism to get those people in to speak to the right people. Because we only want people into our higher ticket services who are actually supposed to be there. You know what I mean? Like people who are. We don't do any biz op stuff we don't do. Hey, learn how to be a sales rep. No, you have to be like an established salesperson or there's just no point doing this. And so figuring all that out when you have such a high volume is actually really difficult because the tendency of a marketing team is just to want to spend more money and get more leads. And then the sales team can get very complacent and lazy and they can have an ecosystem that just requires that and that can create issues because like things can go down at any minute.

Let's talk about the tools that you need to make all of this work. Probably the most basic thing would be a CRM to get started. What are some of the other tools that you find help people become more successful?

I think daughter is king. Right. And there are so many different ways to do it. But I think like end of day reporting is extremely important. End of day, end of week, end of month and quarterly reports are really important. And you can use an EOD form in Google forms and then have it linked to a sheet. Like it doesn't have to be complicated, but we use Qlik data and then that just like we use airtable and click Data is like what a lot of our stuff comes from. And then we use Close as our CRM. Close is a great sales CRM. It's not a customer relations manager. That's not what it is. It's a sales platform, right? Yeah, it's really simple. It integrates with everything, you know what I mean? And I think that having your CRM built in the correct way and then having the ability to get reporting is really important. I like to over engineer reporting and then simplify it because the more like the more, the more data you want. And so if you over engineer it from the beginning, then you can always bring stuff back because it's like the architecture is there. For example, if I'm have an outbound team or a cold calling team or whatever, then like the pickup rate can be affected. So like you have to know how many dials and how many pickup. Right. Cause there's a lot of things you can do to make that better. But then a lot of people don't track the pickup to conversation rate. So, so if a hundred people pick up and 50 people have a genuine conversation, that's 50 people who didn't. I need to know why. So I need to know. Not a lot of people just track like the pickup rate to the booking rate, whatever it is. Right. But that's not actually that helpful because there's a whole step in between. Because if somebody picks up the phone and then screams like a wookie, they're going to have a lot of people tell them to go away. If someone picks up the phone and says things the right way, with the right tonality, they're going to have a very high percentage of people want to speak to them. That's a skill based metric that I can affect. Right. And so, and then from there, from the conversations, then the bookings. So the pickup rate is a process thing that we can fix. Right? The conversation rate is a skill thing that we can fix. And then what I want to do is that conversation rate to the booking rate again is a skill based thing. And. But there are different skills, like the opener. Most people who I come in who do like outbound or cold calling, the only thing they really need to focus on for the first 90 days is just nailing their opener. Because like from a numbers point of view, that's the top of the funnel, right? If you speak to a hundred people and you get 20 of them to have a genuine conversation and then you have a sales process that gets through to two to make a sale, it's okay, cool. If we did nothing but get you to speak to 50, then you'd make five. So now that's one thing that we can change, that just brings more people in. And if every other thing stays the same, then we know you'll have a much better outcome. And so that's where like sales training and having data is a lethal combination. Because if you have the data and you have someone who knows how to read it and can provide accurate sales training, then it's like the, one of the most frustrating things for me is like, hey, I want to get better at sales. Okay, you show me your data. I don't have any, then go away. I don't have anything to say to you.

But you can't improve what you're not measuring.

Exactly. And so it's like walking into a gym and saying, I want to get fit or I want to lose weight, it's okay, go to the toilet, go for a five minute walk on a treadmill, like, you're done, you are technically a bit fitter, you go to the toilet, you technically lost a bit of weight, you're done. Congratulations. You know what I mean? We need a like, specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, timely goal. And so it's, hey, let's have a look at the data and let's find the low hanging fruit. Like in our sales training, the only sessions that I do are sales maximization sessions. So what we do is I break down sales process and data and teach people how to problem solve their own data, right? So it's, let's have a look at the CRM, let's figure out all the buckets, let's have a look at the lead sources, let's have a look, let's establish the flowcharts, the communication, the process, the skills, right? And then from there let's have a look at the numbers and see what number do we change that has the highest effect? And it's always going to be like, and again. And then you got to counterbalance that with what's easy. So what's easy to fix versus what's tough to fix? A lot of people spend a lot of time learning how to handle objections. And I think that's a phenomenal thing to learn how to do. If you have to. If you have to speak to 157 people to get seven of them to actually give you an objection, you might as well focus on the first part and getting more people to the end point because that's gonna be your lowest hanging fruit to getting a better outcome. Then once you start getting more sales through because you've systemized the process and you've gone about it in a way that actually makes sense, then now all of a sudden you can start working on these more nuanced skill sets without the burden of having to produce more and more because you're in a more comfortable spot. Because starving sales reps don't make any money. They're stressed. Stressed people don't make deals because stressed people like Just sound way too thirsty and it's just not a conducive environment for like good sales.

Matt, what other tips do you have as we close out this segment for people who are looking to hire their first sales rep? We've gone over lots of information and you've shared some incredibly valuable tips. I think this is a, like a, a playbook that people can follow. What are some of the things that we haven't covered that people should know before they make that first hire?

I think just have a, I think maybe have someone who's not. You come through and have a look at stuff. You don't have to hire them, but a business friend, whatever, right? Someone who has a little bit of a clue, right? That guy who can tell you the truth, right? The guy who you go to make sure your baby's not ugly, you know what I mean? And. And go, hey man, is this in a good spot? And then go, would you want one of your friends or someone who's close to you to go into a business set up the exact same way? So just have that unemotional feedback and go, are we actually ready? Figure out. And then from there come up with, do your numbers and figure out what's the most amount you can pay somebody without it being like a huge burden to where you end up harboring a ton of resentment against the person. So don't make the best case scenario, end up being the worst case scenario. And then from there just have a very clear job description. What are the roles, responsibilities, the KPIs, the quotas, the expectations, who do you report to? Like how does that all work? And then from there, make sure that the people that you hire have a very clear expectation and fire fast. That's. You know what I mean?

I don't want to tell.

Right, yeah, yeah. Between good CEOs or good business owners and bad business owners is how fast they can fire. Because people who have a need to be liked, generally speaking, I don't think do very well in business because they can't have those conversations. And I was guilty of it, I think in the past. I don't think I would be accused of being guilty of it these days. But if it's not working out, it's not working out. It's not personal. It is what it is. Make sure that you go through the appropriate, hey, performance manage, which means you have to know what you're looking at, know what you're talking about. And then from there, if it's not working, find something new.

The only thing I would add to that list is that don't worry that you may no longer be the highest paid person in the company that your salesperson actually might be. I think that's the thing that a lot of founders get stuck on because they're like, whoa, wait a minute, I'm making 300 and here's a salesperson, they're killing it, they're making 400. But why are they making 400? And they try to cap them, they try to do something and that just creates a lot of ill will. If your salesperson is making a ton of money, it's great because that means you're making a ton of money too.

Absolutely. Jeremy, who's my business partner at seventh, he was the top guy at a quite a large company. He was a top guy by Country Mile. He was making about three, three and a half million dollars a year and more than the CEO everyone. And they started to put caps on him. And then they, what they did is they, they reduced the area which he was about to sell. So he cracked it, went to the competitor and bankrupted the company because he was so good. Like he was the best salespeople. The person by a Country Mile out of about 300 salespeople. So what he did is he went to the competitor and then just started calling and calling and he literally bankrupted a nine figure company in about a year because they tried to constrict him and because he's that good at sales. So it's. He wasn't doing it maliciously. He was just like, all right, how do you sell these guys now? You know what I mean? So it's just. And then they offered him a much higher comp plan and he was able to do whatever he wanted. So he just went through and sold everyone and then. And good salespeople are like very unique and difficult to find. And there are a lot more businesses than there are good salespeople. And you have to understand that if you have someone who's truly good at what they do and they're a very professional sales rep, they have the leverage, not you. They can go anywhere and be successful. So that doesn't mean that you should like fear them or not discipline them, but it means that you need to understand that if you want that person to be successful, they have to have a pathway to make what they want to earn or you're going to get someone in early who's quite good and you're going to have to give up some equity.

That's another thing to do too. Yeah, but you gotta make sure that everybody's aligned. Cause if you're not aligned, it's no good for anybody.

Exactly.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Matt, how can people reach you if they wanted to connect?

I'm not super good at connecting.

But how can people reach your company? How can they find out more about.

Seventh level group they can go to? We have seven level hq.com is our sales training and then more of our consultancy is called Sales Sniper. So I was a sniper in the military. So sales sniper.net you can find me. I think it's like real Matt Ryder on Instagram. I'm just checking now. Yep.

It is good to know your handle. Okay.

I'm not like, I'm a person who likes to kind of stick behind the scenes. I don't really care. I'll help you when I can, Matt.

Thank you very much. Very good insights. I think there's loads of information people can take away from this podcast. Thanks for joining me today.

No, it was fun, man. I appreciate it.