Building a Winning Sales Team That Scales Without The Guess Work

Foreign. What is up? What is up? All right, Founders and small business leaders. I know what you're thinking and what you're struggling with. You're struggling with building and recruiting and scaling your sales team. And I've struggled with it throughout my entire career. I've bit many a fingernail over hiring a salesperson because here's what I know. If you hire the wrong salesperson, it sets your company back, often two years, because these are investments that are supposed to generate roi. And if your company's really small, when they hire salespeople, often the founder takes a little bit of a pay cut in order to grow the business and take a step forward. So you can't f up a sale. I mean, when you get a sales guy, you can't F that up. You've got to get the right person at the right time because your business is dependent on you finding the right person. Now, there is disruption happening in this part of the marketplace and it helps you, as a small business leader, as a sales rock star in an organization, understand who you should hire and who you shouldn't. And I can't wait in this episode to demystify the whole process to help you find the right sales recruits. And who better than one of my mentors and closest friends in the world to come right here onto the Todcast. That's coming up after these words. This podcast is brought to you by the Wire Buzz team. Now, if that name sounds familiar, it's because I've spent the past decade growing Wirebuzz into a digital marketing powerhouse designed and to maximize clarity in complex sales processes so we can help accelerate revenue. And we do this in three phases. Phase one, we transform your website to function like your best salesperson and then also incorporate persuasive, on demand sales videos. Now, your entire team is aligned on messaging and they're injecting massive clarity into your prospect's head. So your site looks great, but it also has engaging content that helps your team sell on demand. 24. 7. The next phase. Phase two. We train your sales and marketing teams to sell remotely or in person to expand the impact of your sales team. And the third phase is we develop and run targeted ads to your prospects. Scale those ads to help you achieve more business results. Sign up for the Wirebuzz Company newsletter to learn more about effective and simple ways to improve your company. Messaging, attract more digital attention, and ultimately make more sales. All right, so have you ever struggled with hiring a salesperson? Do they have the right methodologies? The right habits? Do they have the Right desire for perseverance? Are they somebody that's friggin hungry to not only hit their quota but surpass it? Do they have the right mentality? And I think it's really difficult. I am not the guru of this. My guru dumb ends in the sales world where this guru dumb starts. So I'd like to introduce you to one of my closest friends in the entire world, Neil Tracarico. He is the co founder of Sales Magic and he helps small business owners build and scale high performance consultative sales teams. And Neil, welcome to the toddcast.

Todd, man, it's so great to be here. As always to be connected with you brother. Happy to be here.

Now Neil and I, in the interest of full disclosure, we go way back, okay. We've been guiding each other's lives from the beginning. But here's what you should know about Neil. Neil was also just to give you an idea of the kind of rock stardom that he brings to this episode and what he works on. For a long time, Neil was Tony Robbins executive executive leader of business sales. So yo, you know what that means. Dude knows what he's talking about. Neil, when somebody is trying to hire a salesperson, this is a crucial decision in their business. And something tells me that you're in the process of not only disrupting the sales game, but helping business leaders and sales leaders identify the right hire. True or false?

Yes, this is true. The problem that we've isolated Todd is so much around what you've said. A mis hire could be so costly. I mean studies will show on any given study it's tens of thousands of dollars or hundreds of thousands of dollars. And that's just the financial impact. What about the impact of having a prima donna or you know, a bad culture fit in your organization? I mean this is something that organizations and sales leaders unfortunately are sleeping through in terms of how they're going about recruiting that most important asset or talent for their team.

Hey, when you were at Tony Robbins, how many salespeople did you guys, did you have to, you know, manage or how many were on the team?

Yeah, that's a great question. So we had six different teams at Tony Robbins. When I was on the executive sales leadership team, I was responsible for leading four of them. We led them to record breaking results. But I also was fortunate in that Tony really believed in this methodology and had me train all six internal teams as well as using the early version of this methodology, which I'll share with you, that's what we use there to recruit people.

And so You've already been battle tested, right? Like, you've, you know, you're clearly the best in the world in helping sales leaders and business owners take the guesswork out of hiring. Is there a psychological makeup of a salesperson that it could be discovered before hiring, before the investment, that a company could see and look at the psychological makeup and then determine, yes, yes, this dude is a stud, or this person is a red flag. Stay away, bailout. Now, is that, I mean, is that possible? It is.

It's increasingly more possible. And what I'll share with you, just briefly before I get into that, is typically how things are done. So in sales recruitment, typically placement looks something like this. You'll work with an internal recruiter or an outsourced recruiter. You'll look for a placement, a closer, an appointment setter, an account executive, whatever it may be. And that organization or you yourself will post an ad. People will apply for it, they'll give you your resume, and then you'll interview them. But the inherent challenge with this, and there are multiple challenges, is that first and foremost, you're recruiting from a place of need. You have a hole. You need to get this human being on board. So your mindset is already thinking, I need somebody. The second piece is resumes inherently are lies. Over 54% of all resumes contain lies. So you've got a resume which is inaccurate, you've got a need which is driving your decision making. And then you do an interview of a sales professional who is trained and skilled at winning you over. So it's a recipe for being very excited about winning the interview. But then weeks and months later, you find out, oh, my gosh, this person can't sell or they can't connect with a certain subsection of our client base, or worse yet, they're not a fit for our culture. This is the. The inherent challenge and how we've been able to impact that, you know, I'm happy to share with you. That's what you're talking about, the. The biometric approach.

Yeah. Okay, let's get to the biometric approach in just a second. Because you just drop something that a lot of owners for companies and business leaders may not even realize. Hiring out of. Need a salesperson. I need a salesperson. Need to fit that button seat. And that need creates the problem, and it rushes people to the answer. And interviewing somebody and getting a feel for them and interviewing them because they're already trained at being charming creates the next problem. Okay, so what in the world is biometric? Biometric. Did you say feedback.

Biometric recruiting. So basically, it's a phrase we've coined, and it's all about using smart technology and AI. I know AI is a big buzzword, but let's think about really the technology behind it to examine behavior and personality traits that define a successful sales professional. So it's a new scientific approach that really transforms the way we recruit sales talent. And it focuses on objective and quantifiable characteristics. Right. So it's not about the past performances or resume or potential ability or things like that, but it's understanding, resilience, communication style, and innate ability to influence and persuade. Also, you know, understanding at a deep science level. Traits like empathy, active listening, problem solving abilities, all are vital in modern skills. Right. So we achieve this by using a series of tools which, you know, I'm happy to go through with you.

Yeah, I love.

So it starts with turned off.

Neil, give me two seconds. I just want to get caught up. Okay. Because this is groundbreaking in the sales game. And so biometric recruiting includes smart tech and AI to help identify and find the best salespeople, which takes the guesswork out of the entire process and helps you, of all the people that are applying, identify who are the ones that are already built for the position. Okay. Am I kind of on track?

Yes, you know, you're absolutely on track. And then you've got. It's not just the science. You've got to have the confluence of the science and the human element. So I'm going to share with you and your listeners how you could go about doing it. Whether you do it yourself or you do it with us. How we have turned the recruiting process on its nose is as follows. So same sort of process, you'll have, you know, an ad, a funnel, if you will, a recruiting funnel. Whether you set it up yourself or we set it up for you, you've got a recruiting funnel. The idea is to attract the best possible candidates. They apply like they normally would. But there's three important steps now which are different than the traditional method I shared with you. Number one is they're going to take their Sales Strengths Identifier, if you can believe it. You know a lot about the Sales Strengths Identifier. It's been around for 10 years now. We talked about in 2012, machine learning, which is early AI. So in its most simplest definition, the Sales Strengths Identifier is a scientific instrument that'll provide a report of 54 different attributes inherent in a person that enables them to connect quickly and effectively with another human being in the Sales environment. So their first step is they take that assessment, right? And if they meet the minimum criteria for that role that we've isolated for that specific and unique role, if they meet that, they go on to step two. If they don't meet it, they receive a professional rejection letter. If they do meet that criteria, then we go to step two, which is their video submission. So we have them take a video submission or provide a video submission of them selling us on why they're the best next person in this role. And so what we're looking for is their, their tonality, their approach, their connection. But also, Todd, all the stuff you taught me and taught the teams at Tony Robbins about setting up their environment. Because most if not all these roles now are virtual sales roles. So we're going to review the tape to see how well they do with that. So if they meet the threshold, the scientific standard, they hit a home run on the tape. Selling themselves now they go to the audition. So, Todd, instead of an interview where again, our mindset is I really need to find someone, our audition is to really disqualify them. So we're taking their weaknesses that we see in their assessment because there's no perfect assessment and we're matching that to the scenario. So we put them into role plays of what they're really actually be doing in the role, but with a focus on their weaknesses. Now this is the best place to do that because how much better is it to find out now whether or not they have what it takes to succeed in this role? So by doing that and even rejecting them and seeing how they handle their own rejection, whether they thank you and walk away or they handle that rejection and sell you on themselves. And now we know now and this is also great for the candidate. They don't want to come into an environment where weeks and months later they're not going to succeed. So everyone wins in this scenario because we found out in advance. And again, the same is true in the best of the best sales teams, dance organizations, whatever it is you try out for your role. And since sales is a performance based role after all, now we're just bringing common sense, the best science and approach to this profession.

Okay, I get chills hearing this because as a business owner, my gaps are now filled, My blind spots are now I'm giving clarity to them and in doing so, I can identify who, who has the right mentality. I can get them out of their comfort zone and have them do a video submission so then we can review it. We also get to see how willing they are to get out of their comfort zone in that video submission. And then in the third phase, which is the role play where you get to focus on their weaknesses and reject them, you get to also see how they're going to respond to rejection. And one of the stats that I recently saw, Neil, and I know you're a nerd for this is 44% of salespeople quit after the first follow up. Okay. And nobody replies. And 94% of salespeople will quit after the fourth follow up to somebody. And 80% of sales requires five follow ups, which means in the mind of a salesperson that is a shit ton of rejection. And they need to persevere and keep pushing forward. So if you're going to find somebody that's going to close those deals, they have to be mentally prepared to fight through the rejection with a peaceful, loving heart to get up and serve even when somebody isn't responding. And so you've built this tool that allows this is. I'm so, I'm fired up for this, dude.

Oh, thanks, man. Yeah. And you know, you really hit the nail on the head about those increasing stats around follow up. So even in the audition process, they will have to, before we get to the actual sales call audition is they have to pursue. Right. So they have to demonstrate their ability to get in front of the ideal prospect that we're role playing for them. Because you're, you're absolutely right. So we need to find out, you know, do they follow directions, will they take the, do the three steps, will they pursue the opportunity or are they just sitting back in hopes that it comes to them? That behavior which you've just described, it's so much better to find out about up front whether they have what it takes to get after it like that.

So I think rejecting the salesperson's a really instrumental part in understanding how they handle game time scenarios on a day to day basis. And I don't know if I've heard of people using in their methodology rejection, but it's brilliant because I need a salesperson on my team that's going to get up every day and fight through rejection in order to get to. Yes. How do people, how do companies respond when they get to that third part? And you know that rejection is going to be part of it. It's, it feels counterintuitive, but it's frigging brilliant.

Yes. You know, that's a great question. So at first the CEO or the business leader or the sales leader, they feel uncomfortable about it, especially if they have somebody that they really, really like or feel confident about. But the truth of the matter is, if this human being isn't going to handle or overcome their own rejection for themselves, which is the most important thing to them, how in the world are they going to stand up and handle the rejection for your product or service? So inevitably or initially, the CEO is a little bit uncomfortable about that last part because they're afraid of losing somebody who might otherwise have done well in the interview. But again, doing well in a sales call and getting head nods and yeses. But then ultimately, when it's time to take the action of enrollment with the investment and they're rejected, I mean, that's where most sales are lost. So as hard as it is, let's find out now.

So how. Give me an update on how your clients are responding with this type of biometric recruiting and smart tech and AI, and then helping to find the right salespeople and then role playing and rejecting. Rejecting them. That has to be a. You have to be getting case studies of people that are finding winners and hiring them and putting them in the place for success. What kind of, what kind of success are you already seeing?

That's great. It's a great question, and there's two parts to the answer. So initially, the CEOs were hesitant because we would tell them, hey, this may take two or three weeks longer than you're used to. Right. So a lot of times with the clients that we're working with, they have somebody that they like for recruitment. They've been doing it internally or they've been doing outside placements. They're looking at two to three weeks. When we say four to six weeks, they're initially like, but again, you're looking for that needle to drop out of the haystack more so than you are to quickly get somebody that you perceive as capable. So initially it was taking four to six weeks. But our case studies, our track record is incredible. I mean, we literally guarantee our placements for 90 days to date. I can share with you a hundred percent of our replacements thus far in the last 15 months with this methodology has stuck. So we're looking at increasing our guarantee significantly. I mean, that speaks volumes because those sales reps are staying and producing. And now with the advent of sales magic, where we have a pipeline of supply, where sales pros are going to get out in front of this process, we've been able to compress that, that time placement. I mean, somewhere between three and five weeks. Again, we don't want to over promise because all would agree after the fact that it was worth the extra time that they perceived it would take to get the superstar that they have.

So cool. Like I remember when this was a seed of an idea. Then I remember when you started deploying it inside of the Tony Robbins organization for hiring. Then I've seen you polish and battle test it for success. And now to see you build AI into it makes total sense because AI should be part of the sales recruiting process and smart tech and biometric recruiting, brilliant combination.

And what I'm most pleased to share about Todd is this transcends just recruiting. Something that I realized as we did these multiple placements is we'd have hundreds of candidates, but we'd only place one or two pros. So our commitment with Sales Magic is to help all the other people who didn't get placed. So by coming to our platform, applying for free, going through the process, applying, taking your sales strengths identifier, uploading your video, whether or not you want to be placed for a job or ultimately get placed for a job, you are going to get real feedback on your strengths and weaknesses. How to overcome the strengths and weaknesses in your sales strengths identifier. We use AI to break down the video. So we're going to give you a full report on the strengths and weaknesses of your video. And this is really, really important to me as I, you know, as I transcend maybe into the second half of my career. The purpose is to impact sales professionals. So while only one or two are going to get the job, we at Sales Magic are still impacting the hundreds of others that didn't to grow their careers and opportunities. And on the other side, for the businesses that come onto the platform, giving them access to this pool of the best possible talent that is trained and grown in this way. So really excited about what we're doing.

You should be, bro. It inspires me tremendously. He's Neil Tricarico and he helps small business owners build in scale, high performance, consultative sales teams. Neil, thank you for coming right here to the Todcast. Great catching up with you. And if you want more information on how to use Neil's tool to your advantage, just go to mysalestrengths.com yo, that was a powerful episode. And from what we just learned, it should be obvious how you can now implement these lessons in your life to get to the next level. Now, before you bounce, I just have three quick thoughts. First, thank you for taking me on your incredible life journey. Second, if you receive some value from me and you want to pay it forward. It would mean the world to me if you left an honest rating and review at Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you listen. I'd be incredibly grateful. And lastly if you share this episode, whether it be a screenshot or a photo from where you're listening, anything via Instagram stories or LinkedIn, Facebook or any of the social media sites, just tag me and the guest. I'll repost your content and I'll reply back in the comments because I love mixing it up. In fact I'd love to share your shout outs in my feed too. Not only are these shout outs really good for you and for me but they also help us book more amazing guests because they'll be able to see the reach that you're helping to cultivate. This is a way for you to help contribute to the show. So thank you again for listening and I look forward to earning a regular spot inside that ear of yours. Let's grow.