Jonathan Whistman is a seasoned entrepreneur and CEO of PerceptionPredict.ai and WhoHire.com. With a best-selling book, 'The Sales Boss,' highlighting his expertise, Jonathan is known for constructing efficient teams tailored to unique business requirements. Jonathan possesses the ability to see opportunities before others, empowering his team to achieve optimal performance.
Jonathan Whistman is a seasoned entrepreneur and CEO of PerceptionPredict.ai and WhoHire.com. With a best-selling book, 'The Sales Boss,' highlighting his expertise, Jonathan is known for constructing efficient teams tailored to unique business requirements. Jonathan possesses the ability to see opportunities before others, empowering his team to achieve optimal performance.
All right, everyone. Welcome to the real estate game changer show. I'm your host Mike McKay based in the Jacksonville, Florida market. And each and every week we do this show with people who are changing the game of real estate all over the country. If anyone is in the Jacksonville market or getting into a real estate wise, feel free to reach out to us. If you need help on anything, We can point you in the right direction. Also we still are very actively buying in Jacksonville, especially mobile homes on land. So feel free to reach out to us if you have any properties we can purchase off of you. This week on the show, we have the sales boss, Jonathan Porter Wissman. Jonathan, welcome to the show.
Jonathan:Hey, Mike, nice to be chatting with you. Appreciate it.
Mike:Absolutely. So for the people who don't know you, I know we connected because I reached out to you because your book, the sales boss, which is about how to basically be a sales boss or the most effective sales manager has been passed a lot in real estate masterminds. But for the people who don't know you, can you maybe give a little bit of background on what you do and what a sales boss is?
Jonathan:Yeah. So I work with organizations to help them build high performing teams and really systemize the way they go to market. So my book isn't really about sales training, but who is that person that's leading the sales effort? So sometimes that's the entrepreneur. That's building a, maybe a smaller team, or it might be the individual serving as the sales leader in the organization. But I define a sales boss as a sales leader operating at the top 1%. So this is the best of the best. And the reason I chose the title sales boss is because one is. If you ask somebody how they're doing and they say I'm managing, it just doesn't sound that exciting. You'd rather somebody say I'm doing it like a boss. That style and flair. And, but also I use the acronym boss B O S for a shorthand for how you should think about running your organization and really diagnosing challenges that you might have with an individual on your sales team. So it's behavior. And we could dive into that if you want to, but behavior, outlook skills and stature. And normally when somebody says, how do I get better as a salesperson? they start thinking about their team, they usually start with skills. What's the skill I need to teach. But I always recommend the first lever that you look at is behavior and the behavior is what are you doing? It has nothing to do with equality, but there are certain foundational behaviors that go into any sales process. And it might be different for every organization, but certainly in buying real estate, there's a certain At a motion that you have to be going through, right? And so if somebody's performance is off, I just look at behavior. Is it up or down? I'm not one of those people that say, Hey, work yourself to death. More behavior, but certainly a change or a fluctuation in behavior is the place to start looking. And then. If the behavior is right, then I go to Outlook and Outlook is all that stuff that's going on between the years. So how do you feel about yourself? How are you feeling about your industry? How are you feeling about yourself in comparison, to the competition that all of that? Head trash is what Sandler would call it, or we carry it around with us and That at times can affect us for weeks. Maybe we lose a deal that we worked hard on and are you know We just carry that around or maybe we're having a conflict with somebody that's close to us We're in a relationship and that's eating at us. So behavior outlook and then the third thing is skill So maybe I haven't improved my skill to the level that I need to be competitive at this moment in time and so behavior outlook skill. And then the last thing is stature. So stature is, we've all been in a situation where somebody walks into the room and we instantly know this person belongs there. I should listen to them. There's somebody with credibility. And that just comes with time and positioning. As an example, you running this podcast, you may have not done that on day one of being a real estate investor, but now it gives you stature. Because people listen to you every day, they get to know you. And so we think about that similarly when it comes to building out our sales team.
Mike:Yeah, and how can a sales boss, I'll use your terminology, how can a sales boss help a salesperson build that stature? Because the first few I have an idea, but the stature part, I'm like, how do I help them have that in our business? It might be like the presence on the phone or the presence when they walk into an appointment to possibly purchase a property.
Jonathan:Yeah. Stature comes from a few things and I don't think you can rush it. There's the old saying about imposter syndrome. When you make that shift is when you quit thinking about how to do your job and you're just naturally in the moment and you're in the flow state. That's when it comes. So really working on early on that outlook and the skill because when somebody has confidence, Or when they have competence, rather they all, then confidence follows that. So if I can get somebody really competent, confidence will follow and with confidence, then comes that stature. And we can also start helping our salespeople think of themselves as the expert, and think and really divorcing themselves from that mindset that sales is a sleazy vocation. And it's something that you're doing to somebody and then also putting them in situations where outside of work where they can be seen as the expert. So are there opportunities for them to speak? Are there opportunities for them to write? How do you raise their stature within the community? Maybe there's nonprofit organizations that they can serve on the board as your job is to start stretching their ability. So they see themselves. It's almost like when somebody is, a parent for the first time versus, after they've been at it a while they see themselves in that role. Does that make sense?
Mike:It does. Yeah, absolutely. And you mentioned something in your book as well. That things are only good or bad by comparison. Can you share with the audience, like what you meant by that and how that would apply in a sales environment?
Jonathan:Yeah. So I share that in my book in a section about the five truths about human behavior. And the very first one is that things are only good or bad by comparison. What I mean is that when we, as a human react to something or have a belief about something. It's always in comparison to something else that we've experienced before. So I remember like when I go to rent a car as a young person, I loved renting a car because my car, my personal one was a piece of junk. It was my point of comparison. And I remember the first time I walked into a 3000 square foot home and I thought it was a mansion because I grew up poor and I just, I wasn't exposed to those things. And now I can walk in a 10, 000 square foot home and I'm like, boy, you guys are tight in this space here. We change over time and it's really important when we're thinking about the people that work for us in our organization, what is their point of comparison? ONe is how do I hire somebody whose comparison for great is as close to what I need it to be in order to have them successful in my organization. But it's also then if I can get, how are they defining their standard of great? Then I can help mold them over time by exposing them to things that lead them to have a different standard of what great is. So when people think about what would a great retirement look like, what would a great life look like what is great wealth? What is great health. All of those definitions come from The things that we've experienced already. That's why people say your net your network is your net worth. Because we tend to be exposed to things, our point of comparison changes, and all of a sudden, if you hang out around really healthy people, you feel bad driving through and having McDonald's, right? If you're if all of your friends drink all of the time. That's your point of comparison. So that's what I mean. Things are good or bad by comparison. I remember I grew up in a, what I would call a religious cult. And so this was something that I was exposed to in a really powerful way that made an imprint on me. I was, one of those where you go knock on home. So that's probably the best sales training in hindsight, but I spent thousands of hours knocking on people's homes. And I went into this one community and I walked up there was a mobile home trailer park. This particular one was on the really low end of that look dilapidated. The front porch was falling. There was cardboard in the window. I knocked on the door, felt like cardboard, like I was gonna, knock the door over and I remember thinking in my mind, even though I had grown up poor and was still poor at that point in time, that man was sarcastic. I was like this is the American dream. And It's the gal comes to the door and I say to her, Hey, I'm Jonathan, how's your day going? And I think I know how her day is going. She all of a sudden chokes up and starts tearing up. And I already think I know what the story is, life sucks. But what she says to me is I'm so grateful. That I finally have this home to call my own and I'm safe and she points to the Dirt lot outside of her trailer and says my kids finally have a place to play Things are good or bad by comparison and what was she comparing her life to right? She was escaping domestic violence and I got to know her over time but that made such an impact on me that how we think people are seeing the world is probably Not accurate. It's if you go to a carnival and they have the funhouse mirrors and one makes you look really tall and skinny and the other makes you look short and fat and you know the truth is probably somewhere in the middle of those two extremes. And that's really important. If you're going to be a sales boss is how do I see the world through Mike's eyes, not through my eyes, not through my experience, not through my fears. But their point of comparison and the closer I can get to really understanding that the more power I have to be able to influence where that person's going to go as a member of my team
Mike:Because like then you understand what drives them. Is that why? Or if you're able to look at it kind of the world through their eyes, you know what pulls their levers
Jonathan:Yeah. Why do people do anything right?
Mike:Yeah.
Jonathan:It's a personal reason but if I can get what their point of comparison is like their definition of great think about people that show up in your business and we have a definition of what hard working is and hustle and grind and all of the entrepreneurial burdens that we carry, but the person that's coming to work for us, where did they get their definition of what hard work is? They might not have any reference to what it is, or imagine you need somebody like maybe you're not, buying real estate and you're running a janitorial company and you're hiring employees and you need somebody that has a standard of clean. And maybe their point of comparison, they grew up in a family that's, a hoarding house. What is their point of comparison? What is great for them? And there's a lot of research around that people feel like they've made it when they make about 15 to 20 percent more than the people that they hang out with. So think about where people come from and you may be promoting that the earnings are unlimited coming to work for your sales organization, but where's their comfort point. Cause I guarantee you that once they hit that comfort point, they're going to stop producing for you. Stop working as hard unless you change what their standard of grade is.
Mike:Yeah. I remember you mentioned that in the book as well. You're like when planning compensation, it was something along the lines of Make sure that the salesperson can never be comfortable with just the base. It was like, they need to exceed the target. That was it. It was something like they need to exceed the targets in order to be comfortable.
Jonathan:Yeah. I never want somebody working on my team. That's starving. And I have a real problem with organizations who only pay on commission. Because I think they're making an investment in you. You're making an investment in them. They're also taking on an unknown and a risk. I know I'm saying that universally, there are some situations where it completely makes sense to be a hundred percent commission. I'm just not addressing that on this show. They should certainly not be comfortable and feeling like they've achieved their dream on their base salary or even on underperforming what you need from them. So they should have to attain the goal you need from them in order to run a successful organization in order for them to have their dreams met.
Mike:Yeah, that's a good point.
Jonathan:And what's interesting when you, we talk about good or bad by comparison how many people do you think actually when they're interviewing someone asked them, Hey, what's great money to you? What's the amount of money that you'd really feel like you've made it and i've asked that question For people when i'm interviewing them and I am shocked at how low that is for a lot of people And i'm sure there's a group of people I would hang out with if I told them what I thought was a lot Of money, they'd be like why did you set your standards so low? It's good or bad by comparison. I'm not having a comment about wealth or money or how people should view money I'm, just saying we should look at that with a clear lens if somebody thinks Making 80 K a year is great money and you're paying him a 000 base salary. They're not going to work all that hard for you because they're already really close to what they think is great money. And when people say what would be a lot of money, it's never the money they actually need to live. It's Oh, I have this to live and I have this extra that I can invest or I can, take vacations or whatever their short term thinking is.
Mike:Sure. Yeah, makes sense. And you want to talk a little bit about your hiring process specifically for hiring salespeople. I know a lot of people on this show. They're mostly real estate people and they're hiring either appointment centers, right? Or even, in home salespeople to go actually out to a house and, make an offer on a property.
Jonathan:So I talk about this a lot in my book and chapters that you can follow on how to get there, but really it starts with where and how are we defining that the job ad, right? We should be describing in that job ad, the person that we want, not the job we're asking them to do, because what you want is you want somebody to hear that and to. To immediately light on fire and go, that's me, they're talking to me, this is a job for me. And we should also be really specific about the expectations we have of them about what they're going to earn, which is different than many jobs. A lot of jobs will say you can earn unlimited income or you can earn up to 200, 000 or you can, right? It's this mushy thing and it's unbelievable to the applicant. They don't believe the company. So what you need to be able to say in your job ad is you are expected to earn 175, 000 a year. And if you don't, you won't work for our company the second year. Because we know based on the leads we provide and our proven process that's what acceptable performance is. That sounds completely different, right? And so then once I have people, there's a couple of components to that. hard to speak to globally because everyone's process is going to be a little different and where they're getting candidates. But mindset that I have when I'm going through the interview process is that I'm going to have to write a half a million dollar check. The minute I decide I'm going to hire this person because that's going to change my mindset, especially in the real estate world, because I've heard people say this is I don't pay them much and they're on commission. And so if they don't really work out, it's no skin off my back. That grinds your organization down, you're churning through people. And I guarantee you, it does affect your mindset and it affects the mindset of the other people on the team. So you want to be thinking of it as a half a million dollar check. Second, in my interview process, I'm going to make sure that, for instance, if I'm doing a screening phone call, I hear people doing screening phone calls and it's we're pitching them about why they want to do this as a career or that why they should come to work for us. It's like we're selling them and we need to have that first screening interview with putting them in the situation that they're trying to warm us up. BEcause you either naturally have that ability or you don't. I'm not saying you can't train somebody to, improve their sales, but I'd like to say, if you needed a dog to do a job, you needed him to bark and growl and, scare off the home invaders and there were no dogs available and you went out and hired a cat. Like maybe you could teach that cat to growl, but it's never going to be that convincing, right? So that's what I mean by yes, we can train people to get better, but they should have that natural drive DNA that this is the role that they want to be in. So when you're hiring a salesperson, that initial screening call, I'm not giving them a lot of feedback, and I'm also getting very specific about the everything that they claim to have done, right? Because when I get three levels deep, all of a sudden I realize they were only tangentially related to this, deal that they said they were closing or like you can tell when somebody has been to battle and they understand, what's happening in the sales process. So I want to get that early. And so that's my screening interview, but I also believe nobody works harder when they want the job than they do when they have the job. So I want to move as much of the training process as possible pre hire. So I always have what I call a performance interview and I pay them for the performance interview. I give them a script, I show them a video, I give them audio of other team members doing it. I maybe give them a list of industry vocabulary, but I don't give them the definitions and I say, look, we're gonna come in for the next interview and we're going to role play. That interview it's a sorry. I called that a pressure interview. I actually meant to call that a performance interview It's the performance interview. They're gonna come in and perform and sometimes I do that as a group I'll bring four people in at the same time and we'll all perform together because it's really interesting to watch people interact Inside of that setting. In fact, if you're hiring for sales, you're way better off to do a group interview than one on one
Mike:So you'll have four potential reps come in and then you, and you're interviewing all
Jonathan:yeah, sometimes six, or 10, it doesn't matter to me. But what I'm trying to see is that interaction between them, like how do they handle themselves in that sort of situation. And they're not used to it either. So you'll see who's naturally comfortable there, who can control their nerves and the reason for doing a performance interview is a little tough to teach people until they see it. So when I work with companies, I'll show them how to do it. And they'll see me do one. I am not actually interested in how well they do in that performance interview in terms of their sales process and how closely did they follow it. What I'm really interested in learning is how well could they retain information and sound natural because I'm going to continue to train them. I don't even care if they get it wrong, right? It's the level of effort and the mindset and can they stay in the moment even when they're clearly out of their element. SO they might get started in doing their role play and I'll let them get halfway through and I'll say, okay, thanks. I've seen enough and I'll get ready to move on. And the person that I really want is the person that says so how did I did? Why didn't you let me in? Cause that's what you want out of them or I may say something like, Hey Mike, I'm going to stop you there. A little bit of feedback for you. I liked this. There were a couple of challenges. Do you want to hear those or not? And most people say, sure tell me, cause you're in an interview. What else are you going to say? So I'm not giving them credit for saying yes, but I'll say, Hey, when you did this, you sounded X. I'm curious, do you want to go again? You'd be surprised. A lot of people say, no, thanks for the feedback, but I'll keep that in mind. Other people will say, sure, I'm happy to, but then they'll jump in and they'll do the exact same thing. And what I'm looking for is how well can they take feedback and instantly put it into practice in a way that sounds natural.
Mike:So you want the person who's obviously going to say yes, they're willing to give it another shot and then they quickly improve based on your feedback. They're not someone who you're going to have to coach four or five, six times.
Jonathan:Yeah just to get any sort of improvement.
Mike:that was like actually an issue I ran into years ago with one of the first sales reps I hired. I had to coach him four or five, six times to get something. And it actually, I just let him go. Cause I was like, I can't do this anymore.
Jonathan:Yeah. And so I want to get all that out of the way. But what I'm also doing is I'm having people then show up on day one. Already a week ahead in training. Because they've practiced and they've learned so When you deconstruct your hiring process, it's about finding ways you can, move that Day one success or whatever day that normally is if day 90 is usually success. How do I move that to day 14 or how do I move that to day seven? When people taste victory, that's when the right, then they go Oh, great. I made a good decision to come to work for this organization. So we want to get them to that point of winning really fast. The example I was mentioned to you before we got on this podcast with Tommy Mello and a one garage that, they're hiring garage tour technicians and they spend, a couple of days, when they first hire them, just identifying, this is a hinge and this is an opener, so when they've decided that they're going to hire somebody, they'll put the parts now in a bucket and they'll send them home with them. And they'll say, when you show up on day one, the first 15 minutes, when you're here, we're going to take a test. And based on the score that you get in that test is the percentage of commission that you're going to be eligible for once you come out of training. Makes sense. Good incentive. If I can earn 4 percent or 5 percent or 6 percent or seven or whatever the percentage is just based on day one, how hard am I going to study between the time you told me I had the job and the day I show up?
Mike:Yeah, real hard.
Jonathan:Real hard. And if I didn't, does that tell you as the owner a lot about who you just hired?
Mike:Yeah, that might be the shortest employment ever.
Jonathan:Yeah. If they didn't do anything, I might let them go right then. Because we're setting this idea of a performance culture and that we're always going to get better. So when you talk about the hiring process, it's about how do I do that? And then once I have them hired, my, theory is that everyone sells on day one. Because think about it, if you have somebody that's physically fit, they're going to the gym every day or that, maybe they're a runner and they run every day. The last thing you want to do is take them out of running for two weeks. You got to keep that pattern going and I want to see how do they handle being in a situation where they're not the expert because they're not going to be an expert for a while. And I want them to be really comfortable doing that. So I'm going to give them some sort of activity plus, This is a problem with owners. They put so much on, Oh, you gotta be on the phone and you gotta be perfect. Cause I don't want you to embarrass me. And I paid for this lead. We need a mindset of abundance that there are plenty of prospects. It does not matter if you practice on 200 of them.
Mike:Yeah. Are you giving them a, I want to call it like a lower level sales task, but I'll compare it to the home buying business. It can cost 1500 bucks to get an in person appointment. So are you on day one starting them as go set some appointments or are you just saying, go take some 1, 500 appointments,
Jonathan:depends on what I've hired them for. But I'm probably going to do the lower risk things. And it also depends on do they have experience? THat's going to depend I'm going to put them somewhere at a zone. I think they should be capable of doing.
Mike:And you're trying to put them in a place where they're going to win on those first ones. Or are you challenging them
Jonathan:I don't care. All I'm interested in is are they comfortable enough to go? Oh, like there's going to be some day where they have to go, okay, how does this headset work and where do I dial and where in the CRM do I put this? And do I set up my desk? So I'm just trying to get that done. There's always going to be the first dial where they're like uh, So, I want to get it out of the way that once they start learning, like all time to success. And so I just want to get that. It's, there's a clock that starts. So when can I start? If I can start at pre hire then I can accelerate it because you know, as the owner, I'm putting out money every day and want that money to come back to me. So I don't want to spend 90 days training somebody when I know I could have done that in three days.
Mike:Yeah. Are you putting them like literally on day one like first hour of the day they're on sales stuff, or are you giving them a little bit of training first? On that first day
Jonathan:Totally depends. It depends on your hiring process, depends on what you're having them sell. So I don't want to be definitive, but everyone sells every day. So at some point in that day, they're going to do sales motion. If the sales motion is that I'm having them do is pick up a phone and dial the phone, then for sure on day one, they're going to pick up the phone and they're going to dial the phone. And in the pre hire process, I'm going to tell them everybody sells on day one. So at least need to know this little piece here. Cause I am going to throw you in the pool. You're going to get the best coaching and the best process. thing I can't teach you is desire and hunger and the work ethic. I'm going to model it for you and I'm going to expect it from you. But people succeed here at our company when they bring that to the table and I can give them all the ingredients to be successful. I frame coaching a little different way. It would sound something like this, Mike. it make sense to you as we work together that there are going to be times where I'm going to want to help you improve your performance. Are You going to be open to that sort of coaching? Great. Here's the problem, Mike, a lot of times people tell me that, it turns out they really don't want coaching. So I'm going to give you an option of two kinds of coaching. One is I can go nice and slow. be really respectful of your feelings and give you time to change. The other is I'm going to do it fast and furious, and I'm just going to tell you exactly what you can do to improve. Which of them do you prefer? Everybody's going to say fast and furious. I've never had somebody say slow, right? But I got to get them to say it out loud because now they can't take offense. And I'm going to say, great. Why did you pick fast and furious?
Mike:Oh, because I want to be the best, and that seems like the fastest way to be the best.
Jonathan:Great. And when you say you want to be the best, what does that mean?
Mike:yOu told me your top reps are making 200 a year, and I want to make at least 200 a year, so I got to beat all them.
Jonathan:Great. got to get them to say it out loud,
Mike:Yeah. Yeah,
Jonathan:right? And Mike, here's what I'm going to do. You're telling me you want to make 200K a year. Mike, have a proven process. We provide the leads, we have a process to follow up on those leads. No question. My expectation is if you don't make 175K, you're not working here. What you just told me is you're not going to be comfortable at 175K. You need to be at 200K.
Mike:Yeah, I want to win.
Jonathan:What does 200 K mean for you in life? What it allow you to accomplish?
Mike:Really want to get home paid off in the next five years. And if I can, you that, you know, making 150 in my last job. So if I can take half of that extra money and put it towards that, then feel like it'll set, you and the family out financially really well.
Jonathan:Gotcha. And what's the significance of having house paid for?
Mike:Just feels more secure that you don't have to make this, payment every month, you that's done.
Jonathan:Yeah, but I'm going to go three levels deep on that right there. I'm not going to force you to role play it because what will come out is the executive mind, right? Because we're in role play, but if you're real in the moment, when you get three levels deep, the very first answer is always an intellectual smoke screen. Oh, I want to be successful. I want to make more money. The next answer is more real. And then the last answer is always the emotional reason. You start finding out what are they comparing it to good or bad? That's what I want out of them. What I've set up by that early coaching conversation, it's going to happen even in the hiring process is. Mike, you told me this was important to you. And so if I see a gap between Joe, who's my 200 K year earner and you, how long do you want me to wait to tell you that?
Mike:Five, five minutes to tell me right
Jonathan:Yeah, perfect. Does that make sense that I'm framing that way? So they're eager for it and it has nothing to do with that. I need you to be successful. I need you to sell more. You told me That you wanted to be the best.
Mike:Yeah, now that when you approach them, saying I approached you because told me you wanted to hit this goal and I'm trying to help you hit that goal versus the company needs you to make x amount of sales this week.
Jonathan:And here's the thing is, and I do this math with people all the time. I'm like well, long do you think it's going to take you to be the top performer?
Mike:Uh, six months.
Jonathan:Why six months?
Mike:The last guy you said the top for me. He said it took him eight and I think I'm a little smarter than he is.
Jonathan:One, I'm not going to tell him it took him eight months
Mike:All right. Fair enough.
Jonathan:But what makes you think you're smarter than what I'm trying to do is get in their head. Because people have a timeline, right? it's when I'm here a year when I'm here two years. It's 200 000 Every day, they're not making 200k when they could be. So let's say You come in and you're earning 110k for me and what's the difference between 110 and the 200k 90k? I'm gonna write that on the whiteboard. Okay second year You make 145, 000 for me and Joe made 190, 000. What's the difference in that? I'm going to write it on the board. I'm just going to accumulate, I'm going to say this money, it's like unsold hotel rooms. Every day you're not earning at that 200k mark is, it's not money you can go back and earn. Then I'm going to take that money and I'm going to put that in a compound interest calculator and I'm going to say that 12 months ramp time just cost you a quarter million dollars. Over the next 10 years. So is there any way we can take that six months down to three? What do you imagine it would take?
Mike:well, need a lot of support in terms of like coaching from you guys. So I can know how to sell the product an upsell people so I can make bigger commissions.
Jonathan:Yeah we're gonna give you that One of the things I know is that you have a really difficult time with your physical presence I'm challenging him right because they probably never heard anybody shoot him like that and say so are you willing to invest? 1, 500 to go to a speaking course if I find the right one for you
Mike:it'll help me to get hit that goal in three months.
Jonathan:Yeah. Cause it's a quarter million dollar decision. I just asked you to make.
Mike:got more weight.
Jonathan:Hopefully you can hear in my tone that that's totally different than I came to work for a company that's giving me a paycheck and I'm going to try to buy some homes. I am truly their fitness coach when it comes to selling. And they either want to be the best or they don't want to be on my team. There's lot of places they can go and take two years to learn this business or three years to learn this business. I happen to know it doesn't take that long. How many things are there that are unique to selling a home or buying a home when you're buying them. There's less than 30 questions you get asked. Guarantee. If you wrote down every question a homeowner asked you, there's less than 30. So my question is, how long does it take you to learn 30 items?
Mike:Not that long a week.
Jonathan:Why a week? If I told you I'd write you a quarter million dollar check tomorrow, if you went home tonight and learned those 30 things and you could flash card them, how many do you think you would come in? Matter of fact, I'm going to, I'm going to give you 1, 000 tomorrow. you can come back and learn all 30 of those things tonight, can you get it done?
Mike:I'll get it done.
Jonathan:Okay. So why did you sell yourself short and tell me it would take you a week?
Mike:I don't know. That was just what came to mind.
Jonathan:Yeah, that's it. And what I want to challenge you to do is to think about every day in this business that you're not totally fit. You're literally not costing yourself the amount you're going to earn that day. You're. costing yourself the compound interest of that over time. Cause what you told me is you wanted to pay your house off. You've got a debt sitting out there for a house every year. You don't pay that off. How much money is getting sucked into that home? We don't have to stay in role play, but I'm just trying to give you and your listeners, that's the sort of really being in somebody's head and calling BS. And guess what? They're going to thank you for it. Sounds like I'm being an asshole, right? I get that. I'm never an asshole to my people. But when you have a coach whose interest is aligned with yours and they're giving you direct feedback, you actually look back years later and you go, that was the best coach I ever had. They woke me up. They showed me things I didn't know about myself. That's the path that you have to get on if you're going to be a sales boss, you can literally take somebody who has almost no dreams about their future and transform them into a tremendous force and hungry and loyal. They'll never go anywhere because you're like their lifeblood.
Mike:Yeah. What you're doing is really just compressing time that it gets someone to be what you would consider performer, right? Someone who's performing at capacity
Jonathan:Every day I'm asking myself, how do I compress that time period? So I have to, or you notice how early on, and I would have spent way more time in there. If it wasn't roleplay, really getting to know them, really getting to know what they want to accomplish. So that's the juice that I go over here with. I'm compressing this so you can do this.
Mike:Can get your goals faster.
Jonathan:And you already told me you wanted me to hit you fast and furious, I might even back him. I say, Mike, you seem a little uncomfortable with where we're heading with this. you want to go back to the slow and steady? Nobody says yes. Or they say, you know what, now that I'm thinking about it, I just don't think I'm cut out for this. This is way harder than I thought it was going to be, man. I'm so glad you said that, Mike. Cause I was thinking the same thing.
Mike:Yeah. really funny you mentioned that is after I took a lot of your hiring process out of the book, and I think it was the pressure interview I did with a guy guy signed off zoom middle of the interview. And I sent him a message and I said, Hey, did like your internet cut out? Is everything okay? And he just replied. sorry. I realized I just couldn't hit your standards.
Jonathan:Yeah.
Mike:And I was like, Okay well, guess the interview process worked
Jonathan:I've done interviews with people where when you dig and they've been in sales a long time. you, like you can ask them, they're saying they're doing that. And then you say well, did the best performer do? Because they'll say, I need to leave the industry cause I'm not making enough money. And I thought, I said was there anybody making enough money? And they'll give you a couple of people that are, I'll say was the difference between them and you? they just that much better than you? They had talent you didn't have cAuse then you're going to hear the excuse they tell themselves. Oh no, they had a better territory and that. So you telling me that you can't stay in that industry and go to work for somebody that's gonna give you the territory, like the guy that's making half a million dollars. You start hearing people's drive. I'll say to people all the time, if you wanna earn a living in sales, it's earning a living. There's a lot easier ways to make money, right? So if you wanna make a lot of money. This is you're going to put in the work. You're not a weekend runner. You're a marathon runner. You train hard, you take care of your health. You're going running and you're putting in the 10 miles, whether you're tired or not, there will be a day where you get to kick back and relax and live better than everyone else does.
Mike:Was great.
Jonathan:Yeah. When you see a pressure interview and a performance interview done well, the way people show up on day one is drastically different. Usually when I'm training for clients and I help them with that whole process of hiring and training that first week, I'll hire somebody and on the end of day one, I'll say, look, I want you to go home and I want you to record a video of yourself doing the sales process. And we'll submit that video to the executives of the company and they'll be like, that's better than people that I've had here for six months. If you have people in your business that are not performing at capacity for you within this first 30 days, you have done your hiring process wrong. You can take somebody with no experience, and they should be able to sell in day 30. said it yourself. How many unique things are there to learn? If I learned the 10 things I can sound like an expert and I only need to be one day smarter than the homeowner. I That's it. That's the standard. If you can't teach that inside of a week, your hiring process wrong. Your training process is wrong. Your selection process is wrong.
Mike:To talk a little bit about you've done with your company that predicts kind of future results? We've used some basic personality testing like PI and all those, but what you and I were talking about offline before the show kind of a whole new level to put it lightly.
Jonathan:PI is great. It's really a great tool. It's a 30 year old tool. It's just not modern. And here's what I mean by that. And I didn't create the tool that for who hire that predicts performance. I was actually speaking as the sales boss at a sales conference in Florida, and I came across a gal there and she had create she has a great backstory, grew up in Taiwan. In a rice paddy, no running water, no electricity. First of her family to go to college. an amazing thinker, data scientist, IO psychologist. So I'm just putting that as a background. When we talk about high performers, she's a high performer, but she was using tools like disc PI and her clients were using those tools. And I write about them in my book. So I write about disc and other assessments that's the best I knew at the time I wrote the book. And she said, you just got to thinking that a business owner really doesn't care if somebody's introverted or extroverted or they're a captain or a maverick or, whatever label they're going to give them. They actually care, will they show up, will they perform at the highest level and will they stick around long enough for me to earn a return on the investment in time, money and energy I'm going to spend on this person. And so she started digging into the world of psychographics where the big five come from, which is all PI is based on disc is, all the red, yellow, blue lion, tiger, bear kind of assessments and realized there were hundreds of psychographics that had been discovered that are reliable can be measured with an online instrument, but most of it just gets stuck in academia and, boring literature. And there is a process of going and creating question structures around those, making sure they're validated, making sure that they don't, adversely impact group of people, especially if you're going to use it in hiring. And so she did that work. And so she now has about 500. Psychographic attributes. So as opposed to disc model that's going to have eight to 16 at most, you can just like the amount of ingredients, but she didn't stop there. She said, great. So I have these 500, I might've just made the problem more complicated because which of these 500 matter. And so what she does on the other side is she goes out and she surveys people actually doing that job. In the thousands. And so she gets them to take a really long psychographic questionnaire. She ingests all of their actual performance data. She feeds it into a machine learning model and it says, here are the ones that actually correlate and in what weight, and we call that a performance fingerprint. so then you can deploy that into a hiring process and we're going to output a prediction. It can be dollar revenue fit for the role, flight risk. we Tend to get within 15 to 20 percent between what we predict and actual post hire post training. it's just night and day difference in terms of reducing turnover and performance.
Mike:it something that you're having someone take very early on in the hiring process or is it kind of later on?
Jonathan:As early as possible the hiring process, cause it's going to take them about 10 minutes to complete it and you're going to get an output about fit for the role. Like, why waste your time on individuals that probably are not going to be a fit for the role. But secondly, humans have a ton of bias, right? So we're going to bias out people that are applying that might be a really good fit. And so I would rather get that assessment on both ends. One, when I think they're great for it to say, wait a minute, slow down. This might not be a good fit. And then on the other side of it When I'm saying this isn't a great fit and it's saying it is, I want to slow down and take another look and say, what uh, what is showing up here that I might not be seeing now? It's not perfect. There's about 75 percent of what makes up human performance I think comes through that assessment, but there's the other 25 percent do they have money problems? Do they have drug and alcohol problems? Do they have relationship problems? Like we still have to dig in and see that. And then we're also not judging it on experience. I think about it like if you had a room full of kids, banging on pots and pans and you were able to say, this kid's gonna be able to play at Carnegie Hall and this one should probably just be doing karaoke singing and everybody better be drunk. Even then. That's sort of the power. None of those kids have been exposed to the training that would be necessary to play at carnegie Hall. We're just saying that they have the DNA and the natural makeup do well and put the training that you would give them to use.
Mike:Then if someone wanted this for buying business, I mean, there been surveys done and in our business?
Jonathan:Got great models for that. So people could just go to whohire. com. could sign up for a demo, chat with somebody. We'd show you what the models are, the efficacy of them, but we then automate the entire process as well. Everything from posting the advertisement or getting it through social media, through the assessment, automated two way text messaging self scheduling on your calendar. And that's especially important, you're a small company, you may have got 10, 15 people. probably don't have an HR dedicated team just doing that. So you can keep that hiring pipeline open and many companies, they keep the hiring pipeline open and just automate saying thanks, but no thanks. Or, Hey, we'll call you when we have an opening. And only do we alert them come off autopilot and actually engage in that face to face or first screening call. When somebody is coming through the pipeline who were predicting to do better than somebody they already have on the team,
Mike:Interesting. Wow.
Jonathan:Because you really want to always be fishing, especially super importantly, it amazes me. You get a small team, maybe there's three people selling on the team. one of those members not performing, that's third of your team, a third of your revenue. If you have a two person team, it's 50 percent of your revenue. You If you have a 50 person team, you can afford to have two or three of them not really firing on all cylinders. But the smaller your team, the more important that you really have your hiring process tuned in, dialed in, and especially then your training process. How do I get perfection from that person. What I talk behavior, outlook, skill, stature. You can do that with a business owner. What is the behavior around growing your business and bringing talent in? There is a certain motion you need to be going through to attract the right people. And then the outlook, the small business owner almost feels overly grateful that somebody said yes to working for them.
Mike:Yeah. Yeah.
Jonathan:as hard and have the standard and, but that person that's going to come in early in the business, what you want to be able to do is paint for them the big vision. What is this thing look like five years from now? And we're on a tear. we've already proven we have the magic sauce. Not that we can't get better and not that we won't get better, but you're joining a winning team, but because you're 50 percent of that team, you and me, I'm going to expect a lot of you, but because of that, the reward five years from now is going to be so much better. If you were going down the street and working for somebody that already has 10 people. You're not getting promoted very quickly. My company and who hire right now, we're running about 12 people for that part of the business, but we'll be 50 people next year. Like those 12 people will all have great roles in the future. And the year after that we're at 75, it's better for them to get in early. There's a ton of growth that like the upward mobility. We built out a real estate buying company and also investment company for another person in the industry. We hired six people all at once. And we told them on the day that we hired them, that one of them would manage and lead that group and it would double their salary. And we were going to make that promotion in 90 days. All six of them. What do you think that did to that group of six? They all worked really hard. They all closed a million dollars in new investments within 30 days Because they didn't think they had six months. They knew 90 days I have to win with this group of six and when I do I get to double my salary. That opportunity wasn't available to, you know, almost working for anybody else.
Mike:Sure. people who have like remote sales teams, you have any tips or advice you can share with them around hiring or training?
Jonathan:Yeah, you say remote sales team, tell me what you mean by that, doing what sort of roles.
Mike:Um, appointment setting, closing, but yeah, just kind of leads that are coming in. I'll take the real estate, home buying business, right? It's of leads coming in and usually your people who are remote are qualifying those leads and setting an appointment for someone local to go out to the house.
Jonathan:Yeah in that case, you have to have a cadence every day, that we're live with each other, and we're role playing, and we're live listening to each other's calls, and we're debriefing as a group. It has to be, that, Visually showing up. And they need to be able to hear the other person's call. And they need to be able to hear them calls. Cause when you're in war room, all in one place, benefit is you get to hear how other people are doing. I actually put them on where they're required to just sit and listen to somebody else for a certain portion of the day,
Mike:Okay, like, just listen their live calls on zoom
Jonathan:yep, I'm going to listen to your live calls and I want you to write down and give me feedback. What are you learning? What are we questioning? What feedback are you giving me? Why are you giving me that feedback? It feels like unpaid time, but it's paid time. That's how they're going to learn. That's how they're going to get better. I also record all of the phone calls. And so they round Robin get assigned to rate each other's calls. But the way that happens is you pick a number. I don't care what it is. You're going to rate three of your own calls and then there's another, pick them out of a hat. These five calls, everyone's going to rate those calls individually against this matrix. then we're going to get on a call together, and we're going to listen to Mike's call. And then we're going to go through how did Mike rate himself and how did Jonathan rate him and how did Paul rate him and how did Sally rate him and. And why, and we're going to read that feedback. I want it written, right? Cause if it's not written, they don't commit to it. It's ahead of time. Done. Everybody's doing their homework. Then I'm going to listen to it again live. Everybody else has listened to it on their own time. I didn't pre select it. So I didn't pick a good call, a bad call. I literally went down and said, this is the three that we're doing this week. Why am I doing it that way? couple of things. One is, if I have to rate myself and I know everybody else is going to rate me, how honest am I going to be? Pretty honest. You're probably going to be harder on yourself than anyone else because want to come across as like I'm the world's greatest and then hear a horrible feedback from everyone else just human nature, right?
Mike:Yeah.
Jonathan:So we're probably even gonna own up to things that we don't really believe about ourselves like I'm gonna throw you a bone. They say you can pick on me and I can Psychologically protect myself because of course I knew that about when I hear the other people also say that all of a sudden I'm like, wait a minute. I didn't really think I sucked that bad. The effect on everybody else is oh, he was really honest about it himself. And so this is a Scenario where we can be honest and we can give that sort of feedback. So they always go first, but you literally listen to the call quiet with everyone there, even though everybody's listened to it and then I'm going to have him. What did you do? Great. Let's back it up How would you do that differently? Great. I'm gonna explore that with him and I'm not gonna say hey You did a great job. You did a bad job My role is the leader isn't to give you any coaching in that scenario, cuz everybody's gonna want to mimic whatever I said. So one that's there now Let's say you have two other people that are rating that person Let's say you start and you don't have three other salespeople. Great. I'm going to get my office manager and somebody else. I like, it doesn't really matter. human. They know how it feels to be sold to. prefer it to be other salespeople. But if I know that you and I Mike are both gonna give feedback to Julie, when I'm listening to Julie's call and I'm writing down feedback, what am I going to naturally do? Because I know you are also going to give them feedback.
Mike:I'm going to really listen. I'm going to focus.
Jonathan:I'm going to focus because I don't want Mike to pick up on something that I should have picked up on. And I don't want to be really soft and glowing and praise. And then Mike points out 12 really obvious things. So by doing that in a group, you're keeping everybody honest. And what people learn from that is they don't die from people being honest. If you suck, you should be okay hearing you suck because you want to make the 200 K and do you want to make it next year or this year? So you keep going back and tying it into, that's why we're doing this. So that's what you have to do in a remote team. You just have to really create that cadence of you're not on an Island. You are connected to this team. What you do every day matters. It's harder because you don't get the little have a minute meetings and overhearing people. you have to artificially create that. By the way, I do that same thing with. team, even if we're all together in the office
Mike:How often are you doing that session
Jonathan:every week. Yeah. And when a team's new, I'm doing it every day. When I got a new person on the team, we're going to pick three random calls out of the hat and we're going to listen to it as a team. We're going to give you feedback. We're going to set up a role play scenario and I'm going to say, Mike, go, here's the scenario. You role play with them. This person's gonna give you feedback. You gotta get over being embarrassed that people are listening to you and I, say I'm not just gonna go into a room and get naked, right? It would be weird. However, when I go to the doctor and the doctor asks me to take my clothes off, I take my clothes. I feel a little uncomfortable about it even then, but it's the doctor, right? And it's trying to keep me healthy. I don't tell everybody every detail of my finances, but when I'm with my financial advisor, of course I do. And I might still be embarrassed. I might still think, wow, I made some really dumb investment decisions, but my financial advisor is there to help me. So how do we create a team where. They realize that you're there to catch me and help me maximize my earning potential. Cause that's the only reason I show up in a company. to maximize my earning. Why would I otherwise spend time away from my family?
Mike:Would do that at least once a week and every day for new people, and then you would also kind of have each other
Jonathan:Especially when they're, remote, I'm going to give them shadow time. So I'll give you an example of something we just implemented company. And it's it's not for the sales team. It's for our customer success team. So we have a live zoom room. Um, Open during open hours. So if somebody on our website wants help, they can click and they're immediately in a zoom room. I have my whole customer success team logged in and part of them are in the Philippines and part of them are in the U S and part of them are in Prague. And they put them into breakout rooms to handle that customer thing or do a demo, but they're all there so they can hear each other. So rather than sitting, waiting for the next call to come in, if I'm not on a call in a break. I'm partnered with somebody in the breakout room and I'm learning cause I hear, Oh, how does Mike talk about that? that's great. Then I don't have to worry like, Hey, what are they doing while they're at home remote? Cause they're all in a room.
Mike:Almost creates that. they're all office without, yeah.
Jonathan:Without being in the office.'cause when I'm not on a call, I can just unmute my speaker and I can hear what's going on
Mike:else are you doing with, would you suggest for virtual sales teams?
Jonathan:Those are the prime things. And then the cadence of your meeting. So in my book, I talk about the check-in routine on meetings. I'm still gonna follow all of those things,
Mike:You feel it's a disadvantage if you do those things? Is it a disadvantage to have a remote sales team?
Jonathan:Yeah. I think so. My bias for a sales team is to be all together in one space. I say that and not all of my teams for the companies that I run are that way. sometimes there's an advantage to being remote, but I would say, especially if you're not a skilled leader of salespeople, having them all together in one room and sitting there with them in the same open space, like don't go put yourself in an office. go talk to, if I want to sell a CEO to sign up for sales boss consulting, really only one thing I have to have them do listen to 10 calls because they're going to want to puke Lot of times they'll say no, we can stop now and be like no, You can't hire me unless we listened to 10. Cause by the time you get to 10 calls, they're literally begging you fix this thing, right? Because what happens is we hire people and then we allow ourselves to suffer from the illusion that we fixed the problem. And we set it off into the corner and just hope it'll take care of itself. they're going to get better. They're just learning. The reality isn't getting any better. And then what happens is we get a certain amount of success. Because even a blind squirrel turns up an ear of corn once in a while. And we become happy because that ear of corn came and we didn't have to do it. not because we have a bountiful harvest, because we got all the corn we could have. It's because, least now I'm not having to do 100 percent of it. we start accepting mediocrity in our organization, and then we come to believe, Oh, three ears of corn a month is natural. went in and did a consulting project. I think I wrote about it in my book. It was company that was selling hospital equipment the hospitals big like radiology beds and that sort of thing. And their quota for their sales people was 600,000 a year. Guess why it was 600, 000 a year?
Mike:best I'd ever done. I've the book.
Jonathan:Yeah. Okay. So it is in my book. Best they'd ever done.
Mike:yeah. Thank you.
Jonathan:We were able to hire somebody and have them do 1. 2 million their first year, it's cause they didn't have that belief in the head trash. And that's what happens with most owners that they hire a sales team. They stick them over there in the corner. They quit listening to them. They're not plugged in. They get some results and then they go, okay that's what our quota should be. That's what the market. tells us that we should be able to expect from our sales team and the reality has nothing to do with what the market will actually buy from you.
Mike:it's interesting you bring that up. When I first got into like the home buying house flipping business, I was like well, what good people do? Like flips a month. I came and I was in Jacksonville and I met a friend of mine and I was like, how many flips do you do? He's like, Oh, last year I bought 400 houses. My mind was blown immediately. And I was like, wait a second.
Jonathan:Yeah. And
Mike:this idea the whole time.
Jonathan:to a large sales team and travel along with sales people and somebody will be bragging, they'll be like, yeah, I'm on the road. I do seven appointments a week, blah, blah. And it isn't until I tell them. you know your buddy's actually doing 14 calls when he's out on the road or 21 calls? And that's why I have that meeting check in cadence in my book. Because I'll have them self report when we check in for meeting. I'll say my goal for the year is X 100, 000 whatever it is a million, whatever it is. ran this many appointments. I get everybody to say it out loud Because things are only good or bad by comparison. so I'm going to look and I'm going to go especially if my sales are down. I'm going to say I might suck, but I don't suck like Mike. I'm going to one, pick myself up a little bit the next week with no coaching at all, just because I don't want to stand next to Mike next week and say, but excuse I tell myself. also have to overcome because go, Oh, I ran X number of calls. And then I'm like, wait a minute, not only did Mike do four times what I did in sales, he also did four times as many calls. Like his pipeline is five times bigger than mine. Then they start connecting that without you coaching them. So your role as the sales boss is if I put in that sacred rhythm, which I talk about in my book, it's a sacred rhythm. The reason I have it is because now I don't have to coach that team. Because they're self coaching each other, because I've created an environment where they have to get better. then it just becomes a self fulfilling prophecy, and they become competitive with each other. And then you bring a new person into that team, and they're like, man, I thought I was a superstar. It's probably that same moment when you go, Hey, four houses versus 400 houses. That's what you want. People come in, they go, I didn't even know this was possible.
Mike:it's a total, mindset shift.
Jonathan:You probably can't tell. I get passionate about sales teams.
Mike:I told you offline like, you the book twice through and I actually keep it on my coffee table every few weeks. I pick a section out where I feel like I might not be doing as well as I could have. I can.
Jonathan:a ton of podcasts and you sent me the most exhaustive list of questions that were so specific of any host I've ever had the privilege of being on their show. So thank you for that.
Mike:because I'm interested genuinely.
Jonathan:like, yeah, I forgot I wrote that. That's really good. What should we talk about in the last bit we've
Mike:yeah, we've got, uh, one thing, and this is kind of we've personally seen, I would love to get your insight on it, is, lot of your principles to get our outbound cold calling team to identify who's gonna be a performer or not, two days of hiring them. saying we're keeping them or we're not right. It's a much simpler sales process, right? Their job is just to get a lead. struggle to do that for people who are further down the pipe. Say further down the pipe. I mean, it's, you an appointment setter right, versus I was like, do you have any tips that you follow that? How do you identify winners early identify people that aren't going to make it
Jonathan:Yeah, it's in that hiring process. I'm going to design a hiring process that puts them in the position I need them to be in. And Do they have mental flexibility and the ability to learn quickly and stay normal? I've never fired somebody two days in that couldn't do the job on a phone because they would never make it through my screen. Before I offer them the job, I'm gonna say, Hey, great, can you make five calls?
Mike:live in front of you.
Jonathan:Yeah let's just do it. is what you're gonna do. I'm gonna, you pay you a hundred bucks. I don't need to get whatever. But you might as well decide if this is something you're willing to do because I'm going to be asking you to do this all day, every day. And there'll be people like, great, I'll get on the call and they'll do, and they'll still struggle, I can tell whether they struggle with elegance and are they going to get there? Or is this oh boy, got a lot of work to do, right? the same thing I do all in a pressure interview situation. Somebody will brag about their boss and everything that boss would say about him and why they changed jobs. And I'll say, You can just tell it's not true sometimes. I'll be like, great. And probably you, it sounds like you're such great friends. You, do you still have them in your cell phone? Oh yeah. I got them in my cell phone. Great. Hey why don't you pull the phone out and let's call them together right now. love to ask him about that story. doesn't matter if I get ahold of the person or not. I instantly get an understanding is what they're sharing with me real or is it like, Oh, I I and I'm also setting the standard that. We should at least be authentic with each other cause I'm going to call you on your shit.
Mike:A couple more questions if you have a few more minutes.
Jonathan:No I'm here. I'm happy to spend a talk in sales. It's my passion. So let's do it.
Mike:I it. So of people in this business, myself included, are running a smaller sales team, right? And you mentioned earlier, a three person sales team and one person is not performing like, problem, right? I mean, that's 33 percent revenue out the door. advice do you have people who are running smaller sales team? that's what advice do you have for them to me? You know, so important that everyone is Is it any different than running a larger sales team?
Jonathan:Yeah, it's a lot different. But my question is why are you running a small team?
Mike:question. The reason that most people have, at least in this business, it's my bs belief as well, but very hard to scale past, you and a half, 2 million dollars a year in revenue.
Jonathan:you're saying there's nobody doing more than a million, million and a half in revenue.
Mike:there's not nobody.
Jonathan:What advantage did they have that you don't have? advantage did they have that you're not able to take advantage of?
Mike:thing I can think of is another markets is market size.
Jonathan:Okay. Yeah. So this might be valid. So is there nobody in your market running a large team? there nobody in a similar size market running a large team?
Mike:the cap out in our market's about four million a year
Jonathan:Okay. So you're at 4 million a year then. Okay. Then why are you running a small team? Which isn't the question that you asked me, but that's the where I would go with that, AnD the reason is what I find is people have bought into their belief about why they're the size they are. only have a certain amount of dollars to invest in marketing. I only have, there are right. There's all of these beliefs that most of them aren't true. I'll give you a. Real example, I was at conference a month ago called home service freedom. And I just sat down next to this guy, he's running a honeydew business. Like he's got some team working for him. I just asked him, I said what's the revenue per day on a truck? He's like, got to get them to sell 2, 000 a day on the truck. I said well, why 2, 000? was no real reason. Other than that was a number that they had picked in their head. And I said I'm going to guess at 2, 000 a day, you're going broke and you just don't know it yet. they said think that 2, 000 is as much as we can get. I said, great. What evidence do you have? there wasn't any hard evidence, but they believed it so dramatically too. So they're going to go broke, right? Let's just accept that you're wrong on 2, 000. And let's say you had to make 5, 000 or you have to close your doors tomorrow. How would you get to 5, 000 a day on a truck? don't think we could do it. I said, okay, so you're going to be out of business. That's what you're telling me. No, I'm not going to go out of business. I'm going to do whatever it needs to take. Okay. So how are you going to get to 5, 000 a day? So they started brainstorming. You put throwing crazy ideas on the wall. It's a month later. He called me there are 4, 000 a day on the truck. They've doubled their average on a truck only for mindset. And I would put the same thing in real estate. If you knew you could hire somebody and they could be performing and returning revenue inside of 30 days, you would hire them. problem is when you don't think you can hire them because you haven't successfully hired them or you don't think you can give them leads because you haven't successfully figured out your lead flow. So I would go to trying to decide what's the business I believe that I want to have and can have in this market I'm going to build that business as quickly as I can. And I'm going to take what it, what's the one reason I'm telling myself today and how do I attack that? iF it's true that if I could hire somebody and they could return the money to me in 30 days, that's the only thing I'm going to work on then is say, okay, how do I hire somebody that I know can return money to me in 30 days? I'm going to get really good at that thing until I have so much confidence. I go out and do it. And once I do that, I'm gonna go, wow, I did it. I'm gonna hire five of them because there's no risk. only risk is if I do it and I don't get a return. So it's a belief about your own ability. I would hardly ever want to run a one or two. would never run a one person sales team. Never. Because what do I not know if I run a one person sales person, a team
Mike:comparison.
Jonathan:don't know if the market sucks, my approach sucks, or they suck. just don't know. I have a two person team. one's doing well and one's doing poorly. know, it's not my messaging, it's not the market. If I only have one I don't know, maybe he's right. Maybe we're just, we don't know what we're doing. Maybe we're not competitive. it's certainly, they can believe that. What I really like is a three person team. Because a three person team, the pattern really comes out. Like the smallest size I like to get to. So I'm always saying, how do I get to three people as quickly as I can? Cause it's the perfect flywheel that starts growing really fast.
Mike:you say three people, that's three people like in a closing role, right? Like you would want Three in the same role so you can compare across.
Jonathan:Yeah. Cause here's what's happened in a three person team. There's a first, second and third place, right? What's the second place person going to want to do?
Mike:to be up for, he wants to be first.
Jonathan:Yeah, and, the third place person is probably going to self select out, is fine with me, or they're going to really step it up and put pressure on number two, but somebody is going to be battling it out for second place all the time, right?
Mike:Yeah.
Jonathan:I only have a two person team, like, you're just going to swap places month after month. There's at least, not that fun to watch
Mike:You know, I had a friend. I've interested to get your feedback on this. he did something with his sales team. He's got about uh, six guys there. He um, did is I think, I don't remember if it was weekly or monthly, but it was like, whoever was the top rep in terms of, I think, revenue for week or month, would, they would get. the first, shot at like the best appointments, like the best appointments would like just automatically go to them if they had a slot open for that time on their calendar. And he said, he's like, want people to fight for that first place spot. And I want to give the winners the ability to win bigger. your theory on that? Do you think that's the right approach? Or do you think that alienates like some of the other
Jonathan:one, how do you know the how is he judging what a better lead is? I'd want to dig into the data and just say what's true about that. The challenge you get into if you do that is you buy into people's excuses that Hey, the only reason Mike does better than everyone else is because they feed him the best leads. And so you're giving them an excuse. I want to have a level playing field. If I'm going to give the advantage to somebody on the team I'm going to give them some other sort of advantage that's not correlated to that. The reward is going to be there for them, they're going to have to be in and fight it out and elbow it out with everybody else every month. I also don't believe in tenure, like not raising your pay rate because you've been here longer if you're in sales. You earn your increase by your skill level.
Mike:What's the advantage that you would give them just a bigger commission split or cut or something like that?
Jonathan:Yeah, it might be a financial reward changes. If you're in first place, you get an extra point on the commission or and what I would probably do is I would probably rotate that quarterly So if you miss the cutoff and you're in second or third place You're stuck with that position for the next three months then whoever's on top at the end of that three months They get the higher commission rate
Mike:quarterly? Why did you say quarterly
Jonathan:Because everybody gets a bluebird now and again that they had nothing to do with but over a quarter evens out the lumps, right?
Mike:Yeah.
Jonathan:What the deal timing when something closes can push a big month up or down. And if you do it month by month, people will be like going to hold this deal a couple of days. So it counts into next month instead of this month. And they'll game the system more harder to do that at a quarter, and what I'm really wanting is I want it to hurt that you're in last place. Because you drag that all a quarter and you're just gonna work so hard.
Mike:Yeah. That makes sense
Jonathan:yeah. And and I like doing I also with sales teams oftentimes write exactly what people are making on the board. So I'm not putting their wins on the board so much as I'm putting their income on the board. Cause don't really care what they closed for you. They care what they closed for themselves.
Mike:And they see the other guy making, not what you're making
Jonathan:That's right. Way more powerful to go. Oh, because what happens is you ever see somebody that, I can only speak from experience cause I've been here where you're not doing well financially. And you almost don't look at your checkbook as often. You don't balance the books as much cause you're, it's all bad news.
Mike:Yeah,
Jonathan:We're just going to struggle through. And
Mike:been there and cove it with my Airbnb business text.
Jonathan:yeah, does that make sense?
Mike:Yeah, it makes 100 percent something like
Jonathan:Same thing happens on a sales team is they'll just look at their check cause they don't really want to face the reality of, going to go back to something I said earlier is, so one, I'm just going to write, what are people making? Cause especially in sales, like is. meritocracy, right? It's earned and I'm gonna celebrate. just got an extra 10, 000 in his paycheck this month And then let's say you have a team of six people This is where it gets really interesting the gap between the bottom person and the top person I'm gonna say to him Okay, let's pretend you repeat this for the next six months, but like I'll ask why did Mike beat you this month? might be a legitimate reason. I don't know could be right? or it could be head trash like Is Mike just that much better than you?
Mike:he's not. No, he's not that much better.
Jonathan:Of course he's not that much better than me. Nobody's going to say he's better, right? Or they might say, yes, he is better. And if he is better, then you should get with Mike and learn what is it Mike's doing that's causing him to beat you month in and month out. I get how he plays. Once, right? It's like, do you think about poker tables? People say it's all luck. it's all luck, why do the same people win the World Series of Poker every year? It's luck with the skill. Yeah, there's luck in it. You're the best player will sometimes lose, but they're going to come out frequently on top. And that's what happens on a sales team. You should find out. But what I'm going to do is I'm going to write, just going to pick a number out of the air. Mike brought home 20 K this month you brought home 15 K this month. not that big a deal. repeat this every month, it's 60, 000. If Mike goes and he puts that 60 in a compound interest count calculator, he puts it in a safe investment. He doesn't touch it for the next four years. Just this month's performance made this much money for him that you don't get in your bank account. And the truth is that the higher that dollar figure is, the more chance that's disposable income and it is actually getting invested or paying down debt. And is showing up. I'm doing two things there. One is I'm teaching my sales team how to think about underperformance because they tend to think in the dollars today's dollars, which is the wrong way to think about it. But secondly, I'm also teaching people that are early in their career how to think about what to do with all the extra money I'm going to make them because top guy probably didn't put the money into investing either when he's young, right? He's I'm partying and uh, I'm getting a better house and I'm buying nicer wheels and I'm fine if they do that and they keep working for me. But what I really want to do is teach them how to think right. And when we talk about increasing somebody's stature. When they have a good investment vehicle for themselves, their stature goes up the way they think about themselves goes up when they buy their first or their second or third investment property, their belonging and the speaking truth to a homeowner comes into play. that's what I'm trying to accomplish with that. Don't dig deep like you hardly ever hear executives talking to their people about what they're going to do with their money and What can they not do with their money because they didn't earn it? I'll just keep a score. If Mike's winning three months in a row, and now he's accumulated 15K, don't know what the difference is going to be in performance in your industry, but certainly can be that high, or more.
Mike:easily.
Jonathan:Yeah. said gosh, what would that be like in 10 years if he just invests it? Let's just go five years. Cause you can probably imagine five years you're going to wonder why Mike's sitting on the beach with a second home and you're getting out of the industry because Mike was that much better than you. No, Mike's not better than me. You've got to keep coming back to that. Like I actually want them to get to the point where they say, yes, Mike is that much better than me. Great. At what? At what? What is he better than you at? it catching the ball? it his speed off the line? What is it that he's better at? Because we can train that. Or we can compensate for that. if you can't admit he's better, or you admit he's better, and you believe you can't be as good as him, or you admit he's better, but you haven't identified what he's better at you than, then you can't put in the work. So what I want you to do is go home. And when you come back with three specific things, Mike's better than you. Matter of fact, here's the hard drive. Go listen to his calls and you're going to ride along with them all on next week. that's going to cost you because I'm not giving you any leads. I'm going to take money out of your pocket this week To accelerate your pace to getting to 200k because you told me you wanted it fast and furious not slow and gentle this week you're not going to do any selling you're going to go wander around with mike Until you figure out three things. Mike's doing better than you.
Mike:they find those out faster than a week.
Jonathan:They do. like, put me back in coach. Nope. can be back in on Monday. That's a way more fun environment to play in as a salesperson. And it's so much more fun as the owner of the business.
Mike:Yeah. Super
Jonathan:unattached to the outcome. Like it is monopoly game, right? It's let's go.
Mike:super interesting. other question I wrote down and there's, you know, this position and a lot of other people in this position, this business is, still the closer, They've got, maybe some people send appointments for them, still going out to the houses. They're still making the deals. your advice as someone who wants to transition of that role really being a sales boss and running sales team, as opposed to just running appointments?
Jonathan:Do you want it nice and slow? too bad. One hurts a little less than the other.
Mike:the harder one.
Jonathan:One is I'm going to, one is I'm going to hire somebody and I'm going to set a deadline for myself. I'm going to say, I'm going to get this person as good as I can in two or three weeks or a month, whatever that is. And then I am going to refuse to do another call rest of the time I own this business. if that means I ride on a hundred sales calls with this horse I made a bet on, that's what I'm going to do. until they can close the business. My full time job is going to be coaching this person to close at the same rate I did. Option two hurts a little more than that is to say, I'm going to hire this person and I'm never going to do another call. from the day I hire them because now I got to get the hire right and I got to code, but I'm going to move right into full time coaching. There's nothing to make success more real than realizing I'm not eating until this person eats. I'm going to stay up till midnight if I have to coach in this person, cause I'm not going back out tomorrow and doing what you did today. that's how real it is. It comes down to, are we going to delay this for three years or are we going to do it this month? what you'll find is That usually it's not that hard. Owners tend to think they're doing something special and the reality isn't. They've learned the 10 answers to the 10 questions and they can do it really good without getting nervous.
Mike:Yeah.
Jonathan:And because they've gotten competent at the 10 questions, they've gotten confident because they're confident they close more business. So I would audit myself and I would say every call I've done, what's the 10 questions I got asked or every question, write them down next call. These are the ones I got done. What else did I have to be able to know? I guarantee you there is no more than 30. There's maybe one that you'll hear once every blue moon and who cares if you get it wrong, let's train for the 90%, not the 10%. that relieves me of a lot of stress when I go, all I got to do is be able to hire somebody that doesn't get stressed out, can learn and they're mentally flexible and I give them the, 10 answers I'm just going to drill those 10 answers like I probably not even going to hire them until they know those 10 answers.
Mike:shortening that
Jonathan:Yeah. And I'll just say to him, Mike, if you close what I closed last year, you're going to earn 200 K I'm giving you a hundred percent of my leads. if you don't make 200 K it's all on you. fact, I'm going to pay you so I can go right along with you. I'm giving you my paycheck. That's really powerful. as soon as you have somebody that's replicates what you are, you're free and you can do that the second time, the third time, because now you have confidence. But if you go, Oh, right along with me, watch what I do. Let me come in and rescue you. It's really hard to let somebody lose a deal you could have won, but if you commit yourself to that, you're going to coach them really hard. And early, in my sales coaching business, I would ride along with salespeople in the field. I think I've done like 7, 000 ride alongs with salespeople in different careers. So might never be able to tell you how to sell, but I can certainly tell you how not to sell. But hardest thing is. I'm going into, with somebody else's customer, I can't be the sales coach. Would be weird for the customer. So I always say if somebody asks who I am, just tell them I'm from corporate. thought I should get out in the field and learn how things were done in the real world. Downplay my role cause I'm there as an observer, but really hard for me, even as the outsider to sit on my hands and just I'm, this guy sucks so bad let them lose at least then you know what you're playing with. And you go out and raise capital for a company you're raising capital for real estate, don't know if it's any different, but if you're like, I've raised capital for tech companies and there's a weird thing is that people will actually be more inclined to give you money if you failed at one of your businesses before because they know you're not going to repeat those mistakes because it's so painful. Like you've already practiced on somebody else's money. That's probably a long winded answer to how would I go from founder led sales to somebody else? I would just do it. Who are you selling now? You're just selling your employee. That's it Your job is 100 coach that person full time. Here's the deal. i'm gonna predo it Hey, here's how I prep for that call. These are the things i'm looking at. This is probably what i'd say Let's role play that great. Here's probably where you're gonna get stuck. Your 10 answers great go gonna want to do this one alone or you want me to go with you? Oh, I want to do it alone. Great. You're going to do it alone, you better bring me a check back. So they go run it themselves. They don't. Great. So you want to go do one alone or you want me to come with you? Pretty soon they're going to say you better come with me, but let it be them. I say, great, I'm going to come with you, but I'm absolutely not going to bail you out. I'm going to say hello. I'm going to be friendly to the homeowner. And then I'm going to sit on my hands and I'm gonna let you sink or swim. I believe you're going to swim or I wouldn't have hired you otherwise. You might have a little bit of fine tuning to do but you've got this and by the way, Mike I'm, okay If you make up when I'm in the home with you Because that's what I do sometimes if I don't know if you get in that situation feel free. I'm not grading you on accuracy. We'll talk about it when we leave the home, because what they have to overcome is when you're writing solo, you can fake it prospect doesn't really know what you're supposed to say. So I give permission when I'm doing a ride along, I say, look, I know we've trained a lot of things. We've scripted a lot of things. When we show up, here's what I want you to do. What do you think? I want you to do, Mike. I'll say, follow the script. I'll say, nope, want you to be Mike. want you to be you. want you to do whatever comes naturally in this moment because that's what's going to sell. I've helped refine you, but if you get 2 percent of it fine with that. Be you forget everything I taught you. Just go do you. They're going to do what you've taught them to do, but now they're not going to do it with the pressure of thinking, oh, I have to hit my marks that little bit of being uncomfortable that they're not hitting their marks is going to be interpreted by the homeowner as being dishonest and disingenuous. not going to say, Oh, this guy is nervous because this is his boss and this is his first call. So I give them permission say, forget everything I told you when you need to just dig in and go for broke on your own. You be you. then I'm still going to give him coaching afterwards. I'm going to say, great, you did pretty well and you sounded natural. you got into trouble there, this is why my script is written this way because I've done that same thing a hundred times. I've just learned that this fixes it every time when I just quiet and I asked the homeowner. So what shall we do? So be great next time if we're on there and you start feeling that you just shut up and you say, so what should we do? That's how I would get through that. Guarantee you bring in the right person within two weeks. How many calls do you run a week being in somebody's home?
Mike:10.
Jonathan:Yeah. Eight to 10 rounds. They got it.
Mike:get a deal. You mean.
Jonathan:Yeah. And by the time they get two weeks, if they've ran 16 calls, like you will know, can they do this?
Mike:I do it? Yeah. Yeah.
Jonathan:Yeah, because if they can't you shouldn't have hired probably by the eight calls in week one you're already starting to repost that ad
Mike:the ad never comes down.
Jonathan:Or other option is and this just comes down to your financial risk tolerance and how much cushion you have But you can also hire two start with and never sell again and just know in your mind that you're only going to keep one of them unless they both knock it out of the park. there's nothing like being in and a weekend and letting one of them go and would convince them to let themselves go say, I've been at this a long time. I just tell you now you're not going to make it like I'm willing to let you stay in here and struggle. But last guy stayed here six months and went broke. they're Going to self select out, right? But for the remaining person, their confidence is going to go up. say, Mike, reason you're here and they're not is I saw these two things in you that you're really capitalizing on and I want to double down on this deal we've made together. those are a couple of approaches to get out of it, but it all just takes that confidence. I'm no longer going to sell. I'm going to be in coaching role. I would prefer somebody does that from day one. here's the reason is going to sound terrible. People are better coaches than they are sellers. So if they see you sell and you're not perfect, you've given them a ton of excuses. if all they've ever seen from you and heard from you is coaching them, don't have anything to judge it against. They can't dismiss your coaching. It's like tiger woods. If he went out and that coach Tiger Woods on his swing played against Tiger Woods, he'd get slaughtered, right? But on that one thing, his grip and his swing he's, the coach. you just put yourself in that role of coach and then they can't dismiss what it is that you're doing.
Mike:you not like alongs when they watch you do it? Do prefer not to do those of that reason?
Jonathan:Just find people are better coaches than they are sellers. Don't need him to be impressed with me. built the company. Don't have anything to prove. I'm happy in roleplay to roleplay this with you, but I actually want to give you an at bat. If for you to see me, when does, I'm happy to go in, I'll just keep the commission or do you want to take a shot at it?
Mike:good one.
Jonathan:like, do you want your 200 K next year? Do you want it this year? Cause I'm telling you this lead is yours unless I run it and then it's mine. And I'm only giving you so many leads this year.
Mike:I've kept you a lot over time because I found this super interesting, but I do want to adapt my final question that I usually ask the real estate guys. what it is, could go back in time you were managing your first sales team give yourself one piece of advice, what, you know, now, what would you tell yourself?
Jonathan:I'd say, Jonathan, you suck. have no idea what it means to actually lead people. You need to become a student of people. I thought I was great, I was comparing myself to the great that I had seen, I didn't realize how great can be. I'll do this with salespeople. I'll video record them, then six months later I'll videotape'em again. I'll show'em and they'll, or show'em the old one and they'll be like, oh, I was terrible. And ah, and. they'll be proud of their current one and the difference. then I'll say, the reason I'm sharing that with you is because what I just recorded today, six months from now, you're going to be laughing at yourself and telling yourself you suck. And so I'm that same way today. feel like I have stature in the industry, but I know I'm going to look back five years from now and go, what in the heck was I doing on that podcast? Game changer. I would have done so much better. So I would tell myself that I would tell my early self that confidence was overconfidence and I should just accept that I suck and I should and can and will be better tomorrow.
Mike:that's a great piece of advice. people want to reach out to you after the show with questions, or if they're interested in learning more about, can use your company to make sure they actually hire the right people,
Jonathan:Yeah. So you can go to who hire. com to just get, you you get a faster plug in there than going through me. However, if they want to get ahold of me specifically, John, J O N, short for Jonathan on the book, at the salesboss. com, that shouldn't be hard if they have my book. And people don't believe me, but when people reach out, I will help them and I'll be the person that will help them, even if they're not necessarily paying me because I just believe in giving and you when somebody has a need, they'll hire you and they do great things. So there are some people that reach out and they get a ton of great benefits. I think he just reached out for the podcast, right? And now we've spent two hours together. I enjoy working with entrepreneurs who have the ability to just go out and the drive to put it into practice. When I work with companies, I'm only working with somebody that's either number one or their number two. Because the person that's number three just winning is easy at this point. have some really basic things to do, but to move from number two to number one they've already shown they can execute.
Mike:This was, great. And I really appreciate you being on the show. I personally took away a lot today.
Jonathan:Awesome. And I enjoyed it as well. Thank you for reaching out. I appreciate it. Let me know whenever I can help you out or happy to come back on and we can talk about some other real estate related thing.
Mike:do it.
Jonathan:Awesome. Take care.