Transcription
You can't win a race if you're driving a Camry and everyone else is in supercars, no matter how good a driver you are. So, to create high-performance reps, in my opinion, you have to do two things.
There has to be a plan. You also have to look at how to create high-performance individuals. Michael Phelps, for example, didn't take a single day off for seven years. He was 150 days ahead after five or seven years—three years more training than everyone else. Imagine who you'll be once you hit your goals. Feel yourself waking up in that house, driving that car. Who are you at this time? Write about it. What traits does that person have that you don't? This is the high-performance version of you. Then we all do it together.
All right, guys, welcome to the episode of Coffee is for Closers. Me and the Dirty Sanchez are back. Head off, baby!
Yeah, man. The last one killed it. I think it was my highest-performing YouTube video ever.
Yeah, gave us a good foundation. I just got to keep growing now.
Yeah, the people want the Dirty Sanchez. Who would have thought?
Who would have thought? It smells nice.
Yeah, exactly. Alrighty, so we're going to be talking about the boot camp Kaden's running for our new recruits, and the instability in the high-ticket space. What can you do to prevent yourself from being at the mercy of outrageous fortune?
I don't think it's all doom and gloom, but there are things worth talking about because people are kind of wallpapering over it. I see a lot of offer-hopping. I'm inundated by people saying, "Hey, I'm looking for a home, I'm looking for a home." These aren't bad sales reps; they're normal everyday sales reps.
Yeah, not necessarily the killers, the people who sell wherever they go, but the people who do pretty well if they're on a good offer.
Yeah, exactly. Think like Steph Curry doing Steph Curry things. If you're really good at sales, it sort of doesn't matter where you are; you're going to be absolutely fine. Sales is a pure performance-driven activity, which is why I like it. But not everyone's going to be a rock star at it. If people realize where they're at, it helps them stop thinking, "Maybe I need…" Like we spoke about last week, the vehicle matters.
You can't win a race if you're driving a Camry and everyone else is in supercars. You're not going to win, no matter how good a driver you are. The vehicle just won't get you there. Sometimes you need to be in a position where your vehicle is competitive.
Most people need a vehicle; they need a culture.
Yeah, exactly. The culture is a big one because right now there's a lot of blame—either the leads or the reps. I've been a part of a lot of organizations, and so few actually do anything. I remember a conversation where this guy said, "We need to ramp up sales." I said, "Yeah, that's fine, but the people don't even know who you are. It's all paid ads. There's a sales cycle because they have no clue what they're coming in for." Which is fine, but we have to be okay with a lower close rate and a longer sales cycle. We're trying to cram them through a process. "Are you open to doing any content? No. Are you open to doing this? No. Are you open to doing that? No." Okay, then let's recruit unicorns—top reps. "But you'll have to pay a signing bonus, a base, and higher commission. Are you cool with that? No. Okay, well then shut the [ __ ] up!"
Then what are we talking about? A dream not based on data, just something you're hoping and praying for. It's crazy, man. So many mediocre businesses want top-tier reps. It's like, yeah, you're mediocre.
Top-tier reps aren't necessarily looking for a new offer. You have to have a process to create them.
100%. And when they come to you, you grab them, but it's a bonus. You need to make them. If your business can't survive with mid-to-good reps, you don't have a business. It's a rocket ship that will eventually come back to Earth.
And if it even took off.
Yeah, and it comes down pretty hard. So, making your own reps… Run us through the boot camps you're running.
We have about 40 people going through the boot camp right now. The feedback has been great. The key is building that culture, having people strive to be better, to do their best, to be in an environment where they feel like they can grow.
So, what steps are you taking in the boot camp to facilitate that?
It's really breaking it down. Most places in sales, when you first onboard, it's like, "Here's some materials to process payments, here's a script, go get amongst it. If you do well, we'll give you more time. If you don't, you [ __ ] the brick." That's the culture people are getting sick of. To create high-performance reps, you have to do two things: there has to be a plan on how to take them and create them into high-performance sales reps, but you also have to look at how to create high-performance individuals.
Yeah, I don't know any top-producing sales reps who aren't high-performance individuals.
Absolutely. And I don't know any high-performance individuals who stay at the bottom of the leaderboard. They might be there for a month or two while onboarding, but they never stay there.
So, what our boot camp looks like is really breaking down those two facets and putting a plan and data behind it. The first thing we do is help them plan out their goals based on numbers. Everyone wants vision boards, I get it, but there's no real numbers and data.
Tony Sanchez's beef with vision boards.
Yeah, you know, if you have a nice house on your vision board, that's great, but how much does it actually cost? What's the mortgage, taxes, other expenses, and the aiming point?
Aim small, miss small.
Yeah, exactly. That's why we call it the sniper, because you have to be precise. To be precise, you have to make a precise target first. We break down their goals for the next three years by quarter, step by step, for the next three years, and then that plays into the next ten years, planned out annually. There will be adjustments as people progress. Once you get to one level, you realize where you're going next probably isn't where you want to go. It's not a big deal. But it gives us an actual financial picture of where they need to be, broken down by quarter and year. Then, as they onboard, we can take their data—close rate, dials to get an appointment—and make a plan based on how much they need to work each week to hit their goals.
Beautiful. Sometimes we realize their goals are too big for their skill set, and we move them back a bit. If you CL 10%, you gotta do a lot. I don't know anybody who works 48 hours a day.
No, I know a lot of people's goals say they should. That's what happens when you break a single day into six days.
Every day is three days a week ahead. By Wednesday, what's crazy is it can happen the other way too. People think their goals are way further out than they actually are. Then they're like, "Oh, [ __ ] I didn't realize that was within reach," and they lock in. That helps a lot because in high-ticket and 1099 commission space, everyone wants accountability, but if a business holds you accountable to their standards, most people think that's [ __ ] annoying. I want you to hold me accountable to my standards, not whatever [ __ ] you think I should be doing.
That's a really big one. I used to see managers trying to get their guys to do more. What if they're happy? That happened to Sal Sniper. Tony Hadad found his happy place at 15K a month. People were asking how to get him to want more. Why don't you just let him be happy? Why are we trying to get someone to do more when they don't want more? He was happy, he had a good work-life balance. High five, good job.
No, it's a [ __ ] bad mindset. It's really not. It's a bad mindset. How dare he put his personal life before… or figure out what makes him happy and then do that. Why should he give a [ __ ]?
That's exactly it. It's so crazy, but that's how a lot of people function. "More is better." But it's not. Maybe it is, maybe it's not. It's an annoying answer, but it's the truth. Everybody has different goals. It's got to be tailored to them. We all got into sales; we didn't want someone else's path.
Yeah, exactly. Most of us are rebels, rebellious in spirit. You can't control that. That reduction in dopamine allows us to take their goals and hold them accountable to whatever they said they wanted to be held accountable to. I do think accountability is required to create that culture and help people scale. At Sniper, we're making excellence the standard. In a lot of places, excellence is just for top performers, and the standard is subpar.
If you're a mom with three kids doing this part-time, your standard of excellence will be different, but you can still have the standard. A 22-year-old dude might want to sell 17 hours a day—fantastic. But it's not realistic for other people. You have a baby on the way, you're not going to crank out 18 hours a day. It's this stupid mentality that more is always better. If I've learned anything, it's that money doesn't make you happier. It can provide cool things, and it's important to have, but it makes things easier.
Being unhappy and poor versus unhappy and wealthy… better off unhappy and wealthy.
Yeah, but there are principles of "more is not better." I was talking to someone who knows billionaires, and as soon as you put a "B" in front of it, life becomes unpleasant. There are interesting things, but the "what does this person want from me" becomes massive. There aren't many secret billionaires. People know, and it jades you towards people. There's a right amount where you can tell people to [ __ ] off and do what you want.
Exactly. That's really… It's been interesting doing the boot camp, because these things are normal to me—make a plan and base it on data. It's not rocket science, but the overwhelming response is that nobody else is doing this stuff. Nobody else is onboarding this way. That's one piece of the equation. The other is creating a high-performance individual.
Yeah, and it's not that hard. You have your goals; visualize. Imagine who you'll be once you hit those goals. Feel yourself waking up in that house, driving that car. Who are you at this time? Write about it. What traits does that person have that you don't have? This fire performance version of me. What habits do they have that are building those traits? Then we all do it together. We all have a list of habits, short habits we work on every day. If you accomplish them, you put a "W" at the end of the day. If not, an "L." You stack up Ws, keep your list challenging so you keep taking Ls, but ideally, you're taking more wins than losses. We have something to hold them accountable for on the professional side, something on the personal side, and it's all tailored to what they want, not what we want. Because we have aligned incentives, we all get what we want.
Yeah, I love that. That's great. It goes back to… I remember seeing a photo of a guy hanging off a building, all black, with an MP5, and I was like, "I want to be that guy." I went to the recruiter, they laid it out, and I was like, "Okay, I'll do that." It was two and a half to three years. I just had to check boxes. It's the specificity, it gives you a pointy direction. PE people think about grandiose, long-term, ethereal, ephemeral things, but they're not sitting down thinking, "Okay, what is that on a day-to-day basis?" I used to future-cast my business: where do I want to be in three years? What does that guy know that I don't? If the guy who runs a $50 million business walks in, what does he know? He can probably have good conversations with accountants. Okay, I can't do that now, so I have to learn some finance stuff. I understand corporate structures better, so I need to do this and this. I understand management systems better. I can't do all of these now, but I have three years. Which ones are most important to get me there, and which are important to have when I get there? You start ticking them off. You don't create an overwhelming amount of things to do, but you have a plan, and some confidence that you'll get there. So many people just [ __ ] idle.
One of my things my wife and I always say is that people act like they're getting another go-around. You get one. I don't know what happens next, I'm pretty sure it's not nothing.
Agreed. Don't know what it is, but I don't think it's nothing. But, man, I know we're not doing this again.
No, I'm pretty confident of that. Or at least if you do, I'm not going to remember it. Just let life happen. What are you waiting for? You can common-sense your way to amazing places if you allow it to happen. Our brains want it to be more complicated. It makes us feel better. How could Matt be so far ahead of me if it's so simple? It must be super complicated. You just break every day into three days, and by Wednesday, you're a week ahead of everyone else.
That's a simp. Stop sleeping. Go to bed at midnight, wake up at 11 p.m. And then you ruin everyone. It's funny, though, but all those tropes… there is a truth to it. All the douchebag online bros talk about it, but there is something to it. If you have a goal, what they're actually doing is, "I don't have enough time in my day, so I have to get up earlier." If you have a 12-month window… Michael Phelps is a great example. He talked about his training regime. When you swim, you lose a day if you take a day off. Everyone works Monday to Saturday. On Sunday, you lose your adaptation to swimming incredibly fast. He decided never to take Sunday off. He didn't take a single day off for seven years, not one. He gained an extra 52 days of training every year, but he also didn't lose a day. He gained three days every week. He was 150 days ahead. He was three years ahead of everyone else. That's a compounding effect. He was so much better than everyone else, and he was the only guy who didn't take Sunday off. He did the math. It just made sense. It's not like he wanted to outwork everyone; it just didn't make sense to take Sunday off. He swam Christmas Day. Never took a day off. And it was such a compounding effect. If you're getting up at seven and your competition's getting up at five, what if they go to bed later? If you have a goal, write it down, break it down. You either take the goal and smash it into a time period, or you take the time you're willing to work and extrapolate a goal. If your work schedule and goal don't match up, it's incredibly frustrating. People do it to themselves. "I want a six-pack, I'll go to the gym once a week." You're not going to get a six-pack. It's fine, but don't be angry that you don't have one. You're setting yourself up for failure.
I did that for years. I believed my genetics were a roll of the dice. My mom said, "It's our family genes." No one else in this family is fat except for my immediate family. I questioned my mom. No one else is fat. She goes, "Look at Aunt D.I.Y." I go, "Yeah, but she's not blood; she's married to [ __ ] Uncle John." What are you talking about? She's married in. What are you talking about? The math is not mathing. She was like, "Oh…" I was like, "Maybe it's the poor choices we've made our whole lives." She's like, "They have it stacked." Probably is. Even with having a six-pack… I come from a family where people aren't super overweight, but not very fit either. I've trained since I was a teenager. If I haven't worked out for a while, it's far easier for me to get a six-pack now than it was ten years ago. My body adjusts to it super well. I'm way more efficient in the gym. You just do things well.
The better you get, the luckier you are. You tend to hit winners. You know what to do. I go into businesses and consult, and I can tell them what will happen when they make choices. "If you do this, this will happen." They go, "Nah." I go, "All right." I don't care if they take my advice. I'm not saying I'm 100% right. Based on my experience, this is what I think will happen. They don't do it, and then they go, "Oh, that happened." I go, "Yeah, I know. I thought it would." But it is what it is. You learn. The issue is that maybe they haven't hit many goals before. In school, you're told, "That's an unrealistic goal." A kid wants to be a rock star, and it's like, "Put your feet back on the ground and be unhappy like me. Be a mechanic." People can do incredible things if you put your mind to it. Most people won't. Otherwise, they wouldn't be incredible. Everyone can do really cool [ __ ]. You just have to take a risk and work. If you obsess over something, you will get very good at it.
It's hard not to. Sales is a weird industry. Everywhere else I've been, there's a lot of practice. Even if you're going to be a mechanic, they're not going to give you a book and tell you to go read it on how to disassemble a transmission. They'll do it with you. You'll practice. Sales is full of study, but little practice. It's like surgery. You don't really get a chance to practice. You can roleplay, but it's pretend. It's a simulated environment.
Have you seen those new AI roleplay things?
They're interesting. AI is a whole different kettle of fish. We won't get into that in this podcast. Nobody plans on being in sales; you just end up there. I've never met a ten-year-old who says they want to be a salesperson. When I got out of the army, it took me three years to admit I was a salesperson. I was a trainer. Then it was like, "Well, I don't train people anymore; I just sell them." I'm a [ __ ] salesperson. When I was asked to build sales training, they said, "You're the top sales guy." I was like, "I'm a [ __ ] trainer! What are you talking about?" They were like, "Well, you sell more than anybody else." I guess I am a sales guy.
If you guys want to be a financial advisor, let us know. It's not sales, I promise. No phones, no iPhones, no dialers. You just talk to people. It's casual. You go to their house, knock on the door. But you are right, it's difficult to practice sales. Most things are a science; there's a right and wrong way. Sales, even though it's based on science, is an art. People who say you're doing it wrong are ridiculous. I don't care if you scream like a Wookie on the phone, if it produces results. And you're not lying. Who gives a [ __ ]? I remember seeing arguments online about the words people use to sell. You guys must have good lives because my kids cause me way too much grief.
Yeah, who gives a [ __ ]? Especially in Facebook comments. Some of the stuff going on is [ __ ] fantastic. Did you see that picture I put up of the [ __ ] ClickFunnels?
Yes, people thought I was [ __ ] serious. They were like, "This is seventh level for sure." I was like, "It's really not." I've been talking to Jeremy the whole time. He's been there. And on my Facebook feed, there are 50 of you guys posting almost identical photos on the same exact stage. That's the joke. I've done it like that. Are you proud of me, Dad? Not only have you done it, but you've leaned into it. You probably called your dad to ask if he was proud.
Yeah, he didn't answer. Not until you get the 100 mil, you [ __ ] [ __ ]. That's what I'm going to tell my son, anyway. The funny part about these ones is that it's the last one they're doing like every award. I've been listening to a lot of religious stuff lately. I used to be quite religious, and I kind of went away from it. I feel myself slowly going back to it as I get older…
You're when you're kind of zeitgeist is, is sort of looking at something; you kind of see things in different ways. It's like, man, people really [ __ ] worship at the altar of that, don't they? Like the [ __ ] worship at the altar of money. It's like, and I always found that gross. I always found, like, I really hate the uh, like, you know, "we should listen to that person because they make a lot of money," you know, or, "we should," you know what I mean? Because like I think that there are so many better, there are so many ways to be successful in life. And I think it goes back to your goal setting. It's like, your success is not my success. And if you are like, if you're like, "well, no, I don't want to work that much, and so I'm, I'm happy to like take the hit on the income."
Like when I met Ryan Serhant, I have a good relationship with him; we talk every now and then. Like we catch up when he's in Australia; if I go to New York, we catch up. And I, I am not willing to work as much as him. I'm not willing to. And so after like spending time with him and seeing him operate, I was like, "Oh, I'll probably never reach that level of success," you know. Um, and I was like, because like if that's what it takes, I'm not, I'm not here for it.
I've thought the same thing. Yeah, like I have a, I have a hard stop. I'm usually done at like 5:30, at latest 6. Yeah, I have kids, um, and we're about to have another one. And you can be [ __ ] if you think that I'm going to spend time with people on my team over my kids. Yeah, I like them more than you, you know? Like I want the best things for you; I will support you throughout the day. And if there is an emergency and you need me, I will probably be there, unless my kids have an emergency, and then, and then you fig that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's, it's so fair. And I think, like, you know, it takes a little bit of time for people to realize that, you know, which I think also, like, when you start to realize that, it starts to release the tribalism of work. I, I really, I don't like tribalism at work. I think it's fun to create a community, right? But then if someone leaves the community, I don't think we should call them a piece of [ __ ], you know, or like have anything negative to say.
Like, couple guys from Seventh Level Financials reached out to us. We're like, "Oh, hey man, how's it going?" Like, and they left, and they might have even been shitty when they left, but like they sort of, you know, they really realize it's like, "Oh, these guys are really trying to help me. I just, for whatever reason at that point in my life, wasn't, wasn't, you know, ready or able to do what I needed to do." And when you're told the truth sometimes, that people don't like that, you know. I remember I got asked like some random sales train, like, "Oh, what's your relationship like with him?" I was like, "Oh, when you fire people, they don't like you." I was like, "But I think he's a nice guy," but you know, like, not the truth though. Yeah, I was like, "Oh, when you fire people, like they don't like you, but he's a nice guy." Like I have no problem with that with any of these people, but like, like I've fired so many people in sales, like so many, because you know I've had a lot of run a lot of sales teams.
Um, I remember I went to Cole's event and I was like, "I've fired, have these [ __ ] here," it's like that work for Cole, but I have good Rel, I mean I have good relationships to most of those guys because they should have realized, you know, you're not doing it to them, you're, it's just a circumstance, and like, for whatever reason, like, and I, I always try and do it nice, you know, "Hey man, it's not working out," like, and it shouldn't be a surprise. But generally speaking, as a rule, if you fire someone, they don't like you, which, which is fair enough, like, you know, like, you know, like Shawn Ray, right? Yeah, like Shawn Ray made me his enemy for a while. Um, I love Sean, I always have, um, and for whatever reason, and I've talked about this, I've talked about this to him because we have a very relationship again, and I was like, and I went to him and I was like, "So do you still hate me?" He's like, and I was like, "It's okay if you do," I was like, "It's fine, like I like you, I think you're a great dude, and if I needed to play that role for you, it's fine, I get it." Like you, you like you needed, you needed the fuel for the fire, and not liking me and blaming me for certain things was that fuel, and that's just how you operate. I don't think that's a bad thing; I think it's just a thing. If that's what you need from me, I'm [ __ ] it; I'll be the bad guy. I'm not going to like do anything, but if that's like, it doesn't upset me.
Like the Jordan effect, uh, yeah, if you've watched The Last Dance, yeah, where he just was making [ __ ] up that people didn't even say, and he was like, "No, they said this." Yeah, yeah. Steph Curry does that too. [ __ ] No, they said this. Do you [ __ ] see that now? See what these [ __ ] right, just getting angry? Have you ever seen the interview with Damian Lillard where he's like, he'll never trash talk Steph Curry? He did once, and Steph dropped 64 on him, and he was like, "Nope, I'm out." You don't, you don't, you don't, you don't poke the bear. No, you never trash talk Steph Curry. I love when people do that because he goes off. And I'm a, I'm a Warriors fan, but by the way, Jimmy Buckets, oh amazing baby. Um, squad just got a little bit tighter. Yeah, I hope this was a good episode of Coffees for Closers, and uh, go down to the links below if you would like to be on our team, Sniper Insurance. We're here, we're going to break records, and we're going to have fun, and we're going to uh, do it uh, reasonably. I think we're not going to, we're not going to be douchebags. B, no, unless you need us to be, then ex. In that case, we might be. Yeah, yeah. Only, only if you want us to. My sa word it is. Keep going. All right guys, have a good one. We'll meet you soon. Bye.