How to Build a Top 1% Sales Team in less than 90 Days [ 37:14 masterclass ]

I remember being a brand new rep and just getting started with zero experience and the way I was trained up was number one given Emmanuel written by people who've never done the job before but you can imagine that's a terrible way to train someone right and then essentially just kind of thrown into the deep deep end and said good luck hopefully you can figure it out and I realized that's obviously not very effective because obviously I really struggled now fortunately over time eventually it started to kind of figure it out and as far progressing my

career I started I got promoted to a leadership role I realized I could do the same thing to the people on my team because number one I took a long time to hire people right so by the time I hired the right person there I was already gonna be behind number two I also realized if I just threw him in the deep end did what did to them what was done to me it was setting them up for failure so over time I started kind of evolving adding things to kind of the system to put

together a really simple easy way to actually ramp wraps up very quickly and it really starts with really four components really you break it down so to make it very simple number one and by the way it may seem overly simplistic but we'll go in more detail as well because a lot of times most will just fail to execute even the simple so the first piece is understanding number one are you effectively high on the right profile do you have the right person you're actually hiring for that role because if you aren't clear with that

if you don't have a good proven process for hiring an interviewing you're going to bring in the wrong people so even if you build a great back-end system to put them through they're going to struggle so having the right profile the right person you're actually high for the background experience et cetera is number gonna be number one the number two is once you're actually into the company do you have a system to put them through right so I realized very quickly the first 30 or 69 days was absolutely vital even in my last company what

I realized was once you open a job requisition but by the time we open it to hiring Zone placing the role to them even producing at a level that was kind of okay with the existing system it was about 157 days meaning almost six months so if you're in open territory that means you're already six months behind once you open that requisition up so if I can cut that down as much as possible it's very very important so once they come in is there a system in place to actually properly trade them in onboard for

all the key fundamentals and make them highly successful that provides them the tools and resources right so you have those that thing in place but on top of that you also want to make sure that you also are role playing which is the Third Kind of role play consistently so which means do you have consistent trainings every single week even throughout to really test their skills and improve their skills and the fourth bucket which is really quite simple which is really simple as having live call coaching as a leader are you watching the calls are

you with them live on calls are you coaching effectively and when you're able to do this and you do all through it consistently not just when they get higher not just in the first 30 days but also in segments in the first 60 days nine days 180 days 365 days are you considered all throughout even during the multiple years in when you start thinking that way what happens is their skill starts to compound and start getting better and better and better but when you have a simple system like that your chances of success are much

higher but on top top of that not only produce a higher level you have lower turnover you have happier reps and ultimately a better culture that comes about when you actually do something like this well I love that and I think that the Simplicity is at the heart of many of the most successful companies on the planet simplifying processes is it maybe takes even more genius than complicated things in some cases and so we've got a really good four-part approach for component asset roadmap you can Will template that you've given us here Marcus I want

to go through with them one by one if we could and maybe we could kind of absolutely go maybe Point CounterPoint in terms of like what typically happens in that area versus what you're recommending and what you've seen Works far better so let's begin with the first one having the right person that the right profile for that position however you know most companies missing the mark on that front so a lot of times what companies usually do is they put the job description up they put the post up so you know people apply Etc and

then the hiring leader the hiring manager the salesman interviews them and they don't have an objective way to really see how good that person they have some basic interview questions if they have any and they're like okay cool like you know they seem like they're pretty pretty likable pretty coachable and they kind of hire them based off that now if you have an actually really good higher interest that might work for you but most people don't especially if you've never hired people before so instead what you really want to have is or just keep first

off number one what are the key characteristics of past hires you've made that have the things you can make them a rock star rep right that could be anything from coachability adaptability self-driven whatever it's going to be so you know a couple of those are but then number two are you curating interview questions to help them explain to you what those things are or to that display those characteristics so for example here instead of saying oh you know are you driven oh yeah I'm super driven okay that's a pretty terrible question asked hey versus give

me a specific example where you took major initially when no one asked you to at work and you display exemplary results you want to listen carefully what do they say about that what type of initiative they actually take right that's really important also think about even the robot itself what are specific things or skills that you actually require fire in the role to make them really Excel so for example most sales people are quite awful at handling objections asking tough questions so how can you incorporate those type of questions into the role or into the

interview excuse me then that's doing stuff like doing role plays right so for example I would actually put them through multiple role plays live in the interview with me to help me vet them out it wasn't Perfect by any means but it gave me a pretty good idea so for example like I would test them out say Hey listen let's imagine you just had a great job doing Discovery you did a great uh you know demo you present the pricing they love you and they say pricing sounds good and sounds good and they say let

me think about it go what do you say next and have them role play out loud with you in that same situation now you're not looking for them to do it perfectly the way you want to do it but you want to see instinctually on the spot how they respond they might talk to big game already but can they actually deliver when you actually putting them on the spot and they flounder that's not good now the second note is I personally was looking for coachability so if they didn't do a good job I would coach

them and I want to see how they respond if they would sound completely defeated after I coached them they're probably not very coachable but they're like wow that was awesome can I try again let me try this time with you now the potential might be more coachable because of that love that well I definitely think that there are some ways we can like pull out somebody's skills in an interview but this also seems pretty challenging can you maybe give us even more specific of an example you've got my curiosity peaked are you setting them up

in sort of a sales scenario and giving them a theoretical objection or are you like taking them on personally like how what does that actually look like in practice Yeah so if you have a multi-stage process right which is most ideal so first stage is going to be as simple as like just that interview and you're gonna do probably real estate hopefully some role plays with them live and I like to eliminate some of their concerns or objections which is well I don't know your industry yet I don't know your product et cetera so literally

say Hey listen I want you to imagine you're at your current company selling the same thing this is what happens how do you respond right that's the first stage they do a good job with that what I do recommend next is have them actually go on live sales calls right right so take them on your top reps have them go on the calls and how do they carry themselves how do they what kind of questions they prepare what do they really like are they even on time what's a preparation because this is also their time

to talk to someone on the team to see if it's a good fit for them as well so all those things can give you a really good idea because of that so for example back back in corporate that's what we would do one of the stages we bring them back and we will field reps I mean in person they would hang out for half a day and they would go into the field with my team and they hang out you know they have lunch together they go out they maybe get breakfast together they go in

the field of meeting the prospects they're cold calling together they're doing all those things so that way they're able to get a real taste of the job number one but also we got to see what they were like and I always have my rep my top reps I'll say Hey listen have them take over parts of the call how to do certain parts of it and see how they feel now if they're like gungko and ready to go they're like yeah give me the ball let's go which I like people who have that type of

drive if they were like wow you don't have much excuses well again that tells you something on top of that the quest they would ask my rep told me a lot about them as well because whatever they're asking about my rap about would tell me what's probably really on their mind what's most important to them and if they're asking things that just seem out of what I want to hire you know like maybe they seemed like a person like oh how many hours do you work a week oh you have to work 40 hours a

week oh really oh I don't really like that I only work like 10 hours a week well that's probably not gonna fit long-term wise right that's someone's probably gonna come in do the bare minimum and roll out yeah yeah I like that I think leveraging the rest of the team is a really powerful way to do it and underutilized you probably have to have a pretty good amount of trust with the members of your team as well and kind of have them on the inside baseball as it were on that front as well the other

thing I like that what you're saying there is look to be in business development and selling especially B2B but in any format is to be comfortable with being uncomfortable uh and so you're not even waiting to find that out I really like that about the process so there's a lot more I'd love to talk about but we've got three more areas to cover let's get into the system to put them through so same thing where is that lacking in most companies from your experience and what should that look like yeah so most companies are the

number one they have an enablement team that puts together some sort of training which is probably barely it's probably better than having nothing first off but they have something in place but is it stuff it's actually theoretical or is it actually what's actually happening in the field on the zoom calls day to day every single day in the life of a sales professional right and I find most time it's not or it's put together by people who maybe hate to say it maybe they weren't even that good at sales so they're not able to actually

articulate and deliver it in a way that's actually going to improve their skill sets right that's a very dangerous game right or some companies have nothing and constantly what was like for me was was they're thrown into the deep end because that is like good luck now obviously that leads to a very very terrible results and I always equate to if you want to run a high performance sales team it's like running a high performing sports team right if you have a really good coach the coach could has a system in place and they take

a player who's already good they put into the system and they're a freaking rock star but they're able to do it repeatedly so in comes one rep out comes a rockstar income one rep I'll come another rock star and you want think about your system like the same way and you want to get super granular right and I think it's important also how you stagger and develop the training so for example even from my own company when a new hire starts we have literally no joke the entire sales process step by step completely broken down

filmed into modules and recordings for every part of the sales process now that's not even the first part of that system the first part is actually indoctrination into massive belief that the solution that we deliver has world-class results that's actually the first thing I think we've got to focus on right because most companies focus on product knowledge which that's important to a certain extent but what's even more important is the belief in conviction a sales professional has when they're actually having conversations with a sales or the prospect because you get the best process in the

world but if they don't have conviction or belief they're not going to convey that in their conversation and their questions and anything that they do so even the first stage of the trading like new hires go through for my company it's a little indoctrinated I literally walk them through case study After Case study after casing testimony and examples of success from our pen it's from tangible results to intangible so it's from actual results from whether it's reps who are two three four five five exiting their income in a single year to getting promoted to how

confident they feel to the stress reduced to all these things that's really really important to them so I had them go through all that first before even learning about the product is it's really really important because this now sets them up for Success like oh I believe it now so now they're gonna be much more open to learning everything else and how to actually deliver this transformation so then from there we go to the obviously a little bit basic product knowledge which is important to a certain extent but it's not important still but then actually

literally go through everything so it's not just how we make cold calls or how we do outbound or Halloween Discovery it's literally how do you structure your day what are the mental models you want to have in place when you think about selling and running these calls so we go to it I bring it on step by step by step by step by step on top of the whole process that's broken down there's Frameworks and templates so they can actually Implement very quickly eat all those things right I think behind the scenes I even incorporate

10 different recorded live calls of being on calls so they can see how it's actually executing to see all of it together so they clear piece by piece and they stack the pieces together and then on top of that they also then have live calls with me they can take a watch of me going through a thing and there's even more training than me taking a live call myself and dissecting my own live call breaking up here's what I did here here's why here's a psychology behind this so they can understand not just what to

do or how to do it but also why it works so now you're gonna fully comprehensive way of learning by doing that and when you do that when you do it that way you actually start building skills you start increasing skills and knowledge right now on top of that whole system that they go through which is all modulized you know like we we also have weekly meetings so every Monday and Wednesday you know we have Team meetings right so we're doing training we're discussing and we're very loud we're writing presence so we're keeping the skills

ongoing is really sharp as results that's part of the system so that that's not that's from onboarding all the way through because reality it says I don't know about you but I can watch a video one time read a book one time but I'll remember maybe 10 of it Max I want to watch it a second time when I read the book a second time watch a movie a second time it reinforces I've learned new things right and that's why it's so key to always constantly be sharpening sharpening the ax sharpening the sword that's why

two is key when you have a system like that now you have a Common Language you have common skills you're developing and we have a baseline to work off it and to refine it over time with steps three and four so it sounds like you've to have a real a passionate leader to make this work would you agree I mean you can't just plug this into somebody who is maybe a good teacher or maybe they're a good organizer those are great skills highly useful in business but it sounds like for this you need a real

Champion a real a real passionate person who loves eats sleeps breathes sails to lead this thing am I on point well I mean I guess at the end of the day um you have a couple options here right you can be a Salesman who does not do things like this and what's going to happen is you'll have probably 30 40 50 plus turnover so what ends up happening is they'll kill your growth and you're always trying to chase trying to fill open territory it'll be way more stressed out and that you won't actually be able

to effectively be a great sales leader you go from job to job that's one option or number two you realize one of the core skills you have to develop as a sales leader is how do I make my team the best version of them and when you realize that this is merely a means to the end if you will right there's many ways to skin a cat this way I found to be most active for reduced terms so for example I'll give a very simple example right so one of the sales team I took over

years ago they were typically doing about eight billion dollars in total contract value a year right it was okay not not very much for the size of the team that had I took it over so I implemented this system right modified for that cupcake as a different company and we went from 8 million to 23 million a couple years total contract value every single year and the difference was because now we had a system took turnover from 50 down to 17 right and that's including people that I'm terminating because they simply can't hack it right

so think about that thing lastly heard of a sales team who had less than 20 turnover right it's very rare it's very it very rarely happens right for the whole year so yeah and the reason is because when you have all components together the pieces are simple but the fundamental legs the stool what do you have all together it builds a really strong Foundation it allows you to have replicatable success and this is actually how I was able to go from that team of 20 lean 20 20 reps to get promoted lean team of 85

with multiple leaders in between because and then repeating that same system over and over because now at a bigger org right but you can't do that system otherwise you feel like you're chasing your tail but you have to have a system to actually scale and grow your actual business yeah you know you put me in mind of uh what one of my friends at a former client of mine says that Grant Cardone that uh you know it it's gonna be hard one way or the other it's gonna be hard when you don't succeed and it's

hard to succeed why not just have it be hard and succeed I didn't quote him directly but he says something there's a lot of versions of that and right it sounds like there's some work involved but you're conveying an awful lot of passion and I you almost are you've got to be sold on it yourself I love how you focused on that as well early on when you are coming into a company and it's like I'm following a bunch of rules I'm spitting out a bunch of facts and I'm just gonna be judged in my

performance that feels very different from this hey we do some great things for our clients and you're sold on that and now I've got this I mean you can actually feel really good about your service because I think sales does get a bad name because it's all about pushing people where this is more about serving people I mean even the way you're describing the the training and management role sounds like you know a true coach and the job of the coach is to make the player successful right he or she is actually invest tested in

making them get it done helping them improve all the time every day there's a lot more man you're getting me excited about this I love I love all the aspects of selling sometimes it becomes a little too much of a system this is some really great stuff though about building humans so we got what I'm hearing from you is all right get plug the right people into a great system to kind of ramps them into this culture of yours in the right way and then you have a set of disciplines that kind of keeps that

kind of it kind of looks like this right then you kind of keep keep the growth going over time so that takes the form of role play and also live call coaching so let's get some best practices to The Listener on those two to close out our conversation today absolutely so role playing is so I used to call A real plane because I think the mistake a lot people make of the role playing is it kind of let's say if you're the sales leader and you're having your rep role play with you as a and

you're the prospect most of my fine most leaders act like just like an easy Prospect but the truth is most products are kind of hard especially if you're doing cold outbounds so we would do real plays I would real play with my team every single week right right and I still do it until this day right but there's a way to do it so for example if we're going to re-teach a New Concept I would teach the concepts and then I would pick some of my team that I knew would probably bust me a little

bit be really tough to be the sales per or to be the prospect I'll be the sales person and then I would role play the concept live and I'll I want them to be tough on me giving me objections so they could see me do it live and just handle it run in the process I just taught them and then not have them do it and I'll be the toughest process possible we would roll by the toughest situations because what I wanted to do was build their muscle memory build the rejection tolerance and really improve

their skills because when you start thinking this way and you practice for the worst possible situations when you're actually live on those calls it's never all those bad things add up together it's only a couple of those things so it becomes easy so let me give you a really specific example so for example women will play cold calling I'll roleplay prepare I'm like I want to prepare for four to five no's four to five no that's how we role play that's how we real play and we go through four to five no's and the first

when we do early on they're not very good they're kind of good maybe one or two and then over time with consistency every single Wednesday that muscle gets bigger and stronger so over time suddenly before you know it now they're strong they can handle four or five no's and what happens when they're actually on the phones they get maybe two or three knows so when they're expecting five they only get two or three it's laughable it's like oh that's it that's all you got let's go yeah right and that's why the role players are so

critical but you have to do it consistently the mistake maybe people make is the only role play when the team is underperforming they only train the team is underperforming but the reality is is the top one percent sales teams or top one percent professional athletes of the world they don't practice when they struggle they practice all the time right because the truth is Pros practice more than they play amateurs play more than they practice they never practice and they just want to play the game and thus they are never ready to show up when it's

time to show up so that's really really important that you as a leader are building this as a part of your system to implement consistently early on and later on as well so even with new hires the role players were much more free we played every single day as a new hire every single day because I'm built I knew they're early they're excited they have that rookie energy I know it's gonna fade I'm gonna make sure early on within the honeymoon stage I'm gonna maximize it I'm gonna make sure we're leveraging the energy in the

right way we're channeling it into advancing skills and when you advance our skills that way when things get tough because it will get tough they're pretty strong they're more bulletproof right and then the last piece is live call coaching the mistake many leaders make is they only listen to calls when there's maybe issues oh no we're not closing anymore what's going on maybe let me lose some calls right if even that or they say oh I'm too busy for calls I don't have time to listen to calls I'm too busy I got like well no

your number one kpis results your team's results right what is going to drive your team's what's the best if your reps are the best you can't close every deal for your rep but you can make your team better right so listening to calls me live with the calls is really really important because you can see live now how are they implementing these real plays that you were they're doing you know on the off time live on the calls how are they actually Implement these things you've been teaching them how are you course correcting and that's

really important because now you can also number one not just course correct but also you can recognize the behaviors then reinforce the ones you want to see keep going so for example hey you know you know Marcus you did a really good job here without objection and you like you didn't just try to handle you dove in deeper you empathize them you they really felt hurt and you got so clear that their initial surface level objection wasn't even real is something totally different so really good job of covering that so now it's a cool it's

reinforcing the right behaviors you're actually being a leader now and then you can coach the incorrect behaviors right and that's really important this is something that's happening all the time right so even back in corporate but I had a sales team of 20 I was in the field with my reps at least four half days a week meaning about five six hours each time I was riding with a sales professional in the field going to the points with them not not sitting on the clipboard just like trying to like check mark and judge them not

at all we're Team selling I'm learning from them they're learning from me right I might say Hey listen this next call I want you to run the front part I run the back end okay and there's a switch all right hey good job here let's focus on on the next college tried focusing on this now so what happens is I'm making them stronger over time when you do live call coaching or you're riding with your reps or hanging out with your reps it's not about let me beat you up and find all your wrong areas

it's let me reinforce the right behaviors and also find some areas to help improve and we can do it consistently your reps also now realize you're in it to help them you actually want to help them get bigger you want to help them maximize the skills that will improve their livelihood the fastest so when you actually truly understand that and you realize leadership is about true service it becomes a different game if you just sit back and try to be an armchair quarterback then your team will struggle you'll have high turnover and they'll ultimately eventually

fail and quit you over time well I'll tell you what there's a lot of great insights here and our conversation has already gone by so quickly Marcus I love it uh there's a lot of great um so I think Food For Thought for The Listener to go further like am I missing opportunities to give positive reform reinforcement to my team I mean how how important is that I'm actually getting out in front and leading from the front when's the last time I took a call when's the last time I actually show by example so you've

really challenged The Listener and I'm grateful to you for doing that Marcus I guarantee a lot of our listeners are going to want to go further with your insights how can they best do that you've got a nice offer for us today yeah absolutely so a couple different ways why did you find me on LinkedIn connect me on LinkedIn also uh my book uh six figure sales secret to Wall Street Journal best-selling book you can get a free copy just cover shipping handling by going to the link right right below here which is bentley.co forward

slash book get a free copy right there so pretty awesome book so uh definitely enjoy that that'll help you whether it's for you if you're a sales leader or for your sales team as well right if you want to order in bulk go to Amazon they'll be easier for a book for your sales team to help them actually crush it sales love it well we've arrived at that moment it's time for live q a so uh we've got a few more people that probably are going to be posting questions but we've got a few that

have already come in we will Veer over to that and let's kind of get started with one here so yeah lavey's asking do your methods you've been talking about work better with certain go to market strategies versus other ones and if so which which is which yeah good question I mean I think ultimately when I think about what I was going to say these are Frameworks right these are Frameworks that you want to take and apply right I think if we take something say hey this apply perfectly to the one strategy versus other that might

be the wrong way think about this because at the end of the day nothing's binary right it's not right or wrong one way or the other way it's how can I take the essence of what marks time on the framework here to apply to the specific GTM strategy we start thinking this way it's like interesting uh for example like let's just say for example if you run a team it's all virtual remote to the majority of teams my team is like you might be like I can't necessarily well I can't go and um you know

get in the car and rather than going means like of course not that won't make any sense that this wouldn't work that way but what can you do right for example can we start putting a new software so we can actually start doing call recordings and then we build into our weekly calendar every week as a team we're going to be listening to one of the recorded calls and listen together's team and coaching through it right so you can still apply the principles the same way I wouldn't get stuck in necessarily the the exact specific

things because it's the concept that you're able to apply that actually how help your team improve yeah there's actually um I think I think probably behind that question it seems like when you're talking about getting out there and getting a lot of high volume of conversations you probably have to have a pretty good marketing team or really it needs to be it needs to be enough uh going on on that side right I mean can you just make a cold you know get a dollar going and do enough cold calls to make this work that's

kind of my additional question is that is that still working today or are we finding that's more difficult so we got to have a great marketing uh division to back us up yeah 100 right so here's the thing I'm also a firm believer you can have result you can have you have results or you can have reasons for not being successful right and I've been part teams and I've been part organizations where frankly the market is not that good so you know you're 100 responsible for that right so if that's going to be the case

as a leader are you feeding into that same reason why a teammate can't be successful that they don't have enough leads or if that is a reality what could you do now to set them up for Success how can you Empower how can you teach them how to use sales Navigator bill build highly targeted list and start having them do outbound to fill the funnel uh marketing for sure in the perfect world marketing is a perfect alignment with sales and one feeds the other that'd be the best situation possible but in some situations it just

won't be that perfect so whatever situation you're being thrown into you want to be able to maximize it how can I maximize how can I eliminate it as a problem so for example even like if you were I would argue that cold calling still works and feel disagree with that but not cold call in a sense of let me buy a crappy terrible list upload to a power dialer and start ripping through and making calls that's a terrible way to go about it instead the idea should be more of okay maybe marketing is honestly good

so how can we generate a highly curated list right then we just build and work off of in fact maybe some some people some people listening out there are watching they don't even have they don't know what a powder out I don't have a power dialer I don't have this I don't have these fancy sales things I don't have these this this Tech stack that's okay well same same idea okay what can you do instead well can you go and start searching out and building your own list maybe it's in Google Sheets of hyper targeted

prospects who are the right ICP ideal customer profile and start outbound calling those people do your research in advance right and build a list properly so we go down the list you actually have to have intelligent conversations so you actually have Smart conversations right so you can still apply the same thing but if the rep doesn't have enough calls that there's a bigger problem at play here it could be a marketing issue that doesn't really matter like the problem may still exist but it's still a responsibility of the sales team the leader to solve the

problem that's how you want to start a thing we start thinking that way you never worry about leads and you just worry about hey how can you were more about customer success being able to deliver what you what you said you're going to do how to deliver on yeah I love that guy 100 ownership on that um let's see here's here's a question from Karen Bailey she's asking what are your thoughts on structuring sales teams you know sdrs versus AES and all of that I mean do you have a few favorite ideas as to how

that should be done you know I think think it's it's it's it's interesting question especially in today's time you know you know I've read different books and different philosophies where it's it's heavy on this split off of str's AIDS and I think there's pros and cons to each and I'm gonna say right now my opinion is probably a little bit biased in the sense that I was a full cycle right you know meaning I didn't get the benefit of having someone outbound for me I had to do everything I cold called I little I Coco

I called I did everything I filled my own funnel I filled my own pipeline I did everything right it also made me a better sales professional because of that so I'm not saying it's necessarily a broken model but I think over time because depending on the company some some of these seo's I've seen are almost like marketing roles versus like true outbound and I think it's it's really important to identify and or Define what is going to be the role of the sgr bdr because sometimes it might not be the role that that I'm thinking

about in terms of the student outbound right and some of those roles I think over inches over time like I think we're gonna see especially with AI and everything else is we're gonna see um smaller sales teams we're going to have we're going to see we're also probably like a small SDR team the bdr teams you know and they'll be leveraging AI to actually do outbound right eventually like to the point where that's not even a thing anymore right and it might be just full cycle AE rolls and there's leverage a on top of what

they're doing but they're still doing outbound too so I don't think there's a perfect model but I think it's important to understand like how do you define the role what are you trying to optimize for the instruction properly too that makes a world of sense I like that let's move on here to uh so Juan pinagua I hope I said that right one forgive me brother uh you said you mentioned needing to hire the right profiler are you a fan of tests such as disk or you know there's several as I could name here but

what are your thoughts on that yeah I think I'm I'm probably biased I love those tests personally because I think I think you learn a lot about a person I think when you're when you're interviewing behind my profile whenever you're hiring someone there's like the facts and the test results there's kind of like the uh the hard facts if you will The Logical stuff there's also the emotional stuff too right it's like it's like how do you actually feel with them as well so I'll give you examples so if you couldn't tell by just this

conversation even on this profile I'm a strong D all right that's just that's just this is how I am I'm a hard charger if you could tell um but never yes I just I'm starting to hear that I know I know so um and I've interviewed people we didn't have any tests like that but I I could tell based on the conversation I'm like they're probably a d as well which is cool right which is cool but like when you when you talk with them just like anything else even with a strong D there's good

and bad ones right and overall the person now I could I could feel was not gonna really align to the rest of the team because I think when you're when you're building a strong team it's really important that number one you're hiding right profile but it's not just for the role but also for the team and where the team's gonna go what gaps does the team have so for example and last company I was like it wasn't corporate you know I would hire a lot of a lot of people over time right and they kind

of profile I don't want to say the profile because it seems totally weird but any kind of profile they were kind of higher intentionally but it's a very I'm like okay so and it's like if you didn't fit this profile then they you probably wouldn't get hired it wasn't that wasn't like how they would interview but it just seemed that way you see this team like everyone looks the same acts the same that's dangerous yeah you have you have this homogeneous team the same ways of thinking same age group it seemed like everyone kind of

looked the same way act the same way that can be very very dangerous and I think it's really important when you hire people you are hiring people with different strengths actually lift the team up because as a whole they're actually better right and what was interesting was Alberto had a very homogenous team in my team when I started building this team looked very different very different personality types and so like I'm I'm very very intense I have people that are not intense uh people that are more emotional we had more people that aren't just like

it was like we had we had a lot of females on team different ages different background different gender so we had like a really diverse team and if you looked at my team at the annual sales meeting they just looked different than the makeup of other teams strangely enough a year or two later or the top teams year after year after year right yeah because we had a diversity of thought that's why I think it's you have to be careful a little bit because the instinct is going to be hey they're an X profile we're

all gonna hire that yeah so much more higher off you know characteristics and values you know and their beliefs versus just a personality so to take it all into consideration when you're making a higher decision yeah yeah I love what you're talking about there the the idea of um it's put a couple ideas in my head it reminds me of famous sayings that aren't exactly right until you make one little tweak like knowledge is power it's great saying well only once it's applied right and diversity is our strength well only once you're really unified on

a common Mission then it is if not it's just a thing I mean it might or might not be right so it sounds like you've marshaled a team that did have common values so when hiring when you use the word profile you're not really talking maybe about the same thing somebody else might be it sounds like it's more like a set of values and maybe some Life Choices maybe they want a little more for themselves maybe maybe expand out a little bit what was that core of the profile since there is that diversity around that

yeah so I mean like there's a few things right so like there's a simple stuff like I think it'll be pretty common across the board like what type of sales Acumen do they have I think it's important like instinctually how do they engage with you like when you meet them are they awkward are they like like do they even prepare for the conversation like that's like stuff is not it's not really crazy but it's kind of shocking that that should be a requirement right so that's really important I want to know are they adaptable right

do they have good AQ so like no one thinks pivot how do they adapt to that so I I might ask a question like this hey give me a specific example of a time when you set plan Place something catastrophic happened what did you do next and I want to find out exactly what do they do and also how they Define catastrophic right like I hate to say it but sometimes it's it's like I mean this is kind of crazy but like one of the questions I would ask and this kind of good example I'll

ask like give me an example of something that that was really challenging that you overcame and you're able to accomplish in life I just want to hear generally speaking right and no offense if this is you but sometimes I get the extra like oh you know like I'm really proud that I went to college and I graduated I'm like wait hold on so nice give you loans to go to school you went and party and you graduated you just got above a d that's your proudest accomplishment right like I'm out right it's like so I'll

stuff like that I think is important as well someone mentioned grit earlier like having a level like of grit and perseverance is really important you know like that's just like you know at the end of the day I think the the double determined for success is delayed gratification right being able to do something consistently even when it sucks and it feels like you know it's not desirable and you don't you can't see the end are you able to persevere and push through because oftentimes we know in sales the hardest territory management between the ears so

if we want to be true that's basically what sales is all the time so if you don't have that what do you actually have I think it's really important right how about Drive I want to have a drive are they driven do they expect a lot of themselves like the one of the worst things you can do is hire someone who has low expectations of themselves because when they performed a certain level they're gonna be good they're gonna be stagnant right because they they're not going to be able to push past it right so I'll

give you a really simple example so and it's not necessarily what they've already achieved but mostly what their goals are so for example somehow literally ask them like hey like what was like what do you want to make well like what would be your dream income and why I want to find out what that number is right and I'm not looking for a massively High number by any means about 100 of the reasoning behind it 200k okay cool like why is it up I don't know just I guess that'd be nice you know like it'd

be nice to get there well the reality is is like that's not that's not right there's no true wire Drive behind that right versus hey I'll make 200 000 and here's why because my kid has like 30 different allergies um we're gonna go to this allergy Institute it's really expensive so I want to save up money and take him there to give him all his allergies it's gonna cause x amount in order to get that I have to and you know what I do for my family I do for them because growing up I never

had the opportunity so there's a fire inside a drive that I can't create they gotta have it so I can cover some of these things as examples that hopefully it puts them in a highest likely to actually be successful because again if you hire someone who's gonna low drive low motivation they're gonna call in sick they're not gonna show up when things get harder they're gonna give up we don't want that every time you have turnover every time the fires when I touch someone like just quits that kills your growth it puts you back many

months cost you thousands thousands of dollars yeah yeah the average bad higher I've seen a lot of numbers can cost you anywhere from 60 to 120 Grand and uh so it's definitely something to consider very carefully well Marcus it's been a value-packed episode I'm grateful to you for being here you're a fantastic guest you're welcome back anytime thanks for being on the show it's been a pleasure