A Strong Vision
Do you notice a lot of people withhold this evangelistic around door to door or around solar or pest control or whatever you’re selling in fear of maybe just, I don’t wanna preach it too much cause it’s not that glamorous, You know what I mean? It’s almost like they, they hold back evangelizing this opportunity just in fear of ego of like, I don’t, I wanna negate the fact there’s door to door or it’s scary. Or what if they say something like, Oh, you have to knock on doors. Have you felt that at all? Yes. And I feel like even more so, people will get lazy and just talk about money instead of, you know, there’s a lot of places that our reps can go to make money. There are a lot of places that you could go. Why do they want to work for you? And, why do they wanna work for you long term? Because to build anything great, you have to have people that are, that are loyal and wanna be a part of, you know, more than just a job. And to give you kudos. You know, obviously we have worked together for a year now your people are like that. I notice I work with a lot of leaders. There are a lot of leaders out there that cycle through a lot of people. It’s the first indication I say, they’re not leaving your company. They’re not like you as a leader have not given enough value for them to want to stay. Right? But interviewing, you know, I’ve been on your guy’s podcast and seen and met a lot of your guys came to the summit and interacted with you guys on the platform or whatever, and you can tell they’re bought into you and your vision. Hence a lot of them have been there for years.
Skill
The next one is skills. This one is pretty self-explanatory. This is the ability to, especially in sales, you gotta be an expert in your craft. You get the word expert, you know, on your shirt. Here’s what makes me an expert. Okay, guys. Fun tip, Yeah. Make sure, let’s say expert on them. You’re an expert. Yeah. Yeah, this shirt doesn’t really make a lot of sense, but I just wear it so I can say eyes up here. People are trying to figure it out. My eyes are up here. I get that a lot. People always checking me out. Yeah, I’m kidding. Um, so scale, uh, yeah. Being an expert, uh, you know, they want to know that you’re sharp as attacked. They want to know that, um, you know, you, you know what you’re doing. You can help them level up, you know, from with, you know, with their, with their skill. This is controlling the conversation. This is de-escalating heated conversations. This is, you know, kind of knowing what to say, you know, especially in sales, but also in, you know, conversations with your, with your people.
You know, I found that this also can be debilitating. So I’m gonna put like an asterisk and maybe you’re gonna, I’m gonna, I’m gonna play devil’s advocate for a second. Some people say, that once I have this much skill, I now can be a leader. So I don’t want people to fall into the trap of there’s like this weird destination to skill that they have to reach in order to take on the mantle of leadership. Gotcha. Your influence will mean you’ll actually have more influence as a leader. You’ll be more impactful as a leader as your skills increase. But realize that’s a forever journey. And also be open to you don’t know everything, you know what I mean? Like, but, and, and, but the first step is to put leadership and emotion, in my opinion. But realize like, that nobody wants to follow you if they don’t trust the fact that you have some good nuggets that they’re coming to learn from. And so that’s where the skill, it’s like I’ve watched it in leadership is you have this manager that you’re like, I would never, I don’t want to go to your training meeting. Like I, yeah. There’s nothing I’m learning from you. Why are you in this position? So somebody needs to fill a hole, Don’t be that guy.
Speaker 1: (04:27)
Yes. Yeah. They have to know that you’re somebody that can help them level up. Yep. And they have to have confidence in that. And I totally agree. You don’t have to, you don’t have to be the top rep in your office. You don’t have to be, you know, outsell. You know, everybody, you know, a lights-out salesperson. But you do need to be, you know, you need to know what you’re doing. You know, And you need, you need the product because this is how they’re gonna perceive you as competent and as somebody that they can, you know, respect. Yeah. Um, and I’ll circle back to that after we talk about this too because I’ll tell you how I applied this. Uh, cause I kind of developed this three years ago or so, and then, surveyed and continue to survey all of our, all of our sales leadership on these four attributes. And it’s been super helpful. So we’ll dive in on that in just a
Character
The next one is, is character. This is, um, you know, this is who you are when nobody’s looking. Um, your, your your, your people have to admire you. Um, I don’t know how else, how else to say it. You have to be the type of person that people, you know, who wanna be like, you know, they want you to rub off on, they wanna spend more time around you cause you’re gonna help them, you know, become a better person. Um, this is like, uh, you know, this is, it’s humility. It’s the ability to say, sorry if you mess up. I see so many macho leadership, you know, manager guys that are, and gals that are, you know, they feel like they have to bite people’s heads off. If you mess up, say sorry, it goes along the way. It’s doing what you say you’re gonna do. It’s, it’s having your personal life in order. You know, there, there are, I see so many people hit a cap and, and they have a blind spot. They don’t see it. They hit a cap because of who they are. Your character isn’t asking for more. How you’re showing up isn’t receiving more.
It holds ’em back. And, and you know, they, they’ve got a drug problem, closet drug problem, you know, or alcohol problem. They don’t wanna talk to anybody about it. But their people know, you know, or they’re, they’re showing up late. They walk in late to their meetings and it’s like, Sorry everybody, I have this, you know, they’re making excuses and, and it’s a blind spot for, And um, this is one of the trickier ones to, to give feedback on it because this one is typically a blind spot. Um, but until they, until they can level up their character, fix their personal lives, fix their financial situation, I mean, all these things, you have to have that in order. That’s all part of your character, good time management, and all that.
That. And when receiving feedback in, in my sense, it’s one, it’s like they’ve gotta get the feedback. Two, they’ve gotta receive that feedback mm-hmm. and then do something about it. And I’ve noticed because of the ego, especially in this industry, is people don’t accept shots fired at their character and they get very prideful and the ego pops in. Yeah. And they say, Well, you just defended and blah, blah, blah. Yeah. And they go da, just, just receive the freaking feedback and say, Well, I’m gonna do something or not do something with this. But it’s feedback they must be saying for some odd reason and, and, and then interpret and go with something from there. Yes. And it’s the biggest stagnant to growth is the inability to take shots fired at a character and not flare up and flight and make fun of, or whatever, your reaction is. But it’s to just say, Cool, that’s how my character’s showing up to these people. What am I gonna do about it now? A hundred percent. Well, it’s also recognizing that in a leadership position, it’s your job to give them feedback. Yes. Or in other words, to help them level up. That’s what, that’s what you’re doing. And your ability to be able to do that, help them level up is, is what’s going to keep them there. It’s what’s gonna make them want to be around you. You know, oftentimes we’re too afraid to bring it up because we’re gonna hurt their feelings or because they’re, um, you know, they’re not gonna receive it well or because they must obviously know it’s gonna be no good whatever reason. But, uh, this is all part of developing leaders, which is kind of the theme. What we’re talking about is don’t stop training reps, start training leaders. Um, and that’s where our time is best spent.
Action
The last one, which is Action. The most, probably, the most rare and perhaps the most important one, which is action. This is leading from the front. This, you know, especially in sales leadership, we have, we have a unique job in that we’re all offense. No defense. Yeah. I had a client two weeks ago that said I don’t care about expenses. I just spend whatever I freaking want. I just care about selling more deals. I was like, What? No defense. Yeah, no defense besides defense is a good offense. That’s where I was gonna go. And then he says exactly that quote. He goes, Best defense is a good offense. And I was like, true salesmen, let’s go. And guess. And guess what? If you’re CEO, then that can probably be a dangerous mentality. But if you’re in a sales leadership position, that’s your job. It’s revenue. It’s the front line. You hire other awesome people that are going to play defense and make sure you don’t put the company out of business and you are charging. It’s, it’s, you’re right officer. It’s, you’re, you’re going for it. And you see this mistake, the reason I say it’s the rarest is you see so many people that when they get promoted, they wanna become a glorified secretary. I know they take off their Nikes and they won’t put on fancy shoes and sit in the knight’s, you know, office. And they, they don’t realize that the most valuable thing is the hard thing, which is out on the doors, out grinding up, you know, leading from the front. You gain so much respect. And, and I’ve gained so much respect for you, for doing this. You’re out there, you don’t have to do that, but you’re doing it. You’re out there, you’re grinding, you’re still with people out on the doors. And I love that. I think that’s so important. You could take any excuse, and many people do and most do, you know of like, Oh, I did that. I’m not gonna do that anymore. The problem, then, the bad news is that it just doesn’t work. And I hear it all the time. Well, I told that rep like, Oh, you want what I have, but you don’t wanna do what I did to get that. Like, I don’t do that anymore. It’s like, I’m sorry, but when you take the job, you, you don’t have that right. They’re gonna do what they see you doing and you know, now they don’t care what you did before. They care what you’re doing right now. And they’re watching. I had to pay my dues. That’s the four.
Apply these 4 strategies, level up yourself, and watch your team and business grow! We would love to hear from you. Reach out to us and let’s see if we are a good fit to work with each other. Our goal is to unite the door to door industry and uphold a reputation of honor and integrity.
