Let us face it. The door-to-door sales industry has one of the highest turnover rates. Reps promiscuously jump from one company to another.
Being that recruiting and retaining top talent in the direct sales space is becoming more complex, many companies have been forced to lower their standards, becoming more tolerant of mediocrity from their reps.
But does this have to be the norm?
Christopher Hill and Jordon Price scream a deafening NO to this.
Chris and Jordon have been able to scale their company, Brightside Roofing, from a company that did $2m in sales last year to one well in line to record $20m sales this year!
How did they pull this seeming miracle?
In this podcast, Chris and Jordon expose us to the working details of their blueprint, entailing how they formulated a high-performing work culture that sets reps up for excellence.
Ready to learn more about these insights?
Building core values in your team and maintaining non-negotiable standards
It is no secret that most door-to-door sales companies pamper their reps.
Yes, they don’t want to lose their reps, especially those selling high numbers, and are therefore willing to swallow almost anything from them.
Consequently, this, unfortunately, creates a mediocre work culture where the red lines are blurred, and reps feel they can get away with just any output they deliver.
At Brightside, Chris and his team have installed an uncompromising work culture โ decked with deterrence infrastructure โ where reps are fully informed of the expected KPIs and penalties for not hitting them.
This way, Chris holds his team to high levels of accountability. Such a competitive, no-nonsense work culture ensures reps are consistently on their toes, being pushed to challenge their limits.
Selling your vision to your reps
Here is one of the most prominent reasons why reps don’t last in a door-to-door sales company. The business owner or management struggles to communicate the vision to the rep.
More than that, the management fails at tangibly demonstrating to the reps how the company’s vision aligns with theirs and creates a sustained environment of prosperity for the reps.
As Chris and Jordon explain, reps perform better โ and stay longer โ when they feel a sense of belonging. If your reps are convinced they are critical stakeholders in an important project, they feel more connected to the company’s growth.
The job of the business owner or manager is to transport this sense of belonging to the rep without getting them complacent because of excessive job security.
The management should be able to show the reps that provided they consistently deliver KPIs, the company can fulfill their financial aspirations.
Building resilience and positivity in your sales reps
It is commonly said that door-to-door sales is 80% mental. Why?
Because every day, the average rep is exposed to a deluge of rejection. You dare not allow your reps’ morale to sink in this sea of negativity.
Chris and Jordon advocate building an actionable system that teaches your reps the mental mechanics of resilience and long-suffering.
Jordon’s favorite mental hack to overcoming rejection is the Goldfish technique from the famous Netflix’s Ted Lasso.
Goldfishes have 10-second memories, making them the happiest animals on the planet, according to Ted Lasso.
Inferably, according to Jordon, sales reps can maintain morale on the field if they can forget their failures almost immediately like goldfishes.
Optimizing educational programs to ensure new reps can hit the ground running
Dumping a newbie sales rep at the door and expecting him to return exceptional sales numbers is fraudulent.
Managers need to thoroughly educate their reps on the techniques they need to close sales.
By sustainably immersing their reps into these techniques and frameworks, these procedures become almost second nature for such door-to-door sales reps.
The problem is individually training every rep you have can be exhaustive. What is more, it comes with the risk of inconsistency in knowledge being passed across – especially when you have a large team of rep.
This is by Jordon and Chris recommend systematizing your reps’ education and onboarding. This can be in the form of having an integrated sales educational platform like TheD2DExperts’ door-to-door university with pre-recorded video lectures, sales frameworks, and guides that reps can readily imbibe.
This means instead of investing a fortune (both in time and finances) training one rep at a time, you can simply pass a massive number of reps through an automated sales training platform, accelerating onboarding.
Leading with empathy and showing reps you care for their long-term growth
As much as you want to emit strength as a leader, you can’t forget the humane side of business. Your sales reps are fundamentally humans with an emotional side.
Jordon and Chris advise that entrepreneurs in door-to-door sales should seek that delicate balance between authority and empathy.
More importantly, you want to lead from the front and convincingly show your sales reps that you care for their long-term growth.
When reps see that you are both emotionally and financially invested in their improvement, instead of milking them for every dollar you can, they connect better with your company.
This way, they are more open to staying longer and contributing more.
Here are some of the valuable insights this podcast entails. Listen above to catch the full sauce.
