Ad 00:07
Hey, this is Mike at Salesrabbit.com. We’ve got four great new product coming out: Movers, Weather, Data Grid AI, and Digital Contracts. These things are going to change the face of the field sales industry come visit us at salesrabbit.com to learn more.
Sam Taggart 00:20
Hey everybody this is Sam Taggart with the DDD podcast and I’m here with Mike Hilverda, the seller right right yep. And we got Zack Kerr, also formerly known most commonly known as Zub, which good friends from long time, and I’m excited for this podcast. So we have sales rabbit, which has been our primary sponsor at door con since year one. I mean, I was like, guys want to do this event. I need your help with put on the map. Obviously one of the bigger juggernauts in the tech space for door to door. So little on Mike, you know, been in sales for 12 years, runs their VP of customer success. And then Zach is their chief strategy officer. And 20 years in door-to-door I mean, Zack had built and ran and sold many door to door businesses from solar, alarms…. So a lot of good insight. But I think the biggest thing about this podcast is gonna make this interesting is the eyes that they’ve had in I mean, over the years in sales, rather, how long sales or I’ve been in business?
Zac Kerr 01:24
Eight years, eight and a half years.
Sam Taggart 01:25
Eeight and a half years, how many companies do you think you’ve been on calls with worked with strategize with?
01:30
multiples of 1000s? For sure. multiples? Does that mean? Yeah, yeah, customers and clients alone multiples of 1000s. Right. But then you start thinking about the all the companies we’ve been consulted with and been in sales conversations with you just just universally see, you know, door to door for its whole across all these products and service industries around the world, right, like crazy. You know, a lot of people don’t realize, in some ways how big door to door is, but yet also how small it is. But like, you know, it’s it’s happening in Europe, it’s happening in Japan, it’s happening in Australia, it’s happening in Africa. You know, we talk to companies all around the world that do door to door.
Sam Taggart 02:08
So what’s the craziest industry you’ve seen use your app.
02:13
You get somewhere, people are just doing surveys. They’re looking to collect data in the field. And I mean, these could be like, dissertations, college prizes, or some I mean, they’re small accounts for us, we get some pretty crazy use cases, people gathering information about small businesses and stuff. Pretty non traditional. We get political canvassing now and again, what are some other Sam the weirdest one that I’ve ever heard of? And it’s always stuck with me is like, I thought I saw it on slack. Or someone was like, hey, someone just signed up to use the app to go and sell cat neutering door to door. Dude arena. That’s what is gonna say the cigar company. Random use cases, right? Yeah. You know, some entrepreneurs just like, I’m gonna go sell ABC door to door and give it a shot or attract that.
Sam Taggart 03:01
Yeah. That is so crazy. Like we literally had water. So we did a bootcamp this last week, and we had water trash, ah, back roofing, solar alarm past and medical supply. Good eight industries that are bootcamp and it was just like, wow, this is crazy, like so many different people and knock doors.
Zac Kerr 03:23
And it’s just so neat that like, universally, the there are principles and planning and processes that apply to all those, regardless of where you’re selling products or services, is door to door face to face selling face to face prospecting. And there’s just an underlying, you know, truce and or behaviors you see across all these orgs of what they do or don’t do, right? This is a product or service thing,
Mike Hilverda 03:45
When you ask about what’s the what’s the craziest one I’ve heard of, I mean, there’s been some crazy ones, but there’s just a lot. They’re not necessarily crazy, but they’re non traditional. You don’t think of this as a mainstay of Field Sales. But you see a lot of industries getting into it, because I think a lot of people looked at COVID. And they thought, Okay, this is going to be the Depth of Field Sales, where it’s really going to impact a lot of Field Sales companies, we’re going to see a lot of go out of business. In reality, we’ve not only seen a lot of Field Sales companies thrive, but we’ve seen a lot of industries get into Field Sales because their other channels have suffered. Because you don’t have people coming to the storefront or coming to events. Being able to go to them has been critical.
Sam Taggart 04:28
Yeah, all the trade shows are shut down. I mean, think of how many people relied on going from tradeshow to tradeshow thing how many people relied on retail, you know, the king of the malls or been dead? You know, like, it’s like, that’s wild to think like, how door to doors. It’s hard to disrupt I mean, the only thing I guess what, what threats Can you or where do you see door to door threats opportunities happening over the next 510 years.
Zac Kerr 04:57
I mean, biggest threats like For example, Australia right now is going through a proposed act, it’s it would be essentially legislation, right? Where they’re banning door to door for gas and electricity. Interestingly, they don’t class solar into that category in Australia. But I mean, that’s a real thing. And that’s been looming for actual actual years. But like, there’s significant progress made last week on that, really. And so, you know, when you talk, talk about threats, a lot of it is is, you know, some of these these laws, you know, rules and regs around it. And I mean, it’s stuff you and I have talked about in the door to door Association, right? Yeah, working with a GS and some of these cities, and we’ve all brushed up against those, those limitations that, you know, government provides, and sometimes they make sense. And other times, it’s just nonsensical like this is this doesn’t make any sense.
Mike Hilverda 05:52
Well, the problem is that you have to make sure when you’re drafting legislation like that, that you have both parties in the conversation. So that’s why it’s so important for Field Sales companies and the organization that you guys have created to be involved in that conversation. Like, yeah, let’s do reasonable legislation to make sure that everybody’s aboveboard and doing things right. But yeah, let’s make sure Field Sales as part of that combo. Yeah.
Sam Taggart 06:17
So one of the A lot of people don’t know, but the door to door Association, Zack Kerr actually sits on the board, which is a kind of a was a strategic play one, the relationships there to the insights and the network to really go make a difference. And, you know, because they’re, they’re the threats are the government and laws. And, you know, I think COVID was a scare for, you know, you’re like, Hey, stay at home, and then like, What’s an essential service? And then people were kind of dancing around like, Well, my essential service, can I still go do door to door? You know, I think that was a question a lot of people asked, and, but those are things that hopefully the association can help combat and help push the needle the right direction. So let’s kind of shift gears. So this podcast, I really want to focus we already like got into some good stuff, this is already good. I’m excited. And if you’re listening to this, guys, go check out sales, rabbit sales, revenue.com, these guys have done phenomenal for the last eight years, I’m building tech solutions and, and creating partnerships and network across the world. And so I figured this would be an interesting topic for this podcast would be leveraging technology for your business, and not just sales rabbit, but you know, apps from communication to CRM to score boarding to lead management’s to marketing, I think that there’s, you know, I was funny, I literally had a password. I’m sure if somebody hacked that I’d be screwed in life, but it was like all the things I needed passwords for. And my software’s in my business. And there was like 72 software’s and I was like, What the freak, like, whether it was, you know, marketing stuff, and, you know, logins to design stuff. And, you know, and I was like holy cow, like, we spent money on 72 of these things. Like, it was like a wild like, eye opener, I like cheese. But I think the biggest problem is, is most companies don’t know what text to use, what stack to how to integrate those things, and then how to get the most out of those things. And they pay for it. They think it’s like, Oh, that sounds really fine and dandy, but then they don’t milk it for what it’s worth,
Mike Hilverda 08:17
You can have the best software in the world. You know, the Uber successful, that means Microsoft, Salesforce or something, we’re sales rabbit, you have the best software in the world, you put it on your shelf, you stare at it, it’s really nice and pretty. But if you don’t actually use it, if you’re not building adoption, and your team is not going to do a thing for you. And in our company, we look at ourselves as being able to control or like have a couple of different levers we can help our clients with, how can we motivate reps, get them work more hours in a day? How can we make them more efficient out of those hours? Can we increase their contact rate? And then mastery or effectiveness? Can we increase their close rates? So you’re going from just getting them to work another 15 minutes per day to we’re actually increasing our close rate? And all that’s good. But I think there’s an even higher level of Okay, sales rabbit does x for me. Or if I’m in the roofing industry, maybe acuralink does. You know why, for me, it is incredible things. But my reps are going to adopt them better. It’s going to increase motivation, efficiency, mastery, not just by themselves, but it’s going to take it to another level if these different systems are speaking to each other. Because if my rep has to bounce between x, y, z back and forth between these different platforms, re entering the same information over and over again, kills adoption, it’s actually going to decrease your efficiency. So something we’re always stressing with our clients is, here’s what sales rabbit can do for you. But there’s these other areas that we’re just not going to serve, it’s not our bread and butter. So you need to use those as well. We kind of talk with the a consult with you on how to put together that tech stack, and then making sure that they’re all talking together to create an issue. process. So
Zac Kerr 10:00
Something I see is, regardless of the product or service company, whatever they’re selling behaviors in software buying is kind of an interesting thing to watch. So the the buying group for software has grown. So typically, you know, it’s five to seven people are making that decision as to what software they’re going to buy. So that’s the buying group that we’re essentially selling to, right. And it kind of the table used to not be that way. It used to be a smaller group. And another thing that’s changed is people rely on reviews, and peer feedback about solutions more than ever. Yeah, another mistake that we see companies make is they come to the buying table, and they haven’t developed the criteria list of why they’re getting the software and what they need the software to do. So there’s that. So then they go out, and they look at it, and like, Oh, I’m gonna go buy a field sell solution. So they go and they look at what solution providers and build sales instead of saying, I need a solution that does ABC and XYZ, for this amount of time for this amount of people. And I’ve gone have gone around and talked to my whole organ, my team, and here’s our requirements list, we need to do all these different things, and then go to market and go look for solutions that meet those, that criteria, right? That’s really how you should evaluate and shop for it, there’s a great solution I always tell people about is jeetu crowd calm, which is basically a software indexing site, they index, all these software solutions by category. And we actually went and worked with them to develop a whole new category called Field Sales. So now you can go to jeetu crowd comm you can click on Field Sales, and you can look at it, there’s 50 plus solution providers that are all in that same lane, you know, trying to create these some Field Sales solutions. And you know, one solution provider might meet your requirements list. Yeah, one solution provider won’t. Usually you’re going to find a company that does almost everything, and you’re going to probably say, we’ll go with them because they do most of our lists, whereas someone else does it right. Zooms to Zeus points. You’ll get an instigator of that software conversation, someone who identifies the need for their particular area of business. And maybe that person’s in sales, maybe they’re in operations, maybe it’s an individual rep that used sales rabbit at a different company, they’re coming in saying Why do you guys not have this, but it really is important that you’re looking at all different aspects of business, because I’m looking at it exclusively on the operation side, then I’m going to miss out on the individual reps needs, I’m going to miss out on what kind of visibility to the managers need. So when you’re going to go make that decision, looking at jeetu crowd or capterra, or others that are going to give you reviews and a pretty good definition of what these different platforms do. It’s important that I know what is ops need, what is sales need? Maybe even deeper, what does it need? Like? Do we need the API into the software to connect it with our our back end systems that we use? So once you know that you’re going to be able to make a decision that’s actually lasting that you guys can use for years on end?
Sam Taggart 13:03
Yeah, cuz a lot of times we were swapped around. And that just creates like,
Zac Kerr 13:06
it’s because they’re not Yeah, they’re not having that big conversation initially, to identify needs,
Mike Hilverda 13:12
Something that we see a lot of is, you know, obviously, sales reps move around companies, right. And they also move into different roles. And so sales reps come in to a new company, and they’re like, Oh, we need x solution, why do we need a solution because that’s what I use the Y company, you know, and that’s just what I know. And so we need this here. Well, we need it for these basic things. And then you have someone else that comes in or like, Oh, we need this. And really, there’s a lot of times, there’s just a lack of planning that happens for the organization across the whole, to Mike’s point about planning for all these different departments needs and creating a system and process that arches over all those needs, right? sales rep, it just sits into a sliver that you have all these other solutions, but they need to be integrated, they need to be planned together. And our favorite buyer is the buyer who comes to the table and they’re they’re mature in their understanding and planning and they know exactly what they need. And one of the great values that we provide is that they’re the majority of these buyers right they don’t have that they don’t have a person in their org who’s just over you know, their their Field Sales technology or who’s over you know even
Sam Taggart 14:22
a 10 man company yes like one of the things
Zac Kerr 14:25
So they just don’t know what they don’t know they don’t know what to look for they don’t know how to think about solutions before cells rabbit post cells rabbit integrating across really great values you get is you talking to people at cells rabbit who have done this 1000s of times and then they know Oh, you’re this company or this size, you know you probably should be looking at solutions that look like this or do this because what’s gonna happen is if you don’t plan for this, and I’m not hearing you guys talking about you know, planning for that you need to be thinking about this as well in connection with buying sales rabbit.
Mike Hilverda 14:57
One of the things that I loved about door to door comm And what you created Sam was there is this innate competitiveness and field? So like any industry would be, but yeah, these distant different companies, they’re trying to take each other’s lunch? And how do I get these people to actually talk to each other. And you did that you create an environment where they were willing to collaborate to a certain level share knowledge. And I think the the initial theme you had that first year was a rising tide raises all ships, right all boats. And so as sales rabbit, when we talk to these companies, we want to identify those gaps and identify a way to lift them. And I think that what I would tell your listeners, and anybody in Field Sales is, when you’re partnering with software, companies don’t just partner based on what they individually can do for me, but identified companies that are going to consult with me and say, let’s look at all of the gaps in your process. And here’s what we can fulfill on. And then here’s the other things that we can’t fulfill on and we’re going to introduce you to the other companies that fill those gaps. And oh, by the way, we integrate with them. I love that. I love
Sam Taggart 16:03
that. So let’s say I’m a company. And I’m and I love this because this people don’t, they just buy the software and it sits on the shelf. And so I love this strategy of know what you’re what you’re trying to solve for then go find the software. So let’s say that I’m getting sales rabid, or tool like sales rabbit to manage, like you said, motivate to track and increase efficiency, and then to obviously help closing percentage. So it’s like, okay, most these door companies, in my opinion, there aren’t good at those things. Like, the biggest problem I run into is I can’t get my guys to work, you know, they go out for an hour or two, and then they poop out. Let’s talk about each of those three things motivate and how technology is a driver of that, you know, obviously, I’ve got a manager that’s running a sales meeting, I’ve got maybe trainers, I’ve got competitions going. But it’s like there’s an element of technology that should naturally motivate so how does sales rabbit help or support them?
Zac Kerr 17:06
Let me share some thoughts on this to start with. So you know, when you think about like, how these companies pay their their reps, right? Most of them are 1099, seven, W two, but it’s really you get paid to be the marketer and the salesperson, yeah, you’re originating, the lead the sales opportunity, and then you’re pitching and you’re closing that customer. And so you generally get paid really well in this industry, because you’re doing both those activities, whereas a traditional company, typically they bifurcate their budget, they have marketing dollars, and they have sales dollars, right. And they’re paying sales commission. Well, no company wants to bear the cost of marketing on top of their, their, what they’re paying their sales rep to go out and generate the deal. But what is happening in door to door, and I’ve said this for years is the industry will move towards being less about prospecting, a more about pitching and closing. Yes. And so the role now that data is playing is more critical than ever. And so when we talk about taking someone who’s never done door to door before, and graduating them into success quickly so that they retain, and they continue to perform and build a career or taking a rep who’s been in it for a while and they’re tired of the motions. And they’re not succeeding in, you know, structuring a new paradigm, to cause themselves to be motivated to go out and work every day. you’re introducing a tool or technology that changes the way that they view their work, that changes the way in which they view others that that involve their work. And it literally changes the way in which they have to go work work is different defined differently. Yeah. And so when you can use data, like we just released, the new product is new mover leads? Well, we know that insecurity, you know, security is used new mover leads for quite a while.
Sam Taggart 18:54
Yeah, a lot of people I think passed I think a lot of a lot of services like satellite, you move into a house, you need TV, internet, satellite pass alarm.
Mike Hilverda 19:03
And when you go and you look at like how users use those leads, and all of the work that goes into procuring those, and then actually working them. It’s cumbersome. Yeah. So we took that we built a new product. That’s new Movers. And we now provide that data right in our app, but we built a workflow around it that changes the way in which people have to do that type of work. I think that’s motivating because the rising generation wants to work smarter, not harder. And they want things to technologically make sense, then they want to feel like I’m okay doing door to door but I just want to make sure we’re doing it in like the smartest way possible.
Sam Taggart 19:38
It kind of goes back to that like first year rep when he comes down. He’s like, why are we not just selling the apartment complex instead of this? You’re like, well, in theory, obviously that’d be nice but put your head down go to work, but like, there’s this natural innate, like, oh, wow, this is efficient. Like this is really cool how we’re doing this.
19:55
So we talked to a lot of companies about the millennial rep because this is like it or not As your workforce that’s upcoming, and there is this initial reaction of they’re lazy, or they’re not working as hard as I did in my day, you need to earn your earnings just like I did, it has to be exactly the way I went through it. And I think that companies would little more open can benefit from this by saying, OK, they don’t necessarily want to do it the way I did to churn through and work as hard as I did. But they’re incredible closers, they’re able to have conversations with people about technology, for example, if I’m selling solar, that I wasn’t capable of before. So how can I queue up those conversations, skip over some of the canvassing work that needs to be done, and get them into a high buyer propensity situation. So like Zoo was talking about with this movers product, you know, you identify what your trigger is it listing under contract closed or something, the data drops to your rep in the app. And then, you know, they’re they’re knocking on that door, they’re going to be the first person in that conversation. And when we started beta testing this with some people, we were thinking of security, past internet, satellite, that kind of stuff that automatically comes to mind. And these industries that were already doing this, and what’s been surprising is I don’t think there’s a single industry we serve who’s not intrigued by this and testing it, solar has been a big one. For us, that was surprising, because we were thinking, you know, you do not want to be knocking on that door adapter close. When you’re a solar company, this person is not ready for that conversation. But what they’ll do is we work with them to set a little bit of a delay up. So the date is dropping a month after close persons moved in, they’ve got an energy bill in hand, and suddenly they’re ready for that conversation. So I think the big question is, how can I identify high propensity buyers? How can I queue my reps up at just the right moment? When they can have a meaningful conversation? Love the
21:57
good cashier thought it hasn’t? It doesn’t have to technology, but I’m having and I’m curious for your thoughts, Sam. Some of my favorite clients are the ones that create a holy cause as a company for their their millennial reps, talking about the rising generation here. Something I find is like, people more than ever, you know, and I’m still young in my career, but people more than ever, from what I’ve seen, they want to do work that’s meaningful. They want there to be meaning and purpose behind it. And when we talk about selling, you know, these different products or services, you know, some of them could probably be classed as being more meaningful based on the value that they create. Yeah. But really, how do we get neutering?
Sam Taggart 22:40
I mean, like, what about this cat neutering? I think, to me, we got to see like, there’s a cat problem here.
Zac Kerr 22:49
But I’m sure you could think clients right now who do a really effective job of creating meaning outside of the products.
Sam Taggart 22:54
Yeah, we say it’s not just a for profit business. It’s a for purpose business, as well as a for profit. I love that. So what I I found? Are you asking me like, hey, what?
Mike Hilverda 23:06
Well, it’s just something I think as an industry, we need to lean into more. In fact, I Now’s not the time, but I did a bunch of research, there’s a there’s something called there’s a count that happens every year. A lot of these homeless Coalition’s in order to get federal resources, they have to do a count every two years of the homeless people in their area. And it happens nationally. And I realized that might do this would be a really cool thing to bring the door industry and to go give software that better improves the homeless count, because there’s tons of inaccuracy. And it has to be done. And it’s often done by volunteers, I think this would be the coolest thing to take to the door world to the association or something. So we’re doing the on watch thing.
Sam Taggart 23:50
So yes, you know, we just partnered with autowatch, with the door Association, their partner with Oh, you are the sex trafficking. And once we so in mid March, we’re filming, like all the DT certification courses. And part of that will have the unwatched content, which we already got in there. And that’s teaching door to door people how to identify for sex trafficking. So if you see a certain type of lock, that’s like walking people in in a room, or if you identified this or that, like, you would know how to say, okay, there’s something fishy going on. And maybe you should report this. And because sex trafficking is right in front of us, but we don’t know how to identify like, Oh, this is this girl’s in distressed or whatever’s happening. And I’m like, if we have hundreds of 1000s of foot soldiers in the neighborhoods, like where else is their eyes and ears into neighborhoods like that, where they’re literally talking to each individual homeowner. So that’s a big one that we’re definitely excited about.
Zac Kerr 24:50
I love it. We all need causes, you know, beyond our own interests, and I just I love that so
Sam Taggart 24:57
so let’s kind of shift gears into area management. So officially See, you know, a lot of people I can remember when I first started knocking it was a street sheet you remember those like you had like your, your pen, your paper and it had like it was graphed out and you’d write 1011031051. You know, and then you’d put, you know, smiley face, or like, circle it, if you sold it and draw penis if they didn’t buy, and there’s like, What a dick. And, you know, like, you just like, map it that way. And then also these apps came out like, well, that’s inefficient, because there’s no tracking, there’s no accountability to those. So area management’s always a question I get, like, Where should we go? How long? Should we stay there? How long? How big of a neighborhood? Should I give my rep, you know, those are are like, do I really knock it? How soon? Do I really knock it? I’m sure you have data and like answers to those kind of things? Like what are some best practices on managing an area? You know, obviously, being an area management tool, so you’re
Mike Hilverda 25:52
Removing emotion from it, right? is a big part of it.
Sam Taggart 25:57
And meaning that’s a bad area, we never sell there.
Mike Hilverda 25:59
For whatever reason, or I think this is good because of this, like a lot of times it’s it’s emotionally driven, not data. Yeah. Some groups are getting more data driven in their area selection, but it’s still an issue. In fact, it’s one of the problems we’re solving with our data grid AI product, which is pretty cool, by the way, like, you’ve shown it to me and like it.
Sam Taggart 26:18
Yeah. So like, what they’re doing is they’re taking basically a buyer scores array of one through 10 or something. Yeah. Yeah. So like, they score each home based on previous transactions, papers, people selling doors, people like
Zac Kerr 26:30
Yeah, so like we were talking about with movers, you’re using data to define buyer propensity. Yeah, so with data grid AI, not only at the household level, but to your point about area management, we can look at, you know, a specific company’s customer profile, who have you sold to in the past? What does that person look like? Yeah. Or we can look at specific industries, you know, what is the profile of the ideal, or the core solar roofing satellite customer. And then we use machine learning to say, if these are all those people in this profile, and we look at the data sets we have about all the different homeowners in America and multiple co owners within that home. And then we use that model to say, okay, those are your high propensity buyers, and we judge that on the one to seven scale one to 10 scale, with color coding, and then we’re able to tell our customers, not only you know, this person in this home, higher propensity buyer, and this person has a lower propensity buyer, based on how similar they are to your traditional customer. But we can actually look at an at an area level and say, for this census block, or this census tract, or this county, or even at the state level, which states are most likely to yield those customers who are similar to your previous customers. So cool.
Sam Taggart 27:50
So I always tell people, you know, people like where do I start, you know, let’s say I’m doing summer sales. And I say, have your first couple of weeks in your highest, like propensity buyer area, which tends to been where you had sold the best, your prior or your company has been selling the best like high saturation with your own service or product, and say, start with like, the best chance to succeed, because what ends up happening is, you’ve got these first year, guys, they’re just starting out, and all sudden, they don’t succeed, they’re gonna set the precedent, the standard starts low, because they’re like, well, I guess I’m just not really good sales rep, and they cemented this identity, that doesn’t really serve them. Because it’s all emotional at that point, when it’s not
Zac Kerr 28:30
Just the area, I don’t necessarily want to go back to the area over and over again, I want to say, I want to identify an audience. And so you’re analogizing between this audience in the series before? Well, when I go to this new area, where is that same audience?
Sam Taggart 28:45
I like that. Are you gonna say that? I don’t know. Probably a lot of things. So yeah, area management best tips on managing an area or even just like, how about this, I’ll be specific. I have reps that are just scattered all over Dallas. And I’m managing let’s say these 15 reps, what things would you tell me as a manager to say, hey, let’s clean this up, let’s be more efficient, to track to to strategize like what like instead of just kind of knock wherever you want, when you want how you want, like, Is there a better strategy you’ve seen successful within these companies?
Mike Hilverda 29:20
So, again, following a system or plan process for how you look at area and something I think it really impacts is if all you’re doing is door, and you’re originating all your customers through through door to door face to face contact. It’s easier, because that’s just one campaign. Yeah, but it’s changing. And very few of these companies are doing just one campaign. Yeah, they’re doing hybrid campaigns. They’re doing, you know, some digital marketing before after knocking or the targeted marketing and certain geo areas or they’re doing a new move or leads campaign and they have some other Facebook leads campaign and they have some Other leads are buying from this dude. And they’ve got this group that’s doing door to door. And then you have the some of the thinking is is like, Oh, well don’t give the leads to those door door guys, because they’re performing really well. If we give them leads, they’ll just become dependent on it and they’ll stop performing and we’ll lose the origination from our door door channel. Instead of rethinking about, well, how do humans behave? And how does incentive work in a model where you can bring all these campaigns together. And the reason why I say this affects area planning is that when you when you’re doing other types of campaigns, those don’t necessarily fit nice and tidy into a specific neighborhood or area. No, and that that’s, that’s
Sam Taggart 30:36
why I’m like, this is the conundrum I keep running into is, I got a lead 45 minutes away in the opposite direction of where my area was. So I gotta go take this lead, and then do a knock around it, because I just sold it. And then I start this like momentum train over here. And then I got an area over there. And I did this over and over and over again for five weeks. And I’m scattered all over the freaking place. Yep. And so because people are running these multi channels, I mean, what what what is sales rabbit solve for that? Like? How do you how do you bring efficiency to the element of I’ve got leads coming from all these different directions? And I’m not just a door to door model? What what Yeah, what do you do to solve for that?
Mike Hilverda 31:14
So I actually think scheduling is a is a big piece of this. My I could speak better to it than I could, but we have scheduling tools that help with some of these cross campaign type models. And I will say another complexity here is size a company, if you’re a 10 person, company, you have all the flexibility in the world. But we have clients that have multiples of that in terms of rep count. And when you grow, you just have to become more, you know, systematic departmentalized channel based, and it just is what it is, and you’re more rigid as a company. And you don’t have that flexibility. And you have to create disciplines. And you have to have systems and processes that track behavior that you can then, you know, read via data. Yeah, and say, oh, here’s where people are complying or not complying. We need to either train or discipline or move them off of this campaign. Right? Yeah. And we need to stay in our lane and these different channels
Zac Kerr 32:20
To that point about discipline. I mean, we got so many companies, that when we’re going through an onboarding process, implementing sales rabbit with them, we’ll talk about area management, drawing territories, assigning it to the rep, I’ll say now it’s just the Wild West for us. You know, everybody kind of knocks their own doors and nobody wants Yes. Because and because, you know, who knows? If they said no, to Joe, maybe they’ll say yes to Matt. Okay, but not in the same hour. Let’s, let’s make sure there’s some room
Sam Taggart 32:46
that was here yesterday. Why didn’t they tell me that I was here yesterday, like, you know, you get that like it.
Zac Kerr 32:50
And their response is, we’ve always done it this way, which, of course, is the worst response you can give for any process in the world. But they’ll say, it’s, it’s been successful for us. What they mean is, we’ve only ever done this, it’s been successful for us. And we’re not curious to understand if we could be more successful, like, Who knows if they’ve landed on the worst possible solution in the world. And they decided that is the best possible solution. So wild west approach or saying, I’m going to have three or four reps work in the same territory at the same time? Now, we want to talk through their use case, like why does this make sense to you? We want to be curious and see if there’s some nuggets of truth in what they’re doing. But then we also want to take what they’re trying to achieve and mold it into a better way to Zoom’s points, a more systematic way that can yield data that informs our future decisions. There’s,
Mike Hilverda 33:43
There’s companies, we talked to Sam, where they’re telling us what they need, and we’re like, that’s not what you need at all. And, you know, we’re in a position to challenge them. It’s like, No, listen, we know your without talking to your reps, we know what reps want more than you as a company do. So either a bad leadership, not really in tune with what the sales reps really want, and or need. Because if you actually give them what they want, and need, what they really want, is they want to work smart. And they want to have success. Yeah, they want a box that they can crank that handle and commission when it comes out. Yeah. And so it’s like, it’s, it’s not that hard. But one of the hard parts is is listening to your reps and creating a system or process that is in alignment with how they work and how they want to work but also works for a corporate system or process and it can scale across channels and campaigns. And a lot of times a lot of these orgs buckled to what their reps want, because they end up using appeasing them instead of offering them a better system or process because again, in my opinion, everything rises or falls on leadership. And the leadership has failed to actually go out to market and or go door to door calm, go out and connect with other people and figure out what is actually happening where The changes are and how to bring a better solution to their reps. And if they can’t bring a better solution, if they can’t bring leadership to the reps, they’re just going to appeal do a piece of them. Yeah, it’s just the path of least resistance. And so we see that and so, you know, developing a better processor system, and then then practicing discipline to rise your organization up to do those things. Instead of doing what’s always been done, because everything is changing, and door to door,
Zac Kerr 35:28
I get this false idea, as you’re pointing out is, well, let me find out what my reps need. And instead of saying, What is your process look like? You know, what do you need to make yourself more successful and asking, based on their role, I’m expecting them to give me the whole operational landscape. You don’t want to do that. You just want to get the data from each of the different roles that matter. And then go back to the table with the stakeholders, and design a process that’s actually going to serve that need. Don’t ask them what means they need, ask them what end they need to do their job, right, and then go figure out what the means are that are going to make that happen.
Sam Taggart 36:06
So common problem, I love this. And a common problem you’ll get when you go to reps is they think that they’re working so hard, right? A lot of times, it’s like I’m trying and I’m doing my best. I’m out there grinding. But then I when you lift up the hood, like I was with a company in Atlanta just recently, and I lifted up the hood. And I said, well, let’s look at the actual data. And I’m like, your people work maybe a total of an hour to know like, No, they don’t, they’re they’re all they’re all out there. Like No, no, the data shows me that they work an hour a day. And they’re like, what, and I was like, if you could get them to work a full day, like eight hours, like any other human being in the world, they would you would eight times your production. And then I go Okay, like and I was like so the the real end is, if you can’t come up with a solution to help your people work eight hours a day, then you’re not helping them, you’re hurting them because you’re their leader, and it rises with it and falls with you. Like you’ve got to lead these people. So how does sales rabbit help me? Or a tool like that? Better? Keep my people accountable? Like what what best practices? Have you seen using the tools and data to make sure I can hold my people accountable not look like Big Brother, but like better serve them so that they can make more commission work smarter XYZ?
Mike Hilverda 37:23
Meteor off? Yeah. So data should be a reflection of behavior. Right. And there’s lots of, there’s lots of different KPIs or indicators that you can track inside of sales rabbit. Once you have that data, there’s lots of different places you can bring that data into, interpret and analyze that data to find a story that represents the behavior, right? How you then respond to that, it’s up to you the quality of your leadership, you know, and the relationship you have with your managers and teams, because good data can can inform a really good one on one conversation with a rap about, you know, what they’re getting, or not getting in their life, what type of money they’re making, or not making. And it’s really hard when you got to lead or manage people and you don’t, you don’t know what that next conversation is to have with them to elevate or change their behavior to get better, you know, outcomes. And so when you look at whatever those indicators are, that you’re measuring, most dogs measure a lot of the same indicators, right? They’re all representative of behavior, but it’s how you respond to that data. It’s the leadership that you practice, once you have that data. And looking for trends, is this trend, you know, something that’s happening in this particular office? Is it something that’s happening with a particular team particular reps, and trying to find those themes and then responding to those themes, because those themes are representative of group behavior, you know, versus individual behavior. And that’s really what you’re, you’re trying to change.
Zac Kerr 39:06
So I think that part of the problem people face is that they get all proud of themselves for judging based on data and not making it an emotional decision. But they don’t take those data insights deep enough, they don’t follow it down far enough to actually identify what the problem is. So and I think that historically, in field sale, this has been a problem because we’re very comfortable with attrition. We think I’m going to hire 100 reps, and I’m going to lose 40 of them. And that’s okay, that’s just part of the business. That’s the way it’s always been done. But if I can look at those rep profiles, the work that they’re doing, and say, Okay, these five people shouldn’t have been here to begin with, that’s fine. But I’ve got these other 35 people that are still struggling, and why are they struggling? Is it the work effort? Are they just not putting in enough effort? No, this guy’s actually knocking the doors he’s getting into the conversations. In fact, he’s Adding a lot of appointments, oh, okay, here, it’s actually the appointment to close. He’s good at talking people, but he struggles with the actual closing conversation or if it’s like a setter closer model, the appointments, he’s setting the way he’s setting them as is inappropriate to affect the close. So are we going deep enough into the insights with a mind not to weed out immediately, but to identify? This guy’s great, can I coach him? Can I get him to a point where he’s actually one of my most effective people? Yeah.
Sam Taggart 40:29
And I and I found as a business owner, even within my own business, it’s oftentimes hard to want to consistently look at that data. So just having a good system where it’s maybe every Sunday, or Monday morning, or three times a week, I’ve looked at a snapshot of the data and say, I need to make these four decisions, which is, or my closing percentage of my work ethic, is it? You know, appointment generation, is it, you know, per rep average, it’s like, Wait, hold on, we added 10 new guys, but numbers a new change, you know, what I mean? Like, like, what are those key things that I need to be looking at with this snapshot that I see, that’s gonna help me basically, better move the needle? And I think that, like, most people, they don’t know how to analyze the data, like what you just said, it’s like looking into that and being like, wait a minute, is it a closing percentage problems, like, oh, man, we need we’re training on coaching on closing? Or is it, you know, work ethic is it? You know, and most people, what they’ll do is they’ll go four or five weeks, they’ll then log in, because they’re like, man, my numbers are down, they’ll make you idiots like you’re not working. And then they’re just like, make blanket statements. And it’s like, well, this guy is that guy’s not this guy struggling with this, instead of it being more of a system where it’s like, every three days or every week. And if if you’re a large enough organization, it may be meaningful to say, how much money am I potentially losing, because of the behaviors we’re doing right
Zac Kerr 41:50
Now? Does that afford actually having a headcount having someone who’s devoted to this and is going to focus on identifying opportunities and doing training, and maybe that’s actually going to not only pay for itself, but increase our effectiveness and make us more money?
Sam Taggart 42:06
Yeah. And I haven’t tell people, you’ll hire somebody in India, to literally screenshot the sales rabbit data, and send it out to the group me three times a day, like just, and then it’s just in your face all the time. And you’re like, oh, obviously, that they’re, you know, we’re getting a lot of leads, but no close is like, we got problems like, and if I have to just pay attention to it three times a day, everybody else has to pay attention to it three times a day, then I think we’re gonna probably start to like, think about this. I mean, it literally like, just as simple as that you’re paying the guy three bucks an hour out of India to do one job. And he does cost you 10 bucks a month. You don’t I mean, so it’s like,
Mike Hilverda 42:42
I just, I just think a lot of work struggled to first collect the data universally. Yep. Because they don’t have a system that represents behavior universally across multiple states or
Sam Taggart 42:55
teams, you have one observer, I go, I don’t really use that. So this doesn’t even accurate. And you’re like, Well, why don’t you use it?
Mike Hilverda 43:02
And then, yeah, it’s it’s not an easy thing. And I certainly empathize with the frustration owners, or leaders and managers fill in this piece, right? But so one, it’s collecting the data. Secondly, it’s displaying and watching and trying to interpret the data. And then again, the third part, which comes down to character, and leadership, and like your vision abilities, how do you respond to that data? And how do you lead your people as a result of what you’re seeing and learning and it’s always changing? And that the things that you’re tracking, your work should always be changing. And like when we talk about we’re talking about data mostly is dealing with individual rep, behavior and performance? But like, do there are other things in your company, you should have a dashboard that universally represents like, if you have a holy cause? Like, how are we doing at, you know, feeding X number of mounts, or whatever it is your causes? And are you talking about that weekly? And is that a part of your work, because those types of leads can also impact the amount of hours that people work, if they feel like they’re a part of something that’s meaningful, that’s doing something that’s gratifying for them outside of just making a commission love that.
Sam Taggart 44:06
So I kinda want to wrap up with this because I think, you know, reps, listen up. It’s, most people when they they’re asked to do a behavior, hey, drop your pins, drop your pins, they’re never explained the why. So I’m gonna explain the why. So that if you’re a rep, and you’re an owner, you can say, Okay, I’m gonna use this. It’s if reps understood why the managers and owners need this data. It’s not because of the Big Brother, it’s so that they can better serve you. And you know, give me this data, drop the pins not so that I am monitoring or babysitting you if they understood it in the sense of, I need to better understand how I can better the training, what we need to invest in, where should we spend our time and energy? Where are we missing? What areas should we be focusing on? Because I want to put you in better areas that have better ROI of time. I want to put you in bigger, better deals, but if you don’t Don’t drop pins and show me what I need to analyze, then I can’t serve and help you. So if there’s a good synergy here, where then getting my feedback to you and your feedback to me, that’s going to create harmony in our organization. And I keep finding reps pushing back and be like, we don’t need these app or we don’t need, we don’t need to put our pins down. Or I do that every once a while, and I’m like, No, I want to be 100% accurate this because if I’m a rep, I want to know my frickin numbers. For me internally, I could care less if my manager knows my numbers. Now, the second point is, I want to know my numbers. Because I know if I knock this many doors, I get this many homeowners, by this many homeowners, I get this many closes, I get this many clothes, I make this frickin much money. Let’s put double my effort on this number, and I will make more money. Like it’s just this is math. And I think so many people don’t see it that way. Because they’re just like, you know, and they’re they’re lackadaisical. They’re taking their business way. They’re not taking their business serious in my opinion. And so if I were to say one little two cents on this, and I’m passionate about this, and that’s why we bring the sales rabbits and that’s why we have this conversation about technology data strategy. We’re a consulting company like we’re like how can I help you if I don’t know what the frick your reps are doing? I want to log into your sales revenue account and be like you idiots like you think that your people are working you’ve never even logged in I don’t even know the login I’m like we you don’t have to log into your sales revenue account. Thank you idiot like you know and we see this so often sorry, if I’m getting like fired up right now. But as you can tell, like I as the experts and the consultants like we just do like guys give us your data if I can have a snapshot once a week of your data being a client of ours that I can help you better like me you’re paying me to do that like and it’s still hard to get them to do it it’s crazy yeah,
Mike Hilverda 46:42
Yeah all that there’s so much behavior involved and can’t buy a solution like software solution expected to change your behavior it’s again it’s discipline and and you know putting the time and energy into to change that.
Sam Taggart 46:57
So guys, if you listen to this and got a lot of value out of this I could go on for like five hours because being in a consulting role you guys are also kind of in a consulting role you know what I mean? And we we’ve seen what’s so interesting like said at the very beginning is we’ve just seen hundreds of businesses if not 1000s where we’re like oh my gosh is the same problem on repeat we can fix this and you know, So reach out to cells rabbit cells rabbit calm, there’s a little bot right there. You can just chat in and talk to some old guy on on a text you know, kind of messenger in go check them out. Go follow him on Instagram. They’re really cool company really cool swag right down the street from us. And anyway, thanks so much for guys being on the show. This was this was awesome exam. Thanks for everything you do in the space. You guys are grazing. Okay, see you guys much love share this blue comment. We’re awesome.
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