Live from the SIMA Show Floor! “Professionalize the Process: How Sales Teams Can Level Up Their Game”

Speaker A: Welcome to the Sales Talk Show, a podcast dedicated to supporting both seasoned sales professionals and the next generation of up and coming talent in the service industry. Hosted by sales leaders Bill Butz from Outdoor Pride Landscape and Snow Management and David Lammers from Garden Grove Landscape and Snow Management. Each episode features in depth discussions, experiences and advice straight from the heart of the industry. The show is brought to you by Metal Always Copy Never Duplicate Dedicated.

Speaker B: All right, here we are. Welcome to the Sales Talk show, uh, live at the Simon Symposium in Grand Rapids of Michigan. Uh, I got uh, my partner here, David Lammers and our guest today, Scott Lezac. Looking forward to some great chatter today about some sales strategies and things, uh, that we all believe that we can uh, share with the audience and kind of help out, help the next generation or any generation really. Um, so really looking forward to a great show. Um, this, this conference is one of my favorites. All the time to be here and just meet people and network. I got my uh, glasses on here. The uh, the groovy theme. I don't know we'll be able to wear them very long but uh, just looking uh, forward to it David.

Speaker C: Yeah, we're getting groovy here in uh, Grand Rapids. Great to be here at the uh, the silent show here. 2025. Uh, guys, tell us a little bit about what you've been seeing. What, what you know, what kind of activity you've been here now for a few days. Lots happening here at the show. Before we get into the topic today, what you guys seeing, what you guys learning? What's happening?

Speaker B: Well I'll tell you, first thing I'm seeing the uh, the advancements in technology. I think the industry is really tracking in the right direction. It did used to be just a lot of plows and pushes around. Now you see every other booth is some sort of uh, advancement in uh, software or the technology for the equipment. Uh, this is um, computerized, uh, trackers inside the loaders to see how many uh, how, how the down pressure is on your plow to save this, the, the edges. So I think it's just exciting to see that and just the number of people. There's over 2, 000 people here in a, in a hot June day in Grand Rapids. So that's kind of cool to see. But uh, just the networking uh, has just been amazing. Seeing people and friends and you know that you get that kind of once a year reunion with people, you know.

Speaker C: Go ahead Scott.

Speaker D: Yeah, it's been an awesome show so far. Awesome networking, education. Uh, it's just Great. Uh, big shout out to case, uh, equipment. They had an awesome party last night sponsoring lots of events here and uh, there's just nothing like the network and you get these events, events talking to the peers, uh, getting, getting the educational seminars and then just bumping into people out and out in the wild and having those conversations. It's absolutely awesome being here.

Speaker C: Yeah, I know there was a, uh, sales intensive the other day on the Tuesday, the pre, the pre conference workshop. Yeah, I'm not sure if you guys both had a chance to catch that. Any highlights that you want to share from the uh, the pre show workshop there?

Speaker B: Yeah, I was, I was fortunate enough to get into town early and I caught that it was a great day. Um, you know, 65, 70 people in the room just hearing from um, the uh, the sales coach, just talking about some of the best practices that, that he's seen work. But a lot of it was a little bit going back to the basics, a little blocking and tackling, but just hearing it from a different voice. I think there was a lot of people in the room nodding their heads and feeling like they were getting something out of it. How many people go back and apply it, that's the other thing. Uh, but I think the message was really, really clear, is just, you know, how you're engaging with your clients. It's what we talk about all the time. You know, trust based relationships building, you know, people do business with people they like and trust. So it was, it was a theme running through the presentation. I thought it was excellent. I really did.

Speaker C: Yeah. Well said. We uh, you know, we built the show on the concept of mentoring, coaching.

Speaker D: Right.

Speaker C: And training the next generation. That's what this is all about. You know, it's about the opportunity to give back and help apply uh, the things that we're learning every day, you know, and so to that effect, right. About you know, what we're learning, how do we apply it? And that's what we're hoping we're going to do here today with the show too. We're excited to have you Scott, on the show today. Uh, we're going to dive right into it and excited uh, for today's topic as well, which is a very practical topic uh, that we're doing today on professionalizing the process. And so we're excited here to have our special guest, Scott Lacek joining us as we talk about how sales teams can level up their, their game and just some of the key things about helping salespeople become more professional in their approach. Right. Being more Polished means being more prepared. Right. What are those tools for being more prepared with smart numbers and getting equipped to sell and estimate with precision. Scott, we're excited to have you on the show today. Tell us a bit about yourself and your background.

Speaker D: Thanks, David. Happy to be here.

Speaker C: Billy.

Speaker D: Happy to be here. Great steak dinner the other night. We had a good time there.

Speaker B: Um, yeah.

Speaker D: So I'm Scott Leck. I am the CEO of Castle Rocks Landscape Company. We are a very rapidly growing landscape and snow and ice management company, uh, based in eastern Pennsylvania, servicing the eastern half of Pennsylvania, uh, strategically getting ready to market or, uh, enter additional markets, additional states. So we're in a really exciting time, uh, in our growth and our expansion. And a big piece of what has led to our success is sales. How we sell, how we price work, how we monitor those things. And, you know, that's what we're diving into today. David, I'm really excited for it.

Speaker B: Thanks, Scott. Yeah, we did have a great dinner the other night. It's, uh, you know, back to my reference of the, uh, the reunion. Uh, you get that face to face time with people that we do business with around the country. It's, um, it's always good to get, you know, in front of somebody and then the opportunity to meet, um, Doug and his wife, uh, I can't think of her name, but it was just so nice to have another introduction to another really, really great family. I enjoyed hearing them talking about how they have certain chores around their property and they're gonna go out and take care of the animals in the barn. And I was like, oh, I live in the city. I don't really have a barn on my property. But that sounds like fun. So that was a good time.

Speaker C: I love that. Well, you know, as we get going into this year, we're going to dive into the often overlooked and relationships between sales and operations and why understanding budgeting, cost structures and client expectations help close better deals. Whether you're a sales leader, an estimator, or a quiet rep who's trying to, you know, find your edge and make your mark, right? This episode brings you practical advice to raise your game and close smarter deals. And so let's dive right into it. You know, let's. Let's talk about some real world, you know, scenarios when we look at the underprepared salesperson, you know, facing overqualified buyers, I think that that's a, uh, real challenge for a lot of sales professionals out there who are dealing with buyers who really know and understand their numbers. You know, they Know what they're looking for and what they need. Um, we put a lot of pressure on our reps. We put a lot of pressure on them to bring in new work. Our sales reps work hard and uh, but they're often dealing with challenging situations. How are we equipping them? Right? What are we doing to help themselves?

Speaker D: Yeah, this is an excellent topic and uh, I want to open it up by saying we have to remember when we're selling to people, no matter how friendly we are, no matter how good of a relationship we have, that person's job is to save that company money. That person's job is to purchase the best value, the best service out there at the lowest price. That is their job, at least in the commercial world. I'm going to speak from a commercial perspective today. So we as the professionals, uh, the service providers, the sales professionals, we need to understand that piece and make profitability for our companies as cost effective and production oriented as possible. We really, we make our profits on production, not necessarily price increases. It's a combination of both. That's a loose statement, but we're going to dive into a little bit more of that in the job costing side of it. From looking at the qualified client though, it's so important to make sure you have as a business an ideal client profile. Who are you selling to? Who are you prospecting to? Who do you work for? What is that scope of work that you're providing and what is the client demographic that wants to purchase that solution that you're selling? And once you define that, you can really start to build a process around a sales team. If you hire a salesperson, maybe this is your first roadie or your first salesperson outside of yourself. You hire that person, hey, go sell landscape work, go sell snow work. That, that's like saying, hey, you know, go, go swim in the ocean and find some water. That's, you know, it's really hard to dial it in. But if you say, hey, our ideal demographic that we're going after is large scale distribution. 247 operations, no smaller than 500,000 square feet of pavement to plow. And we're looking for seasonal contracts no less than three years. We have a couple of areas in our market that you can start targeting and looking at. But that's our ideal client profile. Here's the equipment that we utilize to provide the solution for that. Oh, and by the way, we communicate a whole lot better than everybody else because that's the real solution we're delivering above, uh, and beyond anybody else. And putting that into the hands of your sales team will make all the difference in the world.

Speaker B: Very much so, yeah. I couldn't, couldn't agree more. Uh, Scott, I think, I think a big responsibility for me anyways as a sales leader and someone who's been in the industry for a fair amount of years, um, it takes a lot to educate both sides of the opportunity, right? Educating your business, developer, salesperson to go out and go after the right type of work that fits your business. But then there's also the opportunity as professionals to educate the client. I think the client right now is, is different. Um, I'm on the uh, I'm on the back nine of my career. When I was in uh, sales and I was knocking on doors, there was literally someone in the building we could talk to and that person was pretty pretty versed in all things of that building and they were able to talk to you pretty candidly and openly and they knew their business. I think, you know, the way the industry has grown in commercial real estate, there's a lot of people that are doing this job that don't have a background more than their college degree, which could be in anything, but probably not property management. Right. So uh, they're dealing with what they know and they're doing the best they can. So we as contractors, if we can educate them and help them understand their job and help them learn how to buy properly, I think we can get, I think we get our price, I think we get the value that they're looking for at our price. So I think it's super important to uh, as we pre qualify customers and we figure out what's the right customer, I think once we find that right customer and we want to earn that business is to educate them to help, you know, find a price point that everybody can be happy with.

Speaker C: Yeah, you know it's, it's amazing the, when we look to the topic today, uh, of raising up, you know, more professional sales professionals, you know there's, the service industry itself is just so great. It's property management. And under that umbrella there's so much, so many ways to carve out all the different services that are needed to building services. And, and so you know, there's lots to be learned from things such as what you shared Scott, about ideal client profiles. Right. And, and what, and Billy, you own with what you're sharing too, right? With, with how, how do we raise up and train up individuals to learn how to sell and how to work with uh, these over qualified buyers who are looking for solutions for their properties. And so let's get right into it as we talk about the pre qualification process that's really needed and what is that real pre qualification process as needed to really fully understand the um, as I like to say, the uh, the icp, the you know, the ideal client profile or maybe I think that guy, I think actually that came from you Scott, but I um, think I took it to myself here. But let's talk a little bit about that ideal client profile.

Speaker D: You can take anything I say, Dave. No, not a problem. Not, we're not sharing it or uh, keeping any secrets.

Speaker C: Came into my notes,

Speaker B: now it's mine.

Speaker D: Yeah, no, that, that ideal client profile is so important and uh, I went over a little bit of that a couple minutes ago what that is. But defining who do you work, who do you work with, who can you build a relationship with? That's really what this is all about in sales. We're building relationships and we want to have long term relationships. So what client profile fits that? Who can you build that relationship with? And part of this is the power of saying no. We focus on the yeses in sales so much we're going after, yes, we're going after the uh, close. We want to have this. But if you get to the point that you can identify exactly who's out there, who you're talking to and say no before you even get into a process, it's huge. You're not wasting your time, you're not wasting their time. It's respectful to everybody in the process. So that the power of that uh, ICP is just far further than training the, the sales team. It's, it has an appreciation for the client as well, which is extremely powerful. But look at what you're doing today. Look at your goals. Where do you want to get? Are you a small company trying to get bigger? Are you a big company trying to sustain? Are you a medium sized company without many goals? Not sure where you're going to go, but visit that, see what you're trying to accomplish as a business, who you currently are working with and you're going to have great clients, you're going to have bad clients. No matter how far in this process are. We all have that. But what makes your great clients different? What makes that relationship different? What is the site like that you're working on and how does your scope of work fit that so well? To make them a great client, start looking at those pieces, put them together into a plan to really define this. And an important factor with this is an Ideal client and an ideal site are two different things. You can have an absolutely 100% ideal site with a non ideal client. That, so there's more metrics to this than just the site. What person are we going after? What relationship are we going after? Is this going to be a win win agreement or are you just beating up the price and beating everything down? It's really important to define all of these things and it comes with experience. And I have a whole lot less time in the industry than you guys, but I'm approaching 20 years here. So uh, you know, over that 20 years I'm still learning and every single day, every single day.

Speaker B: That's awesome. You're about ready to get new tires. That's what we say about Salesman. You got 20,000 miles, you need new tires. Uh, but this still runs good. No, I think, I think the one thing that um, that you know, the global Pandemic taught us, you know, taught us to do business differently. Um, there was some situations that we have found ourselves in in the past couple years and this came up in our sales debrief. You know, we take the off season, you know, we, we treat our business much like sports teams. So we have an opportunity to kind of shut things down in the off season and think about what we just did and think about how we'd be better. And I think we spent our, our group spent a lot of time on some business that we should not have been talking to. Uh, it looked like a great number in the pipeline, but it wasn't business that we were really ever going to earn. So it was like, we call it false hope. So and then the pipeline gets a little weak at the, at the latter part of the sales uh, cycle and you start grabbing anything, right? It's like going into the, the store right before Blizzard, right? You don't usually drink 2% milk, but you're going to drink, you know, skim milk because that's all they got, right? So that's what we were doing at the end of the season. We were grabbing anything just to fill the, fill the business pipeline with revenue. It's the wrong approach, right? So we backed up. So we're going to look at it differently. But I think something that we're doing is, is a physical pre qualification. Some of those tough questions, like you said, are we meant to work with each other? Are we, are we going to be the right fit for you? Are you going to be the right fit for us? Like is that, is that potential there? And I think customers, I think really Would respect that. It's like, like you said, saving time. Um, we're talking about doing a uh, mandatory virtual call with someone. You know, everybody's jumping on, you know, zoom and teams calls. Hey, I love the, I love the idea that you want to talk to us. We're going to schedule an introduction. Zoom call, 30 minutes next week. Get anybody you want on it. Ask whatever questions. In 30 minutes we should know a lot about each other. We didn't have to step foot on the property. Right. So that's something we're going to try and do in our, in our cycle, our new, new uh, new pre.

Speaker C: Qual process.

Speaker B: So um, yeah, it makes a lot of sense. Makes a lot of sense. Time is so valuable to be wasting it like we did. Um, just get kind of kicking ourselves now. But I mean we're here to make ourselves better. That's why we're at the show. And uh, you know, chopping this kind of stuff up is perfect.

Speaker C: Yeah. You know, I think that, that this conversation is a great example of just, you know, being able to sit down with our clients and better understand why am I here. You know, what is it that you're looking for out of this? What are your non negotiables, etc? Right. And it's just so good to understand that, that 30 minute pre, pre, uh, discovery, you know, just, just to see our. Are we a fit? You know, it's interesting when we look to the process, when we better understand that if there is a fit there, of course, how do we move forward? What does that look like? What are some of those estimating job costing tools? You know, what are the dangers of underestimating? Right. When we look to what you just shared, Billy, you know, we were adding the pipeline with wrong. The wrong revenue. Right. Just for the sake of adding uh, revenue. Let's discuss a little bit about the tools that we use and need, uh, for sales and also the discussing the collaboration efforts between sales and operations.

Speaker D: This is one of my favorite topics to talk about. I mean the, the financial bridge to the sales, bridge to the operations and how do we get operations tied in with sales and all, all of these pieces and I uh, think a great spot to start. This is technology. We have so much technology Aspire out there. You can run any report you could ever dream of on Aspire lmn. A lot of these technologies out there are really providing us with the exact data that we need to see. So leverage it, utilize it. That thousand dollars a month, $2,000 a month, whatever it is, will make you More money than you ever dreamed possible getting into those systems. So leveraging that technology so you can see the results, you can see the answers that you need. And if you're not on a platform, if you're not utilizing it well, you'll be blown away by how many places you're overcharging and how many places you're losing money once you start monitoring that. The other piece of this is once you have that data, what do you do with it? How are we going to put this together? And that data is crucial to know exactly how to price financials, pricing, estimating and bidding. It's a science as much as it is an art. And the science comes in the form of quantification. We have X for our CAB expense, we have X for our indirect overheads and all of our offices, and then we have our direct costs. That's simple. You know, it's simple accounting. You figure out those numbers and that's the hard number of what we have to make, what we have to have. Now if that number adds up to something astronomical, we also have to understand what the market's going to bear. What are our clients going to purchase? You're gonna have the best service in the world. And if you're three times the price of everybody else, they're gonna buy somebody that does the service 95, 90% of what you do. And that's the reality of it. So it's a delicate art of balancing this. What is your production, what are your costs and what's the market going to bear? And I'm a firm believer in raising prices and charging what you're worth, charging that value. But the reality with that statement is we have to understand the limitation of that as well. There is a ceiling to that. There's a gray area of a lower end. You don't want to be the cheap, you don't want to be the most expensive. You want to be right in that pocket. And experience lets you know where that is. Experience lets you know that pocket. When you lose bids, ask who got it. What was wrong with my estimate? Was it a pricing thing, was it a performance thing? What could I have done better? Be humble about this and ask the client, they share with you. When we've lost bids in the past, they will give us the exact proposal and say, here's exactly what we bought compared to what you bought. And that shows you the pocket. Sometimes they're way out of line and maybe you missed them in the pre fault qualification side and it wasn't a good fit and you got to the final, the final stage. Other times you're 15 off and you just got to figure out where you can round that 15 to because that's a great client that is buying in the pocket that you didn't quite make for this. And that's where shows like this are great. Coming to Simon, seeing that technology, seeing the stuff that maybe can give you that 15 to 20, more efficiency to get into that pocket. It's beautiful. It's. I, I love it. I absolutely, that's what drives me in business is figuring those, those challenges out every day. That's awesome.

Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, great, great comment on the uh, the use of technology. Um, we, we've been fortunate over the years to have a pretty strong ops team and, and their, their use of their technology. But you know, we all have been around long enough that you know, it wasn't until you know, maybe 10 years ago that these softwares were going to give us the exact gross profit and how we were doing. A lot of it was an Excel spreadsheet, number of hours, number of pieces of equipment. Do some funny math and at the end you're looking at a number and is it, is it really a trued up number? Right. So a good point on your Scott is to engage your accounting team. You know, get really, get really a deep dive in some of the stuff you're doing. We had an awesome opportunity this past winter to work with a client and um, you know, we were dealing with you know, 10, 10 year snow averages and we had a pretty substantial winter in 2015. When we give them a 10 year average next year that that number's coming off. So it's going to drop it considerably. So with, with respect to trying to extend their business and offer a multi year contract, we sat down with them and showed them that hey, when that comes off, your contract, next year is actually going to go down. They were like, well why, why would it go down? It's like well we have a, we have a range. You know, if you're only going to get 45 inches of snow now our contract is built for 55 so we can share that savings with you. And they loved it and they shared it. They gave us an extension, they gave us more property to look at. So that's just an example of using the technology at our, at our disposal to build a relationship deeper and wider with a client. So really fun, really fun to, fun way to look at it. You know, really to grind the numbers is important. Yeah.

Speaker C: You know Billy, I remember you saying something too and Scott, it came to mind when you were sharing about the numbers too, with cost efficiencies. You know, you talk about root density. You know, I know that uh, it's so important that we're looking for work where we already have work, you know, that we're not focused elsewhere. Right? Just keep our eyes on where we already are, work around our regions, maximize, you know, the, the regions where we are and sell to those areas. And that's just so important, right? The dollar cost averaging of um, of being right where we already are. You know, we can bring so much more efficiency to our clients, to the pricing and to our operations. Um, you know, once the, the buyer, you know, when we put these proposals in front of our buyers, we want to make sure that um, they, that we're putting a solution together that meets what we've been talking about with them. Right? That what we did in the pre qualification process, the estimating process, the budgeting, now we're moving of course to the negotiation step, you know, and we should have already dealt with what their non negotiables are. So now what are the negotiables and are they open negotiating? And so I think at this point, you know, it's good for us to turn our attention to the next point, which is negotiating readiness. You know, what are the signs that a customer is ready to negotiate? And um, having confidence, you know, in knowing your numbers. I think that's, that's a really big one too. Right? Is leading and training and coaching our sales team members to really know the numbers and to how to enter a negotiation.

Speaker D: What Billy just touched on with the weather data that we have, I mean the amount of weather technology that's become available just in the past five years, let alone uh, what we have in the past year or two with the addition of AI in weather models and on site cameras that are measuring weather conditions, uh, all those are value ads in the negotiation stage. But the negotiation really starts, uh, the master starts to close in the opening. So you, you start your negotiation day one when you're having those conversations, start figuring out those key areas, what the client is looking for exactly, and start playing them and start delivering the true value of what you have, what you are going to bring to the table. Get some feelers out there, set some um, anchors in there, Start talking numbers early on. Don't give pricing, don't give the bid too soon, but start talking numbers and maybe go a little bit high. Hey, you know, a site like this with, we're looking at this, this might be half A million dollars a year and see what their reaction is when they do that. If their eyebrows raised like, oh man, that's crazy. Like, no, no, just a number. That's not my estimate, but just a number. Because when you do that in the opening, their brain starts thinking, a million, half a million dollars, half a million dollars, half a million dollars. And that's playing through. And when you come back in and say, oh, yeah, so we're at 350, 000 for this, they're like, oh, wow, that's not bad. So knowing how to play those psychological games from the negotiation standpoint and setting those areas also stand your ground. One of my first comments was about the person we're dealing with, the procurement manager, the site manager, whoever the person is that we're dealing with, it is their job to get a lower price. Keep that in mind and stand your ground. Some negotiations good. If you want to get it to the point that you can give them a little bit, 5% back and use that as a closing tactic, those are all great things. But don't go too far and know your numbers. Make sure your sales team knows your numbers. I'm going to echo Dave on that one. That, that is so important. Send the sales team out with a, hey, this is our bottom line. We can't go any lower than this. Try for this. This is our target. But we cannot go any lower than this. And make sure that they're staying at the target line, not going down to the, okay, I'm going to get this closed right away to this bottom. Stay at the target line and allow for that. There's some great resources out there for negotiation as well. Learning things. Never split the difference. One of my favorite books. Read that book. If you haven't read it, I won't

Speaker C: go into too many more, man.

Speaker D: Uh, uh, details. Never split the difference. That's on repeat in my truck at least once a year. I'll listen to it three or four times. It's awesome. So that's great.

Speaker C: That's great.

Speaker B: It's true. Yeah. Scott, I love, I love the idea of, uh, opening up your conversation when you first meet the client with, um, with some, some research, again, going back to qualification. But you have to, you have to get a sense of whether that customer is willing to negotiate. Uh, you know, where, where did they get, um, where did they, are they getting beat up with their, their incumbent? Right? Is there something going wrong with pricing? Was there something going wrong with service? So sometimes negotiation is all about price. Sometimes it's scope change. Right. So a customer might not need certain line items in their bid. Uh, you know, they may want to pay for salting per occurrence instead of an alum sum. So there's ways of navigating a negotiation with your client that doesn't impact your bottom line. So I always say, you know, if they want a better price, I. My first response is, well, what do you want to take out? And then you get the. I don't want to take anything out. I said, well, I mean, you know, if you buy a car, right, it doesn't have a sunroof, but then you want a sunroof, you got to pay for the sunroof. You know, you want to take the sunroof out, you get a car for less prayer. So this.

Speaker D: That.

Speaker B: That goes on with negotiation. And you have to be. Young business people don't probably have the skill set to do it. So that's when we. We really engage in team selling. Um, and something that comes to mind with me is when we get to a conversation with a client at that level, we always like to bring an ops person with us. Uh, we find that, you know, um, salespeople, unfortunately, we got a stigma of being kind of slick, kind of salesy, right? Trying to get the deal done. An ops guy is just static. He wants to do the job, and that's what the customer cares about. Doesn't care at some point, doesn't care about the price. The price is budget. But when he figures out he's going to work with us, how is this going to get done? And while you're in a negotiation, you got someone in the room that says, oh, yeah, I'll do that. My guys would do that. We'll take care of that. Instead of, I'll tell the ops team to make sure they get that done. Sounds better when someone says, I'll do that, or, we'll do that. So we'd love to have an ops person with us. It's. It's really powerful, and, um, it just takes a little pressure off. They've been dealing with us for a fair amount of time. They're like, yeah, okay. You know, I like Bill. He's a good guy. He likes to take me golfing. But I. I need to get my parking lot plowed. Who's gonna do it? And the big question comes up, who's my guy? I want to meet my guy. Well, you might not meet the guy, but you're gonna meet a guy like him, you know, which is. Which is pretty cool.

Speaker D: I want to extend that operations conversation Just a little bit. Because that, that's exactly how we scale our sales team. Our, we promote from within, uh, every step of the way in our company. Build people up to do it our way and exact. And the most powerful promotion that we have in our company is operations manager to account executive. Because that guy is it. He's the, he's the guy and she is the person who's been out there doing it. So that that person is key. They understand the ins and outs. They can talk details about that metal plus and how it runs circles around other plows and they know the deep down of the operation itself. It's crucial. And the account executive role, I'll explain that a little bit too, is that's sales and account management all in one. So Billy just said they want to meet the guy. That is the guy. That is the person right now. Oh, that's me. I'm going to be out here overseeing it. I'm going to be out here looking at this. So you make a phone call, you're going to talk to me and I'm in charge of the operations team that's out here doing this. And it's so powerful because they are directly. It gives you in a larger scale company the exact same feel as an owner operator company does that you always have contact with the right person.

Speaker B: No, I'm good. Yeah.

Speaker C: You know, I've always, as I was hearing what you guys were sharing, I'm thinking about sales, you know, guys and sales. Even myself, I, I know my background, uh, of what I've done and how many times have I even negotiate, negotiated against myself, you know, and I, and even sometimes I've negotiated myself out of a deal that, that I was right. I was trying to make the deal and I was, I was negotiating against myself and the customer was like what are you doing? They're, they're just sitting there watching me working away at something that they didn't even ask me to do. Uh, you know, and I think that's just so important that we remember as sales professionals it's not our job to a negotiate against ourselves. We got to negotiate with our clients. But I think on the other hand is what is what understanding negotiation. Sometimes our price is the price. You know, when we put together that right solution for our client, we gotta, we gotta make sure that we're confident and sure of what we're coming in with and, and not go against ourselves. I, I heard a story of a gentleman who was selling steel, uh, and to, to large buyers in the steel industry and he put together his deal and he sold it. Actually he didn't sell it. He just said the price is the price. It was 170 million dollar deal for the company at the time. And he, he sold the, the deal based on holding firm to the price because it was the quality that they needed, it was the type of steel they needed and it was everything specified that they'd asked for. Well it was interesting because this manager, his boss was going to be flying in to go to the, to the meeting to do the sale because his boss's job, he said, his boss's job was always to close the deal. His boss always wanted to come in and close the deals. So he goes, he says to his boss, well the deal's already closed. Boss says, what are you talking about? He says, I sold it, it's done. He goes, what'd you sell it for? He goes, it was my job to come in and sell it.

Speaker B: He said, no.

Speaker C: He said, I was given the price by the team, the price, uh, and everything that the client asked for was put together and I presented it to them and I told them that that's the way it was, that was the price, that was the way it was going to be. And they bought it because that's what they wanted, that's what they expected anyways. The boss was really upset, he said, you know, because he wanted, he wanted to always negotiate and his style was that he would always give him a better price. Why? Why? If uh, our solutions are what the client's asking for and if we're bringing right what they need, then that is the cost too. So I think there's a lot to. And again knowing the numbers, really understanding that what our solution uh, costs for the client and that we've represented what their needs are. I think it's important that we understand as we look to some practical real world takeaways here on how we create safer environments and professional development for our, our sales people. You know, how are we teaching sales versus just expecting it? And I think that that's uh, something for us to talk about right now is how are we teaching it, how are we coaching it versus vers versing, uh, expecting?

Speaker D: All comes down to processes, standard practices.

Speaker B: What are we doing on a regular

Speaker D: basis and are we doing it the same way or exactly the same way every time? And how can we teach everybody to do that if you don't have processes in place or your processes aren't working? Re listen to this episode. We just talked through a really good way to build a Sales process, from the ICP to understanding the numbers, to having the qualified training. The only piece of this we didn't touch on is communication. Communication is huge teaching. And I don't mean just having a conversation, teaching our people. What does your body language tell? What is your inflection tell the person. How can you control the emotion of a conversation? By changing your tone a little bit and sounding maybe a little bit concerned, or let's get really excited and get people to go. You can control that emotion from people just within your inflections. What you're doing, that's a huge part of sales, a huge part of the customer journey and customer management. So all of these pieces together come into creating that really good system that you can train on. And it's not once and done. This is a constant thing. Sports teams, athletics. We go into that, look at it, it's train, train, train, train. And we have a game, go play. Train, train, train, train. We have a game, go play. So it is train 90 of the time, perform 10% of the time. Most of us, we're lucky if we're training 10% of the time and trying to perform 90% of the time. So when you flip flop that and you train far more than you are expected to perform, you'll be blown away by how fast and how much better you are able to perform.

Speaker B: It's really good point. Yeah, it's a good point. I think, uh, if you've heard me in circles discuss this, it's, you know, the best athletes, the best musicians, the best artists, ballet, whatever it is, they have coaching. They have coaching. Someone probably talking to them every day. And how often are we talking to our salespeople? In a coaching way, not in a. What do you got going on today? That's just the news. M. Right. The news is the news. You can find that out by probably now looking at Aspire and see where they're at.

Speaker C: Right?

Speaker B: You don't even have to talk to them anymore. But talking to someone in a way that. What can I help you with today? What's on your agenda that you don't think you're gonna be able to get to today? Is there anything I can take away from you? Is there anything I can join you with? Can I come on a ride along? You know, that's leadership, that's coaching, that's mentoring. You know, that's really something we focus a lot on at Outdoor Pride. Mark's giving me the kind of the dotted line to some of our team members to go out and just spend Time with them. And I'm amazed at how some of these people have, um, picked up the, the knack of taking in what, you know, how the customer is reacting. You know, I get in the car and I said, how'd that go? He's like, oh, man, that guy was pissed. I'm like, no, that's just the way he is. I've known that guy for 10 years. He's never happy, but he still signs contracts. Don't take it personally. You just got to play into it a little bit. But, you know, as a young sales professional, he couldn't pick up on that. Right. So as leaders and people with experience and, you know, multiple sets of ties, as we talked about in the industry, uh, we have to help these people learn that. It's. It's not, it's not, it's not. You don't get it off the shelf. To be a sales professionalist industry, you have to work with someone that's done it before and been there and done that. You're right.

Speaker C: Yeah. You know, I read a book once on sales management. Then I read another one on sales management. You just can't read enough about sales management. Right. And one of the things that sticks with me right now, what you just shared, too, is, um, you know, the importance of being there. And it's about getting ready for the performance and then being there for the performance, you know, doing the ride alongs, you know, if it's just a simple thing about being on a ride along. I read in one of the management books I read once was that sales professionals really appreciate it when they're sales manager was doing ride alongs with them and coming to the sales meeting and being there with them. That was, that was, that meant a lot to them. It showed that they were invested in the sales, in the salesperson's, uh, uh, success, you know. And, you know, when I think about my kids, they're. They're in an orchestra. You know, my son's a cellist. My daughter's a violinist. My other daughter's a cellist. Well, there's only four concerts a year. And what are they doing all the rest of the time? They're preparing, they're spending all that time rehearsing. And when they're rehearsing, they're breaking it down as well into different, uh, groups called sectionals. And so the violins get together and they do their sections. The cellos get together, they do their sections. The. The flautists, everybody who's got an instrument in the orchestra, they have their Sectionals and they work at the music individually for their parts so that when they get together on the whole as they're rehearsing, that as they're doing the rehearsals, they're ready to. But they're doing all of that for that. Like what you said, Scott. Right. It's that 1090 preparation 10, you know. And so it's all about getting ready for the performance. There is a lot of work that goes into getting ready for the performance. And I think to that point, Billy, we got to remember all these daily check ins with our sales teams. We got to remember that it's not about what are you doing and why are you doing that? No, it's like, how can I help you and what do you need? And that's so important.

Speaker B: Yeah, something that came to mind. You brought it up, David. I think it's something that we could do. We could all take, uh, you know, an opportunity to learn from is. I, I don't think, I don't think there's a lot of what we do that's um, rinse and repeat. I think every situation is somewhat unique. And I don't, I think that's probably puts pause in salespeople's mind that they don't know they did something here one day. They can't just roll up to the door the next day and use the same exact technique. Some of them it's transferable, but a lot of it isn't. So it's almost like a new, new, new opportunity, new, new set of rules, you know, new engagement. So I think what we've done to kind of conquer that a little bit is we role play a little bit. You know, we do a kind of a pre, pre call role play. And I don't know what to expect. What if he says this? What if he says that? What if she says this? What if there's three people in the room and you're by yourself? What if there's. What if there's five people in the room? What if we bring too many people and there's only one of them? So we kind of kick that can, uh, down the road a little bit and see what that develops as far as an opportunity to be better or to um, you know, trying to earn the business. But it's also a coaching moment. You know, they'll get through that one and you know, maybe someday they'll be a salesman and say, you know, I really like that role playing. That really helped me a lot.

Speaker C: Agreed. You know, as we, as we look to the wrap up, I I read something recently. It was about the personality of sales. You know, we always think salespeople are the best. Salespeople are the outgoing ones, you know, the ones that seem to have the right personality. But it's not about the personality as much as it is about the process. And I think that that's so important for us to understand. Right. That selling is a process, not a personality. Let's talk a little bit about the takeaways as, uh, we highlight, you know, some of the mind shifts around. Selling is a process, not a personality. And invite our listeners as well, uh, here today and also, uh, that are going to listen in on the show about, uh, what do, what do professionals, uh, need? Right. And what does this look like for, for what, you know, for having in their toolbox?

Speaker D: Yeah, it's, it's really, really important to just go over this stuff on a regular basis. Just, just continue to sharpen the saw. Yeah, that, uh, that's what it comes down to. What, what can you do to sharpen the saw? How can your organization continue to grow? I love, love what Billy was just saying about the role playing. That, that is a huge, crucial thing. And just train, just train. Figure it out. We're in an AI day. If you don't know what to train on today, sit down, go to chat GPT and say, I need to train my sales team today. That's it. You don't need a better prop than that. See what it comes up with, and it's going to stimulate your mind. So utilize the tools that are in front of you. You don't have to reinvent the wheel here. We're, we're going out there. We're becoming better together. And the second point I have is don't, don't. Don't let your ego get in the way. Stay humble. You're not the best. You never will be the best. You want to be better every day. You want to be better than you were yesterday every day. Because the best is finite. Being better is infinite. So constantly try and be better and better. And this goes further than sales. This goes to every aspect of your operation in your life. What can you do to be better? The second you notice that you're going backwards, second you notice you're staying neutral, Change. Make something different. Read books, listen to audiobooks, read podcasts, follow good people on LinkedIn and read their content. Just stimulate your mind constantly. Ah, that's what this is all about.

Speaker B: Yeah. Yeah, I love that. Um, I think something that we maybe glaze over a little bit. It Comes out in the interview process is the job description. Uh, you know, writing a really thorough job description is going to help you manage that person successfully. We, um, say hot on the process, not on the person. You know, I think holding people accountable is a gift. If you have, if you have a manager that's holding you accountable, you should be thanking them left and right because that person wants you to be better. If they didn't care about you, they'd let you blow in the wind. Be done. So if someone's holding you accountable, or if you're responsible, hold someone accountable. Take it as a priority to really work through and get, get it right. Uh, and if it's not going well, ask someone for advice. Like Scott says, there's a lot of people out there that are doing this very, very well, that have done it, and they, they can share some, you know, some best practices. But I say hot on the process, and the process is reverting back to the job description. You know, we talked about doing 35 touches a week. You don't seem to be getting much over 15. You know, back when we interviewed, you said you were, you were a stone cold cold caller. I don't see that happening. What's going on? You're not being hot on the person you referred back to the job description.

Speaker D: That's the process.

Speaker B: So I just love leaning into that because I know people really don't like to get, you know, managers. Any, any person doesn't want to make it personal. It gets hard. Right. People have, you know, feelings, and no one wants to hurt anybody's feelings. But if you just look at it through the, through a different lens and be hot on the process, I think it makes a big difference.

Speaker D: I realized in my ramble, I skipped completely over process. And that's, uh, that's process is huge for me. Um, build that process, replicate it, do it the same every time. Improvise, adapt and overcome when it doesn't work and change that process. And I'm really passionate about processes because I'm a fireman as well. And I, I go back, I'm going to tell a really short story about the fire department department. But when you are going to a fire, you don't need to talk to anybody. You don't need to have a conversation, hey, what are we going to find there? What are we going to do? You get there, you're sitting in a seat, and that seat, you know exactly what you're doing because you have assigned seats that you train for the exact task that you're doing sitting in that seat, you get out of that seat and you go to work. You've done that task thousands of times by the time it can be your first fire, and you've probably done it thousands of times because, because of that training, know how to pull the hose line and get in there, you know how to go through the front door, you know the guy behind you is going to get you more hose as you're going in there on the nozzle. You know how to get to that fire and make sure that it's simultaneously opened up so the smoke goes out the windows. When you start putting water on the fire, then steam goes out the windows so you don't get hurt. When you can get that level of detail in your processes around a sales process which layers to your operational process, which layers to your contract, so everything is together and that all layers into your training. Every single one communicates with the other one. And you know exactly what you have to do simultaneously as a team when you get it detailed that well.

Speaker B: So true. Yeah.

Speaker C: You know, something that is so important to do and if you haven't done it, is to put together your sales process. You know how many companies you know haven't done that? Right? And I know how important it is to do it because we didn't have it defined. Take an hour, take two hours and just sit down and map out what is the start to finish in the sales process at my company. So important to do that exercise, you know, and you'll discover so many things along the way as you're defining your sales process. It could be 10 points, 20 points, whatever it is, but right from the initial phone call to when you deliver that proposal and what, and how you're going to achieve that result for that client, but also the onboarding process. Your sales process needs to include not only what you're doing to, to bring the sales solution to your client, but then what are you doing when that client's coming on board and they give you the go, Right. If it's go or no. Right. If it's. If it's no, it just means not yet. Right or not now. But if it's yes. Okay, now what? So make sure you clearly define that sales process top to bottom so that it's really clear, right down to telling them how to pay you. Don't, don't forget to put in your, your eft information for how to pay it, because they're going to ask you for that too.

Speaker B: Yeah, no, it's, um, it's a quick, quick show Here we get, uh, we get an opportunity to do this once a month. David, uh, and I, and uh, you know, it's an. We talk about networking and a lot of people at this, at this event, you know, value the networking tremendously. Funny, uh, story is, uh, a year ago David and I met in person for the first time. But we had done four episodes of this show before we met in person. So how do we meet? We met on, um, LinkedIn. So the two of us had like minded, uh, similar, uh, uh, posts. We appreciate each other's posts, uh, and we communicated and we set up an opportunity to talk. And we just established that we want to do a podcast together and give back. And then we were so passionate about what we're doing, we forgot to think that we never met in person. So I mean, what we're doing today in this society is so, uh, different, right? It's not like, you know, 10 years ago someone said, oh, we're gonna do a podcast. First of all, it was a podcast 10 years ago. They say, oh, you're gonna do a podcast or something. You're never going to meet them in person. They'd call you crazy. But today is different, right? So I think the message that we're trying to share with everybody is don't go after it the way you used to do it just because that's the way you've always done it. Look at the opportunities around you. Today I have to show, if you're here for a day or two, uh, listen to the professionals that are telling us all about their stuff, they're here, they spent a lot of money to be here, and they have a lot of information. Uh, sitting in with someone for five or 10 or 15 minutes, it's not going to kill you. And I think as sales professionals, um, in order for me to be successful, at least me, if I'm telling someone how a Metal plus clears a parking lot, I can't just tell them. I have to understand it. I have to learn what the Metal plus does. They have to know what the Live edge means. I have to know what, you know, the, the van wings, what they're called. Not that the client's going to know what that's called, but it sounds kind of cool when I call it a van wing. I don't know, I, I just learned that today, actually. So you learn something new every day. Um, but no, I just really appreciate, you know, um, the time today. Scott, it's been great having you with us. Uh, it's been great for Cheryl and the team to allow the podcast to be here. Um, so much fun. Um, just can't thank you enough. So David, you want to close it up?

Speaker C: Yeah, I was just gonna say, Scott, where, where can everyone find you? How can we find you out there?

Speaker D: Uh, look me up on LinkedIn. That's a great place, Scott. With two T's. Leac L E S A K Also send me an email. Scott, my inspire you dot com. Love to talk to you, love to network with other people in the industry outside of the industry. Uh, I have a story behind me that has some ups and downs and downs. I love sharing that and love to hear your story as well.

Speaker B: This is the point where I heed my wife's advice. She goes, you're going to a concert, a conference for five days. Just don't talk too much. You talk too much, you go into a conference, people are not going to want to listen to you for five days. So this is the point where I sign off. David's going to take us out. Uh, but thanks to our title, uh, sponsor Metal plus, who see us today, definitely pay them a visit and uh, uh, Landscape Ontario is also an alliance partner as well as cyma. They're very generous to the show. Uh, we couldn't do this without them and it's just, it's a lot of fun being around. A lot of fun looking out and seeing you guys. Uh, this is kind of cool doing it live. Um, so, yeah, appreciate it. Thanks everybody. If I don't, uh, if I don't know you hit, uh, me up on LinkedIn. I'd love to chat with you. We're gonna be here for the rest of the day today and tomorrow. Actually, we're speaking tomorrow morning, David.

Speaker C: Yeah, right.

Speaker B: So you want to share that with them?

Speaker C: Yeah. So tomorrow morning, 8:30 we're going to do a talk on sales that scale. So we're going to talk about what, what you need with PPE for your business. Right. I like to call it ppe. We, we, we like to play on that word. You know, it's not, uh, not the, not the eyewear or the ear wear or the footwear. We're going to talk about what do we need to do to plan, prepare and execute. So when we look to the sales process, what, what is the PPE that we need in our businesses to plan, prepare and execute on delivering successful, um, sales results for our companies as well. So 8:30 tomorrow morning till 9:30, we're excited for the talk that we're going to be doing. Look forward to seeing you there. And like Billy said, we're excited for our sponsors and, uh, the support that we have for the sales talk show and. And that we can get. You know, we have the opportunity to do this for. For the industry. So all the best, everyone have a great show. Enjoy your time.

Speaker B: Thanks, guys. Sam.