In this episode of Building Great Sales Teams, Doug add to the Playbook with a tactical guide on how to defend against companies trying to recruit away your team with the promise of "higher commissions". Enjoy!
If you have sales people there is a 100% chance that you've dealt with this scenario. Most companies only know how to recruit with money. What we know without a doubt is that people get into the sales business for 2 major reasons: compensation and opportunity. The second is the most important. In this episode, Doug lays out a solid and practical defense to combat other sales companies and teams attempting to poach your sales reps.
00:00:26:12 - 00:00:46:01
Speaker 1
Great experiences, build great leaders. Great leaders, build great teams. This is building great sales teams.
00:00:47:17 - 00:01:25:01
Speaker 2
All right, guys, welcome back to building great sales teams today. I got a quick and tactical one for you. If you're in sales if you're in sales management, if you own a sales or if you own a company that has a sales team, you have ran across this before where your salesperson comes to you, whether it be how do I say this, whether it be on purpose or passively, and said basically that there's another company offering them a sales position and their commission is higher, their product is a higher commission or their comp plan is higher.
00:01:25:01 - 00:01:49:16
Speaker 2
If you're in if you're a sales org, you're used to this. So my podcast today is How to defend against higher commission recruiting. Typically, most other business owners and sales organizations are very one dimensional. The only way they know how to recruit is money, right? We know that people get into this business for two reasons. The first is compensation.
00:01:49:16 - 00:02:08:23
Speaker 2
The second is opportunity. The second is the most important, but they forget that somewhere along the way and they come to you say, Hey, and so the company's paying higher. And you know, it's not always direct. Sometimes it's with like, hey, you know, they're a manager in the company, right? And they're like, Hey, this company is paying higher.
00:02:09:13 - 00:02:29:22
Speaker 2
Some of my guys have heard about them and they're talking about, you know, whether or not they should go, too, you know? So you're you're in this situation. You need to know how to defend against higher commission recruiting. All right. So I want you guys to treat this like a sale. And in any sale, we have a simple structure which is intro, qualify, present, closed.
00:02:29:22 - 00:02:44:24
Speaker 2
Okay. And in this situation, you don't need to enter the interest. Already done. They're coming to you. They're talking about this to the company that's recruiting them. So the first thing you need to do is qualify. Now I know what your instinct is. Your instinct is going to be like, Well, fuck it. If they want to go work for another company, let them.
00:02:45:12 - 00:03:06:25
Speaker 2
And trust me, that's my instinct, too. But we need to give them the old one too. We need to give them the effort. The old college try. So we're going to walk through that right now. Right. And I will be the first to tell you that I have let people go, that I should not have let go. And that's why I'm doing this podcast, is because I want you guys to have a tactical way to defend against this.
00:03:07:13 - 00:03:27:18
Speaker 2
And the way that you do that is you're going to qualify that sales rep or that sales manager first. And the way that you qualify them is simple. It's a three step process. Compensation opportunities, core values, compensation opportunities, core values. All right. So the first thing we're going to do, we're going to qualify the easiest one, which is compensation.
00:03:28:14 - 00:03:53:10
Speaker 2
Okay. Okay. You're bringing this threat of higher commission to me. You may be considering leaving the company. Your salespeople may be considering leaving the company, whatever the case is. Let me ask you, what is your ideal compensation? Is that what you're making right now? Plus 10%? Plus 20%. What does it look like in a year? What does it look like in two years?
00:03:54:04 - 00:04:12:29
Speaker 2
You may know this already because they already work with your company. And if you have a good touch base process in place and you have a good management process in place, you have all of this on the sales rep or the sales manager already. But if you don't, you need to go ahead and figure it out. Okay. Realistically, where do you want to be in one year?
00:04:12:29 - 00:04:37:09
Speaker 2
What do you want to be in six months? Whatever the case is getting to understand that completely. And as we present or we basically present to them why we're a better company or whatever the case is, however you want to framework that you're going to bring in their compensation motives. Okay, now here's where the meaty stuff comes in, the opportunity and the core values.
00:04:37:09 - 00:05:02:25
Speaker 2
So you're qualifying for compensation opportunities and core values. We're going move into opportunity here. Remember, we're only qualifying just like a customer. As soon as they tell you the answer you're asking for, it's not, Oh, well, we're better because. No, it's get all the qualification out of the way. All right, so we got the conversation. Let's just say they want to make a hundred grand in the next six months, okay.
00:05:02:25 - 00:05:28:18
Speaker 2
And they're currently trending towards 60 or 70. Okay. Perfect opportunity. Okay. Let me ask you, what is the opportunity of this new art? You know, the first question about the new organization would be, can you make that conversation at this new organization? Obviously, it's yes, because they have a hired comp plan, whatever the case is. But you want to hear about not just the basic comp plan.
00:05:28:18 - 00:05:58:12
Speaker 2
You want to hear about any bonuses, any management bonuses, anything like that, anything that you can calculate into there. Okay. So now now going into opportunity. So what is the opportunity that you have over there? What is their opportunity structure look like? You know what ours looks like, what is theirs look like? And so you walk through that opportunity structure for you and in your listening for ceilings within the opportunity structure, if they even know what it is, chances are they don't even know what the opportunity structure is.
00:05:58:21 - 00:06:18:00
Speaker 2
And you and you need to make a mental note. If they don't know what the opportunity structure is, that is going to be a bullet you're going to use in your presentation this person to just destroy this in the company. And that bullet in the presentation is why would they only tell you about the compensation? That's a red flag for me in your shoes.
00:06:18:00 - 00:06:32:16
Speaker 2
That's a red flag for me because that means they don't have a good opportunity structure. They don't have a good development program. I'm getting ahead of myself. All right. So you can find out what the opportunity piece is because you're going to be able to poke holes in there. You want to be able to poke holes in the conversation.
00:06:32:16 - 00:06:51:24
Speaker 2
Right. This is the last piece is I guarantee they don't know which is the core guy. What are the core values that company you tell me this other companies recruiting you, they're bringing you higher comp. They talk about opportunities to talk about core values. Those are the first holes that are going to blow wide open in this higher commission conversation.
00:06:51:24 - 00:07:14:07
Speaker 2
Now, understand, again, going back to the whole loyalty thing, loyalty is bullshit. Okay, there, there. There is no loyalty in sales in terms of I'm not going to make my family star because I'm loyal to you. Understand that right away. Right. If there's a better situation for me and my family, I am going to take this situation and so are you.
00:07:14:23 - 00:07:39:27
Speaker 2
And don't get me wrong, over the years, I have 100% put my family and tough situations to keep the company going, to make payroll, take money out of my pocket and put it into the company's pocket 100%. I have done that, but I don't expect my salespeople to do that. And if my salespeople have a better opportunity, genuinely have a better opportunity than I want them to take it now, that's what we're going to find out, though, using this process.
00:07:39:27 - 00:08:01:19
Speaker 2
Okay. So going back to compensation opportunities, core values, they probably don't know the core values of the company. So you asked these three questions. Protects about 5 minutes because the only thing they're really going to know about is compensation. And now we're going into our sales program. Okay. The presentation is going to be Kodak. Who would have thought it?
00:08:01:19 - 00:08:24:20
Speaker 2
Right. So what do you know about Kodak? If you've been listening to this show for more than two episodes, you know that Kodak is compensation, opportunity, development, operations and culture, and that is your structure for your presentation. Okay. Now, remember, if we're treating this just like a sale, then we need to qualify the customer and we need to present to them.
00:08:24:28 - 00:08:43:22
Speaker 2
And we do those in order. We don't jump from the qualification to the presentation back to the qualification, because all that does is make the customer go like this. When they're answering questions, their emotions are like this. When you're presenting to in their emotions are on their way up answering questions and going down presenting emotions on the way up.
00:08:43:22 - 00:09:04:05
Speaker 2
Right. That doesn't make any sense. So when we when we qualify, we're keeping them steady here. You know, they're a detective type customer. They're answering questions. Right? And then when we present, we're bringing them up here. So now it's time to present. The first thing we're going to present is the compensation or how does it truly stack up?
00:09:05:08 - 00:09:35:25
Speaker 2
Did you hear any holes in the opposition's compensation where they're like, No, no bonuses. Maybe, maybe the compensation was based on in-store and there's nothing up front, you know, you know, saying depending on your industry, this is going to matter. It's not always apples to apples, right? So if they have a lower quality product or maybe they're able to compensate so high because they're screwing over the customer, that is the case probably seven or eight times out of ten.
00:09:36:13 - 00:09:55:12
Speaker 2
If another company's compensation is higher and you know, you set yours fairly right and other companies compensation is higher at some point along the way, they're screwing over the customer, you know. So now we've got to find out where that is. And honestly, that's a qualification question in the compensation. So you ask them how are they able to compensate that?
00:09:56:21 - 00:10:15:27
Speaker 2
Are they pricing the customer properly is what you ask them during the composite compensation part of the qualifier? Right. So going back into the presentation, that's one of the holes I'm going to poke in it because right now, let's just say so for instance, if a sales rep comes to me and says, Hey, this company pays higher, okay, what are they pricing the seller at $0.30 higher?
00:10:15:27 - 00:10:32:22
Speaker 2
What are they paying higher, about $0.30 higher than us. Well, there you go. They're basically taking $0.30 of what, out of the customer's pocket and putting it in yours, which if you're okay with that, take a walk. You know, I'm saying. But I'm not going to screw over my customer because I want my sales reps to make more.
00:10:32:22 - 00:10:49:27
Speaker 2
And I want to be able to say I have the highest commission in the industry and it's such a waste of fucking time and screwing over customers. Right. So there's a compensation piece. There's a way that you can poke a hole in it. Right. All right. Let's go into opportunity. I mean, the first piece is did they even, you know, asking that question in the qualified?
00:10:49:27 - 00:11:10:25
Speaker 2
Did they even tell you about the opportunity? Maybe they did. Maybe they have a basic opportunity structure. Right. So you want to walk them through, hey, our opportunity versus theirs. And in anything you do doing sales, you're comparing apples to apples, right? You want to always make sure that the apples line up. You don't want to compare apples to oranges.
00:11:10:25 - 00:11:28:21
Speaker 2
And so they need to understand, okay, what is your opportunity here and how does it help you reach your six figure goals in six months? Is that was your goal right. And the opportunity here is that you're not only going to be selling and earning commission, you're going to get an override and training, pay for training people, you know.
00:11:28:22 - 00:11:50:21
Speaker 2
So that's just an example. I don't know what your opportunity, how your opportunity structure is set up, but it needs to be as such that their opportunity is not just on their own sales. It's on management overrides, training, pay, referral, new hire referral fees. You know, there's there's got to be opportunity in a multitude of ways. You wanted to diversify that income.
00:11:50:26 - 00:12:21:15
Speaker 2
It's all within the sales program. All right. The next piece is operations. Okay? So many times I have competed with other sales organizations that all the sales org was was the owner and maybe one advocate, whereas we had 100 plus reps, we were the the owner, two regionals or a VP, three regionals, 13 different managers. You know, I'm saying we were this scout organization even now.
00:12:21:21 - 00:12:40:29
Speaker 2
Even now we are overstaffed for the amount of salespeople that we have. And the reason for that is we want our operations running smooth. And so that's a huge part of it. Okay, so let's break operations into three things that you're going to talk about when you're competing against this higher commission. And the three things are recruiting, fulfillment and support staff.
00:12:41:13 - 00:13:07:05
Speaker 2
Okay. Can they recruit like you? Do they have the budget? Do they put an emphasis on recruiting? Because we can earn high commissions all day, but every day it starts over versus when we recruit well and we train well. Okay, now we're earning passive income versus active income. So when we're talking about recruiting, the main bullet point is active income versus passive income.
00:13:07:05 - 00:13:31:24
Speaker 2
Yes. You're going to get a higher commission with this as a company. But where you get any passive income because they're recruiting, people constantly have new people coming in that you can train and you can put on your team. All right. The next piece is fulfillment. It's a huge piece. It's a huge sticking point for me. I whenever I have fulfillment, I want a client that is doing that fulfillment or an in-store that is doing that fulfillment to be the best.
00:13:32:16 - 00:13:56:06
Speaker 2
Okay. I want to find the best in-store group in the area and they're going to do my thing and I'm going to make you pay more for that fulfillment. Maybe that's why I make commissions lower, because the customer experience is more important to me than the sales commission. You heard it here first, folks. The customer experience is more important to me than the Salespersons Commission.
00:13:56:06 - 00:14:17:28
Speaker 2
The customer experience should be more important to the salesperson in their own commission. Obviously, we're not going to let the families starve, I'm saying. But if we're saying that we're willing to take a higher commission and we're reducing the customer's experience, then we're we're not being ethical at all. We need to place more emphasis on the customer experience.
00:14:17:28 - 00:14:39:17
Speaker 2
And here's why. Referrals is a huge one. Reputation is another one. A lot of people are screwed, right? When they knock on the door, they make a phone call where they meet someone in person because there's a company's reputation proceeds them. So you want a company reputation proceeding? You That puts the customer experience first because we are nothing without our customers.
00:14:39:17 - 00:15:12:05
Speaker 2
Everything happens after that. Okay. Okay, so that's the fulfillment piece. Do they have a good fulfillment process or do they place an emphasis on fast development? And then the last piece is the support staff. Do you get to do nothing but sell every day because you can earn 20% higher, more in commissions. But if you've got to deal with customer management, if you're going to deal with the follow up process, if you've got to deal with fires inside the business because you don't have a good fulfillment process, then how much time are you spending, selling, selling and honing in on your craft?
00:15:12:05 - 00:15:33:09
Speaker 2
And how much time are you spending dealing with that operational issues that you have to now say face for with the customer? That's a big one. So that's operations, right? The last and final and most important piece is culture. You ask the question when you qualify, what are the company's core values? Chances are they don't even know them.
00:15:33:09 - 00:15:55:01
Speaker 2
All they heard was higher commission. They came running to you because they thought you were going to raise their commission. But we don't do that here. We don't react to another company's higher commission. We have our plan and we execute our plan to a fault because we have core values. And that first core value is freedom. That first core value is freedom.
00:15:55:01 - 00:16:18:03
Speaker 2
When we can't achieve freedom, if we're paying that as high as commission as possible because now we're not free, we're a slave to that commission. We're a slave to the sales rep that once the highest commission no, thank you. That's not achieving freedom for us and that's not achieving freedom for yourself, because now you're a slave to the sale instead of developing yourself and achieving freedom by leading others.
00:16:18:06 - 00:16:35:11
Speaker 2
And a good sales program is set up for that. A great sales program is set up for that. So that that's the first piece. And then when you go down your core values, you're going to highlight them just like I am now, integrity. And that should speech. Chances are, the highest paying commission company is the one with the least integrity.
00:16:35:23 - 00:16:54:28
Speaker 2
They have to pay those higher commissions to make up for all the times they screw over customers and they screw over salespeople. So they better have the hired commission in the industry. And then after that, it's no excuses. Any time that we have fulfillment issues, development issues, operational issues, opportunity, whatever the case is, if we have an issue, we own that shit.
00:16:55:28 - 00:17:16:01
Speaker 2
Hey, you know what? I've been in solar for about 14 months now and I have gone through crappy install, medium to crappy installer and so on and so forth. And I have had to own it each step of the way and I did my best to pay my people out for the time that they worked, even if the installer didn't go through because of the crappy installer.
00:17:16:23 - 00:17:54:08
Speaker 2
But we don't make excuses. We own those mistakes and we we did throughout all those processes, we own that. So core values are incredibly important when it comes to culture. And so what you're doing is you're outlining everything that your company does in terms of core values in order to help that person understand. Are you walking into a, a bad culture, essentially, for lack of a better vocabulary, and that a destructive culture, a cancer culture where it's all about sales and high commissions and not about the customer and not about the people around you and helping them achieve freedom.
00:17:55:05 - 00:18:12:19
Speaker 2
So you walk through your core values and you remind them of those and look, it's okay to go through this process. Every now and then we lose our North Star. Every now and then we make bad decisions. Why would your sales manager or your sales team not do the same thing? Every now and then they lose sight of what's important?
00:18:13:02 - 00:18:35:27
Speaker 2
I can't tell you how many times I've had salespeople come to me and say, Hey, so-and-so has been trying to recruit so-and-so for months now. And then I go to so-and-so and so-and-so says, I didn't even bring it to you because I knew I didn't want to work for them because they didn't have the integrity that you have or they didn't have the culture that we have or they didn't have the opportunity structure that we have.
00:18:36:12 - 00:18:53:25
Speaker 2
I know exactly what I need to do to get where I need to go here. And so as you go through the Sales Program Foundation, after you qualified them and after you go through all that, you just kind of hammer the last few points. You let them know, Hey, our compensation plan is set up for you to make six figures in six months.
00:18:54:24 - 00:19:22:15
Speaker 2
Are you are you currently doing the measurable actions required for you to make that? And a lot of times that's during the qualifying the conversation piece like, oh, I'm not making I'm not trending toward six figures. Well, let's go back to the qualification piece because I forgot this earlier. If they're not if they're not where they want to be right now, can you do you have the measurable actions you have the measured actions that were to show them, this is why you're not where you're at.
00:19:23:28 - 00:19:44:29
Speaker 2
All you're doing is you're looking for a way to make more money with less action. And I completely understand that. That's the smart way to do it. Right. But at the cost of your opportunity, at the cost of your core values, I don't think so. So this is how we defend against higher commission recruiting, but is an important key factor here.
00:19:45:11 - 00:20:10:12
Speaker 2
You have to have that sales program in place that covers CODA, that covers the compensation, the opportunity, the development, the operations, cultures. You have to have to have a well-balanced sales program in place. Any time somebody comes to you and says, Hey, this company got something better, it's not about that one thing. And comparing apples to apples, yes, you're going to do that and hopefully you come out on top when you do that.
00:20:10:18 - 00:20:33:01
Speaker 2
But what about the entire sales program? And now you have a tactical structure in order to argue against that. And I would caution you to only argue it once, because if they don't get it the first time and they don't align with your company, they don't belong there anyways. Right. But at least you've you've issued a filter in order to find that out.
00:20:33:25 - 00:20:54:18
Speaker 2
And as long as they're not giving you lip service, then you retain them even longer after that because again, you're preaching it every day. If you have a good sales program, you're preaching the coda of your sales program every day. But if they lose sight, then you brought them back in and you didn't just dismiss them. I'm saying, which I have made that mistake in the past.
00:20:54:18 - 00:21:15:14
Speaker 2
I don't want you guys to make that either. So save this one. Any time you hear that higher commission type recruiting, this is how you're going to defend against it. As always, you guys know we don't run any ads. We don't charge anything. The only thing we ask is that you share and review this show because that gets us in front of more people just like you that need to hear this information.
00:21:15:14 - 00:21:27:00
Speaker 2
I appreciate you guys. You all have a wonderful week. Let's get building.
00:21:27:00 - 00:21:48:05
Speaker 1
Thank you for tuning into this episode of Building Great Sales Teams. Be sure to execute on what you just heard and let's get building as always. Remember to subscribe and leave a review wherever you consume podcast. You can also head on over to building great sales teams dot com and sign up for our newsletter to stay up to date with everything that's going on with the podcast.
00:21:48:20 - 00:21:50:22
Speaker 1
See you next time!