Living The Red Life - How to Grow a High-Ticket Sales Team With Dr. Chris Spearman

Episode Date: June 26, 2023

What are some of the secrets to building a highly successful, highly-functioning sales team? The Red Life team is coming out the gates strong in today's ambitious episode, as Rudy gets interviewed by Chris Spearman, a friend of Rudy's with vast experience in sales as a closer who has joined Life in Wonderland.Most big companies that earn millions have a high-ticket sales team. As you look to onboard new sales staff, are you asking to see their pay stubs and not just taking their word that they've had back-to-back bumper months at their previous job?What is their motivation for joining your team, should you hire an agency to assist with the hiring process, and how are you creating the right culture in your sales team? These are just some of the rapid-fire questions Rudy is answering from Chris as he impresses upon the importance of having high standards and that it is also a numbers game. For example, when it comes to sales, Rudy reckons to hire double what you need at first. Okay, more great advice to get your own 'Wolf Of Wall Street' sales-hungry wolf pack awaits inside the gates of Wonderland. Come on in."A lot of being good at sales is your personality, your hunger, and your passion." ~ Rudy MawerThe first 1000 to click here and send the promo code from the podcast can claim one of my courses for FREE!  - https://m.me/rudymawerlife In This Episode:What should you look for in a closer?How do you find a great salesperson who isn't just doing their own thing? Understanding the difference between sales and marketing at a high levelHow do you create a great culture amongst your sales team?How much leeway and grace do you give a new sales member to get it right? When should you bring in an agency?The value of being in the right network when you're looking to hireHow Rudy built his first onboarding process for his sales teamAnd so much more!Connect with Rudy Mawer:LinkedIn - www.linkedin.com/in/rudymawer/Instagram - www.instagram.com/rudymawerlifeFacebook - www.facebook.com/rudymawerlifeTwitter - www.twitter.com/rudymawer

understand and build a system and a basis around that there will be turnover because you need to try reps some are going to be good some are going to be bad we always say hire double so in sales so if you need 10 reps hire 20. My name is Rudy Moore host of living the red life podcast and I'm here to change the way you see your life in your earpiece every single week if you're ready to start living the red life ditch the blue pill take red pill, join me in Wonderland and change your life. Hey guys, what's up? Welcome back to another episode of Living the Red Life. Today we are talking all about sales, high ticket sales, building sales teams, sales reps. And if you didn't know, most companies in the world that do crazy millions and millions have a high ticket sales team. If you ever watched Wolf of Wall Street, we're kind of talking like

that, but not quite, right? But sales teams are fundamental to any business. I'm here with Chris, a friend of mine, who's joined us recently as my sales director to lead my sales team as it keeps growing and evolving. And Chris has had many of his own businesses and built many sales teams in the past. So I'm super excited to dive into this episode. For me, you know, we were talking about it yesterday in an Uber that I probably lost 10, 20, 30, 40 million a few years ago in my first business because I didn't have the high ticket sales. And hindsight is hindsight, right? But the idea of today for you guys is to learn from that hindsight, learn from those mistakes so you don't have to make them,

so you can make way more money and have way more success quicker than maybe I did because, you know, we learned the hard way, right? School of hard knocks and learning through experience. So we're going to dive in. He's going to ask me a few questions to kick us off on how I built, you know, this company and the sales team and build, you know, up to 10 million within a couple of years. And then we're going to go backwards and forwards and talk about sales reps, hiring reps, building teams, how we're helping our members build them and some of the secrets to building a high functioning sales team. Yeah. So I think this is an opportunity for me to pick Rudy's brain in a different way. So obviously I've been in sales for a long time and it's an area I super enjoy, but when it comes to growing a team, it's different.

Sure. Like I can be a great closer. I can do X, Y, and Z, but so many questions. So let's go. Probably one of the biggest question I get asked is what do you look for when you're in the recruiting process? Yeah. Even downstairs where now that I'm involved managing the sales team, we're recruiting

some closers. And I asked you, you know, what do you want me to look for? Like, what would you say to people that are hiring a sales team and interviewing and prospecting? What should they be looking for in a closer? Yeah, I mean, the important part, you know, and I, you know, Chris was interviewing five new reps for our team. And I walked in to grab my jacket and jumped on and he asked me this question. I said to them, like a lot of being good at sales is, you know, your personality, your hunger and your passion, right? We've had good sales reps that are really experienced, but they don't have the hunger and drive. And then, you know,

it's kind of that whole story with hiring in general. I would sooner take someone average with the right work ethic, motivations, drive and personality and train them on the skill side, then I would take someone that's maybe a little more experienced, but they have the wrong culture fit. And you have to realize in sales that there's going to be ups and downs. There's going to be good months, bad months, good leads, bad leads, great marketing campaigns that fill their calendars, bad marketing campaigns that leave their calendars empty. So it's a blend for me of experience and proof of results combined with those core principles, right? And I told you when you asked me yesterday, one of the shortcuts for success for a lot of you guys when hiring is

ask them to show your pay stubs, right? And back when I was partners with Tai Lopez, he was massive on this and probably taught me that and ingrained it in my brain. Think of that. But yeah, he would always be like, hey, ask for their pay stubs before. Not a bunch of BS of like, oh, I've closed this money. Because they haven't. They always lie. And what you find out is they did it for one month and then they at times it by 12. And that's what they, you know, were doing annually.

Or it was contracted revenue and they were with the company two months. Or they had a sales director and they were with the company two months and, or they had a sales director and they were under them. And this sales director did a $2 million sale and they, you know, a bunch of BS. So it's like, show me the pace of, show me the bank statements, the bank accounts where you were getting, you know, your payments from the company you were selling for. Um, and really I want someone that's closed like half a million. Right. And it's the same when we do ad, you know, Facebook ads when I'm hiring, I'm like, show closed like half a million. Right. And it's the same when we do ad, you know, Facebook ads when I'm hiring. I'm like, show me the ad accounts you've managed.

Yeah. So one of the questions I asked, and this is something I've struggled with, is if they're that good at selling and they've had a business before, you know, if they were that good at selling, they wouldn't need to go for someone else. So how do you try and find someone who has that, we said, entrepreneurial acumen, but that work ethic and skill who isn't doing or running their own thing? Yeah, it's a blend of all of it because you will get some sales reps that aren't entrepreneurial, but they've been in sales their whole life, right? And they're just looking for the next opportunity, especially these days with AI and COVID. Like the world's changing. There's reps from Timeshare and Solar and like, you know, real industries where they sold for 20 years and now it's stopped, right? Timeshares for two years kind of closed down because no one was traveling.

So we picked up some great reps from Timeshares, for example, and I never thought they would actually be good because they didn't understand Facebook ads, but we were able to train them on those skills through all my courses within a couple of weeks. But what they were great at is people. They've spent 20 years interacting with all different types of people. So you want to find some reps that have just been in the game a long time. And then, yeah, you're going to find some entrepreneurial people that, you know, sold for a loan company. They couldn't get it to take off. They maybe weren't very good at marketing, right? Because sales and marketing is different. Marketing is bringing in the leads, running the campaigns,

making product sales, all of that sort of stuff. And then sales is the on the phone side. And you could be great on the phone, but if you have no one to speak to or one person a day to speak to, you're going to lose to the guy that's got eight people a day to speak to, even if you're better, because unless you have 100% success rate, and even if you do, you'd only close one a day. Whereas the person with eight calls a day with a 20% success rate closes 1.6 people per day, right? So part of it is finding, you know, hardcore sales reps that have just been in the game a long time. Part of it, if they're more entrepreneurial in our space, have their own side business, it's about diving in to what the motivations are,

why they want to be here versus doing their own thing. And then really you're taking a risk and analyzing, are they going to be here a long time or is this a bridge? Because they're just not figured out what they're trying to do yet. The turnaround for closures is so high. I think one of the things,

when we're hiring for more capital closures and obviously some of the celebrity brands that we can speak some of some not so much yet is they just want to be part of what you've built sure but that's not about the money for them which is that's rare right that's also you gotta remember like yeah not everyone has a brand like you but how do you try and then build that culture and yes it comes from your record but there's also like anyone who's seen The Office, it's insane. So how do you build that sort of culture when you're starting out small? Is it about finding the right core workers? Because otherwise there's just a massive turnaround in the online space. I think it's important to understand with sales reps, lead gen appointment setters,

there's generally a high turnover anyway. Okay. So, and I mean, you can like, obviously if you have two sales reps and they're going to be with you a while, sure, you don't have high turnover, but if you're trying to build a team of 10, 20, 30 people, then you're going to have high turnover because, and high turnover is not bad. This is like a recruitment HR debate I have all the time with my HR manager. If your standards are really high, it doesn't mean turnover is bad. It just means your standards

are really high, right? I could have zero turnover if I told everyone they were great all the time. I told them, oh, don't worry. I haven't closed anything all month, but you're trying hard. Keep going. No, turnover is indicative of the standards you set partly right and obviously partly it's culture and all of those things so the first part answer that question is understand and build a system and a basis around that there will be turnover because you need to try reps some are going to be good some are going to be bad we always say hire double so in sales so if you need 10 reps hire 20 and then after even through the recruitment process right and the onboarding and the mock calls you'll probably cut down to 15 now you'll

go live with 15 within a month one or two of them will say it's not for me or you'll like let them go for a week or two listen to their calls and say you know you're not for us and now you're down to you know 12 and then you know after another month or two us. And now you're down to, you know, 12. And then, you know, after another month or two, two or three won't do well or four. And now you're eight, right? So you see how that 20 went to eight. So it's a numbers game. It's understanding that accepting it, understanding that is the game you're playing. It's not a bad thing. So if you play basketball, don't expect to score every shot. The best basketball players in the world score like 30, 40%. So say if you're trying to hire sales reps, build a team of 10, and you're only hiring 10 reps, it's like you're trying to defy the law of physics and say, I'm going to

score every basketball shot I take this game, which is statistically not possible. I think like a big challenge from a managerial perspective now is looking at people who you know you're like putting your hopes in them coming good and you know what would you say is there a time frame you look to go okay i'm going to give this person another few months to really come good or you know do you just cut it off yeah i mean there's a line in the sand moment and you got to realize with all staff there's an opportunity cost of keeping someone too long as well. So there's like a fine line and a line in the sand where it's like, hey, this is my goodwill faith. Let's see if it works out. And then here's my line in the sand. And when you start to cross it, you're now having a negative effect. Right. And in sales that can

be burning too many leads. It could be annoying the fulfillment customer service team in a different position in the company it could be you know they're great at taking photos and videos but they're they upset everyone else and it's like hey now you've crossed the line in the sun where your cons outweigh your pros right so with sales reps we generally once they're on like two weeks to onboard and train and then 30 days. And in 30 days between listening to calls, knowing their background, understanding their energy, and then seeing how many sales they make in the first 30 days, we generally make like, we can kind of tell who's going to be good and who's going to be bad. And then if we're on the fence about anyone,

we'll just give them another 30 days or so. And then we'll start to make cuts. And you know, my one of our biggest mistakes over the last couple of years that's cost me crazy money. And nearly blew up the company a couple of times because of how much it cost us was we would leave reps way too long. Whoa, whoa, whoa, wait a second. Before we go into the rest of this episode, I'm going to interrupt abruptly and just ask you one big favor. I hope you're getting a ton of value, a ton of knowledge. I hope you're getting some breakthroughs from myself and the guests. And I want one thing in return. What I would love is for you to subscribe and leave a review. The reviews and the subscription grows the podcast. It allows me to bring you even better guests. It allows me to invest even more time and money into this podcast to bring you the latest and greatest, the best entrepreneurs from around the world that are crushing life, crushing their business, and giving you all the tools, the mindset hacks, the knowledge, and the environment you need to be successful. So do me a favor, if you've got any amount of value from today's episode so far, any previous episode or any of the content I've done, it would mean the world to me if you hit a five star review.

Give us your feedback on the show, the episodes and subscribe and download. Plus, if you do that and send me a screenshot on Instagram at RudyMoreLife, I will send you a bunch of my free training, marketing courses, sales courses worth $499. Yes, $500 worth of courses for a simple 30 second review. It would mean the world to me. Send me that screenshot. I would love for you to leave that review and I would appreciate it very, very much so we can keep growing this show and make it awesome.

So let's get back into the episode. I appreciate you guys and let's dive back in. And by leaving them way too long, it wasn't that they made zero money or only five or 10 grand that month. It was that we paid 30 grand that month to fill their calendars with ads, right? And so it's like, hey, it actually cost us 30 grand. And if you do that with five reps, it's like, hey, that cost you 150 grand in ad spend. And now you sit at the end of the month, look at your reporting, and you don't realize at the time, it's like we're 150k in the hole this

month, because these new reps flopped. And we made that mistake once or twice with, you know, different people, agencies, team leaders promising, oh, we can build the best team, they're going to be great. And we're like, okay. And then, you know, it was a bad decision. What would you say? So some, when people say I'm going to go to and we're like okay and then you know it was a bad decision what would you say so some when people say i'm going to go to an agency and obviously or online machines you've got your own agency and there's good communication there around yeah should i okay get a sales agency an appointment center agency at what point do you say okay this is a good band-aid for now or do you start recruiting and learning and yeah i think agencies have a place as a bridge, right? I mean,

like after having an agency for seven years, using many agencies for different areas of business over the year, agencies are generally a bridge. I always tell people, even my internal team, when we bring in agencies and they get upset, I go, look, they're never going to care about our business like we do. They're just not. They're going to care about their own business, right? So agencies are a bridge. Understand they're a bridge. They, you know, getting an agency to find you your first rep if you don't know how to hire, that's better than nothing, probably, right? But eventually, you know, like with our members, we train them on everything, right? We give them the scripts. We give them the systems. We show, give them the job posts.

We give them the legal contract. We show them how to build the commission structure. We show them example scripts. We build out the lead gen process. So for our mastermind and especially our inner circle and legacy members, we give them everything they need to go do that. And we probably have better frameworks and systems there than most of the agencies that they would pay 10 grand to place. The thing is, I mean, that's, I was a mastermind client when you first started, right? So obviously been a great that's, I was a mastermind client when you first started, right? So obviously been a great friend of Rudy's, but mastermind client. And obviously we went on to make millions in various businesses. Thanks to that, the inner circle wasn't even there then.

And now I look at what's inside. I'm like, okay, where would I have been back then if I had all of these SOPs, like how to hire all of this structure? So yes, there is a, you know, there's a part for an agency to a degree, but for me, I would choose to be in a network where I can learn how to hire. Yeah. I mean, and that's why I moved away from my agency. We still have it because there's always a percent that just want done for you. And it's great. But I, you know, I think more of the future, which I like is the done with you, which is what we do. It's like, Hey, we're going to train you to be self-sufficient one day, right? It's, oh, you can give a man a fish or teach him to fish.

I would sooner support you and teach you to fish over six, 12, 24 months. And then you've learned all these skills from my 10 years of experience and my millions of dollars in testing and mentorship myself versus the agency is a great band-aid and we'll run everything and maybe some people will just have that run forever but at the end of the day if you have crazy big goals you're not going to have a 50 million dollar company with a sales agency running your sales team i just don't i don't see that as like realistic i see it as they might help you get a few reps in which is what we had to get started. And then eventually it's like, well, now I want to take this to 10, 20, 30 reps. We got to build an in-house team.

And I built that in-house team with my head of operations on a different podcast. You can listen to him. And then I started to bring in people like you to take the reins, right? It's like, hey, we got to about a million a month in high ticket sales, but it was too much to manage that and manage everything else in the business, especially if we wanted to keep it growing. And now we're doing it for our celebrity business partners and, you know, we're starting to help members do it. So it's just, it's like stepping stones. Yeah. And obviously that goal for us is

2 million a month and above, but there are systems and things that need to come into play. So if people are what, say seven figures, they're selling something relatively high ticket consistently. Yeah. To get to eight figures and above, it's okay, now I need to hire my team. Yeah. I need to make sure that they're the right people. Yeah. And like, what would you say? Because there's so many people out there who they're, yeah, they're making decent money, say they're making maybe a million a year. And they're like, right now I need my team to be able to do this the solution is to go and learn how to hire how to yeah yeah the sop i mean there's so many entrepreneurs that never get past a couple of mil

because they're just like they're great solo entrepreneurs with a few team members but becoming a ceo and getting to 10 mil is like a different game. It's like, you can be good at basketball, but if you now go and play football, it's a very different sport, right? And you might be very athletic. You can sprint, you can stop, you can jump, you can, you know, but it's a different sport. So for a lot of the entrepreneurs listening, if you're selling by yourself right now, that will only ever get you so far. And the quicker you can like get in the next level, right, where you become more of a CEO, building a team, the quicker you can grow, right? You shouldn't want to be doing every, I mean, some people want to just do everything and make a few hundred K a year with free staff. That's great. Most people want to

build a real business. The quicker you can get used to building the team, building the systems, hiring the sales reps, the better, right? Because that gets you out of the weeds. So you can get used to building the team, building the systems, hiring the sales reps, the better, right? Because that gets you out of the weeds so you can become more of a CEO and have a team around you. So by far the best sales mastermind is actually our onboarding process for reps. Like I say, our actual launchpad onboarding, basically the membership site that we give to our team members is better than almost any other. So do you know how that came alive? No. Oh, crazy story. So we'll finish on this.

So I built this, like I'm a big systems guy. So I built this big. So I used a couple of agencies. We're kind of sick and tired of having to do everything, you know, kind of really kind of pull everything together, even though we had agencies. I then hired a couple of sales managers, but, you know, they weren't really kind of pulling it all together quick enough because, and it wasn't really their fault. They were new from the outside and stuff. And one of them did really emphasize, her name was Liz. She ends like, hey, you need a more user-friendly, like not a bunch of

spreadsheets and Google forms. You need something more user-friendly, like not a bunch of spreadsheets and Google Forms. You need something like user-friendly that these reps that aren't tech can dive into. So one day I was just like super sick of it. And I remember I woke up at three in the morning and I, I know it was late at night. It was like 10 at night. I was like, screw it. I'm just going to build this whole sales process and membership site myself. So I get on my computer. I wake up one of my developers. I get him on Zoom. He builds the framework and click funnels for me, all the tabs. I start building it all, typing it out. And then I start sketching out the login page, how I want it, all the tabs. And then luckily my head of design, he's been with me six years. He's based in Europe. So now it's about 2am. And

I know he's waking up. So I start ringing him about 2am. And I'm like, hey, get it, you know, he normally gets on later, because he works late for our US time zone. And I say, hey, get on early, I need you to build this with me. So I stay on screen share for like three more hours till about five in the morning. And I get this membership site done. And then and I rarely ever do that probably like once a year these. And I rarely ever do that. Probably like once a year these days, like something crazy like that. Back in when I started, that was like a monthly thing, but now we have it and it's a great framework and it's a great system and it's a great onboarding process. And when it comes to recruiting and us bringing these people in,

it's so much, it's so seamless. That's the idea. Yeah. Because the biggest restraint really is the teaching power or the learning power when you're bringing people in. So having something like that. Well, and I did that for the reason I explained earlier. I accepted that I'm going to have to lose 50% and I have high turnover. So I go, how do I streamline that as much as I can?

And that's what we have. So guys, we're out of time. But just to wrap up, look, the first thing you can do, you can all do is obviously get the lead gen system dialed in with me and my team, right? And all of our resources, and then just hire one sales rep, okay? If you're only getting a call a day, do it yourself if you're good on the phone, but hire that first sales rep, make them part-time because I promise you those higher ticket offers, that sales team, that is the bridge to taking your business to the next level for a

lot of you out there. And just having these small packages, one of the biggest mistakes I made in business. Now having these bigger packages and this sales team gives me a bigger product spectrum and it will change your business if you get it right. And if you need help, we're here to help you build that. Okay. We're happy to help. Obviously, if you're in our programs, we're there to help you already and you're getting access to happy to help. Obviously, if you're in our programs, we're there to help you already and you're getting access to that. But don't sleep on this. OK, the phone side is the future.

Yeah, people want that human interaction. Now AI is coming. They want that human interaction even more and they're willing to spend more money to get it. So build that phone sales team. I promise you it will help your business. So Chris, appreciate you coming on.

And I'm excited to keep growing the sales team over the next year. Until next time, guys, keep living the red life, build that sales team. Let's see you on the phone very soon. Take care.