The Vault Unlocked - Why the Setter-Closer Model Still Wins (And How to Build One That Actually Scales)

Episode Date: August 12, 2026

Josh Troy, co-founder of Curvion Blue and 12-year high-ticket sales operator, joins Kayvon Kay on to break down what a real sales operation looks like from the inside, and why most founders have never actually built one. Most sales problems are not sales problems. They are infrastructure problems dressed up as performance problems. You hired the wrong person, handed them the wrong metrics, and wondered why nothing scaled. Josh has seen it hundreds of times. So has Kayvon. This conversation is two operators comparing notes without cleaning it up for the audience. The episode opens on the setter-closer model. Why it still wins, and why it has nothing to do with preference and everything to do with leverage. From there, Josh introduces the golden formula: lead flow multiplied by sales performance equals revenue. Two variables. Two sides of the table. A feedback loop most businesses have never actually built. The conversation moves into the validation sequence, a diagnostic framework that identifies exactly where a revenue operation is breaking down before anyone blames the wrong variable. Lead quality first. Rep performance second. Pitch design third. Offer design last. Run it in order, document it in a validation matrix, and you stop having the marketing-versus-sales argument and start having a data conversation. They also cover why close rate is the wrong primary metric, what collected dollars per booked call actually measures, how the funding waterfall increases average sales price without burning the deal, and what a technical close is and why tracking it separately protects your reps and your client relationships. The episode closes on conviction. A rep with modest skill and full conviction will outsell a rep with all the right skills and zero belief every time. If close rate is still your primary rep metric, this episode will change how you run the numbers. Questions Answered Why does the setter/closer model outperform the full-cycle rep model at scale? What is the validation sequence and how does it replace "lead quality" as a diagnostic? What is the golden formula and how do you use it to find where revenue is leaking? What is a SIP and how does it differ from a PIP? What is the funding waterfall and how does it protect average sales price? What is a technical close and why should it be tracked separately? Why does a good rep with great systems beat a great rep with bad systems? What is CDPBC and why is close rate the wrong primary metric? Looking to dive deeper into these conversations and connect with our host and guest? Follow Josh Troy: Instagram LinkedIn TikTok YouTube Learn more about Curvion Blue Follow Kayvon: Instagram Facebook LinkedIn TikTok     Want to go deeper with Kayvon? Subscribe to the newsletter Book a discovery call Get your Revenue Engine Scorecard™️ Hire the right salespeople  

Most founders think they have a sales problem. They don't. They have a systems problem wearing a sales costume. No real onboarding, no documented process, no playbooks, a sales manager who was just the best rep in the room six months ago, and a marketing team optimizing for the cheapest lead instead of the right one. Today I'm sitting down with Josh Troy. Josh has spent over a decade inside high ticket, high velocity sales. He's built and run outsourced sales operations, for some of the fastest moving companies in the space, and he thinks about sales the way I do. Not as a conversation, but as an operating system. We're getting into the set or closer model,

AI and sales operations, the war between marketing and sales, and why the person you call a sales manager is probably three jobs you haven't filled yet. This is the vault's unlocked. Let's unlock it. Josh, welcome to the show. What's up, Kavon?

Well, you know, I'm excited because I know we're going to be talking about something that's obviously very dear to my heart, which is sales, because that's everything I've actually built my entire career on. But before we go into that, because I know we're going to get into nitty gritty. I just think it's important. Tell us a little bit of who Josh is and where, you know, what you've done to end up where you are today. Totally. Yeah. And that's always such a broad question, right? There's so many different things I could start with.

And I don't want to be too long-winded, but I'll kind of tie it together. the thread that's most relevant to this podcast. But real quick, before I even do that, like we were just talking about, I just had my first baby, super excited, not really taking any calls, but I was like, dude, I'm not rescheduling this podcast with Kvon because I know, you know, we're going to be able to take this deep. So I'm excited for the content we're going to get into. Anyways, my name's Josh Troy. You know, I've been in sales and high ticket, high velocity sales, literally my entire career far over a decade now. I think it's like 12, 13 years or something like that. And, you know, my story really starts off in outbound sales. And so I started my first company when I was 21 years old.

Fun fact about me, not really the purpose of the podcast, but I got sober when I was 20 years old. So I've never even had a legal sip of alcohol. I've been sober for over 13 years now. And, and that's a big part of my story. But, you know, I turned 21. I started my first video production. agency. And, you know, I know, when you hear video production, there's such a wide range. I wasn't doing these, like, short little social media reels. We were producing commercials. Our average ticket size was between 25 to 50K. Towards the end there, the highest I sold was 300,000 for a 60-second spot. So it was really like high-in, high-value production. And so when I first started that business, first of all, I didn't know anything about marketing, but second of all, I didn't have the money or I didn't think I had the money. And I say that now with some business maturity because if I knew what I know now about reinvestment, I would have grown that company a lot faster. And I probably would have started marketing from day one. But at that time, it ended up being great because even though I didn't have a budget for marketing, I had a lot of willpower. I was willing to do whatever it took. So I was in my mom's garage. I remember it was summertime.

It was like 100 degrees outside. I'm freaking stripping sweat. Actually, I'll even tell you this. I usually leave this detail out, but it's fresh of mine since I just had a baby. At that time, I was living with my parents. I just started this business. Inside the house, my older sister, she had a baby, and my mom was helping, you know, kind of raise her.

My sister was a nurse. Anyways, the point is I was inside the house and the freaking baby was crying all day, so I couldn't make cold calls there. I'd go in the backyard and her dogs would bark the entire time because they were put outside because of baby. So it was so much chaos. I ended up being in like a shed in her garage, dripping sweat, cold calling. And so all I had was a bunch of willpower and, you know, Google. I didn't even have like Zoom info or Apollo or any of these data providers. I would just call straight down, you know, with search queries. And that was how I built that entire company. I've hung up. I've got hung up on more times than most people have

made dials. Yeah. I'm sure you know how that goes, right? Like, I've been hung up so many times. And through something, it was really interesting. Everybody hates cold calling for the most part. And I learned to absolutely love it because it was a very unique superpower of mine. Like, there was very few people that could decide that they needed business, pick up the call and find it. And so to me, it became the truest definition of generating money out of thin air. And so to skip through a couple highlights that brought me towards today. I built the company based on outbound, even towards the point of me selling it, just to be right size, it was a very small transaction. It was actually just a couple of years ago. I already have WFS group,

which is now known as Curvy on Blue. I already had the company and I was pretty far removed from that business and it was more of a distracting asset than anything. So I sold that. And even at that time, the number one source of business was still outbound. And so built it based on outbound. At that point in time, I realized that digital marketing agencies, they ran the media for the ads that we produced. So my thought was if we could make partnerships with them, you know, we'd be able to produce a lot more content because they already have the clients.

And kind of the value exchange was they said, hey, you know, we want to learn how to do outbound sales. We're marketers. We don't really have the outbound sales engine. A lot of marketing companies were really interested in that. And I said, okay, well, I want to learn direct. response inbound marketing because I couldn't even imagine Kavana. You know how spoiled closers are these days?

They get a calendar full of inbound leads. Yeah. I mean, now I wanted to let you keep going before we get in there. But yeah, you said it yourself, like back in our day, I'm going to say even when you said Cole Cohen, we didn't get a list or I don't know what you. I never got a list. Like I had to actually go do the work to find the list. There wasn't internet back then or even.

AI for sure where you're like, hey, give me the list of the 10 top real estate agents in the, you know, in this local area. Like I was calling on real estate agents and mortgage brokers. I had to come up with the list. I had to dial the list. Absolutely. So when I look at that now back in the day, people call that, you know, outbound cold calling, what you want to call it. I actually call that business development, like depending on how far you take it. Like for me, it was cold call them, book a meeting, get a meeting in person, meet them market them close the deal that's the full cycle right that is 100% right in fact like that that when i started selling and again we're not talking about decades ago this is 12 13 years ago

and it's crazy how much has changed but when i first started selling zoom didn't exist or maybe it had existed but i didn't know a single person that like zoom was not a thing that people are like what's a zoom meeting right like nobody was on zoom and so it was a phone call to to an in-person meeting and my up wasn't just like some virtual blast. It was sending like cookie cakes and, you know, random thoughtful stuff to try to penetrate the decision makers, but very, very different time. It is. And so you made that comment like sales reps today, they just getting in, they have no idea. I feel like when we say that, you and I say that, we sound like those old farts all back in the day. I'll tell you, you know. It's so true. Like I, I mean, we both run

sales agencies and the complaints I get from these salespeople, I just shake my head and I'm like, you have no idea. Like, that's what changed my world. Now, the problem with it is I've turned lazy too. Like I don't like cold calling. I think it's like, why would I cold call when I know how to do digital marketing and drive quality warm leads to a book call? I just think about the reward, the effort versus reward, is it there or not.

But what I do believe in, I'll just say this, is. there's nothing better than co-calling. Like, I mean, if you want to get to someone quicker, faster, essentially cheaper, co-calling is where it's at. Like my original sales trainer or, say, mentor in all sales, till this day, he won't even go digital marketing. He tried it for like a year. He's like, bullshit.

He still peer hammers the phones day in, day out, making millions. I mean, this guy's a multi, multi. millionaire. Yeah. So three companies all from the single phone. And that's it. That's crazy. Well, I mean, you know, at that time, it's actually funny.

I paid a, I do feel like a dinosaur when we talk about this. And it's funny because we're young guys relative to this, right? But I remember I paid a full stack web developer to build a bot, which was like some automated system where it would take a keyword in a Google query. And then it would, it would run the. search results and it would look for certain things on the website. It was basically its own scraper, like a custom scraper. I had to build that. And I had all these little fancy things. And what's so funny about that is I called it an artificial, sorry, artificial intelligence lead generation bot.

And it was funny because AI didn't exist back then. And it had nothing to do with AI, but I heard that term somewhere. That's what I ended up calling it. But anyways, after that, man, it was like, you know, learn direct response, learn inbound marketing, got a lot more high ticket, high velocity. And I realized how much faster you could scale if the lead flow component was more predictable. So that's quick for sure. Which I love you to say, the lead component is more predictable.

Yeah, absolutely. Well, and you said something interesting too. You said, well, I don't like to do that anymore because it's not leveraged enough for my time. And I think that's exactly it, right? A common, I don't know if you've ever dealt with this, a common question I get is, well, why do you have a set or closer model?

Why don't we just have the closers dialing also? And it's interesting because it all comes down to that question of, well, what is their time worth? And so I build activity models out, right? Financial models show economics. Activity models show capacity. And so the question is, what is worth the time for the skill set and the talent and the responsibility set of, you know, the sales reps? And so when you break it down, if you have really good closers, it is not leveraged.

enough the dollar per hour activity it's not leverage enough for them to be dialing plus if they're any good they're going to fill their calls with their their calendar with calls now it's this up and down lead flow faucet it's like roller coaster lead flow and so for so many reasons that what you said exactly that that's why there's an sdrae or a set or closer model that works the best well i mean that model has been around forever and there's a reason for that and you you just nailed it i like how you said the activity uh if you have your best closer and they're going to take an hour, where do you want them with the hottest lead or coal-calling people, right? We know that answer.

Just hearing you speak, I love it. It tells me you know something called sales operations. Oh, yeah. When I say sales operations, what does that mean to you? Ooh, interesting. I don't typically define it, but I guess if I did, I would say it's the systems, the processes, the methodologies, and the frameworks, the overall orchestration of the revenue. motion. And so, you know, when so many people think of sales, they just often talk about what's said on the phone, what's said on the call, maybe objection handling, maybe someone throws in a

follow-up or two in the conversation. But when I think a sales operation, it's all the connective tissue. So it's everything from the call models, to the sales process design itself, to, you know, lead to close ratio, CRM systems, reactivation campaigns. It's how to be the most efficient in maximize revenue from the leads that you generate, not just what's set on the phone. And there's, there's a whole host of things that are under that term. There is. And I agree with you. I mean, just the operation side of like even the finance side, all the reporting. I mean, everything that go, the dialies, the dollars, the connection rate, all of the things that happen is all underneath that. Yep. So when we go in that conversation now, because I know

that's kind of your at your expertise. What are you seeing right now just in today's work? today's marketplace. I mean, even with all the new CRMs, like I want my favorite CRM, I just logged in the other day because I don't really get into the CRMs anymore where I'm at in my agency. And I, yeah, they have a full AI bought. I've never sound, it never sounded anything better than I've ever heard in my life. And it's like, it is fully sits there and says, who do you want me to call for you? Yeah. I go, okay, with automation, obviously automated email, automated SMS, automated. basically dialing even even though we can say oh it's not the same as humans no it's not but is every

human going to call every lead we know that answer right i don't care how good your product is i don't care how good your operations you know if you're at a big scale level you're not calling every single lead now we have bots i can call every single lead what is there like what do you even need a salesperson for. That's where I'm looking at going, my God. Yeah. Well, it's an interesting question. And also, I'd be super curious with the tool that you, and we could talk offline about. I'm super curious the tool that you're actually using because in my experience, I have just not found an AI dialer that is that great at all. And I think it depends on the actual, the industry and the use case. Right. If you have like a really very, very, very low connection rate type of dialing motion or a very low ticket product that doesn't require

much trust, like it's more effective. I haven't seen a lot of great use cases, but what I'll, what I'll highlight is what you're saying, which is the fact that the output. So the best AI enablement use cases right now for sales operations are things that massively increased coverage and capacity. And so it creates so much leverage. And so one of my favorite ones that we build is the call analysis. Yeah. Same exact concept, man, is like, You used to, you know, when we were first getting into sales, the only way to get an insight from a sales call was to listen to it. And it's hard because all of everything you want to know is on the sales calls.

And so the whole concept of taking that qualitative data and turning it into quantitative touch points and data, that's like the most valuable thing. For example, instead of saying, because you're always managing based on statistical significance without 100% coverage, right? If you only listen, let's say as an example, you're a sales manager. You have five sales reps, eight calls a day. That's 40 calls a day, 40 hours roughly maybe worth of calls. You're a sales manager.

You have eight hours in the day and other responsibilities. You'll never listen to 100% of the sales calls. But what AI allows us to do is run all of those. And if you have a proper configuration, you can say things like, out of the last 32 calls, 17 of them gave this objection. Now, that's so much more actionable. The feedback loop to marketing is significant. different other than saying in the past, well, out of the couple calls we heard this came up,

but I don't really know if that's the reason that sales are lower right now. So now what I'll say, when I talk about AI call analysis or, you know, the umbrella term call intelligence, I'm not referring to like the gongs of the world and, you know, all these other solutions out there. Yeah, there's, yeah. Well, the issue with them is a really good head start a few years ago. they were super impressive, but I can't even count how many people that I've met that, you know, deployed one of those call intelligence tools and never really used it for anything other than more efficiently scrubbing calls. And so the reason why is because they're all trained on generic LLM. So it's just, it's comparing and evaluating your call and your process and your tactics to just

generic stuff online. So what we do and really just this year got to the point where, you know, we can do this at a really robust level is we build out all the custom context engineering in our own AI call analysis models where now it's like the process is documented, our scorecards are regimented. I mean, it's really like a CRM. It's only as good as the configuration you have. And so that's helping us take things to an entire new level. Now, what does that do for a sales organization? Well, a manager that, let's say, that could only manage eight reps, can now manage 20 as an exam. So you get so much more leverage, that leverage in OPEX, you know, the operational leverage

drops to the bottom line. And so those are some of the most exciting use cases for us right now. Yeah, I love that. So let me ask you this. How do you get, when I say compliance, I'm going to say compliance on the sales reps, because here's a thing. Yeah. The AI can listen to the call. The AI can break down the call. The AI, as you know, can send the sales rep or an email and a text message and a nice PDF with everything that went wrong on that call. But still, there's the compliance of the sales rep to actually open the email, read the PDF and actually take the training or, you know, want to learn to grow to bring it to the next call. Yeah. I mean, you know, we call it adult babysitting for a reason. You know, that's that's what it, that's what sales

management is, man. It's just repetitive, mundane things over and over and over and over again. I mean, to a certain extent, you just have to have consequences in a sales organization. You have to have those. And so if people aren't following process, they're terminated, right? That's one of the short answers. But the more in-depth answer is,

I have found a long time ago that most sales reps want to follow process. They do, especially, by the way, if you have earned their trust and confidence that you know what you're doing and that the thing you're telling them to do will get them more results, therefore more income.

That always is the prerearmed. requisite. But if you do that, I am convinced that they want to follow it. So the question becomes, well, why aren't they following it? And what I've learned and what I've observed, managing dozens of sales teams and consulting with a lot of different companies is they have so much complexity in their organization. Now, let's start with the basics. First off, they don't even have proper onboarding. They don't even have a training system. They don't, or sorry, training center. They don't have playbooks. They don't have the process documented to begin with. how can you enforce something that was not standardized to start?

So I think it starts with really, really good process playbooks and training. And then the enforcement piece is the sales management motion. And so we call this the rep development motion. And it's different than performance management, right? Because maybe they're performing, but they're not following process stuff. And so the rep development motion,

every single week, we create what's called a SIP. It stands for a success implementation plan, not to be confused with the PIP. A PIP is typically assigned when someone is not performing. The difference is a SIP, they might be doing well, but the theory is,

the concept is, there's always room for improvement. So the SIP, every rep has that. It's basically an individualized development plan. And every Monday, it's kind of reset with what their focus is for that week. And so what I have found is

the more specific you can be in the development instruction, the better the results. And what you're talking about right now is a really big thing. Like I, I am convinced that sales managers do not know how to develop reps.

I mean, 90% plus of them. And most of them are just a good rep that got promoted, right? They don't have any professionalized management training. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, so now you're coming into what I say. There's like three different really, you know, people hire a sales manager not realizing

that there's actually three buckets that I call them. And number one is there's actual true sales manager. Yep. There's a sales trainer, which we were talking about before the show. And then there's what I call is, a sales coach. And those are very, very three different people. And I tell people that it's like, oh, I know someone who's all three. No, no, no, no. Like, you find me someone who's all three of those,

truly all three of those. Those are the unicorns. Let's let's go capture them. Let's bring them in and do studies on them. It's knowing, A, as a sales manager that's using the, you know, the umbrella term, which one of those are you truly? And then as a business owner and or business knowing what department or what what your team needs more of. Now, if you have someone like you, which just sounds like you run a very tight ship of sales operations, let's say, and there's lots of sale and a lot of handholding through systems and processes and policies,

well, maybe you don't need so much of a sales manager. Maybe there is that room for where you need more of a sales coach, because I don't think AI is ever going to be a true sales coach, right? So, well, what is a sales coach? Well, exactly what I say? It's coaching the players. to be better at their job. A sales coach, like we have an in-house coach,

every single time a sales rep goes to the coach, we'll say, hey, go to Coach Terry. They leave Coach Terry and make a sale. Coach Terry never once talked to them about their sales, never talked about the product, never talked about the service. It was coaching them as the human beings. Because as you know, sales is direct reflection of the salesperson.

100%. And you bring up a really good topic here. I never called it the sales coach specific. specifically, but, but like we have a corporate trainer as an example in addition to the sales managers. And one of the, this is actually one of the biggest topics that I like to discuss with potential people that, you know, want to outsource sales. Because in marketing, it's so commonly understood. Nobody even thinks they're going to build a marketing team and hire one guy or, you know, one girl, one person to run marketing. Nobody thinks that. They know it's a graphic

designer. It's a media buyer. It's a funnel builder. It's a copywriter. It's a life cycle marketer. email marketer. There's so many different specialties. But for some reason, they'll look at a sales team or a sales organization and they'll say, let's hire a sales manager. And it's like, there are so many different functions and responsibilities. And by the way, that's why there's so many failed sales manager hires because the playbook, the responsibility set to begin with is completely incorrect. Yeah. We break it down to the core four. We call for a sales manager. We call it call analysis, Rep, or sorry, call analysis, pipeline management, performance management, and training center optimization.

Because training centers where all the leverage of everything, you know, comes into. And then the thread through them all is rep development, right? But then we have recruiting. Then we have sales enablement. Then we have training, right? We have so many different things that actually come together. And then you also have systems inside, like, you know, systems. And then the RevOps team, right?

that actually is a mistake. Yeah, then you have to have numbers. And then you got to understand even the nuances, like, how many days is it taking for someone to book a call? And what happens when it gets to a point? Like for us, we know after two days, the no-show rate goes to 50%.

So who's watching that number all day? And then what are the triggers that you need to do to prevent that number? Because people just think it's more salespeople. But that's not necessarily the truth. So I'll give you a popular opinion. And I think you'll agree with this. The funny thing about what we do in outsource. source sales is because there's a, you know, there's a premium on how we charge it. I think the

misconception is that we're way more expensive than doing it in-house. And the funny thing is, if they really compare the accurate numbers, there's no way they could do what we actually do in-house for less. We have the efficiencies. We have the economies and scale. And we can have these fractional players where they're full-time FTEs for us, but they only need 5% of their time on that account. Because what typically happens is, oh, I could hire a sales manager for us in that. Well, yeah, that's a very small piece of the puzzle. And what about everyone else? Well, then I always go, okay, who's going to be the hiring manager? Who's going to be the interviewer? Exactly. You're going to be your system, your RES ops person. Who's going to be the manager,

assistant to the, for the sales manager? Okay, who's going to be the trainer? Who's going to be the, it's just like it goes on and on and on, right? I, I deal with that. As you know, the agency, we deal with that all the time. And it's, it's interesting because they don't see all that. They don't see like, I'm basically your HR department, your recruiter, your developer, your sales trainer, your sales manager, and as you know, you're probably worth sitting on the marketing calls. So now I'm operating as a sales director and a CRO for your company. And even accounting, dude, it goes to finance everything. Yeah. Like commissions accounting, compensation accounting is like the most challenging type of accounting. Maybe the one exception is like a really complex business that has really in-depth

whip schedules, you know, work in progress and complicated stuff. But typically sales compensation accounting is one of the most challenging. And, you know, we do all of that. So anyways, we could go back into it. But I just, I had to say that because when you're on the concept, there are so many different hats to run a proper sales function. And everybody groups it together and says sales manager. Yeah, and this is one of many of a sales department, right? So let me ask you this, because I know you were, and this is, this is the fight that I always have and I actually try not to have it. It just seems like it's always there in the business for some reason is the sales versus marketing, the MQL versus SQL. What's your thoughts on that?

We have a slide on it. I always like to say, if we have, have a slide on it in our engagement deck. It shows how important it is because it's like, it's literally an expectation going into the engagement of like, hey, you know, working with our clients, there's a very clear line drawn in the sand. You know, one of the most expensive things is the gap between marketing and sales. We have to have a really strong feedback loop and we have to have a clear line of separation. So it's super important. I'll also say that we have something we called the golden formula, which is lead flow times sales performance equals revenue. The importance of that is there's only two variables to get to the desired outcome.

And each side has to own their variable in a really, you know, regimented way. And we have to be on the same page with the accountability. So there's a few things that I've found that make a significant difference in smoothing out that relationship. And by the way, most of these big problems, you ever heard of the difference between problems and polarities, by the way? Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I say, explain to us. Well, you know, I love this. I read it in some book.

I can't remember what, but it made a big difference to me because I was always frustrated solving the same things. I'm like, why isn't it fixed yet? And I read in some book that problems are things that can be resolved and come to a final state. Polarities are things that will always be there and you'll always have to manage for the optimal outcome. So so many of these concepts we talk about in sales operations and the one you brought up between marketing and sales, it's just a polarity.

It will never go away. So how do you manage it for the optimal outcome? And there's a handful of things that I found that make a really big difference. One of the first things is remove the word lead quality from your vocabulary because it's not helpful for anybody. It's very subjective. Nobody knows what to mean, what it means. And it's not actionable.

If you say, oh, the lead quality is low. How? And what do we do about it? And how do we correct it on the marketing side, right? So for sales, we take a lot of ownership. I don't want anybody to say lead quality. Now, you can address lead quality, but it needs to be a specific thing backed by a lot of data. So the second thing we have is what we call a validation sequence.

Validation sequence is a process of exactly how it sounds, validating lead flow or a new process or a new offer. So when we come into a brand and they have a new offer or service or whatever, it needs to be validated. And so the levels to the validation sequence are number one lead quality, right? Now, again, we don't use lead quality of like poor lead quality, but as a topic, we need to validate that. So in other words, do we have the right ICP on the call? If we have the right ICP and we're talking to the right people is the sales rep performing. So sales performance is number two. This is where everyone gets stuck though. A lot of the times they'll have good avatars, good prospects, pretty good sales reps, and they're still not getting the conversions that they want

and they get stuck. Well, at that point, number three is pitch design. You have to transition and iterate through multiple versions of pitch design. I have sold so many things in my career where nothing about the offer changed, but the way that we pitched it did. And that's what made all the difference. So you have lead quality, sales performance pitch design, which could also mean process, like tweaking the sales process. And the last thing is offer design. If you've really exhausted those options, you might not have an irresistible offer that's resonating to the degree that you want. So two more things on this topic. So first of all, remove the word lead quality. Second of all, run a validation sequence. Third of all, use a validation matrix.

So the sequence is the concept and the methodology of how we do that. A validation matrix is how we document this because it's all about data. So we'll take that concept, lead quality, rep performance, pitch design and offer design. We break that out. It's a series of columns in a spreadsheet and they'll grade a few dozen calls with every single one of those touch points so we can get data confidence on this is the thing. It's like, hey, we just analyze 30 calls. 25 of them were actually good calls. and pretty decent conversations,

but half of them had this same objection when it came to the pitch and the thing that blocked them moving forward. So it gives you that clarity. That is super helpful. And sharing that information with marketing makes all the difference because it gives them the visibility, right?

Like, it's not, I used to say a long time, like, why is it just a sales manager's job to listen to sales calls? Why doesn't marketing do that? Because it's the same data that they need. And there's two parts of a sales call, rep insights and lead insights. And they need the lead insights and how to optimize the campaigns.

So since I don't manage marketers, this is a process that we follow to give them the data that they need to make the right decisions. And the last thing cave on, I know it's a long answer, but you said it's how important it is. The last one man is a form. You have some sort of disposition form in the actual CRM. You have a non-subjective way that you qualify a lead that the team has to be trained on based on some simple criteria. And after every single call, they fill out that disposition form in the CRM. So now you again have quantitative data linked to actual contacts that marketing knows now how to optimize for it. And so that kind of combination of things, it's not a problem that will be resolved.

It's a polarity, but you'll do way, way better with it. Yeah, but everything you're saying is like sounds all great. You're assuming that marketing's doing that and taking that and listening, right? So the challenge is I find if if marketing is trying to get for instance, oh, cheapest book call 100%. That's that is that is a lot. People are like row is not the like marketers can cheat row as so easily and like literally harpooning the back end of the business. Well, so let's stem off of that though. After we just talked about the process and kind of the best practices,

now you actually have SQLs. So if you have a smart marketing team and if you don't, you have to communicate this stuff to them, they can start optimizing the media buying and the campaigns based on the SQLs, not the cheapest leads. And so if you're optimizing for SQLs or once you get enough data, you're optimizing for actual buyers, now you're going to be paying more for people that are a lot more qualified. And so, but listen, we don't, we in our company, we say control the controllables. We're not media buyers, but since lead flow times sales performance equals revenue, it's our most important. relationship. And frankly, if there's a media buyer that we know, because we've done this for a long time, if we know that they suck, we got to bring somebody in that's advanced that knows how to run this the right way. Yeah, I agree with you. I was going to say, if you believe this or not, I,

I was, and I love this because this was at a marketing. I was at a marketing conference and a marketer on stage said this. And I was like, I wish every one of my clients was here. Because it's different when a salesperson says it, as you know, but he said, that's what he said. he stood on stage, he said, listen, if your sales team has to do marketing over the phone, marketing isn't doing their job. If marketing can't get the sales, like, you know, can't produce leads, quality leads for the sales teams, basically like you just said, the offer product is not doing their job. I'll tell you what, man, I agree 100%, but I have a couple caveats to add.

But I agree 100%. It's so important. Now, before I say what the caveat is, one of the most frustrating parts about that, it's really hard to explain to people why it's not the same when they come to the call with little marketing. Because, you know, what do the clients say? Well, then just communicate the stuff that the ads would have said. Or why don't you just spend more time with them, work a longer sales process, do X, Y, Z. There's something about it that is so hard when you start right back here.

and now you're spending so much time with them just to get them the point to actually have the sales conversation and dialogue. But it's frustrating for people because to them they're like, it's the same person just a little bit less awareness. Why can't you just increase awareness? And now it's the same thing. But it's hard because of a concept called peak interest, right? Peak interest is super important. And that's why Speed Delete is so important in sales. Peak interest is in peak buying state is what you want somebody in to have a sales conversation. it deteriorates quickly. So if somebody's not in that peak interest state,

they don't have the level of awareness, the interest dies off as the sales rep is in the process of trying to take them there. I think a lot of people fundamentally don't understand how marketing actually works. It's not like they saw one ad or one video most of the time that got them to that level of awareness. It's been over a period of time that they've been conscious of it

to make really a good lead, right? Yeah. So even if we do that, on the sales call, it doesn't completely solve the problem. So that's the frustration. Here's the caveat I wanted to mention. You're correct. It is true.

It's the most important thing. But we have a training called 10 steps to wires from strangers. That's like our proprietary selling methodology, right? And we have a step called step zero. And step zero is exactly the topic you're talking about, where it's like, hey, in an ideal world, yes, our conversions will be much lower if, marketing doesn't do their job.

But if it hits your calendar, we're not flushing leads down the toilet. You've got to do the very best you can. And so step zero is the concept of doing that marketing piece, basically increasing level of awareness and then taking them into a sales process. It's how to modify our process to take a lead that's less aware or not fully ready. Yeah, absolutely. So what do you see some things in the marketplace today? You know, like it's changed.

The marketplace is changing a little bit. I personally have seen, for instance, no shows are, you know, just on the average, I've talked to a lot of people. They're seeing a little bit more increase in no shows. Yeah. Just, I think the market is just where it's at today, just with everything going on. But what are you seeing some things sticking out right now when it comes to whether the lead? I'm not going to use the word lead quality, but the leads that are showing up and or the conversations that are happening, the offers that you're working on. Is there any common threads that you're seeing that's changing from the last couple of years?

Yeah, you know, funnels and sales topics kind of come in and out like clothing trends. I think you and I may have talked about that once before. You know, it was like in 2020, VSLs were all the rage, dude. And you're getting 25K one call closes. And it was a surge in a perfect storm of so many things, right? Ad costs were at an all-time low. demand was at an all-time high because people were staying at home. They didn't have much to do.

There's for an uncertainty with their current job. There's so many different factors that made a lot of people just want to spend more money online because we're talking about remote sales operations, of course. And so one big thing, obviously ad costs, if you look at it with meta, and this is one of the frustrating things, they're a public company. They need to continue to increase their own, you know, what is it, shareholder value. So you don't have a year where ad costs are lower. So one thing that's been challenging, which is a difference, is that people are paying way more for the same leads and the same opportunity.

And so I think that it's a much more important or more attention needed on the efficiency. You can be pretty inefficient in prior years, call it 2020 to 2020 to the end or early 2023. You could do really well being pretty inefficient. And I think that companies are really realizing, like, that's not going to cut it. We need lead to close rates to increase. We need reactivation campaigns. We need really strong setter motions. And we have a big focus on expansion revenue, which is upsells and ascension for

existing customers to be able to increase LTV, which also helps with company profitability. So that's a big, big change. We work with our clients on rolling out expansion revenue because most of the industry and most these companies are so focused on front-in profitability. It's like if they don't, it's feast or famine, you know, if they don't make all their money on a front-in row as, they're screwed. And I just don't like that business model.

We like to give our clients a lot more sustainability, so we help build out that back in an expansion revenue. That's one big theme in itself. The other theme I would say, and these are the two that come to mind for me right now, is trust is a real big thing again. I'm going to say the trust is. The trust, man.

and like credibility and authority is very different. We're leaning a lot heavier on sales enablement and conviction assets is what we call them in the actual sales process. People want a lot more proof. They want a lot more time with you. And they want to know that you're the real deal. And so I actually believe that a lot of the company, because there's different philosophies fees out there. I've always sold with what we call a closing deck. Always for almost 13 years.

I've always used a closing deck. and a closing deck is just a actual deck like you actually would share your screen and wow for almost 13 years Kvon and I love it so and I'm going to say you've done probably if not I mean I'm going to think assume over hundreds of millions of dollars like I have in my agency I think it's really interesting right like this is where I want people to hear this is here's an amazing you obviously you have an amazing operation I was actually talking to

someone the other day and I was like there's only two people that I know that run a good operation and you are one of them thank you And I appreciate that. Two others I would say outside. Obviously, I would say myself in another group. But yeah, it's interesting because I've done, like we've done over 500 million in the last like six, seven years, never once use a deck. I don't use the deck. And yet you use same numbers, you use a deck.

So I just tell people, it's not, there's no perfect sales process. There is just, it's, it's, it's what works. It's what I tell people, it's what it's what works and what feels good for the salespeople. Dude, we call it Jedi Mind Tricks. Our chief sales officer, my partner, Rai guy, he always says, he says, is Jedi Mind Tricks, whatever you believe is going to work is the thing that does. And so I totally agree with that. But here's the funny thing, too.

There's so many different ways to skin the cat. You seem like somebody like myself that always wants to be the best. Like, that's why we're obsessed with the details. So, dude, let's be honest here. I'm sure it's the same for you. You know how many times over the years I've questioned? Should we get rid of the deck? Yeah.

You probably consider that time should we use a tech. 100% I was going to 100%. I was talking to someone the other day. I was talking to my manager the other day. And I'm like, do you think we should turn this more to a SaaS sale? Like where you do a demo? And he was like, no, it's not what we do. And I'm like, good point.

Okay. But yeah. Let me share. This is interesting. Let me share it because I even know Cole Gordon, I've talked to him about this. He does he teaches no deck at all. I mean, like in his training, it's like the Google Doc bullet point thing. Now, I agree.

Anytime I get into the conversation of don't. use a sales deck, I agree with all the points they make. But then I say, but why don't you still use a sales deck and not do any of those things? So the most common thing to simplify it is they say, don't use a sales deck because it's the quickest way to create objections, because you'll talk people out of deals because it seems too salesy because it's a little bit too fabricated because you can't flow organically. It's a little bit too rigid. It's all the same stuff. But for us, we have a very simple deck. You do not want to have too much content because I agree all. of those things. And we practice something called pitch personalization. And so pitch personalization

is how to use the same sales presentation, but go through it and pitch it differently to every prospect you talk to. And that's all about just tying back and anchoring to the core desires and the dominant buying motives in the discovery. So it's the same stuff. We just do it with the deck. And there's very little content. It's minimal. So we can kind of share the narrative that we want on it. So we have a certain way we do it. But so when people say, don't use the sales deck because of these things. I say, I agree with those things. Therefore, I use a sales deck and I make sure to not do that. Yeah. I want to make another comment, but but speak to that real quick. Oh, I wouldn't. I think, I think what you're doing is incredible. Like, I think it's great. Like, I have not, like, it comes down to,

like, what you just said is like the conviction and it works. Like, if it's working, like, I would say, if it's working, why, why wreck it, right? So you from the sounds of it, you guys have nailed, obviously, a sales presentation that works and it's personalized per. You teach it to everyone in your reps. So your reps are coming in and they know this is what we're going to sell. So when they show up, they're not having that belief that, oh, this is salesy. Oh, there's going to be objection. They have the belief that this is what needs to sell.

And thus it works. I was going to use an example of even one that's even more minute than deck, no deck, right? Because that's a pretty big, you know, a big fundamental change. Yep. price before offer or price after offer? Yeah, right. That's a whole other one. And show every price point or just lead with one and have some pocket drops.

There's so many things. Let's, let's, so I've, we've mastered the one call close. That's what, like more of what we do. Now,

obviously today, it's maybe two calls now, but you know, ideally it's the one call close. Yep. And when it comes to price, it's, I,

it's one. You don't offer, I'm like, I know, there's all like we had an expert come in and offer three our closing rate tanked tanked one we offer exactly what the price is and then after if the like there's nothing left then you go okay suppose can't make any promises suppose we can i don't know turn this in a couple you know monthly payment plan would that make a world of a difference for you right then i'm going to introduce that because here's

what i believe maybe it's what i believe right and what i believe is the energy put out sales reps will always find a way to go to the cheapest price. You give them an option, they'll go to the cheapest price, especially rookie salespeople, right? And like, begin medium salespeople. Absolutely. So I always, one price, it's what it is. It's clear. It's that.

Now, when it comes to presenting, I don't do the value style. It's here. And I've tested this personally for me, and I tell my sales reps, if you're so gung-ho that you have to put the value, then the price, go. I'm not going to change your ju-ju in record. a sale, but I can tell you right now, I've tested both ways multiple times. And I'm price first. And I'll tell you why. Price first, then I go in and here's what you can expect. And just a little bit of details anchoring everything to obviously the dream land and where they are to where they want to go.

And then you shut up. And you just, you shut up and you wait for their response. Now, why I like doing the price first is because in their brain, as they hear this shock, oh, 20 grand, and you're saying, oh, you're going to get X and you're going to get Y, they can start justifying that a little bit to themselves. Okay, that makes sense. Okay, that makes sense. So then when you get to the price, they can put that, they can actually put the value stack themselves instead of me showing it.

I have the ickies. Like, I use the word ickies. Like, I can't handle because I know it. Like the value stack, oh, you're going to get this. And it's valued at $3,000. Like that works on webinar and on stage. Do that one-on-one? Oh, I couldn't do it.

I couldn't do it. I agree. We don't value stack at all assigning a value. Listen, here's the thing with what the subject you're talking about. For me, makes no difference. I would sell both of those. Now, you know this more than anybody, right? This is what I've experienced.

There are some things that I personally may do differently on a sales call, but I have to optimize for what's going to work at scale. Yeah. That's like so important because like I'm not my entire sales. for us. You know, like, obviously we have a lot of sales reps. And so there, like, there's ways that I might do things. And then I think how hard is that going to be to teach and scale and duplicate, etc.

So I like what you're saying. And I've played with all of this as well. I like what you're saying about price first and then justify the value. For us, what I've just, what I've landed on is with the sales team, the way that we feel for the most part is that when you go through the entire offer and can tie them down on the actual thing itself before price, now it gives so much more clarity that like the price is the objection. Right. So I think it's a way to separate like, hey, let's tie down on each piece here. And if they're bought in and then they object, it's like so clear to me that it's the price. So I love this.

Here we go. So the way I eliminate that completely in my sales process is before I even go to price, before I even go to product, I asked a very simple question. How committed are you to changing XYZ? Not, I want to be very clear, not committed to buying my product. Right, right. How committed are you to actually change in the situation you are or how, you know, how important is it? So that eliminates all the objections.

Every objection. Except price. Here's what I find, though, because we have commitment questions as to as well. And we do that right before we transition into the pitch. See, this is fun, man. We got to do this stuff more often. We do that too right before we transition into the pitch. What I find, though, is they say, well, I am committed to solving it.

I'm just not convinced that this is the solution because they're committing to something without having any of the details. And I know you specifically said it's not to the program. Yeah. But my point is, well, that's the thing I want them to committed to is like the actual details of this program, of this offer. Now, again, to go back to my main point here, I think that you could be like to me, to me, this point can be successful either way. It's, it's, well, we've proven that. You and I. That's what I'm saying. This is why I,

why I'm happy about this conversation is like, all these people, it's almost I want to like, you know, we talked about these sales trainers selling this bullshit. Like, all these people saying, I have the secret formula. There is no secret formula to sales. There is formula to sales, but it changes based off of the target, based off of the product, like there's so many factors and there's a process.

but like there's no secret sauce. There's more, as you said. This goes back to what we started the podcast with. When we said like we're laughing at like sales trainers, not laughing or mocking like there's talented people, but when we're talking about the difference, sales trainers are talking about like objection handling and discovery questions and all this stuff.

This is still under the sales ops umbrella what we're talking about right now. It's all the specific process refinement in the order and the sequence of how you do things that can really change and increase close rates, right? And so this is the stuff I obsess over and we just have so much data that we can validate things so much faster than any individual, you know, sales team. Now, back to the point though, real quick on the, on, you know, talking about price point, we do a ton of training on what we call a funding waterfall. And our number one metric that we measure a rep on is CDPBC, which is collected dollars per booked call. We don't look at close rate. We don't look at gross revenue because those are both.

We call it AAV, average appointment value. but yeah 100%. That's the actual He just gave away the secret sauce of any sales organization right there. It is. That is like, and nobody knows that.

Close rate means nothing. It's the dollars collected for every, every book call. Assigned booking. Assigned. Exactly. Whether they showed up, whether they canceled,

whether they're good lead, bad lead, dog got sick, someone ate my homework. If it landed on your calendar, it's being counted. A hundred percent. And so it's return on rep.

It's Roaz on an individual level. And so that's, and by the way, there's, there's, dude, we can do a whole podcast on that one metric because it's like, what do you do when that goes down and what's the reason and what rep do you look at it? Like there's so much to it. But what I was going to say is in collected dollar per book call, it takes everything into consideration like we said, show rate, close rate, revenue, average sales price, collection rate.

And so you have to train and optimize for all those metrics. And so, and it's, it's a little bit different than just like sales training. And so when you talk about price. point, the way I'd finish that is, well, now you have to talk about collection rate and funding waterfall because so many sales reps, like you said, if you have pocket drops, we call them, which are down sales that aren't initially showed, or if you have payment plans, you know, and ways to break it up, the amateur reps, the not best reps, the differences they drop to those almost immediately and they don't know how to position around it. And so we train the order,

we call it a funding waterfall of how you maximize collections and how you maximize collections and how you maximize the average sales price. So regardless if you do price before pitch or after pitch, now it's like, well, what is the process to collecting the money? And I think that is like a really heavily missed thing as well. Explain that. What do you mean is a missed thing, the process to collecting the money? So what I mean is, uh,

that's interesting. All right. So, so what I mean is let's say that it's, uh, you have payment plans. You offer it's a 10k price. Yeah. Or sorry, let's say it's 8K painful. or it's 12K spread over six months.

Yeah. And you could do a full pay, a two pay, a three pay, or a six pay. Let's say those are your option stack that you have. What I'm suggesting is that the first time people get met with resistance of like, wow, that's too expensive for me. They don't have a regimented strategy of how they go through those things. And so all the sudden, I literally watched a call today. I needed to give an opinion on something.

And he literally said, I mean, it went from this guy. I fully believe we should have been a full pay. And this person put them into a 12 month payment plan. And there's no strategy around it. And so how do you, how do you go about that talk track to maximize collection rate up front without blowing out a dealer making it awkward?

There's a lot of strategy in that. Yeah. Yeah, there is. I've been, I, I said my strategy is I don't talk about any other prices except the, until it's near the, until like you're both there about to hang out.

Like, you know what if, but what if, that's my whole point though what if they say that they need a payment plan like right after you present price you show them it's 8k and they say oh there's no way i could afford that up front you go okay well before before we go into that then let me ask you if if if you had the 8k would you be comfortable moving forward yes or no okay so there's nothing about the product right so get eliminate objection handling to start with right well i don't call that objection i call that eliminating eliminating all the

objections like eliminate all the bullshit that they could say. So now it's just price. And then that's when I, it's a little different than I do. And I go, hmm, I can't make any promises here. But suppose, I don't know, I mean, would you be comfortable spending $2,000 a month so that you can X, Y, Z, XYZ? And then you just hold. That's the second drop, right?

Like, so what are the second drop and you hold? And they might go, ah, it's a lot. I go, okay, well, let me ask you, what's, what's, what? would be comfortable to you. Let them come up with it, right? And then obviously if it's like, you know, too cheap and you're like, well, listen, you know, you figure that out. But yeah. So what you're saying is very similar to how we do it. My point is exactly that, though. What we're talking about right now is very often missed. Yeah, 100%. They just because the sales don't care. Like we're talking about, we're two season sales reps that done this. We've ever

10,000 hours, right? Yeah, I totally, I totally hear you. And then the, idea though, this is what's. So let's, let's actually take that because this is actually very important because we run sales teams. You're running sales teams at volume. Well, how do you solve for that? Well, very simple. A, what you have right now is, uh, AI call analyzer, which was one of the triggers. When acts happen, what happened. You know what I mean? So like right away, they get the train. Hey, you're not doing that. The training goes to the manager. Manager knows John is keeps fumbling. Cumbling. Hey, John, we'll keep working with you, working with you. Hey, you're fired. You're fired. You. You're because you're not learning, you're not growing. You're clearly not, right? Like, so we do have you. Obviously, I know you have those things in place. But here's the coolest thing. Like you said, it's never been easier than ever to have these things in place.

Right. Ever. Right. Well, so here's the thing, though, going back to that one, even one more step. So what you said is, and I know you're just giving an example, right? Like, there's so many examples we could get. But what you said works really well if you only have payment plans. But then we have what we call the funding waterfall.

all. So these days, pretty much every offer, if they don't, they should, but pretty much every offer has a bunch of different financing sources. Yeah, funding, yeah. They have the painful and then they have the wrong word though. What did I say? You said financing. Funding? We don't, people finance their cars. We fund people's dreams. Okay, right on. I love that. Yeah, right. I tell though I literally like, that's like, so if they use the word financing and it gets like, when we used to use Gong, for instance, gone is I think you and I both know what that's about. But one of the words was like if they use financing trigger. Yeah. And financing actually triggers, especially the lower conscious people that we were speaking to.

Sorry. Right. To say that. Like these are the little bit lower conscious. Like they think financing. They, they, they, they, in their brains, they were always raised. Oh, financing is bad. You don't, you don't, you don't take cover, you know.

Right. Right. Right. Right. No, I, I, I get that. And I, that's again, Jedi mind tricks, right? Because like, I agree that those things can make a difference. The, the wording doesn't,

me that. It's like when people say, never say the word contract, say agreement. Yeah. Yeah. I've never lost a deal in my life because I call it. It's not like a contract. Yeah, yeah. Or you never even say agreement. You say a simple agreement. It's going to send you a simple agreement. Easy. No issues. Right. Exactly. So, you know, I agree with what you said. And I, I also, what was that? Sorry for saying a thing. It's not to be rude. but yeah, some of the lower sophisticated avatars, and I don't say that to be rude, there's just people in different situations,

and we respect that, but some of them do have those triggers that are more important. You have to be a little more careful with them. But what I was saying was, so funding your dreams options, you'll have a painful cash pay, right? Yeah. And let's say they have, you know,

we won't name our sponsors. I'm joking, but we won't say the names, but let's say it's like funding option one, funding option two, funding option three. And then if they can't, qualify for any of those, then it's in-house financing or payment plans, right?

Yeah. Are you going to the big party next week in Miami for one of your, I got in, I did get invited in that and it sounded really fun, but I just had the baby. So I'm with you too. I want to go, but to fly from our side over to Florida for one night just doesn't make sense to me. Exactly, man. I probably would go though if I didn't have the little, the little guy here. But, but anyway, so you have this stack, right? And you have to prioritize them based on different things. And typically it's whatever will net the most amount of money for the client. That's what you want, right, for the business.

And so if you have those options, though, well, then, you know, there's other options, depending on what you're selling. Some things would be sort of inappropriate because it would just seem out of place. But then you have credit cards. We call them Zick. Yeah. Zero interest credit cards. Yeah.

You have helox, right? Stock accounts. So you have all the different things where they can liquidate money. And so if you have all these. options on how to find money as a closer. When somebody says, I can't afford it, the question is, you literally don't have the money or it's like not in the bank account we're talking about right now. So you have to do an open wallet and have the conversation to figure out where is the money, how would they find it? Before you just drop into it. And so I cannot tell you how many times,

we just will get a zero interest credit card and they're a Piff in a couple of days. Yeah, yeah, Yeah, but again, in hopes that they obviously have, you know, good credit everything, right, is a massive one on that. So. And that's the importance of the funding waterfall because if they don't have the right credit and they can't qualify for the zero interest credit cards, then what's your next option? That's probably the prime lender that will, you know, that will qualify high credit, but slightly below. Yeah, the second. So you have to know which order to consistently go through and you train the reps on that. So it's like clockwork every single time other than just going up expensive three pay. You know what I mean?

Yeah. Yeah. Well, we, I tell my, I mean, I tell my clients now, like, because of the options of credit cards and all the options we have, I tell them, don't do it on in-house finance. If you're doing in-house financing, max three months. 100%. We are not a fan of long finance. It's terrible. Why would you in-house when someone else is willing to give their money up?

So he so this goes to, though, why I'm out. of getting out of my business here, right? Is in going to different clients, I'm done. And I'm just saying, I don't, like, I am done working with clients that are selling to people that are in that position where they can't even afford $5,000, $8,000. Like getting the business of helping winners win more, the conversations are so much better and easier.

Oh, absolutely. And like even in our training on funding, we train on the difference between like somebody that like needs help getting creative and somebody that would actually put them in a poor financial position. Well, yeah, that's a whole difference. Yeah, we're, I mean, that's the whole last dollar rule. Like, we're not trying to, we, we, we, we, we have a couple funny lines. We even say on the calls to kind of soften the, the mood, but we say, like, hey, if it's going to take the cheese off your macaroni, you know, if it's going to turn off the hot water, this isn't for you. So, like, yeah, so

we're not doing this in a credit. I mean, if you're going to pay the rent next month, like, this is, you know, it's not for you. And then I tell, I don't know, I tell my sales guys, there's so much power and saying no. You don't get paid for it, but I will tell you there is so much power in that. And that power you bring to the next conversation to the person that should be saying yes. And you watch what happens. It creates it's the mental frame. The posture that they can hold knowing that at the end of the day, they can hold that.

That's all the posturing that they need. And I even tell them too. And if you sell somebody to financing and they get denied, that's a sale in my books. Like, you know what I mean? That's nothing. I'm so a surprise slash happy you said that. We actually created a term we call the technical close. And so what that,

we track it separately now, where if somebody closed a deal, but they got rejected for financing, we track that data separately to say their effective close rate would have actually been X. Yeah. And that's another thing going back to the conversation with marketing for the feedback loop. Well, yeah.

Like look at, oh, you want X Roaz? We could have had that if the leads were better. 100% and I love it because at that point, like, and I told them, I always say this to the sales, because if the client has an issue, you better believe I'm going to have your back. Because if you had sat on the call, convince him to buy, then convince them go outside their comfort zone to put in their social security number into some website that they don't even know. You press entered and then you went through the whole process. They submitted the paperwork and then they got denied that's not on you. I don't care what anybody says. That's a marketing problem.

marketing problem. And so we have a separate tab that tracks all of them. I don't do that. I love that. Like actually what you're like, I thought you're going to say my brain went to and maybe every five, would you call it the technical clothes? The technical clothes. Because they technically closed them, but they could almost think like, hey, for every five technical clothes, you get a little bonus or something like that. Like, you know what I mean? Like, because here's here's why though. There's two things. So first of all, so helpful for marketing like, and the client too. Like a lot of what we do cave on is cover our ass, right?

And it's like I want to, and by the way, like if the data's against me and it's accurate, I got to live with that. That's what it is. Absolutely. But if we have that detailed of data, they need to see it and they need to know when I stand by it.

But the other thing outside of marketing and client optics, it's, dude, it's so important for the sales reps because now, when we talk to a sales rep, instead of them complaining about, oh, financial capability,

it's like, dude, you didn't even get a technical clothes. Like they bailed out before you even talked about money. What do you mean financial capability? You don't even know for sure because you didn't take them there. So it's solved a lot of problems for us by by measuring this whole technical close metric. Yeah, I think it's, I think it's, I love it. Like I love the fact that you're going that nitty gritty. And again, I could tell that you're, as why you said, you love sales

operations, your data, you're more of data scientist kind of brain and you're, and every little nuance matters. And you, the levers, these are all little levers. And they do matter. And I, and I do that you can take that it's just a safety net with a client but you can also take that back out the marketing and be like hey you know and then the reality is this how many of those actually happened right like when you think about five 600 book calls a month like 10 20 of those it's the significance not there if it's a lot I personally would be there's a marketing problem but yeah that's it that's when you start the conversation I just know because when you're on a good product like I've been on good like we one of my clients right now we're doing about two

five a month. Like, there's no ever object. The, the close is easy. Like, we, I don't even need to have great salespeople. And that's, that's the biggest thing, too. Yeah. I was going to mention this is, when marketing is done right, sell, you don't need a 10 out of 10-10 closer.

And you don't want to build a business out of 10-10 closers. Right. That's a scary business to be in. Hero selling. If you're a hero seller, it's going to be impossible to scale because you just need these unicorns to be able to, well, to do the lead types. Exactly. that's not where you want to be.

So I always tell people like a good business, it's a mix. It's a mix. The marketing's good and like, and sales isn't hard. If sales is hard, like it's our grind, there's something going on. And it could be the sales process for sure. It could be the salesperson. But I'm saying if all of those things have been checked out, truly checked out, then, you know, so then I always say this.

So I had one client, oh, you're getting me going now, man. I have this one client. He asked that they wait, well, hold on, pause real. quick. Just a quick line. It goes back to the slides again we were talking about. So I have a slide that says a pretty good sales rep with great systems will beat a great sales rep with bad systems any day. Yeah, 100%. It's exactly what we're talking about. A hundred percent agree with you. A hundred percent agree with you is, and what you say, a pretty good rep with great systems will outbeat a great rep with poor systems. I couldn't agree more. I couldn't agree more. The only way that

works is if you're in the one in which you and I, if they're, if they're, if they're, if they're, if They're you and me's, you and I don't need systems to be great. But here's the challenge with that. You and I's, we don't go and become salespeople. We go and build business. Exactly. Right. So I couldn't agree with more.

But what I was saying was one of the challenges I saw was we had a client where like we built like a hundred person sales team for them. Right. And the leads were just they were, they promised they would get better and they were not great. Right. And then they started kept saying, oh, your guys suck. And then I started thinking maybe our guys do so. we got to go back and like, okay, what is going on? Our guys would leave, they go on other people's accounts and they go become their

closers on those accounts. Yeah. And it happened not once. We've had it internally for ourselves. A client's all pissed that this rep can't close a deal. We're like, well, they're a great rep. We put them on a different offer of our own and they crush it. Yeah.

Now, by the way, some of that to just take some ownership is not all reps sell all offers equally. Well, I was just going to say. Right. Yeah. But let's assume that it was the right. So we call it ICP and hiring. Not ideal client profile, ideal candidate profile. So you have to have the right hiring avatar for the business.

But let's say it was the right fit. It still happens exactly what you said where it's like they're not performing that well, but then they go crush it somewhere else. And it really does tell you a lot about the offer in the marketing. And it happens time and time again, man. And also the closer though. So I'll tell you a story that happened with me. Yeah.

And this is where I was like, and, you know, when my earlier days, when I was closing, and I was on a couple accounts. And this one account, I just was like, I couldn't. The leads were good. Like, the leads weren't bad, but I just couldn't get it to be. It was hard. It wasn't easy like the other ones. Right.

So like my close rate was like 15, 18 percent instead of 30, 40 percent type of thing. And, and I'm talking my mentor. And he's like, Kavon, do you like the prospects you're speaking to? I'm like, no, man. They fucking drive me really analyticals. there was a there was a four X trading it was a four X trading it's all analytical people right i'm not an analytical person at that especially back then right and he goes do you know anything about four extra i'm like nah and then you just and then i just said i just stopped and i'm like oh my

god like i never like just because you're good at sales doesn't mean you sell everything and i always tell people we've got to sell the thing you're in alignment with because when you do that you become embodied with it yep and then you actually ooze it and then now you're selling here's someone a person a sales rep with a little skill with a hundred percent conviction yeah sells some sales rep with all the right skills zero conviction absolutely a hundred percent and it's not even just a prospect congruency it's the the offer itself yeah if they're not fully bought in on the offer for whatever reason then then they're screwed and it's an energy thing man they could be doing all the right things but for some reason they're not getting

people across the finish line. And I'm not going to say the name because there's just enough people that would know who I'm talking about. And I respect and like this person, but we had one client where it just didn't work out with. It was what I would consider the only time in our business that we had a team that did really well with numbers. We tried it. They didn't do as well. Then they left and they started doing better again. And I spent so much time on it because it was the only time that that had happened to us. And I'm like, what could have been the reason. And dude, we, we did not feel an alignment selling to the avatar. It was, again, I won't describe the avatar, but it was like, it was a very, very broke lead with a specific

background. And these sales reps felt like they were taking advantage. And it was just like, I don't know, we could, we couldn't figure it out. Even me, I just resonate with what you said, because it was like, I'm like, why can't we do this? And you look at it. And I'm like, I don't know if I would have wanted to take that guy's money either. Yeah, 100%. No, 100. You couldn't, I couldn't agree with you more.

We, again, remember I said, there's power in saying no. We, I had a, I watched two. I'll watch a little bit.

But we had a client where like, it was going to be a massive contract. This is going to be like a 60 grand just a month to just a, what do you call like a recurring fee just to have us there on top of our commissions. Like this was a big one. And I was, and I, I pulled it the last.

second and everyone's like, we're, you're freaking crazy. I said, no. I said, like, they were using religion.

I'll just say this. They were using religion to females. Oh, dude. At a certain level where females are in their lives and then where they're going through, you know, changes as they get older and their harmonic changes, right? I'm just trying to be very P.E.

Right. PI, whatever it is right now. PC. And, and I just, and I was like, I can't.

I can't. Like, just, I can't do it. And it was, we've had that happen recently. very, I'm faith-based. That's irrelevant.

I don't like using faith type of stuff in conversations. It feels manipulative. If done the wrong, you know, some people, you know, maybe it works for them, but I personally don't. I just feels like the wrong time to bring that stuff up. I know some people it works well if like that's their community. They just, they want people to know that that's their community, but they're not using it in the actual sale.

That's a different story saying, hey, we're a Christian faith community. are you know that's very different than hey god wants you to do this exactly take a second and just pray what's god telling you well and let's go a hundred percent and that's what i'm saying as well now let's take it one step higher than that even outside of religion or whatever it is i was literally on the phone with somebody yesterday about this and to be fair like i've talked about it a ton of times but just yesterday i had a conversation with somebody and he couldn't comprehend why i wasn't going to take on this brand because again financially it was a pretty large relationship

And he's like, I just don't understand. Like, they literally are ready to start today. But one of the things that I have learned is like, you can't make a selfish decision, Kavon, on behalf of yourself. I personally, yeah, I would like the additional income as a business owner, but I have to make that decision on behalf of my team and my sales management and my sales reps. Because at the end of the day, I know if there's all these problems or, you know, there's these, it's just a bad offer or bad energy. Nobody's going to want to work on it.

And I'm not going to be able to force the success there. I always say that, you know, people often talk about culture internally, but they don't talk about culture and alignment and partnerships. And enough. And for me, it's like, are we a culture fit for the client? And, you know, if it's not a culture fit, I just know it's going to be chaos for everyone involved. And we don't take it.

We part away. Yeah. No, I couldn't agree with more culture. I mean, it's everything. it's uh it's especially with the sales like the sales reps got to the managers everybody the whole mechanism the it needs to be aligned and work together and on both sides like one of our core pillars is one team like it's we become one team right because it doesn't work when it's their team our team is just is there's division and division it causes chaos we say where you're outsourced in-house

sales team yeah same yeah where that's why i love it i mean we've gone over here man i i i think there's a part two coming up what do you hell yeah i would love to me we could talk a long time here's what i want to do because i think it's super important i think we should do a part two we're going to get this live we're going to put the show notes so anybody wants to work with you we're going to have all your links in there but most important we're going to take the time to say congratulations again congratulations to you being a father this week that's massive man like this is a huge like as a father of two daughters, you know, two and a half and four and a half. Like, I'm going to tell you, your life's

going to change in all the greatest ways. And I'm just, I'm happy and excited for you of what's what's to come. Thanks so much, dude. I couldn't be happier. And thanks for an awesome conversation. This was cool.