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Lessons I Learned Training Over 1000 Reps image

Lessons I Learned Training Over 1000 Reps

E162 ยท The Solarpreneur
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47 Plays4 years ago

Tune in now and don't forget to sign up for www.solciety.co!

Speaker 2 (00:45):

Welcome to the Solarpreneur podcast, where we teach you to take your solar business to the next level. My name is Taylor Armstrong and went from $50 in my bank account and struggling for groceries to closing 150 deals in a year and cracking the code on why sales reps fail. online teach you to avoid the mistakes I made and bringing the top solar dogs, the industry to let you in on the secrets of generating more leads, falling up like a pro and closing more deals. What is a Solarpreneur you might ask a Solarpreneur is a new breed of solar pro that is willing to do whatever it takes to achieve mastery and you are about to become one.

Speaker 3 (01:24):

What is going on Solarpreneurs. This is James Swiderski back with another train to win, where we are giving you the tools, strategies, techniques that you need to train world-class solar teams. And in this episode, I'm going to be talking about the lessons I've learned the hard way from training over a thousand reps, personally, in the same room with them through my own companies, through my clients and giving you some of these key tactics and mistakes to avoid so that you can build a world-class sales team yourself to scale your company to the moon. And if you like this type of content, stay tuned because I'm going to be coming back for more episodes. Um, right now you're going to be hearing a lot of me over the next couple of weeks, but after that, we'll dial it back to like a monthly visit I'll pop on and Taylor will be the primary guy as always the guys you liked, you liked the most, right?

Speaker 3 (02:16):

We all want to talk about Taylor. We all know he's the man, the myth, the legend, he's the guy, the head honcho. So I don't want to steal the light from him here. So here we go. Let's go ahead and talk about some lessons I've learned from training reps. And I want to give you my background on this too. So you see where I'm coming from and where some of these methodologies and strategies I've learned have come to pass. And the reality is my method of training reps is pretty different from what's happening, not only just in the solar industry, but any industry altogether. Um, I think that the solar industry is a little behind the times when it comes to training, developing, uh, teams marketing. So one of my core strategies and my, and how I adopt these philosophies and have gotten really great results with clients in the past is actually looking outside of solar, looking in more established industries, like real estate, um, and applying those methodologies to my team.

Speaker 3 (03:14):

Uh, and some of them are right, but some of them don't, and I'll be very Frank with you. What's working. What's not, um, we're only talking about what has worked well here on the show here. So, uh, how I really got into training here, which is the first important thing I want to talk about, um, is I actually was running daily meetings, right with the first company I ever worked with. This was, uh, five years ago, Evel our solar over in Utah. They are no longer in business, but, um, at the time, uh, we were doing, I would say about eight, 8 million per year, um, about a year into my career. And we were running daily sales meetings came out about 11 guys. And these sales meetings were a couple hours long. They were going really well. And our company was looking for additional sales training, right.

Speaker 3 (04:03):

My team. Um, and me, my time was running thin as a manager spending so much time with my reps. We didn't have a scalable system. We didn't have a, uh, course or anything like that. So our company w

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Transcript

Introduction and Episode Overview

00:00:01
Speaker
Hey, Solarpreneurs, what's up?
00:00:02
Speaker
Taylor here.
00:00:03
Speaker
Just wanted to give you a quick intro to this episode.
00:00:06
Speaker
It's going to be James Swiderski on, and he is doing a little series on how we are implementing trainings.
00:00:13
Speaker
for companies that would like to uplevel their sales trainings.
00:00:17
Speaker
As many of you may know, we launched our new SolCity training app.
00:00:21
Speaker
We're already getting great results with it.
00:00:23
Speaker
So James is going to talk about a few things that we were able to implement within the app and ways we're getting great results.
00:00:30
Speaker
Whether you're on SolCity or not, you can go and implement these things today, but you can also go and book a demo at SolCity.co.
00:00:39
Speaker
So hope you enjoy the episode and we'll see you on the inside.

Taylor's Transformation Story

00:00:45
Speaker
Welcome to the Solarpreneur Podcast where we teach you to take your solar business to the next level.
00:00:50
Speaker
My name is Taylor Armstrong.
00:00:52
Speaker
I went from $50 in my bank account and struggling for groceries to closing 150 deals in a year and cracking the code on why sales reps fail.
00:01:01
Speaker
I teach you how to avoid the mistakes I made and bring in the top solar dogs of the industry to let you in on the secrets of generating more leads, falling up like a pro and closing more deals.
00:01:13
Speaker
What is a solopreneur, you might ask?
00:01:15
Speaker
A solopreneur is a new breed of solopro that is willing to do whatever it takes to achieve mastery, and you are about to become one.

Train to Win: New Methodologies

00:01:24
Speaker
What is going on, solopreneurs?
00:01:26
Speaker
This is James Swarovski back with another Train to Win, where we are giving you the tools, strategies, techniques that you need to train world-class solar teams.
00:01:36
Speaker
And in this episode, I'm going to be talking about the lessons I've learned the hard way from training over 1,000 reps
00:01:42
Speaker
personally in the same room with them through my own companies through my clients and giving you some of these key tactics and mistakes to avoid so that you can build a world-class sales team yourself to scale your company to the moon and if you like this type of content stay tuned because i'm going to be coming back for more episodes um right now you're going to be hearing a lot of me over the next couple weeks but after that
00:02:08
Speaker
We'll dial it back to like a monthly visit.
00:02:10
Speaker
I'll pop on and Taylor will be the primary guy.
00:02:13
Speaker
As always, the guys you like the most, right?
00:02:16
Speaker
We all want to talk about Taylor.
00:02:17
Speaker
We all know he's the man, the myth, the legend.
00:02:19
Speaker
He's the guy, the head honcho.
00:02:21
Speaker
So I don't want to steal the light from him here.
00:02:25
Speaker
So here we go.
00:02:26
Speaker
Let's go ahead and talk about Taylor.
00:02:28
Speaker
some lessons I've learned from training reps.
00:02:30
Speaker
Again, I wanna give you my background on this so you see where I'm coming from and where some of these methodologies and strategies I've learned have come

Innovative Training Approaches

00:02:39
Speaker
to pass.
00:02:39
Speaker
And the reality is my method of training reps is pretty different from what's happening not only just in the solar industry but any industry altogether.
00:02:49
Speaker
I think that the solar industry is a little behind the times when it comes to training, developing teams, marketing.
00:02:56
Speaker
So one of my core strategies and my personality and how I adopt these philosophies and have gotten really great results with clients in the past is actually looking outside of solar, looking in more established industries like real estate, um, and applying those methodologies to my team, uh,
00:03:14
Speaker
And some of them work, right?
00:03:16
Speaker
But some of them don't.
00:03:17
Speaker
And I'll be very frank with you, what's working, what's not.
00:03:20
Speaker
We're only talking about what has worked well here on the show here.
00:03:24
Speaker
So how I really got into training here, which is the first important thing I want to talk about.
00:03:31
Speaker
is I actually was running daily meetings, right, with the first company I ever worked with.
00:03:36
Speaker
This was five years ago, Evalar Solar over in Utah.
00:03:40
Speaker
They are no longer in business, but at the time, we were doing, I would say about eight million per year, about a year into my career, and we were running daily sales meetings, okay?
00:03:53
Speaker
I had about 11 guys, and
00:03:55
Speaker
These sales meetings were a couple hours long.
00:03:57
Speaker
They were going really well.
00:03:58
Speaker
And our company was looking for additional sales training, right?
00:04:03
Speaker
My team and me, my time was running thin as a manager, spending so much time with my reps.
00:04:11
Speaker
We didn't have a scalable system.
00:04:13
Speaker
We didn't have a course or anything like that.
00:04:17
Speaker
So our company was looking for something a little bit more scalable.
00:04:20
Speaker
So we went out and hired and bought the Sandler training, if you guys have heard of that before.
00:04:26
Speaker
I think they're based out of Utah too, which is where we were at at the time and why we went with them.
00:04:33
Speaker
Anyway, we did this and they had a three-day kickoff meeting.
00:04:37
Speaker
We're sitting there and they group up all of my guys and myself for these three-day boot camp style things, eight hours a day.
00:04:45
Speaker
We're sitting there through these trainings and I kid you not, everybody's just bored out of their mind.
00:04:52
Speaker
You know exactly what I'm talking about too if you've done anything of the sort with your team.
00:04:57
Speaker
Half the guys are messing around in the back.
00:05:00
Speaker
There's a couple guys that are attentive.
00:05:02
Speaker
People are trying to take notes, but the stuff's just way too complicated.
00:05:07
Speaker
And the biggest overarching question that's just hanging in the room, the elephant in the room is, how the heck do we apply this to solar?
00:05:15
Speaker
Because we know that Sandler training guy, he was definitely not applying it to solar.
00:05:20
Speaker
We're just like, dude, how does this apply to solar?
00:05:23
Speaker
How's this going to actually get me to the next deal?
00:05:26
Speaker
How's this going to get me the next lead?
00:05:28
Speaker
That's all my guys are thinking.
00:05:29
Speaker
That's all I'm thinking.
00:05:31
Speaker
And I'm just like...
00:05:32
Speaker
What the heck?
00:05:33
Speaker
And after we're done with this training, right?
00:05:35
Speaker
and they have a debrief with me and the other management of the team at the company here.
00:05:41
Speaker
And we're just like, what actually comes from this?
00:05:46
Speaker
We felt like we just wasted our cash on training that our guys are not even gonna use, and that's exactly what freakin' happened.
00:05:53
Speaker
And this is absolutely crazy.

The Forgetting Curve in Sales Training

00:05:55
Speaker
In my industry, in training for enterprise sales is what I do with my company, Epic.
00:06:01
Speaker
There's a stat, EdTech University did a study with this,
00:06:04
Speaker
Out of the $1.5 billion spent per year on sales training for companies, that's an average of $1,500 a year per rep, 87% of the content in sales training, live boot camps, courses, you name it, it's forgotten within 30 days.
00:06:23
Speaker
Think about that for a second.
00:06:25
Speaker
Almost 90% of sales training, or it's any training as well, not just sales, it's forgotten within 30 days.
00:06:32
Speaker
Yet, we continue to do things the same way, just simply putting our guys into courses and hoping some miracle's gonna happen.
00:06:41
Speaker
We're doing one-on-one trainings with them where we know we just don't have time at the end of the day to do this with everybody at scale and expecting a miracle to happen again.
00:06:51
Speaker
Miracles are not going to happen here with training, guys.
00:06:53
Speaker
You need to have a proven system and process to really make things scale.
00:06:58
Speaker
And this is what I learned the hard way.
00:06:59
Speaker
So here's what happened after we invested in this training.
00:07:04
Speaker
I realized and had an epiphany moment during this training as my guys were saying, well, hey, James, your training's way better.
00:07:12
Speaker
I knew my training was better, right?
00:07:14
Speaker
But I couldn't be everywhere all the time with all of my reps.
00:07:19
Speaker
so this is where i decided hey what if i were to go put together a process and a system like these guys did sandler training for solar for my guys and put it in a online learning platform of course i think i was doing like teachable or something at the time and i'll just put some of my best teachings on there and make my reps go through it on a regular basis okay
00:07:42
Speaker
So that's exactly what I did.
00:07:44
Speaker
And this was before like everybody was blasting off a course on social media or anything like that.
00:07:50
Speaker
I was a super early guy on this, especially in solar.
00:07:53
Speaker
I was the only guy in solar doing this.
00:07:56
Speaker
So I put this out, right?
00:07:58
Speaker
And the results just started flowing with my reps.
00:08:02
Speaker
All of a sudden, I had guys that were doing a couple deals a month, upwards of 12, 14 deals a month within 90 days.
00:08:09
Speaker
I had one guy, like he starts closing big commercial contracts all of a sudden and decides he's going to go into commercial sales, right?
00:08:17
Speaker
Just stuff started popping off with my team.
00:08:21
Speaker
And this is when our company started to scale.
00:08:23
Speaker
And
00:08:24
Speaker
I realized I was on to something, right?

Essential Sales Training Tips

00:08:27
Speaker
Systematizing training and having a way for reps to personally train on their own time gave me the time to make critical decisions, update the training, lead my team, close big contracts, and make sure that I was making the most use of my skill set as a manager and a VP, right?
00:08:47
Speaker
So some of the things I really stood out as I was scaling this team up
00:08:54
Speaker
is first, and I'm going to give you four tips.
00:08:56
Speaker
First, reps needed to be engaged personally and taught at their own unique level.
00:09:04
Speaker
This is something we kind of intuitively know as we're training people that we want to tailor the training to them, but this is the problem with third-party training.
00:09:14
Speaker
Adam Sandler, what the...
00:09:17
Speaker
Sandler Training System, Jordan Belfort, Cardone U, right?
00:09:21
Speaker
All great programs, great content, right?
00:09:24
Speaker
The only problem is it's not personalized to the rep.
00:09:27
Speaker
They're wondering, how the heck does this apply to me?
00:09:29
Speaker
Or, hey, I've got this problem or this limiting belief.
00:09:33
Speaker
I don't know if I could do that.
00:09:34
Speaker
And then they don't apply it, right?
00:09:36
Speaker
So you need to be engaging your reps personally, making sure that you're tailoring every single strategy to them
00:09:46
Speaker
and helping them on their individual levels, right?
00:09:49
Speaker
If they're a super advanced top producer guy, like Taylor was just having a guy on the show.
00:09:55
Speaker
I can't remember.
00:09:56
Speaker
He's doing like 35 deals.
00:09:58
Speaker
It's a guy at Taylor's company, if you haven't heard yet.
00:10:01
Speaker
He did like 37 deals in a month.
00:10:04
Speaker
Absolutely nuts, right?
00:10:05
Speaker
That guy's at a whole different level than someone who's brand new.
00:10:10
Speaker
and he's gonna require totally different type of training than a brand new guy.
00:10:14
Speaker
So you gotta make sure that you have a way to personally engage and train those reps at their unique level, just like a video game would, right?
00:10:21
Speaker
If you go and play a video game, Super Mario Brothers, first level, it's gonna be easy.
00:10:26
Speaker
Second level, a little bit more challenging.
00:10:28
Speaker
We only learn as people when we're actually being challenged at our unique individual level.
00:10:33
Speaker
This is why Taylor's platform that he's built
00:10:39
Speaker
Soul Society in partnership with my company, Epic, is so unique because we actually use gamification and artificial intelligence to customize training difficulty for every single rep with solar-specific content.
00:10:55
Speaker
I'm not going to do a huge promo on that, but guys, go to soulsociety.co.
00:11:00
Speaker
It's a
00:11:01
Speaker
freaking ridiculous revolutionary system we built.
00:11:05
Speaker
We do a results guarantee.
00:11:07
Speaker
We guarantee you're going to sell 20% more solar or your money back within four months.
00:11:11
Speaker
So you really have nothing to lose.
00:11:12
Speaker
Go check it out.
00:11:13
Speaker
Solsidey.co.
00:11:15
Speaker
Anyway, off the soapbox here.
00:11:18
Speaker
you have to engage in personalized training.
00:11:20
Speaker
Second is having a system for reps to train on their own time.
00:11:26
Speaker
People really learn best when it's behind closed doors.
00:11:31
Speaker
I know I personally do.
00:11:32
Speaker
That's my preference.
00:11:33
Speaker
But even extroverts, I've seen, you need to have that alone time with your thoughts.
00:11:38
Speaker
If you're constantly just
00:11:40
Speaker
consuming information in the form of personal training or boot camps or whatever, you have no time to process this and think how it applies to you.
00:11:49
Speaker
You need to give reps that alone time to do so without overwhelming them with three hour long videos.
00:11:56
Speaker
Bite size content is key.
00:11:58
Speaker
So that's step number two.
00:11:59
Speaker
Step number three, realization number three here is reps need to be held accountable as many times as possible.
00:12:06
Speaker
And my goal was multiple times per day.
00:12:11
Speaker
Now you're probably thinking I'm freaking nuts right now, right?
00:12:14
Speaker
Because you're holding your reps accountable maybe twice a week if you're really on top of the game.
00:12:19
Speaker
Once a day if you're really on point, but multiple times a day, what the hell?
00:12:26
Speaker
I'm telling you guys, it's common sense.
00:12:30
Speaker
The more often you hold your reps accountable on their training and their results, the better outcomes they will produce.
00:12:35
Speaker
It's very simple, okay?
00:12:38
Speaker
Reps, especially when they're beginning, usually are not driven enough, motivated enough to hold themselves accountable like this.
00:12:47
Speaker
Yeah, your top producers, like the guy I talked about, 37 deals in a month, he's holding himself accountable, right?
00:12:53
Speaker
Nobody gets those results without holding themselves accountable.
00:12:56
Speaker
But the majority of your reps are not at this level.
00:12:59
Speaker
They are not...
00:13:01
Speaker
equipped with the mindset and tools yet to hold themselves accountable to high standards like this in order to get them there and develop leaders on your team that do that type of accountability, self accountability.
00:13:13
Speaker
You've got to guide them.
00:13:14
Speaker
You've got to be their training wheels, right?
00:13:17
Speaker
So my suggestion is multiple times a day.
00:13:21
Speaker
And one way we do this with our clients and how society helps is with what we call a pod check.
00:13:27
Speaker
So a pod check, and whether you sign up for Soul Society or not, I don't care.
00:13:31
Speaker
I'll give you the tool here for pod check.
00:13:32
Speaker
Here's all it is, right?
00:13:34
Speaker
Execution's everything.
00:13:35
Speaker
The ideas don't matter.
00:13:37
Speaker
The pod check is dividing your reps, your team,
00:13:40
Speaker
into individual groups and pods of five to seven members.
00:13:44
Speaker
Okay.
00:13:45
Speaker
So big problem companies have is their teams are too big.
00:13:48
Speaker
They're like 10, 15 reps, right?
00:13:50
Speaker
Um, that doesn't do well because it's just too many people at the end of the day.
00:13:55
Speaker
So you divide your pod into five to seven reps, preferably five, and you put in charge of that pod, a pod leader.
00:14:01
Speaker
This could be the manager, but it could also just be another member of your team.
00:14:05
Speaker
I actually prefer that you use members of your team because it builds culture and morale, and that's a real cool hack to actually develop your next set of leaders is start giving some of your regular reps more responsibility.
00:14:19
Speaker
And in these pod checks, what you do is you have a quick five-minute check-in with your pod multiple times throughout the day.
00:14:26
Speaker
And what you do is the first pod check in the morning, you do a quick check on your goals for the week, right?
00:14:32
Speaker
Where are your goals for the week on each individual rep?
00:14:34
Speaker
They give a report.
00:14:35
Speaker
Hey, I'm going to close two deals this week.
00:14:38
Speaker
I'm going to do 10 appointments and I'm going to do five appointments a day set, knocking doors, whatever it is.
00:14:43
Speaker
I'm going to knock three hours.
00:14:45
Speaker
They all have their individual goals and they report those to the entire pod group.
00:14:50
Speaker
So everybody knows what everybody's numbers are, right?
00:14:54
Speaker
And then the pod leader will actually check the CRM and the metrics and say, hey, John's at two.
00:15:01
Speaker
He wants to get to 10.
00:15:02
Speaker
John, how are you going to get eight deals in two days, man?
00:15:05
Speaker
He's like, uh, right.
00:15:07
Speaker
John's going to feel a little embarrassed.
00:15:09
Speaker
He's gonna feel a little humiliated in front of his peers in the pod, right?
00:15:14
Speaker
This is why it works so well because extreme transparency is lacking in most sales teams.
00:15:22
Speaker
When everybody's numbers are just present and you could see who's slacking off,
00:15:27
Speaker
You mark my words what happens with your team.
00:15:30
Speaker
All of a sudden they start moving.
00:15:31
Speaker
They just start taking action because they are embarrassed.
00:15:36
Speaker
They're whatever.
00:15:37
Speaker
They're uncomfortable.
00:15:38
Speaker
And that's good.
00:15:38
Speaker
Your sales team should be uncomfortable every single day if you want them to grow.
00:15:43
Speaker
So that's the first part.
00:15:44
Speaker
And then they say what they're going to do for the day.
00:15:46
Speaker
What is the goal for the day?
00:15:49
Speaker
And they discuss any challenges, issues they need to overcome.
00:15:53
Speaker
And they do these little check-ins throughout the day.
00:15:55
Speaker
And the pod leader is in charge of initiating these check-ins.
00:15:59
Speaker
constantly, in the morning, first thing, obviously, 11 in the morning, right before lunch, one o'clock, two o'clock after lunch evening, right?
00:16:08
Speaker
Making sure everybody's updating their metrics.
00:16:10
Speaker
You're quite literally outsourcing that babysitting that managers hate doing.
00:16:15
Speaker
You're outsourcing that to your team and creating an organized way for your team to get involved.
00:16:20
Speaker
It's kind of like a
00:16:21
Speaker
a mini networking or a business networking group like BNI, where it's member led, you want your team coaching and pushing each other to the next level.
00:16:31
Speaker
So that's a pod check.
00:16:33
Speaker
That's how you hold your reps accountable so consistently.
00:16:36
Speaker
And then the last part I want to give you here is about motivation.
00:16:39
Speaker
Okay.
00:16:40
Speaker
So how do you actually motivate reps consistently?
00:16:43
Speaker
There's a lot of ideas on this, and I'll go more in depth on some other episodes, but the biggest thing I want to talk about is action-led motivation.
00:16:51
Speaker
And if you listened to my first episode with Taylor where we introduced this series, I kind of alluded to this, but the biggest mistake that companies make with contests and incentives is they only incentivize the deal, right?
00:17:06
Speaker
The problem with this is the only guys who are really motivated for the deals are already your top 5% to 10% of your reps, your top producers.
00:17:16
Speaker
The rest of the guys just say, ah, screw it.
00:17:19
Speaker
Taylor, Johnny, James, they're just going to get it because they're on the top of their game.
00:17:23
Speaker
I'm not even going to try it, right?
00:17:26
Speaker
This is a mistake.
00:17:28
Speaker
And quite literally, if you perform this way,
00:17:31
Speaker
there's almost no reason to even hang on to the bottom of 90% of reps.
00:17:35
Speaker
You might as well get rid of them if you're not going to incentivize them and motivate them as well.
00:17:40
Speaker
So the solution to this actually comes down to tracking, right?
00:17:44
Speaker
If you know...
00:17:47
Speaker
how many appointments it takes to close a deal on your average rep, and you know how many leads, how many doors need to be knocked to set an appointment, and you know these metrics by heart, and you actually know them, you're not just fudging them, right?
00:18:00
Speaker
Then you will have the confidence to place an incentive or a prize or whatever
00:18:05
Speaker
on some of these actions that create a sale, like an appointment set or a door knocked, right?
00:18:11
Speaker
Some of the top companies I've worked with, they will create their own banking system, quite literally.
00:18:16
Speaker
They'll create like a Venmo card for their reps,
00:18:20
Speaker
and reps are rewarded every time they set an appointment, they're literally paid out instantly, 50 bucks, 100 bucks, whatever it is, into their company bank account where they can pay themselves instantly, withdraw it to their own bank, right, and start using those funds.
00:18:36
Speaker
That incentivizes the action, okay?
00:18:40
Speaker
Michael O'Donnell has been on the show, right?
00:18:42
Speaker
He talks about the mini habits.
00:18:43
Speaker
This is mini habits, right?
00:18:46
Speaker
Whatever you want to call it, incentivizing the actions that create the results.
00:18:50
Speaker
This is how we get ourselves to do uncomfortable and difficult things as reps, CEOs, founders, whatever, right?
00:18:58
Speaker
Human beings.
00:18:59
Speaker
You need to give yourself a reward and your reps a reward for the first step, the second step, the third step.
00:19:05
Speaker
The only way you could do this with confidence that you're not going to lose money, you need to have the systems in place.
00:19:11
Speaker
So guys, to review here.
00:19:13
Speaker
Lessons I've learned from training a thousand reps.
00:19:15
Speaker
Reps need to be engaged personally and taught on their own unique level and challenged individually.
00:19:21
Speaker
Reps need to be able to train on their own time and have clear tracking and expectations in place.
00:19:27
Speaker
Third, reps need to be held accountable multiple times a day.
00:19:31
Speaker
Pod check is one of my favorite ways to do this.
00:19:35
Speaker
And then lastly, reps need to be motivated with action-led results, right?
00:19:40
Speaker
So,
00:19:42
Speaker
The last thing I want to leave you here is the core lessons I know today as someone who's coached a thousand reps, scaled multiple solar companies past eight figures per year, who's personally sold over 500 deals myself.
00:20:01
Speaker
These are some truths that cannot be faltered with.
00:20:07
Speaker
These are things that...
00:20:09
Speaker
All of the sales greats, all of the sales gurus, leaders, top guys in any industry will tell you are a matter of a fact.
00:20:18
Speaker
And if you adopt these four principles I'm about to give you, no matter what sales training process you have, what products you have, your reps will be ahead of nine out of 10 of your competition.
00:20:30
Speaker
So here they are.
00:20:31
Speaker
Number one, you can lead a horse to water, but you can't make him drink, okay?
00:20:37
Speaker
You cannot expect all of your reps to want to train if you do not have the proper culture in place.
00:20:45
Speaker
This is a mistake that nearly every sales team I see makes.
00:20:51
Speaker
They have a culture against training, right?
00:20:55
Speaker
They buy a training program and the reason they buy a training program is because their sales are poor.
00:21:01
Speaker
That's a mistake, right?
00:21:03
Speaker
One of the worst times to buy sales training is when your sales are poor, okay?
00:21:08
Speaker
Second, the founder and CEO just doesn't want to train their reps and
00:21:14
Speaker
They buy training thinking it's gonna fix it, right?
00:21:17
Speaker
This is the wrong mindset.
00:21:18
Speaker
You've set the culture that we are a lazy organization, essentially.
00:21:23
Speaker
Now, whether you like that or not, I don't really care, but this is the culture and what it communicates to your reps.
00:21:29
Speaker
Your mindset, personally, around training and self-development, you as the founder, VP, director,
00:21:35
Speaker
That mindset will bleed down to your sales reps.
00:21:39
Speaker
Whether you want to or not, this is how people learn.
00:21:42
Speaker
This is how parents raise kids, right?
00:21:45
Speaker
They say one thing, hey, don't do this.
00:21:47
Speaker
But if the kid sees you, the parent, doing whatever, watching TV, playing video games, eating junk food, whatever it is, the kid's going to do exactly what you just did, right?

Cultivating a Training Culture

00:21:58
Speaker
So if your reps don't know about you learning, they don't know you're
00:22:03
Speaker
reading books, they don't know you're taking courses, training, then they're not going to want to do this.
00:22:09
Speaker
This is not a culture of accountability when it comes to learning and training, right?
00:22:13
Speaker
And then the last part is you need to cut the fat, okay?
00:22:19
Speaker
If you've got reps that refuse to log on to their training and you've held them accountable for it, you quite literally need to fire them off your team, even if they're producing revenue.
00:22:29
Speaker
And this is the part where
00:22:31
Speaker
It takes a lot of courage.
00:22:32
Speaker
It takes a lot of balls to do this, quite honestly.
00:22:36
Speaker
And the way that I have found that's easiest to muster up that courage to fire somebody for not training is to know your metrics and know that you've done all you can to create the culture of training.
00:22:50
Speaker
And quite literally, that conversation...
00:22:52
Speaker
goes very upfront, very aggressive with your team.
00:22:55
Speaker
And you say, guys, we are making a radical change to a training environment and training obsessed culture with our team.
00:23:03
Speaker
I want you guys to do the very best you can perform at your highest level.
00:23:07
Speaker
And I've invested in the tools, training, technology, mentors to help you get there.
00:23:12
Speaker
And I put everything on the line for you guys.
00:23:15
Speaker
Okay.
00:23:16
Speaker
And
00:23:17
Speaker
And what I'm asking you is that you jump ship with us and you cut off all options and you fully commit to training and developing yourselves.
00:23:26
Speaker
And we're going to hold you guys accountable on this.
00:23:28
Speaker
We're going to answer your questions.
00:23:29
Speaker
We're going to personalize the training for you.
00:23:32
Speaker
But we ask that you do this.
00:23:33
Speaker
And those of you that do not comply with this.
00:23:37
Speaker
This is going to be a true testament if you're a right fit for our team or not.
00:23:41
Speaker
And that's okay if you're not.
00:23:43
Speaker
If this sounds too intense for you guys, you guys can leave.
00:23:46
Speaker
That's all right.
00:23:46
Speaker
We'll give you a recommendation for the next job.
00:23:49
Speaker
I'm just letting you know our culture, we're about to make some radical changes here, and I want you guys to be fully on board and committed to this.
00:23:56
Speaker
And after you have this talk with the team and you rally the troops, you go and you talk to each one of them personally, and you say,
00:24:03
Speaker
Is this a good fit for you, John?
00:24:05
Speaker
Are you on board with this?
00:24:07
Speaker
And you have these conversations and you get them to commit.
00:24:10
Speaker
And you're going to find that some of your reps are going to say, this is a little too much for me.
00:24:14
Speaker
I'm not in on this.
00:24:16
Speaker
This isn't what I signed up for.
00:24:17
Speaker
And you've got to be willing to let that person go.
00:24:21
Speaker
Now, today it might be scary to let that person go, but what you're not seeing is the second, third, fourth order consequences of this decision.
00:24:29
Speaker
By deciding to be a training organization, a self-development-led organization, you are building a new culture, a new mentality, a new energy around the office.
00:24:41
Speaker
a new dedication and motivation your reps will have.
00:24:43
Speaker
You're going to start attracting better talent.
00:24:46
Speaker
You're going to start seeing better results, but you will not be able to do this if you have stragglers who are not on board.
00:24:53
Speaker
You have to cut those guys or get them on.
00:24:56
Speaker
There's no in-between.
00:24:57
Speaker
So that's step number one.
00:24:58
Speaker
Can't lead a horse to water, but you can lead a horse to water, but you can't make him drink it.
00:25:05
Speaker
Principle number two, mindset and personal beliefs are almost always the sales training problem for reps.
00:25:13
Speaker
It is almost never a skill issue.
00:25:18
Speaker
Your reps don't have an issue with their scripts on the door.
00:25:21
Speaker
That's not why they suck on the door.
00:25:24
Speaker
You might be saying, well, what do you know, James?
00:25:26
Speaker
Listen,
00:25:28
Speaker
If your reps had zero fear of what anybody thought about them, they would have no issue knocking doors because after 5, 10 attempts, 20, 50, 100 reps, right, of just going at it and learning from rejection, they would have the best script in the freaking world, okay?
00:25:47
Speaker
Think of it like an artificial intelligence algorithm, okay?
00:25:52
Speaker
The way AI learns, if you're not familiar with it, is quite literally learning from failure.
00:25:57
Speaker
It's just like humans.
00:25:58
Speaker
AI learns by going out there, implementing a algorithm, a solution to a problem,
00:26:05
Speaker
And it tests it and it bounces it, right?
00:26:08
Speaker
It bounces it back and it usually fails.
00:26:12
Speaker
And it starts doing absolutely crazy things when AI starts working in a system, okay?
00:26:19
Speaker
It starts just failing, doing dumb stuff.
00:26:21
Speaker
If a human was a algorithm, right?
00:26:24
Speaker
An artificial intelligence algorithm, it would be like a rep
00:26:28
Speaker
walking around and pitching like people's mailboxes instead of doors, okay?
00:26:33
Speaker
Just doing stupid, stupid stuff, right?
00:26:35
Speaker
But every single failure leads that algorithm to learn from its mistake and it just looks at it as testing.
00:26:43
Speaker
It's not a personal failure, right?
00:26:45
Speaker
It's just testing.
00:26:46
Speaker
It's just another way not to do it.
00:26:48
Speaker
It's just like Thomas Edison and the light bulb, a thousand ways not to do it.
00:26:53
Speaker
If your reps didn't have fear or personal beliefs or mindset issues, they would do it just like this.
00:26:58
Speaker
They would just keep showing up and showing up, refining, iterating their abilities, and boom, they'd make it happen.
00:27:05
Speaker
So that's my proof.
00:27:06
Speaker
Skills are not the issue.
00:27:08
Speaker
Personal development.
00:27:10
Speaker
is the problem with almost all of your reps, right?
00:27:14
Speaker
They have too much baggage.
00:27:15
Speaker
They have fear over what others are thinking of them.
00:27:18
Speaker
They want to be liked more than they want to make a sale, okay?
00:27:21
Speaker
There's quite a few of these objections.
00:27:23
Speaker
They have money mindset issues.
00:27:25
Speaker
They have issues with following up.
00:27:27
Speaker
They don't believe they could close a one-legged appointment because they wouldn't with their spouse.
00:27:31
Speaker
The list is endless, right?
00:27:33
Speaker
So 90% of your time and your training should really be spent in this area.
00:27:37
Speaker
That's what I'm trying to get across here, so...
00:27:40
Speaker
Principle number three, you need to be growth minded in developing your own skill set as a leader, right?
00:27:47
Speaker
Culture is passed down.
00:27:49
Speaker
I talked about this already.
00:27:50
Speaker
I won't go into it any further, but if you're not consistently developing yourself as a leader, it is affecting your culture.
00:27:57
Speaker
Mark my words.
00:27:58
Speaker
Principle number four, tracking is everything.
00:28:02
Speaker
All right.
00:28:03
Speaker
And this is a big one.
00:28:04
Speaker
I hated tracking when I was selling full time.
00:28:07
Speaker
Never wanted to use a CRM.
00:28:09
Speaker
My company was always telling me to use the CRM.
00:28:11
Speaker
But you know what they didn't tell me?
00:28:13
Speaker
They didn't tell me why it was important.
00:28:16
Speaker
And that is not something I learned until I tried to start my own solar company three times before having an initial success.
00:28:25
Speaker
I realized that tracking was absolutely everything.
00:28:29
Speaker
I'm not even exaggerating with this.
00:28:31
Speaker
Tracking...
00:28:32
Speaker
and numbers just equal results at the end of the day.
00:28:37
Speaker
Business is math.
00:28:39
Speaker
The companies I've seen that survive or go under, it's the ones

The Importance of Tracking Sales Processes

00:28:42
Speaker
who understand their numbers and those who don't.
00:28:44
Speaker
Now when I say tracking, what does this mean, right?
00:28:46
Speaker
This is not just tracking sales.
00:28:49
Speaker
This is tracking everything you possibly can in the sales process.
00:28:54
Speaker
So exactly how many emails were sent, follow-up emails were sent by each rep?
00:29:01
Speaker
How many calls were done?
00:29:03
Speaker
What was the length of each call on the appointment setting call?
00:29:07
Speaker
How long did it take to get to setting the appointment on each phone call, right?
00:29:12
Speaker
How many leads were set?
00:29:13
Speaker
How many doors were knocked?
00:29:15
Speaker
How many appointments?
00:29:16
Speaker
How long was each appointment?
00:29:18
Speaker
How long was each appointment until the credit was checked?
00:29:21
Speaker
You can go really in-depth here.
00:29:23
Speaker
I can tell you that the big guys, the big companies you see, the 50 to 100 million dollar companies, they are maniacal about tracking.
00:29:33
Speaker
Absolutely obsessed about tracking.
00:29:38
Speaker
So how do you get your reps on board with tracking, right?
00:29:40
Speaker
Because you're probably saying my reps won't even use the CRM.
00:29:43
Speaker
Same thing as the training culture.
00:29:44
Speaker
We are a CRM tracking culture now.
00:29:48
Speaker
Get on board or get out.
00:29:50
Speaker
You don't have to be that blunt, obviously.
00:29:52
Speaker
But that's what this is.
00:29:53
Speaker
At the end of the day, you have to make some very critical decisions with leading your team if you want to scale and grow past the seven-figure to low eight-figure range.
00:30:04
Speaker
That's kind of where most companies plateau after they figure out their leads and whatnot.
00:30:08
Speaker
They're hiring on reps, and they're getting stuck there.
00:30:11
Speaker
And it's because of these two things.
00:30:12
Speaker
They do not have a training culture, they do not track properly, and they do not train properly.
00:30:17
Speaker
Tracking culture, absolutely key.

Key Insights and Strategies Recap

00:30:20
Speaker
So guys, that is it.
00:30:21
Speaker
That's what I've learned.
00:30:21
Speaker
Training a thousand reps, pretty in-depth stuff.
00:30:24
Speaker
Um, again, I don't expect a ton of people to apply it, but for the few companies out there who are saying, damn it, like I am missing a couple of these things, go and apply them.
00:30:36
Speaker
This is a hundred percent free stuff.
00:30:37
Speaker
Um, I used to pay, charge clients tens of thousands of dollars a month for this stuff.
00:30:43
Speaker
I don't do it anymore.
00:30:44
Speaker
I don't do consulting for solar companies anymore.
00:30:47
Speaker
I'm 100% in on just training and scaling companies through Taylor's program, Sol Society, and my company Epic outside of Solar.
00:30:56
Speaker
So I'm quite literally spilling the best of the best stuff on this podcast.
00:31:00
Speaker
You guys, please go apply it.
00:31:03
Speaker
Please go use it.
00:31:05
Speaker
I don't just put it out for free.
00:31:06
Speaker
I'm doing these episodes 100% free of time because I care about you guys and I want you guys to benefit from my knowledge and experience in the industry.

Introducing Sol Society

00:31:15
Speaker
I'll see you guys in the next episode.
00:31:17
Speaker
Again, if you want to check out what it'd be like to scale your team past eight figures per year with results guaranteed, a 20% increase guarantee in four months or less with Soul Society, go to soulsociety.co, S-O-L-C-I-T-Y.C-O, or hit up Taylor Armstrong on Facebook or me on LinkedIn, and we'll set you guys up.
00:31:40
Speaker
All right, guys, I'll see you soon.
00:31:42
Speaker
Hey SolarPrinters, quick question.
00:31:44
Speaker
What if you could surround yourself with the industry's top performing sales pros, marketers, and CEOs and learn from their experience and wisdom in less than 20 minutes a day?
00:31:53
Speaker
For the last three years, I've been placed in the fortunate position to interview dozens of elite solar professionals
00:31:59
Speaker
and learn exactly what they do behind closed doors to build their solar careers to an all-star level.
00:32:05
Speaker
That's why I want to make a truly special announcement about the new solar learning community exclusively for solar professionals to learn, compete, and win with the top performers in the industry.
00:32:16
Speaker
And it's called Sol Society.
00:32:18
Speaker
This learning community was designed from the ground up to level the playing field and give Solar Pros access to proven mentors who want to give back to this community and help you or your team to be held accountable by the industry's brightest minds for, are you ready for it?
00:32:33
Speaker
Less than $3.45 a day.
00:32:37
Speaker
Currently Soul Society is closed to the public and membership is by invitation only.
00:32:41
Speaker
But solopreneurs can go to soulciety.co to learn more and have the option to join a waitlist when a membership becomes available in your area.
00:32:50
Speaker
Again, this is exclusively for Solopreneur listeners, so be sure to go to www.solciety.co to join the waitlist and learn more now.
00:33:03
Speaker
Thanks again for listening.
00:33:04
Speaker
We'll catch you again in the next episode.