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Hiring Your First Sales Person for Video Production
143 Plays4 years ago
Max & Jake discuss what you should be looking for in hiring your first sales person for your video production company. First lesson - don't call them a "salesperson".
This podcast brought to you from the good people at Pipeline Video Production Platform (https://www.videopipeline.io). Pipeline is your all-in-one solution to managing the chaos of video production projects from budgets, to schedules, to deliverables and everything in between.
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Transcript
Introduction to Production Masters Podcast
00:00:03
Speaker
All right, well, this is our first episode of Production Masters, taking your production business to the next level. I am here. This is Max Kaiser. I'm here with Jake Rorda. Hi, I'm Jake. Nice to be here.
00:00:19
Speaker
Yeah, Jake and I run Pipeline, the video production management platform that we very much hope that you all will give a shot to.
Max's Video Production Journey
00:00:28
Speaker
But this podcast is really just to talk about issues of the production business that we learn the hard way. That's for sure.
00:00:37
Speaker
I've got a background of about 15 years in video production running a production company up in Seattle that did pretty well. By the end, we were doing about one and a half to $2 million in
00:00:53
Speaker
annual revenue. And we were making, most importantly, making some really, really great videos that we love making. And Jake was along with me for at least three years. I joined the last four years, yeah. Yeah, absolutely. And Jake really helped me to manage the business side of things.
00:01:16
Speaker
and really came at it with an eye for the business stuff.
Salesperson Challenges and Benefits
00:01:19
Speaker
Right now we just have the two of us for this podcast and we thought that we might as well just get started with them and talk about the issues that so many of us maybe don't even want to think about.
00:01:32
Speaker
So a lot of you are probably listening to this have either thought about or are thinking about or need to be thinking about getting some sort of salesperson for your organization, for your video production company. And that's a tough, as I'm sure you know, that's a really tough thing to do in our business.
00:01:54
Speaker
We wanted to talk kind of about why that's a good idea. What are some of the benefits of it? And what are some of the things to watch out for? What are some of the risks?
00:02:04
Speaker
Yeah, so some of the reasons why you might be thinking about doing this. You wanna get out of that cycle. There's a cycle that is the Feaster-Famine cycle of having way too much work, getting completely slammed, completely getting out of any kind of marketing sales role at all that you probably are playing in addition to doing everything else at the company. And then by the time you finally finish up all that work, you have no work and you're totally flat broke again. It's a very stressful cycle.
00:02:33
Speaker
We totally experienced that a lot and we'd have times where we were selling, then too busy, then it wouldn't be busy at all and it was just hard to break that until we had someone that was worrying about sales and we had separate people worrying about shooting. It brings me to the next reason why you might want a salesperson is just because you got in this business to be out there shooting, not to be selling.
00:03:02
Speaker
not always the same people that are great at the sales side and great at the shooting itself. So if you're the type of person that got into this because you want to be shooting, then hiring a salesperson may be that natural next step so that you can focus on what you want to do, but still grow the business.
Max's Sales Struggles and Solutions
00:03:20
Speaker
Yeah, it was always a dream of mine to be able to have some kind of salesperson so that I didn't have to do something that I didn't think I was that good at that I didn't particularly like. I just wanted to be out shooting. I wanted to be out creating. I wanted to be out making.
00:03:36
Speaker
beautiful videos and films. Selling was the last thing on my list that I wanted to do. I just felt that I was fairly crappy at it. I was just like, wow, if we had someone good at sales, actually, imagine what we could do. It was a dream.
00:03:57
Speaker
What do you remember as being your revenue limit? What ceiling couldn't you break when you decided to bring on a salesperson? I think a million. I think we were trying to break a million. We probably had five or six people working in the company and we were trying to break either 750 or a million or something like that. It just had been elusive, probably it's about seven years into running the company.
00:04:27
Speaker
and really we didn't really even have any kind of sales. We had a website and people come to the website and find our work and I still say that that's critical and key and we probably should do an entire podcast about how powerful the website can be in getting new sales.
00:04:45
Speaker
Otherwise, I just went on every call and got on the phone with every potential client and talked to them. I wasn't directing everything anymore, and that allowed us to grow a lot. Again, something else we need to talk about is that when we kind of cross that 500 mark or even like two, 350 mark, it was like stop directing everything. You got to bring in other directors and trust other people and all that kind of stuff. So I'd say it was, but then I thought, oh, I'll just be like the salesperson. And then I kind of just didn't really love that that much, but
00:05:14
Speaker
We just kind of go ahead. You said you didn't make a good salesperson. What about yourself would you say didn't make you a good salesperson and what did you look for when you did finally decide to bring on a salesperson? So number one was I was always too willing to give everything away.
00:05:31
Speaker
I never, I was always such a dream to me that people were willing to pay me to do this and pay people I worked with who I considered my friends to do this, that it was just, I never valued myself highly enough. And I just didn't, I would be like, yeah, we can do that, we can do that. And we were constantly giving it away. So that was one thing. And another thing was just not following up with people enough, not following up with different,
00:06:00
Speaker
folks that I needed to. I don't know, not really feeling, I hate networking. I hated going to networking events or like going and meeting with agencies, just all the stuff I knew I needed to be doing that I didn't want to do.
00:06:13
Speaker
would you also say that there was some pressure to keep your team busy? I mean, kind of a take work at this less profit rather than take no work. Yeah, absolutely. You get to the point where you're just feeding the beast, you know, especially then we were all salaried. And so, you know, you just are just, yeah, you're just taking whatever kind of work. So you get kind of caught up in that as well.
Chris Donaldson's Impact on Sales
00:06:35
Speaker
So, but I mean, we kind of stumbled into, so the guy that we stumbled into, and I guess it's okay to say his name. I don't know.
00:06:44
Speaker
But the guy we stumbled into is still a very close friend of mine, now runs his own production company and Chris Donaldson. And he was someone I met at an agency. And then when he left that agency, he just was like, hey, can I
00:07:00
Speaker
Can I just come over and kind of consult with you? And I was kind of taken aback. I was like, I don't know. This guy was so good at talking to people. And he was kind of very gregarious. And we weren't even really talking about sales. He was just sort of interested in what we were doing. And he loved, loved video, just like the rest of us. And he had some background in doing it for agency.
00:07:30
Speaker
He wound up just getting a desk in our office and just sort of working with us for like months for very, very little pay. I don't know if we paid him anything. I think he just sort of joined in and was just interested in the process. And I think he had two young girls at home and he was kind of happy to get out of the house occasionally too.
00:07:52
Speaker
we gave him a place to do that. But it was a very slow toe in the water situation. And he certainly, I don't think he even started as like sales. He was just sort of someone who was like, I might know some people that might want to do a video and
00:08:11
Speaker
And that's kind of how it began, you know, and that Chris just went on to be like insanely successful for us outselling me, you know, by quite a bit and really opening up just tons of doors for our company and taking it to the next level on on every front. So he really wasn't a sales person. He was a guy that loved video. He was an agency guy.
00:08:36
Speaker
He was an agency. He was from agency. There's a big local agency in our town and he was there and had moved up here to be part of that agency. And then it just didn't, it didn't work out between him and the, the, the folks there. Cause Chris is, is a really gregarious, one of a kind kind of guy. And the company was kind of a very uptight agency. And, and so he kind of found a home with us and we were all kind of Cowboys and, and, and he,
00:09:01
Speaker
Yeah, he wasn't a salesperson. He was an agency guy, but he just was really good at talking to the client. He was really good at talking to the client, and he loved the vision of making incredible videos for folks, and that's what we were doing. He really fell in love with the vision that we had at Handcrack.
00:09:16
Speaker
for the kind of videos we're making and he loved the guys. He loved going on shoots. He just loved everything about it. And he just sort of dived in and made the most of it. And then initially, the first six months, I think his sales were just pitiful, like nothing almost. He just could not close a deal to save his life.
00:09:38
Speaker
One thing I remember about Chris, and to continue on that point, I definitely, when I came along, he was selling big time. So that must have just been the first six months. But one thing I remember about him, as maybe this was because he came from the agency side, was he was always caring about what the client needed and solving the client's problems. And he wasn't, he didn't care, not to say he didn't care, but he wasn't,
00:10:07
Speaker
worrying so much about what was happening inside the company with what producers on what shoot that kind of thing. His focus was what's the problem that the client has and how am I solving that?
00:10:23
Speaker
Absolutely. I mean, and I think that came from agency, right? Like, and it was just, he, he, you're right. And he wasn't worried about like what kind of camera he was going to be shooting on or, you know, he wasn't worried about, I mean, he wanted to make beautiful videos, but he kind of left that up to the directors.
00:10:38
Speaker
but it was more about like, what does the client really need? And he'd just stay uber focused on the client in that regard. But he also, and I can't repeat this enough, like it was just his genuine love for making these videos for the clients, which I think is what made him really successful for us and then made him really successful when he went on to start at his own company after we sold Handcrank. So I mean, it was,
00:11:06
Speaker
Also, I think Key is like he just was really smart from the beginning saying, don't call me a sales guy because people just go running from a salesperson. And he was like, call me an executive. I'm an executive producer. And so we did. That's what we called him. And that's what he did. And it wound up actually being what he was. He actually wound up being very, very involved in the creative of these films that were being made, sometimes writing the scripts.
00:11:33
Speaker
sometimes directing. So it wasn't a fake name to call an executive producer, not a sales guy. But it was critical, right? Because the client wants to think they're talking to the person that's going to be making their film. They do not want to talk to a salesperson. And that was something that I don't think I learned until later when we tried replicating what we had
Hiring Challenges in Video Production
00:11:58
Speaker
We just were like, when we wanted to go to the next level, we wanted to go past 2 million. We're like, let's get another salesperson. But this time, let's get like a real sales pro. And that just totally failed. 100% did not work at all. We got this woman who was
00:12:13
Speaker
very good at selling things, had a really strong sales background, knew all the sales information. She loved selling things, but she just didn't know video. She didn't understand the product. She was never really gonna be a director herself. And we put nearly a year into trying to work it out with her and we just could not. She basically had like maybe five or $10,000 worth of sales the entire time she was there.
00:12:40
Speaker
So it sounds to me like to sum up what you want to look for in a salesperson in our experience as someone who's high level in making the video but is involved in making the video, who's coming at it from a client problem solving side and don't look for and especially don't call them a salesperson.
00:13:04
Speaker
Yeah, don't even worry about looking at their resume and, oh, what's your sales experience? It doesn't matter. They could have sold a million printers and it will never have anything to do with what they're going to be able to do for selling your video. If I were to do it again, I'd be looking at it and saying, what videos do you love? And honestly, go look in agencies because it's not hard to find people at agencies that are really unhappy.
00:13:28
Speaker
Because agencies can be really uptight places with just a lot of layers of sort of bureaucracy, and it's not hard to find a person at an agency, particularly one that loves video that wants a lot more freedom and a lot more latitude and I hate to say but production companies have a lot more
00:13:47
Speaker
freedom and latitude than agencies do. We just always did because we weren't as beholden to trying to make all of the client happy all of the time. We had to come in with our own angle and our own kind of thing that we were trying to make for them to even give us any reason for being.
00:14:03
Speaker
I think that when you find someone that has a little bit of a renegade spirit, but just loves the work. Obviously, I have to be a real hard worker and everything, but that's the main thing. Unfortunately, sales experience just matters for nothing. That's what I would say is just get that type of person and then you get into the question of like, okay, how are you going to pay this person? I think that is,
00:14:31
Speaker
I think that is also a very tricky thing to do. That's why you need to basically have a certain level of income in the company already, a certain level of profit in the company already before you can even really start thinking about bringing the salesperson on because it's going to cost you a little bit in the beginning and you're not going to get anything back on it for quite a while. As you mentioned before, there's that
00:14:56
Speaker
that run-up period, that runway to get started, probably six months. And you're going to need that cash cushion in your company. You're going to need the rest of your company supporting things in order to cover whatever you're paying that person. And I would add that
00:15:15
Speaker
You need to be at a point where the company is running itself in some way that you can focus, you can spend your time helping that new salesperson with your runway, as opposed to
00:15:31
Speaker
I mean, that would be ideal, but we were a long way from that when when Chris started working with us for sure. I mean, he was a lot of a self starter. And I think that has to happen, too. They kind of find their own way of doing things like Chris really defined his own ways of doing things. And
00:15:49
Speaker
I just didn't have the experience to really mentor him at all. So, I mean, honestly, for most folks out there listening to this, I think that it'll probably wind up in the same position, because you might be around 500,000, 700,000 when you can start affording this. And unless, you know, unless you go into some kind of partnership, which you definitely could do, you know, I'd say that could work too if you're at a much lower level, but you're like, okay, he's willing to, you know, you're just going to share profits and just being a partnership from the beginning of ownership of the company and the profits.
00:16:18
Speaker
totally could work, but I'm just saying like if you're a sole owner and you like it that way, then you just have to be ready because you're just not going to get anyone to work just for commission in the beginning because they'll quit because they just won't make enough money in this marketplace particularly.
Training and Relationship Building for Sales
00:16:33
Speaker
It's so easy for folks to get a job, so you're going to have to be willing to put some money on the table for them each month even when they're not selling anything. One thing you can do to mitigate that I think I really recommend is
00:16:46
Speaker
I send that person on a whole bunch of shoots. I mean, Chris would, he would kind of be a PA. He had no ego about it at all. And that's something else you want to look for someone like that. That's like willing to go on shoots and, and just get down in the dirt and learn how it all works. But that's saved you money too. Cause that's an extra body on set that you're not paying, you know, outside of that guy's salary. So, um,
00:17:08
Speaker
Yeah yeah i had to recommend that like that and that really help you need to understand he needed to see one of these chris was crazy about that we put forth a really professional vibe on the set with the client and i think before he started we did not do that and he by being on those teams he saw that happen because chris will tell you.
00:17:27
Speaker
that it's all about relationships. That's how he did it. That's always his answer is like, how did you do it, man? And he's always relationships, but those relationships were based on constantly trying to make a really good impression. That was one of the really important things to him was making a great impression on the client throughout the process. And he watched out for that. He owned that relationship and he owned that, like, you know, um,
00:17:49
Speaker
kind of like onset experience for the client and made it really rich for them. And that's cool, particularly with agency. Agency wants to have a good time when they go to a shoot. And it's kind of up to the sales person, the EP, the AE, whatever you want to call them to give them that experience. Even when you don't have, you don't have to have a lot of money. You just have to put out some M&Ms and kind of care about them a little bit.
00:18:13
Speaker
Okay, they're always worried about caring for someone else, show that you're caring for them. Exactly, exactly. It makes a big difference. And I think that like, you know, just just in general, that they know that someone's looking out for them. And he was really good about being that point person. And that's how he made those relationships. And he would go visit them. And he would, you know,
00:18:32
Speaker
he was so good at beating the street down in Seattle. Everyone thought the company he owned the company, not me. And I was fine with that. But like, it was just because he was just really on it and happy to meet with folks and do all that kind of stuff. And I mean, like I said, it was just a really great relationship. But I think that you can I think folks can copy that
00:18:51
Speaker
just by looking for that kind of person that is curious, loves film, willing to get down in the dirt, obviously willing to be flexible on pay, because you just got to have that. And then I think later on pay, you can definitely work out, you know, we worked out some
Experimenting with Pay Structures
00:19:08
Speaker
Over time, they were kind of complicated in the beginning, the pay structure that we used. I think it was like he would get 15% of everything new that he brought in. And then he'd get 7.5% of anything of that thereafter. And then anything he got from a lead from us, we would get 10% for closing it and 5% thereafter and so forth. And that turned into some pretty good cash by the end. Let's talk about sale.
00:19:38
Speaker
pay structure from a broader perspective for a second. There are a few different ways that we tried, and you talked about one that was just a simple commission on the top number, the revenue. That we tried and that worked, like you said, quite well. Another thing that we tried, and you can try different things with different salespeople as we did, but the thing we
00:20:08
Speaker
ended up with, and correct me if I'm wrong here, was based on gross profit rather than top line sales number. And the reason for that was to incentivize finding those profitable jobs and those profitable clients as opposed to just any project.
00:20:28
Speaker
Right, that's right, that's right. So we did, you're right in the end, we did sort of modify it to go off of gross profit. And just to remind everybody, that's, you know, so instead of just looking at the gross revenue of the jobs, he brought in saying, okay, let's just instead give you a much larger portion of the actual profit of that job. And that that probably is the
00:20:47
Speaker
That is what we did, Jake, for sure. We probably should come back around to that in a different podcast where we talk more about different pay structure ideas. I don't know if that's necessarily the one anybody would want to start with. No, it was complex to do the math on.
Value-Based Pricing and Sales Success Indicators
00:21:04
Speaker
Without you doing it, Jake was our math
00:21:08
Speaker
math master and our cfo and he really would work out all these calculations for us uh without someone to do that it would have been really painful and also just to mind all the paychecks and everything um so that would be yeah that was definitely something later but you're right it was a good idea because it did incentivize going for the more profitable jobs which i the other thing i would say that chris was really good at was was asking people for a lot more money for the work we were doing
00:21:34
Speaker
Maybe it was because he was an outsider, but he could see the value of what we were doing. And he was not afraid to ask for those bigger dollars. And that is what lifted us way higher was just that lack of fear of, you know, kind of coming in and saying, oh, you know, I'm so happy just making a video for you. Thank you. You know, I'll do it for whatever you give me, which is my attitude to this attitude of like, no, no, this is going to I'm looking at this in terms of the value. It's going to bring your company.
00:22:04
Speaker
Amazon, Microsoft, whoever we're making it for, and we're going to price it according to that. Oh, I like that. Think of it. First, solve the problem and think about the value of the problem you just solved. To them, exactly. And that, of course, there's something we should really have a nice, you know, different chat on because that's a really killer one, too. Don't get stuck on your costs plus a certain number. It's really about what value are you providing to your clients?
00:22:30
Speaker
at a certain point it is. I would argue that in the beginning you kind of do have to do your costs plus a certain number because you have no leg to stand on. But that's again, a different thing. But yeah, eventually I think finding the value and charging accordingly is perfect. Okay. So let's say I've listened to us so far. I decided to take on a salesperson. I want to give them, I've decided that my pay structure is going to be
00:22:58
Speaker
simple commission on the top new number, but I also maybe give them a small 30k salary just to keep them floating. Good luck with that these days. Yeah, sure. Hypothetically speaking. No, I know. I hear it.
00:23:13
Speaker
What do I look for in the first six months? How do I know that it's going well? How do I know that the first six months were pitiful? What kept you from giving up during those six months and what made you know even when sales were pitiful
00:23:33
Speaker
that it was still worth pursuing. I think just watching him make these relationships, like even though the I think that there were just always the potential of some projects that were being worked on, you know, like we would meet once a week and he'd say, well, I got this one over here. You know, I think it's me about fifteen thousand. I got this one over here. It could be up to fifty thousand. You know, I remember he landed some big like basketball training video session thing in the first
00:24:00
Speaker
six months that started really small, but ultimately it was about 150,000 in work over like another year after that. So he was just hunting down anything and just watching that they're hunting this down and you're thinking to yourself, yeah, I mean, that's the kind of work we do. He's on the right track and that's who we are. And then they're going on the set. They're just generally jiving well with the crew. I'd say those are the things you're looking for, but they just didn't,
00:24:29
Speaker
that they are meeting with you on a weekly basis and showing you a lot of ideas and groundwork, moving the needle with each one of those clients. Well, what's going on with that client? How are you moving forward with that client? What's this week's little baby step forward with that client? And along the way, we try to come up with things like,
00:24:47
Speaker
different pricing structures for our product and everything, and that was a huge failure, but we can talk about that later. But mostly, it was just that he was so engaged and so diehard working towards these different clients, probably 75% of whom did not work out, but just that 25% was just enough to keep him interested and keep
00:25:07
Speaker
me interested and ultimately made it all work. Honestly, you're just looking for little teeny gains, just little gains of saying, wow. In the beginning, I think I pointed him and a lot of clients like, okay, there's a client I've never been able to break down the door of and he would hunt it down. I can't tell you how devastating sometimes it was because he would spend endless hours on some of these clients and they would just ultimately be like, yeah, I don't think we're going to do video actually, or yeah, we're going to go with somebody else.
00:25:37
Speaker
But sometimes he would just get that little thing so I think it's just being really, really ready to wait and but not waiting like like meeting every week at least with them having to have that sales meeting once a week where you just look at all the potentials look at all the.
00:25:53
Speaker
you should have a number for each one of those jobs. Oh, we think that's 15. We think that's 10. We think that's 12. And it's good to know what you think your profit on those might be too, but that might not come along until later, but just that you feel like that needle is moving and that that group of potentials is growing. And if it's not growing and if it's just stagnant and there's no, what were the conversations you had with them this week, that kind of thing? If none of that's happening,
00:26:18
Speaker
let it go, get it out. They might be a great person, they probably are, but I wish we would have let go of that other person just way, way earlier for her sake and ours, because we just kept on trolling along doing training and training and training, learn our product. No, there's not that much training to do quite honestly. There just isn't. It's just you just dive in and get people stoked about making videos.
00:26:42
Speaker
So you got to have that self-starter. It's not rocket science, man. I mean, it's just it's not like selling a printer where you're like, I will learn all the features. I got to learn like why this is going to save them so much money and all that kind of stuff. Selling video is like.
00:27:01
Speaker
totally, totally, totally different. You have to get under the hood of the company you're selling to look around and figure out where you're going to inject value from the kind of video you could create for them and then sell them on that vision. It takes understanding what a video can do for somebody and it takes loving that process yourself because you're selling them on the enthusiasm you have for it.
00:27:24
Speaker
I mean, that's why I was any good at it at all, because at least I had tons of enthusiasm. But that would be the trick. Get rid of it within two months if it's not working, and you'll know. But when you find that right person, it's going to be awesome. You basically have to do that to move forward, to cross that million.
00:27:49
Speaker
There's just, you're just not going to be able to get the kind of work that you want, I don't think, unless you have that. And I mean, he brought in Zulily, you know, we did a national for them for a quarter million. You know, he brought in Driscoll's who we did tons of huge projects for Capital One. I mean, just talking like this can work. So don't be afraid.
00:28:14
Speaker
That's kind of a nice thing to end on. What does that company look like after this person has started? What are the goals of that company? Is it that your revenue has doubled? Is it that your
00:28:32
Speaker
getting better work with larger clients? What are your goals? Getting better work with larger clients always has to trump everything else because that'll keep the esprit de corps high in the company and the money will follow.
00:28:47
Speaker
And obviously, after that, you're really watching your profit on those jobs, but better work with larger clients is going to naturally lead to bigger dollars for those shoots. And then you just have to watch that goddamn profit.
Future Goals and Listener Participation
00:29:00
Speaker
And that's a whole different thing we should talk about about doing big shoots and how you can make no money on them.
00:29:07
Speaker
You lose a lot of money on a big shoot. Yeah, you can lose and there's a lot of risk. For the most part, the company looks just like you're doing bigger work for better clients. Then the working out of the profitability is something that you, your CFO, and that salesperson all have to work out together. That takes a little more time, but you have nothing to work out if you don't have to work.
00:29:30
Speaker
That makes sense. So it's like one kind of leads the other. And honestly, everyone will show up pretty stoked for work when they're making a Capital One ad. It's pretty fun as opposed to like, okay, let's go make another car salesman ad or something like that.
00:29:46
Speaker
then it's kind of a drag and you're just like, oh, it was fun like five years ago, but I kind of over that now. So it, the bigger jobs, the better work gets everyone stoked, gets everyone happy. And, uh, and it's just a lot more exciting all around. And, and eventually, you know, we'll teach you on these podcasts, how to actually make any money from those. So.
00:30:06
Speaker
So I think we've had some great brainstorming ideas on salespeople, how to find them, what they should look like. And we've also come up with some great ideas for future podcasts where we could just dive in on one of those individual things.
00:30:22
Speaker
We look forward to having guests on this podcast. If you're listening to this podcast and you're someone that runs a production company and you got some ideas, give us a holler and we will talk about having you on the show because we are looking for more folks to have on the show. We just want to expand the conversation about business and video production on this podcast and hopefully teach folks things. Of course,
00:30:47
Speaker
We very much hope you'll try our software, which we put everything in our lives into to make work. We put everything we learned over 15 years, both Jake and I, into. And we really hope that you'll give it a shot at videopipeline.io. And there's a free trial there. We do really encourage you to do a demo with us. We can walk you through it. It's got a lot of features, and it doesn't hurt to have someone walk you through it.
00:31:15
Speaker
Awesome. Well, thank you everybody for listening. Yeah. Thank you. Thanks everybody. Thanks, Jake. That was fun. And we will see you next time. See you next time.