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Jon Paramore:
What’s up everyone? This is Jon Paramore. You’re listening to The Liberating Contractor Podcast. I’ve spent the last 17 years growing and scaling contracting companies all across the United States.
Now I’m on a mission to liberate as many contractors as I can by helping them to break free from the chaos and helping them build a company that supports the life they want to live. Join me as I explain how some simple shifts and strategies are freeing contractors and helping them make more money than ever before. Sit back and relax. Welcome to The Liberated Contractor Podcast.
Katy Martin:
Hello and welcome to The Liberated Contractor Podcast. I am Katy Martin, along with Jon Paramore. Hello Jon. Welcome to episode number four. We’re continuing in our series of discussing marketing. So what we’re going to touch on today is the difference between your sales team and your marketing plans. So Jon, what, in your opinion, are sales reps.
Jon Paramore:
She’s being liberal. What we’re actually discussing today is that your sales guys are not marketers. We’re going to go right into this full force, like it’s going to feel like blunt trauma because we’re…
We’re going to just end this heated debate of sales guys being used as marketers. We’re going to go into this. So I’m the direct answer to the question that she just asked me: are sales guys marketers? The real answer is yes and no. Right?
So it depends. Are they front side marketers? Should you hire a sales rep and essentially make them your marketing team.
The direct answer is no. Should a sales rep need to know how to build referrals and connect to people and do some outreach and some connection and marketing? The direct answer to that is yes, but…
I mean, so listen, we recruit and hire salespeople all the time. Salespeople are best at selling, selling, selling. Let me just drive that home selling. So I want you to think for a minute. Let’s just remove the whole debate around sales reps and marketers, right?
Let’s take something magical like a surgeon, right? Imagine asking a surgeon, “okay, look, I know that you’re really, really good at operating on people, but the hospital has decided to cut budgets, so we’re actually going to need you to go find some clients.
We’re going to need you to go out and go into the areas and knock on some people’s houses and ask them if they would like to have surgery with you, but I’m pretty sure that’s not going to work and I get that.”
I’m being incredibly extreme like I’m going like, oh Jon, you’re being waved down way on the other side. I get it, but it’s kinda the same thing. Most salespeople have that DNA makeup of selling and I was always one of those people right when it came to the actual process of marketing.
Marketing is an intellectual thing. It’s a tracking numbers thing…
It’s a detailed driven thing, right? The actual marketing itself, can I produce content? Sure. I do, I have that innate ability to be creative and think of really cool things that could work from a marketing standpoint. Cool. Then you go ask me to build a funnel and what happens? That’s not gonna happen. It’s not going to happen.
You ask me to be incredibly detailed in my paperwork. What happens? It’s not gonna happen. You ask me to sit at a computer and physically write content.
What happens? You can do it in short spurts. Exactly. That’s exactly right. So here’s what you guys need to know. Marketing in and of itself, there’s actually a process to it. There’s a strategy that goes into it, right? Just like sales. There’s a strategy to it.
If I take somebody who by nature has a marketing degree, they know how to build funnels, they know how to get interaction with people. They know how to connect with people. They know how to get people interested and whatever. Are those people typically introverts or extroverts? Are they people who you put in a room and they’re ready to control it?
Or are they people who were like, dude, put me in a really cool space and let me just go to work.
Katy Martin: Right? Right. Which one are they? Salespeople? Marketers know they’re the ones that connect with people.
Jon Paramore:
Yeah. So that’s the difference, right? So salespeople by nature have like high energy, they need to be out, they need to be in front of people having conversations about products and different things that they can buy and whatever. Whereas I tend to like, let me do research. Yeah. I gotta research
Katy Martin:
…but they know how because they know how to gather the info. Like the Intel.
Jon Paramore:
That’s right. That’s right. That’s exactly right. So it’s like the difference between, like I would say you know, your frontline kind of salespeople, they’re just really, really great at closing. Like they want to be sitting at a table and having a conversation with somebody that’s like, what are you ready to buy something? How can I help you? How do I serve you?
How do I get to a transaction? Right. Like there’s all these powerful questions
Katy Martin:
…like the face to face time or the marketers are kind of the tee up.
Jon Paramore:
Yes. Yes. That’s perfect. So, elaborate on that a little bit. What does that mean? So one person to use it up, one person executes. What does that mean?
Katy Martin:
So the marketing is kind of, well I hate to use the like drumming up the business, but what they’re doing is putting a strategy out there that starts to attract the people in consistently to where the sales people can just go in. They’ve basically prepped and the sales people can close sales. You want to close or are they great at building relationships?
Yes. Are they pretty good at building referrals, but are you going to have a sales rep say, “hey, you’re a really great sales rep.” You don’t. You should build a facebook page and completely build a strategy around it. Are they going to do that longterm? No, no, they’re not that…
Jon Paramore:
Let me just like break down the differences just from a simple personality trait profile. Right? By nature, marketers tend to move a little slower and the action that they take for those markers are out there.
I don’t mean anything by that. I’m just saying, by nature, they tend to be a little bit slower. The action that they take is research-driven like what’s impacting the market, what’s getting them to move? What words can I use that are powerful?
They get somebody to like maybe opt into a funnel. What words can I put in a letter that gets people emotionally engaged so that by the time, like, Katie was talking about, by the time a sales guy shows up, the prospective buyer has chosen to have somebody sit across the table from them who can then demonstrate the benefits of what it is they’re about to buy.
You don’t… like think about it like this: You don’t go to a car dealership to buy a car from a marketer. You go to a car dealership to buy a car from a sales Rep. The marketing people are the ones that created the content and that’s exactly right. They created the content. They built a strategy.
They created the radio commercial, or whatever the case may be, that you saw, that actually drove you in there. The guys over at, I don’t know, at the Lamborghini place are not marketers. When you’re walking in to buy a Lamborghini, these guys are professional sales people.
Like, they’re like a concierge, like, they put you in the car and sit in it. How does it feel? How do you see yourself in this car? When you drive out of here, what do you think people are going to say?
A marketer is not interested in that. All of that was done creed. Somebody coming into the showroom. Like that’s the, that’s the whole up part. So when we have people call Katie and I then say, “I want you to help us find sales guys that go out and market, I want you to help me to find sales guys that are canvassers, and I want to be able to pay on straight commission.” Yeah, I mean it’s basically like you’re saying…
So just so I’m clear, so I can clarify. You’re asking to hire a marketing person who can also sell, who’s also willing to work whenever they can, number one, generate and then close. That’s what you’re looking for? Yes. Okay, cool. That’s like a Unicorn. When you find that person, you let me know.
I’ll hire him and I’ll actually pay them a salary to be that person. Right? Like, so are they out there? Like, we’ve talked about this on other podcasts. Can sales guys go out and drum up leads? For sure. Absolutely. They can.
Like, we’re not saying you need to hire somebody full-time inside of your office that does nothing but lead Gen for your sales guys. We’re not saying that. We’re saying that you can’t–you can–but you can’t physically ask these sales guys on a consistent basis to be marketers because, by nature, they are not built that way. Right?
They’re hunters is probably a better term that people can relate to a little bit more. Meaning that they, like, that…
Katy Martin:
That’s the closing aspect of it. I think that’s probably something we could touch on too: is there a misconstrue, that hunting mentality as well. They can go angle market, but in reality they kill Shit…
Jon Paramore:
Like that’s their job, right? They’re just, they’re just killers of stuff. And listen, that’s a crass term you know, because we talked about that at the beginning. And they’re not hunting people, but what they’re after is, like, that their job is to bring business into the company.
Their job is to cultivate new relationships and bring them into the company. And from a marketing standpoint, we’ve talked about (a couple of episodes ago) if your branding is strong and your marketing outreach is strong, by the time that somebody–like a sales rep–shows up to a door, the conversation that he’s having is totally different than when you guys are asking these guys to show up to a door where nobody’s ever seen them before.
And then you’re essentially asking them to become a marketer. Like, you’re asking them to market your company, to take your day and your brand and position your brand. Like, you’re asking them to become something that they are not right. What would happen if I took a bookkeeper and told them to go sell?
Katy Martin:
They’re not gonna care for it. And we were actually going to talk about this next week. When it comes to team-building, you don’t put a bookkeeper in a sales position. You know, like, there are things that people are made for. That’s right. So when you take somebody out of a position that is not leveraging their strengths at that point, then you’re just passing it off for under-performance. Right?
And so that’s what, that’s the, that’s the side effect, right? That’s what ends up happening over time is that when they take their time away from doing what they do best, then that affects their sales numbers. So I mean, let’s just break this down into like the old old school mentality, right?
And some companies still function this way, like, sales reps are knocking doors. Sales reps are actually closing the sale. They’re managing the job. They’re doing billing; they’re doing estimating; they’re doing all of these pieces.
So when they do focus their time on the front side and they’re generating, generating, generating, generating, and then those files are to move through the pipeline. What happens a month from now?
Jon Paramore:
Sales, right? There are no sales. They stop. They essentially stop cultivating. They stop selling, they stop doing the stuff they’re really good at. Right? Right. But the companies that focus more energy on what they’re not…
Katy Martin:
That’s right. Because it’s more effort. The companies that we see that have the best results are the ones that actually have somebody helping them with marketing, and then allowing their sales guys to sell, and then allowing somebody, after that process, to support what they sold. Right. And then from that part, to build the job, and then from that part to collect some money, right?
Like, there’s actually five separations. There’s not, like, this merge of all these things molded into one. It’s like, hey, somebody help us market, help us get relevant and I guarantee you there’s somebody driving around in a truck or somebody running on a treadmill or something, listening to this podcast. I don’t have the budget to do all that though.
I mean you’d be surprised what you can do with spirit–with very little–and not only that, like telling you to hire four people in and create this marketing department. You know, it’s about layering it in.
Jon Paramore:
There’s this question that you have to consider if you keep asking your sales guys to do something other than sell: what’s going to happen to your sales guys?
Katy Martin:
They’re going to stop.
Jon Paramore:
They’re going to stop selling. They’re going to disappear. They’re going to go work for a company that actually has their stuff together and they can actually just show up and close. That’s, I mean, that’s, I’ll tell you guys, like, to totally be transparent with you. By nature. That’s who I am by nature.
That’s my song. I’m in this place where I can either be on phone calls, helping somebody grow and scale their team or grow and scale their company. I’m relaxed, I’m good to go, but I can be on phone calls, having conversations about people that challenged them to move forward and do something different. I’m in a place of joy.
Like, I loved that stuff when I was a contractor, when I can be in front of people having conversations, helping them to put their home back to pre-storm condition.
I was locked in, but when I had to stop and then build a marketing strategy to go and get in front of more people or you know… I haven’t stopped to stop and fix processes and systems or whatever.
Like, I died a little bit every day that I operated in that space. And so, it’s really no different as it relates to sales reps not being marketers, like Katie said earlier: asking them to become less than who they are as essentially, like, kicking their feet and their legs out from underneath them. And they’re just not…
They’re just not going to do it and what? So we talked about, (either last podcast or the podcast before) we were talking about, like, the consistency in marketing.
If you have a sales guy, because they’re not detailed people by nature, and you keep asking your sales guy to do your marketing and all this, really at the end of the day he is trying to get a lead. What’s the real impact or effect that you’re going to get from halfass marketing?
Katy Martin:
The way that it impacts the market. And what does that mean? That it’s there. You’re not going to have that. You’re not going to have that consistency, or something gets compromised along the way…
Jon Paramore:
…so it’s going to get compromised.
Katy Martin:
Yeah. Even if you take that away from the marketing side of things, it relates to the same as a sales rep being project manager. If they’re not a detail person, then is the job getting it built to the fullest capacity? And you know it’s the same thing.
You have that same effect on your marketing…
That’s not in their area of genius. And so one thing that we always hear from sales professionals, and you and I have had this conversation quite a bit over the years… The fastest way to get people to be burned out is to have them do stuff that they’re not good at or they don’t want to do or that they don’t want to do because it’s hard now.
So here’s the debate. I just want to, on salespeople’s little salespeople that’ll work hard, right? Cool. You want them to basically go do everything while you just sit back and watch it all function.
But those are five very specific roles when it, what it takes to acquire a sale and fulfill a customer, right? Right.
So when there were the marketing department or the sales department through your production department, and then you’re there in your accounting department, you wonder why it doesn’t grow…
Jon Paramore:
So, then let’s flip this coin just a little bit and go, okay. So, how do I find sales guys that can just close stuff down instead of trying to find guys that are multitaskers, right?
And I need you guys to know… like where are you guys actually finding high performing sales people? You’re actually able to recruit high-performing salespeople that can close and do it really, really well if you support them.
Like we have a client right now who’s… I would say he’s probably top 10 and the entire industry with lead generation guy generates leads. He came to us and said, what? ‘I have more leads than I know what to do with. What I need is a team of closers. I need a team of guys, you know. I have a bare bones team right now.
I actually need high level producers.’ So when we actually helped him and counseled him and talked to him about what the damage of having lower level producers and what it’s going to look like in his company to add in some of these high performers with all these leads you’re generating.
He ads in like five high-performing people and within, I would say realistically within, 90 days of us putting these people into his company, his company almost doubles in size like the company, the company almost doubles in size using three people combined with all that because now he’s not asking a sales guy to be a marketer anymore or a sales guy to be a project manager anymore.
He’s asking a sales guy to come in and sell and that’s what they do really, really well. And he supports them by giving them marketing.
He supports that if I’d given him the infrastructure to allow that, to just go ‘hunt’ for lack of better terms. Right?
So it’s just kinda one of those things, like from a marketing standpoint, it’s kind of the flip side of things as far as a marketer goes. You can’t have the marketing people connecting to people and trying to sell those people in either. It doesn’t work that way.
Like, you need those people to do nothing but outreach and connection. And then you need your sales people to come back and close.
Those people are like, that’s like, if I could give you guys one thing that you can take away from this podcast. If you could just figure out a way to get yourself into a situation where you have a regular lead flow, or maybe you use a strategy that helps with your branding and your marketing and everything else that you’re doing.
And then you can bring in. And Katie and I are not talking about 10,000 people, 10 sales reps, sales reps, 30 sales.
It’s not that. It’s not that like three to five high performing sales guys, that are not asked to go out and generate leads and market and whatever and all that stuff, that can switch a company’s instantly if you’ve given them some leads, and all you have to do is close and all you do is ask these people to close back in back. And switching a company’s total trajectory overnight. It can just change the dynamic.
Katy Martin:
A smaller group of people, with very focused purpose, are going to be able to produce higher results. That’s it in a larger group of people trying to do everything.
Jon Paramore:
That’s it. That’s it. And for whatever reason, this industry contracting by whole, we see this dramatic turn and burn, which is like, give me 100 people. Hey Katie and John, go recruit 100 people who are willing to door knock. I know that probably 90 percent of those people die.
They’ll fade out, they just won’t end up staying. And then the 10 that you end up sticking, you know, we’ll build a company around. How often does that work?
Katy Martin:
Well it doesn’t. Because it doesn’t work in that process. What’s the company culture? Our why? Why would those 10 people stay?
Jon Paramore:
Yeah, and anybody who’s listening to this, who has figured out this, you know, the opposite of what we’re telling you right now. Like. you’ve built a giant company with no marketing and no lead Gen and only sales reps really to go knock doors. I would love to invite you to our podcast and figure out how you’ve done because you are a better man than me.
You figure something out that we haven’t figured out there. I also know because we interact with the contractors on a daily basis. The flip side is, what’s being searched for. The contractors want to know ‘where do we go to find somebody we can trust to help us generate leads so that we congratulate our sales guys and wave from having to be the lead generators?’
Those are the people that we’re after. Those aren’t going to be the people that changed the market and set the trend going forward because the old adage of sales reps need to be canvassers.
They need to be marketers. It’s time the smart guys are starting to figure out ‘if we can generate some leads, we can feed these leads to these sales guys and sales guys can turn those leads into more leads because they know how to build referral pipelines that those referrals can turn it and turn it into more.’
This is not a long term game of brand new leads. It’s a game up. Give them enough leads where they can naturally do what they’re good at, which is build a relationship, close a sale, and then build relationships for life that they can constantly rely on to get more business from. Right?
Yep. So you know, I don’t know. I mean, it’s just kind of one of those things that I feel like we hear a lot about where it’s like, ‘help me find the marketers and the sales guys that are canvassers and marketers and whatever,’ but I mean, you talked to those guys. It seems like every single day is talking about it from the sales rep perspective, meaning how do they feel about.
How do they feel when you tell somebody, ‘oh, I’m going to put you inside of a roofing company and you have to be the marketer.’ How easy is that sale? They don’t need… They…
Katy Martin:
Everybody does that, right? That’s easy.
That’s kind of the work we’re trying to encourage by, even by this episode of the podcast, is just to be a little more open-minded to something a little bit different because it does nothing that puts you in a position to improve. Because when I have conversations with sales reps all of the time, I mean we actually had an awesome candidate, reach out to us for placement and we know a great business owner, awesome business owner.
He takes care of his guys. Hey, this guy pays his guys on time. Great. Well-branded company, but the one thing that he just hasn’t gotten over that hump is the storm or mentality where his only method of marketing is that his sales team and they will travel decent amounts of time to work a storm because that’s what they used to do.
That’s all they do. Now. Does he have a small group of guys that do well? Yeah they do. But this particular candidate, he interviewed with the guy and he’s like, ‘I mean I already do this and I can do it here for a better compensation package with a different company and not have to travel.’
That’s true. So tell me what you have to offer that’s different. Like I liked the guy, but it’s not any different than what anybody else is doing. So you have to do it. There has to be something to attract those high-closers because they can go get hired anywhere because everybody is doing the same thing.
There’s still a large percentage of companies that are just doing it that way. And I get it. Most of the business owners kind of operate in the space of fear when it comes to spending money because it’s like, I could pay for marketing, but what if the sales reps can’t close the leads?
Well, what would it look like if you paid for marketing? And then you can attract sales reps, right?
Jon Paramore:
That’s exactly right. I’ve never seen a guy that posted on social media that says, ‘I have an abundance of leads, but I can’t find something.’
That’s exactly right. It’s usually not the problem, right? It’s usually the guys that are like, ‘I have no leads and I need to… Right?
I need a salesperson to come and save my company because I have no idea how to. There’s nobody bringing money, you know, and listen too, Katie and I are not saying these things to pick on people, we’re just stating a fact like we take the information that we see every day and the conversations that we see every day and we translate that into a podcast for you guys to know and understand.
Number one, you’re not alone. If you’re listening to this and you’re like, damn, I couldn’t relate to all of what’s going on in your… You’re not alone. This happens to you. This is probably a large chunk or a large percentage of people that we interact with. Then the dynamic radically shifts with a little bit of faith leading into ‘who can I trust to generate leads?’
When you have some leads, then you attract a couple of good sales guys. Now your revenue problem is fixed. Now you can down and spend a little more money on more leads, more sales reps. Now you’re done playing the game, right?
Katy Martin:
Just break the cycle, the cycle, the cycle of the same thing every season. And we’re definitely not saying, by any means, that the companies that are operating that way–it has nothing to do with your level of intelligence. It has nothing to do with your business owner aptitude.
All it has to do is just being open to something that you don’t know, like, you don’t know what you don’t know. There are ways to improve, so you can break the cycle and it doesn’t have to break your bank.
Jon Paramore:
That’s exactly right. I love that. I love that. For those of you guys out there that are listening to this, that’s something to write down and remember, ‘we can break the cycle.’ It doesn’t have to break your bank. It doesn’t cost a whole lot of money to generate a truck, you know, and you just have to start somewhere. That’s right. I mean so…
So look at it like this. You know, if you’ve got one or two sales reps in, you don’t have a big budget, go generate some leads higher. One really great sales rep generates some leads, higher.
One really great sales rep that can close. And then take the money that he generates and double down and just repeat the process. Like we’ve literally, I’m not kidding you, if I don’t put a monetary value on what we just went through.
For those of you who stuck it out this long to get into this nugget of information that we just gave to you, it’s like a game.
Like it’s a single game changer inside of your entire business. Generate some leads, feed one killer sales Rep. and then double down on the money that he generates and do it again and then hire another rep and then do it again and then hire another rep.
And if these guys are high caliber, which we can help you find, we’re going to talk about how to find those in another episode down the down the road. So pay attention to that. How do I find these guys?
Because they don’t live on your job boards that you think they do. Okay. So, when you have these guys in there, they’re then going to be able to take the leads that you generate and double down and go jerry
Katy Martin:
…or, or, or think about the profit that’ll end up in the long run, as opposed to right now, I think I need 10 sales guy to go produce the sales because I need them to go market. Right?
So if you can take that money and not have to worry about things like paying them draws because they’re out there marketing for six weeks, you know, provide them leads that they can go close and one sales rep can produce the sales of five or six.
Jon Paramore:
That’s right. That’s right. And if you’re listening to this and you’ve got a team of 20 guys and you still feel like you have the same set of problems where you’re like ‘I just can’t feel it. I feel like, you know, no amount of leads, I just can’t find the guys that can close.’
Like, we can help with that stuff. We could point you guys in the right direction to find the guys that can actually close. Just have to make sure that you’re not asking them to also be your marketing company or a campaign or hire marketing budget. Yeah, that’s exactly right. And the commission.
Katy Martin:
But at the end of the day,that’s a cost to acquire a sale. That’s right. That’s the cost of acquisition for the actual sale.
Not your, not your marketing budget. Exactly. You’d be surprised with a little bit of restructuring and refocusing some and investing a little bit on the front side, the difference that can make from a revenue standpoint. Yeah.
Jon Paramore:
And there’s, you know, there are some of you guys that we’ve talked to and I do want to target this just a little bit to you guys. If you’re not willing to invest in the marketing, you’re not really even investing in the lead legion and you’re likely not going to be willing to invest, whether you call us or someone else in a higher performer, right?
Because they need that. Like no guy, I don’t care. Like, if you reached out to being a guy who’s got 17 years, almost 18 years in this business and you said, ‘hey, I have a really unique opportunity, but I need you to not get paid for two months. I, you know, not that I would take it anywhere to be anyway interested.
But as if I were just doing sales, I would probably tell you to go fly a kite because even with my tenacity and grit and my ability to go and close sales at a very quick pace, if you’ve got nothing more to offer me other than an ‘opportunity,’ well, so I can go pretty much right and check anywhere I want to go.
And that’s the same thing with hydro performing sales people. They can pretty much go anywhere they want to go and write their own paycheck. Whether you have a leader, you don’t have to go generate leads, then they’re going to pay attention to things like culture and whatever.
But I’m just telling you from the place of where we are. And we talked a lot. Every single day, the best thing you can do is understand that your salespeople are not good workers. That’s the simplest message that I can drive home. Your salespeople are not workers. So I’m listening.
We respect your time. Hopefully you guys got some nuggets out of this today. We greatly appreciate who you are. And every time you guys have joined us on a podcast, you want to follow us, you can definitely follow us on social media at smash, on facebook.
We also have instagram and things like that. So, if you want access to that, it just disappeared and we’ll send you all that stuff you’re going to ask me, you know, ads, instagram, I don’t know. So here’s the really cool thing. You can also follow me, Jon, Katie Martin, you can go to our website, thesmashco.com. You can also go to our website, rhinobranded.com. We have a ton of content information all over the place. We hope you guys definitely get some value from this. Share this with your friends. I’m passing on.
The word is getting out. It’s making an impact and we really appreciate you guys being a part of the liberty to our podcast and downloading this podcast to make it part of your day. So I’d be greatly appreciative. I’m going to actually be really cool to coming up any attention, some new podcasts coming soon.
Alright you guys, until we spend a little more time together at some point in time. You guys take care. Thanks for listening to today’s episode of The Liberated Contractor Podcast. Remember to subscribe and leave a review.
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