#315 Usman Kayani - The System That Led a $100M Sales Teams

Watch This NEXT: https://youtu.be/FA8kGL3JXx8

Apply to Work with Voics: https://www.voics.co/schedule-youtube

Join Aura: https://www.aura-app.ai/


Guest: Usman Kayani
Youtube:  https://www.youtube.com/@usykay
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/usmankayaniofficial/

Chapters

• 0:00 Founder-Led Sales And Early Hires
• 1:08 Off-Call Work And Sales Hygiene
• 1:51 Leadership Failures And Broken Systems
• 3:18 Skills To 250k Vs Skills To Scale
• 6:45 World-Class Onboarding And Mission Buy-In
• 9:56 Identity Shifts And Tenacity Over Leads
• 12:07 Setter First, Closer Later
• 15:20 Training, QC, And Ego Checks
• 18:39 CEOs In The Trenches And Process Audits
• 21:17 Hiring Frameworks And Personality Fit
• 24:14 Pay Design, Instant Payouts, And Points
• 28:06 Bases, Hybrids, And Opportunity Design
• 31:30 Direct Response Sales Training Landscape
• 33:18 Free Sales Training, Paid Management
• 35:12 Calendar Architecture For Founders
• 38:10 Velocity Metrics And Touch Density
• 42:02 Data, Dashboards, And CRM Standards
• 46:24 Double Booking And Show Rate Engines
• 50:05 Setter Culture, Volume First
• 53:50 DM Funnels, Limits, And LinkedIn
• 57:13 Show-Up Bribes And Pre-Call Priming
• 1:00:18 Keep What Works, Add A Second Funnel
• 1:04:08 Sales Over Marketing Myths
• 1:07:10 The Sales Manager Career Path
• 1:11:12 Placing Managers And Sandbox Ramps
• 1:14:20 Recruiting Setters And Communities

Transcript

SPEAKER_01: 0:00

Everyone needs to learn sales, and then from there, then they're able to give that role to somebody else. Bring in a setter, bring in a closer, bring in an STR, bring in a daughter, whoever that may be.

SPEAKER_02: 0:08

People at times are too early to hire a closer. They'll be making their first 30k. They don't need a closer at 30k. They only need a set. How have you got such good results to people? So we look at your velocity metrics, what we deem as to be a great salesperson, it's about off-the-call activity. So the admin time is the times that no one is showing up. That's when you're doing the CRM work, putting in notes. And a great sales rep, whilst they're on a call, they will be typing, they will be writing things down, the AI will be transcribing, they've put some sort of notes really officially on the CRM. And most people what they do is they'll talk on a sales call, and after they finish the call, they think, now I'm gonna put the notes on. So behaviorally, they're just not efficient.

SPEAKER_00: 0:46

Can you explain the double booking system for people?

SPEAKER_01: 0:51

What do you think is like the number one thing that sales teams are commonly getting wrong? What's the one thing right now that are just consistently getting wrong?

SPEAKER_02: 1:04

I'd say most problems are top-down. So they're from leadership. And where they look at the reps' performance in terms of the sales team's not performing because of this reason, the reps are not performing because of how many different reasons and they blame the rep rather than looking at the system or the process or what they've put in place in terms of training for the team. So they don't look at themselves first, they always blame, and then they're always in that habit of blaming and never building the right process to build a winning team.

SPEAKER_01: 1:32

Why do you think though a lot of these guys don't have any processes in place? Do you think they've kind of like made it up to get to like 100k, 200k a month?

SPEAKER_02: 1:38

Yeah, because the truth is in direct response. So we'll make it really specific for like marketers, because most marketers online are good media buyers, they're creative and analytical. So they have these two core skills. They're creative because they understand the angles that they need to have for copywriting and uh the video that for the ad. And then the other side of it is the analytical. They look at data every day, they look at the cost per lead, cost per call, and they build those two core skills very well. And it gets them to around 200 grand, 250 grand a month. But then the next phase of their skills seems to be systems, people, but they don't develop those. So then the lack of the next phase of their skill development stops them from growing their business. And this is why when they say I got stuck at 250, I got stuck at 3 million, you see Hamosi call it the swamp. And this 3 million bracket that most people are stuck under, it's the skill development that they haven't had yet. And I will be honest, I was I have a very different um I had I came into the space very differently. So I worked for Richard Branson for six years, and I didn't have the phase of zero to 250. When I worked for a company, they were already making 40 odd million a year. So I walked into a business with processes and systems there. Therefore, I had to learn it in reverse. When I came from this industry four years ago, I now had to learn marketing and the problems of the creative and analytical mind later. So my my learning was in reverse.

SPEAKER_01: 3:08

Dude, I've walked through that, right? So you walk into Richard Branson's business. The dude is obviously dialed in a thousand businesses before that. What were you observing in a company that's making like 40 million a year that you can learn from now? Because obviously, different stages, different beasts.

SPEAKER_02: 3:22

Let's break it down in how they indoctrinate you in first. So we call it onboarding and like how we work, but they truly indoctrinate you. So the first day that I started at this company, they said, Welcome. They had a welcome pack for me, they had a gift box for me, and uh they welcomed me into the company, and then they said, You're gonna go on five days of training at our head office. So they paid for a train ticket, sent me down to London, and said, Um, in this five days of training, they showed me the company history because they showed me of how Nelson Mandela and Jason uh Nelson Mandela and Richard Branson had made this deal together to give gyms to South Africa so they can become fitter and healthier. There was a whole mission around it. So they taught us about the mission, the vision, for five days straight. So I didn't learn anything apart from company history, mission, vision. I learned all around why the company exists, and then they had this whole day around what is the perfect employee? How do you truly give great customer service? They never showed me anything about sales. And I applied for a membership consultant job. So I was a sales rep, but I never got any sales training for five days straight. So the indoctrination into the company was so thorough. And at the end of every single day of that five days, they would ask me, let's do a test. Where was when was the company made? And where was the first gym in the f in the UK? They would test those 20 people in their onboarding to make sure they fully understood it. And there was one guy who didn't fully buy into the mission. So you know what they did? They didn't let him go back to work. They told him, Hey, we don't think you're going to be a good fit.

SPEAKER_01: 4:56

Is your sales process right now an absolute mess? You have a spreadsheet tracking a spreadsheet, you're trying to use a zap Earfo, and everything is just kind of falling apart. Well, scaling your high-ticket sales team is tough. Getting to the next level with your sales team is difficult, and you need the right platform to get there. Check out Aura down below and you'll see exactly how to track every inch of your sales process from scheduling your calls, tracking your leads, tracking all your analytics, and most importantly, all the closes inside your business. Aura is the only sales platform that does full end-to-end management of your sales process. This is the main solution right now for high-ticket sales teams to optimize every inch of your sales process. So if you're a coach or a founder or an agency owner, check out Aura for a full free seven-day trial. 100% agree, dude. Because you think about it, right? Like if you can buy into the long-term vision, then how the fuck are you going to put up with things when things get tough? Right? Because like you're always going to have tough days, but it's if you understand the bigger mission of it, it's going to be totally okay. Or at least you're going to work yourself through that process. Isn't it funny? Because like a lot of our industry is based on like tactics, and none of it's actually based on like longevity. If you look at the big info companies that have a long longevity, um, even if you look at like do like a Jeremy Minor, right? If you look at seven level, like the one of the reasons why they grew so much is like people feel like they're part of it. Whether they like it or not, they don't like it. They feel like they're part of it. And I guess like that comes from top down, right?

SPEAKER_02: 6:23

Yeah, and people, uh, so many reps that we've placed into companies have had their training, they're so proud to say we've had seventh level training. And they're proud to say it because of the they say it first, they don't say, Hey, my name is they say, Hey, I've trained, uh I have worked with Jeremy Minor. So it's how it's your your brand means a lot, but also the standard, and the standard comes from an internal process.

SPEAKER_01: 6:50

Okay, walk me through that because it's funny you mention this about the 200k mark because I actually have a video on my Instagram, you can see it, and where I see like a lot of people that I work with are coaches, they're maybe a 20k to 50k a month mark. My biggest like grief is the fact that they don't get the six figures because they don't have the skills, the identity, the systems, the processes. And it's almost like they've fucking made shit up to get to where they are now. They just kind of hacked it together, but they're not willing to take the next jump. It's kind of like, you know, when you're fearful of making another change in case things get messed up. So, how have you observed that? And like, how have you seen guys change and make those shifts?

SPEAKER_02: 7:26

Okay, specifically for the guys who are making between 30 to 50k or 30 to 100k, I did an event in London where I put on my Instagram, if you're someone who earns less than 50k, there's no charge, there's no upsell, if you have a marketing constraint, I'll just come in. We're coming down to my office, I had some offices in South London, and around 12 people showed up. There was it was just a free day, and I wanted to just give back and help. And at the time it was when, you know, Gary Economics was saying all this stuff online, and I was really against it.

SPEAKER_01: 7:55

And I was like, hey, capitalism is same, same, same, bro. Everything he says.

SPEAKER_02: 8:01

And I was so because I really believe in conscious capitalism where it's not just about crony capitalism, where it's about taking. I also want to make a lot of money. I'm never shy about saying it, but I also want to build and give back, and I want to give have um a feeling that I've given more than I've taken. This podcast to me is a great feeling because I feel like I'm giving. When I did when I met these 12 guys and they came down, they all said I have lead constraints. That was their number one problem. Nothing, no one ever spoke about sales. One guy said my DMs aren't busy enough, no one's interested. And I got him to share his screen live in front of everyone. And there were 12 unread messages as soon as we went into his DMs. The next guy, what's wrong with yours? Oh, my CRM, no, there's no leads in there. Loaded up his CRM, there's no notes, he's never called a lead back after they inquired. And the common trend of these 12 people wasn't that they didn't have leads, that was the case, but they all said the leads aren't good enough, these customers aren't ready to buy. And what I realized was it was tenacity. The thing missing for them was grit. To go at that 30k phase, you don't need a crazy amount of leads. People think you do. You need grit and tenacity.

SPEAKER_01: 9:14

Before we move any further, I have one short question to ask you. Have you been enjoying these episodes so far? Because if you have, I would truly appreciate it if you subscribe to the channel to help more business owners grow their online business today. 100%, dude. It's funny because like you can kind of it's like jazz hands, right? The way like Taki Moore describes it is like it's hustling jazz hands to like a million a year, and then it's literally a quantum leap, a different person, like the person that you've become, it's an identity shift. One thing that I have observed though is a lot of guys don't make the decision to go. I don't know if you're familiar with the book uh Category of One. The first chapter in Category of One is the decision to go, and you have to make a decision in your business. Do you want to go for greatness or grow or have a bigger impact, a better way to put it, or are you happy to stay small? And if you want to stay small, that's completely fine. There's a place for you in the world, but it's like the person that needs to change to adjust to this. Maybe that's like a sales team you need to build, maybe it's a better marketing engine, but it's more of like an internal shift first. That's why your business is a reflection of you and your customers are also a reflection of you, right?

SPEAKER_02: 10:13

It 100% is. Darren, you you've got a great reputation for the guys in the start of their business, get into that first million. So, what if I tell you it's great, what do you see? Because you're giving them the tactics, you work with these guys. I don't really work as much, I don't work with anyone with leaderships. So when you're working with them, what are you seeing?

SPEAKER_01: 10:32

So a lot of the times they're good in one domain. It's funny because I interviewed a sales rep even today. The guy was really big into sport and he was big into like e-com back in the day. So he's good at something, it's competency in one area of life, and then you teach them the skills, the offer, the content process, and they plug and play into it. So it's usually like an underlying skill characteristic, and then from there, then it's more like okay, they're just doing one channel at a pretty well level, they're doing one content system once at one level, and from there it's a bit more like a system. But at that point, then they reach a cap because the way I describe it is like you want to get oversubscribed in doing one fucking thing before you look to bring in more people to help you. So sales is the perfect example. So that's why my my general approach is like everyone needs to learn sales, and then from there, then they're able to give that role to somebody else, bring in a setter, bring in a closer, bring in a SD or bring in a dollar, whoever that may be. But I think you have to do it for yourself before you do it for anybody else. I don't know. Would you agree with that, or what would you be? What would you think you're saying?

SPEAKER_02: 11:30

I 100% agree because people at times are too early to hire a closer, and this is what they'll do they'll be making their first 30k. They don't need a closer at 30k, they need a setter, they only need a setter. Around 50 to 80k, you now bring in a closer, but it's half your calls. Why would you give them half your calls, not full? One, because you've never trained your first closer, you don't you can't promise them an amazing earnings. So you get someone part-time, and you want full-time commitment from them, but you you have to give them half of your calls because you need to protect your revenue. In the early stage, when you're under 50k, if you bring in a closer, your sales will go down because you've not got the systems, you've not got the training. So what happens is you make 50k, you bring in a closer, and then your sales dip to 20, you blame the closer, get rid of the closer, then you start back and you're in this loop for a very long time. What you do is you give them half of your calls, and you're just in a round robin with the closer. That way the closer sees what a great example you are. You also see their work and you buddy up together and do the meetings, and you QC each other's calls. And it involves not having ego. And in the early stage, when someone makes 50k, this is when they buy their first sports car, this is where they go on and get their first Richard Mill or get their first Patek, whatever they get. And because they're flexing so hard, their ego stops them from being like having the humility to QC a sales rep at their call, and then a sales rep QCs their call. And this small habit is what stops people growing.

SPEAKER_01: 13:06

Have you have you noticed that a lot when it comes to the setting process, too? Because even on the closing side, I think closing is a little bit more obvious because you see like the revenue not coming in. But setting is something that I've really realized that people just try to pawn off. They're like, oh, hand it to someone. Well, they try to hand it to like a VA, which is never gonna fucking work, right? But they try to offload it. But I guess I'd love to get your thoughts. My opinion on this is you need someone to be ongoing overlooking people's work, ongoing this in the trenches, not looking at like drastic changes, but just one degree here, one degree there, just in small subtle nuances. How do you find that? Because so I want to go get your thoughts on that, like how to train and how would you apply that to people that are trying to get to six figures uh a month. And secondly, how much would you hire? I'd love to get your thoughts on that. How many people?

SPEAKER_02: 13:53

Okay, I I do want to say I last week I was a setter for a day. The reason why I have multiple eight-figure companies that we're running, we have percentages in these companies that we have fractional deals, we're running, we're consulting so many large B2B businesses, we place sales managers, and there was a business, and they were adamant it's the setter's fault. And the CEO, because it's such an important deal to us, we have a good stake in their company. I said, I'm gonna be your setter for the day. And all their processes were broken. I said, I'm only gonna do the setter to the CEO if you'll be the setter with me. Because I knew he wouldn't, his ego wouldn't let him be the setter. So when I said I'm gonna be the setter with you for a day, he said, Fine, I'll do it. So we stayed on Zoom for eight hours. And this might sound like a waste of time to most people, but the realization to this CEO that I'm willing to sit and dial for eight hours, even as a CEO, they learned that there's no ego, you have to be willing to get into the weeds and work out what it was. And we worked out the connected rate was so low, the dialer had issues, there was tech issues, there was the script didn't flow as well. And we found all of this by actually doing it. So sometimes you have to just jump in and do it. So around the the set of question. But you you did ask me one, you did ask me a couple of questions in a few different parts. So I don't want to avoid that point.

SPEAKER_01: 15:13

You're right, we we can double tap on that too. So I think just to add just to add to that, right, is it's kind of like you never want to ask someone to do something that you would never do yourself. And I've really kind of found this over the couple last couple of years because it's like, well, dude, I've run the business and set people, and now you're coming in to replace and make it better. Like you should be providing that training, that support, that material, and then some, which is like you're running the test for people, like you're actually fucking looking at the dialers. And it's funny because I've had a similar issue that you just explained there before, but it was only until I saw it myself I could still fix it. Um, how do you think about hiring reps in general? Like, do you hire in twos? Do you hire in threes? I'd love to get your thoughts on that.

SPEAKER_02: 15:55

Yeah, so it's sectors, what I do is I now uh so the goal with hiring is to make the interview process as close to a job as possible. So I'll always have a system where first it's a culture interview, the next is a skill interview. And in between culture and skill interview, I send a personality test. So before I used to sell the 16 personalities test, now I send a Clifton personalities test. So in between first interview culture, getting to know them, Clifton personality gets sent, I see how they would mold into the team, then I do a skills-based interview, which is very much role-play-based. If there's a third stage, it's gonna be more of an offer conversation about the role. What I'm actually doing is telling them how hard the role is gonna be to see if I can scare them off. And that third, if I do a third call with them, and I so on this third call, when they are eager for the job, what most CEOs do is you're gonna love it here, you're gonna absolutely uh skyrocket, you're gonna make loads of money. I do the opposite. I'll say it's gonna be super hard. I'm super hard to work with, I have crazy high standards. You're gonna be getting uh there's gonna be a day where at 5 p.m. you won't you're gonna finish on a Friday, but I'm gonna text you saying the KPIs aren't done. Is this right for you? And if they stick around, then I know it's right.

SPEAKER_01: 17:02

Dude, that's fucking super important. Let's just double tap on that if you don't mind. I didn't mean to interrupt you. I actually had an interview, I had an interview this morning with a guy, uh, outbound sales rep, really smart guy, four years experience with B2B, and he asked me, How much will I be working? And I was like, I don't fucking know, it's a startup. Like, I don't know. And I was like, uh I kind of was taken back by it. And I was like, What do you what do you mean by that? Like, what's the word track there? And he was like, Well, you know, like reps burn out and stuff. And I'm like, Yeah, I'm not trying to get you to burn out, bro, but I'm also trying to, I'm not gonna tell you that it's gonna be easy. And it was a very interesting question. He was like, Oh, I just want to know like when I'm gonna be off and stuff. And I was like, hmm. Are you an agency owner, coach, or consultant looking to scale your online business? At VOX, we help business owners scale their online business with content. We help them specifically build a high-ticket offer, create content that turns into clients, and also help them with the sales process to make sure every single call that's booked in your calendar turns into a client. If you want to see more about exactly how we do this, hit the first link down below and watch a full free training on how smart entrepreneurs are building a business in 2025.

SPEAKER_02: 18:09

You want to say, uh, what is your limit? I want to push you to your limit and find new areas and find what is your new limit. And you're only gonna find that, and you're only gonna have that true development. I also see it as so I'm in my 30s, I owe something to young salespeople where I need to develop them so they are successful in their career. So it aside from sales, I want to have felt like I've done good work, and part of that feeling for me is these guys who are 18 to 24, by the time they're 30, they remember that someone taught them hard work. And unfortunately, I'm willing to be that bearer of bad news when I say that's not good enough. Because I know it will do good in the long term. And uh, regarding your question around hiring, you said do I hire in twos? What I do is with setters, I'll have a list in the CRM which is old leads, and I'll always have a list. So let's say you use HubSpark close, I'll always have a list of leads that just didn't close that weren't weren't any good. Because there's money in there, we all know it. So I'll have a thousand leads, five hundred leads in that list. I'll hire two setters, I'll onboard them, get them to the course material, and I'll say for seven days whoever gets through this list, whoever has the best result, gets the role. So the way I hire is quite unorthodox because I make them do a seven-day trial, I can promise them they'll make great income. I can promise them they'll have great training, but they need to be able to show that they can do the role. So I do a seven day trial, it's paid. Whatever they make in that role, they'll get straight away. And I also tell them every commission that you get in this on this uh trial week, you get an instant payout. And the reason why I do this is the logic behind instant payouts for setters specifically. Most people do it monthly. I actually change the way we do payouts. You may think it's a payroll headache, but it's not as much. When you have a system for it. There was um in America, you have the truckers and they used to get paid per mile. So, Darren, don't know if you know this, they actually stopped that. So, truckers used to drive across America delivering all sorts of goods, and they used to get paid per mile of delivery. Every mile they were they drove, they got paid more. These drivers would have accidents, they never stopped driving. Because for every mile, they were getting paid, they knew what they're earning. So they would cause accidents, they would just never stop. Eventually, they had to make it illegal to pay them that way. Because when you incentivize people for instant gratification, they perform. You as a CEO, you don't want instant gratification. Your skills are different. For setters, they get paid instant for the next the next day, what they performed the previous day. And when you pay them that way, they will perform better.

SPEAKER_01: 20:55

Do you do this when they're actually on board or too?

SPEAKER_02: 20:58

Yeah, when they're when they work for us as a setter, and we when we consult companies, we change their process to have instant payouts. And there's a whole system behind it. So I know we're moving a bit a little away from the recruiting, but just to explain it.

SPEAKER_00: 21:10

No, no, I love it. It's awesome.

SPEAKER_02: 21:12

To explain it to you in detail, we have a point system. So let's say there's a team of four setters in the team. We'll have a point system because I'm trying to incentivize the behaviors that I want. You know a lot about incentives and commissions, I've I've seen in your content that you understand sales pretty well. But I want to make human behavior as extreme as possible. So what I'll do is I'll say, there's a point system today on the and there's a virtual whiteboard in there for the setters. The first one to dial that day gets a point. The first set gets a point, the highest show rate gets a point. So I give points for every single great behavior I want to see. Every single day, whoever got the most points gets a$100 bonus the next day. And when you incentivize them, they have to also hit their KPIs for the day. So they have to have the two sets, three sets, four sets for the day and hit their dials. But because there's an additional payout, and I will sometimes not pay a higher base, I'll pay a lower base, but I'll add in the daily payout bonus so the OTE is the same. So the way I have structured pay on the PL, it doesn't hurt your PL as much because we're still paying you the right amount, but we're paying you in dribs and drabs because we're incentivizing your behavior along the whole way.

SPEAKER_01: 22:25

Yeah, so it's like, well, this is interesting because I wanted to chat about bases as you brought it up. Um it's like not paying for the base, but incentivizing good behavior because you can't control the close rate, but you can control the books and the sets and the confirmed calls and the show-up rate. So it's what's within your control, because obviously that's a setting, that's a crux of setting, right? You can't control the close rate. Now you did say base though. So what's your what's your opinion on bases?

SPEAKER_02: 22:49

So now bases have got more inflated, bases have moved towards two and a half thousand uh dollars for like American uh setters. So let's say the US-based setters, SDRs are getting paid higher and higher bases. It's because it's become more competitive for them, but also on the opposite side, cost of acquisition price has gone up, and if the bases go up, it hurts a company on their PL too much. So there is a bit of a row, uh, a change where people are setting and closing, they're hiring hybrid people, more and more hybrid roles at the moment. But in terms of a base, two and a half K is on the upper end. I think if you can pay someone a thousand, fifteen hundred dollars base with great incentives, I think about it in reverse. Their base is there, but can you afford to pay a setter six to eight K a month? Can you create that opportunity? So an 8K would be a very good setter, but let's say you're paying them between four and six. If you can reverse engineer that opportunity for them, you'll attract good setters. Because it's all about the opportunity that you create for the people.

SPEAKER_01: 23:50

What's your opinion on no bases?

SPEAKER_02: 23:52

On uh bases?

SPEAKER_01: 23:53

What's your opinion on no base and commission only? Let's say, let's say info coaching, maybe agency. Like what's your opinion on that?

SPEAKER_02: 24:01

When no bases work uh better when there's a better brand. So like you could hire someone because you have a good personal brand, your leads are slightly better, you can hire someone without a base. If someone is running cold traffic only and the leads are hard and they need dialing, they need to give a base. Because SDRs, they need to be incentivized to be able to earn 4 to 6K. And at times when someone is selling a 3K package or 4K package on their offer and they don't have enough opportunity for them to make money, and then with commissions, they can only make 2 to 3k, they're just not going to attract a really good setter. So for you to attract a good setter, you have to pay them the bracket that they need to be in.

SPEAKER_01: 24:42

That's super interesting. Yeah, like I'd love to get your thoughts on this because like I think about this shit really, really deeply, you know, because especially if it's an agency, if it's an agency, like it's really tough to get them the first mile effect because it's like the as you said, right? It's a dopamine, the hit doesn't come as fast with agency work. If you're only closing two or three deals a month, man, in an agency, and I know this because I also have an agency, right? So I fucked this up a ton past a couple of years ago, my first couple of sales reps and stuff. Um, my uh my just a thesis on this, my approach on this is as you described, incentive-based bonuses that almost make up a base, effectively. So, what I mean by this is we had this thing this week, which was like uh 25 booked qualified calls this week, and we'd pay you$1,500, basically. So that's a base bonus for booking 25 qualified calls because we knew we closed 40% of them or 30% of them, and that would be an extra X amount, right? So it's it's interesting, like there's different ways of fucking skin a cat, but as you say, at the end of the day is getting them to like 5k a month, is like the sweet spot.

SPEAKER_02: 25:47

Exactly. With agencies, I do like hybrid roles because with an agency, you don't have enough lead flow at times, and you can't close the volume of deals if it's a done-for-you type of deal, and you because you can't handle that capacity. And if it's an info product, you can separate the role, set or close it. But with an agency, you can hire almost a business development role where they are developing out of the marketing leads that you have inbound or outbound, and then they also close them as well. A good example of this is um Andy Elliott's team, they have such a big chopper funnel. Some leads are coming in, but uh, when the lead comes in, the lead gets rooted depending on the questions that are asked. So if it's a CEO making a million, it'll go to somebody else. And if it's making hardly any money, it'll go to somebody else. And then those people will answer the call, will dial them, sorry, will dial them and then set them for themselves. So it's they're just working their own leads. And um for the right business that has smaller margins, like an agency, I would recommend trying that hybrid model.

SPEAKER_01: 26:47

Interesting, man. So does Annie Eller run an outsource sales agency as well?

SPEAKER_02: 26:51

No, it's not outsourced, I'm just talking about his own products and courses and stuff. Yeah, by the way, I don't think like everyone's buying his program. I will say there it is pretty much a sales course. If someone did say to me, which sales training should I do, I think Jeremy Miners is great, but most people are seeing through those tactics now, unfortunately. If I start flicking my pen and saying, Hmm, start talking in a certain way, and you're selling to a B2B audience, everyone's gonna see right through you. I do like Cole's style probably the most because it has the most um mechanism and sophistication to the way of selling. So I think his works the best for direct response.

SPEAKER_01: 27:28

How would you say like your approach is different? Or would you say your approach is different?

SPEAKER_02: 27:32

Yeah, I I used to sell sales training and I used to sell it for$6,500 where setters and closers used to get trained. I now have decided to give away sales training for free. So that same program we used to sell, I no longer charge for it. Because we make our money on the B2B side, we have uh we make our money on developing sales managers. So a lot of sales reps who are really good at their role and they want to become sales managers will charge them for that. So we I decided to give away all of my sales training for free. And it became a lot more mission-driven. I know there's a lot of revenue that we're dropping for it, but the the mission of like just me being right, like sticking to my word of like I want to develop young men, I want them to have the skills of sales. If I say truthfully, I want, I believe everyone should have sales skills, then I also sell it. I thought I'm kind of not doing right by the world. Sales management takes a lot more time and development. So we will provide everyone sales training for free. I also think how do we beat everyone in the market and give more value than everybody else? Let's give away for free. So in our community, we'll train anyone for sales for free. I'm now doing some YouTube lives where people can get sales training for free. There's just no charge. The entire program that they would pay 10k for, they can get it for free with us. And then with the sales management and the B2B, we work with companies for.

SPEAKER_01: 28:50

Do you work with founders specifically on the sales coaching for founders, specifically? Is that a market you think about exploring?

SPEAKER_02: 28:58

Yeah, if they don't have leads, if they have leads, then we will send them to um a partner. We have quite a few partners that help like people like yourself would help people with their business. So we send them to those. I yeah, I just wanted uh I never want to do something I'm not an expert in.

SPEAKER_01: 29:16

Yeah, because I think it's just a little bit underserved that market. It's just quite interesting, right? Is like there's lots of like programs out there to help you like with content, with ads, with XYZ, but like founder-led sales. I I just felt over the past couple of years it was kind of underserved. It's like, of course, you go to Cole or you go to Jeremy if you're a rep. And like I've sent my reps to those programs and pay for them. But I've just thought it was quite an interesting kind of like wedge. It's like it's different, right? Fender-led sales or any sort of fender led sales is fucking uniquely different, and you should your close rate should be way higher before you start bringing in closures. It's just a it's like it's like a segment of your career, right?

SPEAKER_02: 29:52

I think someone like you, if I'm honest, like um I I've spoken to you a few times now. I think. Do founders come to you for that? 100%. Then I think so they should be coming to you for it. That's the thing. I think that's like a the person to go to.

SPEAKER_01: 30:09

It's it's the logic, though, is like it's a calendar constraint. That's what I'm trying to say. Is like, you know, they come in initially, people just cut, people just want to learn more about sales, then they should learn that skill. But the only reason why I would recommend founders doing it is so that they can pack out their calendar and they know what's going on in the business so that they can bring someone else in. Because it's a control thing, man, right? The reason why people give up their business is because it's a lack of control, they don't know what's going on inside their business.

SPEAKER_02: 30:34

Yeah. I have a tactic for founders. If you if we have a lot of people here who are making under 100k, I have a tactic for you how you should structure your calendar specifically for sales teams. So I believe you should be doing 12 hours a day, six days a week, if you are trying to grow a business. Don't tell me you're motivated and you got you got all of this uh motivation if you're not doing it. And the 12 hours is split four hours marketing, content, outro outreach, whatever type of marketing, four hours product development, and uh or like serving your clients, so it's product related, and then four hours of actually sales specific time that you have. But then you need to be available in your calendar. So the other eight hours is marked as free. So you know in Google calendar you can mark it as free rather than busy. You put all of that calendar space as free because the number one thing that you need to have time for is to take sales calls. So you build your diary, but there's a priority. And the if you've heard the definition of priority is the one thing, and the one thing that you want is more money and more revenue. So in those six days a week, those other eight hours that you have away from sales, you still have your calendar as free. Anyone can book in, and as soon as they book in, you call them and you try to move them into the four hours that you're available by discussing and moving them forward or back in the calendar, or you keep to the time that they can do. So you obviously do it at the time that's best for them. And if you can move it to the right time, do it. And that's the best process to grow your business and avoid hiring a closer up until you're 50-60k in.

SPEAKER_01: 32:13

Yeah, man, you're not the first person that actually told me that as well about when people are booking in. So today is Friday. If someone booked in for Monday, you fucking ring them, you pull them back to Friday evening or Saturday morning. Uh it's speed, right? And uh time kills deals effectively with this. Um, I I want to get into your zone of genius. So the real multi-six figure a month mark, like how how have you found your wedge in this? Because, like, dude, you have a small audience, but you're like wildly respected. Like, whenever I speak to anyone, like everyone knows about you, which is quite unique. And also, like all like the bigger, bigger companies, they're like, Oh, yeah, like I know Uzi for this reason and so on. So, like, what's your what's your edge?

SPEAKER_02: 32:51

I would say I've built my business by going out and shaking hands. It's not been through content. You've I've met you through referral, you didn't meet me through my Instagram page. So I have Instagram. Personal brand is a is a is a massive priority for me. But if I'm not good at something, am I gonna wait until I get good? Most people, what they do is they make content and they'll say, when I'll blow up, I'll be busy. That to me is sitting and waiting and being like, it would feel like I've got I'm just waiting for something to happen for me. And I take accountability for my sales and my business growing. So what I do is anywhere that someone was going in the very early days, two years ago, people will tell you who know me. I went to every mastermind. Every time I made a sale, that would cover the mastermind ticket for the next place. Because I knew if I just help people, because I genuinely do love helping people, if I go and meet the people that I follow, I shake their hand, show them what I can do for them and help them, business will just come my way. And that's what's happened by giving. And I think about every relationship that I have, I need to be in a three-to-one ratio of giving to taking. And I want to give three times more than I've ever asked. And if I do that for every single person, my business will grow. And that's been the logic that I followed, which was away from leads, content, everything like this. I was still doing everything there. It's not popped off. I'm not, I've never gone crazy viral, but I've built this great business from shaking hands and going and meeting people.

SPEAKER_01: 34:18

Dude, I think that's very unique, right? Because you can you can sniff when someone's looking for something off you. And especially because everyone's getting so fucking sophisticated. And when you're selling people that are making multiple seven figures a year, going into eight figures a year, they're hesitant. They're super, super hesitant. You know what I mean? So that's where it's good morals, good values, and following on that process from there. How would you say um in your in your actual sales implementation is different? And I know we've had a chat before, and you show me all your internal shit, and it's mental. Like, how have you got such good results for people?

SPEAKER_02: 34:49

Yeah, so my thing is um I always talk about priority and focusing on one thing. Every single business that we manage and we work with, we look at what is the one thing you need to do that week. So we look at your velocity metrics, what we deem as the most important things. For example, your connected to rake, how many sets uh to how many calls have been set, what's the percentage, uh, close rate, show rate, offer, all of these metrics is around 15. And we will look at what is the one metric that we need to affect this week. An example is let's say you had generated a thousand leads in the last week, and out of those thousand leads that you've just generated, you your your team made four thousand calls. So one of the metrics that we measure is touch density. Each uh lead got called an average of four times. So you I now know, well, if all I did was get you to double your touch density to eight in the next week, everything else downstream will make more sales, more appointments, more sales. So I don't need to touch your clothes rate. What most sales companies and consulting businesses do is they're gonna train you on sales, we're gonna do your close rate, but that's right at the bottom. That's not gonna get you more throughput. So we'll focus as early as possible in the process. And sometimes it's just saying, just spend more money on ads. And so we think about it from a top-down perspective. So if I'm increasing your dials now, over the next week, how are you gonna increase dials? How many tactics can we come up with to increase dials? Is the constraint um a manual labor constraint? Is that you don't have people? Is the dialer good enough? Do you have a power dialer? Is it that maybe your mobile number, I don't know if you know, but mobile numbers can also have a bad reputation, just like an email. So the mobile number's connected rate can go down. It could be the dialer's not right, the text's not right. There could be so many different things. So we need to problem solve over the next seven days. How are you gonna fix it? So then that becomes the one priority. After we fix that one thing, is it where we need to be? Can we get it up further? And we don't move off that number until it's fixed, and then we move on to the next number. And by the time we've worked through a cycle of fixing one thing every week, your business has exploded.

SPEAKER_01: 37:00

Question for you on that is how how do you manage this? I guess like from scaling my own team and it's nowhere near like a huge team, but it's still eight people, right? I have found that like it's harder to manage the stuff that we're managing, right? It's like what gets measured gets fucking improved, right? But like I'd say just the dialing thing, because that's a really good example. How are you on top of like, okay, let's double the dial connects and so on and so forth? Are you building out this shit? Like, how is that done?

SPEAKER_02: 37:27

Let's say they're doing four dials a day. Let's say they're doing four dials per lead. I look at what is stopping each person from doing more dials. Is this what you want the tactics? Is this what your question is?

SPEAKER_01: 37:38

Like, how do you do what's more more managing it? Like, how are you managing the tech side, the data side? So if you so if they're doing four dials a day, and I know in clothes you can see how much it is, but are you literally like creating dashboards off their shit, or are you just going in and checking it every single day?

SPEAKER_02: 37:52

So there's two ways, depending on your tech. So, you know, when you're a business owner, 250k, 300k a month, you don't have a dedicated tech person. As you grow, you have a dedicated tech person. But let's say in a dream scenario, you're using HubSpot and you've got a setter-specific dashboard. Now I have automated data from what your setters are doing in terms of how they disposition each call. Then I also have them doing a manual tracker and the end of day. So there's three different reports that the data gets put in. They do an EOD, whether that's a form they fill out, end of day or a Slack message. There's a spreadsheet they fill out manually, and there's the automated data that gets pulled. So I can see how we're collecting that data and if it's matching. If it's not matching, the first thing I do is we do training to make sure that data matches up. Because the CRM is only ever wrong if someone is not clicking the right thing. So we'll make sure everyone is clicking the right thing. And most people don't put CRM training into their morning meetings, but we do. We look at the CRM every single morning for every sales team, we share the screen and say, Oh, the number seems to be out, what's going on? And that sales rep is held to a standard to make sure everything is dispositioned correctly, even to the point of every lead has to have a note on it, not a detailed note because Fathom can, AI can transfer a lot of notes these days into good CRMs, but you need to at least put NA for no answer, VM for voicemail. So just put a note on. So the manual how to manage the team is very much you holding the standard. And once you know the standard, you hold the team accountable for it. Then there's obviously the tech component, which you can see all the data, then them then the process of them filling out their trackers. So, in terms of managing the team to do it, first you have to know what world class looks like. Most people, well, before they work with us, I'll be honest, a lot of people tell us hey, we don't need a lot of sales, sales are going well. Our close rate is good. So the way before they work with us, at times they'll work with us because they have faith, they got a good referral. So they I want to get make more sales. The close rate's not too bad, though. It's a common thing we hear, we can transcribe our sales calls. Hear it all the time. But then when we look at their sales and how they're managing the team, they've never seen what world class looks like. And I only know that by working for a$60 million business for many years. When you see world class and then you implement world class into the business, the business transforms.

SPEAKER_01: 40:17

Yeah, man, it's like your fitness, right? If you're already eating Mac and fucking McDonald's every single day and you're not hanging around people that are going to the gym, you're obviously going to eat shit food. It's just like it's hygiene. I call it like it's sales hygiene, right? I have a question for you on this. It's funny you said about the tech side because what got me really like anal about just constantly saying, like, oh, is this better or is that this better? Was I had a podcast with Ryan Clogg, and I was like, how the hell did you get to like four million a month, whatever number was? And he's like, a big part of it was tech upgrades, like knowing the limitations in certain technology and thinking, okay, this power dialer or this predictive dialer is not going to work. We need to move over here. And dude, I felt this last month. We were we were running a webinar and we had phone numbers for every country. Half the phone numbers, bro, were getting shut down. Not shut down, but they weren't getting like approved effectively, which meant we had like a fucking UK number ringing Irish people, and this number was getting taken down. And it's like, ah, that and as Ryan calls it, he calls it the 1%. If you've got a 1% uptick here, you're gonna make an extra hundred K a month. And this uptick here, so now for our next webinar in about two weeks, we know what to fix, but we've fixed it, but hopefully that will give us the more than one percent, but the five or ten percent. That's the first thing. The second thing you mentioned about the hygiene. So I I can completely agree with you. My question for you on this, though, is like it's how long is a piece of string, but like how much time should sales reps be put putting towards sales admin in general, like percentage, because obviously it's so fucking important, but they not they feel, but even you as the business owner feels you should be out selling, not fucking updating left, right, and center spreadsheet.

SPEAKER_02: 41:55

I don't want to say sales reps tend to be lazy. And I was once a lazy sales rep because every top seller believes in their own ability so much that they you tend to build this thing in your mind, which is I'll just close it on the call and then I leave it. And they don't put enough focus on follow-up. So 50% of your sales, if they're not coming from follow-ups, I know you're not doing follow-ups. So we look at the that one metric first. Where are the sales coming from? How many are coming from follow-ups? If you believe it, they're just uh one call close guy, you think that's a dream, a top salesperson. That isn't. To be a great salesperson, it's about off-the-call activity. So let's say you've got eight calls in your calendar. I know two, three of them won't show up. So if two or three of them won't show up, that is your admin time. It's an eight-hour job, nine-hour job. So the admin time is the times that no one is showing up. That's when you're doing the CRM work, putting in notes. And a great sales rep, just to go into even more detail, whilst they're on a call, they will be typing, they will be writing things down, the AI will be transcribing. They've put some sort of notes on the on really efficiently on the CRM. Whilst they, because it's not a lot of notes. If you've got AI, it'll transcribe all the bulk of the notes, but you can write things in whilst you're on the call, even on a setting call, you can just do it whilst you're speaking. And most people, what they do is like just is going super tactical, they'll talk on a sales call, a setter or a closer, and after they finish the call, they think, now I'm gonna put the notes on, and they leave it. So behaviorally, they're just not efficient. So you have to be really efficient at doing it. And then the time that I would hire a VA for, so it's down to the sales rep to do all their notes. But if I've implemented a really good double booking, triple booking system where sales reps never come off the phone, now I will hire a VA and the VA will do all the notes and admin for five closes. So I'll get one admin from Cape Town, Philippines, wherever it is, and that admin person will do the notes for all the team, but only do that when we have a double booking and triple booking system and someone is taking all their calls. If they're not taking back-to-back calls, they do all their notes.

SPEAKER_00: 44:00

Can you explain the double booking system for people?

SPEAKER_02: 44:03

Yeah. So um the software that we've been using is eye closed, and what we do is they've got a double booking and triple booking feature. So how it works is if we build something called a show rate engine, when someone books a call with you Monday at three o'clock, the first thing that happens is they get a call to confirm that appointment. If that has no answer, then that slot is still marked as taken, but if they don't answer the second or third call, we will mark it as free. Now it's marked as free. The calendar is now available for other people to book. In case both people do show up, there's an automation that Slack will send into the channel and say the second person has also showed up, and it will allow the setter or a closer who's free to jump onto that call and it'll notify them inside Slack and give a link straight into join. So a setter is now automated though, fully automated, completely automated. And it's even now automated where if they answer questions that we can see when they answer a specific question, they have a lower chance of show rate. So you can look at all the analytics in iCloud and see these questions have a lesser show rate, those will be automatically marked as free, and then the then somebody else can still book because calendar availability availability becomes a constraint, not because of just manual hours of people, but because of technology. So we maximize the technology to make sure we have all the hours covered.

SPEAKER_01: 45:42

Yeah. And it's interesting because I I've heard Cole and Josh Shorens have talked about this a lot in detail as well. It's just interesting to see how how that's done in an automated, automatic way, because how do you how do you quantify when someone shows up on a call? Like, because if it's not, if it's if they're not, if the other person's not present, like is there like a flag that's being initiated, that's not at no a note taker, and so on and so forth.

SPEAKER_02: 46:05

How do you quantify if they don't show up? If they do show up and you're not on the call for the set for the so there's two notifications that go into Slack specifically from this software. The first one is the the second guest is there, so that person is there. We need a setter, so it's looking for someone to join. And then if they've been in the waiting room for five minutes, it sends another notification. So it sends notifications if someone's waiting. And because they're being sent into Slack, everyone's getting notified. So there's uh an SOP for closers will join first. Whichever closer is free, you jump in. Because why would a closer not want to jump onto a call that's available if you're sat free? You've got a chance to make money. Here's an hour, just jump on. And if you don't have that culture, then it's a culture-based thing. And then also the setters are so eager to jump onto those calls because every setter wants to prove that they can close because they deeply believe they can. Because there is this disillusion from many setters who have worked for a while. I'm good enough to be a closer, why not a closer yet? So, pro by providing the opportunity, we can also give them a development opportunity to get good enough to start closing.

SPEAKER_01: 47:12

I actually want to ask you on that. That's a really interesting question because a really interesting topic. Because you know, a lot of setters might come in and be like, Oh, like I'm only doing this to become a closer. And I felt that sometimes that might create a really bad attitude because it's like they don't value what they're doing in the moment. You know what it's like? It's like having a girlfriend and being like, Well, I could get this girl over here, so I'm not gonna value this girl. It's like that doesn't make sense, so it's almost they don't value their role and put time into it. So I try to do a bit of a mindset shift, which was like, hey, you're learning fucking sales and you're learning how to speak to people and you're learning psychology. Like this is gonna help you for the rest of your life. So it's like less about like you're a setter and more like you're you're a sales, you're in sales and you're learning this the gift of sales. Now, we do pay setters a little bit higher than usual because we don't pay bases, so the delta is not that much between a setter and closer, just in commission structure. They obviously don't take the calls or take the volume of calls. But what I'm trying to say is like my question is how do you create a very good setting culture so that people don't get cold feet or hot potato trying to move to the next offer to be a closer?

SPEAKER_02: 48:18

So a setting culture is first created from volume, not quite uh quality. Every setter, I will first in their ramp up, we prioritize total dials first. What most people do is talk about sets and talk about show rate because let's say the founder's taking calls and it's not the closer, founders will get annoyed that a setter has booked on a deal onto their calendar that was not qualified. They'll tell the setter off, the setter will drop their call volume. We see it happen all the time, and that's a common thing that happens. So the first thing that we do is we tell the founder just take the shit for a few weeks. They're gonna put garbage on your calendar, but just encourage them to get the dials up first. So once they've got the dials up 200, 250, 300, if they've got a power dialer, now the dials are there, we can then look at quality. And now when we start carving out quality, we can say, okay, say this different or do this different. But we first have to culturally build their volume up first. And the how do we build that culture? At times we do something called a call drive, and every single week in every setting team there's a call drive, and the call drive is where everyone jumps on Zoom, and for two hours, uh so we we did it with a our setting team recently. So on a it was a Wednesday at three o'clock. I saw on the dialer on HubSpot that's a dime. Wednesday at three o'clock seemed to be the time where everyone does the least amount of dials. Maybe it's like a midweek slum. So what I did was I said, guys, we're gonna do a call drive all together. Everyone, we're gonna jump on and we're gonna do call the leads live on Zoom and put each other on mute, hear each other's calls, talk some shit in between dials, but we're just gonna have fun. I ordered a delivery Uber Eats to everyone's house at the same time, so it cost me six, seven quid, whatever it cost. And everyone had lunch right before, so I'll make sure I fed them as well. This is before the two hours. So I've fed them, got them drinks, and now for two hours, I say at the beginning, whoever hits the most dials and whoever gets the most sets in this time will get prizes randomly. So they've got I've got like six setters on and they're all dialing, and then I have a mystery box, and each mystery box, after every set, I open the mystery box, one's empty, one's got 20 quid, one's got 50 quid. So I make it super fun, and then I just create this environment where culturally they're just doing a lot of volume. And when they did it the next day, once I had done this call drive, I showed everyone, guys, I just want to show you some data over the last eight weeks. This is how many dials were getting done between Wednesday 3 till 5. A total of uh 200 dials across the whole team or 100 dials. But when we worked together on Zoom, we got five times as many dials. Why was that? And I asked them, so this is self-coaching. And then they all said, Oh, well, I think it was just accountability. So then I asked, Do I need to hold you accountable all the time? We'll keep doing their call drives because they're fun. But how do I ensure that I can coach and develop you all, encourage you to do that many dials most of the time? And then I've now coached them to see a new standard. And what I did in that activity was I created a new standard by showing it to them, by getting to do getting them to do it without them even knowing. Once I've created a new standard, they then know they can do it. So that's culturally how I manage setters in very different ways. And I just come up with tactics to be able to drive volume up and drive more sets.

SPEAKER_01: 51:54

Love it, man. I think uh the biggest thing there for me is like that you give a shit, right? Like that's the biggest thing is that you actually care about these guys and you do things that uh that makes you feel like personable with them. And we we always joke like at our company that most like manager, sales managers, or not sales managers, most founders speak to their setters once a month at best, you know? Whereas the fact that you're so committed to your team is the reason why they're kind of outperforming as well. There's also that that component too, because it's more like looking up to you as a mentorship.

SPEAKER_02: 52:22

I do have a question just about setters. I'd want to, I'm just curious because we don't have a lot of DM setters. We have a couple of clients that do.

SPEAKER_01: 52:29

Oh, well, I was just about to chat about it.

SPEAKER_02: 52:31

Okay, I was putting the words in my mouth. How are you doing that for your DM setters? Because I'm really curious. Like, um Yeah, man. I don't I know you've got good tactics in you as well, so I'm always up for hearing yours.

SPEAKER_01: 52:43

Yeah, dude, and like I'm always open to like feedback too. Like, so just for context, like like I would say that we really fucking rammed the DM funnel, like very aggressively, and I would say we did it in a very good way that has protected the account in a good way, touch wood, right? And the way that I that's why I wanted to ask you, I was you took the words out of my mouth. My thesis on this is that the most respected IG accounts in the eyes of like Mark Zuckerberg is at max 150 outbound messages a day, new messages. But the activity that happens inside the engine is up to around six to eight hundred conversations. So, generally speaking, my like my my KPIs for the guys are a hundred activity a day around let's say this okay, let's take a take a step back. Let's just say it's like one or two setters. We're both collectively trying to hit the 150 outbound a day on that threshold, and we're trying to trotle that threshold. The follow-ups and many chat though can be at that six to eight hundred range. So if our activity is at, let's say, 150 to 200 per setter, then that gets us up to the six to eight hundred mark. Now, from there as well, those conversations, I would look to get a give, you know, anywhere between 30% of those are in active conversations. And then I know of conversations, I could probably book 10% of conversations, let's say, like actual, actual conversations that are in running. So what happens is you get left with a hundred active conversations, which gets you to around your 10 bookings a day. And that, and then that's the kind of way that I try to move it up. And then there's a there's a there's a second component to here though, which is confirmed calls versus unconfirmed calls. So in setting specifically DM setting, is if they're unconfirmed, they will 100% not show up. Like 100%. I would almost say they're never going to show up. Because I think there's like this weird thing where they're they're they're booking on their phone, it's not going to their outlook or to their calendar, it's not getting set on it. So we look at calls, confirmed calls, unconfirmed calls, and then our SOD report looks at what's unconfirmed, and we're just making sure that everything that's unconfirmed is getting confirmed for that day.

SPEAKER_02: 54:45

Just a tactic that we've done with DM uh DM uh follow funnels. I do want to say on the DM side, we've never had that funnel for any of our sales teams go past 300k in a month. I've had about five teams this year, none of them have got past 300. I so I just want to be honest with you. I'm saying to you can scale these, but I've just not minded.

SPEAKER_01: 55:04

No, no, no, no, dude, 100%. As in, like, this is why this this is why I'm running a webinar funnel, is because and you you you you would have seen this in quantum. Like, as in I like I talk about this a lot to people, which is like I I believe that we are at the very, very upper end of a DM funnel in terms of like capacity. It's like there's and there's a few things, there's a few things here. There's there's two sides. There's one Instagram, but the other opportunity for us is LinkedIn. So LinkedIn for us was a bit is a bit of a blue ocean in terms of LinkedIn through sales flow. I remember I shared with you sales flow the other day. Sales flow is nice because you can you can you can so there's a you'll find this hilarious. My old sales mentor, because like I learned I learned sales from people that were fucking way better than me. He spoke to LinkedIn, and they LinkedIn confirmed that there's no there's no limit on volume of messages on LinkedIn when they're connected to you. So you can hit a thousand people in a day if you truly are that fucking insane. So basically, we use Sales Flow to give us a central location so that we can have all these conversations running 24-7 and it works because on LinkedIn there's way less uh smoke screens. I would say there's like there's very little, and you can see everything about some of them, absolutely everything.

SPEAKER_02: 56:21

I don't want to give you a show rate tactic for DMs. Hopefully, you don't do this. Uh I think I came up with this. So what I do is for every time we've booked in the DMs, I'll say to them, screenshot me, you've accepted it on the calendar, and I'll send you back a prize. And uh and then they send it back, so they screenshot it that they've accepted it. Then the prizes that I give them um a gift card for a coffee for a Starbucks at the same time as the call. I say, here's a gift that you can use to get yourself a coffee for our call, and I also send them a video of you know the pre-call one-month video, which is about an hour long. So I'll give them the video. So I say, I promised you one gift, but I'm actually gonna give you two. I give them a coffee voucher and I give them the the video to watch. And the consumption of that video, the consumption of the video has completely changed because you know on YouTube on the enlisted uh whether you use Vidalytics or YouTube, you can see people are watching it, but they're watching it now because we gave it as a prize. When it was given away, just like, hey, can you please make sure you watch this? Look at the positioning psychologically. Please make sure you watch this before the call, or else we might not take the call or whatever tactic compared to thank you for doing that. Here's a price. The difference in consumption is crazy. And then the coffee voucher is a reciprocity. So obviously, you know reciprocity very well from sales, and I thought, well, if it's gonna cost me four quid or four dollars, whatever it is, to and if I'm gonna make a hundred calls and it's gonna cost me four hundred dollars, I will get more show up rate and I would enclose more deals. So I give everyone a coffee voucher, and the crazy thing is the take up rate on the coffee is so low, they don't even use it. So we have these, we have like uh you can just give out these gift cards, they just say thank you, they really appreciate that you've done that. They show up to the call thanking you. We have so many people show up to the call saying, Man, thanks for the coffee voucher. That's really kind of you. I've never seen that done before, dude. I'm gonna 100% steal that. So screenshot, two gifts, two gifts. You see, most people online they have these tactics which is like force them to consume this video. You need to do this. I want everyone to smile. If they smile, they will buy from me. If they feel genuine love, they will want to buy. How do I create that feeling?

SPEAKER_01: 58:51

Dude, it's so interesting because you know, like all those pre-call videos, and like we have all that shit, right? It's like the reason why people don't watch it is because it's homework. You've given an entrepreneur, someone who's naturally rebellious, homework. Of course, they never watched your six-hour free fucking training. You know, there's nothing in them. Whereas, like the way that I try to position it is like, this is really for you, just so that you're prepared and just so that you can get the most out of the call. And it's this is important to you. And they're like, Oh, okay, great, that's fantastic, just so that I know that we're gonna talk about this. And uh it's it's funny, right? Everyone's thinking in eyes and not in news.

SPEAKER_02: 59:26

But by the way, when they send you that screenshot back, put confetti into the chat and balloons and say, Here's a gift, and literally make it animated. We make it as animated as possible, and uh, and then we'll also um sometimes have a voice note from the founder, and then you'll say, Thank you very much, man. Have a coffee on me, and then you'll send the voucher. And it's your voice saying it.

SPEAKER_01: 59:49

Fuck, that's such a good idea, Marita. Such a smart idea, man. Um, yeah, dude. Any any questions you have just like on the on the DM side? Because I think it's that's what I wanted to ask you, right? Was like, do M'sus dials is very interesting.

SPEAKER_02: 1:00:01

Did you find that you got to this upper end and they thought, now I need to start a new funnel? Have you are you gonna maintain that main thing now? Maintain that old.

SPEAKER_01: 1:00:08

Yeah, yeah, you're gonna make it like that's exactly it. Like I'd never recommend someone to quit to quit something that's working. You'll be shocked how many do I I know, I know, and that's what I'm always just like, dude, like just leave it running. So what what I found, you know, what do I feel a few things? Just a few things. And like this is so anecdotal, and it's not it's not 100% correct. I've just found for us that like the DM funnel is really qualified people because one we can prune them and then we can see the whole way through. And then when they go through the application form, like the quality of the leads, they're just way more warmer, even if they're cold. So, dude, I call follower ads warm traffic, I don't call them cold traffic at all because they come in, they're fucking following your page, bro. And whether they've been there five days or five months, they know everything about you, like it's way different when you're actually done running like a VSL funnel. So to me, that's still warm. I do have a question.

SPEAKER_02: 1:00:54

You know, you pay for that. Just a question for me most of my content on IG currently gets between 1,000 and 4,000 views. Yeah, so um the views aren't crazy. And um, if I was to run follower ads and I'm not making what what people consume as crazy valuable content because it was crazy valuable, everyone would be sharing it and everyone will be sending it to each other. So there's something it's not right, it's not perfect. So if I'm running follower ads and I'm sending them to a page that isn't fully dialed, how will that affect performance for follower ads for me compared for you?

SPEAKER_01: 1:01:32

Well, the logic for you is like you're helping people with uh like sales leadership, building out sales management and scaling up from like 200k onwards. So the people that are following your page are gonna be people that you want to be qualified. So if you have this fucking super autistic video about how you're building out a sales tracker and it's getting 2,000 views, but of the right people, I would turn that into a follower post and I would I would put$120 a spend through it a day. Then I would track the percentage of people that are qualified. So this guy is that I'm gonna give it a go. Yeah, 100%. Dude, I'm telling you, this is gonna work. Let me just explain exactly how to do this, right?

SPEAKER_02: 1:02:05

Just to give you a bit of context, my IG is for B2C sales reps that want to become sales managers. The B2B is all done through referrals and we don't really advertise for that as much. So B2B is done at events.

SPEAKER_01: 1:02:17

A fucking simple let me let me explain clearly. You have a you have a you have a you have a a reel that's like this something like I don't know who needs to hear this, but just being a sales rep on your own isn't gonna make you super rich. If you're a sales manager, you get a base plus a commission of the entire upside and eventually become like an equity partner. And what does that sound like? Right now you're struggling X, Y, Z, okay? That's the reel. It speaks to the sales rep, sales manager aspirational go. I trottle$70 through that just a day, just to see it. The people that come through, they're gonna be followers that are gonna be sales reps. They'll probably have something in their bio to do with the fact that they're a sales rep because they've probably been trying to get roles on Instagram. So you can see qualified followers. I would look at the percentage, providing it's above 15%, which I think it will be, it's good to scale it. And then when they come in, we just need to send a simple message being like, hey man, thank you so much for following. Are you currently in a sales role right now? Yes. Are you looking to, you know, basically become a sales manager and book them in? I guarantee you that that incubation period will be like 14 days. But even if it isn't, they'll be in the ecosystem, they're still following you, you keep hammering a message, and you'll have a shit ton of qualified people. Now, what we did there just to kind of improve a few things was uh we have like a free course, we get people to sign up on the free course. So it's like fucking comment the word course to learn how to build out a content system. When they when they when they follow on Mani Chat, they go to a landing page, they put in their details, and you can still dial them. So we have them on ManiChat, we have them on Instagram, and then we also have them in our CRM and so on. So it's like a ding ding ding. They're everywhere, they're everywhere.

SPEAKER_02: 1:03:52

And the main thing is do you capture the number and opt-in at that stage?

SPEAKER_01: 1:03:57

Yeah, yeah, they can do it there, and it'll it'll go straight into clothes and stuff as well. Um, so what I'm trying to say is then you get the full spectrum of everything, and then all you got to do is just make sure the setting's solid, you know? And uh, and then I I do think a lot of times it is like a setting issue why they're not rec really converting, because you either burn them too early or you don't do enough with them. Um and I I just think you just kind of you just throttle it, you stay on top of them. And I would say that if for people that are like beginners, not beginners, but I mean like sub six figures a month, it's the easiest funnel to scale if you don't know what you're doing with ads managers and so on, which was me, man. Like, and it is me in many ways, and you know, like you don't have to be you don't have to you can be a Potato and scale a follower funnel, like genuinely, genuinely, it's fucking so straightforward. Um, whereas I had a I don't I know I'm rambling, but I had a coaching call this morning with this guy that's based in uh he's based in Dubai, and he a lovely guy, and he feels like with three setters, he's coming up to the top of his follower funnel. And I was like, bro, you're making 60k a month, like you just need to fix the setting. And he's like, Oh, I'm gonna start a VSL funnel. Think of the 36 different hooks you need to learn to fucking figure out the VSL funnel. You can just fix the setting, which is basically what we're just gonna do for the next for December, just improve the messaging, you know, and it's it costs you fuck all, dude. That's that's the irony on all this stuff, it costs you nothing compared to all the other stuff.

SPEAKER_02: 1:05:17

Yeah, and operationally, most people try to build a webinar and to do a webinar or a VSL phone, let's say they're gonna do a webinar. The your first webinar is gonna be dog shit because you're not done on before. Most people look at these experts who are doing a webinar, present amazing, not only the psychological words in the webinar, but the presenting, the the like delivering it properly. It takes you around five girls to be able to get good if you're already understanding marketing at a good level. And then think about a VSL funnel. There's so much data and so much like daily accountability you have to have on yourself for a VSL funnel. So a follower ad funnel, I would actually think that is the best tactic for someone who's trying to grow early on.

SPEAKER_01: 1:05:59

And also, dude, you can respectfully be a dumbass and still uh work it out. So that's why I think it's hilarious selling high ticket because, like, for instance, like our low-end product is 6k. So we can do a bunch of mistakes and still I'll I'll give you an actual story. Like, I'll give you an actual story. We had a DM setter, was except he was exceptional in the beginning, and then he had like a performance hit and really went down and really kind of went off the rails. He was very good in the beginning, but he would always hit the same leads that didn't close for whatever reason with like a bullshit message and follow up on. This one of these guys actually has closed recently and has become like a really good client of ours. And I said to our team, being like, This was someone that we quote unquote might have burned, but we still worked out positive. Whereas you don't have that margin for error in a VSL funnel. I know you had that podcast with Dan Henry, and that's actually one of the reasons why we we got on so well. It was just like a funny podcast. And like I love Dan, obviously, he's like a fucking hero of the industry, but as you pointed out in the podcast, all the things that he knows that took him 15 years or whatever to learn. I don't think someone can immediately do it out of the box. But you can fuck up a sales process, fuck up the first call, dial them two months later, and still close them. Because I because I've done it hundreds of times, dude, hundreds of times. I've made mistakes over the years and still recovered something. So it's interesting, right? I don't know. I think we're both more on the sales side than on the marketing side. And um, I just feel very passionate about it because there's obviously a massive swing in the industry where it's like it's all marketing, it's not sales. And it's like, well, man, a lot a lot of hundred million dollar companies are sales companies first, right? Hormosis is a sales company funny enough.

SPEAKER_02: 1:07:42

You um you may not class yourself as an influencer because your podcast is successful, you are an influencer, whether you see yourself that way or not. And to be to have the growth that you do in terms of some of your viewership. I think you've got a Luke Belmar video that's got crazy views, some of like your top-performing videos on YouTube and or short form as well, to have that and the sales ability, and now you're understanding leadership operations, that is the recipe of a great entrepreneur. So I don't know what your goals are in terms of do you want to make 10 million, do you want to make a hundred? But the foundational skills that you've got to me, I think you're gonna be mega successful.

SPEAKER_01: 1:08:17

Thank you, butter. I appreciate it. Well, likewise, you know, it both it works both both works both ways. Um for you, I think what do you think from like a next steps? Like looking at your like you talk a lot about leadership and like developing younger people. How do you how do you plan to really become to get guys to become more sales managers? Because I think it's interesting, right? Like that's a very interesting offer, it's a very unique offer as well.

SPEAKER_02: 1:08:42

I think with the only people who teach sales management, especially at the level that we do, and it's not for most people, it doesn't look sexy because everyone can go online and promise you instant gratification and say 10k a month, become a closer. But for closers, you have who you're successful, you have uh two paths to go down. Either, well, you three, you can you can keep closing, but you are constrained to your calendar, there's a limit to your earning, and this is why at a certain level you have to stop buying sales training as a closer because how much more money are you gonna earn? If you've done closing for one, two years, your next step is either open your own business or become a sales manager. And if those are your two options, opening your own business is such a big learning curb. But because most people see ads and think and it's made to seem easy, they'll think I'll just do it, I'll just open my own business or my own offer. But think about the marketing, the amount of things they need to learn, because they've got one competency out of a hundred, but the because they've closed sales, they've never truly understood how much the business did to generate that call for them. That's one thing, and obviously deliver on the promise of that uh of the product service. The next thing is becoming a sales manager to me is a natural, natural progression because let's say there's nine components of sales management tracking systems, hiring people, ramping up meetings, training sales training, developing others, um leadership, and uh what's the last one? Uh hiring. Let's say you've got all of these uh nine components of sales leadership, you have one of them, which is sales training. You can train somebody else because you understand what it is. You can kind of you might not be the amazing coach, but you understand what a good call is. Now, if you learn all these other eight components strategically, which you can do at a good pace, now you can start multiplying your calendar, which was constrained with just your earning times 10, times 20 reps. You can maybe manage multiple offers, you can manage one team. And I see it as the closest natural step, but because it's not the most viral thing to say, open your own offer, make 200k, it it we attract a real sophisticated person who's like, I know I've been held back in my job, I know I should have got promoted, I know I'm due for the next step. I can go from earning 8k, 10k, 15k to 20, 25, 30, 40. And that's why our offer works so well. And the promise that we give them is we'll also be able to place you. And we can promise that because we have great B2B relationships, like we have all the biggest sales trainers that we spoke about earlier on the call, they take our sales managers, they want sales managers from us, which is why me visiting, shaking their hands has been uh monumental in our growth for our business, because those relationships they can then sell sales managers to their clients and they'll ask us, knock on our door, and say, Can we get a sales manager? And we'll place one of these sales managers into their company, or our B2B consulting side, we can give them a sales manager.

SPEAKER_01: 1:11:45

Yeah, dude, it's a it's a next step, right? Because again, when I went back to founder-led sales and to bring in a closer, when the closures are in place, then you want to get out of the sales management, and then that's when you need someone else to come in. So it's like I feel like it's like a role that no one even thinks about. Maybe you know, if you're huge, if you're like a Ryan Clog is different, but I mean it's just people just think, oh, the chaos is always going to be there, and I'm just gonna be always managing the DMs, managing the dials, and managing the closures. Like it is a it is a huge opportunity. I guess one question I have around this on a sales manager side is how do you ensure the sales manager matches the pace of maybe you and the culture and fitting in well, right? Because sometimes the business that you built is based off your drive, and people just want to follow you, and now they're following Scott, you know.

SPEAKER_02: 1:12:33

Okay, so what I did was I learned from the trading niche. So we had a lot of trading clients. Obviously, you've seen all these crypto offers and all this stuff. We took on a lot of these clients, and I learned in their programs they always have a sandbox, and in their sandbox mode, they would practice a lot. So we created scenarios for our sales managers to do sandbox training, role plays, drills, and we come up with so many different scenarios for these sales managers, and we can check their competency very well. And then based upon their experience as a closer, what they've seen before, if they've worked for a business doing 500k a month, 2 million a month, we can match them up with a business. And then what we do is we don't just place them, we will support them for around eight to 12 weeks during the ramp up of that sales manager. So the sales manager continues to come back to us and they have an open door where they can say, Hey, I just need some help hiring this team, and the business owner can also ask us for support. There's two separate Slack channels, and we're able to onboard and ramp up the sales manager because that's the big part of this. If you just throw someone into a line, then they might not be successful, but we guarantee success by the consultant.

SPEAKER_01: 1:13:42

100% dude. That's that's the biggest thing, right? Having like a full overview of like what the fuck is going on inside the business, you know. Um, I'm in I'm interested in your thoughts about the uh the placing of the the setters and so on. Um, how do you how do you do that at a at a high level? Do you do you also have a setting training program?

SPEAKER_02: 1:14:01

Uh it's free. All of our sales training is free. Everything that's for salespeople. Uh, we don't have a setter specific program right now. Like our school community is uh all for closers and we just uh we'll place them in. Set a training, set a training we we give to all the B2B companies. So all of our B2B companies will have set a training for their clients. So we'll have a set of coach for them. But do we have a module that a setters can consume? Not really. I don't think it's um it's the thing that they need from us. We need more, like we want more closes as well because we use that to recruit and place them as well. So when we get them training, we'll also place them in.

SPEAKER_01: 1:14:36

Yeah, because I was just curious about that because I know that you you were mentioned that you're placing some setters as well, just part of the hiring engine that you know, we fill in the gaps basically. It's either a setting, closing, or management issue, you know?

SPEAKER_02: 1:14:46

Yeah, we have around six different communities that train setters, those feeding to our head of recruitment, and then every time we're looking for a setter, they'll ask those seven communities, the head of recruitment will message those seven communities, and then instantly they'll give us a setter and we'll interview a group of those setters and then we'll present the best candidates to the business.

SPEAKER_01: 1:15:09

Sick, dude. Dude, that's insane. Yeah, it's again, it's just getting the business to the next level. That's a big thesis from this, you know. Dude, I want to say a massive thank you. This is a this is this has been so awesome.