How To Build And Run A Sales Team That Doesn’t Suck

How To Build And Run A Sales Team That Doesn’t Suck No-BS Insights From Growing 6 Different Businesses To 8-Figures In Cash Collected And Training Over 1000 Sales Reps By Dean Kozora Introduction My name is Dean Kozora, but you probably don’t care about who I am and you likely don’t want to hear about some genius “new neuroscience” sales methodology I’ve created. (By the way, the majority of that is total BS.) More than likely, you just want to know whether reading this document will be worth your time and whether or not it will actually affect your bottom line. This document is not based on theory. It’s not regurgitated information that you can get from a Brian Tracy book. It’s not a guru framework that will 1000X your revenue overnight or you don’t pay. This is the real deal on what it takes to scale a sales team to $1,000,000 per month and above based on my own experience doing exactly that. This document will give you everything I've learned building and running seven-figure per month sales teams, which I’ve been done 6 separate times: * We grew a detox offer from $300k per month to $1M per month in 6 months with 4 closers and 1 DM setter * We scaled a health and wellness company from $1.2 million per month to $4.8 million per month in 5 months with a 77-person sales organization * We took a personal development brand from $600K to $1.6 million in 2 months with 7 closers and 3 setters * We built a sales division from scratch for an e-commerce platform and got them to $400k per month in 45 days * We took a tech job training offer from $80k per month to $1.4 per month in 16 months * We took an automated trading software from $700k per month to $1.6 million per month in 9 months I’m sharing these results not to brag or “flex” on you (my biceps are actually my worst trait if we’re being honest). I’m sharing this with you because the majority of what you see online on “running sales teams” is from some broccoli head kid in Miami who was a closer for 6 months on an offer and then ran 1 team to $100k a month and found that info/coaching is easier than doing the thing. We have built and are currently building sales teams from the ground up. We’ve grown sales teams to over $1,000,000 a month and are actively scaling multiple teams as we speak. We’ve done the thing and we’re still doing it, every day of the year. You can see that I’m saying “We…” more than “I…” because the truth is, none of this would've been possible without the talented people I have around me. I take some credit, but they get the majority of it because they let me focus all of my time on the things I do best. Those things are: finding the right people, training those people, keeping those people held accountable, and leading them…that’s exactly what we’re covering today. The reason I’m giving you literally everything I know on this topic (for free) is because chances are, if this information is interesting enough to you that you’ll read a full document about it, you are serious about growing your sales team. If that’s the case, you should hire us to audit your sales team, not only is it a no-brainer offer but also, very few people in the high ticket space understand building and growing sales teams to the degree that we do at Hardly Selling. We’re kind of the best at what we do. Just sayin’. Here’s what we do in that audit: * We’re going to go through your funnel and audit the entire sales process, pointing out where you’re losing potential customers, not based on our subjective opinion but rather what we’ve seen work for our 7 and 8 figure clients. * We opt-in multiple times and book in multiple calls as an anonymous buyer with your team to see how your setters are doing and how your closers are doing. * After our opt-ins and bookings we’re going to take a look at all of your follow up SMS and email sequences to make sure there’s no incongruencies confusing your prospects before they show up to the call. (More common than you think) * Last but definitely not least, we’re going to look at all of your sales team data (or lack thereof) and show you the easiest points of leverage which can 5x, 10x, and in some cases, even 100x your results. (No guarantees on the 100x…my friend Taylor Welch said I should disclose that so the FTC doesn’t come after my ass.) The audit costs $2500, and we’ve taken all the risk off the table for you by putting a pretty stupid guarantee on it. Simply put, if you do what we tell you to do and it doesn’t bring in 25-35% more revenue to your business within 90 days, we’ll pay you back double what the audit cost. Meaning, if you’re doing $100k per month and you implement everything we show you and you’re not at a bare minimum of $125k per month in 90 days, I’m going to send $5k to your bank account just as my way of saying sorry for wasting your time. However, in the likely case that doing what we tell you to do does boost your revenue a (bare minimum) of 25%, you’re likely going to want to hire us to help you with other stuff like recruiting, consulting, or maybe even just running your team for you. We have a tendency to make it rain and people like to pay us to do that. If you want to take us up on that audit, go here and book in a pre-audit call to get started. You’re under no obligation to do that, but if you’re doing a minimum of $75,000 per month and don’t want to do that, are you even serious about growing your business? The point of this document is not to solely convince you to hire us to audit your team. It’s to give you everything I know about hiring, training, managing, and leading a sales team. Whether or not you want to work with us afterwards is up to you. Okay, I think I’ve said my piece, let’s get started. Yours Truly, Dean Kozora Founder @ Hardly Selling Section 1: Systemizing Everything Let me paint you a picture of how most companies try to build a sales team. They post a job on Indeed, Upwork, or they post on their Facebook and Instagram looking for "experienced closers" with "proven track records." They get a bunch of applications from people who claim they were the top rep at their last company (spoiler: they weren't). The business owner then hires the person who interviews best, throws them on the phones with minimal training, and prays they perform. When that person inevitably fails, quits, or somehow thinks it’s a good idea to move to Thailand within 60 days, the business owner blames the hire. Here's the truth nobody wants to admit: The problem isn't the people. It's the fact that you don't have a system to find the right people and turn them into championship level talent. Think about McDonald's for a second. They don't hire experienced burger flippers. They hire people who can’t speak English or they hire 16-year-olds who are smoking weed in the parking lot. (That’s the best case scenario) Regardless of that, their restaurants are a machine that pumps out cheeseburgers and they get consistent results. Mcdonalds has systems that work regardless of who's operating them. Your sales team should work the same way. The difference between companies stuck at $100k/month and those scaling to seven figures is simple: The successful ones build hiring and training machines, not hero cultures. So if we’re going to talk about systems let’s break down all of the systems that exist when it comes to running a team. I had my marketing team put together this beautiful graphic for you to break down the two overarching systems: Pre-Hire and Post-Hire So both of those big systems have little systems in them like finding reps, qualifying reps, and interviewing reps. then you need to onboard reps, train reps, track reps, and lead those reps. We’re covering all of that in this document. Now, before we dive into all of that it’s extremely important to note that these systems only work if we have the right team size. Going back to our McDonald’s example, each location also has the right amount of people in the kitchen. If they had 100 people back there, it would be absolute chaos and nothing would work smoothly. Same thing applies to sales teams, you need to make sure you have the right-sized team for the revenue level you're at. Here’s the exact team sizes I recommend based on your monthly revenue: * $0 to $100k per month: At this stage, keep things lean. It’s probably just you closing, maybe one additional closer, and possibly a setter. That's it. * $100k to $300k per month: You want around 1-2 closers and 2-3 setters. The operation is still manageable, but you've got enough manpower to consistently book calls and close deals. * $300k to $600k per month: Add in a sales manager to handle daily operations and training. You’ll want about 2-3 closers and 3-4 setters at this point. This is where having a clear management structure becomes crucial. * $600k to $1M per month: Your team should now include 1 sales manager, 4-6 closers, and around 5-8 setters. At this stage, efficiency is key. Too many reps means mediocrity starts creeping in…too few, and you won’t hit your growth targets. * $1M per month and above: At this level, team size can scale up as needed, but the rule of thumb remains the same: lean is always better. More reps don't necessarily mean more revenue, often it's the opposite. Now, when I say 5-8 setters, I don’t mean 4 average setters and 1 pretty good setter. I mean 5-8 championship level setters who are absolute rockstars on the phone. Sometimes the best thing you can do is cut your roster and go through a rebuilding phase. For example, with one of our clients, EFX, an automated trading software, they had 12 people on their setting team but 80% of the closed deals were coming from 20% of the team. We didn’t just go straight to firing, we first tried to uplevel the 80% of underperforming talent. But, unfortunately, you can’t polish a turd. So we cut half the roster and brought in new A-level talent that raised up the standard of the team. You could literally feel the difference in the energy and excitement from the team AND with the conversations they were having with their prospects. Again, I cannot emphasize this enough, too big of a team means you’re allowing mediocrity and inefficiency. A sales team should be lean, focused, and efficient. If your team feels bloated, that’s a clear sign you have management, training, or recruiting issues. Bottom line: More isn't better. The right number of skilled, well-managed reps is what makes the machine run smoothly. So let’s start with pre-hire and talk about how to find, qualify, and interview potential hires. Section 2: Pre-Hire - Finding, Qualifying, And Interviewing Reps A lot of people have this idea that they’re going to find some hidden Jordan Belfort who was a beast on another offer and that unicorn closer is going to come in and completely dominate. First, that’s not going to happen. Second, you don’t want that to happen and I’ll tell you why in a bit. So let’s be realistic and think about what actually happens when you go looking for sales talent to join your team. You can find reps from online job boards. You can find reps from Facebook groups. You can find reps from your network of other business owners. You can hire sales recruiting services. But, and this is a big but, the best closers I ever hired weren’t “closers.” They were past clients. They already knew the offer. They understood the prospect’s pain points better than most closers ever will. The best salespeople aren’t in some job board database, they’re already in your world, they had the problems your prospects are dealing with currently. So the easiest way to find your next closer or setter that costs virtually nothing is reaching out to your past clients, but eventually that well will dry up, or it may not be possible considering who you sell to. The next best option is to hire us and let us handle your recruiting (hey, it’s true) and the next best option from there is to reach out to your network. The last resort should be job boards like Indeed or Upwork. This is just what I’ve seen from my own experience. Now, once we have prospects for the role, we need to qualify and filter out who is and isn’t a good fit. So what we need is something I call an ISRP which is an Ideal Sales Rep Profile. I came up with this a few years back and it’s been a gamechanger for all of the teams we work with ever since. You get access to it today, for free, because Big Daddy Kozora wants to see you succeed. It’s a worksheet that will help you identify what this person looks like, it takes 20-60 minutes to fill out and you can get access here. The ISRP is basically a detailed profile of: Who sells your offer best? What industry did they come from? How do they understand your client’s experience? What is their relevant authority? If you’re selling fitness coaching, you don’t hire someone 80 pounds overweight just because they can talk fast. If you’re selling finance, you don’t hire a 21-year-old living paycheck to paycheck because they’re “hungry”. All of this information is more important than how slick they sound in an interview, or what previous experience they have from other offers. If you were selling to accountants, I would rather hire someone with accounting experience and zero sales experience than someone who has gone through every sales training program in the world. This is hard for most business owners to accept because they romanticize sales, but industry/relevant life experience will outperform sales experience every day of the week. So our qualifications should not be sales accolades but rather that they’re someone our prospect will be able to relate with. However, that alone can’t be the sole reason you hire, there’s only so many people that fit your ISRP but also you have to filter for energy and skill. If someone sounds like a zombie, I don’t want them. If someone is rude or dismissive, I don’t want them. If someone doesn’t speak English clearly and articulately, I don’t want them. When someone applies for this role (I recommend Typeform or Jotform for your application) have them send call recordings from previous sales roles if possible. Listening to these tells you more than a resume or references ever could. You’ll immediately hear if they can naturally lead a conversation, handle objections, and actually close or set. You also want to ask about previous experience, what their availability is like, why they want this role, and most importantly, you want to understand what success looks like to that potential hire. Now, let’s say you’ve filtered through 20 or 40 candidates and we’ve narrowed it down to 3-5 solid candidates. We’re going to invite these people to an interview where we’re going to run a quick role-play interview. On this call we’ll put them through realistic scenarios they'll face daily. The idea isn’t to see if they perfectly execute your script yet, that doesn’t make sense considering you haven’t trained them yet. Rather, what we’re trying to see is how fast they think, how comfortable they are under pressure, and if they have that intangible skill of controlling the flow of conversation without sounding forced. Do not hire just anyone on these calls. If they did a good job and you’d like to consider them for the position, I would recommend asking for referrals from past job experience. Everybody says they were a top performer. Most of them weren’t. Ask for proof. If someone says they consistently closed at 50%, ask to connect with either a former sales manager or the former business owner who can back that up. You’ll be shocked how many times you’ll discover the person was fired because they were a diva or because they couldn’t close a door and they’re just BSing you on the interview. (Sales reps will be sales reps, they’re called professional bullshitters for a reason!) You should be able to narrow down to 1 candidate. If you can’t decide between 2, grab a coin, make candidate #1 heads and candidate #2 tails, flip the coin and whoever you want it to land on is who you should hire. Now, what I recommend doing when you decide on a candidate is to reach out to them. Tell them you were impressed with their resume and role play, and you’re excited to move forward with them. Yes, gas them up a bit! We want them excited to be a part of your company. You’ll want to also schedule a call with them to get them onboarded (we’ll cover this in the next section) and lock in their compensation which you should have disclosed in the job role/application. For setters, I recommend $1,500 base plus 3% of cash that comes in. If you find someone exceptional and want to keep them, you can make special deals and pay them more, but this is your starting point. The alternative structure that often works better is $1,500 base plus $500 for every deal that actually closes. I prefer this approach because it's cleaner and aligns the setter's incentives with actual results, not just appointments booked. If you're paying based on appointments set, they're going to throw everything and anything onto the calendar. You'll end up with a bunch of unqualified prospects who waste your closers' time. When setters get paid for closed deals, they have skin in the game to send over quality appointments. For closers, keep it simple: 10% of cash collected. Not contracts signed, not projected revenue, but actual cash that hits your bank account. If you want to make a special deal with someone exceptional and give them 12% or 13%, that's fine for individual negotiations, but don't make that your standard because it won't scale as you grow. Do all of this correctly, and by the time you make the hire, you’ll have the perfect hire ready to go, but even an A-player will struggle unless they’re properly onboarded. Section 3: Post-Hire - Onboarding Reps Once you’ve hired a rep, the next critical step is onboarding. This is where most companies completely drop the ball. They hire someone and toss them onto calls with minimal prep, zero clarity, and no standardization. That’s why they get piss poor results. I would recommend putting as much effort as possible into crafting a kickass onboarding experience because this not only impacts the confidence which the rep shows up with on the phone, but it also impacts whether or not they’re even excited to work for you. To start out what you want to do is create an onboarding document which systematizes the entire onboarding process. It should be structured into clear sections so every rep knows exactly what's expected of them from Day 1. I would recommend copying and pasting the below structure onto a google doc and then going through and recording a video on loom for each individual bullet point, linking a google doc, or a a drive folder with videos/recordings. 1. Intro * Welcome message from the owner or sales manager. * Introduction to the team and company culture. * Clearly define the rep’s role and responsibilities. * Include a sales playbook and any critical resources. 2. Basics About The Company * What do we do? * Who do we serve? * What specific problems do we solve for our clients? * Walkthrough of your program or product. Customer testimonials and success stories (this gets reps excited and confident about what they're selling). 3. Systems * Clearly list all software and systems your rep will use (CRM, Slack, payment processors, calendars, etc.) * Video walkthroughs of exactly how to use each tool. * Clarify where and how deals should be tracked. * Provide a workflow or chart showing how the sales process works from start to finish. 4. Sales Training * Recordings of successful sales calls. * Your exact sales script. * Objection-handling frameworks specific to your offer. * Role-play examples or recordings that demonstrate good sales conversations. 5. Extras * Additional call recordings. * FAQs about common scenarios and tricky objections. This is exactly how we onboard every new hire at Hardly Selling. It eliminates confusion, gives reps clarity, and sets expectations from Day 1. On a Monday morning, have a kickoff meeting with your new rep. Share the onboarding doc and clearly instruct them that their job for the first week is to go through everything thoroughly. Make it clear that you'll be meeting with them again on Friday to review what they learned and to answer their questions. When you reconvene on Friday, you'll be able to tell immediately who actually went through the document and who didn't, based purely on the questions they ask. People who did their homework will have specific, thoughtful questions about the material. It’s very obvious for you to tell who did their homework and who didn’t. To start, housing this in a simple Google Doc is perfectly fine because you'll frequently update this as your company grows or your offer evolves. But once you’re happy with the structure, videos, and material, migrate everything into Kajabi or a similar training platform. This is what will allow you to track whether or not your reps actually completed the material. You then want to run a roleplay with them as a final test to pass to make sure it matches your script and it’s something youre okay with. They need to pass to get on calls. If you’re not confident in their current skill I would recommend doing a bit more training before throwing them out into the wild but when they’re good to go, we want to ramp them up incrementally. For the following 2 weeks, they’re at 50% capacity of call volume for you to ensure that they’re not going to waste your time or money. The reason why this is so important is because according to Hubspot the average sales rep takes 6-9 months to onramp to average performance, you’ll be able to see within 1 month whether or not someone is going to be below average, average, or exceptional. Do NOT pack someone’s calendar on day 1 regardless of their skill level. Now, once you’ve properly onboarded the rep, we need to get them on a training/review cadence so we can make sure they’re doing their job properly and fixing any mistakes that pop up along the way. Section 4: Post-Hire - Training Reps Here’s how I approach training my reps: structured, consistent, but not excessive. You don’t want to be the person who’s holding a training every single morning and drilling your team to the point of burnout. If your reps feel micromanaged or exhausted, their performance will tank. But at the same time, you can’t just throw them on the phones and hope they magically figure things out. First and foremost, you need to be doing call reviews. Even if you have a sales manager, you should be reviewing a handful of calls a few times a month. If it’s just you and no sales manager to start, you need to review calls weekly, ideally twice a week. This is how you find out what's actually happening on the phones. Have your reps record every call, and then review a few calls each week for new team members and the ones who’s performance is struggling. If you have a closer who’s closing 60% of his calls or a setter who’s leading the boards every week, I would recommend leaving them alone and just let them do their thing. Now, there is the chance that they’re promising something they shouldn’t be, but you should be able to screen that out when they’re a new hire. If you see a dramatic spike in performance from a rep (more on tracking here in a bit) it’s also worth looking into what they’re doing differently. Here’s what you should listen for on call reviews: * Did they stick to the script? If not, why? Do we need to change parts of the script? Should we do a training on a new specific instance that’s popping up consistently? * How well did they handle objections? Did they go about it skillfully or did they let the prospect off the hook? What could they do differently? * Did they clearly communicate the value of the offer? Did they accurately describe what we do? Are they making stuff up? * Did they maintain control of the call or did they let the prospect drive it? Are they presenting a good image for the company? Now, there’s a chance you may not be the person who needs to be training your reps. For example, one of our clients who’s teams we scaled was Chris Garzon. He ran an offer helping Data Engineers land high paying jobs because that was his background. Chris did not know shit about sales, so he hired us to build and manage his team…he went from $80k to $1.4M per month because of that. A lot of what I personally believe holds business owners back is thinking they can and should do everything inside their business. Like I said earlier, a lot of business owners romanticize sales because of movies like Boiler Room, Wolf Of Wall Street, or Glengary Glenross…sometimes it’s best to just hire professionals to train your team. Sales training is a 7.7 billion dollar industry for a reason. Regardless of whether you hire someone or choose to do it yourself, what’s important is knowing the right cadence for training. A lot of people overdo this. Here’s what I recommend based on team size: * Small Team (Under $300k/month): Do individual call reviews weekly. Spend time with each rep, pinpointing exactly what they're doing well and what needs improvement. This tailored approach helps reps quickly adjust and gets them closing confidently sooner. * Mid-Sized Team ($300k-$600k/month): Introduce weekly group reviews. Select a couple of recorded calls each week, then gather your entire team to review them together. Let your reps share their perspectives and what they noticed, too. This encourages learning from one another and gives your reps the opportunity to see various scenarios play out live. It also builds camaraderie and promotes healthy competition. * Larger Team ($600k/month and above): At this level, you'll want a dedicated sales manager running the weekly group training sessions. Your role as the owner or head of sales becomes more strategic and less tactical. You shouldn’t pull your top closer off calls to become a manager—choose someone who naturally fits the management role. This person will handle weekly group reviews, keeping everyone aligned, ensuring the quality of conversations stays high, and providing focused training when needed. Now, I want to address this because it’s important. There are a lot of sales trainers in the industry who push for daily sales training and daily call reviews. This is dumb, and I highly advise against it. Personally, I think that’s a waste of everyone’s time. Not only does it lead to information overload, but it also creates unnecessary pressure. Imagine showing up every single day just to have someone tell you everything you’re doing wrong. That’s super demotivating. Again, 1-2 call reviews per week, even if you have a large group, 1-2 weekly 1on1 calls with the beginners is a great idea ontop of group calls, but if the reps are performing you don’t need to do 1on1s with them. Now, here’s the #1 mistake I see a lot of business owners make and it 100% screws them over in the long run: Never EVER (under ANY circumstances) pull your top closer or setter off the phone to become a trainer or manager. Your best rep is your most valuable sales asset, don’t waste their time on administrative tasks or turning them into a coach. Instead, take your second or third best closer or someone who has natural leadership qualities and groom them into that sales manager role. Ignore this at your own peril. So those are your weekly cadences, but you also need to have a daily stand up with your team Monday through Friday. These are not coaching calls or training calls. We run it for 30 minutes per day in the morning. The first 5 minutes are celebrating wins, personal or professional. We then spend another 5 or 10 minutes talking about case studies from clients, and it’s even better if it’s someone the reps personally sold. This is how to get your team to have unwavering belief in your product they need to see proof. We then hit daily, weekly, monthly projections for every sales team member. For the people who are winning, I want them to feel it, and for the losers, I want them to feel it We are trying to build a championship level team here, not a kumbaya participation trophy culture. Everyone has felt that energy of being on a team of winners. When you’re behind there is pressure to perform and we want that! Without that in place you won't be able to win the championship. Now, I want to conclude this section by emphasizing that the point of training is not to overwhelm or micromanage your reps, it’s simply to give them ongoing support so they can improve over time. That’s how you maintain quality, reduce turnover, and build a sales team that scales predictably month after month. Next, let’s discuss how to actually lead your reps to keep them consistently producing at a high level and actually wanting to be a part of your culture. Section 5: Post-Hire - Tracking Reps If you’re not consistently looking at your sales team’s data, you’re running your business blind. It’s like flying a car without a dash, you don’t know how fast you’re going or if there’s any issues with the engine. Without clear visibility into what each rep is doing every single day, you won’t know who’s killing it, who’s coasting, and who needs immediate support or intervention. The smart business owner asks, “But Dean? How do I track our numbers effectively and how did you get so big?” Well, testosterone is the second answer but the first answer is, you should use the sheet we use with all of our teams. It’s pretty straightforward, you have a central dashboard and then individual sheets for all of your reps, that way you can see what’s going on in real time. If your reps are updating their numbers just once per month, or even once per week, that data is worthless. I’ve talked to companies who lost hundreds of thousands of dollars because they didn’t know one of their reps was underperforming until it was too late. CASE STUDY. Your rep’s numbers must be visible and updated at the end of every single workday. Without this visibility, you won’t know: * Who needs additional one-on-one training or coaching * Who needs immediate correction or support * Who might need to be put on a Performance Improvement Plan (PIP) * Which reps are excelling and deserve recognition or incentive adjustments Here’s exactly how you set this up effectively: 1. Use The Damn Tracker Every rep must update the tracker at the end of every day. If someone misses a day because they forgot, that’s fine. If they miss two days in a month, have a discussion with them about why it’s important that they fill it out. If someone misses three days in a month, I would have a discussion with them about their future in the company if you know what I mean. 2. Daily End-of-Day Reports At the end of each shift, every rep needs to submit a brief end-of-day report in Slack (or whatever internal communication platform you’re using). It should include: * What they accomplished today * Their daily KPIs (calls made, appointments set, deals closed, etc.) * Any blocks or issues they're facing * Any wins worth highlighting 3. Dual-Weekly Review Every week, twice a week, review the data and identify trends. If someone’s numbers dip or spike dramatically, you can quickly investigate what's going on, whether good or bad, and address it immediately. You’ll know exactly who you should meet one-on-one and precisely what you need to talk about. 4. Transparency & Accountability Seriously, as often as possible, emphasize to everyone on your team why updating these numbers consistently is non-negotiable. If reps know their daily activity is transparent and being actively monitored, their level of accountability and consistency will naturally rise. 5. Use Data to Improve Performance With accurate daily data, you can: * See immediately if a rep’s conversion rates drop * Quickly offer support if someone’s call volume is declining * Reward top performers immediately rather than weeks after the fact * Maintain clear expectations and performance standards Again, the tracker we provide makes this incredibly easy. It’s simple, it’s clear, and it’s effective. Make sure every single rep understands that keeping this data up-to-date isn't just busy work, it's literally how the business grows, how they earn more money, and how you know exactly where to direct your leadership and support. Without daily tracking, you have no idea what’s happening inside your sales team. With daily tracking, you have complete control and clarity. So grab the tracker template above, implement it immediately, and make sure everyone on your team is crystal clear that this is mandatory. Want to know the best way to get your reps to listen to you? Benchpress more than them. Kidding (Kind of). Let’s move on to the next section about leadership. Section 6: Post-Hire - Leading Reps Here's the truth that nobody wants to hear about leadership: Most people in leadership positions aren't worth following. Think to yourself, “Am I somebody worth fucking following?” If you were to look at yourself in the mirror, can you honestly say that you would follow 100% of what you do? If you told yourself to do something, would you actually do it? If you want people to listen to you, you have to be willing to listen to yourself. Leadership isn't just what you do on calls or in meetings. It's what you say, it's how you show up, it's what you do on a day-to-day basis. Do you take care of yourself? Do you wake up in a timely manner? Do you have a great relationship at home? Do you do what you said you’re going to do? Do you NOT do what you said you’re NOT going to do? All of these things encompass great leadership. Now past being someone worth following, you also need to understand that leadership is caring. These are human beings that are trusting you to take care of them financially in return for them helping you grow your business. They are not robots. They are not slaves. They have emotions, moods, along with ups and downs. They have dreams, goals, ambitions, and aspirations. I used to think that you have to rule with an iron fist and yell at people when they mess up but I always felt like shit when I did that. The best teams are all having a great time, and there is zero yelling necessary. Want to know what’s more effective than shouting and having a temper tantrum? Giving a shit. People will give a shit about you and your business if they can see you give a shit about them. If you don't know your team's goals, if you don't know their kids' names, if you don't know what's going on with them, you’re not a good leader. When I was running a 77 person team that we scaled from $1M per month to $4.8M per month in the health coaching space, I could tell you the name of every person on that sales team along with their spouse’s names, their kids' names, why they were working, and what their goals were. Why did I want to know all that stuff? Well, first off, if Bob is having a bad week, I can redirect him toward what he wants. Second, when you get this deep with your team, they start to go to bat for you and they start being more transparent with you. If they're having a bad day instead of just having piss poor numbers, they're going to tell you: "Dean, hey, I'm not feeling good this morning. I had X happen at home, I think Mike or someone else should take my calls today, I’m not going to show up correctly." You can solve a lot of problems before they become problems, just by showing that you care. Here's one thing I do that I stole from Ed Mylett: A couple times a week I will grab a selfie video and I will send it to someone on my team. I’ll say something like: "Aaron, what's up, man? Hey, I just wanted to reach out personally, let you know how much I care and appreciate you. You're an awesome human. If you need anything, I'm here. But I just wanted to let you know, I love you like a brother and you’re awesome." That takes 12 seconds. But who does that? Hardly anybody. Team members are like relationships. You have to nurture them and yes, the little things matter. It's the little things that make people feel good. And if you make them feel good, as a result, they produce good. For example, we had a closer on a team we were managing that absolutely smashed his goals for the month. He lived in Florida, so I paid for him to go to the Bahamas for the weekend with his girlfriend. That little act kept him giving us his very best because it showed we gave a shit about him. Another point worth mentioning is that as a leader, you are in control of people's energy. Energy controls everything. If I'm having a good day as a sales rep, my prospects feel that good energy. If I’m having a bad day as a sales rep, my prospects can feel that as well. When I get on meetings with the team, if energy is down, I command it to be up. I will force people's energy up at every meeting because I am the controller of energy that day. I have literally stopped sales meetings and told everyone to crank out 50 push ups because I need the energy to be 5 levels hire. When we get back on the call I crack a joke, ask them if we're done having a pity party or whatever needs to be adjusted and suddenly everyone’s laughing, energy is back up, and we can all go smash our goals for the day. I cannot stress this enough, leadership is giving a shit about the other person. Everything starts and ends with us in leadership and the more you show up as a leader for yourself, the easier it will be to show up as a leader for your team. Wrap Up Alright, we've covered a lot of ground here. You now have everything I know about building a sales team that doesn't suck. But here's the thing, knowing this stuff and actually implementing it are two completely different things. Look, you have three options right now: Option 1: You do absolutely nothing with this information. You close this document, maybe save it to your desktop, and tell yourself you'll "get to it later." Spoiler alert: you won't. Your business will keep getting the same mediocre results it's getting now, or worse, it'll start declining because you're not growing while your competitors are. Option 2: You try to implement all of this yourself. This is better than doing nothing, but let's be real…there’s a ton of stuff we couldn't cover in one document. You're going to run into issues we didn't anticipate. Maybe your leads suck because your marketing is broken. Maybe your offer positioning is off. Maybe you're attracting the wrong type of sales talent because your company culture is toxic. There are a million things that can go wrong when you're trying to scale a sales team, and most business owners don't even know what they don't know. Option 3: You hire us to audit your sales operation before you start implementing anything. This is only for businesses doing at least $70,000 per month. If you're below that, focus on getting there first. But if you're above that threshold, there are 100% areas in your business where you're hemorrhaging money and don't even realize it. We're going to tear apart your entire sales process: your funnel, your scripts, your follow-up sequences, your team structure, everything. We'll mystery shop your team, look at all your data, and show you exactly where you're screwing up and what to fix. The audit costs $2,500, and we're so confident in what we do that if you implement everything we back that investment with a no-brainer guarantee. If you actually do what we tell you to do and your cash collected doesn't increase by at least 25-35% in 90 days, I'll personally send you $5,000. That's double what you paid as my way of saying sorry we couldn’t help you. Most of our clients see way bigger jumps than that because they had so many holes in their process they didn't even know about, and on top of that, the advice we give has MASSIVE compounding returns. This is probably the smartest business decision you can make right now if you run a sales team. You get to see exactly what's broken in your sales operation, get a step-by-step plan to fix it, and if it doesn't work, you make money. If you're doing $70k+ per month and you don't take us up on this, you're basically choosing to leave hundreds of thousands of dollars on the table. That's just silly. Look, I've given you everything I know. What you do with it is up to you. But don't say I didn't warn you when your competitors start eating your lunch because they invested in systems while you were still trying to figure it out on your own. >> Click here to book your pre-audit call and let's get started.[a] [a]HYPERLINK