Top 1% Salesman: How to Overcome Any Sales Objection

Social media and digital marketing have not replaced the need for an outbound sales team. Today’s guest reveals how to recruit, train, and retain an industry-leading sales team. In this episode, serial entrepreneur David Royce joins Natalie to share how he built and sold four multimillion-dollar pest control businesses by mastering the art of sales. He breaks down his playbook for scaling traditionally overlooked businesses, the psychology behind what makes the top 1% of salespeople successful, and the subtle body language and communication techniques that can transform your sales conversations. David also reveals his framework for overcoming common sales objections, how to turn low-ticket customers into high-ticket buyers, and what to look for when hiring, training, and retaining a high-performing sales team. In this episode, Natalie and David discuss: (01:04) Why Boring Businesses Build Serious Wealth (03:30) From Door-to-Door Sales to $225K Summers (09:40) The Playbook for Scaling a Service Business (11:30) The 4 Pillars of Building Lasting Wealth (16:15) Why Outbound Sales Can Accelerate Growth (19:00) The Body Language Secrets of Top Salespeople (23:10) How to Sell With Your Voice on Zoom (26:00) Handling Rejection in Door-to-Door Sales (31:00) Turn Your $29 Customer Into a $3,000 Buyer (47:00) How to Hire and Retain Top Sales Talent (01:00:30) Mastering Sales Objections With the RAC Method David Royce was the founder & chairman of Aptive, which provides environmentally responsible pest solutions to customers in more than 5,000 cities across 34 states. Within 8 years, Aptive grew from a startup into the 3rd-largest residential pest control company in North America, with over $500 million in annual revenue and 6,500 employees. David was also the owner and CEO of three prior companies that ranked the fastest-growing companies in the history of the pest control industry. His companies have been highlighted in national publications including the Wall Street Journal, Forbes, Fortune, Business Insider, Entrepreneur, and Inc. Magazine. In 2015, David was awarded the prestigious Ernst & Young National Entrepreneur of the Year award. Sponsored By: FreshBooks - Get FreshBooks for less than $3 a month for your first four months at ⁠FreshBooks.com/podcast⁠. Faire - Sign up today and get 50% off your first wholesale order, up to $100 at ⁠faire.com/bossbabe⁠. AG1 - Save 20% on your first subscription order of AG1 Next Gen or AG1 Pro at ⁠drinkAG1.com/bossbabe. ⁠Hostinger - Go to ⁠Hostinger.com/bossbabe⁠ and use code BOSSBABE for 10% off. Resources Mentioned: What Every Body Is Saying by Joe Navarro The Definitive Book of Body Language by Barbara & Allan Pease Zig Ziglar’s Secrets of Closing the Sale by Zig Ziglar The Psychology of Selling by Brian Tracy How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dorothy & Dale Carnegie Tony Robbins’s Personal Power coaching experience Connect with David: LinkedIn⁠ Aptive’s Website Connect with Natalie: Instagram LinkedIn Website YouTube Natalie’s Book, The Freedom-Based Business Method bossbabe,natalie ellis,david royce,how to start a business,sales techniques,entrepreneurship,how to make money,sales psychology,business ideas,boring businesses,profitable business ideas,how to grow a business,sales strategies,how to sell anything,how to close sales,sales training,door to door sales,handling sales objections,how to start a small business,small business ideas,business growth,wealth building,customer acquisition,body language in sales,aptive

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 0:45Speaker 00

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• 0:56Speaker 01

  Communication skills are down 50% from 2008, when the iPhone came out for an average 18 year old. And so what does that say? It's like, we've got a problem. You know, everybody's doing this as opposed to talking to each other. And, you know, sales is a great place to figure out, like, how do I still communicate? Because it doesn't matter if you're a teacher, a parent, right? An executive, you know, in sales yourself. You kind of know how to persuade people, would do door to door. Pest control, I knocked 60,000 doors over four summers.

• 1:26Speaker 00

  Wow. Okay, we've only got a few seconds to bring in someone's interest. What are we doing early on?

• 1:33Speaker 01

  I tell most people.

• 1:39Speaker 00

  Welcome to the podcast. I'm so excited you're here. I have a million questions. And the place I want to start is in this age of AI, I am getting so interested in the concept of a boring business. So can you first define what you think a boring business is?

• 1:54Speaker 01

  Wow. Well, I guess that's a little different for everybody. But I would think it's something that just most people aren't going to college for. Right? Like, I think we got into this place, maybe in the 50s, 60s, it was normal to be very blue collar-esque. And I don't even know if we had the term back then. But over time, a lot of white collar jobs came, you know, to be popular 70s, 80s, 90s. And it's like, if you're going to go to college, you want a better paying job. And so we kind of moved away from this. And it's funny because if you go to Europe, right? Like, you can go into just these trade schools, like, and skip college and not have to pay as much money. And I think a lot of people today are rethinking that. The way I got into it was a total accident. Uh, I had this crappy summer job knocking door to door, selling pest control services.

• 2:40Speaker 01

  And it turns out I was really good at it. I was horrible at first. I sold zero for five days straight. And I went to a bookstore, bought six sales books and just said, I'm going to read 90 minutes a day and figure this out because being paid on commission was like life changing for me. And I knew it could be. And so I just kept pushing and ultimately became the top rookie in it. But as far as blue collar, uh,

• 3:04Speaker 01

  there was an article in the Wall Street Journal, uh, last year, it was about the stealthy wealthy. So what the article says is that the top 0.1% of income earners, not 1%, top 0.1, people who make $2.3 million or more, they're in boring, blue collar industries. There's, and there's actually a professor out of Princeton that studies these. In fact, probably shouldn't be promoting a book for him, but I think he's putting out a book. I actually signed up for it. I know it's not out yet, but it's coming out. But it's this idea that we look in the wrong places oftentimes for, you know, where money is. A lot of times we look towards disruption, right? Like disruptive innovation. But the reality is that disruptive innovation is only about 10% of all innovation. Most innovation's incremental within established, well-established industries, right?

• 3:46Speaker 01

  It's just, you know, finding a software that makes you a little bit more efficient or, you know, getting costs down or, you know, coming up with a new service line. But even that's probably more innovative than most people. It might just be this slight little tweak to a service line. So, yeah, the boring things, most people don't want to talk about, you know, at a dinner party. Cause usually I can stop, I can literally stop the conversation. People are like, oh, so what do you do? I'm like, I kill bugs. And it's like,

• 4:12Speaker 01

  uh, they don't need to take great vacations. Like, nobody wants to talk about it. So if you, if you're, if you're in for, or if you're excited about, you know, making money and building a really great, solid business, that's, it's a solid thing to go into. But yeah, there's a lot of money being made in industries. Nobody wants to talk about, like at a dinner party.

• 4:30Speaker 00

  And I want to talk about those industries because I'm interested in that stealthy wealthy. I want to know what that top 0.1% are doing. But just going back a little bit, you said you were really terrible at it. You bought six books, became obviously very, very good at it. Tell me a bit about that point in your life, because what was it that drove you to go and learn and actually get good at a job that's just generally very uncomfortable? It's so uncomfortable to be that person knocking on the door and probably getting rejected 90% of the time.

• 5:00Speaker 01

  You know, being a, like a starving college student, working minimum wage is a pretty motivating factor. I just had a friend come to me and say, hey, we're going out to Sacramento, California, or whatever, this summer. I sold pest control there last summer and he made $25,000 in three months. And I'm like, I don't make that all year, like working at this snowboard shop. And so that's how it started. And I went out with some friends and I just kept working at it. And I saw like the power of being paid on commission because you really get paid what you're worth. And it's very in real time to know, am I getting better? Am I getting worse? And then you're around other people too. You can ask and then you can benefit by sharing things with them. So it was a really good experience. The next year I went back as a sales manager and then, uh, brought friends out and the, the training at the first company was okay, not great.

• 5:45Speaker 01

  Clearly I wasn't doing that good. But the second company had no training manual. And although they were paying a slightly higher commission, it, you know, I realized quickly why. And then I asked my boss, I said, hey, can I write a training manual for you? You know, I was the top rookie over here. I just want my friends to do well. I don't want them to have the same experience I did. And he was like amazed. And then at the end of the year, our team had sold twice as much as the other team he had at his other second location. And he said, hey, I want to give you an opportunity to help recruit and train and oversee the entire program. You know, you've already been writing this training manual. I want, you know, and I was asking, can we do create sales videos? I was just very excited about the opportunity. And yeah, for the next years I did that. I was recruiting like a hundred people to come out and sell for the company.

• 6:29Speaker 01

  I was making 225 grand. That's 25 years ago.

• 6:33Speaker 00

  Wow.

• 6:33Speaker 01

  So like half a million dollars in today's money is for a college student, like wild, right? Like, don't have to like, understand how, why on earth would I go do that? It's just the best financial opportunity I'd ever had in my life. And I figured I'll save up for college. I want to graduate debt free. I was saving for an MBA, uh, you know, to go do someday. I thought I was going to do investment banking, uh, studying finance. And then that's when my boss pitched me. He said, I was actually asking for a letter of recommendation to, for these investment banks. And he goes, I don't get it, man. You're going to work 80, 100 hour weeks for somebody else? And how much are you going to make? Right? And I was going to, you know, maybe make 60, 70 K a year coming out of school.

• 7:16Speaker 01

  And he's like, you made 225 grand this summer in, you know, four months. Why on earth would you do that? He's, you're so good. You should have just started your own company. So the only reason I did it was he piqued my interest. And at first I said, no, I would never, it's not impressive. You know, I just went to college. Like, this doesn't make sense. And yeah, he told, then he told me, I'm selling it for 10 million bucks, uh, to Terminix. I was like, wait a second, you've only been in business four years. I was here three of those four years. And I know you only put a few hundred grand into it. 10 million bucks, that ROI is insane. Okay. Well, maybe I should think about a little more. So it still took me a couple of months, but eventually I came around to the idea.

• 7:59Speaker 00

  I'm so curious about that decision, especially thinking about, oh, what will my peers say? And I ask because when I was at university, I was recruited by a management consulting agency in my second year. And they were, you know, trying to really make sure, my fourth year I went and joined them. That was the dream for everyone that was in business school was let's go join Accenture or one of these top firms. And all my friends went off to do that and I wanted to start my own company. And I was starting from zero, it was not impressive. And I actually, a lot of my friends thought that I was really weird for doing it. I'm curious how that was for you and if it impacted your decision at all.

• 8:36Speaker 01

  Well, if you thought your friends thought it was weird, imagine how my friends felt when I had to tell them, yeah, I'm going to start my pest, it's pest control company.

• 8:44Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 8:45Speaker 01

  And then on top of that, tell them, yeah, I think I'd build like a multimillion dollar company in this. And they're like, well, that's the plan. I mean,

• 8:53Speaker 01

  because that part was even totally strange to them.

• 8:58Speaker 01

  You know, and, and nothing against, you know, investment banking. My, a lot of the reason I worked so hard, I did 80, 100 hour weeks in this industry. And that was a competitive advantage to be able to run circles around everybody else. Cause a lot of people aren't willing to work that hard.

• 9:09Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 9:09Speaker 01

  And I just figured I was going to go do it anyways in investment banking for five years. Why not, you know, do it here and build a company? And, you know, if it goes well, great. If I don't like it, I'll sell it, you know, go back to MBA school. But after I built the first company and then thought, you know, I need more capital. I'll sell it, I'll sell this one and then do another one. Then it was, how do you, you know, expand regionally? Can I go into multiple states instead of just being throughout Southern California? And then can I, you know, build a national company? You, you just keep, can't see everything when you start. You know, you can only see so much. We started right here in LA and Orange County and, you know, inland empire. And then we just expanded there down to San Diego. But when I started, I only could see, you know, the one location.

• 9:52Speaker 01

  And quickly within a year, I'm like, wait a second, like we can do this. Well, what about this? And then it's like, what if we went into four states this first year of the second company? And so it's, it's little by little, people are always, they, they always ask me the question, did, uh, did you know you were going to build something that big? No, hell no.

• 10:09Speaker 01

  But step by step, you know, it's like, how do you eat an elephant, right? One bite at a time?

• 10:14Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 10:14Speaker 01

  It comes to you over time. And if you're always growing, you're always learning, you're always reading. I always say leaders are readers. Just, you know, be excited about it. And today you've got AI. You can just get AI and keep asking it questions. It's one of the best mentors you can have.

• 10:28Speaker 00

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• 13:04Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 13:04Speaker 00

  Can you walk me through the playbook?

• 13:06Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 13:07Speaker 00

  Of when you, let's say you're starting day one. Okay, I'm going to build a pest control company. Day one, what are we looking at? What are we doing? What is our plan?

• 13:15Speaker 01

  Yeah, so the first, uh, first company, we had this really unique way to grow. So we would do door to door pest control. I knocked 60,000 doors over four summers.

• 13:27Speaker 00

  Wow.

• 13:28Speaker 01

  And so I got really good at it and we trained a lot of people, but it was unique. Out of 20,000 pest control companies at that time, there was no more than maybe 10 companies doing it. And the reason why is it's really freaking hard. And I figured it out really well. For one, like we were good at it, but I wanted to be great at it. People had been employing this tactic for about 10 years and there's still no more than 10 companies. There's really only three that had more than 50 reps, you know, working for them and we were one of them. So we, uh, I took that model because I knew it really well and said, we're going to do this. In pest control, we could grow seven to 10 times as fast as a regular pest control company. The average in the industry grows 5% a year and we're growing 35 to 50% a year.

• 14:14Speaker 01

  And so you gotta look for something where you know you can grow, right? Like ideally that's better. There's a lot of, you know, blue collar work out there and I'll ask them, oh, how are you, how do you get your business? You know, that kind of thing. I'm always interested in talking to, you know, different people that work around my house or whatever else. And I go, I just wait for referrals. I'm like, have you ever thought about finding a way to go get the business if you want to scale it and grow it? But a lot of people, they're busy, right? They get stuck just in the mentality of like putting out fires all day and working in the business as opposed to on the business. So I always try to get to help everybody think a little outside the box in terms of how do you scale. It's definitely the hardest part to it. But yeah, the sales side was our competitive advantage and how we started. And then you're asking how we finish. The reason I sold the businesses is really unique.

• 14:59Speaker 01

  So, uh, we talked a little bit about wealth accumulation earlier. So I, I look at wealth accumulation like, um, there's like four pillars to it. And if you remove one, you know, it might, might fall over, the stool might fall over. So one is I, I came up with an acronym the other day for a gem, like a precious stone. So gem, like one, you gotta be able to have something and grow. It can either grow over time or it can grow really fast. But ideally that thing is going to keep moving. It's not going in the wrong direction. Two is equity. You gotta have equity in your business and own and have control. Three is money. In order to grow, you have to have money. The problem with that is it reduces your equity typically, right? If you go get investors, so you gotta be careful.

• 15:42Speaker 01

  And then the fourth thing I tell people is a moat, all that extra M on the end of the gem. Have something that's really defensible. And people will go, were you just trying to make it as unsexy as possible by having pest control then adding door to door sales to it? You're like, yes, that was my moat. And like, all joking aside, like it actually was because it was so hard to replicate. Even like the biggest companies like Terminix and Orkin had tried to do their own, their own door to door models and they failed multiple times.

• 16:09Speaker 00

  Why?

• 16:10Speaker 01

  Couldn't do it. Just really hard. Yeah, it is, it is brutal, right? So if you knock 150 doors, you're trying to get two people to say yes on average, right? And most people are not that resilient. Rejection is just really hard for most people to accept.

• 16:24Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 16:24Speaker 01

  Now, only about a third of people are ever home. So you're knocking a lot of doors and nobody ever answers.

• 16:29Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 16:29Speaker 01

  Sometimes they're home and you can see them home, but they're just not even going to answer. Don't sweat it. Just go to the next door. Not a big deal, but you gotta be okay with that.

• 16:36Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 16:36Speaker 01

  So I think it's a really great training around, uh, sales, especially for entrepreneurs. But the reason I sold was, uh, part of the wealth accumulation, uh, idea. You have to have money, right? And you decrease your equity if you give away, uh, or if you take money from somebody. So I had watched my boss sell his company for $10 million. And what was interesting is they said, you've only been around for four years. We don't want your brand. We're just going to take, we just want your technicians and your customer base and that's it. We don't need your customer service staff. We don't need, you know, any executives. We don't need a sales force. We can't figure that thing out.

• 17:13Speaker 00

  Wow.

• 17:13Speaker 01

  So just take that. So what we did is I said, if I sell, I can have all that money. I don't have to have any investors going forward. I can completely control it a hundred percent. And then, um, you know, grow, we'll go into four states and that's how it kind of was.

• 17:28Speaker 00

  And you keep all your salespeople?

• 17:30Speaker 01

  And I kept all my salespeople. I kept the golden goose, I tell people. And I kept my executive team as we got bigger and the next one, we didn't really have an executive team at the first one, it was really just me. You know, the second one, we had a few key, like regional operations managers and we had an operation manager in each location, but Terminix didn't need those people. They're like, we already have a manager in each location. That's like our synergies. It's part of the way we bring in value. So, uh, yeah, so I actually built and sold, uh, four times. And so I get that question a lot and it's like, it was the easiest way to do it. The other question I get is why, or what other industries can you do this in?

• 18:03Speaker 00

  Yeah, that's my thought. I'm like, okay, where else does this exist?

• 18:07Speaker 01

  Cause they're like, most people, I've never heard of that. Like usually people get locked in for a couple of years or five years where they can't, you know, go compete. But I think what Terminix was hoping is, well, if he goes and does it again, and we have a good experience on this first one, then we'll buy the second company, maybe two.

• 18:20Speaker 00

  Cause it's all recurring revenue for them. Is that right? Once someone signs up for pest control, they're signed up.

• 18:25Speaker 01

  Yeah, your hope is that these customers are going to last for five years, right? And so you pay X amount upfront to the salespeople. You take care of the customers really, really well, then you know what your attrition is over time.

• 18:35Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 18:35Speaker 01

  And you just kind of calculate that. That's how they, you know, figure out how to buy a company and buy, they're really just buying a stream of revenue.

• 18:41Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 18:42Speaker 01

  And almost two thirds of the public companies, uh, in pest control services, I believe it's M and A. So they've got to buy companies just to keep showing growth and keep their, you know, their quarterly earnings looking good.

• 18:53Speaker 00

  Yeah. So where does this exist anywhere else? Does it?

• 18:56Speaker 01

  Yeah, so, uh, alarm systems. I've seen people do alarms. I've seen people do it in solar. I've seen people do it in, um, roofing. But yeah, trying to find like the, the sales force is really the golden goose behind it. And there's a lot of people are like, we don't understand that and it seems very complex and difficult. You guys go do it and maybe we'll buy some more later on. Actually, I take it back on the roof, on the roofing side, that one, they do want everything. Because the roofing is only a one time sale and it's not a recurring revenue model.

• 19:29Speaker 00

  So fascinating. So let's go into that sales piece because I'm so interested. With our business, we are actually only just starting to build a sales team. So we have done organic marketing, people come to us. Now we're starting to say, well, we have a lot of this traffic. What if we start going to them?

• 19:49Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 19:49Speaker 00

  Is this always been your philosophy on if you come into a business and you want to grow the business, do you think about flipping that and going after the customer?

• 19:58Speaker 01

  Absolutely. Okay. And you can, you can have like a digital strategy, right? To have them come to you and then you sell them. And obviously sales is still very important in that, but that's more of a warm lead, right? They're coming to you. Whereas for me, like I, I don't want to wait to get rich. I want to find a way where I can go contact people and be, you know, into it. A lot of that's gone away, you know, telemarketing was a thing back in the eighties, nineties. It feels like it's almost completely gone away unless it's a scam today.

• 20:22Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 20:23Speaker 01

  Still get some of those calls, unfortunately, or text messages almost on a weekly basis.

• 20:29Speaker 01

  But digital marketing has almost completely changed the game for everything. You know, there's less commercials than ever for advertisements in TV or, you know, radio has kind of gone away. Most people will pay for a subscription for, you know, Spotify or whatever, Apple Music.

• 20:45Speaker 01

  So door to door is this unique thing. A lot of people think it's old school, but for the right service and maybe even the right product, it does make a lot of sense.

• 20:54Speaker 00

  But managing salespeople, training salespeople, I imagine, is that the hardest part? Is it figuring out how to do it and then manage and train?

• 21:02Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's like herding cats a little bit.

• 21:04Speaker 00

  Yeah. Can you tell me about that experience?

• 21:06Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's like their own unique breed. But what I've found is if you train people, there's like a loyalty there, especially if it's for something really hard and it pays really well. I sold my, my last business now and I'm taking a break, but at my, my old company, uh, we had sales reps do a million dollars a year. They would make a million dollars a year.

• 21:27Speaker 00

  And how old on average are these sales reps?

• 21:29Speaker 01

  So like, some of them are 25.

• 21:32Speaker 00

  That is wild.

• 21:33Speaker 01

  Usually they're a little bit older than just, you know, being in college, because it takes a while. They might come in and make 25, 35 grand the first year. They learn from that. They'll make 40 or 50 the next year, or they'll become a sales manager and make like a hundred K. Uh, but then what they'll do is they'll, they'll keep recruiting people and they'll kind of build up, you know, people underneath them and they go train them and they'll build a region, uh, where they're going around and mainly training and it's less about how many sales they do personally and more about how many sales their region is doing. Uh, and so there's, there's a few freaks out there that can make up to that much, uh, in a year. And my pay plan, even today, if you go back, you know, inflation would be double anyways from 225, but commissions are a lot higher now. It's a lot more expensive to do the business model today than it was back when I, I worked. If I worked, I'd easily been over a million dollars.

• 22:18Speaker 00

  Yeah, that's incredible. So I'm so curious, walk me through it. You're training someone to do door to door sales. They are completely fresh. They knock on the door, they actually get someone answering. What are we doing in those first few seconds?

• 22:32Speaker 01

  You're trying a few things. So one is you're, you're trying to connect with a customer and attune to things that a lot of people don't know about. So part, a big, a lot of people think your words are how you sell somebody. That's only, in my opinion, a third of what it is. Another third is body language and the other third is paraverbal communication, meaning how you say it. So I used to have, when it came to objections, my friends would be like, okay, well, with this objection, how do you get around this objection? And I would say, oh, you know, I'd give them the rebuttal and they're like, okay, that's not it. Because I say the exact same words you're saying. And I would say, if my rookie year, I said, you know, I think it's actually how you're saying it and not what you're saying. Right? And so can you connect with that individual that's

• 23:16Speaker 01

  on the doors? Uh, and there's a few ways. One, like if you are very positive, right? If you smile a lot, people love a smile, right? And what is the number one thing they do is they'll smile right back at you, right? As you smile, they smile.

• 23:28Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 23:28Speaker 01

  Smiles release endorphins and they make you feel good. And so as you talk, not only is the customer like you, but then they begin to trust you. And what are they, they trust you and they trust the product, right? Because they believe they like the product when they're hearing about it, but they're actually feeling really good. So you have that ability to somewhat control how they're doing. If you really understand sales, a lot of people would say, oh, it's just these really confident people. They just have it or they don't. And for me, I'm like, no, no. Analyze confidence. What is confidence? Really, there's data around it. There's just specific things that the very best top one percent of salespeople do, smiling. Another one is head nodding, right? As you talk and you head nod, every time you head nod, you're getting a small little commitment along

• 24:12Speaker 01

  the way to get the customer to say yes. And if they have head nod, if you have a three minute presentation and they have head nodded, maybe every five to 10 seconds, by the time you close, they're very likely to do the same thing they've been doing the whole time. Statistically, the more times you've head nod and the more times you smile, we would study this, we'd record, uh, on video, sales reps giving their approach. The very best ones, they did it more than everybody else. And we could go through and count. We'd say, okay, statistically, you need about this many if you want to increase your overall number of sales to X, you know? It's not like a perfect ratio, but quite honestly, if anybody's got an idea out there, anybody wants to get into AI, please go do this.

• 24:51Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 24:52Speaker 01

  Like do something where you can study sales reps and especially in real time, if you had like, like on a Zoom, you know, or video conferencing.

• 24:59Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 24:59Speaker 01

  Something that could measure to know when the customer, because you can also read, the very best salespeople read the body language of the customer as well, and they know when it's time to close. And if they've really nailed the point, because you know, the customer's doing things like head nodding along and going, oh yeah, or yeah, you know, they're doing these things, they're craning their neck, like, I get it. Yeah. And so you'll know, uh, if you create, created some sort of AI software, it'd be really cool. Like stuff really does work.

• 25:25Speaker 00

  It's a good idea.

• 25:26Speaker 01

  They teach it in the FBI, they teach it in the CIA. If people want books about it, there's a book by Joe Navarro, he's a former FBI agent. It's called What Everybody Is Saying. It didn't come out till 2008, long after I had already, you know, finished selling, but really great. It confirmed a lot of the things I had realized when I was out in the doors. There's another one, Alan Pease, he's kind of like the godfather, he's from Australia, but he started teaching this back in the seventies and eighties. And, um, just amazing stuff. The definitive book of body language is what, is the one he wrote. And it basically, it says that politicians know this, that, you know, in law enforcement, they teach all this sort of thing. It's not a perfect science. You have to look for clusters of multiple things at once, but there are things you can do and teach

• 26:11Speaker 01

  everything from like good eye contact, smiles to head nods, to the way you gesture, to the way you stand, avoiding fidgeting hands or shuffling your feet or reading the customer. So lots of fun stuff. If people want to take their sales to a homing level, that's where they should spend their time.

• 26:28Speaker 00

  Every December, I tell myself I'll be organized. And every December, I end up in this very specific little shop down the road, grabbing last minute gifts for friends and family. The whole store is full of really small, unique, perfect things that I feel like I've never seen anywhere else. I didn't, but the store owner did probably back in October, probably on FAIRE. So FAIRE is a wholesale marketplace connecting independent retailers with more than 100,000 unique brands worldwide. Home, apparel, beauty, food and more. Over 700,000 retailers already stock their shelves there. And if you are the one stocking those shelves,

• 27:10Speaker 00

  the timing is on your side because eligible retailers get 60 day interest free payment terms. So what you order this month isn't actually due until December, when you're already selling. Your first order with every brand also comes with free returns. So if you run a shop, now is the time to prep for the holiday season. And I think FAIRE is the perfect place to find unique, high quality products chosen for your exact customer. If you run a shop, FAIRE is how you stock unique, high quality products. You can sign up today and get 50% off your first wholesale order, up to a hundred dollars at F A I R E dot com slash boss babe. That's F A I R E dot com slash boss babe. Terms may apply.

• 27:55Speaker 00

  I'm starting to feel like myself again, and a lot of that comes down to routines, the things that I do every day, whether the week is calm or going completely off the rails. AG1 is one of them. One scoop, cold water, first thing. With the holidays coming, I feel like it's really important to stay consistent on practices that have me feeling really good. One scoop of AG1 includes the foundational nutrition you need to start your day. More than 75 vitamins, minerals, pre and probiotics and superfoods. And AG1 Next Gen is backed by four separate clinical trials with key nutrient levels improved within three months of consistent use. I use it every single day, going into the busiest stretch of the year. It's one of the best ways I know to take care of

• 28:38Speaker 00

  myself. For a limited time, visit drinkag1.com slash boss babe and get a free immune support bundle, including omega three, fish oil and vitamin D3 and K2 with your first subscription of AG1 Next Gen or AG1 Pro. That's drinkag1.com slash boss babe. If someone's doing sales on Zoom, what are some tips for their body language on Zoom where maybe only the top half of their body is showing?

• 29:06Speaker 01

  Yeah. So in some ways, there's advantages, right? So gesturing is going to be a little bit hard, but you normally wouldn't, you know, do this, if you were talking to somebody, but you will on Zoom because you want people to, as you talk and express with your hands, it maintains somebody's interest.

• 29:23Speaker 00

  Right.

• 29:23Speaker 01

  Right? Uh, and when we were like on doorsteps, we would often, you know, point up and we'd look at the eaves of the home and you can see spider webs or wasp nests up there, something to talk about. But you can, you can tell if somebody's following along with you because you'll watch, you'll take your eyes and you'll go like this and lead them up. If you look back and they're looking up.

• 29:40Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 29:41Speaker 01

  Like they're engaged. Like you know that they're interested. And then you can show them what they're, what they're seeing and you're like, oh, that is a problem. I didn't even realize I had that. Or, yeah, that I have a pest control company. Why aren't they getting that? And she's like, well, this is something we do. You know, not everybody does it, but we do it every time we come out. Um, so little things like that. On, on a, you know, a video screen, other things like head nods, smiles, eye contact, those are like gold. Those three things are key. Other things would be paraverbal communication, which I haven't really talked about, but how you say it. If you have somebody on the other side and they're more soft spoken, but you're really loud, you're not, you're not gelling together, right? Like it's a different personality.

• 30:24Speaker 00

  That's the easiest way to turn me off a sale when someone is like a completely different energy to mine.

• 30:29Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 30:29Speaker 00

  I find that so jarring. I'm like, I'm not going to buy anything at this point. It's so true.

• 30:34Speaker 01

  And then also, volumes one, speed is another. They're a fast talker and you're a slow talker. Like, ah, and then speed also, it feels like they're nervous or they're racing through, they're pushy, right? Those are your stereotypical used car salesperson.

• 30:49Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 30:49Speaker 01

  Pitch of your voice. If every time the pitch of your voice goes up and you keep talking like this, if you do that like for two minutes, people just want to turn you off. Confident people, they end their sentences going down on their pitch. It's comfortable when it goes down. Know, so the difference up versus down?

• 31:09Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 31:10Speaker 01

  pauses are really important, giving people time to answer. If you close, wait, let them answer because they believe they have enough information to actually make an educated decision. If you're so nervous because you stop and they don't say anything, you're like, oh, and we also do this. Like you've just shown like they don't have enough and they'll start questioning, yeah, they don't believe in what they're doing.

• 31:33Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 31:34Speaker 01

  So lots of fun little, you know, tips like that.

• 31:36Speaker 00

  It's so fascinating. I'm already seeing so many things that we could be doing in our business based on this. I want to go back to a role play situation because I'm so hard to sell door to door. I'm always, I've got kids on my hips. There's so much going on in my house. Someone knocks on the door. I immediately I'm like, I don't, I don't ignore it because someone can see through my door. Like, I don't want to be doing this.

• 32:04Speaker 01

  If you don't want to, just don't answer. It happens all the time.

• 32:07Speaker 00

  So how would you approach someone like me who has clearly got a lot, there's kids, all the things you can hear, there's clattering going on the background. I open the door already, I'm like, I'm, I have a second. I don't want to be here, but I'm trying to be polite. How would you approach that conversation?

• 32:23Speaker 01

  The best salespeople know not to engage. If you're, you've got a kid in one arm, the dog's barking.

• 32:31Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 32:32Speaker 01

  What she realizes now's not the right time. And so if you're going to be in the area later, you say, you know what, you look busy right now. Would it be okay if I came back later? And a lot of people are like, you know what, they recognized, yeah, I'll give them time just, and you say, you know, would, you know, three hours later be okay, or whatever, you know, the time is, when, when, or when would that be best for you? And they can tell you.

• 32:55Speaker 00

  That's so good.

• 32:56Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 32:57Speaker 00

  That's really good.

• 32:58Speaker 01

  But you, if they come to the door and there's nothing else going on, you know, I'm going to assume, you know, if they're not on a phone, if someone's on a phone call, like you don't even try. You just say, you know what, no worries. I'll, I'll come back later.

• 33:07Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 33:09Speaker 01

  She's not going to close it. Like your statistical ratio of closing that person are so low unless they're like, oh my gosh, pest control. Yes. Hold on. Hey, I'm going to call you back. That's so rare though.

• 33:19Speaker 00

  I mean, that would be me right now with all these mosquitoes in Orange County. But so,

• 33:25Speaker 00

  so what about you knock on a door, someone answers, they're not on the phone, they don't have kids, but already their face is like, I do not want to be sold to.

• 33:33Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 33:33Speaker 00

  How do you handle that?

• 33:33Speaker 01

  It's like the stone cold, just not having it.

• 33:36Speaker 00

  Not interested.

• 33:38Speaker 01

  So sometimes you also recognize that there's no way I'm going to close this person.

• 33:42Speaker 00

  Oh.

• 33:43Speaker 01

  So why would I waste my time? If you're just going door to door, right? And this is not like some big business sale, you know, where you only have so many businesses in the industry that you can close. Like, don't, it doesn't make sense. So I might actually choose, usually within the first 10 seconds, I decide if I'm going to take them all the way through, you know, say those first three minutes of our approach, or if I'm just going to be like, oh, you're good? Like, I'll actually ask horrible questions. You're not seeing anything? Perfect. So I'll see you later. Like, go to the next door and they're like, well, that was easy. I expected so much different. But most of the time, you have to recognize, is it a hell no? Or is it a maybe? Right? Like some people are like, I'm not interested. Like they gave

• 34:24Speaker 01

  you that look or just like, dude, I don't want you at my doorstep. And you're like, okay, yeah, it's not really, like, I'll smile, like, see if I can warm up a little bit. And sometimes they're like, ah, yeah, I don't think we're interested. It's maybe.

• 34:38Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 34:39Speaker 01

  It's the first thing almost everybody will tell you is, yeah, I'm not, of course you're not. Like they weren't thinking about pest control when I came to their door.

• 34:46Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 34:46Speaker 01

  And you're like, yeah, you know, we're taking care of your neighbor next door, whatever, you know, always be honest. You make sure there's somebody in the neighborhood that you can refer to. And just say, yeah, it's, you know, it's mainly been this, you know, it's these ants out here. They're everywhere right now. It's, you know, October and it's been so warm. They're all over the place. And they're like, oh yeah, I have had ants in my kitchen right now. I'm like, like, yeah, it's, it's a thing. Yeah. That's why we're out here. We're, we're doing, you know, some sort of a deal. You give them a reason for urgency. You know, we're doing some sort of a deal. Here specifically we're doing and what people really liked about us. And here's, here's how we differentiate from the competition. And you just start talking and they start head nodding with you and you're like, okay, yeah, they're, they're good. But if they give you that

• 35:28Speaker 01

  thing, like I said, I'm not interested. See my eyes? They're just like a no.

• 35:33Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 35:33Speaker 01

  It's like, don't, don't waste your time. Like, why get somebody upset? Some salespeople think, you know, a great salesperson is someone that can sell ice to an Eskimo, you know, a woman, or sell ketchup to a woman in white clothes or whatever. And so not true. Not the top 1%. We don't think like that. That's like a rookie, that's a rookie mistake.

• 35:50Speaker 00

  Yeah. And it's fascinating as you say it, because I can think to the people that I've had of who've I've had good experiences and not so good experiences with, and the not so good you can tell, they are just having a really bad day. No one's saying yes. They're frustrated. So immediately it's just not going to sell. Whereas the people I have good experiences with, they actually are very happy, very laid back. Oh, I was just there. I wanted to check in with this, looking to see if there's any window. Like as you say it back, I'm like, oh, it makes sense. But also it makes a lot of sense, what you're saying about qualifying right away. You're not just trying to sell to everyone. You are actually immediately qualifying, which we do online where someone will fill out a questionnaire.

• 36:33Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 36:34Speaker 00

  And they will give us an answer if they'd be the right person, if they wouldn't. If they wouldn't, we're not even going to try because it's a waste of everyone's time.

• 36:41Speaker 01

  Right.

• 36:41Speaker 00

  But if they would, that's interesting. I'm going to ask a selfish question because we, we have started to call up customers, which is very new for us. Again, we're going out actually speaking to people. A lot of our customers have no idea that we even sell something more expensive than a $20 thing on the front end.

• 36:59Speaker 01

  It's a warm lead. I love it.

• 37:00Speaker 00

  Yeah. So we're calling them up and my husband's the one that runs all the sales in our company. And he's like, we're only doing 20 minute calls in the beginning. I'm like, I think it should be an hour. We should be blocking off time. He's like, no, we're just going to get on there and we're just going to feel into it. We're going to see, you know, where are they at? Would they be interested? Let's say I'd sold someone, say a $29 product and I have maybe a $3,000 product that I think would be such a good fit for them, based on what they said. How would you structure that engagement and think about turning them from a $29 into a $3,000 customer?

• 37:32Speaker 01

  One key thing is finding out, right? Taking the time, like there's like a general process, right? There's an introduction where you try to get to know the other customer, know the customer. So you build rapport, you know, and it's more, people might call it chit chat, but it's, you know, it might be about, they might talk about a favorite sports team, or they might talk about their kids or whatever it is. Like when we came in, we started talking about family. That's really important. To skip that is a massive mistake because you don't have any level of trust. You don't know whether to trust a person or not, other than through their body language, right? And their paravocal communication. The second thing is like, take time to find out what is the problem. And you can establish the problem further, but for the most part,

• 38:13Speaker 01

  hearing them out and then having key questions, like find out questions that can help them go, oh yeah, I do have a problem here. Oh yeah, I do, I have seen this, or I do miss a lot of this in my business, or you know, whatever it is that you might be selling. And then saying, you know what, you're going to be excited. We have the perfect solution for this. And then here's what it is. And you kind of walk, you walk them through and then you explain why. Some people get caught up on, they focus on the features instead of the benefits. People don't really care about the features, especially in pest control. You want to talk about chemistry and what products you're using. It's actually a turn off for most people. If you tell them why you're doing it. So you might say something like, you know, we're talking about eaves and spider webs, you know, we come out, we wipe all this down for you. They don't really care like

• 38:58Speaker 01

  what you're doing to wipe it down or what products you might apply. The reason why is not only does it look good, right? But it makes sure that the bugs, they're not going up in these vents right here and getting down on the inside and dropping down. And they're like, oh yeah, that's great. I love that. But they don't care how you're doing it. They just want to know what the result is.

• 39:16Speaker 00

  So interesting. Okay. I want to talk a bit more about that features and benefits because I, I see that a lot even on a written sales page. So if you were putting together a written sales page, how would you immediately think about, okay, we've only got a few seconds to bring in someone's interest? What are we doing early on?

• 39:36Speaker 01

  Writing out a script. I tell most salespeople, write it out and you make as persuasive possible. You spend, I think Abraham Lincoln said something like, if you're going to cut down a tree, it's been seven hours sharpening the axe and then an hour just cutting down the tree. But that's that idea is like, you sharpen that persuasive sales pitch down to just make it perfect where every word, you want to simplify it because people don't like wordiness. They don't want like an hour long sales presentation if it doesn't need to be.

• 40:02Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 40:03Speaker 01

  If it can be done 20 minutes or even 10 minutes, amazing. 10 minutes might be a little short for what you're selling if it's a $3,000 product.

• 40:10Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 40:10Speaker 01

  But crafting the words, like that's where reading a lot of sales books comes in hand or comes in handy. So the, writing it out is really important. Making sure that every word is super positive versus negative. Like people, you know, love to give their autograph, but they don't want to sign a contract.

• 40:32Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 40:33Speaker 01

  So hey, do you mind if I just grab your autograph here? It's like, yeah, sure. Why not? I'll just sign a contract. Yep. The word agreement is a lot easier on the ears than contract.

• 40:43Speaker 01

  You know?

• 40:43Speaker 00

  Wow.

• 40:44Speaker 01

  And it's something that's expensive versus, you know, something that's an investment in the home. You know, there's a lot of verbiage you can use positive versus negative. There's also a lot of confident language, right? So will versus try or maybe, or you know, we can do that or absolutely versus I think so.

• 41:04Speaker 00

  Right.

• 41:05Speaker 01

  And so a lot of that word is if you write it down and you memorize it to a point where you can rehearse it without even thinking about it, that's the most important thing. Cause then you can focus on your body language and you can focus on your paraverbal communication, which are the two key things. That's two thirds of everything. So if you just nail the first part and it's a no brainer because it's memorized, great.

• 41:25Speaker 00

  Every December I tell myself I'll be organized and every December I end up in this very specific little shop down the road, grabbing last minute gifts for friends and family. The whole store is full of really small, unique, perfect things that I feel like I've never seen anywhere else. I didn't, but the store owner did probably back in October, probably on FAIR. So FAIR is a wholesale marketplace connecting independent retailers with more than 100,000 unique brands worldwide. Home apparel, beauty, food and more. Over 700,000 retailers already stock their shelves there.

• 42:04Speaker 00

  And if you are the one stocking those shelves, the timing is on your side because eligible retailers get 60 day interest free payment terms. So what you order this month isn't actually due until December, when you're already selling. Your first order with every brand also comes with free returns. So if you run a shop, now is the time to prep for the holiday season. And I think FAIR is the perfect place to find unique, high quality products chosen for your exact customer. If you run a shop, FAIR is how you stock unique, high quality products. You can sign up today and get 50% off your first wholesale order, up to a hundred dollars at F A I R E dot com slash boss babe.

• 42:47Speaker 00

  That's F A I R E dot com slash boss babe. Terms may apply. Boss Babe started as an Instagram account, quotes for women with big goals. That built the community, but then it became a business when we had a website for our products because that's where people could actually buy from us. If you've built an audience and do not have that home yet, Hostinga makes it simple. Describe what you want, a sales page, a portfolio, an online store, and their AI builds a working version in minutes. No coding, no designer, no developer, and it doesn't stop at launch. Hostinga's AI agent works like built in specialists for SEO, website copy and email marketing. If you already have a site, they make moving it over quick and easy. Black Friday pricing is live now through December 14th.

• 43:31Speaker 00

  Snag Hostinga services at their lowest prices before the sale ends. Create your website today for just $1.99. Go to hostinger.com slash boss babe and use code BOSSBABE for an additional 10% off Black Friday and Cyber Monday pricing. That has just blown my mind, especially the autograph piece. Because I'm thinking, I love to think about when I've been sold. If someone says, can you just give me your autograph here versus sign here? I'm not even thinking about putting signing versus that.

• 44:01Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 44:02Speaker 00

  That is fascinating.

• 44:03Speaker 01

  Pest control, right? Like instead of the word chemicals, people don't like the idea of chemicals today. You know, maybe in the eighties or if you go to Texas, they might be like, hell yeah, man. Spray it new.

• 44:13Speaker 00

  Give me all of them.

• 44:14Speaker 01

  Or something, but you know, product, we use the word product. There's so much stuff that you can say that, you know, it can actually scare somebody away versus, you know, something that moves them towards the sale versus away from it.

• 44:26Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 44:27Speaker 01

  Another one from my industry would be the word kill. You know, people might, you know, want to kill a rodent per se, like a rat or a mouse, but taking care of, you know, a rodent infestation.

• 44:39Speaker 00

  That would sell me more.

• 44:40Speaker 01

  They're okay with taking care of something, but they don't want to actually know how you're going to do it. It's like, just keep it, keep it under wraps.

• 44:46Speaker 00

  Wait, this is so good. Okay. I am going to go buy, so there's two books you mentioned. Is there any more? Cause I'm going to go buy every single book you've mentioned and study.

• 44:55Speaker 01

  Some books on sales and my favorite is Zig Ziglar, Secrets of Closing the Sale. He is a, he's no longer around. God bless him, a wordsmith, like incredible. I remember reading his book and just going, wow, can't believe he says it that way. Like I was being sold every time he would talk about different things.

• 45:18Speaker 01

  You know, Brian Tracy has a sales book. There's another book, Dale Carnegie is another great book, right? How to Win Friends and Influence People. It feels very old school.

• 45:26Speaker 00

  I remember reading that at 17 and it changed my life.

• 45:29Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 45:29Speaker 00

  Just the idea, because I came from not seeing anyone in my business start a family. We did not grow up with anything. And I remember reading that book and for the first time feeling like, wait, maybe I have the power to go and do something and just studying and learning people could change my life. It was fascinating and it really worked.

• 45:49Speaker 01

  I was just at an education week at Stanford for entrepreneurship and AI and learning about how you can apply to AI to all lots of, all different kinds of businesses and how to think about it the next five years, 10 years, and all the things you're going to need to be up to date on. And it was really fascinating hearing them speak about that, but they're saying most competitive advantages are going to go away. And the one key differentiator is people's people skills and their ability to collaborate. Skills are down, communication skills are down 50% from 2008, when the iPhone came out for an average 18 year old. And so what does that say? It's like, we've got a problem. You know, everybody's doing this as opposed to talking to each other.

• 46:34Speaker 01

  And you know, sales is a great place to figure out, like, how do I still communicate? Because it doesn't matter if you're a teacher, a parent, right? An executive, you know, in sales yourself, you kind of know how to persuade people.

• 46:47Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 46:47Speaker 01

  And people like when they can communicate in a way that's easy and polite and persuasive and they admire it. You know, the easiest people to close in sales are other salespeople because we admire the craft and how well they do it.

• 47:01Speaker 00

  I love when someone asks me, go on a sales call. I'm like, yep, sell to me. Let's go. I want to see it. Speaking of that, I want to get into managing salespeople because I'm super interested. But speaking of the communication piece, you yourself have two girls, just like I do. And one thing I'm already thinking about with my kids, especially with my four year old is communication in that I, she's a very shy little one and that's fine right now, but I want her to be able to walk into a room, look someone in the eye, shake their hand, introduce herself and have good communication skills. Being from a sales background yourself, is that something you've thought about with your kids?

• 47:40Speaker 01

  I teach them all the time.

• 47:41Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 47:41Speaker 01

  Yeah. And it's more just basic language. So they'll be asking something from me and I'll be like, make sure you're nodding your head. Make sure you're smiling.

• 47:48Speaker 00

  Wow.

• 47:49Speaker 01

  And so now they know when they come to ask me for something, they're like, hey dad, would you like to go do, you know, and it's like, it's not perfect the way you should necessarily do it, but they understand and now they know what to look for. It's like, make sure you have eye contact when you shake someone's hand. I teach them this, like, make sure you always look them in the eyes and say, hey, it's really good to meet you.

• 48:07Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 48:07Speaker 01

  Don't be afraid of it.

• 48:10Speaker 01

  My, my daughters just changed schools. We, we were in the Palisades fires unfortunately, and we moved to Montecito for a moment, rented a house up there because we just wanted to get our kids in school. We're like, we're not doing the no school, like online type thing, like we did during the pandemic. So we were in Montecito for about a year and a half and we just moved back a few months ago. So all, all new school, but that was the, the revelation to me. The, you know, it's the silver lining. Our girls had to make new friends. They've been at the same school for nine years.

• 48:40Speaker 00

  Right.

• 48:41Speaker 01

  And now they had to go to a new school. Now they got to come to another new school. And it was interesting seeing them have to make new friends and figure out how to do it. And they're way better now. My youngest had like one really great friend, uh, you know, probably a group of like three or four girls that she was really tight with. And it really messed her up in the beginning, but she got more and more comfortable with it. And now I think if you ask any kid in their class, they're like, oh, we love Gwen. She's great. Like so good, you know? And so they had to figure that out.

• 49:11Speaker 01

  And I'm glad for it. It's hard in a world where if you have money too, right? Like to teach your kids resilience, to have them do hard things. That's the secret is can you get your kids to keep doing hard things? I always tell them, you know, Royce's love hard things. You know, and I'm sure, you know, a lot of people use that phrase, but. That's what makes it stronger. It's the challenges, often like the worst moments in our lives that defined who we were going to become.

• 49:34Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 49:35Speaker 01

  I think about that in my life, like having some financial trauma when I was younger with my family and, you know, for a long time, I was like, man, why do we have to go through that? It was so rough. But now I look back and I'm like, that was a gift because it made me pay a lot of attention to wealth accumulation, you know, being very thrifty, you know, for many, many years to save and to be an entrepreneur. And I look back now and I'm like, really glad for that experience.

• 50:01Speaker 00

  Yeah, I think about that a lot too, because my girls are growing, I mean, I grew up in the northeast of England.

• 50:07Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 50:07Speaker 00

  In an old mining town. My girls are growing up in Orange County, just a very different lifestyle. They have American passports. They don't know what I did to get my citizenship here. And me and my husband, we're both from the same place. We talk about that a lot in that our upbringing's forced us to have resilience. And you don't, I would be so grateful for my girls to not have to go through what I went through. And I do want them to have resilience.

• 50:31Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 50:31Speaker 00

  It sounds like your girls are incredibly well adjusted. And I'm curious, what are some things that you have done over the last, you know, decade that you think has really helped?

• 50:42Speaker 01

  Anything that helps them step out of their comfort zone. So sometimes, you know, I think a lot of kids, they just want to sit around the house and play with their toys or do whatever they want to do. Getting them up just to go hike, you know, it might be up a hill, up to some springs, up in the mountains, or just going to the beach, even taking a walk, or playing volleyball with them, or doing things that are fun, but, you know, they, they take some ambition and some dedication and commitment and, yeah, anything like that. I also take, I travel with them quite a bit. They've just kind of picked up the travel bug now and helping them see the rest of the world and how different it is. One, to be grateful for what they have, just even being in this country, the opportunities that are out there. And then to think differently, completely differently, right? Like the food, you know,

• 51:27Speaker 01

  the architecture, the spirituality, the music, the art, you know, whatever it might be, it's like this feast of, of the senses when you go to another country and realize, you know, America just has one way of doing it.

• 51:39Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 51:39Speaker 01

  There's lots of ways to do it. And you do, you pick one, like, or pick multiple. Like, I think most things are great when you, you have variety and then you take different things from different places. I think very few people have original ideas.

• 51:52Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 51:52Speaker 01

  I think it's more a combination of all these ideas. I took so many ideas from Silicon Valley because I thought my industry was very boring.

• 51:59Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 52:00Speaker 01

  And then mix them into what we created. And that's what's made it great.

• 52:05Speaker 00

  Yeah. It must have been very hard going through Palisades fire. Did you lose your home in that?

• 52:10Speaker 01

  So we, we just purchased a new home and luckily it's still there. We're remodeling it. So we were staying in a rental home in the meantime. And unfortunately, that's the one that cut fire.

• 52:19Speaker 00

  Wow. And all your things were in there?

• 52:21Speaker 01

  Burnt. You know, so many, 80% of our friends' homes are gone. And I was at a dinner conversation about a month ago with some close friends. And they said, you know, knowing what you know now, if the home was actually going to burn, what would you do? Like, if you had a bag, what would you throw in it now? Now, I, I was an Eagle Scout. So like, I actually packed everything. It was really key. But the thought was what was really interesting because I said, it doesn't matter what I, the one thing I wanted to put in the bag, it didn't fit in the bag. And I'm like, well, what is it? And I'm like, it's you guys. It's my community. And it doesn't, I realized, and I just sold my business. It doesn't matter how much money you have, like your community and your friends, your family, it's priceless.

• 53:06Speaker 01

  And that's the thing I couldn't get back because I had moved. We, we found out about everything burning when we were in Montecito. That's where we had gone up. I grew up in Santa Barbara. And we'd just go up there to get away from the smoke. But we just didn't know everything was going to burn. We, we'd done that four times before over the previous 10 years where we had to evacuate because, you know, there's a fire burn, but it's like, oh, it's, it'll be fine.

• 53:26Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 53:28Speaker 01

  So yeah, yeah, I did. I realized too, I was Angelino. Like I, I love LA and I had to get back. I'm excited to help rebuild.

• 53:36Speaker 00

  That's incredible. So you're back now is, I, I haven't been to the Palisades since it's starting to be rebuilt?

• 53:42Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, it's coming up. I mean, I would say it feels like maybe 30, 25, 30% of the homes are being built.

• 53:49Speaker 00

  Wow.

• 53:50Speaker 01

  But it's going to take time. Like when I looked at, I'm like, oh, this is like a 10 year play or, you know, to get things rebuilt. Unfortunately, 20% of the families just left LA entirely and said, you know, we're done. You know, they can't, we deal with a lot up there, a lot of homelessness, you know, crime, lack of housing, you know, there's a lot of issues. But when they can't protect you from fire, like, okay, it was, it was a doozy on a lot of people.

• 54:15Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah. Devastating. Well, thank you for sharing that. Going back to the sales piece, I want to ask, when you would be hiring salespeople, could you tell when someone walked in, oh, this is the demographic of someone who will do really well? And can you tell me what that is?

• 54:36Speaker 01

  It's not a perfect science, but there's a lot of things you can do to mitigate, you know, people who are going to quit on you. So one, it kind of goes back to what we were talking about our kids. Tell me some really hard things you've done in your life. It's one of the key questions we ask, you know, because we want to know if they have resilience. That is the hardest part of the job. In fact, a lot of people get paralyzed. They'll, they'll drive out into the area, they're in their car, it's hot outside. They might be in Texas, like we're talking about. You know, it's 100 degrees outside. They're going to get rejected all day long. And the hardest part is just getting out of the car.

• 55:08Speaker 01

  We, we call that call reluctance, right? Same thing if you're not going to, you know, if you're going to do telesales or whatever. A lot of people will dilly-dally around and find other things to do until they really have to make the call. But it's funny, once you get into it, you get in the rhythm and then you're fine.

• 55:21Speaker 00

  Yep.

• 55:22Speaker 01

  So resilience is key. So sports is a really good indicator. Like, tell me what kind of sports you did? How aggressive were you? Were you, you know, a team leader? You know, were you MVP? Did you guys ever go to a top, you know, some sort of a top league? What else have you been really good at? You know, if you're really great at grades, it's helpful. But show me that you can do something really, really hard. You know, you're extra competitive at, it could even be drama, you know, if someone's a really great actor, they have, they actually understand all that body language.

• 55:54Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 55:54Speaker 01

  You know, and communication style. And so that can be helpful. One of the key things we found was people who had served a LDS mission.

• 56:03Speaker 00

  Oh, yeah.

• 56:04Speaker 01

  For two years, have been rejected all day long for two years. They're like, we don't care. Doesn't matter. They're like, wait, you can make how much?

• 56:14Speaker 00

  I can make money being rejected? Great.

• 56:17Speaker 01

  Yeah. So it's, it's amazing where you'll find the best salespeople. Actually, I, I grew up LDS and I was raised that way. And I went to BYU. And so I'm in the heart of this world where all these people had served missions. And that was like a no brainer.

• 56:33Speaker 00

  That's the perfect place.

• 56:35Speaker 01

  Yeah. That's one of the reasons why they did so well. That was the key. And I recognized that they were able to do it and most other people couldn't. And so it became a great competitive advantage.

• 56:43Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 56:44Speaker 01

  Then we started recruiting from other colleges where they had sales programs and students were really interested, you know, in sales specifically. And they'd either done some form of sales or like, you know, internship somewhere else. And then, but yeah, anybody obviously with some sort of sales experience or rejection is, it's a great hire if you can eliminate, because you don't want them necessarily training on your dime.

• 57:02Speaker 00

  Right.

• 57:03Speaker 01

  You, you want to make the very best bets, especially if you're paying them. For us, it was 100% commission. That's a great way too, because a lot of people, they don't want to take the risk if it's 100% commission.

• 57:12Speaker 00

  Oh.

• 57:13Speaker 01

  And so you get people who are very ambitious, driven, like, yeah, I don't have a problem with that.

• 57:18Speaker 00

  Interesting. And is it the kind of role where people churn a lot? They're constantly getting pitched by other people? Or do you see them being in that, that seat for quite a long time?

• 57:29Speaker 01

  Yeah, for us, we focused on college students for the most part. We go to about a dozen different schools and recruit. We had about 3,000 salespeople. And they would come out in the summer and then, you know, we'd try to get, you know, call it half of them to come back the next year, you know, but they're aging out over time because they'll go on and get their, their other jobs. And we would usually find them, oftentimes their sophomore year. So I might get them, maybe we get them sophomore, junior and senior year. But there's probably 10% that stayed with us because then they start making 100,000, 200,000, $500,000. And they're like, I can't make this anywhere else.

• 58:04Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 58:05Speaker 01

  So they get a little bit trapped. They're like, all right, I'm either going to go do this other, I'm going to take a big hit on my pay, or I can do this for four months and then go surf the rest of the year, or do whatever it is that they want to do.

• 58:16Speaker 00

  With the online industry, how do you see differences? So for example, right now, we're building our sales team. We bring on setters who will set the appointments for closers to show up to. And I feel like I'm getting pitched in the DMs. I mean, I want to say 100 times a day from people who say they go closers, they can do it.

• 58:38Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 58:38Speaker 00

  I don't really know what I'm looking for and how I could start to really train these people up to want to stay with us for a long time, to earn good money, to do this right.

• 58:51Speaker 01

  So some of the things, one, we really evaluate our industry and figure out what can our competitive advantages be. So one, because I was top 1% of 1% in sales, I knew that like creating a really great training program was going to be key. If someone came to our sales program who'd even worked in another sales program the year before, they'd sell 70% more with us than the other company. So we kept all those stats, kept all the names, kept all the data. So we could actually show that in the recruiting process to get people motivated to come over. So then it's really hard because if some, for another company to compete, right? If they're like, oh, come work for us, we'll pay you a little bit higher commission. They're like, yeah, but you're not paying me 70% more commission. I make way more here. And they also

• 59:34Speaker 01

  found out that we, we're kind of like the, you know, the winning team. Because everybody, the mentality is we all work hard. We're all going to make a lot more. But people want to be around other A players, you know, the, the types of people that make your A players want to leave are C players. Right? And so mediocrity spreads a lot faster than excellence. So our, my mentality was, I like working people that are like me, want to work really hard, be the very top. And then, you know, we can build up that. We'll, we will scale over time because everybody's making more money. And then we've got more money. If we sell more, we've got more money and more revenue, more profits. We can throw that back into our sales team. So things we did, we had,

• 1:00:17Speaker 01

  I started studying Silicon Valley. And I'm like, what if we had a NCAA basketball court at our headquarters? Right? What if we had a movie room? What if we had a golf simulator? What if we had, you know, ping pong, foosball? You can start small. Yeah. Ping pong, foosball, air hockey, pool table, whatever it might be. Do that to start and see how it like changes people's view on things. I found that culture and friends like at work, you know, you want to have a really great program. You want to have a really great manager and everybody needs a friend that's there as well, you know, and you create that unique culture and there's that stickiness to it. And you analyze and you're like, well, what else can we do? What do employees want? So survey your people like crazy and just ask them what they want and they'll tell you. And

• 1:00:59Speaker 01

  if you're willing to take a little bit of investment and put into those things. For me, it was a wild investment at the time, you know, I was scaling across the country. We didn't have, you know, that much money in the grand scheme of things, but I put several million dollars into the headquarters into all this sort of thing. And it just was a different share. People like, well, why would I go sell with that company when I can be near this? Right? Even though they're college students in the summer, they went all over the country to sell. During the school year, they had that and they could come and we'd do, we'd have food trucks all roll up and be like, one, you know, one time a month, it's like, bring your friends, do whatever. It's a great way to get to know the company. Here's free food for everybody. Or we'd have like a DJ come in, or like we had Imagine Dragons come play and Neon Trees and like people come perform.

• 1:01:43Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:01:44Speaker 01

  It's just cool, like to have a giant facility and we could pack 1,000 people into that, you know, the gymnasium or whatever. Lots of unique things. Other things too, like wild retreats, like we would take people initially, it started with Hawaii and we'd swim with sharks, we'd skydive, we'd do all these wild things for college students. It's perfect, right? It may not be the right culture for everybody else. But yeah, you're just, you're trying to figure out what is it that they're excited about, where you can create life experiences. Then we did Thailand and Egypt and Africa. We started like going all over the place. So think about it. We eventually got an NBA basketball suite for the company.

• 1:02:20Speaker 00

  So cool.

• 1:02:21Speaker 01

  You just keep little by little, you keep thinking about it and like, don't give up. Keep finding ways to grow and make it interesting to have that stickiness factor to maintain the group that you helped develop, right? You can have a great sales training program, but other people are going to try to steal them away. And if you're always one step ahead of the competition, you can really scale it.

• 1:02:40Speaker 00

  Yeah. What I'm hearing you say is investing as much internally at reselling your employees to stay with you as you put as much effort into it. It's so much easier to put the effort into clients and bringing in revenue that you turn your attention away from your team. What, what, what was the?

• 1:02:57Speaker 01

  Because you want to attract and retain them.

• 1:02:59Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:02:59Speaker 01

  Right?

• 1:03:00Speaker 00

  What was the?

• 1:03:00Speaker 01

  And, and train them, you know, the process.

• 1:03:03Speaker 00

  True.

• 1:03:03Speaker 01

  Your way.

• 1:03:04Speaker 00

  What was the peak of the employee count you had?

• 1:03:08Speaker 01

  We got to 7,000.

• 1:03:09Speaker 00

  That's incredible. So that must've been a full-time job, just thinking about your culture.

• 1:03:14Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah. And you literally like you build out departments to think about it for you. And you're almost there just to like check off on different ideas. It's, this is a hard part for most people to understand, but building a large company, it actually gets easier the bigger you get. You have to get to a certain size, like especially when you realize that the company is not you and that it's an organization and it's about people and you can hire key people and put them in charge of specific departments. And really those people are, you know, they're still talking with you, but you don't have to have all the ideas. You know, you've got to be willing to find people who are even better at you at those specific positions that have more experience. We brought in executives that have worked at billion dollar companies to come help us, you know, and we're like, say at 100 or 200 million, you're like, how do we get up to, you know, a billion?

• 1:04:00Speaker 00

  Okay. Can you show me how you would move past some sales objections?

• 1:04:03Speaker 01

  I could try. Yeah. And one thing I'd recommend too, since everybody's thinking about this now, record your sales approach. Put it on a big screen TV and then get with your manager, like watch it yourself. One, watch it. But two, like you can just record it, you know, just your voice. Also listen for the paraphernal communication and how you're saying it to hear if your pitch is going up over and over, you know, or it's coming down, or how fast are you speaking? Right? How loud are you compared to the prospect that you're working with? All those things are really important, but we used to, every day we'd have a sales training meeting for just 20 minutes before everybody went out. And we, we'd record, everybody would record their approach where they

• 1:04:48Speaker 01

  came in and we'd look for someone who was like the worst and oftentimes someone who was the best and be like, all right, we're putting you up on the screen. And we call it putting on your armor because it's a little nerve wracking, right? But then we'd say, if somebody sees something, you know, just say pause and then tell us what you saw. It could be something really great or it can be something where they need to work on it. And it's incredible because you, what you're, what we did is we're teaching everybody on the sales team how to critique and how to get better so that they could better critique other people, but also internally they're thinking, can I need to make sure I do this? I need to do this. And if you don't see yourself on camera, you have no idea what you look like and how often you might be messing up on something.

• 1:05:26Speaker 00

  I am learning so much. My mind is blown. There's so many things I'm taking from this that I'm, I'm so excited. Thank you for sharing that. I'm curious, how important is mirroring the other person? And okay, can you tell me about that?

• 1:05:40Speaker 01

  Yeah. And mirroring, you know, we call it mirroring and echoing, right? So for the paraphernal communication should be echoing. And mirroring might be, it's not like doing exactly, you know, what the other person's doing in that moment. But you know, you might be sitting like that. And as we talk, you might adjust that way. And then maybe within 10 seconds, you know, I might do the same thing and start talking like this.

• 1:06:02Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:06:02Speaker 01

  I have a presentation that I give to a lot of my friends that have large companies be like, hey, can you come teach my sales guys, you know, an hour, two hour long presentation on the stuff that you've told me about. And so I'll go in and do it. And it's amazing. You'll find, you know, presence of countries where they're sitting with each other, you know, and they're both like this, but they know that politicians are, they're excellent at communicating. That's why they're in the position that they're in. But they do these sorts of things to mimic, build relationships, and they actually admire when they do it with each other.

• 1:06:33Speaker 00

  So good.

• 1:06:34Speaker 01

  And mirroring can also, it's not just smiling, head nodding. You also have to know how to like kind of lead as you're smiling and you're head nodding. Cause if they're not doing it, you don't want to, if they're doing this.

• 1:06:42Speaker 00

  Do it to me there? Cause you made me do, you made me nod back.

• 1:06:45Speaker 01

  Exactly. Like if they're giving you the stone, stone cold look.

• 1:06:48Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:06:48Speaker 01

  Like, or stonewalling, you do not want to mirror that back. That would be bad body language. So you have to know what's a mirror and what not to mirror. And then on the echoing, you know, the, the speed, the volume, the pitch, the pausing, all of those types of things are really important. The, the slang they use, the way, you know, if they're, you know, I'm not going to obviously mimic an English accent. That would be a little awkward. But finding ways to build trust and sometimes it's just mirroring things that they're into. It might be, you might see they have a sports team. You're like, oh, hey, did you guys see the game last night? Like immediate credibility, right? When, because they're looking for things that are like them to know, do I trust this individual?

• 1:07:31Speaker 00

  So good. Okay. The objections.

• 1:07:34Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 1:07:35Speaker 00

  Okay. Let's say you're pitching me on pest control. Okay. Cause I'm a good client for this.

• 1:07:40Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 1:07:41Speaker 00

  I need to think about it.

• 1:07:43Speaker 01

  That's perfect. Well, what would you like to think about?

• 1:07:47Speaker 00

  I need to talk to my husband.

• 1:07:49Speaker 01

  Oh, it's great. Yeah, I do the exact same thing with my, my spouse. What time does he get back?

• 1:07:55Speaker 00

  Oh, that's good.

• 1:07:57Speaker 01

  Yeah, because I can come back, you know, later on tonight or give you a call or whatever. I usually want to go back in person though, because you're much more likely to close a sale in person when they can see you. And you have that ability, right? If you're on the phone, much harder, right? Because all they're doing is listen to your paraphrables. It weakens your ability to close your, your likability. If you have voice, proverbial and body language, you're in a better spot statistically.

• 1:08:22Speaker 00

  That's really good.

• 1:08:23Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:08:24Speaker 00

  It's too expensive for me.

• 1:08:26Speaker 01

  You know, a few people have said that. I'm glad you brought that up. What's expensive to you? What part about it?

• 1:08:32Speaker 00

  Oh, my God, you're selling me already. Okay, this is great. I'm gonna keep going through them.

• 1:08:37Speaker 01

  So sometimes, you know, too, like with something like that.

• 1:08:39Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:08:40Speaker 01

  I have something I developed called the rack system.

• 1:08:42Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 1:08:42Speaker 01

  Okay, so one is resolve is R, A is lay down an ace and C is close again. And what I tell people is you want four different ways for the exact same objection to go through that process.

• 1:08:57Speaker 01

  Because you might, you know, you might say it's expensive and I might come up with a way to get over it. But you're like, yeah, I still think it costs a lot, right? And oftentimes, when people are saying expensive, it's, it's about, it's like a scale, right? Like, how much of your money, your harder money is worth this? How much am I getting for it? So usually when people tell me it's expensive, I just hear, I haven't heard enough. You know, there's, there's, you just haven't sold me yet. There's not enough value or trade for what I'm, what you're asking for. So the rack system, one is resolve. So I might come back with the expense. Yeah, I've heard a few people say that. Another thing people really love about our company is that we get out into the yard, you know, and we wipe down the spider webs off the fence line. And then we also treat, you know, around the swing sets, you know, around this.

• 1:09:42Speaker 01

  And if I hadn't talked about that before, people are like, oh, I thought they just did the house. I normally have to get out there and do that for my kids. Okay, now the scale, right? It starts to tip a little more. And then C is the close. And so then I'll close again. You know, we're gonna be here tomorrow at two o'clock and five o'clock. Which time will work better for you?

• 1:10:01Speaker 01

  So there's a little option close, right?

• 1:10:03Speaker 00

  Would that be to sign up or to come and actually spray?

• 1:10:05Speaker 01

  Uh, to come out and treat. Yeah, it's like I'm asking, always asking for the business after I lay down a future and benefit. If I don't, they're kind of like waiting going, am I supposed to say yes or what am I supposed to do? If you're confident, right, and you ask for it, it suggests that you, there's enough information for you to make a decision now. Especially if you've just offered something more. And the reason I offer something more is I want to, I want them to forget about the objection. I want their focus to go here.

• 1:10:29Speaker 00

  Right.

• 1:10:29Speaker 01

  And they want to close, but when I close, I want a different close than I used before. So that psychologically, it doesn't trigger them to go, oh, wait, I already said no to this same close, the way he asked. Right? It's a lot of psychology in it.

• 1:10:41Speaker 00

  Yeah, I also really loved how you agreed with me. Because I think to, like, immediately you would think if someone says it's expensive, you don't want to go and say, yeah, it is. But actually, it softened the objection for me when you just, yeah, a few people have said that. Like, so fascinating.

• 1:11:00Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's like, yeah, I totally get it. The confidence that you have, if you, so here's the, here's the thing you don't want to do, right? Like, if somebody says expensive, you're like, oh, um, uh. Like, if you look down, you look defeated, like you just lost, right? And the other, and the customer knows it. They don't, they may not understand body language, but psychologically, they know. Because we only started speaking so many thousands of years ago. Before that, we had to be able to read nonverbals and, and hear parabables to know, even if it was just grunts, what does that mean? Is that person a threat? Are they not? All that kind of a thing. So it's still, it's still in us to know.

• 1:11:36Speaker 00

  Okay, I've got a few more.

• 1:11:37Speaker 01

  Go for it.

• 1:11:39Speaker 00

  Now just isn't a good time for me.

• 1:11:42Speaker 01

  Totally get that. When would be a better time for me to come back?

• 1:11:45Speaker 00

  Great. Okay, this one is, um, this.

• 1:11:49Speaker 01

  And always, whenever I call somebody, like, if I do, and they're like, what can you call me later? And like, I can't get back to them, I always ask them, hey, this is, you know, David I stopped by earlier. Is now still a good time? Because if it's not, if I don't know what's going on behind the scenes, because I can't visually see, you know, that there's a dog and a child on one arm, I'm gonna lose the sale.

• 1:12:09Speaker 00

  Right.

• 1:12:09Speaker 01

  So if you just ask, and most of the time they'll say, oh, yeah, yeah, it is totally. Because they appreciate that you even asked the question.

• 1:12:18Speaker 01

  And they also remember, I think, in their head, they're like, I did tell them this, the time. So they might put down, you know, the child or, you know, go into the next room really quick just to take the call.

• 1:12:27Speaker 00

  So good.

• 1:12:27Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:12:29Speaker 00

  Um, I've worked with a company before, it just didn't work. I'm gonna do this myself.

• 1:12:34Speaker 01

  We actually heard that a lot, you know? One of the things your neighbors found is they've loved this about us. And this is what really worked. There's a lot of companies out there that use this sort of a product. We're actually using this product. And the way, the reason it's different is because of this, this, and this. So find something, and it, sometimes they'll say, I was with another service and this, yeah, I hear that a lot about so and so. Here's what people who've switched over love about us. It's just like, yeah, like, always be agreeable. Like, it doesn't help. If you go the opposite direction, now you're not like them, right? You're not on the same wavelength. It's like one person against the other. Or it's like, yeah. Notice how I'm always confident too. Whenever I say, it's like, yeah, totally, I get that. And I'm head nodding my head, I'm smiling, like, no problem.

• 1:13:18Speaker 00

  I'd be sold. So good.

• 1:13:21Speaker 01

  Everybody who's new does the opposite. They go, oh, um, yeah.

• 1:13:25Speaker 00

  Okay, no worries.

• 1:13:26Speaker 01

  Like, yeah, thanks for your time.

• 1:13:29Speaker 00

  Um, listen, I'm busy right now. Can you just send me the information and then I'll look at it tonight?

• 1:13:35Speaker 01

  You know, so we're only here for today and tomorrow, and that's why we're doing the discount. If you give me just one minute of your time, I'll just explain it to you, so at least you know what we're doing.

• 1:13:44Speaker 00

  But I need to see it written down to know if I can make the decision.

• 1:13:48Speaker 01

  Perfect. I'll show you right now. Just give me two seconds. And I'll just start writing whatever it might be. And say, and probably there's some find out too. So we talked about this, you know, we talked about this. Like, I'll make sure that you're engaged while I'm doing it. I wouldn't just like, you know, do whatever it is.

• 1:14:04Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:14:04Speaker 01

  But a lot of times, I tell people, like, um, you know, I always do the Benjamin Franklin. You know what that is? It's like, you just, you put a line down a page, write positive and negative. You write out, here's the positives on what we're doing. You know, like, any, any objections or any things that you're struggling with? You're like, oh, it's like price or this. And then you go, okay, we can resolve these things. You're, you're good to go. Yeah.

• 1:14:23Speaker 00

  Oh.

• 1:14:24Speaker 01

  So then you talk about this and you tackle it, right? You've got one objection to go through the rack system with. You've got another one, you go through it. Smile, head nod, roll through it. But you want to have it all memorized in your head. And most product services, you know, they don't have that many. There's probably no more than like 20 major objections that people could even come up with. There's probably three that are like the hardcore ones that everyone's like, okay, like, these are the ones I don't want to, you know, get asked, although they're typically the most frequent.

• 1:14:51Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:14:52Speaker 01

  But you come up with all your pre-written, you know, scripts for them and what you're gonna say. And then you can just focus on the body language, because that's what's most important.

• 1:15:01Speaker 00

  Line, okay. Listen, I'm just gonna stick with the person that I'm working with, uh, but thank you.

• 1:15:08Speaker 01

  Perfect. I totally get that and I respect that. One other thing that Susan really liked about us that I think you'll like is we're doing this over here. So it's more about like, just transitioning them to try to get them to think. Your neighbor, so one thing is I'm using a third-party testimony, a neighbor. So you're, you're intrigued already, like, my neighbor, I'm not just gonna shoot him down. Like, if I just said, hey, one other thing we do is this.

• 1:15:33Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:15:34Speaker 01

  It's okay, but it's not as.

• 1:15:36Speaker 00

  It feels more salesy when you do that versus a case study.

• 1:15:39Speaker 01

  Right, versus, you know, the thing that they really liked about us, you know, or one extra thing that she liked. And really, I'm just laying down another future and benefit. I'm laying down another ace, really to get over it. And if there's an easy way to resolve it, that was kind of like a quick, didn't feel like there's a lot I could.

• 1:15:54Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:15:55Speaker 01

  You know, say, you know, I never want to go against or say something negative about the current provider, for example.

• 1:16:01Speaker 00

  Right.

• 1:16:01Speaker 01

  Right? Whatever they're doing, I don't want to say they do something or they don't do something. I only want to talk about what I do. You know, if somebody says, yeah, I've really struggled with them about this. I say, yeah, I've, I've heard that actually, you know, multiple times from other people. Here, here's how we do it differently. Then you can talk about that. They have to say something negative though, because if I say something negative, it sounds like I'm bad mouthing. And it's just never, it's never positive. Right? You want to stay on that positive, you know, take the high road, all of that. Yeah, third-party testimony is key, especially if you have big brands that you've worked with and they're okay with you using their name, that we, you know, take care of them. Or if you can get, uh, you know, written letters about like, or product reviews, like how great you are and all that. You're like, look, so and so, Amazon said this about us or whatever. That's probably a really big company, but.

• 1:16:46Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:16:46Speaker 01

  Think of a small one, you know, multiple small ones, if you're in B2B sales or if it's just customers, ideally neighbors, you know, for door to door, but, yeah.

• 1:16:56Speaker 00

  So good. Okay, my final question is, I'm sure in this industry, your mindset and the way in which you psych yourself up to go knock on that door is everything.

• 1:17:07Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 1:17:08Speaker 00

  For someone that comes to you and they're just like, you know what? I'm, I'm sick. They, people don't want to talk to me. I, I don't, I'm feeling really nervous when I'm there. As soon as they start shooting me down, I'm struggling to like, to maintain it. What do I do?

• 1:17:23Speaker 01

  So one, I definitely record their approach so they can see what they're doing. And they're doing, when they're looking like this, like, yeah, we're out doing this and this. You can see in their face, like, they're just hating it. They're like cringing, or they're, a lot of times when someone's new, customer opens up the door, they're, hi, how you doing? Good. Like, they look scared, right? Like, and we call it deer in the headlights. Totally. It's like deer in the headlights. We're like, oh.

• 1:17:48Speaker 01

  You know, and then what does the customer do? We echo or we mirror naturally and they're like, and they're like, well, this isn't comfortable.

• 1:17:55Speaker 01

  So getting them on camera is the quickest way for them to adapt and go, oh my gosh, I don't want to look like that. And then you tell them, I go home and practice in the mirror, you know, and then we'll come back the next day, we'll record your approach and you're just going to keep doing this over and over until it becomes natural. And then you love who you are in the mirror in the future or on that recording, because you need to be like, if you were being a customer and being sold, how would you want to be sold? You could try to get them in that psyche. Other things too, just in terms of positivity, when people are starting out, I didn't do this for, until my fourth summer, my last summer when I sold, but I love Tony Robbins. His 30 days of personal power is super old school. My dad randomly had a bunch of cassette

• 1:18:38Speaker 01

  tapes in our garage for years and I saw them in there and I, somehow I knew the name only from that. And my dad was cleaning out the garage before I left and he said, hey, do you want these? You know, they might be good for sales. It's like really positive psychology stuff. I'm like, yeah, why not? I'll try it. And I loved it. I listened to it all summer. And that was my fourth summer and I sold 75% more than I had the previous year.

• 1:19:05Speaker 00

  What a testimonial for Tony.

• 1:19:07Speaker 01

  I know. You know, he's a little wacky and different, you know, I've been to like one of the seminars. I'm not like a total, you know, fan, like, you know, going to all, some people go to his things every year. It's probably a little much, but it's really incredible. What he teaches, the psychology behind it. Oh, totally. So valuable. Like it really is.

• 1:19:26Speaker 00

  So good. Thank you so much. I cannot wait to release this episode. I have learned so much. I'm going to make every single person on my team listen to it. We're going to get the reading list. I'm just so grateful for you sharing all of this.

• 1:19:37Speaker 01

  Yeah, me too.

• 1:19:38Speaker 00

  Where can everyone find you?

• 1:19:40Speaker 01

  You know, just on LinkedIn. I like, you'll laugh, but I like, don't even do social media. Like I'm very private, but it comes social media. But yeah, you can go on LinkedIn, look up David Royce. And then if anybody's interested in sales, if you're in college and you're, you're struggling, you want to pay your way through college and end up debt free or safe or whatever. We have competitions. They even do like give out Lamborghini sometime for the very top of the, when you have that many salespeople, you can have some wild competitions.

• 1:20:08Speaker 01

  You know, go to active recruiting.com, active, A P T I V E recruiting.com and they're welcome to go do that. I'm not with the company anymore, but it changed my life.

• 1:20:18Speaker 00

  Wow. Thank you so much.

• 1:20:27Speaker 00

  I want to tell you about a podcast hosted by my friend and business partner, Lori Harder. It's called Earn Your Happy. Lori has recorded more than 1,700 episodes over a decade and she's an expert at getting entrepreneurs to tell the real story behind their success. In fact, I think she's also the guest that has been on the boss podcast the most times. Lori sits down with entrepreneurs, experts and people you'd want to hear from about what it really takes to build an ambitious business and a life you actually enjoy. What I love is that she covers both. You get the practical business advice and you get the honest conversation about confidence, relationships and the ups and downs that come with success. If you're building something big without wanting to lose yourself along the way, check out Earn

• 1:21:09Speaker 00

  Your Happy. Subscribe today on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube or wherever you listen.