Ep 208 - "Sales Is a Contact Sport"

0:00 Well, my friend. Yeah. How you doing? You know, I'm looking out the window right now and it's about as beautiful as it gets in Oregon. I know. It was actually, I just ran outside, meet some folks from power and it is as nice as it's appearing. Incredible 70, 70 degrees will be the high today and there's basically not a cloud in the sky. Unbelievable. That's Pacific Northwest at its best. Oh. That's what that is. So good. That's what that is. We had a fun show, man. Of course, we're completely biased because it's one of our team members. So we had Clinton Tyranny on the show. He's our counterpart from North Carolina. He's one of our fractional sales consultants. Really senior level. This guy's a hitter.

0:40 He's done such a great job and the momentum that he gets, the teams that he works with is just pretty remarkable. Oh God, just an A plus career from being a successful college athlete to coming up as a technician. He's literally been in the industry since he graduated college. And he wasn't like, I finished my degree later. That's incredible. Yeah, he's been in the business a long time. We don't have a chance to get into it a whole lot, but at Floodlight, we have the opportunity, once a year we get everybody together. And I have a lot of fond memories from having him specifically out with the team at the end of last year. Yeah, so cool. He's just a really cool guy.

1:22 And not only have I grown to just trust and respect him, but I'm learning from him all the time. And you're going to hear it. Even on the show today, we're really just having an open dialogue and you're just going to hear the experience and the conviction and what he's delivering and what he's focusing on. So this isn't a floodlight advertisement. Don't make that mistake. Not at all. This is just a really open conversation with a very successful salesperson who's now teaching others how to do it. And he shares the stuff that's helped him create wins. And it's good. Some good stories. I mean, it's just fun. This is for salespeople. It's for owners. It's for operational leaders. It doesn't matter. There's some just really good stuff in here. It's good.

2:02 Let's get in. Wow. How many of you have listened to the Head Hard Boots podcast? I can't tell you that reaction, how much that means to us. Welcome back to the Head, Heart & Boots podcast. I'm Chris. And I'm Brennan. Join us as we wrestle with what it takes to transform ourselves and the businesses we lead. This new camera angle makes my arms look smaller than yours. I'm noticing that and I really appreciate it. I thought you did that on purpose. No, I don't. I didn't. And I am not happy with it. All right. Well, welcome back, as they say. Bro, you need a little more energy, man. Welcome back to the Head, Heart, and Boots podcast. I'm Chris Nordyke, and this is Brandon. This is Brandon. That sounds so cheese.

2:43 So listen, this is a special episode because this is the first, I think the first time, we're featuring a Floodlight team member. We're here with Clinton Tierney. our senior sales partner. Clint's got a really interesting background, and we thought that'd be fun to just get together and rap about stuff a little bit. Yeah, so why don't we just dive right in, dude? I want to hear your origin story. I mean, it was one of the things that attracted us to you besides your glowing personality. You're a sales guy. Yeah, yeah. Oh, and ravishing good looks. Yeah, and general attractiveness. Yeah, we're going to throw that in there. Yes, yeah, yeah. Athletic ability, all the things.

3:24 But actually, his arms are challenging me a little bit because we were at RIA together. Dude, that was my polo he was wearing. He filled it out. I actually got kind of pissed about it. I was going to talk to you later about how you let me down. The arms were stretching the sleeves. I noticed that. It's all right. Yeah. I let him keep those, too. I thought, hey, those show well. All right, Clint, you see how this works. You're seeing what this is going to be like now. Yeah, all my business is absolutely gone now. Yeah, there was no need for any of that. So dude, take us all the way back. Give us a little bit of origin story about family. Where'd you come from? I think your athletics background is actually a really important part of your story. So just kind of walk us through some of that and then getting into the industry and onward. Oh man, yeah.

4:04 So, origin story, originally from upstate New York, a little place called Watertown. If you have a military background, Fort Drum is probably fairly relevant. Brandon, you may or may not have been out there. But that's where I was born and raised, and I played baseball my whole life. Very, very important to me growing up. Kind of showed me my leadership skills, my hard work, and I paid all the way through high school. And actually... I played in college as well, and that was some of the most exciting years of my life. When I left Watertown, I went to school in Rochester, New York, played my years of ball there, and got a degree in marketing, actually.

4:45 And I always knew that I was going to somehow figure out a way into sales. That was always exciting. kind of who I was from a personality standpoint. I was always flamboyant and spoke with my hands on my face. And everyone always said, Clint, you're gonna be really good at sales. So after I graduated, and that was actually in Rochester, New York at the time, God, Chris, there really wasn't a lot of jobs at that point in time. And I always knew I wanted something more, if I'm just being honest with you. Watertown's really small, it's home for a long time, nothing wrong with it, and nothing wrong with New York, but I just wanted more. And so when I was graduating, I moved to North Carolina after I graduated. I was looking for something more. And that time, this was probably 2004-ish, right around there, was one of the most prosperous places in the country to move to.

5:31 That made it sound like they were handing out jobs at the border. So I moved to Raleigh, North Carolina, and I found a place to live, and I had to pay for rent. And so... Got a little job in restoration for an old company called Cary Reconstruction Company. And I was just going to do this job while I looked for my real sales job. And so I started off as a mold technician. And I think, guys, at that point in time, I think I was probably making eight, nine bucks an hour. It wasn't much. Literally, your first job out of college was right into restoration. Right into restoration. No, no, no ties at all.

6:12 Coming from a place where it's snowing and cold for nine months of the year, I was excited to work outside. And that's how they'd advertised it, was work outside, different place every day. And I was like, oh, this is great. I'll get a tan and I'll do this during the day and I'll look for my real sales job at night. And yeah, I fell in love with it, guys. I was a Moltec for like a year and I loved it. We're like, dude, you have a college education. What are you doing in crawl spaces? And I was like, I don't know, man, but this industry is really cool. And I was digging it. So I spent a year doing that. And as I kind of learned the way my management team was set up, I kept going to them. I was like, hey, I want more. I want more responsibilities in there. So I eventually started doing some mitigation as well.

6:56 So I was a hybrid between a mold tech and a mitigation tech. I did that for... God, a number of years in my young 20s, which again, I just thought it was the coolest thing, but I always wanted more. So I started going to all my mitigation manager and my mold manager and I was like, hey, what do I got to do to get into management? And so after a couple of years, I was given that opportunity and I started, at first I was like a hybrid, run-write. I was running and writing estimates for both mold and water. So I would write them, train and exactimate, then I would sell them. And then I would run them as well, which was an incredible experience. And I did that for several years. Then after that, I moved into project management on the structure side.

7:38 And I really did that for probably the latter five or six years of the 10 years that I spent in operations at Care Reconstruction. And I ran residential losses and I ran commercial losses and probably 10, 15, $20 million worth of repair work. I had done large losses well. I became really good at that. My last position at that company, I was there for about 10 years, was kind of like a training manager. So we had at that time, we'd grown significantly. I think it was probably 60 million plus. I think we had five or six locations. So all new project management, As they came on, they came to me first and I taught them how to present themselves, how to write estimates, how to...

8:25 sell work. And I did that for like about 10, the first 10 years of my restoration career was spent mostly on the operation side. I didn't realize that you had, I should know this, but I didn't realize that that breadth of experience was quite that comprehensive. I thought for some reason I had it in my head that you kind of had one tracked up, one side of the org. I didn't realize you spent so much time in construction too. When I say 10, it's probably 15 plus million worth of repair work that I'd done on both, you know, multifamily, some commercial, light commercial, and a lot of residential as well. When you were with that team, I'm just curious, what happened? So they, you said they were at 50, 60-ish towards the end of your round with them?

9:09 Yeah. Wow, that's a big entity. Where did they start when you first joined them? Yeah. So if I remember correctly, and this is again, 2004, 2005, it was, it started off as a carpet cleaning company. The owner, there was a painter and a carpet cleaner kind of get together and they created what was called at the time. Yeah, exactly. Right. How most operators get together and start. It was a little bit of carpet cleaning at the time, but it was a construction company moving in heavy, trying to figure out how to do restoration. And, I'm going to guess, I mean, sometime when I jumped on board, we were like three to five million at the time. Somewhere right around in there. Oh, man. But the leadership team on this place, in this office, over the next 10 years, I think the top tier executive team ended up, as we eventually got bought out by private equity, I think every single one of them ended up going off to run their own business.

10:03 Incredible hunters, incredible culture. And I learned an incredible amount during that 10 years. I really, really owe a lot of my success to this day and my knowledge and my wisdom and my experience to that company and the people that were there. Man, that's awesome. Do you mind just highlighting a couple top things that you feel like were real game changers for you that you experienced there? Yeah. One of the things that I think was one of the most important grassroots things that I learned there was the culture. I learned that if you're not selling it, someone else is. And we used to say, they're eating your lunch.

10:44 And we just, we chased every fire. We bid as tight as we could. We really took it to heart. Even as we were multiple locations, it was always a dagger to the heart when we didn't sell a job. And that was from the president down. That wasn't just the business development team, which at that time was run by one of the best that I've ever seen it done, But he only brought in so much. The rest of the team, the operators, the general manager, the technicians, the mitigation manager, the mold manager, all these guys, man, they sold. And they sold hard. And they had to explain, if you didn't sell something, someone above you wanted to know why. So I really always took that culture.

11:24 Because I know a lot of companies, they struggle to scale and they look to the sales team. And although that's fair, that's not the entire thing. Yeah, that was one of my biggest takeaways, Brandon. That discipline, man. I was just, we were talking with another current client that we're working at. We're working with multiple locations of them and they've got a close rate issue. And so we talked about creating this kind of war room mentality and how important it is. And I've watched Brandon lead this way through a number of different seasons where... It's like, hey, if we've got a problem or we have, in the case of close rate, we have an opportunity in front of us that we're not maximizing. You got to apply it to this daily job by job focus, like looking at the production sheet and the pending and being like, okay, why is this job still impending?

12:07 Let's get this across the finish line. Just that discipline. Yeah. But looking at every single job is so important, right? And I spent a lot of time in WIP meetings and I was guilty of this when I was on project management, but we always wanted to move the goalpost, right? It's like, well, I've reached out. I'm waiting to hear back. That was unacceptable back then. We weren't allowed to move the goalpost. It was like, pick up the phone right now and call this client. Do it in front of me while everyone's in the room. And it was incredible how much we moved the meter just doing that. But it was a culture. It was a culture that was instilled us from the top down. And it was contagious. I think one of the things that's challenging, man, is that you're talking about a culture that was built into the DNA from the beginning.

12:52 That scrappiness ultimately is what started to earn your guys' right to play in that market, I'm sure. But then not losing that is so important because I think that there's a lot of examples, and it's happened inside organizations I've been responsible for, where you become less hungry because you've developed some tried and true systems, you've got decent lead gen, maybe you've got some BDs that, let's call them, they're 60% effective. And you got enough of them, it's like you kind of know the devil that you're working with. And you grow a little accustomed that the work's coming in the door. And I think that a lot of us in the last 18 months are getting a bit shell-shocked.

13:34 Yes. Because if you don't keep that scrappiness in the system, it is so hard to get operational staff to want to pursue opportunities. It's kind of mind-boggling a little bit how difficult that is. It feels like you're asking people to do something that they believe is outside of their job description. Yeah. Yeah. And it is just incredibly difficult to get that momentum and that grittiness back into the business if you let it go. It is. It's easy to become complacent, especially when you're one of the major players in your market. But like you just said, Brandon, the industry has changed. Jeff Moore talked about it at RIA. I don't know if it's going back.

14:16 And I think the companies out there that have that all hands on deck sales culture, that's part of their role. It's not just to write an estimate now. It's, We've talked about this. I talked about this a lot with some of my clients now. It's like, you don't work for a restoration company at the industry exchange. I like to say, you don't work for a customer service company or a sales company that just happens to do restoration. And that mindset is so fundamental to where we are in the industry right now. It's so true. It's a huge, man. Yeah. Well, so keep moving, man. So you have this 10-year come up in the industry, taking on all kinds of operational roles and watching a company grow.

14:58 Holy cow. From three to five million to 50 to 60 million. It's like, what an incredible street MBA in the industry. And then you decide to make a pivot. So talk about this pivot into the sales side of it. the industry. Yeah. So I pivoted a little bit at the time. About 10 years in, we were bought out by private equity. And I had really bought into our customer base. It didn't matter how big the job was. Didn't matter how small it was. It didn't matter how profitable it was. we were going to take the work no matter what, because it could always lead to something else. We had this culture of we were just going to take anything and everything because we knew that that was scalable and that was how we were going to grow.

15:42 And again, if it wasn't us, it was somebody else, and we didn't want that. Well, as private equity came in, and I'm not here to say anything negative about that, but they had a different avenue that I wasn't in alignment with. So I'd take a little bit of time off for a non-compete. from that leadership group that I was talking about, he, once his down and compete was up, which we left about the same time, he called me and he said, hey, Clint, I just bought this little carpet cleaning company that does a little bit of restoration. You want to do this again? And I said, yeah, I do. Because at the time I'd spent a year working for a builder and it was great, but that wasn't in my heart. That wasn't my passion. And so I came in on that point.

16:23 We were very, very small. So there was kind of like a one hat fits all type of thing. lead estimator slash GM ops manager. I don't even really know what my position was at the time, but it wasn't a few months in to where I was selling a lot of work. I was selling a vast majority of the work and I had done that before the previous company. And so my owner and president came up to me and said, Hey Clinton, have you ever thought about doing business development? And I was like, I've never done it before, but how hard could it be? Right. And, uh, Like I'm selling already. It's like, I can just go sell, right?

17:04 So I agreed to it. We worked it out. And I remember very similar that the kind of story went like this. And I think most restorers would probably align with this. I know most BDMs would go, oh, I get this. So on Monday, I show up and I'm like, all right, sounds good. When does training start? And it was like, here are your keys. Car's right out there. who are you going to see today? I was like, oh God. And so I kind of had to learn from there. And I was an agent marketer at the time. So I was just hitting all my local state farms. They're pretty strong here in the Raleigh, North Carolina area. And I did well my first year. I really did. And years two through the next six, I expanded in the commercial markets.

17:48 And I learned a lot. I had to. I became a, a student of the game. I watched every webinar you could possibly imagine while I was driving. I listened to every podcast even before they were cool and popular. I watched and read everything that I could get my hands on. A lot of it was SaaS, tech, sales engagement type process. But I was picking and choosing the things. I'm like, that corresponds to business development. And I eventually learned how to do business development really, really well. I had a genuine ability, I found out, to connect with people and they trusted me. So I ended up after about six years in the field, you know, I was a high producer in the area.

18:33 And I had a lot of clients that were calling me on the daily. And it was a great experience. It was a phenomenal experience. And I, I did find out, guys, that my strength was on the sales side. As good of an operator I was for the first 10 years to where they even put me in a position to train others how to do it, I ended up being far better at the business development side. That was really, truly where my passion was. You know, it's something very interesting about what you said. So highlight a couple things. One, this is like a freebie for me to like promote our team member because they're worth promoting. But the work ethic, I think, is what is interesting. So you approach, and you said this earlier about your connection with sports and some of the skills that it taught you.

19:16 Yeah. you applied a similar mentality that obviously that you applied to sports to be able to play all the way up through college to this learning this tradecraft. And I think what is both frustrating for leaders and owners and kind of saddening at the same time, it breaks our hearts when we see that people, they do have a phenomenal opportunity sitting in front of them. And even like, let's just call a spade to spade, even at companies that, let's just say there's some rough things happening in culture, okay? Some things aren't perfect in most businesses at any state that they're in, let alone now. Even in the midst of that, you really do as an individual have a choice to make.

19:56 You either are going to fully take responsibility of how you're going to learn and advance in your skill set to succeed. Or you're going to take the stance that someone outside of you is in control of how you're going to win. And obviously, you didn't choose that path. You chose the extreme ownership path. And it made you successful to a point where it was outsized from the norm. And it's just like, why am I double clicking on that? Because I want our listeners, like a lot of our listeners are not owners and key leaders. They're actually BDs. They're operational staff, just like the most of us. And dude, this is how, like, so Clinton is an example of succeeded in every role he had.

20:37 Now he's in a position where he partners with other companies to help their sales team develop. And you do it phenomenally, by the way. But really the way you got there had nothing to do with anybody else. It was about how you approached the trade craft. And I just, gosh, man, I just, I want to hammer on that because I think it's so easy for many of us to include myself and, To get in these situations where you're kind of waiting around for the opportunity to be the best opportunity. And we give ourself an excuse to not really have any level of success because the opportunity wasn't quite right. And man, dude, what a disservice that we do to ourselves. You know what I mean? I just want to highlight that because you are a byproduct of that choice making for sure.

21:22 I fell in love with the process though, Brandon. And I will attribute this to sports and my baseball background because I'm, You guys have probably heard this before, but you fail seven out of 10 times in baseball on average, right? Six out of 10, seven out of 10 times. So if similar to business development, which is a long sales engagement process, if the only win that you can figure out is a base hit or a signed contract, you're going to fail far more often than you're going to win. And so the two things that I learned was when I play baseball, fall in love with the process, not the outcome. So I love the grind. I love the reps and I attributed my success in sales from that same exact mindset.

22:03 I love getting my car. I love being strategic. I love banging out DMS on LinkedIn. I loved that grind and seeing things move through the sales engagement process. And over time I had to learn this the hard way, Brandon, but you have to find the small wins throughout the day. When you're making 12, 15, 18 stops a day, and you've gotten no's all day long, I'm busy, I'm on the phone, I can't talk, I've got someone else, you need to be able to find that one conversation throughout the day that was a good win, that you were able to talk about their buying behaviors, you were able to talk about some of the negative experiences that they've had in the past.

22:46 And they might not have went, hey, Clinton, whatever you have to say, like, I'm buying, I didn't get that, right? But I learned how to acknowledge my small business, wins throughout the day and progress yeah yeah i fell in love with that progress i fell in love with that with that grind yeah and that helped me that helped me a lot because for anybody that's listening to their man i've been there like eating that ham cheese sandwich on a 90 degree day on a friday you're 50 plus stops in it's been a week like been there man been there and finding those small wins out throughout the week that is and that's what i concentrate on a lot with my reps Because it's not all about just me teaching them how to get a closed deal.

23:28 It's how to enjoy that grind and coaching and mentoring them throughout the week. Yeah, that's huge. And that really is, I think in some ways, a unique mindset for a lot of BDs. Because a lot of BDs, it isn't the process they're in love with. And so I think that's really good wisdom to offer is that it's probably a more useful way to look at and approach the job. Because Brandon and I have been saying this for years in all areas of the business. We don't have control over the outcomes in this industry. Right. But we ultimately have control of the leading behaviors. What are the inputs that we're putting in as a team? And obviously, that's very true on sales side. I'm curious, as you look back, one, you look at your coaching framework and the way that you see sales today.

24:14 What are the things that you continue to leverage or teach or hold people to today that you learned during that season, those six years or so where you were doing personal sales? Yeah. That's a great question, Chris. My two major takeaways are this. Volume hides lack of ability. Volume of activity solves a lot of problems. I had to learn that the hard way. But any advice that I give to any rep, whether it's a client of mine or anyone listening to this podcast right now, volume of activities and consistency of that volume. Challenge yourself to make as many stops a day be efficient with your time, create your routes.

24:55 That stuff was monumental. And I saw my sales just climb. And I really didn't get that much better over time, but it just climbed and climbed and climbed because it was consistency and high volume of activities. Are you a business that's under five million in sales and you're just now getting ready to try and scale your company up and hit some of those targets you've always wanted to hit but now you've gotta build a sales team? Or maybe you just hired your first sales rep but you don't really know how to manage them. Like how do you manage, lead, train, develop a sales rep? Floodlight has a solution for you now. So we can actually assign your sales rep a turnkey VP of sales that will help them create a sales blueprint, their own personal sales plan for your market, They'll have weekly one-on-ones with that sales rep to coach, mentor them, hold them accountable to the plan.

25:43 And they'll also have a monthly owner's meeting where they'll meet with you or your general manager and review the progress of that sales rep. Their plan to actual results, what kind of performance improvement they're working on with them. Also let them know, hey, you might, they're doing really well. Maybe we should think of hiring a second sales rep. They're going to have that one-to-one advice for you as an owner or senior leader on the team as well. How great would that be to have a bolt-on sales manager for your one sales rep and it's only $2,500 a month? If you're interested in talking more about that, reach out. Let's grab some time and let's talk shop. Our floodlight clients this last year in 2024 generated over 250 million in revenue supported by advised by an industry expert who's owned and operated a business just like you.

26:26 So take action. Don't kick the can down the road. Start with our business health and value assessment and let's unlock the next chapter of your success story. And then the second one was, and I was probably the best at this. There are a lot of people out there that are far better than I ever was as a, as a, making discovery touches, as I call them, or, or make, you know, fresh contacts as you're, as you're going out and seeing people. I really loved scoring meetings with people. That was where my biggest ROI was because at that point in time, if you can get a meeting with someone, then you have now permission to have that conversation with them about their business.

27:07 About business. About, yeah, exactly. And, and, I can start asking them questions about their industry, how long they've been in it, what is their future look like? And oh, by the way, have you ever had the need for emergency services and where could those have gone better? And then you start having a true discovery call and we're unveiling true pain question, pain seeking questions. And we're unveiling true pains that they have. And then at that point, I had a great team behind me, so I was able to critique and customize some solutions that really met their needs. And one of the best stories I ever told, and this is a true story, I hounded a property manager in the multifamily for, God, about a year.

27:53 And at one point, she finally called me and goes, if you send me one more email, Mr. Tierney, come on in, let's meet. And she was tough. She was tough, guys. And she had her arms crossed the whole time. And She really had no plans of using me. She just knows I wasn't going to give up. Like I told you, I was like, I got to get this over with. I got to get this guy over. What does he have to say? And then at the time she was using one of the local franchises and had no issues with them. I mean, just stop blocking every single question I had. So at one point I said, well, okay, I'm glad that you've got someone great. That's wonderful. I'm not here to change that. I'm here to solve a problem. And if you don't have any, that's fantastic. But just so I can learn from that company, like, where could they be better?

28:36 And she's like, oh, you know, it's nothing really. But she's like, the one thing that they could, God, you know, they don't invoice in time. Oh, I got to wait for these invoices. And I was like, So I was like, oh, God, that's unfortunate, but that's not that big of a deal. Why? Why is that a pain for you? She's like, oh, because my regional, she's got to get me to clear the books every single at the end of the month, I clear the books. And it was a big deal for that person's boss in that organization. And so I just said, hey, if I deliver the same level of service and you can see where I'm going with the conversation, I unveiled that. It was like my last Hail Mary didn't. I was kind of closing it up.

29:17 I ended up working with her for years after that. And the pain was because no level of service, no communication, no timeline, no construction, nothing was invoiced. So it was great. I love getting face-to-face meetings with people because that's when you can really, really start diving in to how they conduct their business and what's important to them and the pains. that they have. And those professionals always leak into their personal life. So you just draw out those emotions. I'm so really good at that. I'm sorry, I'm maybe a little long-winded on that. No, no, it's beautiful. So good, man. It's beautiful. Yeah, that was always one that stands out. But I love high volume of activities and really scoring pre-scheduled face-to-face meetings and having a true pain-seeking question type discovery call with them.

30:03 And I loved that. I loved it. Well, and I think it's interesting because it ties back to you finding the little wins, right? Like that's a great example of, in our business, a win is getting a standup. Like, because you know, once they've said, hey, I'll meet with you, 15 minutes, 20 minutes, they've said, I'm open to having a business direct conversation. You're not going to go in and talk about sports and kids and the things. They want to meet with you. Now you know you can go in, you know, and seek that. So this is so interesting too. I'm going to be very transparent as a leader, okay? Okay. I have done the most mental gymnastics around sales and sales generating or lead growth over the last 90 days. I probably have in the entire 16, 17 years that I've been in or around this industry, 15, 16 years.

30:49 Yeah. And you almost start talking yourself into going crazy because I can spend years. We have a commercial sales master course for heaven's sake. Yeah. Like, Craig and I have been saying the same things for years because we knew we needed to start moving away from residential-heavy, agent-heavy marketing. There's got to be another route. And so, here I... We preach this stuff for years and years and years. I go and partner with FP. I want to very... Honor my career to be able to be a participant in it. And then I catch myself doing mental gymnastics about how we're going to approach this, right? Okay, so woe is me. All right, so we kind of have a come to Jesus moment with ourselves and we're like, dude, we have a plan.

31:31 Why are we not executing the plan? So anyways, I got a new team member that joined us actually shifted from a role. And this week was like his first week on the ground. And I literally, I was like, okay, no mental gymnastics. I'm not going to try to create more complexity for my man here. What I'm going to do is I'm going to give him, Chris termed it the mayor of the market. I'm like, dude, every legitimate business that's within a certain mile radius of our shop, all I want you to do is put our brand in their hand. Okay? Yep. It's not overly complicated. He's running the master course in the background every morning. He's getting his training in. And I am not kidding you, dude. Dude went out day one on the ground. Sends a summary of his day in our Slack channel.

32:14 Dude did mega stops, volume stops. Had three secured stand-up meetings for the following Monday. Yeah. Day one. Day one. It's possible. Oh, it is. And you know what was so cool, man, is that the language he was using, hey, I secured a stand up on Monday at 9 a.m. with so and so. Like, my point is, is that you're right. Like at the end of the day, aggressive action, action bias does work if you just do it and you're consistent. And I love that thing, the little win. Like for him, I just freaking pounded the drum. Dude, three stand-up meetings secured and your first day on the ground.

32:55 Do you know how awesome that is? You celebrate it. that, Brandon, not the outcome, because we cannot control whether it's 1,000, 10,000, 100,000, or that stand-up may be 100%. Yep, you've got my next call, sir. Might not happen for three to six months. That's right. Yeah, but man, I just am thinking to myself, bro, if you go out four or five days a week and campus like this and secure two to three agreed meetings, bro is going to slay. Slay. You give that guy a few more months, as long as he locks in and continues to do that, the numbers that guy is going to start posting is going to be phenomenal.

33:37 What an awesome. Anyways, I just got really excited because you're spot on, dude. You're spot on. And I almost have rejuvenated excitement because I'm like, okay, I'm done with the mental gymnastics. Go back to what you know, because it does work. Just stop overthinking it. Yeah. And I love that stand-up lingo, man. He's diving into the Commercial Sales Master Course. Yeah, he is. Yeah, it was so fun. Yeah, so fun to hear him talking about it. So it was super cool. By the way, man, total rando inside chat here. I've got an introduction I need to make to you, Clinton. I was telling you earlier, somebody from the industry will come to find out he used the Commercial Sales Master Course for three or four of his BDs that he was responding to.

34:18 And he ranted and raved about it. So Chris, kudos to you. I mean, no raves. It was all raves, right? It was all raves. Yeah, it was funny. And the guy is just one of those individuals you can't help but absolutely respect from the success. So anyways, kudos to the team. Okay, well, listen, before we get out of time here, Clinton, I want to talk about the transition that you made from individual sales. Because you were very successful. I mean, you were a $3, $4, $5 million guy, like clockwork every year in that role, which is anybody who's listening understands just how high performance you were as a sales rep. But chances are very good, right? That there was a bit of a transition and learning curve into management, man.

34:58 Talk about, as you started to lead a team, just what that experience was like. Yeah, what an eye-opening experience that was. I had mentioned earlier, and you'll hear me say this a few times, Chris, the genuine ability to connect with people. And I was really gifted with that ability. And what I come to find out was when I had 15 or 16 reps at one point under me, they all didn't have that same level. And so I had to figure out why some were extremely successful and others were not. And where a lot of small independent owners, they kind of manage the sale or manage the deal. I had to learn how to manage people.

35:40 And that was a really big, and I'm so blessed with my baseball background because the coaching and mentoring started to really come in. And when I speak about small wins, I learned that when I was a sales director, when I was overseeing others. And some would get really, really frustrated, especially new entrepreneurs. business development managers when they come into a new market. And maybe we had multiple locations with the second company that I was with. And some markets were bigger than others. And some of the teams had more abilities than the corporate office. So now managing people was very challenging, but I found out as long as I was, and I take this into my fractional sales leadership now, As long as we set really, really clear expectations with each of the business development managers.

36:29 And I get their buy-in. It's not just me saying, hey, you're going to do this. It's like, I'm throwing this out there. How do you feel about it? Is that attainable? Is that going to put where you want to be financially? And we had a really, like, what's your why? And then what are the metrics going to be? I was really heavy on those KPI metrics. But I had their buy-in. And it made a huge difference once I could coach them towards that. And when they fell short, I was like, hey, we fell short of where you wanted to be. These were the metrics you set for yourself. Where do we need to pivot? Where do we need to change? A lot of times, Brandon, that always came back to volume, right? That always came back to volume or getting those two to three to four or five standups per week.

37:12 And so it was a change, Chris. Man, what an experience it was, though, to be able to start managing others. I enjoyed it. I was captain of my team in high school, captain of my team in college, and I always wanted to see others succeed more than myself. So I really poured into the people. And I got more out of that in the years that I was a sales director than ever. than any other time as an individual contributor. Yeah, I think that's a core point. Oh, it's such a characteristic. That characteristic is absolutely unique. And I would say it's rare amongst high-performing salespeople. And it's neither good nor bad in a vacuum, right?

37:54 Because we need high-producing sales reps that make a whole career out of that. Of course, of course. But to have somebody like yourself who's been in the trench and successfully performed as an individual, but then to come into the leadership role with this intrinsic desire to coach up others and spotlight others is a really unique combo. I mean, I think, obviously, Brandon and I are really proud to have somebody like yourself on the team because it's rare. It's a rare combination. within sales performers, but I think it is critical. I think it's critical that sales reps have a leader like that that can both mentor them in the weeds because they've done it, but then also hold them accountable, coach them, encourage them.

38:34 Yes. It is really unique. And I think it's the missing piece in a lot of cases because it's so common, not just in restoration, but it's so common that we promote up our best salespeople and we automatically think they're going to be a great manager and we're going to be a great manager. Yes. And nine times out of ten, they're not. And I think it creates almost a failure, a performance failure, which is really bad. It's bad for self-esteem. It's bad for your confidence when we do that. You end up accidentally underserving them when we put them in that position without doing some gut checks. I think, Brandon, the strengths and attributes that create the top salesperson on a team.

39:19 And full disclosure, guys, when I'm doing four and a half, five million, I was not the top producer on my team. I wasn't. But those attributes, those characteristics, those strengths of those types of people, they don't always convert to the management side. And I think that's often an issue. that a lot of companies fall subject to. They think, okay, my top producer, I don't want to lose them, I'm going to move them into a management. And often they think that they want to be in a management position. And it really, I was good at my job, but my passion was always helping others. That's why I was a trainer at the previous Roller Care Reconstructionist. That's why at Restore Pro, I was a director of sales because I liked helping others.

40:03 I always wanted to see others. That's why I love fractional sales leadership. At this point, more than anything else I've ever done, I'm helping companies and business development managers across the country. But I get more out of that. And so you're 100% right. A lot of times, your top rep, it's not the best sales manager. Yeah, no, it's true. I mean, some of the folks that throw up just ridiculous numbers, they couldn't help somebody else do that to save their life. But man, are they the hunter of hunters. Like, get out of their way, right? Yeah, that's the right way. Just stay out of their way. Don't ask any questions. There's justice of adding responsibility and lowering their income potential.

40:45 Yeah, I think a lot of reps think, oh, I just want to get out of the grind. So the opportunity for management is you get out of the grind of all the stops and all the field time and the driving and everything else, but then you realize there's a different kind of grind, essential to being a great coach and a great team manager. And many sales reps, when they get into that management layer, they're like, oh, this was not the stress. This was not the cush. And I felt the stress of everyone on the team now, you know, before I just don't worry about myself. Well, because I care, like now I felt the stress of the entire team and they were consistently calling me with conversion issues.

41:28 And I had to help them with that as well. And because I had a strong operations background, all the problems for all offices of all my reps. came my way. And, and, and so, yeah, one was not, it was definitely not, now that I'm out of the field, I'm, I'm no longer under stress. Couldn't have been further. Different kind of stress. Yeah. I think, I think you give up like personal performance anxiety to stress because that's where all the stress comes from. You start being responsible for others. Okay. So I got one more target I want to attack with you before we let you go, man. One of the things that is unique about you and I think has lended itself to your ability to coach and produce individually really is the discipline and cadence of activities.

42:12 And one of the things that I've experienced with you and it's actually helped me in my current situation is I'm leaning in on the way that you hold accountability with your BDs. there is a system to it. You're very methodical about the way that you want to promote a focus on the vertical, a focus on weekly activity, and then getting them to come prepared and talk to you about what that week's performance was and what you're going to do to maneuver about that. So do you mind just sharing with us like two or three elements that you've focused and hammered on that creates the most success with BDs that you're working with personally? Oh man, God, two or three? I know. We can't allow you to go on a preach session, dude.

42:54 Yeah, no, I know, I know. Okay, so first and foremost is creating the vision. At Floodlight, we have the Commercial Sales Master Course, and that coincides with our sales blueprint. And creating a vision for that, creating a roadmap is crucial. And the only way that I could week over week focus with my, with my reps is having that vision in place. Too many owners and too many smaller companies are too reactionary and they don't stay true to the vision because the economy slowing down things react. And I can't do that. So staying course on our sales blueprint is first and foremost. Secondly, now I teach, email campaigns and I teach LinkedIn outreach and social media brand awareness.

43:42 And I teach lots and lots of ways, but I narrowed down the most on activities of route stops or discovery touches. And then I really, really worked on pre-scheduled face meetings. You cannot get, I'd like to see someone have at least one a day scheduled. That's always the goal. And then the third one is I love presentations. I love, I'm not a big fan of like the lunch and learn terminology, but more of getting in front of top down selling decision makers where you are presenting and educating them on how to make the proper decisions during a buying process because a lot of them, when they say you're too expensive or I'm using somebody, I'm going to use my carpet cleaner or whatever, they don't understand the liability.

44:32 Those three metrics right there are the ones that I concentrate on the absolute most with my reps. Speaking of presentations, you brought a cool story in like three, four weeks ago. One of your clients was making an aggressive push in commercial and you directed them towards RIMS, Risk Managers Association. People have RIMS, right? Yes. And none of them had experience with RIMS, but through your guidance, they were able to get in on a RIMS chapter meeting. And ultimately, that RIMS chapter said, hey, do you have anybody that wants to speak at this? And of course, no one else had experience, but you have a ton of experience selling to risk managers. And so you actually flew out or you actually went on site and attended that meeting and you spoke on behalf of your client and crushed.

45:19 Yes. And then subsequently they started getting some work from those folks, right? Yeah. Unfortunately or unfortunately, the president of that REMS association ended up having a water loss at their personal home and they called my client. So I couldn't imagine, you know, I'm glad that we were the, they were the company that was able. I'm not glad that it happened, but I'm glad that they were the company that got the call. Was that fun for you to look to? I loved it. Yes. I get so passionate about this stuff and it was a great audience. And we mostly talked about emergency response services. programs and how prepared were they and how I know some of them thought they were. And then after I got done talking about these ERPs, they were like, Oh, maybe I'm not as prepared as I thought I was. So it was a great conversation.

46:01 It was great. And I love to get all my reps buckled into those types of associations because it's just, it's instrumental in their success. I thought that was so cool. And I was a little jealous because that's one of the things I miss sometimes is actually getting in that selling seat right in front of those end users and it's really fun. I love it. Okay, dude, you got three minutes. Okay. What is the one thing we didn't ask you that you feel like if you didn't share it, we'd be doing a disjustice to an injustice. Thank you. Personal or pro? You can pick whatever you want. I mean, let's go pro. What's a fractional sales leader and why?

46:45 Total cheat code. Yeah, what do you do? As Floodlight is a consulting company, one of our arms is actually just fractional sales leadership. So for companies that are They're a little bit smaller. They don't have the ability to have $150,000, $200,000 a year type of sales management, sales leader. A lot of them don't realize that this service is available where we can come in and someone like myself with 20 years of experience can come in and set a sales blueprint, teach them the commercial sales master course, teach them about what the small wins are, teach them how to use social media, prospecting, overcoming objections, role play.

47:26 and have a ton of fun doing it and getting involved with the correct associations, making sure you're in alignment with the growth strategies of your company. All those things encompassed and we can come in or I can come in and lighten the load. A lot of owners, man, they're wearing multiple hats and they just don't have, and most of them are operators, Brandon, like yourself. Chris has got the sales background, and not that you couldn't, but you're an operator at heart. A lot of them are the same way, and they really don't know. Here's the keys in your car kind of go. There's a lot of that out there. This fractional sales leadership is, not to sound like a pun, but it's a fraction of the price. You get 20 years of experience, and people are like, what do we have here at Floodlight?

48:09 We can help with conversion. We can help with sales ops. We keep the business development managers involved up to contracts so it's not just a ring and come out. And we're setting up and scaling business development teams for true success in the future. And so for those of you who don't know what fractional sales leadership is, I thought maybe just throw that in there. I wasn't expecting that question, but yeah, that's what we do. It's perfect. Here's a bit of a signing off. That was actually a perfect example of why we just feel a ton of honor to have you on the team, man. Your self-awareness, your head's always on a swivel, radar on, antenna up.

48:52 Obviously, you were successful in sales. That's a perfect example of why you shared a ton of really cool, I think valuable gold for us to all leverage. Man, I just really respect you. I'm still learning from you all the time you being on our team, dude. Yeah. A hundred percent, man. Yeah. Thank you for taking time. I know you've got a full plate. So, um, literally, yeah, we're going to let you go, whether it's, it's baseball or client load. It's like, you've always got something you're hammering on, bro. That's right. Yeah. Hey, my kids are both in playoffs right now. We're playoff mode. So off game after this. So yeah, both my kids play baseball and softball as well. So Yeah. Hey, listen, I just also want to, I want to affirm you. You, uh, you vulnerably, you know, share with me, you were a little nervous about your first episode on HHB.

49:37 Yeah, that's right. I think you did a fantastic job, man. Well done. That's right. I appreciate it. Thanks, guys. All right, brother. Thanks for hanging with us, man. Be good. See you. Thanks, guys. All right, everybody. Hey, thanks for joining us for another episode of Head, Heart, and Boots. And if you're enjoying the show, but you love this episode, please hit follow, formerly known as subscribe, write us a review, or share this episode with a friend. Share it on LinkedIn, share it via text, whatever. It all helps. Thanks for listening.