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Own the Money: Closing High-Ticket Sales with Don Cagle · Big Talk About Small Business

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_04: Every one of them slammed the door in my face, Dad, and he said, Well, son, don't worry, I've got a secret for you.
• 0:06
  SPEAKER_04: Here's the secret.
• 0:08
  SPEAKER_04: Don't tell everybody, just use it and live by it.
• 0:11
  SPEAKER_04: He said, For every 30 doors you knock, someone buys.
• 0:16
  SPEAKER_04: And the kid says, Huh, for every 30 doors I knock, someone buys?
• 0:22
  SPEAKER_04: So the kid's running from door to door.
• 0:24
  SPEAKER_04: Hey, you interested?
• 0:25
  SPEAKER_04: Hey, hey, you're interested?
• 0:26
  SPEAKER_04: He's got such enthusiasm that he's selling.
• 0:36
  SPEAKER_02: We are back for another great episode of that big talk about small business.com.
• 0:47
  SPEAKER_05: Um, hopefully these are small businesses are growing businesses.
• 0:50
  SPEAKER_05: I hope so.
• 0:51
  SPEAKER_02: Because that's the point in business.
• 0:53
  SPEAKER_02: That's it.
• 0:53
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 0:54
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, wait a minute.
• 0:55
  SPEAKER_02: Is that the point?
• 0:56
  SPEAKER_02: Or should it be more about balance life and oh chilling?
• 1:00
  SPEAKER_02: There's no such thing.
• 1:01
  SPEAKER_05: We all know that.
• 1:02
  SPEAKER_05: Grow business.
• 1:03
  SPEAKER_04: Let's grow business.
• 1:04
  SPEAKER_05: Let's grow business.
• 1:06
  SPEAKER_05: So we got in the studio today uh a friend of mine here.
• 1:09
  SPEAKER_05: Uh he's a pretty recent friend, but he's a brother from another mother, just like Eric.
• 1:15
  SPEAKER_05: Nice.
• 1:15
  SPEAKER_05: And and we bonded immediately.
• 1:18
  SPEAKER_05: Um, this is Don Cagle, and Don is a in charge of sales of swimming pools for HomePro Pool Company, which is unbelievable company.
• 1:31
  SPEAKER_05: Okay.
• 1:32
  SPEAKER_05: So I just want to start out by saying, whatever Don's selling, if you don't want it, you don't want to talk to this guy because you're going to end up buying it.
• 1:40
  SPEAKER_05: Okay.
• 1:43
  SPEAKER_05: So, and and Don's had a variety of businesses along the way and uh serial entrepreneur.
• 1:49
  SPEAKER_05: Serial entrepreneur, but I've never seen a guy who can sell like this guy.
• 1:53
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
• 1:53
  SPEAKER_05: I love it.
• 1:54
  SPEAKER_04: Well, I take it serious.
• 1:56
  SPEAKER_04: I take it very serious.
• 1:57
  SPEAKER_04: You do?
• 1:58
  SPEAKER_04: I could have uh went to uh an additional eight years of college and maybe become a doctor or something like that.
• 2:05
  SPEAKER_04: But instead I thought, you know, if you put the same effort into sales, you're gonna be successful.
• 2:10
  SPEAKER_04: Bro, is that not the truth?
• 2:12
  SPEAKER_04: I literally live it, breathe it, eat it, sleep it, and whatever I can do to grow it.
• 2:17
  SPEAKER_04: That's what I do.
• 2:18
  SPEAKER_02: Well, can we start there?
• 2:19
  SPEAKER_02: I'm gonna I'm gonna start there real quick about just the sale, the perspective of sales and especially young folks' minds.
• 2:26
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah.
• 2:27
  SPEAKER_02: I really believe it's like it is what carries the world forward, the whole economy forward is sales.
• 2:33
  SPEAKER_04: Everything we got at sales, you can have it.
• 2:36
  SPEAKER_04: It's the livelihood, it's the heartbeat of any business.
• 2:39
  SPEAKER_02: It is how you're gonna move without sales, and nobody like like teaches you, or you don't have an ask, there's not even a sales course in high school.
• 2:47
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 2:48
  SPEAKER_02: Anything about it.
• 2:49
  SPEAKER_02: There's no pathway, there's no light to it.
• 2:51
  SPEAKER_05: You just kind of stumble upon it in a way, and then there's the negative image that some people have that oh, if you sell, you gotta lie.
• 2:59
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, exactly.
• 3:00
  SPEAKER_04: Exactly.
• 3:01
  SPEAKER_04: I've never taken someone making a joke about me being, oh, he's the salesman.
• 3:06
  SPEAKER_04: Oh, watch Don.
• 3:07
  SPEAKER_04: He's a salesman.
• 3:08
  SPEAKER_04: You know, I take that with pride.
• 3:11
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, that's me.
• 3:12
  SPEAKER_04: Watch out.
• 3:14
  SPEAKER_04: I mean, I had someone tell me one time, they said, Hey, Don, uh, right, it's when I sell them uh signing and windows.
• 3:22
  SPEAKER_03: Uh-huh.
• 3:22
  SPEAKER_04: He said, It's good to see you, Don.
• 3:24
  SPEAKER_04: It's good to see you, but I'm gonna let you know something.
• 3:26
  SPEAKER_04: At my mother's house, I put your picture up by the front door.
• 3:30
  SPEAKER_04: You did.
• 3:31
  SPEAKER_04: He said, Yeah.
• 3:32
  SPEAKER_04: I told her, if this guy comes to your front door, don't answer the compliment.
• 3:41
  SPEAKER_05: I literally take that as a compliment.
• 3:44
  SPEAKER_05: So I just to talk about the pool business, and I want to get into some of the stuff Don's done because he had a variety of businesses that are pretty interesting.
• 3:52
  SPEAKER_05: But but talking about the pool business, Home Pro Pools is an unbelievable company.
• 3:58
  SPEAKER_05: Okay.
• 3:59
  SPEAKER_05: I've had a lot of houses with pools.
• 4:01
  SPEAKER_05: I built pools before, you know, I was a general contractor.
• 4:05
  SPEAKER_05: These guys are so organized and so fast, and they it every time somebody came to my house to do something, they would call and say, Now, uh, did so-and-so show up?
• 4:16
  SPEAKER_05: Now, what happened?
• 4:17
  SPEAKER_05: You have any questions or problems with that?
• 4:19
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, I've never dealt with a company like that.
• 4:21
  SPEAKER_05: They would proactively call.
• 4:23
  SPEAKER_05: Proactively call, not waiting for you.
• 4:25
  SPEAKER_05: And Don, who's the sales guy, he's not out there doing the construction.
• 4:30
  SPEAKER_05: Any issue or question I had, I could text this guy and he would respond in about 10 seconds.
• 4:36
  SPEAKER_05: And you love that.
• 4:37
  SPEAKER_05: Oh, I love that.
• 4:38
  SPEAKER_05: He's my kind of guy like that.
• 4:40
  SPEAKER_04: Everybody does.
• 4:41
  SPEAKER_04: So let me interject there.
• 4:43
  SPEAKER_04: So sales doesn't just stop with the sale.
• 4:46
  SPEAKER_04: No.
• 4:46
  SPEAKER_04: Because I look at it like, and this may be the right way, maybe the wrong way to look at it.
• 4:51
  SPEAKER_04: I look at it like one cell can lead to 10 cells.
• 4:54
  SPEAKER_04: Absolutely.
• 4:55
  SPEAKER_04: And it's an interview.
• 4:57
  SPEAKER_04: Whenever you go to approach this cell, it's an interview.
• 5:00
  SPEAKER_04: You want to, you're at a you're at a job interview.
• 5:03
  SPEAKER_04: Do you like me?
• 5:04
  SPEAKER_04: Do you like what I've got to offer?
• 5:06
  SPEAKER_04: Are you gonna buy from me?
• 5:08
  SPEAKER_04: You are gonna buy from me, and are your friends and family gonna buy from me?
• 5:12
  SPEAKER_04: So every phone call that comes through, I take it.
• 5:17
  SPEAKER_04: It could be, hey, how come they just dump gravel on my front yard?
• 5:23
  SPEAKER_04: Or it could be, hey, you know my sister wants a pull.
• 5:26
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, no, you're right.
• 5:29
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 5:29
  SPEAKER_02: So what you're saying, I mean, like you're saying, like custom, like the service part, right?
• 5:33
  SPEAKER_02: Is continue on.
• 5:35
  SPEAKER_04: We have this wonderful thing going on nowadays.
• 5:38
  SPEAKER_04: It's called five-star.
• 5:40
  SPEAKER_04: And if you look at every cell like you want to be a five-star, it's gonna go all the way through it.
• 5:46
  SPEAKER_04: You're not gonna be a five-star if you're not answering the phone calls.
• 5:49
  SPEAKER_05: That is how I found y'all in the first place.
• 5:51
  SPEAKER_05: They had something like 589 five-star reviews.
• 5:54
  SPEAKER_05: Okay.
• 5:55
  SPEAKER_05: Now, pool companies have a terrible reputation.
• 5:58
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, it's very difficult to find one that actually performs.
• 6:03
  SPEAKER_05: Okay.
• 6:03
  SPEAKER_05: They have one of the worst reputations, I would say, of all types of URLs.
• 6:08
  SPEAKER_04: Absolutely right.
• 6:09
  SPEAKER_04: The pool industry is has been that way for years.
• 6:12
  SPEAKER_04: They take on as many pulls as they can get, get their belly full, and then just who cares about the rest?
• 6:19
  SPEAKER_04: It's true.
• 6:20
  SPEAKER_04: That's basically how it is.
• 6:21
  SPEAKER_04: You know, oh, my company can do about 30 pulls.
• 6:24
  SPEAKER_04: When I get to about 27 or 28, I'm not even going to answer the phone anymore.
• 6:28
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 6:28
  SPEAKER_04: You know, it's not the case.
• 6:30
  SPEAKER_04: We've changed the industry where I work.
• 6:33
  SPEAKER_04: And it's it's year-round, day by day.
• 6:37
  SPEAKER_04: Got great lead generation.
• 6:39
  SPEAKER_04: You know, I treat a lead like it's gold.
• 6:42
  SPEAKER_04: Every lead that I get, I treat like a piece of gold, uh, because that's how I feed my family.
• 6:48
  SPEAKER_04: Uh and but it's just phenomenal how how technology has brought us the leads.
• 6:53
  unknown: Yeah.
• 6:53
  SPEAKER_02: So listen, uh, like, I mean, that's a pretty big statement, actually, especially for anybody that's in business development or sales, right?
• 7:00
  SPEAKER_02: Like, because not many people think of every lead like gold.
• 7:04
  SPEAKER_02: They're usually they have preconceptions or they look into it a little bit and they just start ignoring it.
• 7:11
  SPEAKER_02: Or if some, if they make a call, they don't call back and it doesn't turn into a contract immediately, they get disgruntled about and trash it, right?
• 7:19
  SPEAKER_02: What's your perspective about that?
• 7:20
  SPEAKER_04: So you're you're absolutely right.
• 7:22
  SPEAKER_04: They don't look at it like that.
• 7:24
  SPEAKER_04: I think what it goes back to when I first started getting leads, I got my lead by going out and knocking on a door, literally knock doors.
• 7:31
  SPEAKER_04: And that's hard to do.
• 7:33
  SPEAKER_04: But it's a great expensive.
• 7:34
  SPEAKER_04: When someone gives you the time, you're gonna give it a hundred percent.
• 7:37
  SPEAKER_04: It's gold.
• 7:38
  SPEAKER_04: It became gold at that time.
• 7:40
  SPEAKER_04: Every lead should be treated like gold.
• 7:43
  SPEAKER_04: Uh they've they've welcomed you in.
• 7:47
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 7:48
  SPEAKER_04: You know, uh a customer walks on a car lot and you get eight salesmen say, Oh, they're just tire kicking.
• 7:55
  SPEAKER_04: I've never looked at it like that.
• 7:56
  SPEAKER_04: When I was in the car business, I said, you know what?
• 7:59
  SPEAKER_04: I bet that man could think of a thousand things he'd rather be doing than out there wading through those cars.
• 8:04
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 8:05
  SPEAKER_04: So he's only there for one reason.
• 8:08
  SPEAKER_04: It's to buy a new car.
• 8:09
  SPEAKER_04: You know, let it be a hundred degrees and me not taking up.
• 8:13
  SPEAKER_04: That's not gonna happen.
• 8:14
  SPEAKER_04: Let it be 15 degrees and me not taking up.
• 8:16
  SPEAKER_04: No, those are gold.
• 8:18
  SPEAKER_04: Those are gold bars out there because those people have other things to do than to wait around looking who wants to go buy a car?
• 8:27
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
• 8:28
  SPEAKER_05: I actually wants to go do anything like this.
• 8:30
  SPEAKER_05: I went to the grand opening, the Lewis Automotive Group when they did their new facility over there, and they were given a talk, and it was um, it was uh Shelby Lewis.
• 8:40
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
• 8:41
  SPEAKER_05: And Shelby's like, nobody wants to buy a car, likes the process of buying a car, guess except for Mark's wife.
• 8:49
  SPEAKER_02: He loves that.
• 8:50
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, you do love it.
• 8:51
  SPEAKER_05: Shelby Gold's because I bought about 35 or 40 cars from you know, and you do.
• 9:00
  SPEAKER_04: There are a certain number of people, but you can tell them right off the bat, too.
• 9:04
  SPEAKER_04: But they pull it in there into the trade-in lane already.
• 9:08
  SPEAKER_04: They already know where to put it because we're gonna have it, uh it's gonna be a trade-in.
• 9:12
  SPEAKER_05: Oh, we'll park it right here, so it's convenient.
• 9:14
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, but but Don, though, the other thing I noticed with Don.
• 9:17
  SPEAKER_05: So anyway, he did sell us our pool, okay.
• 9:20
  SPEAKER_05: But the thing I liked about Don is he didn't sugarcoat anything when it came to like, we're gonna have to get a check from you for$40 some odd thousand dollars.
• 9:29
  SPEAKER_05: The moment you say go, you're gonna wire that too.
• 9:33
  SPEAKER_04: No, I'm serious.
• 9:35
  SPEAKER_04: That goes back to me.
• 9:36
  SPEAKER_04: I learned this years ago.
• 9:38
  SPEAKER_04: Own the money.
• 9:39
  SPEAKER_04: I own the money.
• 9:40
  SPEAKER_04: I own the money.
• 9:41
  SPEAKER_04: So, what I mean by that is if it costs this much, I'm gonna tell you it costs this much.
• 9:46
  SPEAKER_04: If you've got to pay this much down, I'm gonna tell you that's how much you got to pay down, when you're gonna pay it down, how you're gonna pay it down.
• 9:52
  SPEAKER_04: I get some customers occasionally, halfway through the deal, say, Well, we're just gonna hold back a little.
• 9:57
  SPEAKER_04: Whoa, that's not how we do it.
• 9:59
  SPEAKER_04: Right.
• 9:59
  SPEAKER_05: We don't do it.
• 10:00
  SPEAKER_05: Because you've already told him five times in my experience, that that's what's gonna be owed at this time.
• 10:06
  SPEAKER_05: That he doesn't just say it once.
• 10:08
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, he goes through it, he makes you sign it, it's gonna remind you repeatedly.
• 10:12
  SPEAKER_05: Well, okay, and that's fine because that's the deal you signed up for.
• 10:16
  SPEAKER_02: That's right.
• 10:16
  SPEAKER_05: Well, I try to hide that.
• 10:18
  SPEAKER_02: That's right.
• 10:19
  SPEAKER_02: Don't sound like what you're doing is it's just setting expectations with your client.
• 10:22
  SPEAKER_04: Exactly.
• 10:23
  SPEAKER_04: And it doesn't just stop with just the money.
• 10:26
  SPEAKER_04: You know, it's it's everything that goes along.
• 10:28
  SPEAKER_04: Here's the way this process is gonna go.
• 10:32
  SPEAKER_04: You know, they well, here's the way I look at a sale, and it and it's with just about anything.
• 10:37
  SPEAKER_04: It's peaks and valleys, you know.
• 10:39
  SPEAKER_04: When they're there buying the pool, you should have seen him and his wife are excited.
• 10:43
  SPEAKER_04: I'm showing them a pool.
• 10:44
  SPEAKER_04: Oh, that's the color.
• 10:45
  SPEAKER_04: We'd love that color.
• 10:46
  SPEAKER_04: That's beautiful.
• 10:47
  SPEAKER_04: Man, they're they're up here.
• 10:48
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 10:48
  SPEAKER_04: Well, now then let's we're fixing start heading down because it's start talking about some money.
• 10:53
  SPEAKER_04: You're gonna also send me a check.
• 10:55
  SPEAKER_04: And let me tell you how we work.
• 10:56
  SPEAKER_04: We send a check right now, you know.
• 10:59
  SPEAKER_04: So, so it's gonna go like this.
• 11:00
  SPEAKER_04: And then we ship the pool.
• 11:02
  SPEAKER_04: Oh my goodness, things are going great.
• 11:04
  SPEAKER_04: Uh man, our pool's gotten here.
• 11:06
  SPEAKER_04: Well, everybody still, you know.
• 11:08
  SPEAKER_04: So I walk them through everything about it.
• 11:11
  SPEAKER_04: I feel like don't hide a thing.
• 11:13
  SPEAKER_04: I tell the good, the bad, and the ugly all the way through a cell.
• 11:18
  SPEAKER_04: And it means, okay, folks, there's three things that aren't included in this bid.
• 11:23
  SPEAKER_04: You got to buy all your own electrical.
• 11:25
  SPEAKER_04: Just know.
• 11:26
  SPEAKER_04: You can't get a master electrician.
• 11:28
  SPEAKER_04: So it's not like, well, no surprise.
• 11:30
  SPEAKER_04: No surprises.
• 11:32
  SPEAKER_04: I don't want the surprise.
• 11:33
  SPEAKER_04: Homeowners don't want the surprise.
• 11:35
  SPEAKER_04: Your clients don't want the surprise.
• 11:37
  SPEAKER_04: Own the money.
• 11:38
  SPEAKER_04: I hope I'm saying that right, but that's the way I look at it.
• 11:41
  SPEAKER_02: It's not just the money, like you're what you're saying, not just the money coming to you, but their money as the customer, where else are you gonna have to put your money?
• 11:50
  SPEAKER_02: Because that that's serious business, right?
• 11:52
  SPEAKER_02: That's right.
• 11:52
  SPEAKER_02: You know, and it feels like that.
• 11:54
  SPEAKER_02: Um, if you're not setting those expectations correctly, you already know that it's that if you don't do that up front, it's gonna be a bomb on the back end.
• 12:01
  SPEAKER_02: And I don't deal with bombs good on the back end.
• 12:04
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 12:04
  SPEAKER_04: You know, that's why it's that's that.
• 12:07
  SPEAKER_04: You don't want to be in that position.
• 12:08
  SPEAKER_04: I don't want to be in that position.
• 12:09
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, well, later, let's go back to the fact.
• 12:12
  SPEAKER_04: I'm looking for a five-star.
• 12:13
  SPEAKER_04: Right.
• 12:14
  SPEAKER_04: Because do you know how strong that five-star is?
• 12:17
  SPEAKER_04: So here's a real quick perspective.
• 12:19
  SPEAKER_04: I do a data with the homeowner.
• 12:22
  SPEAKER_04: So the lead comes in, I call the homeowner and I do a data with them.
• 12:25
  SPEAKER_04: Well, I'm doing the data, I'm building a rapport, I'm getting answers, what they want, what their location is, and I'm building all this rapport with them.
• 12:34
  SPEAKER_04: Uh I want to, I even asked people that don't buy from me, how did I do with that?
• 12:39
  SPEAKER_04: Send me a five-star if you liked it.
• 12:41
  SPEAKER_04: And I'll get five stars from people that have never even bought from me.
• 12:45
  SPEAKER_04: They just talked to you.
• 12:46
  SPEAKER_04: How did I do it?
• 12:47
  SPEAKER_04: They just talked to me on the data, but I walked them through every single thing.
• 12:51
  SPEAKER_04: I listened to them, I fulfilled what they needed from me.
• 12:55
  SPEAKER_04: How much is it gonna be?
• 12:56
  SPEAKER_04: What's it gonna cost?
• 12:58
  SPEAKER_04: How much later?
• 12:59
  SPEAKER_04: How long?
• 13:00
  SPEAKER_04: How much maintenance?
• 13:01
  SPEAKER_04: All these questions.
• 13:02
  SPEAKER_04: So I'm building to have a five-star all the way through the situation.
• 13:06
  SPEAKER_04: So don't get halfway through it and then just kind of fall on your face.
• 13:11
  SPEAKER_04: I'm not looking at just the paycheck.
• 13:13
  SPEAKER_04: I'm looking at a five-star because the five stars are paychecks.
• 13:16
  SPEAKER_04: Am I right?
• 13:18
  SPEAKER_05: Am I right?
• 13:18
  SPEAKER_05: The thing with this guy is like I I call him up where I'm driving, I'm in Nebraska now.
• 13:24
  SPEAKER_05: What are you doing there?
• 13:25
  SPEAKER_05: I'm selling pools.
• 13:26
  SPEAKER_01: What do you think I'm doing?
• 13:27
  SPEAKER_05: Nebraska, for God's sake.
• 13:29
  SPEAKER_04: I'll tell you, it was such a journey out there to Nebraska to sell a pool that we're gonna set up a pool company there.
• 13:36
  SPEAKER_04: See, there you go.
• 13:37
  SPEAKER_04: Because, and it's worth it.
• 13:39
  SPEAKER_04: So I'm making contacts with people that are gonna be selling, they're gonna take the data, they're gonna do the pools, we're gonna do the pools.
• 13:47
  SPEAKER_04: We don't have a problem going anywhere.
• 13:49
  SPEAKER_04: We are set up to do anything.
• 13:51
  SPEAKER_04: So uh I've got two sales to make.
• 13:54
  SPEAKER_04: I had to make the sale with the customer, and uh hey, you know, get some information.
• 14:01
  SPEAKER_04: I got a lot of information.
• 14:02
  SPEAKER_04: The digging's great in Nebraska, it's excellent.
• 14:06
  SPEAKER_04: Uh, it's spread out, you can get to the homes easy.
• 14:09
  SPEAKER_04: It's a it's a great, and they have a need for our program.
• 14:13
  SPEAKER_05: These guys are totally vertically integrated.
• 14:15
  SPEAKER_05: So every single step of the way, their employ own employees and their own equipment.
• 14:20
  SPEAKER_05: Yes.
• 14:21
  SPEAKER_05: So they come in, they drag the pool in with their own equipment, they got cranes that are branded that put that out, they got dirt moving machines that are branded, they got water tanks that are branded.
• 14:31
  SPEAKER_05: Nice.
• 14:31
  SPEAKER_05: They're not waiting around for these other people to do services that can.
• 14:36
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, that's good.
• 14:37
  SPEAKER_05: And that's a totally different deal.
• 14:39
  SPEAKER_05: But so, Don, just to give people a perspective, like how many pools do you sell in a typical week or month?
• 14:45
  SPEAKER_05: Oh my goodness.
• 14:46
  SPEAKER_04: Uh lately I've been shooting for three pools a day, at least one day a week.
• 14:51
  SPEAKER_06: Okay, now think about that.
• 14:52
  SPEAKER_04: So three pools and I shoot for three pools a day.
• 14:56
  SPEAKER_04: That's called a hat trick.
• 14:58
  SPEAKER_04: You guys, if you're hockey players, you know what a hat trick is?
• 15:01
  SPEAKER_04: So, you know, that's insane.
• 15:04
  SPEAKER_04: And what it does is it builds everybody in the company up.
• 15:08
  SPEAKER_04: Whenever they see me there on a Thursday, and I'm and and and here's another thing.
• 15:13
  SPEAKER_04: Not only am I going over these data and stuff, I'll go set in the office and let the people around me hear me.
• 15:20
  SPEAKER_04: And that way everybody's on the same page.
• 15:22
  SPEAKER_04: But it also builds them up and they get excited.
• 15:25
  SPEAKER_04: That's how they feed their family.
• 15:26
  SPEAKER_04: So when I have them on my team and we have a phenomenal team, we have a phenomenal lead team, we have a phenomenal quote team, we have a phenomenal crews that go out and deliver, our delivery teams, unbelievable.
• 15:40
  SPEAKER_04: Our crews that go out and do the digs are unbelievable.
• 15:43
  SPEAKER_04: Our cleanup crew that comes out.
• 15:45
  SPEAKER_04: Yep, Mark, you'll attest to that.
• 15:47
  SPEAKER_04: Sure.
• 15:47
  SPEAKER_04: And uh, when you sell an emotional product like a swimming pool, you're gonna need these team players.
• 15:54
  SPEAKER_04: And all the way through it, when the lady called to say, hey, our guys will be out there to clean up your mess.
• 16:01
  SPEAKER_04: She might have even mentioned a five-star when she did it.
• 16:03
  SPEAKER_04: Oh, yeah.
• 16:05
  SPEAKER_04: She might have said, Hey, hey, be sure and uh mention a five-star.
• 16:08
  SPEAKER_04: Hey, be sure and mention a five-star.
• 16:10
  SPEAKER_04: We want this to be that kind of a uh a purchase for you.
• 16:14
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 16:14
  SPEAKER_04: To where you're proud of it and you can say, Yeah, yeah, yeah, we loved it.
• 16:18
  SPEAKER_04: Don was wonderful.
• 16:19
  SPEAKER_04: I love that.
• 16:20
  SPEAKER_04: The team is phenomenal.
• 16:22
  SPEAKER_04: That's the best thing.
• 16:23
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, is when they say the team backs up everything they say they're gonna do.
• 16:28
  SPEAKER_05: How many times, I mean, like, how many businesses you think do swimming pools where, like in my wife's case, like, we I need to send Don a thank you letter.
• 16:37
  SPEAKER_05: Oh, wow.
• 16:38
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, you know what I mean?
• 16:39
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, it's like it you just don't.
• 16:41
  SPEAKER_02: When you're so happy as a customer that you want to help the people in the company, exactly.
• 16:47
  SPEAKER_05: And I was in my told somebody else and he sold them a pool.
• 16:50
  SPEAKER_05: Or he sold, yes.
• 16:51
  SPEAKER_05: I gotta buy your lunch.
• 16:52
  SPEAKER_04: Yes, yeah.
• 16:53
  SPEAKER_05: I mean, it's like we already did send me a gift card for God's sakes.
• 16:57
  SPEAKER_04: I mean you your customers are excellent.
• 17:01
  SPEAKER_04: Okay, so that's another thing in sales.
• 17:03
  SPEAKER_04: You're always looking for them to refer to you to somebody.
• 17:06
  SPEAKER_04: There's not an easier sell.
• 17:09
  SPEAKER_04: Two sales this weekend, both referrals.
• 17:13
  SPEAKER_04: I got to tell y'all this story.
• 17:14
  SPEAKER_04: As any salesman out there listening to this podcast, I want you to know this.
• 17:19
  SPEAKER_04: We had a customer, he had an emotional pool build.
• 17:23
  SPEAKER_04: Uh, he's just an emotional guy, but a super good guy, way over in Kansas.
• 17:28
  SPEAKER_04: And he says uh every time he would call the office, it was, oh my gosh, it's Russ.
• 17:34
  SPEAKER_04: Oh my gosh, it's Russ.
• 17:35
  SPEAKER_04: But me, if he called my number, I'm like, hey, Russ, what can I do for you?
• 17:39
  SPEAKER_04: But he was a he was a nightmare.
• 17:41
  SPEAKER_04: He was a nightmare for most people.
• 17:43
  SPEAKER_04: Hey, Russ, what do you know?
• 17:45
  SPEAKER_04: Hey, Don, I'm gonna give you a he gave me two leads last week and I sold them both.
• 17:51
  SPEAKER_04: You know, taking that phone call could be for any reason whatsoever.
• 17:56
  SPEAKER_04: It could be for, you know, wish somebody to come out and adjust my auto cover.
• 18:02
  SPEAKER_04: Not a problem, Russ.
• 18:03
  SPEAKER_04: We'll get somebody out there.
• 18:04
  SPEAKER_04: Or, hey, Don, I got two guys that want to buy pulls, you know, and they're they're automatic sales.
• 18:11
  SPEAKER_04: Oh, yeah.
• 18:12
  SPEAKER_04: Whenever they know, they know Rust.
• 18:14
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, they know everybody already knows Russ.
• 18:16
  SPEAKER_04: So they're like, if Don sold Russ, he could sell anybody, right?
• 18:21
  SPEAKER_04: Take me because you can sell anybody, yeah.
• 18:25
  SPEAKER_02: No, let me ask you a question for the listeners out there.
• 18:27
  SPEAKER_02: What what are your hours?
• 18:29
  SPEAKER_02: Are you do you come into work at nine?
• 18:31
  SPEAKER_02: Are you do you need are you taking an hour and a half lines?
• 18:35
  SPEAKER_02: Do you want to get off at four?
• 18:36
  SPEAKER_02: And then obviously at four o'clock without a he's got a horse farm.
• 18:41
  SPEAKER_02: He's got a lot to do, right?
• 18:43
  SPEAKER_02: You don't want yourself to be too pressured in your life, you know, for these sales, you know, that that really the the company is taking.
• 18:50
  SPEAKER_04: Contrary to what my wife loves, I eat, breathe, and sleep self-hell yeah.
• 18:58
  SPEAKER_04: You know, so I'm just gonna tell you, 5 30 in the morning is about when I feel comfortable about looking at what I've had to deal with.
• 19:08
  SPEAKER_04: And uh I typically don't start in on people till about seven.
• 19:14
  SPEAKER_04: Sometimes 6 45.
• 19:16
  SPEAKER_04: I don't know.
• 19:16
  SPEAKER_04: Mark may contradict me.
• 19:18
  SPEAKER_04: I get up early.
• 19:19
  SPEAKER_04: Here's the thing, I don't know every day.
• 19:22
  SPEAKER_04: And you know, I do turn in early.
• 19:26
  SPEAKER_04: I'm not gonna lie to you, about 8:30 or 9, I turn in.
• 19:29
  SPEAKER_04: But whatever came through at 8:30 or 9, I'm dealing with first thing in the morning.
• 19:33
  SPEAKER_04: Uh, you're never off work as a salesman.
• 19:36
  SPEAKER_04: You're never off work.
• 19:37
  SPEAKER_04: I think uh one of the beautiful things that that is so awesome about working for home pro is I don't have to do the bookkeeping, I don't have to do the taxes, I don't have to do the mopping the floor.
• 19:56
  SPEAKER_04: Well, you've done all that.
• 19:57
  SPEAKER_04: Oh I've done it all.
• 19:58
  SPEAKER_04: So that's the case.
• 19:59
  SPEAKER_04: I've always had to do all of it.
• 20:02
  SPEAKER_04: I wore all the hats.
• 20:03
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 20:04
  SPEAKER_04: And the beautiful thing about working for HomePro is we've got such a team that puts together and builds such a phenomenal business.
• 20:14
  SPEAKER_04: It just keeps, and I'm gonna use y'all's modern day word, scaling.
• 20:18
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, and I believe that's the correct word, but it's just going up and up and up.
• 20:24
  SPEAKER_04: And uh it's opened it up for me.
• 20:26
  SPEAKER_04: You know what?
• 20:27
  SPEAKER_04: I'm the salesman, but I also find that when I walk these things through, meaning just like he said, hey, Dawn, they delivered the pull today, but where are they gonna put the gravel?
• 20:39
  SPEAKER_04: Hey, let me find out where they're gonna put the gravel.
• 20:42
  SPEAKER_04: I walk it through.
• 20:43
  SPEAKER_04: I wear every cell on my shoulders.
• 20:45
  SPEAKER_04: You do, all the way through.
• 20:46
  SPEAKER_04: I can testify all the way through it, and uh sometimes it gets heavy, but never too heavy for me.
• 20:53
  SPEAKER_04: Like I tell you, it's never it's never gonna be too heavy for me.
• 20:57
  SPEAKER_02: Uh what's the uh so you get tired?
• 21:00
  SPEAKER_02: Do you ever get tired, Don?
• 21:02
  SPEAKER_02: Yes, I do get tired.
• 21:04
  SPEAKER_02: But so what pushes you through the the tiredness?
• 21:08
  SPEAKER_02: I never get tired of selling.
• 21:10
  SPEAKER_04: I never get tired of selling.
• 21:12
  SPEAKER_04: So it's it's if I was to get tired, if I was to get tired, I would probably start rehashing and rehashing.
• 21:20
  SPEAKER_04: That's another big point that I want to make.
• 21:22
  SPEAKER_04: What do you mean by that?
• 21:23
  SPEAKER_04: So to rehash is we've all got a pipeline, uh, and and people use that word loosely.
• 21:31
  SPEAKER_04: I don't use that word loosely.
• 21:33
  SPEAKER_04: It's a pipeline and it better be packed at all times because it's got to be spilling out fund tickets or money or whatever you guys want to call it.
• 21:41
  SPEAKER_04: But my pipeline has got to be spilling fun tickets out.
• 21:45
  SPEAKER_04: And if it's not, you're gonna have a gap in it.
• 21:48
  SPEAKER_04: And as a salesman speaking to other companies and people that want to be in sales, just know that gap is just not a two foot gap, it's a four foot gap.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_04: Because you got to build it back up to get it to start pushing the fund tickets back out.
• 22:04
  SPEAKER_04: So I would say rehash to answer your question on rehash, rehash is going back to your pipeline and even your previous customers.
• 22:14
  SPEAKER_04: Anything you've got in there.
• 22:17
  SPEAKER_04: You know, I'll pull up, I think I had like 600 uh leads, probably more than that, but 600 leads in the last year.
• 22:28
  SPEAKER_04: You know, believe me, I can go through those and start calling them.
• 22:32
  SPEAKER_04: Whenever I've got some time, I'll just start calling those leads and saying, hey, are you still interested in the pool?
• 22:39
  SPEAKER_04: I'll just are you still interested in a pull?
• 22:42
  SPEAKER_05: And just drop it at that.
• 22:43
  SPEAKER_05: And these are just like a hundred thousand dollar jobs.
• 22:45
  SPEAKER_05: Just boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom.
• 22:49
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, you've got to do them like that.
• 22:51
  SPEAKER_04: Uh I wanted to sell jets, uh, but when they said the average close takes seven years, oh my goodness.
• 23:00
  SPEAKER_04: That's a long cycle.
• 23:02
  SPEAKER_04: So have y'all ever heard that?
• 23:04
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, the average the average close on a jet takes seven years.
• 23:07
  SPEAKER_05: We were speaking of jets earlier, but uh that's crazy.
• 23:10
  SPEAKER_05: So, Don, tell these guys a little bit about how you grew up and some of the other things that you did.
• 23:16
  SPEAKER_05: So just start out.
• 23:17
  SPEAKER_05: When you were a kid, were you like selling stuff on the street corner or what were you?
• 23:22
  SPEAKER_04: Well, it's kind of funny you asked that.
• 23:23
  SPEAKER_04: So I knew that question was probably gonna come up.
• 23:26
  SPEAKER_04: My first sales experience was I was about six years old.
• 23:29
  SPEAKER_04: My dad would go down to uh South Arkansas and buy a truckload of watermelons.
• 23:34
  SPEAKER_04: And I would sell them in the trader parks, and I would sell them in the trader parks because dad, it was so simple just to drive through a trader park, and I'd get out and go to the doors and sell the watermelons.
• 23:46
  SPEAKER_04: And uh, literally, and I'd be carrying those watermelons up to the door, and I would do it with such enthusiasm that they would they would have to buy, you know, and I I really think he was buying them for 50 cents, and I might have been selling them for a dollar, yeah, or maybe two.
• 24:04
  SPEAKER_04: I I doubt if it was two, but probably a dollar back then.
• 24:07
  SPEAKER_04: So you know now when I go to pay ten dollars for a watermelon house.
• 24:10
  SPEAKER_04: I know it's oh I try to get live.
• 24:13
  SPEAKER_04: I know, I'm with you.
• 24:14
  SPEAKER_04: I can't believe it costs what it does.
• 24:16
  SPEAKER_04: So I did start selling door to door at an early age, and I rejection's never been a big deal.
• 24:22
  SPEAKER_04: Uh look at me.
• 24:23
  SPEAKER_04: I mean, you know, I've been I I I never really uh minded rejection.
• 24:29
  SPEAKER_04: I was a very persistent person.
• 24:31
  SPEAKER_04: Uh so I did start selling at an early age, just out of high school, the summer out of high school, I was one of those kids that sold magazines door to door.
• 24:40
  SPEAKER_04: Most people's uh family wouldn't dare let you answer that ad.
• 24:44
  SPEAKER_04: Travel the United States, Florida, California, Hawaii.
• 24:48
  SPEAKER_04: I answered it, and they sweep me off to Dallas and start putting me out of a car selling door-to-door magazines.
• 24:56
  SPEAKER_04: Well, so selling door-to-door magazines, you learn a lot of rejection.
• 25:00
  SPEAKER_04: Oh, yeah.
• 25:01
  SPEAKER_04: You know, but one thing I did learn is when that door says no soliciting, cha-ching.
• 25:08
  SPEAKER_04: There's a reason that's on there.
• 25:10
  SPEAKER_04: That no soliciting means I buy from everybody that comes to the door.
• 25:17
  SPEAKER_04: Am I right?
• 25:18
  SPEAKER_04: Am I right, fellas?
• 25:20
  SPEAKER_04: You know, they they they put their guard up.
• 25:22
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 25:22
  SPEAKER_04: Uh so anyway, I went from there, I went into the car business uh a little later in years after a little stint in college there.
• 25:30
  SPEAKER_04: I went to the car business.
• 25:31
  SPEAKER_04: And in the car business, uh, I wanted to be the best.
• 25:35
  SPEAKER_04: So what I did is I paid attention to the guys that were the most successful.
• 25:39
  SPEAKER_04: What do they say?
• 25:40
  SPEAKER_04: How do they act?
• 25:41
  SPEAKER_04: Where do they go?
• 25:42
  SPEAKER_04: What do they do?
• 25:43
  SPEAKER_04: And to be the best and to be the top of the list, you got to take every up you can possibly take and give it 100%.
• 25:50
  SPEAKER_04: There's not a tire kicker out there.
• 25:53
  SPEAKER_04: There's not a, they're they're upside down in their trade.
• 25:56
  SPEAKER_04: You got to give everybody 100%.
• 25:59
  SPEAKER_04: And what you do is you ask key questions.
• 26:01
  SPEAKER_04: So I developed my own way of selling.
• 26:04
  SPEAKER_04: Hey folks, how are y'all doing today?
• 26:06
  SPEAKER_04: You gonna buy a car?
• 26:09
  SPEAKER_02: The leading question opens with a call a 10 question, right?
• 26:13
  SPEAKER_04: And then I just shut up.
• 26:14
  SPEAKER_02: The test closed.
• 26:16
  SPEAKER_04: And then I just shut up.
• 26:17
  SPEAKER_04: Y'all gonna buy a car?
• 26:19
  SPEAKER_04: And they would be like, Yeah.
• 26:21
  SPEAKER_04: Well, we're just looking for the daughter.
• 26:24
  SPEAKER_04: She's fixing to turn 16, and we're gonna get a car for her.
• 26:27
  SPEAKER_04: Great, great.
• 26:28
  SPEAKER_04: Well, you know, looking at that car is the first stage of buying one.
• 26:31
  SPEAKER_04: So let's just go from there.
• 26:34
  SPEAKER_04: So, so in the car business, that's kind of how that went.
• 26:37
  SPEAKER_04: But he came to me while I was in the car business that I sell siding, siding and windows.
• 26:41
  SPEAKER_04: Oh, really great.
• 26:42
  SPEAKER_04: He said, Yeah, you know what, you'd make a tremendous sales money.
• 26:46
  SPEAKER_04: Would you knock doors for me?
• 26:48
  SPEAKER_04: So I was knocking doors for a guy a year younger than me that's driving a fancy rig, putting me out on doors, and I'm just knocking happy as I could be.
• 26:59
  SPEAKER_04: Because I made a good, I made a thousand dollars for every deal that he closed.
• 27:05
  SPEAKER_04: So I'm knocking on them doors.
• 27:07
  SPEAKER_04: Well, learning in the in the in the magazine business, and I learned numbers.
• 27:13
  SPEAKER_04: Something that's very important for any self-always keep your numbers.
• 27:17
  SPEAKER_04: The activity precedes the results.
• 27:20
  SPEAKER_04: Activity precedes the results.
• 27:22
  SPEAKER_04: I'd love if we've got a minute, I'd love to tell the story about the kid that uh his dad put him out selling selling newspapers on the on the block there in the city and said, Son, I got you a job.
• 27:33
  SPEAKER_04: Here's what you're gonna do.
• 27:34
  SPEAKER_04: You're gonna go out and sell subscriptions of of these newspapers.
• 27:37
  SPEAKER_04: And and the kid, he puts him out and the kid's knocked on about four doors, and and he's just sat down on the curb, and his dad comes back like an hour later.
• 27:44
  SPEAKER_04: What's the matter, son?
• 27:46
  SPEAKER_04: Oh, every one of them slammed the door in my face, dad.
• 27:48
  SPEAKER_04: And he said, Well, son, don't worry, I've got a secret for you.
• 27:52
  SPEAKER_04: Here's the secret don't tell everybody, just use it and live by it.
• 27:58
  SPEAKER_04: He said, For every 30 doors you knock, someone buys.
• 28:03
  SPEAKER_04: And the kid says, Huh, for every 30 doors I knock, someone buys?
• 28:08
  SPEAKER_04: So the kid's running from door to door.
• 28:10
  SPEAKER_04: Hey, you interesting?
• 28:11
  SPEAKER_04: Hey, hey, you're interested.
• 28:13
  SPEAKER_04: He's got such enthusiasm that he's selling.
• 28:16
  SPEAKER_04: I look at that, been using it all my life.
• 28:18
  SPEAKER_04: Yes.
• 28:19
  SPEAKER_04: So anything that I do, I take the numbers.
• 28:23
  SPEAKER_04: Man, you've got 200 leads.
• 28:25
  SPEAKER_04: Well, out of 200 leads, you got to send 42 quotes.
• 28:28
  SPEAKER_04: Well, out of 42 quotes, you actually closed 10 people.
• 28:32
  SPEAKER_04: Man, that's pretty good.
• 28:34
  SPEAKER_04: You know, that's good numbers.
• 28:35
  SPEAKER_04: So now you've got a barometer.
• 28:37
  SPEAKER_04: You've got some way to measure that.
• 28:39
  SPEAKER_04: So that's that's the way I look at it.
• 28:42
  SPEAKER_04: To keep numbers and uh so you did the sighting.
• 28:46
  SPEAKER_04: So I did the sighting.
• 28:47
  SPEAKER_04: So we know.
• 28:48
  SPEAKER_04: Why'd you leave the car business in the first place?
• 28:50
  SPEAKER_04: Because you go from this level, which topped out as a car salesman, you're gonna make about 30 grand.
• 28:57
  SPEAKER_04: And uh this kid, here's here's how I quit at that time.
• 29:00
  SPEAKER_04: This is I'm an old man, folks.
• 29:02
  SPEAKER_04: But at that time, and whenever the the kid that was a year younger than me that I grew up with, one of my best friends, came in and bought a car from me and said, You'll make good money.
• 29:12
  SPEAKER_04: I said, Well, prove it.
• 29:13
  SPEAKER_04: Go get your 1099 or your W-2.
• 29:16
  SPEAKER_04: The next day he brings it in at 74 grand.
• 29:19
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 29:20
  SPEAKER_04: Said, hey, Mr.
• 29:21
  SPEAKER_04: Cliff Tech, I'm sorry, but I'm not gonna be selling cars anymore.
• 29:25
  SPEAKER_04: Okay, and it just kind of went from there.
• 29:28
  SPEAKER_04: So, so I sold siding for years and uh started my own siding company, sold lots of siding and windows for years and years and years.
• 29:36
  SPEAKER_04: Got this uh another partner, we got this bright idea, go down to Dallas and we see these big fiberglass pools on the side of the road.
• 29:43
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 29:44
  SPEAKER_04: Man, that looks pretty cool.
• 29:47
  SPEAKER_04: We come into the fiberglass pool business about 20, it was late 90s.
• 29:52
  SPEAKER_04: We started putting fiberglass pools in down here in uh Fort Smith area, and uh kind of went from there.
• 30:00
  SPEAKER_04: I got a really good break.
• 30:01
  SPEAKER_04: People started calling saying, Can you put that in my old gun out broken pool?
• 30:05
  SPEAKER_04: And I said, Yeah, I can do that.
• 30:08
  SPEAKER_04: So that worked a couple times, and then I uh developed a process of where you could go in and hand lay a fiberglass shell inside of a gunite pool.
• 30:17
  SPEAKER_04: Oh, really?
• 30:17
  SPEAKER_04: So if you've got an old gun out pool that's just beat up and got cracks in it, and there's nothing you can do at the cracked pool, but hand lay a fiberglass shell in there.
• 30:26
  SPEAKER_04: So that was my big break.
• 30:28
  SPEAKER_04: I sold that process uh because man, that's hot, tough work right there.
• 30:34
  SPEAKER_04: I like being a salesman versus it.
• 30:36
  SPEAKER_05: I love you.
• 30:36
  SPEAKER_05: Told me you sold the first one of those three you ever did one.
• 30:39
  SPEAKER_05: No, they did your own pool.
• 30:41
  SPEAKER_05: I did my own.
• 30:42
  SPEAKER_04: I did my own pool, made a mess all over the uh sidewalk, which was a break for my little brother because he started uh uh a concrete coating company kind of based off of that.
• 30:54
  SPEAKER_04: He fixed the concrete.
• 30:56
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, so so it's all good.
• 30:58
  SPEAKER_04: So I went and sold one, got that guy's money down, did my pull.
• 31:02
  SPEAKER_04: I'm thinking I got enough to do his pull, and I get there and catch a big surprise.
• 31:05
  SPEAKER_04: I gotta order a bunch of concrete.
• 31:07
  SPEAKER_04: So I got to go sell another one to get his pull to go.
• 31:10
  SPEAKER_04: But yeah, that was a that was a great business.
• 31:13
  SPEAKER_04: Uh you've got some guidelines when you go fiberglassing in the neighborhood and they can smell the uh, I call it money, but they smell the fiberglass, you know.
• 31:22
  SPEAKER_04: When they smell the fiberglass and everything, neighbors complain.
• 31:24
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, but but that's because they can smell the fiberglass?
• 31:27
  SPEAKER_04: Oh, well, you know, it just smells like a major chemical plant, you know, next door.
• 31:32
  SPEAKER_04: They don't own a pool.
• 31:33
  SPEAKER_04: They wonder what in the world they're doing over there.
• 31:36
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, you know, so uh, but but I came out real good on that and uh actually thought about coming up to where I live now.
• 31:47
  SPEAKER_04: Uh my wife wants to move up into Oklahoma here and be closer to her dad.
• 31:51
  SPEAKER_04: And I'm thinking, you know, I'll open a motorcycle shop on Route 66.
• 31:55
  SPEAKER_04: That'll be beautiful.
• 31:56
  SPEAKER_04: I'll build bikes, sell bikes, and enjoy my life.
• 31:59
  SPEAKER_05: And uh and I bonded over cars and bikes.
• 32:02
  SPEAKER_05: Cars and bikes.
• 32:03
  SPEAKER_05: Oh, yeah, sure.
• 32:04
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, a lot of a lot of those.
• 32:05
  SPEAKER_04: So then I find, man, the property there is just outrageous, right there on Route 66.
• 32:10
  SPEAKER_04: And uh I'm watching the TV, and there's a man comes on there every day and talks about his sighting and window company, and then he comes on the next morning and says, We're a uh fiberglass pool dealer.
• 32:21
  SPEAKER_04: So I said, Honey, I'm gonna go down down here to Joplin and get me a job.
• 32:26
  SPEAKER_04: What?
• 32:27
  SPEAKER_04: I'm like, Yeah, I'm gonna go sell something for this guy.
• 32:29
  SPEAKER_04: And sure enough, it's been it's been great ever since.
• 32:32
  SPEAKER_04: What year was how long you've been doing this?
• 32:34
  SPEAKER_05: That's probably about five years ago.
• 32:36
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, yeah.
• 32:37
  SPEAKER_05: Now you did build choppers and stuff.
• 32:39
  SPEAKER_05: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 32:41
  SPEAKER_04: I did that.
• 32:41
  SPEAKER_04: That was a lot of fun.
• 32:42
  SPEAKER_04: Didn't make you a lot of money, but you had a lot of toys.
• 32:45
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
• 32:46
  SPEAKER_04: Uh, it was a lot of fun.
• 32:47
  SPEAKER_04: And you know, it's I'm always gonna love bikes and cars.
• 32:52
  SPEAKER_04: So I get it.
• 32:53
  SPEAKER_04: That's try to get away from it sometimes, but I always come back.
• 32:56
  SPEAKER_04: You're always gonna kind of come back to it.
• 32:58
  SPEAKER_04: But uh, I tell you what I have found with the company that I'm with now.
• 33:04
  SPEAKER_04: My free time is how to build, how to build, how to build this business, you know, just build, build, build.
• 33:11
  SPEAKER_04: Uh the owner of Home Pro Pools is phenomenal.
• 33:16
  SPEAKER_04: He has got uh a mind that's going 10 times faster than my mind.
• 33:22
  SPEAKER_04: This guy is building, building, building, business, business, business, teams, teams, teams.
• 33:29
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 33:29
  SPEAKER_04: Uh I was just sitting in here and heard the gentleman come out and tell the young man, hey, add two more things to the checklist.
• 33:36
  SPEAKER_04: I thought I'm back at work.
• 33:38
  SPEAKER_04: You know, so always something to make it better.
• 33:41
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 33:41
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 33:42
  SPEAKER_04: And it's and it what I where I was going with that, that's fun to me.
• 33:46
  SPEAKER_04: That's fun to me to grow this stuff.
• 33:48
  SPEAKER_05: He's lucky that he has you.
• 33:50
  SPEAKER_05: I mean, you have been pivotal, but he is that way.
• 33:53
  SPEAKER_05: I met him.
• 33:53
  SPEAKER_05: He came out to my job site.
• 33:55
  SPEAKER_05: I mean, even a company with the business these guys are doing, he comes down from Joplin to my job site to figure out the ideal place to put this pool because we had some questions and concerns.
• 34:06
  SPEAKER_05: And I was impressed with that.
• 34:07
  SPEAKER_05: Oh, yeah.
• 34:08
  SPEAKER_05: And I heard about the story about how we got into the business, and it was pretty interesting.
• 34:12
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
• 34:13
  SPEAKER_05: Basically doing stuff that the company he worked for didn't want to do.
• 34:16
  unknown: Yeah.
• 34:17
  SPEAKER_05: So he sets up a company to do the stuff they don't.
• 34:20
  SPEAKER_05: He's working for a major national home builder.
• 34:22
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
• 34:22
  SPEAKER_05: And they're punching these houses out, but they don't want to build the fences and put the gutters on and do the shutters or whatever.
• 34:30
  SPEAKER_05: So he sets up a separate entity just to do that for them.
• 34:33
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
• 34:34
  SPEAKER_05: And that's where it's.
• 34:35
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, he's a master of mine.
• 34:36
  SPEAKER_04: And it's and it's so awesome.
• 34:38
  SPEAKER_04: And and I've I've walked in those footsteps, not at his level, obviously, but I've walked in those footsteps and it makes it so much easier for us to kind of come together.
• 34:47
  SPEAKER_04: And and we have Build a Business Day every Thursday.
• 34:51
  SPEAKER_04: It's it's a it's a phenomenal idea that whenever I come in with this company, I'm like, every Thursday, build a business.
• 34:57
  SPEAKER_04: We have vendors come in.
• 34:59
  SPEAKER_04: We have the bankers, of course, and whoever else.
• 35:02
  SPEAKER_04: Uh, if a person's buying a pool from us and they want to come in, uh, we have a chef cook cooks lunch for us and everything.
• 35:09
  SPEAKER_04: You know, uh, anytime your company feeds you, that's gonna be a good day.
• 35:15
  SPEAKER_04: You know, exactly.
• 35:17
  SPEAKER_04: We're gonna put some minds together.
• 35:18
  SPEAKER_04: So, you know, we we build a business day, and I I would recommend it.
• 35:22
  SPEAKER_04: And every week you do that.
• 35:24
  SPEAKER_04: And you just spend it on the business and how to build the business.
• 35:27
  SPEAKER_04: That's what, well, I'd like to say we just spend it on that, but that's that's what the focus is.
• 35:32
  SPEAKER_04: Of course, we've still got our other duties and deeds to do that day, but uh pretty much build a business, and I would encourage any small business to do that.
• 35:42
  SPEAKER_04: So what do they do?
• 35:43
  SPEAKER_04: You just the whole team comes together, eats.
• 35:46
  SPEAKER_04: The whole team comes together and has meetings early in the morning.
• 35:49
  SPEAKER_04: If it's with the lead generator, we have the lead meetings.
• 35:52
  SPEAKER_04: If it's with marketing, we have marketing meetings.
• 35:54
  SPEAKER_04: If it's with uh sales, we have sales meetings.
• 35:57
  SPEAKER_04: Uh it's all getting on the same page.
• 36:00
  SPEAKER_04: You know, nowadays you are working off of uh, what do you call it?
• 36:06
  SPEAKER_04: Every Zoho, what are the uh high levels CRMs?
• 36:09
  SPEAKER_04: That's sure that's the I'm old school.
• 36:11
  SPEAKER_04: You gotta forgive me.
• 36:13
  SPEAKER_04: So the uh the CRMs, you know, we we help the old guy out with his how to get through his CRM and stuff like that.
• 36:21
  SPEAKER_04: So it's always uh it's it's excellent.
• 36:24
  SPEAKER_04: It gets everybody together talking about the same thing.
• 36:27
  SPEAKER_04: If you have something to talk about, you're gonna be able to talk about it.
• 36:30
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, but you don't feel like that's an imposition on you and slows down your selling.
• 36:34
  SPEAKER_05: No, it's not an imposition on me.
• 36:37
  SPEAKER_05: I uh to have to spend that day doing that.
• 36:40
  SPEAKER_03: Well, that day does.
• 36:41
  SPEAKER_03: That day, it gets caught up.
• 36:43
  SPEAKER_03: I'll catch it up.
• 36:44
  SPEAKER_03: I sure could.
• 36:45
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, because you always so I always sell.
• 36:48
  SPEAKER_04: I do not have a nine to five.
• 36:51
  SPEAKER_04: I'm just gonna tell you, to answer your question earlier, no, I don't have a nine to five.
• 36:55
  SPEAKER_02: What do you think the worst mistake a salesperson could make?
• 36:59
  SPEAKER_02: Not listening.
• 37:02
  SPEAKER_04: Not listening would probably be to who?
• 37:05
  SPEAKER_04: To the to the client, whoever they're trying to sell to.
• 37:08
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, not listening.
• 37:10
  SPEAKER_04: Uh I always say God gave us two ears and one mouth.
• 37:15
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 37:15
  SPEAKER_04: Listen twice as much as you speak, you know, and I think listening is the key to success.
• 37:21
  SPEAKER_02: I really do.
• 37:22
  SPEAKER_02: So you're obviously like as much experience as you have in pools before home pro, and then obviously the home pro for five years.
• 37:30
  SPEAKER_02: You obviously know your product, you know all the things that need to be done.
• 37:34
  SPEAKER_02: You can answer any question.
• 37:36
  SPEAKER_02: But you're but when you go to a client, you don't come to the table with all the answers.
• 37:41
  SPEAKER_02: No.
• 37:42
  SPEAKER_02: What are you doing?
• 37:43
  SPEAKER_04: No, you want to keep it simple.
• 37:45
  SPEAKER_04: You do want to keep it simple.
• 37:47
  SPEAKER_04: You want to listen to what their needs are.
• 37:49
  SPEAKER_04: You want to hear, you got grandkids, you got kids, you got two kids, you got three kids, you know how big a pull you're thinking.
• 37:56
  SPEAKER_04: You know, there's key questions you want to ask them.
• 37:59
  SPEAKER_04: Uh I never know all the answers.
• 38:02
  SPEAKER_04: But I'll tell you a key thing that a good salesman will do.
• 38:05
  SPEAKER_04: If he doesn't know the answer, just say, I don't know the answer, but I'll find out.
• 38:09
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 38:09
  SPEAKER_02: That's that's very, very important.
• 38:11
  SPEAKER_02: And then when you go find out you, then you what do you do then?
• 38:15
  SPEAKER_02: You go talk to who to find out the answer.
• 38:17
  SPEAKER_04: Well, whoever it pertains to.
• 38:19
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 38:19
  SPEAKER_04: So whenever they say, do the uh the new deck jets have lights on them?
• 38:24
  SPEAKER_04: Well, that's a new thing.
• 38:25
  SPEAKER_04: Our new deck jets have lights on them.
• 38:27
  SPEAKER_04: I'm not sure how that goes about, but let me go talk to the guys that install those.
• 38:32
  SPEAKER_02: You know, I think I'm kind of leading the the question here because I in in sales in my brain, I'm thinking salesperson is is to listen, build a relationship and the trust, right?
• 38:42
  SPEAKER_02: And advise.
• 38:44
  SPEAKER_02: But the lean on your internal team, they're the experts.
• 38:47
  SPEAKER_02: And then you brought up another one, your vendors or your partners that you're working with that are manufacturing, yes, they're the experts.
• 38:54
  SPEAKER_02: The salesperson's job is to go get to hear, go ask the right question, get all the details that they don't know about, your customer, aggregate all that together, and then follow up.
• 39:05
  SPEAKER_02: You're the messenger.
• 39:06
  SPEAKER_04: You're the messenger.
• 39:07
  SPEAKER_04: You've got to get it to the and uh that's that's that relationship you have with them.
• 39:13
  SPEAKER_04: You know, I've got their money and we're starting their job.
• 39:18
  SPEAKER_04: And I know typically we dig their hole one day and we set their pool the next day.
• 39:24
  SPEAKER_04: So I a lot of times I call them and say, Hey, y'all got anything going out there?
• 39:28
  SPEAKER_04: Oh, yeah, we got a big hole in our backyard.
• 39:31
  SPEAKER_04: And I'm like, Great, boy, things are moving along.
• 39:34
  SPEAKER_04: I call them the next day.
• 39:36
  SPEAKER_04: Oh my goodness, Dawn, I can't believe this.
• 39:39
  SPEAKER_04: There's a pool out there full of water the next day.
• 39:43
  SPEAKER_04: You know, these are these are times for them to tell me anything that I need to know about what can go better or worse.
• 39:51
  SPEAKER_04: Or mostly it's to catch their enthusiasm.
• 39:55
  SPEAKER_04: That's what gives me enthusiasm.
• 39:58
  SPEAKER_04: Uh, you know, there's nothing like making a couple of those calls.
• 40:01
  SPEAKER_04: Thank goodness for this uh car play.
• 40:03
  SPEAKER_04: You know, I'm just you know how I'm I'm jetting around everywhere and I'm just making calls all day, all day, every day, you know.
• 40:11
  SPEAKER_04: Um and I'm making those calls because when I get off the phone with unbelievable Don, it's awesome.
• 40:20
  SPEAKER_04: Hello, Mr.
• 40:21
  SPEAKER_04: Fitzgerald.
• 40:22
  SPEAKER_04: You'd inquired about a pool.
• 40:24
  SPEAKER_04: Have you got all the information you needed on that quote that we sent you?
• 40:28
  SPEAKER_04: I'm just so much I it it's it's it's upbeat.
• 40:31
  SPEAKER_04: It brings me back to man, I better sell a couple more of these.
• 40:35
  SPEAKER_04: Those are some happy people.
• 40:36
  SPEAKER_05: You know what do you do though when things go wrong?
• 40:40
  SPEAKER_05: I mean, obviously there's times that stuff goes awry.
• 40:43
  SPEAKER_05: It's not within your control, clearly.
• 40:45
  SPEAKER_05: You're not the guys doing it, but somebody calls you up and they just curse you up one side and down the other.
• 40:52
  SPEAKER_05: Yes.
• 40:52
  SPEAKER_05: What I mean, I know it's gotta happen.
• 40:54
  SPEAKER_05: It does.
• 40:55
  SPEAKER_05: How do you deal with that?
• 40:56
  SPEAKER_04: So I put myself in their position, first of all, and I try to understand what they're complaining about, and I try to do whatever it's gonna take to make it go.
• 41:06
  SPEAKER_04: I let them get in my position sometimes.
• 41:09
  SPEAKER_04: I'll explain, like I was saying a while ago, this is an emotional situation.
• 41:14
  SPEAKER_04: You know, I had a I had a customer, husband called and said, it's phenomenal.
• 41:20
  SPEAKER_04: We actually put their pool in, poured the concrete, dug it, set the pool, poured the concrete in one day.
• 41:27
  SPEAKER_04: In one day.
• 41:28
  SPEAKER_04: Insane.
• 41:29
  SPEAKER_04: They already had their electrical hooked up.
• 41:31
  SPEAKER_04: These people got a pull.
• 41:33
  SPEAKER_04: So he's blown away.
• 41:35
  SPEAKER_04: He's a big uh construction manager out of California, flies in and out, and uh he's like, I've never seen anything like it.
• 41:42
  SPEAKER_04: It's unbelievable, phenomenal.
• 41:44
  SPEAKER_04: His wife calls me, she says, I'm gonna give you a five-star, everything's great.
• 41:50
  SPEAKER_04: It comes about a Friday, and I walk in, and my secretary says, Um, Miss So-and-so is on the phone yelling, attorney, and she wants us to come and pull the pool out of the ground.
• 42:02
  SPEAKER_04: Oh, wow.
• 42:03
  SPEAKER_04: And I'm like, Oh my gosh, you gotta be kidding me.
• 42:06
  SPEAKER_04: So I call her up, and here's what it all boiled down to.
• 42:10
  SPEAKER_04: We had got the pool put in in one day, but our cleaning crew to come and clean up the mess, the dirty water, and blah, blah, blah, wasn't there.
• 42:18
  SPEAKER_04: And she had already told her daughter, sixth grader, have your friend come over this weekend, y'all can go swimming.
• 42:25
  SPEAKER_04: That's emotional.
• 42:26
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, that's emotional.
• 42:28
  SPEAKER_04: She's just blown away.
• 42:30
  SPEAKER_04: We haven't got somebody out there to clean that pool.
• 42:32
  SPEAKER_04: Needless to say, I got someone out there to clean the pool.
• 42:35
  SPEAKER_04: She had a great weekend and I got a five-star out of it.
• 42:38
  SPEAKER_04: But that's what you got to do.
• 42:39
  SPEAKER_04: You just got to put them in that position and let them know, hey, folks, this is a this can be emotional.
• 42:45
  SPEAKER_04: Sure.
• 42:45
  SPEAKER_04: This can be.
• 42:46
  SPEAKER_04: But a lot of times, I'm gonna tell you, a lot of times, it's not that they're having those emotions towards you.
• 42:54
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 42:55
  SPEAKER_04: Right.
• 42:55
  SPEAKER_04: They could be, we just got a diagnosis, or we promised the kid's birthday party with her there.
• 43:03
  SPEAKER_04: I didn't know about the birthday party, and I don't know that I could have done anything about the birthday party, but you leave yourself open-ended where you're not saying, guarantee it'll be in by August 15th.
• 43:13
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 43:13
  SPEAKER_04: You know, you just can't do that.
• 43:15
  SPEAKER_06: Yeah.
• 43:16
  SPEAKER_04: And you say that to them too.
• 43:17
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, and I do, don't I?
• 43:20
  SPEAKER_04: I say, you know, we're gonna ship it out there.
• 43:22
  SPEAKER_04: Uh, I ship all the equipment because I want these guys to be ready to get on it whenever they can get on it.
• 43:28
  SPEAKER_04: But I don't, I try not to promise anything like that.
• 43:31
  SPEAKER_04: So, you know, the the train wreck, that's what I call it.
• 43:35
  SPEAKER_04: A train, the train wreck is never as bad as you think it's gonna be.
• 43:37
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 43:38
  SPEAKER_04: It it really isn't.
• 43:39
  SPEAKER_04: And it's it's usually an outside entity that's caused them to have this fit.
• 43:44
  SPEAKER_02: You just gotta figure out what's that one trigger, right?
• 43:46
  SPEAKER_02: That's really driving that.
• 43:48
  SPEAKER_04: And and here's what they want.
• 43:50
  SPEAKER_04: And here's why my train wrecks don't last and last and last.
• 43:56
  SPEAKER_04: It's because I take that call.
• 43:59
  SPEAKER_04: I take
• 44:00
  SPEAKER_03: That call.
• 44:00
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, and that's the case.
• 44:01
  SPEAKER_04: And then I may be calling them, I may not have the answer for them at 305.
• 44:06
  SPEAKER_04: But you know what?
• 44:06
  SPEAKER_04: I may call them at 7:30 that night when I got the answer and say, hey, thanks for bearing with me.
• 44:11
  SPEAKER_04: I've got the answer.
• 44:13
  SPEAKER_04: And here's what we're going to do to make that better.
• 44:16
  SPEAKER_04: You know?
• 44:17
  SPEAKER_04: So it's it's just it's all about communication at that point.
• 44:21
  SPEAKER_04: So there's so many things in the whole sales as being a good salesman that I think that a person really has to pay attention to.
• 44:29
  SPEAKER_04: You know, I've been around a thousand salesmen in my life.
• 44:32
  SPEAKER_04: And a lot of salesmen are just order takers.
• 44:35
  SPEAKER_04: A lot of salesmen are just cha-ching, cha-ching, cha-ching.
• 44:38
  SPEAKER_04: They don't care to have a follow-up.
• 44:40
  SPEAKER_04: They don't care what that customer does from that point on.
• 44:43
  SPEAKER_04: I really truly want them to be my friend.
• 44:46
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, that's the transactional salesperson you're talking about.
• 44:50
  SPEAKER_05: Versus the relationship.
• 44:51
  SPEAKER_04: Yes.
• 44:52
  SPEAKER_04: And, you know, trust is everything.
• 44:55
  SPEAKER_04: So, you know, whenever you care about them before you've ever gave them a quote, and you've let them know, hey, listen, I'm going to tell you right now, that pool's not going to just cost you what I'm telling you it's going to cost you.
• 45:07
  SPEAKER_04: It's also going to be electrical's got to be hooked up to it.
• 45:09
  SPEAKER_04: You've got to think about some landscaping.
• 45:11
  SPEAKER_04: We're not going to leave it perfectly solid and everything.
• 45:15
  SPEAKER_04: And I tell them these things, and you know what that does.
• 45:18
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 45:19
  SPEAKER_04: It's right comparison.
• 45:21
  SPEAKER_04: Thank you.
• 45:21
  SPEAKER_04: Thank you.
• 45:22
  SPEAKER_04: Trust.
• 45:23
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 45:23
  SPEAKER_04: And it may take it, you know, what I don't know what the percentage is.
• 45:27
  SPEAKER_04: It may take it out of their whole range of buying a pool, you know, uh a$70,000 pool by the time you add this and this and this and sod and and a and a fence around it, it may run$100,000.
• 45:40
  SPEAKER_04: They may only had a budget for$70.
• 45:42
  SPEAKER_04: You know, it might, but I'm not worried about that.
• 45:45
  SPEAKER_04: I would much rather people know up front exactly what they're dealing with.
• 45:49
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• 46:00
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• 46:04
  SPEAKER_02: You know, Don, like you're there's the underlying thing that I that I'm hearing, and I and I'm and I I guess I can hear it because I feel the same way, is that you genuinely care for other humans very much in their life in their livelihood.
• 46:19
  SPEAKER_02: Very much.
• 46:20
  SPEAKER_04: I want them, I want to treat them as I want to be treated.
• 46:24
  SPEAKER_04: That's right.
• 46:24
  SPEAKER_04: For sure.
• 46:26
  SPEAKER_04: I really do care.
• 46:27
  SPEAKER_04: You know, I had a lady come in and we do reviews.
• 46:32
  SPEAKER_04: We do a review.
• 46:32
  SPEAKER_04: Sometimes the homeowner will come in.
• 46:34
  SPEAKER_04: If I go out and measure your house or measure your yard and get ready to do your pull first, instead of just the phone data, then I expect you to come in and look at the review on a on a screen with your picture of your pool and everything.
• 46:48
  SPEAKER_04: And uh had a lady come in there and she just wanted to buy a pool.
• 46:53
  SPEAKER_04: And in first five minutes, she says, You're you're just like a used car.
• 46:57
  SPEAKER_04: I said, ma'am, it's not like that.
• 46:59
  SPEAKER_04: All I need you to do is watch a small video here.
• 47:02
  SPEAKER_04: I'm not watching a video.
• 47:03
  SPEAKER_04: I'm here to buy a swimming pool.
• 47:05
  SPEAKER_04: Well, me and my me and my guy that sets up the video walk in the back.
• 47:09
  SPEAKER_04: And I said, he said, Oh my goodness, what are you gonna do with that?
• 47:12
  SPEAKER_04: I said, I'm gonna sell her a pool.
• 47:14
  SPEAKER_04: And he says, How are you gonna sell her a pool?
• 47:16
  SPEAKER_04: I said, watch this.
• 47:17
  SPEAKER_04: I went out there and talked to her the way she talked to me.
• 47:22
  SPEAKER_04: This is the way we do it here, ma'am.
• 47:24
  SPEAKER_04: You've got to watch this right here video.
• 47:26
  SPEAKER_04: You've got to approve the pull.
• 47:29
  SPEAKER_04: And, you know, next thing you know, she's signing on a little later, you know, everybody says, Don's favorite customer.
• 47:40
  SPEAKER_04: Don't favorite customer.
• 47:42
  SPEAKER_04: Now, let me tell you, when I do the follow-up call and she's had her pull for about a month or so.
• 47:47
  SPEAKER_04: Oh my gosh, Don, I am so thankful.
• 47:50
  SPEAKER_04: You did wonderful.
• 47:51
  SPEAKER_04: It's been the best therapy I've ever had.
• 47:54
  SPEAKER_04: I couldn't hardly walk before I got this full, blah, blah, blah.
• 47:57
  SPEAKER_04: Be a good time for me to make a couple sales calls because I'm feeling pretty good about making people happy, right?
• 48:03
  SPEAKER_02: Hey, on that, so you've said that a couple of yeah, yeah, yeah, you've said that a couple of times.
• 48:07
  SPEAKER_02: Like you're getting you're getting enthusiasm from the good results of you.
• 48:13
  SPEAKER_02: And then you build up that emotion to give you the courage, and then I guess, well, not the courage, but the uh really the the kind of the breakthrough, that ceiling, that glass.
• 48:22
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah, to call with a positive emotion.
• 48:26
  SPEAKER_02: New nobody likes, I mean, some people might, but not a lot of people do not like cold calling and these kind of lee calls.
• 48:33
  SPEAKER_02: Right, right.
• 48:34
  SPEAKER_02: But you gotta have some good positive emo energy.
• 48:37
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, it just goes back to that little boy that was running from door to door.
• 48:41
  SPEAKER_04: He had so much enthusiasm to get to door number 30.
• 48:44
  SPEAKER_04: He never got to door number 30.
• 48:45
  SPEAKER_04: He had been selling those just due to his enthusiasm.
• 48:48
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, you know, they're he's writing orders one after another.
• 48:51
  SPEAKER_04: He can't get to 30 quick enough, but it's coming through to the people.
• 48:56
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 48:56
  SPEAKER_04: You know, I I think you should play off of that.
• 48:59
  SPEAKER_04: You know, if you're putting out fires all morning and uh my goodness, well, the dump truck had what?
• 49:04
  SPEAKER_04: They ran the tire off of it and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
• 49:06
  SPEAKER_04: Why are we gonna get gravel?
• 49:07
  SPEAKER_04: How are we gonna blah, blah, blah?
• 49:09
  SPEAKER_04: Not a good time to probably make a sales call.
• 49:13
  SPEAKER_04: I would say probably not a good time to make a sales call, but you can get yourself back in that groove pretty quick.
• 49:18
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, because you kind of got like service, you know, problems that you know, I can always say problems that you're dealing with.
• 49:25
  SPEAKER_02: Then you call and do check-ins with people, and then you make your sales, your, your initial sales calls.
• 49:32
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 49:34
  SPEAKER_04: You know, you you can categorize them like that, and you can do them like that.
• 49:37
  SPEAKER_04: But I think that what you have to do when you make any of these calls, you got to be enthusiastic about making them.
• 49:43
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 49:44
  SPEAKER_04: You know, I uh recently was taking care of my wife.
• 49:48
  SPEAKER_04: She had a uh little horse injury, the horse didn't win, and it wasn't the horse's fault.
• 49:53
  SPEAKER_05: So hey, before you go any further though, Don's mom is what, 83?
• 49:57
  SPEAKER_05: 82.
• 49:58
  SPEAKER_05: 82.
• 50:01
  SPEAKER_05: She does barrel racing.
• 50:02
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
• 50:03
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
• 50:04
  SPEAKER_05: No, 82 years old.
• 50:06
  SPEAKER_05: You see why this guy's the way he is?
• 50:08
  SPEAKER_05: Yes.
• 50:09
  SPEAKER_04: So, you know, before I come to the podcast, I called mom.
• 50:12
  SPEAKER_04: She didn't answer, but I called her for a little bit of pep talk.
• 50:14
  SPEAKER_04: And she would have, she would have been like, oh, it's gonna be no problem for you.
• 50:18
  SPEAKER_04: You know, I said, Hey, mom, you're not gonna believe this, but I've already got 40 pulls out.
• 50:22
  SPEAKER_04: She said, Yeah, I believe it.
• 50:24
  SPEAKER_04: I expected more.
• 50:28
  SPEAKER_04: You know, and so the beauty of that is is I did grow up in a there's no such thing as can't do.
• 50:35
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, exactly.
• 50:36
  SPEAKER_04: So so there's no such thing.
• 50:38
  SPEAKER_05: I'd say the same thing.
• 50:39
  SPEAKER_05: My dad was very supportive and always told me I could do anything.
• 50:42
  SPEAKER_04: That's awesome.
• 50:43
  SPEAKER_04: And and I've done it with my kids.
• 50:44
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, you know, there's no limitations you can do it, and I don't want to hear I can't do it.
• 50:49
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, there's too many uh too many people trying to find a way not to do things is a way to do things.
• 50:55
  SPEAKER_05: But so I interrupted you though.
• 50:57
  SPEAKER_05: You were staying home with your wife taking care of your wife.
• 50:59
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, so I was taking care of my wife, and uh so during this time I still got 10 or 12 daddies to call each day.
• 51:07
  SPEAKER_04: I'm not taking off work by no means, heck no.
• 51:09
  SPEAKER_04: So I've got the dadas there, and I would go out on my front porch and I'd set me up the table.
• 51:15
  SPEAKER_04: And I've got the horses over here, freshly mowed lawn right here.
• 51:20
  SPEAKER_04: And man, you just no one listening, just me and those customers, and I just felt so good about it.
• 51:28
  SPEAKER_04: And I could just blam the blah.
• 51:30
  SPEAKER_04: And nobody, you know, I'm not interrupted, I'm not having anybody walk in the office, I'm not having this, I'm not listening to this.
• 51:37
  SPEAKER_04: Uh it really, it just shows.
• 51:40
  SPEAKER_04: And so I was I was telling the boss about it, I said, man, I was sitting on my porch.
• 51:43
  SPEAKER_04: He goes, Oh, I know you're rocking it.
• 51:46
  SPEAKER_04: And it just, it just goes show, just get your mindset right.
• 51:50
  SPEAKER_04: Salesmen have to have that.
• 51:51
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, it's not a humdrum job, it's a it's an excellent job.
• 51:56
  SPEAKER_04: And I think I take it so serious and so much as a joy now because I don't have to keep the books.
• 52:04
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, I don't have to.
• 52:05
  SPEAKER_04: You're doing what you do best.
• 52:07
  SPEAKER_04: Let the salespeople sell.
• 52:08
  SPEAKER_04: That's the salespeople.
• 52:09
  SPEAKER_02: That's a that's a great statement.
• 52:11
  SPEAKER_02: That's true.
• 52:11
  SPEAKER_02: That's a big problem, I think, in a lot of companies.
• 52:13
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, yeah, yeah.
• 52:14
  SPEAKER_02: And I'm trying to make it that way here.
• 52:16
  SPEAKER_02: I'd really try.
• 52:17
  SPEAKER_02: It's hard.
• 52:17
  SPEAKER_02: It's hard to do that because there's so many things that the rest of the team needs from the salesperson has all this in their brain.
• 52:25
  SPEAKER_02: That's right.
• 52:26
  SPEAKER_02: In those processes, but yeah, you know, it, but I mean, I get a lot of times like like the you know, whether it's customer success or billings really bad.
• 52:33
  SPEAKER_02: Hey, we need to get that salesperson to get all that billing information.
• 52:36
  SPEAKER_02: I'm like, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.
• 52:37
  SPEAKER_02: Hold on, hold on.
• 52:38
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I don't want them down in the weeds of a lot of stuff, you know, that I need them making another call, touch, building a relationship with that client.
• 52:47
  SPEAKER_02: And so it's hard.
• 52:48
  SPEAKER_02: I gotta go to a lunch, unfortunately.
• 52:50
  SPEAKER_02: Don, I can hang out with it.
• 52:51
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, great.
• 52:51
  SPEAKER_02: No, well, we're running out of time.
• 52:53
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I mean, it's been an hour.
• 52:55
  SPEAKER_02: It's been awesome.
• 52:56
  SPEAKER_04: Oh, I could.
• 52:56
  SPEAKER_04: I was like, how am I how are they gonna get enough out of me?
• 53:00
  SPEAKER_04: We didn't even get to talk about cars and bikes.
• 53:04
  SPEAKER_05: I wonder if Don and I will be able to do that.
• 53:06
  SPEAKER_05: But yes, for sure.
• 53:07
  SPEAKER_05: For sure.
• 53:08
  SPEAKER_05: No, this is great, Don.
• 53:09
  SPEAKER_05: We really appreciate it.
• 53:10
  SPEAKER_05: I hope people out there are listening.
• 53:12
  SPEAKER_05: I do too.
• 53:13
  SPEAKER_05: Because, you know, I think if to summarize a lot of this, Don thinks like an owner of a business.
• 53:20
  SPEAKER_05: And he is.
• 53:20
  SPEAKER_05: I mean, it's his own business.
• 53:22
  SPEAKER_05: Exactly.
• 53:23
  SPEAKER_05: Okay.
• 53:24
  SPEAKER_05: Everybody out there, if you're an employee somewhere, you are a business and you got one customer you got to please, and and he he understands that.
• 53:34
  SPEAKER_05: That's why he doesn't just shut down and do the least amount.
• 53:37
  SPEAKER_05: He's a real business owner.
• 53:39
  SPEAKER_05: You do whatever you got to do.
• 53:40
  SPEAKER_02: You do whatever you gotta do.
• 53:42
  SPEAKER_02: That's exactly right.
• 53:43
  SPEAKER_02: Always and I'm gonna say something to my daughter, my girls, yeah.
• 53:46
  SPEAKER_02: And I'm going to say something to the young folks.
• 53:49
  SPEAKER_02: As you think about and they have all these fears backing up about AI and all this technology, sales.
• 53:56
  SPEAKER_02: Nobody's gonna be able to replace you.
• 53:58
  SPEAKER_02: Never and and you know what people and the that's and and also if you're in college or you've been in school and you don't feel like you belong, you hate studying, you don't want to be behind the computer for the rest of your life, you got all this confusion because the world pointing that way, yeah.
• 54:14
  SPEAKER_02: Sales is an absolutely fantastic place to be in because you're a professional business.
• 54:20
  SPEAKER_02: Providing extreme value.
• 54:21
  SPEAKER_02: You know exactly where what value you're providing all the time.
• 54:24
  SPEAKER_02: You have great responsibility, you earn a lot of money, and guess what?
• 54:28
  SPEAKER_02: You build a hell of a lot of great relationships.
• 54:31
  SPEAKER_02: If you're a people person, if you're a people person, this is the absolute best place to be.
• 54:36
  SPEAKER_02: And I'm kind of speaking to a couple of my girls that are.
• 54:39
  SPEAKER_02: Good, good.
• 54:40
  SPEAKER_02: Because they just don't see them like you need to be in sales.
• 54:42
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, no, no, it's like you don't understand.
• 54:44
  SPEAKER_05: Listen, I got one quick story, and then I know we got to wrap it up.
• 54:48
  SPEAKER_05: I got all these students here um la this week for my classes that I teach in small enterprise management.
• 54:56
  SPEAKER_05: I had a kid come up to me after class last night.
• 54:58
  SPEAKER_05: He's got a window washing company started a couple years ago, 25 employees and his top salesperson who is a college student this summer,$10,000 a month.
• 55:11
  SPEAKER_05: Good for him.
• 55:12
  SPEAKER_05: Okay, you write your own tickets.
• 55:14
  SPEAKER_05: $10,000 a month.
• 55:15
  SPEAKER_05: Can you believe that as a student to make that?
• 55:18
  SPEAKER_05: You write your own tickets, you really do.
• 55:21
  SPEAKER_04: And and just look at it, like I said, do not look at it downgrading or anything like that.
• 55:26
  SPEAKER_04: Take pride in being a salesperson.
• 55:29
  SPEAKER_04: And like I said, you could go to a bunch of years of college with a lot of debt, or you can become a salesman.
• 55:37
  SPEAKER_04: And a salesman can write his own ticket, you know.
• 55:40
  SPEAKER_04: That's right.
• 55:40
  SPEAKER_04: You don't make a whole lot selling door-to-door some things, but you get to sell a bunch of things.
• 55:46
  SPEAKER_04: That's right, you know.
• 55:47
  SPEAKER_04: Uh sales is it.
• 55:49
  SPEAKER_02: I I'm a firm believer in it.
• 55:51
  SPEAKER_02: I am too, man.
• 55:52
  SPEAKER_02: And I think that any entrepreneur, you have to be excellent at sales.
• 55:55
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, we absolutely have to do it.
• 55:56
  SPEAKER_02: You have to be.
• 55:56
  SPEAKER_02: And that's actually that's why I I start.
• 55:58
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, like to me, it's sales is always my number one thing.
• 56:01
  SPEAKER_02: I'm sure I work my ass off every day to try to get back into sales as in my best so hard.
• 56:08
  SPEAKER_02: And I'm I'm getting closer.
• 56:10
  SPEAKER_04: It is fun.
• 56:10
  SPEAKER_04: I agree with you.
• 56:11
  SPEAKER_04: I I have I've been so lucky to get to walk right back into sales and just uh oh, that's great.
• 56:17
  SPEAKER_04: It's it's it's like, you know, I I hustled and worked and hustled all my life, and it's like uh uh begged for every deal that I can get and just worked and worked and worked, and now then it's almost time to retire, and it's just flowing at me.
• 56:32
  SPEAKER_04: Like just coming at me.
• 56:33
  SPEAKER_04: I'm like, I'd be nuts to try to retire now.
• 56:36
  SPEAKER_04: Having too much money.
• 56:38
  SPEAKER_05: I'm having we're never gonna retire.
• 56:40
  SPEAKER_05: No, you know that's no way.
• 56:42
  SPEAKER_05: That's for sure.
• 56:43
  SPEAKER_05: All right.
• 56:43
  SPEAKER_05: Well, hey, everybody.
• 56:45
  SPEAKER_05: Uh, this is uh one last thing, Don.
• 56:47
  SPEAKER_05: If anybody wants to reach you, what is your email address?
• 56:51
  SPEAKER_05: It is uh homepropools.com.
• 56:54
  SPEAKER_05: Okay, so homepro pools they can reach you through that.
• 56:57
  SPEAKER_05: Yes, they can reach me through that.
• 56:59
  SPEAKER_05: Okay.
• 56:59
  SPEAKER_05: Yes.
• 57:00
  SPEAKER_05: All right, great.
• 57:01
  SPEAKER_05: Well, listen, uh, this has been another episode of Big Talk about small business.
• 57:14
  SPEAKER_01: Thanks for tuning into this episode of Big Talk About Small Business.
• 57:18
  SPEAKER_01: If you have any questions or ideas for upcoming shows, be sure to head over to our website, www.bigtalkaboutsmallbusiness.com, and click on the Ask the Host button for the chance to have your questions answered on the show.
• 57:32
  SPEAKER_01: Stay connected with us on LinkedIn at Big Talk About Small Business.
• 57:36
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