Nicola Gelormino (00:00):
How do you get more out your existing sales team? Join us to find out on this edition of the Inside BS Show. Hey, now I'm Nicki G. This is the Inside BS Show. We are talking about how to get more out of your sales team. Who better to do that with than my partner, Dave Lorenzo, the godfather of growth. How are you Dave?

Dave Lorenzo (00:25):
Hey, now Nicki G I'm motivated to motivate you. Let's go. Let's get this sales team fired up. Could you have had a little bit more energy in that opening? I'm wearing the operator number one headset. Come on now. Hello folks.

Nicola Gelormino (00:40):
Dave is tuning in with a new headset. So we are having a lot of fun in the studio today and I want you to be able to share in that because I've been calling him coach, co-pilot, you name it. It's a lot of fun. He is fired up and we are ready to fire up you so that you can get more out of your sales team. Dave, take it away

Dave Lorenzo (00:59):
For full context. I'm testing out this headset because we're going to be doing live events. I will post a snapshot at one point or another of Nicki G in this exact headset. And because I have taken such grief all day from her, she will take limitless grief from me when she wears it. So there's five ways that we're going to share with you today to motivate a sales team. And here's the thing, if you're hiring the right people, the techniques I'm going to give you today are going to work like a charm. But if you hire crappy people, there is no motivation that's going to work. You can use shock therapy. You're not going to be able to shock a terrible salesperson into selling more for you. So let's start with the fact that you've probably hired the right people. You just got to get more production out of them.

(01:44):
So let's call this the better your best motivation tactics, the better your best motivation tips, because if you've already got good people, this will squeeze even more out of 'em. The first thing you can do is track, rank and publish, track, rank and publish. So you track the behavior, you rank them based on results, and you publish that for everyone to see. Every place that has a sales culture that is optimal, that is working has a quote big board where the leaders are at the top and the terrible people are at the bottom. And some weeks, some months you're in the middle of the pack. Some weeks you're at the top of the pack. Generally the people at the bottom are always at the bottom. But tracking, ranking and publishing, if you're hiring the right people, that's fantastic motivation. Everybody wants to be the best in a real legitimate sales culture.

(02:40):
People who are competitive go into sales because the upside is unlimited and they want to be at the top of the leaderboard constantly. We talk all the time about our Provisor group and the reason our provisor group is the best is because Nicki g and I will slit your throat in order to have the best possible provisors group because we're competitive and they keep track of that sort of thing. So if you're out there in San Francisco thinking your group is the best, I got news for you, not we are. That's just my little way of having fun. So tracking, ranking and publishing is a fantastic way to motivate salespeople because if you're hiring the right people, they're intensely competitive and they always want to be on the top of the leaderboard. Nicki G, what say you?

Nicola Gelormino (03:26):
So I'm going to ask you a question from the perspective of those listening, which is, but what about people who aren't motivated by that? Do I have to be worried about the impact on my existing Salesforce, who they've been with me for a while, I'm now going to start publishing the rankings internal to the organization? Do I need to be concerned about what they're going to perceive from that? If I already know, there may be some that they're not going to like it.

Dave Lorenzo (03:49):
So think about what type of person doesn't like their results to be published. If their results, let's say are a percentage of quota and they're ranked based on percentage of quota, the people who are going to be unhappy with you publishing those results are people who are below quota. And candidly, it should be a bottomless program because anybody who's below quota should be fired. I'm sorry, but if you're not making, if the quota is set at a fair level and you're saying we're looking for year over year production increase on sales of like 5%, my God, my grandmother who's dead can get 5% year over year increase in her quota. It's only some lazy ass who doesn't want to get out and do the work, who can't. So the person who's going to be concerned about stuff being tracked, ranked and published is the person who you don't want in your organization anyway. There is no crying in baseball and there is no coddling in sales. You don't like it. Go somewhere where they don't do it because the best do this.

Nicola Gelormino (04:54):
Yep. I think that's right, Dave, and I'm glad you addressed that. So if you're going to have a problem with employees who just don't want to see those numbers, it's likely because they're going to be at the bottom of that list. And you need folks to be motivated because this is a business, their function is to drive revenue for your business. So you ought to find ways to motivate them. And some of that is transparency and is knowing exactly where they stand to motivate them to work harder and increase their numbers to stay on that leaderboard. And you're right, Dave, if they don't like it because it's too competitive, there are other organizations where they can go to where maybe it's less competitive. But I'll tell you why a lot of companies do this.

Dave Lorenzo (05:30):
In an ideal situation, life would be a meritocracy, and the people who worked the hardest and did exactly what they were supposed to do would succeed in sales. Most of the time. If you have great techniques and you're hiring the right people and the right people are employing those techniques, they will at least succeed on an individual basis. Now, from a company basis, the people who are at the top of the leaderboard usually have three things that put them the top of the leaderboard. They have skills, they have knowledge, they have talent. So if you have the innate ability, the talent, and you are an extrovert and you're a natural connector with people, you're always going to do well in sales. So let's take all four of those elements for a minute. This is kind of instructive. When I'm hiring a salesperson, I hire based on their innate ability I hire based on what I see in them and their ability to connect.

(06:28):
In fact, you and I yesterday, and you and I a month ago had talked to somebody and in my conversations with them, those two conversations that you and I had, and you know who I'm talking about, we're going to have breakfast with her hopefully at the end of next week. In those two conversations that you and I had with her and then subsequent conversations that I've had in between, I saw something in her and I think she has talent as far as an innate ability as far as a salesperson goes, she's very personable. She has the ability to connect with people on a human to human level, and she made me want to be around her more. Just her personality made me want to be around her more. That's what I look for in a salesperson. And the reason that I look for that is because I can train skills and knowledge and I can put 'em in the place where they're going to get the right experience.

(07:17):
So because I can train them on skills and knowledge, that innate ability, that talent is an X factor, that will make sure that they're always at the top of the leaderboard. Because with that raw talent, without the skills and knowledge that I teach 'em, they can get pretty close to the top of the charts if I teach them the skills and I imbibe the knowledge on them, if they get what I'm trying to share with them from a knowledge perspective, and then I get them out there and they get bloodied in the business world and they take their punches and they learn quickly from that experience, that's the combination for a hugely successful salesperson, that raw talent will get you 80% of the way there. The skills and the knowledge and the experience get you the other 20% so you can get close to the top of the leaderboard with the talent.

(08:05):
Where we find that people mess up is they get these technical people who have sold other widgets in a specific industry and they've been mediocre, maybe even top of the mediocre pack, and they think the manager who's hiring thinks to themselves, well, this person's been high mediocre. What that means is they've worked their ass off to be high, mediocre, somebody who has talent. It's effortless for them to be at the top of the leaderboard. And then you give 'em the skills, you give 'em the knowledge, they get experience, and they're off the charts freaking successful because they've got all the tools. So we use the track, rank and publish for a number of things. It motivates the salespeople, but it's a pretty good tool from a management perspective as well.

Nicola Gelormino (08:53):
Alright, so track, rank and publish is one motivating factor. Another

Dave Lorenzo (08:59):
One of my favorites is a contest. When I was in a role where sales was important, and basically every role I've ever been in my life other than being an entrepreneur, I mean sales is important as an entrepreneur, it puts food on the table. But every role I was ever in where I had sales responsibility, there was always a contest and I always won it. So I'm not bragging, it's just true. I win contests because I like to win. So here's what happens. When you have really good salespeople and you run a contest, the really good salesperson will spend every waking moment doing everything they can to win a sales contest. I have a client who's going to listen to this show. His name's Pat Murphy, he's up in New Hampshire, he's an executive with Heartland Payment Systems, and we spend an inordinate amount of time devising contests to get his salespeople engaged.

(09:51):
And here's the reason. There's three elements of a winning sales contest that gets people engaged. Number one, it's got to be fun, okay? So when you're in a sales role, you get a lot of rejection. And although salespeople, really good salespeople have what we call rejection armor, they're used to handling rejection, they get beat up all the time. It can get monotonous and it's easy for you if you're having a bad week to say, I need to take the rest of this day and just go play golf or paint the house or take the dog to the vet. I just got to break the cycle of negativity of all this rejection. And when I had salespeople that I managed, I was totally fine with somebody doing that if they were going through a long streak of a lot of rejection. But here's what happens. If you're running a contest, if you're running a contest, the dog smells really bad because you don't take 'em to the groomer, right?

(10:42):
Your lawn is overgrown to the point where your neighbors are complaining, your house, the paint is peeling off the walls. The golf buddies haven't seen you in a month because you're spending every waking hour doing everything you can to win that contest. A contest is a short-term way of measuring who is the best, and that's a really good motivator for people who are in a rutt. It's a really good motivator for people who used to be really great and then they fell off because they had stuff happen in their personal life. A contest is simply a reason for somebody to get up in the morning, and sometimes that's what your best salespeople need. They need a reason to get up in the morning. So for me, I can tell you about a couple of sales contests that I've won over the years that I really, really loved.

(11:31):
So in Excu Stay, when I first started the Excu stay brand for Marriott, I had this office with 12 salespeople in it, and we were doing zero business, nothing to speak of, less than a million bucks a year. And the company came out and they said, we're running the sales contest and anybody who doubles their productivity year over year is eligible. And I'm like, well, geez, I'm doing less than a million bucks a year in sales. I got 12 salespeople. We can double our products. Nothing. I could do this without any salespeople. So I said, we're going to win this contest. And my salespeople are like, we're going to win this contest. What are you crazy? We've never been. It was the bad news bears. We'd never been in a contest before. So that contest was a way for us to come together as a team, and it was like us against the world and we crushed it.

(12:24):
In that one year we went from zero to, I think in that year we went from zero to seven and a half million dollars in sales. The next year we were up at like 18 million, and then the third year, 50 million, by the way, we won the contest every year. So it was one of those things where once we started winning and people started gunning for us, we just had to crush. I mean, just to show them that we were still the best. So it's a way to bring the team together. It's a way to motivate individual salespeople. It's a way just to rally the troops, whether it's an individual person or a group of people. A contest is a really great way to get people fired up, and it's a great way to get people who are off their game, back on their game.

Nicola Gelormino (13:01):
That's great. So lemme just do the high points there, make it fun, make it short term, and use it to motivate

Dave Lorenzo (13:07):
People. Make it fun. Make it so that you get to display the talent, the capability that you have or the talent, the capability that your team has. And then at the end of the day, make sure that an avatar, that you are always competing against someone. So make sure there's an avatar that you're competing against. For us, the first year we were the bad news bears. We were the underdogs. We hadn't sold anything ever. That was huge motivation the second year it was to stay on top. Everybody's gunning for us. They all hate us. They all think we're arrogant. I had a very young sales team, everybody was in their twenties, and I said, everybody says, you're too young. Everybody says you're punks. Everybody says, it was a fluke. My sales team was all women. Everybody says, you're a bunch of women you can't do.

(13:53):
It was totally sexist, terrible. Everybody says, you're a bunch of women, you can't do it again. Oh my God, let me just tell you, that was the greatest thing ever, ever, ever, ever. I would sit down with them in a sales meeting and I would say, you know what they're doing at corporate right now? And I could see their faces would all get red. They're all sitting around, they're going, how did this bunch of women beat us? This bunch of little 20 something year old girls kicked our asses. We can't let that happen again. So you know what they did? They changed the rules of the contest to make it harder for you guys to win. Are you going to take that? Are you going to let him do that? Are you going to let him beat you? And it was freaking fantastic. It was awesome. It was so awesome. I still talk to three of those women and they are all phenomenally successful today. And every time we talk about this, they come back to the scene. Can you believe they did that second year? Can you believe they changed the rules? Freaking great.

Nicola Gelormino (14:54):
I love it. I don't know how you didn't lead with that. My sales team was all women and they all crushed it. Absolutely love that. Alright,

Dave Lorenzo (15:00):
Listen. And it was the most fun I've ever had in sales. I love it. They were so competitive. They were so good. It was freaking great. They were great.

Nicola Gelormino (15:11):
Alright, Dave, what is another way to motivate your sales team?

Dave Lorenzo (15:15):
Money. Money. Money. So nobody gets into sales for any other reason than the money. The reason that people go into sales is because they're not ready to become entrepreneurs. I really believe this. The best entrepreneurs come from sales. If you're a widget maker, you're only going to be able to make so many widgets if you can't sell them. So what I've found is salespeople are really entrepreneurs who just don't want to go out on their own. So if you want to motivate people, just throw some money in their face. And I tell the story all the time. I wrote it, the 62nd sale, my book, I put this story in my book. When I joined Gallup, I had been really successful at Marriott, that business that I was just telling you about. I had been successful at Marriott, I joined Gallup and the C E O came into my office my third month on the job, and he sat down with me and he said, Dave, I need your help with something.

(16:07):
And I sat up on my chair, I said, sure boss, what is it? And he said, here's the thing, my brother-in-law divorced my sister, and that was embarrassing enough, but he was my partner in this business and he took three of my top clients. One of them is here in New York, and I want you to get him back, and if you get 'em back within the next three months, I'm going to give you 50 grand. He's like, I'll just write you a check for $50,000. And he said, you think you can do that? And I said, yeah, you bet I can. Absolutely. Three months on the job, what do I know, right? Yeah, of course I'll do it. No work. And by the way, having a career of sales success, I'm like, no problem. We'll do it. And he looks at me and he goes, great.

(16:48):
And he shakes my hand and he leaves the office. So at the time in the New York office, there were a bunch of consultants who were working other places. We didn't have any business in New York, but we had a New York office because the top talent lived in New York. There was only one other person on my team. His name was James Ack, and he was the director of business development. And I walk into James's office, I'm like, Hey, Jim was just here and he asked for something and I told him we would do it. And James is like, whatever. What do you need? And James is a seasoned sales veteran. And at the time, and he still is by the way, a couple of years older than me, he's probably five, six years older than me, and he had a lot more hardcore corporate sales experience than I had.

(17:28):
So I said, well, here's the thing. And I told him the whole story. I'm like, Jim's took his best client, best client is Aunt Taylor, blah, blah, blah. We got to get him back. And James is like, all right. He's like, here's what I'm going to do. James is super, he's an amazing, amazing inside sales guy. Research this guy can do all kinds of due diligence. He's phenomenal. And so he's like, all right, I'm going to go in the database. I'm going to look up everybody that has ever interacted with Gallup who works at Ann Taylor, and I'll make a list. And he said, and we will come up with a strategy for getting in front of them and we'll figure out how we get in the door. And I said, that's great. I said, that's all we need is to get our feet in the door.

(18:04):
And James and I had gone through, Gallup has this training bootcamp, which is like three weeks long. James and I were in the Gallup bootcamp together, and he knew how competitive I was and we were specifically paired up because we were a good match. Gallup does all kinds of psychometric assessments and everything, and they specifically matched us. We remain really good friends today because we had complimentary strengths. So James says to me, by the way, what's our deadline? This was, I want to say this was April. And I said, July 1st. And James leans back in his chair and just then the back of his chair gives away and he falls over. He literally fell out of his chair and he gets up and he's like, Dave, Dave, Dave, what? He's like, we can't do it. He's like, it's not possible. I'm like, James. And James is a super optimistic upbeat guy.

(18:48):
He's like, it's not possible. He's like, we have an 18 month sales cycle. He's like 18 months. He's like, this is three months away. And I said, well, James, I told him we were going to do it, so we got to figure it out. I'm like, look, you just make the list and we'll figure it out from there. And he's like, oh, okay. Whatever you say. The thing about James is he was based in Boston, and he would come down twice a month to work out of my office in New York because we worked together, and whenever he would come down, we would have him over our house to eat dinner, and we'd always drink too much and tell stories or whatever. And so two weeks later, he's over the house and he has one too many glasses of wine, and I go to the bathroom and I come back and he's complaining to my wife about how crazy I am for committing to this thing.

(19:36):
So long story short, we not only did we do it, we signed a contract for $5 million with Ann Taylor stores on June 30th, the day before, the day before the deadline. So there's an all partner meeting out in Omaha at the time, I think it was Lincoln, they moved from Lincoln, Nebraska to Omaha. So at the time it was Lincoln, Nebraska, which is a huge pain in the ass to get to. So we go to Lincoln and Jim, the c e o says, we're going to invite Dave Lorenzo up here, and he's going to share the secret for taking an 18 month sales cycle and compressing it down to three months. Day of police come up. It's like 500 people in the audience. It's all the partners, all the principals on the consulting side, the research people from the poll, the guy who was on TV who would read out the poll results is there, and they're expecting some fricking wisdom from me.

(20:30):
So I grabbed the mic and I'm like, here's the thing folks. Jim promised me 50 grand and I was going to do everything I could to get that 50 grand, and that's how I did it. I put the mic back in the stand and I walked out and all of a sudden, somebody in the back of the room starts clapping, and then I hear somebody go, yeah, you tell 'em. And the whole place erupts because salespeople love freaking money. So if you think money doesn't matter, you've never managed a salesperson. You want to get salespeople to get shit done, pay 'em more money. That's it.

Nicola Gelormino (21:06):
Wow, there's so many things I love about this story. So money, absolutely a motivating factor, there it is. But I also love when you're young and you don't appreciate what you've committed to. That was a young salesperson saying, yeah, I can do it. Not even knowing what the sales cycle was. Of course you said that. I'm not surprised whatsoever. And of course you got it done, not surprise whatsoever. But one other point I want to touch on is you have to be good at sales to be entrepreneurs. We talk about this, we talk about this in other episodes, you have to be able to sell. So you've got to be able to do it at some point, folks. Otherwise you're going to have a really hard time as an entrepreneur. If you don't develop that skillset, it's great when you come from that background, it makes it to your point, Dave, yes, people who have a sales background are naturally really good at being entrepreneurs because it involves selling. You're selling in every aspect of your life. You just may not realize it, but absolutely an entrepreneurship. So got to be good at sales. So money, money, money, money, motivating factor. What's next?

Dave Lorenzo (22:03):
All right, number four is awards. So we have, again, shout out to my boy Pat Murphy up in New Hampshire. We spend a lot of time coming up with awards for his team to win. And it's amazing what salespeople will do to win a wrestling belt that you give to the person who's the king of the hill that month or to win a goofy looking bowling trophy or to be able to wear Pat does in his company. He gives out it's unbelievable like swag merch. He gives out heartland hats. These people will slit each other's throat to get a heartland hat from Pat Murphy, and they wear it on their Zoom meetings to show that they won the contest or to win the award that he's giving. So what I would say is the difference between awards and contests are awards are for longer term performance.

(22:58):
So salesperson of the year or partner of the year. Contests are short term because you can't change long-term behavior with a contest. A contest is a short-term thing. Awards can change long-term behavior. So at Gallup, I started there as Vice President of business development. I won VP of business development for my first year. They made me a partner. I won partner of the year for two years. Then I won managing partner of the year for every year. That followed for me that award. That award came with no cash. It was a little, was like, I don't even think I have the trophy anymore in Provisor. I won pro Provisors Group Leader of the Year, and the award is sitting in my office in the original box that it came in on the desk. The award is not out, it's still in the box. I don't care about the award.

(23:52):
I just care that everybody knows that I won the award. So the award is an ego thing. If you're hiring the right salespeople, they have two things that you need to look for. They have to have huge egos, and they have to be incredibly competitive because their huge egos won't let them fail, and their competitive drive will keep them going through the rejection. If you don't have the huge ego, then they may accept failure because they won't feel bad when they fail. My ego is so massive I can't fail because it will absolutely crush me. I mean, that's just the way it is. Think about anybody who's ever led anything. Fantastic. Generals in history have massive egos, right? People who are political figures who are successful have big egos. I hate the fact that people think that having a big ego, by the way, men or women, there are plenty of women who have massive egos.

(24:45):
I hate the fact that people think having a big ego is a bad thing. Who thinks having big ego is a bad thing? People with small egos, that's who think having a big ego is a bad thing. Having a big ego is only bad if you use that, if that ego runs away and it makes you a mean nasty person. And I try to keep that in check as much as I can. And thank God I have you to talk about things with Nicola, and you have done an amazing job in the last year and a half helping me keep that in check. I have other people in my life and other areas who remind me that I'm a very small person not to get carried away. So if you surround yourself with people who can help you keep your ego in, check in the areas where it doesn't matter, right? That's important. And then also you need to make sure that you recognize that, Hey, listen, I have this big ego and I embrace it, and I leverage it every chance I get, right? I mean, doing that is the self-awareness that goes along with that is critical. So the big ego and the competitive drive, if you have the self-awareness to manage it, you're going to be very good at sales and you're going to be a very good entrepreneur.

Nicola Gelormino (25:58):
So I'm going to pick up on the big ego for just a moment because again, you know that I work with a lot of businesses and I work with businesses as they bring on new talent, and I love the discussions with them because when they're bringing on, especially existing producers and salespeople from the marketplace, they're coming there because they're highly sought after. They're highly successful. And I love when they start to negotiate what their comp is going to be, that the business owners will always say, well, we have to count for the number they're giving us because they have this. They tend to have an very inflated number associated with their ego, but that has made them successful. So it's not a bad thing. I love that it has to be accounted for because to be very successful, you are going to have a good ego. You want salespeople who are confident, they're walking into that room, they're commanding a presence, they're going to put on a show, they're going to be more successful. So that ego helps them get there. So does that competitive drive. It's not a bad thing when in the environment that we're talking about and how it's being used here.

Dave Lorenzo (27:01):
Well, think about it from this perspective too. Our listeners have heard me tell this story before. You've heard this story a bunch of times. The story about how I landed off at Kerman, I had them pit me against a competitor, and then they told Rosenberg and Estes my client in New York about how that happened. And then Rosenberg and Estes said, we want the same thing you did at Offit Kerman. And me being a big ego, hugely competitive person, I was like, sure, who's the competitor? And they told me who the competitor was, and I crushed him. So nobody else in sales will put their comp on the line based on their ability to deliver. I'm happy to do it because it's served me well, and it's a function of my ego alongside my competitive drive. And also, I will tell you that I'm smart enough to do my homework before I promise that.

(27:49):
And I know the client doesn't necessarily know this, but when I commit to this, I know the game is always tilted in my favor. I would never commit to that if the game wasn't tilted in my favor. And you have the benefit now, Nicola, of looking behind the scenes and seeing that there's a lot more to it than some pompous ass out there bragging. There's a lot of work that goes into it. I mean, you've seen me do this year alone, 29 talks to CEOs before coming up with an offer that makes sense to CEOs, right? You know that 29 talks to rooms of CEOs that range from 20 to 40 people in the room asking questions, listening to the answers, formulating services that make sense, testing those services, testing that message. Everybody thinks that you just wake up one day and you start a business.

(28:43):
They don't know all the work that goes into behind the scenes from testing messaging to determining whether an offer makes sense or not. And what they see is they see this big ego guy who's highly competitive, standing in front of them making an offer, and they go, wow, that's a really great idea. I wonder why nobody ever thought of that and nobody ever thought of that. So it's probably not going to be successful. They don't see the couple of years worth of work that went into doing the research to make sure this was a good offer. And then they don't see the fact that we've sat down and decided that this is something that we're going to work on that's going to be as important to us as breathing, and we are going to do everything we can and eliminate all the other obstacles in our way in order to be successful about it, as successful at it.

(29:39):
And they don't see that we're eliminating other things from our lives that may be distractions. I've eliminated an entire revenue stream from my business that would distract me from making this business successful. I've eliminated extracurricular activities that I was volunteering at. I've basically eliminated everything except for time involving my family or time that would impact my health. Of course, sleep, I guess I'm sacrificing some sleep for it, but I've eliminated everything else in order to achieve the goal that I want. Nobody sees that. But what they do see is the massive ego, and they think to themselves that that ego is arrogance. But an ego combined with preparation and hard work is not arrogance. It's a vision into what the future will be. And that's what people don't understand, right? People look at Elon Musk. I'm not by any stretch of the imagination comparing myself to Elon Musk, so I don't want to get emails about this.

(30:48):
You look at people, look at Elon Musk or they look at Richard Branson, or they look at Jeff Bezos and they think to themselves, look at these pompous asses. But they were incredibly successful. You look at Mark Cuban, they didn't get to be successful by bragging. They didn't get to be successful by just touting their accomplishments. They got to be successful by finding a need in the market, doing an incredible amount of research, making huge sacrifices in their businesses, in their personal lives, putting in the work to match the ego. The person who just looks at the surface sees the ego, they don't see everything else that went into it. So when you're sitting back and you're thinking to yourself, man, this person who's taken a victory lap is a big braggart, and I've got a real problem with that. You're not seeing all the work that went into it right now on social media.

(31:47):
There's a ton of haters hating on Dion Sanders because he took a really bad football team and made them winners, and there's a bunch of haters talking about how he's got a baseball cap on and he's wearing sunglasses in a press conference. What you're not seeing is Dion Sanders at one o'clock in the morning trying to figure out how to cover up the vulnerabilities in his defense. So the opposing offensive coordinator can't exploit it. What you're not seeing is Dion Sanders motivating these kids to come to a school that had a crappy football reputation, but to trust in him, you're not seeing Dionne Sanders driving on back ass country roads to recruit these kids. You're not seeing Dionne Sanders sitting down having incredibly bad meals with these kids' families to get them on board. All you're seeing is what he's putting out right now. But the behind the scenes is an incredible amount of work. So don't judge based on the ego judge based on the results. The ego is just part of the package.

Nicola Gelormino (32:46):
Yeah, well, great examples. Great examples of business professionals and athletes. I have to touch on that. D Tan is wearing sunglasses because he's prime time. That's who he is, all right, we all know that. But he worked so hard to get there. Phenomenal athlete. Again, great examples of the business professionals. I love all those folks you mentioned. Yeah, they have big egos, but you know what? They are successful because they get it. They put in the work, they knew exactly what they were doing when they were building their businesses. I mean, they're just, they're excellent. We could spend a whole show just diving into them. So let me bring us back. Let's go to point number five, Dave, and bring this show home.

Dave Lorenzo (33:21):
So point number five is a piece of the action, and this is the hardest one for you entrepreneurs to swallow. So you've built a better mouse trap as an entrepreneur, and for years you were struggling to get your mouse trap in the hands of people who could use it and realize that it was a better mousetrap. Then along came a great salesperson, and the great salesperson transformed your business. The great salesperson took your business to the next level, and you had a generous compensation program in place, and now they're making more maybe on a salary basis. Then you're a making. So the salesperson has happened to me a number of times in my career where I made more than the CEO O as somebody who was compensated based on sales, based on revenue. And if you as a business owner start to get jealous that your salesperson is making 10%, 20%, 50% more than you, what you're failing to realize is that you're building equity in the business.

(34:13):
So if you want to normalize the compensation, which I hate, by the way, normalizing their compensation, the way you got to do it is you got to offer 'em a piece of the action, because quite frankly, you wouldn't be in the position you're in now without somebody getting your mousetrap in the hands of the customer. So you've got to appreciate that fantastic salesperson. If you want to take some points off the board as far as money goes, look, I'm going to discourage you from doing that. I never want to give away equity in a business unnecessarily. You don't want to 'em leave. Got to give 'em a piece of the action. And I've seen great salespeople be happy with 1% of a big company, 5%. If it's a smaller company, I got to be honest with you, you're going to have to give away a lot more if you're going to take compensation away from them. My counsel is never to reduce a salesperson's compensation. You can change the compensation for people down the road who you hire, but if you're going to do it, you got to offer them a piece of the action. You would have no business zero without somebody getting your product or your service in the hands of the customer. So you're going to change their comp, want to motivate them, give 'em a piece of the action. That's point number five.

Nicola Gelormino (35:28):
This has been so comprehensive, Dave, I am glad that we brought this topic. It's obviously one you're passionate about. You are so knowledgeable in this space. So I hope our audience really all of the examples that you gave us and the five motivating factors we talked about here today. So here's what I want you to do. For those of you listening to the show, this is all about motivating your Salesforce. This is about delivering value to the people out there you are providing your services to. So do us a favor, tell someone you like about the show, what you've heard today, you enjoyed our show. Share it with somebody else, get somebody else interested so we can increase our audience. It's been great having you here today. This is the Inside The Guest Show. I'm Nicki G. You are

Dave Lorenzo (36:07):
The godfather of Growth, Dave Lorenzo.

Nicola Gelormino (36:11):
We'll see you back here tomorrow.