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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:01

Welcome back to the Business with Beers podcast. Last week I hosted a bunch of owners here in Philadelphia for an in-person hot seat event. It was awesome. And this week I want to kind of go through some of the most common pain points that the owners had in the room, and then we talk through some of the solutions. And by the way, if you want to join me at the next one of these events, uh there's a link below in the podcast that says send me a text, shoot me a text with your name, your phone number, and just a little bit about yourself. And I'll send you back a form so you can sign up, get on the wait list. I do cap the number of people at these events because I want them to be intentionally small and very impactful for the people who are in, you know, the hot seats. And so anyway, next one's gonna be in Charlotte. We already have a ton of demand, so uh get in there, get on the list. And if you can't make that one, uh we're gonna be hosting more throughout the year. So, all right, one of the biggest pain points that a lot of the owners had is low accountability. And it shows up in a number of different ways. It could be that um, you know, people just don't follow through the things that they said they're gonna do. It could be that they they hand off issues for somebody else to handle, it could be that like there's a customer um complain or some sort of problem that they just like let fester instead of taking ownership of it and working to find a solution, right? And this is like kind of human nature for a lot of people, right? Like most people want to take the path of least resistance. And so if your team is given an opportunity to just go and just avoid the conflict and avoid having to do the hard work and avoid like all the the stressful conversations, well, guess what? Like that's what they're gonna do. And there's this phrase that that I try to live by, which is you get what you tolerate. Okay, you get what you tolerate. So if you tolerate people showing up late and just like not really caring, guess what? Like you are gonna get people who show up late and not really give a shit. If you tolerate people who, you know, let customers you leave their house and they're unhappy and they're not satisfied with the work, and maybe they said something but they didn't really, you know, do anything, well, guess what? That's what you're gonna continue to get. And on the other hand, if you don't tolerate anything but excellence, then that's what you're gonna get. And because and tolerating means like you're okay with it, right? Like people are gonna know at your organization if you're okay with something or not. Now, I think the the challenge that a lot of owners have is you know that they run small teams, right? I think back to like, you know, when I first started and in my team, you know, we had four mechanics, three mechanics a store. And like if I went and was a real jerk to one of those guys and told him he sucks and he's gotta move faster and he messed up this car and this and that, well, like, and if he quits, well, guess what? Now I go from three to two, and it's like it'd be really hard, right? And I'm not the mechanic, I can't fix the car. And so you gotta get in this cycle of being afraid to have the conversations that are necessary with your team because you're you're afraid that they're gonna quit, and it's really hard to find good people, and maybe it took you forever to find this guy, and maybe he's your top performer. I think that is sometimes a real big challenge in in especially in the trade businesses, where sometimes the top performing guys, like you know, are are sometimes a little bit difficult, right? And kind of comes with the territory, and we but but we can't just let them get away with anything they want, and we can't just be a total jerk, right? And so how do you find uh a balance? And there's a couple ways. And listen, I'm no expert at this, I'm still learning too. A lot of it comes over time, but here's what I've seen work in my organization, and a lot of this, honestly, I've I've learned from bringing in uh you know the the guys from from the military who are in extreme high-level uh leadership roles, and so you know, they wouldn't get to the point that they at without it, and so they're really good at at implementing this stuff across the organization. And I I I give credit to them uh a lot of this. So one of them is you you you just gotta start with the basics, right? So we gotta start with a written explanation of what is expected. So write it down, SOP checklist document, like whatever it is. It has to be written. If it's just like, hey, I told you about it last week, or like I sent you a text, or we, you know, we talked about it in minute 72 on that that group meeting we had, it's not gonna be really effective. So you wanna like clear, clear the path. So it's like here's the written expectation, then you want to review it, then to make sure they understand it, then make sure if it has to be trained, it can be trained, right? Uh, and then there's some sort of like sign-off where they're like, yeah, I got it, I've been trained on how to do it, this, this, and this. Because the other thing I hear is like owners make excuses all the time to be like, oh, well, maybe it's my fault. I just haven't trained them, or I haven't spent enough time with them, or like, you know, they're taking ownership of someone else's like lack of results and lack of accountability. And that may be true. Maybe you just like threw them to the wolves and said, hey, have at it, and you know, it was what it is. But a lot of times that's not the case. And you really have given this person a lot of opportunities, and they just like aren't the right person. So to make yourself feel better about it and to make sure they are completely clear on what's expected of them written, reviewed, trained, signed off. So now there's no more excuses, right? There's there's no more identity knows and all that stuff. From there, a couple things. One, a scorecard is a great tool, right? A simple spreadsheet. It doesn't have to be complicated. It could literally just be, you know, the items going down and the and the dates growing across. And they just they put in a number, right? If the expectation is, for example, let's say, let's say we're in our uh my turf, my artificial turf business, and we have a sales rep, and let's say our expectation for him is three estimates a day, right? So no matter what, he needs three estimates every single day, so uh 15 a week. Okay. Now, some of a lot of those estimates are gonna be ones that we pay for with with with ads, right? But there's also the expectation that he goes out and builds relationships with local contractors, that he gets self-gen, like he goes out and and generates his own leads. He, who have a project, goes and knocks on the neighbors' doors to let them know, you know, hey, we're doing this thing, you might see your trucks, and by the way, if you're looking for a quote, boom, we're here, we can make your backyard look awesome too. And all those things will be documented, we trained, reviewed. So if he has a light schedule, so say he only has one estimate in a day, then he knows he knows he needs to go out there and do the work to generate two more estimates. And so if we're looking at a scorecard, and you know, it's a daily scorecard and it has a one, a one, a zero, a two, a three, a four, or whatever, like there's gonna be a conversation around, you know, hey, listen, the minimum expectation is three estimates a day. You had a number of days we didn't do thing, like like what happened, right? Why didn't you get those? And he might have his excuses and this and that, but but but we're clear on what it is, and we have it, and he's got the playbook. And at the end of the day, if it's like if if he's not generating anything more than than what we give him through marketing, then like at a certain point, the it it there could be a discussion of like, hey, listen, this is like what the job requires. Like to for us to hit our metrics, like we know that we close, I don't know, one out of three jobs, like we got to close a job a day, and if we only do two, like we're not gonna close enough jobs to be able to hit the numbers, and so like your your job is dependent on this, and if not, like it's probably just not gonna work out. So that's one way. So score card to track specific metrics every single like day or week, depend depending on whatever your cadence would be, and go from there. Second part, if you run a remote team, video on meetings at least twice a week. Okay, so for example, if you you have a dispersed team, you're mobile, guys are out in trucks, guys are on the roads, maybe you don't all meet at the same place, like in the turf business. You know, we have a project manager, a sales rep, and then my partner, and you know, they'll still cross paths, right? But but a lot of times they're starting from home, they're independent, and they go around, they come back at home. We don't have like a central place. And so it's critical that we have the face-to-face. I think it's it's people get away with way too much stuff if it's if there's no cameras, you know, that they're on it's 10 o'clock and they're at home in their pajamas at their kitchen table. It's like, bro, like what are you doing? Like, you gotta be out there generating leads. I've I've I mean I've seen these stories. I've had other businesses in the past that were mobile businesses, and the same thing happened to us where like guys would take shortcuts, right? They'd say, Well, I don't my first estimate's not till 11, and I already got three today. And it's like, but you don't only have one tomorrow, like you could go generate business right now to generate two more for tomorrow, right? And so, video on scorecards, and on that call, keep it simple. Review the scorecard. This is where I'm at for the week. This is where I'm doing really well, this is where I'm struggling. If you have multiple people in the same role, it's a great opportunity to share best practices, challenges, what's working for somebody else. And then the the last part is just like, what's your plan versus what did you get done? So this is a great accountability tool, just to say, today I'm going to go, you know, follow up with this one. I'm gonna do this thing, I'm gonna knock on uh five fifty doors, I'm gonna do this and this, right? They're gonna have like a plan for the day because we A, we make them think through the plan rather than just like sitting there and like, but like, oh, what am I gonna do today? Like, you make somebody spend the time prior to the call to come up with a plan, and then they talk about it on the call, and then tomorrow or the next day, or the end of the day, depending on how you do it, they post to a Slack group or a WhatsApp chat or whatever you have to say, did I do the things I said I was gonna do today? So if they said, give me the three things you're gonna do, and they say, I'm gonna um, you know, I'm gonna follow up with 10 estimates, I'm gonna knock on 10 doors, I'm gonna try to get one uh referral lead or whatever, then it's like, all right, doors, I knocked on, you know, 45, I I followed up with 12, so I'm good there, and then boom, like, yeah, I got my one thing. But like otherwise, if you if they say they're gonna do a bunch of things, they just wing it, right? They're like, ah, today I'm just gonna like go and like, I don't know, call 100 realtors. And then there's no like follow-up, and there's no, you know, hey, how many realtors did you call? What was your success? Tell me about it. Like, tell me about the wins, what did you learn? Blah, blah, blah. If you don't ask them those questions, then you just taught them that they can just say whatever the heck they want in a meeting. You're gonna be like, oh yeah, sounds good, whatever. And then there's no like, you know, there's no follow-up. There's there's nothing that like you're never gonna check on them to find out if they actually did it. And so that leads them to saying, oh, well, I must got too tired, or it was hot out today, or you know, I was bored, or you know, whatever. They're gonna come up with all these reasons of of why they're not gonna do things. And so uh just think through that process, all right? So expectations, reviewed, written, trained, signed, scorecards, and then a cadence of accountability, usually meetings. Now, if you run retail-based, so in the auto auto business, I mean we still do video on meetings. You know, guys have we install webcams in all their offices, everyone's got it there. Like we want to see everyone's face Monday morning, we're gonna go through wins, we're gonna go through losses. You know, the the our districts are gonna run their own individual meetings to train on some things, and we are gonna have accountability around that. A couple other things. One is you can use pay as a pretty powerful lever. So, for example, if you know, you could say if if you don't get five Google reviews in a week, you lose a percentage of your weekly's bonus if Google reviews are important to you. You could be if you don't, like there was a guy in in a in uh the other the last week who uh it's a membership-based thing and he needed uh people to sign membership agreements, right? Like it's a subscription service, like they have to sign the thing. And he had a whole bunch of times where subscription these these service agreements weren't getting signed. And that was like a huge, huge problem because like that is literally like the business. And so, you know, they it would they were some very serious consequences if they did not get these things signed, like up to the point of termination, but definitely losing pay. And so uh effect people have a loss aversion more than they have a gain. So it is more motivating to someone to not lose money than it is to earn additional money. Like if you said, hey, I'll give you a hundred dollars more if you got five guru reviews, uh, versus you are gonna lose a hundred dollars on your bonus if you don't get five guru reviews. The loss of a hundred dollars is more motivating to somebody than the hundred dollar gain. It's just like psychology. So it's a very powerful weapon, but you have to make sure you use it like very well. If if if your entire play is like you're gonna lose money for this, you're gonna lose money for that, you're gonna lose then, you have like a landmine every single way they walk. Well, guess what? Like, people aren't gonna want to work for you because they're like, man, like it they just feel just too stressed in all this. So I would ensure if you pick one of those negative consequences that it's one that's very important and very impactful to you, and then that can do it. Okay. Uh for us, it was Google reviews. Like, our Google reviews were not good. We didn't have enough, we were low ranking on SEO. We had a minimum of five Google reviews they have to get every week, which mostly stores are seeing like 75, 100 cars a week. So, like to get five people out of a hundred to leave a review isn't a huge ask. And I mean, I have stores doing 20 or 30, right? Uh five-star reviews every single week. And now, I mean, I got stores, you know, doing having 2,000 reviews. We've moved some stores from a three, three, nine to like a four-seven, a four eight, because we only had bads because we never asked. We started asking, we were being proactive, boom, we get a more accurate representation, which is we we, you know, we do a good job. So um that would be the other one you can use. Just be careful with it. It's powerful, so don't overuse it. And um, yeah, so if you can implement a few of these things, like I said, it's all about just getting 1% better. It's not necessarily moving mountains, but if you can start to implement to to create some accountability, you'll start to see it. And then, I mean, finally, the easiest way to create more accountability in your organization is to hire people who have it naturally. Okay. Now, that's easier said than done, but like, you know, I've had, I was specifically looking for this. Is one of my biggest pain points for many years, is I had a bunch of people around me in leadership roles who were unaccountable. They didn't do the things they said they were gonna do, and I got really frustrated. So I went out and said, Who are the most accountable people I could find? And guess what? People who are in special operations in the military, extremely accountable, literally life and death situations that relied on them doing the things that they said they were gonna do, and everybody's on board. And so I went out and found a foundation that helps place these guys into leadership roles, and you know, it has been a great, great source for me. So now I have the the extremely high level at the top, and then that falls down. If you have people in your organization at the top who do not have that level of accountability, well, guess what? It's all gonna roll downhill as well. So uh that's another source to look is military and just other people who naturally like are just gonna do things. So uh hope this is helpful. Good luck this week. And by the way, if you want to join me at my next session, uh fill the text and I'll get you on the wait list and we'll go from there. Cheers.