Unpacked with Ron Harvey
People Always Matter. Join Ron as he unpacks leadership with his guests.
Unpacked with Ron Harvey
The Greatest Sale You'll Ever Make: Why Leadership Starts With Serving
Kelly Shaw shares his 50-year journey in sales leadership, revealing how focusing on quality rather than quantity builds stronger customer relationships and creates "raving fans" who become lifelong clients and referral sources. He explains how understanding personality types, finding the right mentors, and genuinely caring about customers can transform ordinary salespeople into extraordinary performers.
• Traveled extensively through Spain and Europe, maintaining a second home in Malaga
• Developed leadership style from Marine Corps experience and studying great military leaders
• Specializes in turning around retail operations by identifying the right metrics and salespeople
• Demonstrated how focusing on close ratios and customer satisfaction beats pure volume metrics
• Believes in selling as a service: "Selling isn't doing something to somebody, it's doing it for somebody"
• Recommends understanding customer personality types through frameworks like DISC
• Advocates for scripts that salespeople can internalize and make their own
• Emphasizes finding mentors who have achieved what you want to accomplish
• Suggests joining mastermind groups when direct mentorship isn't available
• Believes in surrounding yourself with people who energize rather than drain you
• Recommends always asking "why" to understand customers' deeper motivations
Download Kelly's free book through the link provided and reach him at kshaw@highticketteams.io for help with hiring, training, and motivating salespeople.
Connect with Ron
Just Make A Difference: Leading Under Pressure by Ron Harvey
“If you don’t have something to measure your growth, you won’t be self-aware or intentional about your growth.”
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Disclaimer:
The views and opinions expressed in this podcast are those of the speakers and guests and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of any organization or entity. The information provided in this podcast is intended for educational and informational purposes only and should not be considered as professional advice. Listeners should consult with their own professional advisors before implementing any suggestions or recommendations made in this podcast. The speakers and guests are not responsible for any actions taken by listeners based on the information presented in this podcast. The podcast is not intended to be a substitute for professional advice or services. The speakers and guests make no representations or warranties of any kind, express or implied, about the completeness, accuracy, reliability, suitability or availability with respect to the information, products, services, or related graphics contained in this ...
Welcome to Unpacked Podcast with your host leadership consultant, ron Harvey of GlobalCore Strategies and Consulting. Ron believes that leadership is the fundamental driver towards making a difference. So now to find out more of what it means to unpack leadership, here's your host, ron.
Speaker 2:Harvey, good afternoon.
Speaker 2:This is Ron Harvey, the vice president of Chief Operating Officer of Global Core Strategies and Consulting, which is a leadership firm, and we spend all of our time working with leaders to really help them hone in on their skills to take better care of their teams.
Speaker 2:You know, at the end of the day, if you want to like sum it up, we do that through coaching, we do it through training, we do that through a lot of different methods, but our primary goal is just to make the people that lead better for the people that they do lead. What I do every day in that space is nice, but we pause and do a podcast where we invite guests from around the world with all different backgrounds, all different skill sets, books and programs and tools and techniques that you can use, and I love it because there's so many perspectives that our guests share with you every time they come on. So I'm excited to have on us with Kelly Shaw. He's going to introduce himself and tell you a little bit about he did. Of course, you know we're going to unpack and have fun. So, kelly, welcome to the stage and thank you for saying yes without any questions in advance.
Speaker 3:My pleasure, ron, thank you for having me. I really appreciate it and you know it's always better when you just free, free flow and you know you don't have any scripted questions or scripted answers. So hey, let's do it yes, man.
Speaker 2:So let's dive in. Man. I mean, we were in the green room, so for all you know that, you know you get to see the clean version of this. But we were. We were working through challenges. I couldn't hear kelly. I said, okay, man, just log out, come back in, we'll figure it out. So we're here, we made it and you're just coming back from Spain. I mean, so you travel a lot and you get to do it. How is Spain? I mean, what do you enjoy? I mean you travel there twice a year.
Speaker 3:Yeah, we go at least twice a year for about six to eight weeks at a time. This year I don't know if we're going to go twice or three times. We go to a music festival every July in Madrid called Mad Cool, which is really a fun, three-day, beautiful festival. I went to Coachella 19 years in a row, but 22 was my last year, so 19 years. I wanted to go to 20, but the music lineup didn't work for me. And then we discovered Mad Cool and we've been going there now for three years.
Speaker 3:Yeah, we love Spain, we love the culture, we love the people, we love the history. You know we travel Europe a lot and we decided to buy a place in Spain. So we actually have a small little two-bedroom condo that was built in 1870. Wow and was remodeled in a town called Malaga, which is this old Moorish town that's got a huge castle that's very famous, and it's about a block from our house, actually. And, um, one of our neighbors is a guy named antonio banderas. He just lives one block over and one block down and has a really nice restaurant called el pimpy. That's really fun to go to. But there's so many places there's where live within a 10-minute walk in any direction. There are 300 bars and restaurants. Wow. Like we don't have a car when we live there. Like we can't even walk. We walk everywhere, wow 1870.
Speaker 2:Yeah, wow, there's a lot of history in that.
Speaker 3:Man, you think about 1870. I mean, most of the West wasn't even built by then. Really, it was getting out of the Civil War.
Speaker 2:Yes, 1870. Wow, still standing solid.
Speaker 3:Still standing and solid. Not really sure about the electrical or the plumbing from time to time, but the building itself is good. Yes.
Speaker 2:I'm sure that's been upgraded or updated, but it's probably still need more. So I mean, even when you think about the work that we do, you think about, you know, legacy and long lasting. We do a lot of leadership here. When you think of your journey and how you got to doing the work that you do, what made you lean into leadership?
Speaker 3:You know, years ago I was mentored when I got into. So next month not February, but March it'll be 50 years in sales and I continue to learn. I was very fortunate I was trained by old school sales trainers that talked about serving first, doing the right thing for the client, making it a great experience, and how to develop a clientele that is rabid for you, your service, your product, your company, whatever. So I was very fortunate I wasn't trained in any of the sales gimmicky techniques that have been out there. So by going through like, I've been through a lot of management training and I went through management training in college when I came out of the Marine Corps and I think I got a lot of my leadership style from the Marines. I was very fortunate. I went in 1970 as a 17-year-old and there are some bad leaders and then I was fortunate to have a couple of good ones and then, of course, studied great military leaders throughout my life and I think they all have a lot of great things in common.
Speaker 3:Now I specialize, of course, in the sales aspect. So I've been going in now since 1978. My job has kind of been a hired gun to go in and turn around retail. Now it's really easy to turn around a retail operation One. Most companies don't know how to hire the right salespeople and typically a lot of companies will have one or two salespeople that are supposedly high performers, but they create so much chaos and so much anxiety in the rest of the workforce and in the back office that it's just not worth it to have them around. When people really dig into the KPIs, they realize that they can get make more money and have a much smoother run operation with a lot more camaraderie if they were to hire just really good salespeople that understand the value of quality versus quantity.
Speaker 2:Let's unpack that for a second, though. And, kelly, I mean you're hitting on some things that are super important. I mean I tell people sales is involved in everyday life, all day. Nothing happens until something's sold is what I tell people. Correct, it's just the reality of it. When you think about KPIs for people that are listening, that are into sales and that probably never, ever tie KPIs to sales, what are some KPIs for sales?
Speaker 3:Well, let me give you an example. I just wrote an article yesterday. I went back to I was doing what was called a dealer 20 group. I was kind of a fractional manager. I would go in, just dealer 20 group. I had all these Toyota dealers, large Toyota dealers, and one of my clients was Elway Toyota and Elway Honda and Demi-Cola. I was flying once a month and do some work. But in this dealer 20 group I had a dealer come in and I said, hey, listen, when you come in, I want you to bring some homework, I want you to tell me who your top two performers are and give me some of their numbers, give me your KPIs and then tell me who you're about to fire or you just fired, and get me their KPIs. So he had two reps he was really proud of. They sold about I don't know a little over 30 cars a month each right. So decent the profit we'll call it profit. The revenue was about $1,000 per vehicle sold. So between the two of them they generated about $60,000 to $66,000 in profit a month. The dealer was ecstatic. He thought these were like great. I said well, how many clients did they see he goes? I don't know, I go. Well, do you track that? He goes? Yeah, somewhere I go. Well, who keeps track of that? He told me the person's name. I said let's make a phone call. But I don't know if this is going to work. But I said let's make a phone call. We called the office manager and the sales manager and these two guys had seen 600 clients. This is a big volume dealership. So I said, okay, so they're seeing 600 clients, they're selling 60. They got a 10% close ratio. You think that's good.
Speaker 3:Let's talk about the guy you were going to fire. Now why didn't you fire him? Well, the guy took another day off. He takes days off all the time. I'm really irritated. I go, so he takes days off.
Speaker 3:How many cars did he sell? 15. Oh, cool, so he sells 15, about half of what the other guys do. What was his profit margin per vehicle? Well, it was a little over $1,100, $1,200 on the front end, but about a little over $1,100, $1,200 on the back end. So actually it was about $2,000 per car. So in seeing Les Ben, he only saw 97 clients, but he sold 15 cars. I go, that's almost a 30% close ratio. He made 50% as much profit as the other guy who sold twice as many cars. And I go, that's almost a 30% close ratio. He made 50% as much profit as the other guy who sold twice as many cars. And I go, if you were to take those other 500 clients those guys saw and you were to replace them with one more of him, right, yes, you would actually sell, and I forget the number of cars but the gross profit would be over $220,000 a month more than it was making right now.
Speaker 3:He immediately fired those two guys. We put in a plan to hire the right guys and I said look, this guy's taking time off, he's spending time with his family. Your office manager loves him, your finance manager loves him, your sales manager loves him. The guys you fired they haven't gotten one repeat sale in two years. They haven't gotten one referral and they've never received a five-star rating. A lot of threes, a lot of twos, a few ones and some people saying if there was zero, I would give them a zero. But your other guy who you're going to fire was getting five-star reviews. Repeat customers when you get a repeat customer, you're not paying additional money for that at sale. When you're getting referrals, you're not putting any money out. What gets you repeat customers and sales is the quality of the relationship you know like between your salesperson and they build your reputation. These other guys are tearing your reputation down.
Speaker 3:I tell companies all the time. I work with a company called High Ticket Teams. We help businesses recruit, hire, interview, train 1099 salespeople. That's our primary thing. And we tell all the time, like one salesperson, untrained who's not doing ethical things can ruin your reputation that you've built 20, 30 years as a company Is it really worth it? When I used to do hiring, I used to tell businesses like look, I believe in multiple step interviews, group interviews, group interviews, not only with the salespeople that we're thinking about hiring, but when they come in for a live interview, there's a couple of us looking at this person and we get to see how they perform under pressure. And I tell people all the time look, if you wouldn't have them over to your house at dinner and walk out of the room or run outside and leave them with your wife and kids or your husband and kids or just your kids, why would you want to hire them Like? That makes no sense to me. They're the lifeblood of your business. You know there's high quality salespeople or a culture that rewards quality is really important.
Speaker 3:In my career I've been very fortunate. I got hired by AMF Bayliner to turn a dealership around in the 90s. I was going bankrupt. It was literally three months away from going out of business Wow, and in 12 months I turned it to number one in the world. Now I will tell you I don't know a thing about boats, except the pointy end goes forward, that's it. I don't know anything else. Here's what I did know after spending a week in the dealership.
Speaker 3:People buy boats for really kind of three Fs Friends, family and fun. Or fun with friends and family. Yes, that's it. They don't buy them because boats are really kind of a black hole to put money into. So we just sold fun with friends and family and we we sold so many boats we had.
Speaker 3:You know, we went from almost a 0% finance penetration rate to a hundred percent not quite a hundred, but close to it. And then, but our finance, our penetration for warranty, was a hundred percent because I wasn't going to let anybody walk out that door, because I know boats break down all the time without a five-year warranty on it. So bumper, we'll call it bumper to bumper. Boats don't have bumpers. Stand to stern, stand to stern, and then it was like to get the culture and the business together. You know, you had to make it fun, you had to make it competitive, you had to make people believe that you believed in them, trusted them.
Speaker 3:And it was an old principle of Ford Motor Company that, as a manager, your job is to train the people under you to take over when you're not there. And the ship should run as good or better than when you're there. And if it's running better, you've done your job. Now you can move up or move on, and I used to tell people when I ran financial services business my job is to train you to become independent. I want you to become a high, high, high, six-figure, maybe even seven-figure salesperson. But I want you to grow, and I want you to grow with this company. When it's time to spread your wings, let me help you. That's when you create the right culture in a business.
Speaker 2:Yes, you said a couple of things I'd like to unpack, Kelly. I mean I'm going to lean back in and go back a ways forward. You talk about the value of relationships and you think of sales and time relationships. Can you unpack how value relationships, regardless of your degree or your titles, the value of having a very ethical, great relationship and get repeat customers? How do you build a very good relationship?
Speaker 3:Well, when I started my financial firm, I think, when I'm working, when I'm talking and I try to train this whenever I do sales training it's like look, selling isn't doing something to somebody, it's doing it for somebody. So if it's the right thing to do, I want to make sure that they purchase either my product or my service. But I know that if I'm doing my job right, this isn't going to be the first sale I ever make them. So I got to do it ethically, so I can sleep at night. But once they buy it, even though sometimes it's not the salesperson's responsibility to do the follow-up, why wouldn't you, why wouldn't you make sure that whatever you sold them, whatever they purchased let's use that word whatever they purchased, are they using it properly? Are they using it to their advantage? Are they taking advantage of what it could do for them?
Speaker 3:A lot of salespeople sell products or services that can be life-changing for a lot of people, particularly in the financial services world, in the medical field, in the health and wellness field. Goodness, I mean, I'm 71 years old, a little 72. And the other day I did 243 pushups in five sets. My body's, my temple right. So if you're in a business of selling health and wellness. You want to make sure that in a business of selling health and wellness, you want to make sure that people are doing it, doing it right, doing it all for the right reasons. I've been in financial services 30 years. I retired eight, maybe almost 10 years ago now and my clients won't let me go. You know you've got and you've done and you've built the relationships when you have clients that actually will call you because they value your opinion. I get calls sometimes from clients that I've had and they go hey, kelly, I'm thinking about buying this car. What do you think?
Speaker 2:Yes.
Speaker 3:Let me Google that. Yes, where are you looking? Let me make a phone call for you to the car dealer. I know a bunch of car dealers. I was in the business. I can get you a good deal without playing any games. Tell know a bunch of car dealers. I was in the business. I can get you a good deal without playing any games. Tell me a little bit about what you're looking for, what you want. I'll find the internet manager or the sales manager or the GM or the GSM and I'll book an appointment for you to go in and see them and take care of it.
Speaker 3:Now, do I get paid for that? Well, I don't get paid monetarily, but I do get paid in the fact that I know my clients trust and love me and they will never buy a financial product from anybody else. Even though I'm not necessarily licensed anymore my wife is, so we do everything through her name. But that's when you know when you've got raving fans. Raving fans are what every business is all about. I mean, I hate to use Amazon as an example, but I got to tell you I rarely ever have a problem with Amazon.
Speaker 3:I don't first thing, I think, to buy something. I go there why I get treated right. You know the same thing with bars and like bars, restaurants. You go to a place you like, you get good quality food, but they treat you a little special. You know like, oh hey, good to see you. A little special. You know like, oh hey, good to see you again. Kelly, know your name, yeah, know your name, know your face. And you know, hey, haven't seen you guys in a while. You've been traveling. Again I go, oh yeah, you know, it's like you want to go back there. It's kind of like cheers. Hey, it's a place you want to be and I think a lot of businesses, a lot of business owners, or we'll call it upper management I don't think they really know how to create that culture. A lot of upper management. Sometimes they manage from fear or with an iron ruler.
Speaker 2:Can you speak to that one, kelly? I mean because if you're in sales or you're in any organization, there's some metrics and metrics can get in the way of you're chasing that dollar amount or you're tracing this quota or you're tracing what your boss is saying. Can they get in the way? You know, managers can oftentimes say I've got to meet these results and it's going to be by any means necessary, even at the cost of destroying some relationships.
Speaker 3:I think I was just getting ready to write an article on actual leadership and one of the problems is what's called psychological safety and trust. You know, if you're, I try to tell salespeople, like never think about the sale, never think about the money. Think always about doing the right thing. Sometimes you have to turn down business to do that, but you've got to have a game plan. Yeah, we, you have to turn down business to do that, but you've got to have a game plan. Yeah, we all have to hit certain metrics. But as a manager, it's not our job to get down on somebody. It's like okay, listen, your numbers are low. So what typically happens is we look at numbers at the end of the month and say it's kind of like doing your taxes after January. You need to do your tax planning in October. You need to sell your loser stocks and if you love them so much, buy them back in January, but take advantage of the write-offs or whatever. You got to do your planning in November, october, not January. It's already after the fact, and a lot of managers, business owners, look at sales after the fact. It's at the end of the month. What happened? Well, you need to come up with some sort of metrics or, you know, safety rails. There was a message in Cherks this week safety rails, which I get. You know, I used to use that analogy of would you ever walk across the Golden Gate Bridge without those side rails and I was like, oh hell, no, I ain't going close to that bridge, that's way down there, it's like high street. But I remember as a salesperson myself, if I wanted to sell we'll say 30 of something, I knew that most of my sales were going to come probably close to half in the last 10 days, but to at least be ahead of schedule. If I could sell half of those by the 15th of the month, that means I'd have to sell seven, maybe by the 7th of the month or the 8th of the month or the 9th. I would keep track of my metrics and then I would try to analyze each one.
Speaker 3:One thing I learned in the military when you go out in combat you come back, you debrief right Like what went right, what went wrong, what the hell went wrong, why did it go wrong and how can we avoid that from happening in the future? So I learned a technique years ago. So I would take salespeople out, train them in the field live and I would have them watch me the first few times and I'd let them a little by little kind of take over. Then I would let them run the whole show. But what happened is, when I was doing it, I would come out and say, okay, so, bob, what did you think I did really well in that? What did you think I did, okay it? I would come out and say, okay, so, bob, what did you think I did really well in that? What did you think I did? Okay, but I could probably improve on what do you think I didn't do very good that I should be aware of that. Maybe next time I can do better. And was there anything I did that you think hindered or hurt the sale that I want to avoid next time? And that would get some really good dialogue going. So they're now interviewing me and you got to have thick skin because they're going to see things. Maybe you didn't see when you were in there.
Speaker 3:Now, I always close deals. So even if I did some stuff wrong, I still close the deal. But when they would do it, I would do the same thing. I always started with the positive what do you think you did right. Sometimes they would think they did a lot of stuff really right. I would have to disagree, but I wouldn't. I would say, yeah, I think you did most of that pretty good. What do you think you could have improved upon? And I work on the things they could have improved upon, and then we kind of dissect it and then we mentioned I'll ask them what do you think you did that probably hindered you from making that sale?
Speaker 3:And then we would work on that.
Speaker 3:And I didn't wait till the end of the month to go back over their 40 clients.
Speaker 3:Like I did that on a weekly basis.
Speaker 3:We would have a week.
Speaker 3:Hey, you went out and saw eight clients this week. They had $2.4 million in available money. Well, I would ask them how much money they were in front of them. They'd say about $600,000. I'd go well, it's actually 2.4. Why did you think you were only in front of $600,000 versus 2.4? Well, they had this, they had a relationship with the banker, they had this, they had that, and I'd go those are all excuses, you were still in front of 2.4.
Speaker 3:And then we'd go like, what'd you say? What'd you do? Blah, blah, blah. And it's the first 90,. It depends on the industry. The first 90 days, everybody needs a lot of handholding, and I learned something many years ago that a kick in the butt is six inches away from a pat on the back, and all sales staffs need a little bit of both. To what degree? How much? What percentage is different from person to person, and if you're not the person to pat him on the back and lightly kick him in the butt, you need to put somebody in there who can, who is doing it for all the right reasons, not just yelling and screaming at him because they didn't hit their freaking quota. If they didn't hit their quota, it's your job as management, because you didn't put the things in place to help them achieve those things.
Speaker 2:Wow, a lot of great nuggets and hopefully people are jotting down. I mean, because if you're in sales and the information that Kelly's dropping, you should be taking notes and probably, you know, at the end of this year I want his email address or contact you know. So, when you think about sales and people that are in it outside of their own attitude, what's the thing that gets most people caught up? So I love the idea that sales is service and it's not what you're doing to people, is what you're doing to help people.
Speaker 3:Correct.
Speaker 2:What's the biggest object? Because most of us we think sales. We think here comes a slick talker, fast talker, want to get paid, want to continue to get wealthy off of me or going to take advantage of me. And how do you help if I'm a salesperson? Get over that perception of salespeople.
Speaker 3:Well, I don't know if you're familiar with the GIF profile or the Colby, yeah. So I'm a 10 quick start on Colby, me and Dan Sullivan. We're like herd and catch. It's a little challenging. My wife is also a 10 quick start. We're a hot mess and in the disc I'm a very fast-paced people-oriented.
Speaker 3:So I train a lot of people to try to understand disc, not only to understand their clients a little bit better, but most importantly to understand themselves and their pace and focus. So I did pretty well with engineers. It's because I knew to slow down and not get friendly, be very blunt and to the point, professional, which is not my normal style, by the way. But I also knew I couldn't use big language. It's the best. It's like hey, here's what so-and-so said. Hey, if you go to this magazine, you go to this article or if you do research, you know, google this and here's what you're going to find out.
Speaker 3:I would always have printed copies with a lot of highlight stuff and I would always operate under the assumption that that person probably knows as much about my product as me. Just be flat to the point and be professional. They're going to go and do their research. Don't push them. They're not going to buy. You try to push them Boom S-style personalities. I just got to talk up. I got to slow down still. I got to talk about the family, the future, who's going to take care of them, how it's going to work. Maybe you should sell them something with a warranty how to actually do all that. So I'm going to talk a little about the future. But these, that are the dominant personality. I'm just going to get to the point, not be overly friendly, but I got to move fast because they're like give me the facts, I want them yesterday and let me get the hell out of here and I'll make my decision. So you got to give them a little bit of control. You got to at least let them think they are in control and you got to boost their ego a little bit With eyes. You just got to quit having too much fun talking too much and ask them to buy. They'll buy. Then you can continue to have friends and go to happy hour after the sale.
Speaker 3:So when I was, I think, really starting to get really good at sales, I would kind of study like, what do people really think about salespeople? And I wanted to give a different persona. So I did everything I could. Now, one of the things I did I didn't need glasses. But I remember telling my girlfriend many years ago I go hey, you're applying for this job with this big company, pull back your hair into a ponytail, put on glasses. She goes I don't wear glasses, I don't care, it'll make you look really professional, it'll make you look more studious and you're overly excitable. So when you go in there, calm the hell down, talk slower. And she got this incredible job because this person thought she was one of the most intelligent people, smartest people she ever met. And I did the same thing I would wear glasses and when I would greet people, I wouldn't be overly excited.
Speaker 3:People say in sales you should be really excited. Well, excitement comes from the greatest sale ever made, which, by the way, is the name of my book. Yes, that's available for all your podcast people for free. Um, it's about the sale you make to yourself, about you as a person, what you can deliver to the client, your product, your service and your company. And if it's the right product, service, you're the right salesperson. You, you've got the right company. You owe it to them to close it and to make sure they're utilizing it properly. So I hope I answered your question.
Speaker 2:I kind of got off on a roll. Yeah, you did. Yeah, For the audience. I mean, you do have a book and it's out. So how do people get to your book? I'm going to give a couple of them.
Speaker 3:Yeah, you'll have a link here and it should be in the bottom of your stuff here pretty soon. But, yeah, they can follow that link. Give us their name, email and then they'll be able to download the book. And then there's a bigger version of that book coming out where we're going to a lot more leadership, a lot more team building, how to build dynamic teams that are cohesive, they're fun, they're empowering and how to empower teams to do the work. And that book will be coming out in about five months and everybody who downloads my current book will get a free version of that when it comes out, so they don't have to worry about buying either one of those. Awesome, Awesome.
Speaker 2:So, kelly, as people are listening, and definitely for the sales professionals that are out there, you've managed to do it really really well. What are some reasons for people that, if they want to reach you, what are some things that's happening for them and how can you help them?
Speaker 3:Well, you see, I'm talking to an individual person and maybe they're struggling. Whatever I mean one, I'm a good listener. At least I believe I'm a good listener most of the time. My wife sometimes may not agree, but I try, I really try, you try, yeah, but I think in my 50 years and probably 45 of that being in management, maybe the whole 50, actually almost the whole 50, all except for two or three I've been able to actively get involved with helping salespeople by listening, by giving them some anecdotes, by maybe giving them some alternatives.
Speaker 3:I'm really good when I'm in sales and talking to people about their presentations, about verbal cues, body language, tonality, verbal pacing, how to ask the right questions, like how to use their facial expressions. I was very fortunate, I think 81, 82,. I took an acting class so I could get better at sales and that really helped me use my body language, my facial expressions, to get certain points across without being verbose. I can help a lot of people with their mental attitude. I can help them with scripting, like, if you go into a room with 5,000 salespeople and you ask how many people like scripts, I think you're going to find that 4,900 hate them, yes, but the 100 that like them were probably some of the higher achievers.
Speaker 3:And I was in a room the other day. I was in Philadelphia on Friday, yeah, and I asked this room and I was on a Zoom. I had a room full of salespeople for Thrivent Financial and a big Zoom room and I asked how many people like scripts? And like, every one of them kept their hand up. I go. So how many people hate scripts? Everybody put their hand up and I said well, how many of you were born in the U S? What language are you born? Speaking English, english, english, english, english. I go, ds. You weren't born speaking a damn word. You didn't say mama or dad at until you were probably five, six, eight, nine months old. And some of y'all talk funny man, like some lit soda. Or from you, you guys like from Minut Soda. Or from you, you guys from Philly, I got to tell you. Or you know, there's a couple of y'all from the South. Y'all have different actions. Those are your scripts, I go. I know salespeople have scripts that are worth 50 grand a year.
Speaker 2:Yes.
Speaker 3:It's the English language, it's the same damn words. It's how they're positioned and how you internalize it. I've got friends that literally make $100,000 a freaking month, month in, month out. They're between $1, $1.2, $1.3, $1.5 million as 1099 salespeople. Why? They have better scripts and I learned a long time ago to internalize something. So I'll tell you a short story.
Speaker 3:When I got hired in financial services, this guy hired me to sell annuities and he goes you think you can sell annuities? And I go oh yeah, my ego says I can sell anything. And I go what's an annuity? He gives me literally 15 minutes of training, kicks my butt out the door to go sell a movie and I sold a couple. I don't know how, but I did. I come back and go dude, let me follow you for a week. I want to go on the road with you because you're a beast. Now understand this is a ride or down for your audience. Yes, success leads crumbs and clues. So does failure. Too many people pick up the clues and the crumbs of failure. So I followed this guy for a week and then back in the day and of course I recorded a lot of calls and I recorded myself practicing, drilling and rehearsing military background and my wife walked by my office one day. It was in the home and I set appointments the Saturday, the week before I would go out. My territory was from Northern California all the way through Bisbee, arizona, all the way down past Tucson.
Speaker 3:And she goes when did you start stuttering? I go, I don't stutter, she goes. You were just stuttering I go. No, I wasn't, she goes. You were, I go, I was not. I go. No, I wasn't, she goes. You were, I go, I was not. She goes. Listen to the tape. So I rewound the tape and I went.
Speaker 3:Oh, that's where Paul, my mentor, stuttered every time he was in the sales presentation. I don't know if he did it on purpose, but I found myself after a week of traveling with him, internalizing all his great habits. Right, that's what everybody should do Get a mentor that you want to be like, who's achieved what you want to achieve and do what they do. And honestly, for like four years of being on the road, I actually stuttered almost every time at that spot. I don't know why it was, just I internalized it so much I couldn't get out of it.
Speaker 3:But he had a script that closed a huge amount of deals. Now he also had a really high fallout ratio. So I had to take his script, put it with my personality, internalize it in a manner that works with me. Still basically the same 85% probably and then I was able to close almost as much as him. But at the end of the month mine all stuck together. His didn't, and mine created no grief in the company. His did. He's my boss, don't get me wrong. He was great. He still accomplished great things. I just did a better job because I did what he did, but I fine-tuned it to me and my personality.
Speaker 2:Love it. I mean phenomenal. I love that you say find a mentor. So if you're listening and you're paying attention to what Kelly and I are talking about, you should have a mentor, someone that's ahead of you several paces, that's doing well and has achieved what you're trying to achieve and figure out what it is that they're doing. I mean, and that's in every, regardless of where you are, what industry, you know what you're doing find a mentor. It's one of the greatest investments you can do is find someone ahead of you that's going to help you become great.
Speaker 3:Absolutely, and you know, the funny thing is, ron, is that people that are really successful they want to help you yes, it's people that are struggling or they're afraid you're going to beat them will not help you. Insecure, very insecure People that have made it. They've been there. Maybe they've been there two or three times. Maybe they've been there and failed and they build themselves back up. They want to help and if you can't find a mentor, get into a mastermind group.
Speaker 3:I used to help set up mastermind groups for financial services industry. That's a way in the car business. They're called D or 20 groups. Today you got to probably spend money to be in a mastermind, but it's worth it.
Speaker 3:If you think about what Jim Rohn said many years ago so many other people have said this and it might even be in the Bible you are the accumulation of your five closest friends, right, the five people you hang out with the most. I went to a Dan Sullivan strategic coach event many years ago called the Couples Conference. There are about 300 couples all high producers getting together, sharing information and how to have a great life and a perfect life, and so the spouses or partners could understand what goes on in day-to-day business, because a lot of them don't sometimes right, especially as men. We compartmentalize it. How's everything? Oh fine, let me just relax, not talk about work. And I learned that there are two types of people in the world people that just drain energy out of you, and you know, when you're around them, you're around them. You're around them for an hour or two and everything's negative. It's bitch, moan and complain and you leave there. You're just drained. But there's other people when you're around them, they give you energy and excitement.
Speaker 3:I have a buddy named Steve McCarthy great guy, great salesperson, and I trained him in financial services. His previous company had failed because his business partner took advantage of a lot of stuff, but he wanted to get back into sales, just direct sales, and him and I spent some time on the road. Great, great, great guy. But when I'm around him, or him and his wife, we could talk for like 10 hours, stay up all night long and come up with at least 20 ways to make the world a better place. And we're just.
Speaker 3:From that point on, we're on a mission and that's what we as human beings have to surround ourselves. You know, even Jesus surrounded himself with a mastermind group. I think they were called the apostles. Yes, pretty sure. Yeah. Jesus realized he couldn't do this alone. He needed 12 people to spread the word.
Speaker 3:You know, in business I had 12 clients that were my. What do we call it? We call it a special name, but we invited 12 clients to be on our board to meet four times a year for a special dinner and just talk about the business, talk about where we're heading, what we're thinking about doing, get their ideas on our upcoming holiday party gifts, I mean. And they were our raving fans. Some of those clients are 85, 90 years old today. I can't get rid of them, even though I kind of want to sometimes, but they keep giving me money. And that's building a great business when you have raving fans that they consider you part of the business.
Speaker 3:Let me give you an example, ron. I have a client named Frida Barrett. Frida's husband just died. She's got to be 90-something freaking years old, I don't know. She's way up there and she's starting to get dementia real bad. But her kids came to me and said hey, you do financial stuff for my mom, can you do it for me? Sure, and you know it's like whatever you want, kelly, just tell us what to do, we'll do it. Okay. Their kids, frida's grandkids, are coming to me saying, hey, you took care of my parents and my grandmother. They said I should come to see you for financial advice.
Speaker 3:Isn't that what we really want from our business? Is people out there you're not paying money to that are spreading the word? It's like we all have our favorite restaurants we send people to all the time Because why? We know they're going to get great food. They're going to give us compliments for sending them there. They're going to get taken care of. Their staff is wonderful. But do we get an affiliate check? Nope. Do we get a commission check in the mail? Nope, but we get paid by satisfaction. Right.
Speaker 3:And as a business owner or upper management, you want to build that team not only sales, but the whole, how every department interacts, where you're all working for the same goal, which is to deliver the right product to the person or people, make sure they take care of it.
Speaker 3:They're raving fans and they're going to send you more business. So that at some point I know my business plan. When I started financial services I donate I had X number of dollars a year I was going to use for outgoing marketing to attract new clients and each year I would drop that by 15 to 20% and devote that money to client retention and at the end of five years I didn't have to spend marketing money. It was like so minimal. Yet all the people I knew in the industry were spending $40,000 a month. $30,000 a month and I'm spending like four, three and getting the same results because I've got great word of mouth, good reviews, repeat clients. You have to put very minimal amount of money in for repeat clients. You just got to give them a lot of attention. Yes, yes.
Speaker 2:Awesome. I mean really, really great. Mastermind, as you talk about. You know this podcast and you talk about the work that you do and masterminds and mentoring. I think all great ideas. As we come to a close, two things I want to close out with is what's the one piece of advice that I haven't asked you about, that you haven't shared, that you would say here's a golden nugget I want to leave with you and share.
Speaker 3:That you would say here's a golden nugget I want to leave with you and then we'll do your contact information. I was speaking at an event, on a panel, and a moderator asked me a question. They go, kelly, if you have one word, one bit of nugget you could give us right now to help salespeople change their trajectory, what would it be? And I go why she goes. Well, I mean she expounds upon that and I go why she goes. Well, I mean she expounds upon that and I go why. And she goes. Well, she was getting frustrated. I go, the word is why. And she laughed. And I go. Here's the deal.
Speaker 3:Like, salespeople don't ask enough questions, they don't dig deeper. You know, and I would say, as a salesperson, as a business owner, as a manager, know the big whys, whys of your employees, whys of your clientele. And as a salesperson, as a business owner, always ask the question why? Why today, you know, why is that important to you? How is that important to your family? Learn different ways of digging deeper, asking more questions.
Speaker 3:I think, if you have that natural curiosity, I've been very fortunate. I don't know how I learned that. Maybe it's just because I'm always interested, I love people and I want to find out, but I also know that there's a reason. Somebody's here and you know they don't have to be here. They don't have to be talking to me. So why are they here? What's really their pain point? What's the bridge they're trying to get across? Get out of this hell, excuse me, and get over to this sunny resort vacation area where life is grand. You know, christians might call that we would call that heaven, of course, but I think, yeah, that's the thing. Just dig deeper. Care Really, truly care about who you're dealing with. I think you can't fake that. You got to really have that in you. If you don't and you're just after the money you can still be successful, but you'll never be happy. Your clients will never be happy.
Speaker 2:Yes, I love it. Genuine, authentic care, which I think across the board now is we're figuring that out is how to be more authentic and genuinely care about it. What's the best way to reach you, kelly? If someone wants to bring you on the podcast or just wants to reach out to you, what's the most effective way to reach you?
Speaker 3:You know, I tell you what. The easiest way to reach me is my email. At my current position, which I'm vice president of sales for High Ticket Teams, which is kshaw at high ticket teamsio. Okay, I'll also send you my other email, which we've kind of slowed that part of the business down, but it's kelly, at kingdom sales academycom, but we've shut down our website. That email is still active because I have a lot of clients that still contact me through that email and it's forwarded to all my other emails. But I'll get you both and I'll get you the link to the free download of the book, because a lot of the stuff we talk about how to get your customers frothing at the mouth, how to promote an opening night performance, how to, you know, build those deep relationships it's all covered in the book and the book's really probably more about mindset than anything else, but I think that's the thing that helped me.
Speaker 3:I went to a Tony Robbins event in the 80s and I learned a technique that he does a lot, which is getting your chi together, and I remember my job was to go door to door basically selling financial services. I would go into a home and walk out with a check for $500,000. And I only know those people for three hours. So you got to be a damn good salesperson and build pretty good rapport to do that and have a good reputation. But I learned, and I'll share this with every salesperson when you're doing something for somebody, you don't thank them. I saw myself, before I'd walk in the home, coming out the door, shaking their hand and saying congratulations. I set my intention up front Congratulations. I'm going to enjoy working with you guys over the next 10 to 20 years, right, yes, that mindset's different than I'm selling somebody something. It's I'm here to help them and I'm here to serve. So when I do that, it's congratulations, you made a great deal. I'm looking forward to working with you. So yeah.
Speaker 3:So just get ahold of me at K Shaw at high ticket teamscom, fractional management, and we know how to hire, train and motivate salespeople.
Speaker 2:Yes, I love it. Thank you for sharing so much you know and we will get, as you put out, the podcast for all of our listeners. You have all of our contact information. Thank you for staying with us and joining us on this podcast, again for everyone that's following and listening. And until next time, callie and I will sign off and we look forward to working with you or hear from you in the future.
Speaker 1:Well, we hope you enjoyed this edition of Unpacked Podcast with leadership consultant Ron Harvey. Remember to join us every Monday as Ron unpacks sound advice, providing real answers for real leadership challenges. Until next time, remember to add value and make a difference where you are, for the people you serve, because people always matter.
