Sales Management Podcast
Cory Bray, 8x author and co-founder of CoachCRM, digs into hot sales management topics.
Sales Management Podcast
98. Sales in the Commercial Real Estate Industry & Coaching Sellers with Ryan Hartsell & Joe Nurrenbrock
This episode touches on some industry-specific themes in commercial real estate, and also zooms out to look at coaching in general.
If you're in the real estate business, there are specific actionable tactics you can implement. If not, it's a fun episode that may open your eyes to different perspectives around sales in a different industry.
Welcome to the Sales Management Podcast, your source for actionable sales management strategies and tactics. I'm your host Coach CRM co-founder, Corey Gray. No long intros, no long ads. Let's go. I got two guys from the real estate industry here for you today. Hey, fellas.
Speaker 2:Hey Corey, How's it going? How's it?
Speaker 1:going. How's it going? Going great. I've got Ryan Hartsell from Oxford Partners and Joe Nirenbach from Avocat Group and we're going to talk about sales in the commercial real estate space. We're going to talk about coaching. We're going to talk about a lot of different things outside of what a lot of my guests typically talk about, which is the software technology sales. So these guys are working with physical products in physical locations, but guess what? They're still trying to move folks through a process and help solve some pain points out there. All right, guys, I have a lot of things I want to touch on, but, joe, you just mentioned to me that you were reading the five secrets of a sales coach. Tell me what's going on in your mind around coaching, the team and some things that you're you're recognizing as opportunities coming up for the back half of 2023 yeah, probably, just as uh, ryan and I kind of build out specifically our sdr teams.
Speaker 3:we we find that there's a good amount of ability to get better at coaching and you know I've found a lot of value in reading your book and looking through that framework. So we're nowhere near proficient at it yet, but we're hoping to kind of take some steps in that direction.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and for me, I've been in the business for 16 years recruiting and managing and training people through our industry and you know there's lots of different ways we pick up business. Kind of our primary way is just making cold calls to C-suites, but I pretty much know everything on how to do that. And so when you're training somebody, it's like you see them committing different mistakes or errors or you see areas of opportunity for improvement and you almost get really excited and you give them too much information. You photo, you just kind of information dump on top of them. Yeah, because you got to fix this, you got to fit that.
Speaker 2:And I think that framework kind of you know why, why, why Joe was talking about it before we got started in this podcast and why we like it so much is it kind of trains you just to focus on that one thing, that big next improvement that needs to happen, and kind of understand what type of issue that it is. So identify the issue and just focus on that one thing rather than throw a bunch of different things at it. And just, rather than throw a gazillion different things that need to be solved, let's find the number one thing that needs to be solved right now and then break that one thing down in multiple steps, and I think that's important.
Speaker 1:If I throw eight basketballs at you, how many basketballs are you going to catch?
Speaker 2:Exactly, yeah, you can catch zero.
Speaker 1:Maybe. Maybe two might catch a black eye, I don't know.
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 3:Right, yeah, the Right so.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 3:The coaching framework.
Speaker 1:If anybody out there wants to check out the coaching framework, send me a note. Free stuff at CoachSierracom. Free stuff at CoachSierracom. I'll send you a book or a course. All right, let's talk about commercial real estate industry. How is sales different than product sales?
Speaker 2:product sales. Well, so we're in commercial real estate and there's a lot of different areas of commercial real estate. Inside that we're brokers and inside brokerages there's a lot of different things that you can do. You can be a landlord rep, you could be a tenant rep, you could be focused on leasing, you could be doing sales brokerage. There's lots of different things. And so Joe and I we focus on office and industrial tenant rep. And so what companies will do? They'll hire us.
Speaker 2:The CEO, cfo, president, partner of the company will hire our firms to go out and negotiate their lease renewal, lease relocation, to go purchase a property or go buy a property.
Speaker 2:And so we're really selling a service. It's a relationship business and we're selling kind of an intangible service versus maybe a product where you have a piece of software that you're like, hey, this software solves this problem and let's do a desktop screen share and let me show you how it works. It's more of an intent and tangible service where we're selling our expertise to pull off a transaction better than they could on their own. And so inside our specialty it's just that we're kind of like very precise in the services that we offer. But at the end of the day. It's a relationship and you got to really get good at communicating. You know how, how our services are going to impact, possibly impact you know their, their next transaction. So it's just different, you know, and it and it really is more of a relationship that's going to be built over many months and many years, versus a quick in and out type of service.
Speaker 3:It's also piggyback on that. It's so what Ryan's saying is our it's different because our product is intangible. So we can't screen share a software and kind of click into it and you know it's not. It's not something that you can physically show, but it's also real easy, I think, in our industry to to falling into the trap of feeling like the real estate itself is the product. That's kind of prospects our clients will imagine that we do beforehand, like go find me a building, are you just an order taker?
Speaker 3:And I think you know, partially through working with you for sure, the clarity that we got was you know we don't sell the real estate, we sell solutions to pain points that they have. So you know that's taken also some interesting directions where we've actually had a lot of success in sort of making our service as tangible as we can. So we sometimes have these, you know, a tangible analysis or a tool that we've created to solve a certain problem. Maybe you're outgrowing your space, maybe you're hiring aggressively or maybe you're overpaying now that you have too much space and people are working from home. So that's helped us a lot in the last couple of years.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, and thanks for running that off. Joe and I tend to go off on tangents and then get excited about something else, and maybe I'm not answering the question that was directly asked of me, but I do think, corey, that's kind of where we benefited from you and what we learned from you is that before it's like, hey, we're specialists, all we do is tenant rep, we do this all day. Look at all our wonderful clients, look at our client testimonials. We're experts. Just take our word for it, hire us, because you can't do this on your own. That's kind of like the old way of doing it.
Speaker 2:And kind of what we learned from you is to, rather than say any of that, because who cares? You really kind of lead. You know we've taken a version of what you, you know, taught us Corey, but you know we got to lead with the pain points like what are the pain that you might be experiencing, that you're not verbalizing, that we can solve for you, and that's kind of your intro, to get their attention. And then, when you're having the meeting presentation, rather than say all those things were so great, this is special, you kind of give them as best you can.
Speaker 2:Again, we are selling an intangible service, but we can kind of show them examples of other companies that we work, that working them through case studies, examples of someone that was in that, in your shoes, having this problem. This is how we solved it, like here, you know, let it and then let us do a free evaluation for us. We'll have a second meeting with that free evaluation and kind of one step student, three step it. This is what we do first meeting, second meeting. This is like the decision that you're going to make in the future and I know there's a lot there, but we've really like embraced that as part of our sales presentation and I love it now because it's just like you get at the end and a lot of these executives at the companies kind of chuckle and they're like well, why wouldn't we do that? Like, why Like yeah, like well, how can I say no?
Speaker 2:you know, and we don't always get hired on all of them, but we get way down the line.
Speaker 1:You get good next steps and I think that's one of the best coaching opportunities you got is if your team doesn't have consistent next steps, it makes it hard, but what you're talking about is your team always has consistent next steps and the deal just flows and you open this up. I think it was funny because you do open this up with talking about how it's a long-term thing.
Speaker 1:It's a long-term thing with consistent next steps, and you can't force it either. People have leases. Leases expire in 2026. You can't be be like. I guess you could get people to break their lease.
Speaker 1:that's probably something that you could yes, get them to do that's right yeah, at the same time, that's that's got its own issues associated with it, right. And so you've got to do this discovery over a long period of time with a human being and drive towards some kind of outcome, and it can't be one of these things like oh we, we have a 60-day sales cycle. It could vary, right.
Speaker 2:Right, exactly what's the?
Speaker 1:longest term. What's the longest sales cycle that you guys have had?
Speaker 2:recently. I mean we get lucky. I mean, don't get me wrong, sometimes we might meet somebody and pull off a deal in two, three or four months, but that's like extremely rare. But most of the transactions that we end up closing we met with that prospect at least a year before the lease expired and needs to get renegotiated, or a year before they buy or sell that property, and that's kind of the standard at least a year.
Speaker 1:Okay, here's my tactical sales question. How do you keep a salesperson on top of something and focused for a year when it's hurry up and wait?
Speaker 2:and then it just sits there for a while.
Speaker 2:Well, I think the important part is you have to be impactful during that first meeting and you have to actually provide value so they remember you, because sometimes you might have a meeting and it really is a wait and see for two or three or four months or five months or six months, and so there's little things there.
Speaker 2:Obviously, you got to send them emails and call them and check in, and I know you said that maybe you know you wanted to wait till then, but maybe we need to talk now because of this. So there's like those tactics to kind of stay top of mind. But I think at the end of the day, you actually have to be like a little bit more impactful and memorable on the front end. So when it does come time to make that buying decision, you know they're going to think of you, they're going to reach back out to you. I mean, obviously you got to stay in front of them or they're going to forget, and some people view us as a commodity, but I don't know if that answers your question, corey, and that's something we got from you is is is you know you got to really paint the picture of you know the pain that they're going to involve avoid and the amount of time that you're going to save them.
Speaker 1:Because it might not just be the pain that they experienced today. It might be the pain that you know they're going to experience in the future, just because you guys have seen this movie so many times.
Speaker 2:Right, exactly, yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 3:And that's the whole educate, predict thing of your health kind of acronym that you taught us is that you know, predict future you. A little bit of context. There are sort of like two major decision points in our sales process. So there's the one where we get engaged as hired. That usually comes in the form of an engagement letter that says yes, go do my, go work on my real estate project. You are getting hired to do that, and then so it's almost like it's not really like our sales process necessarily is always extremely long. It's that our revenue collection is because we work the deal at that point. When we get hired, then we work the deal for nine months.
Speaker 3:But to go back to my original point, is what I found. The difference in the last couple of years, as we've gotten better at discovery, doing demos that are tied exactly to how you know to solve their, the pain that they're experiencing or whatever, is that we can actually get that engagement letter. We can get hired long before the lease is really in the strike zone, because we can provide them with planning services to make their options clear, Because most people just don't know what they want to do. They could relocate, they could downsize, they could go purchase a building. So there's all sorts of stuff we can do before we actually start going out into the market, and that's been a big difference I've seen. So that's one way that's actually possible to shorten the sales cycle is you can go out and get engaged with the client and start working with them when they're still pretty far out from you get engaged with them early because they see a reason to work with you prior to that lease expiration.
Speaker 3:Exactly, and we used to before we understood how to do this. We would and I think a lot of real estate brokerages fall into this trap is like you fall into the trap of being like an order taker you wait until the business knows exactly what they want to do, exactly what they want to do. You wait until they figure out oh, we actually need to relocate from this lease and we need to go get 10,000 square feet over in this sub market. So at that point you commoditized yourself. You're just a guy who goes and finds spaces that fit that requirement, whereas what we're very good at and I think which gives us a little bit of differentiation is we meet them earlier in their buyer's journey to use like a SaaS buzzword or whatever their buyer's journey and we can meet them earlier and help them do actionable things at that time to get the clarity on their project.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I love that. This is where that r word gets scary to me. I think it's very important to have relationships. Relationships are a good thing, but the minute you tell your sales team to build a relationship with someone, something gets triggered in the brain and all of a sudden it shifts away from uncover pain, create velocity, to oh, I need to be their friend, yeah, yeah. And it sounds like if you've got a deal where, hey, on this date, their contract's up I think this applies to anybody.
Speaker 1:If you're replacing an incumbent because that's effectively what you're doing, because I guess the default incumbent would be they're just going to do it themselves. Yeah, maybe there's another firm involved, maybe there's not Anybody out there that's replacing an incumbent. It's really easy to say, well, their contract's up on February 18th of next year, let's wait until before then and then we'll reach out. But what I'm hearing is there's an opportunity to do something sooner that can solve some of the pain points for them, at least in the planning and preparation phase earlier, and then, when that February 18th date comes along, you smoked all your competition. You're in first place.
Speaker 3:Yeah, exactly, being the first mover is kind of huge For us. It's very rare to get into a situation where we're I mean it happens, but it's not typical we like to be the only people kind of at the table because we're getting started earlier. It's not like we're going in to an office and they're conducting five interviews that day for who they're going to hire.
Speaker 2:You know we want to get them nine months before that no-transcript last minute, just at the right time, and you guys are all the same and, frustratingly, you know that's how it goes and don't get me wrong, I played that game, I've been one of those lucky people and I've been hired just because of that. But, like, I think the joe's point is, if you can somehow figure out a way to insert yourself and and then help them arrive at the conclusion that they need to arrive, you know, help them make that decision then all of a sudden you've differentiated yourself, uh, and you're there. You're there, you're their company.
Speaker 1:Yeah, Good timing, good differentiation. I love it. And then you guys also use folks to prospect. You have specialized roles sales development folks. Tell us a little bit about that. Is that unique to your industry? Is that something that you're innovating on in the real estate space?
Speaker 2:Well, I mean I imagine some people do it but most don't Kind of the traditional brokerage model and there's still I think there's still a place for this. But the traditional model is to bring in a brand new kid or a person transitioning from a different industry that wants to be a quote commercial, real estate broker, commercial real estate agent. Maybe they're a complete newbie, outsider, maybe they grew up in the right neighborhoods and influential parents and person hiring them wants to open up and see who's going to get invited to their future wedding and start working those contacts. But the traditional model is to bring on somebody brand new and teach them how to procure however you procure. And our model is through kind of more direct, straight to see, sweet, cold calling. But you teach them how to procure and they shoot, you know they eat what they kill and they set meetings and then they go out on those meetings with some type of senior advisor, mentor and they pitch the business together and then they pick it up and they um and then they close the deal and that's how they make the money and the money Right. And so they learn everything from suits to nuts and they learn how to be a stand on your own two feet agent and that's what they do and and they just procure and transact their own business. And, by the way, that's how I got into the industry and that's how I made it.
Speaker 2:Um, the downside to that is that is, you know, if you implement that process or our process effectively, it generates business. And then you have deals to work on. And you know, some people are fine with $50,000 a year of income to themselves, some 150, other half a million, some 300, some want to make seven figures a year, but at some point they kind of reach a point where they're content and happy with their income and or they stop procuring because they either don't have the time or it's a lot more fun to be a commercial real estate advisor than, like what I say is a glorified phone monkey and it's not, but I just use that as a joke. And so the effectiveness of new business generation on that model, you have to repeat. You know, rinse, repeat, keep hiring brand new people and retraining, and then they reach their limitation, whatever it is, and so it's kind of a non-efficient system.
Speaker 2:And so what we've chosen to do is start hiring SDRs. We got to find the right SDRs, train them up, but what they're really focused on all day is just making the call, setting the meetings and getting hired and then passing it off and they're done. And they just do that over and over and over and over and over again and they get compensated for being really good at it. And so that allows our you know callers to be callers, our closers to be closers and our transactors to be the transactors. Right, and so it's just. I think it's a more reliable way to procure new business opportunities and, as an owner of the company, it's easier to train those people and then to get more out of them during the time that they're with you, versus that rinse and repeat cycle that I just explained.
Speaker 1:Because it sounds like it's really hard to coach somebody. I think the model you just described same issues happen in wealth management, insurance brokerage basically any type of book of business industry where you've got somebody that's happy, that's making money for you, and you want them to make more, and then you end up in this weird world where you've got to coach somebody to be better than exactly what they want to be by doing things that they don't want to do.
Speaker 2:Right. And then those people, even if they're fine and you're okay with them, I mean they tend to leave. I mean it doesn't matter if it's a real estate agency or wealth advisor or whatever it is. You know people don't want to stay at the same company their entire career. That doesn't happen anymore. You want to see if the grass is greener on the other side. You want to move around. Your spouse will think things happen in people's lives where they need to leave, and so from my perspective it's like it's really hard to train those. It's really hard to get good at training those people and then you get really good at so then you're training those people and they you know, and then they have capped outcomes and you know, and then they're around. And so I think it's just a better way to is you know, you get more out of your specialty and your expertise with that SDR role.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and to add in to that, it's like what you were saying about the other industries. It's like essentially the equivalent of our account executives. They're brokers and they are expected to go then work the deal. So the classic thing in real estate is like a boom and bust, where they prospect and then they get a bunch of deals in the hopper. They're working those deals, their prospecting goes down.
Speaker 3:So it's like it's always this you know, sine wave thing, and that's essentially why we want to do that create more consistency as far as the They've got a full pipeline.
Speaker 1:They work the pipeline. They win the deals. They win the deals. They lose the deals. They wake up they don't have a pipeline anymore. Exactly, yeah, yeah, I love how you brought calculus into this, joe. Just for you, if anybody wondered why you sat through calculus for all of those hours, your eyes bleeding, so you can understand what happens when you've got one person in charge of prospecting and closing. Oh man, that's good. So you guys are in a regional business too. Tell me a little bit about some of the pros and cons of having a regional focus. Joe, you're in tampa, ryan you're in houston right yep, smallerically.
Speaker 3:I don't know. It seems like you might disagree, because Houston sometimes seems massive, ryan, but it is smaller. And then, if you're limiting yourself, it's like our market is essentially based in a geographic region region, but then it's also like our you know customer profile. It's it would be anybody who's in a what we call an institutionally owned office or industrial building, but then they have to also be of a certain size as well. It doesn't make sense for us to to do a certain smaller deal. So, yeah, it's just maybe a little bit of a smaller market as opposed to a different industry who can go all over the country. That that also probably forces us to have focus, which is a which is a good thing. Sometimes we don't just try to boil the ocean or whatever.
Speaker 1:There's a limited number of prospects for your team to call.
Speaker 3:Yeah, exactly Exactly, and and then real real estate's a little bit weird, because it was like what I was. What I was saying is the. The prospect of the client can sometimes come into the conversation, assuming your product is the real estate itself, right? So they Right, we do have a portion of our business that goes for national people of national footprints, but if I'm just talking about our local business, they like expect you to be in the market, and at some point you need to be in the market. We can get to this later, but Ryan and I are a big fan of virtual meetings, virtual meetings, especially like meeting one, two, three. But at some point you're probably going to have to go tour some actual buildings, so that presents just an inherent Right.
Speaker 1:Yeah, let's rip up, let's rip on that. So, ryan, pros and cons of zoom meetings over shaking hands in person in your, in your business.
Speaker 2:Well I like. So maybe that's some way that our firms are differentiate from the traditional. And I was at. I'm very involved in SIOR Society of the Industrial and Office Realtors. I go to the. There's two conferences a year. I go. I help put together some of the breakout sessions. I've been moderator, panelists and different things, so I've really gotten into that. And I was just an attendee in one of these breakout sessions. So I've really gotten into that and I was just an attendee in one of these breakout sessions and they, the panelists asked for a raise of hands. Who here still prefers in-person meetings? Everyone raised their hand and then OK. And who here prefers virtual meetings? And I'm not exaggerating. Me and my partner Chase were the only ones in the entire freaking room that raised our hands and everyone kind of looked over and chuckled.
Speaker 1:How many people are in this room? Okay, set the stage for us. How many?
Speaker 3:people are in this room.
Speaker 2:Oh, probably 300,. I would guess Probably 300 people, 350 people.
Speaker 1:Yeah, 300 people, and you guys are young guys. What are you right about 40?
Speaker 2:I'm 38. I'm 38. My partner's 37. Yeah, I think I'm 32.
Speaker 3:I don't really keep track.
Speaker 1:What's the general age range of people in this room?
Speaker 2:Older.
Speaker 1:I would say yeah, older 55.
Speaker 2:They're doing a good job of getting some younger people in there, but mostly older. There are some younger.
Speaker 3:I was surprised that we were only first two that raised their hand. I was actually in the row behind you raising my hand.
Speaker 2:Oh, okay, I didn't know that.
Speaker 1:Okay, sorry, you got 300 people in the room and you got three people who raise their hands and say these people must think that you're crazy. So tell us a little bit about why you're right when it comes to not all the meetings have to be remote, but what are you able to do over the remote meetings?
Speaker 2:So Thomas Sowell is an economist. I mean, I really like him, I love his quotes. One of his quotes that I cite all the time I just love it is that there are no solutions, only trade-offs. Okay, so there's pros and cons to everything.
Speaker 1:So we just went from calculus to philosophy. You guys are awesome. All right, let's get some ROI on this. College degrees.
Speaker 2:So before COVID, you know, virtual meetings weren't customary commonplace and the older decision makers didn't really know how to do it. So you had to go see them and I would spend. You know, houston's a big place. Maybe I get somewhere in 10 minutes. Sometimes I'd have to drive out 45, 50 minutes, maybe an hour, to get to them.
Speaker 1:Have you seen that image that's been circulating on the internet, where they overlay the state of Connecticut on top of Houston? Oh yeah, oh yeah. It's roughly the same size.
Speaker 2:I think just a couple of states yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, all right, so you know you drive way out there and then I learned in the first 90 seconds that they're not a prospect. Either I don't want them or they don't want me, and the person that set the meeting made a mistake and then you have to drive all the way back and so I spend all this time driving around. I'd rather just book three virtual meetings, like in an hour time frame, and just do boom, boom, boom, and if it's a great meeting it's a great meeting, and if it's a bad meeting it's a virtual. I can cut it. You know, I can cut it off quickly and then move on.
Speaker 2:And so I think now virtual meetings are generally accepted as a relationship business. You got to go see them, but that first meeting or two you can do everything. I mean our closing ratios haven't. They haven't gone, they've improved and like almost all of our meetings are virtual meetings to start, and so from an efficiency standpoint I really like it.
Speaker 2:And then also honestly, like in person, potentially in our industry you send a lay back and try to build rapport and and kind of like walk around your warehouse or office building and tell me your history and about you know, and that's all fine, but then you know to come out like you're huge, you know just baloney binder of like information and graphs and you hand it to them and they're fumbling around and more focused, looking at what you just gave them and the words that are coming out of your mouth, I like we can control the conversation.
Speaker 2:I think, better in a virtual meeting you can share your desktop, you can give those visual illustrations, you can give examples, you can control what they see and then maybe, if you want to see them in person, if it's a really good one, then you can set up as the next step to come meet them in person and do that silly little song and dance as a second meeting, right when it's an hour away, but now I know I have a live one. That's a second meeting, right when it's an hour away, but now I know I have a live one.
Speaker 1:And so you know, it's just. I think it's way better. So how much more capacity can the sales team handle because of this model versus somebody that had to be in the car all day?
Speaker 2:Well, I mean one. We can generate way more meetings per appointment setter if all they're doing is setting meetings, and so our appointments have definitely gone up. But I would have days where I might go on five or seven. I mean, this is a good day, obviously, but you know, we might have like five or seven virtual meetings. You know six virtual meetings, and I could have never done that driving around, and then I would just, you know, I I got I'm running the company too and I got the responsibilities I still act as an agent and I got my deals to cover and I just would have been a hot fricking mess, you know, if I had to like drive around, meet with all those people and do that. So I went on one of my tangents. I'm not sure if I answered your question directly, but just to add on that.
Speaker 3:I obviously virtual meetings are way more efficient for us, especially in the first meeting. Like Ryan is saying it, if he's got to go drive a half an hour for a 10 minute meeting and it was a waste of time, that's not a good situation for for anybody. But I think the real key is for for me. My opinion is, with virtual meetings you just have to have it way, your process like way more dialed in, like almost like a, like a, an in-person get away with slop, more sloppiness. But I mean, ryan, and I'll use the plan you know, you know what I mean like set, set the logistics, set the agenda of the call, set the next steps. And maybe you have to be a little bit more on top of that with virtual meetings not to lose momentum between them. But if you can pull it off, then it's. It's ideal.
Speaker 3:And yeah, I do agree with. I agree with what ryan said about since we don't have any more the. We try not to have the. You know 40 page binders of everything you know about our, our clients logo pages and that type of stuff, and we're actually maybe sometimes have a tool that we're clicking around in to show them the analysis we did to help make something clear, that that's something that makes to me a virtual meeting a lot more. I don't know, just run smoother, focus.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah yeah, and I want to go back to that just to make a couple points. Because I just want to want to make the point um, it, it? I mean you used to have to run a deal. You talk about location and it's a physical product. Well, you run a deal and close it. You saw the client three or four times, two, or properties. Since COVID, I've literally conducted meetings and closed transactions virtually and I never even shook the person's hand or saw them in person. So that's just absolutely. It's not always works that way, but it does work that way now and it's pretty great. Yeah, yeah, yeah, people will do it. Yeah, that's new.
Speaker 1:Fascinating, yeah, I mean I think there's a big trade-off and when you're just building a sales team, I love what you guys said. You're looking at your metrics, you're looking at how many meetings you're able to get booked, so that's why you specialize the team into prospecting and the closers. You're looking at how much can I do in a day, and so you move the model from out in the field in the first meeting to virtual for the first meeting. We still have everything as an option. You can go out there and do what you need to do, right.
Speaker 2:And another advantage to the virtual meetings, and then maybe we can move on. Sorry, I get excited when I start thinking about it. You know, an in-person meeting. I mean we're calling the president, ceo, cfo, they're busy, they run their companies, we're a complete interruption to their day, and then we're asking to see them physically. Let me come in, I'm a complete stranger and we're going to shake hands. I'm going to sit there and you're probably gonna have to ask me for water and coffee, and you know. And then if I hate you, I got to like still be polite and run you off. You know, run you off in 30 minutes. So virtual eating are an easier ask and so, like, part of my strategy is, like, you know, you train up your guys, be like, hey, yeah, yeah, you know we could swing by for 15, uh, 15 to 10, 10, uh, 15 to 20 minutes to meet you in person. Or, you know, we could just keep it easy and just do a virtual meeting and everyone's like, oh yeah, a virtual meeting.
Speaker 2:A virtual meeting, you know, because it's like they're on the fence, they don't want to see. I know I'm like, oh, you give them something terrible that they don't want and an alternative that they could live with. That I'm also okay with um, is, you know, and so that's kind of that's another advantage that's the old henry kissinger, how he would manipulate richard nixon.
Speaker 1:Kissinger would go to nixon with three options and he'd say, mr president, there's three options, and he'd give him like two really bad ones and the one that he wanted and nixon will be like those are three options. I guess we have to go with that one.
Speaker 3:That's not a very good impression.
Speaker 1:Here's a question I've got for you guys. When you're having your sales team, let's talk about your more senior folks. How do you?
Speaker 2:keep your senior folks, who are just absolute experts in this business, from getting sloppy over time. That's a good question. Well, go ahead, joe.
Speaker 3:Well, I was just gonna say that probably one area that it's not directly an answer to your question, but one area I was probably naive on, definitely naive on, was to try to feel like the same shoe fits everybody. So it's like the training that the young SDR goes through is the same training as the guy who's been in the business for 10, 15 years longer than me has to go through. It's like Ryan Ryan, I'm sure you're the same.
Speaker 3:It's like you have agents who can essentially do the equivalent of a discovery, demo call etc in one impromptu phone call to the ceo they come out of that call ready to sign the engagement letter so it's like you don't want to slow, slow that down or or whatever. So it's. I don't know if that's answering your question, yeah so you got, you got somebody.
Speaker 1:They're good, they can do their thing, they can knock it out, they can make it work.
Speaker 3:Yeah, don't go through. Don't make them rigid, rigidly needing to set up a 15 minute.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, okay, so don't don't add too much process if they're able to so. But there's steph curry and they can make a 23 foot shot. Let them shoot the 23 foot shot.
Speaker 3:That's a lesson that I've learned, yeah.
Speaker 1:OK, Ryan, what were you going to say?
Speaker 2:No, I mean. I mean that's true. I mean some people can just go into a meeting and listen to what the person is saying and then regurgitate whatever real estate knowledge that they have or solutions that they know and you know, and then they're so impressed and then they're hired Right. Or sometimes a newbie can go in not knowing anything and the person is just ready. They view us as a commodity.
Speaker 2:When I was 24 years old, I looked like I was 16. I would still get hired primarily by women that were my mother's age. I think their hearts went out to me. You know, like, oh, I'm going to hire this little guy, but they just kind of viewed it like an apartment lease, like there's nothing to negotiate, it's no big deal, so like I'll just hire this next person to come in. And so you you know you have different people in different kind of by the different temperaments are ready to go. They're not at all. You know they will hire you, but you have to demonstrate this great knowledge and so you don't really always know who that's going to be. You know who you're talking to going into the meeting.
Speaker 2:So I think it's important you still have to train your experienced people and your inexperienced people, your experienced people. You still have to have a plan. You still have to like, understand, like hey, can I confirm the time? This is what we're going to discuss. Do you have any questions? This is the agenda, this is the decision that you're going to make at the end of the call and then, rather than wing it, you have to understand what their situation is up front, so you can make some type of demonstration.
Speaker 2:We love to give examples of how we've helped people in the past. Walk them through that case study, walk them through. Give them visual examples of what our work product looked like, the type of end results that we get. Come prepared to do that, no matter what. You can be completely inexperienced, you can be an absolute rock star with great industry knowledge. You still need a plan for all that. And then when you start, if the person cuts you off, okay, when do we start looking at properties or how do we? You know, and then like, obviously advance to the next step. So I think it's more important if you've got to train your people, kind of what that customary kind of standard process, that company standard process, what that looks like, everyone understands, that's the MO, but then they have the flexibility that if they need to change directions or keep it simple, stupid, then just do that, because some people you come across it's about timing.
Speaker 1:They want to keep it simple, stupid yeah, so make sure there's this is the solid process in place and that the the folks that have the experience are still adhering to it.
Speaker 2:At least right gate, and then if they need to call an audible, they can call it right, because having that agenda, that set, is going to make the new person better than they were on their own. And and then the experienced person can be amazing. And if they're in it, but if they get that person that wants more feedback, wants more example, then go through that process and if they're ready to go, then you be you and you do what you normally and then you know, close the deal.
Speaker 1:Yeah Well, Joe, question for you what's it like managing people that have more experience than you?
Speaker 3:managing people that have more experience than you. That's a good question. I, I think I try to just make it more of a let let's see how you know I can help you type of conversation. Like get there, get their buy-in on it, cause a lot of the guys that I'm thinking about, as you say, that they're really pretty self-managing to a large degree. They've been doing it for 20 years. So it's just, I think, about learning the lesson of how to say hey, I'm not.
Speaker 3:You know, this process and all these things, processes and all these things, they're largely for the younger, inexperienced guys who, if they don't follow this things are going to get broken down in the deal, next steps are going to get missed and stuff like that. But here are all these resources, um, that could just make you, who's already killing it, kill it even more. Yeah, you know what I mean. Like the highlight email. That's something that everybody universally in my company loves, because there's also a piece of it, too, where we find that if you follow the process to a T, then their job becomes easier, because we have what's called a transaction team, who's really kind of like our operations team, who actually goes and works the deal, negotiates the leases to a certain extent. So as much as we've, we find, to kind of follow the process, it makes it easier for us to introduce that team uh, to have everybody kind of fill those roles correctly so the producer can stay involved but still go back to you know, still go back to procurement smoother.
Speaker 1:Yeah, love it. Well, cool guys, this has been fun. I think we got to hop here in a second Anything you all want to plug Any last words, ryan?
Speaker 3:just anybody who is struggling with a business problem that relates to real estate and would benefit on getting some clarity on their options. Hit Ryan or I up on up on LinkedIn. We'll send you a tool that one of our clients use to solve a similar problem. Yeah, sounds good.
Speaker 1:Love it. Free tool, joe Ryanyan. Thank you guys so much. I'm cory bray. Check out coachcrmcom to see what we're building over there cool stuff. We got a free version for you. Those are some really cool things coming out. I'm trying to go against this idea of rating people on a scale of one to five and an annual or semi-annual performance review I think is one of the silliest things that exists. Ryan, you're two. Okay cool, let's fight. It's insane Some of the things that are happening out there in the performance management world. It's like you took 1955 and flipped it upside down and said, oh, I think that's what I saw. It's wrong. That wasn't the original intention. You're doing it wrong. If you want to see what we're doing, coachcrmcom, the sales management podcast like, subscribe Apple Spotify. We'll see you next time.