In this episode of "Small Business, Big Moves,". Thomas Bennett is joined by guest Doug Mitchell to explore creative strategies and innovative approaches that have propelled small businesses to new heights. Discover the art of thinking big in small business and how to build great sales teams.
Connect with us on social media:
- Facebook: Thomas Bennett
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Small Business Big Moves is a podcast where innovation meets entrepreneurship. Join Tom Bennett as he explores all things business growth! From business funding and business tax credits to conversations with leaders who have grown successful and innovative businesses!
In this episode of "Small Business, Big Moves,". Thomas Bennett is joined by guest Doug Mitchell to explore creative strategies and innovative approaches that have propelled small businesses to new heights. Discover the art of thinking big in small business and how to build great sales teams.
Connect with us on social media:
- Facebook: Thomas Bennett
- Instagram: @Thomas.mbennett
-YouTube:@SmallBusinessMoneyConnector
- LinkedIn: Thomas Bennett
Subscribe to "Small Business, Big Moves" on Your Favorite Podcast Platform for more inspiring episodes on innovation and entrepreneurship.
Small Business Big Moves is a podcast where innovation meets entrepreneurship. Join Tom Bennett as he explores all things business growth! From business funding and business tax credits to conversations with leaders who have grown successful and innovative businesses!
Welcome to the Small Business Big Moves, the podcast where innovation meets entrepreneurship. I'm your host, Tom Bennett, and we'll explore all things business growth from business funding and business tax credits to conversations with leaders who have grown successful and innovative businesses. Welcome to the show. My guest today is my man, Doug Mitchell, the king of building great sales teams. Doug, I'm excited to have you on the show. I'll let you introduce yourself here. Yeah, it's an honor to be on the show. Thank you so much, Thomas, for inviting me. I'm excited to drop some of this game on your listeners and and, and learn myself, man. We, we always have good conversations. So I've been in, I've been building sales teams for 14 years now. 13, 13 years in my own sales org where we sold for Fortune 500s and we, we sold direct, we sold B2B, we sold door to door telemarketing, you know. So I had a lot of different clients, a lot of different avenues in which we sold for them. And so a big part of that journey was recognizing systems operations and how to build sales teams. And so I winded down that business last year and went full in on consulting because I had already been doing it for a couple of years. And that's what I'm doing now. Yeah, I love it. No, like, like we were just talking about it when you've been able to provide a tremendous amount of value to me. I know you can provide a lot of value to the listeners as well. But yeah, I know you mentioned you've been kind of in the industry and building teams for about 14 years now. Was there anything specific that really got you into that or realize, Hey, this is something that I can really Yeah. Make a big movement with or how that happened. I always, always say I was going to be an entrepreneur no matter what, didn't really matter what it was. Whatever I got the opportunity to do first is, is what was going to be the thing, right? And, and don't get me wrong, I had a mobile detailing business, I had a marketing company, I had, you know, I did a bunch of different things. But only one of them resulted in a seven figure business, you know, and that was door to door sales. So I was working for another entrepreneur at the time and he had multiple businesses. And so that was the first time I saw somebody operating multiple seven figure businesses, industrial staffing, collectible gold sales. And then he also had a youth ministry group, as well as a door to door sales company that one of his salespeople convinced him to start. He sunk 200 grand into it and that salesperson left when it wasn't working out. So left him with the company and he was like, Hey, Doug, you're my utility guy and you jump in here and start managing this business, you know, but you're going to have to knock on doors, you know, and I was making about 30 K a year at the time as his marketing manager. And I was also doing a bunch of other stuff. And so I was like, well, what's the commissions, you know? And he was like, it's anywhere from 70 to 120 per sale. How many sales can you make a day? As many as you want. Heck yeah, let's do it. You know, so I jumped into it. I started knocking doors for 90 days. I did not enjoy knocking doors. You know, it's crazy. I was in the business for 13 years and I didn't enjoy knocking doors. It doesn't make any sense, right? You're supposed to be passionate about what you do. Not if you're not, if you're a born operator though. So I was able to systemize that door knocking. I was able to bring in, I had a couple other reps with experience in the industry. I was able to bring in their expertise into it and start developing systems, which was okay, we're going to put together script. All right, we're going to put together a way to overcome objections. And now we're going to do a scope of work. So everybody that's coming in and knows exactly what they need to be doing every day in order to be successful, we're going to put together an opportunity structure. So when they come in, they recognize, Oh, Hey, this isn't it. I can get promoted if I do X, Y, and Z. And we did like automatic promotions and stuff. I structured the meetings, the opportunity meetings, you know, everything had a slide deck or a system to it. And so what I, what I realized after a while is I was doing what most business owners start doing in like year four and year five, but it was just natural to me. It was how my brain worked. You know, I was a natural integrator. And so I had enough visionaries around me that you know, we were able to build. A, a seven figure business, you know, at our height, we had 110 sales reps and we're doing about 5 million a year in commissions. And the reason I want that number is important to me because I want everybody to understand that's commissions, you know, most people say, oh, we're doing 5 million a year, and they're doing it in total gross, right? So the install costs, the equipment costs, the labor costs. All that stuff. We were just doing that in commissions, you know, and so it was it was an interesting ride to say the least. And by the end of it, what I realized is. You know, when I hit that 5 million, I had about a 9 percent net, you know what I mean? Which is terrible for a business owner. That's kind yeah, that's kind of your stat to say, Hey, is my business healthy? And at 9 percent net, your business is not healthy, right? And so over the next couple of years, I got very good at understanding, okay, what am I overspending on? What do I really need? And, and, and how do I optimize my systems, you know, and this is all within sales programs, you know, there really wasn't a fulfillment side of the business there really wasn't. So I got very dialed in on how to do that. And it was it's cultivating the systems I use right now with my clients and increasing their efficiency, and by the by 2000. I think I was in 14 when we hit 5 million. So by 2016, I was at a 30%, 32 percent net profit. I had worked basically tripled, almost quadrupled my net profit from three years before. Now I was doing half the business, but I was making twice the money, you know, and that's a beautiful thing. The gross number isn't what it's all about. It's really about that, that net number. And then, and then also you got to look at what are your people making? And at the time that I hit that 5 million, the first time I had 110 guys, the average income was like 35, 36 K, you know, per rep. And even when you factor the staff and the management into it, and then by the time 2016 came around, the average income was about 48 K. You know, and this was pre COVID pre super inflation that we've been dealing with the last couple of months. So that was a really good living. That was a really good living back then, as long as you had a two income household. Right. And so that was a big part of that, that journey and learning and everything. And that's kind of what I'm able to bring to my clients is that specific niche, if you need to build a sales team, that's what we're jumping in on. And of course I still operate a business for 13 or 14 years. So there's a lot of. Accessories that I can bring in, you know, like operational planning as well as marketing CRMs, all that good stuff that that goes along with the sales program. Absolutely. Yeah, that's great stuff. I wish I wish I knew you 10 years ago when I started out in the door to door solar industry. Just pounded on doors out here in Massachusetts is you can kind of imagine how that goes. And it was kind of how back then it was before before the solar industry is where it is today. Like you talked about having the scripts, having the systems, we didn't, we didn't really have that. It was kind of go on go on YouTube or look up some of these sales trainers out there and kind of. Tweak what they're doing and just just learn as you go. So the power of like you said, being able to have that whole process where you're giving them the scripts, you're giving them the system. This is how you can get promoted, get to that next level. I think that's a huge thing that pretty much any, any business out there needs. So good stuff. Yeah. What I found is, you know, it's common in our businesses like door to door, but I wanted to bring it to, you know, small and medium sized businesses, especially in the home service space, you know, because. They typically are trades people that become business owners, right? And they never intentionally built out their sales program. It's just, it's just how they sell. Maybe at best, they have a script in place. They have two or three salespeople. Maybe they're doing seven figures already, you know, but every, the only reason everybody knows how to do their job is because they worked side by side with the owner or they work side by side with the existing salesperson that was there. So they got taught by osmosis. Rather than taught by a structured program that you can scale. And so I wanted to bring that to those small and medium sized businesses. Especially in the home service space, you know, but I've done, you know, I've done work for b2b as well. And then like a high end security company, a car wrap company. I mean, it's it's across the board, but where I really like to play is in the home services space. Good stuff. Yeah, and I know I know you're always thinking big and innovating and Doing all the, all the exciting things that you can think of. I know you, it seems like you've been doing that for, like you said, like 13, 14 years what, was there something that made you real? I know you said you were like, I'm always going to be an entrepreneur. Was there something that triggered that or made you realize that when, when you break it down with the the systems that you're putting in place for companies, I guess, when, when did you realize that, that how powerful that was and that you had the talent to do that? So. It was probably when I joined Apex executives, and so I was in that program for two years. And now I'm just, you know, I'm a lifetime entourage member now, but I was in that program for, for two years when I first joined it, you know, maybe I was doing like two and a half million. And so, but in executives, it was like, I think 30 grand a year at the time, you know, and I had just hired Ryan to come speak to my guys for one hour. And I paid him 10 grand for that, you know, and then, and then before he spoke to my guys, I went to MDM 21. And so I'm there and I'm surrounded by all these guys. And they keep telling me, you need to join Apex executives, you know, your seven figure business, this will take you to eight figures. All the things. Right. And I was like, okay, so Ryan was walking by and I'm like, you busy? And he was like, yeah, he's throwing his biggest event of the year. MDM 21. And I asked a dumb ass question like that. we both kind of had a laugh about that. Cause we, I realized what I said in the moment, but he's like. What's up? And I said, I keep hearing about the Zaypak executives. What's the deal with the program? And he's like, I tell you what, if you join that program, I'll speak for you for free. And I'm like, Oh my gosh, how much is the program? You know what I'm saying? Like, and, and ended up finding out it was 30K. So I just put the other 20K on payments. I joined the program. And so I'm, you know, the first fly in Friday, they meet once a month. Right. And it's all pretty much seven figure businesses, business owners. But I would say at that time, there was like 35 of us. And I would say 30 of them were net worth millionaires. Right. And so. I did not belong in that room. I was not a net worth millionaire. You know, I was used to making about, you know, three to 400 a year. I had a very good, lifestyle. And at the time I was maybe working 20 hours a week in my business. I had delegated. I was true visionary in the business now. And I had to delegated everything else. And so I'm in this room and I'm like, dude, I don't belong here. They're going to figure it out. They're going to know I don't belong. You know what I'm saying? I'm just going to shut my mouth. And like, Absorb everything. And then one of the guys sitting next to me and he's like, what do you do? And I'm like, oh, well, I've got a door to door sales teams for AT& T Vivint. And we're getting into the solar, you know? And he's like, Hey, how do you build sales teams? Well, little did I know, once he asked me that question, he opened up Pandora's box cause I just started going off, you know, in halfway through, he's just like wide eyed and what she tells, you know what I'm saying? Like. Wow. You know, and, and it was then that I realized I had something special and then three quarters of the way the conversation, I look up and there's two guys standing, listening to everything I'm saying. And then they start asking questions, then all of a sudden by the end of this conversation, I've got five other executives around me and now that they're still in the program right now. And I, I know for a fact they're multimillionaires, But they're learning from me in that moment, you know, cause everybody has something that's special and talented about them. And, everybody has their niche, their thing, their zone of genius. And when you get the, when you get that moment where, you know, I mean, you may be new in the industry, maybe you're only doing a hundred grand a year, maybe, you know, but you, everybody has that zone of genius that they've gone deep on. And when you can captivate someone with it, then you know, you've got something special, you know what I'm saying? So that, birth consulting, that birth, the podcast. And the, the fractional CSO offer, and I did, I had something valuable that I did, I gave for a year straight, nothing but giving to executives, entrepreneurs, entourage, putting the content out there, jumping on calls and, and, and, and helping people before I even thought to, not, not thought, but before I even decided to monetize it full time, which was the end of last year. It's exciting stuff. Yeah, I know. I know we've had conversations before. I know. I know. You keep it real and talk about the the ups and downs of the business. I know. On Facebook, Instagram, everything you, you always see the wins and what everyone's doing, doing big, you don't really see behind the scenes do your journey with what's something that jumps out at you is maybe not necessarily a failure, but kind of a hiccup in the road or something that may have temporary temporarily set you back a little bit. Yeah. So I would imagine the listeners are asking themselves, why would somebody give up a seven figure business to go into consulting full time? And maybe now, I mean, you figure your first year in consulting isn't going to be that great, right? Maybe I'll close at like 250, 300 this year, right? And, maybe net 40%, you know? And so probably going to be my lowest earning year in the past like 10 years, you know? And so why is the question, right? And, and what I realized in, in joining groups like Apex and Real Business Owners and talking to guys like Matthew Meehan, who you're working with, And these are the guys that I look up to, you know, I had built my, my business on some very simple things, opportunity, structure, systems, you know, all that stuff, but more than anything, an income target and materialism, you know, and so because I had built my business that way, when I started incorporating core values into the business, then I started getting a lot of friction from different people in my company and. You know, by the time I did it, I was convicted and I was going to do it for real. A lot of you guys listening have core values, you know, but you don't implement them, you know, and that's the difference, right? Once I started implementing, I started getting a little bit of friction, a little bit of pushback, you know, nothing crazy, nothing like fireable, And then you know, so I had two major leaders in the company, two divisions of the business. They were both. One was trending to seven, seven figures. It was solar and it was new. And the other one had already been at seven figures easy. Right. And so unfortunately my leadership in the, the existing business violated our core values and did it within the company, you know, your personal life. I can't, you know, I can't dictate that too much, you know, and even though I may hear about it, like there's only so much that I can justifiably do, right, but he brought it into the business and so I had to cut them loose. And I was not in a position to take over as director on that side of the business, you know, because I was developing our solar program, as well as I was launching my consulting business, you know, so we do so much. Yeah, I, I effectively let that that business go, you know, and it was a seven figure business and I knew by by cutting him loose I was going to do that, because I didn't just cut them loose and. And not give him a way to make money. I made sure that he had a contract set up and that he got taken care of and that he was able to do what he was doing now in the future, just because we don't align on core values doesn't mean I need to try and sabotage your career, you know, and so naturally some of the guys went with him, you know, and crazy story though. Me and him signing an agreement. I'm going to be consulting for him now yesterday. Yeah. So that just happened, that just happened yesterday. You know, like he had called me a couple of months ago and apologized and we squashed everything. And then, and then he reached out and he was like, Hey. You know, you, you're the best at what you do. You think you can do it for, for my business now. And that's kind of shows you like, all right, I've had a lot of growth. He's had a lot of growth, you know, and you can, you can come back together after something like that, you know, even though I fired the guy, you know? So that's, huge. And then on the other side of the the, the solar side, it was me and my VP of sales who had been working with me for 12 years. Had conflicting ideals on how we were going to grow this business. I wanted to grow it through installations and controlling the customer experience all the way through. I didn't care if we only did 20 installs a year, as long as those installs were on point and we created raving fans with every single one of them. Right. But he was looking more, he, he was still in sales org mode. You know, he wanted to do everything for the sales reps and give them the highest commission possible. And I knew we couldn't do both. You can't, have all this margin on the sales side and then still support your EPC, you know, which I wanted to be the EPC. And so knowing all this, it's kind of funny in hindsight, though. I knew I made the right decision because if I wanted to grow the EPC side of the business. Then we were going to have to move some of that money from commissions over to the install. Right. And he wasn't down with that. And we, and at that point we had already been butting heads a little bit over the core values that I was implementing. So we decided to part ways, and again, gave him the sales team that he had built in Corpus Christi said, Hey, you, you take those guys, like, I'm not going to try and recruit them or anything like that. I'll wrap up the business that we have together and I'm going full time consulting, I'm committed on this. And at least I know now, the way I'm building this business now is with core values in place with transparency, integrity, and accountability in place already. And so when I build it back up to seven figures and I have that leadership in place, that leadership will have been through the gauntlet with me, but with core values intact, you know, so that w I would say that was. The biggest learning moment of the last decade was that I should have built my business with values. The first time around. And it also shows you, you know, you can be successful without core values. You know, everybody likes to point to core values and say, Oh, that's how you're successful. Well, no, it's trendy now. That's why you're saying that it's just trendy. Okay. And, and that's your answer for everything. Cause you don't have the real tactical answer, but it is the answer. A lot of times for the big things, you know, why can't my business get to the next level? You know, why don't my guys. Wanna work as hard as I do or why, you know, why can't they see the big picture? You know? Because maybe your values are, aren't in place and your vision isn't in place. You know? And so I would say that that was my, you know, you didn't wanna say it, but it is, it's a, it's a failure to build a business without your values incorporated into it. It a hundred percent is'cause it's only a matter of time before that gap happens. And, you know, it creates a little rubber band effect. And basically I was growing, evolving as a business owner and as a husband and father and individual. And my team wasn't answer that rubber band snapped. And that's what led me to go and consulting full time. Yeah, I appreciate you sharing that it's such a powerful lesson with when you really get into the core values I mean I came from. The corporate world I spend almost probably almost 10 years in in corporate sales and the core values in these large companies, they just don't exist. You know, it's always kind of chasing that quota, getting the next deal get them service and kind of move on to the next one. But when you really have those core values broken down and then you're building a team that's all on the same page, I mean, you're going to operate way more effectively. Like you said, you. You can make plenty of money without them. You can always go and make sales and drum up business. But like you said, when you have a whole team functioning together, it's a game changer. 100%. Yeah. And I know you mentioned to jump into this for a minute too. I know you mentioned you get a webinar coming up. I know you provide a ton of value. So I wanted to let you kind of jump into that and share what that might look like. Yeah. So it's going to be coming up in December. If you want more info on it, just go to salesprogrambuilder. com and that's where you can get the info on it. It's going to be a free webinar. And basically what I'm going to be doing is going over the, the tenants of building great sales teams, which is Kodak. Right. And it's just an acronym that I put together whenever I decided to go consulting full time. I was like, I need, I need a way to communicate, you know, how I build these sales programs to my prospects and my clients. And, and to people that just need that value, right? And so, in my mind, there's five major ways that you build sales programs, right? And Kodak is an easy way to remember them. The first one is compensation. You know is it, is it simple? Can you fit it on one sheet? And can you show them how they can make a hundred grand a year, right? The next one is opportunity. Alright, we're making a hundred grand a year and that's great. But can you show them how they're going to grow and develop as a leader? And there has to be an opportunity structure there showing them, you know, going from sales rep to maybe trainer to maybe assistant manager, manager, regional VP, all that good stuff. Is there a path? For them to get there, a path to a hundred K with conversation and a path to leadership with opportunity, right? The third one is development. Okay. Yes, we're definitely developing them when they come in, teaching them product knowledge, teaching them sales training, and, and maybe even helping them develop as a leader. And that's all fantastic. Right. But are you developing them as human beings too? We have so many resources in groups like you and I are in. And so I can bring, you know, I can bring. Thomas and to talk about funding. You know, I can bring Matthew me hand in to talk about investments. You know, I can bring Keith gauze and to talk about how to set up your LLC. And then I record those conversations and make sure that they're available to my guys on my learning platform so that they can continue developing themselves. Right. It's bringing Apex and real business owners and the tactical empire, all these groups that I'm a part of into my business because they're teaching me these things. So I'm teaching my guys these things. Right. Then the next piece is operations. This is where things get heavy. You know, this is where like, If I'm spending 90 days with a client, 60 days are probably spent in operations, right? This is the recruiting. This is the payroll systems. This is the client communications and reporting. And recruiting is such a big piece of it because if you have, if you want a large sales team, you know, even in the best position, the best industry, you're going to have like a 10 percent turnover every 90 days. You know, so you're gonna have to replace, those people every 90 days and continue to grow your sales team. You know, so say it's a team of 10, you've got to hire a new one every 90 days. If you want to continue growing, you need to hire two or three more because only one of them is going to work out. So you've got to have a constant system of recruiting, attraction, setting the example, and that's all got to be systemized. And you got to be able to filter them out in the interview and onboarding process, as well as make sure that they get the proper training throughout. So that's where a lot of the operations come in is deploying that training and making sure you're not overwhelming them to, you know, the last piece is culture. So if you're doing the first four, well, The fifth one is going to happen organically, but that doesn't mean you don't need to be intentional about it and making sure that, okay, we're gamifying our sales competitions. We're making sure that everybody's in touch with what's going on in the company and that reporting is transparent, you know, and that we're transparent about, you know, commission changes, product changes, all that good stuff. And then yeah, the fun stuff, you know, we got to make sure we're coming together as a team, physically coming together as a team, you know, even if we're spread across the nation, at least once a quarter, and then we're doing some type of annual deal where we're recognizing our top producers, we're bonusing them out, you know, and and we're, we're tracking all that stuff and there's constant communication on, you know, to where, you know, we're moving in the same direction as a team and we're creating a culture of, again, integrity, accountability, accountability. And dedication to the craft, you know, and so that, that, that comes along with the cherry on top or, and then the, really the thing that everything works off of, which is your mission statement and core values, you know, that's going to really build the culture from the get go, as long as you have those filters up front, when you're hiring new people, then you're intentionally building that culture and you're baking it in and, you know, you're covering it every day, if you have a sales meeting daily, or if you have a weekly, The thing that you start that sales meeting with is the mission statement and core values, and you don't just say it, you make your guys say it to make sure that they know what they are and they've memorized them and they're aligned with them. And so that's code. what I love about what I do, and I'm going to brag on myself a little bit here because a lot of coaches and consultants do it. Yeah, they tell you what to do. Right? And so I have roughly 15 documents that support Kodak, right? If you have all these documents in place, I customize them for the sales program. And so. Whenever I engage with a client, I'm customizing them, these documents, a comp plan, an opportunity structure you know a sales flow, right? Modules, a prospecting module, right? A appointment setting module, you know, these, these different documents that support Kodak and, and you know, when they're all built out that you have a complete sales program, right? And so what I'm going to do is I'm going to walk through some of those documents, how to build them, and then how to create that, that well rounded and at least initial sales program for a lot of the people that want to hire their first salesperson, maybe, you know, they have a salesperson and they're not hitting their KPIs or they want to double their sales team next year. This is going to walk them through that. That's huge. Yeah, there's so much value in that. I mean, you, you're giving away a million dollar advice here. It's a exciting stuff. What, what you've been able to do. I know, I know the value of seeing sales teams grow, especially when they're functioning together. And like you just said, you're covering everything, you know, you get a business that Season issue with the sales teams, not not hitting quota. They're not producing whatever might be going on. They, don't always realize what, where that issue stems from. It's a lot bigger than they might not be hitting the phones as much. They might not be knocking as many doors. I think it's oftentimes a lot bigger than just prospecting. And if, if those reps don't feel like they, align with the team, I mean, there's so many things that could be. Going wrong there. So good value there, Doug. I appreciate that. Yeah, absolutely. And you kind of brought up a great point, which I want to make sure I mention, right, which is you probably have the reporting that you need right now in order to understand where your sales team is struggling or where your salesperson is struggling or where you're struggling yourself. And it's a very simple thing. We all do this and maybe we do it organically and naturally, but it's, what I like to call like a daily report, right? And so we all have that prospecting action that results in a conversation, right? So let's just say I'll do door knocking to make it easy, you know, and you can convert this into cold calling. You can convert it into Facebook messages. You can convert it into, you know, group comments, whatever you need to convert it into for it to make sense, right? But it's at the end of the day, it's the prospecting action. First, let's call it door knocking, right? Our whole deal was if you knock a hundred doors a day, you can make a hundred grand a year. 100 for 100, right? So if you knock 100 doors a day out of that 100 doors that you knock, you're probably going to contact maybe 50 times, right? You'll make contact with someone. Let's go lower. Let's say 40, right? Of those 40, maybe 20 will be your qualified prospect. Right. And then of those 20 qualified prospects, maybe you'll have 10 converse full conversations where you can actually get your full pitch out. And of those 10 conversations, maybe you'll be able to close three to four of them, right. And then of those three to four, maybe you'll get one or two sales, right. And so maybe the other two didn't qualify for credit or, you know, maybe they didn't have the decision, the decision maker there, whatever the case was, right. And so when you can break down that whole number tree, essentially from a hundred to those two sales, now you have a formula, especially if you track it over time, you know, you track it over 10 days or something like that. You know that, Hey, this is the formula for me to get two sales a day and it's starting with that hundred, but too many people get lost with that hundred and they're like, Oh, I need to pay for leads. Oh, I need to follow up on my current clients or whatever. And they stopped doing that prospecting on a daily basis. Right? But remember that a hundred got you the two. And so if you, if you knock that a hundred down to 50, now you're only at one. And don't get me wrong. As you become a better salesperson, it's I'm going to knock a hundred doors. I'm going to call a hundred people or message a hundred people. And I'm going to make three sales and I'll make four sales as you hone in on your craft in there. But as a manager, yeah, exactly. As a manager or as like an analytical person of your own performance, the conversion rates along the way will tell the story of where the struggle is. Right. And so if, if I'm knocking on 100 doors, and maybe instead of getting 50 contacts, I'm only getting 20 contacts, what does that tell me? My turf's bad, right? I've already done the research. I know that on average I should be having 50 contacts at 100 doors, right? But if I'm only getting 20, that tells me right there my turf's bad, right? Okay, let's just say I'm getting the 50 contacts. I'm only finding, you know, maybe 10 qualified customers. Again, turf issue. I'm in the wrong turf, right? 50 contacts, I'm getting 25 qualified customers. But maybe I'm only having, you know, 5 full pitches. Okay. That's an issue with my intro and my qualify. All right. Out of 25 people. Maybe I'm, I'm giving a full pitch to 15. So my intro and my qualifies could, but I'm only closing one. Right. And so maybe there was an issue with the way I qualified or my presentation sucks, you know? So as you get down this tree, you start realizing, okay, this is what I need to work on and what I need to get better on. You start tracking those KPIs of those conversion rates. Then you'll have little indicators of where you need to work on your craft or your team needs to work on a craft or your salesperson. And just doing that alone, tracking the numbers, knowing your numbers is going to be huge, whether you're a solo rep or you have a team of five or a team of 10 or 20 cases. So I wanted to make sure you, you alluded to it earlier, and I wanted to make sure that I like expanded on that big time because it's a huge. A huge piece of value. If you're able to execute on that, it really is. Yeah. I mean, that all breaks down to that, right? If you're not not measuring it, it's not going to improve, you know, so that that's huge. And then, like you said, you can find out exactly where that where that challenge may stem from. So, yeah, but I do want into more detail on that. anything else I didn't ask you or that you think people may benefit from hearing Yeah, just you and I are working right. And probably two years ago I wouldn't have been I would have taken the whole week off. Because I had a seven figure business and I was in good shape and it was time to rest and recover. There's nothing wrong with that. But some of us are in our first year of business again, like me. And so we're, we're in separation season right now, you know, but we're here on a podcast, you know, and, and who knows what this may result in, but we're, we're doing the, the prospecting actions. You know, this is some, this is very similar to what we're doing right now to knocking doors. It's the prospecting action, right? And so you gotta decide what that is for you. Don't let anybody trick you into saying you need to rest and recover if you're not at that point in your business. It's really, again, going back to the numbers, if you're at the numbers that you need to feel good about taking the time off, and I love it, that was me for a long time, right? But I'm starting a brand new business, so it is separation season for me. And I always see these posts and everything, and they're so one sided. And I'm like, whoa, different people are in different places. You know, you can't... You can't hate on somebody because they're resting when, when they put in the work and they've been successful this year, you know, because I made a decision to change businesses. I'm in my first year again. And so, you know, that, that, that's the last thing that I would leave him with is it's okay to be in separation season. It's all, it's also okay. Take some time off. Spend it with the family and everything. If you're at that point, you can do that. Absolutely. No, I appreciate all the all the value you shared. I know through a lot at them and hopefully they can take that in and implement some of that in the business that's a that's going to be a wrap for this episode of small business, big moves, if you enjoyed today's episode, what would really help us is if you share the podcast with someone you think can get value out of it. Also, if you can review the podcast, that's going to help us get in front of more business owners. And we'll look forward to seeing you all on the next episode.