The Grow Show: Business Growth Stories from the Frontlines
The Grow Show: Business Growth Stories from the Frontlines
Hear Them Out: How Listening to Your Employees Fuels Business Growth
The Grow Show is Live! Today's episode features guest Tim Petsch of GrassWorx, LLC. Text us at 904-867-4466!
#EntrepreneursCheatCode - Scott Scully talks about the importance of gathering employee feedback. Highlighting the dramatic productivity growth when employees feel heard and listened to.
#Miningforgrowthgold - Tim Petsch talks about his experience as a leader with GrassWorx, LLC, and the strategies they have used to find their niche in dog parks and apartment complexes nationwide.
#TalesFromSales - Jeff Winters shares his approach to training new sales reps. Drawing a sports analogy, Winters advocates for getting reps on calls quickly to let them self-organize, rather than extensive classroom training. The segment emphasizes empowering sales teams and simplifying the sales process.
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Run it up. Nothing could stop me.
Scott Scully:What's up? Grow nation, welcome back to the Grow show. This is the number one resource for actionable advice to make your growth just a little bit easier. This is absolute cheat code for entrepreneurs looking to increase sales, grow their pipeline, set up growth culture. This is the spot those people are tuning in all over the world. Shout out to London. Oh, some listeners in London. Oh,
Eric Watkins:Good day mate. That's Australia, isn't it? It
Scott Scully:is. But shout out to Sydney. We're
Eric Watkins:close.
Scott Scully:We got some listeners there as well.
Jeff Winters:That was a good, good day, mate for London. Huh? Kiss. Kiss that. Listener, goodbye.
Scott Scully:Exactly.
Eric Watkins:My story. I was around a couple people from London. They were at the gym. They were in watching their nephew play soccer at the local college, you can't understand a word. They say, Yeah, created English. Can't understand it.
Jeff Winters:What are you talking about? You can't. You can't understand what they say. It's no, they like English. I
Eric Watkins:understand. They like, I can't. It's hard. Every word is very hard. Like, I can't, I can't really explain. We
Scott Scully:just lost those three, yeah, all right. My name is Scott Skye. I'm here with my partners in crime. Eric Watkins, Jeff winners, and we have a grow guest today. Eric, yes, we do. Gonna give him a little intro. Yeah.
Eric Watkins:Today, we're very excited to welcome Tim Petsch, from the Vice President of Sales and Marketing from grassworks. Everybody. Welcome, Tim. Welcome. Tim. Welcome Tim. So a little bit about grassworks, and Tim's going to talk about it later, but you know, they're a leader in innovative, eco friendly matting solutions, known for their commitment to the to sustainability and high performance products. He's got a test here today that you may or may not see on camera a little bit later, but we're really excited to talk with him. And you know, we're bringing in leader sales leaders from all different types of industries, and excited to see the principles that apply across the board. But welcome Tim, thanks for joining. Good
Unknown:to be here. Eric, thanks for having me down. Absolutely.
Scott Scully:You all have tuned into the right episode. You know what today is? Today is the 99th episode. 99th episode, just one more until we hit 100 so the next episode will actually be the start of our third season.
Eric Watkins:So this is season three, final
Scott Scully:episode of season two. I have a few announcements, few exciting announcements. First off, we are going to release a newsletter, an E newsletter, called the Grow zone.
Eric Watkins:Ooh, the Grow zone layer, the
Scott Scully:Grow zone, that'll have all of the really good content that we have covered over the course of the month. And people are going to be able to sign up for that, and we'll get that out to them on a monthly basis. It'll have links to the episodes, just some actionable things that they can use in their business to make things a little bit easier. So we're excited for that. Also a website, new website, coming out first quarter of next year. Wow. So you'll be able to go there access our content as well. Also, this is live. You can text us, oh, you know, we've been engaging with the audience in a lot of different ways. But you can now go into your player and right above the description of the episode, you can text us. So with that, each show, we're going to have a little something for you, and if you text us your email address, then we will give you a one pager on whatever that major thing that we went over in the episode is so we're super excited to be able to help, and also excited about another engagement point, and what you're like and what you'd love us to cover things like that, but you can now text the show. That's
Jeff Winters:exciting. I put my I did another podcast, and I gave out my personal cell. They were like, Oh, how do I get a hold of you? And I was like, text me. He's like, what? I was like, just text me. People texted me, yeah, absolutely. They weren't like, wow, that was awesome podcast. But they did text me.
Eric Watkins:They give you constructive feedback. Sent me like Venmo requests.
Scott Scully:So we've got a sizzling episode. It is going to be incredible before we get into some of our our growth gold, we got our local sheriff, our resident Sheriff on LinkedIn, we have to
Jeff Winters:the 99th episode. 99 I don't know if I've done 99
Scott Scully:of anything, of anything. I. Definitely
Eric Watkins:not most days straight on a diet. I'll tell you that much. Oh,
Jeff Winters:I'm literally, I'm trying to think every time, like, been married, like, That's it, 99 days I have never done anything for 99 you know, like this consecutively. So it's, it's good. Um, two truths and a lie this week, as usual, it's just there's so much content on LinkedIn, I'm sifting through not only the content that I see. I'm getting more and more every single week, people tagging me, people shooting me, notes separating back from fiction and truth. It's a party game, but for business, but for business, two truths and a lie from LinkedIn. Let us begin with some what I would call underrated areas to find truths, which is in the comment section. Oh, not all truths live in the posts, folks. There's some gold in the comments,
Scott Scully:spreading his wings. Look at him.
Eric Watkins:Let's start here, diving deep, scuba diving into the comments. Original
Jeff Winters:post by Augusto, who was soliciting feedback on green flags when you're in the interview process as a candidate, what's something you want to see that lets you know a company's great and stable? And I thought this was kind of a unique take. John Ziemba said, a structured and trackable employee onboarding process. He said it's possible, but unfortunately, it's a common problem I've heard about from the leaders I've talked with, and specifically the sales reps are the ones that suffer as a result. There is a better way you as a candidate can tell a lot. I'm inferring can tell a lot from a company by asking about their onboarding process and how structured it is that this was an interesting green flag
Scott Scully:for new hires or clients, for new
Jeff Winters:hires, new hires, new hires. Yeah, yeah.
Eric Watkins:Probably both, yeah, probably both. No. I think that's that's great. That's a good one too. Of you know a lot of positions post these on target earnings that you're probably never going to make in that role. Yeah, and if they're giving you a number, that seems a little fishy already, and then they back it up with no real answer to how they're going to train you and get you up to speed. That's probably a spot you don't want to go?
Scott Scully:Yeah, I think people, one of the most important things is obviously that they feel like they're going to be able to continue to grow and develop. And that would be a really good way to show that you value that within your culture, yeah, bringing people on the right way. I love it. I like the truth.
Jeff Winters:Tim, we need you. Yeah, I
Unknown:agree, in particular, as we're growing and looking at how we structure a sales force, and where do we, where do we hire, and how do we outsource some of our sales thing of letting them know that we have a, you know, a sales process, some sales guy can step back and sales process sounds like medicine. You know, they wouldn't be independent, do their own thing, going golfing in the afternoon when they want, yeah, but I think it's a whole different positioning of how this could be a incredible tool to help you out, keep you organized and a resource. I think it's all into positioning and results. You never want to come off as the Big Brother looking over thing that's going on. But I think that's especially important in a sales role and making sure that the alignments there, yeah, and somebody doesn't buy into that, then they're probably not a fit, you know? Yeah. So absolutely,
Jeff Winters:I think it says a lot about a company. Yeah, if you have a really cool I remember our first when we first hired our first employee, like the biggest feedback she gave me, it was like, our fourth employee. I should say the biggest feedback she gave me was, like, I got lost in the garage. Even told me how to get to the office. So like we went. You know, that says something too. Yeah, infrastructure, onboarding process, you probably get your together, yep, just my thought. The next comment comes from Brian lamana, a sales rep at Gong, friend of the program, great. Shout
Unknown:out to Gong. Shout out Gong. Ring the gong. You might say, ring the
Jeff Winters:gong. Could help ring the gong. One could say,
Eric Watkins:there it is. Good job today, baby.
Jeff Winters:Something you're gonna see over there sleeping.
Eric Watkins:He doesn't have the sound effects, right? I'm
Scott Scully:gonna tell
Jeff Winters:you something else. I don't want to spoil this. In season three, we're gonna hear more from our producer, Ryan, and that's, that's a great warm up. That's great to be alert um, Brian says, in response to what's the worst sales advice you've ever gotten in your career? That was the question posed, and Brian said, the worst sales advice I've ever gotten is the customer is always right. They're not it's on you to educate them. They don't know your market and they don't know. How to Buy, etc. 98% of the time the customer is always right. It's on you to educate them. They don't know your market and they don't know how to buy. 98% of the time, Eric is the customer always right.
Eric Watkins:No, no, and if like, why would they come to you in the first place, if they had it all figured out, you're right. Like they're looking for that consultant that that difference of opinion from what they're doing currently, and the best sales calls that I listen to, they're a little rough, like there's there's points of contention, there's points of disagreement, if someone's just nodding their head and going along, or vice versa. As a sales rep, you're nodding your head and going along, it's probably not a really effective sales call. So I agree 100% I don't, I don't think the customer is always right.
Unknown:And I would agree. I think you talk to some customers, they think they know it all you know, yeah, they're not up to times. They're stuck in their paradigms. They don't want to open their mind to listen, and I think that's one of the ones you just, you know, push aside and say, Okay, you're not on the qualified list. Yeah? So,
Scott Scully:yeah, I don't think that the customer is necessarily always right, but I don't think you can tell them that they're wrong, so you've got to figure out how to make it their idea. Does that make sense? How do you do that? Because
Jeff Winters:I think you're right. How do you do that,
Scott Scully:honestly? The Easy, my easiest answer to that is just ask enough questions right about what their current process is, or what what their current product is and performance and that their situation and what's keeping them up at night, and just connecting them to some sort of pain and getting them to agree that if that pain wasn't there, life would be a little bit easier. That's a process, and it takes patience, but the best salespeople can do that, but I can't just tell you you're wrong, even if you are like, I gotta bring you around. In most personality cases, it's
Eric Watkins:the equivalent to a patient showing up to the doctor and being like, I know exactly what's wrong. I have tendonitis in my knee. That's exactly it. Right? It's like, instead of being like, no, your legs actually falling off. You have a broken leg, like the you ask them questions, seek down, okay, tendonitis in your knee. Tell me about that, you know what, as I'm hearing it, I don't think that tendonitis is the issue. But if you're like, Oh, you're right, you have tendonitis, let me prescribe you this. I think that's what sales reps are doing sometimes, if they take this advice,
Jeff Winters:not to get off on too deep a tangent here. I agree with what Scott said, and I'll yes and and say, I personally, when I'm on a sales call, if I'm doing something wrong, just tell me. I'd love to hear that. You know what? Eric, you know what? Jeff, I don't think that's the right thing to do. Okay, cool. Well, tell me what is, but that's to Scott's point. And you buried the lead a little bit in, like everything you said. I think as it relates to what I'm saying, you got to know the right person to do that with. With me. That's great, probably with you, Scott, it's great. Like you want somebody you said the other day you're on a sales call. You're happy somebody had
Scott Scully:a point of view, right? Yeah, yes, I agree. Okay,
Jeff Winters:now to the lie, the lies. I have data on this lie, not real data, but I have data from Tobias. Tobias says CEOs writing on LinkedIn is a waste of time. Sorry. Personal Branding gurus, once companies cross 10 to 15 employees, great CEOs just don't have the time to post on rank LinkedIn regularly, but honestly, they shouldn't. There are so many better things to allocate your time to as a CEO. He goes on from there, but that's what Tobias says. Don't have time 10 to 15 or more.
Eric Watkins:Eric, what's the data? Keep going. I'll tell you. Oh, I, I'd like to have all the facts first. I'll show you. I, I think posting on LinkedIn as a CEO can be very valuable to their business and worth the time. I also think there's a lot of other things to do that could drive even more value. So it's hard for hard for me to answer, I would say as a blanket statement, that's a lie, but I'm sure there's some CEOs that spend all their time posting on LinkedIn, and they should spend a little less time on LinkedIn and more time in their business.
Scott Scully:Sensitive one to me. I think that it could be important to put yourself out there as a thought leader. If you make the mistake of getting out there and engaging in certain controversial things, there's always a big audience that is willing to go on the attack, and that could be not a good thing for your business. So it's I think my answer would be that I think that there should be some level of of engagement on LinkedIn. I think that they should get advice on how to do it, and I think that they should use it for vision and to celebrate their team and to talk about good news and not talk about politics, probably not get political or not get a controversial. Does that make sense? Like, I think you should do it. You should do it in the right way, and you should have coaching if you don't know how to do it. And I'll even
Jeff Winters:run it to social like, what do you think? Yeah, I
Unknown:think it's valuable for a CEO to have presence on LinkedIn or anywhere and agree exactly with what you said. But as far as the time, I think that can be handled by a marketing a PR person who you plot out an annual strategy of what you want all cover, and then those are plugged in on weekly, bi weekly basis, and they're not actually doing the writing, but certainly seeing it and improving it. So I think the time, the time part could be, could be overcome. I
Jeff Winters:think so too. Here's the data. Here's the data. That's a really good point. Here's the data I counted in my feed. And is this a little bit of a clout for sure, $11 billion valuation companies or more, their CEOs on like, just in my feed 11, I saw a video from the CEO of zoom info, publicly traded 15 billion, $20 billion market cap company, if he's got time, if they've got time, you can make the time at 10 people. That's outrageous. Like, maybe it's not your strategy, but you can make the time they got time. You got time, yeah, and a
Unknown:lot of time I had my comment is finding the content or producing the content that could be all you know, planned out as part of your bigger marketing plan, sure, leveraging that channel. So great point.
Jeff Winters:You got time, yeah,
Scott Scully:I think people can get caught up in I have to post versus posting something worthwhile. So if there's marketing people involved, they really have to be. They have to know the message sure, because a lot of times they can't deliver what your message is. So like, whatever period of time you're getting together with that team and just giving them your voice and then having sign off. I think that that's good. Absolutely. You have, you have another comment. You're shaking your No, I
Jeff Winters:didn't think that was it was so hot last week, you know?
Eric Watkins:Oh, yeah. Like it wasn't well. It was only a matter of time
Jeff Winters:for the 99th episode, though, that should have been on fire. I was so excited coming in, and I didn't get the reaction I wanted. But that's okay. I got other stuff to say in this episode. Okay,
Eric Watkins:well, please, please come back. We
Scott Scully:haven't celebrated you enough in your chair for LinkedIn.
Jeff Winters:I thrive on that. Okay,
Scott Scully:you're the best. LinkedIn, share you're the
Eric Watkins:best. You're so good. Cut it out.
Scott Scully:All right. Well, I've got a topic here that I think you're going to have really good feedback on. Jeff. So this is important. This is a big one. And honestly, I started to go out and do some research. When I, when I thought about talking about this topic, and the stats that I found were staggering, it's it's actually not great, but it makes this a super relevant topic, and why this is important in your business, I am going to, you know, call this little thing here, you know, if you're if you're not getting feedback from the front lines, you're going to hurt your bottom line, right? This is all about making sure that feet on the street, the people that are doing the work, that you're sitting with them, and that you have a process to get feedback, hear what customers are saying, listen to their opinions, because if you are that means more engagement, and more engaged employees means better results, and you're winning, right? So I did. I found some stats. I found a global survey of over 4000 employees, okay, these are, these are some painful stats. 86% of employees feel that at their workplace, they're not heard. 86% 92% 92% of highly engaged people feel listened to, right? So a lot of people don't feel listened to. They're not engaged, but the people that do feel listened to are super engaged. 74% of. Employees report being more effective at their job when they feel hurt, 74% Can you imagine? Like, how important is that? Is it to have people engaged or listened to, right? Like, if they feel like you are hearing them, 74% are saying they're more engaged. It's like, it's the thing. It's the Domino, right? 88% of employees whose companies financially outperform others in their industry feel heard. The Domino is, how do you get your your people, your very important people, on the front lines in your organization, how do you make them hurt like how do you hear their ideas? Incorporate them into your business practices to win, quite frankly, so that's where our one thing, decision making process comes into play. And those of you that are listening, we haven't always done a great job with this. You know, sometimes we feel like, Hey, we've got processes in place. We've been doing these things for year. They years, they work. And we started a process last year to really get feedback from everybody in the organization. We did it for a while, and then we paused for a minute, and now we're in the process of bringing it back. And after going and just talking to people and doing research, like we cannot lose sight of this ever again. The stats are ridiculous, but in our one thing decision making process, what we do is we'll get together as an executive team, will talk about things, and then those leaders will go out to VPs and directors, and they'll say, Hey, here's something that's bubbling up. Can you go out and can you get feedback? Then they'll have individual meetings with folks that report to them and those groups, you know, and then the feedback flows coming back, and then the directors and VPs are, are consolidating all that feedback, organizing the advice, presenting it back to the executive team. And collectively, we've, we've gathered advice from the entire organization, brought it back and implemented one idea a month. So one thing a month, we're going to make sure that everybody is involved 12 big, significant business decisions every single year. And people really enjoy this process. We just started again. We got really good advice on our vision meetings and our celebration meetings. The next thing coming around is, how do we spend our culture budget? What would you like to see? What motivates you? But God, I really enjoyed doing the research and just collecting some of these stats, and it just makes me really realize how important it is that we're doing this, and we need to do a good job, because if our people are heard, they're more productive, and our business is going to be better. What do you guys think? Yeah,
Eric Watkins:I think this is, this is a huge deal. And frankly, yeah, we, made a mistake, we lost sight of it, and we brought it back and implemented it with the team. And I would give three tactical things when you're doing this as a business to be thinking about. Number one is it is only going to be impactful if you go to every level of your company. Sure, it's going to be the most impactful if you can go to every level. Don't just do it with directors, don't just do it with managers, do it with everybody in the organization. My second thing, it's going to be tempting to just send out a survey. It's gonna be tempting to just say, give us your feedback on this for people to feel heard and understood. I think it's really important that they have a voice, a physical voice. And so one thing we talked about in the last session is when these managers are going and speaking with their teams, they're actually doing it in person or on a call together, where people can actually talk and give their thoughts. And I think that's important. And then the last thing is to clarify up front, if you look at our business, you know, 500 plus employees all going to have different ideas and perspectives. It's impossible, in our solution to include something from every single employee, but just to under just to make sure everybody knows, like we want everybody's input and opinion. But unfortunately, at the end of the day, whatever the solution is, it may not be what you exactly requested, but it's important that your information is in the shared pool meeting when we make that decision. And I think it's important to clear that, clarify that up front, so it doesn't turn into, well, I keep giving my opinion on things, and they never take them, so I'm done giving feedback.
Unknown:Yeah, and I would add to that, I think it needs some. Make the employees feel that they can give constructive criticism without ramifications. Do you really want to hear what I say and not to worry about, hey, I'm not going to get that promotion, or one day the pink slip comes out, you know? And that's a hard balance, but I think it's important to know that they can be honest and and open and be heard. So
Eric Watkins:great points.
Jeff Winters:Let me zoom this out a smidge, because maybe you do the one thing, decision making, process that we do, and maybe you don't, because your organization works a little differently. I'd say you should. It's been awesome. I think the point here is, though, like when you're thinking about making a decision as a leader, it's all about the relationship of time and buy in. So you can make a decision in the following ways. You could make a decision and make it an edict, everybody do this, and it's going to be faster because you're just making the call, and you probably get less buy in. Then you can make a decision on the full other side of the spectrum, where it's like, oh, I gave them a problem to solve, and the whole team solved it great. Probably takes you a little longer. You're going to have more buy in. Or you could also say, Hey, here's what I'm thinking. What do you think? Beat this idea up? And I think that you can do this on so many decisions that otherwise people get kind of, like, a little complacent and don't want just, like, all right, I'm just going to make this call as opposed like, Hey, here's my idea. Beat it up for five minutes. You're gonna get so much more buy in and engagement just by asking. Because the fallacy Scott, I think, is that people think that if I ask for your feedback, and it's not what I want, and then I go the other direction, it's you're gonna be upset. But that's not what this data says. This data doesn't say they want to be right. This data doesn't say you have to take the recommendation. This data says they want to be heard. And therein lies the difference.
Scott Scully:That's good. That's good. I would say one thing, and then we'll close this section out that I noticed the other day when we're in the process sitting down as a group like face to face, is that not everybody feels comfortable talking in a group setting. So just make sure, if you're putting this into play, that there's lots of different ways to give feedback, right? Maybe they could give it an honest anonymously, if they don't, if it's something that's sensitive, or maybe there's an idea box, or maybe they can send a message in a chat channel, in your CRM. There's just set up lots of ways for the for the data to come in, so that different people that feel, the people that feel, uncomfortable giving feedback also have a mechanism to do that as well. But we're going to keep this in play. We suggest that you do as well if you want a little help in this area, here's where our first text, the show is going to come into play. Text the show again on your player where you are listening to this show, right above the description of this show, it will say, text us. Please. Text us your address or email address, and we will give you a one pager on what our one thing decision making process is. So text to show give us your email address, and we will email you back a one pager, and we'd love to share that with you. Sound good? Sounds good? I love the I love the text interaction. I think we're going to get a lot of requests, all right, we're we're to the important part, right? We've got a grow guest, and he is going to bring the heat before, before, though, we would love to hear just background. You know, your journey, how you got there, the company that you represent, you know, can you give the audience just a little bit on you Sure? Yeah, I
Unknown:would say I'm a tale of two different careers. My first half was very much on the corporate end. I started off with Big Ed agencies, big accounts like Frito, lay PepsiCo, McDonald's, and kind of evolved to more the corporate side. I worked for merits in their strategic planning department, loyalty marketing, what certainly is a great background for stats. And then one day, it took a shift. I always say my my world went to the dogs. Were for a small startup dog company. Very dynamic product. I don't know if you've ever heard the Furminator. Yeah, it was a hit. Here we it grew by leaps and bounds. It's in 40 countries. End up selling to a private equity firm. And it was just a great product to introduce in such a great big market. How many people here have dogs? Raise their hands, yeah. That's kind of the the national stat, you know, by 68% and you don't see innovative pet products come around very often. Hey, you got bulls, leashes, collars, yeah, there's some new technology, things that come out. So I was introduced to this product. I. Um, our name of our company is called grassworks. We've been making artificial turf for 50 years. Actually invented astroturf for the Astrodome back in the 60s. But remember, remember the Astrodome? Okay, it goes back a long way, but we've been independent company now for about 20 years, and really pride ourselves on, you know, innovation and new products. And about five years, we invented a line of it's called hybrid turfs, and this particular turf is called Natura. What makes it unique? And this is always one of our challenges. How do we get our people's heads out of a standard turf to hybrid turf, which is a turf that allows the grass to grow through, protects the ground, allows the urine, the water, to filter through. So actually, when I was introduced to this company. It's a conversation I tried out my backyard. Man, just fantastic product. And it's one of those things you don't come see come around every day. It could be a real game changer in the market. And again, you threw some great stats out the other day. A couple stats, something like 78% of people own a pet. Now. Another high level stat is we target the commercial side. 33% of people live in apartments now. Dogs are part of your family. They got to be in the apartment with you, and they got to have a dog park. Just put some of the numbers in reference. I just hired one of our guys to move out to Denver to be a rep, and there's over 900 apartments that have a dog park in Denver. And growing by the day. If you've been out to Denver lately, there's growing I think their state bird is the construction crane. There's somebody to do buildings and apartments going up every day. But just to put in perspective and multiply that throughout the country, and they're looking for a solution to have a and they call it the Battle of amenities. All these apartments, you got to have the gym, you got to the pool, you got to have the charging station, you got to have a common area, and the dog parks is right up there with something to attract people but retain them also. So we're just bringing a whole new paradigm to that industry, the multifamily industry, and another industry is dog daycare facilities. To call a dog daycare a kennel now is almost like an insult, like put your dog in a prison. I don't know if you guys bring your dogs to a dog daycare, but they have TVs, hotels, you know, their spas. It's a whole different, whole different paradigm. They can have the yards looking good. They let 50 dogs out eight times a day. That tears the yard up, and it's a mud pit. You know, a lot of labor costs in cleaning the dogs before they drag it inside. As we all know, Labor's important everywhere. So really, it's one of those products that is a total game changer on both the commercial side, but also residential, you know, backyard. So we've been at this for about three years with this product called maturity, and just continuing to learn as we go. That's awesome. Yeah,
Scott Scully:I have a feeling that not only are people about ready to learn from you, they're going to be looking you up and buying buying some turf. What are, what are two or three good ideas, good takeaways for the audience and just how you grow your business? Boy, I
Unknown:think anything just from a, you know, the big picture is there's no cookie cutter answer for everything. You really got to tailor things to who you are. But I think more importantly, learn as you go. Have documentation. Learn to go and be willing to change as you go. You stick with something too long. Don't be afraid to, you know, change things and try, try a new approach, versus going the direction for a long time, and we've learned a lot. Even the multi family world, who is our target audience, you know, is the property manager? Is it the capital? The capital group who's spending the money? And we're just learning leaps and bound and adjusting our our marketing, our approach, our sales playbook as time goes on. So
Scott Scully:I love what's coming out for me is that you have really drilled into a target market. And I think we talk about that a lot. I think it's a mistake that people make is that they've got a solution that could maybe go in a lot of places, and so yours could as well, right? But when, when you've got a target market like that, with that many multi family homes, even in just one area like Denver, you can go on the attack, have specific messaging and really have that much.
Unknown:I think that's one of the mistakes a lot of companies make, and I would say I made it. Probably the beginning is developing a new channel is expensive. You know, you gotta do the whole circuit of trade pubs, trade magazines, learn the audience. It's hard to develop channels. When I first got here, my head was kind of spinning. Oh, yeah, this is work great at golf course. Is gonna work great at, you know, at wherever? And some point we said, hey, let's focus on these two. They're semi related, and let's really focus on and put our efforts. There.
Jeff Winters:Two things stick out for me. Love it. First, 80% of people have a pet in this country. Did
Unknown:you say that between dogs and cats? Yeah,
Jeff Winters:no kidding. I'm new on my dog journey.
Scott Scully:They don't all wear spiked vests like
Jeff Winters:I am. I'm coming around on this thing. I really am. I may need to get them something to. To pee on like this sounds like a great idea. Here's the other thing that sticks out for me, being flexible and making sure you're able to change and change quickly, especially as it relates to marketing channels. I mean, never before in human history can you see a marketing channel go from hero to zero as quickly as it is today. And you got to have them all in your bag. You got to be competent and ready to flex to any channel at any given time, because things move so fast, and you cannot be wedded to one channel because you're just at too much risk. And as a company, you can't be wedded to the status quo, because the status quo could turn your lights off.
Unknown:Agreed, at least, made a major shift within the last two months. Most of our efforts on multifamily was getting the property managers involved. Property managers really are the CEOs of their each little, you know, unit, or maybe several, but each apartment is probably a, you know, five to 10 million business, so they're not small potatoes. But we realized after we set a meeting with the largest property management company in the country that has about 3500 properties national it's like anything the bigger getting bigger. Imagine how much capital is involved. We're talking about 33% of people live in an apartment owned by private equity firms and so forth, and they're both looking to want to want to keep their customers happy. But how do I increase the asset value of my property? They buy and sell just like your house. Hey, you got to keep deciding decent you got to keep the roof, you got to keep the dog park. You got to keep improving it. So we met with a group of it's called their their their capital construction capital services group, group of 10 guys in a room. I didn't know these people existed. They basically, for Denver market alone, are split up and saying, Hey, I got these 40 properties at working with all the improvements, getting the budgets, working with the contractors, and creasing, increasing that asset of that company while keeping the residents happy. Okay, why were we going after property managers? Yeah, did good. We got some case studies. It was a slow process, but now we're at a different decision making process. We're shifting our whole whole strategy
Jeff Winters:about it. How'd you get that meeting?
Unknown:It's like anything. We're in the Denver market, and I happen to be at their board of directors meeting we got into for the Apartment
Jeff Winters:Association. So get in through an association, yep. And those are you. Those
Unknown:are huge in this industry, you know? Okay, I didn't know anything about them, yeah. But it connects. We met the one of the contractors in the market who was on the board, and then we met one of the guys from Gray star who they worked on a project together, a first project, one one dog park in Denver, our first one. Yeah, wow. Hey, push to get in the meeting with this this group, they have meetings every Friday morning, and there you go. It was like we were peeling back the onion, and I feel like we smashed the onion with a hammer. Said, Okay, now we get it, you know, yeah, and, but I think it's that constant persistence of trying to figure out the market. Yet we don't have it all figured out. Certainly. Now it's a whole new level of, how do we reach these, these capital expenditure, construction services group within these large companies. They're big companies, billion dollar companies, but that's where the where the traction and the they're gonna say, hey, go do this one in Dallas. Go do this one in versus us trying to work locally and push up through the property managers. So sure, one example, yeah,
Scott Scully:I love how the business has evolved to right astro turf in Houston, to where you're at today, in probably a bigger market, I would imagine, you know, with pets where they're at today, and that's, it's just an awesome, awesome story. Thanks for sharing. Yeah, you
Unknown:know. And we tried other avenues, and my background is a lot more retail, working with pet smarts and Pecos of the world. And it just doesn't work as well when it's sitting there on a on a stand, you know, or a kiosk. Could explain the proposition. And it's expensive, you know, the margins that get in retail are high. They hold the cards. And we decided to go to more of a direct model with the with both the called the commercial side, but also we have stepped up our direct residential customer, backyard customer. We got some influencers involved who can reset market and when a message resonates, our website lit up so much we had to change our whole e commerce system and upgrade it because we were getting so overwhelmed. Wow, sounds like a horrible problem. Yeah. People think you know, these gross success stories are, just say, one day you put on the market, and next thing you sell the company. But man, it's a long up and down, painful process. I'm sure you guys see that many times, risk change around every turn,
Scott Scully:change evolve, right? Find a market drill in have some sex. Success stories get to the next level, get pushed up, and it's on.
Eric Watkins:So it's on. Good
Scott Scully:story. Thank you. Well, now we got to listen to Jeff. Yeah, we do. You gotta go back to, I mean, we have the pleasure of listening to Mr. Winter and share some long, short story. Sales advice for those of you out there looking to sell more product, service, 80%
Jeff Winters:of people have pets. I would have guessed like 40, but I don't know. Really, my house sample size. I didn't grow up with one of my wife didn't grow up with one of my kids. Nearly didn't grow up with one. So it was almost 100% all right, Tales from sales. I'm gonna tell you a story, and it's going to illuminate my point. So my point today is around training new reps. We have a new rep on our team, and sort of doing a new take on an old favorite, or an old take on a new favorite. However you want to look at it, it's a little bit of a smaller sales team, and so I'm a little closer to it. I get to see the training process up close and personal, and I see the flaws in our ways. And I think my message here is get them on the phone faster. Your training is too long. That's my that's my message for you. Your training is too long, your classroom time is too long. For a salesperson, it's not they got to know nothing, but get them in the sales call as fast as you can. And don't hold their hand, and it's hard not to, but this is what you need to do. And here's the story I'm going to use to illuminate this. So I was talking to the number one of the top varsity baseball coaches of any high school in the state of Missouri and probably the Midwest, and I was talking with him, and his kid is a great baseball player, so I was trying to, like, pick his brain. And I was like, how did you train your kid? Your kid to be so great at baseball? He said, Jeff, here's the deal. I traveled the world for recruiting purposes, and I went to a lot of these countries that are sort of passing up the US in terms of their baseball talent at a young age, and I noticed a stark difference between what they were doing and what we're doing. He said, what we're doing here in the US is we are over lessening over technical. Get on your back foot. Go to your front foot. Rotate the hips. Throw with your arms, 64 degree angle. Throw it this way. And every single lesson is another mechanic, another tip. He said, I go to these other countries. There's no lessons, there's no tips. They're fielding ground balls for hours and hours and hours, and they are throwing it at small targets. And what's happening is their body is naturally learning to self organize. It's naturally learning to self organize, which, when they're put in pressure situations, when the game's on the line, they don't have to rely on the mechanic and the foot and the tip turn. He's like, they just know what to do, because they are self organizing. And that's what I taught my kid. I did not ever play catch with my kid. Not one time. Ground balls, ground balls, ground balls, because he would get up and self organize his body and throw it. I never, as a varsity baseball coach of one of the top programs in the state and probably the region. Ever Told him anything about technique? Never. I just let him learn what his body being self organized would produce in terms of the outcome toward the target. How does this relate to training? You might be asking, this is what you need to do with your team? Yes, yeah, I give him a script. You got to teach him a little bit of the product. I understand, let them self organize. Let them self organize, because the goal of your sales pitch is not to have a perfect sales pitch. The goal the sales pitch is to let them close deals. Yes, you have a process. Yes, you have a playbook. I understand, put them on calls faster, let them fail faster. Let them figure out how to self organize so that we're in those situations. They're not relying on technique. Oh, I'm supposed to ask a question here. Oh, I'm supposed to talk this amount of time. Oh, I'm supposed to say it at this beats per minute there. Know what to do naturally. Let them on there. Let them fail. Train them faster.
Eric Watkins:Yeah, I like it. That's it. No, I think the
Jeff Winters:an impassioned story. I just mean I like it is not helpful.
Eric Watkins:Well, it was so long I was trying to figure, I was trying to remember everything that you were talking about but the and I got lost because I thought you were training your kid. And I was like, I could never, I don't see you hitting ground balls to Charlie, but
Scott Scully:you thought he was saying I trained. Literally, didn't go out the backyard.
Eric Watkins:Kid like, what? Come on.
Jeff Winters:I did not. I don't do any of these things. This is what good? Yeah, this is a great father, coach.
Eric Watkins:No, I think the well, podcasting, right? We're decent at it now. Did anybody tell us the mechanics? Did anybody show us how to do it? No, we just had to do it over and over and over again. And I think you find out what works and what doesn't work. The only thing I would say is, I've always felt like it's an art within a science, the science. Science is the box, and there's just certain things that the principles that you need to abide by, and then the freedom is the art within that box. And that's the thing. If you tried to box everything, I think it gets it gets tricky, and it like a process. Should enable somebody, not disable them. So if your people are ever feeling like they're less effective with the process, then it's doing the reverse of what you're trying to do. So I think there's, there's a little bit of both, but I like it.
Jeff Winters:I guess my thing is, like, you don't, don't have the manager on every call with the sales rep for a year. Yeah.
Unknown:Yeah. I want to add a quote I just heard the last couple of months from one of our sales trainer I'll give him credit for it, from our Sandler guy on Denver. And he had a great quote. He goes, sales are hard, the process should be easy. How many times can we get so much process with our sales people that they're at their desk? It's just a mundane thing. But how sales are hard enough the way they are. How can we make the project easy and simple for them? And as far as the practice you're talking about, I think it's just like any sport, half of the value sometimes is laying on the couch for 15 minutes and kind of visually walk through your calls or how you're going to do it. And you know, work so well with my golf swing, I sit down 15 minutes and visualize my swing. I'm kidding. Yeah, I think part of it is not necessarily just role playing with your boss or with somebody, but role playing it out to yourself. You know, before you go into something for 15 minutes, sit in your car, take a couple deep breaths, run through mentally of what you're going to do.
Scott Scully:We just talked about that, right? We did love it. Love it. Yeah, I'm practicing before you actually sales, people don't do that, right? Get warmed up practice before they actually go in. They do it and everything else in their life that they've been doing. But for some reason, not, not sales, that's good. You brought the heat brought the heat huge and good.
Jeff Winters:It's a good story.
Eric Watkins:It's good story. So what is the kid in the major leagues? What's the deal? I don't know. What's the punchline? You didn't really tell us how
Unknown:good story, though. Yeah,
Jeff Winters:he said he was very good,
Eric Watkins:very good. So his dad thinks he's good. Okay, got it? Well, not all
Jeff Winters:dads think their kids are good at sports, like they're all going pro. Don't put this in the time capsule. I'm not so sure my kids don't bury this, but I'm actually pretty sure we're, we're looking at,
Eric Watkins:we're looking at academics. We're gonna, yeah, debate, debate. Debate been like that,
Scott Scully:the newspaper, the yearbook, right, which
Unknown:is great. You're you're here, yeah, look at you.
Jeff Winters:Moving on badly.
Scott Scully:Okay, here we go. We are headed to to do or not to do, to do
Eric Watkins:or not to do. There is no Yoda threw me off there. Yeah, I forgot the words were different. Anyway. We're here for to do or not to do everyone's favorite section. This is where you come to learn about life. We do a lot of business here, the business, the business, the business. You need to know what to do for your life. So we've talked on this show. We talk about food a lot, but this one's particularly important, especially because Tim shared with us his breakfast this morning. Tim, would you mind sharing with the group what you have for breakfast today? This
Unknown:morning, I had yogurt, granola, the chia seed and honey.
Eric Watkins:Look at that. Sure. Look at that. Just healthy. And if you see Tim, he looks like the head yogurt.
Scott Scully:He looks good.
Unknown:I'm not sure I'll take that, but
Eric Watkins:two, oh no, yeah, the question today is okay, we've had the should you do breakfast or not to do breakfast? But there's enough people out there that want to do breakfast. Here's the thing. You have two decisions here, and you can mix them both, but you really need to decide, do I want to do a hot breakfast, toast, pancakes, hash browns, breakfast sandwich, or do I want to stick to a cold breakfast yogurt mixed with a little bit of granola, some fruit, maybe a cold muffin instead of a warm muffin. Should you go hot or cold for breakfast? Tim, we'll start with you. All
Unknown:right, first, I want to say I'm not. I'm not a big breakfast eater in what I I am hungry in the morning, okay, but I kind of got it in my head. You know that I gotta get some something going my head. Protein to keep me going. Yeah? Get me thinking, otherwise I'd be pretty sluggish. So I would make that a split question. I said, during the week, it's like a yogurt or smoothie or a banana, only maybe in the morning, okay? But on the weekends, hey man, let's go out get the eggs, the hash browns, the sausage, you know. And enjoy, enjoy a little bit. You know, weekend warrior. Yeah, we could warrior for the. The hot, greasy
Scott Scully:stuff, I totally agree. Yeah, I have like, a kind bar and water and ice tea in the morning. But on the weekend, yeah, get the eggs and totally
Eric Watkins:agree with absolutely the whole deal, Jeff,
Scott Scully:or if you're on a golf trip, then I have that damn stuff every morning.
Unknown:Mary, yeah, those
Jeff Winters:that have listened to the show know that I find breakfast reprehensible. I think it's disgusting. I have no interest in it on any day that said if I were going
Eric Watkins:to never, you never eat breakfast. Never pancakes. Never Have you ever had pancakes in your life. I
Jeff Winters:have at lunch or dinner. I hate the idea, but like, let me, let me just, let me, let me just, let me just. Give the audience some fodder, the idea of, irrespective of hot or cold, eating like carbohydrates in mass quantity for breakfast. I don't know how you go on with your your life. I mean, look, I have said this before. I'll say it again for your benefit, like when I see somebody sitting down to French toast at 40 I'm going, I will. You'd have to, yeah, you'd have to carry me out of here on a stretcher. I'm not. My body is not capable of handling carbohydrates in that quantity at that time of the morning. So, so no, I No, no across the board, no. Breakfast is revolt. No offense, it's revolting. And I think this is one of those things like the food pyramid, you know, like they're gonna come back and societies and be like, Yeah, we got screwed on this whole breakfast, the most important meal of the day thing. Don't eat it. I'm calling it right now.
Scott Scully:My grandpa went to 90 having bacon, eggs and toast every single morning, every morning, steak, most nights. He drank, smoked half his life, 90.
Unknown:I think that's the key consistency
Eric Watkins:so your body can adapt. Yeah,
Jeff Winters:I think that's great. I just my own thing. I just No Brad, yeah, I have a pancake. It's, it's 730 I have a lot to do today, and now I ate a pancake. Well, I
Eric Watkins:think, I think you heard it here first. If you put, yeah, if you put Jeff's opinion to the side, you should go light during the week, and you should go hard on the weekends. And that's what you should do, cold in the week, hot on the weekends.
Scott Scully:Incredible advice, as always. All right, that'll be a wrap for today. I want to remind you text to show, text to show if you want to grow, give us your email address and we're going to text. We're going to email you back, sorry, a one pager on our one thing, decision making, advice to get your people's ideas so they can be heard, so that you can be more productive and you can kick ass as always. Let's grow.
Eric Watkins:Let's grow. Let's grow. Thanks, guys, thanks. Tim,
Unknown:the Grow show is sponsored by inbound SDR, digital search that works you.
