Hiring a Sales Team? Why Most Agency Owners Sabotage Themselves (and How to Get it Right) with Travis Hoechlin | Ep #797

Hiring a Sales Team? Why Most Agency Owners Sabotage Themselves (and How to Get it Right) with Travis Hoechlin | Ep #797 Speaker 2: Hey, Travis, welcome to the show. Speaker 1: Great to be here. Thanks for having me. Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm excited to finally have you on. Tell us who you are, what you do. Speaker 1: My name is Travis Hoechlin and I'm the CEO of Rize Up Media. We're a marketing company for law firms. Basically 100% of our clientele are close to 500 some odd law firms across the country and we focus on I tell people we do five things. We build custom websites, we do SEO, we do local service ads and pay-per-click, and we do social media. And we focus on small to medium-sized law firms. Speaker 2: What made you start an agency? Speaker 1: I worked for a big box store agency, essentially, the biggest in our industry, or one of the biggest in our industry. My business partner and I, Bo Bryant, had owned a business before in the mortgage world, and we always knew that we were going to start another company. We had no idea what it was going to be, and then we ended up learning the legal marketing space. We knew we were going to do it. We just kind of procrastinated doing it. We kind of got comfortable. We both did really, really well at the big company and, you know, got all the accolades and got a good paycheck and all that stuff and finally got enough courage to make the jump. Speaker 2: What was the push you had to give yourself to make that? Because there might be some people listening that wanted to kind of dive into it. And, you know, when you're comfortable, it's hard to make a big switch like that. You know, going like, I'm doing really well. And why do I want to take all that risk? Speaker 1: Yeah, so it's kind of embarrassing looking back on what kind of the final straw was. But I was the top salesperson for like six years in a row at this big Fortune 500 company and was making the best money that I've ever made. And we'd always talked about, hey, we're gonna, we're gonna make the jump and do it. And what ended up happening is this. One of my bosses pissed me off and I was, and listen, I was, my wife, at the time we had a three-year-old and a newborn and we decided, my wife was a salesperson and a very talented salesperson, but we decided that we're going to have her stay home with the kids and raise them. So it was scary to make the jump, but I led this organization for the sixth year in a row and I went out on paternity leave and I got word that they, because of And I met with a guy and I said, are you really going to not let me go to President's Club? I just led your organization for the sixth year in a row. And he goes, yeah, I don't, we're not going to let you. And I said, okay. And I went home and I told my wife, well, I think this was the final straw. I think this is the final straw. And I served out my paternity leave and came back for about a month and made the jump. And it was the best decision. I should have done it five years earlier. Now looking back, we all say that, right? But it was, and it's embarrassing that that little thing was enough to piss me off enough to make the jump. Man, we've been absolutely rocking it for the last six years, and I'm glad I did. Speaker 2: Well, I think the lesson learned, too, and the reason why I ask that is when you have great teammates, you don't have to worry about motivating them. You have to worry about demotivating them because it obviously meant a lot, especially if you're the number one person and then they don't let you go over some kind of technicality. Be like, come on. You know, I remember when we sold the agency and I was pretty excited about it working with them. And I was like, well, we can do a lot of really cool stuff. And then they just demotivated me. And I was like, I can't wait for us to sell this damn thing again. Speaker 1: Well, they say that's why most people I saw this on LinkedIn or somewhere at some point, they feel like most people. Most high performers end up leaving because of they're not getting the recognition or that they think they deserve. That's the reason that they bail. Speaker 2: Oh, most definitely. Yeah, it's crazy. So let's talk about, you've built an amazing agency. I've seen it grow over the years and you've really done it through building a sales organization. And there's a lot of agencies that are listening right now that are struggling with finding one salesperson. And they're the main salespeople, right? Like, And that's kind of a little bit scary. So obviously, you were the top salesperson. And that's the funny part, too, is you're really good at managing the sales team. Usually, like the top salespeople suck at managing. They'd be like, let me just do it myself. So why did you bring on a sales team? Speaker 1: Yeah, I think there's a couple things to that. I think as I look back, I mean, you'd have to ask them. And I see that when folks come to us and want to get You can jump, become part of the team or what have you. And I think it's important to remember when you're at a job to strive for excellence because people are watching. We all have worked with people and whether you thought about it or not, you would look at them and go, I would work for them. Or I'd want to be, lots of people are looking for someone to lead, right? And I, this wasn't a conscious decision. I'm just very competitive like that. And as I look back, I think, I like to think what we did back then was as We always conducted ourselves professionally. We always were top producers. We always helped everybody who asked. I always picked up the phone. I was never the top sales guy that held their cards close to their vest and not willing to share my trade secrets or best practices or anything like that. I always was willing to help somebody else. And I think that's paid off in spades now where people, I think, look at us and go, We know they're going to be successful and we want to be part of that. Speaker 2: How did you know that you wanted to build a sales team and not just do like when your partners started this because you get, you know, you and Bo were selling. Why don't you guys just sell versus why did you want to build a sales team? Speaker 1: You said I'm good at managing the sales team. I don't know if that's my strong suit because that was the toughest. Ironically, that was the toughest thing that I had to get over. I think my strong suit is certainly selling. And so at first, we weren't sure we wanted a sales team because of I don't know if that person can do as good as I can. But then what we realized was, and whether that's true or not, our sales team is awesome. We've all worked with them before and they're all top of the top. But no matter how good I may have thought I was, put my ego to the side, Two really good folks at a hundred percent are better than my hundred percent. Right. And then, and then we realized very quickly, you know, three, certainly, you know, no matter what I thought, like you bring on good salespeople, like three ads are better than one, right. Or three, three people doing production is better than mine. And so we, we started there. And then what we quickly realized that I didn't want to be their competition. I see a lot of agents, friends of mine who have agencies make this mistake. They go, I'm going to bring on a salesperson. And you know what? Here's the comp structure. Here's where our clients are. You know, go eat what you kill. Go. Speaker 2: Here's the crappy leads. Speaker 1: Here's the crappy leads or here's no leads. I'm going to keep the good ones to myself. We had, for whatever reason, we had enough foresight to know that or see that that would suck if I was a salesperson in that. So as soon as we brought our first salesperson on, first couple, we had to step out of the sales role. And now we were just helping them. I heard somebody say this a long time ago. I don't need to be the king anymore. I want to be a king maker and I want to help them be successful because all of our sales team, we have 10 of them. We're all high-income producers, high performers, all that kind of stuff. So I told all of them, I'm going to help you make the most money you've ever made, and I'm not going to rest until you're at least there. And then it's up to you to decide how ambitious you want to go from there. And so with that type of thinking, I think they've felt that. I hope they felt that. And that's my number one concern because if they've taken, it may be not as big of a leap of faith anymore because of how much we've grown, but certainly And early on, I respect that tremendously and I'm going to do everything in my power to help them become successful and make a bunch of money because they bet their professional career on us is how I look at it. Speaker 3: Hi there, agency owners. Let me ask you, are you ready to scale your agency without increasing your overhead costs? If yes, then you need to know about E2M Solutions. Now, E2M is the number one most reliable white label partner for agencies. They specialize in web design, WordPress development, e-commerce, SEO, and content writing. They basically do all the heavy lifting, which frees you up to focus on growing your agency. Now, here's the best part. E2M is just not another vendor. With over 10 years of experience, their team of over 300 experts has a track record of delivering for more than 300 agencies. They're your strategic partner. They deliver on time every time, so you can focus on what you do best. Now, E2M's mission is simple, to help 500 agencies increase their revenue and profit margins with white-label services that actually work. And to help you get started, they're offering a special deal, 10% off for the first three months. But act fast because it's only a limited time offer. So head over to e2msolutions.com slash Smart Agency to check out their transparent and their flexible pricing. Trust me, if you're ready to grow without burning out, e2m is the partner you've been looking for. That's e2msolutions.com slash Smart Agency. Go check them out and tell them Jason Swenk sent you. Speaker 2: Yeah, it took me a while to figure that out because I remember thinking about there's probably two or three salespeople I hired at the agency and I'm a very competitive person. I think anybody in sales is very competitive. You have to be. And I was like, we're going to compete. It wasn't a fair playing field, right? Like I was giving them shit leads. I would take all the good ones. Like no one can compete against that. I knew all the stories. I was holding all the cards. I didn't set it up for success for them. And then later on in the career, I was like, well, let me just turn everything over. And it was amazing. It just turned around overnight. As soon as I changed that one little switch in my head. Speaker 1: There's a lot to that too. It's like, that was my identity. That's what I, that's my strength. So there's certainly maybe some of your listeners could relate to this. That's what I bring to the table. Well, there's three of us who own this company and like, what's my value, my value. Like if I give that up, like we've had this conversation between the three of us, I'm like, we need to let that go. Speaker 2: Right. Speaker 1: Cause there's someone told me that there'll be other things for you to do. Cause I, my thought was, I'm not doing that. What am I going to do? Sit here and watch YouTube videos and you know what I mean? Whatever. I didn't even know, but I assure you other stuff piles on your desk, but to get that, um, That was a really, really tough thing that I needed to get over is that, hey, for us to grow where we want to grow, we want to go to a $100 million company. I can't be the bottleneck and I'm going to be the bottleneck. As weird as that sounded internally to me, that I would be the bottleneck because of my, I would limit sales. Speaker 2: Yeah, it's, yeah, it's very hard. What, what also too, I think a lot of people struggle with is they brought on a salesperson in the past, they failed and they're like, oh, it just doesn't work. When you guys decided, hey, I'm going to commit, did you bring on three at once or two at once? Speaker 1: We brought on two initially, and then we brought on two more like three months after that. So we got a team of four, and then we basically hired two to three a year since we did that. Speaker 2: So I know people are listening, and I think they have this little pit in their stomach right now, right? They're like, Oh, my God, like, how do I manage these people? Like, especially like in the very beginning, like, what was that process? What worked for you? And what did not work? If you remember. Speaker 1: Yeah. So what did work was, first of all, we kind of stacked the deck and these are all experienced, high-performing salespeople and we don't hire anything else. Speaker 2: And that's good. That's a secret. Speaker 1: That is 100% a secret. I don't want to babysit anybody. I don't want to micromanage anybody because I don't want to be micromanaged. I would quit that job in two days if somebody tried to micromanage me. But you have to be willing, if you want that person that you don't need to babysit, and you want to go get somebody from a different industry or something else, they need to make money. They're in sales for a reason. Like if you're not a salesperson, this may not make sense to you, but if they're good, they're competitive. They want to make a bunch of money. They have other opportunities. They can go sell. Once you know how to sell something, you can go sell anything. You and I could go sell cars. We can go sell cell phones. We can sell mortgage. We can sell marketing. It doesn't matter. We need about 30, 60-day training of whatever the widget is, and then we can go sell it, right? And so if you want those types of people, I see that mistake. Where people, I want a beginning salesperson and that now I need to train them that they need to go prospect every day or whatever it needs to be. With us, with the circle of influence that we had, we went after the highest end salespeople and gave them a very, very, very high ceiling as far as income that they can make. What we did was, whether it's a new person or something like that we go after, what I tell them is, listen, you already know how to do this. Our product is much, much better and more complex than where we came from. So let's do this. The first 30 days, 30, 60 days, we'll call it three different segments. We run a two call close. So if they don't know how to sell what we're doing or our product or offerings or services, what have you. I tell them, come in the door, just go get me appointments. I'll run the appointments. Just go get them for me. Go bird dog for me. Go get appointments, fill up your calendar, and I will run the first meeting and the second meeting and close the deal, and then you can take the client from there, right? So that first 30, 60 days, that's what they're doing. I don't wanna overthink anything. I just want you to do the prospecting. Go get appointments, get them on your calendar, and I'll run it. And I want you to listen to me do it. And I tell them whether you need to listen to me two times or 20 times or 200 times, I don't care. But at some point, you're going to go, okay, I can run the first meeting. Now, you just come in and do the second meeting. And that second segment, that second 30-60 days, they're going to do the first meeting. They're going to bring me up to speed. They're going to tell them that they're going to bring on the CEO or however they want to introduce me. And then I'm going to do the second meeting. And then We're going to do that and then at some point, that 30 or 60 day period, now they can spread their wings and fly. And if it needs to be longer than that, so be it. But I think that is the best process to kind of get people up to speed quick. I hear a lot of folks, agencies go, well, they can't sell as good as me, right? Or they don't know myself. If they listen to you two, three, four, 10, 30 times, whatever it may be, they're going to get it. Speaker 2: Especially if you're hiring people that have already have a proven track record in sales. Speaker 1: Absolutely. Absolutely. You need to know that they have a sales process. You know, folks who aren't in sales, are you hiring farmers or you're hiring hunters, right? And we've learned this the wrong way, hired like farmers to be in a hunter role. You know what I mean? Like, ah, you know, if you, you know, they say things like, Hey, if you can get me appointments, I can close them. I'm like, I'm paying you. I'm giving you a high bar for income possibilities. I'm hiring you to go get business, you know, so that's a big one. Make sure they're hunters. Speaker 2: Yeah. And what we always talk about too in the mastermind is like, if you're going to hire one salesperson and you're going to train them, why not hire two or three? Because usually one may not work out and you've only done this You know, one time for training or going back to, you know, what you were saying is like, and I know why agencies do this. I've seen it a thousand times. Like what, like you, you explained is like, I just don't, I can't pay them this huge base. And so I need to hire a junior person. But then what you realize is you're evaluating your time, you know, way down here versus money. And you're going to waste a ton of time. You're going to waste like probably a year training someone only to find out that they were the wrong person. Now, what was that year versus if you hired the right person? They could have brought you over a million dollars that first year. Speaker 1: Yeah. To your point, I agree with you 100% hiring a couple, two or three at a time. Because also what happens is they compete with each other. Speaker 2: Yes. Speaker 1: If one of them is having success, the other one is embarrassed to, oh, well, this lead wasn't good or this and woe is me. Like there's none of that. It's like if you see two other folks knocking it out of the park, you're going to go, okay, what are they doing? And then, and we've seen that where they grow together and they compete with each other and all that good stuff. So yeah, a hundred percent agree. Hire a couple at the same time. No question. Speaker 2: You just got back from a killer trip where you took your team, you know, down. I want you to talk a little bit about that as like an incentive trips or how do you just keep them inspired in order to, you know, obviously they have no cap, but talk about the incentive trip and how that works. Speaker 1: Yeah. So good salespeople are competitive. They chase money and they want the perks. In the corporate world, There is a lot of that. There's bonuses they can chase. There's incentive trips that they can chase. That's where we all came from. And so, we wanted to keep that kind of thing going and it's worth it, especially for a couple of different reasons. I'll talk about our Christmas party for the whole team as well. But our whole team is remote. Like our corporate office here in Las Vegas, it's three partners, a couple of employees come in a couple of days a week. We have like 60 employees across the world. Probably two-thirds of them are here US-based and then a third are overseas. It's important to have those incentive trips for them to run after, right? We put the bar at basically three quarters of a million dollars. Now it's at 850 where you sell that amount of money in a year. We're going to take you like we just did. We went down to Costa Rica for five days and stayed at the Four Seasons as we were talking before we got on here. It's the best resort I've ever been to and I've been to quite a few of them. And we spoil the hell out of them, right? And we have them bring their significant others and spoil them too. And in today's world, people can work wherever, you know, the opportunities are endless. And so why would they choose us? And so we want to reward that. It's worth the investment, in my opinion, to make sure that at the end of the year, there's a bar set and they need to get over it. And anybody who hits that bar goes. And so what we found is our team all pulled for each other. Like some of them hit the incentive in July and were already qualified. Others went right to the bell. It was a really cool thing to see everybody like, hey, you know, let's get so-and-so over the bar. We want them to go to Costa Rica as well or whatever it may be. And so it's super important to have those. Those types of incentives for the competition. Speaker 2: Well, this has been amazing, Travis. Is there anything I didn't ask you that you think would benefit the listeners listening in? Speaker 1: No, man, I appreciate you having me on here always. Speaker 2: I'm uh, well, it's an damn pack a longtime listener first-time caller Awesome man, well, it's been great to have you on the show and great to have you in the mastermind and for anyone listening if if you got value from this make sure you you know share it with a friend and Until next time have a swank day.