Seth Garber: Their job description is wrong. Their profile doesn't match up to somebody who's going to be a great salesperson. Ultimately, we're setting them up for failure from the beginning.
---
Patrick Baldwin: Mr. Garber, welcome to Texas.
Seth Garber: Thank you.
Patrick Baldwin: Hot and humid, just for you, sir.
Seth Garber: It is incredibly hot here. Coming from Florida, getting off the plane, and being smacked in the face of the heat here was pretty unbelievable.
Patrick Baldwin: You're welcome.
Seth Garber: Thank you.
Patrick Baldwin: Texas Pest Expo, we're here hanging out in person. Seth, this is awesome.
Seth Garber: It's great and it's in good old Fort Worth.
Patrick Baldwin: I don't know what you have in store for me because you've already made fun of my driving or if I was a vehicle. What was it?
Seth Garber: We did start off in a funny light. At the beginning of this episode, we might as well talk about it. I was having a good conversation with our buddy, Rob Lemoine, and we were talking about what kind of cars represent individuals. I was talking to him about a car and Rob said, “Patrick is probably a Sebring convertible kind of guy.” You might be a Sebring convertible kind of guy now that I think about it.
Patrick Baldwin: Definitely not a Sebring convertible. Thank you, Rob. You said, “Our buddy,” I'm not sure if Rob is still my buddy after that one. Seth, if you don't know this, I know that you like to ruffle feathers or be a contrarian if you will. Talking to a lot of people, they always say, “How can I get my technicians to sell?”
Of course, thinking back to Bugs, we had our technicians that could make sales commission. They did sell and I would say they sold well, relatively speaking, and they enjoyed making the extra money. I thought that I'm going to randomly ask you. Seth probably is going to tell me how that's wrong or different or maybe there's the right way to do it and I was doing it all wrong. Tell me how I'm wrong, Seth.
Seth Garber: This is a big surprise. It's probably one of these questions that gets incredibly controversial incredibly quickly would be my guess, Patrick. Let's think about why we hire a technician to begin with. If I asked you, Patrick, why we hire a technician and what their job description looks like, how would you describe a technician's role to me?
Patrick Baldwin: Go service a customer in its purest form. Go kill bugs.
Seth Garber: We bring somebody into our organization who has a profile that says, “I want to solve problems, I want to take care of a customer, and I want to get to my next stop.” That's typically the profile, would you agree?
Patrick Baldwin: Yes. I said it in the rawest form.
Seth Garber: That's the profile. As we talk about a technician selling, we have to think about why we hired the technician to begin with. The reason we hired a technician is to take care of our customers. We didn't necessarily hire a technician to go out there and sell the customer a new service. When I think about technicians, the second we say, “We want our technicians to sell,” the first thing we've already done is we've said their job description is wrong, their profile doesn't match up to somebody who's going to be a great salesperson, and ultimately, we're setting them up for failure from the beginning.
From my perspective, not that I don't think that technicians can sell, but if we're diving in and saying, “We want them to sell,” are we providing them the resources to teach them how to sell? Frankly, it’s a different personality profile, it's a different job description, and it's different everything. It's illogical. I've got a little bit more about this but what do you think about that?
Patrick Baldwin: I agree. The profile of a salesperson or a technician is not the same. Are you compromising one for the other, both in skillset or personality profile, but also time and efficiency? Can I maximize their compensation in one arena or the other and not blur the middle in between?
Seth Garber: If I'm a pest control operation and let's be agnostic to size right now and I'm thinking about a technician who we want to go out and produce a lot of revenue so we want the technician to go out and let's call it 1200 to $1,500 a day in revenue. Let's say that technician does twelve stops, let's make up a number. All of a sudden, we're going to put a requirement in for this technician to run leads and do inspections. Now we have a technician who potentially can't get to twelve stops a day and production goes down and now they're doing inspections and they're not selling these accounts because they don't necessarily have the right skillset.
All of a sudden, we've taken a route or a technician who could go out there and do the right production and we now are giving them a $600 day, which now makes the company inefficient and now makes the company potentially not profitable. What about all the opportunity costs we're losing because they're not closing these deals and they're not doing additional production? To me, having a technician and seller is a requirement, it becomes illogical because we're simply taking away from efficiency every time we ask a technician to go out and sell.
Patrick Baldwin: Is this a universal application? All the people you work with, is this the hard and fast rule? Are there exceptions to this?
Seth Garber: There are definitely exceptions. Would I say it's a hard and fast rule? No. Would I say that if you're a multi-million dollar company with technicians all over and you need to stay focused on efficiency, I probably would steer away from my technician selling. If you're a growing organization with 1 or 2 guys and you don't have the ability to have a salesperson or your CSR team or your person in the office isn't incredibly proficient at handling inbound calls and converting deals, you may have to have your technicians selling some. If I went to build a company from the ground up today, my technicians wouldn't sell. They wouldn't sell at all.
Patrick Baldwin: I'm thinking about a part of the skill set of a technician. Empathy could be a character trait of a salesperson, office person, and technician. Put it to the technician for a second. If a technician has empathy and he’s going to solve a customer's problem, is it not a disservice to not sell them something if they need that additional service?
Seth Garber: That's a different question. When I think about does a technician sell, I think about net new opportunities. Taking a prospect who's not a current customer or a lead in making them a customer. If we shift over and say, should a technician upsell cross-sell to a current customer? I would say they should and they should be trained to do so.
To your point, having a high level of empathy and having the ability to communicate with the customer in a meaningful way also leans heavily towards developing trust. One f the biggest components of cross-sell upsell, which maximizes the average value per stop, is being able to do that and build trust. I would say that if we're talking on the other side, which is cross-sell upsell versus net new customer, from that perspective, I love our technicians selling.
Patrick Baldwin: I'm glad to clarify that. There is this model out there of a salesperson also being a new start tech so cold lead comes in and then they're out there, they sell the customer and get their initial done with one-stop and one roll of the truck. Is that model viable or scalable?
Seth Garber: That's a model that gets used a lot. We do have clients that use that model. If we think about where the rubber meets the road and we think about the idea that the faster they become a customer, the faster we're sure that we're going to keep them as a customer matters. It is a viable model and it does work. The part that I always think about is what is a salesperson's responsibility versus a technician's responsibility.
To do a new start tech, if they're a classically trained technician, if they're going to be a sales start tech, is there time focused on sales or they focused on service? That's the part that throws me off because coming outside of the pest industry as a head of revenue, I always think about the fact that are we in a revenue-producing time or are we not.
Where the lines get blurred in that new start model is that are these real salespeople? Are these more lead chasers? Who are these guys? Who are they? I don't necessarily love that model. It's used a lot. Conceptually, the door-to-door space where you have a door-to-door guy sells it, they've got their new start tech right there, he rolls up, and gets it started immediately. That model makes logical sense because of how they sell.
The idea of deploying a resource to a residential pest control customer and that resource has to go out there and sell that customer residential pest control and then have to do the service, to me, is incredibly inefficient. If we have a lead that comes into our office and we have an inside salesperson or a CSR, depending on our model, we're going to convert that customer in 6.5 to 7 minutes to a credit card on file paying customer regular residential service.
Whereas if our model is the lead comes in and now we have to schedule a salesperson to go out to convert that same residential account or taking a chance of losing that account, that may take seven days to get our sales rep out in front of that customer. What's better and what's more efficient? I would prefer to close that customer on the telephone versus putting somebody out in the field and potentially have them not close that account.
Patrick Baldwin: Great point. Thinking back to Bugs, we had the office trained for what we knew then to sell. The first job for them was to sell over the phone and we even had a phone call come in, a live answer, and then we had a couple of girls on sales, one on service. We had at least two people always trained on selling over the phone.
If they couldn't sell over the phone, we offer a free inspection. The inspector had to go out and move the customer above minimum annual value. He had to sell a termite warranty or upsell them exclusion or termite bait or whatever it was. He was there to get an upsell to get paid a commission. What model still exists or doesn't even exist where you would put a salesperson out in the field to do that residential sale?
Seth Garber: There are a lot of models out there that make logical sense. Let's go through the different kind of cohorts of services where this makes logical sense. Customer calls in Florida, middle of swarm season, they've got something flying around their house, and they tell you that it's flying ants. In that scenario, let's send a sales guy out because, more than likely, we probably have a termite opportunity. In the perfect scenario there, what we want our team doing is selling them preventative pest control service. Scheduling the termite inspection would be my perfect scenario.
However, sometimes that might not be the case. That's okay because now your average sales value could be high enough to where it makes logical sense. Now what we're doing is we're putting a sales guy on site. Another one is anything related to wildlife. In the wildlife sector or space, every situation is different. You'll hear us teach this as part of wildlife training but every situation is different. I see too often that people are trying to diagnose wildlife problems on the phone without putting their eyes on it and that's a big problem.
In the wildlife space, you need to have a sales rep go out there. These sales reps in the wildlife space, if you're a multi-service company and you can do everything, these guys need to know how to sell pest control. We encourage those calls to come in when we're training our clients that are wildlife pest control companies, we always work up with the CSRs or inside salespeople when that call comes in to always try to sell preventative pest control prior to scheduling the wildlife inspection. However, it doesn't work all the time but we work on that. That makes logical sense.
As it relates to pest control, I don't think of a scenario where it makes logical sense. If a customer calls in and they say, “We've got tons and tons of tiny roaches.” Most companies go, “We have to do an inspection first.” Why wouldn't we schedule the service and then let the customer know? If it's German roaches, then there's an additional charge that starts at $350 and we let the customer know upfront.
I know that the customer is going to come back and say, “You didn't tell us all this stuff.” This is when our technicians need to be good enough and be trained on how to upsell that service as it comes into play. I could probably think of some other ones but these are the scenarios where it does make logical sense to put someone on site. In some instances, if your technicians are fairly trained in sales, potentially, these might go onto a route for a technician to talk to in some of these instances.
Patrick Baldwin: I'm following you. That happened for us, it was termites, rodents, and bedbugs that we needed to put our eyes on. We did a free inspection, that was our model. I know you can have a paying model for inspections, I get it. If it's swarm season and they have flying ants, what they think are flying ants, and you're saying, “You need to put them on a preventative like cell and pest control,” over the phone.
Is that with, “These might be ants. Let me go ahead and get you scheduled. I also need to schedule for inspection. They could also be termites. If they're termites, that's not covered by what I'm about to sell you.” That's a fine line but I don't want my technician or salesperson walking into a situation they think the customer has already a figure in their mind knowing that they're going to solve this problem or whatever it is for that price. Now they're going to get hit with a lot bigger number.
Seth Garber: That's a great example and that example is what you face. Let's use this scenario. We used to deal with this all the time and clients deal with this all the time. In the middle of swarm season, a customer calls in and says, “I have flying ants in my house.” If your CSRs are trained and they walk them through a residential sales process, the CSR is trained well enough to simply say, “Mr. Customer, from what you're describing to me, you're saying it's flying ants. More than likely, it's a termite situation because it's the middle of the season.” CSRs know this. We're not going through the whole sales process right now.
From there, the way that we train the CSRs is, “Mr. Customer, since we've got you on the call, you are having some type of insect issue. More than likely, it's termites. However, what we would recommend is we should also put you on a preventative pest control service. After we are in service, if we run into a termite situation in the future, we can catch it ahead of time.”
“If we're lucky enough where we come out and these are flying ants, you're covered. If it's termites, it's going to be an additional charge. We'll give you an estimate for the additional charge.” This way, we have them as a customer. We at least try it. I will tell you, the close ratio is not going to be as strong in this way, and you're still going to get your termite inspection. However, these are things to consider. We have to train our teams through FAQs and how these different things work.
Patrick Baldwin: I got another sales question.
Seth Garber: Keep them coming. You've got me here on the spot in Fort Worth, Texas. I'm happy to be looking you dead in the eye versus doing this over Zoom.
Patrick Baldwin: We're talking sales. I've got another one. This came up on a phone call. The question was, “I'm hiring a salesperson. They're going to go eat what you kill. I'm not going to feed them any warm leads. I’m going to pay, in this case, with the state, base plus commission.” My quick advice, thinking back, was, “Good, don't ruin the hunter and feed him any warm leads ever.” Am I wrong?
Seth Garber: What a hugely loaded question that is. Since we're diving into salespeople, let's think about it from this perspective. What kind of salespeople are we hiring? Who are we hiring? One of the things that I see in our industry is we don't tend to hire real salespeople. We tend to find people who talk well and who may or may not ever have classically trained skills or they maybe have come from a national pest control company and they were sales there so they're going to automatically be a good fit because they understand the product.
The question is a lot bigger question. If we're asking, do we eat what we kill or do we feed them leads? The majority of the sales reps in our industry, if they come from big companies, are used to being lead chasers. A lot of guys from the national companies are going, “We're not lead chasers.” The reality is a lot of them are and we've hired a lot of them and they're lead chasers and they've never been trained classical hunting skillsets or they simply haven't been.
The first question I would say is, who have we hired? Have we hired somebody who comes from a true hunter-driven sales organization or understands what hunter-driven sales are? Are we hiring a person who's a lead chaser? That makes a huge difference because if we hire a lead chaser and we now make them try to be a hunter because they say they're a salesperson, we're setting ourselves up for failure. This is what you're going to get your $18,000 a month sales reps or your $25,000 a month sales reps. Honestly, they don't deserve to be equally compensated.
However, if we go and find the top-level classically trained hunter sales guys or salespeople that are out there, these people are a whole different breed. Frankly, they're not going to even ask you for leads. I'll use myself as an example. If I went to go work for a pest control company today, I would never go to the CEO of a pest control company and say, “Hire me as your sales rep and give me leads.”
I would never ask for that because the reality is that anyone who's willing to raise their hand and say, “I'm going to be a lead,” for me, that's not the client I want anyway. I want to go after the big huge accounts. I want to go after the big hospital systems. I want to go after the big stuff. Frankly, I don't want to spend my time chasing the lead of a residential customer or a restaurant that might be $125 a month. I still don't want to spend my time there.
However, if we hire a lead chaser, the lead chaser is going to go, “Absolutely. I'm going to go after and go sell that restaurant.” Because it's a nice easy thing, they get their sale, and they get that endorphin rush that they're looking for. If you have a lead-based business, get guys that know how to run leads. Get those, frankly, middlers. If you want to have an aggressive sales organization and your concept is, “I want them to eat what they kill,” go hire the right guy who is willing to eat what they kill and has a proven track record of doing it.
Patrick Baldwin: Hopefully, a lead chaser is not derogatory. I feel offended.
Seth Garber: Let's think about a lead chaser. I guess it depends on your business. Maybe it does come off derogatory but that's a real job too. Someone who is comfortable getting 10, 15, or 20 leads a week going out there and meeting with customers and selling them and trying to maximize sales value is a real role and responsibility. For that person, the company is taking on a much bigger expense of generating those leads for that person. Whereas somebody who's a true hunter, that person is going out and generating their business.
Patrick Baldwin: We talked about salespeople versus order takers. Lead chaser and order taker, I probably put them in the same kind of realm there. We've talked about, in pest control technicians, it's harder to hire someone that comes from a big company or a competitor and you have to untrain them and retrain them and they get back into their routines. Let's talk about sales and this hunter position here. You spoke about experience being a sales hunter. Is that necessary or do you get someone raw, see that they have a lot of potential, and train them in that way?
Seth Garber: What an important question that is. It's a question we deal with all the time. I even dealt with it. We're building a sales organization in the northeast and the COE of the organization, which is a successful pest control company, has no background in building a sales organization. However, he has a world-class background in being incredible in service and operations. I answered this question earlier.
The first question I would ask is, “As a leader of the organization, regardless of size, do you as a leader have a deep understanding of true hunter-driven sales, how to look at the data sets, how to manage your own schedule if you were that person, and how to do it? How do you follow up all the different touchpoints?” If you do and you're comfortable as a coach, it's great to take a young guy and go teach him how to do it.
However, where I see the failure is that people attempt this but they have no background or classical training on how to build a hunter organization. They tell them to just go out there and work hard. However, doing outside sales is a data-driven business like anything else. It's not just someone to have a good personality or not. How many people did you see? Out of the how many people did you see, how many conversations did you have? Out of the number of conversations that you had, how many proposals did you write? Out of the number of proposals did you write, how many deals did you close? That's hunter-driven sales.
The bigger question would be is that based on the skillset of the leader or skillset of the operation should determine it. If you know how to build these people or have a deep understanding, do it. If not, I would probably look for someone with a skillset and bring them in as an actual skillset team member versus trying to develop them.
Patrick Baldwin: It does make sense because it'd be hard for me. I would not consider myself a hunter so it'd be hard for me to recruit and manage that hunter. Hopefully, that is someone that does self-manage. I would expect that's part of it.
Seth Garber: In another market, we've tested this. One of the companies that we work with has five commercial sales reps. We've done it all. We've done it both ways. We've hired people with industry experience and top performers who were lead chasers with top-performing companies. We brought them as hunters, and now they're average performers.
We brought in hunters outside the industry, taught them pest control, and they are well above average performers. We also have young kids who have never done pest control sales but are hungry and have put them into an organization that understands hunter-driven sales and they're outperforming the top performers. We're seeing it.
Patrick Baldwin: I have a two-part question here. Maybe the phone is not ringing as you want or you just want this high-risk and high-reward growth model of sales where you bring someone in high commission. If they don't bring sales, they're not going to stick around long, and they're not going to get paid. Let’s say you go in that direction. What's step one when it comes to even putting out a job ad? This might not even be step one but get to the point where you want to hire that person. Is there a certain question you're looking for or certain ads you're putting out to attract the right applicants?
Seth Garber: It's funny, you don't know this yet, Patrick. I built fourteen videos walking through this entire process. I haven't told you this yet. They're going to go out live on YouTube. We walked through exactly what we're talking about, which is interesting you brought this question up. The first thing about the job description is that it has to be an honest job description. If you think about the purpose of a job description, this is the first time that we're selling our company to a prospect. That prospect has to be able to read that job description and put themselves in the shoes of that role. It has to happen and be able to back the company. They've got to feel good about it.
If you're looking for a hunter, you're like, “Let's go through the process.” You're head of a company or leader in a company, you understand hunter-driven sales and you want to attract hunters. You call them out. Here's how we write them for our clients, “We are looking for a salesperson who will go out there and make it happen. We are ideally looking for people who have worked at these companies and we call out all the 4 or 5 top hunter-driven sales organizations. I came from one Cintas. We want people from Cintas. We want people from Aramark. We want people from UniFirst.” We call them out.
That way, as a job looker, somebody who's looking for a role say, “I worked for a company. I worked for one similar to this.” We know. Now we're starting to attract that person. That's how we start. We call it out, we're authentic, and we're open and upfront with it. We tell them exactly what the job is. You will be going out and seeing 50 to 100 businesses a day or a week. You're going to be expected to have 12 to 18 scheduled appointments with commercial accounts every week. You're going to have a quota of $50,000 minimum. We'll put it all right in the job description. That's how I like to call it out.
Patrick Baldwin: Now you bring them in for an interview. Here's the second part of the question. Is there one question you're asking to figure out if they're a hunter or if they're not a hunter?
Seth Garber: Let's take a step before we bring them in for an interview. There's a simple litmus test that I like to use to determine if someone's a hunter or they're a farmer. Here's my very simple litmus test. Before I would ever bring them in for an interview, when I look at that resume, I look for data. A real hunter who knows how to be an outside sales rep will call the data sets out. They will tell you their performance to goal.
They will tell you the number of appointments they've had per week. They will call out real data sets on sales volume. They'll talk about their performance. They'll tell you that they've been a top achiever and how they placed in, I always laugh, the state or the region. I only care about people that can place nationally because that's what I want to see. I don't care about regional performers. I want national performers or people who can say that they're at the top. That's what I look for.
The first thing I do when I look at a resume is look at all the data and process the data. I say, “This person's saying they were number one in the region except they don't give me any data sets.” They don't give me any data sets, now I'm ready to start asking questions about this when I meet with them if I bring them in. I always try to make the data make sense to me. If they said, “I worked for this company. Here are my numbers.” I will go and think about, “Is there a chance that these numbers are made up or is there a chance these numbers are accurate?” If I can, in my mind, validate what they're saying, they get an interview. If I can't validate it, we move on.
A lot of times, you'll see people, especially in today's world, copy and paste resume templates and you can tell them in two seconds the data doesn't make sense. They're saying they were a sales rep but then down their thing, it said they managed twelve people or vice versa. They say they're 147% to quota but they've never called out their quota or how things are measured. It's pretty clear when you've done this quite a bit. That's what I would do before I would ever bring them into the interview.
Patrick Baldwin: Is the interview a continuation of that? Is that number one in the interview?
Seth Garber: Yeah. The interview process that I like to use, and we've built courses on this, is I like to do a 15 to 20-minute phone screen before I ever bring them into an interview. The entire purpose of that phone screen is to identify are they a cultural fit? Number two, is there any red flags in our discussion? Number three is I let them ask any questions that they want about us and we will answer every single one of them. The final one, which is an interesting point, is if I like them, I always let them decide if they're going to move forward in the interview process. I never decide for them. What that looks like is this. We're going to go ahead and do a mock interview.
Patrick Baldwin: Of course.
Seth Garber: You love that. Patrick, thank you for taking a little bit of time to talk to me today. So you understand how our phone screen is going to go today, I'm going to ask you some questions. I want to get to know you to see if this is a good cultural fit for you. Prior to coming to our interview, I did some research, I took a look at your resume, I took a look at your background, and I have a pretty good understanding. I'm going to ask you some questions about that.
Today is more about getting to know you. After we get to know you, I'm going to let you ask all the questions you want to meet and I'm going to answer completely and transparently and as open as possible so that way you feel good about the business. At the end, we'll decide if you're going to move forward with the interview together. How does that sound?
Patrick Baldwin: It sounds great.
Seth Garber: At this point, we're going to take their guard down and if they agree, if they say, “Sounds good,” the interview is now on my court, we can own it. I then tear the data apart. That call, if that goes well, we bring them in person. Once they come in person, now it's bad cop. Now we're going to talk about data and they're going to have to validate their data right in front of me and I'm going to have to have a deep understanding of what their careers look like.
Patrick Baldwin: That makes sense. I was already getting sweaty palm over here. I was like, “Crap. He's going to interview me on the spot.”
Seth Garber: The interview is over. You got the job.
Patrick Baldwin: You're a good cop on the phone screen and a bad cop in the interview.
Seth Garber: Yeah. Here's the thing, especially as you get experienced doing this, the first time you start to interview top-tier sales reps or you've had a bunch of work for you, it's pretty easy to tell the ones that the story doesn't make sense or that they're trying to sell themselves. Top-level sales reps don't have to sell themselves. They're incredibly confident, their data makes logical sense, and they can validate their careers and their roles because they did the work.
Patrick Baldwin: This might be a stretch here thinking about what transpired.
Seth Garber: Sorry.
Patrick Baldwin: Was that real?
Seth Garber: That was a legitimate sorry because I realized I brought over a lot out of it.
Patrick Baldwin: It's a big moment. Day one, is this hunky dory? It's sunshine and butterflies on day one of a new hire. Is it, “We're going to put you through the grinder and see if you can make it with this organization. You're going to see the worst of the worst, get dirty, sweaty, and hot.” What does day one look like?
Seth Garber: Day one as in they're day one coming into the organization or day one going through training? which part of day one?
Patrick Baldwin: New hire paperwork today.
Seth Garber: I've got a little bit of a core belief and people who are going to read this episode are going to disagree with me. My core belief is that the second we've put somebody through a regimented interview process and we've made a selection of who this candidate is going to be, I feel obligated that we need to be able to set this person up for big success. I do know that the cost of this hire, regardless if we're paying them a straight commission or however we're paying them, is incredibly high. The opportunity cost of my time or our leadership's time is a lot.
I'm a big believer of when someone comes to work with the organization, I want to put them through, especially on the sales side, a good 30-day period of time where there's not a whole lot of expectation. We tend to, on the consulting side of our business, when we bring on commercial sales guys or 100 driven sales reps, we have an incredibly detailed 4 to 5-week onboarding process where they learn the industry, they learn the processes, they learn our systems, and they learn how they're going to be measured. I like to go a little bit slower than some people do with the expectation that, within 12 to 15 weeks, we can get this person all the way up to quota call it at $50,000 a month minimum.
Patrick Baldwin: Day one, for that person, it seems a little laid back. day one is probably more lunch with the owner or CEO.
Seth Garber: I would even argue to say that week one as a whole tends to be a little bit more hunky dory, let's call it. I would even say week one from my perspective.
Patrick Baldwin: That was a good little Texas thing.
Seth Garber: Was that good for Texas?
Patrick Baldwin: I've heard the flip side. At Bugs, with what you just said, a little more laid-back day. After the drug test, if you could pass the drug test, that was the first thing they came and did. After that, it was culture, bright and shiny, introducing you to everyone, having lunch, and all that. I've also heard the flip side of successful organizations where we're going to test you starting day one. We're going to make it hard. If you make it through day one, call day one, day 1 or day 2, you're most likely going to stick and survive.
Seth Garber: I would argue for companies that are successful do that and a lot do it, that's common in the door-to-door space but there's huge attrition. I would say that if that's going to be the culture for someone to do that, that's fine if that's the way you want to run. My guess is that if you looked at it, the hiring process of an organization like that is probably pretty broken and their churn is probably incredibly high. Why would you spend so much time interviewing somebody committing to their career if you're just going to put them through the ringer at day one? Why would you do that?
To me and my organizations, I wouldn't do that today. Back at the beginning of my career, I did commercial door-to-door outside the pest industry and that's how it worked. Day one, we came in, we rang a bunch of bells, we got out in the road, we went door-to-door, and we tried to sell stuff. Maybe there's a way to learn that way but everyone quit. I didn't quit because I didn't want to quit. I had such tenacity. I remember making zeros some days and I wasn't going to quit. A lot of guys will quit. Especially in today's world, why would they stay?
Patrick Baldwin: Seth, you've given tons of valuable information. We don't dive into sales as much, you and I offline, here on The Buzz. There's a lot of valuable information you gave so thank you.
Seth Garber: I'm glad these were random questions because it allows me to process it in real-time. My opinion has change from time to time and we operate many different structures and many different processes. At the end of the day, people have to understand the first step of doing sales is deciding what your sales organization is going to look like and that starts to answer a lot of these questions.
Patrick Baldwin: It's funny. At this point in time, this is what Seth says. I wonder even going back to saying sorry or not saying sorry, at this point in time, that's what you're saying. Are these universal? Some of the questions, even today, it's a broad stroke but does it necessarily apply to everyone?
Seth Garber: I don't think so. We're all in some type of an education component. The Buzz here is an education component. What we do for our companies is an education component. FRXN has its education components. The most important part about it and why I always say in the moment of time is the way that I feel is because people have to think about things in terms of their business versus exactly what's being said. That's what matters.
If I'm listening to my opinion here, however, I am a three-man operation without the resources to do some of these things, your technician probably needs to sell. It's probably not the best thing for longevity but they have to. People have to think about it in terms of their business versus exactly what's being said. That's why I try to preface things like that.
Patrick Baldwin: I'm a few weeks late asking you this but we had a conversation with David and he said that not saying, “Sorry, we implemented it. It's changed our culture. It's awesome,” and all this stuff. I’m like, “Crap.” Is there any disclaimer that you want to give about not saying sorry or is that for everyone?
Seth Garber: No. As I said before, sorry is completely overused in our world. The only time you say sorry is if it's authentic and you truly, in your heart of hearts, mean to say that you're sorry. David, if you're listening, I imagine that in all of your operations right now, no one is saying the word sorry based on the feedback you had given us.
Patrick Baldwin: You're not sorry for that. Texas has put on a great show. A great board and it's been a great show. Seth, I'm glad finally got you to Texas to do an in-person Boardroom Buzz. It’s good to see you here.
Seth Garber: Thank you. It's been a great show. I'm glad to be here.
Patrick Baldwin: Uncle Paul, wherever you are, safe travels. Have a great week. We'll see you.
Seth Garber: Bye, guys.
---
Dylan Seals: Thank you so much as always for supporting us at The Boardroom Buzz. We know your time is valuable and the fact that you spend 45 minutes or an hour with us means the world. All the media that we put out from Potomac is meant to honor and celebrate you, the service industry owner. As Paul would say, “Yee who toil in the pest control vineyards.”
As part of giving back, we have this podcast, but more than that, Paul and I have been working our tails off over at POTOMAC TV. We've spent a tremendous amount of time, energy, and resources to build out that platform to bring you market updates, to bring you visual breakdowns of the merger acquisition process, and to tell stories and present information in ways that, frankly, it's not possible for us to do on The Boardroom Buzz.
Adding the visual element takes it to the next level. I want to invite you to go to YouTube and find us, it's POTOMAC TV. Potomac.tv will get you there. Go there and subscribe. Check out some videos and leave some comments. Let us know what you like and let us know what you don't like. Let us know what you want to see more of and we'll see you over there.
