Mike Schill has worked with sales leaders like Grant Cardone and Brandon Dawson. Mike joins the Pipeline Meeting podcast to talk about getting your salespeople to care about growing your business.
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Mike Schill has worked with sales leaders like Grant Cardone and Brandon Dawson. Mike joins the Pipeline Meeting podcast to talk about getting your salespeople to care about growing your business.
What do salespeople care about? The same thing as anyone else. Pursuing their dreams. Mike talks about how to root organizational goals with personal goals. And how you have to understand your employees in order to get the best results out of them.
He does believe it's possible to flip a team from low performing to high performing, sharing his experience playing Division 1 football.
Motivation can be both personal and organizational. He talks about how setting big audacious goals can motivate your salespeople to care because they're pursuing something bigger.
Lastly he shares an interesting point that while marketing is senior to sales, investing in salespeople is key to getting ROI on marketing spend where salespeople close the deals for your business.
Find Mike Schill on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/michael-schill-74110a55/
[00:00:00] Harris Kenny: Welcome to Pipeline Meeting where marketers come to talk about sales. I'm your host Harris, Kenny, and I'll be joined by guest every Monday and Wednesday for brief 15 minute interviews where we'll share tips that you can apply to support your sales team and help them close more deals.
[00:00:15] Harris Kenny: If you don't have time to listen to this whole episode, you can skip ahead in the show notes in your podcast player, or find the transcript at introcrm.com/podcast. All the episodes are published there.
[00:00:28] Mike Schill: Listen, salespeople don't wake up in the morning and go to work to get the CEO or the marketer one step closer to their dreams. And I don't do that either. And you don't do that either.
[00:00:41] Mike Schill: Nobody does that. The only thing anybody gives about is their goals, their aspirations, and their dreams. So if you tie in the practices of an actual organization or quotas and or targets and or KPIs to just what you want as opposed to what they want... that urgency is not gonna be there, and all of a sudden you get that, that fall off.
[00:01:04] Mike Schill: I think on average, it's like 30% of the people that are within an organization in one year are not within an organization the other year.
[00:01:11] Mike Schill: Every single problem that a business owner has in their business has nothing to do with their employees. It has everything to do with them. Because they're the people that let their employees in the organization. Everybody's gotta take full responsibility for it.
[00:01:23] Mike Schill: As opposed to blaming people for not wanting to work to the degree or the level that that, that you want them to work at, how about you actually understand your employees? What are their own personal, what are their own professional? What are their own financial goals?
[00:01:40] Mike Schill: A great mentor alongside Grant Cardone, Brandon Dawson, who's you know, a legend in his own right, spoke on this and taught this with the thousands of businesses that we addressed this exact same issue with. It's you gotta understand your employee to the degree you understand your employee's degree.
[00:01:56] Mike Schill: You understand your business. It ain't a business that runs employees as employees that run a business. So if you don't know nothing about them, then expect nothing in return.
[00:02:06] Harris Kenny: Do you think it's possible for an underperforming team to become a higher performing, if the CEO changes their mindset and how they're engaging with their sales team?
[00:02:15] Mike Schill: 1000%. It's almost like asking the question you watch a college football... is how they were five years ago, exactly how they are today. Can a coach adopt an offense and a defense that's better suitable for the conference that they're in? And you get a hundred percent buy-in? And then they go from not being ranked to being raped top 10.
[00:02:32] Mike Schill: Yeah. It happens every single year. You just gotta have an area of focus on it.
[00:02:36] Mike Schill: We've seen that hundreds and thousands of times happen, but it starts with upper level management. It starts with the CEO, it starts with mid-level management.
[00:02:45] Mike Schill: And then you start moving the employees.
[00:02:48] Mike Schill: Now, the only thing to realize is that, if there's no expectations that were set prior to, and then all of a sudden you're coming down like a hammer year three and requiring all these new changes.
[00:02:59] Mike Schill: You're gonna have to expect kickback and that ain't their fault. That's your fault. So you gotta deal with that kickback and you gotta work through it. And you gotta give them time to mold into the type of personnel that you want them to become, or that potential that they have.
[00:03:15] Mike Schill: If they keep kicking back, time and time again, well then guess what? Go find somebody else, you know?
[00:03:24] Harris Kenny: So mindset's a huge part of it in setting goals. How much do you feel like process and technology, your software, how do those things come together?
[00:03:31] Mike Schill: Operations and systems are vital in an organization and operations and systems allow for optimal growth and performance. You can have the best operations and systems in the world. But the other challenge is to get people to use it and do it.
[00:03:48] Mike Schill: What's the best CRM in the world? The one that's used. How many salespeople don't use the CRM. Okay. Well, usually human nature tends to draw us towards things we understand and know how to do, and lead us away from things that we don't understand and don't know how to do.
[00:04:06] Mike Schill: As opposed to going on a sales team and asking them, Hey, they're not utilizing the CRM. Ask yourself how much training have they had on the CRM? And if it's zero, well then, that would be like expecting somebody to be able to ride a motorcycle and they've never had experience of riding a motorcycle.
[00:04:22] Mike Schill: What do you think is gonna happen?
[00:04:24] Harris Kenny: Sometimes people do these types of trainings and they feel like salespeople's eyes are glossing over, or they're in a zoom, where they've got seven other things up on their screen.
[00:04:32] Harris Kenny: Connecting these two threads, understanding salespeople are self-motivated... and therefore, if you're going to want to get them set up on new systems and pro set new goals for them and set up new systems, you gotta tie those systems into their personal motivation.
[00:04:45] Mike Schill: It's gonna help you be able to provide financial freedom for your mom who's in hospice care. But the family can't support the bill. The real reason why you go to work every single day is to make sure that she can go into the best hospice care facility in the state of Tennessee.
[00:05:02] Mike Schill: If I can get that granular, it's game over.
[00:05:05] Mike Schill: in these Slack channels and the things that you're talking about, I would be very, very, very interested to see how many of these CEOs and high level people actually can get that granular with one person in their organization outside themselves.
[00:05:20] Harris Kenny: You have this disconnect, right? I mean, people all get a chance to have real conversations with their team and how they're doing. It's just these little chat messages coming in and then onto the next thing.
[00:05:29] Mike Schill: Yeah, man. It's like, Hey, why you showing up to work every single day? How could I improve your role? The only thing that we're doing is we're implementing and adopting something that's gonna . Get you one step closer to your goals. But you also gotta paint a picture that is exciting for somebody.
[00:05:44] Mike Schill: If you come to your team and say, Hey, our goal this year is to do 10 million in revenue, that's not exciting. That's not exciting to me. Honestly, that would, that would steer me away from that organization.
[00:05:57] Mike Schill: 10 million, like. Okay. That's no money. That's no. A hundred million dollars is no money. Hey, but hey, our goal and our aspiration within the next five years to have an exit of 1.2 to $2 billion to be a publicly traded company, and we are going to take the key influential people at this stage and move them progressively within the organization as we grow.
[00:06:20] Mike Schill: So if you are one of those individuals who takes on the initiatives, takes on all the systems and operations, performs at an incredible level, the outcome and possibility is an exit of this company.
[00:06:32] Mike Schill: Anywhere from 10 to 15 million plus anything else and everything else that comes for. Okay. that's like, that's like going to practice to win a ball game or going to practice to win a national championship.
[00:06:44] Mike Schill: Which one are you more motivated to do? So you gotta paint a big picture, man. You gotta get paint a picture that everybody wants to be on board.
[00:06:52] Harris Kenny: And that's if you want that highly engaged, high performing talent. If that's not a concern, you know, and you're okay with having people who are just kind of more clock in, clock out, then you don't have to worry about this.
[00:07:04] Harris Kenny: But if you do want to grow that company that has that kind of impact, you do have to connect on the individual level and. Paint this bigger picture that people can get into.
[00:07:13] Mike Schill: Totally. Totally. And if you don't want to have that impact on why you in business in the first place? the whole point go in business to have impact.
[00:07:20] Harris Kenny: Now tie this to your background. You've done a lot of work with Grant Cardone and you've done this sales training. You've spoken in front of a lot of people. What's fun for you? Where are you having your impact? I'd love to learn a little bit more about your business and your journey as an entrepreneur.
[00:07:32] Mike Schill: After working alongside GC for quite some time, we opened up the Full Circle agency. It's, it's South Florida's fastest score marketing and advertising firm. Our impact that we're having in the community is getting brands, brands, products, and services known.
[00:07:48] Mike Schill: The most important asset that you can have is, is as it relates to a brand of product of services being known, right? I was taught with my mentors that it's not the best product that usually wins it's the best known product that usually wins.
[00:08:02] Mike Schill: The other side of the Full Circle agency is the Sports and Entertainment Division.
[00:08:06] Mike Schill: Coming from that background of sports at a pretty high level, you realize and you see that man when you're part of sports for the majority of your life. That is your identity. And then when that identity is no longer part of you, and that's the only thing you've known for 26, 27, 28, 29, 30 years, is that one thing, people don't realize how hard that is.
[00:08:36] Mike Schill: They have no idea. They have no idea.
[00:08:38] Mike Schill: And then on top of that, when you have them perform at a high level, , you kind of have to eliminate all the other noise or all the other data and or information because there's someone bigger fashion and stronger that's coming for your job no matter what.
[00:08:52] Mike Schill: The type of data that you consume every single day is, is geared towards being an athlete and your identity is an athlete. And then when all that is taken away or stripped or you have injury or you have to leave or whenever it may be, father time catches up. Well then, man, that's a very, very, very, very low place to be and people don't realize it.
[00:09:13] Mike Schill: So that sports entertainment division inside of things we're growing funds as it relates to, to investing specifically for athletes and entertainers. We're doing brand collaborations and product collaborations for athletes and entertainers. Both present and past.
[00:09:31] Mike Schill: So we can provide a streamline to life after sport, because sport is a simulation of life, but life is a bigger game than sport. It's just connecting those dots. Those are the two impacts that we're having, getting people known. And then I have that sole passion from that, from the athlete and entertainment side, just because that's what I come from.
[00:09:50] Harris Kenny: What are your goals for the business? I mean, it sounds like it's something that has a lot of potential.
[00:09:54] Mike Schill: My goal for the business is to be evaluated at 250 million in under five years. We're, we're eight and a half months in, right? I want to sell this thing. I want to dump all that money into the next venture, potentially record label, potentially something within the entertainment space.
[00:10:11] Harris Kenny: What did we not talk about that you've got going on that you wanna talk about? Any advice about salespeople and for salespeople, about your business, anything else like that?
[00:10:20] Mike Schill: The only other thing I would say to sales is you need that. And that is the lifeline and blood of the organization. My mentor and Grant always, always taught us that marketing is senior to sales, and it is. it is 100%.
[00:10:35] Mike Schill: The most important thing you can do for a business is to market and advertise it because it's physically impossible for them to do business with you if they don't have any idea that you exist.
[00:10:44] Mike Schill: But the number one misconception that I see with business owners in all degrees is they invest anything and everything in the marketing and advertising. and then there's no sales process. They don't invest into their salespeople and they get pissed off when the salespeople that are available don't perform at an all time high.
[00:11:05] Mike Schill: There's a reason why the salespeople that are the greatest are not available. It's because they're already making a ton of money somewhere else.
[00:11:13] Mike Schill: If it takes 10 years to get somebody from a four five to a four, three in forty... Every single day, consistent training, for two tenths of a second, then who are you to not think that you're going to have to train a salesperson in the exact same fashion?
[00:11:32] Mike Schill: You gotta invest into your salespeople. They have to be training every single day on the meet, agreed on fact finding, on overcoming objections, on follow up, on leadership training, on management, training on demos, on negotiating. They have to be training on that stuff every single day, like every single day.
[00:11:50] Mike Schill: If that's not in the organization, well then whose fault is it? Because if they knew everything you knew, then they would be a business owner and they wouldn't be working for you.
[00:12:03] Mike Schill: You gotta treat your salespeople like gold. And just because you market and advertise, I mean, you only won half the battle.
[00:12:09] Mike Schill: Now you gotta sell it close 'em. That's what separates the dogs from not the dogs, man. That's what Covid did. You had two types of businesses out there. You had order takers, which ain't sales, which is pretty much like you going to Wendy's and ordering a number four, and then they just deliver it to you.
[00:12:25] Mike Schill: And then you had real businesses that actually had people that knew how to communicate and everybody that was just taking orders got wiped out. And rightfully so, because you didn't have a process in the first place, you didn't have a process in the first place.
[00:12:38] Harris Kenny: Where can people find you online if they want updates and seeing what Mike Schill is doing, where can they go?
[00:12:45] Mike Schill: The same name across the board. It's at Mike, m i k e, and then Schill, S as in Sam, C as in cat h as in hat, like on your head, I l L as in Larry, Larry underscore. You can check that out on Instagram, Twitter, TikTok.
[00:13:03] Mike Schill: You can check out The Full Circle Agency. That's the organization that I run. And anything and everything that you need as relates to marketing and advertising, reach on out and in this little sales game. From an ownership standpoint and what it really takes as far as requirements from a sales standpoint, man, reach on out too, we've got some pretty incredible insight man as relates to that as well.
[00:13:24] Harris Kenny: That's all for now. You can find show notes at intro crm.com/podcast. The theme music for Pipeline Meeting is by Neighbourhood Vandal. If you learned something, consider sharing this show with a friend. Thanks for listening.