How To Build A 7 Figure Sales Team
Transcript and Summary of Podcast:
# How to Build a 7-Figure Sales Team So You Can Get Your Time Back
**Chapter 1: Introduction**
"Are you looking to hire a sales team so you can make more money and work less? Listen up! If you're a coach, consultant, or agency, and you want to hire a sales team of two or more people that are going to work efficiently and be absolute guns in your business so you can actually make more money and get off the phone, then in this podcast interview—which I'm about to splice over—is where it goes through a series of steps that I, as a business owner, had to go through back five years ago when I had no clue about sales scripts, about sales calls, or anything.
"As an introvert, how I made my journey into growing a multiple seven-figure agency with having now a sales team. And so I'll walk you through the exact steps that you need to take in order to have a really good sales team. And it's not just about throwing an ad up there and trying to get some closers in that have been trained by some of the gurus out there. There are steps that you have to take to make sure your business is actually ready in infrastructure beyond the marketing—I'm talking from the sales aspect—so you can actually get A-players into your business that want to stay, that are happy, and can actually thrive in that environment and make multiple seven figures for the entire business.
"So let's splice over to the interview, and I'll walk you through the exact steps that you need to think about in order to grow a really productive and happy team."
---
**Chapter 2: The Interview Begins**
"Andrew has owned several seven-figure businesses and is insanely knowledgeable about many things, but especially sales. So today we're here to have a bit of a chat about how to create a sales machine, a sales system into your business that will allow you to maybe bring on your first salesperson—but when I say salesperson, it could be a broker or an advisor who is also selling—so maybe bring on your first salesperson, or maybe you've already got a few and you want to bring on more.
"So I guess, Andrew, when did this concept of needing a sales system, a sales process, a sales machine pop into your head? Can you tell us about that?"
---
**Chapter 3: Andrew's Journey into Sales**
"Yeah, so for me, I've been in marketing for 10 years. I would say that I think I shifted around 2019 that I wanted to do more high-ticket sales, which required me to be on a sales call, I guess you could say. And I would say that I would be the reluctant business owner, I'm going to call it. And the reason I will say this is because although I was a marketer, what I enjoy is marketing. I enjoy creating funnels; I geek out on the ads and so on. But I say reluctant business owner because I see this so much with my clients as well.
"And what I mean by that is, let's say you're a financial planner; you're good at what you do. But I think a lot of us forget that we're actually not that anymore. Like, you're a financial planning business; you're not that anymore. Me as a marketer, I'm not that anymore. What I actually am is a business owner. And as a business owner, I quickly learned five years ago, in 2019, that I'm responsible as a CEO for marketing, sales, and operations.
"And for me, it looked like that because I was good at marketing; I was good at delivering. I am, by nature, an introvert; I don't even like doing interviews like this. I just like to be in a quiet room and do my thing. But by being a CEO, I had to kind of take responsibility and step into sales. And I really sucked at it. Like, A) I didn't like it; B) if I go back to 2019, I would get onto sales calls and just be an information giver. I'd have these great conversations; I didn't even know how to pivot to ask for the business or how to take—I didn't know anything of that.
"So I guess that's my journey, if we can probably start there, which might take some relevance as to what's needed next, to what developed over the years to build out my own sales team, if you will."
---
**Chapter 4: Realizing the Importance of Sales**
"For sure. Yeah, I think the awareness is the first stage. You know, a lot of people think they're awesome at sales when they're not, which is a problem."
"Yeah, and then a lot of people realize they're not good at sales, but then they don't do anything about it, right? Which is also a problem.
"So I guess for you, when you realized, 'Hey, this sales thing is really...' You knew you wanted to get from here to there, but then when you had that realization that, wow, sales is the key driver or one of the key drivers that's actually going to get me there, what did you—what sort of journey did you go on there? What was the..."
"Yeah, I think people would be interested to know how you've gone from there to now, where you've got a sales team and you're amazing at it—you coach and do all sorts of stuff with sales."
---
**Chapter 5: Building Sales Skills**
"Yeah, I think the first thing I would say is that when you said that a lot of people think they're great at sales, I would say I thought the same thing. And I think a lot of people genuinely believe that because, as a service-based business, they're probably predominantly dealing with referrals.
"And I kind of say to my clients, it's kind of like saying, 'I'm really good with the ladies, but I'm in an arranged marriage.' Like, you didn't have to do anything. Referrals are somebody else vouching for you. You've got instant transference of trust; there is no sales. The referral source did the marketing for you; they found this lead and then they converted them for you by saying, 'Go with this person; they're really good.'
"So I think for a lot of business owners—not wrongly—but they believe they're really good at sales. And I know we get it when we talk with them; they say, 'I've got a really high conversion rate—nine out of ten.' And as soon as they say that to me, I'm like, 'Are you talking about referrals?' Because if you take that same gentleman that might be in an arranged marriage, if you now say to him, 'Okay, go to a bar and approach a lady cold,' how would that conversation go versus an introduction? It's very different.
"And so I think a lot of business owners don't really feel that until they decide to grow outside of their referral base, because that has a cap. Now you want to go to what I call the open market, and the open market is highly skeptical and low trusting. And so compared to referrals, you lose that trust factor.
"So I think a lot of people kind of get punched in the face a bit when they jump into that arena of open market ads, and suddenly either their ego comes up and they go, 'Well, all these leads are bad because I'm really good,' or they have awareness and go, 'Well, I've spoken to 20 people and none of them engaged my service; maybe there's something that I don't know.' And then those ones who have more of a growth mindset have the awareness, and then they can go on that journey like I did: 'How do I fix this?'
"Yes, and you see the people get awareness and they get scared of the rejection and all the rest of it, and then they go back in their shell, and they just sort of stay at this level. And, you know, I see them, you see them, and these are the frustrated business owners that know they need to do something but just don't want to do the hard work, I guess, to step outside their comfort zone and have that rejection.
"And I mean, we see that with referral partners as well, like when they have to generate referral partners out of their existing network. Same thing—people think they're good at building relationships and what we call relationship marketing, but it's not until you have to do that with someone who's a stranger that you really see how good you are.
"So I guess for you, once you did have that realization—because it's so confusing out there—like, where do you go to get education? Because, I mean, you've got YouTube University and you can just binge stuff; you've got paid courses; you've got mentors. What was your sort of journey to uplevel your sales skills?"
"Yep, yep. So I think the first thing that's really important to do if you want to grow your business is that, as the business owner, you've really got to validate this yourself first. And what I mean by that is you have to go to the open market—let's say ads where you're attracting strangers—and you, as the business owner, have to kind of create the playbook first.
"Now, before you create a playbook, you have to be able to validate that you can convert people into clients. And so you've got a couple of options. You've got, you know, the old YouTube University—I mean, that's the free stuff. So you've got to maybe find some videos you can watch, get your hands on a sales script, and kind of learn a bit about what the process looks like. And it's not what people think. A lot of people hear scripts and they think about having to sit there and read something, and that's not the case.
"I mean, we can watch a movie and be emotionally moved by an actor into laughing or crying, and it's a script. But they're using tonality, pace—they know how to have adopted that script for their own authenticity to bring it through. And so I think if you think about a sales script, it's more about having a process that you need to discover and learn on how you can speak to someone and just have a heart-to-heart conversation, really—human to human—and just be able to identify what is the problem that they're having or what is their unfulfilled desire.
"And then you've got to be able to have a conversation with them in a way to uncover more of the root cause of what's going on, what's holding them back—not just mechanically but even psychologically. And then you've kind of got to figure out where they want to go to have that gap.
"And then I guess you've also got to understand from your own perspective, ethically, what you offer—can you get them from A to B? And if you can, then you can share that with them and invite them to do business. And there's a whole process around how to do that in a way, because there's a lot of stuff going on that's beyond just the mechanics of it, but the human psychology that you're dealing with. And you've got to be able to do that in a really nice, effortless, enjoyable way for the prospect, but also yourself.
"And so I would say you either have to go down the deep dive of the internet, of YouTube and so on, or as a business owner you can shortcut that, because, you know, either way you're paying with time or money, and time can be more expensive. And I would say the journey that I took—I got myself one-on-one coaching in sales. And as I said, I was reluctant to it because I don't enjoy doing calls all day because it takes energy away from me; I'm not an extrovert. But I knew I had to learn it in order to elevate my business. And so I had to go down that path and do that and create a playbook."
---
**Chapter 6: The Danger of Outsourcing Sales Too Early**
"Yeah, I agree. And I think the key point you made at the start, which I think misses a lot of business owners—you need to build it out yourself. Like, even if you hate sales, it's so risky—and, I mean, you've seen people like this as well, Andrew—who bring on a sales guru or whatever they might be, or someone who's good at sales, and then you bring them into your business. I mean, sounds good, right? But you bring them into your business and you go, 'Here, sales rep, build me my sales machine now.' Do you want to talk about why that's dangerous to get someone else?"
"Absolutely. I guess an easy way for me to explain this is it'd be like me being head of surgery in a hospital, and I'm going to bring in surgeons to work underneath me, and I have no idea whether these surgeons are doing a good job or bad job because I have no experience in it. So how can I lead them? How can I be the mentor to them and manage them? How do I even know whether they're doing a good job or killing people?
"You have to have a foundational understanding of sales and the processes. And especially you, as the business owner—you know your business very intimately, and you should be selling the best because you're the founder, right? People are going to have most trust in speaking to the CEO.
"So you need to have that; otherwise, I think if you've got nothing in place—and this is what I also see sometimes, business people, and this happened to me also a few years ago, which I'll share in a moment—if you don't have anything validated and you're just hiring a salesperson, A) if you get the A-player coming in and there's no playbook, no onboarding, no scripts, no calls to be able to review to actually know what they have to adapt themselves to, they're going to immediately bounce because they're a high performer.
"So who stays? It's the C-type players who could not care less; they're happy to collect their weekly paycheck. And now you're abdicating your responsibility and saying, 'Well, you build it for me.' They don't know your business, so where do they get the information from? And then it becomes a vicious cycle of this is all just terrible."
---
**Chapter 7: Validating Your Sales System**
"But really, yeah, and this is where you hear the situation—and any business owner out here that runs ads—they see those types of salespeople. What do you hear from them? 'The leads are terrible. You know, if you got me better quality leads, I'd be making the sales.' And the challenge is, if you haven't done the selling before, you can't hold them accountable; there's no way for you to know whether they're telling the truth or not. And that's really—"
"Well, there's a couple of things going on. You haven't validated it yet, so you don't actually know what the conversion should be. You've got no metrics to manage. There's no call recordings of yourself that you could give them so they understand how to approach all of this.
"But, you know, I think this idea of the leads being bad—because, you know, I'm going to play both sides here and go, they could be bad. However, you might have ten leads you've spoken with, and you could say the leads are bad, and I could say, 'Possibly.' But if you've spoken to 20, 30, or 40, or 50, that becomes a statistical significance where, hang on, you've spoken to 50, 60, 70, 80—are you telling me you've hit the jackpot that you've attracted 80 bad appointments? Like, there comes a time where the excuses run out, and then there has to be this facing of the truth of maybe it's you.
"Which is why, once again, sounding like a broken record, you've got to validate the sales system so that you know at appointment 30, this is approximately how many people should have gone through to a strategy call, to a contract, whatever your next stages are. You've got an idea that people are progressing and the numbers make sense based on your experience."
---
**Chapter 8: Building Sales Assets**
"So let's—you touched on another good point, which is assets, sales assets, right? So it's kind of like, I guess, building a foundation of a house; you need some certain things in place before you can start to actually build the house, right? So what, for you in your mind, are the assets to create that sales house that you can actually build on and it's not going to be shaky and fall over?"
"Yeah, again, I'm a good example of what not to do, because I went through this process as well. So I, years ago, went through the process of doing all the sales coaching and getting really good at it and converting high. And then I approached a sales recruitment company, and I got some really good advice from the CEO. I went, 'Look, I want to hire a salesperson so I can buy back my time, work more on the business.' Makes sense, because I was doing a lot of sales calls.
"And he just said to me straight out, 'You're not ready. I will not even give you an A-player,' because he goes, 'Everything's in your head. What are we going to do with getting this top performer in?' And so he sent me away, and I went again on a 12-month journey, I think, roughly, where I kept selling but I also very slowly started building out—and by the way, I took the long road; you can do this very quickly—it was more of a choice at that time. But I went down the path of, okay, you need to have a library of your winning calls that you're doing so you can share them with somebody else so they can, you know, mirror you and adapt to that, have a solid sales script in place, have an onboarding process in place.
"You need to have a way for them to have sales trackers, a good CRM. You've got to be able to teach them how to take notes, how to put in tasks, how to do good follow-up. What does that process look like? You need to have in place sales trackers so you can also monitor that, and also end-of-day reports.
"Because I really view sales—if you look at a business and you've got marketing, sales, and operations—I look at the sales aspect like a sports team; it's performance-based. And with performance comes, you know, the state of mind, the energy. Like, sales reps—you've got to coach them daily. And that's one thing that you need to kind of transition as a business owner: first you're the player, the salesperson, then you probably transition to player-coach, and then, obviously, coach. And you need to be able to coach them every morning, even if it's just for 10, 20 minutes. I still do that with my sales team now.
"You can eventually buy back your time and send one of your sales team into player-coach, but a lot of people make the mistake—they put something in place and then leave them be. And this is not one area—I mean, you should obviously do all areas—but one area where you've almost got to, I find in my experience, you've got to coach them daily, even if you just have quick huddles in the morning and then maybe have a longer one during the week where you do role plays and all those sort of things. And you get into this rhythm, momentum, for them to be able to come to you as the sales manager that they can trust in, that you know what you're talking about, and you can help them overcome either their own state of mind or what they are going through—because you're going to have to deal with that—and also the mechanical side of how to overcome objections or how to fix something that's come up and how to go through that. They need that. And if you can't provide that, it's not going to be a good environment for them."
---
**Chapter 9: Managing and Supporting Your Sales Team**
"100% agree. And it's even more important if you've got a remote team, right? Because you need to get a read on the salesperson. So much of sales is confidence, right? Like, just believing it, and it's energy transfer between the salesperson and the other person. And if they're off by a small percentage, it's going to significantly affect their conversion rates. And sometimes they don't even realize it's happening, but if you're catching up with them every day, you can see stuff and you can help them correct so that you don't get in a situation where it's been a couple weeks and sales have been really down and you've got no idea, right, where it's just literally in their head.
"Love it. Now, one good way that I found to manage that—yeah, so we use Slack, and every afternoon the sales reps put in an EOD, an end-of-day report. It's just a series of questions; it takes them five minutes that they just give a brief summary of the calls they had, and they've got to kind of tell me where they got stuck on the call. But they also have to rate themselves on their physiology, on their energy, inspiration, and it gives me a good temp check how they're feeling. And it's something that comes in in the afternoon, and it sets me up for an 8:00 a.m., 30-minute meeting. We're going to have a chat."
"They fill it out?"
"Do they fill it out? Because I've tried that with mine—sales rep. I've only got one salesperson, and I think I might have been asking too many questions. I think I had like ten questions on there, and it got—they weren't—I think they were just going through the motions with it. Like, how many questions do you ask, and how accurate do you find it is?"
"I will say a couple of things. Sales reps—the type of people you attract are usually not the best with paperwork. Like, you've got, for example, on the operational side, your client success managers, if you're service-based, they're much better with attention to detail, doing notes. Sales reps, if they're true sales kind of rep nature, they just want to have a chat and do it; they don't necessarily want to do paperwork.
"So, again, having daily meetings, it's kind of like really conveying to them why I need it. It helps me to get a read, so I give them a reason why. I say, 'Look, it sets up our call for the next day. If I sense something where you feel that you got stuck, we can address it the next morning, even do a quick role play on it, give you some feedback.' And so I think over time, when a lot of it wasn't done—and it's not always exact, so I'll have to kind of manage that—but then I understand, and I actually find it useful for them to be able to come the next morning and go, 'I got stuck here,' because I already know what's going on.
"Now, sometimes, you know, if you're paying someone commission, let's say bonuses, if you've got a rep that really is just not putting the EODs, you've got some options. You can say, 'Listen, if you keep not doing them, first of all, try and find out why and have a bit of a dig and understand, and, you know, can you come to an agreement?' But if they're a repeat offender, well, you can essentially say to someone, 'Listen, I'll take you off the rotator,' meaning the calendar, for a few days so you can catch up on paperwork. And so sometimes there's the carrot and sometimes there's the stick.
"But I've found what works best for me is just to have a heart-to-heart to first of all understand why it's happening, but also for them to understand how that's helping me and the company. Because if they understand that it also impacts them, and that they're getting some value out of the EODs by the next morning for me to be able to discuss what's going on in their life but also on those calls, it's highly valuable to them as well."
---
**Chapter 10: Role Plays vs. Call Reviews**
"I hear so—call reviews. So for people listening, call reviews are obviously where you listen to a call, a recorded phone call, Zoom call, and you give feedback, versus role-playing. What do you see is the purpose of each of those, and which one—do you do one of them more than the other with your guys?"
"Yeah, I definitely would do more role plays than call reviews. I don't—and that might not be a great thing—I don't necessarily do a lot of call reviews. I actually don't really want them to watch a lot of their own calls, because I would rather them watch their winning calls.
"So I get my guys, if they have a really good call—and it doesn't even matter if they got a 'no' at the end—a great call for me is following the process. And if you do that well enough, ethically and with authenticity, that you just have a good call and you're able to add some value for someone, whether they went ahead or not, that for me is a great call. Now, if they come on board, that's a great win and they feel great.
"Then I want them to create a folder and put those calls in there; let's say they've got ten winning calls in there. The reason behind it is this: imagine if you're a sales rep and you've just had three successful calls in the morning. How pumped would you be to take your fourth call in the afternoon? The momentum.
"So one thing that I like them to do in the morning before our meeting is to watch a couple of those calls, even just parts of it, so their brain locks into how they showed up on that call. They were obviously in the pocket; they had good energy; they were congruent. It kind of tricks their brain into, you know, that feeling of starting the day and feeling like they've already had a couple of wins, and then just keep that momentum going.
"On the flip side, if you get them to review their bad calls, it can start to calibrate their brain for that, so I don't want to do that."
"Interesting. Yeah, it was more you listening, doing call reviews of them and critiquing them, but I love what you said then. Are they listening to them every single day? Are they listening to positive—?"
"No, they should; they don't, let's be real. There's a lot going on. But I do remind them, especially if I see things go a little bit—the momentum's a little bit lost—I'll just immediately push them straight back: 'Listen, just do something good in the morning. Go for a walk, start your day nice, feel good. You've got to feel good,' right? I'm not saying, you know, the whole pump-up thing. Just look after yourself, get a good night's sleep, you know, all those sort of things. Like, just—that's the first thing that we want to address when things go off, physiology-wise.
"But then it is important, if they can listen to their calls every morning, even if they're just going for a walk and listening to it on their phone with the earpiece in, you know, just a snippet of it—they don't have to listen to the whole call, just five, ten minutes—it just calibrates you. If you want to be a high performer, this is what it takes."
---
**Chapter 11: Conviction and Confidence in Sales**
"What are the things they notice when they listen to their calls? Is it when they're in the pocket? Is it the tone? Is it the energy? Is it the words? Like, what are the key things—I don't know whether you've ever asked them—but what would you say were the key things that they should be picking up when they hear themselves in the pocket, so to speak?"
"Conviction."
"Conviction."
"Yes. So this brings up another point. It's really important—the sales rep that works for you—first of all, it goes without saying, as a business, that you've got a good fulfillment process and that you deliver really good results for the clients. Your sales reps feed off that.
"It's like when you're talking to a friend, and your friend's doing the wrong thing, and you 100% know passionately that they should be doing ABC. You can talk to them all day long to convince them because your passion's coming through that this is what they need to do. It's the same with the sales rep. If they 100% believe—and that's why it's also important when we have team meetings, the client success managers share wins, and these sales reps hear those wins, and they're like, 'I signed that person up; oh, they got a result; oh, that's amazing'—the conviction.
"So now when they're talking to a client of ours that's stuck, they're in pain, they're stressed, coupled with the conviction of the sales rep that, 'Dude, this will fix your problem,' and they 100% in themselves believe it, they come across very different than if they feel like they're peddling something that they don't really believe in and they're just chasing a commission."
"So true. It's huge."
"So doing all these things stuck together with this huge amount of conviction, which as a byproduct gives you more confidence, more energy, and everything else."
"I love that. Love that."
---
**Chapter 12: Starting Steps and Final Advice**
"Cool. So I guess last question: people may be feeling a little bit overwhelmed now with all of these things if they're sort of towards the start of their journey, and they're like, 'You know, I need to do something about this sales thing. I'm the guy or girl doing the selling, and I really want to grow the business and get off the tools, so to speak, and bring someone under me.' If you're going to break it down, what would be the first, say, three things they should focus on doing, just to—in manageable steps?"
"I think—okay, so let's just assume they're already running ads and they've already validated—no, I'm going to step back. I'm going right back to the fact that they're the person taking the calls, right? So they're wanting to bring on a salesperson."
"Yeah, okay. So they haven't—okay, well, let's talk about both. Let's talk about the unvalidated funnel, and then let's talk about the validated one."
"Okay. All right. I think the first step I would say to someone is start recording your strategy calls. A lot of business owners I speak with, they go on the Zoom but they don't record. And then I get pushback; they go, 'Oh, my client, they don't want to be recorded.' But that's usually—that's just a story you're telling yourself. Is it a fact?"
"So true."
"Because in every call we do, it's recorded, and nobody ever says anything. I think I've had one in all my years that said, 'Turn it off.' And I'm like, 'Yep, no problems,' turn it off, and just continue the conversation. Big deal.
"So I'd say first step is start recording your sales calls that you're having, you know, especially the ones where you're getting a win. As a second step, I would say is do you have a sales script? Start getting your hands on one. Start looking at some sales trainers online; there's different ones. You know, you've got your Grant Cardone, you've got your Steve Gordon, you've got your Jeremy Miner. Watch some of those and just see what resonates with your personality that you like.
"And then from there, do a little bit of a deep dive and start picking up some things. And then maybe I would say from there, investigate, you know, what courses do they have? Invest in some of those and start improving your own game.
"Look, the byproduct is you're just going to really increase your own revenue because you're going to close better and everything else. So—and then from there, once you've got some recordings and you've started creating a bit of a script—so get out of your head what's there and have a script—you're on your way to creating a bit of a playbook. So at minimum, record your calls, start getting some training. If you've got the financial resources, get one-on-one coaching; it's going to fast-track everything. And have a script built out. That's the bare minimum: recordings, a validated script. I think that those are the foundations I would work on. Knowing your own conversions before you can start thinking about bringing somebody else in."
"Yeah, yeah, I think that's probably answered my question, and I would 100% agree with that. And it's probably the highest ROI spend you could ever do is obviously investing in yourself, but more specifically investing in sales, because there's an immediate return on investment there. You know, it's an absolute no-brainer to invest in sales training. You'll never regret it."
"I will say this: I'm a good example of someone that doesn't like sales, but strangely enough, it's probably become one of my strong points now because I've had to go down that rabbit hole and learn it. And sometimes when people say, 'It's not what I want to do,' and all those sort of things, then really what they're talking about is their feelings. And I love a quote by Mike Tyson where he says, 'If you want to be successful, you have to train your mind to be greater than your feelings.'
"So I would say to anyone that's listening, if you don't want to do it, no one cares. If you want to grow your business, you need to kind of know how to manage your thoughts and feelings and overcome that to do what's necessary, not what you like. And that's what I had to do, and I'm a great example of not liking sales, and I just had to go down that, and I don't regret a moment because it's made me a better communicator at the end of the day."
"Love that. That's the perfect way to finish, I think. So thank you, Andrew, for coming on and telling us about your sales journey and educating us on the steps to take to build that sales machine into your business, man."
"Thank you."
"Pleasure. Good to chat."
---