DGS 295: Do These Things Before Hiring a Sales Setter in Your Property Management Business

Recently, Sarah was working with a BDM (salesperson) who believed she was ready to hire a sales setter to help with some of the sales outreach and follow up.

In this episode of the #DoorGrowShow, property management growth experts Jason and Sarah Hull discuss how to know when you need to hire a sales setter and things you can do to increase your sales volume without one.

You’ll Learn

[00:43] The Importance of Having Sales Metrics and Data 

[05:45] Setting Your Salesperson Up for Success

[07:57] More Volume = More Results

[09:47] The Two Main Components of Sales

Quotables

“There are certain things that we’re gauging all the time in our business, but I think sales has to be probably number one.”

“ You have a BDM and they’re good at sales and you have them doing anything other than sales, you are making a very stupid mistake because that’s the lifeblood of the business.”

“Just do more of the things that you should be doing and you’ll get more results.”

“If something’s not working, you just got to not tolerate it.”

Resources

DoorGrow and Scale Mastermind

DoorGrow Academy

DoorGrow on YouTube

DoorGrowClub

DoorGrowLive

Transcript

[00:00:00] Sarah: I bet you, you can just get more results by doing more work, which means stop doing the other things that you’re doing.

[00:00:05] Sarah: Just do more of the things that you should be doing and you’ll get more results. And then you can probably don’t even need to pay a setter.

[00:00:12] Jason: We are Jason and Sarah Hull, the owners of DoorGrow, the world’s leading and most comprehensive coaching and consulting firm for long-term residential property management entrepreneurs. And we’re going to keep this episode a little brief, so I’m going to skip some of our intro. At DoorGrow, we are on a mission to transform property management business owners and their businesses.

[00:00:31] Jason: We want to transform the industry, eliminate the bs, build awareness, change the perception, expand the market, and help the best property management entrepreneurs win. Now let’s get into the show. 

[00:00:41] Jason: Alright. What are we chatting about today? 

[00:00:43] Sarah: Alright. I wanted to talk about this just because I think it happens a lot in business and we have to just kind of gauge, right? So there are certain things that we’re gauging all the time in our business, but I think sales has to be probably number one. So one of our clients had asked me last week on the scale call she’s a BDM, so she does all the sales and she said, “Hey, we are actually thinking about hiring an appointment setter. And they will kind of help with a lot of the outbound calls and you know, the follow up and the scheduling and you know, rescheduling any appointments and just kind of like staying on top of things and making sure that everything is being tracked and, you know, moving forward and doing a whole bunch of outbound calls.”

[00:01:36] Sarah: That’s really what setters do is they just sit and call all day long. Yeah. So she says, “yeah, we’re thinking about hiring this sales setter, and I want to know what you think about it.” So the first thing I did is I was like, okay, if you actually need a sales setter, then like, here’s the Rdoc and that’s great.

[00:01:56] Sarah: Like, we would hire a sales setter… 

[00:01:58] Jason: which is a job description for those unfamiliar. 

[00:02:00] Sarah: Yes. So we would hire a sales setter the same way that we would hire A BDM. Mm-hmm. I always recommend going through the DoorGrow Hiring process, but before we really dig into the hiring piece is we should first figure out is this actually something that you need right now?

[00:02:16] Sarah: So one of the tools that we have for our clients in our client workbook is a sales tracker, and I happened to pull up the sales tracker for them just out of curiosity. And lucky for me, she had actually filled it out. So my one recommendation is for whoever is doing sales, and if it’s multiple people, then that’s fine. Multiple people need to then fill out the sales tracker. So fill out the sales tracker at the end of every single day. This is like your end of day report. 

[00:02:42] Sarah: If you have two BDMs, then they both need to be doing it. If you have a, BDM and a setter, they both need to be doing it. It doesn’t matter.

[00:02:50] Sarah: Every single sales person needs to be filling out and submitting their own data and metrics. So I said, well, let me look through your sales tracker. Now, she did not have it filled out consistently every day. There were some days that she had it filled out. There were some days that were not filled out.

[00:03:07] Sarah: And then there were some days that had pretty solid data, and there were some days that had like, you know, “I did three to four hours,” or “I did, you know, six to eight appointments.” Well, is it six, is it seven or is it eight? So don’t give me like the range, give me the actual raw data. So I was looking through this, and even with the data that she had in there, I was able to kind of make an assessment.

[00:03:31] Sarah: I said, “listen, if this was my business, I would not be, at this point in time, I would not be looking at hiring a sales setter. The reason being is that with the resources that we currently have, which is A BDM, what we need to do is just turn up the volume for the BDM. And once that BDM is totally maxed out, then we can look to see, hey, do we actually need some additional support?

[00:03:59] Sarah: And that might be a sales setter. So what I was noticing, and now she’s a newer hire. She’s been there only a few months and she’s doing a great job so far. So. The early on data, she was still in training and onboarding and learning and kind of testing and figuring things out. And you could see that as you go down the list, the later the date, the better results that she was getting.

[00:04:24] Sarah: So in the very beginning, she was maybe doing like half an hour or 45 minutes a day, and later on in the list she was doing, you know, one to two hours and then she was doing three to four hours. And then she tends to do about four hours a day on average now. And then same thing with phone calls.

[00:04:41] Sarah: You know, she would do, you know, a couple of phone calls in the beginning and then later on down in the data you would see, hey, she was doing more phone calls, she was getting, doing more time. She was doing more phone calls. She was setting more appointments, and therefore some things were starting to close.

[00:04:58] Sarah: But what I could also see is that she is not fully maxed out. 

[00:05:01] Jason: Right. 

[00:05:01] Sarah: So if we have a BDM who is full-time, meaning at least 30, maybe even 40 hours a week, and they’re doing four hours per day, that’s like 20 hours a week. So that’s like part-time BDM work. Yeah. So then what is happening with the rest of the time?

[00:05:18] Sarah: So I said, “first of all, anything that you are doing at all that does not have to do with sales, cut it out immediately. Stop it. If you’re on like client success meetings, because the property manager was also on that call.” Yeah. So, and I know that they work in tandem. They work as a team, which is really great.

[00:05:34] Sarah: Like the team culture there is fantastic. But when you’re dragging the salespeople into the customer service side. 

[00:05:42] Jason: Big mistake. 

[00:05:43] Sarah: You’re costing yourself so much money. 

[00:05:45] Jason:  I want to comment on that just real quick. I mean, everybody listening, if you have anybody in your organization that’s good at sales, whether it’s you that should be doing the sales and you don’t have anyone else to do it, and you’re the business owner, or you have a BDM and they’re good at sales and you have them doing anything other than sales, you are making a very stupid mistake because that’s the lifeblood of the business. They feed the business, they pay everybody else’s salary. They’re the only people that bring money, fresh money into the business. And they should not be dabbling as a property manager. They should not be dabbling as a leasing agent. They should not be dabbling or picking up slack for anybody else.

[00:06:27] Jason: No. Hire other people if you need to, but get your salesperson spending full time spending their time on sales if they’re good and they will make you a lot of money. And having them do anything else is a massive waste of a resource. 

[00:06:40] Sarah: Absolutely. I’ve said it like this before, if you have a star quarterback on a football team, do you want that quarterback doing any other, like playing any other position?

[00:06:50] Jason: I like that analogy. 

[00:06:51] Sarah: Do you want them kicking? Do you want them walking? Do you want them to be a tight end? 

[00:06:54] Jason: No, there’d be dumb. No. 

[00:06:56] Sarah: Why? Why on earth would you do that? No. If I’ve got somebody who can hurl that ball with pinpoint precision and accuracy to any spot on the field at will…

[00:07:08] Jason: don’t make them a kicker.

[00:07:09] Sarah: I got to preserve that resource. And then I’m like, that’s literally the only thing you’re going to do. 

[00:07:14] Jason: The kickers, kick. That’s all the kickers do. The kickers do one thing. They just kick the ball’s. That’s it, and they’re not used very often. Like, it would be ridiculous to say, “you know what, kicker, why don’t you also occasionally be our backup quarterback?”

[00:07:26] Jason: Like, you’re second string now. Like, it just, it doesn’t make sense. If he could be a quarterback, he would not be a kicker. 

[00:07:32] Sarah: Right. 

[00:07:33] Jason: Yeah. 

[00:07:33] Sarah: Yeah. So I said, anything that you’re doing that is not sales, stop it immediately. Like today. Don’t stop it. Monday. Stop it today. Okay. That’s it, period. That’s number one.

[00:07:43] Sarah: Then number two, we need to just get more time out of you. So if you’re doing, you know, four hours a day, what’s the rest of your time being spent doing? So we just needed, we need to spend more time and then we just need to increase the number of calls. So she actually happens to be in my accountability group. So that call was Friday. Every Monday, we have a telegram group that it’s real quick, it’s just an accountability group. We set a personal goal and a professional goal for the upcoming week, and then we give updates on the previous week. And her goal for monday, like this past Monday was to do a minimum of 100 calls per day after our call on Friday.

[00:08:24] Sarah: Which is awesome because I said, “you have to increase the volume. Yeah. So that you can get more results. And then once we have the volume increased so much that you cannot add anymore. You are absolutely maxed out. You can’t add more time without, you know, working like 80 hours a week.

[00:08:40] Sarah: We can’t add more time. We can’t do more calls. We can’t possibly like squeeze any more, you know, blood from the stone. Now I know you’re maxed out. Now it might make sense to look at either hiring another BDM or hiring a setter. 

[00:08:55] Jason: Yeah. 

[00:08:55] Sarah: But right now, you are not maxed out. All you need to do is just increase your volume so that you can get more results, because I bet you, you can just get more results by doing more work, which means stop doing the other things that you’re doing.

[00:09:06] Sarah: Just do more of the things that you should be doing and you’ll get more results. And then you can probably don’t even need to pay a setter. 

[00:09:14] Jason: Yeah. So we have three setters. Yesterday they made 200 calls between the three of them. And they each booked… on a Monday…. they each… yeah, on a Monday, which is hard for property manager, for property managers. 

[00:09:24] Sarah: Come on.

[00:09:24] Jason: And they each booked a one appointment, which is pretty good. But that’s a lot of calls. And we have a lot of other growth engines installed at DoorGrow, but we’re getting almost 300 calls a day. And we’ll probably add some more setters, but like, we’re doing outreach and so this is the game.

[00:09:41] Jason: This is the game. And if you’re not putting in the numbers, but you’re like, “maybe it’s not working,” you don’t get the game. Yeah. 

[00:09:47] Sarah: So my big thing is there’s two things. There are two main components of sales, and almost every single, if not every single problem that you have in sales. It all boils down to one of these two things I can almost guarantee it.

[00:10:02] Sarah: One is volume, and two is AB testing. That’s all sales is, and if you fix your volume and you AB test everything to optimize for best results, you will never have a sales problem. 

[00:10:15] Jason: Yeah. 

[00:10:15] Sarah: So that’s what we figure out here at DoorGrow, how to have people optimize, AB testing and volume. And that’s why our clients can get the results that they’re able to.

[00:10:26] Sarah: That’s why our clients can get results that other people aren’t able to. They’re like, oh, I’m doing like all these calls. I’m doing all this stuff. Yeah, but you’re not doing it. Either you’re not doing enough or you’re not AB testing the right way. And you’re not using the right strategies.

[00:10:38] Sarah: Yeah. I mean everything. Like, listen, I can give you a list of, you know, a thousand people and you can call them your way and we can call them our way and we’ll get better results. Why? Because we’ve AB tested everything. Yeah. So it’s always, it’s either volume or AB testing. Yeah.

[00:10:51] Sarah: Those two things. And you will never have a sales problem again. 

[00:10:55] Jason: If something’s not working, you just got to not tolerate it. That’s the problem, is at each stage there’s things that are not working if you’re not getting deals, and if you don’t change what’s not working and you keep doing it the same way, you’re going to keep getting the same result. And so this is what we coach on. We’re like, cool. You need to fix that step now, this step in the pipeline, now this step. And until you get everything dialed in, it’s not really working. But once you get the whole growth engine built out, it’s all unclogged, the water’s flowing, then you’re making money.

[00:11:25] Jason: And that’s why I say it’s the last 10% of getting things dialed in that gives you 90% of the results. All right. 

[00:11:31] Sarah: All right. 

[00:11:31] Jason: Okay, so if you felt stuck or stagnant and want to take your property management business to the next level, reach out to us at doorgrow.com. You can also join our free community at doorgrowclub.com, our Facebook group.

[00:11:43] Jason: And if you found this even a little bit helpful, help us out. Don’t forget to subscribe. Leave us a review. We’d really appreciate it. And until next time, remember, the slowest path to growth is to do it alone. So let’s grow together. Bye everyone.