How to Hire Construction Business Developers Who Win Large Commercial Projects

0:00You guys are going to love this episode. It's all about how to hire, develop, and retain business development professionals in your construction company. Comfortability discussing money.

0:12Neal Glatt: And if you take a salesperson who's only ever sold contracts that are under a million dollars or under$500 ,000, and all of a sudden they get into a$5 million,$100 million project, they can start to freak out. whether they be people with industry experience or without industry experience. My guest is an expert as far as that's concerned. If you have strong will to sell and strong sales DNA and strong tactics and no industry knowledge, then we can teach you the industry knowledge. And if you have strong industry knowledge, but no interest in sales and no sales DNA, you will always fail and it's not teachable.

0:51His name is Neil Galat, and there's so much value packed into this episode that I encourage you to listen very carefully to it.

1:01Neal Glatt: You're staying along some time, but my playbook is that we're going to only spend five minutes together. I'm trying to be professionally disagreeable. I'm trying to be just a little tough and giving them a shelf where they can break in. And then immediately use and apply what you learned to help you to identify, hire, develop, and retain killer business development people who are able to win you projects with the right clients in the right locations. And that will really help to increase the profitability and success of your construction company. Ooh, I promised a lot. But we are going to deliver right now on Construction Genius.

1:42This is Eric Anderton, and you're listening to Construction Genius, a leadership masterclass. Thomas Edison said that genius is 1 % inspiration and 99 % perspiration. If you're a construction leader, you know all about the perspiration, and this show is all about the 1 % inspiration that you can add to your hard work to help you to improve your leadership.

2:11Neil, welcome to Construction Genius.

2:13Neal Glatt: Thank you for having me. I'm glad to have you because you are an expert in helping construction companies source, hire, and develop salespeople. And so I just want to dive right in here. What's one mistake construction companies make over and over when hiring people to sell big projects? Yeah, well, they tend to fixate on one thing that they think is important for some companies or hiring managers. that's money-driven or extrinsically motivated salespeople. For others, it's competitiveness, or it's like D1 athlete experience, or my favorite, the worst one, industry experience. You have to know the industry to succeed here.

2:53Neal Glatt: And when we say any of those things, they're all good on their own, Eric, right? Like those are valuable traits to have, but they're not the whole story when it comes to salespeople. And so I would say taking a narrow view what sales success would look like or sales potential would look like. We use an assessment when we screen salespeople and we have over 220 data points that we're looking at. Motivation is one of them for sure. Industry knowledge is one of them for sure. But there's a couple hundred others that we believe are also important with big projects, particularly comfortability discussing money.

3:30Neal Glatt: And if you take a salesperson who's only ever sold contracts that are under a million dollars or under$500 ,000, and all of a sudden they get into a$5 million,$100 million project, they can start to freak out because they're not comfortable with that level of money. So there's lots of ways it can go wrong. And we got to make sure we check every box. It's a little bit like buying a car, a used car, and taking it for a test drive and saying, hey, this feels good. But then you get the 160 at whatever point inspection a mechanic does, and you see all these other things that are important that you can't tell from that test drive.

4:07Neal Glatt: And so relying on just an interview and looking for a couple of specific things is where we think construction companies tend to really go south. Okay. I'd like to explore the industry experience because working with my clients, sometimes I'll bring in a BD person and that person doesn't have a lot of experience. Yeah. And what happens is that person is in front of a prospect and they don't hear what someone with experience hears and therefore they miss opportunities, right? Yes, of course. I know that's obvious. So how heavily do you weigh industry experience in your process? Well, it depends on the firm and the sale, right?

4:45Neal Glatt: Yeah. So if everybody listening to this, you all have unique sales processes and prospects where for some of you, that's super, super important. And if you lean into HVAC or like clean room construction, like you got to be on point with that type of stuff. And if you're, you know, a different component of the supply chain or maybe it's just not quite as important, that technical knowledge. For sure, we want people to be educated and to know it. We just think it's easier to teach them the industry than it is to teach somebody who knows the industry sales if they don't have, say, money tolerance like we talked about or decisiveness or a drive or commitment to do things.

5:22Neal Glatt: And so we expect that if you hire a really awesome business developer who does not have industry experience, that you would put them through a fairly considerable onboarding. Maybe you ship them out to some of your vendors who have schools and type of stuff for a couple of weeks. Maybe they do a bunch of job shadowing. Maybe even for, I don't know, for six months, 12 months on the job, they're accompanied by a senior sales rep or even a project manager who gets paired up with them. And so if I'm representing a construction company, I don't know the first thing about construction. Give me a project manager who knows this stuff.

5:58Neal Glatt: Let them listen for those things and let me work on the client discovery and building trust report because that's my specialty, my skill set. Right. It seems that that's where a lot of construction companies fail with business development is hires because I don't think they set their expectations appropriately for how long it's going to take to ramp someone up and what they should expect in terms of ROI on their investment in them within a certain period of time. Do you find that a lot? We do. Yeah. And we spend a lot of time talking about that. What is a reasonable amount of time? What does the the onboarding look, because it's so important.

6:33Neal Glatt: And we've had this experience where we've placed somebody, by the way, we don't recruit, we just help people assess, but they've hired somebody with, with some of our guidance and they go, man, you know, this person was supposed to be awesome. And they passed your test and they answer all the interview questions. And you said that you thought they would do a good job. And those are all true things. Right. And then they don't, they wash out for some reason. And, you know, sometimes it's like, yeah, they were a great candidate until you hired them and expected them to just be a superstar on their own.

7:05Neal Glatt: And I think what is important here is that everybody needs a coach, right? And if you look at your favorite pro athlete, the superstars, they have coaches, even though they're the best in the world at what they do. And I have a sales coach and I send my salespeople to sales coaching who aren't me, even though I do sales coaching, because you need someone to help you along the way. If we could really hire amazing salespeople and they just were awesome, sales management as a job in an industry wouldn't exist. Just like project managers are essential. You only need them because the individual guys on the ground need that level of support.

7:42Neal Glatt: It's not that they're bad. It's that nobody can be that good, right? Yeah, it's interesting. How can an owner tell if they have a sales process problem or a people problem? And I ask this because I think a lot of construction companies don't really think in terms of putting together a sales process. They kind of hire someone and send them out to some networking events or tell them to go bang on some doors. And then, you know, again, they throw up their hands six months to a year later when nothing happens. Yeah. Yeah. So oftentimes there's room for improvement on both sides. And it's a little hard for us to distinguish that kind of, you know, without our test, which is why we have it.

8:20Neal Glatt: Right. We wouldn't do it if it wasn't insightful. But I would say this, if you cannot write down your sales process on a piece of paper with stages and steps, not what you do, not like I attend these events, but the actual stages and steps that you follow. And when done well, it would sound like outreach to prospects and or ask for referrals could be a type of that. And then we qualify the opportunity. And here's the things that we qualify them on. Eric, I know that you talk about right place, right job, right budget. And so qualify on those items and explain what they are. And then you have a set of series and steps that you follow, which consistently result in sales.

9:01Neal Glatt: Not always could be 20%, 10%, regardless of the post rate, but there's a consistency that's predictable. Then you probably don't have a process problem, but that's a big ask. And very few people have that, right? Particularly in construction, because the opportunities can be so long. You could be talking years and years of pipeline age, depending on where in this industry you work. And when you have a people problem, rather than a process problem, we tend to hear mistakes. So this is an experience I have. I was near you geographically in California a couple of weeks ago, and I interviewed several business developers working on the same team.

9:44Neal Glatt: this organization has a process problem because they have no process and so we know that now the question is do we also have a people problem right so we're not getting enough for sales results we've identified we have a process problem two of the reps i don't believe are a people problem because when i asked them about their sales they described lots of activity and a certain level of frustration with the lack of results, but very much like I'm trying to do this more often. I want to find a way to say this better. I'm hoping you can help me navigate this more. That's a process problem, not a person problem.

10:21Neal Glatt: There was one rep and they're a person problem. And the way I know that is because he was equally frustrated by the lack of results, but he was very quick to make excuses. And so he would say something like, I didn't get that deal, but our Google reviews sucked. And they said that in the sales and in the presentation, or I have a bunch of friends in the industry and they also said that this is a really tough year for sales. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's a people problem, but usually there's opportunity for improvement on both sides and opportunity for improvement on the people side doesn't mean replace them.

10:55Neal Glatt: It often means train them. Okay. So I think that's a really good insight there. If your business development person is explaining and excusing, then that is an indication of an issue there. I want to go back to this idea of a sales process because when contractors hear that, again, it doesn't necessarily register with them because they're not necessarily brought up in a structured sales environment. So let me run an idea by you and tell me if this makes sense. So let's say I have one or two people in the company that are really responsible for business development. It could even be the president of the company.

11:28would it be wise to sit them down and interview them in terms of how they go about winning a project? Because sometimes they're probably doing things intuitively where they don't even know why it is that they've landed the deal, but they've just done it. So yeah, give me a little bit of insight into that about how someone could develop a sales process.

11:47Neal Glatt: Yeah. This is the exercise I walk people through when I facilitate. And I'll say you can even, as a listener, do this as homework or follow along right now. Think about the greatest sale you ever made. Not the biggest or the most profitable, although it might've been, but the one where you're like, wow, that was awesome. The one that you wish you could do every single month for the rest of your life and your business would be as big as you want, right? Think about that sale. And everybody who's been in sales has that sale, right? Now let's talk about what happened. What did you do? A lot of times that sale started with an introduction to a decision maker.

12:23Neal Glatt: Right. So, oh, I got a referral to that person. I got introduced to that person. Okay. Maybe referral should be part of our sales process because depending on where you are, construction is highly competitive and there's lots of people who can do this type of job and trying to break in. It's almost impossible, but getting introduced is like a golden ticket. Right. So let's figure out how we get more introductions. And then what, who did you meet with? Well, I met with this person. How big of a decision maker were they? A lot of times you'll here, they were the owner. They were the project manager.

12:55Neal Glatt: They were in charge. They signed off nearly 100 % on who they got to pick in the budget for it, right? Okay, great. Well, that's a significant thing that we should look for then, making sure we're selling to the right person. Then what was the conversation like? Oh, Neil, they told me everything. They told me about the other guys who were in here. And they told me about all the stuff they didn't like about people like us in the past and how they were looking for a real partnership. And it was a give and take. Like, okay, can we ask any questions that help us figure out if they're like that or not in the future, right?

13:25Neal Glatt: And that can be part of the sales process. And then what? Did you give a big formal presentation with an hour-long PowerPoint where you wore a tie? No, it was super casual. Oh, well, maybe we shouldn't make the presentation the big thing. Maybe we should make the question discovery the big thing, right? And what was the negotiation like and the post-sale activities and the communication? And just line that all out. And if you do that for your favorite sale, maybe your favorite three sales, I think you'll start to see some threads of continuity that you can then apply. And let's try and do that as much as we can.

13:58Neal Glatt: Right. And that would be the bones or the skeleton of a sales process. And then you can flush it out from there. And we help companies. But frankly, AI can do a great job helping you flush that out, too. Right. So. So that's I'm glad you said that, because I think one thing that you can do is you can record an interview with the person that you're talking to. get a transcript, throw it into AI, prompt AI to put together a sales process for you, and ask questions of it, obviously. And you'll get some tremendous insights there. I'm glad that you said that. Yeah. I see you have a bookshelf behind.

14:29Neal Glatt: I have a bookshelf behind me as well. And it's full of sales books and they all have sales processes. And I have a couple of favorites and not so favorites, but they're all kind of the same. When it comes to the sales process. What are your favorites? Tell me your favorite sales books. I'm a big, big fan of the go-giver sale, which is all about people who give tend to get more. So how do you add value? One of my favorites is called Let's Get Real or Let's Not Play, which is all about this idea of qualifying people. The challenger sale, I feel, is good, but not for everybody. And then I was trained by a Sandler guy, so I like the Sandler books as well.

15:04Yes. Yeah. Sandler's classic. Let me ask you that about Let's Get Real or Let's Not Play. I have a philosophy when it comes to sales, And I know that it may not fit with every contractor, but I'm speaking specifically to a contractor who's in a negotiated environment. The way I sell that I've learned over the years is I create the game that I play. Yes. And I invite people to play my game.

15:29Neal Glatt: Yes. And if they don't want to play my game, that's okay. I'll go find someone who does want to play my game. So I come from that proactive perspective as opposed to trying to play other people's games all the time in terms of sales. Yeah. How well does that perspective work in a commercial construction environment in your experience? Well, it's harder than other environments to do that. Yes. But it works very well, right? So the rule that I was taught around this is whoever has the stronger system wins. And so you call it a game, right? And so sales process is your game or your system. And when you have a really strong sales process where you stick to, and that might be something like we don't send proposals until we've discussed budget, that might be one of the rules of the game, then you tend to come out winning.

16:22Neal Glatt: And that's not, I want to clarify winning too. It's not at the expense of, but it's winning the sale, right? And in commercial construction, the problem for a lot of companies is that they have very strong systems or they have games they know very, very well. Because in construction specifically, you're dealing with a lot of procurement folks and they go to buying school, right? Their playbooks are more researched than our sales playbooks. They're far more disciplined with it. They're far more sophisticated. That's why when you do an RFP, you can only fill out certain fields and you have to do it all the same way.

16:59Neal Glatt: And their whole game is to commoditize you. Yes. So our game is to partner and establish best value. And you have to find a way, if you try and conform to them, and I know a lot of contractors and owners who, they think that they're establishing value by doing what they ask, but you're not, right? You're minimizing your price. And that doesn't mean that you're disrespectful. It doesn't mean you tell them they're wrong. It just means you do things differently than they envision, preferably before you get to that point where they start the RFP, right? So I'm sure there's a lot of people listening who think, well, Neil, you don't know.

17:36Neal Glatt: It's a competitive RFP and the scope is the scope and it's just down to the price. And there's an element of that is true, but somebody helped them write that scope. Yes, they did. And if I'm working with a construction company and we're already facing three-year pipelines anyway, we need to extend it to four-year pipelines where we're helping them choose the scope that we can be most competitive at, that makes sense for us, that they're going to get the best value for before it goes out. Maybe some of your listeners don't know, but those RFP responses come in. The company has to choose. And some companies will just choose based on price and the lowest.

18:13Neal Glatt: But usually there's like a lowest qualified price. And sometimes you'll see fairly complicated scoring rubrics where your price is worth 30%, but then your certifications are worth 10%. And your business ownership, if you're diversity or minority owned or locally owned, is worth 10%. There's all these functions, especially when you get to quasi-public and public, right? Yep. And so you can help someone figure out what the right scoring criteria is, which you stand the best chance of being once the proposals are in, but only before the RFP goes out. Yep. So that's usually six months or a year in advance of the proposal going out.

18:53So it's interesting what you just said there, because it's so interesting. You think about, oh, we have a three-year timeline from RFP, the completed project. Hold on, just bump that another year and make part of your process being doing whatever you can to get into the RFP creation, as opposed to just waiting for it to come out.

19:13Neal Glatt: Yeah. So if you have a special certification that not many contractors have, make that weighted in part of the proposal. Tell them it's important. Help them understand the value. That's why you have it. if you have an exclusive product or process for construction that you're licensed to use that nobody else can like try and get them to source that one right limit the number of competitors if it's the right application right all these i'm trusting you to use ethically right so yeah of course i should get but they don't know they're just speccing whatever they heard about right yep and you're supposed to be the expert you're the one going to the trade shows you're the one listening to the podcast so you should know what's best and you can't trust that they do when they spec it, which is why you get those RFPs and you're like, why would they say this?

19:54Neal Glatt: It doesn't make sense. This is ambiguous. This is the wrong product. This is the wrong process. Like you can change those things in advance with them if you do sales work, call on them, build rapport, get them to trust you, help them work through it and make the best selection. And then when it's a fit, participate in the RFP. That's beautiful. There's so much gold in what we've already discussed here. I appreciate it. Let's go to my next question here. What traits do you see in the people who actually win large commercial projects? So first and foremost, we see a pretty high level of motivation and commitment.

20:29Neal Glatt: You might call it perseverance or grit. We see that they work hard. They don't give up easily, right? I think the second set of criteria we see is something we call sales DNA. These people are somewhat comfortable with rejection because they face a lot. It doesn't put them off. We see that they don't need approval. So they're not trying to get their emotional needs met at work. They have supportive love in their life. They feel good whether they close$10 million in sales or have a month that's a zero, right? They know that they're still okay in life. And then they're comfortable discussing money and asking tough questions are kind of the three big pillars that we think salespeople who have that DNA tend to perform well and those without don't.

21:15Neal Glatt: And then the tactics that people use are very personality-driven. That's why my favorite sales books are my favorite sales books. They match who I am. They're not right for everybody, but every great salesperson shares that DNA. It's interesting, this idea of tough questions. One of the great mistakes I know that many people make in a sale is they sell to the wrong person. Yeah. And so one of the questions I've used again and again, which I think is applicable across all industries, is when I'm talking to someone about a potential sale, I'll ask them, who besides yourself is involved in the final decision regarding this sale.

21:50Neal Glatt: I love that. I love that. And the reason I phrase it like that is because I want to respect them. So I'm not saying who makes - It's so complimentary. So complimentary. Yeah. Who besides yourself. And I think in every sales situation, if you don't ask that question, you're doing your company and the company you're selling to a disservice. And when you ask that question, you must watch their eyes very carefully. And if there's any body language that betrays them, not exactly telling you the whole story, you need to be willing to press on that and ask tough questions so you don't waste your time selling to the wrong person.

22:25Neal Glatt: Yeah. And my experience as a sales coach is I always wish that they would just ask a couple more questions of the prospect. And so immediately what comes to mind is after who besides yourself is involved in this final decision and to what extent or how, right? And so almost everybody has a boss in this world, right? My boss is involved. Okay. To what extent and how do they kind of rubber stamp whatever you go with or do they really criticize? Right. And then the next follow-up question is what's really important to them, right? What are they making their decisions based on? And all of it is, sometimes people think about sales, I think very wrongly.

23:05Neal Glatt: They think about sales as trying to convince the person in front of them of something. And I don't believe sales is that at all. I don't believe we can convince anybody of anything, but what we're trying to do is kind of change this from a negotiation or me versus them into like, why don't we have to see if we can help each other get what we both believe is the best here? Because there's people not in this room who are going to impact that, right? So what do they care about? All right, quick break to talk about my book, Construction Genius. this is what I want you to do. Go to Amazon, search for the book, read all of the five-star reviews because there's a ton of them, over 50 to be precise.

23:48And the reason I want you to read them is because real people wrote those reviews who've actually read the book. And it'll give you an idea of why you should go and buy a copy right now on Amazon. And here's the deal. If you purchase 10 or more copies for your company, and then send me an email, ericatconstructiongenius.com, I'll come in via Zoom and do a one-hour Q &A and a bonus training session with your team at no charge. I normally charge$4 ,500 for an hour of my time. And again, for you, I'll do it at no charge if you buy 10 or more copies of my book. And the reason you should buy it is all in the title.

24:22It's effective, hands-on, practical, simple, no BS, leadership, strategy, sales, and marketing advice for construction companies. So if you're in the construction industry, this book is for you. So you can get it on Amazon. You can also get it on Audible in the audio version as well, narrated by yours truly. And I know you'll really enjoy it. So go out and get the book. And now back to the interview. Okay, so I just want to make a bookmark here for everyone listening. If there's one thing that you take away from our conversation so far, please take these three questions. Who besides yourself is involved in the final decision?

25:00Question two, after they answer that, to what extent and how are they involved? And then the third question, what's really important to that person? You must be asking those three questions when you're involved in any complex sale at any time. I think that's tremendously important. And it might change too throughout the sale. Very interesting. And it could also change according. So you might be talking to someone that you've done business with before, but the project they're offering you this time is different than the project they were offering you last time. And because of the size or the complexity or whatever, the decision makers change as well.

25:36Neal Glatt: Yeah. I mean, even within the course of one project, my clients in this space will see people be fired and hired and companies bought and reorg and the project continues. But if it's not fully sold, or even if it is, you kind of have to resell it over and over again. And so not taking anything for granted. And it could be as simple as, hey, has anything changed that we talked about in the past that we should revisit now? Because it's been three months since we last visited this or since you made the award. By the way, that opens up the possibility in the most positive sense for change orders, which is oftentimes what we thrive on from a profit standpoint, right?

26:15Yeah. So now you just said another thing. I want to make sure everyone heard that. You must not take anything for granted. The best salespeople have a slight touch of paranoia in them. They're never convinced that they've got the deal until the deal is signed. And if appropriate, the check is in the bank. You know what I'm saying?

26:33Neal Glatt: Yes. We call it a healthy skepticism. Healthy skepticism. Thank you. We'll take that over paranoia.

26:43Okay. So how long, and I know this is a question that many people ask because a lot of construction companies just aren't experienced hiring business development people. And there's so much frustration. So how long should a company give a new BD hire before deciding if they're a fit? Wow.

27:00Neal Glatt: That's a loaded question. So sometimes we will observe things pretty quickly that tells us you're not a fit. When we look at sales performance, and I think that's your question, right, is we have a mark for what performing looks like in terms of results, but it can be hard to know what that is or what that will become when they're new, when they're going through onboarding, et cetera. So we would say for your company, what is the appropriate amount of time to get this person up to speed, meaning they can have an intelligible conversation about what you do with a prospect. Not be an expert, not replace a project manager, just have an intelligible conversation.

27:40Neal Glatt: And maybe that's 30 to 90 days, depending on how complex what you do is, right? And then, so that's your onboarding period. Then we get into the performance period. And there should be a minimum level of performance. Performance does not mean checks cashed necessarily. Right. That is what we would call a lagging indicator. It's a score based on something that already happened. And so what we're concerned about for performance right away is leading indicators, things that happened before or are predictive of performance. and we might look at networking events attended. We might look at doors knocked on or calls made to our target market, right?

28:22Neal Glatt: And anybody should show this body of work of activity that we believe is quality and there's a qualitative aspect to it as well. So now with technology, I'm listening to recorded calls and seeing all these notes. It's very, very hard for someone to hide when it comes to sales anymore, right? But that's why they save a ton of time. But we should see that level of activity post-onboarding period very quickly. And there should be a weekly and monthly expectation. And that should be hit very consistently. And that's how you can know within six months whether somebody is going to probably pan out. Or at the very least, you'll see the holes first.

29:00Neal Glatt: Because you cannot afford to have someone who's not going to bring the results sit on payroll for two years and botch those opportunities along the way. The cost is millions and millions of dollars if you were to add it all up compared to a performance sales rep. Yeah, going back, that's a really good thing about the calls being recorded. One thing I would recommend that people do is if your BD people are having meetings over Zoom, for instance, with prospects, you can get a transcript from Zoom every time from the actual call itself. And then you can analyze that transcript very simply using AI and see where the person is excelling, where perhaps they're missing and give them ongoing active coaching based on every single call that they do.

29:43Neal Glatt: Yeah. And I'm coming to this podcast recording from a CRM launch at a company. I don't do CRM launches. I just tell people why their CRM is not working and introduce them to some friends. But the one they just launched, every phone call they make is automatically recorded, which is legal in their state. Every in-person conversation and calendar virtual meeting is logged natively through the CRM. Every email is automatically tracked. And now when you pull up a record of the deal or the property or the company or the contact within the CRM, in-house, generatively a three-sentence overview, citing the references, will show up.

30:27And in our

30:29Neal Glatt: world now, my sales reps do not have to write or type anything ever. It's just automatically capturing all the details. It's available for everybody to see who needs to internally. And it is such a game changer in the last five years because the tools existed to record this previously, but they were so manual, right? And now with AI, the summarization of transcripts, the analysis of it's been a while since you did this and you need to again. It's amazing. Yeah, it really is. And this is, I think, a very practical, useful use of AI that a lot of people should be diving into in detail because AI is very, very strong at taking transcripts and gaining insights, particularly if you set up the prompts in the AI correctly so that you can get from the transcripts what it is that you're looking for.

31:19Let me ask you, is it easier to teach a construction person to sell or teach a salesperson the construction business. And I'll tell you why. Back in the day, I used to sell copy machines. And one of the best salespersons that I've ever met used to be a copy machine technician. And he transferred into sales and he was just killer because he knew everything about the copy machine. So what's your experience in terms of construction?

31:46Neal Glatt: So if you have a strong will to sell and a strong sales DNA, it's very easy to teach you sales tactics. And if you have industry knowledge and a strong will to sell and strong sales DNA, then once we teach you the tactics, you will be the very best for sure. Right. If you have strong will to sell and strong sales DNA and strong tactics and no industry knowledge, then we can teach you the industry knowledge. And if you have strong industry knowledge, but no interest in sales and no sales DNA, you will always fail and it's not teachable. Does that make sense? Makes perfect sense. So when we go and we hire for sales or we work on a sales team and we're looking for people, we should absolutely include anybody we know who has industry experience to see if they have the DNA and the will to sell, because if they do, that's our person.

32:43Neal Glatt: It's the easiest to teach them the tactics of sales. But a comfortability to ask tough questions is not something I can teach. When I have a sales rep and they're scared or they're looking for approval or they're worried about how expensive it is, that's like their parents' fault, right? And I can't outdo their upbringing and their worldview with training. We can teach anybody to say what your amazing question, who besides yourself is involved in this decision-making process. Yep. Who will say that? Someone who's comfortable challenging, someone who's comfortable asking tough questions, because that's, even when it's nice, it's a little uncomfortable, right?

33:23Neal Glatt: Yes. It's a little bit breaking the rules that they're trying to say, their game. And so you need someone who's comfortable moving in that way. And we can't teach that part, right? Yeah. So it's so interesting because I think one of the mistakes that construction people make is they hire people who have gift for gab, quote unquote. Yes. And that does not necessarily correlate with the ability to ask tough questions. And it's almost as if, as I reflect on this, that is perhaps the one skill that is a reflection of some of these other skills that you, or other traits that you've mentioned, the desire or the willingness to be rejected, the grit aspect, that's the sort of the tip of the spear there.

34:07Is that, am I hearing that right?

34:09Neal Glatt: You're exactly right. And in fact, Gift of Gav is interesting because one of the AI advantages of recording stuff that we get is we see the percentage of time that the salesperson talks versus the prospect talks. And I'm sure you've read the preferred balance is the salesperson's talking about 30 % of the time. And sometimes people who have the gift of gab, if you will, love to talk far more than that. And it becomes contrary to sales ability, because if sales was explaining something, then every project manager would be the best at it. Right. But it's not. It's about figuring out where someone is and where they're trying to go and what problems they face and helping them find a solution.

34:54Neal Glatt: and that requires learning from them, not teaching to them. Yes. To me, that goes back then to the sales process where a vital part of the sales process is the quality of the questions that you embed within that process and how that relates to your ability to understand what the prospect is looking for when they're engaging with a contractor and then how to structure your presentation to meet those requirements. Absolutely. Okay. So for a company without a dedicated sales team, where should the owner start? To install one or to grow? Okay. So to install one, I think the owner has to do a little bit of soul searching first for what do you want this company to be?

35:41Neal Glatt: What are we looking to do and how big are we looking to grow? Because sometimes owners do not want a super large company. They want to grow 10 % or 20%. And if you bring on a really killer salesperson, they might get a little bored kind of quickly. And the first time you tell them, well, slow down, they're going to leave. So that's not going to pan out well, right? So we want to make sure that you have growth goals that make sense, number one. Number two, that you have defined what you want this person to do. The type of prospect to target, the sales process to follow and all of that. Okay, if we've got those things and then we're looking to hire a salesperson, we would say we need to figure out the criteria for what hiring them looks like.

36:26Neal Glatt: And we've already talked, it's not gift for gab. It's not D1 athlete. It's not industry experience, right? It's something else. And so we need to build the search around that. Now, when any one of our listeners here goes to hire a technician or operator or labor or whatever, and you want to see how they are at their specific trade, you give them a test. You hand them the keys to a piece of equipment. you set up some lumber, you tell them to go out there and see the tool, right? If you were hiring an accountant, you might give them an accounting book test or something similar as well. We should do the same for salespeople.

37:03Neal Glatt: Now, that's more difficult, right? How do you test someone's ability to sell? Particularly because salespeople, applicants for sales jobs, I will say, are really, really great at selling themselves, but not much else sometimes, right? Yes. And so you cannot do something as obvious in an interview as sell me this pen. That's two on the nose. So what we train people to do when we work with them and they're trying to hire is we train them to set up the type of situation that the salesperson will encounter pretty much every day. And we believe that most salespeople, the bulk of their job is going to be calling somebody who doesn't really isn't expecting their call, doesn't have all the time in the world and maybe isn't interested yet in what they have to do and finding a way to sort of break into that a little bit.

37:55Neal Glatt: Right. Yes. So the experiment to test for that is this. When we find a candidate, first of all, we assess them first and we only do this with the ones who score very high. but if you did it without the assessment when you get a candidate who you seem to like before you interview or go too far with them the very first interaction should be a message saying eric i got your application looks great i'd love to do a phone screen with you or phone interview with you please send me a few times that you can chat and you'll do so and we'll set that up now you as the candidate are thinking i don't know 30 minute phone screen hour interview something you're staying along some time but my playbook uh is that we're going to only spend five minutes together.

38:36Neal Glatt: And I'm not going to tell you that. That's going to be a surprise. So you're going to call me and I'm going to say, Hey, Eric, it's Neil. Thanks for taking the time. This is going to be pretty quick. I've got a number of applicants here. My job is to figure out who to invite in for an interview. And so I wanted to chat with you about the job. Here's what it is. Tell me how you meet that criteria. Tell me why you're a self-starter. Tell me why you have already earned$100 ,000 and are looking for the next level, that type of thing. And I'm going to run a five minute timer from the time this call starts.

39:04Neal Glatt: And as soon as it hits five minutes, I'm going to say, Eric, thanks so much. Sorry to cut you off. That's all the time I have for today. Here's what happens next. If you hear from me by the end of the day tomorrow, it'll be a set up an interview in person. If you don't, this is as far as you made it in the process. Right. Okay. And I'm trying to be professionally disagreeable. I'm trying to be just a little tough and giving them a shelf where they can break in and seeing what they do. And when someone goes really compliant, oh, okay, thanks so much, hangs up the phone, that is suggestive. It's not definitive, but it's suggestive that they might struggle to break in with prospects.

39:45Neal Glatt: But when somebody says, can I ask how I scored? How many people are you bringing in for an interview? What are my chances or how can I improve? And they keep me on the phone for a while, and I don't fight them at this point, I'm happy to answer their questions, then I think that they've passed the test and they would be awesome in this hunter role, right? Sure. So that is one example of one of the tests we use when we hire. And when somebody passes that test and a few other things, then we think that they would do really well. Excellent. Okay. So this is not a process where you just kind of, you should be winging it, obviously.

40:21Yeah.

40:21Neal Glatt: I mean, your salesperson, first of all, it doesn't even matter how big your company is. The salesperson might be one of a handful responsible for your entire company's results and your ability to provide employment to all of them. It is possibly the single biggest point of failure in any one company. And the dollars involved with getting it right or getting it wrong, I think are so important that it's hard to show me besides like an executive level leader, anything that's more critical as a hiring decision. Think about the last time you promoted someone into a leadership role and it failed. Why did it fail?

41:01I can tell you one reason. People know how to build projects, but they don't know how to build and lead teams of people. Construction comes with its challenges that only insiders truly understand. Generic leadership training doesn't cut it. You need a program to train your leaders built specifically for construction professionals led by an industry expert. And my online course, The Shift, is exactly that course. It has five modules. It'll teach your people how to control their calendars and reduce stress and embrace chaos and accomplish their critical tasks. It will teach them the three essential messages they have to communicate every day in order to motivate and lead their team effectively.

41:46It'll show them how to build and lead a high-performing team, give them a framework for running effective meetings so they'll be able to solve problems in less than an hour, and also give them a higher perspective on their leadership. That will enable them to work on the business and on their teams and not get stuck in the weeds micromanaging. So go out to my website, theshift.constructiongenius.com, read all about the course, and then enroll yourself and your leaders in the course, and I guarantee that it will transform your leadership. If it does not, you take the whole course and you didn't get benefit from it, you just send me an email, eric.constructiongenius.com, and I will cheerfully refund you 100 % of your money.

42:30I'm really confident this course will transform your leadership. So again, go out to the website, theshift.constructiongenius.com, learn more about the course and start taking it today. Yeah. Okay. So let's sum it up here, Neil. You're sitting across from a construction company owner. You're having lunch with them. and they say to you, Neil, give me three pieces of advice that I can start applying tomorrow to really help me to identify, hire, and develop the best salespeople?

43:01Neal Glatt: Well, we would say definitely put them through the paces of a test. And one B to that would be lots of situational and behavioral questions. So one question I will always ask salespeople is, tell me about your worst month in sales. What happened and how'd you respond? And anybody who's lying to me to get the job tells me that they didn't have a bad month in sales. Anybody who's actually got grit identifies a really bad performance period and shows me how they improved, right? Yes. So that's significant behavioral type question. The second thing I would do is not ignore your culture. So the one thing that we don't test for in our assessments, in our sales hiring program, is the cultural fit.

43:48Neal Glatt: and it's really, really, really important. You have to like the person in front of you and they have to fit in with the team and they have to do the same things that you do, whether that's being really detail-oriented and documenting or that's being a little brash and being out there. If they don't fit, then your whole process and everything you talk about as a team, it's just going to become fractured. It's hard to get momentum, right? So figure out a situational behavioral way to test. Make sure that you're including culture heavily in that. And then the last thing that I'd always recommend is don't rely on your ability to try and suss this out because I don't.

44:25Neal Glatt: As a sales hiring expert, I don't believe that I can identify this stuff from an interview. And that's why we pay tens of thousands of dollars to use this high-end assessment built on 30 years of sales data and analysis. You have to get objective measurements in your hiring process if you want to do it right. just like everything else in life. Yeah, excellent. And you've mentioned this, the assessment a number of times. And so please tell us a little bit more about that. And if people are interested in that assessment, how can they get in touch with you? How can they learn more about that? Sure.

44:58Neal Glatt: This is an assessment that I believe heavily in because 15 years ago, it saved my sales career after my worst year in sales. So I took this assessment and was able to turn around my performance with my coach and grow a company to tens of millions of dollars. And it was a blast. So we help companies with this assessment. It's about 35 years old. It's tested millions of salespeople. And we bring it in in a way that's super easy where we test every single candidate before you ever waste any time interviewing somebody who can't do the job. If you're interested in learning more, you can reach out to us.

45:35Neal Glatt: My name is Neil Glatt. My website's N-E-A-L-G-L-A-T-T.com. Super easy to find on LinkedIn or Google for that matter. And what we'd love to do is set a time, chat for about an hour, hear about what you're trying to accomplish and see if we're a fit. And if we are, we both agree, then we'd be happy to talk about what an investment this looks like. And if we're not, then we'd love to refer you to one of our friends who does marketing or recruiting or something else that would better solve your needs. So that's our promise. You know, the process is generally eight to 12 weeks. So if you want somebody to start, We typically start our first action or working meeting together eight to 12 weeks before because we need time for applicants to come in.

46:17Neal Glatt: You have to do interviews. They have to give their notice for wherever they are. All those things take a little while. So if you're trying to plan for this, we can talk with you soon so you can budget for it in the future. And then if you're looking to hire, we'd say give us about three months and we can feel pretty good about getting that person on board. Beautiful. And then all those links are in the show notes so you can get in touch with Neil. Neil, I know I've had a lot of fun here today. It's a great topic, sales, and I appreciate you coming on. Appreciate your insights. And I do wish you the best.

46:46Neal Glatt: You too. Thanks so much, Eric. Thank you for listening to today's episode with Neil. You should re-listen to the episode and really get all of the value from it. Share it with other people. Give us a rating and a review wherever you get your podcast. Check out the links in the show notes to contact Neil. And we'll catch you on the next episode. Thank you for listening to this episode of Construction Genius. Hope you found that 1 % of inspiration to help you in the next few days. If you like the show, please give us a five-star review on iTunes. Share it with other construction leaders who you think would benefit.

47:21And always remember that the show is brought to you by Kick-Ass Meetings. I've been working with construction leaders since 2004, teaching them how to run extremely effective problem-solving meetings that gets their people collaborating.