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Dennis Collins:
Welcome to another episode of Connect and Convert, the sales accelerator podcast, where small business owners tune in to learn the insider secrets to how to grow sales faster than ever. Hi. Leah Bumphrey, my partner in crime.

Leah Bumphrey:
Hello. Hello.

Dennis Collins:
Thanks for coming back. I always worry that when I sign on, you’re not gonna be…

Leah Bumphrey:
Never. No. I enjoy our conversations and our guests way too much. They’re just… Too much to learn when having a chat with you.

Dennis Collins:
Well, we’re in luck today. We’ve got the real deal. This gentleman has done it all and he’s got a great story. And we’re going to bring that in just a few minutes. But first, we always start off. Leah, you do this so well of making our special offer to all of our viewers and listeners. Please tell them what they can get for free.

Leah Bumphrey:
Dennis, you said it best. We are all about insider secrets for small business. We have a passion for helping business grow, and part of that is being available for small businesses to have a session with us one on one, no charge. That’s where the free word comes in to discuss what’s next, what’s happened, where are you going? And how we could be a part of that. Sometimes it’s very specific about things that we’ve talked about, such as recruiting, such as training. Sometimes it’s more of a general conversation in terms of what it is that we do and what we’re inspired to do to help small business. So don’t hesitate. Send us an email. We will get you set up, and for a free 90 minutes, you will walk away with something fantastic.

Dennis Collins:
And you know something, we’re not high pressure people. If it’s not going to work out or if we don’t see a way forward to work or help you, we’re going to tell you that up front. So give us a shot. We’d love to hear from you. If nothing else, we’ll have a nice conversation. Right, Leah?

Leah Bumphrey:
Exactly.

Dennis Collins:
Okay, so today’s episode, I’m excited to introduce a gentleman who has over four decades of successful sales and management experience. How about that? His name is Gordon Wilson, and Gordon is joining us today from Phoenix, Arizona, which is only one of maybe a dozen cities or more that Gordon has lived in. And when we asked him earlier about his favorite city, he gave a great answer. Would you mind, we ask you, gee, Gordon, of all these places you live, what’s your favorite? And you had a great answer. Can you tell our audience what your answer was?

Gordon Wilson:
Yeah, every place has great things about it. They always have something to offer that’s nice and there’s always something new, exciting about moving somewhere new. But I found as a human being and the quickest example to express is when I moved to Newport Beach, California and I was overlooking South Laguna Pier there before it was destroyed. And you pass by the beach every morning on the way to work and fresh orange juice on the corner and it’s like, wow, the bikinis at seven o’clock in the morning and basketball.

Dennis Collins:
That sounds like trouble.

Gordon Wilson:
But what I’m saying is this. And it’ll lead more to my point, it’s like, after about four or five months you realize that you’re not even paying attention anymore to what it got you excited about where you’re at. I’ve lived in the mountains, I’ve driven down through canyons for 45 minutes to get to my office in the tech center in Denver. And then I found out after a while you’re more interested, you’re planning your day, you’re in your head about what you got to do and everything just dissipates. So every place has got good and bad. It’s just what you make of it. And I’ve made the best of everything that I’ve been, I’ve learned from every place.

Dennis Collins:
That’s a great answer. That’s perfect. And so true. You just never know until you get someplace and then you get lost in your day to day and it could be anywhere. But it’s still that special place when you get a chance to enjoy it, if you’re not working so hard. It looks to me, sir, we’ve only met recently, so I’m just getting to know you a little bit. But it looks to me like I don’t know that there’s anything you haven’t done in the sales management. You’re an accomplished speaker. You’re a writer. You’re a coach. Maybe tell us what you don’t do. I think you do everything and have done it and are still doing it.

Gordon Wilson:
I don’t retire. It’d be the only thing I haven’t done successfully for a long period of time. Six months is the longest I’ve lasted. And I just want to elaborate on why. I’ve learned so much. I have such a toolbox full of little golden nuggets of sales and the ins and the outs of what works and what doesn’t work. And one thing I didn’t want to do is I could have rode off into the sunset and sit at the side of the pool and suck a nice scotch and cigar or whatever it is you want to do. I didn’t want to take all that with me. I enjoy helping other people become successful, both professionally and personally. And so for me to take someone that’s green or even one of the top people in the company and just make them just that little bit better, that little more success to hit their goals, or the green person that’s never made six figures. How do you get there? How does that happen? And to see that happen over the years, that’s where the joy in what I do and why I still do it is still there.

Dennis Collins:
Well said. I can identify with that. I was known as the guy back in the day when I was managing radio stations. I was known as that guy who grabbed the young, untrained people out of the rough. And I really took a lot of pride in getting them up to speed. But I’d love to hear how you did it. Can you share with us? Do you have a formula? Do you have a go-to? How is it that you take those diamonds in the rough and bring them to be the best versions of themselves?

Gordon Wilson:
Well I told somebody this recently, and I don’t think it was the answer they were wanting to hear. They thought it was some sort of magic thing, and I had a book this thick, and I had this whole process laid out, and I just sat there and just drilled on it and got it done. I learned a long time ago through myself that, one, you have to believe in yourself first. And if someone doesn’t believe in yourself, as a coach, you have to find out where do you get that belief? Where can they find that belief in themselves? Because when you believe in yourself, then your whole life changes, because no matter what you do, and I’m a perfect example of I’ve known nothing about any career I’ve ever had, and I’ve had multiple careers. I did radio. I was very successful in radio. I never wrote a book. I did it in 45 days. I’ve never managed a team. I took that out. I didn’t know anything about the high-end digital print industry, selling up to $4 million or $5 million projects for major Fortune 1 companies. Didn’t know anything about that either, but what I did have is I believed in me, okay, and that I could succeed.

So what I do is I take young people or even successful people, and I realize that I need to find out… I need to get in their head, and I need to find out what their desires are. What do they want? What do they want to achieve? What haven’t they achieved yet? But I also found that basically our younger life predicts where we’re at in our older life if we haven’t overcome the things that created pain or not good enough or not feeling good enough or not worthy of in our life. I can tell you almost every person I have coached successfully have had some baggage, like most humans do, from their younger life or teens or pre-teen that has affected the decisions we make, how we make the decisions, whether we feel good about myself, whether we think we can achieve something or not, because most of that is negative in our life, and a lot of people absorb that. And to me, I explain it like the hands of our hand. That negative’s right here, and like cancer, it expands and tentacles through every aspect and decision we make in our life.

And if we don’t go back and visit that and find the reasoning behind it, you’re not going to find what unlocks that person to just explode onto the scene and become very successful at whatever you choose. If you’re a good coach and you get to learn to know people, they can go anywhere, any product, any company in the world and be successful because it’s not the product. It’s the person and the desire to succeed and win.

Dennis Collins:
Wow. You just gave us a lot there. I want to jump into a couple of the issues you just brought up. Mindset, I got into their head. I got into their head. You’re talking about the people that you coach. How do you get into someone’s head?

Gordon Wilson:
Well, it takes time. Look, managing a team or people is no different than going out and trying to sell a customer. The process is the same. Questions, Investigatory, doing discovery, closing the doors, getting commitments. First of all, do they have the desire to succeed? And then you have them write it down. I have a form everybody that works for me fills out that tells me, what have you done? Where have you been? When did you do it? How much you make? What your goals are? And do you have the desire to get there? And then once they sign that, they’re now accountable to that. So now I say, “Okay, I need your help to get to this.” So I’m seeing in your conversations, and where I’m presently at, and I don’t know if this is advertising or not, but I wish that I would have had Rilla 40 years ago.

Because back in the day, you only knew what your people were telling you they were saying, or you only knew what they were telling you and how the conversation said or what the customer said. So you ride a lot of tries. And if you do a ride along, that game changes in the truck or wherever you’re at. They’re not going to be exactly the same. So I have someone on my team presently. I found out that there is an issue with women, strong women, and he gets offended easily, and he gets uptight. And I’ve noticed it in the conversations. That’s telling me something from the past. That doesn’t just happen overnight. So now I have to sit down and do one-on-ones and say, “Okay, let’s go through this. Why do you think you respond this way.”

And once we get to that point of why do you respond that way, then we have to get to the point of, do you realize that this is not going to allow you to get to the success that you told me you wanted? And now the bell goes off, and I said, “So you know I’m going to be listening.” Let’s see if we can’t change the directive of that and understand that’s their opinion. That’s how they feel. You don’t have to believe in it, but the idea here is we’re looking for a win, and what comes out of your mouth can either dictate whether you win or lose. And you need to think about that.

So it takes longer than that, but this is where most managers fail, and most companies fail managers. They hire you for a purpose. “I want better closing averages, better ticket averages.” “Oh, okay. What are you going to do about that?” “I’m going to get in their head.” “Well, no, what are you going to do about that?” “No, that’s what I’m going to do.” And it works, and they don’t understand that it works. But the real issue is everybody wants love. Everybody wants to have the attaboy. Every time one of my guys, even now that I have a team of five, every time they close, I don’t care if it’s an $800 deal or a $25,000 deal, there is a great job, way to start the day off. Keep it going, man. I believe in you. You’re only a couple clicks away from hitting your goal. Let’s make it happen today.

Every time, whether I’m at dinner, wherever I’m at, I make sure there’s attaboys, and you’d be surprised. Even grown adults like recognition, acceptance, and someone that thinks understands them. And what happens with companies is they jump so much minutiae on you after about six months and so many things to do and numbers, numbers, numbers, reports, reports, reports. And then what happens is you don’t have time to do what they hired you to do.

Dennis Collins:
That’s well said.

Leah Bumphrey:
Gordon, I find this fantastic because you have a personal accountability to the people that you’ve committed to helping. It doesn’t matter who’s hired you. You are accountable to these people who you are trying to help them do better. You make sure you know what they want to do, why they haven’t done it, what they’ve done already, and where to go. What I would like to know and get into is where did this start for you?

Gordon Wilson:
It started with me.

Leah Bumphrey:
But where? Did someone help you see this? Was it a book that you read? Or has this just always been since you were two years old, just like, I see this? There’s different ways that people approach getting this into their very being. And you obviously, you’re owning this. So where did it come from?

Gordon Wilson:
You just rang a bell in me to try to figure out where it started, and it popped in my head. Now, this is going to go left and right out of here.

Leah Bumphrey:
That’s why we do this.

Gordon Wilson:
When I got out of the military, I needed an attitude adjustment. And when I was in the military, when I was off duty, I was bouncing in nightclubs. And when I got out, I started bouncing in nightclubs around Chicago. One day, it was a private club that I was became part owner in. And a doctor came up to me one time, because we had a lot of business people that were members of this private club. And it was a music dance place. And he said, “I sit here and I watch you every night work with people. And I watch how you work people. And I watch how you take escalations down and get people calmed down and get them out the door. And you need to be in sales. The way you talk and work with people, you need to be in sales.”

Dennis Collins:
Interesting.

Gordon Wilson:
And I thought about that, because I’ve been welding on the side and I had bronchitis and all this. And I dabbled in a little bit of sales at a jean store or something. But it was nothing. It was more of a game than anything else. So lo and behold, the doctors told me I needed to get out of the smoky nightclubs and the welding. And I moved to Arizona in the ’70s and started selling door to door. But what I realized is I was a man who wanted things, just like everybody else wanted things. Everybody wants something. With me, when I moved out here, I started seeing all these exotic cars, these huge homes and Arabian horses and all this stuff. And I’m going, “Wow.” And in little Illinois boy working in nightclubs at night and not seeing much of the day or in a factory. I knew it existed. I saw it on TV, but now it’s in my face. How do I get that? And I realized that through trial and error that I had to want it bad enough to make the changes necessary for me to accomplish that.

And that’s what I always tell people is that when you want it bad enough, you will make it happen. You will find a way to make it happen. And I’ve been that way even through my younger life, that I wanted to be the best. I wanted to be… And I had a lot of knockdowns, had a lot of disappointments. And so if you don’t get up from those, then you have other choices. You can live in a box or live in a house. It’s really up to you. And it sounds simple and it’s not. Life is a journey. Sales is a journey.

But sales is about people. It’s not rocket science. You don’t need to read a 500-page book to learn how to sell. You just have to learn people and be able to ask the questions and understand them. But if you don’t have that inner desire to succeed, now look, success to some people is making $36,000, $30,000, $38,000 a year. They’re happy with that life, and that’s okay. That may not fit in your particular industry, but that’s okay. So you have to find the comfort zone of each of those people and how that fits into where they are in your business or your team.

Dennis Collins:
What a great story. Man, there’s so much here.

Gordon Wilson:
I’m layered.

Dennis Collins:
No, I would say that you’re versatile. You’ve done a lot of different things, and it sounds like you’ve done them well. But I want to backtrack for one second because you mentioned something before Leah’s great question about Rilla. And I bet most of our listeners, viewers don’t know what Rilla is. You and I know it because full disclosure, we work together with a client called Alaskan in Phoenix, and you are one of the sales coaches there, and we are on the consulting team. So that’s how we met. But tell our audience what Rilla is and why it changed your coaching.

Gordon Wilson:
Well, it is an AI device, and I’m at full disclosure here. I was not on board with this when I heard about it. It’s like, are you kidding me? I don’t need another layer of micromanagement and all this conversation. Sorry about that. And so when I got to looking at it, it actually, from the time the gentleman or lady gets out of the truck, it starts recording the conversation. And you get to hear the customer. You get to hear the end. So I’ll shorten it. You get to hear the entire call A to Z. And then what’s really nice about it is over on the side menu, you can click on AI and you can ask a question. What could that rep have done better to improve? What did they do well? There’s multiple questions. And then you actually can go through here and you can listen to the conversation. So you get to hear inflections. You get to hear when they’re putting things into the sales approach.

You also have AI to give you some hints on what they think it could have done. I’ve learned you have to check that carefully because it’s not always necessarily correct because it is made by humans. It was a software. But it gives you some points to go off of. And what I’ve learned is I have immediate moments at that time and moment to critique and coach. And you can put notes in at the side of each paragraph and then your rep automatically gets that and responds to it. And then I take notes on it and that’s how I usually train on my training days is I teach moment training. We get to the point where we almost train too much and you can’t stuff all that in there. But you can train at the moment. So if you have someone that has hit all but four points of your presentation that you want because you get to set up what you want Rilla to track of what’s important to your company. And if they only hit three… If they only missed three or four of those, I don’t say a whole lot because maybe the timing wasn’t right and it doesn’t apply to everything.

But on the other hand, if they’re missing something important that you want to see, you can just coach to that and you can role play it really quick. So you never had that in the past to be able to be there at the moment where it’s true because they forget that you’re listening.

Dennis Collins:
That’s right. That’s an excellent point. I totally agree. Had I had that tool back in the day, wow. But I use it as well as you use it. And I happen to agree. It is powerful. Let’s talk to our viewers, our listeners right now. Let’s say they are not currently using any type of recording with their sales conversations. What would you advise?

Gordon Wilson:
I would advise that you manage the team by the person and not by the team. You can manage the team as far as what your numbers are and what you’re responsible to and what the company would like to see. But you have to figure out each… So I have five people on my team right now. It’s my job to find out what motivates each individual individually, what makes them tick individually. Because not everything you train on needs to be for everybody.

Dennis Collins:
True. And Rilla gives you a chance, like you said, for coachable moments. You can pick out a segment in a Rilla and coach just on that segment.

Gordon Wilson:
Absolutely. And we can put it up on the screen in a training session and actually go right through the call with the team if you get okay, ask okay if it’s all right if you do that. Because it’s a coachable moment because everybody learns from somebody else’s mistakes or successes. So sometimes with permission it’s very important that, “Oh, well, the teammate’s doing that. He’s rocking it out of the park. Maybe I need to incorporate that myself.”

Leah Bumphrey:
And a lot of times what is forgotten is these training moments, these opportunities, and the information you have, it’s not just about, “Oh, you could have done this better, you could have done this better. Oh, why did you miss this?” The real opportunity is those snapshots of brilliance where you’re inspiring the rest of the team, where you’re building up the person. A training is not just about you didn’t do this. It’s about, wow, look what you did.

Gordon Wilson:
Absolutely. A lot of times in here… Thank you for bringing that up. If there’s only one or two things they’ve missed, and quite honestly, they may not have sold anything, but it was a great presentation or it was just something they’re not going to win anyway. It’s a newer unit. I’m going to say, “Hey, awesome job, man. You did what you could. You got what you could out of it.” So they need to hear the good, not just constantly, I agree with you, of what they didn’t do right. They need to learn that they’ve done… Look, they may have 60% right. They need to know how good that is because the rest of the team is still at 50%, whatever it is, but it’s important that you give kudos to people when they’re doing stuff. Even the small things are important.

Leah Bumphrey:
And most people who are good at what they do, they know where they messed up. If you said, so in this call, what could you have done better? They’re actually going to dig deep and find a whole bunch of stuff that you’re going, “No, no, no, no, no. You’re being too hard on yourself.” But again, that’s part of the team building. That’s part of the individual growth opportunity. And recognizing that this is a partnership. Training is not a top-down initiative.

Gordon Wilson:
Well, I think also, and I’m going to go back just a little bit and answer to this, but also, Dennis, part of what you were asking in the beginning. When I get introduced to a new team, I pretty much lay myself out in front of them. I’m not some mystery man. Because I already know they’re going to go, who dug this guy up out of a grave? Wow, they must have been digging pretty low on the bucket to get this guy in here.

Dennis Collins:
No old jokes. No old jokes.

Gordon Wilson:
Yeah. It’s not a joke. Anyway, but what I found fascinating is I want them to know what my expectations are and what I’m truly here to do. I’m here for one thing, to help you become more successful. And the more you let me into you, the more you answer my questions when we do our one-on-ones, the more I can help you. And if you truly want to succeed, I will help you get there. Now, here’s what I won’t deal with. Here’s the lines. I lay it all out. Have I had a successful career in life? Absolutely. I’m going to have to refer to myself sometimes of some successes so you can understand that someone that didn’t go to college, someone that got drafted in the military, which most of you don’t even know what that is.

Dennis Collins:
I laughed at that. Most of you don’t even know what that is.

Gordon Wilson:
Yeah. And so I said, look, I’ve had hardships. I’ve gone through things that I wouldn’t want any of you in this room to go through in your entire life. And that’s where you learn to overcome. That’s when you really learn who you are and what you’re willing to do. And I’m sure everybody in this room has had things that has held them back or put them down some point in their life. Have you overcome it? Have you gotten around it? Have you forgiven it? Whatever it takes. That’s what I’m here to help you with. You wrote down on the paper, each one of you, thank you. Each of you, it’s amazing, almost put down here a hundred or more grand a year. Okay. You’ve never done that before. Well, now you have somebody standing here that’s going to help you get there. But I need your commitment and I need your buy-in. Do I have that? So that’s what my first talks are like with a team because you have to get that belief like a customer has to believe to buy from you. Your team has to believe to buy from you.

Dennis Collins:
I love the analogy. You said that earlier in our conversation that working with a team of salespeople is just very much like working with clients. Same deal. It’s about knowing who you’re talking to, understanding what motivates them, not some book that says do this, do that. It’s about them and learning that and abiding by it. And I love your emphasis on the one-on-one. A lot of our viewers and listeners, they get mixed up about the one-on-one meetings. What is a one-on-one meeting really supposed to do? I think you just enumerated it. Maybe you can summarize that. What’s a good one-on-one coaching session?

Gordon Wilson:
I’ve probably had 20 companies give me a piece of paper and say, “This is what we do on one-on-ones.” It’s like, “Yeah, thanks. Okay.” Believe it or not, I don’t even take a lot of notes and stuff either. I’m sorry. I just don’t because I deal with these guys every day. My one-on-ones can be a five-minute conversation after a call on the phone. Because that’s a coaching moment right there. What happened? Why did it happen? How did you propose that? Did you propose it the way we talked about? Because it’s fresh in their mind. Now, if I have to have a private one-on-one door closed, I’m not a yeller. I’m not a screamer. I’m not a dictator. I’m a how do we make this work. That, to me, is a successful one-on-one. You’ve got to get over the issue instead of trying to always talk about the problem.

Your numbers aren’t where they’re supposed to be. Well, gosh, the guy already knows that. So what do you think? Because he sat up in front of the team every week and saw he’s at the end of the line on the numbers. Okay, I’ll let that go for a while because I want to see if the guy can bring himself up. That lets you know what the desire ratio is. If you’re watching someone’s numbers, if you see their… Look, we’re taught in sales to look at body language, facial expressions, tone of the voice. You’ve got to do the same thing with your people.

When you’re in a meeting and they’re looking at the numbers and they’re last on the list there and that’s your problem, child, although sometimes the people at the top are your biggest problem. I know I used to be one. But the thing is, watch the body language in your meetings. Watch the eye contact in your meetings. That’s going to tell you when you don’t have buy-in just like a customer, or you do, or a problem that has come up when the head totally goes down or they start rustling papers, which is nervousness. I bring that stuff up to them, “Hey, I noticed in the meeting I lost you there for a bit. You went sideways on me. Tell me about that.” That’s your coachable moment.

Dennis Collins:
Have you found in your amazing career any person, people who are uncoachable, not coachable?

Gordon Wilson:
Yes, I have, depending on your term, let go, fired, adios! In my life. My wife accuses me all the time of being way too patient. Look, I’m a big intimidating man. I’m 6’3″, 265, and I can be intimidating, especially in a business suit when I’m just pumping iron and walk into a room. You have to learn how to become small.

Dennis Collins:
That isn’t easy for a person of your size.

Gordon Wilson:
No, especially when you have a big voice, too. I can’t emphasize more that too many companies forget about who brings them to the dance. Most sales teams are responsible for approximately 60% to 65% of the revenue of that company, especially in the HVAC business. And they don’t get any love for that. They don’t get any recognition for that. They just get the beat down on why the number is not where it’s supposed to be. And you should be nurturing those horses, feeding those horses, taking care of those horses, and they should be your number one priority to get to understand. Even the people up above me or you, because those are the people that usually haven’t done what you’re doing, don’t understand what you’re doing, but they went to a seminar or read a book or did something, and they think they’re the God of sales. And then you’re going to run into the manager who couldn’t do what you’re doing that’s jealous that did your job for five years that’s now your boss.

Dennis Collins:
Wow, you must have been looking into my life. You just described a lot of the characters I’ve met.

Gordon Wilson:
Hey, my last four positions, I was hired to come in and bring sales numbers up. I mean up. I have managed a team of five that produces $35 million to $40 million a year in HVAC home sales. And their numbers were… And this is a patting my back, but I just want to tell you how this process works, is their numbers were 47% as a closing average you said I want you to be above 50% and their ticket average is at 15.8 and I want that higher. In six months, I had the closing average between 55% and 65% and the ticket average up to 18.9. At the end of that year, they had a team that was working, so why did they need me?

Dennis Collins:
Well, they need you because it goes away.

Gordon Wilson:
No, I’m just telling you, I’ve been hired four times to come in and do something, which I do, and then the people up above think, “Oh, well, thank you very much. I don’t want to pay you more next year.”

Dennis Collins:
I see.

Leah Bumphrey:
Yeah. So it’s quite interesting, Gordon, because there’s, as we know, there’s three things, three motivators that people have. They want to make a name for themselves. They want to make money, which is why a lot of us get into sales, or they want to make a difference. You have picked the let’s make a difference, Dennis and I totally understand that because of our love of training and seeing people grow. So here, you see these people grow, and then it’s, “See it, Gordon, you’ve done it. Go away.” And you end up somewhere else and you help them grow. So you obviously love making the difference.

Gordon Wilson:
Yes.

Leah Bumphrey:
Explain that to us a little bit.

Gordon Wilson:
I don’t know. I don’t think… If you’ve been blessed in life… And hey, let’s say, I’ve been to the top of the mountain three or four times in my life and fell off the back side, had to climb back up again. Sometimes it’s a factor of life. You have 2008 come along and totally crush your company down to nothing in 90 days that you have no control over. How do you survive that? How do you come up out of that? It’s the will to succeed, the desire to succeed. And those experiences give you a lot of relevance in being able to project that to someone else. Don’t tell me you can’t. Don’t tell me you’ve got failures in your life. Tell me what you’re going to do about it. And that kind of experience if you use it… Too many people into processes and you’re well aware of, we’re in a process now, I can neither confirm nor deny my feelings about the process.

But I will say 80% of it goes along with what I teach. There is some meat in there of what I teach. It’s just some of the process, and we get lost in it. You get people thinking… Look, if you’re a company that has, “We can do it this way, this is the ABC way, and this is the only way we do it.” Well, you got somebody so concerned about following the process, they’re not listening to the answers that the questions you’re asking the customer about. They’re too busy wondering what they’re going to say next instead of listening to the answer. And if you’re not nursing your team, you’re not getting the success that you want. If you’re not finding out what makes them happen, you’re not going to get it. It might come up a little bit for a little bit, but test that when times are hard. Test that in the middle of COVID. Test it in the middle of 2008. That’s when your coaching and your teams get truly tested.

Dennis Collins:
I wish to heck I had to work for you, Gordon. I’ll tell you what, what a breath of fresh air, because what you’re talking about right now doesn’t happen at a lot of businesses. And we always challenge our listeners who are primarily in small business, small business managers, owners, people who work in small businesses. We challenge them with people like you. We challenge them to listen to the guy who did it. This is a guy who’s been almost five decades in business, and every story, we could spend the rest of today and tomorrow talking about what he did to grow, to develop, to make things happen. He’s the real deal.

Leah Bumphrey:
We’re listening to you, Gordon, and I’m thinking of people that I’ve worked for where I go, “Man, I wish they’d have talked to you.” I’m thinking of instances for myself where I wish I would have had more clarity. So with this pattern that you’re expressing, and for people who are listening and watching who see that in themselves, they’re going, “Oh, shoot, this is an issue that I have.” How can they transition in their thinking?

Gordon Wilson:
They have to want to. It’s no different than the salesperson. An owner or a senior VP or whatever title you want to put on who’s ever where in this food chain, they need to… Everything starts at the top, everything. It’s either the group that bought out the company or the company itself or the owner, but everything starts there. And they’re always looking for a way to do this or do that or that, and people become more of a monopoly piece, or a chess piece than they do an important factor of their team, and that’s the way they’re treated. I can’t tell you how many managers say, “Hey, you’ve got to get your numbers up.” “Hey, thanks. I didn’t know that. I like starving to death. Appreciate it.” I’ve had managers come into my team and jump all over my team in one of my meetings, and I come out of the meeting, I said, “Just so you know, my team doesn’t wake up in the morning and say, ‘Hey, we’re not selling crap today.’ Just thought, let you know we’re not interested.” Nobody wakes up saying that. But that’s the way they’re treated.

Dennis Collins:
No. But I love what you just said. Sometimes you’ve got to stand up to the senior VP or the general manager or the owner. You’ve got to stand up and say, “Hold on a second. I got this.”

Gordon Wilson:
Yes, but the problem is that’s why my last four positions have not continued.

Dennis Collins:
There’s a consequence to that.

Gordon Wilson:
Yeah. Well, the thing is I’ve interviewed thousands of people because I owned my own executive search firm for about eight years. And all you do is interview people. You find people, and you have to learn what they’re like, what they’re about, what they sound like over the phone. But what’s taught about all this is they’re so busy with the bottom line, which I do understand. But you can improve your bottom line so much better by not running a dictatorial company and then hiring a bunch of mini-me’s to go out and conquer your world for you and just throw people aside like they’re nothing. I just had a company that called me. My phone lights up a lot for people that have worked for me that are wondering what I’m doing and where I’m at. They just took a very, very successful team. I mean guys doing $6 million a year in HVAC sales. By the way, they were only doing $3.5 before they hired me, but I digress. Anyway, they just cut their comp plan 20%.

Dennis Collins:
Huh. Good. That’s motivating. Yeah.

Gordon Wilson:
Yeah. They took their bonus away or they tried to take it away while I was there, and I said, “It’s in the comp plan. Well, we’re going to change it. Sue me.” And it’s like that kinda crazy stuff takes your $35, $40 million team down to $25 next year.

Dennis Collins:
Real quick.

Leah Bumphrey:
But is there any way to influence those people? Because they have to want to change. They see low-hanging fruit. I take away that 20% bonus, and all of a sudden my P&L is there, and that’s what I’m basing it on, and I’m out of here. How do you influence that? And that’s particularly a thing. And Dennis, you and I have had questions from our listeners about the second-generation owners.

Dennis Collins:
Yeah.

Leah Bumphrey:
Or is it possible to influence them? You’ve seen it from both ends.

Gordon Wilson:
In most cases, I will say yes on middle management, no on upper management, because you have to rely on middle management to now make that next step to upper management, and that’s where it loses its steam. The other thing is upper management is really pretty much ruled by a board or some conglomerate that came in and bought them up along with five other companies. They want three years, four years. Maybe there’s a five-year plan. They’re going to cut people. They’re going to bring the numbers up. They’re going to sell, and that’s why people don’t want to listen. Also, a conversation I had recently was, please do not hire experienced managers that can truly help you grow and not let them do what they do successfully everywhere else and try to change it or put ropes around it or tie it down because you don’t understand it.

Dennis Collins:
Wow. I would love to have that printed up and spread to the world. Isn’t that the truth?

Leah Bumphrey:
But you know what I see here is an incredible opportunity because you have these businesses that are looking at bottom line growth and watching that growth and achieving that growth, but not really interested in sustaining it beyond their tenure. And then we have the clients and listeners and the people who are listening to us, Dennis, and are giving us questions and really wanting those insider secrets for small business. Those are the ones that can capitalize on this. What do you think, Gordon?

Gordon Wilson:
I agree. I’ll give you an experience, and I’m sure there’s probably some people out there that have either done this themselves or experienced it. I’ve been in a weekly meeting training session, which I hate to call because I like them roundtables. I want input from my people. That’s how I train. But out of nowhere, the owner would walk into my meetings and start to override what I’ve been doing successfully in raising the numbers. That suddenly what he has to say is suddenly more than people then going where we’re obviously going in the right direction and demean and take away the importance of what I was saying. And if you’re doing that, you are shooting yourself in the foot because quite honestly, they don’t understand your life. Most of these guys that are new and young don’t really care. I’ve been in places where the senior VP has stood up in front of 50 salespeople and go, “Well, I want you to know we’re behind $1.4 million in our budget this month, and I’m not going to get my gold watch if you guys don’t get the numbers.”

And 75% of those people in there, one, don’t give a fat poop about your watch. Two is can’t relate to $1.4 million. Three is they’ve never made over $36,000 in their life. They have no idea of the importance of what in the heck you’re talking to. They’re trying to live through the 90 days of computer crap that you just put them in front of to learn what you do. That’s gone away. Personal training is gone away. Now, “Oh, by the way, here you go. Here’s your computer. See you in 90 days. Please pass all the tests, and you’re ready to go out on the street. And I want 100 business cards a day on my desk when you come back here at 5 o’clock.”

Dennis Collins:
Watch the videos and take the tests. Yeah.

Gordon Wilson:
I took 143 videos in six days with tests when I got here.

Dennis Collins:
Wow. 143.

Gordon Wilson:
Yes.

Dennis Collins:
That’s part of the onboarding process, right?

Gordon Wilson:
With the particular situation, yes. And what’s fascinating is I found out I could not have to listen to the videos and still take the test to pass them.

Dennis Collins:
Well, that’s because you’re Gordon Wilson. I wish we had more time. Leah, can you believe it? I’m just lost in this conversation. I could go on and on and on. Maybe we should reschedule. What do you think? Maybe we can do another one.

Gordon Wilson:
You know, if it helps owners, managers, or people that are out there, whatever, I really don’t mind. To give you an example of how I don’t mind, and I’ll give you an example of how I don’t mind. I started hosting and producing my own radio talk show a long time ago. And I spent years doing it, helping people all over the world just work through their stuff. And that includes people very high up, people very low, addictions, whatever it is. Just finding out how to move on in life. And people need to take time to understand who they hired, why you hired them, and then leave them alone.

Dennis Collins:
Wow. This, ladies and gentlemen, has been a master class in sales, leadership, sales management, what to do, what not to do. I particularly appreciate your comments about owners and senior level managers second-guessing. The person who jumps in the meeting and counter or contradicts everything that you already said, that you’ve been training for months and weeks. Small business owners, if that’s you, stop it. Don’t do it. Hire the right people. Put your trust in those people.

Leah Bumphrey:
Trust the people. And that’s exactly the word, Dennis. You’ve got to trust the people that you’re hiring. And if you don’t trust them, then re-look at that process. Because if you’re making them sit for the first 90 days with 143 hours’ worth of video and that’s all they get, you are setting yourself up for failure. And if you’re not, you are setting yourself up to go after those Goliaths and really show them what’s going on.

Gordon Wilson:
One more thing. If you are a small company that is stuck in that 1.4 to 2.3 arena for the last 15 to 20 years, one, why? Two, is it the people you’re hiring? Or three, is it you? I guarantee you it’s the last one. It’s your management style. It’s the way you run your business that is keeping you from growing instead of allowing the people you’re hiring to grow and help you grow their company. Cut out looking to blow through people and hire people and keep hiring people and keep going through managers and managers and GMs and sales managers thinking they’re the key to the success because as soon as you hire them, you cut them off. Here’s what you tell them to do and think. You know, it’s the KISS syndrome. Keep it simple and cut out expecting the same result from the mistakes you’ve made for the last 20 years.

Leah Bumphrey:
Gordon, we are sponsored by WizardAcademy.org, which is a place for non-traditional style of businesses and business owners to go and learn about training and to expand onto who they are as opposed to being cookie cutter. And you are not a cookie cutter guy.

Dennis Collins:
Not at all.

Gordon Wilson:
That’s not been one thing I’ve ever been accused of. And you know what? At my age, I own that. My dues card’s punched in full, and I’m okay with it.

Leah Bumphrey:
Beautiful. Love it.

Dennis Collins:
I love your attitude. You just have the right attitude, my friend.

Gordon Wilson:
Thank you.

Dennis Collins:
But more than that, you have the right stuff, and you’re willing to share it. And so many people who have the right stuff won’t share it. And today, you have been generous with your time, generous with your keys to success, and I think you have moved the ball forward for our listeners and our viewers. So I can’t thank you enough. Gordon Wilson, sales coach at Alaskan AC in Phoenix, Arizona, thanks for joining us. And for this episode of Connect & Convert, that’s all. We’ll see you next time. Connect & Convert.

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