Hiring & Coaching Painting Sales Reps w/ Colin Nolan

Jon Bryant: Hey everybody, welcome back to Price Sell Paint. Today we are here with Colin Nolan from the Nolan Consulting Group. Welcome Colin.

Colin Nolan: Thanks, Jon Bryant. I was telling you guys earlier how big of a fan I am. I don't think you've had a guest on who's been as excited to be here as I am. First time, long time.

Jon Bryant: Amazing.

Michael Murray: There you go. We've never heard that.

Jon Bryant: You're a long time listener, first time caller. So for those who don't know Colin, he's part of the Nolan Consulting Group. They've been influential in my life, Michael's life, and just shaping our businesses. They help businesses that range from around $500,000 in revenue all the way up to $50 million. Your expertise—we're excited to chat with you today because of how much knowledge you have in hiring sales reps, identifying when sales reps are working, working with sales reps to get better, and just bringing that knowledge that's so helpful to us as business owners to get the right people in place in our organizations.

Colin Nolan: I'll see what I can do here. As a fan of the pod, you guys know a lot, so I'm sure you'll have some tips as well.

Jon Bryant: We have a growth mindset around here, Colin, so I'm ready to learn. Where I want to start is you knew Michael back when he couldn't grow facial hair. What was it like working with Michael back when you first started?

Colin Nolan: Michael was actually my first ever paying client. I never told him at the time—I didn't have the courage to tell him that until about a year and a half ago.

Michael Murray: You told me that for the first time right now!

Colin Nolan: No, I told you that about a year and a half ago. This was back in 2016, 2017. It was contentious because the Yankees and the Indians were in the ALCS against each other that year, so that caused some friction.

When I first started working with Michael, the interior painting was the large hurdle for you to get over. In the winter time, you basically had none. I remember the first month of January where you did around 75 or a hundred thousand in overall revenue. It was a massive win. We finally did it.

Michael Murray: In the January of 2017, we did like $10,000 in revenue. That was a big increase—about a $10,000 increase over the year before. I started the company in 2006, but not until 2017, really 2018, were we anything other than a college painting, exterior painting company. We hired a bunch of college kids, painted a bunch of exteriors, operated in seven different states at one point. I highly don't recommend doing anything like we did. It was awful. I lost a ton of money, was crying a lot, wondering how I was going to make it with two little kids and a couple hundred thousand dollars in debt. I was trying to find some marketing help.

David Chisholm asked if I was referred to him by Nolan Consulting. I said no, what's that? I didn't end up working with David, probably because I couldn't afford to hire anybody to help me with marketing, and ended up hiring Colin after that. The rest is history. I'm still working with Colin—he's still my coach today.

Colin Nolan: I still remember the first couple of calls. Because you were my first real client, I'd get nervous thinking about our Wednesday call on Monday. I needed to prepare and do a really good job. Michael, you helped me get over some of the early coaching jitters, so I appreciate it.

Michael Murray: I owe a lot to you.

Colin Nolan: When I look at where you were and where you are now, it's pretty wild. I remember the financial state that you were in and how brutal it was.

Michael Murray: I think Colin actually wanted to deal with another person. He was like, this is not good—people this deep in debt.

Colin Nolan: But it was very clear to me how intelligent you were and the drive you had. I thought, this should be working. Why isn't this working? And sure enough, look where you are now.

Michael Murray: Part of it was because we only had revenue for four months of every year. I needed Colin's help to tell me that that wasn't the best business idea.

Colin Nolan: That's the kind of coaching you get at Nolan Consulting Group: you should want to do more revenue in months where you don't have it.

Jon Bryant: He's going to send you the bill after this, Michael.

Michael Murray: Smart. And the rest is history. You helped me fire my first sales rep.

Colin Nolan: Yeah, I remember that one. And then there was one that you hired who was working out at the gym during the day when they should have been on estimates.

Michael Murray: Working out at the gym and working out of his side piece's house. Because he was married and doing things he wasn't supposed to be doing. Yeah, we could write a book. Memory lane with sales reps.

Jon Bryant: Let's talk about those first experiences working together, working through sales reps. What are some of the takeaways that you can look back on, Michael, about sales rep hiring? Is there anything you've learned?

Michael Murray: I'm literally in the middle of trying to hire sales right now, and it's never easy. I think the biggest thing I've learned—and I still don't do it—is we should always be looking for sales reps. We are constantly struggling with this, and we have good sales reps right now. I would say I've learned a lot about not hiring for the wrong reasons. We were hiring people who had some experience, seemed to have their own sales system—thinking this is going to be great, they're going to come in and fix us. Through Colin's help and Nolan Consulting and the literature, now I feel a lot more confident that we actually have our own system and I'm confident it can work. We just need to find the right person who's willing to come in and put in the effort.

Jon Bryant: What have you learned over the years working with people like Michael?

Colin Nolan: I find—not just Michael, but a lot of contractors—will hire sales reps because they found the one that was the best of the bunch, but the bunch may not have been that good. The scarcity mindset kicks in: "I have to hire someone, it's about to be February or March and I need someone to run leads." So they hire someone even though their gut is telling them they're not a fit.

Even though you invest in training them and give them leads that you've paid for, two months down the road you realize they're definitely not a fit. Now it's May and you have no sales reps. It's tough to overcome this idea that there are no good sales reps out there. You can't hire bad ones, so just don't hire bad ones and keep looking. I know that's terrible advice to hear—it doesn't really help people out—but it helps them avoid the soft cost of the bad hire.

Michael Murray: I would add to that: once you've hired that bad sales rep, you stop looking, which goes back to what I said. We need to never stop looking. Once you hire that mediocre rep, you're too busy to keep looking. Maybe we're missing out on the person who two weeks later would have been that rock star candidate.

Jon Bryant: If "keep looking" is the answer, Colin, what do you do to run that process more effectively and know that you found that person? I think a lot of people are going to say they'd like to find the right person. When do you know? What are some telltale signs?

Colin Nolan: It's definitely tough. The one thing that all great sales reps have—if you're hiring someone with sales experience—is what Brian calls "trophies." There's got to be some accomplishments. They've been in sales for five years? Point to your trophies. What have you done? What accomplishments do you have? How have you done it?

There should be some war stories of how they were able to change behavior to hit goals. They were down on a goal, did things differently, totally revamped some aspect of the process or started prospecting and then that led to hitting goals. That only works if somebody has trophies from sales.

If you're hiring someone with no sales experience—which is what a lot of people end up doing these days because good sales reps are employed—then there's got to be trophies at some point in their life. You don't want to hire someone who's never done anything of note. Are you competitive? What have you achieved? What are you currently trying to achieve in your personal life? Do you have goals that you want to hit? Whether it's financial or physical, what are you going after? Those types of personality traits are going to carry over into how they operate inside of a sales quota system.

You can always rely on personality tests and profiles. I like to use those. The one we use often is the DISC. I don't like to hire based off of a DISC. If someone's got a bad DISC profile for a sales role, that's not automatic disqualification. I use them more as a tiebreaker. If I've got two candidates and I like them both, can't really decide, they both have trophies, they've both done stuff that I really like, I'm going to go with the person who—based off of experience—having a high D is going to be more successful in sales.

But there are a lot of successful sales reps that have profiles of all different kinds. So I never like to throw people out just because of the DISC itself.

Michael Murray: I'd love to talk a little bit more about that. For somebody listening who's not as familiar with DISC, what are the qualities we're looking for that DISC can help to bring out?

Colin Nolan: DISC stands for—you spell it D-I-S-C—and the D, I, S, and C are four behavioral categories where everybody falls on some sort of sliding scale on all four. You'll hear terms like high D, high I, low D, low I. For a sales rep, you can be any kind of DISC profile and be successful at sales, but typically it's the high D coupled with a high I profile that is successful at sales.

A high D is someone who, when you're around them, you know it because there's no filter. They say what's on their mind. They're not afraid to ask tough questions. They tend to be competitive individuals. Everyone listening to this knows a high D in their life just based off of those traits.

Someone who's a low D is more agreeable. They may not say something because they're worried it could cause a problem. "I don't want to cause conflict. This could make them uncomfortable. I'm not going to say it." So they're not going to ask the tough questions. They can tell the customer doesn't really want to talk about this part of the project, so they're going to skirt around it.

You want someone who's not afraid to ask tough questions, but they also need to have emotional intelligence to boot. That's where the I comes in. The I is the interpersonal component. High I's are people who go to a networking function and see everybody as potential friends. They love to meet new people. They're very chatty. They can sometimes be distracted, but they're really bubbly, happy personalities. You couple those two together and it can be a fairly powerful combo for a sales role.

Michael Murray: What's the common mistake where somebody, especially in an interview setting, seems like they'd be good at sales?

Colin Nolan: Typically that's the I. They're seeing someone that's really chatty and likes to talk and they think, "You should be in sales." The problem with hiring that person for sales is high I's value the relationship to such a degree that they want to be liked so much that they're at risk of not asking the tough questions because they're afraid it would jeopardize their relationship. They forget why they're there. I'm here to try and see if we're a fit to do this project together, not here to be your friend. It would be great if we were friends, but that whole "hey, you should be a sales rep, you're really good at bonding and rapport"—that is one piece of a 14-piece puzzle, but it often gets the most attention.

Michael Murray: How do you coach somebody who's having some struggles with that directness? Maybe they're a medium D. How do you coach that?

Colin Nolan: There's this theory we subscribe to called the identity-role theory. It's pretty common in psychology. You have your identity—it's you, it's who you are, it's how you view yourself. No one can take that away from you. Then there's the roles that you play in life. You're a father, husband, friend, boss. There's all these roles. We could list 25 roles right now if we put the time into it. How you show up in all of those roles is different. There's different behaviors required to be successful in all those roles, and some overlap, of course, but how you are as a boss might be very different than how you are as a friend or a father.

It's about getting in a role. You look at any movie and Robert Downey Jr.—is he really Iron Man? Does he think those things? No, he's reading off a script. Being in sales can be reading off of a script. You just got to know when to say the right things and then do it.

You don't have to—it doesn't have to be who you are—but in order to be successful and ask those tough questions as a low D, you have to be comfortable being uncomfortable. You have to know when the time is to ask those tough questions that you might not be comfortable asking, and then do it and not have the results impact how you feel about yourself or impact the next appointment that you go on.

We say "get in the role." If you had to write a movie script role for what the sales appointment would look like with the best sales rep in the world going on the sales appointment, what would they do and what would they say? And then do it. Now it takes more work to be someone that you're not naturally, so someone who's a low D can mimic a high D—it just takes thought. It's not them being themselves naturally. A high D would say this now, so you just got to work on it. This is where the word tracks really help out, to have them armed with the right tool set of "When the customer says this, I know this word track usually works well." Whereas a high D naturally might not rely on word tracks as much—they might just play off the cuff.

Jon Bryant: What are some indicators that someone's making those changes? Or at a bigger level, that they're able to have success? Coaching is an element of it, but when do you start seeing that—say you're Michael and he's hired someone who's a low D—when do we start to see if they can actually do this?

Colin Nolan: There are a couple of different ways to evaluate the success of a sales rep. The first is overall cultural fit: does the rest of the team like them? Do they not fit in with the overall culture of the company? There's how well they work as a sales team altogether. Then there's: are they hitting their sales quota? Are they hitting their goals?

If you peel all that back and let's say they're a cultural fit, they're good with the team, but they're just not hitting their goals, then you do what I say is lift the hood of the car and get into all the behaviors that you know make a successful sales rep. You gotta find a way to assess them. You gotta have a way of assessing your team.

Ideally you have a sales system at your company. If you don't have one, they're not that hard—they're everywhere online. Customize it for yourself. Michael has one that works for him. Jon Bryant, you guys have one as well. Then you gotta chart them. You need to assess.

There are a couple of foundations of sales coaching: you need to assess, plan, coach, measure. The assess piece is the first part. Here's where I need you to be on this component of the sales process. Here's where you are. Do we agree on that assessment? You're basically diagnosing their development level. Assuming you guys agree on where somebody is on their development level, then you can get into, "Alright, now let's come up with a plan. How are we going to improve this? What's a good KPI? How do we objectively measure this?"

Let's say that bonding and rapport is a big one. Every sales rep gets into sales because they love the bonding and rapport aspect. It's probably the one aspect of a sales process that if you ask sales reps "How good are you at this?" they're all going to be like, "I'm great at it." No sales rep's like, "Terrible." They all think that they're great at it. So if you lift the hood on it, it's like, "Well okay, what makes you good at it? What are you doing?" There are three or four pretty common bonding and rapport tactics to take that if you want to ride along with the sales rep. You can measure and monitor and find them and then go, "You didn't do this" or "You did this and that wasn't okay."

For me, it's about assessing, figuring out where they're weak, and then coming up with actual objective measures for how are we going to get you better at this? In the bonding and rapport aspect, you didn't do any of the four or five tools that we typically teach.

I'm all about putting in pretty heavy guardrails—in bowling you put down the guardrails and ensure the ball gets to at least hit some of the pins. In developing people, great leaders are constant with their feedback. They don't let a lot of time go by without giving feedback, both positive and negative. That feedback loop is constantly allowing the guardrails to come closer and closer to where they're going to be hitting a strike more often. Feedback is constantly pointing them in the right direction that they need to go in.

I have a one-year-old now that's just starting to try and walk and he's using the walker. He veers off to the left and you gotta bring him back to the center. If he's off to the right, you gotta bring him back to the center. If you don't watch him for a minute, he's way off. It's kind of the same thing with a sales rep, but you gotta constantly be doing ride-alongs. The feedback's gotta be constant, bringing them back to what you know is the right path.

Michael Murray: It is funny how sales reps are a lot like one-year-olds. I'm just kidding. I love our sales reps.

Colin Nolan: Sales reps are great.

Jon Bryant: I think this is actually really helpful. I'm trying to think of this from a sales rep perspective too. If you are a sales rep listening, I think it's really helpful to get the background of what is needed for the business and what is helpful to be thinking about yourself and trying to work on yourself. That's really how sales reps get better—working on your role and working on the key parts of your role.

We're going to talk about assessments and how we can start to identify issues in the role. But ultimately every good sales rep is constantly looking at their process and their systems and being like, "Am I doing the best I can?" and trying to educate themselves on what it looks like to do better. If they do better, they do better. Hopefully you have a good comp system that allows them to be rewarded for that effort. I think a lot of times it can feel like an us versus them mentality, but really it's us together. Let's be better together. I think that's important to hear in this conversation—you can take a lot away from this by just thinking about areas where you need to improve.

Colin Nolan: If a sales rep is asking those questions and thinking that way, but they're not hitting their goals, that to me is like, "Alright, well, we're going to give you some more time" because not many sales reps think that way and are doing that kind of work. On the podcast you guys had with Connor from Sound Painting Solutions, he mentioned in his first year how terrible his numbers were, but his boss kept him around. He said, "I'm seeing the work you're putting in." If you're seeing that, you gotta give those kinds of people time because people who put in that kind of work and think about their job and the company that holistically are not easy to come by.

Jon Bryant: That's very rare. If anything can be taken away from this, it's that thinking about how to do your role better is beneficial to yourself first, and then hopefully that's going to be rewarded.

Michael Murray: I think that's the number one quality I look for in a sales professional—that inner competition, that "How am I going to be better tomorrow than I am today?" mentality. 1% better every day. When a sales rep has that—obviously I'd love to have that in everybody—but a sales rep especially. I would say they're probably the most important piece in our businesses.

I can absolutely track from when we started working with Colin until today—there's so many things that we're better at, but I would say the number one thing where it all starts is just being better at sales. Because we can charge at a higher rate, which can then start to solve for a lot of problems. It's amazing that when you actually charge the right price, you can make money in this industry and pay people and have benefits. When that happens, you can attract even better people. It becomes this really positive flywheel. That all starts with being able to sell better and connect with the right customers and not the wrong ones and all of the pieces and parts that a great sales rep is going to bring to the table.

Colin Nolan: When you know that work's going to be coming in, it allows you to plan and be methodical in the other areas. Whereas if work's scarce, then you're going around with your hair on fire trying to figure it out and you're not putting your time into operations.

Michael Murray: You're in fight or flight mode all the time.

Jon Bryant: Let's talk about KPIs. I think the whole idea of this conversation is how do you know if you're doing well and if you have potential. KPIs, for those listening, are those indicators that it is working. Michael, you were excited to talk about some of your previous experiences with salespeople and where you might've went wrong. Colin was a part of some of those with you. Maybe we can share some battle stories and learnings.

Michael Murray: We've had a lot. When we first started using Paint Scout in 2020, our sales win percentage was right around 32% as a company. We were selling about a third of the quotes that we did. I think the year before we were probably at 35%. Part of that 2020 issue was COVID—we had a million quotes because everybody was thinking about doing something at their house. We also had really bad sales reps in 2020. Talking about hiring somebody that had a lot of sales experience, couldn't use technology—that made trying to do virtual quotes during COVID really fun.

Sales win percentage would be one of the first KPI things that instantly come to mind. What are some of the key numbers that you look at, Colin? If one of your clients calls and says, "I've got this sales issue" or "I want to hire my first sales rep. How should I measure them?"

Colin Nolan: Sales win rate, close rate—those are the golden goose that everyone kind of looks for. The other obvious one would be just sheer volume. Are they hitting their overall goals? As Kevin talked about when he was on your podcast, I'm paying my sales reps to hit their goals. If they don't hit their goals, we don't have work and the operations team can't do it, so we have to hit our goals. You have to hit your sales goal.

Then the hourly rate—a lot of people could close a lot of jobs and do a lot of volume if they're not selling at a high enough rate, if they're constantly discounting and undercutting. Those tend to be the traditional ones.

If you lift the hood even further and go back into their sales pipeline: Are there a lot of open bids? Are there a lot of open estimates and not a lot of closures? Are they tracking their estimates? Is there follow-up that's happening and you can see that there's work being done? Or is it just kind of the X-Files, what we call it, where "I got 125 open bids, there's 3.1 million dollars of work in those bids. There's hope in there somewhere. If I get 1% of those, I'm in good shape." That's just a terrible strategy. The pipeline is a great ulterior place to go and see what's really happening in their day to day.

Jon Bryant: How soon are you looking at this stuff? Someone's 90 days in. Do we have enough data to make assessments at that point?

Colin Nolan: You have data points. I don't know if you have a conclusive story. Some people take time, other people are more plug and play. It depends upon the experience you're hiring them with. It depends upon your industry. If you're an average job size of $4,000 and you're all residential repaint and there's a lot of open bids and not a lot of closes, there's something not happening there. But if it's commercial longer term, then you gotta give them more time.

It's difficult for me to say in 90 days, here's what should be happening, because it all depends on your infrastructure of your sales team, the training that's available, the help that they're getting, plus the kind of lead flow they're getting, the branding and quality leads that they're getting. And then obviously, are they putting in the work? Can you see it every day? That to me is more indicative of: do I want you on my team?

If I've given you 90 days to hit these benchmarks of learning our system, did it take you 90 days to learn all those things or were you really getting after it and learning it in 60? Here at Nolan Consulting Group, we have an onboarding training plan for new coaches we hire that lasts about 90 days. I can tell a lot about a new coach if they're hitting the 90-day items by day 35 or day 60, because it's all self-paced. How voracious are they? Are they eating it up? And then you gotta audit and make sure that it's being absorbed.

A lot of this is self-paced. There are a lot of good books on sales, a lot of good podcasts on sales, and it's really up to them at what pace they take it all in. This is a great podcast on sales.

Michael Murray: I don't think there are any other podcasts. This is the original podcast, obviously.

Colin Nolan: It's the only one I listen to.

Michael Murray: What I hear you saying is kind of like the difference between the leading and lagging indicators. After 90 days, you might not have enough of those lagging indicators, but if we're looking at the right behaviors—are they doing their follow-ups? Are they setting next step agreements? Are they showing up to appointments on time? Putting in the work, learning, reading the books, doing the things? We might not yet see wins happening at the pace that we would like, but we can probably project, using Connor as a great example, that there's great things coming for this person. We need to provide some encouragement and coaching and guardrails. But if we're only looking at those lagging indicators—"Well, you didn't sell enough. Sorry, you're out"—you can make some really bad decisions. Am I hearing that right?

Colin Nolan: Absolutely. I actually was having a conversation about the exact thing with a client on Wednesday. They've not seen any kind of result yet that they want to see from a number standpoint, but he's asking what networking events he can go to. He's asking their business development person if he can tag along. He's putting in the work and they're talking about him like he could be sales management one day, even though he's got no real data yet. That just goes to show that that type of early attitude and effort is what you should be looking for.

Jon Bryant: There's the hard evidence, which is interesting because at this point now I've seen so much data that you can show me a profile of a sales rep just purely on data and I can tell you what they're doing wrong. It's like the Matrix—instead of seeing zeros and ones, I just see "this person doesn't follow up" or "this person isn't asking for the job." It's really become evident for me. But I think the first 90 days is the hardest to assess because there's so much to learn. As much as we think that someone who's painted before should know how to sell a paint job, they have to learn your sales system. If you haven't sold painting before and you have a sales system, you got to learn painting. There's a lot of variables there. So I think it's probably more of the soft skills we're looking for—that learner mentality, being willing to put in the effort.

But I'd say the one stat that really has been effective for us to monitor has been the closure rate. That's the ability to take a no and to move it to a point where you can get a yes or a no. A lot of times, if you can't get there in 90 days where you show you can close off work, we don't have enough data to work with at all because you can't do the most critical part, which is try to get the job. Have you experienced that? And do you agree? Is that important?

Colin Nolan: Are you getting that from their pipeline not growing at a huge rate because they're closing jobs out? Or are you getting that from your ride-alongs, Jon Bryant—you're seeing them tell customers, "I'm okay with no," and they actually get closure?

Jon Bryant: It's a little bit of both, but mostly it has to do with the pipeline. Are you—noes are great in the first 90 days. If you get 40 estimates and you get all noes, okay, we have something to work with. I mean, if you're getting all noes on 40 estimates, that's probably a problem in itself. But the point here is that that's really the key differentiator between someone who can sell, who has that D we've talked about earlier, or can at least emulate it—they're not just making friends, they're actually trying to push towards a decision point, which a lot of people are uncomfortable with.

Michael Murray: I would just jump in real quick. The idea of closure—we've talked about it, it's been a long time on this podcast—closure doesn't necessarily mean winning the job. It just means it not being open. It means actually getting an answer from the customer. The most common thing is if somebody doesn't book with your company, they just don't give you an answer.

I think that is the most prevalent thing in our industry or in home improvement. It's big ticket sales. "I'll get back to you." You never hear from them again. You chase them, chase them, chase them. Eventually you just give up. That's what Jon Bryant's talking about: getting an answer from a customer where you go after it enough, you set the conditions enough. We make customers feel okay with—just give me an answer. I'm not going to hassle you about it. I'm okay with a no. If at any point we're not going to be a good fit, just let me know. That's a sign of a really strong, successful sales rep.

Colin Nolan: It means they have the right internal regulation going on. Getting a yes or no from this customer does not have any impact on my self-worth or my value or the kind of day I'm going to have. I can't let this yes or no impact my happiness level at all. My happiness is something I control. That takes—if someone's got a really great internal regulation, that might be one of the major components of a great sales rep: to be able to get through.

If a customer really believes that you're okay with no, then they're going to tell you. But they have to believe it. You can't just say that word track and have it sound salesy. They have to make them believe it. If you can do that, then I have a hard time thinking you won't be successful in sales.

Michael Murray: One of the things I love to talk about with our sales team—I think even though I talk about it quite often, it almost surprises them every time they hear it—I say one of the worst things that can happen as a sales rep is when you get really excited when you sell a big job. And the reason for that is the opposite side of that coin: you get down when you lose a sale. When somebody tells you no, maybe it's a big job, great house, and they say no, you're going to get a little bit down. Your emotional state is going to change in the negative, similar to how it would change in the positive when you win that sale.

How that manifests itself is you don't go for closure because having that negative experience in your emotional state is something that we all want to avoid. Nobody likes to feel down. Subconsciously then, as a salesperson, we don't go for closure. We go for making friends and giving out bids and hoping that some of them say yes—that makes me feel good. If I never hear no, then I don't ever have those negative experiences and they just fizzle away. That's a mediocre at best sales performance.

Colin Nolan: It's the same thing that leads to people not prospecting and not doing business development, because they don't get to feel good by prospecting. "I'm not going to get a sale here. I get turned down a lot." So if you're really good at the internal regulation piece, you probably would also be good at that business development piece.

Michael Murray: I love that. Talk more about that. That's something that I think in our industry we struggle with so much—prospecting and sales reps owning their results in that.

Colin Nolan: Sales reps, particularly the short sales cycle sales reps, as much as we say "don't get too high or too low," they do to some degree. It can be really difficult to get them to spend a full day where you're not going to get any type of dopamine hit today. You're just going to go out and meet some people or jump off coffee and that's a good day. They're like, "What do you mean that's a good day? I didn't make any sales." They end up not wanting to do it.

I like companies that tend to gamify the business development side and try to make it an easier crossover to where winning is not making a sale, winning is a contact. "I spoke with five people today that were all in the HOA niche that I was going for"—that's a win. The sales team needs to celebrate that win at the sales meeting. You kinda force that dopamine hit by prioritizing the behaviors that's going to end up leading to results potentially way down the road. But if you can have a sales team that celebrates those types of wins, the prospecting is going to be way more fun and people are going to want to do it more.

Michael Murray: Yeah, for sure. Jon Bryant, you guys do well with that. We've had Dave on and I think the gamification that you guys have done is awesome.

Jon Bryant: It's a great way to do it. It just makes it feel so much more real if you can do it in the right way. It's a huge part of this industry and most home improvement industries—figuring out how to be relevant and to get to know people even when they don't need your services.

Colin Nolan: In order for people to buy from you, they first need to know you and like you. I need to know that you exist if I'm going to buy from you. I probably need to like you and my interactions have been positive. Those are the first two steps of the customer cycle there, and that's the whole goal of this business development piece.

I think your brother—he doesn't take any company-fed leads. He was like, "I don't want any company-fed leads." I've never heard a sales rep say that and then not be successful. There's been a couple that have been able to do that. But that mindset of—if you had the confidence to say that, you're almost going to follow through on it. It's all mindset, the whole prospecting thing.

Jon Bryant: Let's chat here about the Nolan Consulting and Sales Assessment. I know that's such valuable work and I'd really like our listeners to be aware that this kind of stuff exists. Maybe give us the overview of it and then we'll talk about how it can be helpful.

Colin Nolan: We've been doing sales boot camps for as long as we've existed since 2003. The sales rep self-evaluation wheel has been a part of that. I actually got this from Andrew Leslie. I was talking to him this week and he said sales reps are visual people, so that wheel thing is really powerful. I agree.

You're able to go through these 14 questions that look to attack different pieces of the sales process, but not just process—different things that would benefit a sales rep. You ask them to grade themselves on a scale of zero to 10, with zero being lowest, "I don't do this ever," and 10 being "I do this every time. Perfect, no room for improvement."

Jim Falk, you guys have had on from Nolan Painting, he's a pretty good sales rep some people would say, and he'd never give himself a 10 in any of these. To say you're a 10 means that you've reached perfection, and that's just the kind of mindset where you can't think you've ever reached perfection because then you rest on your laurels and get lazy. So nine is really the highest that we'd like to see people give themselves. You rate from zero to nine and that gives you a really good insight into the different areas that sales rep needs to improve.

As their sales manager or boss, you're going to want to do the same thing for them. Then you can compare the two wheels and go, "You gave yourself a nine or 10 on bonding and rapport. I gave you a two. There's a big delta there. We have never bonded ever, so I don't know what you're talking about." So there's conversation there. It's like, "Tell me what you think good bonding and rapport means because that's not what I'm seeing."

Then you can start talking about, "What's the action plan here? Do we agree upon what has to start happening?" You say you're great at bonding rapport. I don't think you do a lot of active listening or finding common ground. You kind of just talk a lot. You see a fish on the wall and you talk about the fish. That's not bonding rapport to me.

Michael Murray: Nice fish. Nice dog. Anyways, I got something to sell you.

Colin Nolan: I have a dog too. Done, bonding rapport, check.

Come up with some actionable areas, some objective things that you can start to see them doing that are going to help bring that from a two to a five or six and just show improvement to some degree. So there's 14 different little spokes here. I'm not sure, Jon Bryant, if you want me to go through all 14 of them or to pick out a couple.

Jon Bryant: Pick out a couple just so people know. I think ultimately the idea here is that I think it's so helpful to know that this stuff exists and that you can get help. So yeah, do a couple you think are interesting.

Colin Nolan: I always gravitate towards finding pain. It's definitely a phrase that a lot of sales reps are familiar with and a lot of sales reps will rate themselves high on bonding rapport but also on finding pain. But I don't think people actually do a good job of this. I think sales reps think they find pain but they don't really find pain. They find potential flags that they're going to care about and then they move on. Whereas when you really find pain, you get to what they really care about—what's going to make this person pay more money for my product or for the experience that we're going to give and make us a fit for each other.

In order to really get there, you gotta do the work and it's not quick. It can be a roundabout way. I like to view finding pain as getting into a hot tub with a customer. It's like, "Alright, we're getting in, now we're getting out." No, no, no—we just got here, let's sit for a little bit. Let's chat. How long has this problem been going on? What have you tried? That's brutal. That really didn't work? Then what did they say? You find it and hang out for a bit. You did all the work to get there. You got into the hot tub, enjoy it. Poke around, figure it out, experience it.

Once they fully experience that pain and you know that they remember that experience and it's fully present as if they're back in that moment, then you can move on. People will find pain, if they find it at all, and then they quickly move on. They're like, "Great, I got it, next." So that's one of the ones that I love that people don't do—they might do it, but they don't do it very well.

Michael Murray: Can I put you on the spot? Can we do a little role play? I'll let you be the sales rep, I'll be the customer, and give us somebody that is like a seven, eight, nine in that finding pain. What might that sound like? A residential painting quote. You're the sales rep. I'm the homeowner.

Colin Nolan: So they're very good at finding pain and really sitting in it. Michael, you were talking to me about how when you had the last contractor here, they would do work till well after typical closing hours. They'd be doing work outside till like 8 PM and their neighbors were complaining. That's a pretty brutal experience. Can you tell me a little bit more about that?

Michael Murray: Yeah, it was last summer we had this landscaping, we got the patio done. You can see it out there. It took forever. So we've got young kids and for us, 7:30, 8 o'clock is bedtime. It was time to get out, see you tomorrow. I've got to get the kids to bed here. It's a little loud.

Colin Nolan: I mean, I want to hit 7:30, it's bath time and everything needs to stop. Did you talk to him at all? Did you go and ask them to stop?

Michael Murray: Yeah, the first day I didn't. I just was like, alright, this is just going to be a one day thing. No big deal. I want to be nice here. But that second day, my wife was like, "Hey, what are we doing? You gotta go talk to these guys." So I went out there and the guy honestly was kind of rude about it and I didn't want to get in a fight. I don't know, he's working on the yard.

Colin Nolan: So you asked him to end it early and he just wouldn't do it.

Michael Murray: Yeah. He's got a lot of projects to do, he said, and he's got to get this done while it's daylight out. I mean, I get it. I understand there's only so much time.

Colin Nolan: But you get it. I mean, you're the customer. I can't even imagine how that made you feel.

Michael Murray: I was a little frustrated for sure. I wasn't happy about it.

Colin Nolan: Frustrated for sure. And then if they just kept doing it, it's kind of adding insult to injury each day that they just don't leave by 7:30.

Michael Murray: Yeah, for sure. Eventually we had neighbors that were texting over like, "Could we keep it down over there?" And it's kind of embarrassing to be honest.

Colin Nolan: That's my nightmare, Michael. That is literally my nightmare. That sounds unbelievable. I'm really sorry that that happened to you. That's a horrible experience.

Michael Murray: Yeah, I'm glad it's over. Let's put it that way. I don't want to do that again for sure.

Colin Nolan: So I'm going to write down in our notes, "Listen to the homeowner and make sure that we're done before 7:30." Would that be helpful, Michael?

Michael Murray: Yeah, I think so. I don't think I'm asking too much.

Colin Nolan: I don't think so at all. So we got there, we found the pain, we sat in it for a bit, and then made a little joke to kind of get out of it. But the key of finding it is that it's not for in the moment to try and sell them. I'm not trying to be like, "Great, well, if we can do that, if we're gone by five, can I earn your business?"

The goal is: now I know something that's going to make him potentially pay more because the experience matters. He had a bad experience, this wouldn't have to happen again. I can use that. We're not going to—I mean, we would never have that happen whether I knew about this or not.

When the objection comes on price, if it comes, that's when you use the pain and you go back to it. And it's not slimy. It's authentic. It's: "Michael, we talked a lot about your past experiences where you've spoken to these contractors and you made your preferences known and they wouldn't listen to you. It felt disrespectful. I'm not saying that these other contractors are going to do that, but did you have that conversation with them the way that we did? Are you confident that they're going to take your experience and how you guys experience people in and around your home to the same degree of seriousness that we are?"

You just make them think a little bit. Hopefully that emotion you bring back up again is enough to make them part with whatever the gap is in price.

Michael Murray: I love it. So let's do another quick role play. What might that sound like if somebody's like a three or four? A zero might not even be bringing it up, not even asking about the last contractors. But maybe there's somebody out there that's a three or four—they've heard of this, perhaps some of the other guests on the podcast have talked about pain, and they kind of do it but not really. They get into the hot tub and they get out. Give us an example.

Colin Nolan: So Michael, have you guys worked with other contractors in the past?

Michael Murray: Yeah, we had the patio put in last year. Big project.

Colin Nolan: Okay, good experience, bad experience?

Michael Murray: It was okay. I mean it took—the guys took a little longer than I thought. But overall I was really happy with it in the end.

Colin Nolan: Okay, so it sounds like timeline's pretty important to you in getting things done.

Michael Murray: Yeah, I mean, I don't want you guys here forever. How long do you guys think this project might take?

Colin Nolan: Probably four days. Okay, so we'll make sure timeline's important to you, making sure that we're going to get this done in a speedy manner. I'll make sure that we have that on the estimate and it's taken care of.

Great. I found his pain. His pain was the timeline and I made sure that I noted in the estimate. So when you were like, "Yeah, it was okay"—that's a note for every sales rep that's out there: Whenever a customer is telling you about an experience and the tone and the inflection of the voice goes up or down, pause. Hold the phones. You found something there and they don't want to disclose. You got to peel that back.

"Michael, I can't help it, but I noticed that when you said it went okay, you went 'it was okay.' That in my experience, there's always something there. Is there something there?" And you can kind of get into it.

Someone that is not looking for real pain is just going to hear "check the box, found what might make them buy" and they're going to move on from it and then not even get to the pain.

Michael Murray: Love it. It's awesome.

Jon Bryant: Maybe let's go through one more, Colin, one more on the spoke and then we'll wrap up.

Colin Nolan: I already hit bonding and rapport and finding pain, because those are the two that sales reps always think they do well and they're really important. Obviously Connor did really good about talking money when he was on your pod. I'll say the decision process.

The decision process can be kind of a third rail topic, particularly if you're selling to homeowners. It's like, "Well, I don't want to disrespect the person I'm talking to here by saying, 'Are you going to involve your wife? Are you going to involve your husband?'" They may not fully get into what the decision process is.

Are you afraid to ask the tough questions about how is this decision going to be made? When you've had decisions like this in the past with projects on your home, can you run me through what that process looks like from when you bring people in to when you make your choice? What does that look like? Have them bring you through.

You can also say things like, "Who would you like me to include in my emails? Is there anyone else that I should be including when I send stuff over?" That's kind of a roundabout way of being like, "Is your spouse going to be involved in this as well? Should I be including them?" Then they go, "Yeah, include my spouse." "Oh, okay, great. So you're married. Are they going to have a lot of input?" Once they open the door to it, you start getting into it a little bit more.

But it's really an inflection point to not figure out more about the decision process because it's one of the things that customers can keep close to the vest. That feels like "I'm giving up a lot of information if I tell you about my decision process and how I'm going to make this choice." Asking about it is the first step and then doing it the right way to where the homeowner doesn't feel—or whoever you're talking to, if it's a commercial sale, it's like, "I know I'm talking to you but your boss is making this call"—of course that's not what you want to do. So you gotta find ways of getting to who the decision maker is without insulting and disrespecting the person you're speaking in front of. That can be tough. Because it's tough, people might not do it. So that's another one I'd highlight.

Jon Bryant: Yeah, especially from—we've had this discussion before on whether you should do it or not. I think there's that mentality sometimes people have: "I want to make sure that both decision-makers are going to be present for the meeting." Really quick, just want to make sure. It's a little odd.

Colin Nolan: You can turn people off real quick.

Michael Murray: "Hey, female, is your husband going to be home?" Oh my God, you lost. Just stop.

Colin Nolan: You gotta view that individual that's right in front of you as your champion. Even if they're not the main—I say this all the time, "Well, I don't really get to—I talk to the facilities manager, but the board makes all the calls, so it's not worth it."

Well, you have the greatest insight into the board sitting right in front of you. How can you solve their problems and make them fight for you to that board? Or if they can't fight in front of the board, can you learn more about the board from them? You got it. People are really quick to overlook who's in front of them to get to their real decision maker, and they're losing an opportunity to create a relationship that's going to benefit them. So that's another area that I think a lot of people could work on.

Michael Murray: That might even be—go back to that pain conversation—that might be an opportunity to talk about the last time a project was done. Perhaps you're not talking to the main decision maker or that board example. How did that go? What was that like? Maybe there was some pain involved. Maybe the board went with somebody that the facility manager didn't recommend and we can hang out in that pain and that part of that conversation as well.

Colin Nolan: There's pain all over the place. You got to bring your metal detector to the beach and you're just combing the beach and you hear some beeps and you dig up and it's not real pain. It's fake pain. I'm going to keep going. Once you find pain, get in the hot tub and hang there a while. Wait till you're nice and pruney and then you can get out. Not an actual hot tub, just to be clear. The proverbial hot tub.

Michael Murray: Yeah, we do not—if you're in the hot tub with your customer and you haven't got the job yet...

Jon Bryant: Because if the other decision maker comes home...

Colin Nolan: I hope you make that sale. That's all I'll say.

Michael Murray: People are just going to listen to this episode and—this is Colin Nolan in my hot tub! That's some pain.

Jon Bryant: It's going to be quite the scene.

Michael Murray: Episode's going to get an explicit rating on it here soon.

Colin Nolan: Perfect.

Jon Bryant: Colin, we appreciate having you on.

Colin Nolan: Yeah, it has been a blast. It's been fun. Thanks for having me on.

Jon Bryant: For those of you who are the first time learning about Nolan Consulting, the sales assessment is available. You guys can do that for just anyone. How does that work?

Colin Nolan: Yeah, we'd be happy to make this available to anyone that's looking for it. Then it's 14 spokes for us, but you might customize it for your company and kind of get an idea about what we want to be judging and coaching our sales reps on. Absolutely available.

Jon Bryant: Love it.

Michael Murray: Colin, Jon Bryant and I are obviously clients. I've been working with you guys since 2017. Jon Bryant, you've been a client of Nolan before I was. How long does that go back?

Jon Bryant: 2013 probably.

Michael Murray: Wow, 12 years.

Colin Nolan: I think you joined right when I joined. That's a long time ago, Jon Bryant. It's funny.

Jon Bryant: Yeah, feels like forever.

Michael Murray: Talk about just who Nolan Consulting is for, and maybe who Nolan Consulting is not for, for somebody that might be listening to the podcast. They've heard it before, they've considered it. Who might be a great fit? Who might be maybe not a great fit?

Colin Nolan: A big component of what we do is we help business owners crystallize their vision, implement systems, know their numbers, get out of the hourglass. There's a lot of great coaching companies out there now. I think something that we do really well is the care that we have, the depth of the relationships that we generate with our clients.

I would get on calls with Michael back in 2018 and get anxiety about the numbers I was going to see because I cared about Michael. Now I look forward to getting the numbers emailed to me because I know they're going to be killer.

It's really for anyone that's looking to turn a lifestyle business where you are your business, your business is you, and turn it into a value business, whether you want to sell it where it's worth more or just run it on the side. But through developing people—that's a big part of what we help with—developing people, leadership training, field leadership training, sales training, all that stuff. Because really it's people at the end of the day. They're going to get you to where you want to go. If you can help people get what they want, they're going to help you get what you want. Figuring out what they want is huge.

I'm not doing a good job answering your question at all. It's typically trades businesses between $500,000 and $20-27 million is our niche and we obviously work with people beyond that, but people don't come to us at that range.

Michael Murray: That's fair. It's not just the painting industry. Obviously there's clients here. Some clients have come and gone over the years. What is a characteristic of a company that's joined that wasn't as successful? Maybe it was short-lived. Perhaps they didn't have the infrastructure to put some of the stuff in place. Perhaps they didn't have the right mindset. Anything like that might come to mind?

Colin Nolan: I'd say the type of people we don't work super well with are the people that are looking for quick fixes. "I need something to solve this problem." Growth is not a straight line. As you can attest to, Michael, there's going to be trials and tribulations and challenges and bad days and good days. The people who want to build their businesses the right way, not through quick systems that plug and play—"I'm good, I'll see you guys later"—but when they want to develop a respected advisor, they want to build it the right way, those are the people who work out really well. Would you guys agree with me? You guys are on a lot of people on summit. That's pretty accurate.

Michael Murray: Yeah. I mean, I think that growth mindset—we talked about with the sales reps—somebody who's trying to improve, that 1% better every day type of mentality. I think somebody who's open to—who has that humility that "I don't know everything." But also willing to share it. It's a group. You just mentioned there's the individual coaching, but there's also that group component. That's how Jon Bryant and I became such good friends over the years here. A lot of it is just sharing with each other best practices and horror stories.

Colin Nolan: We typically will put people into two groups. You're either a sharer or you're a taker. Takers don't mean—I don't mind saying that because takers don't last long. If you're a taker, you typically will get our systems, you will work with us and then you might move on your way. And that's fine. That's totally fine. You're allowed to be a taker. You're paying us. We're giving you, it's a good exchange.

Who really work out and benefit in the long term is they want to give to the group. They want to help the group out. By doing that, you obviously are going to get in return as well. That's the mentality.

Jon Bryant: Love it guys. Well, let's wrap it up there. Colin, thank you once again. For all of you who are listening, enjoy the content, give it a like, give it a subscribe. We're happy to keep doing this and bring on awesome guests like Colin. If you're looking for more information, it's NolanCG.com.

Michael Murray: I'll call you next week when something's completely broken and I need your help.

Colin Nolan: Perfect.

Jon Bryant: Thanks guys. Have a great day. Talk to you later.

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