Last week, I received something out of the norm: a thank-you note from a salesperson we fired. He was a good guy but just wasn’t hitting quota, so back in November we made the decision to part ways. But here’s the really cool thing about his note…
He recently landed a sales leadership role with a tech start-up and said that “everything I learned at TMT as a sales rep and your marketing strategy has allowed me to hit the ground running” – rebuilding their website and creating lead generation magnets, sales scripts, presentation decks and more, already bringing in over $100K in new sales while successfully raising their prices without suppressing sales.
He went on to say that I have routinely shared with my employees that you should never take a job *just* to get a paycheck – MORE importantly, you should get an education, and he wanted to thank me for giving that to him. That’s one thing I can promise to the people who work at TMT – they will definitely get an education in marketing and selling far superior to anyplace else they are working.
This brings me to 2 really important points:
First, ALL businesses are schools. The question is, what are you teaching? What kind of students are YOU producing? What kind of skills are you developing? What kind of standards are you holding others to? Good schools are measured by the success of their students – and if other companies wouldn’t enthusiastically hire your employees, WHY are you paying them to stay around?
Being a place where employees get to learn best practices, discipline, excellence, leadership and REAL skills is how you not only make your employees more productive and more valuable, but also how you keep the good ones and attract ambitious talent. The best statement I heard about this was delivered by Dr. Martin Bean, general manager of CompTIA at the time, who said that shortsighted business owners refuse to invest in their employees’ education, arguing, “What if I train them and they leave?” His reply was, “What if you DON’T train them and they stay?”
This is a secret of larger, more profitable businesses – they hire smart, ambitious and “green” employees, then train them to be great and put them into a functioning system to shorten the learning curve and get them to maximum productivity in a very short period of time. In doing so, they get better employees at a lower cost. You see this with best-in-class MSPs. They routinely get techs to work for less because they have good systems and processes, great training and great management.
Note this: When you lack good onboarding, training, systems and processes for success, you HAVE to hire expensive talent that can succeed in a barren environment that lacks structure.
I learned this years ago when visiting Robert Herjavec at his MSSP office in Toronto. His head of HR explained that for years they tried all sorts of tactics to retain level-one techs, but after about a year, they either had to be fired for nonperformance or they would leave for a higher-paying job. So instead of trying to fix it, Herjavec’s MSSP just accepted the fact that when they hired a level-one tech, the clock was ticking and they had one year before they would either have to promote them or fire them. Knowing that, they built tight systems and great training for new hires to get them productive ASAP, and build career paths for the good ones. They set up a constant recruiting effort, much like a lead generation funnel.
We take the same approach with our SDR program. Many have been promoted up in the company after a year and a half to two years. The others move on or are fired. Building that “factory” takes time, but it pays off and will become more and more necessary as you grow.
The second point about this is a reminder to YOU as a CEO that YOU need to put yourself into a school with experienced teachers and other serious students of business so that YOU can improve your own skills.
I’m currently reading David Novak’s book The Education Of An Accidental CEO. David was the co-founder of Yum! Brands, the world’s largest restaurant chain, with over 45,000 stores (KFC, Taco Bell, etc.).
David grew up in a trailer park, with no formal education, but said he was fortunate enough to learn from great bosses who all went on to build huge companies, as well as Warren Buffett, Jack Welch, John Wooden and more, attributing his success to these mentors – his was not a “traditional” education.
As the leader of your company, YOU need to gain access to great leaders, marketers, speakers and CEOs to learn from their experiences, keeping yourself in school year-round. You don’t need to work for great leaders, but you do need to read their books, watch their interviews and go to the seminars and events where they are speaking.
This is also why being in a successful peer group is so critical – you want to be in groups that pull you up to another level. You’ll never run a 7-minute mile hanging out with the 12-minute-miler group or, worse, no group at all. Even the 12-minute-mile people are at least getting together to DO the mile, which is something.
I have to say I’m super-pleased that this sales rep found a position that works for him. I’ve been fired from more than one job and it sucks. Firing people is no picnic either and if you like firing people you need therapy. I truly mean it when I say that it is my sincere hope that every one of my employees who leaves moves on to bigger, better things for them and that, in some small way, I helped to contribute to it.
Your business should be more than just a paycheck for your employees—it should be a place of growth, learning, and success. The top MSPs don’t just hire talent; they develop it. At the IT Sales & Marketing Boot Camp, you’ll learn how to build a high-performance team, implement systems that drive productivity and position yourself for sustainable growth. Surround yourself with industry leaders, proven strategies and a peer group that pushes you to new heights. Secure your spot now at robinsbigseminar.com.
