8 Years of Sucking at Sales to Overnight Success With Shawn Channell

Most entrepreneurs and small business owners are bogged down with the day-to-day operations of their businesses and don't have enough time to focus on sales.

Without a highly trained sales team, you're leaving a lot of money on the table. Not only will you not make as much money as you could be, but also you'll likely wear yourself out trying to do it all yourself.

Shawn Channell is an expert in this field and can help you build a world-class sales team that will take your business to new heights. In this episode, he shares his secrets for creating a successful sales team.

Connect with Shawn

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Transcript

Shawn on Chasing Financial Freedom

[00:00:00] Ryan: Hey guys, Ryan Dement from chasing financial freedom podcast. I hope you guys are having a great day on the podcast today. We have Sean channel, so his story's a little different and I wanted to bring him on because he talks about his first eight years in sales and how he's sucked. And now he's teaching small business owners to grow or bring on their sales people and get them in a profitable place.

[00:00:26] Ryan: Sean, welcome to the welcome to the. 

[00:00:29] Shawn: Ryan. Thanks for having me. I'm excited to be on 

[00:00:32] Ryan: you are more than welcome. So we had a little bit of a talk about what you're doing, but why don't you tell the audience a little bit about what or who you are and then how you got there. Yeah. 

[00:00:41] Shawn: So currently I've really focus on working with small business owners to help them up level their own sales skills and, or start building up their sales teams.

[00:00:51] Shawn: Most of us, as we grow our businesses will get to a point where we'll look to have, our first sales people or first sales team. And we really help them hire them, train [00:01:00] them, develop them and get them up and running so that, the business owner can act as an owner and not the salesperson.

[00:01:07] Ryan: Great story of the first eight years of sucking at sales. What got you to want to change and stick with it? Cuz a lot of people wouldn't after eight years, that's a long journey. 

[00:01:20] Shawn: Yeah. I don't know if I'm stubborn or maybe just dumb I can't tell you it was, I got into real estate at 19 years old and.

[00:01:32] Shawn: Really I was, I went to college. It just wasn't for me at that point. So I dropped out and I was living in a small community and, I always knew I wanted to be in the business. And so I didn't really know what that looked like at that age. And I had a friend whose father was in real estate and I thought you know what, there's no degree requirements.

[00:01:52] Shawn: This is something I can get into. And so I got into it, got my real estate license at the age of 19. And thought, I'm gonna [00:02:00] build to get out here and make my fortune reality hit in. And I soon realized that I had nothing in common with the people that were buying houses. Here I am 19 year old kid living with my parents working with people that are in the thirties and forties and, seventies, they're buying their third house.

[00:02:16] Shawn: They have kids older than me. They have grandkids my age. I didn't, I wasn't able to relate with them and what they were going through. And I managed to sell a few houses, but I just wasn't successful at it. And so I ended up going into car sales thinking that I might be better at that.

[00:02:31] Shawn: Nope, I wasn't. And part of that was not having a good coach, not having a good instructor, someone that to walk me through the sales process my manager. When I was in real estate was like, you build relationships with people I'm like about what, how, I'm 19 year old, underage drinking on the weekends.

[00:02:50] Shawn: And these are people who are business professionals or buying their, second house. What do we relate about? And when I got into car sales, the coaching was. [00:03:00] Similar it was, very high level. And typically in sales people are either good at it or they're not, when they're good at it, they don't necessarily know how to tell people how to be good at it.

[00:03:12] Shawn: They just said I just build relationships with people. I just talk to people. I, I just close 'em we negotiate and I'm like what does that mean? And so I had to find a really. Strategic way to, to do all this and it took me a while. And so I bounced around from, real estate and car sales and door to door.

[00:03:29] Shawn: And all of those things molded my approach. I did go back to college during that course. After the first St in car sales, my parents finally convinced me to go back to college. I went to my degree in economics, but I immediately went back into car sales when I got. And I just, maybe I don't like to be bad at things.

[00:03:48] Shawn: And so maybe I wanted to figure out a way to, to be good at this, but it definitely took me a long time and it definitely took me a lot of hard lessons to, to find a way to find success. [00:04:00]

[00:04:00] Ryan: So when you first started in real estate at 19, what drew you to it? 

[00:04:06] Shawn: I think initially it was just the ease of access to get.

[00:04:10] Shawn: It's not hard to become a real estate agent to get your real estate license. I went through a course. It was a self-paced course through a pretty big branded, real estate firm. But I was, I was 19 years old. I was used to studying, I was used to, being a student and so I just really buckled down.

[00:04:27] Shawn: And three weeks later I had my real estate. Now that just legally allows you to sell real estate. It doesn't teach you any of the ins and outs of the real estate business, but that was what drew me to. It was just the ability to get in there, thinking that I was going to be able to be successful from a business perspective very quickly.

[00:04:46] Ryan: And I think that just translates to today and beyond because you see the market it's starting to cool off the real estate market is cooling off, but you see a lot of real estate agencies jumping in because I think it's easy and [00:05:00] I can just sell a house. And I think that is a great story and a great point to talk about just for the simple point is sales is not meant for everyone.

[00:05:08] Ryan: And you brought that up. It's either you're really good or you're really not. And. As business owners, we don't get a choice of being either or you've gotta be able to drive the business and be able to do that. So having somebody like you to help us is critical. So how do you help small businesses?

[00:05:27] Ryan: Like for myself, we don't have salespeople cuz we're in real estate development. But could we probably, we could do some different stuff, but how would you help a small business owner let's say or, you know what not don't, let me go down that path. How about you? Tell me what type of businesses you work with and your system.

[00:05:45] Ryan: And then we'll go back and forth. Yeah. 

[00:05:47] Shawn: So I work with a lot of small business organizations chambers of commerce and then minority business enterprises and things like that. And through those partnerships, I do a lot of standalone sales training, [00:06:00] and that is really designed for small business owners to help them up level their sales skills.

[00:06:06] Shawn: One of the things I don't think most of us realiz when we get into. Running our own company is how much sales is require. You don't, you I've been really good at real estate. I've been really good at construction. I've been really good as an accountant and I wanna start my own company, not recognizing that.

[00:06:23] Shawn: That means I have to sell my services, my products to other people. And so a lot of small business owners struggle with that aspect. And we walked them through a very. The course is about 25 hours. It is, you walk away with, what do I put in emails, four or five different email templates.

[00:06:40] Shawn: What do you say on that first phone call? What's my follow up look like. What's my social media presence look like. You walk away with a script, don't say script. Strategic blueprint, a plan on how to take, go from a prospecting conversation to a closing conversation. And that allows a lot of small business [00:07:00] owners just to go out and start becoming more effective at closing the leads that are in their phone.

[00:07:05] Shawn: If they can, jump from one out of every 10 interactions becoming a customer two or three, that's a game changer for the. And then at some point, ideally you're gonna get to the spot where you're like, it doesn't make sense for me as the business owner to do all the sales, I need to have a dedicated salesperson. And that really came about, is working with business owners who were like, we've tried, we've hired 'em they lasted three months, or it lasted eight months and they just didn't have the same passion or the same skills or the same ability as me. And it's back.

[00:07:38] Shawn: On my lap. And there is a difference, right? As a business owner, we're passionate, this is our baby. This is what we love. This is what we know we're good at brings on board without structure, without training without a plan. You it's a toss. You might get lucky and find the right person, but, I spent the last 17 [00:08:00] years coaching, developing, hiring training sales.

[00:08:03] Shawn: So I know what to look for when it comes to hiring a salesperson. I know how to translate your business to them so that they have those skills. I know what processes to put in place for 'em what CRM system we should use. We create playbooks, we create a foundation to set that person up for success.

[00:08:21] Shawn: And then that allows that business owner they're okay. The salesperson's really. Got it going on. I can focus on growing my business in other ways, whether that's through more marketing efforts, driving profits, cutting. Costs, whatever those things look like allows 'em to really run their business and don't have to be that salesperson.

[00:08:40] Ryan: So what I gotta ask, start getting down to my questions here. Cause I got some interesting ones for myself, at least popping in my head as a business owner. So what would you say the number one obstacle is for a small business owner when it comes to sales. So the trans, when I'm starting is the transition piece from, okay, I'm doing all the work.

[00:08:57] Ryan: I'm doing all the sales. To, oh my gosh, [00:09:00] I've gotta scale. Now, if I want to continue to grow and bring on a salesperson, what are the hurdles there from going from I'm doing it all to bringing somebody on? 

[00:09:10] Shawn: Part of it's control. I think that's where a lot of business owners struggle, especially when you've been doing it all, you have a way of doing it and that way may be highly effective for you.

[00:09:20] Shawn: That doesn't mean it's gonna be highly effective for the salesperson that you bring on. And so I think, one of the benefits of working with someone like me is I'm the outside person looking at. So I can say this makes sense. This might not make sense for a salesperson. And I don't have the emotional attachment that you may have to your processes the way that you think things should be done.

[00:09:45] Shawn: And my whole goal is to look at it from a scale perspective. So I think, control and letting someone else find their rhythm, find their opportunity to do things that are as effective as you would do, but maybe on their own path. [00:10:00] Is one of the things that I've seen with a lot of business owners when they're looking to hire that first sales person is dealing with it to say, I trust you.

[00:10:09] Shawn: the results will come. And letting that happen. 

[00:10:13] Ryan: It is definitely control because I've had some other business that I've sold or I've dealt with and I needed sales people. And I know when I was doing the sales versus bringing somebody on, I had the same problem. Luckily I had a partner that was very good at sales and was able to work with the sales people as they came on.

[00:10:29] Ryan: But I totally get it. Control pieces is a huge issue. Once, you bring somebody on and you're giving 'em the training, the opportunities and so forth. How does the owner's mentality change? Do you, is it like overnight? Is it over a period of time? I, you said 25 hours. That's a pretty substantial amount of time.

[00:10:49] Ryan: How does that owner or that small business transform from going from I'm doing it all to now I've got sales people doing. 

[00:10:58] Shawn: Yeah. It's I think one of the reasons [00:11:00] that a lot of people decide to make that transition and decide to work with someone like myself is, they're tapped, right?

[00:11:08] Shawn: They're emotionally, mentally tapped. And mostly that's become from a time perspective, right? Running a business is very time consuming, especially when you're acting as a full-time sales person. What I see a lot of times is, those first few weeks and typically when I help someone build a sales team or, hire a salesperson, we're talking three to six months of partnership, right?

[00:11:28] Shawn: This is something that's gonna take some time to fully develop and get settled in. So those first few weeks, there's a lot of questions and a lot of concerns and a lot of, looking over the shoulder, but then what you notice is they start to see. Those processes being put into place when they start to understand what the vision is, going to, outcome's gonna look like it's almost like this sense of relief.

[00:11:52] Shawn: All, I want people to thank me because I'm giving them time back with their families. I'm giving them time to focus on areas of their [00:12:00] business that they know they're not, fully invested in. And now they have the ability to do that. And. It's really rewarding for me because I get to see these individuals get their lives back.

[00:12:12] Shawn: And at the same time, their businesses are thriving and growing and set up for long term success. Because the only way that we're really gonna survive is to continue to, scale. And if we're trying to carry everything on ourselves as the business owners, We can only do that for so long.

[00:12:31] Shawn: And then eventually we get burned out and we, most of us, maybe we get lucky and sell the business. But if you look at the statistics, most of the time we just end up close shop and that's what I'm trying to help business owners avoid. 

[00:12:46] Ryan: Is there a huge difference between bringing one person on as a salesperson versus a team when it comes to the small business and I know it's scale, but is from the training perspective from your.

[00:12:57] Shawn: Personally my favorite, if the business owner feels [00:13:00] that they can do it from a financial perspective is to bring on a minimum of two a couple reasons. One that helps protect the investment they're making in me and the training program. Because if for one re for some reason or not, one of those two people don't work out.

[00:13:14] Shawn: They still have someone, out there doing the sales but from a sales purely sales perspective. It's easier when you have a partner it's easier when you have someone who's going through the same things that you're going through. The same learning curve, the same, rejections and there's that competitive aspect.

[00:13:31] Shawn: Most good sales people are competitive. And so if I know that I'm competing against Sally and, we're going through the same thing and we're calling, same type of prospects and we're having the same expectations. I wanna win. And so I'm gonna push myself every single day from a still perspective to try and beat, that peer but at the same time, I have someone to bounce ideas off of and share my stories with.

[00:13:53] Shawn: Having two people I've seen really sets the company up for success from a lot of different [00:14:00] aspects. 

[00:14:02] Ryan: So I'm a small business owner and I want to scale. what, and I, this is I know this is gonna be, it's very vague, but it's just one of those questions I've gotta ask. When do you typically see those small business owners come to you and say, I'm ready to scale?

[00:14:18] Ryan: What actions or what events have happened to get them there? 

[00:14:22] Shawn: Yeah, typically so from a revenue perspective, it's happened. We're talking where companies are doing, just several hundred thousand dollars. All the way up to, I think, there's companies that the owners are doing 10 to 15 without a sales team, and it's 10 to 15 million and they're like, we're Jack.

[00:14:39] Shawn: So I think it really depends on your business model. And what it is you sell and who you sell to there are companies out there that are more driven just by the market. Okay. And so they can generate much higher levels. Revenue because the marketing funnel is spot on and, they know they're niche.

[00:14:56] Shawn: There's other companies out there that maybe more competitive and you've gotta [00:15:00] have an active outbound sales effort. So I think a lot of it depends on that business model that you're looking at, but it really just comes down to, is, are you closing as much business as you'd are you fully taking advantage of all the opportunities that are available to you?

[00:15:17] Shawn: Whether those are. Just the market in general, are you touching as many potential customers as you could, or, are there leads that are coming into your pipeline that you're unable to actively work because you don't have the bandwidth. And so I think you just have to look at it, if I make this short term investment now,

[00:15:37] Shawn: do I have the potential to start recouping, My investment. 

[00:15:42] Ryan: Yeah. And did the sales start paying off and moving yourself to the next level of scale? Totally agree. And I'm gonna keep on drilling down to the small business owner, cuz there's a lot of entrepreneurs in here that are gonna be listening.

[00:15:54] Ryan: So I really wanna ask the questions is some business owners don't really know when [00:16:00] it enough is enough and I know you have a different, perspective. Putting, yourself in their shoes when that enough is enough. And when we talked about revenue or we talked about, I've lost time, whatever, but what would be some tips if you're on the fence on whether or not to bring on a salesperson, how do you back that up or talk to that entrepreneur or that small business owner when you're doing your sales or speaking to people about, okay, I feel your pain, but here's where you're at type of a thing.

[00:16:29] Shawn: Yep. And one of the things I'm even as a sales leader, sales person, I think the first thing we started is what is our financial goals? What are we trying to accomplish? And can we back that up through our actions, if I want to, $250,000 more this year how many sales do you have to make?

[00:16:51] Shawn: If we have, have to make X number of sales, how many clients do I have to talk to? And so you start looking at what are those [00:17:00] components? What are those benchmarks from a financial perspective, get us to a goal. And, if we pay someone $50,000 to do these activities, Will that justify and we can get to that number will that justify their existence.

[00:17:16] Shawn: And so I think, just like anything else, any other investment you made, where, what are we trying to get to and then, and work backwards from a financial perspective? If it makes sense. If it doesn't, then it's probably not the right fit. And that also depends a little bit on the business model.

[00:17:31] Shawn: There's some companies that. An inside outbound salesperson is the right fit. There's other businesses I work with that need someone that's out on the street, that's actually sitting in front of customers and those are two different types of sales per people. And, there's different levels of experience.

[00:17:48] Shawn: We might look for different, Backgrounds. And all those things come into play when we start talking about what the right fit is and what direction they should go. But those also might come with different salaries and [00:18:00] different levels of compensation and different requirements.

[00:18:02] Shawn: We have to take all those things into consideration before we just say, yep, we need a salesperson. Let's pay $100,000 a year. And. 

[00:18:12] Ryan: So you come with a whole set of different skills and it sounds like you're also gonna help the business owner or the entrepreneur with kind of backdooring the numbers to understand the sales piece.

[00:18:24] Ryan: Is that true? Or am I just in interpreting that incorrectly? No, I think, 

[00:18:28] Shawn: The only way I can believe that I'm successful is for them to be happy. And at the end of the day, I believe the only way that, that my clients are gonna be happy is if what they've invested in is paying for itself.

[00:18:40] Shawn: And so I need to understand what that looks like. I can't help them get to a goal if I don't know what that goal is. And so that's what we need to come together. and, understand what you're trying to accomplish from a sales perspective and what that looks like beyond. 

[00:18:54] Ryan: Okay. So from that perspective, part of your services is helping them with those financial [00:19:00] numbers and understanding that, and that's part of a process.

[00:19:03] Ryan: You get them there and they're ready to go. I guess my next question is. It all for me, it boils down to potato. Pat potato is, and I'm gonna say this is because it is all about the bottom line, but during those 25 hours of training is the person or the sales people that are brought on. Are they actively working sales during the actual training or is it truly a training system to like, you're kinda like a new hire and you are working through the training piece and you don't really hit the sales floor until you're complet.

[00:19:35] Shawn: Yeah. Typically my preference is, we're gonna spend at least two weeks getting you prepped. I think that depends on the complexity of the products. I'm not a product. For every client. So there will be some expectations that the, the business itself is responsible for making sure that the salesperson understands their products and services.

[00:19:55] Shawn: In addition to that, you have to understand the company culture. The [00:20:00] company's overall processes, what, how does a lead come into the company? How does what happens after the sale? What's the expectations from a follow up, so all those pieces have to be, or should be, at least in my opinion, shared with the new salesperson so that they fully understand the business as well as you would as the business owner.

[00:20:20] Shawn: And that takes time. And typically two weeks. We, we get them onboarded and ramped and they're essentially just focused on learning the sales methodology, learning the company, learning the products and services technology, CRM systems, any of those aspects of it. And then we start getting them out there and start making, sales efforts during that time.

[00:20:43] Shawn: And typically I said, typically I'm working with these companies three to six months and in some cases up to a year, I'm acting as that sales manager. I'm meeting with those sales people every single day, or at least a few times a week. We're talking through how their sales activities are going, what you know, who they're focused on, what [00:21:00] their pipeline looks like.

[00:21:01] Shawn: So that again, they're getting that true sales leadership. So they get those habits in place over their first few months. And when I walk away. The company has a playbook. Like they have a sales playbook of, here's what our processes are. Here's what our daily expectations are. Here's our KPIs.

[00:21:19] Shawn: Here's all of these things. So when that business owner is ready to add that, second or third or 10th salesperson, they can repeat that same process every single time. 

[00:21:31] Ryan: How hard is it in your experience for the business owner entrepreneur to adjust, to becoming a sales manager in instead of, or lieu of the salesperson?

[00:21:41] Shawn: For some of them it's really simple others it's different. And I think that depends a little bit on their own sales background. If you think about it as a business owner, you probably are managing other people within your organization, and there's certainly some different conversations that you're gonna have as a salesperson.[00:22:00]

[00:22:00] Shawn: But I typically do invest some time. With the business owners to talk through, how do you have coaching conversations? There is definitely an aspect of what we do. That's designed to help them step into that sales, leadership role and really understand, what are the metrics we should care about?

[00:22:17] Shawn: What do our coaching conversations look like? How much leeway and freedom do we give the sales team? They're. As prepared as possible. But when I walk away and I'm no longer involved that they can just keep this the ball rolling.

[00:22:32] Ryan: You've got a lot of knowledge and you have a lot of experience in a lot, many business owners and entrepreneurs, including me. There's times where we just want to be in control of everything, but we do need somebody like you to help us. If I was in a service business I think I would be signing up today with what you've shared.

[00:22:51] Ryan: So last piece here, I've gotta ask the question. How can somebody get a hold of you or be able to talk to you more [00:23:00] about your services if they're a small business owner and they're looking to scale? 

[00:23:03] Shawn: Yep. Yep. They can come out to our website, which is just H and launch.com and reach out to us there.

[00:23:10] Shawn: We're all over social media so they can find us on Facebook. LinkedIn. Instagram my email is sean.channel at just launch.com. They can send me a, an email. So we're pretty easy to find and more than happy to have a conversation. Part of my job every day is to have sales conversations and there's a win in that because.

[00:23:32] Shawn: It allows me to make sure that my skills are current and up to date. And I understand what the market is looking for. And I can help transition that into our sales training. 

[00:23:42] Ryan: Sean. I thank you for coming on. You have a vast amount of knowledge. I'd love to have you back on. I have some more, I'd like to tell some more stories about some of your sales that you've done in the past, or maybe some entrepreneurs that you've helped.

[00:23:53] Ryan: That'd be great to share with our listeners, but I thank you for coming on and we'll definitely be sharing your [00:24:00] information in the show notes and we'll make sure people can get ahold of you. 

[00:24:04] Shawn: Awesome. Again, thank you for having me online. I really appreci. 

[00:24:07] Ryan: You're welcome. I'll talk to you soon. Okay.