Building High-Performance Sales Teams with Dean Kozora

Benjamin Mena [00:00:00]:
Welcome to the Elite Recruiter podcast with your host, Benjamin Mena, where we focus on what it takes to win in the recruiting game. We cover it all from sales, marketing, mindset, money, leadership, and placements. Man, I cannot wait for you guys to listen to this awesome podcast about leveling up you as a sales leader, and that way you can build an amazing team of recruiters. But first of all, a few quick announcements. Book of the month, month of March. Stop self sabotage by Dr. Dude. Definitely get that.

Benjamin Mena [00:00:37]:
Pick that up. Read it. That is the book of the month for the month of March. Also, if you missed the recruiting growth summit, you can catch the replays link in the show notes. Definitely check that out and make sure to join the elite recruiter community. All right, here we go. I'm excited about this episode of the Elite Recruiter podcast. I'm bringing on this special guest because he has built multiple sales teams of absolute killers.

Benjamin Mena [00:01:02]:
And recruiting is one of the toughest sales things that you could do because we are handling everything on the client side, we're handling everything on the candidate side. So it's really a two way sales game. But I think one of the biggest things that we are doing in the recruiting world is we're really just doing the same thing that's been going on since the. So I brought on this guest to talk about how to build out a modern sales team that is full of high performers. Dean Kazora, welcome to the podcast.

Dean Kozora [00:01:34]:
Thank you for having me, dude. I appreciate so.

Benjamin Mena [00:01:37]:
And let's go ahead and get started. How did you even get into sales world? And then we'll talk about what you're doing with the teams that you're working with right now.

Dean Kozora [00:01:45]:
Yeah, you know what's funny, dude? I fell into it, man. My wife and I moved to Tennessee a bit over four years ago, and we had no job breaking down a car. I basically made up, wrote a fake contract, and photoshopped some fake checks to get out an apartment down here because we're just like, you know what? Let's do it, man. And started working down here at a company called traffic and funnels, and I had no idea who they were. Came into the office, and what's really funny is the first week I was in the office, one of the guys is like, that's Alex Hormone. I'm like, who the fuck's Alex hormosi? And then you don't know him. And I'm like, dude, I don't know any of these people. I'm getting paid 45,000 a year.

Dean Kozora [00:02:22]:
I'm good. I had no idea who Taylor Welch was or anyone in the space and I fell into the sales world accidentally there because someone was talking about how much money they made a month. They were like, dude, how much money you make? And someone was like 22 grand. And I'm like, that's bullshit, dude. No one makes that kind of money. And I heard it and I fact checked it and I checked their bank account and I checked with our billing person and I was like, what? And so immediately I came in as a client success director and I immediately was like, you know what, dude, I'm going to learn while I'm here for free. And I'm just going right into sales. And I did that.

Dean Kozora [00:02:59]:
So I actually fell into this sales world on accident. I got in, I saw what people were doing and I'm like, oh, I'm just going to take this free training and run with it. Because why not, right? If people are paying a lot of money for this, I'm getting paid to do like.

Benjamin Mena [00:03:16]:
Also one of the reasons why that I think a lot of people are just like stumbling recruiting. It's like one of the things you hear about a story of like a rich Rosen that's able to, as a single person, bill a million dollars a year. So you're like, there's money in this game. But at the same time, I think one of the things that recruiters need to learn better and kind of grow with is their sales training. But I'd say this podcast episode is going to be for the recruiting leaders that have a sales team. And since you've gone on from TNF, you've gone on and taught a ton of sales leaders and trainers, like, how to build a great team. So when it comes down to it, let's get started with the very basics. How do you even find a good person that would be great in sales?

Dean Kozora [00:04:02]:
Yeah, you know what's really cool, man, is the industry has done it for us. The industry has trained these people and the industry has given these people experience. So it's all about who you know, right? I mean, that's kind of probably somewhat familiar to you guys in recruiting as well. But when you're looking for a good sales rep, it's like it all comes down to your network and who you know. And I connect with a lot of different sales leaders. I connect with people that run their teams. I connect with people who run different placement agencies, sales agencies, and I just know them because I always have places for them to go, right. Because I'm building teams.

Dean Kozora [00:04:33]:
I'm managing teams, I'm training teams. Inevitably people are like, I want salespeople, so I connect with great people. I continue pushing things out there to build my brand so people know who I am. And what ends up happening is the law of attraction. People come toward me, people refer individuals over to me. But you know, the really interesting thing that I find awesome is a lot of leaders in the space don't treat their team correctly. And inevitably, those people are always looking. When you are not treated well, you're always looking.

Dean Kozora [00:05:02]:
And if you know something about salespeople, it is that no matter where they're at, no matter what they're making, they're always looking around, right? And I know that because I communicate with a lot of them. So I've taken people from teams because they're not happy, they're not stoked, their manager is not who they need to be, they're getting treated like shit, they're not getting proper lead flow, right? So they're all around. It's just a matter of having conversations with them. We're not going to go into a Facebook group and all of a sudden find a bunch of free, amazing sales reps. You'll find a bunch of free ones. I promise you. 90% of them will suck, though. But it's all about connections.

Dean Kozora [00:05:36]:
Who you know, who knows you, right? Who can you connect with in this space in terms of who's led teams, trained people that knows individuals, because they're always looking. They're always looking.

Benjamin Mena [00:05:45]:
And when you get a good salesperson or when you get somebody, I think one of the biggest mistakes that I think a lot of people make is figuring out the onboarding process. And I want to talk about that because what I have seen from you offline for probably about a good year or two now, you highlight the onboarding process as one of the most important parts of it. Can you talk about that?

Dean Kozora [00:06:08]:
Yeah, dude. So your onboarding process is going to make an average sales rep great or a great sales rep better. Because when people come in, most individuals, most business owners or sales managers, Dean's good at sales. I'm going to put him on calls. Well, dude, Dean is good at fitness sales. Dean is good at sales in that realm. He doesn't know anything about offer A, offer B, or offer C. Right? So when we onboard someone as a sales rep, what's the first thing we want them to understand who the company is, because when prospects are coming to us, they're not coming to talk to us as a sales rep.

Dean Kozora [00:06:40]:
They're coming to talk to us because we're an affiliate of the company, right. We're a direct branch of the company. So we need the sales rep to understand, first and foremost, who the company is, their history past that, we want them to understand back end how things work. Even past that, we want them to understand how the program works. Then and only then do we actually get into sales training regarding that company. Because if someone is wildly educated on a subject, they could really suck at sales and sell. It doesn't mean they're going to be the best. The best.

Dean Kozora [00:07:08]:
But if I know everything about the subject, I can get on a call and do mediocre, right? So we can take someone who's average and make them decent by teaching them about the company, how the company works, what they do, how they operate, what the offer looked like. But then on the bottom, at the end of all of your onboarding, you stack on industry specific, offer specific sales training, right. Call reviews, how to speak about certain things, certain nuanced questions that come up, because then you take someone who doesn't know anything about the company, industry offer, you get them really integrated into the company, get them really integrated to how things work, how the offer works, and then you give them specific training on that, because it is different everywhere you go, how you sell. Yes, your ideologies transfer, but certain things work with certain places. Certain nuanced questions come up. So when you follow that process well, and you onboard people, well, you get individuals who don't have to bother you as much, they're not getting hit with weird objections they don't know how to answer. When someone has a very tactical question, and that's what's holding them back. That sales rep has the ability to answer that.

Dean Kozora [00:08:11]:
Right. But the reason that I'm so heavy on the onboarding process is because as you bring on a new sales rep, you want to have a filtering process in place. Like you legitimately want to not weed people out, but weed people out because no one's going to work harder than they do in the beginning. And I'll prove it to you.

Benjamin Mena [00:08:28]:
Right.

Dean Kozora [00:08:29]:
Are you in a relationship? Yes, absolutely. Married? Yes. How long have you been married?

Benjamin Mena [00:08:34]:
2019, whatever that is. I feel like 2019 was a year or two ago or a year ago, but. COVID.

Dean Kozora [00:08:39]:
Yeah. When you guys first started dating, how often were you buying her flowers?

Benjamin Mena [00:08:44]:
Probably about once every two months.

Dean Kozora [00:08:46]:
Once every two months. But how often were you doing those extra little things? Right. Staying up late, texting, like going out of your way for her. Those are the things that we don't do now we do them, but not as much. Right. So we understand fundamentally that in the beginning of any type of engagement, even on a relationship level, we do more. So the reason we have this onboarding set up and, sorry, I just had to use you an example on it because it's live. But the reason we do this is because we want to see how hard someone's going to work.

Dean Kozora [00:09:15]:
And if they're not willing to go through this and actually put in a little bit of effort, we know they're not going to do the work on the back end that they need to actually be successful. Right. So we get to see right then and there, are they actually going to do what we need them to do? Are they picking up what we're putting down? Like, are they actually studying? Because we'll go in and we'll look at the course, how much have they actually completed? But we do all of these things because what comes out the other end and actually succeeds and passes, like, passes a role play at the end, it's good, you know, they're going to work hard. You know, they're a fit. You know, they understand this stuff. They know how to sell it. They know the nuances. So you put this sales rep in the best possible position to succeed, right? And a lot of companies, they're like, yeah, go check out our course.

Dean Kozora [00:09:54]:
Here's our script. See Yan Coles on Monday. And it's like, dude, they're not going to go through that. I'm not going to go through that. You have to tell me to go through it. You have to show me what's important. You have to track my progress, right? And some people don't like that. But as a business owner, our number one importance is revenue.

Dean Kozora [00:10:11]:
Not revenue, but success.

Benjamin Mena [00:10:13]:
Right?

Dean Kozora [00:10:14]:
Sometimes it equals money. Sometimes it equals happy clients, but it's money in the door. That's how businesses work. And the best possible position to put yourself in do that is to have a sales rep who understands what in the actual fuck they're doing, not just from a sales realm, but, like, an offer standpoint.

Benjamin Mena [00:10:28]:
How long does a proper onboarding typically take?

Dean Kozora [00:10:33]:
I mean, dude, someone can get it done in 24 hours. It doesn't have to be long, right? I just built one for a company last week. Intro to the company, how the company got started. Let's make some quick videos. Owner just makes a video. Hey, it's dean from XYZ company. Super stoked to have you. It's like two minute video.

Dean Kozora [00:10:52]:
Then we go into a couple of other videos. About how to utilize the systems, what to watch in the course. Right? Don't watch the entire, like, 80 module course in Kajabi. Watch X, Y and Z, and you highlight these things and you create videos when you can. Dude, it can be a three, four hour course. It doesn't have to be long, and it can be shorter than that. Whatever you can do to get the point across about what the company is, what they do, or who the company is, what they do, how they help people, nuances, some recorded sales calls, maybe some meetings, and then you just role play with them at the end. Like, I've onboarded people in two days and they've been well educated on the offer.

Dean Kozora [00:11:26]:
Of course, during the first day, two days, they went really hard. But I always drag that out a little bit because they are contractors. I can't tell them what to do legally or technically. But I'll onboard someone on a Monday, I'll meet with them on Thursday, and Thursday I'll check in. If they have no questions, I'll know they haven't gone through everything. Because typically when you're looking at new information, you have questions, but I'll know based on their response there, based on how they show up, if they actually have done anything, and then if they have, we'll answer some questions. How do we feel? Let's get into the next section. You want to role play tomorrow? And they pass, we can have them on calls by Friday.

Dean Kozora [00:12:00]:
We can do it pretty quick. But it's a matter of randomly throwing something at the wall, hoping it sticks, or understanding that this ball you're throwing at the wall is sticky on all sides. And, you know, it has a really good damn or goddamn good chance it'll stick.

Benjamin Mena [00:12:14]:
And that kind of takes me back to my first recruiting job, if you want a good laugh. So I actually had two offers for my first recruiting job out of college. One of them was, I think it was like, a much higher base salary, 100% remote. And this was remote back in 2005, and the other one was a 27K base salary with a crappy commission in office five days a week. And my mentor was just like, she looked at both offers and told me to go to the lowest commission, one with a crappy base salary, and that was in the office five days a week. And she was just like, I actually know this other company. You're going to get the job. There's no onboarding.

Benjamin Mena [00:12:56]:
There's no training. You were just going to get told that you need to go do something while this other organization actually had a really good training program and an onboarding program. And I think I hated not having the freedom. I hated not having the additional base salary, but I don't think I'd be in the recruiting space if I took that other job almost two decades later.

Dean Kozora [00:13:19]:
Yeah, it teaches you, man. It's like we're trying to set people up for success, and if you don't, they're not going to win. Not everyone is as good as they say they are. That's the funny part, dude, and I'm sure you know this. As a recruiter, everyone's like, dude, I'm an a plus closer. It's like, if you have to tell me that, you're definitely not right. There are far and few people that I can just plug in and give them a script and they're going to do okay. But we're talking like one in 100, dude.

Dean Kozora [00:13:45]:
Because most people that even look good on the outside and speak good and you've heard good things, there's some things that they're iffy with, dude, I've hired really good closers and there's only been a few that have actually really blown me away. Everyone else, like, dude, they all have their quirks. They all do. And it's like if we want them to do well, we need to front load some of the work. And especially as a leader, too, when you freaking front load that work, you have an easier time on the back end. You're not having to re bring things up. If they have a question and it was in the training, you can push them back to the training. You can teach them to be freaking independent.

Dean Kozora [00:14:20]:
It's wild. It's like mind blowing stuff, but it's like, it makes sense. And I'm glad you shared that because it's a real life example. Like, this stuff works well.

Benjamin Mena [00:14:29]:
And you also brought up another thing, talking about course and curriculums. And I know you work a lot in that space, but I think that's also a mistake that US recruiters don't have enough of, or Us leaders and recruitment business owners is having a bit of a curriculum or a course set up for our own business. How do we even get something like that started?

Dean Kozora [00:14:49]:
A course for your business? I think the question I would ask is like, who would be watching the course?

Benjamin Mena [00:14:55]:
I mean, for the employees that you're going to onboard.

Dean Kozora [00:14:58]:
Oh, yeah.

Benjamin Mena [00:14:59]:
In your space.

Dean Kozora [00:15:00]:
Yeah. So, dude, it's a matter of sitting there with a piece of paper. What do these people need? We have someone who's brand new. We have our start point. We have our stop point. How do we get across that? It's really easy to mold a journey if you understand the start and stop point or beginning and destination. And it's like, what do I want these people to know? And how can I not give them hours and hours of information to teach them the most simple things? How can I use brevity to teach them what I need them to know? And how can I put this work on that? It's like front load the work so it's easier for them. But I have a simple framework, and if you ever need it, dude, I'll send it to you.

Dean Kozora [00:15:37]:
I use it with a lot of people, and it's not like it's some earth shattering stuff. It's not like it's a million dollar framework or anything, but it's a simple framework to get people exactly what they need. And if you follow it, dude, you can onboard people and have five videos and then pass that just like job specific training. And if it's in sales, it's like throwing sales calls and how to run the system, which is like, it's easy.

Benjamin Mena [00:16:00]:
One more thing I definitely want to talk about is you've dealt with a lot of high performers, you train a lot of high performers, and you have also been teaching now a lot of sales managers. How are people keeping track of the KPIs of their team?

Dean Kozora [00:16:14]:
Yes. You know what's funny, man, and this might shock you, is most people don't track things as well as they say they do. I think it's just they don't know. They don't really understand what to track, what metrics to look at. I mean, I have some simple trackers that I utilize with a lot of my management clients. SDR tracker, AE tracker, marketing to sales, communication tracker. Basically, like if you're doing inbound appointments, how many you need per week based on what the closers have available. So there's like sync there so they're not over or underspending.

Dean Kozora [00:16:46]:
Those are some really good metrics. Then we can look at MQL versus Sql. Are we tracking both of those? What's our lead to close rate look like? There's a lot of ways to do this, but it's a matter of every company is individualized. If we try and get all of these data points for every company, we might get information overload. Most companies will do well if they understand what the setters numbers are and what the closers numbers are. And if they have those two things right, close rate, show rate, cancel rate, offer rate, cash collected revenue generated and from a setter like dials to set to set, shown things like that, sets closed. If we have these basic metrics, most companies will go very, very far like that. But when you want to understand the full journey of lead comes into lead closing.

Dean Kozora [00:17:29]:
What's average, like lead to close date on this front end product or this funnel, then it gets a little bit deeper, right? And that's an even larger question. But for most companies, knowing the metrics of your AES and SDRs, it gets you really far, because it's a predictable system. If you give the SDR 100 dials, they set five, and one of those closes, we know every 100 dials, they close a deal. And it's a really scalable system. But as we get past that, as the team grows, it's like then we want these little metrics, right? So the answer is, it depends because every team I work with is different. Some people have disclosure trackers, some people, they just track things in a Google sheet. It looks horrible, but they know what's going on. But the big question arises is, is it working for them? And if it is, let's run it.

Dean Kozora [00:18:12]:
Okay.

Benjamin Mena [00:18:13]:
And real quick, you just said, talking about salespeople making 100 dials, is this 100 times? Picking up the phone and smiling and dialing?

Dean Kozora [00:18:21]:
Yeah. So that's a low end, dude. Like, I have some guys on some of my teams making like 250 a day, they'll smile and dial. They'll use a power dialer. I think the number 100 scares people. Like, oh, my God, 100 dials. But like, dude, go dial your wife or go dial your friend that you know isn't going to answer. It rings for 12 seconds and then a voicemail takes you another twelve.

Dean Kozora [00:18:44]:
So one dial takes you less than 30 seconds. So it's like, the number seems big, but when you actually crunch it down and look at it, it's not much, but there's a million ways. Right? We can run a power dialer, we can run something through alaware and run like a mass text to inbound. We can run some sort of like AI software that dials a bunch of numbers for you and just transfers live calls. There's a lot of ways to do it. I really like the old fashioned way of work your list and just dial them manually. There's something about that, right? Because you aren't just going with random people. You can start to cherry pick a little bit, you can start to filter a little bit.

Dean Kozora [00:19:18]:
But I can go deep on a lot of these topics. But, yeah, 100 dials is kind of average.

Benjamin Mena [00:19:23]:
The reason why I kind of like, I'm jumping on that a little bit. I know in the recruiting space, it seems over the last few years, I think it's because recruiting got easy during for a lot of people. As the market got crazy, a lot of recruiters are now afraid to pick up a phone. So trying to find somebody that is not afraid of smiling and dialing, where do you find that individual dude, you.

Dean Kozora [00:19:47]:
Just require it up front, man. What I've learned, because, dude, I've hired a couple of hundred sales reps, right? I'm not a recruiter, but I've hired a couple of hundred sales reps over the past like two years and maybe more if we look before that. But when you are very upfront about the requirements of the job, right away they know what you're telling them to do. It's much harder when you set a standard that like, oh, dude, it's going to be easy. You're going to make a lot of money. And then they come in and they're like, oh, my God, I have to call 100 people a day and do admin work. It's like, holy shit. I thought I was just going to come in and make freaking ten grand a month.

Dean Kozora [00:20:21]:
It's like, no, dude, going into it, it's like, we want to lead with the goal, but we want to tell them how we're going to hit their goals, right? So if I was selling it to you, I'd probably say something along the lines of like, Ben, here's the position, dude, you can make ten grand a month. Our closers or our setters that are doing that, they're making $125 a day, right? They're starting at nine. They're not getting off the phone till five. In between it, right? In between calls, they're doing admin work, they're putting in notes, they're following up with leads, so they're making like 100 new dials and 25 follow up dials a day, sending 50, 60 emails. And when I tell you that, it's like, hey, I have hit the nail on the head with, this is what you can make, and here's the pathway. So there's no confusion about how we actually get to that goal. It's much different if I'm like, yeah, Ben, it's a sales job. You can make ten grand a month.

Dean Kozora [00:21:08]:
Just come join us. In your mind. The easy button goes off and most people, they will have that easy button, like ping in their head, like, oh, dude, ten grand a month to take some sales calls, I'm good. We want to tell them up front, right. Because it's like the whole interviewing and hiring process, in my eyes, is a filtering process. We don't just want someone to get in that role. We want the best possible person to be on the phone. And sometimes it takes opening up the funnel a little bit more because we know there's so many catches along the way that filter people out.

Dean Kozora [00:21:43]:
But that's okay if we're looking for success of the team we're running or someone else is running, I want to put as many filters in there as possible.

Benjamin Mena [00:21:50]:
Right.

Dean Kozora [00:21:50]:
Not bad filters. But just at the end of it, am I going to get a good fucking person out, have a weird thought process with it?

Benjamin Mena [00:21:58]:
Well, and it's one of the things, I think, in the recruiting space, you see the money, you see the placement checks. You see this when you're looking at hiring, that's the thing that we talk about. But what you're trying to say is there needs to be a lot more clarity in the process to be able to filter out. So you're not spending six months with, unfortunately, a recruiter that is not performing 100%.

Dean Kozora [00:22:20]:
Do you want to tell them what it takes?

Benjamin Mena [00:22:22]:
Right.

Dean Kozora [00:22:23]:
And then what you also want to do, because I'll even go the extra route if you want to do more, it requires this.

Benjamin Mena [00:22:29]:
Right.

Dean Kozora [00:22:29]:
And what you're going to find with those people is you're going to find the Michael Jordans and the Kobe Bryant's, because there's going to be a few people that want more. They're not satisfied with money here or income here or success here. They're always chasing that next level. So I always poke in there when I'm interviewing someone, like, yeah, I mean, this is what you can make. But if you really want to push it, like, it requires XYZ, and it gets to here, and then you find those types of people, of course, you have to see them do it over and over again and see if they keep their energy up. But there are special people out there in sales in any area where they're just wired to do more. Dude, great example. My aunt is a fucking hustler, bro.

Dean Kozora [00:23:11]:
She works home healthcare. Do you know what the average home healthcare nurse makes? I'm going to make five of 80K somewhere around there. Yeah, probably, bro. She makes 250 every year. How? Dude, she hustles, right? She's starting work at 06:00 a.m. Every day. She knows with her current company, she can do X amount of hours overtime, and she knows that if she does overtime on the weekends, it's X plus Y. And then she has other companies that she works with.

Dean Kozora [00:23:37]:
When she's seeing certain patients with one company, if they're over there, she'll stop. She wants more. She'll do more. Dude, she works from 06:00 a.m. Till 07:00 p.m. Fucking five days a week and as much as she can on the weekends. But there are those people. There are people that are like that, that if you show them the pathway to more, they will do it.

Dean Kozora [00:23:55]:
And when you find those people, dude, help them as much as you can, right? Help them. Push them. Challenge them in a nice way. Don't scare them away, because you're going to uplift them. And by uplifting them, they make everyone else look bad. And when they make everyone else look bad, there's a new standard set on the team, right? That's how we build culture, and that's how we do it as a sales team. You can build around one high performer, you can build around one savage or one killer, but you can't build around a bunch of idiots. If everyone has someone to chase, what ends up happening is they do chase them.

Dean Kozora [00:24:27]:
Then when you get two in like that, they battle and they start getting pissed at each other, which is even better, because if one loses, they're not going to lose again. And then you bring other people into the mix. And guess what? All tides rise. Ships, right?

Benjamin Mena [00:24:42]:
How do you build that culture where everybody's now chasing that high performer? What are you doing outside of that?

Dean Kozora [00:24:51]:
Dude, it's a standard thing. It's a standard thing. And it's a standard across the board, all day, every day. If someone's late to a meeting, even if it's a minute, dude, I hold them after. I'll chat with them after, or I'll call them out in front of everyone. Hey, Ben, thanks for joining us late. Make sure you're on time next time.

Benjamin Mena [00:25:08]:
Right?

Dean Kozora [00:25:09]:
And it's a standard within everything we do. But it's also in the beginning, like, when you start working with them, asking them their goals. Not just, like, do give me your goals, but challenging them on their goals. If their goals seem, like, really low, breaking that open and starting to understand what they truly want, but then helping them see bigger, right? And then when you do that, you expand their horizon, you expand their capacity. And then when you hold that standard every single day, and you push and you probe them, and you actually challenge them to change and do better and do bigger and hold more in their ecosystem. They end up growing. They end up growing. And when you do that with everyone, they end up being happier, a little bit more pissed off in the beginning, but they end up being happier with the result because now everybody is in a space of growth.

Dean Kozora [00:25:58]:
And when someone on the team shows up late, the team calls them out. When someone's being weak, the team coaches them, right. So it's manufactured in the beginning by you, but it's picked up later on the team. I'm a big fan of front loading work. When you front load the work in recruiting and hiring, you do really well. When you front load the work with team culture, you also do really well, right. Because once the team culture is where it needs to be, you as the leader don't need to be in there as much of a dickhead or as much of a dickhead. And, dude, I'm actually a really empathetic leader, but I hold my team to high standards.

Dean Kozora [00:26:32]:
I'm not the sales trainer that says you have to work out every day, but I make them get active, dude. I tell them, if you're not up early, I don't think you want it bad enough. I'll challenge them, but I understand that things happen. People have different lives, so I'm empathetic with that. But there are certain standards that I have, and if you fall below them, you just shouldn't be on the team. And it sounds really cutthroat. It really does. But if you do it in an empathetic way and you're not mean about it, and you actually can show them why you're doing it.

Dean Kozora [00:26:59]:
Hey, man, I know I'm harping on you for being late, but it's because I care about you. And when we stack up this time over the year, it equals X. They'll start to see that your push is really in their best interest. Kind of like a college football coach. They're definitely dickheads on the field. They're definitely dickheads in practice. But it's because they want the kids to be the best, right? I view it as the exact same thing.

Benjamin Mena [00:27:21]:
Definitely took me back to my college cross country days, where the days I hated my coach the most were some of the days that she pushed me the best and I got faster and better.

Dean Kozora [00:27:34]:
Yeah, that's what it is, dude. It's the same thing, man. It's like, as you said, everything from the 80s is still prevalent now in recruiting sales teams. Dude, they're just freaking sports teams, bro. They're sports teams. Like, to get on the team you have to pass XYZ test and you have to get picked or you have to get drafted. It's the same thing, but everyone wants it to be this cozy comfort area. Like, yeah, we can still care about people, we can still do the right thing for people, we can still love on people.

Dean Kozora [00:28:01]:
But at the end of the day, when we want people to get better, we might have to push them a little bit.

Benjamin Mena [00:28:06]:
And this has been awesome. And I'm going to flip gears a little bit. When it comes to training your team in place to be better, how do you up level your sales team?

Dean Kozora [00:28:17]:
That's a good question. Right. So first I want to find out within each individual person, where are they not good. And if someone's really good, I find areas on which they can improve. So what I do with my team is I meet with everyone one on one weekly. And then we do weekly team trainings and we do morning huddles. I know some people are against morning huddles, but I love them because it's a piece of accountability. We offer opportunities for training on there, and we also allow the team to help, too.

Dean Kozora [00:28:44]:
If I saw an issue on a call yesterday, you faced it last week. You can train me on it. So it opens the floor to everyone getting help from everyone. But daily team meetings, right? Weekly one on ones. And then also if you want to implement like an office hours, which I always suggest people to do, where it's just like come and go as you need, but if you're below a certain number, you have to be there. It ends up giving people exactly what they need. But within each individual person, everyone's struggling with certain things. Right.

Dean Kozora [00:29:13]:
Usually we can find it pretty quick when we run a call review. But some people might be struggling with ex objections. Some people might be struggling with how to open the call. Dude, some people might just be having a freaking bad week. And by meeting with them one on one, you understand something's going on outside of work and you can give them time off. Right. But getting people to perform at a high level, I think, is a very individual answer. There's the normal pathway of meetings, office hours, one on ones, those types of things.

Dean Kozora [00:29:41]:
But when you meet with people and you find different things out in the one on ones, you actually learn how to either motivate them or give them time off or help them step back.

Benjamin Mena [00:29:49]:
Right.

Dean Kozora [00:29:49]:
Because motivating you is going to be much different than motivating me, which is going to be much different than motivating Ben. Right. It's very different. Everyone's skill set is different, but you're doing this for a completely different reason than I am. And if I want to get you performing at your best, I need to understand what you're actually trying to get out of this and what your goals are. Because when I can push you in accordance with those goals and push you the right way, with call reviews, with training during one on ones, and understand who you are as an individual, I can bring you up. Right. And when you bring five people up, team performance rises together.

Benjamin Mena [00:30:24]:
Love that. And there's something else I kind of wanted you to explain a little more. You guys do this thing called EOD end of day review. First of all, what is that and how do you track it for your team?

Dean Kozora [00:30:40]:
Yeah. So eods end of day reports. I'll pull one up and I'll just read it to you really quick. I'm going to read you a live one. Let me pull up. We will go to this company sales, EOD. And so what we do is these are the metrics we want to understand if you're a closer number of new calls, number of follow ups, number of completed calls, offers closes. We can look at social posts, right? But we want to really figure out within those, like, what's going on.

Dean Kozora [00:31:11]:
No shows, cancels. And then in that we look at projected revenue, total generated, revenue total collect. And then within it further, we have them list out all of their calls. Now, this company right now, I can't read these to you because it is like, I don't want to say a big company, but if I read these names, they're going to know I'm reading them off. But we'll just say, like John Barker, we identified problem, we identified solution, which he readily agreed with, pitched X program rated eight out of ten, because he's been burning claims not to know XYZ or have trust in him. So what we're doing is we're getting the trackable metrics, and then we're getting the untrackable metrics. Calls completed, calls taken, all that good stuff. And if your SDRS dials, connects, how many sets you made.

Dean Kozora [00:31:53]:
But we're getting the actual numerical stuff that we need to put into a tracker. And then we're also getting the non numerical stuff, the data points behind the data. This stuff actually, surprisingly matters more than the data itself because we want to know what's actually happening with people, because that moves the needle, not just hitting the numbers, but we look at just basic numbers, and then we look at data behind the numbers.

Benjamin Mena [00:32:14]:
Right.

Dean Kozora [00:32:15]:
Subjective data. What happened on calls where people are at. And then it starts building this database in our EOD channel that we can always go back to.

Benjamin Mena [00:32:23]:
Right.

Dean Kozora [00:32:23]:
If I search up John Barker in Slack and I can find John Barker from a month ago, I can see what happened with him, and I can ask my sales rep, dude, do you ever follow up with John? But they also have that database as it's really, it's not for me as a leader, it's more for them. End of the day rate myself. How did I do?

Benjamin Mena [00:32:43]:
And how do you track that? How are you keeping up with all your recruiters end of days or all your salespeople end of days and be able to look, is our program, is.

Dean Kozora [00:32:53]:
It a. Oh, dude. So I'm in like freaking nine slack channels right now. Slack accounts. And within each slack account, we have tons of channels. I've started muting every channel. That is not relative to me. The big channels that are relative to me are new enrollments, sales, EOD.

Benjamin Mena [00:33:10]:
Right?

Dean Kozora [00:33:11]:
Maybe like leadership. So within each slack account, I have four channels that I actually look at and I go through them all day, and I have my assistant actually mess around in there and respond back for me at times if I can't or bring things to me that she sees that I didn't get to. But we want to look at the end of the day every day to see what's been going on. Because everyone's EoDs from that same company go into the same channel. So if you and I are on a sales team together, EOD from 2924, you and I are going to be in there at the end of the day. The manager is going to look at it at the end of the day and see what's going on. Right. And if you don't submit it, manager is going to be like, yo, Ben, where's your EOD? Can you please submit that for me?

Benjamin Mena [00:33:47]:
Right.

Dean Kozora [00:33:47]:
So it's the whole team on we're X company. The whole team on X company goes into this EOD channel. Right? And we all put our stuff in.

Benjamin Mena [00:33:56]:
There so everybody can see everybody's EODs.

Dean Kozora [00:34:00]:
Oh, absolutely.

Benjamin Mena [00:34:03]:
And if you're a recruiting leader that's thinking about implementing an EOD for your entire team that they need to fill out at the end of the day to really talk about what they've done, how do they get that set up?

Dean Kozora [00:34:16]:
So I guess a good question would be what metrics can we track for them throughout the day?

Benjamin Mena [00:34:23]:
So a lot of it's going to be like new reach outs. It's going to be interviews and submits, at least on one side, submits to clients for candidates. Like, you have a candidate for a client, interviews for clients, and then actual placements, and then revenue collected from those placements. So that's one side. And then the other side would be like your initial meetings, or MPCs, which is marketing a most placeable candidate.

Dean Kozora [00:34:48]:
Yeah, I would get all those data points, and I would put that in just a quick word. I'm looking for dude, outline. And I would just put it in there and have them copy and paste it every single day. You can even have, if you use slack, you can even have some sort of widget in there as well, where they click EOd and it just pops in there. It'll just literally populate what they need and they put their numbers in. But I want to find all the trackable data. But, dude, the main thing past that is I don't want to just know those numbers. Especially for recruiting, dude, for the interviews you had, talk to me about them.

Dean Kozora [00:35:22]:
Give me a little snippet for the people that were hired. Talk to me about them. Because, dude, I don't really give a shit about your numbers. Right? Because numbers do not equal results. Results equal results. What happened that actually equals dollars in the bank account or actual success for the company. That's what matters. Dude, if my sales rep take one call a day and they close one deal and do really well, and that's all they do, great.

Dean Kozora [00:35:45]:
If you make one dial and make one set, and it closes, and that's all you did that day. Phenomenal, dude. If you do that consistently over time, I will freaking be shocked because it's kind of impossible, statistically impossible. But if that's what you do, that's all I care about. So I want to know within the interviews, within the placements or whatever, we're tracking what happened? Who did I meet with? How did it go? What's the follow up like? Because that's for.

Benjamin Mena [00:36:12]:
Right.

Dean Kozora [00:36:12]:
They need to recap their day. They need to say, Ben, this is what I did today. And it's important for you as well if you're leading them to just audit on a day to day basis, to coach every day. But it's more important for them so they can actually think about their performance that day and maybe go back to it later.

Benjamin Mena [00:36:29]:
And it's such an eye opening thing sometimes what you think you did versus what you actually did.

Dean Kozora [00:36:36]:
Yeah, you know what's funny, man? I think there's two types of people there. There are people who always think they've done well and they never do. And then there's people who never think they do well and they're always killing it, right? Because I have some sales reps who they're like, I'll have them rate themselves out of five and they'll always put themselves at a two or three and they're crushing it. Like, dude, I know I could have been better today. I know there's more, right? Those are the people you want to lean into. And then there's individuals. I gave my best effort today. Your numbers suck.

Dean Kozora [00:37:05]:
All the data sucks. Like the why behind the numbers suck. And there's always two types of people. Doesn't mean one's better than the other, but I know who I'm going to hire. Ten times out of ten, the other one's coachable. But if you don't have that ability to be honest with yourself and assess yourself critically, there's a reason you might not be doing well, right? And there's a reason that the people that are doing really well are very harsh on themselves is because they start comparing themselves to either an upgraded version of themselves or someone they look up to. So they always feel less that. Such an interesting concept.

Benjamin Mena [00:37:40]:
This is awesome. So before we go to the next part of the podcast, is there anything else that you would love to share about training a sales team, building the sales team or any of that nature?

Dean Kozora [00:37:50]:
Yeah. One thing, man, it all comes down to work. In how much work you put into the team, you're not just going to plug people in and they're going to crush it. That might work, but most likely won't. Statistics show us it won't. But getting a team up and going, it all comes down to what you're willing to pour into them, right? Like I talk about front loaded work all the time, it's important. If you're able to pour time, effort and energy into your people, it will always pay off. So it will always pay off.

Dean Kozora [00:38:17]:
And if you had a touch of love and empathy in there, it'll pay off even more. But if you're a leader trying to have a high performing team, or trying to get your team to do better, spend more time with them, track things more, don't be an asshole, but actually care about them and give them more availability of what you have, that's perfect.

Benjamin Mena [00:38:35]:
So jumping over the quickfire questions, they don't need to be quick answers. What advice would you give to a brand new recruiter that's just now having a team or a brand new sales leader?

Dean Kozora [00:38:50]:
Yeah. So a brand new sales leader. Spend as much time as possible with your people. And that would go for a recruiting leader, leading a team as well. Spend a lot of time with your people. Get to know your people. Start to understand who they are, not just from a work basis, but understand who they are as a human being. Because when you do that, you cross the barrier of like friend and boss, which is good, right? It's very good.

Dean Kozora [00:39:14]:
Some people think it's bad. I think it's phenomenal. I have coached tons of reps from a place of empathy because I know their situation with their family. But also when I ask Ben, how's it going, how his wife is doing, and I know her by name or. Right, I know his wife had some procedure done and I ask how it went, right? Dude, they feel cared about. They want to stay with you forever. That's how you build a long lasting team. So spend time with them and actually give a shit about them.

Dean Kozora [00:39:38]:
Right. You have to actually spend time to get to know them, but spend time to get them where you want them to go. Leading, in my opinion, a lot of people think it's just a trait. I know it's a quick fire question, this is long, but I think it's really how much time are you willing to pour into your team? Because there are people who don't know shit about leadership who just help their team as much as possible and they do really well.

Benjamin Mena [00:39:59]:
So same question, but we'll just say for the experienced recruiting manager that has had a team for a while, what advice would you give to them to really just start up leveling their team?

Dean Kozora [00:40:09]:
Yeah. So find what metrics their team are in charge of and see where people are at first and foremost. Don't do anything with the team until you understand the metrics. What are they responsible for and where are they at the process of doing whatever that goal is? Let's just use a weird metric behind it. Let's say each person is responsible for ten and everyone's at seven. Well, we know everyone's underperforming. Let's find out why.

Benjamin Mena [00:40:33]:
Right.

Dean Kozora [00:40:33]:
You don't want to go in and just push people to do better. You want to understand what the problem is before you try and solve it, right? Simple. But a lot of people don't recognize it that way. Then you go in with each individual person, not as a team, but one to one, you address the problem and help them get through it. Because if I get in front of six people and I'm like, hey, you guys are at seven, I need you at ten. They're all going to talk behind my back to each other about how pissed off they are and how much they hate Dean. But if I go to Ben and I'm like, hey, dude, you're at a seven. What's going on? Let's figure this out.

Dean Kozora [00:41:02]:
How can we get you to a ten? What are you missing from me as a leader? What can I do better to get you up there? What do you need? And we do that with every person. Now, I've built a relationship with you where you actually believe in me and trust me. And I'm going to be able to get you up there much faster. Not just because you want it for yourself, but you want it for me because I'm asking you to do it and you like me.

Benjamin Mena [00:41:20]:
That is great. Well, next question is, I know that you are huge into learning. Has there been a book that's had a huge impact on your own personal career?

Dean Kozora [00:41:30]:
Dude, let me grab it really quick. So it's hiding somewhere around. It doesn't matter. Infinite game. The infinite game by Simon Sinek. Because I think everyone thinks there's a goal to all this, that when we hit X, we'll be happy. And we find pretty quick that we're just not right. It's a matter of continuous growth.

Dean Kozora [00:41:52]:
I have no emotional tie to anything that I do. Am I getting better, yes or no? That's where I have the tie to. And so the infinite game helped me see this as not a destination type journey. But, dude, I'm just going and like, there's a post I made the other day about if I'm not having fun, I just quit it. I don't care.

Benjamin Mena [00:42:10]:
Right.

Dean Kozora [00:42:11]:
It's about enjoyment of the process. It's about enjoyment of the growth. And that book just changed my perspective on how to view this business game.

Benjamin Mena [00:42:18]:
Do you have, like, a favorite sales tech tool that you love?

Dean Kozora [00:42:21]:
Tool? Dude, I'm a big fan of HubSpot and that's more like CRM style. But I'm a very big fan of HubSpot because I understand how it actually works from a filtering aspect. And if you get the trackable data necessary in there, like, if you're a lead in my system, I know everything about you. I know when you open emails. I know when you click things. I know when you've been on our website. I know how many times you've opened. Like, I like that, dude, because it tells me as a sales rep or a sales leader what's going on with you, right? And if you open my email ten times and you haven't responded.

Dean Kozora [00:42:55]:
Brian, know you're thinking about me. I'm going to call you. But I really like HubSpot if you set it up correctly, because it just gives you all the data. But past that, man, I don't think there's many other tools we can use like power dial or. Sure. But I like to know the why behind the what. Right. The why behind the data.

Dean Kozora [00:43:11]:
And HubSpot gives me the why.

Benjamin Mena [00:43:13]:
When you think about your own personal success, what do you think has been a huge driver of it?

Dean Kozora [00:43:18]:
I'm too stupid to quit. That quick response, dude, that's how you know it's real. I'm too stupid to quit, man. Now the thing is, I just keep going. Right? When I said the infinite game was a book that changed my perspective, it did, right? Because success, in the most simple terms, is just getting up one more time when everyone wouldn't. Winning. The definition of winning is trying one more time and succeeding. You can look that up in Webster's.

Dean Kozora [00:43:47]:
It's probably not true, but that's my definition of. But like the reason I win is because I don't give, right? I failed many a like, no one sees that I have two businesses that have failed. No one sees that. The first business I started, I wasn't able to pay my rent and had to go work at a supplement store. No one sees. With the second business I started, I had to work three sales jobs on the side to actually pay my rent and live my life right. People don't see that stuff. But the thing is, dude, within every area that I've fallen, it's like, dude, I'm just going to keep going because I know that at some level, sometime it's going to pay off.

Dean Kozora [00:44:21]:
And if it doesn't, I'm going to learn something in the process or meet someone that changes my life.

Benjamin Mena [00:44:25]:
Right?

Dean Kozora [00:44:26]:
And that's been very true. It's like I'm too stupid to quit. I'm just not going to quit. And I think I will surpass a ton of people because I just won't quit. You can take everything I have away from you right now matter. It doesn't change anything because I'm just here to play the game. I'm not winning it, but I know if I'm feeling good, I'm winning it.

Benjamin Mena [00:44:45]:
If you can go back to the very beginning of your career and have a conversation with yourself, what advice would you give yourself?

Dean Kozora [00:44:53]:
This is a good one, dude. Trust yourself more. Trust yourself more. Right in the beginning, dude, I didn't believe that I should be worthy of having what I'm going to get, right. There's always a bit of impostor syndrome within every area, every aspect of my life that I faced. And it held me back for so long. Held me back for so long. Every time I started doing well in something, in a career, I'm like, dude, I shouldn't have this, right? Or I would stop myself.

Dean Kozora [00:45:23]:
I would stop myself because I didn't think I had the correct answers. And then later on I would find out that I did. So keep going. Trust yourself. Actually dive in a little bit deeper, right? Don't give a shit about what anyone feels. But the big one is, like, if you feel a certain way, Dean, trust it, right? There's a reason you feel that way. And I've actually had that. I've had to learn that lesson two times over the past year.

Dean Kozora [00:45:44]:
Again, that trust, my initial instinct, because I got kicked in the teeth by not doing so two separate times, both in personal life and business. Like, I knew the move right away and I went against it anyways because it seemed sweeter the other way. And both times it wasn't like a kick in the teeth bad, but some painful lessons, for sure.

Benjamin Mena [00:46:05]:
Awesome. Well, Dean, before I let you go, is there anything else that you would love to share with the listeners?

Dean Kozora [00:46:10]:
Yeah. If anyone actually thinks I'm awesome, it's hilarious. It's hilarious because I'm literally nobody. I have quite a few people reaching out to me every day who are just, like, stoked about my journey, and I'm like, dude, I literally just kept going. I think we're in the online space. A lot of people are glorified for what they've done or how long they've been here. But what I think a lot of people don't recognize is we're all just human beings. We're all just human beings.

Dean Kozora [00:46:38]:
I've met a lot of the bigger names in the space and hung out with them. I have a really cool partnership with a big name in the space. He's a human being, right? No one like, he's. He's special on the outside, but when you meet him, just a normal human being. So keep going, keep meeting people. Be a normal, good human being and just push, right? There's a lot here if you want it, in the recruiting space, in the sales space, really in life as a whole. But, I mean, that's all I can really say. This is an exciting time for us right now.

Dean Kozora [00:47:09]:
The space is changing, as I'm sure you see I love it. I'm spearheading it. I'm going right in. And I just hope that someone gets a little bit of value from this. And I'm sure they can tell I came completely unprepared, reading everything like 30 minutes before. But I like to do this right because I don't want to have some pre planned speech or pre planned answers to questions. It's so much more fun when you don't do that.

Benjamin Mena [00:47:34]:
Awesome. Well, Dean, I'm so excited that you came on and shared. It's something that I've seen from you guys, and definitely, especially you, is just like, you've done such a good job training salespeople, and I've seen that as a huge failure in the recruiting space, the onboarding, the training of new recruiters. And I think it's one of the reasons why a lot of recruiters are almost set up to fail and why so many people quit our industry every single year. So if you're a leader out there, I hope this conversation with Dean definitely.

Dean Kozora [00:48:06]:
Helped up level you.

Benjamin Mena [00:48:08]:
And I'm excited about the growth of your team. So definitely thank you for checking us out and for the listeners. Guys, until next time, thanks for listening to this episode of the Elite Recruiter podcast with Benjamin Mena. If you enjoy, hit subscribe and leave a rating close.