How to Hire HIGH ACHIEVING SALES PEOPLE | Ask Mr. Wonderful #2 Kevin O'Leary
Oh, I just love the smell of a good royalty deal in the morning! Welcome to another episode of Ask Mr. Wonderful, and I mean ask me anything! You ask the questions, and I give you the answers. Bring them on!
Hey Mr. Wonderful, I had a quick question for you. What prompted you to have this unabashed honesty on shows like Shark Tank, or were you always just like that? Thanks!
Hey, or a great question! You know, here's the way I look at it: business is really binary, black and white. Either you make money or you lose money. I would rather just tell the truth all the time. My mother taught me something once: if you always tell the truth, you never have to remember what you said. That's why I’m the same way all the time; I just tell the truth. And by the way, I’m the only shark that does! Everybody else is trying to pander to their feelings. I don’t care about their feelings; I care about their money. And you know, if they have a bad idea, they didn’t get bit in the hiney eventually anyways. So I'd rather just tell them right out of the gate, tell them the truth. That’s my strategy.
Hello Mr. Wonderful! I am a new Sales Manager and I want to know what are the top three characteristics you look for when hiring top sales talent?
Mary, fantastic question about top sales talent! Let me tell you how it works. I've been doing this my whole life. The salespeople that really succeed are able to set targets on a monthly or quarterly basis and make them. Make them! In other words, don’t set targets you can’t achieve. If you tell me you’re gonna get a hundred thousand in sales in a week or a month or whatever it is, get a hundred thousand in sales. Know exactly your territory, know what your potential is, and don’t overestimate. The salespeople that really advance, that are the most coveted, are those that have stability to their forecasts. That's what I'm talking about. I love salespeople, men and women, that know what they can achieve and consistently deliver on those numbers. Sounds like you might be one of them!
Mary, I was gonna ask something political; I decided not to. So I'm going to keep it fun. Does Mr. Wonderful have a bucket list?
Wes, I wish you’d asked the political questions! I love politics! I'm a political policy wonk; I’m just totally into that. But do I have a bucket list? Yes, it's very simple. I look at tomorrow’s activities, and anything I don’t want to do, I just don’t do! I want to spend my time doing things that interest me. I want to pursue things that are intriguing, very often I haven’t done before, and work with people I want to work with. That's what financial freedom is all about! I don’t have to answer the phone; I do because I want to! And I'd like you to achieve the same thing! I want that for everybody. It's not about the great of money; it's the freedom it lets you have to do the things that really matter to you.
All right, Kevin, so here's the question for the average working individual. So having a job, working for somebody else, being very disciplined about both saving and investing, which option would you recommend? Would you recommend investing in a Roth IRA where you can take advantage of those tax benefits? You don't quite have access to it, and you don’t have exact control over your money, but you know that it’s there; you know that it’s growing with a good company—with good mutual funds or ETFs or whatever they use. Or would you recommend investing with an individual brokerage account and building a dividend-paying portfolio, like you talked about in most of your interviews and videos online, where you talk about diversification and not invest a certain percent more in each sector, each company? That way, you have the dividends that you’re building, and you also have more control over what happens with your money. Thanks, Kevin! It was good teeing in Milwaukee, and I hope to hear a response from your question!
Hey James, look, that's a great question! I always prefer the tax-advantaged strategy that you talked about in the Roth IRA. I will tell you why: you don’t want to touch that money anyways. And frankly, once you put it into a diversified ETF, you’re getting the market diversification you need. Stock picking is very hard, but I love anything that can grow tax-free; it’s really great, and it forces you to leave it alone, let it grow. So, which one should be putting in ten percent of your salary into that every year? So definitely the Roth IRA with a nice, diverse, conservative ETF of at least 20 stocks, and that’s the way to go! I love dividends, but I love them even better when they’re tax-advantaged.
This one comes from Zach. I’m Mr. Wonderful. My question to you is: on Shark Tank, I hear the sharks say a lot of times that people have products and not a company. "I’m out!" But in other cases, I see sharks actually buying businesses that are just products and not companies. So is this just a way to say "I don’t see me making money with your product?" And if the product is a good idea, would you invest because you see a vision on how to build a company around that product, or it's just a solid product that you see nothing but dollar signs? Thanks for your consideration!
Hey Zach, that's a great question! You know, it’s true: sometimes people have a great product but not a company, not a business. A single product company is very challenging because it's very, very risky—if anything happens to that product or it gets knocked off or it’s no longer competitive, there’s no other source of revenue. So what I like to do, if it’s a single product, is call it what it is: not a business; it's a product! So why not do a royalty deal? In other words, say, “Look, I don’t need to own the product; I need to own the revenue stream. So give me 7% of sales or whatever, and I’ll get behind the thing and blow it up!” I was the first to bring the royalty deal into the Shark Tank ecosphere. Now every shark's copying me; they have no creativity, those guys! So they’re always doing my structures. Well, what do you expect? I should invoice them for what they’re learning from me. They’re all grasshoppers!
Hello Mr. O’Leary! This is Sundeep from Toronto. Thank you for giving me this opportunity to ask you a question. I am a registered nurse working at a hospital, and we are always short-staffed. I am looking to start my own staffing agency, but don’t know how to start. Can you guide me on how to get a contract and how to beat my competition? Should I offer a better price for the staff I send? Thank you so much!
Sundeep, sounds like you want to be an entrepreneur! It's a great question. You know, the key is you’re coming from the industry you understand, and yes, staffing is a big issue. Your first task is to find five people qualified that you can actually be a staffing agency with, so you can get them contracts with hospitals or care providers, and you have to add at least a fifteen to twenty percent margin to them. But the fact that they don’t have to be full-time employees may be a big advantage for you. The thing is, if you want to do this, you gotta try! Entrepreneurship is not a destination; it’s a journey! It’s full of risk and hardship and lots of challenges, but if it’s burning inside of you, you gotta do it! And I think it’s a great area; there’s a never-ending demand for good healthcare professionals. So it’s not like the market isn’t there; it’s how talented you are in actually herding sheep, which is really what the talent business is about. If you’re an agency, you gotta find qualified people that show up on time, are good workers, pay them well, pay them on time, and your job is to find them contracts, whether they be short-term or long-term. And if you keep the client and the actual worker happy—the people that are coming into your agency—it’ll be a very good business. I know people that do this even for hostesses in arenas. They’ve built a big business by just getting great hostesses that show up on time, and all those boxes that people want! That’s a fantastic business! Same idea. Now you understand what I’m talking about. Good luck to you!
I own a small manufacturing shop in South Florida. I’m not ignoring operations, but I want to get more business into my company—more local business. How much more should I focus on marketing versus operations? And I don’t want to get overloaded with too much work and disappoint customers. My question is: how to balance the two and still be able to manage?
You, be Thomas, the age-old question about capacity and your ability to service your customers. There’s no question you want to service customers that have a very high quality of customer service; that’s how you keep them coming back for more! But you also want to be running at 90-95% capacity. So it sounds like you need to add a little bit of marketing, but not too much. That balance is something you have to do on a quarterly basis. You have to kind of forecast what’s coming down the pike every 90 days and build a little more span into marketing when it softens up. I like to be running at 90% capacity minimum; that’s when you’re the most profitable! You’ve got a little bit of wiggle room for helping out a customer who wants a little bit more, but you’ve also used the majority of your productivity by being at almost full capacity. It’s what they call work! It’s the talent of the balance that really matters. Sounds like you should do a little more of it and focus a little harder on that 90-day cycle. Good luck to you!