Subscribe via:
Show Summary
This conversation delves into the complexities of hiring, exploring the challenges faced by entrepreneurs and the strategies that can enhance recruitment success. It highlights the importance of transforming hiring practices, building a strong company culture, and adapting to the evolving landscape of talent management.
Resources and Links from this show:
-
Listen to the Audio Version of this Episode
Investor Fuel Show Transcript:
John Pyke (00:00)
Sales cannot be taught or learned. You either have it or you do not. And here’s proof. 20 % of the salespeople at almost every company globally consistently sell 80 % of the total sales revenue. And now in the real estate industry, it’s even skewed even more. 5 % of the real estate agents sell 95 % of the total revenue.Kristen (00:05)
Welcome to the Real Estate Pros Podcast. I’m Kristen and I’m here with John Pyke, who’s the author of How the Top 1 % of Realtors Build World Class Teams. We’re gonna talk all about optimizing your team and how you can save a lot of money by not hiring the wrong people. So thanks for being here, John.
John Pyke (02:16)
Absolutely, my pleasure.Kristen (02:18)
I’m excited to get into this. This is a very important topic that I think is a struggle for a lot of people. think building teams is the most important part and it’s also the most challenging part. So tell us about kind of your background and what got you into this sector.John Pyke (02:29)
Absolutely.Sure. At a very young age, I actually started working with the company that founded skills-based training. At one point, 85 % of the Fortune 500 trusted this company because they were considered to be the least risk vendor, the best of the best. Okay. And so even though I did exceptionally well with this company, I had a crisis of conscience that occurred, an epiphany I wasn’t expecting. So…
this world-class training after the training the high performers continue to be high performers and the low performers continue to be low performers. Simply put there was no direct causal link between the training and an increase in sales. So I actually resigned from this company because I couldn’t in good conscience represent a company that I knew the training didn’t work. And so the biggest indictment that traditional training doesn’t work and I will mention this
Kristen (03:29)
Right.John Pyke (03:37)
Sales cannot be taught or learned. You either have it or you do not. And here’s proof. 20 % of the salespeople at almost every company globally consistently sell 80 % of the total sales revenue. And now in the real estate industry, it’s even skewed even more. 5 % of the real estate agents sell 95 % of the total revenue.Kristen (03:42)
Ouch.John Pyke (04:04)
The total businessPart of the reason for that is it’s an industry where it’s very easy. ⁓ There’s very little resistance to get into the industry. So you have a lot of part-timers, a lot of retirees. They’re not really taking it very seriously. So that’s one of the reasons why.
Kristen (04:21)
Yeah. Wow. That’s very interesting. And what got you into real estate in general, like to specialize in this?John Pyke (04:30)
So actually I heard a ⁓ radio ad from Glenn Beck. I was in need of selling a home. And ⁓ basically this guy came on Glenn Beck and said, hey Triad, if you’re looking to sell your home, the only person I recommend is Jason Bramblitt. And so within three months, Jason Bramblitt was successful.in selling my property and prior to that, this was during the Great Recession, I didn’t have one person interested within nine months.
So basically the ad on the radio was, if he doesn’t sell your home, he will buy it. So I called him right away and he was phenomenal. That man, Jason Bramblitt, ended up introducing me to a consulting firm, a coaching company called Radio and Television Experts. And little did I know,
up until that point, there’s about a 90 % failure rate among real estate agents. So I went and did a presentation with Barbara Corcoran and Glenn Beck. I was the headliner. I did the opening keynote speech and I literally had a table rush. Like 35 % of the room came back asking for my help hiring great people. And that’s kind of what started everything about 15 years ago. So I have helped hire, assess and train.
over 350,000 people in the residential real estate and wholesale side of things as well.
Kristen (06:40)
Wow, that is so impressive. And you touched on really interesting stat that 90 % of real estate professionals don’t continue with it. That’s a huge number.John Pyke (06:53)
Absolutely and simply put most companies just don’t have the systems, the programs, any type of really unique selling proposition to set the real estate agent apart to give them a competitive edge and that today more than ever is what’s needed.Kristen (07:09)
Yeah, so would you say, you know, when you’re hiring someone, do you help people, you know, source the right talent and be able to identify somebody in an interview? Are you helping more with training or is it both?John Pyke (07:24)
It’s actually both. So on the training or on the recruiting side, I basically have a done for you program which broker owners and entrepreneurs love because I literally handle everything. And so that has to do with writing the ad, ⁓ optimizing the ad, publishing it to over hundred different online job boards. But the real key to success is being able to assess each person to determineif they have the sales DNA, if it’s a sales position, or if they have the administrative or operational DNA, if it’s for operations or admin. So based on some research, they said that over 90 % of the decision criteria for hiring somebody, right, 90 % in terms of correlated performance on the job has to do with the person’s cognitive abilities or their brain.
Kristen (08:21)
Got it.John Pyke (08:21)
And that’s the game changer of what I do. I measure the hardwiring of the brain. The hardwiring of the brain literally dictates everything about who we are and how well we do it. So think about things that you can’t see in an interview. Things like persistence, drive, initiative, self-starting ability, self-confidence, the ability to handle rejection, the ability to connect on an emotional level and build trust and rapport quickly and easily, problem solving. I mean, all those things are innate.So you either have a certain amount of them or you don’t. That stuff cannot be taught or learned. And that’s why traditional training, 87 % of it is completely forgotten in the first 30 days. So you’re just flushing your money down the drain. So that’s why I’m able to identify the top 10 % or the top 20 % of the best, most effective salespeople, the talent. And then you can teach them real estate. But to try to teach somebody in real estate that’s struggling how to sell,
Kristen (09:18)
andJohn Pyke (09:22)
It’s like pushing a boulder uphill. And candidly, Kristen, that’s why so many broker owners just give up. They just say it’s not worth the effort, it’s not worth the time, it’s not worth the risk, it’s too disruptive to bring people in and have them leave, it’s too costly, et cetera. So that’s really the expertise that I provide ⁓ to the real estate industry. So you think about teams like Mark Spain, some of the biggest and best teams, Jeff Cook in Charleston, South Carolina, he’s like,Seven ext his business from 300 sides to over 2,000 sides, you know, when I work with them because we went from one office to seven.
Kristen (09:55)
Bye!John Pyke (10:35)
And so basically all my clients have breakthroughs like that. That’s not an outlier. They quadruple and quintuple their sales revenue because regardless of how many leads you have, it’s only as good as the people that you have that are qualified to be able to close those leads. Does that make sense?Kristen (10:55)
Absolutely. I think it’s interesting that you were talking about these traits like persistence and all of that that’s hard to measure in an interview. And I think the way people traditionally try to do that is, you know, tell me a time where you are persistent. And I think self-reporting or, you know, people can kind of say anything. So I would love for you to talk kind of more about that and how maybe people are spinning their wheels with some of the questions they’re asking.John Pyke (11:23)
Absolutely. let me also mention something. Everything I do is based on science and statistics and analytics that are are time-tested and proven over decades. So right now there is a an increased usage of personality instruments, which is a positive thing. But here’s what most people don’t understand.Based on 100 years of research, if you’re using only a personality instrument like Myers-Briggs or DISC or any of the other ones that are out there, and most assessments are only one-dimensional personality instruments, you have a slightly better chance of making a rate higher by just making a decision based on looking at someone’s resume and not even meeting them. So obviously,
You know, if you’re trying to get an extra dimension with just personality, you’re going to still make a wrong hire 80 % of the time. But your question was about asking the right questions or asking more questions. And that is a trap. Most people think, I just talked to somebody the other day, she had six interviews with this person and it still didn’t work out. So the more questions you ask isn’t the key to success.
So let me mention something that I teach my clients that’s revolutionary, transformational. It helps them become the only logical choice. think back, Kristen, to the last time you had an interview. I can almost guarantee you this is what happened. After the small talk, they said, we have some questions that we’d like to ask you. Okay. And then with only five minutes remaining, they ask you, what questions do you have? Yes or yes? Because
Kristen (13:03)
Yeah, exactly.John Pyke (13:05)
They think that the more questions they ask, the closer they are to not making a mistake, which is completely faulty. Because of the fact that we have such unbelievable intelligence and analytics, right, and data around whether the person is talented enough to do this job and do it exceptionally well, I teach my clients to completely reverse engineer the interview. So this is what it sounds like. Hey, Kristen, we’re thrilled that you showed up today. ⁓ Our interview is gonna be something that you experienced like no other company.Instead of interrogating you and basically asking you questions for 50 minutes straight, we know that this is the single most important decision that you’re going to make, right? Because you spend the best waking hours of your day at work. We want to make sure we answer all of your questions. First, when you’re done, then we would like to ask you some questions because we know you’re going to absolutely crush it here based on the fact that you you ranked in the top 10 % of the best salespeople in the world.
Kristen (13:48)
brain.John Pyke (14:04)
We want to find out whether or not it’s a good cultural fit, whether or not we’re going to work well together, whether we want to get up every day and go to battle with each other every day. And so basically I tell them that before they actually come into the interview, so they’re prepared and have all these questions and that totally gives them the control. most many entrepreneurs would never dream of doing that. But since they have all this data and all this analytics, soWe literally obliterate any other company that’s interviewing them for a similar position because they’re doing it the old-fashioned way.
Kristen (14:40)
Right.John Pyke (14:42)
So, know, hope is not a strategy. can’t just, you know, now more than ever, you need to have data for your decisions. And the great news is this data is available and it’s the single most important data when it comes to making a hire.Kristen (14:55)
That’s so interesting. So you’re kind of helping people feel like they, you know, they’re a part of the conversation. This isn’t, like you said, an interrogation. I feel like that’s definitely the vibe where it’s like, are you a good fit for us? And you’re basically giving the power to the interviewee to make their own decision. And that’s kind of, yeah, you’re setting the stage for it.John Pyke (15:59)
You’re absolutely right. It’s a collaboration. So you basically say, hey, we know you could do exceptionally well here. It’s just a matter of whether or not our values are congruent with each other to see if we’re a good fit. ⁓ So that’s what it’s really all about. And that’s how my clients cherry pick the best talent. And that’s why we’re able to basically get 50 % growth year over year over year. When you have the right talent, makes the difference. McKinsey & Company, one of the…best and most notable well-respected management consulting firm said that the difference between hiring average talent and superior talent is a factor of 8x, eight times.
Kristen (16:41)
Wow. Wow. And so you help your clients kind of once it gets to the point where they’re asking the questions, you’re helping them kind of streamline the process. So they ask the correct questions.John Pyke (16:56)
Yeah, mean, absolutely. And here’s another thing I’ll mention. Let me just mention one incident or example. Chad Schwendeman up in Minnesota, okay, he has a team of 30 people on his real estate team. Now, I have helped him hire every single individual. And here’s what some people are going to find very hard to believe without having spoken to them and without even looking at their resume. It’s irrelevant. But…Kristen (17:24)
Wow.John Pyke (17:26)
To prove that’s actually the case, will prove it more than anything else. Chad Schwendman last year was ranked in the Wall Street Journal Real Trends as the number nine highest performing residential real estate company in the United States. His productivity per agent, they averaged 35 homes sold per year. To give you a perspective, that’s eight times higher than the industry standard.Kristen (17:42)
Mom.John Pyke (17:56)
So again, this is a science. You implement the science, you interview and hire the right people, and you’re going to get superior results every single time. And I could give you countless stories and examples similar to Chad that have had this transformational breakthrough. The days of having to throw darts and roll your dice on hiring are over. You no longer have to go through that headache, that frustration, that cost. Now here’s the other part.Not only one of my clients said that she determined that her time per hour, she’s worth a thousand dollars per hour, okay? She went through this exercise. And so one of the other benefits of this is it eliminates you from interviewing people that don’t have a chance. I mean, how many times you get into an interview and within the first three minutes, you know, ⁓ boy, how do I shut this down?
this interview down, right, and not be offensive to the candidate because there’s absolutely no way this person, right, is going to be part of my organization. So that we sift, sort, separate, we cherry pick, you know, hundreds of applicants. Jeff Cook in Charleston, he’s one of the most successful clients of mine. We evaluated over 10,000 people and he basically picked the top 5 % of that top 10,000 people.
and they’re on his staff, right? it’s sales is much more than just a numbers game. You’ve heard that, we’ve heard that for decades, know, sales is a numbers game. That’s only half true. Sales is much more than merely a numbers game. It’s an accuracy game. It’s first of all, accurately hiring the right people, eliminating the costly, frustrating guesswork. And then it’s asking the right questions.
to develop trust and rapport, right? So it’s all about accuracy, not about numbers. prior to working with me, most of my clients have about a one in 20 success rate with hiring someone that’s good, that they’ll actually want to keep. One in 20. So if I was an entrepreneur and I knew those ads, I wouldn’t really want to be enthusiastic about hiring either. Yeah.
Kristen (20:13)
Wow,I mean that’s so impressive what you’re able to do. You’re able to really transform businesses and save people a ton of money. I mean it’s so expensive. I would love for you to talk about the expense of hiring the wrong people.
John Pyke (20:28)
Okay, so based on some recent research from Harvard Business Review, they found that 80 % of turnover, 80 % of attrition at a company is based on poor hiring decisions. And that those decisions can cost as much as five times the annual salary of that individual. Now, there’s gonna be multiple sources. You some people say it’s anywhere from 2X to about 13X their salary.Kristen (20:53)
youJohn Pyke (20:57)
based on the type of position. The more senior, obviously the more costly it is. And some entrepreneurs think they’re short-sighted because they think, well, it’s not costing me that much money because these are straight commission people, so I’m not really losing that much. Really? Right? You’re talking about how disruptive it is to the company, ⁓ how demoralizing it is, you know, to consistently make these bad hires all the time, the loss of goodwill in terms of your reputation because you’re not hiring people that are up to a high standard, the costs, I mean,beyond the opportunity cost of not having somebody in the territory to sell or losing business. ⁓ It doesn’t even include those numbers which are even higher. yeah, the cost. Somebody once said that 90 % of business challenges are actually recruiting and hiring challenges in disguise and I couldn’t agree more.
Kristen (21:54)
Wow, I mean it’s so impressive. It’s such an important part of the business and you’re helping people at all stages, correct? You’re helping startups, you’re helping people that are going public. It can be applied to anybody.John Pyke (22:12)
Absolutely. Yep, the science works doesn’t matter what into I’ve worked in hundreds of industries, not just residential and wholesale real estate, right? ⁓ From startups all the way up to fortune 500. ⁓ Hired, you know, the only thing I really haven’t helped hire with by personal preference is computer programmers. That’s one one area that I’ve done a tremendous amount in the mortgage mortgage industry, manufacturing, pharmaceutical, biotech.The list just goes on and on but it really doesn’t matter if you’re hiring somebody in operations, somebody in finance, somebody in sales, somebody in human resources. It all has to do with the hardwiring of the brain. If the brain isn’t hardwired the right way, it’s over. So let me mention something that every entrepreneur is going to resonate with. I was recently at a conference. There’s 500 people in the audience. I asked people to stand.
these entrepreneurs if they’ve ever had anybody on a performance improvement plan. Which means they’re not measuring up, right? So we have to put together something from a legal point of view so that they can exit the company. You give them a three month window or chance to improve. Then I asked this telling question. I said, if any of you in the audience that are standing have had somebody that almost instantaneously and immediately made a heroic recovery
and suddenly became a high-performing person, would you please remain standing? Kristen, I think you already know what happened. Not one person continued to stand because they couldn’t do what you’re asking them to do. It doesn’t matter how much you try to train and coach and mentor. If they don’t have it, they’re never gonna have it, right? Because it’s the hardwiring of the brain. So…
That was an interesting moment of truth for a lot of entrepreneurs. Look, everything that I’m saying makes a significant amount of sense, right? It mirrors everyone’s personal experience. So there’s no excuse for not utilizing this technology. So here’s typically what I do. I will take any company, any industry, but I ask them to do this. You give me one of your single best salespeople.
and also give me one of your worst. Don’t tell me who’s the star and who’s mediocre. Have them take this assessment and I will tell you who’s performing at a high level, why they’re performing at a high level, and why they will continue to perform at a high level. And I’ll also tell you which person is weak and why they’ll never be a star when it comes to sales. I have never been wrong. Not
Kristen (25:03)
Wow. ⁓John Pyke (25:05)
Not one time. The science is that exact. It’s that precise. Yeah. So once people do that and they see that firsthand with their own people, in their own company, with their own industry, it’s a total game changer. Transformational.Kristen (25:09)
Wow. Wow, but what?I mean, you’ve given such great structure and advice on properly hiring and I’m sure you have just so much to teach people if they were to work with you. mean, we’re getting towards the end of our time, so I would love for you to talk about where people can find you, how they can work with you, and where your book is available.
John Pyke (25:42)
Sure. So ⁓ my website is thetalentgenius.com. I think it’s written there under my name thetalentgenius.com. If you want a copy of my free book, How the Top 1 % of Realtors Build World Class Teams, ⁓ all you have to do is just email me and I’ll send to you a free copy via PDF. Okay. So it’s just my first name, John, J-O-H-N, at thetalentgenius.com.Kristen (26:03)
Wow, nice.John Pyke (26:12)
and I would be happy to gift that to you.Kristen (26:14)
Amazing. Well, I mean, that’s so generous. And I really think everyone should take advantage of that because you have just incredible insight on this. I’m so impressed with everything that you’re building and helping people build. So thank you so much for being here, John.John Pyke (26:29)
My pleasure.Kristen (26:30)
Awesome, and everybody, thank you so much for listening. I hope you learned a lot. I think there is a lot of information there for you to think about and, you know, reach out to John if you’re interested in working with him, if you like what you heard. So thanks so much to everybody for listening. We’ll see you next time.
