Top 5 Characteristics of World-Class Salespeople with Troy Elmore

And so I entered into sort of a technical sales profession back in the early 90s and sold for a company called FlowServe for many years. And then I left there to go sell software because that was the cool thing to do in the late 90s before everything just crashed. And went to work for a company called BMC Software, which is really what taught me or the company taught me Sandler. And the short story on that one is that I thought I was really, really good at sales until I actually started being taught how to sell. And then I realized how bad I was. But I had just succeeded before I learned Sandler just out of pure energy. Just I worked harder than everybody else. But that's not a sustainable model. And so I learned about Sandler. And then I wanted to have my own business. I got an MBA. And that's what you do when you get an MBA is you either go up the corporate ladder or you do your own business.

And, you know, and so I didn't want to go up the corporate ladder. So I decided to buy a franchise with Sandler Training that was back in 2003 and had a business partner back then. But we started it and been doing it now for becoming on 18 years now coming up here pretty soon. So it's been a wild ride. A lot of fun. That's awesome. All with a mechanical engineering degree. All with a mechanical engineering degree that I didn't use. I only got that. I was good at math and I didn't like the other four majors my dad said were there. I mean, it was like a doctor, a banker, a lawyer, an accountant or an engineer. And I was like, well, I'll just pick engineer. You know, that was pretty much my guidance counselor, my dad. So, yeah, nice. I like it. We were talking and, you know, doing a show like this, there's no real way to say, oh, well, this is how we're going to train you in a 20 or 30 minute.

Yeah, we are. And so what we really tried to talk about when we were kind of pre-planning here was what are just some of like some real solid takeaways that a real estate agent that whether they've had sales training in the past or not could take and throw into their business. And these are just sort of guiding principles on how to be a better salesperson overall. And then at the end, we'll talk a little bit about if they want some more in-depth training, how to talk to somebody like you about that. Perfect. So why don't you just go ahead and jump in and let's get started with your Top 5 characteristics of a world-class salesperson. Okay. And so as I tell you about these Top 5, I'm going to tell you that I'm segmenting them a little bit. So I'm segmenting them into three sections. And so there's going to be two of them there into one of the two sections and then the other ones will be into the other section.

So let me tell you, I'm going to segment this. A world-class salesperson thinks about sales in three ways. They think about their mindset. They think about their behavior each day and they think about their techniques. And so as I go into these Top 5, you can't obviously divide three into five very easy. So you're going to see some of them are weighted one or another. But that's where I'm going to start. So if you want me to, I'll just get into it. And I'll just kind of tell you what I call the top one. So the top one that we say is that you need to understand what's going on in your head. You need to understand your mindset. You know, sales are really run or lost between your ears. And it's amazing how many salespeople that we can teach to do something but then still won't do it. They won't ask the questions they need to ask. They won't do the things they need to do.

And it has nothing to do a lot with intelligence. It has more to do with what's between their ears and what they think to be true, which may not always be true. And the example might be that maybe they have some belief system that, let's say, everybody buys on price. And no matter what, so in the real estate world that you have to lower your percentage to get somebody to use you. And if you believe that, then, you know, that hurts you in sales because you won't ask the right questions to show your value to get somebody to feel comfortable to give you the percentage that you want. And so, you know, the first rule that top salespeople do, instead of listening to their self and all the negative head trash and scripts that tell you you can't succeed, you know, everybody buys on price. You know, if you haven't been in the business a long time, there's no there's not enough prospects.

Instead of listening to that stuff, you tell yourself the things you need to believe that you tell yourself. And so from a guy named John Gordon, who I've just briefly met, but who writes a lot of books, great books, he he loves to say you need to talk to yourself. And so I always say salespeople need to talk to themselves. They need to tell themselves what they need to believe. Because if you just listen to your head, Chance, I tell you, most of the scripts and most of the things that come in your head are negative. I think there's a study that shows something like 80 something, five or six percent of the belief systems that are things you tell yourself are negative. And so so instead of listening to yourself, talk to yourself, tell you to tell yourself the beliefs you need to believe and get your head in the right space.

So that's the first one. So randomly that you say that just completely unplanned. And we had not talked about this in advance, but I just so happen to have a John Gordon book sitting on my desk right now. So that's just kind of crazy coincidence. So, yeah. So tell me before we jump into number two on that, let's pull the thread on this a little bit. Do you think that this is a, is it a confidence issue? Is it a, you know, you hear a lot in sales, like fear of rejection, right? The call rejection and things like that. Is it that that hammers on them? Is it just past life experience? Like what's the. All of the above. Yeah. I don't think that we really, really do a lot of self-reflection to figure out what goes on in our head that hurts us from being as successful as we could be.

I mean, we're, we have a, we are a mound of success underneath a lot of layers of armor, you know? And so we, we, we, it's like statues. It's interesting because a statue, you know, any great statue, the statue is already there. You have to kind of chip away at it to get it to show you the statue and shipping away is all those negative belief systems. And so, yeah, it could be a confidence thing. It doesn't have to be a confidence thing because I can be very confident that the, that the market sucks, you know, but that doesn't mean that it's true, you know? Right. So, so it's a confidence thing. It's more of a negative belief thing. And how do, how do my beliefs, which most of the beliefs we have, we've never experienced, but how do my beliefs impact my success?

Because they do, because you are a product of your beliefs. You're where you are today. Like there's a rule of sales and I, and people hate this rule, but you're earning today exactly what, what you think you're worth and not a dollar more. Because if you thought you were worth it, you'd be earning it. And there's a, and people hate that rule because they hate to think that it might be my fault, but it starts with what's going on in your head. Yeah. Awesome. That's great. So, I mean, again, and I don't want to belabor this point. No, please. Is this a, in order to overcome this, I need to do a daily affirmation. I need to meditate. Like, is there, is there a, I know there's no one size fits all, but is there a general rule of, before I go and I make my prospecting calls today, I'm going to spend five minutes just getting in the right mindset. Yeah.

So, I think there's two things you can do here. One is you can actually write down or tell yourself the beliefs you need to have. That instead of saying, prospects don't want to hear from me, maybe prospects are, you know, are waiting to hear from me. You know, prospects need me. They're, they're waiting for my call. That might be something you write down or at least think about. That's the first thing. The second thing you can do is instead of just waiting for your beliefs to change, you can think about the actions that you would take if your belief were opposite. So, if I believed prospects really wanted to hear from me, what would I do differently? And I would put those action plans in place and I would start doing it because what we find is that actions or behavior drives your mindset. Your mindset doesn't drive your behavior. Although, although your mindset does drive your behavior, your mindset, you can't change your mindset without doing action first.

And so, if you, if doing anything, just start to do the action that you would do if you had an, if you had an opposite belief system. So, that's the two things I tell you. Write down the right stuff. There you go. What are you, what am I looking at? So, we've got a book that we do a lot, we work a lot in, which is The Greatest Salesman in the World by Ogmandino. And every year at the beginning of the year, I ask all of my agents to pick one scroll that's going to be their kind of defining scroll. And for people who don't know the story of Greatest Salesman in the World, the Greatest Salesman in the World is imparting his knowledge to the next generation salesperson, essentially. And the one that I have for, that is mine for this year is, is the scroll that says, I will act now. Yes. Because I think we're all prone to letting those self-limiting beliefs cause procrastination and things like that.

And what I have found is that sometimes just doing something results in more things happening just because you're doing stuff. Right. It may not be the thing that actually leads to, that is the catalyst for the end results you're looking for. But just by doing something, you start to feel energy coming back to you and start seeing results. Right. Even if you do something, even if it doesn't change that belief system right now, it's amazing how just acting upon something instead of just procrastinating this negative belief system, how it helps improve everything about you. And so you're right. Yeah. Great. All right. So we fixed the problem between our ears in, you know, five minutes. So perfect. So number two. Number two, look, you know, we talked about the three segments, right?

One of the segments is attitude. The other one is behavior and the other one is techniques. So when you get to the behavior section of sales, world-class salespeople, number two is they have what we call a cookbook, right? They know what in a cookbook is, you know, we don't see very many of them anymore, right? They're all online. But if you looked at an old-fashioned cookbook, what you'd see is you see these things called recipes in the cookbook, right? And the recipe would have ingredients, it'd have the number of ingredients, and it'd tell you what to do with these ingredients. And so within a cookbook, what we say in sales is you need to know what you need to be doing on a daily, weekly, monthly basis. What is your behavior for success? And you do that by back-ending, you know, if I'm looking for a certain result, if I'm looking to make a certain amount of money each year or sell a certain number of homes or list a certain number of homes, how many initial conversations do I need to have from that?

And how many calls or networking events or such do I need to do to have those initial conversations? And when I back-end that and when I reverse-engineer that, I can come up with what are the behaviors for success. And so great salespeople know their cookbook. They know they have to do this many calls, this many networking events, you know, get this many referrals to get those initial conversations, to get those sales, and they hold themselves accountable to that. And so they understand their behaviors, they understand their cookbook, and they're disciplined to that cookbook. And they know that if they can do that, they'll succeed. So that's another great salesperson who does that. They're disciplined in that regard. Yeah, the hard part is that accountability piece, though, right?

Correct, right? But great salespeople have big goals, and those goals are – we call them the why. The why is greater than the what. The what is the what they have to do every single day to be successful, those behaviors, but their why is greater than their what. And so if I'm looking at a vision board, if you will, of things that are important to me, maybe it might be one of my things is maybe taking vacations with my family or paying for college or whatever it is. That why needs to be greater than the what I have to do because I'm not going to let anything stand in the way of reaching those goals, and those goals have to be greater than the what. That's how you – that's really one of the best ways you can hold yourself accountable is to understand your why because other people – and certainly you can have accountability groups.

Just like going to the gym, right? You can say, I'm going to meet you somewhere, and those are all really good things, too, because collectively, you can let the shame of letting someone else down help you. But certainly it works. It all helps out, too. Yeah, but that all works. And so I guess the question then would be, how do you find the ingredients? Yeah, I mean, I think, look, we overcomplicate this thing. There's not that many ingredients when you're going to sales. It's what are the things I need to do. So let's – we can list a few of them, right? I need to maybe send emails. I need to make calls to people, right? How do I find emails? Well, maybe I use LinkedIn. Maybe I use Facebook. I need to do maybe – and there's proactive versus passive as well, right?

I need to go to networking events. Maybe I need to do some free talks. You know, it's what are the active prospect – I need to ask for referrals. What are those active prospecting activities? And these are – people are always looking for the silver bullet on this one, and there's really not a silver bullet on this one. It's more about can I pick the four or five activities that I can start doing, and then I can hold myself accountable to them, and then I can track them and see what's working and not working, right? Right. So that was what I was about to say is if you track it, then you know over time if I make ten phone calls, I'm going to get an appointment. Right. So when you really get into that reverse engineering, that's when you can start to get, you know, kind of an exact science to, right, if I pick up the phone and I call five people a day, then I should be able to set three appointments a week.

I should be able to sign one new contract a week, sell, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, right? Exactly. And look, as you do this long enough, you should start to realize that your cookbook changes. The cookbook that we have in our business is different than it was 18 years ago. I mean, it's just different. I know a lot more people. I do a lot of different strategic things. We have a lot more strategic relationships, and so, you know, it's just different. When you first start, you don't really know anybody sometimes, right? You don't know. So sometimes it's just that raw prospecting to get started. It's like rip the Band-Aid off and start and then know that it's not going to be forever. You'll have different type of prospecting as you get further along in your career. Most salespeople don't stay the course long enough chance to be successful. They go a year or two. They don't really do the things it takes, and then they go do something else.

And the same thing, and it's almost like they have 20 years of experience, you know, but they've done it 10 or 15 times, so they've never stayed long enough to be successful. Right, right. And we talk about it all the time in real estate. You know, there's such a high attrition rate, especially in the first couple of years. That, you know, I refer to it when I'm talking to agents and I'm training agents, I refer to it as really your first two years are nothing more than a branding exercise because you've got to change the mindset of your audience from, I used to do this and now I'm your real estate resource. Right. And the only way to really do that is to continuously prospect and to pick up the phone and call and talk to people and build that mindset and send emails and do all the daily activities that you're talking about.

It's just, I've got to hammer this into your head right now that this is who I am, not what you used to think of me and what I used to do. Agreed. And I think, and tell me if I'm wrong, but most of the Realtors that we've talked to, there's very few of them that really take this as serious as they should. And a lot of them take it as sort of a hobby. They treat it as a hobby. They kind of do it when they have time to do it. And so that's good news and bad news, right? Because that's bad news for the people who treat it as a hobby because it's really hard to be successful. The good news is the people who don't treat it as a hobby, who treat it as something that is bigger than that with a lot more purpose, are the people who wildly succeed in those industries. So that's what I've seen. Yeah. And I mean, I think you could say that across the board in sales, just in general, is the people who really are business owners and take it like that and have that mentality.

Those are the ones who are going to be successful. And yes, you know, there are people in the real estate industry that are going to say, oh, I'm the CEO of my business and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But the truth of the matter is, if they're not getting up and doing those daily activities every day, they're not really. Agreed. Yes, you're absolutely right. All right. So that takes us to number three on the list. Right. So number one is they talk to themselves. Number two is they have a cookbook. Number three is they absolutely use a selling system. So let's talk about the technique side of this. They use a system for selling. They just don't do willy-nilly. They don't do what feels good. They literally have steps, which they use to come in and ask certain questions to figure out whether this is a real prospect. Right. And they don't just fly by the other pants.

And then as a selling system, they actually take control of this conversation and they guide it in the right direction. They don't force people to buy from them, but they have a system that helps them guide the conversation, helps them be that trusted advisor. And so if you have a system, what do we know about world-class salespeople is they can figure out what's working and not working from a system. Because afterwards, they can always debrief themselves. Not only can they pre-call plan, but they can debrief themselves to figure out what's working and not working. And so world-class salespeople don't just sell by the seat of their pants. I see a lot of amateurs do it. They say, oh, I just like to be loose, sell by the seat of my pants. But world-class uses a process and a system so they can figure out how to always get better. And that's number three. Yeah. So do you mind if I give away a sales trick?

So the piece of what I learned from you back when I was selling insurance that we use in our business today is tying the knot. But naturally, obviously, typically, on setting the expectations of what a meeting looks like. And it's not a script in the sense of here's a script and memorize this and become robot Realtor. It's just a, hey, this is what I know you're expecting of me. This is what I'm expecting of you. And here's our exit strategy if this isn't going to work out. If so, let's move forward. And it's a great, super easy to do system that you can put into your business that I think is just, when you explained it to me 15 years ago, something like that, I was so impressed with just that piece that it has stuck.

And we, like I said, we train it now to all of our agents. And so having those systems, having those processes, I think one of the really difficult things in real estate is it's not tangible. You try to go in and you sell, because you're selling yourself, right? You try to go in and you sell somebody an iPhone. You know, you work at the Apple store and you're going to sell an iPhone. Okay. Easy enough. Here it is. Play with it. Unlock the screen and face recognition, whatever. It's got some cool features and things like that. But it's very hard to bring that tangibility to the table when you're offering a service. And so I think that having the system and coming up with a creative way of branding that or whatever it is, that's your step into that tangibility for your client.

Agreed. I mean, you're really selling trust, first and foremost. Whether you're selling a product or a service, you have to sell trust. And you have to sell them that they trust you enough to be able to take guidance from you in whatever direction or whatever solution you recommend to them. And so that's a system. One of the pieces of the system is allowing them to start to trust you by the questions you ask and the way you do it. And again, hey, if I'm doing it wrong, if I'm following a system, I can always debrief myself and figure out how to do it better. And that's an important thing. And if I have a sales team, I can coach them if I have a system instead of them all doing it their own way. And so it tremendously helps in that regard. Yeah. One of the things we talk about a lot is, you know, if you look in the military, for instance, the Navy SEALs go out on a mission and they spend all this time preparing for it.

Right. They're on this mission for maybe an hour or two. And then they spend all this time debriefing. And so they may have spent weeks in preparation. Yes. And they may spend hours in debriefing over what was a really quick operation in the big scheme of things. And so to be, you know, the corollary is pretty clear. In the business world is, you've got to be prepared. You've got to be ready. You've got to have your processes and systems built in your business so that you can perform without question when the time is right. And then you've got to be able to go back and look at it and be honest with yourself and what was good, what was bad, and all of that. And you can practice a system. You can role play it. You can do, you know, and to that Navy SEAL, I saw something yesterday to that same end, which was, I was watching, I remember what I was watching.

It was on Netflix or something. It was on those days yesterday, you know, just to kind of relax. And, you know, the guy said, and I love the saying, and I've heard it before, is that he says, the more that we sweat in peace, the less we bleed in battle, you know. And so, you know, if you have a system, you can constantly practice that and role play it on top of using it in battle. And SAIL sometimes feels like a battle, I'll tell you. It's a tough world out there. Absolutely. All right. So that takes us to number four. Number four. So, and it's under the technique section as well. So not only do you have to have a system, which we said was number three, but number four is that great salespeople know the problems they solve. And so amateur salespeople tend to sell features and benefits. They tend to sell the wonderful. Let me tell you why you should use me as an agent.

Let me tell you how great your life is going to be. The problem is that no one cares, right? They don't care about what you can bring to the table. What they care about is the problems. Can you solve the problems they have? And so we use in Sandler, we say that people buy for pain, right? They buy to move away from pain. They do move towards pleasure. But pain is such a greater motivator. And so in order for you to really understand people's pain, you know, what are some of the reasons why they would consider using you? Especially since most people probably have maybe had or used a real estate agent in the past, right? And so what are some problems that they've had with real estate agents in the past? What are some problems that they're worried about when it comes to selling their home, you know, or buying a new one? And so understanding the problems you solve, then you can start to have conversations around that and see if people are going to be motivated to do something different, right?

And so great salespeople, you have to understand that. What problems do I solve? Not what things do I do? It's two things that are completely different. What frustrations or concerns do my prospects have that would get them to act? And I need to, if I don't know what the problems I solve are, then chance I don't know what I'm looking for. And so great salespeople know that. So how do you do that? How do you do what? How do you find out what the problem is? Well, the easiest thing is, is to try to figure out, you can sometimes work backwards, right? You can figure out what are some of the things that we do and why are those, why does that matter? What problems might somebody, so you kind of almost do like a reverse engineer there too. And so, you know, if somebody were to switch, and again, if they were using an existing real estate agent, what problem would they have to have to want to switch?

Maybe there were some customer service issues. Maybe they didn't sell their things timely enough. Maybe they didn't bring value. But then you start to think about what problem would they have to have to want to use a different agent than they maybe used before. And that's just one example. We could spend hours talking about this. But it's really going backwards from what you do to what you solve. So I think my question was more along the lines of, I don't think agents do a very good job of asking questions because they're dangerous, right? And you never know where the hell somebody's going to go with it if you ask them a question, especially if it's an open-ended question. And so I think that one of the things that real estate agents, if they could get better at something when it comes to a sales standpoint, is really digging down on the...

Agreed. Okay, you need three bedrooms. But tell me why you need three bedrooms. What are you going to do with this space? How are you going to entertain? How are you going to do this? How are you going to do that? And really drive to what are the emotional things that are driving this purchase or sales decision? Agreed. So we talk to, we teach a lot of new home salespeople a lot. I've somehow gotten to the niche of doing a lot of new home salespeople. And some of the things we teach them to do is, why are you even thinking about moving? You know? And what are some of the... And when you really break it down, you know, the problems lie in three buckets when it comes to moving. One is problems with the existing area they're in, problems with the community they're in, or problems with the home itself. And so when you start to look at the area, let's say, for example, maybe you're thinking about moving because, in general, there's a security problem.

Maybe the schools aren't that good. When it comes to the community, maybe you're having problems with the neighbors. Maybe the Homeowners Association is upsetting you. Maybe you're looking at the benefits. I mean, the things that used to be there aren't there anymore. When it comes to the home, obviously, when it's too small, it's too big, and so on, right? But thinking about the problems you solve so you can start to have a conversation around that. Because, again, you're trying to help... You guys kind of, you know, you're trying to get to understand why would they move in the first place, and then you're starting to understand why would they pick you. Because it's really kind of a couple different sales, right? And so... It really is, yeah. But that's what... I don't think it's that much different with you guys compared to them. I think a lot of times, and it's a, you know, I might piss a few people off when I say this, but a lot of times Realtors kind of think that they're more important to the process and the decision-making of actually moving than they really are.

When the truth of the matter is, those people have probably already made up their mind that they're going to move. They're going to buy a home. They're going to sell a home. I mean, those are things that come from family creation or, sadly, sometimes family splitting or jobs or whatever, birth, death, whatever it is. And I think that a lot of times we feel as agents that we are the cause of somebody buying or selling a home. And the fact is, that's not the case. We just want to be in the right place at the right time to take advantage of being able to offer our services to them and be able to sell that. But I think that on the flip side of that coin, there has to be an understanding of what's driving their decision-making in order for you to be able to really put your best product forward.

Right. Well, look, at the end of the day, think about a doctor, right? And you need to really, first, I think, you know, you really need to understand the problem so you can find out how to help them. But you guys are, you're not, as much as people like to think that you guys help them find homes, you help them find solutions to problems. And so you have to understand the problems so that you can help them find a solution to that. And so understanding all those whys, it does help them at least get you, when you ask those questions, not only does it help you provide the right solution, but it gives them that at least perception that you care and that you are understanding them, right? And they're looking for someone to understand them. If you can ask the right questions to understand them and to understand the problems, then you can be that solution provider. And people get way too caught up in the products and services they sell versus thinking about the fact that they sell solutions.

And so you can't sell solutions to problems. That's problems that you don't understand or know. Yeah, exactly. That's exactly right. Yeah. Perfect. All right. So that takes us to our last point. Number five, right. So I'll say this by the great world-class salespeople diffuse bombs. All right. They diffuse bombs before they blow up. And I'll tell you that in sales, there's a lot of bombs that tend to blow up towards the end. And they usually come in the form of objections. You know, when people say things like, well, you know, we were going to go with you, but your rate was too high. Right. Or we were going to go with you, but there's another decision maker involved. Or, you know, or we decided this. And I think that great salespeople ask all the right questions to diffuse all the bombs before they blow up on them at the end.

And they usually blow up at the very end. And the price one is a great one, right? You know, you should never hear someone come back to you and tell you your rate is too high. They should, you've already should have had that discussion. Right. You should never have had that be a problem and an objection. Like we like to teach salespeople how they should overcome objections. But the reality is you shouldn't have that objection at the very end. You should have already talked about that. You know, you shouldn't have this objection of, well, you know, my wife or my husband wasn't on board with this. And I have to go talk to, well, why were you, why did you not address that bomb before it blew up? And so great salespeople know a lot of their bombs that come up in the sales process and they address them. And they address them ahead of time and they hit them head on. They don't wait and hope that they don't blow up. Right. So I don't know if that kind of gives a good description of it. Yeah.

So if we take that back to our debriefing sessions, right? Essentially, we're going to create a frequently asked questions section of my business. Yes. Build a process and system around it so that we're addressing those bombs before they get there. Absolutely. And then how much of that is also expectation setting? Right. A lot of it is just setting expectations up front about here, you know, here's the questions I'm going to ask. Here's some of the information I'm going to need. Here's the things we're going to talk about. Some of it may be a little bit uncomfortable, but moving is a big deal. And we want to make sure that we can help you and that you get the right solution. Because, I mean, most people don't move more than two or three times in their life unless they're just, you know, the rare breed that is in the military or they're investors.

Right. I mean, I think a lot of the bombs, if you will, that we see, things like low appraisals that happen once a home is already under contract. They're surprises and they're not usually good surprises, right? Right. And so I think that what, if we did a better job of setting expectations of this is what could happen early, you always have that option of being able to go back and say, remember when we talked about this? Absolutely. And that's, I think something that as Realtors, we don't do a great job of is setting that X, you know, in the, in the, in our world, we call them pop tart agents. And a pop tart agent is an agent who the phone rings and boom, they pop up out of their desk and they run because they've got a fish on the line.

Right. Instead of taking the time to actually have their recipe book and sit down with that person and say, okay, let's talk about the water. Why of you moving? Let's talk about this and that. And then setting those expectations. And it all becomes a part of that final experience that you've created as your product. And your process or your system should have the questions to diffuse the bombs ahead of time. It should be built into it. Right. So awesome. All right. So if somebody is watching the show today and they have gotten their interest piqued and they want to become a better salesperson overall, what are some of the things that you think they should do that you want them to call you?

Well, it's a pretty simple process. I mean, if they want to know more about us, they can obviously look at it on our website. You know, our website, www.iss.sandler.com. Sandler being like Adam Sandler, S-A-N-D-L-E-R. Or they can just email me directly, which is my first initial and my last name. So it's T-E-L-M-O-R-E, T-L-M-O-R at sandler.com. And just, you know, if they want to reach out and talk to us, then we'll have a short conversation with them. And generally, it's an initial 10 to 15-minute phone call. And we're talking about a high-level conversation. And from there, we kind of decide together, does it make sense to have a further conversation? And if it doesn't, that's okay. We'll part as friends, but no risk. And we both get to kind of decide that. And so that's where we start.

If somebody wants to have a conversation, let's do it. I will tell you that, you know, what we do is not for the faint at heart. So if it's a Realtor that's kind of just kind of playing a hobby and says, I don't know if I want to do it, we're probably not the best fit. But if they're saying, look, I'm doing really good, but I want to take it to the next level, then that's probably a better person to have reach out to us. So that first part sounded a whole lot like you were tying the knot with me. Oh, yeah. I mean, that was like, you know. Make sure we're at four or seven expectations and make sure we're at the same rate, right? Yeah. All right. So before we go, I want to ask one more question. Sure. What's the best sales book you recommend? Well, of course.

What's the best sales book you've ever read? Do I have to pick the Sandler book? I mean, Sandler books are obviously some of my favorites. So we'll put an asterisk up there. Non-Sandler. Your favorite sales book. Well, so I wouldn't say that I have most of my very favorite books are non-sales books. They're more attitude mindset books. Okay. And so if I could give you one that I really think is or some that I, one of my favorite, favorite books that's sort of a, it gets you to think about your head is this book by a guy named Viktor Frankl a long time ago called Man's Search for Meaning. It's one of my absolute favorite books. It really gets you to think about perspective of your life and that you can endure whatever. And sales is a tough world. But if you were to say, what's another good book that I really love?

I think Brene Brown writes some really good books. One of my favorites is a book called Daring Greatly. Justin Engels is a medical book about vulnerability and how to, you know, separate, you know, your value of yourself from what's going on in the world. And so, I mean, we could just go on and on and on and on about those. But I think some of the best books are the ones that you can read about your head. And then you can, you know, certainly the sales books. Look, it doesn't, sales, if you read a good sales book, they're all going to help if you can help your head. Sandler is, I'm a little biased, but, but if you read a good sales book, in general, they're going to be able to help you, right? They're going to be able to help you. But working with your head is going to help you more than anything out there. And so that's what I would, I would say.

And so I probably didn't answer your question, but I wanted to make sure. Those are great. Victor Frankel, I mean, classic. Rene Brown, new classics. And a Houstonian. So I love that. So awesome. All right. Well, that wraps it up for today. I want to thank Troy Elmore for sharing his Top 5 tips, five type, Top 5 characteristics of a world-class salesperson. I thought that was really fantastic information that you could take up in your business. So thank you for taking the time out of your day to watch and be committed to improving your business. And we will see you the next time on Top 5.