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The RTO Show "Let's talk Rent to Own"
Ever wondered how a $8.5 billion industry keeps millions of Americans lounging in style? Step into "The RTO Show Podcast" – where the mysterious world of Rent to Own furniture finally spills its secrets! Your host Pete Shau isn't just any industry veteran – he's spent 20 years in the trenches, collecting the kind of stories that'll make you laugh, gasp, and maybe even rethink everything you knew about that couch you're sitting on.
From wild customer tales to industry shake-ups that'll knock your rented socks off, Pete brings the seemingly mundane world of furniture financing to vibrant life. Warning: This isn't your typical business podcast – expect real talk, unexpected laughs, and "aha!" moments that'll have you looking at every lease agreement in a whole new light.
Whether you're an RTO pro who knows your depreciation schedules by heart, or you're just curious about how that fancy sectional ended up in your living room, Pete's got the inside scoop you never knew you needed. Tune in and discover why the furniture business is anything but boring!
The RTO Show "Let's talk Rent to Own"
Are You Still Selling Like It's 2019? Fix it!
Post-pandemic realities have forever altered the customer journey in rent-to-own, demanding fresh approaches from industry veterans and newcomers alike. Pete Shau and Jason Winters unpack this transformation with refreshing candor, highlighting how the traditional in-store sales model has been overwhelmed by digital-first shopping habits.
Most striking is their revelation about traffic patterns: "We're not 70-30 anymore. We're 80-20 or even 85-15," with online interactions dominating customer engagement. This shift requires sales professionals to develop entirely new skillsets for closing deals through text messages, emails, and automated systems rather than face-to-face conversations.
The episode introduces a compelling metaphor comparing successful sales teams to gardeners rather than hunters. Where traditional approaches focused on immediate conversions, today's environment demands patience and consistent nurturing. "No gardener plants just one carrot," Shau notes, emphasizing that multiple touchpoints across various channels must be maintained with potential customers. This gardening mentality recognizes that while customers initiate purchase decisions at their convenience (often during evening hours when scrolling through social media), conversion requires persistent follow-up.
Perhaps most valuable is their critique of the "Superman manager" syndrome plaguing many RTO operations—where one person attempts to handle everything themselves rather than developing team capabilities. This approach ultimately wastes resources as stores "pay for five salaries but only get what one person can physically do." Both hosts advocate for training environments where everyone contributes to sales, from delivery techs spotting additional needs in customers' homes to collection managers reconnecting with previous customers.
The conversation wraps with practical advice about following established processes rather than reinventing operational systems. As Winters puts it, "A chocolate chip cookie is delicious. You don't have to invent it every time you want one." This wisdom applies perfectly to RTO operations seeking to thrive in challenging retail environments.
Ready to transform your approach for today's digital-first customers? Subscribe now and join the conversation about evolving your RTO strategy for 2023 and beyond.
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Hello and welcome to the RTO Show. I'm your host, pete Schaub. Today I'm talking rent-to-own with the Jason Winters friend of the show, longtime friend, and you know, every time that I have Jason on we're talking about operations. Sometimes I think that we talk on the channel a lot about some different stuff and the podcast goes a lot of different areas from ownership, retirement, people that are just in the business. They want to get to know us a little bit better. But sometimes I just want to go back to the roots, right, and to me the roots is how do you run a rent to own? Because I think now more than ever and I don't know if there's a time limit that I'm going to stop saying this, or in the past has it been any different? I don't know, but since the pandemic it hasn't been the same.
Speaker 1:Time and time again, the more people that I talked to were going. It was like this and you know there was roses and rainbows and butterflies, and then, right to the pandemic, everything changed, right, and that huge shift of hey, I'm going to go online. Hey, I'm going to go online. Hey, I might not visit the store as much. Hey, how do I interact with all of my customers, but I don't really interact with my customers. Now it's all virtual, now AI is in the picture, now we have a lot of places like Aseema and all the buy here, pay later kind of things that weren't available, and so my thought process is this when we're talking about new school versus old school, we're in the new school, now there's no turning it back. I mean, right, jason, you tell me there's no turning it back and they're not going back to the old ways?
Speaker 2:They're not. The customers are just not going to do it. They want Amazon delivery, free shipping, that show up within a day or two at the most. You know what I mean, and anything falling short of that is not good service.
Speaker 1:It's not good enough, and so, to me, the old school versus old school sales mentality is a great idea. To just really talk to the operations crew and go yes, they're used to the way it was, but they're getting out of it. Not only that, because the way I see it, too, is we are at the end of the baby boomer generation, where they like to shop the way we sell, we like to sell the way they shop, but as these newer generations start coming in, there couldn't have been a greater divide of the way we used to do it to the way we're going to do it, and so we have to transition ourselves, not only to be able to say I can sell to the baby boomer, but I need to be able to sell better to the people who have 10 times more online options than they had even two years ago. I mean, it's all over the place. Now you can get anything anywhere online.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and you got to be just the adjustment to get to getting into this day and age. It is a big adjustment because you know, back in the day I could sell anything to anybody, but I can't sell anything to nobody and I visit stores and I'll see three or four or five stores and maybe see six customers the entire week. You know what I mean. And they have the same pressure to get sales, they have the same expectation to get sales and somehow the sales happen but it's just a tremendous drop in traffic. How are they trying to buy from me? And we have to adjust our systems and we have to adjust our skill set in order to be able to capture those customers as well as have those skills that we always used to have with the in-person sale. You know what I mean and the steps you know. At Rent-A-Center it's always been like a greet, ask, match, close. You know you've got your sales process Sales 101.
Speaker 2:Right, and you can train that. That the thing about it is. That is a skill that can be taught and not everybody's great at it. Like there, there's very few born salesmen and I don't think a lot of them decide to come to work in a rental owned store. I mean, they'd probably be selling bugattis and you know, maseratis and stuff like that, because if they're a born salesman they're probably going to be selling real estate in Hawaii or wherever they're going to be. They're going to be doing something with very high commissions.
Speaker 1:You know what I mean. I've always said, because when you have that natural born salesman, they're usually more drawn to the concept of I will get paid on my merit. In other words, if I don't pay, you don't pay me. So it's commission-based the better I do, the better I get paid, right. So if I can get this guy in here, I can sell him a high ticket item and I can close them as fast as I possibly can, giving the best customer service, and hopefully he'll come back to me whenever that runs out 10 years 10 years plus another home or another Bugatti, right, then I'm doing my job. But they never think of it as let me go down to the furniture store, let me sell somebody something that they need, and that's not commission enough for me, that's not high drive sales for me, that's not that high pressure environment when I'm really going to shine. So we get those people that. Okay, I got to show you how to do this. When you come to me, I've got to show you how to get this done.
Speaker 1:And I think the crazy part of what we're having is the new school versus old school is that you have some people that have been in the industry for years. They've done it a long time. This is how I train Bob. This is how you train. This is how I train you. Somebody sat me down and said this is how you do. Let me show you. Shadow me. I'm going to go to a customer, find out what's going on and get their needs. Sit down, feel it, you know. Is this the type of fabric you want? Does it, you know? Is it the kind of mattress? Is it firm? Is it not? So now we're taking these guys who have traditionally trained this way for years and we're going okay, you've got to do all of what you're doing on the phone or you have to be that personable online. You have to answer that email Like you're sitting in their living room or you're talking to them on the stool while they're going through their phone, and the truth is they can't do it.
Speaker 1:We as an industry have not gotten to the point where we're training the online sales as good as if somebody walks in a door, and the worst part is that we're not 60-40 anymore, we're not 70-30 anymore. I would say that we're almost 85-15. And if we're not, we're 80-20. But the online sales, the online leads, everything that you interact with, including being online on Facebook or social media where you're trying to present yourself as a sales entity where look at this sofa, or I've got this Nobody even wants it anymore. Don't sell it to me.
Speaker 1:Do something stupid and funny, right? You know I want you to do something stupid and funny, like a TikTok video. At the very end you just give me a phone or some address or something I can click, because I really don't want to try to find you. I just want to get to you in one click and if you can't do that, I'm not really interested. But that's how the sales force force is going. And even and I think we had mentioned this even not that long ago, or somebody said something that you know they're getting there too. As far as an older generation, they might not have been there five years ago, but when they had to transition and learn how to be online, when they had to learn, okay, they might not be on their cell phones as much, but I guarantee you they're on that all-in-one or they're a laptop or they're on a tablet, because, even though they're lingering far behind, it is easier to sit at home and conduct your business.
Speaker 1:I mean right now, I think there's like 30% of people that are actually working from home full time, that these numbers weren't even close years ago. So this new school and old school idea is that I have to train somebody to do that. I have to train somebody to close online. I have to train somebody to close online. I have to train somebody to close AI, and the only way you're going to do that is you're going to have to sit over in that room over there and you're going to have to text me, or you're going to have to send me a picture and, dude, you can't wait five minutes, you can't wait ten minutes If you don't get back to me as soon as I hit that button. Well, I'm just going to, I'm just going to text your competitor and I want to text the other competitor and it's, and it's okay. You're not even going to know that I'm cheating on you bro, I'm just going to.
Speaker 1:I'm just going to text it and you don't even know I'm cheating on you, Right? You know?
Speaker 2:Well, the thing is that we got to. We also got to remember too in this day like everything isn't like you do have to be fast, like you have to be, like we have to catch them in the mood. You have to catch them when they're, when they're scrolling. But the problem is most people are scrolling around looking at that stuff while we're closed, right. So you know, after work they're home and they're. You know they're sitting on the couch with the TV playing, but they're still just kind of scrolling through social media, looking around, sitting on that lumpy couch and going, oh man, I need a new couch. I'd like a new couch. It's not always neat.
Speaker 2:I think that we're really good at getting the things that people need. I think those are the sales we're trying to exist on right now the ones that do everything we ask them to do, that call us right back, that jump through all the hoops. They give you their you know their blood type and their mother's maiden name and everything that you ask them for and everything that you know. They think it's weird that you're asking for, but they give it to you and they lay down and die right in the middle of the showroom floor and get, it's because they don't have a bed or they don't have a washer and dryer. They're sick and go to the laundromat or whatever it is. Those I think we get, but what I don't think we're very good at getting are the wants, the people that want things Like. I always tell this story Paul, my boss. He was in the market.
Speaker 1:The illustrious Paul. We're not going to mention him.
Speaker 2:That's right, paul, if you're listening, paul, it's you it is. The story is about him. So he was in the market for a car, right, wanted a new car, just you know, it was time to get a new one. So he put out, he started looking online and was looking at different dealerships and different models and this and that, and and was looking at different dealerships and different models and this and that, and he put out a few inquiries to some dealerships. But the next day he had to get on a plane and we spent a week having a meeting in Atlanta, right. So that night he just happened to be looking at car dealerships. The next day he gets on a plane and he goes to Atlanta, we have our meetings and everything.
Speaker 2:This phone's blowing up with all the people trying to get back to him for the first couple of days, right, and then it kind of dies down towards the end of the week. He doesn't have time for it, like he's in meetings, you know he's conducting his meeting and hanging out with his people and everything else. So then he gets back a week later. He didn't need the car any less, but he did not immediately respond to all the people that were trying to get him, because he put in an inquiry online. He has a car. It still gets him where he's going. It's just, you know, high miles, whatever. You know what I mean. It didn't change the fact that he wanted the car. That, and also two things, true. He did not respond just the next morning or whenever that person that's at the store got back to him.
Speaker 2:So I always tell that story to stores because they think people shop around. They look around on their phone. They're looking for a TV. They have a TV. You know what I mean. It might be a little older. It's got a couple of pixels out. You know what I mean. It's probably a flat screen at. It's got a couple pixels out. You know what I mean. It's probably a flat screen at this point.
Speaker 2:But they'd like a bigger TV, they'd like an OLED or they'd like whatever. You know. They want the one with the game hub in it or whatever. They want inches, baby, right, they want it. They want it. They don't need it. They can still watch dry, right, that's not a need.
Speaker 2:A bed it's lumpy. I can't really sleep, great, but I get some sleep on it. These things that we sell, they're not, and if you have one, that's a lot different than I don't have one, and I think that we've become really good at getting people that don't have something or moved somewhere and need something, but the wants. I think that we what I see a lot is stores think, well, I tried to call them back two times and they don't want it anymore. Like if they wanted it, they would call me and they would jump through my hoops and they would give me their blood sample and they would do all the other stuff that I'm going to try to get them to do, but that's just not the case. Like people buy at their own pace now more than ever, you know what I mean.
Speaker 2:Convenience Right, and that's why your sales calls. You know people think sales calls are a waste of time and the reason for that is because a lot of times you don't get any sales from doing sales calls. You just don't. But what are the chances that you're going to magically call the guy who just cracked the TV at the time that he cracked it and goes oh my gosh, I don't have a TV, what am I going to do? And then the phone rings and it's you saying, hey, you guys want a TV. The chances of that are zero.
Speaker 1:Mr Right place at right time right.
Speaker 2:Now, if you make hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of calls, you might run into a couple of people that are really in need of something. Didn't think of you, or whatever. That's great. But the whole point of doing sales calls in any kind of volume is to be in the Rolodex of options for when that thing is a need or they're ready to buy it, they have some money or whatever. People don't buy on your schedule just because you made some phone calls.
Speaker 2:So it is very demotivating for people to sit there and make a million phone calls and think, well, I didn't sell anything, this is a waste of my time, so I'm just going to start pencil whipping the rest of these because it doesn't matter. But the thing is that when those things happen in the customer's life and they go oh man, what am I going to do? My TV just cracked and it's time for the NBA finals. What am I going to watch it on? Oh wait, there was that nice guy, pete. Yeah, down at Buddy's right. I'm going to give him a call back because he seemed like a nice guy and I've seen his funny videos online. You know what I mean. You know what Next time I go to Harbor Freight next door. I think I'll stop in, and then they just come in and it feels like it's out of nowhere.
Speaker 1:Well, I think it's all. That's extremely relevant. Everything you're saying is extremely relevant. But I feel like, when it comes to our salespeople, we have flopped right. So before, when we made calls, we would get those answers and we would get sales right. So we, as generous as we are, like hey, it worked for us in the past, let's do it again. So then we send them out. They're not getting their answers and, like you said, they get tired, they get that burnout idea.
Speaker 1:Well, I think the rules are flipped now. So the customers who were getting those phone calls and placing orders at that particular point in time because they didn't have the availability to do it whenever they wanted to, they jumped on it. Now, like you said, they have the availability to do it whenever I went to Atlanta. I can just do it when I get back and it's not going to hurt me, because the truth is, wants and needs and wants are great, but that will flatline your business. You won't grow and you might not go down, but the needs will always kind of be there. But you make money on the wants too there, but you make money on the wants too. You know not.
Speaker 1:Just I think you get, you can you can subsist, you can live on needs, but you grow Right, but you grow in the wants. So, now that the customers have the availability to go, go, go, go, go. Now it's flipped. Now, as a sales person, as you call, as you mail, as you door knock, as you put something on the cars in the parking lot, well, now it's different. Now we're all gardeners, okay, we know that there's going to be a return. It's the waiting game. That's what people have a hard time with, because now, as somebody comes in off the street, you hire them. What are they used to? Right here, right now? And the truth is, like you said, it's a need versus a want, because the truth is on a phone. I can do all my mail, I can contact you through the phone, I can text you, I can check my online, whatever I want to, I can order and I can watch TV. I can pretty much do anything anywhere. Now my wants are I want the bigger screens. I'm tired, my neck hurts and I don't want to be sitting there in the middle of the night with everything turned off, watching one screen. It kills my eyes. All right, I'd like something where maybe we can all watch it. The family's going to watch it or whatever. But do I need it right now? I'm still going to watch a show, I'm still going to get the information, but what is my want versus that essential has changed to now.
Speaker 1:We're gardeners. Like you said, I got to plant that seed and now I've got to water it and I need a little bit of sunshine and I need to stick it in. You know one of those rooms where it gets hot and it gets humidity and you want to know why the greenhouse is so important? Because you've got to feed it. And I think that's what happens. I think number one we forgot how to sell. The online part is very important, but it's still a sale. And then the second part is you got to be a gardener. Now, man, you've got to do everything it takes to nurture that sale from the beginning.
Speaker 1:The thing is is that no gardener in his right mind is going to plant one carrot. I'm going to plant one carrot. I'm going to plant one thing of lettuce. I'm going to have one potato, and I know it's going to be good. What are you doing in between now and then? You've got to live off of it, so you've got to plant an entire row. So you've got to make an entire set of phone calls. And guess what? Now, your potatoes, I've got to do a whole bunch of door tags. What else you got? Well, I got some business to business I. And then you've got to go back. You've got to, like you said, you've got to have that follow-up call. He was interested at that time. I called him right. When he said he wanted it, I had all the offerings. When he said he wanted it, I had the car, the model, the inside, the engine. He wanted it. He wanted the damn thing.
Speaker 2:Okay.
Speaker 1:Which is quite possible, right. And then not everybody leaves like Paul, but not everybody heads out of town like Paul. But what does happen is people get business. Their life is busy. Kids call I got to go pick up mom. You know I'm going to the airport. I got a flat tire. You know rent's due. I got to figure out how to hustle that money.
Speaker 1:Okay, I put on the back burner, but it doesn't mean that it's never going to go. It doesn't mean I don't want the TV. It doesn't mean I don't want the stand. It doesn't mean I don't want the bedroom set. It means, in my life of I want it right now, it's not right now. Something came and bumped it out of the way and now I've got to figure out how to take care of that right now. But it's still on the plate. That's just the peas instead of the steak. So now I'm going to come back to it.
Speaker 1:When I come back to it, it's got to be what did you do to get that sale? And it can to be is very slim. And the truth is, for whatever reason there's well, there's 100 reasons. Truthfully, I mean you can call me and say, hey, I have this great deal. You wanted a 55.
Speaker 1:I got a 55 at this great weekly monthly rate, with this same as cash price, and I think most people in their head go that sounds great. Can I do better? I'm immediately going to go to somewhere else or I'm going to check up on it. But in a world of convenience, even if I do that, I might not even reach out to anybody. I might just look it up. This is a great deal, but this is further from my house and I don't want to let that guy pick me up. I really like that guy and so you know it's that gardening mentality that I think is a newfound thing. Not only do you have to be good when you reach them online, when you reach them on the text message. When you reach them is when they reach out, but you've got to be good later too. You've got to pick the bugs out, you've got to make sure you weed it, you've got to make sure you fertilize it, and what I don't think is we don't have a whole lot of gardeners out there.
Speaker 2:Well, I don't know. We're training them to be very good gardeners. You know what I mean. I hope we are and I try to work to make sure that we are, and I don't know. I just think that it is a lost art, like training itself and just being great at showing and role-playing, and everybody feels weird role-playingplaying, like no one really wants to do it, but there's really no better way there. There isn't. There really isn't listen.
Speaker 1:If you, if you are watching this, if anybody's watching this, if you guys are watching and you never had a role play man, you are missing out, because you will be nervous, you're gonna feel, you're gonna feel like this is the most weirdest thing ever. It does feel weird and you're like're like this guy, he's going to be mean to me, he's not going to want to buy, he's going to make me say all these things and at the end he's not going to buy it. That's the whole point. Right To learn, rejection, to learn to overcome those hurdles, those obstacles. If you think that they're going to say it to you, whoever's not being pressured on the clock to say it to you is going to say it. Even worse, you're wasting my time. Get to the point and you have to figure out is that the person that wants to hear about all the bells and whistles? Do they want to hear about how it reclines and how good it is? Or they want?
Speaker 1:This is the price. How fast can you get it to me and I'll take care of it? Or are you talking to somebody else that does want to know? I, but what do I get for my price? And you've got to tailor it in, man, you've got to fit the issue, I think, training is it?
Speaker 2:That's really all there is. That's all you really can do, and they've got to be good at so many different things nowadays that we didn't have to worry about back in the day. Like you know, when you and I started out, like you could, I don't even think you could make a payment online. You know what I mean. You have to physically come into the store. Now they have to do that, and you know I, as, as the technology has gone up, though, I just think that there's way more, there's more ways for them to avoid you than there is.
Speaker 2:There were before um, so you got to be good at so many different things you got to. You got to have the amazon style. They see it online, they pick it out, they reserve it, it's at their house and it goes seamlessly. They don't even want to talk to you, they just want to put the order in and that's it and then have it show up.
Speaker 1:It's funny you say that because I in my mind and I'm telling you this is the God's honest truth. About six months ago, I'm on Amazon and I'm looking for some podcast equipment. I'm not going to lie, I'm always looking at this or that or this. And it was a good deal. I put it in my cart. It lived in my cart. I can't tell you how many times I moved it or I didn't buy it. It lived in there for six months.
Speaker 2:I put it if it was safe for later. And I just keep moving it. Yeah, just keep moving it.
Speaker 1:I don't take it out and it's like we have to be that.
Speaker 2:Yes.
Speaker 1:I mean, and the truth is and I'm not saying that we have done it or we haven't done it I know that there are a lot. It's crazy because we talk about Amazon and they have a few hundred million users for one website. We are opposite. We have a lot of millions of customers for a whole bunch of websites. We have all the competitors that are out there, whether it be Renness Center, aaron's, buddies, happies, whatever it is. So everybody has their approach. But do they have those items that live in the basket? Like if I came back three months later, would it be like hey, you still want that couch? Hey, do you still want? Because it caught me by surprise when you were saying that. I was just thinking God, that thing sat there. It sat there, but it never.
Speaker 2:You wanted it, but you didn't need it.
Speaker 1:And every time I hit that button to buy something, they were like hey.
Speaker 2:Hey, something. They were like hey, hey, by the way, yeah, the robot did that. Yeah, right, the robot did. But we have to be good at that. We have to provide I think you got to talk to the customers. The way that they approach you, like if they approach you online and that kind of transaction, that's probably how they want to be talked to and you have to have that, that skill set be able to text back and forth and and be, you know, quick to respond and everything else, because they're not going to sit around and wait in these days, like you know, if that person has made the decision to put their personal information into your system or give it to you, provide it.
Speaker 2:However, you guys get approvals. I mean, we're lucky at Rent-A-Center. We have some of the best you know technology for that that there is, and I can only imagine, like you know, kind of taking a step backwards on that, you know, and what other companies are dealing with. So I, you know, I feel fortunate for that, but it is a skill set anyway, like you could still be, you know, have all that technology in the world, but if you can't close the sale and you don't get it and make it show up when it's supposed to show up, or when it shows up, you get terrible service or I mean there's still a million things that can go wrong.
Speaker 2:But you also have to be able to be that in-person person like that, you know, because customers do still come in. I mean, I don't see a lot of customers, but I do see some stores that, just one after the other customers walking in. You know what I mean, and those are very lucky locations to just be in a busy plaza or you know, just right in the right spot. But you know, you just have to have skill sets to be a virtual salesperson and an in-person salesperson, and I don't. I just I think that a great way to try to improve your results is to spend a lot of time making that a priority, that everybody kind of does it in the same way.
Speaker 1:This, and you know, someone does have to be sitting there waiting for those web orders to come in, and they're not leads anymore, they're web orders I feel like when you have the online because, like you said, they've researched it, they've looked at it if they're, if they're giving you the information they're, they're sold.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's a done deal you can only screw it up at that point and I think you, you have to treat it like that you really should done.
Speaker 1:Deal like you came to me.
Speaker 2:This is it, I'm this is a one deal I like. They're in their mind and the customer's mind so many times it falls apart after that, when they've already made the buying decision. We're coming along going all right. Well, well, I just need to fill out this order form and I need to get a couple more pieces of information from you and they're thinking I already I mean, I already told you which one I want and just close it. When's it coming? Just do it, just close the deal, just do it. You know what I'm deal, just what I would need a couple of things to set up for delivery. You know what I mean and we do. We have to protect ourselves and we have to make sure that we're not making a bad decision and you know, some different companies have different tools to do that. But that right there, when a customer goes online and they've put in an order, you have to treat it as it's a done deal, sale period.
Speaker 1:I think, man, you're so right about that and I think that's something that I need to go back and tell my guys Like, if you get that, don't treat it like it's a sale. Treat it like it's a deal. It's a deal. They sent you a deal and you're just now calling them to close whatever it needs to happen.
Speaker 2:Get the delivery schedule, get it done Right.
Speaker 1:Knock out any. Get it done. Right, knock it out. I mean that should. That should essentially be it. Hey, when are you gonna be home, right? What time you want this? Let's, let's just get this done.
Speaker 2:Let's get a payment on this and then we'll iron out some of the back end stuff in case you need to get that stuff. But maybe that I. I think that the customer that comes to you that way expects that, and if you give them anything else, it's gonna be like well, you gotta, you gotta.
Speaker 1:The number one thing is getting them off the market. You have to get off the market, right, and? And the idea is, if you don't get them off the market, you're gonna, they're gonna go somewhere else. Yep, they're gonna go somewhere else, and not only are they gonna go somewhere else, the chances of getting them back on the hook, bro, that's, it's done. It's done. Now, you know, we used to call it the be-back bus, oh yeah.
Speaker 2:It's a one-way trip.
Speaker 1:That's a one-way ticket, right? It never comes back because the only time it comes back is to haunt you. You lost it. It didn't make its full rounds, you lost it and it's gone. And you know some of the things that I do. I said you know when's the last time I've been to a damn rental home website? I've been to my own. But like what about everybody's website? Dude, you will not know the variations that are out there. And I looked and I was like you know, there is no one way to do this. You know because I saw what you were talking about. It basically says if you go on a rack website and you open a pop-up, we'll eventually come up and go hey, you want to know what you can get? Just put your information and we'll tell you. Right, there's nothing on there that says, hey, this is your, is your limit. Hey, this is how much you can get. Hey, you know, we've pre-qualified.
Speaker 2:it just says, hey, put your information, we'll figure it out and it's like and they've got it down to where it's very easy, like you put in your your email address, your phone number and the last four of your social and you're approved for a certain amount, right and right, and you can go shopping at that point, and at that point it's an order, like, that's a sale, it's sold.
Speaker 2:Because if it's that easy, then you need to be chasing approvals. Like if you put the $2,000 or $3,000 or $4,000 virtual approval dollars into a customer's pocket, it starts burning a hole the instant you do that and as soon as they get home to that wobbly dinette or that tiny TV that they have, it's getting the job done, but they're thinking about the one that they could have and they're approved for, but still they're not going to be. Oh, I got to get it right this instant, every time. You know what I mean. But we have to treat it as though it's an Amazon transaction.
Speaker 2:Now, someone that walks in probably wants you to do the whole razzle-dazzle in the store. Walk them around, sit on this one, sit on that one, and you have to, you know, greet them with a nice warm greeting and establish some kind of relationship with them. Then ask them like a question that starts off to buying you know what brings you in, type thing, and then ask a million questions as though they know what the item is in the store, as far as the item number and everything Right, and you just have to play a game with them and listen to them and say, hey, what you know, cause they're going to give you all the real reasons that they're in there. You know they're going to be. I got the other one that I have is too small. Or you know we got we just it doesn't fit in our new apartment, or you know what I mean. So then you can match what you have in your inventory that fits that exact set of circumstances that they outlined in the questions.
Speaker 2:Show it to them, show them the features, tell them why that feature benefits them, and then you know, at the end of the day, you got to ask for the sale and you got to ask them to give you a chance. So if you don't have someone that's well-trained in doing that process and just go, well, if they wanted it they would know what they want and I would just show them one or two things and that would be it. Like I just think that natural born salespeople aren't going to walk in. We have to train them in each one of those phases and we have to explain why it's important that they do it that way, Cause every single sale should kind of flow like that you greet them and you know, thank them, and then you got to make sure you thank them at the end as well, and I mean thank them. Don't don't say have a nice day, yeah, you know what I mean. It's thank you.
Speaker 1:They just spent their time, their money with you, like well, you know, that's the only thing that's going to build that relationship it's true and I you know, something that I've I've also noticed is that we used to have guys back in the day who we would say that guy is a seller, that guy, that guy, that gal, that person.
Speaker 2:Man and they're still out there, like we still have. They're still out there. Yeah, you know what I mean but now I believe more.
Speaker 1:It's more of a team effort. Right now, you've got the front end. Who's going to close the deal? We've got signing going over it. That depends. Is it online, is it not online?
Speaker 2:that's a lost art right now, too, with the online business like yeah, and then you got to be able to figure out how to make sure that customer understands everything. Yeah, in today's, in today's terminology world like well I mean it was back in the day, we'd sit down. We go through the paper line by line and you, you know you talk about, you know, just make sure you pay attention to this one right here. This is super important. But are our guys that deliver the product? Because, well, you might never even see this customer Exactly.
Speaker 1:Well see, that's what I'm saying.
Speaker 2:Are they doing that?
Speaker 1:It's like a team effort, because now you have maybe somebody else going over the closing even though you sold it, or you could be going over the closing and somebody else sold it. And then guess what? We live and die by those Google reviews. If we have guys that are really on top of it and they get their Google reviews like they're supposed to, it's also end user. So they go out to the house and they do everything, and it used to be. You know, I'm just going to call it like it is.
Speaker 1:Every once in a while we'd scuff something or whatever. We could probably get away with it. Nowadays, they're going to take a picture of it, they're going to post it, they're going to give you a bad review and they might even still pay it out. But you're going to pay for that. You're going to pay for that with bad reviews or being skipped over or not looked at. And so the sales. You know, I feel like it went from somebody leading or spearheading it to. This is a group activity. This is a basketball, football, soccer activity where we're all part of this.
Speaker 2:Well, I think everybody is set up to create sales in a different way too. In the store, like the typical RTO store, you got your drivers or account managers. We used to have a route. A lot of places don't even have routes or call credit at all, they just do deliveries. So those people, they're in the customer's home, they can see what that customer might need in addition to whatever they deliver them. But are they even looking for it? Probably not, unless you expect them to. You know what I mean.
Speaker 2:Like I think that driver or a good, a good delivery tech should be able to be trained to tell, to say you know what, that that they're looking at this TV on a couple of milk crates. Man, like we'd need to get them a nice TV, a TV stand or a fireplace over here. I'm going to come back and bring it to them. How many of them are going to do that? Hopefully the ones in the good stores. They, they probably are a collection manager, right? How do they make sales? They know who they return Like they know who was at a temporary issue, who you know. They had to give up the laptop, but they know that they paid pretty good and they kept in contact. You know that's part of our business. That's what we want. Like you know, you got to freeze the payment and everything else. That collection manager should have all kinds of people that they want to get that right back to them.
Speaker 2:So if that guy can give you three or four a week, and then the drivers can maybe each give you one, or they strike up conversations with five up, five down, or they go to gas station you know what I mean, because they've got a big billboard on the side of the vehicle they're gassing up, If you could bring me one and you guys bring me three, and the sales, you know, the salesperson can bring me like eight to 10 and I can probably pitch in five to eight myself. That's a healthy week, that's a great week and everybody has their own little chunk and everybody's counting backwards from the expectation of the manager. Every week you should have a meeting and say how many can you give me this week? Well, I could, probably. I didn't. I didn't get any last week, so I had an extra one. Let me give you two. Sounds great. So now that guy is going to go out there looking for two. This guy, I mean, who can we? Who can we redeliver? That you know.
Speaker 1:How many times do we have people looking at a list, a list when I was and God, I hate. I hate saying this because I feel like a hundred years old, you, I, we could do that, we could go, you don't. I don't need a return list, or you might. I may leave a return list to remind me, but I can cherry pick about five off of a two month list like that, right, because.
Speaker 2:About five off of a two month list like that, Right, right, because it's it's not you already know, like you said, there are those people that, yeah, they had bad situations and they want it back. Right or they were always.
Speaker 2:Well they did when they gave it back but it's up to us to make you know cause we got to make sure they're not feeling embarrassed when that return happens that it's just part of the process that we're going to follow, even set a reminder. You know we've got our system where that collection person should come back from that pickup and know when to call this customer back to see if they're ready to get it back. Yet I mean that is an untapped resource in almost every store. You know what I mean. And if everybody grows together and everybody sells together, then because you got five people looking to make a sale instead of one, because then if we have a bad week of sales, oh, sally's off her game. This week we didn't get anything, we only got 10 or 50. You know well what if sally has a bad week maybe she's got something going on outside of work that her mind's not in her what if she?
Speaker 2:leaves what? What if she?
Speaker 1:quits, right, what if she? What if she goes and she's no longer here? And I think that's you know a lot of uh. I've seen this in companies and I've seen it in some rental homes where they're like we don't even have a salesperson anymore. We're all salespeople, we're. We are now associates. You are now a rent-owned associate of this brand. You know whether it be rack buddies, aaron, whatever it's a store we're working at.
Speaker 1:You're an associate of this location and right now, the the only thing that you're pushing is this brand. You're this brand. You are a Renner center brand. You are a buddy's brand. This is the brand that you are, and I want you to do this. And what is that? Grow, grow, have good revenues, maintain good relationships and have fun at the end of the day, got to have fun.
Speaker 2:That's what keeps people working there. That's what keeps customers coming in there. It can't be somewhere you dread to go Like it's got to be a fun experience.
Speaker 1:I just think we've gone past like the lone wolf kind of idea where it's like this guy's going to put the whole store on his back. And I think, you know, one of the things that I saw at FRDA we were at FRDA not that long ago and I would love to get him on the show is Will Jackson was talking about the difference between managers and leaders. You know somebody that you have that can do the job all the way around, and you go, hey, let me put them in this position. This guy can do it, he can do everything. He can deliver well, he can get those Google reviews, he can close a sale, he can go over the agreement. He can do all this. And when they get to that leadership role, they have a problem getting everybody else to do it.
Speaker 1:And, man, I'm going to tell you right now, if there's ever a time that that lone wolf wouldn't work, it's now. Man, it doesn't work. It's really a team sport. It's almost like whether you're doing it all at once like a football, basketball kind of thing, or whether you're in like WWE. Man, I just got to tap out for a minute. I've got to slap hands. Dude, you got to handle it because I'm just not doing a good job, like you said. You know, maybe Peggy seems just having an off week man, maybe she's having a baby, maybe somebody got a tooth pulled, whatever the case is. Or maybe Bob, he's got to go to the doctor. His son failed math and he's trying to figure this out at home, people are people.
Speaker 1:And you have these lives that are happening. And how do you overcome that? Well, you know what? Number one? It's a group sport, but I think what you said earlier is probably the foremost. What you said earlier is probably the foremost, it's the nut in the shell is are we training that? And then the expectations of the training, because sometimes I feel like, even if we do train right, let's say that we have it, let's say we went over some training things, I got some new books.
Speaker 2:We're doing it right.
Speaker 1:I got somebody to say they watched all six videos and he went through it in five whole seconds. Now they're out there in the world. And what do I say? Well, he read it. I showed it to him. He knows, she knows. But the question is, what was your expectation after that? Did you ever get them to show you that they really understood, that they knew that position? Because I can tell you right now, I've read books and sometimes I got to go back.
Speaker 1:And because the application to life versus what you see on screen or on paper is not the same. I can tell you just to sell, that's easy, yeah.
Speaker 2:You watch the video right. You watch the video right. You know how to build a house now, right.
Speaker 1:You know how to make a sale, you know how to handle everything. No, and what's that expectation? I think we're lacking on the expectation in some places. We need to get better at that.
Speaker 2:I agree. And you got to have expectations too, because you can't hit a goal if you don't have one. That's like a cliche, but it's true. You got to know what number you need. You got to look at your average returns and your average payouts and your average charge-offs, right, and usually you got like a key indicator.
Speaker 2:For 13 weeks you say, okay, this is my even right here, I got to hit. I'm going to lose 16, 17 a week, guaranteed, like just from normal business Clockwork. So if I want to grow, how many do I need to sell? Well, I need to sell at least 17, just to say it's zero, and I'd like to gain three, four a week. Okay, so then I'm going to need to get you to 21 sales.
Speaker 2:Who's going to get them? Well, johnny's going to get me two, because he's out on the road and he's pretty good at talking to customers in the house. The collection manager is going to get me three or four of these returns back. The selection manager is going to give me three or four of these returns back.
Speaker 2:The sales manager is going to spend the bulk of her time making sure that his or her time on there, checking on the web leads, making sure that they're responding quickly and that we have the right merchandise and the manager, just to be part of the team, needs to be kicking in sales as well, because I've even seen where managers don't sell anything all week long and say, oh Sally, I don't know, man, it's all Sally's fault. Well, I mean, they're just doing what they see. Like you got to be leading by example to some degree as well. It's better. I would rather have a store fighting over who got what sale than have a store, you know, putting it all on one person, yes, and just expecting that one person to carry the whole load.
Speaker 1:Well, I mean, you know, back in the day we used to have these scripts. Nothing wrong with scripts. I'm not saying you got people that just don't get it. And so they run the scripted. But I think nowadays you can start with a scripted. You start with. This is a baseline, this is how you get through the conversation, this is the goal and steps. But I think the goal eventually should be I don't want to script it, this is your goal, this is what you want to get out of it. You have to say these things. Number one address who you are, where you're from, right. Don't just say, hey, how you doing, you want to see me Right, okay, so those are things that you really got to get out In the midst of the conversation. You do want to hit these key points, but the truth is I don't want you to keep reading that damn script if you've already sold it.
Speaker 2:Don't oversell it. Stop talking and start typing, right Stop.
Speaker 1:Just take the payment Right, just get it in there, do what you got to do and close the sale, and I think that's the part of it where we go. Oh well, this person has been doing it a long time. This person knows. Ok, I can guarantee you and this is something that I actually saw very recently. I was watching something on YouTube Half my education is YouTube University and there was a lady on there and I forgot what she was doing. She was selling futures or whatever it was. She's young, okay, she was like in her maybe like mid to late 20s.
Speaker 1:Now, if you understand the arena that she's from, people are usually a younger person would be 10 years older than her in that arena. And I mean, when you talk about confidence, this lady spoke like she was running the damn company. I mean, she was just like straight up and she said something that caught my ear and it really made me think, and it's something that I've said before, but it really caught more of my attention when she said it. She said listen, I have made it my goal, my purpose, what I do. I am just as, if not more, experienced than people that are older and have been doing this longer, because I do it more than they do it. Get that into perspective.
Speaker 1:If they're closing one a week, I'm closing five a week. So it takes them five weeks, I've closed 25. Look at that. I've done six months worth of work in my five weeks. They've done six months. How long do you think it's going to take me to catch them Now?
Speaker 1:Here's the difference. If you're closing one a week, you're probably doing pretty good. She goes. It's not that I'm saying that they don't work good, but I have multiple drives. I have multiple areas in where I have to do this. So it might be one a week here, but it's five a week in my life. And that means that not only am I seeing everything that happens in these operational standpoints five times more than they are.
Speaker 1:That blade that she's honing that skill set, it's sharp as all get out because she's doing it now, now, now, now now. Not one here and maybe one there. So when you say you know Bob's been doing this for 10 years. Bob knows what the hell he's doing. Bob, you know I can't beat that.
Speaker 1:There's a point where I want to be that guy. And it doesn't mean that he's better than you being in that seat and having tenureship as far as length of term does not mean he's better. How many deals has he closed and how many deals have you closed, and how often are you closing them? How much are you working on it? This is something that I think and we were talking about this earlier. But, like, does anybody ever go home and work on that skill? It's all, it's all that work. So in 40 hours, somehow I'm supposed to learn, grow, sell open, close, be the best I can, and then you know what I'm a clock out at 40. Now, I'm not saying that you know, everybody should do something off off clock for business. But I will always tell somebody you invest in you, you will always have a return.
Speaker 2:And that the companies, like I think they're great at teaching you how to rent and how to collect, but they very often fall short of how to manage. Yes, like you know, this guy's a great collector. He's hitting his clothes up and down, opens crazy. You know customers are paying, growing the business. So you know we're not picking up the world either. Like, all right, here's your keys. You're a manager now, you're so good at that, I know you're going to be good at this, great.
Speaker 2:And then the district manager just leaves and that's that right, like it's just what. Did that happen to me? It happened to me before. It happened to everybody. Like a lot of people that I've talked to, they know how to rent or they know how to collect, or maybe they could do pretty well at both.
Speaker 2:But most of the time the management part was left up to you and either you were naturally great at it, just like that natural salesperson, or you have to put the work in and you have to kind of really take some time.
Speaker 2:Read some books, you know, get some, get a mentor that you know there's already a great boss or a great leader.
Speaker 2:I mean, people are going to follow you based on your title for a while, but they're not going to be, you know, going the extra mile for you for very long if they don't feel like you have the skill set that they need. And what they need from you is not to be the best most. You know, the Superman manager is the worst problem in RTO that I think. I mean, they're the greatest. They work their fingers to the bone all day, they care, they're there, they go in and they and you know, but we're still. We're paying five salaries in this location and we're only getting what Bob can do Right and that's just not going to work out in the wash, like the business is not, because if Bob didn't say to do it, it didn't get done, right, right. And if he doesn't have time, like he can only do, one person can only do. Believe me, if the store could run on one person, we would be running on one, one person because that's just the way it is.
Speaker 2:But we are in so many cases the company is paying for four or five salaries and only getting what one person in that location can do physically themselves.
Speaker 1:A lot of the time.
Speaker 2:And the training away from that is time well spent. You have to be able to show them how to delegate, even just the things like. You've read the One Minute Manager before. Oh yeah, you ever read those books.
Speaker 1:There's like three or four of them.
Speaker 2:Yeah, one of my favorite ones is the monkey one. You read the monkey one and I have given that to almost every manager I ever managed. And Coaching for Improved Work Performance by Ferdinand Fournier, great book.
Speaker 1:I have not read that one. I'm going to have to add that to my list.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that one. They actually gave it to us at the Rent-A-Center home office when we went to a DM training and I've given it to everybody after that. But that one and the monkey one are the best because it just for the people that haven't haven't heard, haven't read the book. It's like when you're the manager that kind of handles everything in the store.
Speaker 2:You got to picture all those problems that happen as a monkey sitting on the shoulder of the coworker like customer ask, customer ask, coworker question, and they get this monkey right here.
Speaker 2:You know they want to know how much they have to pay today. And they walk over to the manager and they say, hey, manager, johnny wants to know how much he has to pay today. And that monkey takes one foot off of his shoulder and puts it on that shoulder and then he's like, okay, who's going to take me, who's going to figure this out? Manager's like I'll talk to Johnny, don't worry about it. And then the monkey just puts both feet on the manager's shoulder and the coworker walks away free, didn't have to think, didn't have to come up with it, didn't have to do anything. Then the manager's got this monkey and then another monkey, and then another monkey and another monkey, and another monkey, and all these people are just coming over just putting monkeys on this guy's back. You have to learn when you're in a management position at store level, you have to answer questions with questions. What do you think?
Speaker 1:The number one answer to any question is a question.
Speaker 2:Right, what do you think? What do you think? I mean, he's a week past due, so he should probably pay two. Sounds good. I knew you could do this.
Speaker 1:Go ahead and take care of it and that monkey stays on that person's back. They have to handle it.
Speaker 2:Yes, and it's just, it's management. That's what it is and it's so simple. But it's just so like everybody feels like no one's going to do it as good as me, no one's going to care as much as me, and no one. But yeah, you can only have that cape on so long, like you could probably have an okay store for a long time running it that way.
Speaker 1:Okay you're the octopus right. You're the octopus right.
Speaker 2:You're the octopus. You got a bunch of arms. They're just robots and I just I'm the head, I'm the brain. So the store has only got one brain and a bunch of arms. You know what I mean. And you can only get so far.
Speaker 1:Well, you got a lot of managers out there who are focused on how it's done and not the result of what they're doing. No, no, no. You got to do it like this because this is the way.
Speaker 2:I do it. This is my way.
Speaker 1:You can't do it that way, because it just gives me the willies. How about this? How about you just empower that person to do what they need to do to get that job done? You come back and you tell them the expectations and then you come back and you follow up on those expectations and say you know what the result? As long as you were in these lines, you didn't kill anybody, you didn't shoot anybody, you didn't do anything illegal, you didn't break any company policies. Great job, it's done.
Speaker 2:They should have a number right, they should have a number. They should have a number they have to achieve. Right, it should be a number of sales. It should be a close or an open Within this time frame. Yeah, Teach them everything they need to know how to do that. Answer their questions with questions. But at some point you got to start saying, okay, what do you think? Because they will go to you like the coworkers will go to you. They don't want to make mistakes, they don't want to get in trouble, they don't want it to be their fault if something goes bad.
Speaker 1:Well, you know something you said earlier about, they'll follow you for so long. You know, I've noticed that in titles, especially in titles, right, if two people that don't know each other, one knows that a title is this and the other person knows the title is this. In other words, this is a salesperson and this is a GM, they both associate those titles with 100% knowledge of what that position is right. So you get a salesperson that walks in, like you said you know what, that's my boss, that's the GM, he knows everything that a GM has to do, right, and what happens is you get 100% checkmark, but it only goes one way. You can't get 101%, but you can get 99.
Speaker 1:So they're going through and, as they realize, you kind of just aren't checking a couple of boxes, you just keep on going down, and then they're going to fit you how they see you. So at first they're going to give you how they see you. So at first they're going to give you this, I mean, I guess. I mean he's the boss, I got someone to do it this way, and then they start learning their position, maybe a little bit better, and they're going this doesn't make any sense, or well, I guess, if I just sit here long enough, they'll call. If I sit here long enough, they'll close the deal. If I sit here long enough, I don't have to worry about making the tag, or they'll figure out the tag for me and I can just put in the numbers. They'll start equating the real knowledge to that position, and so that will fall off, and instead of being the knowledgeable GM, you will start going down. As to the, you're just another guy who gets paid a little bit more money than I do, and that's what you don't want.
Speaker 2:And people in those environments, like the Superman manager stores a lot of times the people underneath them don't want to move up like that. Then I want to be like. I want to live like john john's gonna have a heart attack like john's here till 8, 8, 30, 9, 30 pm every night.
Speaker 1:John's coming in at 7 in the morning he's here before I get here and he's here after I leave right, I don't want to be that.
Speaker 2:I got a life to live. I got my. You know, I want my work-life. This guy has no work-life balance, you know, because that's what ends up happening when you take on all the monkeys and you have all the things on your shoulder. I'll take care of the inventory. I know you're going to screw it up anyway, like you know it's all. But when you start to let go, it's then you start to get like you're paying for five salads. You're getting what five people can do, and what five people can do a lot Four people three people, whatever staff you're running with you can get it done, as long as everybody is on the same page.
Speaker 2:Everybody is pulling their weight and everybody has got their contribution. But, believe me, if the staff could be one person, they would make it that way. You know what I mean. It just if it could be two, they would make it that way, like it's just if it could be two, they would make it that way.
Speaker 1:Like it's just, it's not a thing. Well, it's one of those things where we were here and we need to get there Old school versus new school we've definitely got to take a long look at what we have been doing, what direction we want to go in and make sure that we're taking bites out of that apple so that we can get to where, from where we are to where we want to be. We want to make sure that we train right. We want to hold the accountability. We have a team. Make sure they work as a team. No Superman managers I mean. Unfortunately they're out there. They're out there and I really wish that you could just go in there and snap your fingers and you can see. I wish you guys can see what I see in you.
Speaker 2:You are an absolutely amazing worker, but you're going to burn yourself because you're burning on both ends and it's not going to work. Well, the good thing is I try to set up like a manager. You got to make them understand that they're in control of what they can. They're only in control of themselves and now they're people. But they have to have a plan for that, because a lot of them just come in and flop down on a counter and whatever happens happens. They're like oh, this guy called, so now that's the most important thing. And then this happens, so that's the most important thing. They start 50 million things. They don't get any of them done. They work until they're going to drop at the end of the night and nothing got accomplished. And they feel like they're failing, even though they are busting their humps all day long, every day, and they just don't. They can't figure it out. But at some point you got to go in and put the light on and they got to start managing and that's just not automatic. Like it takes training and thought and it takes some letting go and letting people fail and make mistakes, and you know what I mean.
Speaker 2:I've learned. I'm not a good multi-unit manager because I know everything. I'm good because I screwed everything up in every way possible and learned things the hard way all the way through, bang every mistake you could possibly make, and I just have been through all that and now I can just hopefully help people avoid the stuff that I actually did. I like to come in and just tell them look, I used to do that too. I used to be the Superman manager. I used to have all these problems because I have and I've been in every bad scenario that they could throw at you. That's what. But but I, when I decided you know what, I'm going to go take a look at another, look at that training program that they stuck me in the room when I first we I first started and said just get these books done and then we'll start showing you how we really do stuff around here. Right, and that's how a lot of people will get trained. They're like, okay, we'll go do all that mumbo jumbo and then we'll come in here and you just sit next to him and he's gonna do it and you do what he does.
Speaker 2:And then I was started doing that. So I was doing what the guy in the truck did next to me, and then I found out that's probably not the best thing to do. And then I just kept struggling and hitting the wall and the wall and the wall. And then I said you know what? You know, I wrote that training program. It's probably people that are super successful at the home office right now. Right, they probably got promoted and make a lot of money. And I'm doing what John in the truck does. I'm going to take a peek at this and actually try to absorb it, because they're giving you the recipe, they're giving you the perfect recipe. People say that's how a process becomes a process. That's how numbers become numbers, because they all grow from people making mistakes and figuring it out.
Speaker 1:But just so you know, that's how warning labels also come around. Somebody did something so stupid You're like do not inhale this or drink it or try it. But it is, it's a trial by error. I mean, nobody makes a process just to make a process. Processes come because somebody did something wrong.
Speaker 2:Well, that, well then, how. They also did it right, because how they write those programs and how they come up with that training is what stores had the best results. What do they do? Okay? Well, they do it this time, they call it this time and they make this many. You know, telemarketing calls a day and they do it at this time of day, and then they react to their web leads this fast, and you know, and then they go, okay. So they figure it out. Like a chocolate chip cookie is delicious. You don't have to invent it every time you want one. Like there's a recipe.
Speaker 1:Just follow the process.
Speaker 2:Put this amount of sugar, this much chocolate chips, some butter and some egg yolks Well, I don't want to put some salt in here. Well, there's no salt, but they're going to taste kind of funky, right. And every single one is baking their own recipe in the store when we already figured it out. Most of these companies they're big companies, like they have a recipe that they have figured out over time. One day someone started a company and they started doing it in their garage and they started renting to some people and they think, well, you know what, there's probably some good people out there that probably just need to make some smaller payments. And I can, you know, I think I can work with that. And they find out that, yes, there are, there is a market for that. So they become successful and they get a store. Great Store gets a little more more busy, busy, busy. Okay.
Speaker 2:Now he gets another store, and the minute that he gets another store, they start competing with each other and this guy starts doing a little better than that guy. And that guy says well, what are you doing over there? Well, I'm calling it this time and I'm operating at this percentage and it seems to be working for me Okay, well, I'm going to try it over here. That guy tries it over there Next thing. You know, that's the way, that's the way.
Speaker 2:And then someone comes along and we, and this guy starts doing better, and they go hey man, what are you doing over there? Well, I tried this new thing and I'm just doing it this way instead of that way, you know what? And they all try it out and that becomes the way. They've already done all that, yeah, yeah. And we think well, I promoted Johnny and Johnny was a great collector, so he's just going to figure it out. Whatever he does is going to be great. No man, I don't need you to invent the chocolate chip cookie. I need you to read the back of the back and do exactly what it says, and you're going to have some delicious cookies. Well, you know what.
Speaker 1:I was reading something the other day and it said and I might be quoting LinkedIn right here, but I saw it and it said you are not a real leader unless you can promote somebody. You can promote a leader who can promote a leader? Yeah, and so you know, I talk about promote leader, but have another leader under you to promote a leader under them, and that's how you know you've gotten it right. That's the great recipe of the world. If I can do that, then I've actually hit something on that. But, guys, you let us know. Do we have the right recipe, Are we?
Speaker 1:telling you the right thing, Old school versus new school, and some of the things that we come across and some of the things that we say hey, I think this is a great idea. If you guys think that you got a better idea, then absolutely, by all means, hit me up at the show. Pete, at the RTOshowpodcastcom. You're welcome to go to the website at the RTOshowpodcastcom. Get on there, buy some swag, help the show out, look good. You know as you're doing it, you know that's a fancy shirt, that's a nice shirt, right? So you can go on there and buy anything. Also, you can follow us at Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, now YouTube. Don't forget to subscribe. And, guys, I'm going to tell you guys, as always, Jason, we appreciate it Get your collections low to get your sales high. Have a great one.
