How to Manage 90 Reps Without Going Blind

Most home improvement sales leaders manage somewhere between a 1:10 and 1:15 ratio: one manager for every ten or fifteen reps. Jason Fulton manages 1:30 — 90 reps, 3 managers, across 38 markets. He’d tell you that's not the impressive part.

The impressive part is that he actually knows what his reps are doing in the home.

Jason is National Sales Director for American Standard's in-home sales program. He joins Jake on this episode of Tactics to explain his system behind the ratio, including the three reports he reads every morning before he gets out of bed, and the exact moment in a transcript review where he found five missed closes in under five minutes.

If you've ever woken up on a Monday, looked at your close rate from the week before, and had no idea whether the problem was the leads, the reps, or the pitch, this episode is for you.

The Model Home Improvement Companies Won't Try

Walk into most home improvement sales organizations and you'll find a warehouse model: one location, one manager, roughly ten reps, and a lot of fixed overhead. The ratio is comfortable. The visibility is real. The cost is high, and the growth is slow.

Jason built something different at American Standard. No regional warehouses. No local infrastructure. Three managers covering 90 1099 contractors spread across thirty-eight markets nationwide. He calls it asset-light.

The traditional model had cons to him. "There's a warehouse. There's ten sales reps, a manager that manages those ten sales reps," Jason says. "Half of your job is managing stuff, the other half is doing ride-alongs and coaching and working with them. It's pretty expensive."

The alternative, American Standard’s model, solves the cost problem but creates a visibility problem: how do you coach the room you're never really in?

Three Reports That Structure Each Morning

Jason’s operating model works because his information flow is tight. Every morning at 6:45 — weekends included — Jason opens three reports.

The first is a scheduling report: two weeks out, who's booked, where the coverage holes are, which markets are running thin. The second is an efficiency report: leads issued, demos run, sales closed, credit declines, net sales per lead issued. The third is what his team calls the MOD report (manager on duty), a lead-by-lead disposition log from the previous day.

By the time he's walked the dogs and made coffee, he has a working agenda. His mornings are fixed. His afternoons are not, so he knows those three reports are how he gets a plan worth having before the chaos starts.

Jason's morning routine is designed so that he can react to real information ASAP, instead of just noise. Most home improvement sales leaders already know their close rate is down 5% from last week. What they don't know is why. Was it bad leads, or reps skipping the urgency step? With these 3 views, he has everything he needs before the afternoon chaos begins.

The Hiring Trap That Kills Growing Teams

If the operating model is the frame, recruiting is the foundation. American Standard runs on 1099 contractors, which means if you have no leads, you have no income. Jason explains the challenge: you need enough reps to cover incoming lead volume, but not so many that you starve out the ones already producing.

"How do you bring in enough new reps to cover the leads and everything that you're bringing in, but don't starve out the reps that are currently in the market? And you also can't overhire because you're not going to be able to feed them and it just becomes a revolving door."

Most teams know this problem, but few have a real system for it. Jason's answer is a two-stage interview process. A recruiting partner handles the first screen, and if they pass, they go to a regional sales manager for the second. The managers treat this as fixed, calendar-blocked time, the same way they'd treat any high-leverage task.

What Jason's screening for isn't experience or background. It's what he calls a motor. He says, "I can teach you the presentation, I can teach you how to sell. I can't teach you a conscience and I can't give you a motor."

You can train a rep to run the seven steps. You can teach them to handle the warranty objection. What you cannot do is install urgency. Either they have it or they don't, and hiring someone without a motor is worse than not hiring at all.

Why the Performance Gap Is So Wide for In-Home Sales

For in-home sales, the difference between a top rep and an average one isn't always effort, but rather talent and skill. It’s about how well they can handle discovery, build urgency, and close without flinching when a customer raises a price objection in their own living room. Those three things are hard to teach, and they're nearly impossible to coach if you can't hear what's happening in the appointment.

Jason talks about this plainly. Walking into a stranger's house and leaving with a $20,000 contract requires a specific skill. The people who have it make it look simple. The people who don't often don't know what they're missing.

"It's like hitting a golf ball. On the surface it looks easy, and the people that are good at it, they just make it look so simple."

That gap between what the best reps do and what everyone else does is why visibility matters so much in this industry specifically. If you can hear what your top reps are doing differently in the room, you can teach it. If you can't, you're left guessing, or relying on ride-alongs that happen too infrequently and with reps who know they're being watched. The craft of in-home sales is learnable, but only if you have access to the actual conversations.

What Jason Found After Listening to One Recording

Jason had just brought on a new regional sales manager. He sat down with her to walk through how he actually uses Siro. He pulled a real recording and they started going through the transcript together.

A customer mentioned that something was leaking in their house, but the rep heard it and kept moving without adding urgency or closing on that fix. Then a warranty concern came up, but American Standard has been in business for 150 years. Five minutes into the review, they'd already found five learning moments.

"This customer said they were concerned about a leak. Well, how the hell didn't we sell that? Why didn't we build the urgency behind that? In five minutes, here's four or five coachable things just in this one presentation."

This is what the model runs on. When you can't be in thirty-eight markets at once, you read the transcripts. You find the reps where a small correction produces a real result. When you do fly out to LA, you're not running with everyone, you know the three people you need to prioritize. You've seen the tape, and you know what you're looking for.

What does your sales system look like when you can't be in the room?

Jason's model asks that question and creates a real solution. The morning reports give him a real-time picture of every market without leaving his house. The recruiting filter finds people who don't need to be managed into effort. The transcript reviews replace the random shotgun coaching that frustrates reps and doesn't move numbers with something surgical: a specific rep, a specific moment, a specific fix.

Thirty to one sounds impossible, but it's actually just a forcing function. When you don't have enough managers to cover every rep, you have to build a system that works without you. And a system that works without you scales in ways a warehouse model never can.

Transcript:

Jason Fulton:

Walking in a complete stranger and walking out with a $20,000 contract is not easy to do. And the people that are good at it, oh my God, they just make it look so simple. It is not easy to do, but the people that are good at it make it look really, really easy.

Jake Cronin:

Hey, everyone. I'm Jake Cronin, the founder and CEO of Siro, the AI platform for in-person sales teams. And this is Tactics, the show that dives deep with sales leaders across industries to uncover what top-producing sales organizations do differently.

Today's guest is Jason Fulton. Jason first had a 15-year career in music before getting into sales, and today he runs national sales for American Standard, overseeing 90 reps across 38 markets with just three managers. That's a 30 to one ratio. We get into exactly how he makes it work from the three reports he reads every morning to being surgical with where he spends his time in the field. Let's get into it.

Jason, welcome to the podcast.

Jason Fulton:

Thank you.

Jake Cronin:

Thanks for coming.

Jason Fulton:

Thank you for hauling me up here.

Jake Cronin:

Could you talk through how you got into sales?

Jason Fulton:

In my life before my life, I was actually a musician. So I had played music in college for beer money. So when I moved to Atlanta not knowing anybody, I just started playing a few open mics just so I could meet some folks. And along the way, I met a few booking agents, you can make a good living playing music. And so for 15 years, that's what I did.

In 2008 the economy kind of fell apart, but I just happened to know the VP of sales for a company called Safe Step Walk-In Tubs. Sold tubs with doors in them to seniors. And at the time they were only about six months old. And Jake, I still had hair down to here and I had earrings and the whole nine. Just you never in a million years would have sent me into anybody's house.

Jake Cronin:

Customer-facing role. Yep.

Jason Fulton:

But I was tenacious and just bugged him. I'm like, "Listen, man, I'll come sweep the floors. I'll file contracts. I'll deposit checks, just do something." I saw this as an opportunity to get into another career to make six figures without having to go back to college, without having to learn a new trade so much.

Little did I know, boy, sales was its own trade and there's a lot to learn in there, but I had somebody that would give me a guide.

And so my first few weeks, I sucked out loud, I was not very good at it. But what I had was somebody that I could call so I could go through and say, "Okay, I did this and this and this is what they told me, so what would you do?" And then I'd get that answer. And then the next presentation, I go through that again, "What would you do?" And they gave me the answer. And pretty soon you just kind of have all of the answers.

Jake Cronin:

How did you transition from being a individual contributor, a sales rep, to management?

Jason Fulton:

When I started with Safe Step, they were still doing the pitch book, right? So you had the eight by 10 color glossies and all of that stuff.

And the problem with that pitch book is that, well, if you didn't like four pages inside of that pitch book, well, you just flip past them. And I was like, "Listen, a computer is a much better way to show this. Let's do a PowerPoint." So we developed a PowerPoint and kind of switched everybody over to that.

So the person that got me involved after a year left the company, new managers came in, but since I was involved in developing the first PowerPoint and they had a new presentation, I got to develop the second PowerPoint, which was a different take on how to sell the exact same product.

So here I get to learn a different way to sell the exact same products, kind of interesting. Those managers lasted about a year, new manager comes in, he's got his own system, but the way he wants to do it needs a new PowerPoint, so they come to me and I help build that PowerPoint. So here are three different ways, different methodologies of how to sell the exact same product. So I got to learn a bunch.

Meanwhile, these guys, American Standard, were developing their own in-home sales program. They hired the VP of sales for Safe Step who got me involved in the first place.

Jake Cronin:

[inaudible 00:04:13]. Yeah.

Jason Fulton:

So when he started over there, they needed a new manager so he reached out to me, so I got to come over with American Standard and build the PowerPoint again. And then this time together we got to build the entire program together. So it was pretty amazing getting to build this from... If we could just build a program from scratch, what would we do? We really were given that freedom.

So anytime we would have a bootcamp or something like that to get all the sales reps together, I would sit next to the person who had the best numbers. And not only am I listening to what's going on from the leader, but also listening to the guy right next to me and being like, "Okay, what do you do in this situation? How do you do that?" I would ride with anybody who would let me.

Each time I'd pick up one small little thing. So the more of those you do, you pick up those small little things along the way. And pretty soon, after a few four years, if you're working at it, you can find all those things.

When we talk about when we do recruitment, one of our regional sales manager says that, two things, that, "I can teach you the presentation, I can teach you how to sell. I can't teach you a conscience and I can't give you a motor. Those are two things that you have to provide. I can't be more interested or more invested in your career than you are. I can give you all the tools and I'll help you along the way, but if you don't got the motor to push them, then too bad." And I had a motor like you wouldn't believe, right? Nothing pushes you to learn something than not having other options. I just had to figure it out.

Jake Cronin:

How did you then step into a people management role?

Jason Fulton:

So when I came over to American Standard, again, we only had three markets. We were in LA, San Francisco, and Philadelphia. We were opening Orlando and Tampa.

So I came in and I was going to manage the Southeast. So we already had a presentation but it needed some work. So when I came in, I was as much a salesperson as I was a manager.

When we were opening markets, because we were opening usually a market or two a month because we were growing quickly, I would fly in, I'd do interviews, that sort of thing. But while I was there, if we had three or four appointments, I'd run three or four appointments. Why not?

So I got to learn kind of this sales presentation while we were actually selling stuff as well. And then kind of having that piece down and I was like, "All right, how do you work with people?" And again, it was Joe Cross was the VP of sales that helped me with all of this. Without Joe Cross I'm not here, hands down.

So Joe taught me how to deal with people and hear kind of missteps that I've made along the way and let's try and make sure that you don't. And that's the way that it works from kind of there on out that I reported up to Joe. But pretty much my responsibility was the sales staff.

So that was developing regional sales managers, people to fix my end of it, and then just a lot. Sales really touches every aspect of the business. We have to be involved in marketing. We have to be involved in the call center part of it. We have to be involved in the install part of it, the finance part of it. We really touch, at least on a management level, every department.

Jake Cronin:

Cross-functional. Yeah.

Jason Fulton:

So that was really kind of cool that I got to learn a lot about every little piece of the business.

Jake Cronin:

What was your darkest moment? Darkest professionally where it was just hard to see a path through, a path to keep up with the scale.

Jason Fulton:

So as you are growing, there's no bench. We use 1099, so if you're not running leads, you're not making money. And there's no bench that, "Okay, well, we've got three sales reps, we don't use them right now, but we got three sales reps ready to go. So as soon as you have leads for them, boy, we're set." It doesn't work that way. You can't do it.

And it's a constant. It hasn't gone away is how do you balance that? How do you bring in enough new reps to cover the leads and everything that you're bringing in, but don't starve out the reps that are currently in the market because you can't lose them? And you also can't overhire because you're not going to be able to feed them and it just becomes a revolving door.

Jake Cronin:

Vicious cycle. Revolving door. Yeah.

Jason Fulton:

So that's really tough when you're trying to pitch this as a great opportunity, but as you're opening these brand-new markets, it will be, and if you got some time, I'm going to get you there, but on that first month it might be a little bit slow while we ramp this up.

And finding the right people that can kind of subsist off of that, that are okay with that, that have enough in the bank that they can tough through that with you is tough. Now, that being said, I've got reps that have been with us for seven, eight years, which in the in-home sales industry-

Jake Cronin:

That's a long time. Yeah.

Jason Fulton:

... it just does not happen. And I want to believe that it's because we care about people and we treat them like humans. They're not just numbers on a spreadsheet.

I have to say, listen, regardless of what my title is, I'm still an outside salesperson, right? I came from that field. Every one of my regional managers all came from the field. Our management team knows exactly what it's like to go out and sell these products. They've done it, they've done it at a high level. And I think that gives us a real advantage in our management team because you can't tell me that that guy doesn't know what he's talking about.

Jake Cronin:

They have some credibility built up. They've got the track record. They know what's like in the shoes.

So at this point, now that you're at this scale, now you've handled a lot of the supply and demand sort of constraints, even though it doesn't go away, what do you see as the hardest parts of your job today?

Jason Fulton:

So the hardest part of our job today is we are a relatively asset-light community, company. There's really two ways that you can do this.

And one method is there's a warehouse. So we're in Atlanta, we've got a warehouse, there's 10 sales reps, I got a manager that manages those 10 sales reps and there's a warehouse and all of that stuff. Half of your job is kind of managing stuff, the other half of your job is doing ride-alongs and coaching and working with them.

It is pretty expensive though, right? You got to pay for that business, you got to pay for the manager and the commission, and you got to pay for all of that stuff. We don't do that. I've got three managers that are managing around 90 people.

Jake Cronin:

Wow.

Jason Fulton:

Well, how do you do that? I mean, if I have to fly out to every market and try and run with 10 sales reps that are in LA, I can't do that. I mean, it's just-

Jake Cronin:

It's not possible.

Jason Fulton:

Exactly.

Jake Cronin:

It's the laws of physics. Yeah.

Jason Fulton:

So that's tough. How do you manage and how do you coach? If only there was a tool, something that would record the rep and then maybe look back over it and let me know where they succeeded and where they didn't. Could you guys develop something like that?

Obviously, and listen, I'm a big fan, but I am a big fan because I see this as just it's another way to handle this. It might not work for everybody, it might not be the best method for everybody, but for me, this is how you take three managers and effectively manage 90 sales reps with them.

It's not going to take the place of a ride-along. Sooner or later, Jake, I need to sit down with you and just see what you do, but I can go through, and we have a new regional sales manager we just brought on. So I was walking her through Siro and just randomly just, "Hey, here's the one that was an hour and a half, that's a real presentation. Let's listen to it."

And we started going through the transcript and I found five things like that that was like, "We need to dig in here. This customer said they were concerned about a leak. Well, how the hell didn't we sell that?" Right? I mean, if they're telling me that something's leaking in their house, boy, that's a real reason for me to move forward.

Jake Cronin:

Pretty urgent problem to solve. Yeah.

Jason Fulton:

Exactly. So why didn't we build the urgency behind that? Did the rep recognize that? Did they do anything with it? There was some point that they were just uncertain about the warranty. How is that possible? We're America, 150 years in business. If there's anything you ain't got to worry about is the warranty. We're going to be there. How could they possibly have any problems with that? Five minutes. I mean, five minutes. Here's four or five coachable things just in this one presentation. That's how you do it.

So I can make them better just by doing that and then I can be surgical. So when I do fly out to LA, I'm not worried about running with eight different people, I'm worried about running with these three people that are good, and boy, I can make them better. Right?

Jake Cronin:

You see the clear [inaudible 00:13:39] know where to push.

Jason Fulton:

Just a little bit of work, you can make them better.

Jake Cronin:

So you've got 90 folks, 90 reps across the company. You, three managers, 90 reps.

Jason Fulton:

Correct.

Jake Cronin:

So you got that span of control of 30 reps per manager. That sounds like you have to have become an expert at time management to get this going.

Jason Fulton:

Ooh.

Jake Cronin:

How do you manage your time?

Jason Fulton:

I am a creature of habit and I have been for a very long time. I think that's what made me decent as a sales rep is knowing how to kind of follow a system. So I get up at 6:45 every day. It doesn't matter if it's a Saturday or a Sunday, it's not because I want to, it's because my brain just gets me up at that time.

I have three reports that are sent to me automatically. So I lay in bed, I pull my phone up, I open up those three reports and just give a little bit of a glance.

Jake Cronin:

[inaudible 00:14:27] yeah, please.

Jason Fulton:

So one of those reports tells me about scheduling. So I can look and see for the next two weeks who's on schedule and where do I have hole. Second report is just an efficiency report. So how many leads did we issue? How many did we demo? How many did we sell? How many were credit declines? What's our net sales per lead issued? It just gives me KPIs to look at.

And then the final one, and I don't know why it's called this, it's called an MOD report. Best I can come up with is manager on duty. But what it is, is a report that lists out every lead, what the disposition was. So did we sell it? Did we not sell it? Did we get porched? Did we get turned away at the door? Was just the customer not there? What happened? And it gives me notes. So with those three reports, I can kind of get an idea of what my morning needs to look like. What do I need to deal with?

Jake Cronin:

Gets your finger on the pulse for the last day.

Jason Fulton:

Exactly. I get up, I take the dogs out. While the dogs are out, I go make a cup of coffee. I mean, it's a constant schedule.

Jake Cronin:

Consistent, regimented.

Jason Fulton:

Exactly. And then by noon, okay, then everything goes off of the rails then, right? I think it's Mike Tyson once said, "Everybody's got a plan till you get punched in the nose," right? So I usually get punched in the nose around noon, but my morning is very, very regulated. And I think that works for sales reps, I think that works for managers. I think it's important that you just kind of fall into, at least for a time, just a groove of just these are the things that you do every day.

Jake Cronin:

What other rituals do you operate based off of or do you mandate your team operate based off of? What's kind of your operating cadence?

Jason Fulton:

So it kind of goes on a day by day. So every other week we have biweekly meetings and we meet with the entire sales team, right? So each one of those there's a lesson involved.

So for each one of those meetings, I hand it over to our regional sales managers like, "Okay, what's a great lesson?" And develop that. So they can be really developed and really worked on because they really only have to come up with one every month, right? We do them every other week. One of those is mine, so I just handle it, and then one of them's regional. Our leader is big on measurement, right? Right? You have to measure everything that you're doing.

So big on reporting, but not too much, right? I also think that you can talk about what you need to do so much that you forget to actually do it. And certainly I think Zoom and video conferencing has made that a little extra. It's really easy to be like, "Okay, well, let's have a daily cadence on this." And I was like, "I get it, but do things change really so much day to day? Can we just get too into this or it would be better off working to try and meet a couple, three times a week?" We've got a pretty huge growth plan for next year.

So recruitment is a big piece and we've recently kind of outsourced our recruitment to a company called ScaleHouse. Raul Huete, one of the coolest guys on the planet. Lots of time and effort that really goes into that, right? I mean, a ton, but it's also the most important thing that we do. But we got to figure out how we can make it efficient, right?

So we developed kind of a two-stage process for those interviews. So his team does this 20 minutes worth of interview and if he likes them and they're happy with them, sends them over to a regional sales manager and then they do this one.

But we have to carve time out to do that. So when we're in those times, it's like, "Okay, from 10:00 until 1:00 you have to carve out, you have to make your time available to do this." The one thing that we're not doing yet is carving out time specifically for Siro and Siro coaching, which we need to do and is coming. It's part of it.

Jake Cronin:

For your direct reports, how would you mandate they or suggest they spend their time? If you were to say between, what do you got? You've got recruiting, you've got sales training like the coaching, managing your existing folks, and then third, you probably have ops stuff like handling any sort of escalations and whatnot, and maybe finally is admin like reporting up and whatnot, one-on-ones with you. Across those buckets, how should your team be spending their time?

Jason Fulton:

So it really kind of depends on how your team's doing. Listen, if your sales aren't where they need to go, we got two ways that we fix that, right? Coach them up or coach them out.

So in a region where maybe they're struggling on a close rate, maybe their time really needs to be spent coaching. Or if we've done that or they're just not getting it, well, then your time really needs to be spent on recruitment.

So I don't know that there's just kind of a blanket statement that covers everybody. It really depends on how your team's doing at any given time.

Now, that being said, we do have, like all of our contracts, when they come in, they come in through a front-end review. We have a team that just looks over that contract and makes sure that, first off, we've crossed the T's, dotted the I's and all of that, but it can also be installed.

Maybe we sold something that is not going to pass code in this particular state, or we missed this piece. We should have moved the plumbing from this side to that side. Well, if we don't catch it there, then we ship the wrong shower pan and then the installer goes out there, he can't do anything, he's wasted all of his time, he's upset, we've lost revenue. It's just none of it's any good.

There's a team that looks at that, and they'll send us something back and say, "Hey, we need this, we need that, we need this." We reach out to the sales rep, say, "Hey, we need this, we need that and we need this." But the sales rep's out running appointments.

So a lot of times those things can fall through the cracks, which means we have to have a weekly meeting. We have two of them actually where we go through that list and just make sure that everything is still moving in a direction.

Jake Cronin:

Your biweekly cross T's, dot I's or we'll call it the admin meeting.

Jason Fulton:

Exactly. Exactly. We meet with the recruitment department once a week, we meet with the marketing department once a week, we meet with the call center once a week. So we have these kind of weekly cadences where we just, again, a sales touches every piece of the business.

So I think it's important that we all communicate. I don't want to be islands, right? I don't want these to be islands of different things. I want all of us to communicate so we're all on the exact same page.

So marketing can tell us, "Hey, we're expecting an extra thousand leads next month." And when we look at that, that means we're going to get so many in this market and so many in that market. So then we can look at that and figure out, "Okay, do we have the coverage for that or don't we have the coverage for that?" And if we don't, then we have to talk to the recruitment department and make sure that comes through.

Jake Cronin:

Work out those cross-functional kinks, dependencies.

Jason Fulton:

Exactly.

Jake Cronin:

What do you think that your direct reports and the folks in the field would say is unique about working with you versus other sales leaders that they may have worked with or for in the past?

Jason Fulton:

I want to say that we try and respect sales reps. Again, I'm still one of them, so I know what it's like to be out in the field. And I get myself in trouble because sometimes I run my mouth, but I understand what it's like when you drive out an hour to somebody and you knock on the door and they say, "Oh, I called to cancel that appointment. No tip, sorry."

And then, dude, you're pissed, and, "The call center's a bunch of idiots." And I can look through that and I can pull the call and I can find out most times that customer didn't do that. It's just a hell of a lot easier for me to blame it on somebody else when you're staring me in the face.

Jake Cronin:

Versus. Yep. Yep.

Jason Fulton:

Right? I don't believe all buyers are liars, but they might be. So it's hard to kind of manage that, that I get that they're upset but it wasn't really our fault. I mean, these are just things that happen. It's part of-

Jake Cronin:

Mistakes happen. It's complicated business.

Jason Fulton:

But I think that there's more validity to it when it comes from me because I spent years in the field. There's more validity from it when it comes from a regional sales manager who spent years in the field. Because we recruit from within, it's just really hard for a sales rep to... You just don't understand. You don't get it. You've never done it.

Jake Cronin:

Yeah.

Jason Fulton:

And there are plenty of companies out there that, yeah, they report up to somebody who's never really done the job. They've never really sat at a kitchen table. And I feel 100% what they would feel, right? Listen, until you've actually done it, you just don't know. Walking in a complete stranger and walking out with a $20,000 contract is not easy to do.

Jake Cronin:

It's hard. I mean, sales is, it's so easy to throw peanuts from the sidelines, but it's freaking hard. I think what the evidence of that is the massive delta between top performers and bottom performers. If it was an easy job, everyone would be making the same, but you have folks, a few who just dominate while most folks are down here. And that shows the performance gap.

It's kind of like if you had a bunch of people on a basketball court, LeBron James would stand out every time. There is a talent, there's room for greatness. I think that exists. There's a ton of room for it in sales.

Jason Fulton:

I liken it to hitting a golf ball, right? On the surface it looks easy, and the people that are good at it, oh my God, they just make it look so simple. Try it.

Jake Cronin:

Yeah.

Jason Fulton:

Right? Try it.

Jake Cronin:

Easy from your couch.

Jason Fulton:

Yeah. I don't play golf because every time that I've tried to swing a golf club, the ball goes in the opposite direction. It just, it is not easy to do, but the people that are good at it make it look really, really easy. And I think it's kind of a detriment to the system.

There is a real craft behind it. And just like any craft, boy, it takes work. To get good at it takes work, it takes constant review, it takes constant just evaluation, which is easy to do. Let me say it's not easy to do, but again, when you work from the model of office, manager, ride-along, it kind of forces you into it.

When you're working with our model, it becomes a lot more difficult, right? Because again, I'm not riding along with you nearly as much so I don't get that feedback unless I have a way that I can do a virtual ride-along and then I can look at it afterwards, which is why I believe that this is the future of management, or at least it's a way, an effective way to do this job if you don't want to have all of that infrastructure.

Jake Cronin:

How's your job changed over the last year?

Jason Fulton:

Well, first off, I was away from American Standard for a couple of years and then I came back. I came back in March. So when I came back, a lot of things had changed. A lot of things had changed. Some for the better, some for the worse.

So one of the biggest things that we've done over the last year is move into a digital order capture system. So it used to be here's your PowerPoint, here's your demo bag, and here's your contract, ink and paper, right? You keep a cop top, you give the bottom copy to the customer.

Jake Cronin:

That's how it was when I was selling Cutco, same thing. We're walking in, paper order forms, demo kit. Yeah.

Jason Fulton:

Exactly. Standard. We've been developing a digital order capture for a while and it does two things. First off, it's a visualizer. So now we can actually build your shower right in front of you. So when you're done, you can see your shower.

While it's doing that, it's also building the spec sheet and it's filling out the contract and all that. So when you're done, it prices it for you. So your price worksheet's right there, you can't screw up any of the math on that stuff anymore. And then it's just sign, click. When you get home, you press a button, it just sends it up to LP and your paperwork's submitted versus having to scan everything in and email.

So, now, took a little while to get everybody adopt to it, and just like any piece of software, it had some clunks along the way and still does, right? Still has some issues, but we're working through those. But that's a huge step towards not only efficiency, but I also think it does help with sales.

I love the idea, and this is something that you guys are developing and I played around with just a little bit earlier-

Jake Cronin:

The sneak preview.

Jason Fulton:

Yeah. Yeah. Not only the AI component, which is really cool, just to be able to go through and pick spots and all that stuff, really neat, but this whole idea of the role-playing and stuff like that, oh my God, how cool is that?

And then I think that if you eventually tie that into an LMS system as well, so it kind of does a few different things. So if I find something inside of the rep's clothes that I don't like, I could not only send them, it's like, "Okay, you need to watch this module, which is in such and such, and then on top of that, here's four examples of sales from people in the field on exactly how that works."

Jake Cronin:

Here are the recordings, listen to it, and then let's role-play it back and Siro's going to judge you in real time or whatever. Yeah.

Jason Fulton:

How amazing is that?

Jake Cronin:

That's coming.

Jason Fulton:

What a neat system.

Jake Cronin:

That's coming. That's going to be pretty sweet.

Jason, I want to do a lightning round. First question for you, what's your favorite sales book?

Jason Fulton:

So right now there's a book by Chris Voss that says never split the difference. So Chris was a, Chris, Mr. Voss, was a hostage negotiator, and it made sense because I'm a big fan of splitting the difference. We're $2,000 apart, I'll take 1,000, you take 1,000.

Jake Cronin:

It's easy [inaudible 00:29:09].

Jason Fulton:

Well, if you're doing hostage negotiation, you can't say, "Well, go ahead and kill two of them and I'll take the other two."

Jake Cronin:

[inaudible 00:29:14].

Jason Fulton:

So I really like that book and it gives you a lot of information on just different techniques and how to approach people and different cadences and inflections in your voice and mirroring people and that sort of thing. I think it's a lot of the stuff that's in your speech analytics part, right? So I'm a big fan of that.

Jake Cronin:

What are your three favorite pieces of software?

Jason Fulton:

So one of them, and I'm not kissing your ass, it's Siro. I love Siro.

Jake Cronin:

Glad to hear.

Jason Fulton:

So that's something that I use on pretty much a daily basis. I'm a huge fan of MasterClass. You want to learn how to cook an egg like Gordon Ramsay? Great. Gordon Ramsay will show you exactly how to cook an egg. But the two pieces that I tell everybody you need to go back is one is called Libby, L-I-B-B-Y. The other one's called Hoopla, H-O-O-P-L-A.

Jake Cronin:

Libby is the library app?

Jason Fulton:

So is Hoopla.

Jake Cronin:

Hoopla. Oh, I haven't heard of Hoopla.

Jason Fulton:

So go down to your local library, get yourself a library card, and you can rent audiobooks through Libby and through Hoopla.

Jake Cronin:

Okay, last one for you, what's your favorite sales tactic?

Jason Fulton:

So I think for me, it's just assuming the sale. I believe that if you do everything the way that you're supposed to, if you do a solid warmup, if you do a very solid value-building presentation, that a sale is just the natural conclusion to that.

Jake Cronin:

Jason, I think this is a great place to end it.

Jason Fulton:

Jake.

Jake Cronin:

Thank you very much for the conversation.

Jason Fulton:

Hey, man, appreciate it. Thanks for bringing me up. Love the facilities here, and more importantly, love the direction on where you guys are going.

Jake Cronin:

And thanks for watching. We're here to help you level up as a sales leader, so please tell us what you would like to hear on the next episode. And if you do have an in-person sales team, be sure to check out siro.ai. I'm Jake Cronin. Until next time.