Micropreneur Hiring: Get the Right Team So You Can Relax a Little – Matt Molter

0:18Thank you guys. So, my name is Matt Molter and for about 11 years I was a police officer and I left that and started a company called Agency 360. Agency 360 they're what they do is we we have a SaaS tool that helps public safety organizations like police departments and 911 centers. We help them track and monitor the onboarding of

0:41their new hires. And about 3 years ago I needed to hire more people. I got so busy that I needed some help. And I screwed it up big time. Big time. And what I'd like to do is share with you guys a few of the lessons I learned and and how we use those lessons in

1:05hiring our new team. So right now, when I look back at the last 3 years and how I screwed this up, I think of hiring as like this banana peel in the middle of the floor. Have you ever seen like the Three Stooges or cartoon SpongeBob and somebody drops a banana peel and you just know, it's so predictable. You just know someone's going to come and step on that banana peel

1:30and slip and fall. That's how hiring is. I knew hiring was important. Right? I had I had heard all about how your first hires make or break your company, how A people hire other A people, uh you know, I listened to the podcast from Rob and Mike and all of their advice and I still still screwed it up. And if you've ever hired the wrong person, I cannot tell you the pain that that causes, the nightmares I still have uh from issues. Not only does it cost you productivity and time and lost revenue, but the stress

2:07the stress is crazy. Wrong way. There we go. Crazy on your family. Right? Cuz you know, I want work to and and family to kind of intertwine and it rubs off on them big time. And I didn't I should clarify this, too. I didn't just screw up hiring my first full-time employee. I didn't screw up hiring my second

2:32full-time employee. I screwed up my first five full-time employees. I don't even know why I'm still in business anymore. But I learned a lot through this process and and like I said, I'd like to share with you how we changed things and and really improved and changed the team. And the first lesson I want to share with you is know what you want from this employee. My first hire was a

2:57contractor relationship. And we started to get busy and I was like, "Hey, I like how this is working. How about we get together and you come on full-time and and work with me?" And she said, "Yeah." And what we didn't do is lay out what our job description was. You know, we didn't create that foundation

3:18of how this was supposed to work. And it came back to bite us. That kind of started the cracks in our relationship. Day one, the cracks were there and they just got bigger and bigger and bigger. So now we put a lot of time into the job description and random Star Wars pictures. It's MicroConf, right? We've got to talk

3:37about Star Wars somewhere. So when I think about my job description, I think about what do you need? You know, what do I need? I need someone that cares about sales more than I do. So I don't have to worry about it. Right? Culture. What kind of culture am I going to trying to create? I have a family, you know, and I want to integrate work and life into that. So, you know, will this person fit into that? What kind of

4:01culture am I trying to create? And the key with the job description is to be as transparent as possible. Like right in the beginning we talk about, "Hey, 60% of your time is you know, like take a sales manager that we just we just hired. 60% of your time is going to be working on our inbound

4:17leads. It's going to be doing online demos. It's going to be following up with emails. But 30% of your time we want you we think you should have 30% of your time dedicated towards outbound things. And 10% of your time is going to be random stuff because that's what we need when we're running a small company like

4:35this. And one of the biggest things we added we're creating a profile here. But one of the biggest things we added that got great response from the candidates themselves was at the end of the job description we put, "What does it look like if you did a good job? What does a good job look like?" All right? And so many people came up to us and said, "We love that. That's you know, helped them visualize the position and think of themselves in that role and whether they could be successful in that

5:06role." So, lesson number one, put the time in in the job description. Lesson number two, don't be desperate. We got into a position where we needed a developer. And we were promising features and deadlines were coming and we didn't have anybody to do it. And finally someone came in that was a good coder, but in a small company we need more than just a good coder. All right? We need someone who can manage the project, who knows about architecture,

5:41front end UI UX kind of stuff. And and we brought this person in and I mean it cost us a year. You know, it took us another 6 months to fix all the problems afterwards. So, this is real real pain here. So, now we take our time. You know, our goal is to get three to five candidates. We want it to be a hard decision who we

6:04hire. Right? So, we're going to promote and take as long as we need to find the right people. And we're looking for a sales manager in our example here that we just hired. Where Where do Where do sales managers reside? Well, LinkedIn. Most of them are on LinkedIn. So, we put it, you know, we approach this with an inbound and an outbound campaign. So, we put it in the inbound, put the LinkedIn ad out there, get that going. We tell our friends. We

6:32have our coworkers tell their friends. We tell our family. We tell our customers that we're hiring. Get that generating. And also do an outbound campaign. That's where I'm looking, hey, what jobs near me have have people doing a similar position that I think could bring their experience over. And I just reach out to them cold. Hey, we're looking We're looking to grow. Are you still happy where you're

6:57at? Let's chat. Both processes, the kind of the inbound reaching out to all your friends, family, and the outbound have have delivered great candidates to us. So, the key lesson and after you collect all of that, you need to track it all. Again, if you use LinkedIn, they've got a nice little manager tool. But, if you use Google spreadsheet, that's fine. One power tip, don't create this complex matrix of how you're

7:23evaluating people. Keep it simple. They either meet your standards or they don't. So, take your time. Be patient. The third big lesson, so we hired somebody for a marketing position. And we did a great job description. We were patient. We had a a ton of great candidates. They thought they could do the job. They came from a big company. They thought, "Oh, doing this at a small company, that's going to be easy compared to where I came from." That's not true. We

7:55didn't test their skills for ourselves. So now, we always run them through tests to make sure they can do what we want them to do on a daily basis. All right? And we And we frame it very nicely. So, we'd like you to come in for a longer interview so that you can learn what a day in the life is like. Cuz these are the things you're going to be doing every day, and

8:22we can see your skills. And we've got three exercises we're going to put you through. So, in the case of the sales manager, we had our three exercises was follow up to an inbound lead. Someone filled out our schedule a demo. Call them, all right? Our second one was a present an online demo. Present a website or a feature

8:44that of a website you know, all right? And the third is come up with a cold campaign. How would you approach our customers? This was so insightful. The cream of the top cream of the crop really rises in this in this situation. So, in our inbound lead, for example, on that exercise, we'd literally leave the room. And And we give them the instructions. Like, "Hey, we're going to do this inbound lead when you're ready." We're not

9:11trying to pressure them. You know, when you're ready, call, and we're going to mock through it. And And you learn so much right in the beginning. First question, "Do you have any questions before we start?" If they really care about sales, they'll say something like, "Yeah, what's the next step in the in the lead process? What are What stage are we trying to get them to? What's the common objections

9:34that you receive?"

9:41We go through the scenario, talk to them, and it doesn't matter what their answers are in the scenario, but I'm asking myself, what's their tone? Is this something our customers are going to relate to? Is this someone they'll they'll be able to connect with? And then at the end, we all get together, and the first question is, how do you

9:59think you did? You know, did they And then And they'll go on, they'll say, "Oh, I think I did this well, or I didn't do this well." And it's such power and insight in learning that. A good salesperson might say something like, "Oh, I I did this real well, but I really screwed up this, and I was so nervous." And the whole time you're thinking, "Well, I didn't sense they were nervous." If that's how they were

10:20when they're nervous, that's awesome. Right? There's a really a lot to learn there. So, those are the three lessons. Get the foundation right, be patient as you wait for your candidates, and test their skills. Uh it's made a huge difference for us. I feel like I'm not stepping on the the banana peel anymore and falling on my

10:44butt. Uh but, I love talking about this topic. There's so much more to share. I'll be happy to share with you our job descriptions, our emails, everything. Reach out to me, matt@agency360.com, or we'll be around the conference the rest of the rest of the day and early tomorrow. But, thank you guys so much, and uh best of luck scaling your

11:03companies and growing your teams.