How To Create Top Performing Employees & Increase Sales Revenue In 6 Simple Steps

My name is John Hopper, and I’ve been a business owner and employer for over 10 years now. I’ve done millions in revenue over the course of my career and if you asked me what the hardest part about business was, I’d tell you that it’s without a doubt finding, training, and retaining the right employees.

For the longest time I was completely frustrated in business because I didn’t have my head straight about what the most important things were for me to focus on. So now I’m here to save others some of the headaches that I had to deal with when it comes to employees and figuring out what to focus on with my employees to build a successful business.

Here are the six things that I learned on my own that will make or break your business. I hope these lessons help you as much as they did me.

"The only real mistake is the one from which we learn nothing."

- John Powell  

1. The Employees

One of the most important realizations I had in business was that my company, if it was ever going to grow, would be made up of mostly my employees. A one man show doesn’t go very far and you’ve got to scale your staff if you want to scale your income. So the first thing and the most important thing that I care about is the people that work for my business every day. The people are the most important thing. It's not the customer, it's not the money.

Let's say we run out of customers. If we have great people, they will go get more. If we run out of money and we have great people, they will go get more money. Don’t miss this part, your employees are those who make the wheel turn, they are the most important thing in your business.

You need to see the employee as an asset and the employee needs to see themselves as an asset, without the employees, there is no company. So pay close attention to who you hire and have standards in the workplace that everyone needs to live up to and which you won’t settle for.            

2. The Sales

Sales is what moves your bottom line. As a business owner, you have to have revenue. If you don't have revenue then you can't pay the employees, you can't do marketing, you can't do training, you can't pay rent, and you

Most of your attention, and your employees’ attention needs to be on the sales end of your business. What that means is you need everybody in the company contributing towards that bottom line. Do you have an assistant who isn’t paid on commission? Well, then start paying them commissions.

The truth is that we’re all in it for ourselves on some level, and to motivate your staff to do something you’re going to have to offer them something that motivates them. If your assistant or receptionist can help you by bringing in a referral or flipping a support call into new business then why not pay them for it.

In fact, promote it within your company. Make sure that everyone knows they’ll get paid for what they produce, down to the accounting team or anyone in the company for that matter. That’s how you start setting the culture of sales in your organization and as the main driver of moving your bottom line, this needs to be a priority for everyone.

3. The Follow Up

This is the initial downfall of customer service problems. The customer comes into an agreement with you to do business with you and then you don't hold up your end of the bargain because you didn't follow things up. This is how we have customer service problems. Could you imagine not following things up in your private life? You drop the kids off at school and you don't go to pick them up? Think about how irresponsible that would be, because irresponsible is exactly what it is when someone in your organization doesn’t follow up.

This isn’t tied only to your salespeople. Everyone in your organization needs to follow up on their completed projects or assignments to make sure that it made it through the pipeline and the cycle was closed out. In your business, there’s a customer waiting on the other end of that line and the quality of what your company produces is directly tied to their ability to get things done, which means follow up and follow through.

This needs to be a focus at your workplace. It needs to be in your mantra and maybe even hung up on signs around the office. Nothing kills a business faster than management or employees who block a flow of income because they make things take longer than they need to by not showing the right level of priority and not following up.

4. The Character

The fourth most important thing that we care about is that we want to be dealing with people of character. It's not just me, the business owner. It's the employees that work there that you want to be people of good character. We want to be dealing with honest people, trustworthy people. People who keep their word, we don't want to be dealing with drug users and liars and thieves. Nobody has time for that and your customers don't have time for it, so we want to be surrounded by people of good character.

That the phrase, “because of the horseshoe the war was lost”, is so true in today’s world because it’s the little things that you and your employees do in the business that sets the tone for your standard of quality and care towards your customers.

If someone’s character isn’t in order, that’s not the only thing that’s going to be out of order by the time you’ve let them have an effect on the rest of your staff. So when you have someone that needs to be cut from the team and you’ve already done your due diligence to help them how you could, do it fast. Only keep the employees that you know you could trust with your most important jobs.

5. The Team Work

Number five on the list is we're all on the same team. This has been a huge problem for me in my career because employees don't like each other. They're going way out of their way to get each other fired. They're stepping on top of each other to get to the top and we're all on the same team. Competition is down the street. We don't compete here and no great team should have cutthroat competition in their environment.

We compete with whoever’s down the street, or better yet, we dominate. We want to be dominant in our industry, so we don't have time to fight with each other. We need team players on our team that will help the entire company rise. So when you’ve got a high achieve who’s toxic to the environment, sometimes you need to make the hard call and cut them before they infect the rest of the team.

6. The Push to do more

The sixth most important thing, and the final thing we should care about, is we want everybody to push to do more. We don't want them to do more jobs. We want them to do the job. They're already doing better. If they're pushing to get things done, that's what we're looking for. As employers we want the type of employees that will push to do more all the time and follow through until the end on whatever they’re responsible for, and even some things they’re not directly responsible for.

Closing

So now you take these six things and you culminate them together as part of your company’s culture. And what you will get is employees who understands their value and contribute greatly to the growth of your organization.

They're helping bring in sales, they’re persons of good character, they're following up, they're team players, and they're pushing to do more. When you have employees who do all of this they become un-fireable.

If they come to you and say, I want more money, what are you going to say? “No, I'm not giving you more money”. They're producing sales. Of course you're going to give them more money. They understand their value because at this point they’d be bringing so much of it to the table. So if they come to you and they say “Hey, I can't work on Saturday”... If they're an employee who understands their value, they're helping with sales, they're following up, they're a person of good character they’re a team player who’s pushing to do more then you’re going to give them what they want. Because these employees are worth it. And that’s exactly what you want, so it makes sense to pay a premium for them if they’re truly exceptional.

The employee ultimately writes their own ticket. So now when the employee comes to you and says, Hey, I need a raise. Hey, I need a day off. Hey, I need to come in late. Hey, I need this. Hey, I need that. When you start seeing that your needs are being met, you're going to give it to them. And you can forget about trying to motivate your employees to do things because they’re going to produce it for you so they get what they need in return. 

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