Staffing Sales Growth Framework: The Four S’s

Steven: It took this industry a hundred years to get to 20,000 staffing firms in the US. Then in the next ten years, we added roughly 35 to 40% more. Call it 28,000 agencies. Here's the problem. In 2015, about three dollars of every hundred dollars of payroll spend in this country moved through staffing. Today, it's about a dollar forty. Forty percent more firms, half the spend. I'm not a mathematician, but the math only ends in one way: consolidation. The next three to five years are going to be brutal. And a lot of the firms fighting on markup right now won't be here for the other side. But here's the other thing. After three frozen years, the market is finally thawing. And a thaw is where the share changes hands, which means the single most valuable machine you own right now is your sales engine. And most firms in the industry have never actually built one. We talk pipelines all day. We've barely talked sales all year on this show. That changes today. My guest, Shad Tidler of Lushin, a sales training and consulting firm out of Indianapolis. Shad spent years in logistics sales with no training and no coaching, hustling on trial and error until he became a client of the firm he now works for. He spent the last twelve years helping companies fix their sales engines, the last ten of them working with staffing firms — ASA, Staffing World, MRI Network — and he's teaching a sales breakout at Staffing World this October. He's brought a framework with him, the Four S's of Sales Growth: strategy, structure, staff, and skills. We're going to walk all four. And by the end of this, you should know which one is your bottleneck. Shad, welcome to the Staffing Playbook.

Shad: Hey, Steve. Thanks for having me on today.

Steven: Hey, we're glad you're here. This has been a long time coming. Hopefully I didn't botch your intro for our audience. Tell me what I missed, fill in the gaps.

Shad: No, you pretty much said it — that I was a trial and error sales guy for many years and I had success. But if someone looked at me, Steve, if you looked at me and went, "Well, Shad, what are you doing to have success?" I'd be like, "I don't know. I do this, I do that. I don't know." And I finally went, man, if I started to figure this out and actually do something repeatable, I probably can have that much more success. And so I took some courses online, did some study, it just wasn't quite there. It was improving, but not figuring it out. And I happened to come across the blog Lushin was writing online, checked out the website, went in for a session and became a client for three and a half years before I started here twelve years ago and said, okay, I'm ready to get out of logistics world, I'm ready to do this, helping people full time.

Steven: That's fantastic. What a cool story. And I know we barely touched on it. There's a lot more depth there. But I want to talk about sales, because we have barely touched sales this year on the Staffing Playbook. That was a big topic in 2025, for good reason. But right now we have this opportunity to make a difference in the industry, because it is about sales. So I really want to ask you, just first question here. I talked about this freeze we were in for three years. Now we're in the thaw. So why is the thaw right now the moment to get obsessed with your sales engine again?

Shad: It's funny you bring this up, Steve, because I'm literally doing a webinar in a couple of weeks for a regional staffing association, and it's all about this topic. And here's why. You've probably been around long enough, you remember 2008 in the downturn, and then obviously you went through COVID. Everybody's coming out of it. We're going, okay, finally, after things peaked up and then the crash happened and it was the freeze, and now it's starting to thaw. Here's the problem. A lot of people are going to go, "Okay, hey, things are getting a little easier. Orders are starting to come to us. Clients are opening up and saying, hey, there's additional ways we can help. We've got more budget. Now we're expanding." And unfortunately, human nature is that the things that we've worked hard to do to start to get some of those things to happen, we go away from when things get successful. Like, they're happening easier. It's just human nature. We just start to get — there's no better way to say it — we get a little lazy. "Yeah, well, this is good, man. I've worked so hard. I've got to take a little breather." The problem is that we know that cycles happen in the marketplace, right? We know there will be another one. Like you said, whether it's consolidation or something else. And so right now, instead of going, "Okay, I'm just going to breathe and kind of just let everything come to me," which means that we start to let the skills drop with our people, we start to not fill the pipeline with new opportunities, and then all of a sudden when things get bad, now we're having to get all that inertia restarted. We've lost those skills, we've lost the pipeline, we've missed on opportunities, competition's come in, and it's a heck of a lot harder to dig out. So even though — like we always say when things are successful, the question we ask around here, and we ask a lot of our clients, is "what's next?" And it's not because we're going, "Hey, we don't appreciate that you've gotten some success." It's that we know if the ball is already rolling, it's a heck of a lot easier to keep it rolling than to stop and then have to start it all from that stop again.

Steven: Yeah. Well, I'm excited. A lot of our audience here are people in middle management in staffing firms. Think of regional vice presidents, a VP of sales. We have about one-sixth of our listeners in the C-suite. But the people that are listening in today are the people who own the sales engine, but mostly didn't design it. So before we walk through the Four S's — you've assessed a lot of sales organizations. Where do staffing firms actually break? Which of the four has the biggest holes?

Shad: I typically find it's structure and the staff, and that relates to skills. So let me go. Structure is because, like you said, we didn't design it. And sometimes it's even if we did, we don't know what we don't know. So maybe we have a sales process that we're following, but it's not effective. Everybody's kind of doing their own thing. It's missing some key components, or the things aren't in the right places at the right time. And that's where we're getting some of the challenges and outcomes and stalls and put-offs and think-it-overs we get. Maybe it's that we've got goals for our people, but we don't know how to break them down to here's the activities they need to do every day and what's expected. Here's the right leading indicators or KPIs, key performance indicators, we should be tracking that are leading indicators to keeping the pipeline filled and getting new sales in and keeping growing, not just tracking the lagging ones like revenue in and orders, jobs filled, orders closed, things like that. So I find those are missing. Also in the structure is things like, if we're going to go out and hire new people — maybe we've got some people who aren't performing, or we've got people who are and now it's like, hey, if we want to expand, we need more bodies on the ground — we don't know the right criteria, the right tools, the right process to go out and hire salespeople. And I saw a little smirk there, because I think you know where it's going.

Steven: Oh, yeah. Staffing firms hiring — we suck at hiring our own people.

Shad: Well, especially sales. They're similar, but there's also big differences. And a lot of times I find staffing firms just don't know what they don't know and they miss some key things in that. And that's what hurts. And so that's why I say that on the structure. Now on the staff side, we don't actually know what skills and strengths that people have or are missing, not only from a sales and business development side, but also from managing those teams. And so therefore we throw some training at them or we try to do this, and it's not addressing the right problem that's actually going to help them grow.

Steven: Right. Well, I want to get into all of that, and we will here. So I want to take these four S's in order. So starting with number one, strategy. When you say strategy as the first S, what specifically do you mean? And what's the most common strategy mistake you see? Because I know you've seen a lot out there.

Shad: So strategy is, do we know the end in mind, where we're going? If we're growing, why are we growing? Is it towards a mission and vision that we have? Maybe it's, hey, I'm a family owner and eventually I pass it off to other generations of my family. Is it like here at Lushin, where we had a family owner, no other generation of family wanted to take it, so we turned into an ESOP and sold it to employees? But what's that end mission and vision that we're going after, and why? And then how does that start to break down to our people and connect with their personal goals and with the company goals? That's what I mean. What resources are we going to need in order to be able to get there? And what's our longer-term plan and strategies to get there? That's what's in there. Now, the biggest thing that gets missed — there's a few, but one of the biggest I see, oh, actually I'll go with two. We don't know our ideal client profile, or we're not staying accountable to it. So we don't really take time to go, "These are the actual attributes of the best customers and clients we work with, and we should be going out looking for more of those," and staying accountable to it, because that's what's going to help us get to that vision and get there faster. And the other piece is we don't know how to take the goals, break it down to people and connect it to their personal goals. I mean, Steve, you know people work for their own reasons, not yours.

Steven: A hundred percent.

Shad: So you've got to go, hey, whatever it is, I've got to understand what those are and then connect those back to the common goal and go, "Hey, if you want to get here, or you want this, here's how hitting your goals, exceeding your goals, helps you and how that all factors into where we're going."

Steven: Right. You said a keyword that has been shared by many guests on this podcast for the last year and a half: ICP, ideal customer profile. I think for those of you that just glossed over and heard ICP again, stop glossing over it. I love that you said not only do you have to define it, but then stick with it, right?

Shad: Yeah.

Steven: And that gets missed often, but that's a different episode. Clearly a hot topic.

Shad: Yeah, absolutely.

Steven: All right. So my next question with strategy is, you look at all the firms out there — how many firms are still running that 2015 playbook strategy in 2026, where the spend is just structurally smaller? What does a stale strategy actually cost them? I mean, it's a pretty obvious answer, but what are you seeing?

Shad: Well, what I'm seeing is that it starts top down. So if it's not clearly defined at the top, Steve, and it's not filtering down, and people don't understand what that means and then connect it into the day to day, people go in whatever direction they think that it is, or whatever direction that they feel is best or is comfortable for them. So that's where what I see is that when that's happening, the owner's like, "Why don't they get it?" The leaders, the owners are going, "They don't get it. Why are they going after this business? Why did they bring this in? Why are we doing this? Or gosh, why aren't we growing faster?" Well, we're not taking a look and going, okay, very first thing, and the key thing, is not only defining it, like we said, but you've got to be able to get everybody marching in that same direction to it. Which means we've got to clearly communicate here's what it is, here's why, here's how that connects to you, and then define that and now take that down, as you're giving the structure, into the specifics day to day. And then have checkpoints along the way, because we don't exist in a bubble or vacuum. There's going to be outside factors. Things that happen in the marketplace, things that happen from competition, like you mentioned earlier, consolidation. Those are going to affect things. Things happening in client industries. There's going to be internal factors, turnover. Maybe we're finding this piece of strategy isn't working, we've got to pivot and change in our direction. Those things get missed. And so the cost is that everybody goes in their own direction, we're not actually making progress, or we start to go backwards because of that.

Steven: Yeah, you're correct. I even look at this whole markup war that's been happening the last few years, when you have roughly half of what was spent in 2015 now being spent in 2026. And I think that markup war has been the stale strategy, like what that looks like in the wild. Firms just buying revenue at margins that can't feed them and hoping to make it up later. So when a firm realizes that they've got a stale strategy, whatever strategy that is, what's their first move when they realize they have a problem, when they realize that their strategy is failing?

Shad: Well, the first thing is to start to go, okay, what specifically about it's failing? The very first question I ask clients is, okay, what outcome are we trying to go after? What goal? Okay, is that still clear? Okay, now let's go backwards and change what's failing in getting there in this particular strategy. Maybe it's, hey, we thought this was part of our ideal client profile, or ICP, but maybe it's not. Maybe we're finding that something's happened in that industry, that market's changed and it's not supporting it, we need to adjust it. I just went through my own earlier this week, because I was like, it's been a while. I went, there's been some things that have changed in the types of clients that I'm working with and some of the industries, right? That's got to be looked at on a regular basis. Things like going back and looking and going, okay, maybe we aren't putting enough resources to this particular strategy and that's why it's not taking off. Maybe we made some assumptions when we first started, and those are proving not to be correct at this point as we get into it, because that's the bigger strategy. Sometimes it's just we've got 75% of the data, we're going to make a couple of assumptions and just adjust along the way. And so here's the thing I see, Steve — leaders, you've probably seen this, they get so set on the strategies and go, "We've got to do it this way," and they don't adjust. And it keeps us moving down the wrong road when there's holes and things happening, because they're like, "Well, this is what we started with. I came up with this idea," versus going, "It ain't working." Okay. One of our things here at Lushin is we'll give anything a try once. If it doesn't work, let's figure out something different. If it does, let's figure out how to do a heck of a lot more of it. So be willing to go, "It's not working. Let's take a look back and figure out what do we need to adjust here."

Steven: Yeah. All right. Well, this brings us to the S you told me firms break the most, so I want to go deep. And that S is structure. So walk us through what structure means. What does good actually look like?

Shad: Okay. So structure — I want to paint the picture. Let's say you're building a house. So strategy is the goal, the vision of the house, and this is what the big things are. Now structure is, okay, we've got to build the actual — we're going to have the tools and the pieces to build it, and a process that we're going to go through to build it. And we've got to set up a timeline and go, there's going to be certain checkpoints along the way to go, are we on track, and certain quality measurements, to go, hey, this is going to bring the vision and the goal together and it's going to do what it should. That's that structure, if you think of it. So it's things like the process. If you think from a sales and business development side, what is our sales process? Have we actually sat down and truly mapped out what is now, but also looked at and gone, where are the problems? I call them the fire starts. Hey, you agree to a meeting with a prospective customer and then they ghost you. Well, there's a fire. There's something that did or didn't happen early in the process that caused that fire to start. Hey, you send over that agreement with your fees or your rates, and all of a sudden they don't respond from there. Once again, there's something that did or didn't happen earlier, got missed, that caused that. Well, we've got to first map it out and go, here's what's happening, here's where the fires start or are happening. And then go back and go, what do we need to adjust, put in, take out, maybe order in a different way, to get ahead of those fires? Like a lot of people will tell you from a sales side, I'm sure you've heard, "Okay, here's how to handle objections." But I always say, wait a minute. Why don't I just put out the objections before they start? If I know that might be an objection that's going to come up for these types of customers, these types of industries, et cetera, let me just put it in my process and beat them to it and diffuse that before it goes off. But we've got to figure that out, get that clear, get everybody in agreement, and then have it documented and train our people and coach them to it, and use that as accountability to go, if we're seeing a deal go off the rails in the pipeline — it should be closing, it's a month later, two months later — we're able to go back in the process and go, what did or didn't happen that caused us to get here? But we've got to have that process in place. If you think of goals, taking the goals and breaking them down to, what do you need and expect your people to do every day? What metrics and KPIs should we be tracking along the way? And how do we track them in meetings, one-to-ones, regular cadence? So that way, if they're having an issue — let's say they're doing the prospecting attempts every day in those numbers, but they can't seem to get any meetings set from the conversations they're having. Well, that means I'm going to take a look at the conversations and go, wait a minute, let's check some recorded calls, let's sit down, let's see what's being said, so that way we can figure out how do we make the behavior more effective. But we've got to know, what are those things to measure along the way? How does that break down? And then clearly say to people, "Here's your goals, here's the path to get there, here's the things we're going to help check along the way to help you stay on the path, plus help you get more effective." It's things like that. It's things like your hiring process. What should a good job description for our different sales roles or sales management roles look like? How do we start to get that out there into an ad? As people are coming in, how do we evaluate, make sure that they actually have the skills — not only the skills to be a strong salesperson, but things that are particular to our selling environment and our particular company? What interview questions should we be asking to really figure out, hey, resume sounds good, but do they really have the experience we need to be able to do the things we do? Even after you make the offer and they accept, what should a strong onboarding plan look like in the first couple months so that they ramp up effectively and quickly into your organization? Those pieces are structure pieces within it.

Steven: You actually answered not only my first question, but my second question follow-up. I mean, that structure: the goal, the opportunities needed, the meetings to first appointments, the prospecting behaviors like you mentioned, and what assumptions are we making at each step and how are we tracking those? This is a really hard one for a lot of sales VPs and sales managers when it comes to holding their team accountable to a cadence that works instead of just metrics on a dashboard behind a laptop. Where's that line between an accountability cadence that works versus the dashboard that every executive is looking at that can potentially kill a team?

Shad: Yeah, so I always tell people accountability works as long as people understand how it helps them. I was working on this with a couple of newer managers with a client of mine today in a different industry, and we're talking about micromanagement. And a lot of what they were referring to — one of the questions asked was, when you've experienced micromanagement, what makes it so bad? And they're like, "Well, I don't understand why they're doing this, that they don't trust me." We've got to connect that to their person and go, "Hey, here's the personal goals where you want to get to, here's where you need to get to in sales. So let's have a plan along the way to help you get there. Here's how all this connects." A lot of times when that's not there, people see accountability as, you're playing big brother, big sister, you don't trust me, this is just another thing we've got to do and put stuff in the CRM, versus, hey, here's how that actually can be used to help us. Now, metrics are good and KPIs are good, but I relate this to a story from our founder, Paul Lushin, and how we got our name. His oldest son, Elliot, used to be a fighter pilot, used to fly, I think, A-10 Warthogs and F-15s.

Steven: Wow.

Shad: We're all close to him. We've known him since he was younger. One time we asked him, "Elliot, you're sitting in this fighter jet cockpit. You've got levers and dials and bells and whistles. How the heck do you keep all that straight? There's no way you can remember everything." And he said, "There's three particular indicators I look at. As long as those are doing what they should, everything else is performing the way it should. Now, if one of those goes out of gauge, or a warning comes on, I know the next indicator to look at based on that." So all I've got to do is make sure it's right, and now when one goes off, I know where to go. But those three are my three main ones to look at. That's the key with sales leaders. What's the three, maybe five, indicators that we go, as long as these are doing well, it means things below them are happening. Now if one of them's off, now I know where to go back and start to look, versus, I'm going to kill you with twenty different things and you're like, "I can't keep track of all this. How does all this relate?"

Steven: I love that analogy. You're right, because it's usually those three to five things that if those are working, the downstream, you can count on it. If one of those isn't working, you're going to find downstream where it's broken.

Shad: Yeah. And then in terms of the cadence as the other piece, it all depends on performance and years within the organization. So, for example, when I started at Lushin, I had a weekly one-to-one with my manager, my leader, and that was partially accountability to behaviors and metrics and numbers, partially coaching my pipeline, helping me through things. As I was here a few years, behavior-wise, that was not an issue. I'm doing the things I need to every day. Now it became every couple of weeks, and it shifted a little less from the behavior and more towards the coaching pipeline, helping me be a better salesperson. Now it's once a month. It's just pipeline, some coaching around those things, some key areas where I might have a challenge here or there. And it's about helping me improve and anything else I bring to it. So the whole key — leaders are like, "Well, I don't want to hold my people who are doing well, who perform, and their experience, to the same accountability and things as people performing who are new." I go, you're absolutely right. But the whole key is that as an organization, we're accountable, but we're accountable to the relevant things based on where we're at. So maybe that experienced person, one or two things are going to be find additional business with current clients, some sort of KPI on that, and ask them for referrals, because that helps them grow their business faster. Versus a new person, where it's like, your daily behaviors, and are we getting enough conversations and meetings? You need that to get them on the right track. So everybody's accountable. Nobody gets passed on that, but to the right things that are relevant to their position.

Steven: Got it. All right. I've got a question that's going to tee up the last S, which is staff. But you think of a lot of firms where their sales were down last year. I don't remember the exact percentage, or something like that in 2025. It wasn't good. It was not a good year for the staffing industry. How does a firm know if they have a structure problem and not a staff problem? Do the symptoms look identical? I would guess, because there's no growth. How do you tease that out?

Shad: The main symptom does. It's the sub-symptoms underneath that we start looking at.

Steven: Like your fighter pilot buddy.

Shad: Exactly. So the main symptom is we're not seeing revenue grow, or it's growing at a slower pace, or we're seeing deals slow down. Like, hey, revenue is growing, maybe it's taking a heck of a lot longer to get decisions, we're having to cut margin. Now we've got to start to look underneath that and go, okay, to your point, is it a structure piece? Is it a staff piece? Even if it's staff, is it skills within the staff? Is it motivation within the staff? Is it beliefs that they have that are making — right, there's other pieces. We use a very sales-specific evaluation with a third-party company that helps look at all of that — strategy, structure, staff, goals — and helps us to understand with the organization. And it's one of the very first things we do as we start working with them. It's like, I had to go to a doctor's appointment the other day. We sit down, we have a conversation. She goes, "Okay, based on this, we've got to run some blood work." She goes, "I've got about three different theories of what it could be, but I'm not going to know until we get some blood work and we get some labs back and we know for sure and rule out a few things." Same thing. It could be things like, hey, these are the things that are helping, here's why. These are the things that are missing, here's why. And even going below that. So you've got to have some sort of a tool that can objectively help you run those diagnostics and then be able to interpret and go, okay, based on that, here's what we should focus on the next six months, year, whatever it is, that's going to start to help us fix and get to the main symptom that you're wanting to solve. Whether it's just overall sales revenue hitting a certain goal, whether it's being able to protect margins, whether it's being able to get in front of new ideal prospects and clients, whatever it is, we've got to run some tests and tools and get some objective data behind it.

Steven: Yeah. All right. That's interesting. So I'm thinking about a firm that fires its sales rep. Not having a mapped process, it's basically guessing. And so they hire the second sales rep. Do you see that turnover just happen one after the other? I would imagine until I fix that mapped process, that structure.

Shad: Yep, a hundred percent. And a lot of good salespeople.

Steven: And they go in, "Not me, it's them."

Shad: Yep. And that's the very first thing. One of the things we look at when working with clients is, we've got to have a leader that admits they have challenges, and they admit maybe it's myself. A lot of times, Steve, it's we don't know what we don't know. Think about a lot of staffing leaders. Maybe they're great salespeople and then they're thrust into management. Or maybe they're an owner whose sales were simple for them. They've learned all the lessons already. But if we call it the "wing it" star — like I said, I was when I started — if you were to ask them, "Well, how do you do it?" It's like, "Oh, I just do this." It's like a habit. "It's not that hard." The problem is getting all this out of their head into their salespeople, on paper. And we call those the non-transferable skills. You've got to get those out of their head and then get their people to execute, because their people aren't them. They're not the owner of the company. That's the key. But yeah, you see, until that starts to happen and they admit that and go, "I need some help, it's not my specialty," they just keep hiring salespeople and go, "Oh, it's them. Market's tough. There just aren't good people out there."

Steven: Yep. All right. I want to bridge this now into the last segment. So you mentioned hiring, and I promised everybody that we'd go here because this one is personal for me. I think it's personal for every staffing firm.

Shad: Absolutely.

Steven: The S where the irony lives is staff. So staffing firms are the best in the world at hiring. Except for salespeople. Why is the industry that hires for a living so bad at hiring its own sales reps?

Shad: Part of it is they just don't understand what makes a great sales rep, a great salesperson. They've got ideas, they've got pieces, but they're missing key pieces. Part of it is because, Steve, a lot of people look at sales and it's like this nebulous thing. It's like, it's the art of sales. Well, yeah, there's some art to it, I'm not going to fight that, but there's also got to be a lot of the other pieces of the four S's we talked about there. And the crazy thing is, you see organizations bring in salespeople like, "All right, here's your goal, go." Would you bring in accounting people and go, "All right, hey, we need you to get in money, pay — just go, we'll figure it out"? No, you'd be like, process — there's goals and there's structures and there's checkpoints. It's our money, right, coming in and out. It's our profit. But salespeople, who undoubtedly have one of the most important jobs in the organization, bringing in new revenue and helping business grow — that's just how it's been approached so much. So that's part of the problem. And one of the things we also see is, you just mentioned it in what we just talked about before this, it's a phenomenon I call, they don't have the birdcage ready for the bird. So maybe they go out and land a great salesperson. And a great salesperson doesn't mean that they came from the industry and they sold for your competitor. Just because they sold for your competitor and did well does not mean they're going to do good in your environment. Maybe at the competitor, they were just given all the best leads. They didn't actually go out and hunt new stuff. They were just given all the best leads or best accounts, and they just grew them. Maybe your competitor has a bigger name than you that just easily opens doors, where you've got to work your way through and fight the resistance, because they have better margins to work with than you do. Now, we don't know, but that's a bad assumption that gets made. But even if you do find a great person that's a great fit for your selling environment, you've got to make sure those four S's are in place, because as soon as they start to figure out this stuff ain't here, they're like, "That's why I left the last organization. I don't want to come in and be the entrepreneurial seller that's going to help you fix all this stuff or figure it all out." So that's the first thing, is that they miss building those things to be ready, and also having the skills as a manager and leader to be ready to lead and manage and coach and hold people accountable. Now, the next piece is that they've got to understand what makes a great salesperson. Things like—

Steven: Yeah. How do you actually evaluate that sales fit? Because if they're good at — I mean, they should be good in the interview. It's literally a skill they should have. So beyond that good interview and gut feel, what are you actually evaluating for a sales fit?

Shad: Yeah, so first thing is you have a very clear job description that's goal-based, that is based around here's the performance we want, exactly what great looks like. I see too many organizations, even from a staffing side, is that they create a job ad — here's the duties and things you need to do — versus this is what makes a great salesperson. This is not only the goals you've got to go after and the things you're going to measure, these are the attributes and the personality of the person. This is the culture we have here and fitting this culture. This is the exact experience we're looking for, the relative experience we're looking for. I just was working with an internal partner of ours a couple months ago, and even they brought up some stuff where I'm like, man, yeah, that's actually really great, to make sure you define those ahead, because if you don't get that right, the rest of the hiring process doesn't matter. So that's the first thing, is do you have a true, clear picture, a great job description of what you're looking for and why? And the next piece is, to your point, people, especially if they're good salespeople, they're probably darn good at interviewing and talking in front of people. With the help of AI, anybody can write a great resume that looks good, sounds good, says all the right things, brings out your experience, puts them in the right order. The problem is, is we as humans have something called a confirmation bias. And this works in our head this way. "Hey, Steve, your resume looks amazing. Gosh, you sound awesome in the interview. I can see you totally fitting in here into our culture. You've said all the right buzzwords. You've given me great examples. You're going to work great here. We're hiring you." Because as soon as I started to hear things that I liked, that I was wanting, I looked for everything that confirmed it.

Steven: Guilty.

Shad: We've all done it in hiring. But that's why we've got to use objective tools that can help us assess, are they strong as a salesperson overall? Are they a strong fit to your sales environment? The company that I was mentioning we use to assess and evaluate teams that I'm currently working with, they have a hiring tool that helps us do that ahead. So even if someone's going, "Man, that resume looks good," I'm getting objective data. Are they a strong salesperson overall, based on this organization's thirty years of experience, all the information and metrics and data they have, to compare them against the best of the best? And then, are they a good fit to your selling environment? Things like, they've sold to the types of clients, the size of clients, protected the margins you need, in your sales cycles, industries that are relevant to you. All those things to go, are they even — now we know that they're a strong salesperson, a strong fit to our sales environment, should we go ahead and proceed with the interview? And start to figure out now, do they have the experience, or the cultural fit, or are their goals aligned with what we want? Obviously, compensation and benefits, are those aligned? If we give them an offer, would they take it? All those things. Well, so many organizations kind of put that off to the back end and go, "Okay, we'll try and figure it out at that point, if they've got the skills." And then by then your confirmation bias has kicked in and now you're looking for everything. "Oh, and it can't be that they don't have the skills, because they're so good, we want them here." Or they never evaluate, they take it at face value. And gosh, we as humans try to be great judges of people, but just aren't.

Steven: Yeah.

Shad: So you've got to have some sort of tool for that. And then in your interview process, know how to ask questions. So things like, "Hey, Steve, tell me about your experience prospecting." "Well, I do this." "Okay, so how do you do it? What sort of problems and challenges do you run into, and how do you work through those? What are the key metrics and KPIs you're measuring every day? How do you set up your day on a time basis? When you get these sorts of objections, how do you handle them? Hey, you know what, this is the objection we get the most here. I'm going to role play it with you, candidate. I want to see how you actually handle it." Not just what you tell me logically, but how you actually respond when the real-life pressure's on. A lot of people don't know how to ask those questions. They ask the first or second level and then they go, "Poof, that sounds good. All right, let's move on," versus, no, let's drill down and see. Because people who have the experience, they really know what they're doing, they're able to talk you through it. It's like, "This is how I do it. This is exactly what it is. This is what I run into. Here's how I handle it. Yeah, I'll role play. I may not be perfect to your particular company, but I can show you I can handle this situation." That's stuff that's missing generally in the hiring process.

Steven: I like the role playing piece. Here's the common objection we get — don't give me theory, let's role play. Give me your real-life answer. People know from AI and podcasts what to say, but you make them play it out, they're going to go to what they do. Okay, before we move into the last S, which is skills — this is a personal question I have. Sorry, audience, I'm going to be selfish right now. When I was in this industry in 2018, 2019, my expectation was a sales rep covers their own salary in GP inside six months. About 40% made it. Most got there around nine. Today, it's nine to twelve months to break even, if they get there. And the real takeoff now is year two, when the client trust — when the client matures, the orders widen. Staffing spend is now half of what it was, in 2025 a big part of that. But I want to understand, how are we evaluating our sales reps? When do they need to start paying for themselves? Because you might be front-loading eighteen months of salary before someone pays for themselves. What does this look like?

Shad: Well, first off, the first thing I consider in that, I go, okay, what's our onboarding time? So if it's a couple months, three months, whatever it may be. A lot of times what we teach our clients is it's about three months to really get them where they're up. It doesn't mean that they're not out doing behavior — you want them doing behaviors and prospecting things as early as possible — but to where they're pretty much able to go out and be sufficient on their own and driving things, that's probably about a three-month period before that starts to happen. Now, in terms of from there, then it depends on your sales cycle. How long is your sales cycle? What's the goal, et cetera, in terms of that? And then, okay, here's what they need to do to break even. So those numbers are out there, Steve. I'm not surprised by them, because I've seen and heard similar. There's no one formula. Each organization is a little different, depending on what size of deals, what's your sales cycle length, etc. But you should be able to sit down and go, hey, based on, if we've got enough reps here, and like you said, hey, these 40% have made it — okay, so let's take a look at that. What are those 40% doing? What things are happening with them that we can re-emulate through the onboarding, and also look at in our hiring process and evaluating to make sure that's there, so we're getting more people that fit that? And then what can we build off of from there to go, okay, are there ways we can shorten that cycle of onboarding? Sometimes it may just be, no, I mean, this is what it is. But also, then it becomes, okay, well, what percentage of people are we seeing that don't make it through there? And it goes, let's look back and go, like we're talking about in the hiring process, how are we evaluating them early and making sure they've got what we need, and do we know what that is? How are we making sure that we onboard them appropriately and we're ramping them up on the right things? One of the things I see missed big time is the onboarding piece. It's still too much out there of — and organizations are getting better, don't get me wrong, I've seen a vast improvement in the last twelve years — but it's still a large majority that are bringing them in and going, "All right, here's your goal, here's your laptop and phone, access to stuff, go. We'll ride along, a week ride-along. And Karen, that's yours. Good. All right, let's roll." If we're doing that, then we're putting a lot on them. The great ones are going to figure it out, but they're still going to struggle. The mediocre to not-great ones are not. Versus having a good, strong onboarding process. And every time you bring people in and they ramp up, they do well, you've got to look back at those people and get ready to hire the next and go, what did we miss in the first three months that would have helped you ramp up faster?

Steven: You're going to scare away the great ones too, right? With the poor onboarding experience.

Shad: Oh, yeah. Like I said, with the birdcage, as soon as they go, "Wait a minute, you sold me on a bill of goods and they ain't here," they're going to be out. They're going to start looking and go, "Wait a minute, I don't know." As much as you're going, "I want to make sure we don't have buyer's remorse with them," they're thinking the same thing in their head. And as soon as they see some gaps, heck yeah. But also making sure, do we learn those lessons and build them into onboarding? If I look back, twelve years ago, we hired our next person, Rob, a couple of years after me. Management came to me and said, "What did we miss in the first three months?" I was like, these key things. If I would have known those earlier, it would have made a big difference, I'd have known how to do it. Went to Rob when Emily got hired a couple of years later: "Rob, what did we—?" right? And every time we've just built and refined the onboarding so that people can ramp up quickly and shorten that cycle to profitability.

Steven: Yeah. No, that makes sense. And the whole sales cycle you mentioned earlier, how long does that take? It's different for each, depends on which niche you're serving in staffing and the size of the deals.

Shad: Yeah. I get with owners in various industries, they're like, "All right, I'll onboard them at three months, and then they've got to be producing in two months." Wait a minute. Your sales cycle is six months. How's that going to happen?

Steven: Yeah, it's not going to happen.

Shad: How are those going to sell? I mean, it doesn't mean that they might not get lucky, a deal was almost done and they happen to walk in. But let's be realistic. Now, hey, we go, here's worst case scenario, we're realistic and it happens quicker. Awesome. But let's be real with what it is.

Steven: All right, Shad, we've got the strategy, the structure, the right people in the right seats. We've got that covered now. Thank you.

Shad: Yep. I'll cut you a check later.

Steven: The last S, the one everybody I think reaches for first, and that's skills. Skills is the S everyone reaches for first. "My reps need training." But you've told me the real gap is usually the management layer, not the rep skills. Unpack that.

Shad: Yeah, because it's the one that they see. They go, okay, well, they're not prospecting enough, so it's got to be a skill thing. They're not closing deals, it's got to be a skill thing. They're not protecting margins, it's got to be a skill thing. Could be. Could be one part of it. It generally is. But it's not the only thing. And so the very first thing, okay, wait a minute. When we say they don't have skill, why are we even there? What are we seeing happen? And then now let's start to back it up and go, well, wait a minute. Even if it is a skill thing, is it just skill or is it will? Or there's a motivation on the team. Is there a lack of commitment to go out and do the tough stuff? Like maybe they're motivated and go, "Steve, yeah, I mean, I've got goals and things that are driving me to go out and sell more, but gosh, I'm too scared to go outside that comfort zone to do it." Okay, I can give you all the training and coaching in the world. Don't matter if you're going to go, "I'm not willing to get outside my comfort zone and risk." Maybe they're not taking responsibility. So for them, it's, hey, if I lose deals, it's not my fault. Well, okay, if you're not going to admit that it's something you're doing or not doing — now we can help you with the tools, but you've got to first admit that, or we can't change that. Maybe it's also not just a will thing. Maybe it's also a belief thing and a mindset piece. There are certain beliefs like, "I can't push back and challenge people without something bad happening." Cold calling: "If I interrupt, something bad's going to happen. I shouldn't do that." Well, if those beliefs are in the head, once again, skills, tools go right out the window, because when I go to pick up that phone and their head's popping, going, "You shouldn't interrupt that person" — even if you know what to say, how to differentiate yourself, how to break those typical walls of a cold call, don't matter. So it's asking questions like that to help people start to go, "Well, I don't know. Maybe we should do something to look under the hood," versus just making that assumption. Now, there's always going to be skills training that's got to be part of it, but it's got to be accompanied with a lot of that belief piece, a lot of the mindset piece. It's got to be accompanied with, we've got the right tools and structure in place. It's got to be accompanied with, management knows how to hold them accountable, coach them, motivate them in the right way to be able to consistently put the skills in place.

Steven: Yeah, very true. Okay, I know we're running out of time. I have so many questions for you. This is just a blast.

Shad: Yeah, I think it's been really great. I appreciate it.

Steven: This has been great. Okay, I want to stress test this framework against two things that are changing really fast in our world. So your framework probably started before AI, that was doing prospecting, and a buyer who builds their shortlist before they'll ever take a rep's call. If most of the buying happens before the sales is in the room, do structure and staff still get the same weight, or has the center of gravity moved more to marketing's hands?

Shad: Structure and staff still, but the process changed a little bit. Is that how are those leads coming into us? And then even if they've got their shortlist, can we interrupt that at all, because maybe we're showing up in a different way? Maybe they don't know all the criteria they should be looking at to buy, because you can go out to AI and go, "Hey, help me figure out how to buy this." But if I don't realize that that's criteria that I should have in my buying process as I go after getting help from a staffing agency, or what should be important to me, I don't know what to look for, right? So AI is just going to spit out what I'm telling it. So from a staff standpoint, that's skills that a rep needs to have, whether it's AI-based in the AI economy now or not. Things like being able to question and consultatively sell and figure out, okay, well, wait a minute, I get you've done all this research, but why is it that you're trying to solve this? What impact is that having on you, on the organization? Is it really something you're committed to in your priorities? Why haven't you fixed it? Why now? Being able to still have your process and qualify and go, wait a minute, just because they reached out — maybe they reached out to us because we were on that shortlist, but is it the right fit for us? I came from logistics where, I mean, gosh, I worked for a big company at the start of my career that we made darn near 90% of everybody's shortlist in the particular segment we're in. We're one of the big five out there. They're always going to — if they did any research or anything in the industry, they would be like, "Hey, we're including these guys." We had to get good at qualifying and go, wait a minute, just because you're coming to us — and we appreciate that, that makes life easier, all this hunting — doesn't mean it's the right fit. Maybe there's something you're looking for, you're missing, that's going to make this hard for us to do, or it doesn't make it the right fit. We still have to have a good process and skills to do that. Yes, AI is making the buyers more informed and absolutely shortening that cycle, making things happen faster. But those people skills to have that communication, even to lay out expectations with the customers we get started with — from a staffing side it's like, hey, we're going to do everything right, Steve, we'll give best effort, but gosh, there's just things that no matter what we're going to run into, from your side, from our side. We need to have a conversation and set those expectations and how we're going to handle it. AI is not going to tell you what to do, but do your reps have the skills to have those conversations? Do they know in the process where to have them? Do they know how to handle the things that may come back from a customer on it?

Steven: Yeah, that's always good. I think you mentioned this in our first conversation, the AI and the marketing side, that kind of fits into the strategy bucket, right? AI is new. It wasn't here ten years ago the way it is today. And so you need to find the right AI strategy that fits in your framework. In my world, light industrial staffing, the buyer is procurement, and they are incentivized to drive my rate down. So I could run all four S's perfectly and still lose, because the real gap is, to your point, differentiation, right? And that's really where a lot of firms get it wrong. Don't you think?

Shad: A hundred percent. A hundred percent.

Steven: Yeah. Okay, so just a couple minutes left here. We have a listener driving right now to a branch and can't assess anything. They're listening to this right now. Give them that sixty-second self-diagnosis. How do they figure out which S is actually their bottleneck instead of just guessing?

Shad: I'll give you kind of highlights in each one. The first question, strategy: are our goals clear, and do our people align to them and know what we're going after and why? Do we have our ideal client, like we really know that and we're sticking to it? Structure: do I actually have a documented sales process, and have I figured out what the reasons are, the problems that are happening, and changed to fix those? Staff: off the start of my head, what skills are there, what are missing, and why are they missing? And then finally, skills: okay, what's the number one thing from a management side, sales side, that we need to work on, and what's going to be our game plan to start to work on it? Those are the very high-level questions. Now, the key is those are very high level. It's only the stuff you can see, versus the stuff that's happening in people's heads under the surface.

Steven: It's great. All right. Well, this has been just a fantastic discussion. I think we could do two or three more like this. I feel like we've just scratched the surface, but you've given us these four pillars, which I think people can start there. With that, Shad, where can people find you? Lushin, the Staffing World breakout in October?

Shad: Yeah, I'll be at Staffing World in October, breakout session. I don't know if we've titled it, but it's around growing accounts. So right along the same piece: how do I grow with my current clients? What am I leaving on the table? How do I actually do that and be proactive, like we just talked about? I want to say I'm on that Wednesday of it, in the afternoon is when it is. Outside of that, if you go to our website, Lushin.com, we've got a fancy little button up at the top, a dropdown like "Talk to a Coach." Hit that button, select me and send me a quick message and it pings to my email, and then I'll give you a call back. Or you can connect with me at Shad Tidler on LinkedIn. I'm pretty sure I'm the only one out there with that name, so it's pretty easy to find me.

Steven: Yes, I think you are the only one. Shad, thanks for bringing an actual framework and letting us pressure test it instead of pitching it. That's the deal on this show and you've held up your end. Really appreciate it. And here's my one-line version of this last fifty-five minutes: most firms think they have a sales problem. They have a system problem. And now you've got the four-question test to find out which one is yours.

Shad: Fantastic. Thank you very much.

Steven: And we definitely need to get you back on.

Shad: Absolutely, Steve. Thank you. It's been a pleasure.

Steven: All right. Well, if this episode was useful, send it to the one person who runs a sales team in this industry. They're the 34% listening anyway. Follow Shad on LinkedIn. Catch him at Staffing World in October. And we will see you next time on the Staffing Playbook. Take care, everybody.