Building a Sales Team From Scratch (Episode 103)

Ask a room of security dealers to raise their hands if they're in sales, and most of them do. Then ask how many are also the owner, and most of the same hands stay up. In Episode 103 of the Unlocked Podcast, recorded on day two of the Brivo Cloud Security Summit in Arlington, Texas, Lars (Calgary Lock & Safe), Tony (Assured Security), and Chad (Loc-Doc Security) tackle the problem that creates: no sales department, no sales process, and a revolving door of sales hires who never quite work out.

The goal was tactical. If you're the owner of a $1–3 million business and still the primary salesperson, what would you actually do, step by step?

Step One: Who Is Your First Sales Hire?

The hosts didn't agree, and that's the useful part. One view: hire a proactive hunter with a proven sales track record and teach them security. Promoting a great technician is the common path in this industry, and it often skips the sales skills entirely. The opposite view: most small companies aren't short on leads, they're slow at getting quotes out the door. Step one is someone inside the business who can answer the phone, price the work, and tell the customer when you can get there.

A middle option came up too: hire the most customer-focused person you can find, someone with the instincts of a great server or barista. They go to the job site, listen, take good notes, bring the details back to whoever has the technical knowledge, build the proposal, and own the follow-up. That's the work owners never have time for.

Count the Activities, Not Just the Results

Sales leaders who get promoted without a system tend to flounder, so the hosts focused on leading indicators you can count every week without extra paperwork. Time in front of customers came first, with a new rep somewhere around 12 to 20 site visits a week. Then follow-ups: the single most neglected habit in this industry is sending a quote and never calling about it. One host said their data shows follow-up calls lift win rates 15–20%. Another described a junior sales assistant whose only job was following up on sent quotes, and approvals rose 13%.

A tip picked up at a recent Vistage event: make three calls first thing every morning, before the day takes over, and follow each call with a text message instead of an email. People remember a phone call. Nobody remembers yesterday's vendor email. Make it social, too. Put the team in a conference room with coffee and knock out the follow-ups together.

A Scorecard Reps Own

One host's team tracks seven weekly measures: new contacts, appointments completed, unopened quotes, approved quotes, approved margin, recurring revenue, and follow-ups. Each one has a target and a simple progress bar. The key detail is that the reps report their own numbers at a Friday morning meeting. Holding it on Friday gives everyone one last day to get their numbers to green.

The caution from the others: seven is the ceiling, and you should probably start with one or two. A scorecard with too many numbers gets ignored. Watch trends, not snapshots, because large quotes take longer to close and quoting volume naturally ebbs and flows. If you want a quick start, export your sales data to Excel, drop it into an AI tool, and ask what it sees.

Leaders, Culture, and How to Pay

A great salesperson doesn't automatically make a great sales manager, any more than a great technician makes a great salesperson. Before promoting someone, make sure they can run a sales meeting with a clear agenda, build a repeatable playbook, and hold deal-focused one-on-ones.

On compensation, the hosts disagreed on how much commission still motivates people, but they landed in the same place. Define the activities that lead to success, set realistic targets that ramp up through a rep's first year, and tie pay, whether commission, bonus, or salary, to the outcomes you actually want. People want to know if they're winning or losing.

As you look at your own sales this week, ask yourself: if I stepped out of the sales seat tomorrow, what's the one number I'd want my replacement to report every Friday?

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Assured Security: assuredsecurity.com

Loc-Doc Security: locdoc.com

Calgary Lock & Safe: calgarylockandsafe.ca