DGS 322: The Three Key Ingredients for BDM Success

When your property management business isn’t growing, hiring a salesperson might seem like the obvious solution, but what if that’s actually where most owners go wrong…

In this episode of the #DoorGrowShow, property management growth experts Jason and Sarah Hull break down why most BDM hires fail, the critical mistakes owners make with commission-only roles, and the exact systems required to make a salesperson successful. They dive into DoorGrow’s Three Fits framework, the three non-negotiable ingredients for BDM success, and tease a game-changing new growth model designed to help property managers scale without burnout, bad leads, or broken systems.

 

You’ll Learn

(00:00) Introduction: The Three Fits for Hiring
(01:16) The Challenges of Hiring a Business Development Manager (BDM) 

(02:42) The Three Key Ingredients for BDM Success 

(04:40)  Mistakes in BDM Compensation: The Commission-Only Pitfall 

(05:40) The Three Roles of a BDM and the Problem with Buying Leads 

(09:54) The "Door Machine" Teaser: The Easy Button for Growth 

(14:39) Advanced Community, AI, and Final Thoughts 

Quotables

“A BDM has zero chance of success if you hire the wrong person.” 

“If they’re not all three, they will fail. Or you’ll fire them. Or they will leave you because they’re not making enough money.” 

“If you do not have the right system to plug a BDM or a salesperson into, you can hire as many of them as you want, and they will still not work.”

Resources

DoorGrow and Scale Mastermind

DoorGrow Academy

DoorGrow on YouTube

DoorGrowClub

DoorGrowLive

Transcript

Jason Hull (00:01)

All right, five, four, three, two, one. All right, we are Jason and Sarah Hull, the owners of DoorGrow, the world's leading and most comprehensive coaching company for long-term residential property management entrepreneurs. For over a decade and a half, we brought innovative strategies and optimization to the property management industry. At DoorGrow, we have spoken to thousands of property management business owners, coached, consulted, and cleaned up hundreds of businesses, helping them at doors.

 

improve pricing, increase profits, simplify operations, and we run the leading property management mastermind with more video testimonials and reviews than any other coach or consultant in the industry. We're the best. At DoorGrow, we believe that good property managers can change the world and that property management is the ultimate high trust gateway to real estate deals, relationships, and residual income. At DoorGrow, we are on a mission to transform property management, business owners, and their businesses. We want to transform the industry.

 

eliminate the BS, build awareness, change perception, expand the market, and help the best property management entrepreneurs win. Now, let's get into the show. All right. So today, we're going to be chatting a little bit about the challenges of getting a business development manager, a BDM, or a salesperson for your property management business that we've seen. Yes. So a lot of times people think, hey, I need to grow my business.

 

and they either don't wanna do it, they don't have the time to do it, or they just want help doing it. And then their go-to is, well, I'll just hire someone to do it, right? What could go wrong? Yeah, and that's where they make their first mistakes. Hiring is tough. Hiring is tough. And so, a BDM has zero chance of success if you hire the wrong person. And so, we...

 

started solving this challenge for our clients by building out a hiring system. We call it door for a hiring. And we focus on what we call the three fits. They gotta be the right culture fit, which means they actually share your values. You can trust them. Because if they don't, aren't a culture fit, they'll steal from you or they'll do something off. And if culture's off, generally everything else goes south. It doesn't work. They have to be the right personality fit, which means they have to have

 

the right personality to be willing and love and be able to do sales. And they have the right skill fit, which means they have to be intellectually capable of developing the skill or they have to have the sales skill already. If they're not all three, they will fail. Or you'll fire them, which is basically because they're failing. Or they will leave you because they're not making enough money. Okay, then once you hire them,

 

assuming you get the right person, there's three key ingredients we found that are critical for BDM success and it's really difficult to get all three of these dialed in. It's even difficult for our clients who we coach to do these three things and so generally we see a lot of other BDM coaching companies they probably do a good job of maybe hiring the right people. My guess is they know how to read disk assessments and they use other tools and they can find good salespeople.

 

but I hear a lot of them fail. Like my brother hired two salespeople from one of these BDM placement coaching companies and he fired both of them. And it probably was my brother's fault. I don't know. Sorry, Brian. But it might've been he just didn't have these three key ingredients in place. They might've been able to have a chance. So these three key ingredients are one, training. And.

 

Basically they have the right strategies and training in order to succeed. Second, they have to have the right accountability. A lot of business owners just are like, here, here's what you do, or they rely on the BDM coaching company to just make it work. And sometimes they just get bad strategy. I don't think anybody has as good a strategy or clever or unique as I do as Dorgo does. We were very innovative on that.

 

I think then ⁓ the third piece is we've got training, we've got then accountability, there has to be transparency, visibility, metrics, things like this. they're being, you you can see where the gaps are, where the problems are. And third, compensation. And so the compensation has to be right. If the compensation structure is off, compensation is incentive. And if the incentive structure is off, either they won't be making enough money,

 

and they'll quit or you'll be paying them maybe too much money in the wrong way and then they get lazy and they're not incentivized to continue because they're making enough money or they're not getting motivated enough to get the results that you need so you'll fire them. There's so many ways compensation gets messed up. A lot of you think, I could just pay them commission only. Then I don't have to pay them anything unless they make money and then they're not motivated or they're not doing the leading actions.

 

and then they fail. So we've just seen a lot of mistakes made there. And I think one of the biggest ones is the idea, well, I'll just pay them commission only. And that's a really nice thought, but in practical application, it's just not a way to set things up to be successful. And the reason is, I know everybody's going, that's what I want. Yes, we can want these things, but...

 

In reality, the problem is that unless someone can start working in your business today and have the ability to close deals this week, then a commission only structure is just not going to work. And what I mean by that is not just, ⁓ no, they can, they can close a deal. They could close a deal right away. Great.

 

do you have a few thousand leads for them to call today? So if they get hired today and they get trained today and then tomorrow they start making calls, do you have a whole list of people that they can call and then close deals as early as like four days later, three days later? Because if the answer to that is no,

 

No, Sarah, I don't have an entire list. If I had an entire list, I would just call them myself and I would just work that list myself. Great. So then what you're doing is you're bringing someone in who can only make money if they close a deal and somehow expecting them, you're expecting them to close a deal, but not providing them with leads to work. So it's essentially saying, all right, I...

 

We'll pay you if you close deals. You can get started today. I don't have a list, a long list. Don't give them 10 people. 10 leads is not good enough. I don't have many leads for you to work. I have some, but I don't have a whole list of leads ready for you to just start working that are already in the system. ⁓ You need to go find the leads and create the connections and the relationships.

 

to get the leads and then you need to build a relationship with them and take them through the entire sales process and then you can close them and that might take two weeks, three weeks, four weeks, two months, three months. So what usually ends up happening on a commission only structure is the BDM, the first month makes zero dollars. So imagine if you did work for an entire month and you made nothing.

 

Would you want to be in that situation? Probably not. But then we're expecting other people to want to be in that situation. And for some people, that is doable. But for the majority of people, that's just not possible. They have bills to pay, they have a mortgage or rent, they have to feed themselves, they might have a family. It's not possible to just say, well, hopefully you figure it out really quickly, even though I'm not going to give you what you need in order to be

 

successful quickly, I hope you figure it out quickly because that's how you'll get paid. And then people wonder, why is no one applying for my job? So the problem, a medium is a little bit unique. Having a property management salesperson, they need to be not just a closer in which you like they just closed deals. They also need to be a setter. They need to be doing outreach and outbound, but they also need to be a networker.

 

They need to be going to networking events, connecting, walking into offices, meeting with people. And so the challenge is if they're a setter, a networker, and ⁓ a closer, they really need to be compensated the way you would compensate all three. we talk about this. There's a YouTube video up where I talk about how to compensate a BDM. Check it out. ⁓ But basically there needs to be a base plus commission and there's a strategy to how to do this correctly. Feel free to check out our video about that.

 

But a lot of people get this wrong. All right, so assuming that you get all of these things dialed in, it's still a struggle for some of our clients to manage their own BDM to do this. I'm going to share, we're going to give you a little sneak peek about something that we have coming up. But first, that's going to be a game changer for this industry. If you struggle to grow, if you tried lots of different lead sources, you tried lots of different programs, we're going to tell you about how DoorGrow will just grow your business for you.

 

as a teaser. But before we do that, I'm going to read a word from our sponsor. So this is our sponsor for today's episode is Blanket. Wait, Blanket. Lior from Blanket. It's his birthday today, which I did not plan. But happy birthday, Lior. Yeah, happy birthday. So by the time this goes live, it'll be past. But for those that watching the live stream, maybe if it goes out today, then cool. All right, here we go. Blanket is a property retention growth platform.

 

that helps property managers stop losing doors, add more revenue, and increase the number of properties they manage, while your clients with a branded investor dashboard and an off-market marketplace, while your team gets all the tools they need to identify owners at risk of churning and powerful systems to help you add more doors. I think Blanket's an awesome platform. You want to keep your properties, even if your clients are kind of like selling, you can keep the property and get other owners into it, and there's a network of owners that will.

 

choose in to being your property management client and take over this property. So I think it's a no-brainer. Everybody should have a blanket. Check it out. Okay. So let's talk about something that's uncomfortable when it comes to growth and sales and hiring a BDM. So a lot of people think that in order to solve their growth problem, they need to hire a salesperson. Okay. Right? Yeah. So they go, okay, well.

 

growth isn't happening, let me just like hire a salesperson because either I don't want to do it or I'm not the right person to do it or I am busy with other things and I just don't have enough time to dedicate to it or maybe I am doing it but it'd be nice to have some extra deals so let me hire somebody else to do it alongside with me and then I can double my growth if there's two of us. Yeah or even worse a lot of people think well I don't need a salesperson I can do it myself I just need more leads.

 

And if you're listening and you're saying that, there's reason why you probably haven't had great growth or significant growth if you haven't and you're saying that. Not all leads are equal. We talk about this a lot. Reach out to us. Just give us a shout out on any social media. Just say leads to us and we'll send you our leads training for free or go to doorgo.com slash leads and watch this training and I break down how to get unlimited leads for free and why not all leads are equal. You don't.

 

have to be paying anyone for leads. In fact, I recommend you don't because it slows down your BDM, it makes your BDM focus on the wrong strategies, and then your BDM is dealing with a lot of cold, unqualified leads from the internet that are the cheapest owners, that are the most difficult to manage, that have the highest operational cost, and are the most price sensitive. And this is why a lot of businesses and property management start to struggle and be unable to scale because of the types of clients and properties and owners that they're taking on.

 

And the sales cycle time takes way longer than what our strategies are, way longer than warm leads. And so you don't want to give your BDM a pile of cold crappy leads from the internet and slow them down. And so they're not able to add easily 10, 20, 30 units a month. They need better strategy. Okay. Okay. So the uncomfortable thing is that if you do not have the right system,

 

to plug a BDM or a salesperson into, you can hire as many of them as you want and they will still not work. So if you're trying to get a BDM in your business and grow the company without the right system in place for that BDM, it essentially is like saying, hey, I want to get in shape and I hired a personal trainer and then he's gonna do all the work.

 

Yeah. Well, you have the right person, but it doesn't alleviate you from being involved and putting in work. So even if you have a BDM, you still have to be involved in it. It's not many times, it's not like, this BDM is just gonna come in and figure everything out and build everything and figure out what to do and how to do things and close the deals and everything's gonna be great. Yeah, normally it's not turnkey at all.

 

I mean, I'll give you an example. I knew of a property management business here in Texas. They have since sold their business, but they had multiple BDMs. They had a whole bunch. They were shelling out a massive amount of money for cold leads and digital marketing. And they were paying for some sort of sales program that was very expensive with one of these big name gurus who I won't mention in sales.

 

strategies and tactics are outdated and old school, pushy sales, manipulation type stuff. And they were just showing up a massive amount of money for client acquisition. It was ridiculous. And it wasn't really that effective. And they ended up selling the business because really the business was, it was just a numbers play. They were trying to stack in a bunch of doors just to get out and they exited. But, and ⁓ you know, on these,

 

This was the CEO, this was somebody that was coaching in the industry, but the margins were really difficult and that was because they were taking on bad doors and bad clients. All right, so what do we want to share today? So what if? We're gonna play the what if game because this is what we did. And actually, this is something we had kicked around for a while and then I was talking actually with John and I said,

 

this is this thought that I had, and what if it worked like this? But then what if we actually do it like this instead? And ⁓ then Jason and I had been kind of chatting about this, and we've developed this idea. I think it's something that we feel like we have to do for this industry. Because...

 

Man, it just gets under my skin so bad when I see property managers doing everything wrong. And when I see them failing. And especially when they're trying so hard and it's still not getting them the results that they want. So what if there was a way to press the easy button and just have growth happen and you don't actually need to be involved in it at all?

 

What if you were able to just have the company grow and you don't need to take any of the action. You don't need to be involved in the growth. You don't need to do any of the strategies. You don't need to buy leads. You really would just be closing a deal, having a conversation with somebody who has already warmed up and ready to go.

 

which is I think what most people want when they say they want leads. Right. They say they want to leads. don't actually, you don't want leads. Let's be real. Easy lay down You don't want a lead because you have to work that lead. What you really want is you want someone to come to you and say, hello, I'm ready to sign up with you. And what do I need to do to make that happen? I get it because I was there. That's, I did not want to do sales in my business. And that was the only way after.

 

I had grown it to a certain point. That was the only way I would sign on a new client is if they came to me and said, hi, I want you to be my property manager, but what do I need to do? Yeah, here, sign this. Here's the agreement. Lay it out. Easy deals. it. So I know that that's what you guys want is you just, you love the actual closing and the pitching of the deal. You don't like all of the other stuff. You don't like the outbound calls and the follow-ups and the scheduling and the rescheduling.

 

and the nurturing and the warming up of the relationship. And a lot of times, networking, sometimes they like it and sometimes they don't. They're like, well, I don't know, I could kind of do that. But it's not really like you're forte. Really, you're like, I would love to just get on calls with people all day who are just ready to go. Yeah. They're just ready to go. So what if that was an option? That would be a game changer for this entire industry.

 

and we would make a ton of money here at DoorGrowl and you, if you're one of our clients, would make a ton of money and it would be a win-win-win for all three parties. the salesperson would also make a ton of money. So with this idea, I feel like we can richen the entire industry, which is exciting to me. We will be creating multi-million dollar business owners with this new offer that we're going to be launching. We're calling it

 

The Door Machine, that's our working title right now. So this is gonna be a game changer for the industry. If you are interested in maybe what this might be, because we don't wanna announce it yet. Yeah, I'm not fully... Then reach out to us. out to us and we're gonna be starting with our clients that have gone through our rapid revamp, where we rehab their business.

 

These are clients that we've cleaned up their branding, their website, their sales pitch, their pricing, their purpose, which is the actual product. ⁓ We're rehabbing, it's like bar rescue for property managers. We're cleaning up the business. We are gonna start with them, because we need all the friction removed from the business. And a lot of your businesses have a lot of friction and a lot of problems and a lot of leaks in the hose, and you're thinking, how do I turn on the hose more?

 

the host has these massive leaks. So we're going to be working with businesses that we've cleaned up the leaks first. They're going to get dibs to this. And so if you're interested in this, come to DoorGrow. We'll show you the leaks. We'll help you clean that up. And then you will be one of the people that can get access to the door machine where basically we give you the doors. We throw the doors at you. You have lay downs and your business can just scale and grow and

 

We are almost like a partner with you. We're involved in the growth of your business and we'll help you grow it. These are doors you wouldn't have gotten otherwise and it's gonna be a no-brainer. So yeah, so reach out and let us know if you're interested. Anything else we wanna say about it? I don't think we're gonna give too much more We're keep it a little close to the best. Right now. Because it's not public yet. we haven't, it's...

 

It hasn't been officially launched. We have chatted with a few of our clients about this so far and all of them said yeah, like I'm in, it. I'll give one other clue about something other than this that we're also doing. We're also going to be launching a new community, an advanced community, leveraging AI, leveraging AI tools, giving access to AI stuff that is going to be, I think, also a game changer for the industry.

 

We're gonna be consolidating our Dorgo Club Facebook group, our Telegram community for clients into one platform that's gonna be a game changer for the industry. And we're figuring out some low dollar price points to get people in to this group so that you can easily get your first 10, 20 units, which would make affording our mastermind program easy, offset, a no-brainer, already paid for basically. And so these are some of the things on the horizon.

 

and I've got some new team members helping me take sales off my plate. And so I'm gonna go deep into the rabbit hole of building all this stuff out. And we've got a really strong vision. think this is gonna be, this coming year for DoorGrow is gonna be one of the biggest, this will be the biggest. I think this year we may make as much money and have as much impact as we've had in the entire life of our business over the last decade and a half. So I think it's gonna be that significant. So I'm excited to see what we're able to create.

 

and I think it's going to be a game changer. We've got some strategies where we're going contrarian in the opposite direction of AI. And we're leveraging AI, but I think the future is human. And I think depth is going to be the key to scalability. And we're going to be applying that to DoorGrow, and we're going to be helping our clients apply that. And it's going to be a game changer because the more AI slop and goop and grossness and junk that's out there because anything can be created now,

 

the more humans are gonna matter if you do it in the right way. You gotta leverage, you gotta use AI. You gotta get on that AI stuff, but you gotta do it in the right way. And where you can use humans, where you should use humans, you gotta go all in on that. that's part of our strategy for the next year and beyond. So stay tuned, it's gonna be amazing. So anything else we should say before wrapping this up? ⁓ Nope, do you wanna talk about the newsletter?

 

What about it? We have a newsletter. I'll mention it in our little outro here. Great. I don't know if that was in there. So I'll mention that. So for those of you that watching, listening, if you've ever felt stuck or stagnant in your property management business, you want to take it to the next level, reach out to us at drover.com. For a free training on how to get unlimited free leads, this leads training, you can just text the word leads to 512-648.

 

Also join our free Facebook community just for property management business owners by going to doorgrohclub.com. And if you would like to get the best ideas in property management, join our newsletter by going to doorgroh.com slash subscribe and get tips, ideas, Sarah writes stuff, I'll write stuff. Like you'll get some really good info from that. And if you found out, if you found this to be even a little bit helpful,

 

any of our episodes, don't forget to subscribe and leave us a review. We'd really appreciate it. helps us reach others and help others. And until next time, remember the slowest path to growth is to do it alone. So let's grow together. Bye everyone.