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What tactics are today's most innovative restoration companies using to build workforces that attract new staff, retain top employees, and get the most out of every worker? The team at KnowHow just decided to ask them!
In this podcast, we sit down with some of the top performers in the restoration industry and ask them how they built a world-class team culture in such a volatile industry. Like everything KnowHow does, we've geared it to be ridiculously actionable, so you can act on your learnings right away.
The restoration industry is too competitive to not be constantly learning. Stand on the shoulders of giants by borrowing the playbook of today's most successful companies. Head to tryknowhow.com to help your staff get ahead.
Nate Weathers South East Edited
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[00:00:00] The restoration industry is under siege. Sales are soft. Margins are razor thin. Getting paid feels like pulling teeth. This is a wartime environment, and restoration leaders need battle tested tactics that work when everything's on the line. You are listening to Mission Critical, the podcast where the industry's elite operators share the systems, strategies and scars from the trenches.
I'm Leighton Healey, the CEO of KnowHow, and we spotlight restorers who refuse to go quietly into the night. Today's guest is Nate Weathers the quiet engine behind one of the most disciplined sales outfits in the industry. He leads market development at Southeast Restoration, a dominant regional operator across Georgia and Tennessee.
Last year, Nate rolled out four verticals across seven cities. For 2026, no new programs. Not until the current ones are fully [00:01:00] optimized and delivering. ROI. Nate's team doesn't guess. They enter every market by interviewing ideal customers and building the playbook around what they hear. They track every step in the CRM from research to outreach to backlog contribution.
They know what's working, what's not, and when to cut bait. His reps don't do casual drop bys to their customers. Instead, they research ahead and come prepared with tactical questions. You could say that they earn the right to advance with a customer, and when a customer relationship stalls, they don't panic.
They just double down on the ones that show signal. Nate is an all star example of what a great sales leader looks like, and in this episode, a masterclass in sales infrastructure. How to forecast in a lumpy industry. How to build repeatable performance and how to lead with systems instead of vibes.
Leighton: Welcome back to [00:02:00] the Restoration Playbook Podcast where we get into it with some of the killer operators in the industry And today I get to interview a hunter that I've been hunting for quite a while. Nate I've been trying to get you on the podcast man for I mean let's be honest it's been a while
Nathan Weathers- Southeast Restoration: while.
Leighton: uh
Nathan Weathers- Southeast Restoration: Most of that's on me.
Leighton: Well I'm just gonna chalk it up for you know uh the type of people that we like to get on the podcast are busy and they've got full schedules and so it's great to have you here And I'd love for people that have never had a chance to meet you and and maybe meet Southeast. Take a minute and don't be bashful. Tell us who are you and also tell us a little bit about Southeast, one of the most impressive teams in the industry.
Nathan Weathers- Southeast Restoration: Thank you. I appreciate that. That's an honor and it's an honor to be with you guys today as well. I had the honor of knowing a few of southeast restoration leaders back before 2020 and they saw it fit to bring [00:03:00] me on board about midyear. And I've been grateful ever since.
It is a rapidly growing company, one that cares about culture and its people at the heart of everything that we do. and that also goes externally. So we show that service to our customers as well and make sure that that core and that culture comes through as well.
I started out being a regional manager. We call it a district director here covering, overseeing half of our eight locations in Tennessee and Georgia.
And, uh, about two years ago, um, founder came to us and said, hey, I'd like for you to oversee the company as far as market development and work with our reps and build a 25 year legacy, even even bigger. So that was a big honor. Uh, that's what
Leighton: Hmm
Nathan Weathers- Southeast Restoration: doing ever since.
So, uh, I feel, uh, a strength in that.
I've been doing sales and sales management, uh, for most of my career, and I love building teams and galvanizing, fortifying, giving them all the tools and resources that [00:04:00] they need to win. Southeast obviously is a massive, at least in the private world, a massive, mitigation and restoration company.
But we still act and conduct ourselves as a caring, uh, small business. And, uh, I think that's a, a key to our growth and our culture as well.
Leighton: So so let me ask you you know Nate so you mentioned you said hey my most of my career has been in sales and managing sales teams and um so cut let me circle back in a moment First thing you know I just wanna get right to kind of like today is we're kind of in this kinda almost I would call it almost like an interperiod between we need to end the year strong but we also need to prepare you know all our dry powder and our plants for next year. The average restoration company I know cause we do all these studies the average restoration company is doing somewhere around whether you're independent or [00:05:00] franchise you're doing somewhere between three to 5 million a year. Now outfit is doing many many multiples of that And so some people are are right now trying to wrap up and then plan next year for something that you guys might knock off in say a month. So tell us what is it like bringing in a sales program the size of yours and preparing for next year. What does that look like? What does your world look like right now?
Nathan Weathers- Southeast Restoration: Well, you probably don't want to know my calendar looks like a bad game of Tetris currently, but it involves a couple of different things. Number one, I, um, I wanna make sure that have the right message going out into the field to attract the type of customers that we actually want to work with. And I know that may sound a little pompous, uh, it's not meant to be, but there are specific [00:06:00] places that Southeast shines and there's things that we just don't want to get into, markets that we don't wanna get into.
And that's okay. I think any good wise business, uh, thinks through their targets and instead of going very wide and shallow, we go very deep and strategic. So that's part of the mindset that we have going into this year, ending the year strong. In most cases, um, we do have a bit of a lull. As, you know, coming into Q1 as, as a lot of companies do outside of those that deal with ice conditions and freezes and things of that nature. Um, we're in Georgia and Tennessee, so we have a little bit of that, but not a lot. So my goal is to stabilize our growth and make sure that we don't have any of those gaps within the year. So that includes what are we spending in our budget? How are we protecting our ROI. Do we even know what that data is? And I know a lot of companies out there just getting started and they're spending a [00:07:00] lot of money to get the phone to ring. But I would, I would ask them to think specifically, what are you using those dollars and what is your expectation of that spend? Um, so this is all part of the planning we have for next year.
Leighton: And what do you how do you think about this Nate. When I hang out with kind of these these let's call it these capital groups that are you know trying to roll up this industry they will you know kind of provide their thesis on why they're different and unique and all these different things But one of the little kind of cheeky questions I like to ask them is I say how do you think about forecasting sales in this industry. It's almost like how many analysts have you gone through trying to create you know like a three-year forecast right And because this is a lumpy industry with a lot of unpredictability. In your world, as someone who is leading the sales strategy for one of the leading brands, what would be your response to say like some analyst who you know just working way too late at the [00:08:00] office bumps into you at a cafe and you say hey you look really stressed out. He's like yeah you know I'm trying to create a sales forecast for you don't want to hear like no I wanna hear a property restoration company. I dunno if you know anything about that, you're like I know a few things about that. And what advice would you give for some stressed out analyst about how you actually think about forecasting revenue for an industry like this.
Nathan Weathers- Southeast Restoration: I think one of the two metrics specifically that would help that conversation at the coffee shop with the analyst that's stressed out would be book management, customer management at the rep level. Um, and then also really looking at effectiveness of that, which is normally an indication of sales backlog, right?
So you've got a couple of different things working at the same time. One is a leading indicator, one is a lagging indicator. And those two things combine, seeing how they're [00:09:00] managing their book, meaning what are they doing for, we, we hate using the, the words route stops. I believe that's something that the USPS and the Amazon trucks do.
That's not what we do. We do quality sales touches. What are we doing for quality sales touches? How is your effectiveness in the field showing that in the way of real revenue that's sitting in the backlog, that gives us the data to say we need to go a little, put a little gas on this fire.
Or hey, this is not working and we need to either tweak the program that we have for that specific vertical, or we need to figure out something that would make our reps in the field more successful, uh, on a global level, a company level.
Leighton: And gimme a sense of um like right now we're seeing for example like in this industry there hasn't been a lot of major weather events for a while but at the same time you know KnowHow [00:10:00] we have been pretty aware through our reporting that people are beginning to think about diversification starting to think around how do we choose our revenue streams based on which ones provide the best gross margin. You know some people are really hot and cold about program work hot and cold about carrier work. Some are you know if it's not direct commercial work I don't wanna talk about it. I mean there's there's so much noise right now around what is the right recipe your book of business. How do you think about that because I think it's confusing and there's a lot of conflicting messages. Two years ago for example all of our data showed everyone wanted to just like you know throw out TPA work and everyone was gonna be doing commercial And then fast forward the next year now everyone likes TPA work but they want to go recon recon recon. And and and now you know it seems like everyone is like no no no you gotta get back to basics back to water mit you know direct water mit, small jobs. It's a lot of contrasting information.
Nathan Weathers- Southeast Restoration: Yeah. [00:11:00] For sure.
Leighton: So give us some clarity here. Like what what do we do with all this variety?
Nathan Weathers- Southeast Restoration: Yeah, I, I appreciate the question, and of course, I think there's a lot of variation in the answer, depending on where you are in the country, what your capabilities are as a company. There are companies that start out specifically doing commercial work, and that's the way they've been for 20, 30, sometimes 50 years. We started out back in 99 doing residential only. So we have made a shift to get into commercial work. But I will say that we have a legacy of doing residential work. There is a lot of noise out there, Leighton, and it goes back to you choosing your own destiny. And that destiny has to be something that you either have a affinity for and you have the capability for with your teams. Because if you try to stretch and grow too hard, you're gonna have overwhelm and burn out, and all of a [00:12:00] sudden you're gonna make a really good attempt at something that you can't finish. And we wanna make sure that we are equipped, we've thought through the processes, we have more processes and more data to give us those indicators than probably any other company that I'm aware of.
And we're friends with a lot of those that are watching and listening right now. But I believe the noise has to come down to where is it that you have the capability? Where is it that you see your strongest suit? And then lean in and then do the fundamentals, and then get back to basics. Don't be the company that goes and chases every shiny thing. That's a losing recipe in my opinion. You have to do what is true to your company, how you're built. And yes, you can try new verticals and they may not work. And we do that. We do that quite often. I released four brand new vertical programs in one year last [00:13:00] year. And I did that for a reason because I wanted my 21 representatives that go out in the field in seven different cities to come back with a lot of data to say, I'm not good at this. We're not good at this. Or, hey, we've just found a new niche that we need to, to go exercise. So I believe that you have to stick with what, you know, be open to some of those new ideas, but don't go to every shiny thing.
Everybody's got an opinion, especially on social media, about what needs to happen, where you need to go. Stick true to what you know, and make sure your people have the capability to actually serve with excellence, not just lackluster performance because that's gonna be a vertical or direction that your company's gonna go and have trouble with in the future. You have to build it. But when you do, again, get back to those fundamentals, work it, we're doing literally no new programs for this coming year, 2026, none. When I told my team, they took a sigh of relief [00:14:00] because I've put four new ones on 'em last year. But what we are doing is doubling down on each one of those vertical markets and making sure we're extracting all the goodness, all the return on the investment that we've put in over the last really 18 months or so. So I hope that helped answer that question.
Leighton: Yeah. What I'm hearing you say is that well, when we got started right Is at the end of the day you you have a company where there's certain things you value right. There's a certain approach in the market that you want to take and some customer profiles don't frankly value that approach as much as some some other customers really do value that approach. It sounds like you know there's there's kind of two lenses it seems like you're looking at the market through. One is the lens that you've created for yourself which is this is just the way we like to do business. And then there's the lens of okay, you know within our region it seems like there is opportunity within these verticals, so let's run this playbook and put it to the test. And so there was some exploratory work there. [00:15:00] Is that a fair summary?
Nathan Weathers- Southeast Restoration: Very fair. Yeah. And I love the
Leighton: Yeah Mm-hmm
Nathan Weathers- Southeast Restoration: playbook, because every single one of these verticals has a very specific playbook, and we lean on that.
Leighton: Mm
Nathan Weathers- Southeast Restoration: We want to create repeatable success. And we
Leighton: Mm-hmm
Nathan Weathers- Southeast Restoration: have trainings, whether they be virtual or in person, I did, I did four today, with some of my locations.
We, we know exactly questions we're going to ask. They're very candid. and they're very action oriented. But if we don't have those tasks in our playbook ready to roll, much like a quarterback looks at his arm before each play, Then we don't know which way we're heading, but we've all got the same playbook.
And I would say that eases confusion. It gives more clarity, and it definitely gives everybody peace as far as the vision, uh, uh, of where we're going as well.
Leighton: And Nate if we put those if we put those playbooks in a pot and we boiled it down What are the common denominators that those playbooks share
Nathan Weathers- Southeast Restoration: I'd say the biggest thing that would [00:16:00] rise to the top of that pot would be ownership.
Leighton: Mm-hmm
Nathan Weathers- Southeast Restoration: Who is doing what many times, especially when you grow rapidly with people and there's multiple teams and layers of teams, nobody really knows what they're doing. Should they? Sure. Um, do they many times, no they don't.
They're coming in, they've got good hearts, they've got good work ethic, but they need direction. And so ownership, meaning you're doing these things and they are due by this date and this is gonna help this cause. those are the types of things that we do. I would say another really is, um, accountability and execution.
Very, very different things. You can hold a team accountable and say, these are the things that I expect out of you. It's up to them to actually execute on those things with their customers in the field, restoring a home or a property, mitigating a water loss, whatever the case may be. And that is that inspecting what you [00:17:00] expect part of leadership that we have to always remember holding them accountable. They know what the clear result needs to be, and then making sure that they actually do that. And that's something that I always ask my team to hold me accountable as well. Hey if you're not clear, let's talk about that and, and let's fix me as your leader.
Leighton: Hmm
Nathan Weathers- Southeast Restoration: gonna do this collaboratively and we're gonna, we're gonna win together.
Leighton: There's a lot of ownership there. You know you referred to um you know your team had this sigh of relief because you're not expanding into new verticals but it sounds like you know they did a lot of bush whacking. You know they they did a lot of bush whacking in their reporting back. So it's obviously ownership in terms of really in a sense, testing out that vertical and then there's the accountability. I just have a quick question that I'd like to to actually ask you kind of a broader question but how do you think about accountability on something as abstract as an unknown market?
Nathan Weathers- Southeast Restoration: Good question. I think the answer to that [00:18:00] is in the preparation, you mentioned bushwhacking and essentially doing a lot of research and trial and error. What I would correct you is we did a lot of research within the markets that we chose to go into by interviewing the customers that we hope to gain. Let me unpack that just for a second. I personally, and my team sat down with, uh, headmasters of private schools. One of the blessings of our business is we get to work educational continuity, right? If they have a water loss or the lab catches on fire or the kitchen, students don't go to school, and specifically in private schools where their parents are paying for that, that's not a good thing. So we sat down for months with headmasters, with principals of schools and said, if we built an emergency response program for you specifically, what would that look like? And that was it. We shut up and took notes. [00:19:00] And we did that again and again and again. At the end of that exercise over several months, we put all those and we overlaid that and we had a very definitive list what our program needed to look like. So I felt like we had the playbook to win the game before we even snapped the ball. And that turned out to be true. So as much pioneering and bush whacking as there was, that was more working out the kinks of the messaging from the reps, not necessarily the basics and the commitments of what we had said we would do for that client. So, that is specifically how we judged what we expected because we knew the answer of excellence straight from those that would be signing a contract with us. Right. The accountability part. It's not that hard once you set that, because now you have the parameters, you have the five things, or 10 things or one thing that you say that sets you apart from [00:20:00] any other restoration company in the country, and it's the one thing that they bought, right? From that, the accountability really comes from making sure we have all the things we expected from that exercise, um, accounted for. So I always say if it's not in CRM, it didn't happen, right? don't know. 'cause I sit here in Atlanta, Georgia and I've got, I've got ladies and gentlemen all over the place, we want to go and learn from what we've done and see if they've been accountable, that needs to be tracked somehow. There are amazing ways today that didn't exist even a year ago on using AI. All kinds of wonderful tools that we're starting to look at to help us with realtime coaching in the field where I or someone else doesn't have to do ridealongs. That's a get to for me because that fills my cup. I love being out there in the trenches and knowing what they're running up against [00:21:00] because we can handle it right then and there, but I can't do that for all those reps. So it's accountability seen by, really are they, are they working the plan that we've put together and are the results coming? Um, I know that was a lot of context
Leighton: it makes sense
Nathan Weathers- Southeast Restoration: pretty good, uh, question there, but, uh, that's what we do.
Leighton: I think it's a it's a robust question for like a robust problem because the end of the day um you know what you you unpacked is you identified a market. You you took a sampling of who who are good examples of optimal customers within that market And then you sat down and rather than you know hawking your wares you you said we would like to just listen, right. I'd like to get your response to this is because I think that most players in your industry recognize that they have to think about diversifying their revenue even just so they're not too concentrated on one source Because I think that, for example, [00:22:00] those that maybe overly relied on say carrier driven work a lot of them really experienced what happens when carriers have a low claim year in some regions. And one of the things I think creates a lot of heartburn for business owners is that when they give a sales rep or or let's call it some type of a sales leader the the leave to go and sniff out a new market or pursue kind of a a new service line, it's hard for them to manage because there's not always a lot of outputs. You know there's a lot of inputs a lot of dinners, a lot of like let's call it like qualitative descriptors of things that made it a productive week. But it's very intangible and I think there can be a lot of capital outlay and people can start to feel nervous that either is this sales rep taking advantage of me. Why am I not seeing results? When should I expect to see [00:23:00] results? I think it's that like long standing challenge that business owners feel which is need to break into a new market but it's so hard to quantify whether or not we're making any traction or making any progress. I'm assuming you know that's something you're familiar with. How how do you think about navigating that early low tangible exploratory process, and how do you manage your sales reps through that period of time?
Nathan Weathers- Southeast Restoration: Great question. I was just talking with our president this morning about this, um, market development is not a, it's not a project. Right? Many times I think, um, business leaders come into this and say, hey, here's the project, here's the scope, here's the money we get to, to, to spend on this thing. And we can, we can have a schedule.
I will tell you some of you that are probably watching or listening as well as my team have, have worked on relational capital for sometimes years. We are starting to see [00:24:00] the fruits of those, but depending on what the vertical is, the adoption, rate, you know, what, how quickly we can actually build relational capital, is really an unknown in business development.
So what I like to focus on is not only book management, but book management through a pipeline. And I've learned from a lot of great people in the industry over the years how to do that well. Down to, and it may sound silly, but have you even researched the customer that you're gonna go call 'em? I have a really hard time and my team will tell you with just drop bys, just, hey, how you doing? And here's some candy. Here's a pen and a pad. That's not quality to me. You're not getting deeper than that surface level. You're still at the 1 0 1 level. You're not at the 2 0 1 or 3 0 1 level where you're starting to really understand that person's business.
Back to what you were saying earlier, we need an opportunity to ask questions, find their [00:25:00] pain points and listen. That listening is what allows us to deepen that relationship. And then, and only then, once we know their pain, we can start to say, hey, we have a solution there. But pipeline management, I do this because it's literally laid out in our systems as such, go research, go set the initial, meeting, if you will, if there's a presentation involved, which many times there is, who do we need to have there? And there's things that have, they have to do in our CRM that says that they have earned the right to go to the next step in that pipeline. So for me, overseeing that department and seeing where we're weak. I get to see it very, very simply. And some of the calls that I had earlier today, we don't have enough in those initial stages of our pipeline, meaning we need to go prospect, right?
That's a clear indication of that. Um, some of these customers have agreed to partner with us, and that's great, but to me that's the [00:26:00] crack of the gun at the start of the race. They've just agreed to partner. We still haven't earned their business or their referrals. How do I know that? Because we look at the pipeline together and we coach from that.
So that gives me a very, as close to transparent view or perspective of the effectiveness of that specific rep than any other thing I know today. There may be better ways to do that, but at least right here today, that's, that's how we manage that and gives us that better view into return on investment and effectiveness of that specific sales program or sales representative?
Leighton: There's a lot that you're saying there that I think is just textbook like textbook advice. And and so I wonder if I was to just like parcel that up a bit. I like to drill into one particular aspect of that. So pipeline, we keep talking about pipeline. So anyone in sales probably heard the term pipeline but I think what you're talking [00:27:00] about is you're also talking about pipeline coverage which is this this concept that right now for example right now we're recording in November and so a lot of individuals are thinking you know what what do I need to do today to kind of again keep my crews going you know till the end of November the end of December. What you're what you're talking about is what are the inputs that we're making right now that essentially are going to put up opportunities that may not actually come to fruition for you know three months six months 12 months and beyond. Ultimately when I think about what you're describing I just think about that almost like you see kids at a party trying to keep the balloon from touching the ground right. And it's it's you're you're you're you know you're basically putting a whole bunch of stuff in flight balance in a sense those engagements with qualified customers. And in a sense at the same time understanding that uh you have to have some type of a line of sight on when that will come up for harvest and it can't [00:28:00] just be smoke. Walk us through like here's a conversation that just find is so common in sales teams. You got that guy on your sales team and you think his pipeline is just full of smoke. It's just a bunch of nothing. And every time he comes into that standup he's saying you know what I had a great call with so and so. I think you know this is gonna come together or this is looking positive. Or you know what, I know that dinner was definitely worth it. And you're looking at their expense request and you're just like man like I honestly doubt this person. What does a reality chat conversation look like between you and a sales rep that you think is honestly either over optimistic or you think that their pipeline is more smoke than anything.
Nathan Weathers- Southeast Restoration: Um, when I was a regional manager, my first early years being at Southeast, I, heard that a lot. And it was really from our production folks. Hey, I couldn't get this trade partner out there. We couldn't get the material selections done on time. It ended up being story time, and I [00:29:00] finally decided I'm not gonna listen to the story. I know contextually there's some bits of the story that kind of matter. But if we can't schedule and hold people accountable to a schedule, meaning in our system, not on a yellow pad, that they can erase or lose or what have you, but hold them accountable, then it's not separating the fact from the fiction.
I want the facts. I don't want the story. I've got this label on the bottom of one of my monitors here that says, drive with the data. And I will tell you before being part of Southeast, didn't drive with the data or the metrics that I needed to do what you're saying. But the time that I've spent with Southeast and the metric, um, the analytics tools that we have allow me to kind of separate that fact from the fiction.
So in the same way we have specific markers where it shows that, hey, they're stuck with this particular customer. They've been [00:30:00] there for six months. My conversation with them is, what are you doing that you haven't already done? Have you spent enough money? Many times, they haven't spent any money, meaning, a, a dinner or something that I would consider kind of an extra mile activity, something a little above and beyond than just the stop by. When they have and they're not seeing traction month after month after month, we cut 'em. We cut the action for that particular potential customer, and I tell them to upgrade. And that's a mindset. No salesperson in the world wants to cut any organization from their book of business. And the off chance that that one person, one time a year is gonna give 'em a million dollar job, right? We all know this to be true. I have found in my career that less is definitely more and less allows you to get deeper. So when we cut them, my instruction is don't let [00:31:00] that spot sit. You find someone and upgrade, right? And so, it's difficult. It only gives us part of the answer, but it definitely shows me where the action and the efficiency of that relationship is going.
And I'll, I'll be honest with you, we literally have a, a sequence of data that tells us a stagnant organization, which means they haven't gotten any business out of them last year or this year. And I literally say, hey guys, this is where you can make space to upgrade. This is 20% of your book of business.
And I know all those salespeople that are watching this know exactly what I'm talking about. They don't wanna let go of that person. They have a great relationship. They say, hey, Nate, that person really likes me. That's great, but they're not referring business. They love you. They love all the gifts that you give.
They love that you come by. It's great that you know, when their birthday is. Outside of that, there's not a lot of depth business wise, right? And that's what I train our guys to continue to [00:32:00] be good farmers of that. Rotate those crops and make sure that we're getting the weeds out and, and getting good fruit and good vegetables, if you will, uh, from, from our book.
Leighton: I'd like to get your comment on on something that I'm seeing is that a lot of teams seem to be um looking towards these kind of fractional sales offerings. In a sense they're they're subbing out um the sales management of their teams to some type of service provider. And I think there's some merits to it, but I think sometimes underneath it what's going on I and I could be wrong is you've got a leadership or management team that probably maybe more they kind of came from the tools Maybe they came uh from being a contractor themselves And the thought of building out a sales program is not not their strength. I'd be interested to hear your perspective on two things One is what do you think about these in a sense these kind of third party of sales [00:33:00] programs that come in. And secondly, for someone who wants to build it in-house and they need to they need to find that key sales leader to build their sales program around how do you attract like a high quality sales leader?
Nathan Weathers- Southeast Restoration: Good question. So I'm writing these down so we can stay on track here. Um. So the fractional piece, it, yes, that's definitely a trend. I see that quite a bit. Um, and yes, to your point, it does have some merit. I believe that that person, I think ultimately I aspire to be one of those people when I retire or something, right? But, I believe that probably the weakest point in that type of situation is they don't know your business like you do. And they can spend a lot of time and a lot of money, and they can learn, that's great, but you've got to have work coming in so that you can pay your technicians and your project managers and, and all the folks that [00:34:00] you want to keep on your team.
So, I think for smaller companies it may be a great solution. I would say the larger you are, and specifically if you're multi location like we are, it's super hard. Super, super hard. So we have to make sure that we know our markets well enough, that we're actually going with the right program and the right messaging and the right folks in those situations. As far as finding a high powered sales leader, you know, there's so many wonderful managers of mine that I have worked with and for over the years, and I think all of them would agree that, obviously we all have our strengths and weaknesses, and you wanna hire a team that plays to your weaknesses, right? So being a sales leader, you're only as good as the health of the team. We talk about growing our people up into the right. We talk about this all the time, up into the right, up into the right, that can be a great culture fit. And we've had this before, and that can be a very poor performer. So if you're looking [00:35:00] at your x and y axis and, and doing these these up into the right type of, assessments, um, great culture fit, but are they a performer? Do they have grit? Do they have passion for what they do? And can they really galvanize and collaborate with teams? I believe the great sales leaders of today are those that know their people personally, that choose to get in the trenches and learn from them. And then really keeping the deficiencies of the team at a minimum because they're collaborating with those team members very, very often. And so it takes a little bit of a unicorn, to find a person that does all those things naturally, but I think that, if there's such a thing as a strong sales leader, it's someone who does those three things very, very well. and
Leighton: Hmm
Nathan Weathers- Southeast Restoration: often.
Yeah
Leighton: You know a lot of times business owners think about do we do we build the talent or do we buy the talent [00:36:00] right? And is it easier to bring someone in even from a different industry
Nathan Weathers- Southeast Restoration: Yeah.
Leighton: You know say train them up on the nuances of property restoration. Or do I take someone who's been you know running one of my locations or who's been my you know my top estimator and see if I can develop them. What do you have as a preference? Ultimately, we all like to think that we can just build and mentor and coach, but business moves fast. What's your advice in that kind of build versus buy when it comes to
Nathan Weathers- Southeast Restoration: Yeah.
Leighton: sales function of a business
Nathan Weathers- Southeast Restoration: I've been in several very large businesses, none of which, uh, apply in the context of Southeast Restoration in my career. What I've seen time and time again is that, at least in my history, it's been better to build that person. So a little plug for the, uh, the book, Ideal Team Player by Patrick Len. He says they have to be hungry, humble, and smart, right? Hungry, humble, and [00:37:00] smart. Notice the order there, right? They, they gotta want it. You know, I think a lot of folks are really, really smart and they know it, but they're not hungry and they're definitely not humble. The humility, if you will, comes through how coachable, how adaptable they are, and then smart's.
Great. Uh you and I, and a lot of the viewers here have probably watched a, a lot of very intelligent people run businesses in the ground. But you gotta be hungry, humble, and smart. And I would give that an amen and a hallelujah, uh, to Patrick Lencioni for writing that, because that is literally how we bring people in. We feel like we can build them and I don't know, unless there's some rare occasion that I'm not thinking about where we haven't in my years here, been able to do so. I believe you can buy smart, but if you're buying, you still have to have those three [00:38:00] identifiers, those three in that order, in my opinion, if you buy, because that's a more of a winning recipe than not every single time.
Leighton: Yeah. Hungry humble and smart. Let's talk about you for a little bit here Nate because you know I
Nathan Weathers- Southeast Restoration: We don't wanna
Leighton: um well. Hey I mean so this is my experience. I remember the first time that you and I interacted, my immediate reaction was the guy seems like a really good dude right. My immediate reaction was you know what the I mean uh team kinda laughs sometimes because of the things that we we care about is we'll call it like the we call it the airport test, and I probably brought it over from someone. But essentially, it's could amongst all the other things and qualifying this individual and whatnot, but there's always that question of if we missed our flight or a flight was delayed or we'd had to we had to have some six hour layover, would we enjoy just spending that like six hours together. And it doesn't mean they have to be an extrovert It doesn't mean they have to be but there's something about. Are there some layers to this person, and [00:39:00] so you got some layers. You got some layers to there Nate which is which is good
Nathan Weathers- Southeast Restoration: that. Thank you.
Leighton: But let me ask you, so one of the things that is very visible for a salesperson is the numbers that they put up or the numbers that they miss. But what's often not seen is everything that's kind of below the surface like an iceberg. All the habits, all the parts of their character and their personality, let's call it all of those that kind of supporting infrastructure. Tell us a little bit about that. What are what are some of the things that that you do to support and sustain yourself as someone who has to be not just a high performer but a facilitator of high performers
Nathan Weathers- Southeast Restoration: Okay then, you're giving me a lot of credit. My wife would say, I no layers and I'm not the kind of guy that you wanna meet, uh, at the airport, but, uh, no, I'm kidding. I am who I am and what you see business-wise is what you will see personally as well. And I think that's just, that's just the way God may be. I think that's a thing [00:40:00] of integrity. I think it's just being a guy who knows that there are people who have come in, in my, outta my life where their yes
was not their yes. And their no was not their, no. There was instability there. And my desire in the way that I was raised is to be a man of integrity, of, of honesty, and to just. Just be me, just be transparent. So, as far as what I do, I love my family, more than life. And that's not just a, a cliche statement. I try to spend as much time as I can with them. I do some really crazy things. I carry a lot of weight around, in a backpack for a whole lot of miles. Some people call that rucking. I do marathons, and that's a mind game, and that keeps me sharp. I think on some level it actually dulls the things that are gnawing at me, because of the pain, but it also allows me to endure. I like doing things like that, that are hard, that are uncomfortable. I've tried to teach every sales team I've ever worked with that [00:41:00] people don't go to the gym and not tear muscles, right? They go to the gym to grow and to grow, you actually have to get uncomfortable. In fact, it's painful and you tear muscles. That's when the growth occurs. So my wife would tell you that I love being awkward or uncomfortable because I believe that's where change occurs. And I use that in every aspect of life. Whether it's helping my girls, my daughters understand life and getting them outside of their comfort zone.
And I think they are much, much better equipped in life now at age 18 and 21 than they ever have been because they knew that their mom and dad were gonna continue to make them feel uncomfortable in certain situations. But I also use it with my team to the extent that every training we have, we do role playing. I know that sounds old fashioned, but I tell you what, you can learn a whole lot about the effectiveness of messaging [00:42:00] when they're presenting to their peers even their boss. But, uh, those are some of the things that I like to practice. I try to read as much as I can. It's never enough. I can never find enough time, and I try to also put myself in teaching and coaching situations, whether it be at church or with a group or mentoring, uh, group, so those are some of the things that I do, underneath those layers.
Leighton: What I hear there's you know hungry humble and smart right. Like reflecting your own codex of what you're what you're looking for. I'm just curious I mean you know you talked about maybe someday in the future where you decide to hang it up and you have a retirement party and who knows, whether that's 20 years five years 10 years whenever it is. But you say maybe I would love to be in a position where I am advising, mentoring, coaching. You you name it right?
Nathan Weathers- Southeast Restoration: Yes.
Leighton: So if if you were in a sense to just kind of lean into the future for a moment, you probably have enough insight into this industry, and your own [00:43:00] business, and the businesses of your peers. If you had to just put your finger on two or three things you'd think are just like classic examples of growth bottlenecks, growth headwinds that people um there's those things that are harder to eliminate those external kind of macro factors that again doesn't have lots to do with what you can control, but there are things we can control. And so I wonder from your perspective and your experience, what would you with a high level of confidence say, hey if your business is not growing at the rate that you want it to grow, you're probably doing a few of these things wrong.
Nathan Weathers- Southeast Restoration: Great question. Wow. I believe it could be a question of focus, for your team. I believe that so many times in this industry, specifically in mitigation and restoration, whether it be residential or commercial, we just want it all. We want 'em all. And I would just go back to some of the things we talked about earlier.
I would tell you that's the wrong approach. Clarity for your reps gives them additional [00:44:00] purpose. I don't know about you, but I tell my representatives: I want you to know, hey, on Tuesday. I'm gonna go see this type of client, this type of vertical, and I get to repeat that messaging 6, 7, 8 times in a day and be effective and tweak my message whole day. Now, that's not always ideal and I get that, and it's not ideal a lot of times with the territories and the reps that we have. But I want them to really hone their craft and get in really, really to that 2 0 1, that 3 0 1 level that we talked about before. And that means being a good listener as well. I would say a lack of focus is where they're just spraying and praying as we would say in the south, right? That's that's never a good strategy in most cases. That's a strategy that's built out of fear or anxiety or something. I don't know. But it's,
Leighton: Yeah, sometimes just caffeine
Nathan Weathers- Southeast Restoration: Sure.[00:45:00]
Leighton: Sometimes there's too much caffeine. Yeah Yeah exactly. Some sales rep with too many Monster energy drinks.
Nathan Weathers- Southeast Restoration: That's exactly right. But the focus is very important. And I would say, for any sales leader, you gotta sing the same song. I think a lot of leaders don't disseminate the vision and the goal of the company to their team like they should, right? We try to meet often to make sure we're singing the same song and we're going towards the same goal. We have big, hairy, audacious goals. You guys know what A-B-H-A-G is? We've had multiple BHAGs since I've been here. We've got one set right now, which is several components long for 2030. And those things are metrically driven. Shocker. We get to look at those every single day, and we can talk to those every single day, but they're visible in our analytics and they're accessible to the entire team at every single level. So, I think focus or lack thereof is a big [00:46:00] problem. I would also say, uh, anticipation. If you're watching this right now, worried about what's coming in January. Hate to tell you, it's too late. Just too late because specifically with market development and relational capital, those things used to be three to six months, I believe. Now that's actually gotten a little bit longer. In certain verticals it may be eight or nine months so I try to keep my team thinking eight or nine months ahead of the game, and so we have specific priorities per quarter that we track metrically and each team, and each rep has ownership of that. And then we can continue to grow on that.
And I will tell you those that don't do the thing, those that are not good users of their time out in the field, they rise to the top. You see 'em very, very quickly, very quickly. There's no guesswork. So we have to go back and say, hey, where were we not clear. I own the fact that [00:47:00] you're not performing well and here's the things that I'm gonna repeat to you or even lay out in greater detail. And now here's the new goal for you. And then we start to pick each other up and continue to grow, or we don't and we have to make other arrangements. So, I think that the focus and anticipation are really as common sense or generic as that may sound, once you continue to ask the questions and dig into both of those and get the clarity that you need as a leader. Everything else is pretty, pretty obvious.
Leighton: And I think that's just good honest road tested advice and I think that I think you would agree that one of the hardest things to break through in a sales leader's mind or sometimes of motivated sales rep is the optimism that has often characterized their entire life. You know what I mean?
Nathan Weathers- Southeast Restoration: Yeah.
Leighton: I think we would agree that it's hard to be successful as a sales rep if you're like a pessimist, right? There is an optimism there. In [00:48:00] fact, one of the the studies we released recently with our partner CR magazine is this kind of pulse check one of the things we looked into is we did this contrast of across all revenue brackets of companies. Um you know how confident are you that you're gonna hit your 2025 number. And then how confident are you that 2026 is gonna be a way better year, essentially you know. And it probably won't surprise you, across every single bracket It was like moderate confidence that we're gonna hit this year's number. Lots of confidence that next year we're gonna freaking crush it. You know what I mean. And it's brought to mind you said yeah based on what? Exactly right Based on you know what kind of pig spleen are you rubbing right? Like it's just like you know what what's going on here man.
But let me ask you this and this is kind of my my last question to you here in our discussion. You mentioned BHAGs you know Jim Collins BHAGS and when I think you know good good to great I also think his Stockton principle right? This idea that you know leaders have to be [00:49:00] optimistic and yet they still have to confront the brutal facts right. And and so
Nathan Weathers- Southeast Restoration: Yes,
Leighton: yeah this that's right .The Stockdale paradox. Sorry Stockdale paradox. So right now um I think that uh you know someone kinda just tuning into this conversation is gonna say so how do I balance my optimism, which is trying to be a pragmatic realistic leader because I need to motivate my people because at the end of the day anything that we do anything we implement from Nate's playbook is gonna be new, and they're gonna need a level of optimism a level of hope to kind of see that over the finish line. And yet they still need to be able to be this to use your slogan on your computer screen right. You know just like just drive with data. I mean really it's facts based decision making. How do we balance optimism with being able to just confront the brutal facts of our industry to be able to get the job done.
Nathan Weathers- Southeast Restoration: I would say to all those that are [00:50:00] watching, if you don't have the systems and the processes to show you what's working, start there. I believe in leaderboards, I believe in departmental dashboards. We scoreboard everything. One of our leaders in another location says if they're taking score, I wanna win. I would also say you don't know if you're winning, if you don't have a scoreboard, So for those that are hoping, and I've talked to so many companies with Restoration affiliates and the Pivot Group and several other groups that we've partaken in over the years, that it's a hope. You have to be, to use your word realistic, not optimistic. You have to be realistic, but you can only be realistic if you can actually see what are you clearly asking that person to do and what their efforts are producing. The Stockdale paradox says that you can handle that brutal truth. If you don't have an [00:51:00] environment in your company where you can be candid, that's a problem. But if you haven't made space for that as a leader, that's your problem. That's what you own. And so being a sales leader doesn't mean you just go out and create programs and don't hold your people accountable. It means that you can do those things, and that's fun and that's great, but are you actually spending the time to ask them the questions of effectiveness and listen. See how your leadership needs to change. Your people will tell you where your weaknesses are through their actions, and sometimes it's a reflection of their inaction as well. I believe that, as we continue to get better, to sophisticate ourselves within this crazy industry, those are the things that you have to have at your disposal. I believe passion persuades, I was created a very optimistic kind of guy. But I also expect results, right? I also expect results.
If you have really, really nice people that you [00:52:00] love, that's great, but sometimes it's not. And when it's
Leighton: Hmm
Nathan Weathers- Southeast Restoration: is when you have to say, are they good for the business or am I holding them back from something they could be better in? I know that's a different perspective, but many times the very few people that we have that turn over in our, in our company, when we have a mutual understanding that this is not the place for them, they go on to do bigger and better things. And if you have that mind of optimism and care about your people, like you say you do, sometimes that's the right answer. And and that's hard. That's hard.
Leighton: Yeah
Nathan Weathers- Southeast Restoration: that's why you're a leader.
Leighton: Yeah
Nathan Weathers- Southeast Restoration: Leaders do hard things
Leighton: And and They lead to hard things. You know Nate there's there's so many strings that I'd love to pull on to go deeper but I wanna be mindful that might just need to be another conversation. Yeah I could just list out all the things you know the way that you think about entering markets the way you think about the tool belt that a sales rep uh needs to have. The way you think about balancing accountability with still creating kind of a small [00:53:00] business vibe. And then even just the way that you obviously hold yourself to a very high level of performance, but you have a very realistic and yet still very optimistic view of how to move things forward. There is something for everybody in this discussion. As we kinda land the ship here, let me give you one last kind of closing question. It could be that your team find their way onto this podcast. And so just to kind of wrap us up here Nate what's what would be kinda one challenge or word of encouragement that you would have even for people on your team.
Nathan Weathers- Southeast Restoration: Wow, you're putting me on the spot here. I believe one of the biggest epidemics in this generation right now is people don't believe in themselves. And because of that, I believe that they don't try as hard as they can because in this day and age, we're just kind of expected to live mediocre. And I don't believe that to be the case. I think we're called to something greater. I think we're called to serve. I think we're called to elevate. I think we're called to raise the [00:54:00] bar. And if you live your life like that, that will show in everything that you do both professionally and personally. That would be my message, not only to my team, but also to all the other sales teams out there that are not doing so well this year. wondering, am I gonna have a job in January? Are they gonna make my quota so large that I'm just never gonna hit this thing? Right? There are those that are out there, and I would tell you if that's you, believe in yourself, number one. But ask for help. Ask for the guidance. There are no bad questions when you're lost, you will take a clue from any place you can find it if you're lost in the woods. If you're lost in the woods, go ask your leader. Go find a business mentor. Go surround your people, with better acumen of the thing that you're trying to get, trying to improve, you're trying to get better with, and, and live that way and, and own it. Be that person and believe that you can do it. And that's not just [00:55:00] philosophical. Uh sales is tough. A lot of folks out there that have never done sales believe that we just play golf and, and have expensive dinners. I'll tell you, some of what we do is some of the hardest to do in the whole world of business.
And it's not just transactional, it's depth, it's time that people don't see. It's the random text on a Sunday afternoon. Hey, man, I was thinking about you. I remember that thing you said on Thursday. I'd like to take you and your wife out to dinner with me and my wife. Would you like that? Sure. Love that.
And then a beautiful thing starts and all of a sudden you've opened up opportunities for you and your company to grow. Those are the things that you just naturally have to start thinking about. I know I went a little philosophical on that, but I believe that you've got to ask for those help, that help and that aid to get better.
Leighton: You know Nate, you're a humble guy. And so I appreciate the you know the caveat say oh you know maybe I got a little bit too philosophical there. Here's my take on it. In a world of [00:56:00] just so much I would call it kind of some people call like hustle porn like just you know get it done grind it out. I think that what you have to say is a refreshing reminder that you can be the guy at the helm of one of the biggest sales programs in the industry and you can value integrity can value humility and you can still be humble right. And and you can be growth-minded. And it's not all about finding that angle finding that quick edge. It's actually about five year BHAGs. It's about building you know legacy oriented businesses, and I can just imagine that these types of dialogues you're on the daily um tuning into uh you know working with you and part of your team, I can see why you know people stick around in your team and put up some big numbers because you know you're you're pretty inspiring guy Nate
Nathan Weathers- Southeast Restoration: Thank you. Appreciate that Leighton. Thank you.
Leighton: Yeah
Special thanks to Nate for showing what real sales leadership looks like in restoration. One thing that [00:57:00] keeps echoing, you don't know if you're winning, if you don't have a scoreboard. Hope only counts when it's backed by data folks at Southeast, that means pipeline stages attract. Ownership is clear and debt accounts get cut to make space for upgrades.
Too many teams go into a quarter with blind optimism. Nate's team shows up with nine months of prep behind them and the systems to track whether it's working or not. This kind of leadership compounds because it's discipline, transparent and built to last. Thanks for listening to Mission Critical. We'll see you in the next episode.