Carey Gille Of Franchise FastLane On How To Turn a Good Sales Team into a Great One

An Interview With Rachel Kline

“Empowerment is defined as “putting power into others.” As a young mother, I made that dreaded Christmas morning mistake of new toys but no power! Where are the batteries? The good news is putting power into these toys is relatively easy to solve. But putting power into people is much more challenging. You must not only see them for who they are today but also for who they can become.

A strong, high-performance sales team is critical to a successful business. But what makes a sales team successful? What strategies can leaders use to create a highly successful sales team? To address these questions, in this interview series, we are talking to CROs, marketing leaders, and sales leaders about “How To Turn a Good Sales Team into a Great One. As a part of this ongoing and insightful series, I had the pleasure of interviewing Carey Gille.

A serial entrepreneur who’s co-founded four unique startups throughout her career, Carey Gille possesses extensive knowledge and insight into the world of franchising and entrepreneurial pursuits. In 2017, Carey co-founded Franchise FastLane which has grown into the #1 FSO in the country representing over 20 brands and awarding over 5,500 territories nationwide. Residing in Omaha, NE, Carey is happily married with three active boys and enjoys reading, running, and inspiring change in others.

Thank you for doing this with us! Before we begin, our readers would like to learn a bit more about you. Can you tell us the “backstory” of what brought you to this career path?

“I graduated during the dot-com boom and even though I graduated magna cum laude and had employment opportunities, I was not interested in the 9–5 corporate grind, I wanted to be an entrepreneur. I partnered with a few others, and we started a software company. We put our computers on credit cards, rotated our office for the day between our homes/apartments, even McDonalds, and took turns taking paychecks. We didn’t have much to invest in marketing, but we started getting local and eventually national media attention, so the big players in the industry took note.

We ended up selling our little company to Intuit and I found myself employed by a highly esteemed Fortune 500 company. We integrated our tool into the TurboTax experience, and it is still there today. I also had the opportunity to lead a team in building their estimated tax solution, as well as contribute to other financial services and early cloud-based solutions. I presented to corporate icon, Scott Cook, on a quarterly basis and learned about net promoter and the value of the voice of the customer. It was an important phase of my career, as I developed as a professional but admittedly, I was anxious to get back to my passion for entrepreneurship.

From there, I was involved in another startup that has grown to over 90 offices worldwide and is now the world’s largest boarding pass and travel data advertiser. It was during this time that I started to follow a franchise back home in the Midwest called Complete Nutrition. I was traveling constantly and was a new Mom. In the early years, my son traveled with me, but I knew that wasn’t practical for long, so I started thinking about a transition that allowed me to prioritize my family.

I met with the co-founder of Complete Nutrition, and he brought me on to lead sales/development. We set a goal of 20 or so locations and instead awarded over 240 locations in less than 18 months gaining the recognition of Entrepreneur Magazine as the “Number Two Top-New Franchise”. Not only that, but my husband and I invested in our own locations as franchisees, and I fell hard for the franchise business model.

My professional journey up to this point was one of extremes…startup to Corporate America and back. What I found in franchising was the best of both worlds. The ability to be your own boss, impact a community, build your own vision — but not on your own. Instead, backed by the infrastructure, processes, training, strategy, marketing, and plan of a proven franchise model and a franchisor.

Vision is defined as “a clear and compelling picture of a preferred future.” In most careers, you get one or the other. You often experience “clear and compelling” through a corporate position…steady raises, benefits, PTO, and more but as a business owner, you get to experience what most would consider a “preferred future” in that ability to own your time, leave a legacy, build your company. But franchising offers BOTH!

When the franchise I was with sold to private equity and I was contemplating what was next, I started working on a business model within the franchise industry in which brands could outsource their sales, allowing the founders to keep their focus on their expertise within the business. I met with the former president of Complete Nutrition for mentorship and found out he was already further along with a similar business model. We decided to partner and started Franchise FastLane in January 2017.

FastLane has become the №1 FSO (Franchise Sales Organization) in the country with over 100 employees. We are partnered with over 25 of the best franchise brands in the country and have awarded over 6,000 territories nationwide. Ten of our brands have experienced private equity events and Franchise FastLane has ranked with Entrepreneur for five consecutive years and with Inc. 5000 for two years. We were acquired by Southfield Capital in May 2023 and at that time, I stepped into the CEO position. This role is very fulfilling, as the FastLane team works together every day to inspire life change and introduce business ownership through franchising.”

Can you share with our readers the most interesting or amusing story that has occurred to you in your career so far? Can you share the lesson or takeaway you took from that story?

“When my partners and I started that little software company straight out of school, we didn’t have a marketing budget, but we needed exposure to tax filers. We wrote a press release and sure enough, local media started picking up the story. I started traveling as a spokesperson for the company and so, on a whim, we decided to send the press release to the Wall Street Journal. And a few weeks later we were featured on the front page of the Wall Street Journal right above the fold. For the next year, I traveled to New York City on a regular basis and was a featured guest on CNN Headline News, CNNfn, MSNBC, U.S. News and World Report, and more. I had only filed my taxes independent of my parents a couple times, but here I was as a nationally featured tax expert speaking on charitable donations and how to maximize your allowed deduction.

Also, when Intuit acquired our company, their logo was Uncle Sam’s hat. They invested in many rounds of design and customer research for this logo. As a young company, we found a freelance designer and paid about $10,000 for three options. With that investment made, we knew we had to choose one. We went with a circle-checkmark design alluding to that affirmative feeling of “check-done!” Intuit acquired our company, took one look at our logo, and decided that was better. The circle-check design is still the TurboTax logo as of this day. Henry Ford was right when he was quoted as saying “Whether you believe you can or you can’t, you’re right.”

Are you working on any exciting new projects now? How do you think that will help people?

“Right now, we have 26 strong franchise brands in the FastLane, all positively impacting communities and introducing business ownership nationwide. Everything from home service to fitness to food trucks to automotive to B2B services to lifestyle and health. Our leading brand in 2023 is Gameday Men’s Health, and it certainly is exciting. For franchisees, they offer a business model of reasonable investment, small team, simple straight-forward business model, differentiated service, recurring revenue, and strong returns. For the mature man, they restore that youthful energy and stamina getting him back in the game by offering high-quality testosterone treatments in a relaxing man-cave type environment.

We are also introducing a new program called “Carpool.” This is an entirely new service offering that will allow us to assist more brands. In 2022, we consulted with 191 brands that were seeking franchise sales and development assistance and we only signed eight new brands. We need to see very specific brand criteria for the FastLane, but how disappointing to not have a solution for so many brands in need.

Carpool is for brands that need infrastructure and coaching but will keep their development efforts in house. These brands will plug into our ecosystem of technology, support, compliance alongside extensive coaching and training as to the FastLane way, but they work directly with prospect and candidates. This is very exciting because it is so much easier to scale and could likely be a solution for hundreds of franchise brands.”

None of us can achieve success without some help along the way. Is there a particular person who you are grateful for who helped get you to where you are? Could you share a story about that?

“So many people! I have a mother and husband that are both endlessly selfless and have stepped in so many times over the years to help me balance that needs of professional, wife, and mother. But I also had so many partners over the years who just believed in me no matter what the role. I was the youngest partner in that first software company when the media responded. I remember asking my partners about hiring a spokesperson, but they didn’t hesitate to tell me why I was the one who would walk into CNN and onto the national stage.

But most recently, my partnership with Ryan Zink at Franchise FastLane and his commitment to ensuring I was in the right role at the right time to tactically drive when we needed results, but then strategically lead when the time was right, eventually stepping into the CEO role with our private equity partners.

If someone asked what we did right at FastLane, the answer is easy…people! I owe this role, this success, to all FastLaners from the earliest days when we were a team of three to our team of over 100 today. There is not one success story I could share that isn’t about other people first.”

For the benefit of our readers, can you tell us a bit about your experience leading sales teams? How many years of experience do you have, and what size teams have you worked with?

“I have been leading teams for over 20 years. The smallest teams within a start up to our larger team of product managers and developers at Intuit to our team of over 100 at FastLane today.”

What do you think makes a sales team great? What strengths or characteristics do you try to cultivate?

We have five core values that are truly core to our DNA as a company. They are:

1. Be Gritty, Be Hungry, Bring It
2. Drive Fast Results
3. No Surprises
4. Have Each Other’s Back
5. Inspire Life Change

As with any department, there can be a lot of different strengths, weaknesses, and personalities. How do you manage such diversity on an individual basis? Is there such a thing as a blanket motivator?

“When we started FastLane, there were other successful FSO’s in the space but one aspect of their business that we recognized quickly is the developers drove the process “soup to nuts.” It was the responsibility of that person to lead gen, register leads, host the calls, chase down the no-shows, map the territories, track the FDD filings and cool down, prep the franchise agreements, market. In most cases, everything was on one person. We quickly recognized an opportunity to structure the business in a way that catered to the diverse strengths of the individual enabling true specialization and laser focus.

One of our first hires was a compliance expert. She specializes in Franchise Disclosure Documents (FDDs) and relentlessly tracks registrations by state, signatures, franchise agreements, cooling docs, signature docs and more. This is what she is good at, and this is where she thrives. Today she leads a team of similar compliance gifted individuals. This personality is not typically our salesperson. In fact, they are very different in terms of natural skill set.

As strange as it would be for us to ask a compliance expert to take a sales call, it would be equally strange for a salesperson to thrive in the role of compliance. When you put people within their areas of innate interest, natural strength whether that is marketing, compliance, sales, media they thrive. Of course, this did mean we needed to invest in a larger team in a timely manner, but the investment was well worth it as we saw happy employees, great results and the beginning of strong culture.”

What strategies have you tried to increase motivation, engagement, and productivity? We want to hear it all; the stranger, the better!

“In addition to our core values, we have a clearly defined Mission and Vision:

Mission: To responsibly drive extraordinary growth for the chosen few.

Vision: To be the leader in franchise development setting industry standards.

Every year, our leadership team takes time away from the day-to-day to review the data and learnings from the previous period, revisit strategy, and then align around that year’s TIF’s (The Important Few as opposed to the unimportant many). We ensure every team member has a direct line of sight between their function and how that contributes to one or more TIF in support of the mission and vision. People need to know and easily be able to state why what they do matters!

We also set quarterly goals to achieve bonuses. We set the sales group up in teams by color and leader and we run fun contests to create a healthy, internal competition. We celebrate and award major milestones such as 300, 400, 500 to 1,000 territories locked. One year we set a goal and told the sales team that if they achieved the goal, the support team would be sent on a tropical vacation. Our sales team knows the support team is the backbone but often unseen is a vital part of our business and worked so hard to see them travel. When they did achieve this goal, each salesperson sent back pics for us to enjoy in team meetings.”

Of all the strategies you’ve tried, which did you find to be most effective? How did this have a direct correlation to sales?

“Again, back to our early days of FastLane, one organizational aspect of the business we learned was very important, very early was brand assignment. At the time, we observed that other FSO’s often had more brands than sales members, so they just ran a simple round robin for leads across their brands to a salesperson with available calendar. What we found in this scenario was a struggle for the team members to personally identify with any brand. They all tended to gravitate to the same one or two brands.

Again, we knew changing this would mean an investment in a larger team, but we decided to dedicate a director per brand. In this structure, they get to know the brand as well as the internal team, they become passionate about the brand, and they start to identify personally with that brand. As they immerse themselves, they begin to eat, sleep, and breathe their assigned brand. If leads are slow, they don’t move on but instead they work to promote and evangelize their brand.

We then organized these Directors in a team under VP’s in which the Directors host the series of calls in Discovery to educate and ensure brand fit but the VP’s step in for the closing. This is important because the nature of Directors calendars does not allow for those inevitable impromptu calls as the signing day draws near…last minute questions around territory, loan or rollover challenges, overcoming fear. At this point, the VP is well-versed and, in a position to truly coach that candidate into the signing if that is what is right for the brand and the prospective franchisee.”

Can you tell us about a time that your sales team outperformed their targets? How high over did they go, and what was that like for everyone involved? Can you share a possible reason for this unique performance?

“The year that comes immediately to mind is 2020, the height of the COVID pandemic. Many franchise business models were impacted dramatically by COVID. The industry was so resilient, and I remember feeling such pride in the strength of our partners, competitors and networks.

As a company that just celebrated our third birthday now employing over 30 people across the country, we were determined to drive a strategy and the needed results to retain our team. We continued to service our existing brands but also pivoted our new brand focus into business models that were recession resistant. For example, home service brands that offer a necessity service. During isolation and travel lock-down, home maintenance became even more important. We brought on brands that cleared drains, sprayed for mosquitos, cleaned and installed gutters, insulated homes. B2B services also continued to thrive, and we saw success with a differentiated garbage compaction company.

In addition to this, the team looked to our core values. They had each other’s back during a difficult time stepping in to meet the unique needs across the team. FastLaners never said “that isn’t my job,” they were there for one another. They were also gritty and determined to inspire life change during such a hard time. Prospects that just lost their 30-year corporate job and always wanted to own a business but now had the push it took to step out their comfort zone while also the time to investigate and better research the opportunity. The strategy shifted, FastLaners rose above and 2020 was our best year yet. As they say, “Life begins at the edge of your comfort zone.”

Great things often take time. What do you think is a realistic timeline to take a sales team from good to great?

“I don’t believe there is a standard rule or even average here. You can find examples of this taking weeks and other instances in which this took years or was never achieved at all.”

Ok. Thanks for all that. Here is the main question of our interview. What are your five strategies that will help turn a good sales team into a great one?

1 . Guide Mentality

“When we hire a new employee at Franchise FastLane, they receive a box of branded swag, a backpack, some cool stuff. But most importantly, they receive a book written by Donald Miller entitled “Building a Story Brand” with a hand-written welcome note from me in the front cover. We start with this because we know the first thing a new hire needs to understand as we all work together to inspire business ownership is that we all absolutely MUST have a guide mentality.

The company and sales team that confuses customers with too much noise is destined to lose. If you are confused, you lose every single time. We currently represent 26 brands at Franchise FastLane. Do you think we ever present a potential franchisee with 26 business ownership opportunities? No! We get to know the prospect’s interest, experience, goals, and financial status, then we present no more than three brands that could be a great fit.

Donald Miller explains that “People don’t buy the best product on the market; they buy the product they understand.” He uses the illustration of picking up a hitchhiker. You pull over and roll down your window. He has one burning need and one burning question, “Can you get me to…?” Let’s say instead you tell him about your mission statement, the make/model of your car, about your playlist. He doesn’t care! He cares about one thing, and you just lost him.

In Jan. 1983, Apple finished production of their new computer that they called “Lisa”. They launched it with a detailed nine-page ad in the New York Times featuring all the specifications and features. It was a dismal failure. Fourteen years later, Steve Jobs decided to try again. The nine pages of technical jargon was reduced to two words, “Think Different.” No computer pictures, no lists of specifications, no noise, just a customer promise. We all know what happened from there.

A good salesperson is a good guide…every time. As our prospects consider franchise ownership, we take them through a discovery process of about six calls. After every call, there are required follow up actions and preparation for the next call. The idea of business ownership is exciting and intimidating, the path must be clear. It is so important that our team realizes their role is that of a guide.”

2 . Understand their “HERO” Status

“Another fatal mistake we see so often is when the company and/or salesperson positions themselves, their product, or their solution as the hero. The customer is always, every time, and without fail, the hero of their own narrative. Customers aren’t interested into buying into your hero status. Miller tells the story of a music streaming service called Tidal. JayZ founded the company and personally invested $56 million. His stated mission was “to get everyone to respect music again.” He pulled in other celebrity musicians to release on his platform all focused on solving a problem for celebrity musicians. He talked about water being free, but music isn’t.

“Social media and twitter literally used him as an example of a rich, entitled celebrity that doesn’t even remember water isn’t free. The public turned away from this group of multi-millionaires with a goal of guilting them into paying more for music. JayZ set himself up as a hero solving for other hero’s and it failed miserably.

Customers don’t need a hero; they need a guide to their own hero journey. It is the salesperson’s number one responsibility to understand what that individual’s hero persona looks like and guide them to that status. Miller states it quite simply “People trust those who understand them, and they trust brands that understand them too.”

3 . Inspire through Example

“I sat in a leadership conference once and was taught, ‘Leadership is not a position or title, it is action and example.’ One reflective question all leaders should ask themselves — If your team was a reflection of you, how would that impact the quality of the organization? There are a couple key ingredients to inspiring others.

The first is authenticity. No matter what your political position, you would have to agree that the importance of an authentic connection was demonstrated in the 1992 presidential debate when a young woman asked about the national debt. One candidate jumped straight into a long answer of political jargon that was challenging to understand. When he concluded, the other left his podium, walked up to her and asked, “Do you know someone or have you yourself lost a job this year? Has this caused pain for you?” Only after establishing an authentic, empathetic connection, did he share his position on the topic. The debate concluded with an uncontested winner.

The second is a legacy of service. As a leader, you are there to serve your team. Be mindful of the endgame, what people will say about you when you are gone. In my role as CEO today, I can relate to the Sales Director working to ensure his/her 10th intro call of the day is just as influential as the first one early that morning. I can relate to the VP working through the fear of a new franchisee. As a leader, it is important to have an understanding of other roles within your organization because you’ve been there, maybe even because you’ve worked them yourself.

We have repped over 40 brands in the FastLane and we have been privileged to work alongside founders that drive the strategy of their business but also remember very well being in the truck themselves cleaning gutters, painting houses, setting up fitness equipment, taking out the trash and more.

A legacy of service was exemplified to me by my parents on a daily basis. Fifty years building a ministry from a living room to a church attended by hundreds — always there to lead through service.”

4 . Direct Line of Sight into the Big Why

“In the FastLane, we are now over 100 employees strong and one discipline we are committed to even beyond mission, vision, core values is a bi-annual process of aligning around TIF’s. T-I-F stands for The Important Few. We all know that if everything is important, nothing is important. Our TIF’s align the team around a common strategic goal that tracks to our mission as a company. The mission is our foundation but the TIF’s are the tactical measurables initiatives we look to accomplish in the coming months as we work to achieve our mission.

I worked for Intuit for five years and they called this “The Big Y.” They illustrated it with an algebraic equation wherein each team or individual had their X that they were tasked to solve for as a factor of that equation for Y.

Whatever the method, it is imperative that every team member has a clear line of sight into the Big Why of the company. Be creative! With our sales team, we liven it up with quarterly goals, sales contests across teams, and milestones to celebrate.”

5 . Empower & Equip

“Empowerment is defined as “putting power into others.” As a young mother, I made that dreaded Christmas morning mistake of new toys but no power! Where are the batteries? The good news is putting power into these toys is relatively easy to solve. But putting power into people is much more challenging. You must not only see them for who they are today but also for who they can become.

First, see them for who they are today. We are all so busy with our calendars and devices, we so often fail to stop and notice. At Intuit, we conducted many forms of market research, but one was what we called “follow me homes.” We would literally watch people at Best Buy select our product and then ask if we could follow them home. (Clearly this was years ago.) The point was we wanted to see their experience from buying our product, understanding how a disc in a box lead them to a cloud solution, setting up their account and so on. We needed to see where they were today.

My son plays baseball and I noticed that every once in a while, I would hear his coach yell “Grant, I SEE YOU!” It was always on a play that wasn’t even his, so I was left confused. I finally asked Grant what he meant by that. He explained that the guy that makes the play gets obvious applause (as he should), but coach was taking note of the little things done right where you are now even when it isn’t your moment yet. For example, when you are in left field and you have to run to back up a throw from home to third. Most often, the catcher gets the praise if the throw is on and the steal is caught as he should, but this coach was communicating to the outfielder that while that wasn’t his play, he saw him right where he was at taking the necessary steps to be ready for his moment.

Second, now see them for who they can become. Dr. Stephen Covey says, ‘Leadership is communicating to people their worth and potential so clearly that they see it in themselves.’ With over 6,000 territories awarded, we have seen so many new hires become incredibly effective salespeople. We hired a former small school basketball coach earning very little. He came in and demonstrated an athlete’s competitive spirit, a strong work ethic, and an insatiable hunger to learn. His Vice President saw him for where he was at and told me what she thought he could be. He started with an average brand, we promoted him to a home run brand and now he leads a team. Honestly, I feel remiss sharing just one story here as we have seen this time and time again…potential recognized and achieved.

We have also seen 10 brands now experience private equity events. They had a strong vision, a good business model but they didn’t know how to grow. Together we drove nationwide growth in achieving hundreds of locations and they attracted the attention of private equity and earned an exit dream. We had to see them for where they were when we signed them but also believe in what they could be.

In my own life, I was empowered by people who saw me where I was at but also where I could go from a national tax expert at 22, to leading a team of developers, to aligning airlines around an aligned travel data monetization platform, to leading development for a nutrition franchise, to building and now leading an FSO that inspires life change and business ownership. I was and still am empowered and now, I know I must pass that on!

Maybe not as inspiring to talk about but equally important is that every sales team needs to be equipped. We immediately invested in operations, compliance, technology, automation, and still look at the sales process on a regular basis to determine how we can allow the team to focus on their prospects’ hero journey, not the logistics. Three years ago, we even totally transitioned from one CRM to another, investing extensively into an optimal experience for our internal sales team. Two years ago, we hired a leader to focus on training and invested in a training curriculum and LMS platform we call ‘The Vault.’

Our sales team strives for what we call ‘the two I’s,’ intentional and influential. They need to communicate often, remember personal details, personally invest in the candidates and it is our job as a company to best equip them with what all they need to succeed.

In summary, what does it take to go from good to great? If they understand their role as a guide in the customer’s hero journey, they are inspired by example, they have direct line of sight into the mission and they are empowered and equipped, they have the tools and foundation for greatness.”

Guide Mentality

Understand the Hero Status

Inspire through Example

Direct Line of Sight into the Big Why

Empower & Equip

We are nearly done. You are a person of enormous influence. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the greatest amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger. :-)

“I’d like to inspire a movement — a real one — in which people look past their differences to support one another again. To be friendly, warm, personal, caring, and empathetic. It’s troubling to see where we are as a society — a real regression in how we used to care for one another. We need to be inspiring greatness in others. I’m not sure how this movement would pick up steam on a national level, but I’ve never stopped believing it’s still possible.”

Are You Ready to Step Into Franchise Ownership?

Franchise FastLane is the No. 1 Franchise Sales Organization (FSO) in the country and our mission is to responsibly drive extraordinary growth for the chosen few. We have vetted over 100 brands and partnered with 26 brands that are ready to grow! To learn more about the brands we represent, explore our brands page today. If you are interested in learning more about the possibility of joining the FastLane or CarPool, please click here to submit an application. To keep up with all the latest happenings, make sure you follow us on LinkedIn, like us on Facebook, and check out our collection of photos on Instagram.