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19 min read

Smarter Equipment Finance: Jobs, culture, and you ...

Are you (or someone you know) looking for a job in sales in Las Vegas? .

We may (or may not) be a good fit for you. 

Jenn and Kevin break down what it's like to work at Smarter Equipment Finance.

 

 



Audio is above, and video is below. Or you can read the transcript below the video. 

We are proud to facilitate an awesome career for many folks who want to help others and thrive on honesty and fair dealing. 

Oh - and if you want to apply for a job, send your resume to jobs@smarterfinanceusa.com 😀

 

 



Transcript


Jenn 00;00;38;09 - 00;01;01;04

Welcome back to our podcast. My name is Jennifer Casey and this is Kevin O'Boyle. This is season two episode two with Smarter Business Finance and working for Smarter Equipment Finance. The ins and outs of our company and what it takes to be an account manager here. So thank you so much for joining us. And let's get started. Let's talk about the recent article.

Jenn 00;01;01;05 - 00;01;11;08
We'll actually pop it below that you can click on where the minimum wage now for fast food restaurants is going to be $22 an hour.

00;01;11;09 - 00;01;12;26
Kevin
Good Lord, that's a lot of money.

Jenn 00;01;12;26 - 00;01;17;07
That's a lot of money. What are your thoughts on that?

00;01;18;18 - 00;01;25;28
Kevin
Yeah, $22 an hour. It's about 45 grand a year. I mean, that's a good starting salary to flip burgers and stuff like that.

Jenn 00;01;25;28 - 00;01;40;02
And it's going up with inflation, so. Yeah. Yeah. So, I mean, as far as cost of living goes up or inflation goes up, it could go up as well. So people could work at at Taco Bell for, what, $46,000 a year. Yeah. Or what's a better opportunity.

00;01;40;04 - 00;01;49;00
Kevin
Yeah, I would much rather work here. Smarter Equipment Finance than flipping burgers and being greasy all over. My skin's greasy enough. I don't need to work at a fast food place to make it worse.

Jenn 00;01;49;11 - 00;01;56;28
Let's talk about a day in the life of an employee here. What is it like to be in a sales role here?

Kevin 00;01;57;15 - 00;02;23;25
So I'm not trying to sugarcoat anything. A sales role here is pretty difficult. You have to bust your ass while you're here. You have to be on the phone. You can't be afraid to talk on the phone with anybody. We do make cold calls to vendors. We do get leads that come in as well. But if you are somebody who's afraid of human interaction, this isn't the spot for you.

Jenn 00;02;24;05 - 00;02;53;05
Once you first start off, there is a training process. Normally it's anywhere from 12 to even 16 weeks of training, hands on. We're talking about how to read credit, how to speak to people on the phone. You know, we we would rather people with sales of course, but people with a customer service background or even industry specific situations where they've come from construction sales or gym sales or things like that are always a really good transition to us.

Jenn 00;02;53;05 - 00;03;03;06
So day in the life of a rep, I would say pop in depending upon when your shift starts 6 a.m. to 7 a.m.. But you're on the phone all day, right? Yeah.

Kevin 00;03;03;08 - 00;03;04;06
Pretty much all day.

Jenn 00;03;04;08 - 00;03;22;18
You're helping clients work through credit situations. You're submitting deals through our credit department, you're checking in documents are coming in from your clients. You're working with vendors, trying to get new relationships with vendors, and also continuous training on different changes because our industry is constantly changing, right?

Kevin 00;03;22;19 - 00;03;42;06
Yeah, All the time. You know, we deal with the credit matrix that helps us a lot. And to me it was the biggest tool to help my success, you know, while I've been here. And as long as in that process you learn, you know, what we need. It just makes your job that much better. Again, our sales process, it's not just selling.

Kevin 00;03;42;06 - 00;03;49;20
We are gathering information from our clients and our vendors so that it's easier for us to make a sale when that time does come.

Jenn 00;03;50;03 - 00;04;05;25
I would like to say our transactions, it's like a waltz. There is a there is the right way to go about it. You know, if you take one move out the wrong way and step on someone's foot on accident, you will learn to not put your foot out in that in the next.

Kevin 00;04;05;25 - 00;04;19;16
That's me. I'm a terrible dancer, so I've made a ton of mistakes. Starting again. This job isn't easy by any means. There is a learning curve, but if you've got the will and the drive to do this. You can be very successful here.


Jenn 00;04;20;04 - 00;04;41;20
You're, in my opinion, You’re gracefully taking someone through a transaction, start to finish by educating them, giving them good customer service, facilitating everything from start to finish. And if you don't know something, lean on the team of people around you, which I find incredible. I've never worked in a company where it is really a team atmosphere. Yeah, I know.

Jenn 00;04;41;20 - 00;04;58;16
I've given a scenario before to a lot of our reps that there was a time where I had to handle some personal stuff and I was away from my computer for about 2 hours and came back and the funding department just kept funding my transactions and I didn't even realize what was happening. And I said, Well, what do you mean?

Jenn 00;04;58;16 - 00;05;15;08
You guys just got all these transactions done and our director of operations said, Well, someone gathered the insurance from the insurance company and there was a signature missing on this piece of paper. So they reached out to your vendor and they got this and this and this and this, and we got everything done and we just funded everything.

Jenn 00;05;15;29 - 00;05;33;26
It's just it's very rare to have an entire department that supports you so you can really focus on that client and helping that client and then helping the next client. You know, a lot of the times that we have things that are very time sensitive and we have to do transactions quickly and our clients want answers immediately, right?

Kevin 00;05;33;28 - 00;06;02;04
Yeah, I couldn't agree more. The support that Smarter Equipment Finance offers us as employees is I mean, second to none. I've worked at bigger companies before, smaller companies, and just the attention to detail that they have for us as reps and the things that they do. And it's just it's the best, to be honest with you. You mentioned being away for a year from your computer for about 2 hours, just like from our funding team.

Kevin 00;06;02;22 - 00;06;21;22
If you're on our sales floor and myself or you are not available to answer questions. We don't have an environment here where the other salespeople will turn their, you know, turn their head to somebody looking for help. Right. Because there's a lot of places I've been where the top salespeople are. Let’s just be frank. . They're assholes, right?

Kevin 00;06;22;02 - 00;06;30;02
And they don't they're like, I'm worried about my deals. Like, I don't have time for you. Our top guys here don't do that.

Jenn 00;06;30;06 - 00;06;30;24
Right.

Kevin 00;06;30;24 - 00;06;43;07
I've leaned on Anthony before. RJ, Clem, you know, our three top guys that are here, and they've never shunned me away or, you know, acted too good for me. They weren't too high brow.

Jenn 00;06;43;27 - 00;07;01;01
Right. And you have to think of that, too, from a client perspective. I mean, there are times where you might be away from your phone or there's a rep that's away from their phone, and that client is not getting the answer that they need for maybe it's a half an hour. But again, they're small business owners and they're so busy, Maybe they know that they're going to run a meeting that they're not going to be available.

Jenn 00;07;01;09 - 00;07;24;12
They’ll call into just our general sales line and someone will get them the answer or I mean, there have been times where the operations people are answering the phone to get something and, you know, is that obviously ideal? No, because maybe that person doesn't know the best answer. But there's always someone who's willing to pick up the phone and help that person, which, again, whether it's our clients or whether it's someone on our team, I do feel like this is definitely a different opportunity here.

Jenn 00;07;24;17 - 00;07;28;13
It's a big it's a team atmosphere, it's a family, it's a family company, which is pretty cool.

Kevin 00;07;28;13 - 00;07;44;19
Absolutely. I mean, that scenario that you just mentioned now, I come from the car business, I would have just given somebody half of my deal, you know, just for oh, I answered a question for him. You owe me half a deal. And that's how cutthroat it is in the other sales industries and things like that, which is why this is such a breath of fresh air.

Kevin 00;07;44;28 - 00;07;51;22
Coming to work here from, you know, 10, 15 years of sales experience. It's it's just a different environment.

Jenn 00;07;51;25 - 00;08;14;01
Right, Right. Yeah. Let's talk about what people should expect to make maybe their first year and then obviously growth opportunities from there in regards to obviously, we don't have a cap here. So typically year one of coming in between your base salary and then what you would be making commission if you were just hit quota maybe hit a little bit more.

Jenn 00;08;14;01 - 00;08;15;09
I would say the range would be, what.

Kevin 00;08;15;29 - 00;08;34;22
About $75,000 to $100,000. And honestly, I mean, that's such an easy goal to attain. If you're not hitting $75,000 to $100,000, you're more than likely not going to be here for your first year in an industry that may be new to you or may not be like, that's a pretty good starting salary for your first year.

Jenn 00;08;34;23 - 00;08;57;08
Absolutely. And I would say the the cool thing about this is they've broken it down into three different tiers. So as you grow, your business grows with you, so does your pay structure. So in the beginning there's a little bit more support. Obviously there's a little bit more leads. We're training people and you'll notice that it's more flat rates that you're getting paid out on different transactions.

Jenn 00;08;57;08 - 00;09;17;15
And then as you move from account manager to senior account manager and then to senior account manager II. At that point, the growth opportunity is just I mean, you're uncapped. The more profit margin that you can bring in, the better. And there are some of our reps who have taken that and have run with it and who do a lot larger transactions.

Jenn 00;09;17;15 - 00;09;34;22
They're going after national accounts. So in you know, we don't say that once you've you've brought in this amount of profit margin, you know, you can no longer make any more. And there are companies that do that. Yeah. You know, but there is obviously a point where can that one rep be able to do that amount of business.

Jenn 00;09;34;22 - 00;09;49;15
And at this point, yes, our senior reps are just they're taking it and they're running with it. They're growing national accounts. Some of them are able to now work from home, which is some perks that we have. We have amazing snacks in the office, constant snacks. I mean.

Kevin 00;09;50;19 - 00;09;51;20
There's a lot of snacks here.

Jenn 00;09;52;21 - 00;10;05;08
Stop. We have a holiday party every year, which is actually coming up very soon for us, which is so fun. And then there's an annual trip. And what's that all about?

Kevin 00;10;05;08 - 00;10;14;05
President's Club. And to get that, you just have to hit your, our company goal of $25,000 per month for the entire calendar year.

Jenn 00;10;14;09 - 00;10;15;00
Insane.

Kevin 00;10;15;00 - 00;10;24;28
And you get to go on the president's club trip I think this year they're going somewhere international so everyone has to get their passports in line so they can get on that trip.

Jenn 00;10;24;28 - 00;10;25;11
Yeah. Yeah.

Kevin 00;10;25;16 - 00;10;44;05
Another cool thing. So we were talking about 75 to 100 your first year. Yes, I know. There's people that are probably interested like, well, what about after that. Right. After your first year you should expect to probably double that. Right. Because you've growing your book of business, you're getting more vendor referrals and just the longer you put into it, the more it's going to get back to you.

Kevin 00;10;44;10 - 00;10;50;29
And the way that we approach things, the way we talk to people, it should only bear that much more fruit for us.

Jenn 00;10;50;29 - 00;11;11;15
The time and effort that you put in is the time and effort that you get out of that. So and that also ends up being, you know, the money that you make from this role. You know, if you are coming in and you are training, as Rob would say, if you if you train like you're a professional athlete for this role, then you will be rewarded that way.

Jenn 00;11;11;25 - 00;11;34;16
know, if you are preparing for your day, you know, the night before, looking up, checking out new vendors, prospecting different industries that are growing, looking at the industries that are being affected right now with, you know, supply issues, just things are changing in the market. I was having a conversation the other day with one of our reps because a lot of this meal prep stuff is happening, right?

Jenn 00;11;34;22 - 00;11;57;16
Meals to go how to meals on the run, you know, what does it take in order to get that business to be up and running? There's businesses that need equipment for that. There's businesses that need equipment for all sorts of different things. I mean, another one of our podcast, which you can click below, is our Infrastructure one and you can hear about a lot of different industries that will be affected by that and and that will grow from that as well.

Jenn 00;11;57;16 - 00;12;10;07
But anyways, the, the whole point of that is that there's endless opportunities here with so many different industries to make a good amount of money for each person and whatever they're they're passionate about. Right?

Kevin 00;12;10;07 - 00;12;27;22
Absolutely. There is a level of professionalism that we have. There is again, you have to have no fear in you to get on that phone. Let's be real. If you come here and you don't make any calls or you're scared to talk to somebody on the phone, we don't want you here. All right. You know.

Jenn 00;12;27;26 - 00;12;32;15
What happens if I just come into work and decide with my feet up on my desk and watch TV on my cell phone.

Kevin 00;12;32;15 - 00;12;34;27
You know, that somebody actually tried to do that.

Jenn 00;12;34;27 - 00;12;36;07
And it didn't work out.

Kevin 00;12;36;07 - 00;12;54;00
It didn't work out. Now, we we sent them home with a said, Hey, what are you doing? He said, I'm just I'm waiting for a lead to come in like you can go home. Yeah. You know, we don't we don't play none of that B.S. It's fun to work here, but if you're not working, it's. You don't belong here.

Jenn 00;12;54;00 - 00;13;04;01
Yeah, I think you actually segue into really good point that I want to bring up is our culture, our company culture. Let's talk a little bit about what our company culture is like. What is it to be a part of this team.

Kevin 00;13;05;06 - 00;13;38;03
To be a part of this team? It's really a family atmosphere. I kind of try to dive into it earlier. If there's an issue that you have, it's it's an open door policy with our management and our owners. They're always wanting to know if there is something wrong, how they can make things better, you know, if there's more processes that we can implement to streamline things for for the rest of the staff. Being on the floor again, sometimes it is hard, sometimes we're not available, but we're in a place where again, the salespeople all help one another.

Jenn 00;13;38;21 - 00;14;17;12
Everyone's super helpful. It's an all hands on deck opportunity. There's also continued training, which is amazing. We have every other week trainings with an outside sales trainer, which I think is really big, and we also focus on call training. So we we dive deep into how things are said or, you know, maybe if there is an opportunity on a transaction where maybe there are customer service issues and that client called back in and something came back to you or something came back to me and, and we realized in that moment when that rep is talking to that client that they maybe didn't answer it the best way that they could, you know, and this isn't

Jenn 00;14;17;12 - 00;14;20;15
beating up on someone, but this is just growing and getting better.

Kevin 00;14;20;16 - 00;14;47;02
Let me let me go off of that. So another thing that we don't do here is we don't lie to clients, right? So if we don't know the answer, again, the company culture is, hey, just be upfront and honest with your client or your vendor. Let them know that you know, that's that's a good question. Let me let me get an answer back for you because if you're lying to people, people can sense when someone's not genuine, you know, with with someone on the phone.

Kevin 00;14;47;15 - 00;15;11;10
And I think that's a big key to our success here is because we in our hiring process, we try to find genuine people who do have sales experience, obviously, but we don't like the typical used car salesman. And and again, I do come from the car industry, so I know what that stigma is. And I've seen that stigma from, you know, people I've used to work with.

Kevin 00;15;11;17 - 00;15;19;02
If you are blatantly lying to a client or a vendor and one of us finds out like you're done here.

Jenn 00;15;19;10 - 00;15;19;19
Right

Kevin 00;15;19;27 - 00;15;28;22
Right. We don't we don't tolerate that. We don't want to to have that stain our culture and what we kind of strive to build right?

Jenn 00;15;28;22 - 00;15;48;07
So I think that's big. You know, there is a few reps who have come on board, and I know one in specific had said to me, Wow, I'm actually just it's a sigh of relief to be able to sell with integrity. You know, I've been selling a product for quite some time and it gives me anxiety because there are times where the client doesn't fit into what the product is.

Jenn 00;15;48;07 - 00;16;07;01
And I'm literally trying to shove a, you know, a square piece into a round hole and it's just not working versus our opportunity. These clients are calling in. They need the equipment and we really find out what their need is and make sure that that makes sense for them. You know, it's one of those things where, you know, when people call in and they say, I just want a backhoe.

Jenn 00;16;07;01 - 00;16;22;28
Wow, Why do you need it? I just want it for myself personally. Do you own a business? Yeah, I want a dry cleaners. Okay. Well, that's not a revenue generating piece of equipment for your business, right? You just want a backhoe. But when it comes down to financing equipment, does it make sense for their business? Is it revenue generating?

Jenn 00;16;22;28 - 00;16;27;04
You know, that's one of the things that we are asking on a regular basis.

Kevin 00;16;27;04 - 00;16;52;29
Somebody's trying to buy a backhoe and they own a dry cleaning business anyway. For the most part, that's not going to work. You know, so a lot of this position, it's not only sales, you're fact finding really. And we're you know, we're gathering the information to know if something like that scenario would be even possible. Right. Just like you said that me with my knowledge here, that's someone I don't want to be on the phone with for a long time.

Kevin 00;16;53;13 - 00;17;13;20

Right. And working here, we don't expect you to be on the phone with something like somebody like that for a while. We've got a golden script that we use and pretty much that lines all our salespeople up for success, right? And somebody who's trying to buy a backhoe again for a laundry mat or whatever they have, it's not going to work.

Kevin 00;17;13;20 - 00;17;26;26
So we try to teach our account managers to save some time, right? We obviously can't sell everybody, and we're not going to hound you to like, Hey, why did you not every call supposed to be 15 minutes, That's not us.

Jenn 00;17;26;26 - 00;17;30;16
Well, I wouldn't even say we're not even trying to sell everyone. We're not a match for everybody. Yeah, we're.

Kevin 00;17;30;16 - 00;17;30;21
Not.

Jenn 00;17;31;12 - 00;17;37;10
For every transaction. We're not. We're not here to say yes to everybody. If that was the case, I mean, yeah, we would just be.

Kevin 00;17;38;14 - 00;17;39;03
Exactly.

Jenn 00;17;39;03 - 00;17;47;29
Rolling in the dough over here. And there would be a lot of failed businesses. Sure. Yes, we can move forward. Yep, sure we can move forward. Yeah. It's not the way that the world works.

Kevin 00;17;47;29 - 00;18;07;08
Yeah, we again, we assess the situation, our client, and we determine if it's something that's going to work or not. And I've been places in the past where they want you to squeeze the life out of a deal to make sure that you can find something when you as a sales person know that there's nothing that you can do.

Kevin 00;18;07;18 - 00;18;26;20
And that comes from upper management and those old positions. And like I said here, it's not like that. Like we want we don't want you to waste your time. Our time is your time is valuable. You know, we don't want you to waste it here. So, again, working here, you don't have to worry about bending over backwards or trying to trying to shine a turd.

Jenn 00;18;27;13 - 00;18;40;10
All right, let's talk about the benefits. And it doesn't necessarily have to be benefits of just salespeople, but benefits of our company. And then we can get into the benefits of salespeople. But what are the basic benefits that we offer? Health insurance?

Kevin 00;18;40;29 - 00;19;07;14
Yeah, dental vision 401K after six months. Company match at 3%, 100%, 50% the next two. We also offer a financial benefit to where if you have any like financial issues, if you're going through. Coaching. Yeah, find the financial coaching if you're having any you want to do a trust or a will or something, you have someone to lean on and talk about that.

Kevin 00;19;07;14 - 00;19;20;03
If you're wondering if you should refinance your house in this market, you know you can. We have that available for you. That's no extra cost. It's something that the company does offer to the to the whole staff.

Jenn 00;19;20;03 - 00;19;23;21
Right. And we are open Monday through Friday. We're not open on the weekends.

Kevin 00;19;23;22 - 00;19;24;27
Yeah, no weekends.

Jenn 00;19;25;03 - 00;19;26;13
PTO holidays.

Kevin 00;19;26;13 - 00;19;44;22
PTO holidays, sick time, 7 to 4 is the starting shift. When you first come here, once you have more tenure you can go to a 6 to 3 or five or an 8 to 5. Nobody really does that. But if you you know, if that floats your boat, go right ahead. Yeah. So we do offer that.

Kevin 00;19;44;22 - 00;20;08;09
Another cool thing that the company offers is they they spend about $25,000 a month on leads, the generation of leads that come in to, you know, to the sales force. And that's spread throughout various websites, Internet, phone calls that come in. So the company definitely doesn't wait for the business to come.

Jenn 00;20;08;09 - 00;20;12;27
Right. And we have a videographer.

Kevin 00;20;12;27 - 00;20;13;26
It's pretty awesome

Jenn 00;20;14;13 - 00;20;30;10
We have an amazing videographer. I'm going to stalk his ego for a moment. But yeah, we do things like this. We have podcasts. We actually send out edited videos to our clients and vendors to let the to put a face to a name and to say thank you. Which again, I myself, I think that that's a huge benefit.

Jenn 00;20;30;10 - 00;20;40;24
It's a benefit for us and it's also a benefit for our clients that work with us. They get to see a little insight of, of us and more about the industry. So I think that's a huge benefit as well.

Kevin 00;20;40;26 - 00;20;42;06
Yeah, those videos are awesome.

Jenn 00;20;42;20 - 00;21;02;17
Another benefit too, is when people get a Senior and to a Senior II to is we allow people to go to trade shows. We'll even fork the bill for the the attendance fee and buy swag to go there which is pretty cool if you're prospecting larger vendors. I mean the growth opportunity right there alone is huge.

 Jenn 00;21;02;17 - 00;21;30;01
Our company is growing by numbers, by volume, and then eventually, you know, hopefully more nationwide as well. We have people in our company that work from home and our operations team that are in several different states. We're in five states nationwide, which is pretty cool. But in regards to our clients, we do work nationwide. So if you are from New York and you live in Vegas and you want to only work with New York people and that's your jam, cool.

Jenn 00;21;30;07 - 00;21;50;04
Welcome. Come on board and work with the entire state of New York. And and there's also the opportunity of working with several different industries. We don't necessarily say, hey, that's actually something that's in our in the equipment financing world. There are lenders and there are companies such as ours that only work with one industry. They believe if you become a specialist industry that you'll thrive.

Jenn 00;21;50;12 - 00;22;01;27
I actually think that that's hindering and I might be better at something than you are and you probably better or something that I am. So if you want to work with that industry, have at it and watch that business grow and grow that industry for us, which is pretty cool.

Kevin 00;22;02;02 - 00;22;21;21
Yeah, it doesn't make sense to pigeonhole, you know, a specialty as far as like the financing is concerned because there's so many different pieces of equipment that are out there. You know, that's why this opportunity to work here is I mean, it's second to none. Like the it's endless. There's always new business owners starting their business. There's always people looking for equipment.

Kevin 00;22;22;09 - 00;22;26;07
This is an industry that during these times right now, it would be hard to fail in.

Jenn 00;22;26;24 - 00;22;47;22
There's always business owners that need equipment. There's always going to be small business owners. Some industries will always be thriving and then there's others that might not. But equipment is going to always be needed, especially right now with technology. You know, things are changing, Things are growing. Each year there's a a new bell or a new whistle that's on a piece of equipment that we didn't have before, which is great.

Jenn 00;22;47;22 - 00;23;00;04
So, yeah, I definitely agree. It's always growing. So I will put a link below for you guys to check out growth opportunities and career opportunities for smarter equipment finance. We do hire a few times a year and if you're interested in joining our team.

Kevin 00;23;00;11 - 00;23;09;12
On our website, there's a jobs link. Click on the jobs link and that will take you to our Indeed application. Fill it out and we will be in contact soon.

Jenn 00;23;10;03 - 00;23;19;06
Definitely. We'll thank you so much for joining us for episode two, season two of the Smarter Business Finance Podcast. Once again, my name is Jennifer Casey.

Kevin 00;23;19;06 - 00;23;19;22
And I'm Kevin O’Boyle,

Jenn 00;23;19;22 - 00;23;26;24
and thank you so much for joining us today. On season two episode two of Working for Smarter Equipment Finance.

Kevin 00;23;26;24 - 00;23;27;16
Bye

Jenn 00;23;27;19 - 00;23;34;04
Bye

Rob 00;23;34;04 - 00;24;11;25
Thanks for watching or listening. If you're listening through a podcast app, we would love it if you would be so kind as to leave a review. If you are watching this on YouTube, it would mean the world to us if you left a comment or gave us a big thumbs up. And lastly, if you're looking at us on the website, if you would let us know an episode that's of interest to you, that would be fantastic.