Welcome back to another episode of Freedom Blueprint podcast. I'm your host Justin Dees and I am joined today with my amazing special guest co-host, my awesome wife Kristen, who is the virtual CFO for the trade. So thanks for coming and hanging out. So at the time of recording, we're a week out of Pantheon.

Yes.

Yes. Thanks for having me.

Yeah, a week after, yep.

a week after pantheon. so before I know, I there's some topics we want to talk about today, but how was.

that? Pantheon was awesome. It's always a great event. Yeah. It's huge. Huge. The production is like eons. It's just it's really cool. It's one of my favorite ones from that standpoint in that it's it's they go. I don't want to say over top because I don't think it's over the top, but it's. I know.

Thank

they had a circus theme.

Okay. But they do a really good job with like the aesthetic of everything. Their main room where the keynotes are is huge and you know the audio video and all that kind of stuff which is a little bit more on my awareness now than it probably was before is really cool. Their appreciation parties are always cool and they had a lot of

more vendors this year, not vendors, but like, well, I guess vendors. Yeah, well, like in the expo hall in years past, it was a smaller expo hall this year. was quite, quite large.

And then it's always cool to hear about some of the new stuff that they're rolling out or have about to roll out or they want to roll out in the next year or two or whatever. It's just really cool. And then of course, just meeting up with people that you haven't seen since conference season last year. And in my case, sometimes clients that I've been working with for over a year and I've only seen them on Zoom and I finally got to see them in person for the first time. So that was really cool.

That's pretty cool. Unfortunately, I didn't get to go. I was, I got sick. Like we came out of vacation and I got sick towards the end of the vacation, which is always awesome. Yeah, no, I was in the hospital for five days. And then they finally released me. Well, they didn't have children.

which we're not talking sick like the sniffles.

No, I think you released yourself.

I'm getting my shit and leaving so whatever y'all need to do figure it out. But they did tell me that I don't need to fly until my whatever time and so now hopefully all that is gonna be past me for now. Because we have a lot of shows coming up. have lot of events coming up and we have a lot of really cool on-site stuff we're gonna be doing with clients that we're I'm so excited about so hopefully.

So yeah, gotta get it together. Get it together, Rene.

But no, it's always cool and Pantheon is all, they just do such an amazing event. I think it just, goes to show, I know a lot of times when people talk about Pantheon, they want to immediately talk about pricing, right? Which is interesting because we're in an industry where we know we're not supposed to be the cheapest guy. Yeah, that's look at service type and they're like, oh, it's so expensive, so expensive. And the truth is it's a premium product.

Yeah.

Yeah, for sure.

And the price reflects it the same as every business owner listening to this. You should be providing a premium product in order to charge a premium price. I think it's unethical to charge a premium price and give half ass service. And there's people that do it. There's definitely people that do it. But I am looking forward because we've got quite a few coming up. I'm not even sure when this is going to come out, but we've got, know, Resideo coming up. We've got Wealthy Plumber coming up.

Vertical Track, which is a garage door freedom event, which we're both going to. This is going be your first garage door experience, which is cool. I don't know. kind of like the garage door industry is, I don't know, they're pretty cool people. Residio. Yep. Service World. mean business.

try.

Residio, Service World, We Mean Business, that's gonna be, I'm really, I'm looking forward to all of them because they're all so much fun. But I will say with We Mean Business, what I'm the most excited about with that is it's really this concept of contractor led and a lot of.

spouses. Yeah.

And there's just so many in the industry, and we know that. mean, that's like, we wrote the book. That's why we ended up writing the book about when your business partner is your spouse, because there was so many people that are married, and sometimes it's not even marriage. Sometimes it's siblings, sometimes it's best friends, sometimes it's whatever. So that's gonna be a really cool culmination of intentionally having a room together of couples or...

Partners that have a close relationship, maybe.

I think anytime you have a partnership, it's going to be a close relationship, especially because there's finances involved. I was talking to somebody a while ago, and he was contemplating on whether or not to bring on a partner to help bring capital into the company. And I was like, well, mean, do you want a partner? And he's like, I mean, I don't know. And I said, do you like the person enough to marry them? And he was like, no. And I was like, then you don't need to be a partner with them.

That's fact. That's pretty good.

Right, because you know all of those things in business they bring up a lot. I mean it can be stressful so you know whatever. But no that's gonna be a fun one for sure.

And Stephanie and David, they just, they have a good time. So we've spent quite a bit of personal time with them out riding side-by-sides and getting money. And there's just a different level of getting to know someone when you're waist deep in mud and you're trying to figure out how to get unstuck. So I'm really excited because I think they're going to put on a world-class present. It's not going to be big. It's going to be an intimate. But anyways, I'm

I I like the smaller events because like Pantheon is great, but we're talking thousands of people are there. There was a handful of people there that I caught a glimpse of on like the first evening walking through the expo hall. And I was like, oh, like Angie Snow. Oh, Angie Snow. Yeah, oh, Angie's here. want you to catch her. And I never saw her again the whole time. I'm like, dang. That happened a couple of times with a couple of different people.

Yeah, mental check.

But when you have the smaller events, you have the opportunity to really be able to connect with pretty much everybody there and learn something from everybody there. so it's pretty cool.

So knowing that it is trade show, I don't even like, I don't like.

of trade show, but that it's event season. I encourage every business owner. I know at times it can be a big investment. Attend these events, man. I'm telling you that what you will get out of them will far exceed, like you should get a huge ROI. Now, the caveat of that is to make sure that you implement something. Just one thing. If you go to these events, you pick up one thing, you implement one thing, it's gonna be an ROI. But that is on you.

great.

to do that.

The implementation is huge. I had a conversation with that about that specific thing with somebody just this week. They were asking me if I thought that they should invest the money into going to a particular event. And I said, well, it depends on what you plan to do with the information. Yeah. If you plan to, if you have the bandwidth and you plan to implement the things, some of the things that you're learning at the event, then yes, 100%. You'll get an ROI probably instantly. But if you.

you're gonna come home and you're not gonna do anything with the information that you learned, then one could argue is it worth it, you

That's the challenge of running a business is you have to invest. And I would argue that some of the best investments you'll ever make in your business are networking events. And I know people are like, I don't want to hang out at the bar all night.

Trust me, I'm not either. And that's not what I mean when I say networking, but it's pretty amazing what happens when you're walking through this journey and you're in a networking environment. It's easy to meet up with somebody that could be 10 steps ahead of you. They could be one step ahead of you. They could be 10 steps behind you. And there's always information that you can share together. And one of the coolest things about the industry that we're in is I think that people realize that there's not a lot of proprietary. Duh.

Yeah. There's no big secrets.

and willing to share.

There is, there is one silver bullet and I tell people because they go what's the what's secret ingredient? What's the magic sauce? What's the one thing? It's implementation. Yeah. So there's your there's there's It's out of the bag. Everybody knows it now. It's implementation and when you're when you're a business owner and you're grinding out day to day and you're in the in the weeds and the thick of it doing it doing it doing it I get it. It's it's hard to do the implementation part of it, but you got to be

There's a secret. Cats out of the bag.

You got to be mature enough to set up your time and schedule your time and guard your time so that you do have time to make sure you get an R on it. Because it is on you, right? It is you as the business owner and you as the attendee of whatever event or whatever thing you invest in. There's so many times people go, oh, that was trash. You're like, what's three things you learned? They're like, nothing. You spent two days somewhere and didn't learn anything. There's a common denominator here and it's probably not the event.

Yeah.

Anyways, but it's cool. As we were starting our journey and we were getting into this, we would go to these events and kind of divide and conquer, right? And we talk a lot about lanes and we don't just say it, like that's really what we do. And we go and we'll go to an event and we look at what's going on. like, cool, you go here, I'm gonna go here. Yeah, if it says the word spreadsheet, I'm like, out.

because I know you want to go to all the ones about numbers. Well, most conferences are smart enough not to the word spreadsheet in the title. yeah, excellent segue. That was good. It was a good setup. like that. Yeah, so, you know, one of the things that I think

Yeah, that's correct.

we have done pretty well over the years is make sure that we do stay in our lane. And even today, even though we're not, I mean, kind of technically, we're not technically working in the same business, not from a home service business standpoint right now. But I'm still, we're still very aware of lanes. So when you're talking to somebody and they've got a question about whether or not their payroll fits into their, you know, financials, then you bump it over to me. And when I have somebody who has a question about

You know how to handle objections in the sales process. I'm like hey, I got somebody you need to talk to you So I I did want to talk today a little bit about the sales process partially because It's cute. I'm curious about it. I feel like I should know more about it by now, but I also Didn't put a whole lot of time into what wasn't my lane

And so I just kind of wanted, really I wanted to talk to you about how you do sales training, about how you sell. Cause you, you have spent time selling in our businesses over the years. A lot of times that was, it is one of your favorite things to do. And that's part of what makes you good at it is you're good at it. So it's fun and it's fun. So you're good at it. It's like hand in hand. Right. So, so I was talking to a client the other day who is

things.

They are kind of changing their business model a little bit in the fact that they were selling before, but it was different. And now they're really trying to learn and adopt a lot of what is what we call like your standard selling process, I guess, for services, right? The bigger ticket type stuff, not the services necessarily, but like the bigger ticket, like in HVAC selling the unit or in garage door selling the door.

And just what some of that process looks like in terms of how do we set it up? How do we get the customer ready to say yes right early on? How do we handle some of the common objections that are going to come up? Gracefully right, right How do we do it in a way where we don't feel like use car salesman? Just you know kind of having a little bit of a conversation around that. I think there's a I think there's a lot of different

sales selling strategies out there? And I do think that the selling strategy needs to match the culture of the company. Yes. There are some companies who I don't want to say aggressive necessarily but they're selling. Okay.

I would agree. I there's a lot of different ones.

I would say there's some that are aggressive. I think there's some companies, some of them that know it and do this intentionally and some that don't, don't put the customer first. They put revenue first. And there's a balance with that, right? Because you gotta have revenue. Money doesn't buy happiness, but poverty doesn't buy anything. So you have to have revenue in order to...

be able to do anything in the business. you can also, it's kind of like that servant leadership side of it is sometimes there's a process to go through.

So if we're looking at the process, so the first opportunity, in my opinion, to begin the sales process is the moment the customer makes contact with the business. Yes. Whether that's through an online lead or they call in. So let's say they're calling in and you have the CSR answer the phone. So what are some things that they can do or should be aware of knowing that they are that first point of contact in the sales process?

Making sure that they're, so I would say even before that, right, even before the phone rings, I think what companies need to make sure they do is they make it easy to do business with them. Like just make it easy. Don't make the customer work so hard. Just make it easy for them. So if you're having an online, you know, there's a lot more online platforms that are being used.

Me, I don't wanna talk to anybody on the phone. Especially about a service. I wanna get on my phone, I wanna schedule it, and I want them to be here when they say they're gonna be here. I get I'm not everybody's customer, but I think it's really important to make sure that if your customer is coming through that chat feature, or online platform, or whatever that looks like, to make sure that they're still personality, not just robot.

think the other thing, when they do call, I think it's important that the CSR make sure that they feel listened to and heard and they're empathetic to what's going on and they're feeling that they care enough to think about it and make sure that they're gonna handle it correctly.

If a customer is calling specifically for a quote on a new system, is there anything that the CSR should do or say or ask in order to prep the salesperson to go there? Or do they just get the information, it and get somebody out there as soon as possible?

Well, I think that you want to kind of get a little more information on the customer. Like if they've never been a customer and they're not in your system and they're new, know, obviously you want to have a conversation. People do business with people they know, they like, and they trust. And so when they call in, you don't want to just rush them off the phone. You want to find out a little bit more information, right? And I think about, this is on point, but a little bit off track.

but that's okay.

We were reading a book or hearing a story, and this has been years ago, and it was about a salon owner. And the salon owner, every time a new customer came in, he would put them in a red smock and everybody else was in black. And it was just a subtle enough a thing where everybody didn't know, but then they trained their people to really make sure and go out of their way to welcome them because...

I don't go to the hair salon, right? But you go to the hair salon. When you swap hair salon companies...

Which by the way, I have not done in like 12 years. Right.

So when you do it, it's kind of a big deal. Sometimes there's life altering things that have happened, whether you're moving to a new area or whatever it is, who knows? So I think kind of going at it from that perspective of if they're a new customer, find out a little bit about them. I'm not saying barrage them with questions, but hey, I noticed we've never done business with you before. How did you hear about us? Just a super simple question. And I know people are like, well, in Service Titan or my whatever CRM, automatically tells me.

No, it doesn't it tells you that final point that they reached out to you They may have a neighbor that said dude. You got to call these guys. They're amazing You want to know that information sure you got a Google click that you paid a truck ton of money for But maybe what happened was it came from a neighbor, right? So ask them that and then I would also say what's going on with your system that that makes you want to get a new one, right? So just kind of start talking to with them about Why do they need a new?

Yeah.

Why do think they want one or why are they even starting them?

And maybe it's, hey, I just bought the new house and I got a inspector that came out that said I'm gonna need one in the next five years and I'm just kicking around pricing. Well, that might be a good time to say, listen, not a problem, we'll come out, we'll give you a quote. Obviously, you know that prices change over the course of five years. So, you what was bread and eggs five years ago, or cars or houses. But I think that's the first thing is just welcome them to your family, to your business is one of the first things that the CSRs need to do.

Do you charge for that estimate?

for a system I would never charge.

Yeah. All right. So we get them on the schedule and we're sending a sales a salesperson out. Now we're assuming in this case that it's a relatively green salesperson or maybe they're, you know, naturally a people person. But maybe they're a little greener. You know, so one of the things that when we talk about running service calls, we had a system, part of the written system on the service call was

Was it five in and 10 out or 10 in and five out?

called it 5 in 5 out but really it was more of a 5 in 10 out.

Yeah, so but the idea was that we had a really clear system on what the first couple minutes of the service call needed to look like. The middle piece was the diagnosis part. It's hard to write a system around that because we're troubleshooting. There's still some things you could parameter, but whatever. have the middle piece of the actual diagnosis part. And then you have the last several minutes of the call where we are wrapping everything up and we're setting a good tone for them to use this in the future. So that would be

from the service call standpoint, would you say that there is something similar on the sales process where this estimator or comfort advisor or whatever you call them in your business has this very specific what they do in the first couple minutes and definitely a very specific in the last few minutes or is it the whole thing that should be pretty like systematically predictable?

you want to be careful because you can be over rigid and then customers feel that. But then that's such a challenge too because with your text, if you follow these steps, I know you'll be successful. But you've got to have some parameters around flexibility and every customer is different. yes, think the biggest trick and the reason we did our 5N 5L,

what we were trying to teach the technicians was be intentional. Like that's it, just be intentional. When you go to the door, there's a way you knock on the door, there's a way you stand, there's a way your truck is, there's a way you're communicating with the customer because really what you're trying to do is get them comfortable with you. And so there is, from an NLP, a neuro-linguistic programming sort of way, you kind of want to get customers in the habit of saying, yes, is my truck parked where it's supposed to be, yes.

Am I good to come inside? Yes. Here's the notes that I have on the call. Maybe can you tell me a little bit more, right? So you're not only getting them comfortable with you, getting them comfortable with yes, but you're also kind of setting that tone for you're there for them, right? So what is the problem? And then.

this is more the service side too, but you know, always making sure, you know, while I'm here, is there anything else you would like me to look at? I think that's a really missed opportunity that techs, come in with horse blinders and they're like, water heater not working, where's the water heater? Go, right? It's just to kind of create that environment. Customers, when a customer calls a company, especially when you're talking about maybe a plumbing, an AC, an electrical company,

they're gonna have an expectation in their mind. And so I think a lot of that making the customer comfortable at the beginning is really part of your job so that what arrives, they're nervous. You got a stranger coming into your house and what are they doing? They're gonna sell you something.

Well, and most of the time it's the lady of the house that's there too.

Was that answer?

Yeah. So, so they get there and we're getting them, we're getting the customer comfortable and use kind of, sorry, used to saying yes. And then you go through and you, you know, you do your quote and you provide your options. You your options, right? And they might be, if they're specifically asking for a new system, it might be a good, better, best option, or it might be some different, different

on. Here's the thing that's so interesting to me when I talk to business owners and I say, you know, they're giving options all the time, right? Like we always have options. How many people say no? It's crazy to me how many people say no.

If you go to a customer and you give them one thing, you got a 50-50 shot. That's a yes or no. Like that's it. When you give options, it really opens the door.

Which you can give too many options. can overwhelm and make it difficult to make a decision. We don't want to do that. But there's so many times, and this even happens with you and the buying process when you're buying something, is you don't know what you don't know. And you never know if there's this new cool thing out there that's available and you like new cool things. So usually if somebody tells you about the new cool thing, you're like, yes, I probably need that.

whose minds don't buy.

like.

But if we never let the customer know and you know to a certain extent especially on the plumbing and HVAC side of the world People think that there has there might not be new technology like water still flows toilet still flush sinks till faucet still turn on Yep, water still gets hot air still blows cold, but really in all seriousness There is a lot of new technology that's going on in the plumbing and HVAC world

that the customer's not sitting at home and go.

It's not showing up on their Facebook feed. So they would never know about it if we didn't take the opportunity to tell them about it. So I do want to see if you'll speak to a little bit reading the body language of the customer while you're in the home. So how do you tell if you are talking too much? If you're in the customer's home and you're talking too much, how can you tell?

Well, okay, so to back up just a little bit, think sometimes salespeople, especially newer salespeople, they think that the selling process happens when they sit at the table. And that's not when it happens. It happens the second you walk in the door. So in your process, you should be going through and finding out what's important to the customer.

Okay.

whatever it is, whether it's a garage door, and I'll use HVAC as an example, but when you're going in the house, what is it you didn't like about this system that you have now? What is it, if you could fix one thing about it, what would it be? And it's amazing, we don't ask that question, but then the customer's like, well, this room's hot or cold all the time, or, know. So I think it starts by getting the information from the customer as you're doing the sales call, because really,

People can't argue with their own information.

And if a customer's like, this room is hot and this room is cold and you as the expert go, you know what, this would be a really good opportunity for a product like Aeroseal. You're like, Aeroseal would be like a great option for that. Obviously you don't have that conversation with the customer now, but you're kind of getting ready and seeding that, okay, so these rooms are hot and cold. So then when you're sitting down and presenting it, you're able to draw from the information that they already gave you to do that. So.

To me, my sales approach has always been educate first. That's just educate the customer. And you gotta kinda set boundaries and you gotta set the tone of the call. A lot of times throughout the sales process,

if you find out what they do, I don't mean in kind of a weird clunky way, but you know, sometimes you look around somebody's house, you get a pretty good idea of what they do and see, know, if they're an engineer, they're going to want an exorbitant amount of information, right? So just, just be prepared for that. If they're not, they may not want the detail. Like for me as a buyer, I want to know about the cool stuff. I want to know how much, and I want to know how fast. There's not a whole lot of other information typically that I want.

Which is why it's frustrating for me to buy things sometimes because they'll just pepper me with...

a ton of details that you're not concerned with.

Let me tell you about the toe capacity or the whatever. I'm like, I got a boat. just, does it pull it? Like that's really all I want to know. So.

So I will say that it is important when you're talking, when you're educating to make sure that you're using the vocabulary. Yes. That's not the industry vocabulary because they might not know what you mean about that. But you would be like for the HVAC world, I'm assuming you'd be speaking to the comfort side of things. Maybe the energy saving side of things like that kind of stuff. Depending on what's important to them.

depending on what. Yeah. And a lot of times even for that kind of stuff, you can tell what's important. What car do they drive? Do they have bottled water in their house? Like there's all these little things.

Are there animals in the home? That one to me is huge. Like if you walk in and there's a dog barking or a dog licking your feet when you get in there, I feel like right then and there, that should be a mental note of certain things that I need to make sure that I'm including on my estimate. Or at least taking into consideration. I know our dogs shed everywhere. you know, whatever.

So a great option would be some kind of filtration system and maybe a filter rack that lasts more than 30 days. There's all kinds of different features on that. I think that's one of the biggest missing pieces in the sales process is just educate first and then set the standard. So if you're going in throughout this process that you're talking to the customer about, kind of get to the end of, my job today is to help you in any way I can, give you all the information.

and I really want to leave here with either a follow-up appointment or a schedule, a time to schedule to do it. Because it's a, especially with an HVAC system, they're very expensive now, right? They're more than some cars. And so you can't get irritated if they're like, I gotta think this over or I gotta talk to my spouse. Totally get it. What's a good time where can come back and we can go over this together?

Come back.

Yeah, come back. No, no, no, no, no, no, I'm coming back. I mean, it's a, a big sale. Go back because the challenges and sometimes go, and actually some companies will say, well, we don't want run one leggers and one leggers, which is like the wife's home, but the husband's not. They want all parties.

party's present.

And I think that's just not a good way to do it. So if you present the information to one of the spouses, I gotta talk to the spouse, just listen, if you don't mind, why don't I come back and that way we can, you guys will have time to talk about it. And then I can come in and I can answer all the questions at one time and no big deal. Because no offense to the person that you gave the information to, they're not the expert. So if the spouse or whoever the other person is that needs to help with the answer,

You don't want them assuming anything. And you don't want them getting on Google and being like, well, so and so said. Because really at the end of the day, when customers say things like, well, I've to get multiple codes, really what they're saying is they don't want to feel like they're getting ripped off. I mean, it's not about getting three bids. It's not.

So how do you handle the objection when they said, well, I'm getting a couple quotes and I've got another company coming out here on Tuesday to give me a quote.

I get it. I understand this is a huge purchase and it's a big investment in your house. mean quite frankly for talking HVAC that's the largest piece of mechanical equipment in the home. So why don't I do this? They're gonna come out Tuesday. Would it make sense for me to come out Tuesday afternoon? Let's compare all of them together. Like we'll lay them all out and honestly I may not be the best price but...

is price the most important thing to you. And it's crazy when you ask a customer is price the most important, their automatic reaction typically is, yeah, okay, so warranty's not important, standing behind the product's not important, you know? And then they're like, well no, I want reliability. I want it to last a long time, right? You're spending all this money, you want it to last. Right, and especially in the HVAC world.

be put in right.

if it's not put in correctly, you can have some major issues and it can fail way faster than life expectancy. So no, I would go back to the homes. Great. Listen, get your quotes. Why don't I come back Tuesday? We'll go over all of them together because there is always a difference and an HVAC system isn't an HVAC system. If they're pulling one off a boat in China and slapping it in and they're not doing certain things, you're not trying to say to the customer, hey, buy my, you know, I'm the greatest ever and only

buy for me but if you sit down with customer you look if we decide that we're not the best fit that's okay but let me let me educate you this is what I do this is what I love to do let's just go over

So I want to highlight that you said if we decide. Correct. Not if you decide. Correct. So it feels like the decision is made together. Right. Right.

Well, because look, let's say you're sitting down and you're looking over two bids, right? And they're the exact same bids, which rarely are they ever the exact same bids. But it's the same product, same serial number kind of thing. It's all the same thing. You're looking at it. And this guy's $5,000 less than what you are.

You have to explain that to a customer, right? And you have to let them know like, okay, well, I've never heard of this company. Let's check out their reviews. they've been in business for six months. That is great. Love startups. But for six months, do you think that's gonna be the best fit and their longevity is gonna be here 15 years from now to take care of the system? Because it has to be maintained on an annual basis. Says so in the book. So again, I think it's just...

being an educator and not always just go and sell, sell, sell. I there's so many times you'll talk to a customer and you're like, this is not ever gonna happen. We're not gonna sell this thing. But just put that away and just go, you know what? I'm gonna help, I'm gonna educate. It will never waste time. Even if they go, look, budgetary, I have to spend, I have to go with them. I totally get it. I understand, but you have all my information. So if ever in the future I can be of any service to you, please don't hesitate to call.

and you'd be surprised, they'll call, they're like, my system's not working. You mean the one they put in three weeks ago? Now they won't call you back? Weird. Who saw that coming? But you can't tell a customer that, right? Right? You can't tell a customer, like, the guy's working out of the back of a pickup truck in his mom's basement.

Okay, what about offering financing? Do you offer financing on every job? Uh-huh. Yeah.

I mean, okay, yes, basically. There are certain dollar thresholds that you want to work on, if you're at 100%, yeah, 100%, because they're as expensive as cars. And they say that, I don't remember what the number is, like 80 % of people have $400 in their savings, or $800 or whatever the number is.

Even if they had the cash to stroke the check to you, if you go, listen, we got some pretty good finance deals. got 72 months, 0%. Even if I have the cash to pay for it, whose money would you rather use? Would you want to borrow free money or you want to use your money? But I would never not offer financing on the job. And I would lead with the financing because

Right, I'm still.

as you're showing the comparison, especially when you're doing like a good, better, best, right? And let's say your best is variable speed, whatever. Let's say it's $25,000 and your lower one is $12,500, right? That's a huge jump cash wise, but if it's over 72 months, it just makes it seem like a little.

When you say you lead with financing, do you mean like you present the pricing from the monthly, like what it costs a month standpoint?

Like this one's gonna be $278 and this one's gonna be...

Yeah. Okay. So, um, so we were at rooms to go a couple of years ago and, um, we were purchasing furniture for one of the rental properties. I think it was the beach house or something. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. We went in there. We knew we had to buy multiple rooms of furniture. And so, um, thank you. So, um, they also, also we know that rooms to go, they offer like.

150 months interest rate something like that. it's awesome. And so anytime that we do that we always take advantage of it because

We'll borrow their money for free.

So they go in and they run your credit or whatever and they say, all right, you're qualified for $15,000. And then this particular time we went in there, we did the credit thing, all of that. And they said, okay, this is how much you're approved for. And then we were like, all right, cool. And we started going around with our sales person around the showroom floor, picking out the things for the different rooms. And so what she would do is she would add them on her little tablet when we like, ooh, I want that and I like that and I think I want this and whatever.

She'd add it up and she'd be like, okay, you still have $150 a month left to spend in your whatever, whatever. She was basically doing her best to try to max our limit because she knew that that was right and that we still had room in our credit. So it wasn't about, we actually tried to- Recruit her. We tried to recruit her.

paid commission.

She was awesome.

She didn't want to come into the HAC industry. doing really good in furniture, it was She wasn't pushy. She was pleasant to work with. She was asking questions about things that were important to us or that we liked or didn't like or whatever. It was just a really cool experience, but she was most definitely using that credit line as a way to just try to push that average ticket up a little bit. Respectfully, I was like, all right, let's max it out. I can see what's happening here and I appreciate it.

Yeah, so I don't do it that way. I don't know that I would necessarily do it that way, but...

There are companies that do.

No, there is and but but I do think as a tool you do need to know right so if you run their credit and they've got $30,000 I'm not saying that you want to wear them out and make sure you hit that $30,000 but as you're building the system especially as you're talking about financing you're like listen we have this incredible air scrubber product and dehumidification product and da da da da it's only gonna add like nine dollars a month

or aerosol or whatever, like there's all kinds of different.

Or we got some duck repair options that we can do and it's only gonna add four dollars a month to it. Do you want to just add that on to it? Right. You know, that's just a smaller chunk to take. To me, I always try to stay away from the big numbers because people don't, you're not thinking about it, right? People are like, well, last time I got my HVAC system put in, it was $5,000. Like, well, how long ago was that? 15 years ago. Yeah. Great. How much was eggs 15 years ago? Right.

But no, think finance is such a powerful tool and they're gonna finance it anyways. Rarely is somebody gonna pull out of their cash, out of their bank to hand you credit card, which has got trash probably, interest rates or, so they're gonna finance it anyways. And I think it's just, it's uncomfortable for technicians sometimes, because they're like, what if they don't get approved?

Yeah, they're going to go with the credit card.

But let them, you know, let them fill it out.

Well, and one of the things that I heard at Pantheon specifically was about how it is important to offer financing on each call because sometimes a customer might be too embarrassed to ask about financing.

That is a very

And so if we just just go ahead and put it out there on the table that it's an option right off the bat, then we are removing that like feeling like I'm not managing my money properly if I have to ask for financing for it. know, so I thought that was an interesting thought. Mindset thought about it. Yeah. Yeah.

Those loans are always better interest rate than credit cards. Always.

And there are dealers out there now that don't charge the business owner. There's a couple. There's a few of them out there that just one of them, was talking to somebody about one of them, I can't remember the name of it, but it's treated more like a personal loan than a home improvement loan. And so they don't charge the business owner for it, which is kind of cool because sometimes those fees can get a little crazy.

And I think sometimes business owners have too many options for financing to like two at the max Have your have your first look have your second look because again You're gonna confuse your text and you don't want to confuse the text you want to make them feel good about it But if you're financing like if you go into it and you know, like there's some That are like, okay anything above 650 will approve up to X amount of dollars. Okay, great You can kind of have that conversation with the customer at the beginning say listen. We got a couple of different finance options

Yeah.

You know, one is better suited for people that have a 650 score or above and some are going to be less than a 650 score. I don't know which one you want to go with. Maybe they know their credit score, maybe they don't. Most people that have good credit know their credit score. It's just like anything else, they pay attention to it. So if they don't know, then maybe that second look might be a better option.

All right, so let's say we presented the options, we gave the estimates, whatever customer is gonna think about it. So basically we didn't close it that day. And or in some instances, there's still times when maybe the estimate can't be left at that moment, because we have to go back and do some figuring or looking some stuff up or whatever in order to be able to put the estimate together to even be able to send it over to them. But we've spent some time in the home and we've already

to certain extent, put the options out there and talked about them and educated about them so that when they see them, it's not the first time that they're seeing all these things when they get the copy of the estimates.

When those are sent out, I would say that it needs to be paired with at least a phone call if we're not able to get somebody out there to redeliver them. we don't have the manpower necessarily to make that ideal situation happen.

think it depends on the dollar amount. But if you're too busy to make a sale.

then you probably need to hire some more people. You need some kind of restructuring because sales starts the flywheel. So in that scenario where you have to come back and go, great, I've got all this information, listen, I got some homework I gotta do, there's some things I gotta work on, I gotta call the manufacturer and it's already six o'clock tonight, so it may be tomorrow, that would be a really good time to say, maybe you and your spouse, I can meet you guys here and we can go over all of it together at that one time. I think customers are way more

likely to have that then you know both parties at the house, both decision makers. We had a floor company that did that.

Like, no. Houndstand, My wife makes the decisions. You don't need me there.

We talk to each other, but I still end up making the decisions usually. Right. Okay, so sales follow-up. I will say that in our industry, even though it is most ideal to go there, most of the people in our industry follow up through phone calls. Correct. And emails and texts. Right. Okay.

Right, I don't know, so.

And so a lot of times what I see happening is they might have a selling technician leave the estimates and then the selling technician might have, you know, may or may not follow up with it. But then a lot of times it gets bumped to like a CSR to start doing follow ups with the customer. we know definitely, first of all, the CSR has not been out there, so they don't know anything about the situation. But maybe the technician, for whatever reason, doesn't want to or chooses not to follow up, which the worst thing that you can

do is spend all the time to go out there and make the estimates and do all the things and then not follow up. Oh my gosh. So in some way we have to be following up. So we have a CSR now who is doing follow ups because they get a little bit of a spiff in themselves. All right. So if I'm a CSR, I've not been there before. I know the customer has the quotes and they've had a day or two to think about it. What am I, how am I approaching that conversation via the phone when I make that follow up call?

and it happens so often, so, often.

So I think anytime CSRs are following up, I personally think CSRs should follow up on every call, whether estimate or not, or whether they didn't do business, I think the best way to approach it is if you were to approach a happy call. Okay. Hey, just wanted to check in. I saw Jimmy was out there and he left some estimates for you. How was Jimmy?

How do you do? Right? Just have that conversation. Because it's really wild how many times you'll hear from customers like, wow, you guys followed up. Like five other companies came out here, left quotes, hadn't heard anything from them. Like, seriously? So I think if I'm a CSR or if I'm having my say, which we do, I'm going to have them follow it up as if it were a happy call.

Because the truth is if a customer has very technical questions about it, they're gonna have to hand it off anyways, which is not a big deal. But if they're doing the happy call and they're like, hey, do you wanna go ahead and get that scheduled? I mean, a lot of times customers are like, yeah, let's go ahead and get that scheduled. Great, what day's best for you? Or great, looks like Tuesday we can come out there, does that work for you? So I think they can approach it as a happy call, but then turn around and...

make it a sales call. And then if they have someone who has technical questions, then you say, great, let me get whoever they're gonna get involved and I will make sure they call you back and give them a date by close of business today or tomorrow by noon or whenever it is. And then you need to make sure that happens. Because then you lose trust with the customer and from not making a stinking phone call.

I really feel like you flipped this whole.

I did. Is there any other main points or key points or anything that is super important in that sales process that we have not touched on yet, regardless of who's involved in the process?

I think again, set the tone and when you are, be intentional about the entire process, right? Be intentional. Not rigid, be intentional. So when you go in, you know you're gonna be getting the answers to the questions while you're going through the process. So that way when you sit down to present whatever the different options are, you're giving them their information. Like you said, this room is cold. So be intentional. And then when you leave that house, do not leave that house

out either a no I'm not doing business with you or a yes you can follow up with me on this date and this time even if it's a phone call and then you have to follow but I think I think a lot of times people kind of dive bomb quotes and then they're like peace out real scary

and then follow up.

Yeah, yeah, they like like dump and run. Yeah, like, yeah.

Be intentional, hey listen, we're gonna go over these quotes and obviously anytime you're giving quotes, start at the top and work your way down. It's amazing, I'll do ride alongs, I'll do shop tours sometimes and I'll go, I'm gonna jump in a truck with this guy because his sales are bad, I'm let me go jump in truck with him and I'll jump in and I'll watch him present and now because I'm in the truck they're like.

They're already nervous.

They're already nervous and they're super hyper focused on doing it correctly. So if they go the bottom up, I automatically know that there's a problem, but they'll start up. You can't go up. It's easy to go down.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

You have to paint the picture for a customer, Like this is gonna be an investment, this is gonna be expensive. But listen, the first one I'm gonna show you, this thing is like the bee's knees, it's gonna have everything on it. So don't faint if you see the, you know what mean? Just kind of paint that picture and go, listen, this has got all the bells and whistles and this has got literally everything you talked about. And you go through it. And then you go, basically we can take this.

and we can create it how you want to. So if you weren't interested in the duct repair for your system, which would be crazy that a customer wouldn't do that, then you take it off. And I'll tell you, one of the really neat phrases that I picked up from Joe Cressara, and he's got a great book, and Joe's an amazing guy, he wrote a book. And really, the premise of this book is like, what do we do? What should we do? So you're presenting it, and you're like, so what do you wanna do?

you're making it a we thing, not an I thing, not a you thing, a we thing. So I think just being intentional and when you're done with that call, having a next action step and it can't be, all right, call me if you got any questions. No, no, no, no. It's either no, I'm not doing business with you, which I'm still gonna follow up with you, or it's a yes, you can come back or yes, you can call and follow up with me at this date and this time.

to do it.

Yeah, I mean, I definitely think that the objections, the biggest objection that that most of the people that I'm working with anyway are getting because I'm pushing them to raise prices because they're usually prices aren't high enough to cover their cost. Right. And so their their biggest objection right off the bat is what you're so much more than everybody else. And so, yeah, it might be fun one time, one of these podcasts to do a a practice sales call. Yeah. Not calling it role play, but do a practice.

always call it practice, don't ever call it role play. Guys get panicky when you call it role play.

Yeah, Practice I get panicky when we call it role play. Don't call it role play. We're practicing. Feels like you're acting when you're role playing. Cool. Awesome. Well, thank you for letting me pepper you with sales questions.

Yeah.

Fantastic, I didn't know that's where we were going with this call or this episode, I think it's good and hopefully it was valuable to everybody and you know, there's lot of good tech tips and techniques and

There's a lot of trainers that focus on sales out there. That's certainly not the primary thing that I focus on, but I've been around it and certainly I can help. But everybody's got a little different philosophy, but mine is always educate first. Like I don't ever want to push somebody, I don't ever want a customer to do business with me and then regret it because they thought something that wasn't true.

Okay, here's something that I'm just now realizing that I think is really interesting. Generally speaking, you are not a detail oriented person. Right. Do you agree with that? Okay. And there's a lot of times that little nuances you don't necessarily notice in life. Okay. But on a sales call, I feel like you are hyper focused on the little details because there's tons of little cues that you pick up on during that process that you then turn

thousand percent.

around and weave back into the sales process. That's really actually interesting. I'd be like, did you notice this ginormous thing over there? And you're like, no, I never saw it.

customer will tell you everything like they'll tell you everything you need to know about them and how they buy and how they think if you just pay attention to them and you know my grandmother used to say when I was a kid God gave you two ears and one mouth you should listen twice as much as you talk and I think in the sales process that's that gets jammed up with guys sometimes they tend to way more than they should be just listen paying attention to what's going on around

had to listen to what they're saying.

Great.

Well, awesome. I hope that was helpful to everybody, and we will see you on the next.

Next one.