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Successful Life Podcast
The Successful Life Podcast, hosted by Corey Berrier, is a globally recognized show that ranks in the top 2% of podcasts worldwide. It offers expert insights tailored for contractors, focusing on business strategies, sales skills development, and the integration of artificial intelligence (AI) in the industry.
Successful Life Podcast
Revolutionizing HVAC Sales: Unleashing the Power of Emotion and Proactivity with Sam Wakefield
Ready to challenge traditional sales tactics and revolutionize your business returns? Our guest this episode, industry expert Sam Wakefield, is here to help you do just that. With over 18 years of experience in the HVAC industry, Sam has gone from an adi-crate puller to a sales manager and trainer. He's grown two businesses from the ground up and now channels his expertise into his podcast, Close It Now.
Sam offers invaluable insights into the mechanics of successful communication, highlighting the importance of tonality, body language, and mostly, emotion. He believes emotion is the gas pedal driving us to take action. Further, he shares his game-changing approach to HVAC sales that emphasizes the power of proactive interaction over digital marketing. He also delves into the importance of personal growth and the role of self-improvement and responsibility in not just sales success but also overall life satisfaction.
Listen on as we explore the psychology behind sales conversations, the role of positive visualization, and state management in boosting sales success. To cap it off, Sam , a door-to-door expert, who shares how to leverage the sales system to disrupt the HVAC industry. This episode is brimming with actionable insights that promise to make a significant difference in your sales game. So, don't miss out, tune in, and let's make some noise in your industry.
https://www.audible.com/pd/9-Simple-Steps-to-Sell-More-ht-Audiobook/B0D4SJYD4Q?source_code=ASSORAP0511160006&share_location=library_overflow
https://www.amazon.com/Simple-Steps-Sell-More-Stereotypes-ebook/dp/B0BRNSFYG6/ref=sr_1_1?crid=1OSB7HX6FQMHS&keywords=corey+berrier&qid=1674232549&sprefix=%2Caps%2C93&sr=8-1
https://www.linkedin.com/in/coreysalescoach/
Welcome to the successful life podcast. I'm your host, Corey barrier, and I'm here with my man, Sam Wakefield. What's up, buddy? Hey man.
Speaker 2:How's it going? It is fan of freaking tastic. It's a good day today.
Speaker 1:So I'm super excited about this conversation, as I am usually pretty excited. Very rarely do I get to talk to another sales guy, I don't know why. I just don't typically bring. It's not that I intentionally don't bring sales guys on, but there's not a lot of in my opinion. There's not a lot of sales guys are tricky right.
Speaker 1:There you've got all kinds of salespeople. Some are good, some are slime balls, some are in between right, and I don't consider myself. I don't consider myself a slime ball, I'm not saying I have always been that way, and so it's really refreshing to talk to somebody that has very, very similar values. So tell everybody a little bit about yourself, sam, and let's dial us to get into this.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah. Well, thanks for the intro man. I'm so grateful to be on your show. It's been something that I don't get to be a guest on many podcasts, so it's nice to be in the hot seat for a minute, which is fun. But yeah, I've been in industry almost in the HAC industry almost 18 years now. I started off years ago as an adicrat pull-induct work. I was the just to help her on the crew because I needed a job and I did that for a few years. That moved into service for a little bit and then I was like man, I need to find something else. I almost died in an attic one day. It was 140 degrees in the Texas summer, it's three in the afternoon and my arm hit a live 220 wire. That was in the attic and the guy next to me had to kick me off of it and I was like you know what Screw this, I'm out of here, Right One of those days, and so I quit for a little bit and I was like I gotta do something else.
Speaker 1:I don't mean to laugh, that's awful. Yeah, it was rough.
Speaker 2:And so the owner of the company him and I would stay good friends he understood he was like, okay, that was a scare, I get it. And so he called me back. Yeah, it was a little bit later. What? Maybe a year later, hey, my brother's the sales guy. He's leaving.
Speaker 2:I know that you can sell cause I'd always had some home-based business. I pitched him like three different MLMs across the years and he told me no every time. But he always listened and he was like I know you could give a presentation and I also know that you're not going to underbid the labor because you did it. And so come in and sell for me. I was like, okay, and so my sales. My first day sales training was here's the stack of leads, the last guy didn't call and here's our price book, go make money. And I was my sales training and he's like, okay, I'll just dial for dollars. And it was wild Cause I, when I my first year, I gave the company about a three to $400,000. Boost and revenue just because I got busy. I didn't know any different. And the very first sale was that moment was like oh my gosh, I'm built for this. This is my light bulb moment of this is what I made to do in life and so since then I've been.
Speaker 2:We grew that company. I bought in as a partner. We grew it over five years a quadruple in size and then sold my half back to the partner, back to my partner, and that was in a tiny town of 13,000 people where I was putting up with we're a million and a half in a town of 13,000 people was proves that it doesn't matter the population, you can have market dominance. And then we moved to me and my wife, we moved her family to Austin, texas, and said to talk to the owner of a company. I did my research and owner of a company here, became sales manager, sales trainer, helped him grow that company from 2 million to 8 million in about three years and that's where I developed. We were 80% marketed leads at closing at well over 50% for the team and I had no idea that was good. And so that's where I developed the sales system and, like I say, those numbers you're closing like that on market.
Speaker 2:It leads us crazy and so, yeah, so he then he sold the company and I. In the meantime it started the podcast, started training people because there there wasn't any trainer in the industry that was doing they had the same philosophy that I did and it's really had a message started getting in. Everybody that goes back and listens to the old close. It now podcasts the first probably 40 of them or 50 of them the voice recorder into my phone in between appointments so you can hear traffic in the background and like a couple of times almost get run off the road and that's crazy. So and so that's my journey into sales, training and podcasting, and so now I'm doing some cool stuff. So what would you?
Speaker 1:say. What would you say to the audience? Hey, what would you say? Different makes I was gonna say different year. I can't say that word, I don't even know why. I was trying. Like, what makes you do? When you say that you looked at it different, you look at sales training differently. Can you dive into that a little bit, like when you say there's philosophy behind that, what is that?
Speaker 2:Yeah, there's what we. What I do is it's it's really different. It's based in well first of all, and gotten stuck Everything that I had seen. So the reason I started close it now is I had a team. I sent two people up to the up to the Northwest to like a pretty well known sales training place. They sent them through the their program for a week. They come back with their cell, the slide deck, and they're like they're all proud of it. And they showed it to me and I was like this is the exact same slide deck from when I took the class 10 years prior and I was like throw that in the trash. Nobody buys like that anymore. I can teach you everything you need to know. I can drive the truck with me. And I was like, well, if that's the best thing out there right now, then nobody's learning anything. And so that's part of what sparked the close it now business.
Speaker 2:But so much of it is psychology, nlp you and I have talked about that a little bit. Some NLP in it, neuro linguistic programming and really just listening, understanding the psychology of what. It's, not just sales tricks, just understanding the difference and why and how people buy and the missing, especially in the last three to five years, the way people buy has changed, and if you don't believe it, think about the number of people buy on feeling and emotion. It's always been that way, but especially the last three, four, five years it's been such a boom. It became too easy in our industry and it made people lazy, and so there's no cells the last few years, and now that the industry is right, sizing and actually going back to normal, then people who everybody's freaking out oh my gosh, the calls volume is down. It's like, well, no, it's just normal now. It's not a boom right now. I would do the same thing in 2010, 2011, 2012. And when the tax credits went away, everybody freaked out. Then we're not going to be able to sell the high end equipment. Everybody's getting bids now and well, it's the same thing. It's just a cycle, and so now is when real sales will rise to the top.
Speaker 2:But the missing piece is the emotional, truly hard of service, connection and empathy. That's missing in the industry, and bringing that back is that's part of what we do. That's different, and the other thing is understanding that, and this is a hard truth for everybody. The people are just. Our industry is lazy.
Speaker 2:I found this out and I love you all, every single one of you, but I spent two and a half years in solar, going out and there are no companies, there's no such thing as a lead. Here's an appointment. You go find your own, and I've met personally hundreds of people who are making, earning a million dollars a year plus in solar, in alarms, in pest control, in windows, and you name it that. They're hunters, they're carnivores. They said I don't need a company, I take radical responsibility for myself, let's go create business. And they do every single day. And that's the missing piece of like intensity in our industry that doesn't exist right now that I'm really passionate about bringing back. So all of that, put that together and so do. It's the like tenacity of a freaking velociraptor, but with heartfelt compassion and empathy of somebody who truly cares and listens. That's right. So that's a weird combination, but that's where I'm at.
Speaker 1:But it makes total sense. You said the emotion everybody buys on emotion, right, everybody buys on emotion. Most of the time people think it's logic, but it's a hundred percent not. Maybe there's some logic tied in there, but it is primarily emotion. And so you mentioned the difference in emotion over. Let's just take the last four years, right, going into COVID, there was a different emotional button that we were dealing with. In the middle of COVID, if you weren't empathetic, if you weren't cognizant of what the hell was going on, you weren't getting the house. So now we've moved past that and now you've got to be empathetic to the fact that people don't have any money because COVID happened, right, so it's like it's a flow. But if you're not aware of that and you can't pick up on social cues and read body language, right, you're in deep shit.
Speaker 2:Well, and I would actually argue that a little bit too. People do have money. The difference is they are much more selective of where they choose to invest their money, and that's why people are seeing hey, I'm gonna get five bids, I'm getting eight bids, I'm getting 12 bids now, when they didn't before. So through the boom of well and the other part of COVID, that was the best thing for industry is people started to sell virtually. So I can tell you how many systems I've sold through literally text message and never talked to people, or through Facebook Messenger because somebody entered the wrong number on their telephone. Well, I stalked them on Facebook Messenger and they're like I'm so glad you found me right. Or through email and never talked to them. Or just through Zoom. Never step foot in the house, they go out and I'm like, hey, can you just throw me on FaceTime and let's show me your attic? Or show me your system, show me your basement. Simple, and yeah, it's great, and why not? Right? And the caveat being okay. Well, yeah, absolutely, let's do this. I'm gonna swing by. You can close yourself in the master bedroom. I'll wear a mask and gloves. I just need to grab a couple of measurements to confirm and we can install tomorrow and it works and it was great and it's such a different world.
Speaker 2:The thing about feeling and emotion is that people may not believe this, but all you have to do is watch the news. And how many times now do you see some crazy news report about so and so was emotionally triggered because of this right? Well, that just tells us. That's how people think. Now People have been given permission to have feelings and emotions, is it? A lot of people like oh, it's good, it's bad, it's gone too extreme. Well, it doesn't matter that, you're not your customer. That's how they think. So how do we connect to them in the way that they think?
Speaker 1:Yeah, and look, I hate the news. I'm just gonna say that right now I hate the news. I just don't watch it because it is pure emotion field, emotion, field, conversation, that's the whole idea right.
Speaker 1:If I was literally thinking about this. Last night I was sitting in a meeting a recovery meeting and there was a guy sitting across from me and I had brought up to him. I had said something to him about Joe Rogan at a totally different meeting and his response was so violent about how much he thought he was such a fucking moron. Right, joe wrote, and when I was sitting across from him last night, like I couldn't stop thinking about how he reacted and I thought he is 100% addicted to going. I'm like when he leaves this meeting he's gonna go home and indulge in the news. Like I don't know why. That's not really relevant to our conversation, but it was just weird and it captivated me because I'm like how could you get so sucked in? But I get it. It's probably been pretty easy if that's what you like, especially if you're older, right? Older people still watch the news.
Speaker 2:Sure, sure. Well, it's made. News has just become a place to. If they can get a rise out of somebody, then they do their job, not to really report facts anymore.
Speaker 1:Not at all.
Speaker 2:Yeah, but with knowing that, though, that's how we can use that to be like okay, so I've always given the analogy a sales decision. It's like driving a car. The steering wheel is the logic part of it. Yeah, it's gonna point the wheels in the right direction, but the emotion is the gas pedal. That's what's gonna make somebody take action, and take action now. It's not moving until you get the emotion involved, and that's the gas pedal.
Speaker 1:Yeah, 100%. So how much do you work on? This is around along the same lines. Tonality, I think. I don't think tonality is such a big deal. I was working with the team yesterday and we were role-playing and I said, all right, well, tell me how you explained Mold. He was like all right, so he went through his thing and he was like he said to the other person he was role-playing with he said, like what is this? And the other guy said, well, I don't know. And he said, well, you tell me what it is. And I'm like hold on, dude. Like are you really gonna say that to a customer? Like you can't say that, like he's like well, I can't take responsibility. I'm like, yeah, but you don't have to bulldoze the guy. It was wild, you don't know what. This is Right and so. But I think a lot of times we don't. I know. For me, even I don't realize sometimes when my tone is not accurate. I'm aware of it more when I'm talking to someone out in public. I'm less aware of it when I'm at home.
Speaker 2:I'm the same. I get called out moderately often by the, my family and people in my life at home and I'm like, oh wait, that came across way different than I anticipated. But you're right, when I'm in a sales situation or I'm in a training situation, I'm hyper aware.
Speaker 2:And I know every single thing is entirely intentional, and so tonality is crucial. When I'm training people, we'll learn scripts or something, and okay, that's 101. Now let's go to 202 and 303, which is tonality and body language cause 15% of communication is the actual words we say. The rest is tonality and body language. So, for example, the mold thing is like oh my gosh, have you seen this? This is this, is this? Organic growth is concerning yeah Right, that's a whole lot different than, oh, do you know what this is?
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:They're like I don't know.
Speaker 1:Well, you tell me. I'm like hold on, dude, like okay. So I want to pivot for a second. You're doing some pretty cool stuff. It's not like you reinventing the wheel, but it feels like you're reinventing the wheel because nobody else is doing it. It's such a simple thing that I think I see it simple. It's simple for somebody that's knocked doors before. It's simple for somebody that's a hunter. That makes all the sense in the world. So I would love for you to dive into what you're doing differently to generate leads for clients or for customers. Yeah, oh man, I'm super excited about this. We've got a lot going on.
Speaker 2:You're right, there's no. Nobody's really company is one off here and there might dabble in this, but when I was telling you, dove into solar for a little bit and met so many people that are literally making, earning millions a year when A-track there's what. Maybe four or five people across the country that earn a million dollars plus a year as a consultant, and that's through a one. They're not doing it themselves, they have a whole team. They might claim the numbers, but they're not making all the numbers themselves, they have a whole team of people and that's their company dropping hundreds of thousands of dollars in marketing, right. So I met these people who, with zero marketing cost, they're hunters and so. So let's back this up a little bit because we've got to set the context.
Speaker 2:I've been in the industry so long. I came from that place of I remember thinking and when my wife was asking me years ago, hey, why don't you just go talk to them? And I'm like, oh, I can never knock doors, I'm too good for that. Our industry doesn't knock doors, it's going to give us a bad reputation. We don't want to have that. Look on the company. People don't want me there, they're going to close the door. What I didn't know is all of that is just a wrong story. I was telling myself so when I got into solar for a little bit and still am. I've been in the industry for a long time but and still am. I've got a pretty big team. We're doing boot camps and we're out and we're blitzing and we're doing 100, 150 doors, 200 doors in a day. You get past that fear of rejection real damn fast. And the coolest part is, out of 150 doors you might have three people that were like, hey, get off my lawn. And it's the most fun I've had in cells in decades Because you meet the greatest people. They're so welcoming, they're super exciting.
Speaker 2:But the thing is, when you're selling something else, like insurance or solar or pest control or alarm, that's a want-based sale. People have to want it, you have to create a need, but it doesn't exist. When you are selling HVAC at the door, it's a different animal, because everyone knows it's inevitable, everyone needs it and the conversation is so simple. So what I'm doing is working with companies. We're taking it to the streets.
Speaker 2:Man, in this world where AI is coming in, where it's a fist fight right now for digital marketing, that digital marketing space, client acquisition the guy that I went out with yesterday. He said his company, their client acquisition cost about $1,300 per client. The reason for that is in the digital space. For someone to come into a company through digital marketing it doesn't matter what it is PPC or Google or Facebook or whatever they have to already have taken action on their own, and that's what you're dealing with about 3% of the marketplace. When you go out and get proactive, that you're dealing with 97% of the people that nobody else is swimming in that blue ocean. And so now what we've done is we've completely turned it upside down and it cost us nothing.
Speaker 2:So the difference is we've been a lazy industry for so long. How many times this time of year it's fall? Everybody's bitching and moaning about oh, there's no leads coming in. Why is my ad spend not working? Let's put more and more in it. I'm like asking everybody.
Speaker 2:I'm like what are you doing today to go out and get in front of more people? Do you have networking groups? What are you doing? You go talk to people at the grocery store. Go stand in line at Starbucks. You can find people to talk to, and so part of what? So the bigger picture is, I'm really bringing the intensity of.
Speaker 2:We've been herbivores too long, right, we've just spoon fed leads from the company, sucking on the tit of the company for company leads, and when the company needs to work more to get me more leads, well, how about take radical responsibility for yourself and your life? Right, if I am responsible for taking care of myself and my family, then I need to take action. And if I'm responsible for everything that happens in my life, what can I do to change that? So the hunter mentality right, being a carnivore, let's go create business. We are the weather. Who cares if there's a recession? Who cares if there's? It's fall and it's spring and the weather's perfect.
Speaker 2:And a good example of that is yesterday. We're proving it literally went out yesterday with a guy who's never knocked a door in his life. He's an air conditioning guy and he was like, so scared. I was like let's go get on the doors, I'll show you how to do it. And our very first door we knocked. The lady comes out so excited we're there, sets an appointment, didn't cost us anything, we ended up.
Speaker 2:I was taking a lot of time to train him, so this is a really slow pace, but we ended up knocking 21 doors we talked to. We had actually I've got my tracker right here. I'll just tell you exactly what the numbers are. We knocked 21 doors, had nine qualified conversations. We set two appointments in two hours. So that second appointment, the lady was like I've got time right now, can you come in and look? Sure, no problem. And by then he was doing the pitch and it was just so easy. And so we get in the house, go through discovery really smoothly, evaluate the equipment, come back down like here's what we found. And she's like oh yeah, we knew it was old. We've been in the house a couple of years. We've been expecting this. I didn't wanna go through the effort of calling people and getting bids and stuff. I'm glad you showed up.
Speaker 1:And that's most customers thought pattern yeah, they don't wanna call you, they don't wanna call the service company because they feel like one. A lot of these people have never had a call service company, so and I won't go on a huge CSR tangent, but like you've gotta pay attention to the people answering the phones, because these people are nervous calling.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, of course. Well, and the average is homeowners in North America by 1.3 systems in their lifetime. They're gonna do this one time. One time, that's it right. And so if we show up with amazing white gloves service and we're at their doorstep already and we're professional and we know what we're doing, they're not price shopping, they're not getting three bids. Now you're just taking care of people and then you own that neighborhood.
Speaker 2:So let's scale that out a little bit. We went out for two hours. We set two appointments. That didn't cost us anything. If somebody, if one person, worked two and that's the pace minimum you're gonna set an appointment every hour. When you get better at the conversation, it's two or three. So if one person who sucks at it sets an appointment an hour and goes out two hours a day, five days a week this is not even working Saturday and Sunday, and those numbers are way better You've just set 10 appointments in a week that you wouldn't have had otherwise, that were zero acquisition cost.
Speaker 2:Then, even better than that, is what? If so, say you close 50% of that? Okay, so it's five deals in a week. That's 20 a month, you just added. If you have awful numbers and your average ticket's only 10,000, which obviously we help people with that. Nothing against that. If your average ticket's 10,000, you're doing great. The industry average is about 8,000, right. So if your average ticket's 10,000, you just added 200K to your bottom line at the end of the month by going out two hours a day, five days a week, at zero lead acquisition cost.
Speaker 1:I would argue it's even more because of the zero lead, because if you do the math, $1,300, take your guy $1,300, a lead for five leads, I could hit you with that. That's approximately $6,000 approximately. So that's tremendous.
Speaker 2:Oh it's huge. Well, and that's just. These are like super basic, rudimentary numbers. This is and this is how. Like say, you've got a company and you're doing I don't know five million a year and you've got like two sales guys. How do you double your company? Well, we gotta put so much more ad spend blah, blah, blah, hell. No, let's just go find two. Let's turn your sales team from two to four. Find two carnivores that are gonna go out and do this and create they decide to create their destiny. We just double the size your job goes. It moves from. How can I get more leads into the company with, through all of the traditional ways we've done it to? How can I hire people fast enough on the production side to be able to fulfill what these guys are selling?
Speaker 1:Yeah, so what is the all right? So what is the compared to roofing? What would that doorknocker make on a day that he sets two appointments?
Speaker 2:Well, it depends on the model. The interesting thing is, it's really hard to convince people who were have been so spoiled for so long with leads from the company to actually go out and take the steps and do this. So the handful of like the new model will looking across the industry. There's right, we're ripe for revolution right now. Anything that's been done the same way 50 years is ripe for revolution, which is what's happening. This is disrupting the industry between AI, between this, all the stuff. So either we find people who are already hunters and pull them in from another industry and just teach them the sales process. So we can either bring somebody in, teach them how to sell HVAC and they just go out and they find their own. They find their own kills and eat it themselves, meaning they sell it on their own or we can just develop setter teams.
Speaker 2:Right, let's find, if somebody has a $5 million a year company, they couldn't handle the work of three, three good people who just set appointments. They can't handle that volume right, and so it's so easy too customer acquisition. So think about it this way find some part-time people at like the local college in the theater department. They learn scripts fast, they're good at becoming somebody and for a persona or the music department right, they're best at improv.
Speaker 2:Go talk to the guys in the jazz department, right, and they need part-time work that they can make money at when you can show them, hey, I can show you how to make $2,000, $3,000 a week, working two, three hours a day. They're all in. And so what that looks like is if I bring Corey on and I say, hey, corey, check this out, I'm gonna pay you $25 for every appointment that you set, and then when that they people actually show up and they sit the appointment, they're there and it's a good quality appointment, which incentivizes setting quality appointments, I'll pay you another $125. So it's $150 per appointment you go set 10 in a week.
Speaker 1:It's 1500 bucks, it's 1500 bucks.
Speaker 2:Yeah cool, you work I don't know work a Saturday and you set another 10 on a day. You just made three grand in a week and you're stoked. And then I'm stoked because now I've got 20 appointments that cost me three grand and they're kind of warmer.
Speaker 1:I would say they're a warmer lead than any other lead that you're gonna pay for.
Speaker 2:Oh my gosh, absolutely. They're qualified because we qualified them. We're not buying some lead from somewhere and you show up and it's a mobile home that's falling over. We're not driving up to the junkyard like when we buy crazy leads from places that promise all these leads but then you show up and it's like, oh my gosh, this is an empty lot.
Speaker 1:Right, it's just a waste of time.
Speaker 2:Yeah, they're qualified Well and we get to pick the area. We're picking places that we already know we did a bunch of work in the age of the house is perfect. Every system in the neighborhoods about to die, those are the neighborhoods we're in. We're not just willy-nilly throwing a dart and hey, pick a neighborhood. We're not gonna go to the two-year-old neighborhood, we're just working the best ones. Right, make sense. You get to pick your client this way.
Speaker 1:Dude, that's incredible and it's really not. Yeah, and look one thing, I think that is important, for maybe there's a doorknocker watching or listening, or maybe it's a business owner that's like, yeah, this makes sense, because it does Understand that when you walk up to this house, you're not there to sell them something. No, you're not there to. It's not a sales pitch, no, you're just having a conversation. You're just having a conversation.
Speaker 2:Well, and it's so easy right now too, because nobody's knocking for a track, and so the pitch at the door is like hey, listen, I'm not the solar guy. You probably get those a lot.
Speaker 2:Or my favorite one is man. I don't normally do this, I'm the air conditioner guy. But man, I heard your air conditioner from the street, right. How long has it been since it's been checked? That's gotta be having issues. You're probably paying twice as much as you should be to cool your house and it probably isn't even cool and very good. Am I right If I could show you how you could get rid of that thing? Take care of it a piece of mind for a decade doesn't cost you anything to do it. Would you want some more information about that? Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 2:Okay, great, perfect. Well, listen, I don't even know if you qualify yet, but if you have time right now, cool. If not, let's schedule a time that's convenient.
Speaker 1:And that's it. That's all. It is Right, that's it. Like. Who's going to cuss you out? Nobody, very few people are going to cuss that guy out.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and the ones that do, there's the people every now and then like oh my gosh, get off my property. Okay, sure, no problem, right, because there's thousands of thousands of more homes to knock door next door. You don't run. You never run out of leads.
Speaker 2:You just got to knock the next door. And then, when you do so, when you're like, hey, this was so simple and easy, who do you know I can help? Yeah, Right. And then the other thing ask it for referrals. Nobody in our industry asks for referrals. Sure they do. If they do, they definitely don't do it right. They'll have got 50 bucks for you if you hook me up with somebody and I sell them this crazy system. No, it's like who do you know that I can help?
Speaker 1:Yeah, exactly, let's write their name down. Yeah, you got it. Yeah, for sure, get them on the phone yeah.
Speaker 2:Or like oh, the neighbor, yeah, they've been talking about it. Perfect, do you know them? Walk me over there and introduce me, don't just point me over there. And then you're knocking on there and you're like who?
Speaker 1:are you no?
Speaker 2:walk me over there and introduce me. Yeah, absolutely Simple stuff. It's just nobody's doing it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's like reviews. Like a lot of times people struggle getting reviews. I'm like everybody's got a phone either in their hand or in their pocket. Just ask them to pull the phone out. Yeah, man, direct them to Google, have them pull your website up and instruct them exactly what to do.
Speaker 2:And guess what?
Speaker 1:9 times out of 10, they do it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you got it. It's just the 100 mentality man. We've got to get more tenacious in what we do. We can't be passive anymore. Yeah.
Speaker 1:Passive people.
Speaker 2:That's right. Bad sales people have skinny kids.
Speaker 1:That's right. I forgot about that. Yeah, that is right, 100% All right, so let's yeah, I think this is super cool. Okay, and it ties in to the next thing I want to talk to you about. I know that personal development, personal growth, is something that's vitally important to both of us, and I don't even know if we talked about our journeys with that, but I would love for you to share a little bit about your journey with personal development and how you think how important that is for folks.
Speaker 2:Oh, it's everything. It's so everything. I started I was 19 and for my birthday when your friend of mine got me Rich Dad, Poor Dad by Robert Kiyosaki it's my first even kind of nonfiction personal growth book and I was hooked. I read every single book in that whole library at that point and then just became a lifelong learner and so I started reading often on over the years and then, right at 10 years ago now, 11 years ago now, some massive tragedy happened in my life with my wife and we had a bunch of people in our family like instantly died in a car wreck and it was awful. We just had in September, like 10 year anniversary of several of them and was your wife one of those people?
Speaker 2:I don't know, my wife was not, but her so started out my Her brother who worked for me. My brother-in-law was a. He was on our crew, one of my install crew, and he committed suicide. And that's September 26. And then, a year and one day later, my wife's, or both of her parents, and her grandparents on our mom's side, were in a horrible car wreck road rage, accident by a big commercial truck. Everyone in the car was killed except my father-in-law. And then, four months later, my sister-in-law lost a one month baby to SIDS.
Speaker 2:So it was this insanely dark time in our lives and so it was bad, but instead of it went through some substancey things lots of alcohol for a little bit. But most importantly, what happened is, instead of turning to a lot of other things, I dove head first into personal growth. That was my coping mechanism, and so my audible goes for miles because the number of audiobooks and things that I was listening to constantly to keep me above the line and so because of that, is like massive. So I've got this insane appreciation for personal growth and that's why, when people listen to my podcast, one of the things they'll hear me say over and over is in sales, we work to become someone worth buying from.
Speaker 2:Because as you up level, as you level up, the people that buy from you also level up along with it. Because sales is not the performance of an hour, it's the overflow of your whole life. And who cares if you make a million dollars a year, if you lose your family and you get divorced because you're never home and you have a heart attack because you're not taking care of your health? So it's all about taking care of all of the elements in your life. To be a top performer, we're a machine. We've got to function at a high level. You can't do that eating off the dollar menu, right?
Speaker 1:That's right.
Speaker 2:So that's my personal growth journey. It was escalated at one point and it just had a slow down sense and I love to talk about personal growth and books and speakers and events, and you name it. In the last 15 years I've spent $150,000 in personal growth At least 10K a year going to events or buying books or whatever.
Speaker 1:So tell me what your favorite event has been. I think, even though we haven't talked about this, I have a feeling that I already know the answer to this, but I can't wait to tell me.
Speaker 2:Yeah, my favorite event I've ever been to 2016, I went to. It was in the network marketing space. It was called GoPro this event that Eric Worre puts in Las Vegas and the key notes were him, richard Branson and Tony Robbins so amazing. The ability to hear so Richard Branson live in person was incredible. And then, of course, four hours of Tony Robbins will absolutely change your life, and I've gotten the privilege of hearing him twice. He also spoke at my back when I was doing network marketing. He spoke at my company's event as well, and another four hour event. So that that was absolutely life changing event that shot me to another level for sure.
Speaker 1:So I anticipated you to say it was Tony Robbins event.
Speaker 2:But that was pretty close, that was the end with Richard Branson, that's.
Speaker 1:That's. That's incredible. I've not I've never seen him speak. I've been to a couple of. I crewed. Well, I went to my first Tony event in 2018 and then the next year I crewed on the same event and it is life changing. There's something about when you hear about walking on the fire it. There's something about when that happens and you walk through that and it's done and you don't get burnt. You have a shift, such a massive shift, that you can't argue with walking across a bunch of coals and not getting burnt. He just doesn't make sense, right, but it 100% works. But it's all here. It's all here.
Speaker 2:That's it and that's, I think, the biggest thing when I'm training companies and so the doors is part of what I do.
Speaker 2:As far as sales training Got virtual program, I do one site visits depends on the company and what they're wanting to accomplish. We've got everything from a we'll do a week or we'll do a year program, just depends on the company. But if there's one thing that they the biggest moment, that's the most fulfilling, is watching. It's not just like a light bulb moment, it's like those spotlights when a grand opening of a restaurant or something happens, or like a disco or a club or something that shoots straight up in the sky. It's that intense. Those moments happen for all of the people in the class because it doesn't matter if they're new or I've had people that were been doing this 25 years and they're like oh my God, I've never seen it like this because of the way that we dive into the psychology behind what's happening in the conversations and it's not just. Well, here's how you handle this objection I'm not just going to give you if they say these words, use these words, because if they change it, then you're out of luck. You have no way to respond.
Speaker 2:But if you understand where the question or the objection comes from and why they're asking it, and then you can understand the questions you need to ask. In return, to clarify, I've said for years there's no objection that can't be handled by you asking more questions.
Speaker 1:That's exactly right. It gives you the. It helps you to understand the perspective of the other person, which is the name of the game.
Speaker 2:You got it? Yeah, for sure. So, but that's it, that's how we're. So we're multiplying companies, revenue and like such a short amount of time, because it's not just here's a new trick, right, here's a bag of stuff. It's like let's completely mentally shift the dynamics of your organization in personal responsibility and personal growth, and as that happens, then, yeah, we're going to learn some sales things also. But all of that combined is what's making such a massive difference.
Speaker 1:Yeah, 100% dude, because that's the thing that is completely missing. Look, I won't get on a soapbox here, but, like, at the end of the day, if and I don't, and I know you don't do this, I know you don't come in for a day or two days, or even four or five days, and that's the last, like that's the program, right? I know that, I know you don't do that based on what you told me, right? And it's impossible to think that someone is going to come in and transform your sales team over four or five days and then that'd be the last touch point. It's impossible, yeah you got it.
Speaker 1:But it's a business model In the business model. Is you got to call me back in?
Speaker 2:Yeah, right, yeah, that's interesting, but you say that, and I 100% agree. Up until real recently, that's what I've been doing. So I've had the ongoing virtual program and I've been doing a four day one site visit. We're locking in the learning, because I'll do half day in class and then half day in ride along, and every time I show up we're closing it to 70% plus at 20 or 30% better, higher average tickets and what they're used to, and I just didn't really. I think part of it is just needed to structure out some better plans, because I'm in the field so much that I'm learning the rest of it of really here and what companies need, and so I'm about to phase out the one site, the one time visit that I have been doing, because, you're right, it's accountability over time.
Speaker 2:It doesn't matter how high you jump, it's how straight you walk when you land, or do you continue to do the things. The cool part of a lot, though, is what I do, though. It's a lot of awareness items. So when someone is aware of, they've made aware of, something, if they choose not to do it, then they're making an intentional choice to go back to their habits that were bad versus. It's different than learning a new skill and trying to practice it and get better at it, because when it's an awareness thing, if you're not doing it, you're choosing not to. So that's part of why we're getting like where NLP comes in, because now we're getting instant change versus someone that just has to practice this more.
Speaker 1:So let's go slightly deeper just for a second. All right. So if it takes, they say, on average 21 days to change a habit, it could be debatable, but I would say that's, let's just call it average. When you're changing a habit, you're also changing the habit of your body reacting to the thing that you're trying to break. In other words, every day you and I do in our daily lives, we do some shit. That's over and over. It's the same exact thing, because we don't. It's like driving a car. You don't think about driving a car the same way you did when you were 16 years old.
Speaker 2:You're on autopilot half the time, yeah, right, yeah, and always put my contacts in, right. I then left I. Just this is what I do, right.
Speaker 1:It's just what you do because you're programmed. You've programmed yourself with that habit to do it that way, and there's nothing wrong with that, unless you're doing the wrong things. Yeah, and so I think that you've. For me, I have to overcome those movements, those natural born movements that I've created in myself. Does that make sense? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So that's where the reinforcement comes in, right, that's where the accountability comes in, because it's hard to just switch it on, even if you're aware sometimes your body trumps your mind.
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely. It's that awareness that it's interesting, because I didn't even realize I was doing it at first. But when I'm out in the doing trainings and stuff, I'm teaching people how to anchor and so, and you understand what that means. What that means is well, I always ask almost like when's the best time to make a sale? And I don't know. It's like right after you made a sale, because when you walk into that next house, it's easy, it's like taking it order, right, it's so easy.
Speaker 2:You just everything flows. You assume it because your energy is already there. You're already in the right state, right, right. And so it's state management, like Tony Robbins would call it. And so what I help people do is like we'll go out and we'll get in that state, and then I stop them. We'll go out and we'll make some amazing sale and I'll stop them, and so, okay, feel this energy right here. This is what we need to capture, because everybody knows if I'm going out on an appointment at Friday or Saturday night at eight o'clock at night, what's the mindset? They're signing the papers. I'm not leaving.
Speaker 2:They're getting my ass out of my house at eight o'clock at night or I can't be doing something I want to be doing. I have to go make a sale at eight o'clock at night on Friday or Saturday. They're signing the documents and it always sells. Now how do we capture that same without being overbearing and just like a pushy salesman that nobody wants to be? But how do we capture that same mindset and plug it into, I don't know, 10 o'clock Tuesday morning or three o'clock Thursday afternoon, when they're normally would be okay? Well, yeah, I'll email that to you and we'll get back. No, it's like, I'm here, let's make right now the right time to buy. Everybody's like oh, there's never a good time to buy. Well, right now is the right time to buy because I'm here and this is my window for you to purchase.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I'm not going to take no for an answer.
Speaker 1:Right and it's never going to be cheaper than it is right now. Guarantee is not going to be cheaper at a later date. So also, let's take the guy that gets his teeth kicked in right and just the customer sucks and he didn't sell. Yeah, there has to be. You can't ride on that same great energy. There has to be a pattern break. But you've got to be able to recognize how to break that pattern, because if you don't 100%.
Speaker 1:If you don't, you're going to go right into that next house and probably do the same thing.
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely, and that's it. Winston Churchill's famous quote is success is going from failure to failure with no lack of enthusiasm. And that's what we have to do in sales. We have to almost be bipolar. Right, I know I'm going to sell this, and then when you don't, and the customer is awful and say they're the only the commodity buyer and that's it, you walk out of the house and all right, cool Next. But it has to do. In fact, last night I did a really amazing interview with, again, jonathan Neves. He owns a green energy mechanical up in Boston and he took us through an exercise which I was walking everybody through.
Speaker 2:It's like take a few minutes in your car and you're going to talk to yourself. You're going to talk to yourself out loud and you're programming your brain to. It's the specific part of our particular activating system, to use the correct terms. But we're programming our brain that just sit before the appointment and be like okay, this is Cory is going to love me. Mr and Miss Barrier, this is going to be the best experience they've ever had. They've they're going to see the value in everything and have no problems with price. This is going to be like literally the most incredible moment their lives have ever had. They're going to love every single thing. They're going to love the company, they're going to love me. The project is going to make the most sense to them and they're going to have the most certainty. It's going to solve their problems and we're going to be high-fiving and hugging and they're going to get everything at the end because they finally have the solution in their life and they're so excited about meeting me today. Right, no, I just programmed our brain of what we're future, casting that outcome.
Speaker 2:People think this is all woo-woo and crazy, but this is literally I don't know a top performer that doesn't do this. Right, and this is state managed. This is how to get back into that state. And me just doing it right now. In this role play, I'm just like got the excitement of like goosebumps, because I'm like I'm ready to go sell something right now. Right, because I've done that for so long. Instantly, my brain just shot off. All of this going on, it's like, all right, we're ready to close right now and I'm just role-playing it with you and that's the power of what you get used to, that you can put yourself in that state at any moment if you learn how to do it, and so that's a big part of what we train.
Speaker 1:Overcoming that, and you can also stay in that negative mindset If you would so choose to all this is the same thing. It's the exact same thing, but guess what? You and I and everybody listening to this have a choice, and that choice is you can either say I'm excited to go into this house or it's gonna suck, and most likely, you're 100% correct.
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely what you focus on, you find and what you expect will show up in your life.
Speaker 1:That's right.
Speaker 2:So, if you, I mean, there was a time when I was back, when I was still in the field and I was it was probably 2018, 2019, before COVID, before all that and we just had a run of like. Every time we show up at sales meeting, my numbers are bigger and better and bigger and better. And I'm doing 20, 30, $40,000 projects all over town and we show up at sales meeting and my close rate was like 68% or something that you know during that time period and everybody else has gotten. They only come in, they start complaining. I've got all these ethnic clients and all these people that are just want the cheapest price and I'm getting the worst leads and you've gotta be getting the cherry-picked leads. And I'm like, guys, we're getting the same leads that you are.
Speaker 2:And finally, this one guy took me to lunch. He's like, dude, what are you doing? And I'm like you're not gonna believe me. And he's like, yeah, I'm buying you lunch today. We're having a nice lunch. You at least owe me to tell me what you're doing. I was like, listen, bro, here's what I do Every morning before I leave the house. I've got this nice place, I sit quietly and I'm mindful and I just throw myself into this meditation. I visualize my day of being and my mantra and my affirmation is I get the best clients, I get the best leads. They always buy. Everyone wants to buy from me, everyone wants to buy the best from me and I don't accept anything else. And I'm just sitting focused on that for 20 minutes every morning and he's like you gotta be doing one. And I was like no, the process is the same, it's just what I expect and, sure enough, that's what happens. That's what happens for years and it always has.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's dope dude. Yeah, yeah, that's phenomenal man. I'm really glad that we got into this conversation, but I don't think I've had this kind of conversation with anybody ever on the podcast. I don't think.
Speaker 2:So you do a lot of like all the technical stuff which I love. I've loved your podcast for a long time, so long time listener, first time caller.
Speaker 1:I appreciate that dude and this has been such a good conversation and we're probably gonna have to do a second one at some point.
Speaker 2:Oh, yeah, yeah, totally yeah, this is dope, I love it, man.
Speaker 1:Well, where can people find you? Tell them about your Facebook group? And, by the way, go, definitely go check out. Close it now podcast, because it's like he drops knowledge like this all day on there.
Speaker 2:So yeah, yeah, I'm 100%. I'm not the trainer that's gonna like only give you a little bit and then charge you for all the good stuff. I'm just give it away right Cause I know that if you adopt a philosophy of always give more value than you take, everything else takes care of itself. Right? The number of people that message me and tell me oh my God, my whole life has turned around since I started listening to the podcast with sales and all this, and I've never even met them before. I love it, it's so fulfilling. But, yeah, so close it now you can. I've made the brand very consistent so you can find it anywhere Apple podcast, spotify, search, close it now.
Speaker 2:Sales training It'll come right up on Facebook. The Facebook group is a community where it's super positive. I do an insane amount of trainings in there. In fact, everybody listening. I've got one that's a pin post. There's no reason anyone should ever have to get bullied by the three bids. Objection again, because we absolutely destroyed that. So that's a video that lives in the Facebook group. So search, close it now in the Facebook group and go join that, and you can just email me, sam at closeitnownet Notcomnet, sam at closeitnownet. Or pop me a text 512-364-8559.
Speaker 2:And tell me, you found me from Corey's podcast and, yeah, we're rocking it, rolling man. We've got so much going. We're really expanding this year. I'm excited about taking it to the streets with the doors. I'm excited about I've got a book coming out soon which will have the wholesale system in it and then a companion workbook which will have the sales system along with it and my online course just released. So you can act.
Speaker 2:It's got the course and it also has me and Sam. I partnered with Sam Taggart, a door-to-door experts, and so it lives on his platform. You can get there from HVACdoorsnet. Hvacdoorsnet yeah, that's the right one. I just bought that URL when the course went live last week and so it has the whole sales system in that course. And then him and I have a whole group of modules on how to pitch at the door for HVAC, and so we role play a bunch of stuff and we're giving away the scripting.
Speaker 2:So, and then when someone wants to implement, give me a call, we'll come out, we'll train your team, we'll show you how to recruit carnivores to go out and literally you can double your company in a matter of. With this model, you can double your company once a quarter. If you decide to, it's as fast or as slow as you want it to be as an owner. That's your choice, right? So so there you go. Let's completely disrupt this industry. Let's make this time that HVAC companies make some freaking noise in our industry and let's change the game, because there's no reason we shouldn't be able to.
Speaker 1:Amen dude. Thank you so much, dude, I really appreciate it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, thanks for having me on, man. I'm so grateful to be here today. Yeah, this was great. I really appreciate it. Yeah, good stuff, man. Thank you, brother.
