Welcome to Close it now, an H Vac sales training podcast with Sam Wakefield.

Here we'll build your reputation in residential H Vac sales to be the expert influencer in your market.

You'll get insight into the top minds in the industry as they share their skills and hacks to help you on your journey.

This podcast isn't just about selling more, it's about understanding your customers needs and building efficiencies behind the scenes so you can sell more but work less while being top of mind when people think H Vac.

Now let's get started with your host of the Close it now podcast.

This is Sam Wakefield.

Well, welcome back to the Close it now podcast.

Sam Wakefield here.

I am so stoked to come to you today.

This guest is somebody actually came across recently, but I've known of his company for a lot of years in the industry and you've probably heard of it as well.

But before I tell you what it is, let me tell you a little bit about him.

He is an athlete, one of the, one of the people I love when I come across people who do out of the ordinary things.

I was always that person growing up that was not into the normal football, baseball, soccer types things.

I was always into extreme sports.

And how can I maximize my own personal efforts to achieve something that I never thought possible and push my limits?

And that's one of the reasons I connected with this guy when I was reading his book.

Because it starts with a really cool story about spartan races which I'm sure we'll talk about.

But he is the.

He's a serial entrepreneur currently he is the owner of Afflicare Sports Recovery company, owner of a company called Booked, which is a night answering service for home service companies.

So everybody pay attention.

We'll talk about that.

That could be a great resource for you as well.

And the reason we're talking today is he is also the founder of Power Selling Pros which is the source for, for everything that you need to know about your, your call center, your CRMs, all of that training that they need as well as he even does right alongs with service tax.

So it's about how to get that conversion from when that call comes in.

How do we get it in the hands of the people that can do something with it because we all know nothing happens until something gets sold.

And so I'm super excited to introduce today Mr. Brigham Dickinson.

He is here to talk about his new book which we'll get into.

It's called Something to Give.

And I tell you I've read a good portion of it so far, and it is fire.

So, everybody, let's welcome Brigham to the show.

Thank you for joining me today, sir.

I appreciate it.

Sam.

Thank you very much.

Yeah.

You know, I told you how much I love that name Sam right now.

Now tell me about it.

I love that name, Sam.

That Sam.

I am that Sam.

I. I love eggs and ham.

It's like the best sales book of all time.

Absolutely.

Yep.

For everybody that's just listening, he actually has a copy of it we're looking at on video right now.

And so watch out.

When this goes live on the YouTube channel, at some point, you'll be able to be able to see it in person.

But.

But tell us a little bit about yourself, man.

Give us a highlight reel.

How did you end up where you are in life?

I, um.

There's a.

You know, in the book, it goes in pretty in depth, but give us kind of a highlights and what's your philosophy?

Life philosophy and company philosophy.

Yeah.

So let's start with.

Let's start with Kevin Comerford.

Kevin Comerford used to work at Service Experts.

Long, long time ago, back in 2001, right.

And Kevin Comerford was a district manager in California for Service Experts.

And Service Experts was just bought out by Lennox and one of the companies inside Kevin's district.

He was over, like, you know, 10 different companies.

It was way back when.

It was kind of one of the first big purchases of heating and cooling companies came around, and Service Experts bought up a bunch of them at the time.

And so Kevin was over this one district of Service Experts in California.

And I happened to be a lead coordinator working for a company called Arctic Gear, which was a service Service experts company.

And so I answer the phones for those who want to replace their unit, not just service it, but replace it.

And they were sure they wanted to replace it.

So those calls would come to me, I'd book those.

Now, that's not the reason why I took the job.

The reason why I took the job is because I was finishing my marketing degree and I was going to be this amazing, markety muckety muck man.

I was going to be good, right?

That was my goal.

That was my intention.

So Kevin Comerford calls me up and he says, hey, Brigham, how's it going?

And now, first of all, the district manager calling a lead coordinator, right.

From a specific company as a district, I felt super darn special.

I was like, wow, Kevin's on the phone with me.

This is amazing, right?

Why are we on the phone today?

Yeah, this is not just my boss.

This is my boss's boss.

You know what I mean?

So that's a big deal.

And so I'm going.

All right, cool.

Kevin wants to have a chat with me.

He says, hey, Brigham, I'm gonna.

I'm gonna be at Arctic Gear in a couple weeks.

I want to spend some time with you.

I'm thinking around noon.

Does that work for you?

Well, yeah, it works great, Kevin.

Let's do it.

Clear my schedule, right?

Yeah.

And so.

And so two weeks go by, and I'm getting really excited because in my mind, I'm thinking he wants to talk to me about my marketing ideas.

I was doing some of the marketing at Arligue in addition to being a lead coordinator.

So I thought for sure it was because he wanted to chat about my.

My.

My.

You know, my marketing abilities.

And so I had all these ideas.

I put.

Put together a bunch of articles, and I had a notepad full of notes, and I was ready.

I was ready to show him how great I was at marketing.

And so we happened to meet at the.

At the lunch table at Articare, and I start to unload on him with all these marketing ideas, right?

And I was showing him what was working for Articare and how it could work for each of the other companies in this district.

And I think he gave me the floor for about three minutes.

And after about three minutes, he said, okay, well, this is all good, Brigham.

This is really, really good.

And then he kind of puts his hands on all of my stuff and kind of moves it to the side.

He says, now show me how you answer the phones.

And I'm like, what do you mean?

You know what?

Let's.

Let's just practice, Brigham.

Ring, ring, ring.

And he's sitting there waiting for me to, you know, answer this imaginary phone.

And of course, I. I totally botched this.

Like, this is.

This is Brigham with.

With Arctic Air.

He's like, that's not how you answer the phones.

It better not be.

For the next two hours, he drills me on how to answer phones.

We wrote scripts.

He practiced in different voices.

I mean, he was super animated.

It was crazy.

By the time we were done, he walks out of the lunchroom, and as he's going through the doorway, he turns back around and looks back at me, and he says, hey, I'm going to call you periodically, and I don't care if you recognize the voice or not.

I'm going to be different.

You might.

You might hear different voices, right?

I'm going to Be different characters.

I want you to stay inside the role play just as we've done for the.

For the last little bit.

And then.

And then we'll talk about it afterwards.

I said, all right, sounds great.

And sure enough, for the next six months, he calls me every week.

And sometimes he's this cowboy guy.

Sometimes he's an old lady, sometimes.

And it.

And funny thing he would say after the role play is over, he'd say, hey, okay, this is Kevin.

And of course, I'd act surprised every time.

Oh, my gosh.

I had no idea it was you, Kevin.

And, I mean, how cool is my boss's boss, right?

My boss is amazing.

Right?

Royal Hockley is an amazing guy, and we can talk about him, too.

But, Kevin, to take the time to invest the time to show me how important this role was and why it needed the attention that it needed, it changed my life.

Obviously, it changed my life.

You fast forward a few years later, I was still trying to make it in marketing, and it was after a failed business.

A gentleman by the name of Troy Nearings I was working with, he brings me into his office, and he says, hey, we got to let you go because your leads are no good.

I said, what do you mean, my leads are no good?

And he says, well, they just want a ballpark price.

They just want to know what your charge come out.

They just want to talk to a technician.

And I'm like, well, wait a minute.

They're not calling for fun.

Yeah, they want something.

Yeah, they want something from you, Troy, obviously something that you provide.

They just don't know the difference between you and the next guy aside from your price.

And so that's why they ask those questions.

They ask those questions because, quite frankly, Troy, they don't know what to ask.

And he says, well, Brigham, it sounds like you know what you're doing.

I know.

I know what I was doing, Sam, because Kevin Comerford taught me three years earlier.

Of course I know what to do, right?

And I said, well, look, let me train them.

I'll teach them how to book these calls and all these customers.

And I did this same thing Kevin did for me.

Sure.

And so within a couple of weeks, I get a call from Troy's friend Tom Robichod, Precision Plumbing Heating in Boulder, Colorado.

He calls me up, and he says, hey, I hear you're doing Troy's call handling training.

And I said, yep.

And his marketing, he's, oh, that's great.

I was wondering if you would train my CSRs.

Cool.

As long as I could do Your marketing.

So.

Well, I've got that covered, but I'll pay you to train my CSRs.

And of course, the light bulb came up over my head.

I was like, oh, he's gonna pay me.

He's gonna pay me to train his CSRs.

And so my business completely transitioned from that point.

I stopped being a marketer and started coaching csrs one on one twice a month.

And within a few months, I was hiring all my friends.

And Sam, I don't have a lot of friends.

I was hiring all those guys up.

I mean, you've already talked to one of them, Barry Gates, you know what I mean?

Right?

And plus, I gotta pay each one of them to just be my friend, right?

Because now they're all working together, you.

Know what I mean?

So anyway, the rest is history.

We have over a thousand trainees in our coaching program now and 15 years later and 40 employees domestically and at least another 40 internationally that listen to phone calls and save certain calls for coaching purposes.

The greatest benefit of Power Sling Pros is that it makes sure that you're where it ensures it gives you the best chance of being the only one that goes out there, having been on the other end of it.

Right?

I dress up like a technician all the time and go out with the technicians and, and, and show them how to, to set leads for comfort advisors and take great care of the customer, that sort of thing.

The best thing, the best scenario is for me to be the only one that goes out there.

If I'm one of five bids, boy, you've really put me behind the eight ball.

It's going to shoot.

It's going to kill my confidence whether I'm a comfort advisor or a technician.

So making sure you're the only one that goes out is the most important thing, right?

So for that reason, Rome alone, it's the, it's a great, it's great to have Power Sling pros.

We do it for you, right?

We do it for you.

We hold the team accountable.

We coach them twice a month using their own phone calls every.

Every other week.

It's one less thing you have to do, right?

One less thing you have to worry about because we've got it.

And that's what we do for hundreds of companies throughout the United States as well as in Canada, Australia.

Love it.

Man, that is powerful.

And what a cool story.

That's almost similar to how mine started.

I just started podcasting because I had something to say, and then six months in, first person, finally people were calling me up saying, take my Money.

Tell me how to do this.

And it's very similar in that organic origin of.

Of what we do.

And so.

And I love that.

So tell us about.

So you.

You've written several books now this is your third, is that right?

That's right.

Cool.

So tell us about your journey into becoming an author.

Well, the first one, Mark Madison in our industry, great speaker, great trainer.

When I was at Arctic Air Royal, sent me to a training that Mark Madison did.

And one of the things he said in that training was is that, you know, once you have a foundation of principles that people need to know and need to learn, you should.

You should write about it.

And so in 2016, I wrote this book, and.

And I wish that I had listened to Mark Madison's advice when he first said it.

Right.

When he first told me to write the book.

But that was a long time ago.

So finally, finally, by 2016, once I had a really clear idea of what was working for csrs dispatchers and lead coordinators, I was able to put it all in a book.

And so that's where the.

That's where the first book came into play.

And of course, you can find any of my books just by going to Brigham Dickinson dot com.

There's a link there.

And of course, you can.

You can order all of my books if you wanted.

But.

But that's the first one.

And that's kind of.

This is the pattern for excellence is.

Is the foundation of princ.

It's a.

Some people look at it and go, hey, the wheel, right?

Yeah, the wheel.

Sure.

The end goal is to win the moment and wow the customer.

Right.

And there are eight principles that we teach to help you achieve that end goal.

And it's a positive attitude.

It's preparation, it's listening skills, it's caring, it's reassuring.

Asking the right questions, creating value, and being grateful.

Realize, I totally was cruised through those.

But that's basically what the first book is about.

The second book, pattern After Excellence.

Well, this.

Look, as a company grows, the leader must also grow.

In fact, the main thing that holds a company back from growing is its leader.

And of course, I found that out.

The hard way, right?

Yeah, over and over and over again.

And so as my company grew, I got to, like, 300 trainees, and I plateaued at 300 trainees for three years straight.

And I finally ended up hiring a coach.

And that coach pulled me aside and he said, look, I don't want to meet with you in the office.

I'd rather come to your home and the first thing I thought was, is, wait a minute.

I've heard this before.

Living in a van down by the river.

We're going to be pals.

We're going to be friends.

And of course, diet of government cheese.

Exactly.

So you've seen it, too.

You know what I'm talking about.

And so he ended up coming to my home on Mondays.

And this is $1,000, basically a visit.

So he'd spend the day, he'd have me turn off my phone, and by the end of the day, in my house, I'd have these oversized stickies all over my house.

And he'd ask simple questions.

He said, hey, what's keeping your business from growing?

That's a great question.

That's why I hired you, dude.

Why don't you tell me why?

You know what I mean?

And then he just keep asking, how, how, how, how?

How are you gonna do that?

How are you gonna do that?

And after the 100th how, we started having these amazing brainstorming sessions.

And then I was able to get out of my own way.

And part of that was just taking a look at the principles that we teach CSRs and applying them as a business owner and recognizing that as business owners, we have tendencies, human tendencies, that come into play.

And what's interesting about human tendency is that we're all driven by these needs.

We have a need to feel happy.

We have a need to feel self assured.

We have a need to feel understood.

We have a need to feel cared about.

We have a need to feel like we belong.

We have a need to feel like people are engaged with us.

We want to feel worthy.

We want to feel accepted, and we want to feel important, right?

These are all things that drive us on a regular basis.

Because we're driven by these human needs, we sometimes cave to human tendency.

And as we cave to human tendency, it makes us unhappy, Right?

The complete opposite of what we were working for in the beginning, Right?

Exactly.

And not confident and misunderstood and indifferent and so on and so forth.

And so instead of caving to these human tendencies, what we should do instead is to focus in on truth.

It's funny how there's a hundred behavioral books that are out there, maybe more.

Maybe it's a thousand, right?

Well, the funny thing about that is, is that the study of behavior doesn't necessarily affect or change behavior, whereas the study of truth.

Now, what the frick is truth?

Well, the word's been hijacked over the years.

And here's what I mean by that, Sam, is that people say that they have their truth.

And these other people, they have their truth.

And that truth is different from this truth.

Well, no, you're talking about belief.

And, and everybody's entitled to their own belief.

You.

You might believe something different than I believe in, and you're entitled to that, however, truth.

That's different.

Right.

It's kind of like saying, hey, it's my truth that when you plant an apple seed and you give it plenty of water and it's planted in good soil and it's got sun, that one day I'd have a beautiful peach tree.

Well, no, dude.

No.

You plant an apple seed, you're getting an apple tree.

It doesn't matter what your belief is.

The truth is.

The truth is the truth.

It's absolute.

Right.

Well, there's.

There's a set of absolute truths there, found in the pattern for excellence, that when you apply those truths, you get the happy consequence, you get the good result.

Right?

And so basically, when you apply truth to moments, pivotal moments, what will happen is, is that you'll win moments.

You'll act rightly as opposed to, you know, you'll do what's right as opposed to what's easy.

Sure.

And.

And you'll win them and you'll win the moment and you'll win it inside the office.

And that's what the.

That's what the second book is all about.

It's about, you know, being patterned after excellence and then, of course, the next evolution.

Sounds like, Brigham.

You took forever to get to this book.

I know.

This is great.

It's so valuable, too, because it clearly sets it this up because it's a natural progression in the way that they.

That.

That you've evolved as a human being and a leader as well as the content that we were just talking about.

So.

Yeah, so tell us about something to give.

Okay.

So after I wrote Pattern After Excellence, the company grew.

And I'd say we got.

I'd say we doubled over a couple of.

Couple of years.

Got to around, I'd say 600 trainees.

And of course, today we're over a thousand.

So, you know, the end result.

Right.

I've already let the cat out of the bag, but that's a.

That's a byproduct, Right?

It's a byproduct of what?

Doing the right things.

Right, exactly.

So I've.

I've since then realized, as a result of what I've experienced working on myself.

Right.

Working on me as a leader and, and staying out of the way of my business.

And Sam, I'M not perfect.

Right?

The.

The last thing I want is for anybody to think, oh, my gosh, put him on a piss.

No, I.

Look, I. I am still learning and will continue to learn.

In fact, the more I learn, the more I realize I have to learn and something to give.

It's.

Look, all these books are kind of like a journal, right?

They're journal entries where I'm learning lessons as I go along.

And the cool thing about Something to give is, is that my entire life, I. I realized now that I was proving myself, right?

The first five years of my business.

Power sling pros.

My gosh, Sam.

I was never home.

And in fact, I would be at so many events, so many industry events, that there'd be some contractors that were great friends of mine, and they'd say, oh, my gosh, Brigham, you're everywhere, man.

I see you at every event.

This is crazy.

Well, the downside to that is that I was never, ever home.

Right?

My kids would say the opposite.

They said, dad, you're never, ever home.

Right?

And there's a toll there.

There's a tax, you know, that I'm still paying for.

And.

And there's lessons that I wish I. I learned more quickly.

Right?

But.

But my entire career, I spent it proving myself, proving myself to my clients, proving myself to my team, proving myself to everybody around me.

But as you become a leader of.

Of.

Of a group of people, in order for them to grow, you actually need to stop proving yourself and give them the opportunity to prove themselves.

So, in essence, you've got to step out of the limelight and let them step in.

You've got to let them be the hero, and you need to coach them up.

Now, the funny thing is, is that every contractor I work with has a team of individuals that work for them with untapped opportunity, untapped potential for opportunity.

I see that all over the place.

Yeah.

And they have these ambitions, and if we do not sit down with them as leaders and say, where do you see yourself in three to five years?

What do you want to do with your life?

We're never going to know what that opportunity is.

And even more sadly, we're never going to be able to get out of our business.

Yeah.

Right.

We're always going to be working in it, not on it.

You got it.

You got it.

And funny thing, I've been to hundreds of events over the years, and in every event, they all say, you got to work on your business as opposed to in it.

Nobody talks to you how to do it.

Step by step, how to get out of your business.

Step by step.

And so it took me 15 years to figure it out.

And don't blame me, right?

I'm a slow learner.

I finally figured it out, right?

And so once I figured it out, I had to put it all in a book.

And so this shows a business owner, step by step, how to methodically get out of their business, get out of the way, so that the people inside of it.

And that is your most important asset inside of an organization.

It is your people to see it any other way.

I don't know, bro.

You got to work on yourself.

Okay?

I love it.

Yeah.

Oh, you got it.

I was just having this conversation with somebody that reached out to me yesterday, in fact, and he was.

We've been talking about, you know, when we're going to schedule my site visit, and he's like, man, you know, I just having the hard time finding people and keeping people and getting people that aren't going to steal from me and all these kind of things.

And I was just like, man, culture is everything.

I said, create a culture.

And just like what you're saying, I was like, you've got to start.

You can attract the best people if you start vision, casting the future and tell them where you're going and how excited you are to take them there with you and plant that flag and be that leader, but also show them how that's going to raise their standard and their level of success and improve their whole life.

And I was like, man, culture and messaging is everything when it comes to hiring and keeping people.

And exactly what you're saying, man, I get that question all the time.

How do I find good people and how do I keep them, and how do we keep them from stealing and just create a culture where they wouldn't want to?

Right?

You nailed it.

You nailed it.

So there's two things that are needed.

They need to believe in what they're doing.

It's got to be bigger than any individual inside the organization, right?

It's got to be more about.

It's got to be more than about money.

There's a lot of places where people can make money, right?

If.

If it Zappos, let's.

Let's face it, it's an online shoe store, and they deliver happiness, okay?

And people, the employees there, they drink that Kool Aid.

I know because I've taken the tour several times.

If they can do it, if they can create a purpose bigger than any one individual, well, then so can we.

I mean, look in the Heating and cooling industry, there are people that actually die from being too hot or being too cold.

Okay.

If, if, if we can do it for shoes, my friends, we can do it for this.

We can do it for the services that we provide because it is in very, in some cases vital.

Right.

Vital to their health and, and, and to their lives.

And so it's important to set that purpose, that thing that's bigger than any one individual up, as well as set yourself up as somebody who is worth following.

And that's, that's something you got to look in the mirror.

You got to look in the mirror and say to yourself, dude, am I, am I someone that others are willing to follow?

Right.

Because they need both.

Okay.

Because there's a lot of great purposes out there now.

You know, people have caught on.

You know, companies have caught on.

Well, you know, 5% of all of our revenue goes to Africa, you know, whatever.

Right, sure.

People have caught on to great purposes.

Yeah.

So in addition to great purposes, they've got to have.

That's entry level in our society today.

Exactly.

If you don't do that, people are wondering what's wrong.

Wrong with your business.

Yes, exactly.

Yeah, that and a, that and love sacks.

Right.

Got.

Everybody's got to have a couple love sacks inside of the organization.

Absolutely.

So, yeah, so.

So step one, step one.

I mean, for me, step one is, is whatever you can subcontract out and have done without you having to worry about it.

Right.

The list of to dos if you can make them less, that's your step one.

And of course, that's why I bring up power selling pros is make sure you're the only one that goes out to the customer's home.

And the cool thing about power selling pros is we just take that call center and we hold them accountable for you so you don't have to worry about it.

So step one, just everything that you can subcontract out and have done by somebody else, do it.

And of course, Parasolon pros is a good example of that.

Step two is absolutely to have a vision, have, have a, a purpose, a specific mission and a set of core values that, that you can get your team behind and then make sure you are somebody worth following.

I'd say that's.

That would be step two.

Step three is to sit down with them.

Sit down with them and then ask them where they see themselves in three to five years.

Hopefully it's inside your organization and just make a list of all the things that they want to do with Their lives.

Yeah.

And then I'd say step four is to write down everything you do on a day to day basis inside your business.

Just write down everything you do and then put each one of those tasks that you do on a sticky and then put it on your wall in your office.

Now some, some business owners are going to have 20, 30 different task stickies on their wall in their office and it's going to be annoying to them.

And that's the point.

Can you imagine 30 stickies on your wall in your office?

That's going to drive things crazy.

Yeah, it's going to drive them up the wall, literally.

Right.

Because the stickies are on the wall.

Anyway.

Yeah, you're welcome.

No, so, so, so anyway, and he's.

Also a comedian, folks.

You throw all those stickies on the wall and you ask yourself, which one of those do I want to keep?

You can only keep one.

Good luck.

Right.

Now the reason why I say one is because usually it's three to five.

But if I were to say three to five, they'd keep half their stickies.

Right?

They take half of them off the wall.

So I say only one.

You can only have one.

And it leaves us with three to five, which is great.

And so the rest of your time, you work on the business.

Now the question now is, okay, great, what do I do with these other stickies?

I'm glad you asked.

You just got done talking to your employees about what they want to do with their lives over the next three to five.

Why don't we start matching them up based on what they want to do and then this is how you can keep your employees.

You can keep your inside customers.

Right.

The homeowner is not necessarily your customer, your employees, your customer.

The homeowner is your, is your customer's customer.

Right?

Right.

Because you want to keep your customers, your employees so that they take care of their customers so that you can be a lazy CEO, which is the goal.

Right?

Yeah.

I love it.

I heard a.

You remind me so much.

I heard was blessed to be an event one time that I heard Sir Richard Branson speak on this very topic.

And he is so passionate about.

They kept asking questions about his different businesses and what his businesses were doing.

And all his answers revolved around a story about his amazing employees and how, how he like everywhere he goes, he like meets them all and gives them gifts and encourages them.

And it's literally this conversation for 35 minutes.

No matter what the question was, it always revolved back around to the importance of taking care of your people first.

And he's like, that's how I've done it.

That's how I became a billionaire and built so many businesses.

I just always take care of them no matter what, and then they build the rest for me.

Yep, that's great.

Yep.

That's it.

That's it.

That's exactly it.

So that would be step four.

Take those stickies methodically off the wall over time by delegating those responsibilities, those tasks off to your employees, letting them step into the limelight.

And then, look, if they do it.

If they do it 80% as well as you do it, you're in great shape.

Okay.

You gave yourself freedom to fail over the years.

Do the same for them.

Sure.

Right.

Yeah.

That's the four.

If there's a step five.

Well, step five is now begin to work on your business.

Right?

Work on it.

Work on how.

Where's your customer acquisition?

Yet?

Here's what I mean by that.

Let's say, for example, when I go to a contractor, I ask, how many finance options do you have?

Oh, we have one.

It's Wells Fargo.

You kidding me?

Why?

Why.

Why don't we have 10 different financing options?

Right?

People love payments.

Technicians don't like payments, but guess what the homeowner does.

Look at the car.

Look at.

Yeah.

Look at all the services that.

That they've got.

Look at the gym that they go to.

Right?

They love payments.

They love it.

Right.

You may not like it, but you're not your customer.

Right?

Right.

I always have to say that with.

With business owners, technicians, CSRs.

You guys.

You guys, stop.

You're not.

You're not your customer.

Stop treating everybody like you want to be treated.

They're like, what are you talking about?

It's the golden rule.

Well, here's the platinum rule.

Treat them the way they want to be treated.

Right?

They're begging for this.

Give it to them.

Yeah.

So finance options is a great example of working on your business.

If you get to the point where you have several different options that a customer could choose from, and then what you've done is you've just created another job for somebody else to take on, right?

So go in, figure it out, figure out what needs to be done, have a bunch of processes and systems for it, and then give somebody and then delegate it off to somebody, and then that.

That way you.

That's kind of your way of focusing on the business.

You've just.

You've just created a.

Basically a way to.

To close more sales.

Right?

You've probably increased Your, your conversion by what, 10, maybe 15% just by adding all these finance options.

Exactly.

Customer retention, that's where service agreements come in, right?

How is your service agreement set up?

How much time have you spent on it?

Here's the point.

As a business owner, the more we focus on one thing, the better that one thing is going to be.

I mean, the biggest thing that, at least for me, that kept my, my business from going, from growing is, is not being able to focus.

Just, just focus long enough on one specific opportunity until you've figured it out.

You're smart enough, you're capable enough, you can do it.

The problem is you keep distracting yourself with these tasks that you do every day.

You know, I gotta have my dopamine.

Dopamine fixed by going and being the hero, swooping in, fixing a problem and not.

And, and, oh, I don't know where the day went.

Oh, my gosh, I was so productive.

I fixed these.

So many problems.

No, all you've done is made your employees reliant on you, right?

To grow the business.

Congratulations, pal.

The company is not going to grow past you.

You are the bottleneck.

Congratulations.

And of course, I'm talking in front of a mirror, right?

I've told myself this a thousand times, right?

So, yeah, customer acquisition, customer retention, and of course, customer experience.

Getting creative in the way that you get feedback from the homeowner.

You guys, the bigger a company grows, the harder it is to get specific feedback from the homeowner.

So here's what I suggest.

As soon as I got Parcelling Pros running by itself, the very first thing that I did was, well, I looked at a wall for about 48 hours and went, oh my gosh, what I'm going to do with my life.

I've just delegated every responsibility I've got off my plate.

Right?

And so it's like, there's no more sticky notes.

Yeah, exactly.

And so I got a, I got a call from a contractor and he said, hey, I said that I heard that you just delegated a bunch of your responsibilities off.

Do you want to, you want to come do some ride alongs with my technicians?

And I said, sure, let's do it.

Well, as soon as I started interacting with the homeowner, I uncovered a ton of other opportunities, services that we could provide at Parasailing Pros that I never would have noticed had I not spent or invested the time with a technician uniform on it.

Talking directly with homeowner.

Sure.

Just listening, Right?

Yeah.

And business owners should do the same thing, right?

If you really are wanting to work on your business.

These are the steps you need to take.

And it's all in the book.

It's the book called Something to Give.

Love it.

Love it.

Let's camp out for a second on what we were talking about right before we hopped into this recording.

And we've already covered it a little, a bit, but let's go deeper.

You know, you were talking about the greatest spiritual gift we can give is giving others so the ability to be self reliant and self reliance.

And so I mean, that's an empowerment, right?

Yeah, so it's, so it's Rumbam's ladder.

That.

And it's at the end of chapter one.

And you should certainly, you should certainly get the book if you want to learn more about it.

But the, the top tier of that.

Ladder.

Is to give the gift of self reliance to somebody else.

In fact, we have a three pronged purpose at Power Slim Pros, and that is to develop individuals to the point where they are self confident, self reliant and service minded.

That's, you know, that's our, that's our war cry.

That's the thing that we're constantly striving for and working towards.

And the same is true with my inside customers.

I want them to be self confident, I want them to be self reliant, I want them to be service minded.

And so it's my objective and my job, my purpose to, to assist them in getting there.

But yes, self reliance is the highest tier because, you know, you've heard the old saying, you know, you, you feed a man for you teach, you give man a fish and you feed them for a day, teach them how to fish and you feed them for a lifetime.

That's true.

Unless there aren't any fish in the lake and then they need to go somewhere else.

Right, exactly.

And that's what, and that's what's, that's what self reliance is.

Self reliance is the ability to rely on yourself to get things done.

There is, there is certainly a pandemic of sorts going on in our country with, with homeland homelessness right now and in, in major communities.

It's, it's, it's never been, I mean, as long as I've been around, it's never been as, as bad as it is today.

Right.

And what better time to, to combat that situation with the right solution?

And the right solution is, and I realized that sometimes it's easier said than done, especially with mental illness and drug addiction and so on and so forth.

But our End goal for every individual, for every human being is for them to become self reliant.

I'd say that that's the American dream is to be able to, regardless of your background, you know, regardless of where you grew up or who you grew up with, to be able to change your stars, so to speak and Absolutely.

And.

You know, make something of yourself.

I love that.

You know, we talk about so much in this podcast is being that person that, you know, when you, when you've learned a skill and a trade and, and really built that muscle being to.

And we talk so much about taking ownership of your own business and running your life as its own business even, you know, we were talking about, you know, salesmen earlier and so many times we get in these off seasons and everybody's like, oh, what do I do?

I don't get any leads from the company.

Well, you're not taking ownership for your own life and your own responsibility, radical responsibility for your family's existence.

Right.

So how do we do that?

That's by, you know, doing the, doing the things that others won't so you can get the results others are not getting.

And at the same time, you're not a tree.

You can move, you can change your, you can change exactly where you are if that's the right decision for, for you and your family or for, for whatever's going on.

Because so many people get stuck in that, that kind of rut without, and they're just leave it to the company, leave it to everyone else and just go along with the flow.

And I love that.

Being self reliant and living on purpose, living intentionally instead of just being tossed along by the waves and the wind and wherever it leads me.

Now it's what Jim Rohn's famous quote is.

You know, the winds of life blow the same on every person.

It's how we set ourselves that determines if we get to our destination or not or if we get thrown into the rocks and being intentional with that.

And so much of what we do, what we do here at closing now and clearly what you do at Power Selling Pros is every single thing is on purpose and every single thing has a reason.

And we do it with, you know, confidence and we're self reliant and of course service minded.

So man, I love this conversation.

It's, it's getting me fired up, really raising my vibes today.

Awesome.

Yeah, good stuff.

As you were talking there, it reminded me of there were, there were times when it comes to self reliance.

There's some times where you need to take responsibility even when it's not necessarily your fault.

Right.

If you can.

Sometimes in the past, when I've been dealt a difficult hand, Right.

I essentially would pretend that it was my fault so that I could just own it and, and, and, and create a path forward.

Right.

Not an easy thing to do.

But there's, there've been, there have been times where I've just done that, where I pretended that it was my fault, even though it wasn't sure, so that I could take responsibility for it.

In fact, I would say that.

And of course, in the book we, it talks about meekness.

And usually when people have heard the word meek, you know, meek or meekness, they think weakness.

Right.

They associate it with weakness.

And that's just not the case.

Gandhi was meek.

Right.

Martin Luther King in, in many ways was.

Jesus Christ was meek.

You know what I mean?

Obviously, these are all phenomenal leaders.

Right?

Right.

With incredible influence in our world.

And so there's, there's something there that we need to recognize.

And there's something incredibly powerful about recognizing when you've made a mistake.

Instead of justifying the mistake, instead of explaining away the mistake, just simply own it.

And the reason why this is so important is that when something goes wrong inside of an organization, we want our team to own it.

We don't want them to come up with excuses.

We don't want them to sidestep it.

Well, this could be them, if they're not owning it, mimicking you.

Right.

And without a little meekness, they're going to continue to mimic you.

So I, I realized this one time when I simply decided, instead of sidestepping or justifying it away when I had made a mistake, and clearly, as a leader made a mistake, I. I brought it to the team and said, hey, this thing happened.

I acted this way and I was wrong, and I apologize.

That sort of moment is a moment that you win.

It's a moment that you win because you teach by your example how to own and be responsible for something that occurs.

And that's one of the difficulties we face as leaders, is that sometimes our team doesn't own their mistakes.

And it could be because the leader doesn't own their mistake either.

So meekness is a very powerful leadership tool.

And it is absolutely not weakness.

It is instead incredibly strong.

It is a show of strength.

That's one of the most important things I've recognized as well, and I'm sure you'll agree with me, is what will keep a team around as well, even through hard times.

Is when.

When a leader is transparent and owns their.

Their mistakes and just says, hey, I screwed up, guys.

Let's learn.

What can we learn from this?

Because, you know, and adopting the mindset that we either win or we learn we don't lose, it's like, I made a mistake.

What can we learn?

How can we get better and move forward?

Just that sheer transparency creates a bond that is.

We're talking about becoming that leader worth following.

That's a big part of it.

And it's crucial.

Crucial for building a team.

Yeah, yeah.

You've got to.

You got to get your team to the point where they're willing to take a bullet for you.

And the only way that happens is if they believe in their heart of hearts that you will take a bullet for them.

Right?

Absolutely.

Yeah.

And we can look across, you know, industries and pick out a handful of those companies that, wow, that has.

They've built something special.

And what is that?

And how do we.

How do we model that?

I can think of like, you know, Andy Elliott with his.

His team, Ryan Stuman with his team.

You know, these are, of course, sales trainers and stuff, but like Zappos, you know, that so many other similarities in that type of relationship.

It's like, man, we love being here and wouldn't go anywhere else even if it paid a bit little more because it's just such a good environment and it's.

It's great.

It.

It's exciting because then it gives us something to aspire to.

It's like where it's not competition that, oh, they're so much better than us.

It's like we can aspire to that and use it as that.

What, what?

Success leaves clues.

So what are they mod.

What are they doing that we can model and incorporate into our own lives and organizations?

So, man, it's good stuff.

Well, it is.

It's getting to be the time to start landing this plane here in a couple minutes.

But before we do, tell us a little bit about how people can get in touch with you.

Also highlight.

Just take a tiny snippet and I'd love for you to go over booked and a little bit of what booked does, because I know that we have a lot of business owners and small businesses that are in this community that listen that it may be a good resource for them.

Yeah.

So how to get in touch with me or get in touch with Power Sling pros?

If you want to take the responsibility of holding your CSRs accountable to their calls, we're happy to do that for you.

Just go to powersellingpros.com and there's a bunch of free stuff on there, so definitely go regardless.

Right?

Go to powerslimpros.com and that'll be the best.

You'll fill out a form and we'll be in touch with you and talk to you about your CSRs and your dispatchers and coordinators and make sure that you're booking your calls.

And while your customers will take that responsibility essentially off your plate.

So that's how you can get in touch with us.

Booked.

You just go to bookedbypsp.com here's what's cool about booked.

Most night answering services book 20%, maybe 30% of their phone calls.

That's not great.

That's terrible.

Right?

And, and so what happens is, is business owners, what they do is they, they convince their CSRs to answer the phones at night.

They have them take a cell phone home at night, and it's a little bit better, right?

On average, they're booking, I don't know, maybe 40, maybe 50% of those phone calls, if that.

If that.

Right, right.

And heating and cooling, look, it goes out at night, it goes out on the weekends.

So when those calls come, you got to make sure that you book those calls while those customers, even worse, they give a phone to a technician.

Okay?

When a technician has worked all week long, you know, from seven in the morning till six o' clock in the evening, the last thing you want is to go out again.

So guess what they're going to do?

They're going to troubleshoot it over the phone.

They're going to tell them to call back tomorrow.

They're going to.

They're gonna, They're.

They don't.

You do not have them answer the phones.

Okay?

I experienced myself calling for plumbing and electrical and different things.

They get the answer Saturday night, plumbing's backed up and they're like, can you go stay in a hotel?

What?

Did you just ask me if I could stay in a hotel?

They literally asked me, can you stay in a hotel or like a friend's house or something?

I don't know if we can get there for a day or two.

Yeah, not good.

Worst thing, not good.

So you're right, Sam.

You're right.

And it's not a good situation.

So none of these options are good.

None of them are.

And yet this is what we do, and this holds us back from growing.

And so again, one more thing that we'd like to take off your plate is we answer the phones for you.

Now, we had a ton of contractors over the years.

We've been doing this for 15 years at power selling pros, training CSRs to book calls.

And while the customer over the phone, make sure you're the only one that's going out.

Right.

That you're not.

One of five bids.

We've been doing it for years and finally we decided to just listen to the contractor, our customer, when they said, wouldn't it be great if you were to answer the phones for us at night?

You guys know how to do it.

And so we built a team that answers phones at night and during the weekend.

And right now we have a 93% booking ratio.

That's power.

Yes.

Talk about power selling pros 93.

Yeah, it's.

It's crazy.

In fact, we've got a laundry list.

It's a bit of a waiting list because we don't want the quality to go down based on the types of customer or the amount of customers that are coming in.

So definitely get on that.

Definitely call booked or go to bookedsp.com and get on that list because it is, it is the best night answering service in the business.

It really is.

Love it, love it.

So, yeah, I remember when we used.

To use years ago, it was awful because we would start, we would get the recordings and the phone was so scratchy you couldn't even understand it.

People are on the other line going, hello, who is this?

Hello?

I thought I called the air conditioning company and it was just awful.

So 100% agree with this as it doesn't matter the size of your organization.

Somebody needs to be answering the phone all the time in our society also, of course, make sure you have a place where they can book their own appointments.

It's.

You could set up a calendar to have them, let them book their own appointments.

So that's, that's one thing.

But more importantly, there are.

People are calling in to get all hours of the day and night.

Have somebody answer the phone real time, not a message.

And I'm sure it's affordable too.

It's what I'm sure it's way less than paying a person to do it.

That's for sure.

And in the ROI is dramatic.

When somebody that knows what they're doing, you don't.

You skip the cost of training because you just have somebody that's an expert already, if you could just hire them to do it for you.

That's great.

That's right.

For sure.

Well, cool, man.

I love it.

Where can.

When does the book drop and how can people get a hold of the new book because something to give.

I will tell you I'm going to read it in depth because it was speaking to me as a business owner and a leader and aspiring leader and growing my business.

Definitely was speaking to me.

And I know a lot of you listeners will get a massive amount of value from it.

And the killer P as I called actually kind of in my mind when I was reading through, you know, purpose, pattern, principles, performance, persistence, patience and perfect.

And that's the.

It just gave away the theme of the book.

But it's.

It's worth diving into because it is man.

It was impacting me to a level that I did not expect, honestly.

I'll tell you.

I appreciate that.

I'm excited to really go through it in depth.

So where can they get the book?

So you just go to brigham dickinson.com B R I G H A M D I C K I N S O N dot com.

There's a link there it is.

You can pre order comes out September 19th but by going to that website you can order it now and it'll come to you in the mail as soon as it comes out September 19th.

And then perfect.

Because this so super quick to catch up.

That's actually ideal because this episode is going to drop right about then.

And this is actually part of the Profit rocket Growth Summit 2023 speaker series that I'm doing since I found.

Yeah, since I found out the last several months I'm one of the speakers as well.

I've been interviewing all of the people that are going to be speaking at the Profit Rocket event to give everybody a sneak peek and encourage them to get there.

So have you been to a Profit Rocket before?

Is this your first time?

And tell us a little bit about what you're going to be doing at the event.

Yeah, so doing a breakout.

How to turn your call center into a profit center.

Really excited about it.

Yeah, it's going to be fantastic.

You're gonna love it.

I would not miss it.

It's gonna.

It's gonna be a phenomenal event and I'm excited to be a part of it.

You heard it first here folks.

Brigham is doing.

Hey how to turn your call center into a profit center.

Do not make your call center a loss leader just like a lot of companies do.

That can be a profit center.

I love it.

So get your ticket.

So in order to.

If it's okay with you and in the Facebook group, I would love for you to join the Facebook group, the closing out Facebook group and all of the speakers along the way have have hopped in there as another resource for people to connect with you and or, or one of your people.

Either you're or one of your people because so everyone that's in there, I have a pin post that where you can get tickets for the Profit Rocket event.

Hop into the Close It Now Facebook group or email me sam closeitnow.net and I will get you a direct link to that.

That's how you're able to connect to any of the speakers that you've been hearing in the speaker series because they have all joined the group and said they were happy to connect with whoever wanted to and otherwise it's just a great resource for amazing training and content.

I am having going to be doing some live events inside the group with guests to come in and train on these types of things for CRM, for buying leads, for.

We've got some expert sales trainers that are going to come in and drop some knowledge and nuggets on us.

But make sure to join the Facebook group.

It's a great, great place, a good community.

We're approaching a couple thousand members now and it is a positivity only community.

If you're any any of the other H vac Facebook groups pretty much you know that if somebody asks a question they get ripped to shreds for not already knowing the answer.

That is not this group.

This group is only people who are like minded in personal growth and supporting each other and helping each other rise to the top.

So, so that's the, the little spot.

Thank you for joining us today, Brigham.

This has been a fantastic conversation and you've loved every second of it.

And yeah, so you've dropped so many nuggets for everybody.

I hope everybody was taking notes for leadership for everything else.

One thing that this podcast is known for is an actionable item that people can implement immediately.

And we always basically every single episode there's something that I've heard over and over.

It's like, oh my gosh, I did this one thing and everything changed.

So when it comes to the call center and the csrs, what is one little nugget that you can drop on everybody right now that will really help them in what they do?

The first 30 seconds of that call, of that customer call determines the ultimate outcome of the call.

So let me give you some tools that you can use inside that call center to make sure that first three seconds is phenomenal.

Okay?

So the customer has.

Customer has an emotional need.

There's three of them, right?

Three of them that they need to have addressed in the beginning because there's a ton of them.

But there's three that we can address right out of the gate.

The first is they need to feel understood, they need to feel cared about, and they need to feel reassured that they've called the right place.

Now, what you have to say, what you have to offer, none of that matters until these three emotional needs are taken care of first.

All right?

So you got to listen, you got to care.

You got to reassure.

You with me, Sam.

I am.

Okay.

So the customer gets on the phone.

They want to.

It doesn't matter what they want.

Right.

Let's say they want a ballpark price.

Let's say they want to know, charge, come out, say they want to talk to.

It doesn't matter.

Right.

Customer gets on the phone.

Thanks for calling.

Totally awesome heating and air.

This is Brigham.

How can I help you?

Yeah, what do you guys charge to come out?

It's a great question.

Can you tell me more about your situation?

What's going on?

Well, I've got this air conditioner.

It's blowing hot air.

My gosh, that's terrible.

How long has I been doing that?

Oh, last couple days.

Well, look, we can help you with that.

When would you like us to come out?

Well, this afternoon to be good.

What just happened?

Well, you.

You heard, you listened and cared for.

Sure.

Yeah.

And I said I could definitely help you with that.

I reassured them.

Definitely help the right place.

Okay.

So right out of the gate, I'm listening, I'm caring, I'm reassuring.

And then I simply ask question of my own.

In the first 30 seconds of that phone call, I change everything for them.

Right.

Nobody's answering the phone this way unless they're being taught by us.

Right?

Right.

So you listen, care, you reassure, you take care of those emotional needs first.

And then you're going to find that your calls, they're going to be shorter because you've taken care of those emotional needs first.

I mean, it's funny.

You can listen to a phone call for five to six minutes, and towards the end of that phone call, the customer keeps going back to how they feel and making sure that they are understood, making sure that they've called right place.

They keep going back to those things because those emotional needs have not been met.

So if you can take care of those things first, get it out of the.

You're done with that call in two to three minutes.

And they feel.

Yeah, they feel understood, they feel cared about.

They feel reassured that they've called the right place.

You Just got to take care of those things first.

So, yeah, first 30 seconds of the phone call determines the ultimate outcome of the call.

Just got to listen, care and reassure.

Oh, my gosh.

Thank you for that.

Is a powerful nugget.

It's so there's no.

Like we were talking about earlier.

Everyone listening.

You will know that if you've listened to very many of these podcasts, there's no coincidence when you connect with somebody who thinks very similarly, because that's exactly how I teach the sales process is we do introduction first.

They have to know who they're talking to.

We highlight real, we give them the credit.

So we plant that credibility flag right at the beginning that we can use to refer back to for anything further on, and we smash that moment of rapport.

For most advisors, it's 30, 35, 40 minutes.

We smash that moment of rapport within the first five to ten minutes, and then everything changes for the rest of the appointment.

I love hearing the way you describe this because I feel like we're on the same NLP psychological type of combination here.

And it's powerful.

So it's exciting.

Everybody listening, take notes, rewind that section back and write it verbatim.

Because I, I can tell you from the study that I've done and what I've invested into the power of words that every single word that Brigham just said is a million dollar word for you.

That script he just gave you, I guarantee you he's probably invested hundreds of hours and thousands and thousands of dollars to develop.

And because, because I, I can hear it in each, every single word and also go back, listen to it several times and listen to the tonality because that's also crucial in the way he just delivered it.

And take that verbatim and teach it to your people and you'll instantly see some results because that is, that's a massive, massive change.

So thank you for that.

That is.

I recognize it for what it is and that's powerful.

Thanks for giving that away.

And so that is just the tip of the iceberg, everyone with power selling pros and what they do for your CSR staff, and I'm sure that you have training on how to grow the staff and how to, how to scale and tools to use and all those kind of things as well, so.

Well, thanks for joining us today.

I feel like we could go on for a long time.

We may have to revisit another, another podcast episod.

Pick another topic.

We just go, let's do it.

Let's do it.

I'm up for it for sure.

So everyone get your butts to the Profit Rocket Growth event.

Come meet us in person.

I am going to be hanging out with these guys circling around their booth probably quite a bit and yeah, we're going to be doing some cool stuff in the future.

Be on the lookout for some cool things coming.

I I'm going to drop this little nugget.

Dropped it in a podcast or in a live training.

I am currently working on something everybody that will absolutely, if someone is willing to do the work, raise your hand if you would like to be able to turn on leads and appointments on command any time of the year.

I'm currently working on something that is not being done in the H Vac world and it's going to be a total game changer.

It's been used in other industries to help companies scale from 3 to 30 million and 30 million to 300 million and those types of numbers to 10 extra numbers in a real short amount of time.

And so that's all I'm going to say because I'm under contract.

I cannot say more just yet, but I'm recording at the end of this month for that very thing and we're going to be launching it really soon, maybe even at the Profit Rocket event.

So if it will be my prediction the biggest bomb that's going to drop at the event.

So everybody listening, pay attention.

This is important.

It will solve your lead problem at very, very extremely low or no cost lead customer acquisition.

So you heard it here first on the Closing now podcast.

So everybody, thanks for joining me today.

It's been a good one.

We're going to end this like we always do everybody.

You go out there and save the world one heat stroke at a time.

Thanks for listening to Close it now with Sam Wakefield.

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