Welcome to Close it now, the podcast that's revolutionizing the H Vac and home improvement trades industries. Get ready to dive deep into the world of heating, ventilation and air conditioning. We're turning up the heat on industry standards and cooling down misconceptions. And we're not just talking about fixing vents and adjusting thermostats. It's about the transformative movement that's reshaping the very foundation of H Vac and home improvement. We're the driving force, inspiring top performers who crave excellence not only in their professional endeavors, but also in fitness, nutrition, relationships and personal growth, proving that we can indeed have it all. This is Close it now, where excellence meets excitement. Let's get to work now. Your host, Sam Wakefield.

Welcome back to Close It Now. Sam Wakefield, here I am doing something special for this episode and the next episode. If you have been with me from the beginning, you know that this podcast started in Drive Time University years ago. I was, well, five years ago now, I was in the field every single day as a consultant in Austin, Texas and leading my team there. And it's really fun now because I'm about to close in on episode 150, which is an exciting moment and I'm super stoked about, but I wanted to do a little bit of throwback. So for all of you who are listening now that you didn't hear some of the first episodes, Drive Time University basically started because I was driving in between sales appointments, recording strictly onto my voice memo on my phone. And that's what we call it, Drive Time University. Because if you use your windshield time as education time, then a 15 year career is in outside sales or service tech is the equivalent of three PhDs. So welcome back to Drive Time University. I am driving down the road and I wanted to do a little bit of a callback to those first episodes. And I think the first or I haven't even counted 20, 30, 40 episodes were me driving down the road, just like you, being a consultant in the field, just like you guys and ladies and I wanted to do a little bit of that because I don't know if you knew this, but 150 episodes is a pretty seriously big mile marker for any podcaster who's doing podcasts. Most podcasts actually don't even make it through episode seven. So to celebrate the fact that we are coming up on episode 150 and for all of you listeners, I am so grateful for you. I don't know if you knew this, but to Close it now, podcast is in the top 2% of podcasts in the world. So I am just so grateful to every single one of you. And I've got a special episode for you today. We're going to do. I realize that there's so many people that listen now that haven't gone back and listened to the first ones. I'm going to do a few flashback moments of lessons that are some of the most instrumental in really in sales in general, especially in the closing now sales process. Because I realized in the last several months, one of, I guess my main tagline has become change your language, change your results. Which is so important when we're having the conversation with people. Realistically, all of you out there, raise your hand if you know that you have the right solution for homeowners, the right solution for people. You truly know that their life situation is going to be so dramatically better and different than what it is now before you showed up, before you made the appearance. But you'd know that for whatever reason, you just couldn't quite get them to understand how much different things are going to be, how much better life is going to be. Well, for most of us, it's a lack of the ability to communicate clearly. Now sales is really just communication. It's communication and psychology. It's about helping others. But, but not only that. It's like we always hear, oh, it sells itself, it sells itself. It sells itself. Well, it doesn't. There's not a single thing out there that sells itself. There's not a product, there's not a service that just sells itself, that doesn't take someone to communicate clearly what someone's life will be like once they already have it. So that's where I want to start today. This one, this episode is about communication. If we want to communicate better, communicate more clearly. There's a few word substitutions are super powerful. I'm going to teach you a word substitution that changes everything. We're also going to start thinking about and talking about a couple of the other just main philosophies that will change everything in your sales career. So are you ready to get started? Let's rock and roll. So I'm doing this old school style. So I don't have my microphone or my mixer or any of this kind of stuff, which is really fun for, because it's, you know, I'm all about keeping things simple when sale. If you're in a sales position, if you're an advisor, if you're selling tech, even if you, if you're not a selling tech and you just Want to flip, you know, you're in the communication area to, you know, sell more indoor air quality or really just repairs, communicate better to the homeowner. So one of the first thing, there's two major philosophies I want to take you through that are the underpin. Every single thing that I do here at Close it now and every single thing that really, if you truly want to be successful in self, these are major philosophies. You have to understand them or you're really going to limit yourself with your own belief system, with your own glass ceiling that you put there yourself. So before we get into those, one of the things I want to encourage everybody is start having more fun. You've got to start having more fun in what you do. If we're not having fun, what in the world are we doing this for anyway, right? You've got to have a, you have a blast with what you're doing. If you take yourself too seriously, the homeowners will take themselves too seriously. And then you end up with like shining the spotlight on somewhere it doesn't need to be. End up in a price war. Well, so and so is going to do it cheaper and it's the same model number what you put yourself into this like bubble that there's no relationship for. There's no reason for the homeowners to choose you other than the lowest price. So let dive into a couple of these philosophies that will help you in your communication to be able to relate better, be able to resonate better, be able to build bigger and better rapport with homeowners. So when it comes down to it, if things are within a certain amount of price, even if you don't change anything else, that people will choose you because now they trust you more than someone else, right? Because you've built a relationship, you actually care about people instead of just showing up with commission breath because people can smell that a mile away. So let's start with one of the first philosophies which is near and dear to my heart, which is permission based. Selling everything has got to be permission based. And I'll show you why. Because if it's not permission based, then you end up running into those moments where the homeowners like that they put the wall up, their eyes glaze over and it could be something they just asked about. So let's go through and talk about what is called the permission stack. The permission stack is a three step formula that the foundation should be the foundation for every single thing you do. It'll help you with your communication with your partner, with your kids, with your parents, with your siblings, your brother and sister, anybody in your family to help you communication with your co workers, with your employees, with your managers. That will literally just help you in communication. Communication with everyone in your life to be better heard. You will become a better listener as well as you will be able to present your information, your thought or your idea in a way that it's listened to, it's heard, it's accepted and considered differently than just telling someone something. So the permission stack is this. The three step formula is step one, ask permission, Step two, give the data. Step three, check in. So if I was to implement that right now, I would say, okay, everybody, would you like to hear what the permission stack is? That's step one. Step two is just telling you what the steps are and step three is checking in. Does that make sense? Follow me. Any questions? Right. And so we can use this a lot of different ways. And the example that I love to give the most, usually let's talk about air filtration. Let's talk about air cleaning. So raise your hand if you've ever been in this situation in a home, in an appointment where say the homeowner asks you a direct question about something and you start to answer and all of a sudden it feels like I said that wall goes up, their eyes glaze over and they check out. A lot of times mid, mid sentence, they'll grab their phone, start texting or surfing Facebook or something and you're like, wait a minute, you just asked me this question. And so it's very clear what happens because we've all been in that situation. So raise your hand. Would you like to hear how to overcome that? Well, here we go. This is the example. So what I'm going to do, I'm going to role play both sides. I'm going to be Mr. Homeowner and Sam Wakefield, comfort advisor in the home. And what I'm going to do, I'm going to take you through first kind of how we normally have traditionally handled questions. And then I'm going to take you through what is, sounds and feels like to do that with the permission stack. That way you can hear, hear and feel a clear difference. Now pay attention because a lot of times if you're ever in any of my trainings or you, we work together. One of the things I talk about so often is feeling. People have to feel it. They have to feel what life is going to be like differently, to take it and make an emotional Buying decision to pull the trigger, to move forward and move forward now. So at the same time, the more that you practice this skill, the more that you become able to listen between the lines, the more you become intuitively able to feel objections as they come. Intuitively able to feel the ability and the ways that you can overcome the objections or not just objections, but. But all the way through an appointment, you start to flex that muscle and gain the ability to feel where the conversation is going. Now, I say this very seriously. This is not a woo woo moment. This is really building the skill to be able to. It's called third level listening if you're in any sort of a coaching type of atmosphere. But third level listening will. It really is what unlocks the keys to working with homeowners. To be able to hear what they actually want or what they're telling you, even if it's not the actual words they're saying. So let's do this exercise. I want to take you through what it sounds like when a homeowner asks for a better way to clean the air. And I'm going to answer the incorrect way first or how we've traditionally done it and then I'll do it again and we'll answer with the appropriate value or the appropriate permission stack the process. So, so super side note, I'm driving down the road doing this again like I used two years ago and wow, this is. It's a whole different experience now because it's been a while, but okay, here we go. Value stack. No, without the value stack or without value stack without the permission stack in the first question. So Mr. Homeowner says, hey, you know what? We've been really fighting our allergies lately. Do you guys have any better way to clean the air? And normally what we would do is say, yeah, we sure do. We can Talk about the 4 inch filter, we can talk about our electronic air cleaner. You're gonna love it. It's good. You know, depending on how much you want to spend. The price point is this or this. Now that's how we've usually answered that question, right? And so step one is the second I started going into that, I'm sure you all felt like pushback, right? Called it's very much a lean back type of communication because all of a sudden I'm telling and the person that asked the question is leaned back and they're checked out because we just went straight into it. Now, in order to do this right, of course, here's a super ninja trick question. And this is One of my favorite questions, anytime somebody asks about a product or service or even more so, more important, if that homeowner says, I need such, such like they say I need duct cleaning or I need this, don't just go straight into like telling them about what, whatever it is they're asking about. Ask more questions. Say, okay, do you mind if I ask you a few questions? So that's a permission stack. And then ask them, what are you trying to accomplish by duct cleaning or by whatever it is they asked about. Ask some clarifying questions. What are you trying to accomplish by asking for this? So now let's, so now that we did that wrong, let's do it the right way and get really get into it. So homeowner says, hey Sam, you know what? We've been fighting allergies a lot lately. Do you have any better way to filter the air? And I would say we have some incredible options. Would you like to hear what they are? And then the homeowner says, yes, absolutely, and then gives me permission to present the option. In a way they'll listen. Because now that I asked that permission question, they say yes, I would love to hear about them. It's not weird, it's not bizarre when that happens in a conversation. Even though they just asked about it, purely telling them, going straight into it, we're skipping the step. We have to say yes, we do have options. Would you like to hear what they are? When they say, yes, now you have full permission, it drops that. This is a like literal ninja trick. It drops that resistance ball. Their eyes unglazed, they lean in. Try this with people. You know, their physiology will change. They will literally lean in and start shaking their head yes. Now I've done this in class after class after class and even in role play. The person that I'm role playing with an advisor in the class, they always respond this way. When you go straight into telling body language, they always lean back, they always have that glassed over type of look in their eye. The minute that you ask for permission, that wall goes down and they will lean in and start shaking their head yes. So ask for permission, then give the data. You know, the data is whatever. In this case it's, you know, we've got our. And always start at the top, of course. So what most people do and use social proof, what most people do, especially in your neighborhood is they go with this option here. It's the best way that we have to get rid of allergens, etc, etc, just go through your whole bench and normalize the expensive thing as what everybody does. This is what most people do in your situation. They go ahead and they lock it in. They get those allergens under control. So life is, you're not gonna have to deal with this anymore. Life is gonna be so much better. Once this is installed. And then right there is the perfect time to insert a story. To be good at sales, you have to be a story collector. Stories will sell. Facts tell, stories sell. The great Brian Tracy says that. So we've got to use stories as you're describing products, as you're describing services. If you're describing the different ways that we do things, use a story of how someone' life has changed because of whatever it is you're talking about. So that's part of the data. And then the check in is. Does that make sense? Do you have any questions? Follow me. Which of these do you think would be the best fit for you and your family? That's a trial close, but it's also a check in. So when someone, when you ask that question and someone comes back with an answer of, oh, I think this might be the best fit, then you ask them, but why, though? We've got to get them to they. When they. It doesn't matter what we say. It matters what they say, it, our perspective in the home means nothing. It's all about the homeowner's perspective in the home. So when they, when they tell you that they like a specific product or service or level of equipment or something like that, you always ask them, but why though? What is it you like best about that? Then let them sell themselves on why they like that product. And then, and only then can you move into more of a close. But until they sell them cell phone, and this is what locks it in, they've got to sell them cell phone, what life is going to be like once the product is installed, once the system's installed, whatever it is we're doing, once we've done the duct cleaning, once you've done the, you know, the duct, you know, rebuild. It doesn't matter what the, what it is. They have to see why life is going to be different and how it's going to be different. So that's the permission stack. It's three steps. It's asking permission, giving the data, and checking in. Does that make sense? So that's the first thing. The other philosophy is called the benefit lens. They have to, have to, have to start communicating to our homeowners in the terms of benefits. Now the thing with the benefits is Most people, we've always heard this, you know, tell them about benefits, not the technical stuff, tell them about benefits. Well, most people stop halfway and don't actually get to a benefit. Most people will tell, like part of the tech, the other side of the technical aspect, the specs on the equipment, but don't actually tell what a benefit is. And most people truly are just confused of what a benefit actually is. What a benefit is is what the living experience is going to be like. So I'm going to go ahead and describe something and I'm going to stop where most people do. Then I'm going to do it again with the benefit lens because remember, most people did not wake up this morning, or no one, in fact woke up this morning and said, oh my gosh, I'm going to buy a furnace today or I'm going to buy an air conditioner today. You know, what I really want to buy is some. I want to spend a few thousand dollars on some air cleaning for my house. No, nobody woke up and said that. What they woke up and said is, man, I'm tired of my bills being high. Man, I'm tired of it being uncomfortable in this house all the time. Man, I'm tired of having sinus infections all the time from allergies. Boy, I'm tired of my nose bleeding in the winter because it's so dry in my house. I wonder if there's a way we can fix that. They don't even know for most of these things that you, as an alien H vac professional, have something that can even help with that. So the reason that people don't already have what we offer is one of two things. Either we've done a horrible job of communicating to them what we actually offer and what we can do in a home, or and more likely, we've tried to communicate it, but we did it in such a way where it was very technical. Nobody understood truly the difference between the basic and the middle of the road and the high end. No one really understood the difference, and not as much that as understanding the difference in the product. No one understood the difference in what life was going to be like once they already had it. Because we have to remember that if homeowners truly understood what life would be like once they have a variable speed system, once they have, you know, they're your indoor air quality, like super pack, they would already have it. If they understood what it did and what life was going to be like, they would already have this stuff. So our disconnect has been always in communication. So in order to get changes, we have to make changes. So change your language, change your results. So the benefit lens is crucial. So when we're explaining things, like, for example, we'll take like a. We'll take like a Remi halo or an air scrub or some air scrubber or something like that, a germicidal lamp. When most people describe that to the homeowner and say, okay, yeah, this thing, man, it's great. It's gonna kill. It kills strep, it kills staph, it kills flu virus. It, you know, it kills mold spores, it kills mildew spores. It's got a UV light and, you know, it's awesome. Well, none of that was benefits. That was still technical. But that's where most people stop and say, yeah, it's gonna kill allergens. Okay, well, so what, right? There's a thousand different things that kill all of that stuff. You can get Lysol to kill that stuff. You can buy a standalone air filter at Walmart for a hundred dollars that kills that stuff. Why in the world should I spend $1500 or whatever your price is for one of these other items? That's because we didn't explain it properly. We didn't explain it in terms of benefits. The benefits for that are. Remember when we talked about how your allergies are, like, they're made so much worse by mold spores and mildew spores and things that grow. Yes. The homeowner says, yes. Okay, great. Well, you're gonna love this because that's exactly what this kills. It goes to work in your ductwork, so you're not gonna have to experience those symptoms anymore. Tell me more about those symptoms and I'll show you more I've had. This is going to help solve a huge part of that problem. Also, insert a story. Like when I installed this in my home and my wife, xyz. Right? You got to have a story to connect to this. That is in terms of benefits. Benefit statements are things like, okay, remember we talked about how you experienced this? Won't it be great to know that with the help of this product. Product. It's going to dramatically reduce that in your life, so you're not going to have to live like that anymore. That's a benefit statement. Right? There's a big difference between just telling what a product does and helping a homeowner see what their life is going to be like and what their benefits are once it's installed. Obviously, we don't have enough time in this podcast to deep dive a Lot of different products and how to explain them, but that's just a taste for it. Go back and listen to that. Get a feel for explaining in terms of benefits and everything will start to change for you. It'll start to change immediately. It'll start to change pretty dramatically, pretty drastically. So that is the benefit lens. So with those two foundational items, one is the permission stack, the other is the benefit lens. Even if you didn't change a single other thing in what you do or your process, process or anything else, immediately you change those two things and start communicating in those terms. What you're going to find is your numbers will go up dramatically because this is where communication starts. This is the foundation for any sales, communication, conversation in 2024, right? This is our society now. The way people buy has changed in the last four to five years, especially after the pandemic. So when we consider start talking in terms of the benefit lens. And then the last little thing I want to leave with you in this episode is learn how. Learn how not just to ask permission questions, but also in everything that you discuss, learn to be able to tie a little emotional bow on the end of each of the end of each of your discussions. And that just is very, very simple. It's not hard. And it really sounds something like, you know, once you talk to a homeowner about a product or a system, the emotional boas and one, it feel great to know you're not going to have to deal with this anymore. You're going to love the way you're going to live or what life is going to be like because you're not going to have this problem anymore. Or won't it be awesome to know that this year when Thanksgiving comes around, you're going to have the best experience with your family in your home and it won't be uncomfortable like it was before. See, those are little emotional, but that take people mentally right past the technical, right past the purchase, into future living. If you can help them visualize the future moments every step of the way. Basically what's happening is we're locking it in their brain that they've already got it and they did it with us. And their life is going to be so dramatically better. But because they now have this, this system in their life, there's these accessories, this product that was installed right to start with, they're not going to have headaches. They're going to have peace of mind for a decade. They've got a great warranty. It isn't going to be awesome to Know you're not going to have to fight with this thing anymore and it's going to be such a non issue in your life and you're going to feel so much better and your bills are going to go down. See, that is future casting. What life is going to be like this. This makes sense to everybody. Raise your hand if this makes sense. So I'm super, super stoked about this episode today. It's definitely some fun flashbacks. This is episode 149 and I'm just grateful for everyone in this industry that has listened for these five years. Over five years now coming up on five years, we had an anniversary and you know, life is so much fun when you make it fun. You know, we've got over five years of the closet now we're out here changing lives. If you want to know more about getting me out to your location for a site visit, definitely do that. We're growing this year. We're doing some cool stuff. We've got got some books coming out soon. We've got a new virtual program that's going to be coming out soon. Done a few beta tests on some things and the one thing I'm really excited about, that I'm going to start mentioning just a little bit is I'm experimenting with what I'm calling micro groups. So it's one thing to do, be able to, you know, for companies to have the ability to get me out to your organization, it's another thing if you're in a company that is, maybe you're the only, you're the only consultant or you're the only selling tech and you don't have a lot of support. I know there's thousands, literally thousands of you across the country that were just like me when I started. You know, it was me by myself for a decade, just scraping, trying to scrape together other trainings and buying courses and trying to go to class across the country. Like there was no such thing as the Facebook groups and just free education online when I first started. So I had to just scrape it all together myself. But I know a lot of you don't even really know where to start. One of the people that attended this, my class this last week, one of the things he said, there's so many podcasts to listen to, there's so many trainings out there and there's really great stuff out there. No way. I'm not talking bad about any of the other trainers, but when you start to combine it all, it's so overwhelming because everybody has a little different way of doing it. Everyone's got a different level of how aggressive they want to be with the homeowners, handling objections, how aggressive to be in the house, etc. And you know, find the person that resonates with you. Find the trainer that really resonates with you. If you like the way that I do things, the close it now style, that's very permission based, very NEPQ kind of ideas. If you know what, you know what that means, then let's rock and roll. Let's do some stuff together. Let's get you trained at a faster pace. If you just grab a few nuggets here and there, but you really resonate with another trainer, that's awesome. I love it. I support that. The one thing that I would stress to you is to invest in yourself. That is something no one can ever take away from you. You've got to invest in yourself. If it's with me, with coaching or coming to one of my events, or have me out to your location or anybody, just invest in yourself. Because as you grow, as we work to become someone worth buying from, that is something no one can ever take away from you. Just because your company doesn't say they may or may not pay for your training, why would you give your power away? Because our earning potential in our industry is so astronomical that, okay, so what if I invest a few thousand bucks in a course or training or something, I'm gonna get that back in like a week of making more sales that I wasn't going to before. And then my lifelong value for being able to make higher average ticket, better, close rate. I mean, talk about a way make impact in my family and my community to have a purpose. Wow. It's so much, so, so worth investing in yourself. So like I was saying, if you want to invest with me, cool. If not, find some place to invest in your learning and in your training and your growing. Because you could do it. Can you do it on your own? Absolutely. But what is the. At what cost? Right? What is the time lost that you could have been earning higher along the way? When you hire a coach or trainer, it compresses time for you. That's the. So that's the message I want to get across to you. Everybody start compressing time. We don't have time to waste. We have a big world to change. And there's an industry to grow, an industry to raise the standard in our H Vac industry. And there's no better time than now to start right away. So find yourself a place to invest in yourself and do it. Like I said, if it's with me, if it's with somebody else, if it's not even in the industry, it doesn't matter. Find yourself a life coach or a business coach or all the above and let's go, let's get to the next level. Find yourself a personal trainer you are worth investing in. So that is my message today. Thank you all for listening. If you've ever gotten value from this podcast, I would ask you to leave a five star review on wherever you listen. If it's Apple, if it's on Spotify, wherever you are hearing this, thank you so much. I appreciate every single one of you. Thank you so much. Everybody that has sent me coffee for the what's in your cup segments. I love that. I am going to definitely be going through a lot more of those. I've gotten a few coffees in, I've got a review and get on the show. And everyone, thanks for leaving me leaving reviews. It is time to take this industry to the next level. 22, 20, 24. Make it your year. Make it the year that you say, you know what? I'm tired of being a sissy. I'm tired of only going, giving it 80%. Let's go all in this year and most like Tony Robbins says most people overestimate what they can do in one year and completely underestimate what they can do in five. I 100% agree. So let's get you on the track this year to completely revolutionize your numbers and help more people. Let's end this like we always do. Every single one of you. Go out there, save the world one heat stroke at a time.

You've been listening to the Close it now podcast. Our passion is to dive headfirst into the transformative movement that's reshaping the very foundation of H Vac and home improvement and at the same time covering fitness, nutrition, relationships and personal growth, proving that we can indeed have it all. We hope you've enjoyed the show. If you did, make sure to like rate and review. We'll be back soon, but in the meantime, find the website@CloseItNow.net net find us on Instagram at the real Close it Now and on Facebook at Close it Now. See you next time.