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.

All right, welcome back to the podcast.

This is going to be a fun one because what happened is I realized when I was recording this I got a little bit excited and I went for a long time.

So turns out steps one through four, the four ways to generate Free H Vac leads is going to be a two part episode.

So this episode we are covering lead generation method number one and lead generation method number two.

And then next week the episode will cover the kind of upper level lead generation is the magic of number three and number four.

But I'm going to leave it a mystery as to what they are until you listen to the episode.

So thank you for sticking around.

This will be the first two part.

No, it won't be the first two part.

I did a two part episode with, I split it up with Mike Claudio a few years back so this will be the second one.

But I'm super excited.

Thanks for hanging out.

This is going to be a really powerful two episode series.

Four ways to generate free leads.

Really especially powerful to fill up your calendar in the shoulder months, in the off season, in the spring and the fall when you you're not busy, right?

I hear all the time in the shoulder months that man, I don't have any leads.

I'm not making any money because I'm not getting any leads from the company.

Well, the theme of this episode is to take radical responsibility for yourself and your business.

Don't just rely on the company to provide you with leads.

You have the ability to go out and talk to people.

It's what we do.

We're salespeople, connect with people.

So these are four creative ways to come up with your own business, come up with your own leads and to really bump those numbers up.

So stop acting like you don't have the ability or the power to take your life and your business into your own hands.

You do.

And so if you don't get Anything else from this episode, this two part episode, take this from it, that I empower you to take control of your life and your business.

You can do it, you can reach out, you can make a difference in your own life if you choose to do the work.

So I'm super excited about this episode.

It's.

It's really powerful and I hope you get as much value out of it as I have gotten in the last 12 to 15 years of creating just insane amount of income and business from using some of these methods.

Every single one of these I've done and continually do to create my own business.

And I hope you get a lot of value from this as well.

And every top performer will say, yeah, absolutely.

These are effective ways to completely change that dynamic of the amount of people you see, the amount of volume you do.

If you added just 1.1 new deal a week that you weren't doing before, because from implementing even one of these methods, and that's 50 deals a year, what would that do to your paycheck?

What would that do to your bottom line?

What would that do to the value that you bring to your company to change the whole margin and change everything?

So hope that you get as much value from this and have as much fun as I did making this episode stick around.

It's going to be a good one.

All right, welcome back.

Sam Wakefield here with Close it now sales training today.

The episode is going to be a lot of fun.

Four ways to get free leads.

So raise your hand if you've ever been thinking, man, it is really slow.

I wish I had more people to put my opportunity in front of.

I wish I had more people to talk to about how I can help them save and how I can help them be more comfortable and live more efficiently.

And you know what?

I just, I'm going broke here.

I wish I had more appointments and more leads.

So raise your hand if that's ever been you.

You go through the summer and you're like, this is fantastic.

And then it gets to the fall and you're like, oh my gosh, what am I going to do?

It's October and I made eight.

And then you get to the winter and oh my gosh, this is fantastic.

And then the springtime comes in February and March and you've made 1250, right?

And that's $12.50, not $1250.

And so I know if you're anything like me before I learned how to generate my own leads, before I learned how to track things better and Stay consistent.

And to dig.

There's an old expression called dig the well before you need it.

Before I learned how to do any of this, man, the life was feast or famine.

And that is the nature of so many H Vac businesses.

That's the nature of, you know, just so many salespeople, especially in this industry, you know, And I find it super interesting that now that I've expanded, I've looked at a lot of different things.

I've looked at a lot of different industries, and I've learned a lot from a lot of industries.

You know, the thing with H Vac is it if you've only ever done that, especially if you've, you know, kind of grown up in it like I did, you know, was a attic rat pulling ductwork, you know, just a helper on the install crew years ago.

Then I became foreman, not because I was promoted, but because everybody else quit.

And so I instantly became the crew leader because I was my crew of one until we hired more people.

And so, I mean, there's.

I've definitely had some really interesting struggles in my career.

I know you've probably had them, too.

But once I got into sales, all I'd really ever seen was the H Vac industry and how it functions.

And so especially that up and down, you know, we get into the fall and the spring, and, man, I just wish that there was more business and I would.

Look, I was in a really small market.

You know, my town had 13,000 people.

Of course, eventually I was setting records and that kind of thing.

But, you know, starting out, man, it was rough.

And I would look around and think, man, I wish I could move or I should move to, you know, a bigger city or a different market where, you know, these guys are, you know, man, my close rate is better.

My average ticket is better, but they just have consistent sales year round.

They have consistent appointments year round.

I wish I was in a market that was better than that until I learned how to farm my own appointments.

So that's what this episode is going to be today.

Four ways to get free leads I'm going to go through one by one and really break it down for you.

There's a lot of things that you can do to generate more business for yourself, and really what it starts with is taking ownership for your own success.

That's really the foundation of this entire conversation.

Because until you do that, basically you end up being a lead baby.

H Vac is great because by design, service drives sales, meaning, you know, homeowners will call when they have A problem.

It's a need based purchase.

So we're not, we don't have to convince somebody that they need heating or they need cooling.

They want to be comfortable people.

It's a, you know, in other countries, yeah, it's a, it's a luxury.

But in the, you know, in, in most of the world that's developed, it is definitely a necessity to be comfortable.

You know, people die when it gets too cold or too hot if they don't know how to handle it.

So it's definitely a need based purchase.

Right.

But what happens is if that's all you've ever done and you've relied on the company to provide all the leads for you, well, that's, I'm just gonna say that's kind of lazy.

You become a lead baby and you know, honestly just kind of suck it on the tit of the company and wishing that for things to get better, you have to get better.

Right.

And so today we're going to talk about how to take ownership, how to take responsibility, radical responsibility for your own business and your own income.

And this will change everything for you.

If you start to do this consistently, it's going to make a massive difference for your success, which is what I want for you.

I want every single one of you to, to see a dramatic difference in your success than you've never seen before.

If you coach with me, I can double or triple your income just absolutely.

By teaching you the right steps, the right process.

If you have me to your, to your location and we do an on site training, I mean, how cool would it be?

Your entire team doubles their numbers after, you know, four days.

We do classroom for four days and then we're going to do, I'll go out and do ride alongs with everybody and we're on site showing you how this works.

So many trainers will come in and they'll teach a classroom and then all right, go have fun, go do it.

See if you can implement.

And then not that much changes, but it's about the real world, hands on.

I mean anybody who's ever done training knows that a week in the classroom is about the same as an hour in the field.

So that hands on, actually implementing in person makes all the difference.

So that is my.

So the closing out on site training is amazing.

Highly recommend.

Definitely reach out to me to learn more about that.

Also if you're an individual, you want to take responsibility for your own sales, message me, email me@samoseitnow.net or just join the Facebook group.

The Facebook Group is a really great way to stay connected, to learn more about what's going on.

In fact, this podcast today came from a live video that I did in the Facebook group.

So I had some questions come in.

They're like, oh my gosh, I just, I'm doing great.

I just need more leads.

So I developed a, you know, just did a Facebook Live and we talked about it.

And so we do that a lot within the Facebook group weekly.

We'll do, you know, a ton of free trainings in there, but today let's dive in and talk about the.

Talk about some free leads.

So number one is one that so many people don't like to do.

In fact, there is an idea, especially if you're with a company, that your pricing is higher than everybody else in the market.

I know a lot of you listening are with premium companies, which is fantastic and I highly recommend it.

That's the only way a company can grow and scale properly is to be priced properly.

And homeowners will pay more for you, for your service, for your product, for your install, for being taken care of.

They will pay thousands more than anyone else in the market if you do it properly.

But what happens is you, a lot of times you develop this idea, which is very false, that if it doesn't close in house on one sit, that they are going with someone else and they would never.

There's no reason to follow up.

That is what I'm here to tell you.

That is 100% a false idea, false notion.

Because in, in actuality, when you start looking at statistics and numbers, there's a good 30% or better of homeowners.

If they didn't go with you, they literally just didn't go with anybody.

They haven't done anything.

You can drive back by that house and I guarantee you that same old 1980 Brown Square GE is still sitting out there that they didn't, they didn't change.

It's still sitting there waiting for somebody to properly execute a correct sales process.

And you know what the logical conclusion to a well executed sales process is, right?

It's a sale.

They're waiting for someone to take their hand and just pull them right over the finish line and help them.

And you can only do that by being confident in what you're representing.

If you cannot without a shadow of a doubt walk into a house and have the confidence and the certainty that what that homeowner is going to be delivered is the best in the market, that is, it's exceptional service, it's exceptional installs.

Find a different company.

That means you're not working for a good enough company.

If you're out there praying that, man, I hope they get crew A and not crew B.

Because crew B always breaks something.

You're not with the right company.

I've been in that situation and it sucks.

It's horrible.

So one, that's the first principle is find the right company to represent.

You are not a tree.

You can move.

It's okay to find a better company to work for or with or if you need to start your own.

I mean, that's the beauty of America and this amazing society and this awesome industry that we're in.

You can literally start your own if you have a better idea, you want to do things differently than what is out there.

So number one way to get free leads, and of course these weren't free to start with, but they are free to you now.

And this is what so many people don't do, is to farm your leads.

What do I mean by farm your leads?

And by doing this, it's going to improve when you decide to take radical responsibility as if you purchase these leads on your own.

Because I don't know if you knew this.

The average price for customer acquisition in the heating and air industry for most areas is between 4 to 6 to $800 per lead.

In a lot of areas, it's over.

It's a thousand dollars or higher per appointment.

So when you knock on that door and you don't make the sale and you just move on and you say, well, I've got so many more appointments that you know, so they probably went with somebody else.

You're literally throwing away six, $800 thousand dollars at the company, spending customer acquisition to have to get that customer to call, to get that client to just ring the phone, right.

Or to put in an inquiry online.

So you're being very wasteful to start with.

Number two is that homeowner.

There's a good chance they didn't do anything unless they tell you we're going with this other company and you know for a fact they installed.

Then does raise your hand if you know how long you should follow up.

How long do we follow up?

We follow up until they say no.

Until they say F off or they die.

Right?

They have to tell us that they have made a decision.

You follow up.

Basically, you follow up until a decision is made by that homeowner that can literally.

I followed up with people for years, years.

And they finally, you know, two, three, four years later said, you know what?

It's time.

Let's make a decision now.

That was a lot of it was early on in my career before I got better at closing.

But it also is the power of the pipeline.

There's nothing like having your phone ring and it's the homeowner on instantly on the other end says oh thank God you still work for that company.

We just moved and we loved what you did last time at our other house.

We want to do it again.

Or the phone rings and that homeowner says, man, you know what?

We were denied financing two years ago and we finally saved up the cash.

We don't even need to shop around or get quotes again.

We liked you so much in your sales process.

Come show us whatever the new models are.

Let's get this thing installed.

We're tired of using window units or we're tired of using space heaters.

It's time to fix it.

Right?

We finally saved the cash for it.

I wish we had gotten financing before because we were two years down the road.

But now it's time.

There's nothing like that phone call.

It's awesome because you did a well executed sales process.

So number one, the way to get free leads is pick up the phone and call the damn leads.

Start calling every single one that you didn't close when you were there the first time.

Literally pick up the phone, start calling.

Now.

Here's the process too.

You're not I don't ever want to hear you say the words follow up.

I don't want to ever hear you say the words where, hey, I'm just touching base.

Don't ever say the word circling back.

And there's a process to this.

You're going to call, you're going to text, you're going to email, all at the same time.

If they don't answer the phone and you physically talk to them, you're going to call, text and email.

If you're in the area, stop by and knock on the door.

It is okay.

At one point you had a conversation with them in person.

And so if you're in the area, you know they're going to be there at 5:30 and you've got another appointment down the street.

Go back by, knock on the door.

Hey Joe, I was just in the area.

I saw you didn't change your system yet.

Wanted to continue our conversation.

Continue our conversation.

So stop saying follow up, stop saying touching base, stop saying circling back when you are doing your follow ups, when you're re contacting all of these appointments because I know you got them Every single person has them.

Own it.

Take radical responsibility for your pipeline, for your life.

When you get back in touch with them, you're going to say something like this one.

You're going to stop being an amateur.

Amateurs follow up.

Amateurs circle back.

Amateurs touch base.

Be a professional.

Professionals, they'll get back.

And what you're going to do is you're going to follow up with intention, you're going to follow up with purpose.

So you're gonna get them on the phone and be like, hey Joe, I was just continuing the conversation we had before you and I met six months ago and I remember that you were excited about this model.

I wanted to let you know I just found out we're having a promotion on that model and then tell them whatever the promotion is, I didn't want you to miss out.

Now if you don't actually get them on the phone to have that conversation, what you're going to do is leave that as a message.

You're going to text it, you're going to email it, but don't give away the farm, right?

We're not giving away the cow.

What we're going to do is that message, it peaks.

Interesting.

They're going to reach back out.

You want them to reach back out to you.

You're going to leave that message with I just found out.

And this is the formula for the best follow ups.

I just found out.

I remembered you were excited about this product before.

I just found out we're having a promotion.

I just found out we have a new model that just came out.

Whatever it is that you want to offer.

I remember before you and your family were really concerned about indoor air quality.

I just found out we have a new model of XYZ that just came out.

You're going to be really excited about it.

Are you open to more information or I just found out.

I remember you were really interested in the two stage model.

I just found out it just got an upgrade or I just found out we've got a promotion on it.

You're really going to like what the promotion is.

Are you open to more information?

So you're not telling them what the promotion is, you're just asking, are you open to more information?

And when you do it like this, they're going to reach back because they're like, wait a minute, that's right, I was interested in that.

I need to know what the promo is.

And so they're going to reach back out to you.

So you're doing that through text, you're doing it through email.

You're doing it over the phone.

But follow up with intention, follow up with purpose.

Follow up with a way that.

And as you do this every several, every few weeks, you know, once a month, six weeks, have a reminder in your system.

So create something so people don't slip through the cracks.

You're literally letting thousands of dollars fall right through the cracks by not reaching back out and saying, I just wanted to continue the conversation we had before.

I know you said then you had to think about it.

Well, it's been six weeks now.

It's now June, it's now July, it's now December, it's cold, it's hot.

Let's continue this conversation.

I just found out about this promotion.

I didn't want you to miss out.

They will reach back out to you.

A much higher number than you expect will reach back out to you because now you've piqued their interest.

You made them feel special because you remembered what your note, what your conversation was.

And this will force you to take better notes.

When you're dispoing your jobs, you're going to take better notes because that way now you have your ammunition to.

When you reach back out to be able to have this conversation.

So they're going to feel special that you remembered what they talked about, which I talked about.

You're peaking their interest.

Because every time you reach out with intention, it's going to be because of a promotion.

It's going to be because of whatever's happening in the community.

If there's obviously the fires in Canada right now, everyone across Canada and the northern part of the United States, if you're not selling more IAQ items than you've ever thought about in your life, you are missing a massive opportunity.

So this is the beginning of, let's see, we're in June of 2023.

All you have to say is with everything going on outside, all the smoke and the fires, have you ever thought about how much toxic, how much toxins are in that smoke that you're breathing every day?

Would you like to hear what we've done for our own homes to protect us from having to breathe all that inside our own house, to turn our own houses into a sanctuary?

Would you like to hear what, as an industry, what we're doing to combat that?

We can do it for your own, for your home as well.

Would you like some more information?

So that is a beautiful way to introduce that.

So anyway, following up with intention, call every single person that didn't close.

You are letting thousands of dollars slip right through the cracks because you're not following a good follow up process.

Don't be lazy.

I know so many people like, oh, I hate to follow up.

Well, what you're actually saying is I am a lazy salesperson.

So don't be that.

Just call them.

Call the people.

So page two, here we go.

Let's take a.

And I'm not beating up on anybody.

This is because it's a podcast.

I'm not talking to.

I am talking to you directly, but I'm also not talking to you individually.

I'm just giving you the overall insight.

Right.

What I've seen successful over the years, what I see that all of the top performers who are doing 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 million a year, they don't let appointments slip through the cracks.

They will continue the conversation until somebody makes a decision.

If that decision is to go with them, if it's to do something else, they will continue the conversation until they know for a fact on their tracker sheet it turns green or red, end of story.

There is no in between.

So that is the, that's what successful people do is they take radical responsibility.

All right, number two, networking groups.

I know that networking is so powerful.

This is the dig the well before you need it moment.

But as you go out and you get in, I so recommend getting into BNI groups.

Get into your local chamber of commerce, your Rotary Club, your Lions Club, whatever the group is in your area.

If there's not one, start one.

Literally all you have to do is start calling up the.

Just go on Google and look for different trades.

Find the local Realtor, find the local person who does solar.

Find the local person that is a plumber, find the local electrician.

Look for highly rated companies and those people that are in the same house, in the same demographic that you are, call them and say, hey, I'm starting a business referral group for trades.

I'm starting a business referral group for homeowners so we can pass business to each other.

Would you be open to more information about it?

Would you like to join it and just communicate that way?

Literally this is taking responsibility, this is doing the work.

And as you create that group of people or just join one, because that's the easy way to do it.

Just join a group that the focus is a business referral group so you can trade business with each other.

When you do that, what happens is you be and it takes a bit.

You become, the longer you're there, the more people will like you.

If you're a good person, of course.

I mean, the caveat is you have to, you know, be a nice individual and provide value.

But when you do, people will get to know you.

They will start to like you, they'll start to trust you.

You, they'll start to you can communicate weekly what you do, how you help people.

The ask is, hey, this week I'm looking for that homeowner that is has 2.3 kids, 2 dogs and works in tech.

You know, whatever the ask is.

But as they get to know you, like you and trust you, they will start to pass referrals to you.

And if you didn't know this, referrals close at an 80% close rate.

That's right, 80% close rate.

So referrals are super powerful.

So I highly recommend networking groups.

They are awesome.

There's so many ways that you can get business from that and also adopt the mindset that givers gain.

Right?

This is the BNI philosophy.

Givers gain and so give more than you take and they will take care of you with business.

Thanks for listening to Close it now with Sam Wakefield.

Subscribe to the Podcast Now.

Subscribe so you're first to hear new episodes jam packed with actionable tools and tips to make you the top H Vac professional in your market.

If you have friends and colleagues who would like this show, share it with them and send them to our Facebook community for more in depth discussion about the challenges we all face and how to overcome them on the Close it now podcast.