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 Close It Now.

Sam Wakefield here.

So excited to come back today for another episode of Stories from the Field.

Actually.

So I made a bunch of notes when I was in my site visit in Pennsylvania and I intended to record a bunch of Drive Time University episodes while I was there.

But after recording one I realized that the air conditioner in the hotel room was obviously incredibly loud.

So I apologize about last week's episode and the sound quality, but it was such a good recording I didn't want to delete it and have to start over because I was just flowing.

So I hope you got some good content from that.

The good news is now I am back and in my studio so we can have some better sound quality.

So welcome to Drive Time University.

I am, yeah, I'm excited to come to you guys.

If you don't know, this is something we do every single week.

You the.

I've talked about this in early episodes, but it's something that's so important to remember is using the value of time is the only thing that we have that you cannot get back, you cannot get more of is time.

We can always get more money, you can always get more things, you can get more stuff, but you cannot get more time.

What does this.

I mean every billionaire on the planet and every bum on the street has the same amount of time.

It's what are you doing with it?

How are you leveraging your time?

How are you leveraging yourself to maximize that?

So knowing that, did you know that in a 15 year career, and I heard this from Charlie Greer years ago.

If you don't know who that is, one of the classics.

He was like the second person in heating and air.

Tom McCart was the first person, he was the second person to sell over a million dollars worth of heating and air equipment back when the average sale was about $3,000.

So monsters back in Florida in the 80s.

But Charlie Greer, one time I heard him say this on his Tech Daddy series.

Raise your hand if you've ever seen Charlie Greer's Tech Daddy series that he did.

We used to watch that in the, in the training rooms years ago in the VHS tapes.

But that is so I'm kind of all over the map right now.

Charlie Greer, he said that in a 15 year career, if you use your windshield time, your drive time as education time, instead of just listening to music or just zoning, if you actually use it for audio books, for podcasts, for learning, a 15 year career as an outside salesperson or a technician is the equivalent to three PhDs.

Three PhDs.

So welcome to Drive Time University.

I know you are focused on bettering yourself because or you wouldn't be listening to this podcast.

So I am so excited.

You guys and ladies there have been definitely been interviewing some heavy hitters lately.

Who do you want me to interview?

I am definitely taking suggestions.

I would love some connections to other people within the industry or outside of the heating and air industry.

I've got some people coming up that are going to be really groundbreaking that are not necessarily in heating and air or solar, that have really great mindset skills.

People to teach us efficiency.

We're going to do another episode with Aaron about the AI that he's using.

Big updates there, how to incorporate AI into your business.

I've got a couple people coming up.

They're going to do some actual just kind of financial work.

How to think about finances, how to think about money, but just so excited about what's coming up in the future.

This year is the breakout year for Close it Now the site visits are off the hook.

I was in Pennsylvania doing the site visit and this is where I got a lot of these notes because there's nothing like being in the field.

You know, we went out, we were like crushing the deals.

Deals that probably wouldn't have closed in one sit.

We were closing them, you know, two days.

When I was there.

One of the guys I was with had, you know, $50,000 days.

He had over $100,000 a week.

Now he's doing that all the time now.

You guys, there's so much power in the energy from a site visit when you know, we can be there in person, we can work on up leveling and then, man, I'm out in the field doing ride alongs for the second half of the day.

I mean, so many trainers in the industry that they learned what they trained, you know, 10, 15 years ago and now they just only train they haven't been out in the field and who knows how long.

So they've lost touch with how people buy now, how the consumer buys.

And as something I'll never want to do as a trainer, I need to stay current.

So I'm in the field, man.

It's what we do.

We go out, we close business.

So anytime I go out to a site visit, it literally pays for the entire training from me being in the field selling for you.

So if you're an owner there, message me.

You can email me@samloseitnow.net or find me in the Facebook group and just pop me a message.

We can set up a time to come to your location and get your people to the next level.

So excited about our site visits and today's topic.

Today's topic is a good one.

We're talking about accessories, right?

Why do we add accessories to our sale?

You know, there's a lot of reasons why people are scared to.

But really the reason you're scared to add accessories to your sales, accessories to your offer is because you're not asking the right questions or you're not asking enough questions.

You know, the discovery is the way to get there if you're so actually, first of all, let's cover this.

Let's cover the steps to a sale.

The steps in a sales system, you've got to have a consistent system.

If you're out there winging it, if you're out there just kind of, you know, well, you know, I know my stuff.

So we just kind of go by the seat of our pants and every call is different.

Well, that's okay.

But also, you're going to miss some things that's good for one person, but one, you can't scale that.

You can't duplicate that or teach it.

But more importantly, you know, you're not able to really hear and focus on what the homeowner is saying and what they're.

What they're trying to communicate to you.

If you're constantly working on developing, you know, your system is different every time and it changes.

That's called selling by chance.

That's, you know, hoping we sell.

Right.

We have to be intentional with our process.

You can't just, you know, sell by fingers crossed and hope it works.

We have to be very disciplined to be a professional.

You have to know what you're doing.

I mean, my appointments, you walk in at 35 minutes in, it's going to be.

You're going to hear the exact same thing as walking in 35 minutes into a different Appointment, it doesn't change.

And when someone has a system that they've learned so well that they don't even have to think about it, it's just like breathing, then you can focus on the important thing, which is what the homeowner is saying, what the homeowner is communicating to you, and how it's.

What you're saying is responding to them.

You basically learn it to forget it.

So you can focus on the important thing, which is them, not you.

This is not about you.

A sales appointment is not about showing off how much you know.

There's one thing that's really gotten to me lately is as I go to these different site visits and we go through what people are currently doing, there are some questionnaires out there that are so horribly written.

And raise your hand if you've ever read through a questionnaire or a customer intake form or whatever you want to call it, where they're asking questions about rooms too hot, rooms too cold.

One thing I never want to hear you say is, where in the house has hot and cold spots?

That's a goofy question.

Don't ask that.

Ask when some rooms.

In the summer, when some rooms are cool, are others warmer than the rest?

Or in the winter, when some rooms are warm, which rooms are colder than the rest?

That's how you ask that question properly.

Don't ask, does your house have hot and cold spots?

I mean, holy cow, the husband can point at a wife and be like, oh, she's the hot spot right there.

Right?

It's goofy to ask that.

Those kind of questions.

You got to think about what we're doing.

Every single thing you do in a home has to be intentional.

Every action, every word you speak, everything has intention.

Be very focused on the purpose of what you're doing, right?

The purpose of your discovery.

The purpose of the questions in discovery, you know, the people I'm riding along with, it's not their fault.

Nobody's ever taught them this.

But, I mean, raise your hand if you know the actual reason of discovery.

The purpose of discovery, it's not to answer the question written and move on to the next one as fast as possible.

You know, that's what most people do.

They.

They go through the questionnaire strictly to race through it, and then so I can get to measuring and then presenting systems and, you know, hopefully close a deal.

No, discovery is so important.

Discovery, you should spend, you know, 10, 20, 30, 45 minutes, an hour.

You can spend that long in discovery asking questions.

And not only just asking the questions that are Written.

Your mindset needs to be that you need to listen to understand, not to listen, to respond.

Going to say that again.

When you're asking questions to a homeowner, your mindset has to be to listen to understand, not listen to respond.

And when we start to understand that, what happens is you realize that the questions on the page are not questions that need answers.

They are topics to start a discussion.

Right.

They're conversation starters.

The questions on your questionnaire are conversation starters.

Every single one.

It's not a question that needs an answer to move on to the next one.

And when you treat it like that and you start to listen to understand what's going to happen is you now have a conversation.

You now are asking things like, wow, how bad is that room?

You know when some rooms are cool in the summer, which ones are warmer?

Oh, and they say, oh, it's little Jenny's room in the corner of the house.

Okay, how bad is it?

Is it all the time?

Is it night or during the day?

Is it when the door is closed or when the door is open?

Is it the same in the winter as it is in the summer?

Is the temperature off?

How many degrees is it off?

Would you say, take me there, show me this space.

What's it like?

What's it like for little Ginny?

How does she experience it?

Does it cause her to sleep?

Okay.

Do you think it affects her work at school?

Do you think it affects her schoolwork?

Are there any overlying health issues that you think it's causing?

How do you feel about this situation?

How does that make you feel?

Right.

Those are the kind of.

That's how far we need to drive down this road with questions.

When you're in discovery and you're asking about the experience in the home, because you've already set this up with, hey, I'm just going to ask you some questions.

You get to tell me what your concerns are and what you're experiencing.

And when you roll into a house and you're rolling up, do you think anybody else in your town is asking them?

Hey, you get, first of all, what we're going to do.

I'm just asking some questions and you get to tell me what your concerns are and what you're experiencing.

Then based on your answers, I'm going to measure the house.

Do you think anybody else is asking that?

I'm sure I can guarantee you they're not.

What they're doing is they're saying, hey, all right, take me to the thermostat.

Okay, where do you normally Keep this thing set.

Oh, 72.

All right.

Where's your furnace?

I need to go measure it and then sit down.

And they show them, you know, a box and then a better box and a better box and a.

Fantastic.

They have four options.

Good, better, best, fantastic.

And here, this one does this and this one does this and this one does this.

Which one do you want?

That is literally a trained monkey that's taking an order.

That is not sales.

Sales is asking questions, listening to a homeowner's concerns, then recommending solutions based on that.

That is sales.

And when you can dive down into and you can dig down into the emotional hot button that that homeowner has about a topic and about a situation.

And you start asking them those emotional questions, like, how does that make you feel?

How do you feel about this situation?

What can you not do because of this in your life?

You start asking them questions like that, you're going to start getting emotional answers.

And when you get to the point of the emotion where they.

And I will tell you if one to three people out of every 10 that you have discovery with, if you're not seeing tears and at least one out of 10, like getting to the point that literally their eyes are getting misty and some people will cry, if you're not in minimum 1 out of 10, you are not asking enough questions in discovery, you're not diving deep enough.

Because what happens?

And the whole point of this, it's not to manipulate people or anything like that.

It's to find what their true concerns are.

And as soon as you're able to find what those true concerns are, and in discovery, you're not going to make suggestions.

It's not the time to suggest resolution to it.

You just ask about the problems.

And when they say, can you fix it, say, I don't know yet.

I have to measure, I have to run the calculations.

It leaves them in anticipation.

They're going to simmer in those pain points, which is, okay, we want to bring those up.

We want them to feel how much it really is an issue, it really is a concern.

And so once we've done that, then the conversation, you take them to tears or you take them just as far down the road as you need and want to go, and then just ask them, if we could do something about that, would that help you?

And listen.

And then in our sales system, in the close it now system that I train, we've got some several steps after that.

But that's the power question is if we could do something to help improve on that, Would that help you?

And when you start getting answers like, absolutely, yes, I would do anything to change that.

Okay, great.

No problem.

Let me measure.

We'll see what we can do about that.

And then when you present a solution later, we're no longer presenting.

Okay, we remember we talked about you had allergies.

So I've got this germicidal lamp.

It's an air scrubber.

It's a Remi halo.

It's I wave.

Whatever it is.

Do you want to buy this big fat air filter?

That's not what we're selling them now.

People don't buy the product, people buy the benefit.

So the way to present that is.

Okay, remember earlier when we talked about what you were experiencing because of your allergies, and we said if there was a way to help, that you would like, you'd like to know about it.

Right?

Right.

Okay, great.

Well, in the solution for improving the allergens and cleaning up the air in the house, we have this, this, this, this, and this.

Can you see how all of these combined is the ultimate solution for what you're experiencing?

And they say, absolutely.

And it's no longer a price objection because you're the only person that's walked in that's cared enough to find out what they're experiencing and now offer a solution to their actual concerns.

That is the difference.

That's how when you.

When.

I mean, our people are doing, you know, five $10,000 IAQ packages on top of the one, you know, on top of a system, a premium system, Right?

That's how our people are doing those kind of numbers, doing 30,000, 35, 40, $45,000 projects every single day because they're solving people's real issues.

They have in their life.

They're literally changing lives.

And when your focus is helping people and changing lives, there's no longer price, you know, price negotiations, there's no longer price objections.

Right?

It's because you're truly solving their concerns.

And that's what it's all about.

And that's why we also.

Why we build so many accessories into every single thing you offer.

Because it's called anchoring.

Right?

If you anchor at here's a system, here's the price for the system, then all they have to do is compare commodity versus commodity.

You've not differentiated yourself.

I don't care who tells you that.

Well, you can come in and you can show a little gas flex and have them hold it and show them a gas valve and have them hold it and say, oh, Nobody else is doing that.

Let's get a torch on some copper and make it gross and show them if we don't do the entry level work, right?

Well, yes, that's going to differentiate some, but I mean, every great company in the country does that.

They're doing the same thing.

That's not how you really differentiate.

You can differentiate by touching someone's heart.

You differentiate by showing that you're there and you actually care about them to solve their problems.

But that's also why we build so many accessories into the project.

It's called anchoring.

If you only present the system price and that's all you're looking at, there's nothing to compare to.

But when you have, you know, 2, 3, 4, 5, you know, accessories and options listed and they start if they are like, no, that's too much, the price is too big, I didn't expect it, blah, blah, blah, that's fine.

And they start saying, well, okay, the way to remove that is, well, here's what you're not going to get.

If we take this out and you're naming the benefits, right?

So you're not going to get the ionization and the air cleaning.

We're not going to be able to, you know, filter as much as we would like.

You still get a filter, but here's what you're not going to get.

Do you want to take this out of the project?

Make them say yes.

Make them say yes.

They want to take it out of the project.

So the next thing, you're not going to get the humidification like we talked about.

Remember earlier, you said this was important to you.

We're working together to build this project, though.

So it's up to you.

You're not going to get that.

Do you want to take it out of the project?

And if they say yes, no problem.

Because what happens is we've anchored with several accessories listed.

By the time they say we're giving people something to say no to, we don't want them to just.

We don't want to just present a system and they say no to the total project, we're giving them something to say no to.

Because as a society, we're trained to say no to things.

So if we give them an accessory to, to say no to, and then what happens?

More than likely, and the chances are we're going to still complete the sale along with at least one or two accessories.

So all of a sudden our ticket's bigger anyway because we anchored to maybe five accessories.

And now they feel great because they were able to.

They feel like they won because now they were able to say no to an accessory or two.

Well, we made them say they didn't want the benefits, not just the accessory.

We made them say they didn't want the benefits.

So it's harder for them to say no to it.

And at the end of the day, we're going to have happier clients because we all know the more someone spends with you, the better you're able to help them.

Because now you can accomplish more things in their home that were always on their concern list.

And how many of you know the people who spend the most are the happiest?

They're the ones that High5 you5 years from now in the grocery store and say, that was still the best decision I ever made.

I'm so glad that we did that.

So that's my message today is discovery is crucial.

You have to emotionally connect in discovery.

And then when you translate into what you present now you have a baseline for all of these things that they said that they wanted from the beginning.

But remember its benefits they're not telling you.

They want an air conditioner.

Nobody wants to buy an air conditioner.

Nobody wants to buy a furnace.

Nobody wants to buy a germicidal lamp.

Nobody wants to buy ducts cleaning.

What they want to buy is nice, cool air when they want it.

What they want to buy is to be warm when they want to be warm and cheap to do it.

And they want to buy less allergens.

What they're wanting to buy is the ability to get up in the morning and not have a bloody nose because it's dry.

The ability to not have to take, not have sinus infections every quarter from the allergens.

That's what they're wanting to buy.

It's our job to connect the dots and show them that the products that we offer will accomplish that for them.

And when you can start thinking in these terms, in this benefit focused term for the homeowner, the conversation completely changes.

Because you're going to be the only one in your market that's talking like this.

You're going to be only one stepping into a house with this level of certainty, with this level of confidence and solving their problems.

So be thinking about that in every single thing you do and every single thing that's very, make it very intentional.

And that's how you're going to be able to multiply your ticket price.

That's how you'll be able to multiply your close rate by doing exactly that.

That so that Was a lot get fired.

I'm gonna talk about this stuff, you guys, because I just freaking love our industry.

I love what we do.

I love how we're able to help people.

Literally able to change lives on a different level.

So super excited about this.

I've got several more episodes from notes from the field that we're gonna be talking about.

Man, I even missed our what's in your cup today?

Today I actually had some Irish cream which was really good.

I don't normally do flavored coffees but today Bones coffee had some Irish cream that was pretty delicious.

But what is in your cup?

Send me some recommendations.

Reach out to me samoseitnow.net you can email me directly or find us on our Facebook group.

I did a free coaching Friday there today.

Every Friday I try to do Facebook live.

We're gonna do free coaching Friday.

Really excited.

I'm working on a couple things you guys.

How many of you raise your hands have had that have in the off season been like man, I don't have any leads.

I don't have any leads.

Well, I'm working on solving that problem for you.

I've got a couple programs going.

One with the boots to the ground.

I'm making some content with a guy that you've probably heard of.

He was just the interview that dropped today in fact when I recorded this episode.

So I'm going to be doing stuff with Sam Taggart also.

I made a partnership today with a lead generation company.

I'm super excited to be able to offer that to all of you.

There's going to be be on the lookout.

We're going to do a launch here soon.

You're going to get a discount.

It's actually so excited about the offer.

You're going to be able to get the service at a 3/3 discount.

That's 33% discount just for being connected to close it now.

So really working on that because if you remember back the episode where I talked about how to get free leads, this is part two.

You can buy leads.

Absolutely.

Makes it very affordable.

Especially when you get them at such a discount.

And the the leads coming in, I'll help you close them.

I mean if you're buying leads you got to be able to close them.

But.

And that's what I'm here for.

But I want you all to know we've got a really cool partnership with a company that does lead generation.

I'm really excited about it, really excited to introduce it to you.

And you're going to get a monster discount.

Strictly from coming from Close It Now.

So be on the lookout for that jump in the Facebook group because we're going to do a lot in there about it.

And yeah, everybody, let's go out there and save the world one heat stroke at a time.

I will talk to you soon.

Thanks for listening to Close it now with Sam Wakefield.

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