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.

All right, welcome back to Close It Now. Sam Wakefield here. I am doing it old school today. I'm traveling. I haven't had the opportunity to record one of these in a couple days. So I am doing it old school on the voice memo on my phone. So if you hear car sounds, that kind of stuff, we're kicking it old school. Sam Wakefield here. Drive Time University coming in hot. Today is kind of a fun episode. What we're talking about today, I get a lot of questions about, okay, when I put my proposal together, do I go out to the truck? It feels weird to sit there. Do I stay in the house? All these things. We're going to break this apart today because there's some very serious things that happen and there's a good flow and there's a bad flow. And have you ever stopped to wonder what goes on in the homeowner's mind when you're putting prices together? So we're going to talk about all of this today, but first we are going to do some what's in your cup? So I am here in Kansas City, actually Overland park, to be exact, and I am looking at two different cups. Today I stopped for the first time. I don't know if you're in the part of the country where there is a scooters coffee, but for the first time, I stopped at scooters instead of doing my, you know, typical Starbucks or whatever. Not that I'm a massive Starbucks fan, but I'm a. I am a fan of consistency. I hope you are, too. So that. Which is exactly why people, you need systems in your company and to be able to grow and scale, have consistency because consumers and buyers love consistency. If it's different every time, why in the world would I go back? Because I might like something and then it's different and it's never going to be the same again. So consistency is important. But I stopped at Scooters because the last time I was here, this is the second visit to this company here in Kansas City to Air Care Heating and Cooling. And these guys are rock stars out here. But the first visit, I showed up one day with Starbucks and they said, hey, why didn't you stop at Scooters? We did all of the scooters in the entire Kansas City area, which is really cool. I was like, oh, that's really fun. So I went to Scooters today. And so I've got two things. One is their peanut butter power. It's like a smoothie, a shake in the morning. So if you don't know, I am living what I preach. So I am down to. I'm down at 19% body fat on my way to 10% as the mile marker this year. I want to see ABs for the first time in my life. You know, I decided to go all in. Are you one of those people? We'll come back to the what's in youn cup in a second, but I was just inspired to talk about something for a minute. Are you one of those people that you've always been naturally good at things and so you've only ever really had to give it about 80% effort or determination or discipline or work to achieve basically top tier performance? Well, that's always been me, right? But the problem with top performers who are naturally good at good at their skill set is you end up finding yourself only ever giving about 80%. And then personally, in my life, I'll just tell you my story. Hit this place when I turned about 40 or just over, and I started really wondering what would happen, what would happen if I stopped playing small? What would happen if I said, you know what, there's a few habits in my life that are holding me back. What would happen if I just went all in and gave it every single thing I have? Gave it 100%. And I can tell you it's worth it when you decide to stop being a sissy, stop playing small, actually give it everything you got, stop being lazy and just go all in on something and the universe will align for you. The universe is conspiring for you, not against you. To say it differently, if you are like religious, God's always working in your favor, right? And so that's what happened this last year in 2023. I went all in on Close it now with the podcast and with training and with coaching and the Business has grown, it's multiplied. The most incredible part is the way that, you know, just all of the things start to align. The connections with people, the networking, the places that you're able to get in front of, the referrals that you start getting when you go all in and you're passionate about what you do, people will come from miles around to see what's going on because there's, it's not very often, it's very rare when someone decides to just give it everything they've got. And so that's what I'm doing with my health. So that's why I'm, I've been very. My personal choice for my nutrition is very plant based and it doesn't mean I don't eat meat, but I'm very plant based. And as often as I can, I'll have a, you know, a smoothie or something instead of just eating, eating regular food. It's paying off. It's. It's incredible. So, yeah, so dropping the drop in the weight. But also I have a. So back to the what's in your cup? So we've got our protein or the peanut butter power smoothie, but the what's in your cup coffee portion of the day from Scooters is their Americano. So let's collectively take a drink together. What is in your cup today? Is it coffee? Is it something else? Are you one of those morning coke people from the gas station? What are you doing this morning? So mine is a Scooters coffee Americano established in 1998. And yeah. Three, two, one. All right. That is a pretty decent Americana. So let's go. So let's talk about today's topic. Today's topic is that what do we do during the appointment? Well, the first thing is I hope you have the ability to present while you are there for first visit. Let's cover this first. You know all of the whole. The semantics of do I go out to the truck to ride at the proposal or come back in? All of that aside for a minute, the first thing that I want to cover is I have a way to create a proposal while you are there for the first visit. And I'm talking to everybody, I don't care if you're a service. Obviously for service techs, we've got pricing because, you know, we go out to fix things. You have to have pricing when we're there to be able to, you know, for repairs. We get that. That's easy, that's simple. Yes, we're gonna have pricing for that. Now I'm talking about when you're quoting equipment, when you're quoting systems. I don't care if you're a selling tech, if you're an advisor, project manager, whatever, whatever you are, it doesn't matter if you're quoting, have a way to get a price to them while you are there for your visit. Do not, do not, do not, do not under any circumstance, with a caveat of a few things we'll talk about in a second, but do not, under normal conditions, leave to put the proposal together and then schedule a second appointment unless there's a handful of conditions that would require that. But for the most part, don't leave. I know that there's. In fact, it's interesting, I'm working with a guy right now that he reached out to me. He's like, man, my company doesn't allow us to give proposals. We have to take all of our findings. We do the sales presentation, get it back to the office. A couple people in the office put the put the pricing together and then we send it back over, usually a few days later. And when this gentleman told me about this, and I'm not going to call any names, but holy cow, that made me want to vomit. That's gross. And here's why I can tell you any of you are listening to that that are closers are laughing your ass off right now, because I know. And you know what happens when that person goes to the appointment? They leave. And then a closer comes in. It's going to be. You're going to be getting a call from me saying Mr. And Ms. Jones aren't going to need your service anymore because I'm closing it while I'm in the house. Because here's so for everyone when you, Here's a ninja tip ninja trick expression that turn a phrase for you use this when you're following people who come out and they left and didn't leave a number with the homeowner. Ask them, ask the homeowner this when, you know, you said when the homeowner starts. Because we all know what this sounds like. They start asking you like, oh, can we get a price? You're going to give us a price right now? And he's like, well, yeah, yes, I absolutely, of course. Why wouldn't I? And they say something like, well, the other people didn't. They said it was too complicated a project to put together on the site. Or the other people didn't, for whatever the reason, ask them this. Stop what you're doing, set everything down, look them dead in the eyes and say, oh my gosh, Mr. Jones, Ms. Jones. They didn't even take the time to put together a number for you while they were here. How did that make you feel? They didn't value your time enough to take five extra minutes to put something together while they were here. They had to schedule another appointment to waste your time. How does that make you feel that they didn't value your time to even take the time to put something together and tell them, listen, we all have the same availability for the ability to do that with the right, with Pro, we could all, every single company can get a program or create a price book. They didn't. They haven't even done their due diligence to do that. They have to go somewhere else to give you a price. Wow. I'm sorry about that. Listen, we're not that, that's not how we operate. We're professionals. We're prepared when we show up to your home. And that's exactly why I'm able to put everything together right now. So are you ready to take a look at what we found? So that's how to cast out serious doubt on the competition without talking bad about the competition. But that's a very beautiful place to be able to really lock in how professional you are, really lock in how prepared you are. Throw in a couple other things about the company or about you or about Yalls process, how you're trained, how you don't listen. We don't believe in guesswork. That's why we're as thorough as we are. This is a big investment for your money and with your, with your money. And we do not take this lightly. So those types of expressions, those types of phrases are absolutely gold when we're talking to the homeowner. So that's step one. You've got to present while you're there. Because any real closer in almost every case is going to come in and close that homeowner while you're trying to scramble to get numbers together. So that's 100% what happens all the time, Every single, all day long, Me and my team and like all the closers I know across the country, absolutely. Call your company and tell them. I mean, if you've never called a company and cancelled, called someone else and canceled their appointment or called someone else and canceled their install for the homeowner, then you're missing out because that is a very fun phone call. So that's step one. You got to present while you were there. Now let's talk about the flow of the appointment for the presentation. Right? Because a lot of people, I know a lot of you are still, even if you've got price books that you've got to pull out of, or if you've got a digital presentation that you've got that you can, you know, you put together, if you're using service Titan or you use an on call air, or my buddy Brandon Stowe, he's got a one called the Matrix, which is incredible. I highly recommend, recommend checking out the Matrix with over at Brandon Stowe's. That's what he's putting together. But it doesn't matter if you have a program or not. What a lot of you are doing, that I hear over and over and over is you'll do, you know, you'll do your questions, you'll build rapport, do questions, you'll grab your measurements, you know, look at the house. But then what I'm hearing from a lot of you is you'll go back to the truck or back to the van to sit and do your manual J calculations, your heat load, heat loss, heat gain calculations. You're sitting out there, you know, 15, 10, 15, 20, 30 minutes to put together the proposal for this homeowner. Let me ask you, what in the world do you think is going through that homeowner's mind while you're just dicking around out in your truck for 10, 15, 20, 25, 30 minutes or more in the middle of their appointment? They're like, this is our appointment. What in the world is going on out there? Why are they staying out there so long? So I gave you a little bit of insight into what the homeowner's mind just by describing that. But this is what happens the second you hit that separation. And I'm not talking about, you can't just, hey, I need to run out to the truck to grab something. You go grab your tape measure, pop in and out. That's no big deal. You're communicating, you're telling what's going on, you're setting the right expectations. But when you go out there and just sit, even if you told them, hey, I'm going to go run these calculations and put your pricing together, they have no concept of how long that is going to take or should take. So the homeowners mind will drift. It will drift. We have to stay engaged with them to keep. So what happens is you've completely lost energy, you've lost momentum, you're losing rapport. By the second thoughts start to come into that homeowner's mind of, wow, I wonder if they're like making up their numbers according to the neighborhood. So one of the thoughts that I've actually talked to a lot of homeowners about this, One of the thoughts that comes to their mind if somebody goes away to put pricing together, one of their things is, oh, they must have grabbed the price book for our neighborhood or they were waiting to see what we owned in our home before they put the prices together so they can raise jack up the price a bunch if we have nice stuff in our house. This is literally what goes on in the homeowner's mind. They're thinking, man, they must be making up numbers or they just don't know. Or the other thing is they're thinking, man, this is my appointment. I'm short on time. Anyway, they get over here and then now they're spending, you know, 20, 30 minutes in their truck, sometimes longer in their mind, they're thinking, man, this is my appointment. What are they out there doing taking care of everybody else instead of being in here, like with me 100%. What homeowners have said to me over the years when I've talked to them about this. So you've got to stay in the house, stop leaving the house to put together these numbers. If you're not proficient as a representative for your company and your product, if you are not proficient enough to be able to sit at a kitchen table or at a countertop and put together your pricing and your numbers while you are having chit chat or conversation with the homeowner. And I'll give you a cheap hack for that here in just a minute. But if you're not proficient enough to be able to put together those numbers and not get nervous while they're standing there talking to you, you've got to work on yourself because that is amateur. Now, I'm not picking, I'm not being mean. I'm not picking on anybody. And because this is, I'm not talking to a person, I can say it like this. Don't take this as I'm spanking you. Take this as Jim Rohn's famous quote. My mentor, Jim Rohn, he used to say, don't wish things were easier, wish you were better. So what that means is in order to reach become the person worth buying from, you have to know what you're selling and how to put it together and how to price it and be able to do that with people standing there. Stop being lazy, stop being taking the shortcut. Put in the work to learn your craft. Put in the work to learn your tools. Your tools are your pricing tools. Your tools are the are what you use to put things together what we're using to to put the prices together what you're using for you know to show the homeowners. So here's a quick hack too if you're. If you're have gotten to the place where you're going to force yourself which I highly recommend, don't leave the freaking house. But when you. Here's a quick hack though when you're putting stuff together if you get nervous if the homeowner is wanting to talk to you about things, you've got to also have your brag book have your and this needs to be. You can get it printed up. It's cool but you don't have to start fancy three ring binder and put some stuff just in sleeves. You've got need to have like the company copy of the company license insurance if your state requires being bonded. Put those in there and then just print, start printing off your all your five star reviews. Put them in there. Five star. Five star. Five star. Especially the ones that mention your name. Even cooler is if you sprinkle in a couple negative reviews but then a response that was really incredible after that. And then sometimes the ones that the homeowners pop in and say you know what, you're right, they fixed this situation. Put those in there too. It's okay. Also put together before and after pictures. Before pictures and after Pictures are super powerful. 1. You can use this at any point throughout your visit to show them what it's going to look like. They have to be able to see it. We've got to show what it will look like once they already have it. But so before and after pictures. Here's your ninja trick too. When you're taking before pictures of other company or competition's installs, take the Especially when you come across the ones that are like they're gross and they're horrible installs and they were done awful. But you can clearly see the sticker from the other company. You can clearly see the name and the logo on those really bad installs. Grab those before pictures and keep those in your book. Then you show off your really gorgeous perfectly put together install on the page adjacent to it with your company logo and everything on there. So at the end when they say something like oh well you know we're talking, we're going to get a couple other bids. Find out who they're talking to. Say oh listen great company, 100% I totally understand wanting to get some numbers for them, too. I've got some pictures of what their installs look like. Would you like to see what they are? I can just show you a comparison to theirs versus ours. Open up that page. Show that page with that horrible install and their sticker on it, and then your gorgeous install with your sticker on it. But you built them up to be like, oh, yeah, great company. We can show you what their work looks like. So here, I just wanted to show you, Mr. Homeowner, here's their install. Here's our install. I mean, can you see the difference here and the quality difference and how this looks once it's done? Have them answer and they'll say, oh, you're right, because it doesn't matter. On paper, a company can look identical. They can win the same awards and same reviews. But you and I, we all know the install is where it. You know what makes the difference, who cuts the corners and who doesn't. But you can't. Unless you have pictures, you can't prove it. So that goes in your bag book. But put all this together, and if you're getting nervous with being in the house trying to put your numbers together, hand this to them. Say, here, feel free to look through this. Read as much or as little of this as you want to while I'm putting these numbers together, and I'll let you know here in a minute when I'm done. But you stay in the house. They can ask you questions. You can have sidebar conversations. All of that happens while you're in the house so many times. The most important pieces of information about, they'll think of things that they had forgotten, maybe something they didn't think of during discovery. When you're asking questions about the home and about their experience living in the home, sometimes they'll think of other things there that they want you to look at, to fix, to add into the project. Sometimes you overhear just they're talking amongst themselves. You'll overhear them talking about the reasons they want to buy. And more importantly, this is the time where you can possibly overhear reasons that would keep them from buying. So you'd be able to handle that when you present in just a few minutes as well. But absolutely 100%, do not leave the house to put these numbers together. Don't spend a large amount of time away from them. If it takes 5, 10, 15, 20 minutes to go through an attic and a crawl space and that kind of thing, that's fine, because you're in their house and they know what you're doing. They know you can't be fabricating something while you're crawling under a house or in an attic. They perceive that as you doing the work on their project. When you're sitting in your vehicle. They perceive that as just dicking around, doing something else. Yeah, they know that you're putting together the numbers for them, but they also perceive this as your opportunity to do something else that's not pertaining to them or to fabricate something on the spot. So stop leaving the house if you're in a company that does call by call management, which I'm going to start talking a lot about that because I'm extremely passionate about it. And interestingly enough, I don't always agree. But, you know, I don't really agree with much of anything in our industry when it comes to the way things have always been done. And that's why you listen to this podcast. Anyway, so we're going to dive into call by call management soon. I've been holding, holding my opinion off on this, so to watch how the industry goes with it a little bit. But we're to the place where, man, I've got to speak up. So we'll cover that soon. But even if you're in call by call, don't go out to the vehicle. Say, you know, tell Mr. Homeowner, okay, I've got to go, got to go check something out at the unit outside, or I got to go look at something else in the attic, in the crawl space, in the basement, wherever, you know, step around the corner outside or something to make your call by call call to your manager. But, but don't go back to the truck. Don't spend ungodly amounts of time in the truck. That's where you lose the homeowner. And if you're doing that, yeah. And you're seeing good results, that's awesome. But I can tell you if you stay in the house, you're going to see better results. So I hope this was helpful. I've been getting these questions a lot about do we stay in the house or do we go? No, you just stay in the house. There is absolutely no reason that you can't put together a quote in the house for people. And listen to me, people don't lack resources. They like resourcefulness. There are so many programs out there to make it instant, that are cheap, to make it easy. Worst case scenario, just put together a printed page that has prices on it. I mean, holy cow, keep something with you, stop being lazy. Put in the work to prepare to make your appointment go smoother. So that is the episode today. Got lots of stuff coming up. I'm excited that I kicking it old school style in the car with the voice memo and I'm grateful for every single one of you. If you've ever gotten value from this podcast, I would love, love, love if you went to where you listen and leave me a five star review. Still really focused on Apple reviews, but Google podcast has a place for that too. I love a five star review. It would mean the world to me. And if you hear me call your review out on this podcast, message me and I will give you a gift that no one else gets. So that's really fun. And you'll also get a free coaching session with me as well. But to reach out to learn more about the coaching and training programs like the on site training program training I'm doing here in Kansas City this week in Pennsylvania next week I'm all over the country. To learn more you can go to closeitnow.net you can also email me samoseitnow.net you can find the Facebook group which is Close it now. Just search Close it now. Sales training on Facebook. It will come right up and share the group with people. The group is building. It's building. I think we're at 2300 people now and it's growing more all the time. Share the podcast with someone that you think would get some value from it. You can also grab the online course h vacdoors.net that's the full cell system as well as an entire module on door to door script for H Vac. And that is my episode for today. Hope you got some value. I want to hear in the comments and also pop in the Facebook group. Let me know how you handle this part of your appointment. Do you stay in? Do you go out? Did this shed some insight into the psychology of how homeowners think? When you go, when you leave the house, I want to hear your thoughts and your ideas. So reach out and oh, the last thing is pop me a text. 512-364-8559. We'll chop it up. And yeah, if you want to get me out to your location, pop me a message. Let's get out there. Let's bump your numbers up. It is perfect timing. Just in time for summer. This year we're cranking up in the spring. And yeah everybody, thanks for listening and until next time, go 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 find us on Instagram herealcloseitnow and on Facebook closeitnow. See you now next time.