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.

I'm gonna say them again.

We are inclined to look at people that have the mansion, that have the big business, that have the 50 trucks on the road, that have all the sales.

And we do one of two things.

We either say, oh, must be nice.

He didn't have the same challenges, or he had a leg up, or he had a better childhood or better parents or better schooling or.

Or whatever.

Or I'm going to also caution you to not do this.

Please don't look at them and say they must be lying, cheating, stealing, ripping people off.

They must be taking advantage of people.

Because Sam and I know hundreds and hundreds, perhaps thousands and thousands of people that are out there closing business, serving customers incredibly well, never lying, cheating, or stealing, treating people like they're their own very, very own family, and they're getting ahead in life by serving others better.

And so those are my first two recommendations.

I don't want to preach, but I will say, I think a lot of times we trick ourselves into believing either somebody else had it easier or they've got to be doing something unscrupulous in order to have the amount of success they're having.

Do those things happen?

Of course.

Of course some people have a silver spoon in their mouth.

Of course some people have a trust fund.

Of course some people had wealthy parents.

I didn't.

I don't think you did, Sam.

Nope.

I don't think most of the people.

In fact, I don't know a single person that I've worked with in the trades.

The most successful clients, tech salespeople and CSRs.

I don't know a single one that had a silver spoon or a trust fund or is out there ripping people off.

The salesmans of the year that work for me, the others that I know, they didn't come from money.

They didn't come from some incredible pedigree.

They worked their tail off.

100% they worked, and they were consistent.

So here's what I would say.

First of all, it does come down to mindset.

It comes down to no longer justifying that we're the victim.

If you see yourself as a victim, you will attract that into your life, and you will prove yourself right.

If you see yourself that you can overcome any challenge, that it's going to be dependent upon how you respond to those challenges, you will likewise prove yourself right.

The challenges are never going to stop coming in our lives and our business and our relationships and our finances.

What will determine where we end up in our life, where we are today, and where we are in the future is how we respond to those challenges.

The quality of our responses will determine the quality of our life.

That will determine the quality of our close rates.

It'll determine the call, the.

The quality of our booking rates.

It'll determine the quality of our website and our SEO and everything else.

The quality of our relationships, our marriage, our significant others, our kids.

Everything will be determined by how we respond to our challenges.

So my advice, my.

My recommendation to people who are.

Are plateauing.

Some of us aren't going to want to hear this.

Bring it, man.

Bring the heat.

Dig back in and work harder because nobody else cares.

I might and Sam might, but your customers don't.

And you know what?

As much as we want a wife that cares that we're out there trying to make the grocery bill and the mortgage or the rent and the car payment, you know what?

She also wants you at home for dinner.

Sure enough.

Live a thankless life.

And so the only way that we can solve that challenge, if we're tired of being on call or the business owner wants you to take more on call or raise your close rates, we got to figure it out.

You know how we figure it out?

I'll tell you this.

We work harder, but we work on leveraged activities.

What are those leveraged activities?

We've got to turn off the television and stop wasting our days watching whatever it is.

And I'm not saying not to have balance, Sam.

I'm saying if.

If you love football, pick college or NFL.

If you love them both, fine.

Watch one game on Saturday and one game on Sunday.

Stop convincing yourself if you're.

Listen, let me back up.

I'm sorry.

If you're not where you want to be and you're plateauing or you're not where you want to be in your finances, your relationships, your health, Your fitness, your spirituality.

There's work to be done.

It's the only way.

Nobody's coming to rescue us in this life.

We've got to save ourselves on this planet.

I'm not talking about the afterlife.

What I'm saying is if you're not happy with where your life is in any respect, it's going to take work and nobody's going to do it for you.

So if nobody's going to do it for you and you want to lose weight, you have to do it right.

You've got a meal prep if you're overweight and you want to get fit so that you have more energy and you're around long term for your kids and you can run an extra call so that you can make extra money and you can change your zip code and put your kids in a better school and buy your wife a new car and take that vacation you already always dreamed of.

You're going to have to make the sacrifices and that might mean that you only pick one sport and it might mean that God forbid you don't also get in a fantasy football league and study this crap.

Because you know what?

The professional athletes are living their dream while you're watching them live their dream.

100%.

I'm a sports guy.

I love sports, I love football, I love basketball, I played baseball, I ran track.

I love it all.

I don't have time for it because I have a bigger purpose, I have a bigger mission.

I've gotten clear on what it is I want out of my life and my retirement and for my family and for my children.

So we've got to get clear and then we've got to make sacrifices because we can't do it all.

So where do you get the time?

You got to make the time.

How do you do that?

First, you get clear.

You figure out what your desires are.

You write it out in present tense as if it's already happened.

You start to read it, you start to visualize it, you start to see it as if it's already happened.

You create this cognitive dissonance every single day so that you stay out of the drive thru and you put down the liquor and you put down the fast food and you find a little bit of time to go to the grocery store and do a little bit of meal prep, right?

We've got to do things like that.

And I promise you, if you will do that, all of a sudden you're going to have a little bit more energy.

You're going to be more tired at the end of the evening, especially as you're working on your health and fitness and figuring out how to breathe for 30 minutes and stretch and hit weights, you'll fall asleep faster, you'll breathe better when you sleep, and you'll wake up more rested.

By the way, sleep with sleep aids over the counter.

Tylenol pm, Ambien, Lunesta, all those.

I don't want to get sued.

Here's what I'll tell you.

You Google it and see if something called diphenhydramine in those products aren't linked to early onset Alzheimer's and dementia.

They also almost work like an epidural, blocking you from actually getting restful sleep.

And restful sleep is what wakes you up and makes you have energy.

So what I would say is, when we go back to this personal development, how do you do it?

Number one, you got to figure out what your why is and get committed.

Then you're going to have to decide.

I'm going to make sacrifices.

Because if you don't watch the games this year, that professional athlete only cares if his check cashes.

Yeah, he wants to be a star, but he's working for his next contract.

Are you?

And so then I'm going to say, all right, I'm going to have a little bit of balance in my life.

Balance is good.

If I want to golf one day a week, great.

But I'm only going to golf one day a week until I'm where I want to be in all those other areas of my life.

I'm only going to watch one football or maybe one on Sunday and one on Monday night.

Great.

And then I'm going to start blocking time and saying Wednesday night is for my 7 year old daughter and we're going to go to dinner alone and we're going to go out and I'm just going to invest time and I'm going to keep my phone down and for 60 minutes, man, I'm going to do nothing but ask her things about her and I'm going to listen and I'm going to seek to understand.

I'm going to figure out what's going on in her life.

And so we can start to block schedule our time.

Right?

My weeks are planned before the week begins.

Right.

My months are planned.

My year is planned.

If I was able to pull up my calendar here today, Sam, every minute of every day is planned.

Does it mean that it always goes according to plan?

No, but it means I can drag and drop.

You know, when, when you said, doug, I've got a family challenge And I can't do the podcast whenever that was three or four weeks ago, Right.

All I did was say, send me another invite.

I could have dragged and dropped.

You could have said, hey, does this date work for you?

I could have looked at my calendar and in an instant said, I can do it that day, Sam, if that works for you, it works for me.

Here's what I would say.

I'll wrap this up and I'm sure you have questions.

When we're plateauing, when we're not where we want to be, it starts with sacrifice and getting committed to what we really want out of our life.

And not just today.

It's not just what's easy today.

It's not just, I'm exhausted and I'm going to come home and turn on the tube and watch the game or Netflix and binge.

It means that we're going to have to set our schedule and we're going to have to say, I'm going to get to bed at a decent time.

I'm going to wake up no matter how tired I am, and I'm going to start to work my way out of this because ain't nobody going to do it for me.

All adults listening to this podcast, Right.

There's nobody that's going to come in, I can't imagine, and wake us up, drag us to the gym.

Nope.

Have us start doing breathing.

There's nobody that's going to have us put our nose in a book and start studying how it overcome three bids and brand installs and price and talk about it, sleep about it, think about it, talk to our spouse about it.

Nobody's going to solve that challenge for you.

We've got to repeat those words and how we handle those situations in homes or on the phones so often that it becomes second nature.

And we don't even have to think about what we're going to say.

We think about how we're going to say it.

That's the beauty of role play.

That's the beauty of repetition and consistency.

So that when we get down to the end, we don't even have a second second thought.

I'll give you an example, Sam.

Tell me.

You got to think about it.

Oh, man.

Hey, listen, it sounds great.

Everything looks good.

You're a great salesman.

But, you know, we're gonna have to think about this.

Can you email it to us?

We'll get back to you in here in a few days.

Absolutely.

It sounds like you're not quite ready to move forward.

You'd prefer if I just Sent you an email and it sounds like this is a big decision for you, Sam, and it's just not something that you're ready to move forward with right now.

Is that right?

Yeah, it definitely is.

I mean, it's great information for sure.

We just got to process a couple things and figure some things out.

I can't blame you.

It sounds like your home operates in a very similar fashion to the way mine does.

I can't really imagine what it's like for you to make this decision.

I've been doing this a long time.

In fact, I've been, I've been working with homeowners similar to yourself here in the, in the area for the past 20 years.

Most of the times when customers are in situations like these and they're not ready to quite move forward, they've shared with me that it's usually one of three things.

Either they have some additional questions, the product, the service that we've recommended isn't exactly what they think will solve the challenges they're having, or it just comes down to the price.

Sam, which one of those do you think it is for you that's holding you back from moving forward?

Do you have additional questions or do you not think the system will work as we've outlined, or is it just about the price?

Well, you know, the, I mean everything makes sense as far as the project.

I mean, the project makes sense.

That was the easy one.

You know, it was pretty easy problem, easy solution there.

The questions, you know, there might be a couple of just like along the way of, you know, what install might look like and that kind of thing.

But you know, really the, the biggest thing is, God, you know, this is just way more than we expected.

Just didn't really know what we were going to be facing.

But boy, the sticker shock on this guy is definitely, it's a serious thing for us.

Wow.

Yeah.

Sam, I can only imagine how you're feeling about the price now.

I'm going to time out, I'm going to step out of role play and I want the listening audience to think about this.

Is Sam still telling me needs to think about it or is Sam willing to now negotiate and tell me we need to work on the price?

The other thing that Sam said, which is actually uncommon on a sales lead as Sam can tell you, especially if we've done our job before we get to this moment.

I promise you this, my guys, as we won Linux Partner of the Year, Sam, as he went out there and closed millions and millions and millions of dollars of businesses in his career, people didn't have any questions at the end.

No, no.

Because we were so thorough and we outlined it and we painted the picture and we drew it out and we, we covered all that that we knew.

We were working the entire time in the home to eliminate any questions that they might have.

We were designing the perfect solution with them, with them engaged in the process.

It's going to be the price.

But here's the key, and I'm going to jump right back into this role play.

I want it to be about price.

It's always about price.

We all have a fiduciary responsibility to our own poc, to our own family, to our own bank account to get the most for the least.

It's a basic human need.

And if they don't, even if they think the price is fair and even if we blew all, all our competitors out of the water, they still feel a duty to ask or to negotiate.

Why something called buyers or.

And if they don't do it, they won't be able to sleep or they'll wake up in the middle of the night having basically a heart attack, an anxiety attack, and go, I wonder if I would have asked for a discount, if he would have given me 5% or 10% off, that would have a grand.

And you wonder why you get cancellations.

I want to life into these objections.

I'm not afraid of them.

Why am I not afraid of them?

Because I've been practicing them.

Role playing them, scripting them out, practicing the words and then practicing how they're delivered, the cadence.

I could do exactly what I just did 100 times.

It'll be 99.9% the same.

The way I handle that, we have hundreds of those and so does Sam.

The question is, how deep and how long are you going to work until you decide that I'm going to be the best there's ever been at the things that are tripping me up day after day on the calls, either on the phones or in the homes.

So let's pick up where we left off.

Yeah.

Sam said, I do have some additional questions.

Number one, if you've done your job, that ain't happening.

Not very often.

If it does.

If Sam said, well, I do have some additional questions about the install immediately.

Now, again, I've moved them off if I got to think about it.

And now I'm going to attack that one because I'm going to whittle it down to price.

I want it to be about price.

I have a million ways, okay, maybe not a million.

I have 100 ways to overcome price and I've been overcoming price the entire time during my presentation talking about the value that we deliver and the technicians and background checks and the, and the NATE certifications and everything else that we do to deliver value, five star review, social proof, all those things.

All right, if Sam said I do have some additional questions, I think the system will do what we've designed.

But in yeah, it's about the price, first thing I would do, I'd pick off the easy one.

Sam, sounds like you have additional questions.

I'm going to repeat it back to him and rephrase it.

I'm going to let him feel heard, understood.

I'm going to breathe life into it.

And then I'm going to say so it sounds like you have some questions about the installation.

What kind of things were you concerned about, Sam?

Well, you know, with that as far as really just how long is it going to take?

We've got a couple, you know we're going to get this done moderately quickly but you know we're going to be out of town here soon.

So you know it's construction and the only thing I know about construction is usually takes way longer than anybody ever says.

Right.

I'm not in role play right now but Sam is serving up softballs like how easy is it for you as I'm talking to the listeners now, how easy is it for you now to build back up your value value?

Now do I understand that in Austin, Texas it might be 105 degrees in the middle of the summer and you might book be booked out at your company for a week or two.

Listen, we're going to build the value over.

This is a 20 to 30 year system.

We're going to be talking about refrigerants, we're going to be talking about proper installation, nitrogen purchase.

We're going to be talking about how everything is done perfect and we're going to install a system that not only we stand behind, it stands the test of time.

So that would be an easy one if Sam had some questions about when can you get installed.

Listen, I'm not going to ever.

I'm not going to lose a deal because somebody can't get their system installed.

I'm going to try to get them in quick.

I'm going to try to call guys in and work on the weekend and we're going to try to make money and we're going to have them on performance based pay and do the job right and all those things.

But when somebody has Initial questions.

It's not a challenge.

What I can tell you is, is a challenge, especially I haven't practiced.

This is price bids, brand price installs.

Those are challenges.

So I'm going to back up to the role play.

I said, Sam, most of the time in similar situations, I never say the same because everybody wants to be unique.

I never say I completely understand.

I say, I can only imagine those are very, very important and effective.

And communication to lower sales conflict, lower sales resistance.

Please, please, please.

Don't anybody that listen to this ever go out.

You're going to do it because your neural pathways, it's going to take some time to break these bad habits.

People don't want to hear you understand.

You work at the company and they know you can get wholesale prices and they know you know how to install it.

They don't want to hear you understand, they want to hear that.

I can't even imagine what it's like for.

You have to make a decision like this.

You must be very surprised by the amount of the investment to have this.

Let me slow down.

You must be very surprised by the amount that it's going to require in order to invest in a system like this and have the job done right by a company that stands behind their work.

With over 800 five star reviews.

You're going to get really good at saying all these things.

It's going to take practice, going to take role play.

You're going to write them out, you're going to practice them, you're going to script them, you're going to practice them with your team, with your wife, with your shower head and with your steering wheel.

And then when we get down to the end, you're not even going to be worried.

Just like I'm not worried.

Like, I didn't know what Sam really was going to say or do.

All I know is we're on a nationwide podcast in 71 countries and I open myself up as a sales trainer to say, hit me with some of your toughest stuff, Sam.

And Sam would be happy to overcome this, too.

That's what true professionals do.

So here's what I would say.

I'm going to get down to the end, and this is just one of a hundred techniques.

But I'm going to categorize his objection.

He says he's got to think about it again.

I'm going to breathe life into it again.

I said something like, sounds like this is a big decision, Sam, and you're not quite ready to move forward.

And then I'll shortcut This the second time through.

I then came back and said, usually when our customers have shared similar things, such as yourself, they've shared with us that it's one of three things.

Either they have additional questions, it's not the right product or service, or they're concerned about the price.

Sam, do you think it's the questions?

Is it the product or service or is it about the price?

Sam said, well, I might have some questions.

Now we've covered that.

Now he says, the price, by the way, always ask for the order.

Again.

Sam teaches, close it.

Now, if I overcome the questions, I'm ignoring the fact that he told me it was too much because that might be a complaint or a concern, not really an objection.

So if Sam says, well, it is a lot more than I expected and I have some additional questions, I'm going to pick off the easy one.

Answer the questions, talk about the installation date, how it's going to look, how we're going to behave, the drop cloths.

We're going to put down the perfect installation of the way we do it better than anybody else.

You will be able to eat off your ductwork.

We're going to turn that PVC pipe so that you can read.

It's going to left, right.

Does that matter?

Does that get the flu out at a quarter inch rise any better than if it's not?

No, but what it does mean is that me and my apprentice knew that every single detail was paid attention to.

The gas valve was turned on.

We did a full system operation and a run through.

We walked you through the system.

Every bolt was tightened, every gas valve was turned, everything was done perfectly right.

And so we're going to build value in the way we do our installations.

And this is why I say nobody's ever question me about installation.

Yeah, maybe installation date.

But if asked for the order, we already talked about that too.

They're going to question you about price, tell you it's first one in three bids, what's right, whatever.

By the way, I've also talked about the financing, which I call special promotional offers.

It's a wordsmith.

So then always a promotion, always a program, right?

Yeah.

Why do I talk about payments or financing?

Because Dave Ramsey's out there telling everybody to pay off all your debt, pay off your house, pay off your cars, don't buy that boat, don't take that vacation, don't run up your credit cards, pay off your credit cards.

And all of a sudden we come in talking about financing and payments.

Monthly payments, down payments, initial payments, no, no, no, no, we're going to talk about this in terms of an investment.

We're going to have people.

Doug's reading.

He's reading my notes from like, so long.

Oh, my gosh.

We are our own worst enemies.

Why?

Because we didn't get up early.

We didn't stay up late studying this stuff.

We watched too much football and we did too much Netflix.

We paid attention to things that aren't going to matter when we're 70 or 80 years old.

And those things don't matter to our wives and they don't matter to our kids.

They want us and they want the best version of us.

So when I get down to you, I'll calm down here a minute.

No, you're good, Sam.

And we go through this thing and I say, will you trust me?

And then you go, oh, it's a lot more than I thought.

Blah, blah, I got to think about it, blah, blah, blah.

Now I'm going to pick right back up.

And you said, I had some questions, but yeah, Doug, it comes down to the price.

When he says the price.

This is an old Tom Hopkins.

It's a six word, three part cadence.

And simply say this instead of saying like.

Sam told me to email him.

I already forgot.

I don't care.

Because I know that his emotion is going to start to dissipate the moment that I walk out that door.

By the time I start my truck and the time I go over the hill, he's already thinking about the next few or two or three people that he's going to get to do it cheaper now that he's outlined what.

What I've outlined or what he needs to do with his system.

Okay.

By the way, sales is only three things.

One, a transference of emotion to a lowering of risk.

And that's a scale.

As trust goes up, risk goes down.

As risk goes up, trust goes down.

It's a transference of emotion and then an earning of trust, a lowering of risk, lowering, raising.

One goes up, the other goes down.

It's this scale.

Right?

All right, so what I do is I got to close when the emotion's high, when I'm in front of them.

And I'm not saying, listen, some of you are one to argue right now.

Yes, you can get follow ups.

Yes, I have a follow up process.

I'm not going to give up on them.

Follow up is.

Is key, right?

In fact, I think I listen to so many things.

Did you have a guy on your podcast talking about the magic follow ups?

A hundred percent.

Yeah, we had Doug Brown recently.

What a stud that guy is when he was talking about all his percentages and all that stuff with Follow Up, I'd highly recommend go listen to that Close it now podcast with the guy talking about the power follow up.

But what I am saying is our best chance.

And by the way, if I have to see everybody twice, I can only see half as many people.

Here's the six word, three part cadence.

How much too much is it?

All right, so, Sam, let's just say that I say, is it.

Do you have additional questions?

Is it not the right product or service that'll solve the challenges we've identified, or is it just about the price?

Which one of those do you think it is for you, Sam?

You know, it.

It's really the price.

It's, it's.

I would say it's definitely sticker shock.

You know, all the research we did, people we talked to, just seems.

Seems really high, man.

Yeah, it is.

It's a lot of money.

It's a lot of money for quality, Sam.

It's a lot of money to do the job right and stand behind your work and provide the warranties and guarantees we do with the professionally trained techs and the tools, the torches, the refrigerants, everything else.

It is a lot.

Let me ask you this.

How much too much is it?

We're at 19,000.

How much too much is it?

That's a good question.

I think right now we just don't know what we don't know.

You guys are the first in, and it's just we're in this phase of figuring it out.

I mean, we want to make a decision soon, but we don't want to rush into anything either.

I'm going to let our listeners enter the mind of me and Sam both.

He's lying.

He's negotiating.

What I know is he has a number.

And when I say how much too much is it, you know what?

The consumer thinks he's about to drop his price and he has a number in his mind.

And that number might be 10, it might be 15, it might be 18.

We don't know.

But here's what I would say.

At least you stand a fighter's chance if you just implement us now.

So if you go back and listen to this podcast, and by the way, I. I've customized this closing sequence, and like I said, we have hundreds.

But this comes out of the book how to Master the Art of Selling with Tom Hopkins.

It's set it up with an intention statement.

We don't even need to set the intention statement.

I just came down to the end and did a different version.

I didn't even have to close them early on and get them to agree that they could make a decision.

Today I got down to the end and Sam said he's got to think about it.

And I said most of our customers in similar situations have shared with us when they're not ready to move forward.

It's one of three things.

Questions, product or service or price.

And that person thinks you're going to negotiate and drop your price.

So guess what?

They're going to tell you exactly what you wanted to hear if you're not afraid of price.

And so then I'll give you another technique if Sam says, and by the way, usually they give you a number, but if Sam did what he does, I'll role play it that way.

Right.

Role play is role play.

And so Sam says, ah, Doug, we don't even have any idea the first one.

Sam, it sounds like this really is a big decision.

It's a lot more than you thought.

And you haven't gotten any more bids, quotes or estimates from any other competitors, is that right?

Yeah, that's correct for sure.

Sam, just a moment ago you'd shared with me that you'd done a lot of research and you said that it sounded like it was a lot higher than what you'd learned about online in order to replace a full system.

Furnace, air conditioner, high efficiency, variable speed modulating, blower, all those things.

And we're at 19.

What do you remember that the online experts had to say about what it would take to install a system like this with a team like ours?

Well, you know, I mean there obviously it wasn't that definitive when we were doing the research that just kind of, you know, the Google spit us back this kind of generic number.

But you know, it was saying that, you know, it could range from, you know, usually 12 to 16 somewhere in that range.

Is usually what, what they were saying.

Yeah.

Sounds like probably an article you were reading was probably about single stage equipment, probably not high efficiency, modulating and who knows, right?

I mean, sure, who knows if that was even considering the amount of the permit.

Right.

Or a one year test drive where we would buy this.

It didn't give a location or anything.

Either, you know, so you know, cost of living, different parts of the country, equipment prices, shipping cost, all those things.

Different distributions, manufacturing brands, all those things.

Sam, it sounds like you were hoping to probably not be much more than 16,000.

Am I hearing you correctly when you say on the high end, 16.

You know, we're the family that, you know, we'll pay for quality if the value is there.

You know, we're not never going to shortcut anything.

We just, you know, we don't want to pay more than we have to for, you know, for the right project.

And I wouldn't want you to.

Absolutely.

I mean, so it sounds like maybe if you felt like the value was there, you could, you could maybe entertain the idea of 19,000, but it's just a lot more than you expected, am I right?

Yeah.

Yeah, absolutely.

The difference between 19 and 16 is about $3,000 if my math is correct.

And I'm not the greatest at math.

Yeah.

You know, Sam, when installed properly by professional technicians like the ones that we employ with a buy it back guarantee, if we don't do what we promised you and protect your home and all the things that we talked about, from the drop cloth to the nitrogen purge to the refrigerant charge, to pulling down to the right amount of microns, providing you the warranties, pulling the permits, all those things.

What I can assure you is that we didn't get over 8005 star reviews here in the local community over the past few years by skipping any steps or taking advantage.

You'd also shared with me that your experience when you had your roof replaced with that contractor, that you had gotten eight bids and you went with your gut and you trusted somebody right in the middle and you still ended up in court.

Right.

In fact, as you shared with me, you've had to get up on your roof and replace a section because it still leaks and that contractor won't even take your calls anymore and you had to hire an attorney.

Sam, what I can promise you is that's not going to happen with our organization.

This job is going to be done right the first time.

And if there was anything that we made a mistake on one phone call to our facility, and we will send the Calvary, they will be back out here to serve you and your family and make sure things are taken care of.

You're not going to have to call an attorney, let alone file a report with the Better Business Bureau or Yelp or Google or HomeAdvisor or anywhere that you find all these contractors.

And goodness gracious, Sam, you are certainly not going to have to call the Call for Action News Team to come out here and make us do the right thing.

Sam, that $3,000 over the life of the system, when properly installed, doing what it was intended to do by a contractor that Stands behind their work at $3,000 over the life of the system, about 20 years here in our market, works out to be about $3 a week.

That represents the cost of one half a cup of black Starbucks coffee.

Right?

Once a week, just a half a cup of black.

No foo foo, no whipped cream, right?

Yeah.

The cold brew I got earlier was like 750.

Sam, we're talking about your gas, your electricity, your water.

We're talking about torches and tin snips and acetylene tanks.

We're talking about highly controlled refrigerants from the epa.

We are talking about people on your property that had best be fully insured workers comp liability.

We're talking about really dangerous things.

Sam, all I can tell you is if this was my home and my family, this isn't the time to save a few bucks.

It's the time to make a decision that's going to protect you and your family for the long term.

Sam, I tell you what, why don't we go ahead and take care of the paperwork.

Let's install this system.

I want you and your family to try it out for a year and if it doesn't solve all the challenges we've outlined with the humidification in your home, the dehumidification, the indoor air quality, the variable speed mixing up the air in your home, helping to eliminate those hot and cold spots in your primary suite all the way down to your theater room in the basement.

If it doesn't help to alleviate those like we've talked about, you call me and we'll come out and do whatever it takes to make things right.

Fair enough.

You know, fair enough.

That makes the most sense.

Let me ask the, the listening audience and you Sam, it was pretty good, but is it going to win them all?

No, of course not.

No, there's no 100% close.

Right.

And I don't want it.

I don't want it.

I don't want 100% close rate.

I never held my team accountable to that.

My Linux partner, salesman of the year, four time repeat Linux district sales champ out of Colorado in a six state region, never ever had more than about a 60% close rate.

He approached 71 time and I was really worried.

Yeah, because we were selling premium high efficiency, variable speed, all the bells and whistles, the indoor air quality.

If somebody starts to approach 70% close rate in the Denver market, somebody's being lied to.

We're over promising we're going to under deliver.

We're going to have bad reviews, we're going to be Buying systems back.

We're going to be out there because we've over promised and we've told people we can perfectly eliminate stratification between the upstairs primary.

If you go back and listen to this, I didn't say it'll be perfect from upstairs to down.

I said it'll alleviate those concerns.

Just as we've outlined.

We're making progress, we're improving.

We're not in progress completely solving.

Did we add an upstairs return?

If you only have a unitary system and you got one in the basement, a condenser outside, and there's not one in the attic, you might need to say, okay, not only is it going to be 19, we got to add another 6 or 7,000 for a ductless mini split.

Another year from now, that number will probably be dated.

And those of you listening are probably thinking there's no way I could install a high efficiency variable speed modulating unit for 19.

No, you probably can't.

Listen, guys, it's a role play.

Please don't try to find every little thing.

But what I am saying is Sam told me he got to think about it and email him.

And here we are having a conversation 20 minutes later.

That's the goal.

Keep the conversation going.

You don't have to be high pressure, you don't have to be pushy.

Everything that I'm doing first, it takes the mindset and the ground rules.

By the way, in our seven foundations, the first is the ground rules.

We're never going to lie, cheat or steal.

We're not going to over promise or under deliver.

Number two in our seven foundations is we're going to start talking about the mindset of what it's going to take in order to stay in the game, to serve, to get up early, to lather yourself up and have this, this energy and this enthusiasm and this passion and to communicate it and do it call after call, day after day.

That's the mindset and that's what we're listening to.

That's what we're thinking about.

That's what Sam and I are talking about.

And it's why Sam's the Tony Robbins of the trades.

And then number three, I talk about wordsmith.

I share.

I say words like share instead of tell.

I say words like investment instead of price, cost, fee, charge, spend and pay.

I talk about things like the monthly investment, the initial investment.

I talk about a diagnostic investment.

I don't talk about the diagnostic fee, and I sure as hell don't talk about the monthly payment.

I talk about special promotional offers.

I don't talk about financing fees, I don't talk about financing options because people are afraid of that.

They didn't want to finance, they wanted to write a check and they didn't want to spend as much as they want.

So I talk in terms of investment, special promotions, all those things, right?

There's a hundred of those that we've developed.

That's the wordsmith.

Then number four is rare.

Listening, repeat, acknowledge the emotion, rephrase, relate, and then express.

Express is finally when we then can go to start talking our stuff.

Before that I'm going to relate, rephrase, express at the very end.

But I've got to make sure I seek first to understand after that, then I'm going to go into these third person transition statements like I outlined in that role play.

I'm saying most of our customers in similar situations, that is the opposite from saying, you need to do this or I would.

I'm saying most of our customers would.

Which in the seven principles of persuasion out of Robert Cialdini's book Persuasion and Influence, he talks about social proof, right?

So I'm leveraging social proof.

I'm leveraging consistency by talking about others and what they're doing in similar situations.

Not the same.

And oh, by the way, it also makes me authority because I'm in the know the authority.

I'll enunciate that after we generalize and transition to those type of things.

Now I'm going to come back and I'm going to say every single sentence.

How many of the seven principles of persuasion can I use?

And then at the very end, it's going to come down to what I call the EKG level of performance.

How do we perform?

What is our cadence?

What is our structure?

What is our sentence structure?

How do we perform and what is our body language?

Because that matters to eye contact.

When we should make eye contact, we should break eye contact.

When we lean up, when we lean back, when we stand up, when we sit down.

Every detail matters in a sales process.

I love this so much.

After that, if you haven't done what Sam and I have been working on for the last 20 years of our career, then you're leaving yourself short of what your legacy could have been in these trades.

And you're doing it day by day, call by call.

Again, it's going to be a thousand mile journey.

If, if I'm speaking foreign language and Sam speaking foreign language, you're like, what the hell are these guys talking about?

What that just happened?

We are nuts.

But you know What?

We love this.

We're passionate about it.

It'll work for you.

And I'm going to go back to the ground rules for one minute because listening to a guy like me rattle off a bunch of this stuff might start to sound like manipulation.

I'm going to encourage all of our audience that has a problem with being in sales or selling things to people.

I want you to think about this.

The difference between manipulation and persuasion, I believe comes down to one word.

Intent.

How do I know that?

Because if I go to work and Sam has a contracting business and I go to work for Sam for the next couple of years and he teaches me all of his secret sauce, all of his scripts, all of his close it now, all of his mindset training and all of his meditations, and all of the things, the amazing stuff that says Sam's doing to change our industry.

And then I make some poor decisions and Sam says, doug, I love you, man.

You, you're great in so many ways, but I can't overlook this one.

I need you to turn in your uniforms and your keys.

You're done.

Now, I got a lot of skills I learned from Sam.

Let's just say that I did a presentation and I went out and I closed this $19,000 sale, this make believe $19,000 sale today.

But tonight, I don't know, I hit on the, the homeowner, right?

I, I stole some things out of her drawers and she got me on tape, right?

And she sends the tape to Sam.

Sam fires me, says, Doug, it's such a poor taste and character mistake, I've got to fire.

You have no choice and, and you're not available for rehire ever with a mistake like that.

So the next day I call a competitor that I'm always up against and I go to work for him.

And the very next night, I'm running a lead.

And the very next night, I use everything that Sam taught me over the last decade.

Same price, same system, and I sell it for $19,000 and I make all the same promises.

The difference is I went to work for a shady contractor.

And I knew it.

I knew he doesn't stand behind his work.

I've seen his installs, I've watched how he's behaved in the community.

But I went in and played my game.

You see, what's the difference?

I said the same words, I said them in the same way.

I used the same training.

What's the difference?

Intent.

Right?

On night number two, when I worked for the shady contractor, I was a sleazeball.

Scumbag snake in the grass that lied my tail off in order to make a commission and get a sale, knowing that the contractor didn't have professionally trained technicians, wasn't going to install the job right, wasn't going to pull down to 500 microns, wasn't going to do a nitrogen purge.

All the things that those of us professionals in the industry know we have to do to do the job right.

I told him it was going to happen.

I used it to close the sale.

I made my commission knowing that full well, this guy's either going to go out of business, not stand behind her work, or I'll just get a job with another guy and go make my commission.

That is manipulation, right?

Because my intent is all wrong.

My character is off.

I have no integrity.

I'm just lying.

So I challenge everybody to say, those of you that say you don't want to be in sales, sales is an honorable profession.

If you treat it like a true professional, if you toe into it, if you don't dive deep, if you don't study, if you don't practice, if you don't listen, if you don't, if you really don't work towards mastery, then, yeah, it's a fraud.

And salespeople get a bad name.

I like to think of us as servants.

We're there to serve others.

We're there to help them make decisions.

And by the way, those decisions typically mean steering clear of the cheaper contractors and a cheaper price just because they had a fiduciary responsibility to get the most for the least, because they don't know.

And if we get really good at these conversations that folks like Sam and myself and many other great trainers like Joe and everybody else around the country are trying to teach, those things can change your life and they can change your career.

But it's going to take a lot of hard work.

It's going to take a lot of heavy lifting.

It's going to take consistency and persistency.

It's going to take ongoing training, heavy lifting, and you can never stop.

I love this so much, man.

This is.

This is the heart of everything.

This is the heart of the, you know, the intention, the reason we're there.

You know, people have forgotten that, you know, home services were a service.

It's in the name home services.

We're a service industry.

And so when we talk about we are there to serve, but not just to serve.

Serve with empathy, with heart, with caring, with compassion.

And we've been in those situations in a home where it's like you know what, you don't need this.

You know, let's go with the, you know, maybe the less expensive option, right?

Maybe that is the right fit at the cost of our commissions, but because it was the right thing to do, or, you know, a thousand different scenarios that we could talk about our experiences and stories of the times that, you know, we, when you go over and above to care for people, even when it's not the popular thing.

And this is what I, this is what I love so much about having conversations with people like you is, you know, we're cut from the same cloth in the way that, you know, when we think back 30, 40, 50 years ago, the most trusted person in the town was, you know, the plumber and the H Vac guy.

And, you know, they call it, hey, my heat's out.

And what would they say, put on a pot of coffee, I'll be over there, here in about 30 minutes.

And there was no getting bids, there was no shopping around because they were the trusted person.

And our industry has really ruined so much of that with the sell at all cost type of mentality, which is we're kind of dancing around, but I'm just going to call it out.

Talk about the elephant in the room right now, especially in our industry, and this has been my heart and my soapbox for a while is like, let's bring trust back to the trades.

Let's bring it back to a place where people have that, hey, this is my air conditioner guy, this is my heater guy, right?

This is my plumber.

It's like, this is my plumber, this is my electrician, right?

They don't do all of the dog and pony show and the rigmarole like has happened for several decades now.

And man, and if we don't change things in a pretty short amount of time, you know, it could progress worse, it could get further.

We could have some, you know, Federal Trade Commission step in and start regulating our industries, which we do not want, right?

They don't care.

They will shut.

They don't care what the size of the company.

Oh, it's a half a billion dollars a year.

Okay, no problem.

Let's freeze all the assets and nobody gets paid, right?

We don't want that.

You bring up such great points.

I want everybody to listen.

And, you know, our industry tends to be male dominated, but there's some great people out there doing amazing things.

You know, corporate coral whale comes to mind.

I've heard some.

I just talked to her a day or two ago.

She's Going to be on the show.

Soon, in fact, and everybody tune in for that one.

I can't wait till the day I have the opportunity to just invest a little bit of time with her, maybe grab lunch or something.

She lives just a little bit south of me here in Colorado.

But you know, I've heard her on some other podcast.

I've got some shared clients where she's done some training.

And you know, the crazy thing is I always hear this thing and I gotta remember what I was, what was getting ready to start on, but I was, I'll just say this.

And Sam, make sure you ask her about running maintenance calls.

Because, you know, I've been in the industry 20 years and so have you.

And it's like I hear so many technicians say I'm a, I'm a super tech, right?

Whatever they call themselves, I'm the best.

Everybody thinks that and they don't.

They think they're above a maintenance call.

And Coral, check this out, check this mindset, check out this paradigm shift.

I heard Coral one time on an, on another podcast talking about the fact that she only wanted maintenance calls.

Now think about this.

Most technicians don't want to, one don't want to run maintenance because they want to go out there and be the, the big bad troubleshooter.

I don't think there's anything wrong with that.

Coral has a little bit of a different perspective.

She says, think about the mindset of the homeowner that has nothing wrong and wants somebody to come out and do maintenance.

And it was willing to pay for that to maintain their equipment to make it last long term.

She then goes into this sweat of pulling the thing apart, finding every possible thing that could help this system's longevity, right?

And her tickets are insane, her revenue is insane.

And she loves to run maintenance, right?

So, you know, she's a female, which is why I thought about that.

But most of our industry is male dominated.

So I'm going to say this.

I want you to imagine that you're sitting over at your buddy's house, drinking a few beers on a stack, watching the game, and he starts talking about the groaning noise or the hot and cold spots or the air conditioner's not cooling, whatever it is, do you start to have an honest conversation with him about what other contractors will do to get the price down?

I mean, if you're a professional tech working at a high end company that provides the 401k and the 3% match and the nicely wrapped vans and the giant website and all the leads and the call center and everything else that it takes to run an amazing company that's got, you know, paid time off and you got vacation time.

Those things cost money.

New tires on your van, new brakes on your van, new windshield on your van.

Every bit of that coffee, actual fresh burritos at your weekly meeting, ongoing training, Companies investing in your training.

I would relish those opportunities because there's a lot of guys out there that don't get that right.

So I just want you to imagine you work at a company that has giant expenses because they're running a quality operation.

And your buddy tells you he's got a contractor coming over, or somebody came over yesterday and they're going to replace the entire system for six grand.

Furnace and air conditioner.

Do you think they're getting high efficiency?

Do you think they're getting variable speed?

Do you think they're getting modulating gas valves?

Do you think they're going to eliminate hot and cold spots or at least help to alleviate them?

Do you think that's going to have any indoor air quality?

Do you think it's going to come with a maintenance plan?

Do you think it's going to come with a buy it back guarantee or a one year test drive or a two year test drive or whatever it might be?

No warranty is only as good until they drive out of the driveway on that one.

And so what do you say to your buddy to protect him?

Dude, don't you dare.

Dude.

Anybody that says they could do this for six or seven grand is lying to you.

They're not going to stand behind their work.

It's not going to solve this.

Show me what they told you.

And then all of a sudden the guy's going to go get his notebook, piece of paper or his napkin or.

Whatever scribble on the back of the car and thrown at him.

The guy got an email and the email has like a couple of bullet points.

New 80 furnace, new 14 seer air conditioner, you know, whatever, depending on the time, the country and the Mason Dixon line and all those things.

Anyway, my point is you would save his butt for making a poor decision.

Yep.

All I'm saying is let's work so hard that we get to have these conversations proactively up front in a way that serves our homeowner and not to use scare tactics, to have an honest conversation that serves them and keeps them from making a decision that is actually not in their best interest, even though they think it is.

If you go back to our role play and just we pick numbers out of the year 19, 16, 12, whatever.

If you're in this industry, you know you cannot run a company for the long haul installing great equipment that's going to solve all those challenges for 12 grand.

And you probably can't do it for 16 unless you're far underpriced and you're not planning on being around long term.

And if you are selling it for that, it probably means you don't have a team and you don't have Service Titan or House Call Pro or anybody else.

I don't know if anybody sponsors your podcast, Sam, so I'm just throwing some names out.

Yep.

What I can tell you sponsors on this show.

Okay.

Keep it organic.

What I can tell you is every single thing, even before the doors open and the lights get flicked on.

It's like that national debt ticker when you're at the helm and you're running a business in this industry and it just keeps running.

Right.

And so what I can tell you is that in order to get quality, quality technicians, pay quality pay, quality CSRs, to set great leads and great service calls and have a great software to track your customers in order to send out thank yous or cookies in order to have a company picnic or take people to the ballpark once a year, or send employee of the Year to Mexico for a week like we used to, what I can tell you is it all costs money.

Burritos cost money.

The coffee costs money.

The toilet paper costs money.

The rugs cost money.

The uniforms cost money.

The lights cost money.

The Internet costs money.

Everything cost a lot of money and it keeps going up.

And so if we want the nice things in life and we want a great work opportunity where we're, where we're getting trained and they're helping us with our tool accounts and they're financing that stuff for us as employees, it all costs money.

And the only place that money comes from is customers.

I'll finish.

So something makes a sell, somebody makes a sell, right?

Yeah.

And I'm going to give a little bit of insight for everybody on here.

I won Linux Partner of the year in 2016.

And just a few months after walking across stage in Las Vegas and accepting that word, we almost closed our doors and I almost lost my life.

And I almost cost the lives of, you know, the, at least the, the financial life of many of our people.

And what I can tell you is it was a short stint of a slow time and I didn't even know.

But what we did is we started using the supply houses as the Bank.

We were Lennox Partner of the year and we were the number one dyke and fit dealer in the Rocky Mountain region the same time.

And it all looked good from the outside.

Buying new trucks, wrapping new vans, inventorying them, Mastercraft, shelving, right?

New uniforms, new hires, new computers, installed service titan, new website.

And you know what happened over a 90 day period when things slowed down?

I. Unbeknownst to me, we weren't paying our supply houses.

Checks were cashing, truck payments were being made, building was getting paid, everything was getting paid.

And we started using the supply house as the bank.

And then all of a sudden, at about the same time, that 90 day came due and all of a sudden we couldn't pick up equipment.

And then we were behind with the other supplier, we couldn't pick up equipment.

Then we went to our third supplier we couldn't pick up.

It was a really scary time and we started to fix things.

And one of the things I said is we will never again waive a diagnostic, nor will we ever include it in the cost of a repair.

We need that $99 at the time.

I also said we will no longer discount a job.

Not 10%, not 1%.

We will go out there and we will sell our value and we will maintain our price.

So I don't teach anybody how to discount.

We all are pretty good about that already.

And in one year, Sam, we not only paid off all that debt and got current, we came back like a phoenix rising from the ashes and we won Linux Partner of the year again.

2017 is one of the most difficult years of my life.

It was so stressful.

If you ever see some of my videos that I had filmed, I literally look 10 years younger today than I did.

No doubt.

There's this old adage that those that can't do, teach.

I promise you, I could drop into a town and scale a company real quick.

I could hire, I could recruit, I could train, I could serve.

We could start communicating in different and more effective ways and we would gobble up market share.

But this is a hard, hard business and I'm telling you, I have no interest in doing it again.

I did it.

I proved it twice.

And then I almost lost my tail.

And then I proved it again, so once in the Springs, twice in Denver, and almost closed the doors.

And now I feel like my, my life's mission is to serve others.

Zig Ziglar said, you can have anything you want in your life as long as you help others get what they want.

Like those challenges that I went through and the darkest of times and how we pulled out of that.

I think I have a message to share, and I think I have a way that can help people work their way out of this.

So if you've plateaued or you're plummeting or you just want to do a little bit better, I think guys like you and I are in this to help.

We're not here to fleece the contractor.

We're not here to take advantage of them and charge them for rah rah sales training or hardcore closing tactics.

Right?

I care about people.

I care about men.

I care about women.

I care about business owners and techs and the trades people.

Blue collar, that's my people.

Right?

I wear a collared shirt.

And if you see my.

Any of my branding, I'm always in a sport coat.

It's a uniform.

I grew up in the country changing my own brakes and my transmission, and I just don't like it.

I don't like it.

It doesn't get me out of bed in the morning.

But what I love is helping others achieve what they want in their life.

And so what I would say is anybody's capable of turning it around is probably going to be the hardest thing that you've ever done.

Especially if this kind of stuff is out of your wheelhouse and you're not going to do it today and you're not going to do it tomorrow or next week, you can start to have an impact, but it's going to take you a long time.

Just like it takes a long time to lose 50 pounds.

It's going to take you a year to really start to work towards mastery in a lot of different areas.

But you can do it if you stay consistent and persistent.

You can do it if you stay focused, but you don't let the challenges stop you.

You got to keep getting back up, right?

And so I think that's.

That's my message, Sam, and it's the message I hear you use, that you share on your podcast and that you share from the stage and that you share in your.

On sites and everything.

I've heard about you, man.

I have not heard one single person.

And I'm around the country a lot.

I've not heard one single person have one bad word to say about you.

Your character, your training, it's just not out there.

And it's something for you to be so proud of, dude.

So when I come on, maybe it just sounds like I'm, you know when you, when you said nice things and I said, I'm honored to be here.

I truly am.

And you and I like to cut up and have fun and joke and tease and we've known each other almost two decades, but man, there's just nobody better than you.

And thank you.

I'm just honored to be on here and be a part of what you're building and how you're serving our, our trades.

And I'll finish with this.

I have so many clients that their website looks great, their trucks look great, they're going to all the conferences.

And as I get to know them more personally and more intimately and they.

And the trust is gained almost to a client, almost.

They've either been on the brink of losing their, their tail, they're right there right now.

They don't know how they're going to pull out of it yet.

Their team thinks that they're rich, right, because they got a big house and they got a big car and they got 10 trucks or 50 trucks.

And they're trying to keep it a secret because they're going to home tonight and they're trying to figure it out and they're trying to figure out how they're going to keep the, the stack of cards from crumbling.

It's scary.

And I lived it and so I can relate to it as a business owner in these trades.

To say, man, it is not all it's cracked up to be.

And I also know a number of people who just went back from the ownership side and just went to become a comfort advisor or a tech.

You can go out there and run a couple leads a day.

Serving people incredibly well.

Never lying, cheating or stealing, recommending great stuff, getting great at the way.

You explain how our industry works and you can make yourself a couple hundred grand a year.

There's people out there making, you know, 500, 600, 800 grand a year and they're not selling anything to anybody that they don't need or that they haven't been honest about.

It is possible.

And I will tell you this, scaling a business in just, you know, a number of months from 800 to 8 million, it's a lot of stress.

It was a lot of debt.

We didn't, you know, I didn't put any money into that company.

It was all based on raising prices and selling better.

And then we got in some trouble and it happened just that fast.

90 days.

We got behind the suppliers.

Took us entire year to get back to even and pay all that off.

And then when they win the award again and, and I can tell you it was, man, it was nip.

And tuck there for, for quite a while.

But we did it by doubling down on training.

We did it by doubling down on role play and communication and ride alongs and, and phone calls and listening and, and having the integrity to hear the hard stuff and say, yep, I could have scheduled that call better.

I didn't get both homeowners present.

Yep, I could have got that Comfort Advisor a full 90 minutes with both homeowners.

I could have scheduled that call better.

I could have looked at the schedule and not sent a guy across town and wasted an hour when there was a guy one mile away finishing up a call in 15 minutes.

Right.

All of those things can be done, but it's going to be work.

It's going to be hard.

And so just know if you're listening to this, there's a lot of guys out there that look like they're doing really well, just like I did after winning that award.

And just a few months is all it took and it almost.

And there's a lot of guys out there facing that.

So if your business owner seems stressed and he seems like a jerk and he keeps harping on you on your close rates and why didn't you close that one?

And you know, we got to get better.

It's probably not just because he wants to buy another car, another boat, right?

Yeah, that's the reason.

But man, I'm telling you, this business is, it's harder than it looks from the outside.

A lot harder than it looks.

It's going to take a lot of work.

Love it.

If it's easy, everybody do it, right?

The challenge is a lot of people do try to do it.

And you mentioned this as we got started today, Sam, there's a lot of companies talking about millions and millions and millions of dollars of growth and exiting and private equity and all this.

And I'm telling you, for every one of those, there's 10,000 that have a different story.

Those are the ones that make all the social medias and the conferences and the big stages, the ones we all hear about.

It's literally like, and I know we've all seen this, the Instagram models that have the courage to say, let me take off all the filters.

And then you're like, oh, my God, it's not even the same person.

Right.

It's like what Vanity Fair and Redbook and Cosmo and all these magazines have been doing for years.

And now everybody can do it with their own screen.

And now instead of seeing this incredible supermodel that looks amazing on the COVID of Cosmo.

Well, everyone can do it now on Instagram with a stupid little filter.

And then we buy into it and go, oh, that's what a woman looks like, or that's what a guy looks like, or everybody has a yacht or everybody has $100 million company.

No, that is not the actual world we live in.

That is a bubble of fake online stuff.

I'm not saying that there's not some really successful people that have exited their company and put millions in their pocket, of course, but it's one for every 10,000.

It seems like a lot based on what's happened in the last five years.

I can tell you, being in the trenches, just like you, Sam, the people that we're working with, they need every last penny to make their payroll every Friday.

Absolutely.

And, and that's the, that's, that's so much of where.

And I love that we are kind of landing here on landing this plane because this is who the message is for.

You know, I'm not here to train the, you know, $150 million a year company.

Would that be a cool contract?

Yeah, probably.

But that's not what it's about.

It's about helping the people that, you know, are exactly who we just described.

The ones that are in the grind that are like begging waking up every single.

I'm getting emotional thinking about this because I've been there and I've been that person.

It's like waking up every single day.

It's like, how are we going to make it today?

It's like, yeah, we want to have a 90 day plan and a six month plan, all these things.

But today we have to make something happen or those doors close.

And that is so much where my message is and I know yours is as well.

It's like, let's help the people get out of that.

The survival mode into.

Okay, now we're seeing some consistency.

Okay, now we're seeing some growth.

But not growth for the sake of growth.

Sake.

Growth for the sake of.

It's not how much we bring in, it's how much comes out at the, out of the bottom of the machine at the end, right?

How many lives are we able to change in our organization, right?

It's like, you know, having that guy on the install crew that buys his first house because now he's able to.

Right?

The ones that like want to send their kid to a better.

Just like talking about change the zip code and send the kid to a better school.

Right?

All those things that, man, I love this so much.

So, man, it has been such an honor to have you on the show here.

One more thing.

I know we're out of time.

This is going to end up being a couple episodes.

I'm going to split this up because I think we're.

We just passed the two hour mark and I love it so much.

Time flew.

I thought we were at like 30 minutes.

Yeah, I'm just kidding.

I'm not that bad with time.

The national average in the industry is about 2 and a half to 3% net income, which means a lot of people are below that line, below 0% and they're losing money.

And then of course, some people are at the holy grail of like 20 or sometimes even 30%.

But there's no way you can go out and put five or 10 trucks on the road and have a 20 or 30% net maybe a few years from now.

But when you're growing and you're expanding, you got to have capital, right?

It's a very capital intensive business.

The trucks, the wraps, the vans, the tires, the shelving, the inventory, the facility, all those things, right?

And so I want everybody to think about this in regard to, since this is the Close it now podcast.

If you can't hold margin, if you can't go out there and sell it retail, which is what I ended up demanding to my team so that we could get out of that hole and save our tails.

If the national, let's just call it 3%.

3% on $1 million is 30 grand.

A guy with a million dollar company takes 30 grand home if his wife is working in the business, that means they, they netted 15 grand each.

If she doesn't have another job, if he turns $2 million in gross revenue and he has a 3% net, he took 60 and so now him and his wife are making 30 each, right?

If you get to 5 million at a 3% net, if you're following this math, right, I mean, now you're getting into like six figures, but you're still splitting that between two people.

If the wife works in the business.

Now, I want you to think about this.

Let's drill all the way down in the microscope to a $10,000 sale.

If a $10,000 sale yields a 3% net income over the course of the year, then how much is that?

What, 300 bucks?

300 bucks, right.

10%.

Let's say that it's 10%.

Let's say they're really one of the better companies in the country and they turn a 10% net on a $10,000 sale when everything goes through the wash. By the end of the year, 10% of 10,000 is 1,000.

So, yes, 3% is 300.

So let's just say that you're a great company and you're turning a 10% net, and that's how you're priced.

And then we don't do our jobs in the field to build the value to hold the $10,000 price tag.

And the homeowner says in Sam and I's role play.

Well, Doug, I was just thinking, let's say it was.

He goes, could you do it for 17?

That's 10% off.

Doug, I got a brother that's been a contractor for 30 years out in Cleveland, and he says he always gives 10% off to his clients or when things are slow.

So, Doug, I know you got 10% room in there.

Let's say that you're at the kitchen table.

You want to keep your close rate high.

You want to get the deal.

And you think to yourself, well, you know, the company's doing well.

19,000.

Minus 10%, 1,900.

So I'll do it for, yeah, 17, 1.

I can drop 10%.

Everybody in that organization made money but the owner.

The owner broke even on that.

It's a lot of work in this business to go to work every day, work 12, 14 hours a day, work six, seven days a week.

Even if you get a fishing trip or you go on a dealer incentive trip.

And it all looks great.

It's a lot of work when somebody gives a 10% drop.

So I don't allow 10% drops.

I don't.

I don't teach 10% drops.

I don't teach 1% drops.

I teach people how to hold the value.

Why?

Because we need to hold our value.

And by the way, to me, I know that there's a benefit in somebody feeling like they got a good deal.

The good deal somebody's going to get from me and our clients is how to build value and choose the best contractor in the country to install and stand behind their system.

That's the good deal they're getting where I'm just going to come back and share why I can't, and then I'm going to let the chips fall where they may when we get really, really good at this, because I know there's probably somebody listening right now going, well, I would just raise my prices 10 more percent than what I need.

If I get it, then I got a 20% net.

That's not the way it works.

Right.

It's not right.

Discounting is a drug.

It's a drug and we get in the habit of doing that, and before you know it, we got that in our pocket.

What the number one thing we want to talk about mindset.

When I said we can no longer discount or waive a diagnostic or include it in the cost of the repair, all of a sudden, when that's no longer an option, you're forced to get better at building the value.

You're forced to become a more effective communicator.

You're forced to be a person that can go in there and sell the value of your services.

And anytime you have that drug in your back pocket, when the going gets tough, you're going to take it.

So I encourage everybody on here.

Thank you for all your time.

If you made it through the entire.

Whatever it's been two hours, maybe more with Sam and I, we truly care about you.

I know I do.

I know Sam does.

I've known you for, like we said, Sam, almost 20 years.

And you don't have to be a shady, snake in the grass, sleazy person to hold margin to run a great business, to scale your company and be more on the premium side of the price range.

But it does mean you're going to have to work a lot harder and you're going to have to be better.

Absolutely.

You know, I love that you said that.

And it makes me think of.

There's a. I'm looking up this quote that I want to end this episode with because it perfectly sums this up.

It's the Jim Rohn quote that says, don't wish things were easier, wish you were better.

Don't wish for things to.

Don't wish you had less problems, wish you had more wisdom.

Right.

I'm paraphrasing.

I didn't find it exactly.

But that's it, right?

That is it.

It's so much it.

It's like for things to change, I have to change.

For things to get better, I have to get better in the second that I do.

You know, the way that we look at things, the things we look at change.

Right.

It's just wild how it happens.

So for everybody listening, you know, Doug is a monster salesperson and sales trainer.

Rumor has it I've got a little bit history there, too.

Now think about what we talked about most on this episode.

It was not that.

Yes, we did some cool role play and thank you for.

Thank you for that.

But more importantly, how much time did we spend, everybody, on the morning routine and on personal growth and on being how do we become the person that when you walk into the room, people just want to do business with you because you're that level of individual.

And the rest, the details, the rest is just, well, here's the menu.

Let's pick something.

We're just ordering off the menu at that point.

And so I just want to reinforce it with that is like, you cannot, we can't say it enough.

We can't reinforce it enough.

And you cannot spend too much time developing yourself first because if you, unless you put that oxygen mask on that, you can't take care of anybody else.

You can't pour from an empty cup.

And that's that so much of the heart of where we're at.

So, man, we could go on forever.

I'm sure that we will do.

I'm sure another episode, at least at some point.

Can I, can I do a giveaway for your listeners?

I was about to ask.

Let's tell everybody how to get in touch with you.

And you know, if there's anything, any promos or, you know, any pro programs that you're really working on, what you're excited about, and do that.

Thank you so much, Sam.

I'm never going to turn this into a sales presentation.

I know that guys like you and I like to let our content speak for itself.

We've developed thousands of online videos and a virtual learning program that encompasses every division of your company from call center to tech to sales to leadership.

Fully interactive, fully engaging role plays filmed in real vans and real kitchens and real entryways.

And so part of that program I mentioned, our Seven Foundations foundation number three is to become a wordsmith.

We have about an 11 video series within that virtual program.

And what I'd like to do is just offer that to your listeners.

So if you go to synergy learning systems.net it's.net not.com go to synergylearningsystems.net there's a lot of free content on there.

If you go to the Contact Us page, there's a dropdown and you will find in that dropdown, close it now.

If you click on Close it now and submit that form, our team will send you the Wordsmithing program absolutely free.

And I give you my word and my promise.

Please don't give us like your old Yahoo email address.

I apologize if anybody's still actually using.

The Yahoo email address or the AOL or Hotmail.

Yeah, I should have said AOL or Netscape.

I don't know.

Here's what I will say.

Our organization will Absolutely never spam you.

The only time we send emails to anybody that puts their email address in is to do what we would call content marketing.

Which means occasionally, every month or two we will send out a free set of videos with some of our content.

We just share it for free, all you know, different role plays, how to overcome three bids brands, how to, how to book a service call, how to schedule a sales lead, all those things.

And so if you do get an email from us it will never ever, ever just be a sales presentation or buy this.

We've got this event, it's content marketing.

We're going to continue to add value.

If you find value in what we do, maybe one day you become a friend, maybe one day you become a client.

My main thing is meaningful connections and how can I and how can Sam add value to this industry?

And so this is one way we can do it.

Go to our website, check out all the free stuff, get yourself a free video set of all the words that we call the dirty words of anti persuasion that we never again want to utter on a sales call, a service call or a call in our call center and start to change those out.

And it's yours for listening and making it to the end here today.

Well thank you for that giveaway that is super powerful.

Everybody else, that's everybody that's listening also this is fun because I have a new product I've developed that perfectly fits the heart of this conversation is there is also I recorded a call it what you want, it's a guided meditation or a hypnosis for that top performing salesperson.

You know, how do we break through that to mental barrier like we were talking about?

It's like, you know so many times we have our thermostat of our life set at a certain level and we, you know we'll see some success.

We do this work, we do this inner work and it's like we get past it and then all of a sudden something happens in our life.

We might self sabotage or it just seems like well life hit us hard and it slams us right back down to that upper limit wherever that thermostat of our life is set.

So I actually recorded a hypnosis recently that is 17 minutes long.

Listen to this when you're first waking up, when you're going to bed and really sink into it everybody.

And it is my gift as well.

So we've got a lot of value coming in on this one.

But I'm on it, I'm on it.

I am definitely as soon as we get off of here, I'm going to the site I'm getting.

Love it.

Yeah, I'll send you the link for that.

But what it does, it's so cool for everybody listening.

It helps you visualize what it looks like, sounds like, feels like to be the person who wins all the awards, the one who always tops your leaderboard, the one that gets the accolades.

That's like, for what?

And it's cool because it's customized to.

As you listen, your own programming is going to put yourself in the right place.

So if you're not the person that's about the accolades, that's okay.

If you're not the person that's about, you know, the Lamborghini or whatever, that's fine.

But it will help you resonate to the level of success and that that's really what it's about.

So for everybody listening, also in the show, notes is going to be the link for both of these giveaways and I love that this is such a value packed episode.

Two episodes for everybody.

I know what I'm doing.

Tomorrow at 4:30 to 4:47, I'm going to be listening to Sam Wakefield in my ear with a meditation about how to become great.

Love it.

Love it.

Thank you so much for being here, man.

Let's land this plane.

And for everybody out there, you know how we do this.

Go be someone worth buying from.

You've been listening to the Close it now podcast.

Our passion is to dive head first 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.

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See you next time.