https://youtu.be/B85204SHdN8
IN THIS VIDEO, LEARN HOW YOU CAN IMPROVE YOUR SALES NUMBERS BY:
- Incorporating a simple six-word phrase into your sales process
He also shares with you his secret on how he fully equips his team to become effective sales agents — including the inexperienced and total newbies to the industry.
FULL TRANSCRIPTION:
From Zero to Hero: Six Words That Can Radically Improve Your Closing Rate.
Now, if I heard that I’d probably think there’s something gimmicky coming.
Some cliche pushy sales tactics.
Maybe a Jedi mind trick of sorts but if you’ve listened to any of my other shows or read any of my content, you know I’m not into that stuff.
I prefer a much more transparent and authentic approach to the sales process.
I feel that just being knowledgeable and confident in making a connection is a good baseline to sales, a good starting point.
But beyond that, if you really want to be a true sales professional and close lots of project and really pull in the high sales numbers, there’s a few things you need to do.
A few key phrases, a few ways to position yourself, a few ways that you can be one step ahead of the game and ultimately sell more projects.
And in this show, I cover one of those ways.
One that is working incredibly well for myself, the salespeople on my team and the new recruits at my company.
Good morning.
Good evening.
Good whatever it is wherever you are.
Whenever you are listening to this which will be at some point be in the future.
That is the nature of podcasts and video recording after all.
For me, though, right now it is Friday evening.
Friday.
Friday.
Friday which is my least favorite day of the week as a business owner.
If you’re a business owner, too, you can you can probably relate to that.
Contrary to the rest of the world, Monday is my favorite day of the week.
If you’re a business owner, you can also probably relate as well.
A Monday is always a great day to set a new pace for the week.
Achieve some goals.
Friday, it’s always like, “Man, we never got done what we needed to get done.
We never sold what we needed to do. And I’m looking forward to a fresh start.”
So, if you’re not a business owner that’s just kind of quick glimpse into how it is and how we look at things.
Anyways, I’ve spent this week and last week training some new sales recruits.
We hired new sales recruits.
Two of them are totally green to sales and also the industry.
One of them is experienced in the industry.
He’s actually been with us for a while.
We’ve kind of pulled him up but he has no sales experience.
So, training three new people essentially from the ground up.
That’s powerful.
Sales is absolutely crucial and it’s important we get it right and they get trained well.
Sales is absolutely crucial.
You need to take advantage of every opportunity that you have to sell, and so many contractors just don’t do this.
It doesn’t matter if you’re a painting contractor, electrical contractor, roofing contractor, selling new homes, or it doesn’t matter what you’re selling.
Many salespeople in general, just don’t take full advantage of every opportunity that they have.
Think about this and this is not far-fetched.
You could be a contractor that’s just closing 20% of your deals.
Now, if you double that and close 40% of your deals which is a totally realistic number.
Close 40% of your leads — totally realistic.
You’ve doubled it from 20%.
You’ve essentially just doubled your revenue and doubled your profit without spending a penny on advertising.
That’s all there is to it.
Now, I’m not saying skip advertising but what I am saying is that there’s a huge goldmine in your leads and in your sales process.
And this is why it’s really important that I get my new sales guys trained right and if they’ve got the proper instruction and coaching behind them.
And even more importantly, as a manager, that I’m able to identify who has this potential to sell before I hire them and through the sales process.
So, at some point, they’ll have to leave the training process and they’ll have to kind of released into the wild.
That’s always a fearful time because I don’t want to put them on an opportunity that another salesperson that’s on my team could have closed.
I always hate turning them loose.
It’s tricky but it has to be done.
It’s something I have to overcome and have to rely on my training to get them where they need to go which will ultimately lead to revenue for my company.
I’ve very fortunate that I’ve got some awesome customers we’ve done projects for before that are business people so they understand the need for training and they understand the sales process that they let us come out and actually practice.
So, they’ll kind of pose like an undercover customer.
All you know work out a time to have a meeting at their house or whatever and we’ll put them into the CRM and the new recruits have no clue that these are actually, really, just past customers.
And they’ll go out there, meet pseudo undercover customer and these customers will absolutely grill them.
Put them through the third degree.
Further, be much harsher on a much more thorough on them than nearly any of our real customers will.
I’m very fortunate I’ve got some customers that do that for us and help us out with that.
That is something crucial.
If you don’t have some customers like that and you’re training salespeople, make those connections because it will be invaluable.
Now, over the course of my business career in the company and the time that I needed to train salespeople, one thing I’ve noticed and you’ll probably notice this, too.
You might even be this person, is that some of them just don’t have it.
It’ll seem like some just don’t have it. With a little of coaching, you can get around this, as you’re going to see.
And this usually comes up not long after they get released into their first actual sales call, especially if they haven’t been coached on this.
They’ll go out, they’ll come back, and as soon as I get back, I’ll be like, “So, how did it go?”.
And they’ll look at me, all wide-eyed and kind of excited and like, “It went good! It went good!” Then with the next question will absolutely kill their enthusiasm.
I’ll be like, “Well, so, good you’ve got a deposit and a signed contract?”
Of course, you’ll see their heart sink. “No, didn’t get a deposit. They’re not ready to go with it just yet but if they do they’re certainly going to go with us. I mean, there were, nice customers.”
Say, “Well, I’m not sending you out there to be nice customers. I’m sending you out there to close deals.”
I should rephrase that “I’m not sending you out there to meet just nice customers. I’m sending you out there to be nice to the customers and close the deal. Bring back a contract and deposit.”
That is obviously the goal of the salesperson but they’re not doing that and that goes on.
So, what are they missing?
Maybe you’re one of those.
Maybe you do go out there and you meet with a lot of customers but you just kind of find the sales conversation just kind of trickles off.
You hit them with the price and it goes nowhere.
Leads to no sales.
You are not getting contracts and deposits that you should.
What’s the missing ingredient?
I’ll tell you what it is.
When you hear it, you’re going to be like “Wow, that is just incredibly simple.”
“Makes total sense.”
“I’m not doing this.”
“I’m going to add these words to my sales process, and it’s going to bubble things up. Make things better.”
Here it is.
They’re-not-asking-for-the-sale.
That’s what differentiated many of my top sales performers between the ones that just would not cut it.
They both knew the same thing.
They have the same confidence.
Some of the ones that couldn’t sell had better charisma, better confidence, even better product knowledge.
But they just couldn’t sell as well as some of the better salespeople because they were not asking for the sale.
You have to ask for the sale.
You can’t wait for the customer to bring up and that’s what a lot of weak salespeople, I should say, do.
And that’s what a lot of previous trainees I have had, had done.
They would just go out there.
They’d hit the customer with the price and then they would just kind of wait for the customer to say, “All right. Let’s do this.”
Newsflash!
If you don’t prompt then and you don’t engage the customer, you don’t encourage them to take action, they’re not going to take action or generally, they will not take action.
You have to ask for the sale.
How do you do that without sounding like a pushy salesperson?
Here’s what works for us.
It’s worked wonders for my top sales guys.
Once we realized that a few of us were using these lines, all the rest of the people in my company caught on and it has truly propelled our sales.
I will say that this few word phrase, probably the most valuable phrase that we have in my company and that is: “Should we get this written up?”
So, you go out there.
Make the connection of the customer.
Go through your whole sales presentation, if you have one.
If you don’t, well, you should get one.
I’m working on a great awesome piece of content video blog post.
I’m not exactly sure how it’s going to be presented but I’m working on publishing something on our exact sales process that we use.
But after you get to the price and the customer kind of simmer in that for a little bit, point-blank ask, “Should we get this written up?”.
And at that point, you’ll find quite a few of them.
You know many of them will just say yeah and they’ll say, “Yeah, let’s go ahead and do it.”
If not, you’ll get an objection and at that point, you can either overcome the objection you could change the topic.
At the very least, you can change the topic.
Go back to talking about your company, your position, the product, the service, etc., and then come back and ask “should we get this written up” again.
I wouldn’t ask that more than twice but it suitable to do that a few minutes later.
See if the customer softened up.
Of course, there’s more direct ways of overcoming the objection which that is a whole another talking point, a whole another video recording on that — overcoming objections.
If you just come out there and start asking for the sale when you have not been asking for the sale before, your sales game is going to be two steps ahead of where it was before.
Now, back to the objection thing.
You should always position yourself as best as you can so that they don’t say no.
I’ve got a full sales process that I said I’m working on and I ’m going to be publishing that soon but until they do, just remember, ask for the sale.
There’s nothing else that you do in the sales process besides show up, smile, and crank out an estimate.
Just ask: Should we get this written up?
I guarantee that you will close more deals.
You will increase your closing rate simply uttering those six words: Should we get this written up. They’ve been a total goldmine for me and my company and I really, really grill and train my new salespeople to do this.
Ask for the sale.
Since I’ve been doing that, I found that I don’t have as many of these new recruits employees, trainee, salespeople, whatever you want to call them.
I don’t have as many that fall by the wayside and end up losing their job because they can’t close the deal.
The only trick to it, the only thing we’re teaching them differently is ask for the sale.
That’s it.
That is seemingly a small piece of the puzzle that can mean the difference between a horrible salesperson and a good salesperson.