Question: How do you suggest changing the mindset of a service tech who is resistant to adopting a selling mentality?

Weldon Long; New York Times Bestselling Author

A big part of it is about changing perspective. When people find out new information, it changes how they view a situation. I was out in California working with a client and they had this guy working inside on the telephone as a re-hasher. If a salesperson failed to sell a deal, he’d call them and try to get them back on. He did that for about a year and was really good at it, and decided he wanted to go into sales.

I trained him and he just started to run leads over the last couple of weeks. I went to visit a lead with him that one of the re-hashers had set for him. He told me, “Now that I’m out here running these leads, I realize it’s not enough to say I’m going to send somebody out. You really have to qualify the lead.” He had a whole different perspective. That’s the way new information can be; it can completely change your perspective.

Talking about changing the mindset of your technicians, we’ve got to give them new information. For example, the Prosperity Mindset Training – one of our 10 core curriculum pillars on EGIA Contractor University – is about giving your techs new information. And some of that information is really basic. Understanding that energy in our brain (the thought) can trigger an emotional response, which triggers the reaction, which triggers the results. When people start understanding the relationship between their thoughts and how that’s affecting their results, they can understand that if they want different results, they need to change their mindset.

Einstein says you can’t change something with the same level of thinking that created the problem. That’s part of the new information we give them. So, a lot of it is just making sure they understand the relationship between all of these things and then give them the opportunity to decide if they want new results. Show them that if they want better results, we have to work backwards and start thinking different things.

I really think it’s just a matter of them going through the Mindset Training but I’m not saying that’s all they have to do. Within that course, they’re going to hear about different books that are critically important. One in particular that I’m rereading is by Napoleon Hill, Think and Grow Rich. I’m constantly reading new books about the same stuff and it’s powerful. I just picked up a new on called Atomic Habits and it’s the exact same conversation. It’s about giving your techs new information and helping them understand the relationship between what they think and what they do.

This is the weekly Ask the Experts free excerpt. To listen to all of this or past calls, or to see the schedule and register for future calls, click here.

Consistent results come from consistent activities. Whether it’s instillation, maintenance, or sales, you must follow a process to get reliable results.

This week, Weldon Long explains the RISC process to help you systematically approach sales opportunities and improve your close rate. Plus, Gary Elekes outlines his technician sales training process and Drew Cameron discusses helping your customers get financing.

All that and more, on this week’s episode of Cracking the Code!

No one WANTS to feel like they’re being sold to! Stop selling and start asking questions to help your customers find solutions.

In this “Clip of the Week” from Cracking the Code, Mike Treas explains how to position yourself as the resolution to your customers’ problems with the art of listening.

Watch the clip below, and visit EGIA.org/Show to watch the full show.

Question: Why should we offer financing to a cash buyer?

Drew Cameron; President, HVAC Sellutions & Energy Design Systems, Inc

You should offer financing to every buyer, cash or not. Financing includes credit cards, so let’s not forget about that. Cash buyers might like to put it on a credit card to get the points or the miles or the cash back. So, we offer financing to everyone because we don’t know if they’re a cash buyer. I’d ask the questioner, “How do you know they’re a cash buyer?” I’ve had plenty of people say they were going to pay cash or write a check at the end of a job and then they became aware of the payment options we had available. We show ALL customers, ALL the ways they can pay, ALL the time. My job isn’t to make the decision for them, my job is to show them all their options and let them pick for themselves.

What we find with financing is that people tend to close more readily because you have financing in-house, they don’t need to go outside to get it. Your closing ratio will go up and your average sale will go up. People tend to spend more when they can spend less per month and they don’t have to come up with all that cash up front. People can buy a bigger house on a mortgage than they can with cash, it’s the same principle.

When you get your average ticket up, you get your revenue per lead up. We find that those numbers go up by a factor of almost 30%. So, you want to offer financing to everybody because you don’t know if they’d take advantage of it or not. Once they have that account established and they start to pay the loan down – say they got a $10,000 loan and they start to pay that down, in year two maybe they’ve paid it down to $7,000 – now they have room to buy on account. You can market to those people because you can see how much room they have to buy on their account. You can say, “Hey, you have some room on your account, now you can add that UV light you were talking about or that humidifier you wanted.”

We talk about in the In-Home Sales training, we talk about that perfect home environment over time. You could probably do $80,000 worth of stuff for somebody in their house today. Are they going to spend $80,000 today? NO! Are they going to spend $80,000 on financing? NO! You’re going to have to build that perfect home environment for them over a number of years. Having financing in place with an “on account” aspect will help them do that.

Offer financing every time but also promote it in your marketing. Everyone gets access to all the financing. We don’t give a cash discount to customers – this is my approach to it – because we don’t want to penalize everyone else that needs to take advantage of financing. We say “same price cash or credit” for people because most people today pay for this with a payment program. It’s easy, flexible, and affordable for people to get the system they want today and pay for it over time. If you pay for it sooner than later, there’s no prepayment penalties, so that’s always a great thing.

Interestingly enough, I spoke in Florida last month and a I met the TM who works with a sales company in Omaha, Nebraska and one Warren Buffet chose to finance his system. He took advantage of the 12 months, 0% interest plan. He said, “Why would I put out my money when I could borrow someone else’s money with no interest?” That’s why you should always offer it. If Warren Buffet will take advantage of it, we should be offing it to everybody.

So, definitely provide options. Leverage your expertise to make some recommendations. Either way, find something the homeowner is really comfortable with.

This is the weekly Ask the Experts free excerpt. To listen to all of this or past calls, or to see the schedule and register for future calls, click here.

Selling is about high service, never about high pressure. This perspective lies at the core of the Prosperity Mindset.

This week, Weldon Long explains how to shift your selling approach to create more opportunities. Plus, resident experts Mike Treas and Gary Elekes discuss improving communication and preparing yourself for success.

All that and more, on this week’s episode of Cracking the Code!