Question: How can I get my sales team to sell more IAQ products?

Gary Elekes; Founder, EPC Training:

Indoor Air Quality (IAQ) has become mainstream now. Most contractors include IAQ products in their sales approach and consumers are now recognizing that IAQ is something real that affects their daily lives. Back in the 80’s and 90’s we were representing IAQ as a “sick building syndrome” that was creating health issues but there wasn’t a lot of data behind it. Now we have great data and very detailed diagnostic tools that are able to validate those types of things. So, we can prove that IAQ efficacy is there.

That said, how do you get your people to sell more? I think the answer is education, role play, practice, and putting the technician in a position where they understand how to have a conversation with the homeowners about the need for IAQ. We want to ask questions, converse, and define what the homeowner’s wants and needs are. If there are wants and desires, then that’s where the financing conversation starts.

For us, it’s a pretty simple answer. We use a couple of different strategies. For one, we bundle. When you’re purchasing a system, a high-end system is going to come with some IAQ options. We’ve moved to what we now call “Customer Choice” where a customer can choose any three of the IAQ products we offer to be included in the high-end system instillation. We created an average price in terms of cost structure, so we don’t care which ones the customer chooses, we just care that they’re happy and their experience is great.

That’s how we do it on the install side, but this question is about how to get your techs to sell more. We create a monthly promotion centered around one specific indoor air quality product. That could be a thermostat, a light, a filtration system, water filtration, or plumbing products as well. What we do is we train our technicians during the last week of the month on the products we’ll be highlighting during the upcoming month.

Let’s say we picked thermostats as the IAQ product. We create a targeted promotion that we give to the technicians so that the customer can get a really good price or financing opportunity. We also stock the trucks with that product so that our technicians have it on hand and can install it immediately. So, the sales team side is putting it into the bundles, creating the financing, creating the special opportunities for homeowners to think about and choose what they want. The technician side sells the point of purchase promotion and install the product.

All that is cool but at the end of the day, if the technicians and sales people don’t believe in it and have a fundamental understanding of what they’re talking about, there will be a discomfort level and they won’t act. What we want to do is train, we want to be organized, and we want to have a system that we approach the customer with. The technicians and the sales people need to be put in a comfort zone.

We spent an inordinate amount of time training on that before we got good at it. If we go back to my early days at Service Experts, it was all about getting people comfortable with what they were talking about, what questions to ask, and how to actually communicate and educate. When people are able to educate, they’re able to define needs and people can then say, “Yes, I’m interested.”

The back end of that is the remediation side. We want to create referrals, we want to create opportunities on social media, and we want to create networking. I think when you’re selling IAQ in today’s marketplace, it’s pivotal to have some success stories and have people who will create referrals for you on social media. It’s one thing to hand customers the EPA guidelines, but it’s quite another thing to have a positive testimonial or review from a happy customer whose allergies were fixed because of the IAQ system you installed. That’s a much more powerful approach to your marketing platform. In my opinion, all of those are things we need to be doing.

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.

It’s important to capture as much customer information as possible to give your sales staff the best opportunity to convert leads into revenue.

In part nine of our continuing summer training, Weldon Long outlines the perfect approach to qualifying your leads and improving sales by staying focused on the customer.

Plus, your sales people will learn the second step in destroying the 3 bid objection.

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

There’s nothing more powerful in business than the story of a happy customer.

In this “Clip of the Week” from Cracking the Code, learn how to use customer testimonials to demonstrate the value of your brand and improve sales.

Watch the clip below, and visit EGIA.org/Show to watch the full show for more on in-home sales.

The following resources have been added to the Contracting Best Practices Resource Library. To access these new tools, visit the Best Practices Library.

Videos

9.23 – Digital Reviews – Generating More Client Reviews Via Technicians: On-line customer reviews are crucial to our brand and marketing success! We can’t have enough 5-star reviews, and the secret is to ask. The service technician is the key in the development of more reviews. In this segment we discuss the behavioral side of teaching technicians how to ask for and ultimately create more reviews.

Not a member? – Start your 30-day free trial to access these new items, along with hundreds of other useful videos, templates, and documents to help you achieve success in sales, marketing, training, and much more.

Question: How do I maximize revenue without hiring more people?

Weldon Long; New York Times Best Selling Author:

I love this question because it’s one of my favorite strategies. There are two ways to grow a business: you can acquire new customers and sell things to them or you can sell more things to your existing customers. Selling more accessories provides more solutions to your homeowners and results in a higher average ticket. When you acquire new customers, you have to get more trucks, you need more admin staff, you need more of everything.

For example, I’m working with a client right now in California. About a year ago, the revenue per lead was $4,000. The commitment that I made to the owner was that I’d increase revenue per lead to $6,000 in six months. We were able to do that through a very simple process – we raised prices about 15% and we increase their close rate from 30% to nearly 45%. So, in my opinion, you maximize revenue by improving sales performance on your existing calls.

People sometimes freak out when they hear “price increase” but works it’s actually a very effective way to increase revenue without increasing overhead and without hiring new people. Even without raising prices, you can train your salespeople to solve more problems when they go in the house. If I go in and replace the air conditioner and the furnace, then I get X amount of dollars. But what if I opened up the entire top of the house and put in a radiant barrier, new attic insulation, new duct work or a zoning system?

I’m working with another client to produce a marketing video called “What’s in Your Attic?” It shows this family in a very clean house playing a board game. The camera pans up into the attic and all of a sudden you see rat feces, dust, dirt. You then see it get sucked into the ducts and dumped back onto the family. What we’re doing is opening up an entirely new level of the house that not too many companies are looking at.

So, my advice is to look for different areas of the house that may have a problem and provide a solution. We all know that the ductless mini split is one of the fastest – if not the fastest – growing segments in the industry. Go through your last 500 installs and call those customers. Unless the duct work was designed perfectly, I guarantee they still have hot and cold spots in their homes. When you talk to them, tell them you have a new technology called a ductless mini split for custom, individualized heating and cooling that can help the hot or cold rooms in their home.

You have to mine your own existing customers, raise your prices if it’s possible, and train your people to sell more stuff. All of that can be done without increasing one dime of overhead or hiring one new person. I find it’s better to grow your business by selling more solutions to your existing customers. Then you have more money to do more marketing, hire more people, and grow that way too.

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.

What actually protects homeowners – empty promises from random companies or the demonstrated trustworthiness of your brand?

In part eight of our continuing summer training, our expert faculty introduces the first step in building trust with your homeowners to overcome the 3 bid objection.

Your CSR’s will also learn the true value of every lead to make sure they’re not letting any opportunity slip away.

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

A huge part of your value as a contractor is your expertise.

In this “Clip of the Week” from Cracking the Code, Learn how to leverage your knowledge to recommend solutions for your homeowners and increase your relative perceived value.

Watch the clip below, and visit EGIA.org/Show to watch the full show for more on in-home sales.

Question: Many marketing companies promise the world. How do I vet marketing agencies before I give them my money?

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

What I do to vet marketing agencies I work with is ask to see samples of their work. I ask to see case studies that establish where their clients were and where they took them to. I also want to speak with past and current customers of those marketing companies. I want read any online reviews about those companies, whether it’s on their social media platforms, their websites, or review sites like Google or Yelp.

Before I jump in with somebody, I’m going to give them a test. I’m going to make a small commitment to test them, and maybe even multiple companies at one time. I’ll have them do that test without them knowing that they’re being tested against each other. I want them to play the game the way they would usually play it without knowing that they’re being tested against another company. When you’re told you’re being tested, you might perform a little bit better and I don’t want that to be the issue.

Lastly, I’ll have them do a pay-per-performance trail if they’re willing to do so. You can give them a small commitment up front and pay per performance based on the company achieving a certain metric. Maybe it’s social media lead generation or direct mail lead generation, I’d give them X amount of dollars and ask them to prove to me that they can get X amount of leads.

Some marketing agencies claim they can get you first page ranking on Google – well, have them put their money where their mouth is. Tell them if they can do it on a pay-per-performance situation, then I’ll sign a contract after I see the results. Those would be a couple different ways that I would vet marketing agencies and their claims prior to committing to a contract.

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.

Effective sales is about high service, never about high pressure.

In part seven of our continuing summer training, Weldon Long outlines a solutions-driven sales approach to help your technicians prioritize the needs of your customers.

Plus, our team of experts offer valuable sales strategies that will help your CSR’s and sales people achieve next-level results.

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

Selling to home owners depends on developing strong relationships, and relationships are built on trust.

In this “Clip of the Week” from Cracking the Code, learn how to use your company’s guarantees to build trust and communicate your expertise to potential clients.

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