Consistency Yes, but How?

When we talk about our experiences with salespeople, most of the time, we have less than fond memories. It feels like they hold our time hostage, they stare at us from head to toe trying to size us up, and they force us to consider purchasing items we don’t even need. So how do we avoid this stigma and build a reputation for honesty and integrity?

Avoiding high pressure is the first way. Sales does not have to be about high pressure. People are no longer easily fooled by old sales tactics. Those in the know have discovered that high pressure should be replaced with high service.

You have to be willing to extend yourself emotionally and professionally to your homeowners/customers without even knowing if they’re gonna buy from you or not. We have to focus on high service.

The key is to have a process to communicate that service. Consistent sales results come from consistent sales activities. Random sales results come from random sales activities.

We’ll cover more about high service for the customer in the near future, as we could fill volumes with it. But when you provide this service, what does that mean for you, and how it will affect your bottom line?

When we talk about consistent sales results, I’m not talking about hitting the exact same sales totals every month. Obviously, in the HVAC industry there will be seasons when it will be busier than others. It can be nonstop in the summer and much slower in the fall. But consistency says that something should remain the same.

That one factor is what we refer to as revenue per lead, which is the average revenue generated per sales lead. That means if I give a salesperson 10 leads and they bring back $50,000, that’s $5,000 revenue per lead. If they make two deals or three deals or four deals, it’s still $50,000 in total volume. I divide that $50,000 by the 10 leads and that’s $5,000 revenue per lead.

For example, let’s say you get 50 leads per week in July, and then in October you get 25. Your prices remain the same year-round for the sake of argument. In July, you’ve brought in $250,000 that week, and in October it was $125,000. The months have opposite weather conditions and different needs from each other, but your average revenue per sales lead is still the same at $5,000 each. That can only be done with a consistent process in place.

Forget the lulls of the mild spring and fall seasons. There’s no need to lay off employees or adjust staffing drastically.

In July, you will be running more leads, but your revenue per lead should be about the same. In other words, your average close rate, average ticket, and revenue per lead should stay about the same year-round because of the process. If you have $5,000 revenue per lead in the summer and $3,000 in the fall, that, by definition, is a random sales result. Random sales results come from random sales activities.

Now, here’s the cool part.

Although having a sales process is critical to your success, you have to shape the process to be your own. It doesn’t need to be prepackaged or from someone else. There’s no one process that works for everyone every time. The reality is that in sales, there are 4 key components of every sales process.

Build a relationship, investigate the homeowner’s problems, and solve those problems by selling your solutions while focusing on bringing the call to a conclusion. And then obviously ask for the damn order.

So those four components are going to be in any sales process. You just have to make it your own. I remember when my kid was a teenager, he was growing up and wanted to make some extra money. One day, he came to me and said, “Dad, I want to mow the lawn to make some extra money.” Of course, I was delighted to hear this.

So I took him outside, showed him how to use the lawnmower, and I headed back inside. After a few minutes, I looked out the window to see that he was starting at a different place from where I start. I always begin by the deck and go in a counterclockwise motion. Well, he was out by the road, and he was going clockwise. He wasn’t cutting around the trees the same way I would.

I remember thinking that he was screwing up the system I had in place that I learned through experience. But I had to let go of my preconceived notions and let him develop his own system. I did, and it ended up working out for him with no grass left uncut.

As parents, we all want to walk our children through something and save them a ton of time by sharing our secrets from what we’ve learned over the years. But we have to choose how much to tell them… and how much they should figure out on their own.

My job is to provide the tools and guidance to get started. And that’s the key to having a sales process. You need to have the tools/ingredients: build a relationship, investigate the problem, solve the problems, and ask for the order. If you have a process and practice it, you won’t accidentally skip important parts. And you won’t accidentally get random results. That’s the beauty of a system.

It doesn’t have to be my system. It doesn’t have to be anybody else’s system. It does have to be a system you’ll actually implement and follow, and it needs to be in place for running every service call and every sales lead. The system I have learned over the years helps you get there faster and saves the hardship of making too many mistakes, but you can develop your own. So take the time, commit to a process, learn it, master it, and change your zip code.

Sending you our best wishes. We’ll see you in the New Year.