Where Are My Muscles?!

In sales, we often end up looking at the final numbers at the end of the month. We either point fingers, make excuses, or celebrate. But we rarely look at ways to improve the numbers by examining the daily procedural steps to find room for correction. One crucial thing we overlook is time management.

How do you prioritize time in the field?

Caught in a Tug of War

On one hand, It takes time to build a relationship. Yet we want to get to the next call soon, don’t we? This tug of war will always go on in your head, but you can’t be successful in sales when you always have one foot out the door. So, time management (and thought management) is very important.

For example, it’s difficult to arrive on a call and then find yourself at the kitchen table only 30 minutes later, trying to have a repair-vs-replace conversation. That’s not really how it works for the most part. One exception is if you’re there because their heat or air has gone out completely, and the weather is pretty bad. The sales process itself usually takes time. So don’t rush it.

And to the managers reading this, it means we have to give our guys time to run the calls. I know it’s tempting to just look at the final numbers each month. But if they aren’t allotted enough time for a call, no one will hit their numbers. If you have them running 6 or 7 calls a day, you can forget about them converting a lot of them into meaningful sales. They’ll end up going in and performing the basic repair and hurrying to their next call. This leaves untold money on the table.

We have to be more strategic than that.

Roll With the Punches

Your techs need to be flexible enough to stay longer on a call than a specific predetermined time. This comes into play when their schedule is being made for the day. Flexibility gives them time to use sales techniques to turn a $300 repair into a $15,000 new system if it calls for one. Most people need to be convinced to make a large purchase, as no one really wants to part with their money on their own.

With so many calls a day, how can they build a relationship, which is vital to making them seem trustworthy? Beyond that, the relationship is vital to convincing and selling as well.

If the goal is to grow your company, it will eventually take more trucks, along with more employees who buy into the entire sales process. If you are solely looking to make money off repairs, then each tech will probably have to run 10 calls a day (and will burn out faster than you can say “Seasonal Energy Efficiency Ratio”). You have to shift your mindset to one that allows for time to do its work.

There is a direct relationship between the amount of time you spend with a homeowner and the average ticket.

Take My Advice

Remember what the goal is – for a homeowner to take your recommendation. That’s the goal. But the degree to which they’re going to take your advice is going to depend on the strength of the relationship, the trust. So how do you build the relationship and the trust? By taking enough time to let it develop organically. If you’re only in the house for 15 minutes, you’re not going to have anywhere near the relationship that you would if you were there for 90 minutes, right?

Relationships grow naturally according to the laws of nature. It’s kind of like a field of corn.

Can you imagine a corn farmer in Iowa who wants his corn to grow faster? Do you think if he goes out to his field and yells at the corn (or stares at his watch), it will speed up the growing process for him? “Hurry up, what are you waiting for?!” Although it’s called an ear of corn, it can’t hear you. Corn grows… at a corn’s pace.

It’s a natural phenomenon.

Relationships are the same way. You can’t force relationships to happen quickly, and you can’t expect to have great success at the end if you’re not taking the time to build that relationship with your homeowner.

If they don’t have a relationship with you, they don’t give a damn what you say, they don’t give a damn what you want, they don’t give a damn what you recommend. You wouldn’t go to the gym for the first time and then get home to expect bulging muscles looking back at you in the mirror, would you?

Think back to your biggest and best calls. No matter if you’re in sales or if you’re in service, the big tickets, the big opportunities always took time. Rushing it is a recipe for missed sales. Adjust your time expectations, and sales will follow.