Controlling The Energy And Intensity Of An Appointment

Getting a client to book your services can be quite complex. In this episode, Sam Wakefield shares his insights on making a sale in relation to your energy, enthusiasm, and confidence. He talks about a specific principle on controlling the energy and intensity of an appointment with homeowners to get them excited about your product or service. Find the value of injecting your enthusiasm to your clients so that you bring your service into their homes.

We’re going to be talking about energy, enthusiasm, confidence. What is sales? Sales is the transfer of enthusiasm from one person to the next. We are going to talk about the energy required to make a sale. Sales is such a fun topic. There’s so much psychology to study, but you don’t have to get into all that. I do it just because I’m a nerd and I love to study that stuff. One of the principles that I want to talk about is there is a threshold of energy required in order to communicate accurately to the homeowner and get them excited about the project. It is based on the principle that logic is the steering wheel of any buying decision but energy and emotion are the gas pedal.

How do we tap into emotions? We tap into emotions through our energy. It’s funny because I had this conversation with a homeowner in the house I was just in and there’s a misconception in sales and thinking about sales. Raise your hand if you’ve ever heard this as well, “I can’t be a good salesperson because I don’t have that type of personality. That guy has a huge outgoing personality or that girl has a huge outgoing personality. Of course, they are good at sales because that’s the type of personality they have and there’s no way that I could do that because I have a different type of personality.” I’m here to tell you that is absolutely not true. It’s not the case. Any type of personality can be great at sales because there’s also this thing called acting. Have you ever seen these actors in a movie like this crazy awesome personality, but then you may see an interview on a late-night talk show or something, and that’s not at all who that person is? You’re totally almost disappointed in who they really are but for the hour and a half or however it long it was, you totally thought that was them?

There are situational types of things that you can do to become the person needed for that specific moment. Again, I am not talking about manipulation. I am not talking about becoming something you’re not. I am talking about becoming the best version of you. I’m talking about becoming you times ten. That is being your personality to the max. What is that? What are we talking about there? My wife says it’s like becoming a chameleon into the situation. You become that. A good example is when you go to a baseball game versus going to a black-tie formal affair dinner, you’re the same person. Who you show up to the event, that’s the face that you put on for that event. That doesn’t mean you’ve become someone else. That doesn’t mean you’ve become someone you’re not. That same person can go to the lake and that same person can go to maybe a church service on Sunday morning. You’re the same person that you show up with a different energy. You show up with a different demeanor. You dress differently. You act differently.

I’m not saying hide things or cover things up but it’s becoming the person appropriate for the situation. It doesn’t matter what your personality type is. Everyone can do this. It all comes back to what is sales? It’s the transfer of enthusiasm. Do you have to be over the top like waving your arms around crazy enthusiastic about stuff? No. There are some tips and techniques that you can use that will show some urgency in your voice, the rate of your words. If you slow down and get a little more intense with the forced whisper, that’s when you’re being really serious. I just came off.

I had two appointments, closed them both in the house, installing both this week. One shot, one kill for each one. Awesome. That’s closing it now. That’s how we have to ask for the sale. There is a situation that arose in the first one I came to. I was talking to the guy. Let me give you a recap of the sales call. Call ahead, big house, three systems of entry code for their gate, drove down their driveway into the house. I walked up to the house and the guy meets me at the door. The first thing he says is, “I have a maintenance plan with this other company and I’ve always liked them, but it’s such a big-ticket purchase for the system that’s down that I wanted to get a comparable quote.” “No problem, sir. That’s why I’m here. How’d you find us?”

He’s telling me how he found us. Of course, I’m asking him some clarifying questions like, “If you’ve had a great relationship with the other company, what is it you’re looking for from us?” He’s like, “I want to make sure that I’m getting the best value for my dollars and the service especially when it comes to the installation because I’ve done some research online.” Raise your hand if you’ve ever had a client say, “I’ve been doing some research online. Everything says that the installation is crucial when it comes to the life of a heating and air system.”

I go into the intro about our company and I’m going do a specific episode on the key elements to an intro. Going to our intro, “Here’s our agenda for now. To be most efficient to help you best, I’m going to look around the house. I’m going to measure including the attic, including the systems. I’m going to calculate the appropriate-sized system for the space that we’re looking at.” He says, “We did that with the other company. You know the appraisal district says that this square footage, but that’s not true. It’s really about this much square footage. We already sized it. 3.5 tons is the right size for that space.” I said, “Sir, I appreciate that,” and in here’s where I’m talking about with seriousness. I said, “Sir, we take this very seriously and I don’t believe in guesswork. It’s not going to take a long time but because I don’t believe in guesswork and I cannot function off of the information that another company provided, I’m going to redo the calculations myself to verify. In truth, that is what we need to look at.”

If you’re paying attention, you’ll notice me slowing down. I’d lower my tone of voice and I got very serious. I said, “I don’t believe in guesswork. I’m not going to guess what this big investment that you’re making here,” and then we moved on. At that moment, you can control the rate and the tempo of your appointment and by doing that, you can increase or reduce the level of seriousness. From that moment forward in the rest of the appointment, I led the appointment, not him. Also, he instantly changed the way that he was communicating to me from, “Here’s what the other company already told me and I just need a price comparison to hear,” and instantly he started asking more questions, “What do you think about this? Here’s what they said, what would you do?”

Controlling Appointment Energy: Sales is the transfer of enthusiasm from one person to the next.

It turned a corner from being just somebody there to drop off another bid and run into much more of a conversation of, “Let’s work together to come up with the right solution for your space.” Obviously, even though he said he was satisfied and okay with the previous company, something was missing or he wouldn’t have called us to start with. Always remember that when you’re in a house. They called you because there was a problem. If they were 100% certain and satisfied with the company that they’ve been using in this situation, if they were happy with them, they wouldn’t even call you. The phone wouldn’t have even rung. You wouldn’t even know they had a problem because the previous company would have taken care of it already, but they didn’t and that’s why I was there.

He called us because he had a problem. In fact, we were the only other company that he called, which is awesome because we have great credibility online. They’ve read our reviews and I show up and reaffirmed what kind of reputation we have in the communication, in the skills. I’ve got the skills necessary to close it on the spot. We did high-end communicating equipment as per typical and he’s a happy camper. We’re installing it here. The lesson is to control the energy, and control the rate. Where he unpacked this when I first showed up, he was on a very, “I know what I’m looking for. I just want to get priced this one thing and not really want to sell the house in a couple of years. I don’t want to invest a lot of money in this house and at the same time, because I talked to the other company, I already had a good idea of what I was wanting.”

I recognized that and realized I had to get his energy down because he was in almost a combative type of, “I called you out of obligation but something is missing and that’s why I want to talk to somebody else.” I had to get control of the energy of the visit. By doing that, by bringing the tone down and slowing down the rate of pace, and if you’ve seen a wave, like a trough in the wave, the bottom, that’s where I took it down to. After that, when we started working together, I intentionally started little by little, bringing the energy up a little higher and a little higher until we sat back down at the kitchen table to go over the options and introduced those options as our philosophy is education. “If you don’t mind, I’d love to show you everything that’s available even though I know you said you already or just probably interested in this one single-stage system. Let me show you everything’s available and explain to you how it operates and why it will benefit you.” Most importantly, why the benefits are there.

At the end of explaining that, he says, “Let’s see the price on this variable speed model because that sounds a lot more like it’s going to accomplish what I want to accomplish. All those problems you explained to me that a single-stage has, I have those and I don’t want them anymore. Let’s look at the price on this. I don’t even want to see a single-stage system.” Even though when I walked in that’s the one that he thought he wanted from the way the other company had explained things to him. Definitely lead the energy and explain things right and you have no idea where it’s going to go. It’s part of the fun. It’s part of the mystery. By the time we sat down, I went through the explanation of the benefits of each system. My energy, of course, is ramping up and ramping up to where we ended up with the variable speed equipment and, “We can install this week. Does Thursday or Friday work better?”

He says, “Thursday, let’s do it.” That’s how you close a sale. The lesson on this episode is the energy. You’ve got to take control of the energy in a visit but also don’t leave it down. You’ve got to build it back up because logically, he knew he had a problem. He knew he had to make a decision. Also because it’s a big house with three heating and air systems, he’s got some time. He could call 30 other places. He could go through the process as many times as he wanted, but he didn’t because I was able to answer all of the specific questions that he had in his mind of, is the product a good product? Is the company a good company? Is the price a fair price for what he’s getting at with great value? As soon as those three things were answered, he said, “Let’s do it. There’s no need to shop anymore.” That was our lesson is you have to transfer the energy because when is the best time to make a sale? Right after you make a sale because your energy is there.

You’re in that moment of making a sale. The logical next step is for you to go out and make another sale. Every sale you make, I challenge you. Pick up the phone and call somebody else. If you don’t have the next appointment, find one. Make a call, because your energy is in the right place. Every time you make a sale, it’s the perfect time to do your follow-up calls. You’re smiling. You’re happy. You’re in a great place. People can hear it in your voice. You’re enthusiastic. If you make one more call every single day, if you make one extra call every single weekday that you work, on average that’s 250 workdays a year. Can you imagine if you made one extra follow-up call, 250 times a year, what would that do to your numbers?

Raise your hand and high-five yourself for doing that. That is going to make it a wild difference in your numbers. Make one follow-up call, one extra, every single weekday. I’m not even talking about weekends. I’m talking about the weekdays that you work. Getting rid of holidays and everything else, that’s about 250 days a year. What will that do to your numbers? I challenge you. Do that and let me know how it goes for you. You can connect to us at CloseItNow.com. That is your location for all things Close It Now. Join our Facebook Group. It’s a community that we’re building that is focused on positivity, focused on selling in this new age. Sales are not like they used to be.

In-home sales, especially in the heating and air world, are not like it was five, six, seven, eight, ten years ago. It’s a different way of thinking. In order to get new results, you have to use different words, you have to use different skills. You have to say things you’ve never said to get the results you’ve never gotten before. Let’s all go to a new level together. Join the Facebook community and I would definitely do some coaching in there. It’s a great place you can put in your questions, get some support. Join the space. CloseItNow.com, that’s going to lead you to all things Close It Now. If you got some value from this, share it with somebody. Share it with your other sales associates. Share it with technicians. Share this podcast. We are global in six countries now and growing by leaps and bounds. Thanks for reading. I will talk to you again soon.