Shut Up And Sell!
When you are passionate about what you do, you tend to talk about it a lot. Do you find yourself getting into the spotlight all the time in your sales pitches? Today, Sam Wakefield talks about how talking less will help you sell more and reveals the secrets to understanding your clients better to address their needs. You may want to pay attention because these effective strategies will double your ticket size and close rate.
We have this ongoing conversation to dominate your market, to literally crush it in the industry and in your area because we all know that bad salespeople have skinny kids. Thank you, Zig Ziglar. It’s one of his famous quotes. I don’t want skinny kids. I know you don’t want skinny kids. That also means I don’t want a small MBA. Do you know what an MBA is? No, it’s not a Master of Business. I’m talking about a Massive Bank Account. Massive Bank Account is what we are after. I’m loving the community that is building in our Close It Now Facebook group. You can find me at CloseItNow.com. That will get you connected to everything you need to know about the Close It Now sales training. It’s just such a great community that’s building. We are starting to hit some serious momentum with members joining, conversations happening and it’s a cool place where you can drop in any objections you’re coming across that you’re maybe having an issue handling them. I guarantee you, somebody, in the group with all of the varied experiences and the seasoned people in there, the new people in there, somebody has a fantastic way to handle that objection very easily.
If you’re having a problem, jump in the group and drop the question in there. What is it? You can also email me as well at Sam@SamWakefield.com. Shoot me a message. I would love to hear from you. What topics would you like covered? Let me know what part of the world you’re from. Let me know your biggest takeaways. I want to give a huge shout-out. This thing has gone global. We’ve got readers all over the world. We’ve got readers in Canada, in Morocco, in India, in the United Kingdom, and in Columbia. Share this episode with anyone you know in the HVAC industry that has anything to do with sales because this is focused on residential and home. Close It Now, stop creating a follow-up for yourself. The topic is about something that’s important. It basically talks less and sells more. Have you ever heard that? In fact, there’s a book called Shut Up and Sell! I’ve literally read hundreds of books on sales, psychology, influence, NLP, and techniques, and put them all together into how to interact with people.
Studying different types of personalities. It’s a good book. It’s about so many problems. If you’re in sales a lot of times, you have been vaccinated with the Victrola needle as my dad would say. You like to talk. You’re great at communicating with people. For a lot of us, that can actually be a detriment to our results. A detriment to our success in our career. Every time that I find myself slipping into those habits, this episode is specifically for those big personalities who love to talk. We’re going to have a lot of different topics. You don’t have to be a big boisterous, naturally outgoing personality to crush it in sales. That’s the topic for that personality type. There is a great visual that I learned. If you’re like me, there’s a good chance you probably have had some theater in your past, some acting thing. If you’ve ever been on stage, done music or anything, you know what it feels like when you get on stage and the stage is dark and you’re hit with a spotlight. You can start to feel the heat from the spotlight on your skin.
If you’re not used to it, if you haven’t grown accustomed to it, it starts to get uncomfortable. The longer it goes, the more uncomfortable it gets. Do you know what I’m talking about? Have you ever experienced that feeling of being in the spotlight? It didn’t even have to be necessarily like that. It can be in any kind of room. That moment you step in front of people, the room goes quiet, you’re standing there and all of a sudden your skin gets hot, you feel the heat start to rise into your face. What that is, it’s that uncomfortableness of the spotlight. We call that the spotlight effect. When you are talking to the homeowners, it could be a homeowner. It could be a couple of homeowners, whatever decision-makers. It could be partners, whatever your situation.
Selling With Less Words: By listening between the lines, you can get the vibe of what your potential client is trying to tell you and what they’re holding back.
This is important in the first half of the home visits, especially important in the introduction when you get into your inquiry questions about what their concerns are, what they’re experiencing in their home. As you get into those, imagine it’s just you and them sitting in a chair on a completely dark stage. There’s one spotlight and it’s only shining on the person who is talking. Close your eyes and visualize this, you’re on that stage, you’re in that chair and the spotlight is only shining on the person that’s talking. It’s like a game. Do everything in your power to keep the spotlight on them as long as possible, as often as possible because that could do a couple of things for you.
One, you’re going to be leading by questions. You’re controlling the conversation, but what it’s going to do as they start to answer the questions, you can then ask clarifying questions. How so? How does that make you feel? Tell me more about that. Those types of questions to get them to open up, to tell you more about their concerns. Your focus is listening between the lines to what they’re saying so you can get the vibe of what they’re trying to tell you or the vibe of what they’re holding back from telling you. We all know that customers don’t always give you all the facts. They don’t always give you all the details. They might intentionally or unintentionally be holding things back that you can uncover, like peeling an onion, in the visit.
What that does is allow you to focus on the responses. You get to see their facial expressions. You get to focus on their body language and every chance they get. Play that game with yourself. Focus that spotlight on them so then you can go through that process and do this as much as you can through your entire process from start to finish. The fewer words you can say, the better. My sales appointment used to be two hours in a home just about every time and it’s gotten shorter and shorter over time because I realized I was talking way too much. I realized that I can talk about this stuff way longer than most people ever want to listen.
For most of you, there’s a good chance it’s probably the same thing. I’m constantly fighting that battle of reeling myself in, especially if someone is even a little bit technical-minded because I like to nerd out on this stuff. I love the technology. I love systems. I love everything that’s going on heating in our industry. If I’m talking to someone who’s into politics, there’s a good chance that lobbying about the air conditioning industry might come up. It’s ridiculous how much knowledge I have about the industry and the equipment, all the different stuff, the history of air conditioning but no one wants to hear it all. Whatever you’re into, it’s great to talk about it here and there, but no one wants to hear it all. That’s the point of using fewer words.
Selling With Less Words: You can craft a way to have the life you want by design and accomplish massive goals at the same time.
There’s a good friend of mine. I’m always talking to him and it’s like, “Fewer details. Those are just details. Leave them out.” He’ll ask questions like, “If this situation and this scenario arise, how do you present this?” He’s like, “Every bit of that is details, no one cares or wants to know.” At the end of the day, there are 500,000 half-inch drill bits sold in the United States alone every year. That’s not because people want a drill bit. Nobody goes to the store and says, “I want a drill bit for my collection.” No, they want a half-inch hole. They don’t care how they arrive there. They just know they’re going to go get something that’s going to do the job. At the end of the day with what we do, people don’t care necessarily about the product unless you come across that 1 in 200 mechanical engineers that are needing out on the equipment as you do. If you’re like me and you might not even nerd out on it either, then they don’t care how they arrived there.
What they care about is being cool when they want to be cool, being warm when they want to be warm, and cheap to do it. If you can accomplish that and communicate it into that many words that this is going to be the most comfortable, this is going to be the cheapest to operate. You know how you were telling me about you have those allergy problems, this is the solution for that and you’re going to wake up the next day not experiencing that. They raise their hand and say, “Sign me up. I don’t care what it costs.” At that point, it’s not about the dollars. It’s about the value. I’m going to do a whole episode on how to talk in terms of benefits and not the features. When you can start to express those things in those terminologies, you’re going to be able to turn the corner in your sales career. It’s a constant thing to be thinking about not using industry jargon that nobody has a clue.
Take a step back, and put yourself in their shoes. You’ve never known of any of this before. Would any of it make sense the way that you’ve presented it? Ask yourself that question. Debrief yourself before and after every single visit and keep a journal, keep notes. What did you learn? What can you change each time? That’s why I love that I’m out there every single day crushing it alongside you. Because every bit of this is a case study for me while we’re working on and growing together. Because when techniques and verbiage come around, you’ve got to get it in your mouth, you’ve got to practice it, you’ve got to use different things. In order to get different results, you have to use different words and use different techniques. That’s what we’re focused on here.
Was this valuable? If this was valuable, share it with somebody. This is my passion, to help you work less and sell more. Would you like to double your ticket size and double your close rate? What’s the industry average? 30% close rate in the heating and air industry, that’s awful. If you’re doing that, there’s no shame in where you’re at, but I can tell you that there’s a better way. It’s easy to double your income if you just sell more of the jobs you go to. You don’t even have to get more leads, just sell more of them for a higher ticket price. Gets them add-ons, and system enhancements. We’re going to get through all of this stuff. I’m so excited about this massive list of topics.
Go to CloseItNow.com. That’s going to get you connected to us. Climb on board. We’re creating a community that hasn’t existed. A community for all of the HVAC sales professionals around the world to come together to support each other, to share their successes, share your losses so we can support each other, help you get through that too. It’s more than just learning how to sell stuff. It’s a community of support. I’m so glad you’ve joined and attracted those people who want to not only better their sales career, but better themselves, better their life, better their family life. Have the time not only to go out and earn $1 million in sales in a year but also have time for your family. You can do both. You don’t have to be that person who disappears for two or three months in the peak of your busy season or your partner is just like, “I’ll see you here in several months.” My wife said, “I’ll see you again. I’m the air conditioning widow again.” It doesn’t have to be like that. You can craft a way to have the life you want by design and accomplish massive goals at the same time. That was one of the main points of the Close It Now movement. Thanks for reading. Let’s do this again next time.
Important Links:
- Close It Now – Facebook group
- CloseItNow.com
- Sam@SamWakefield.com
- Shut Up and Sell!
