The Power Of The System!

It is so easy to simply go for what the customer wants of us without us having fully provided them with the options they need. However, by doing this, you are missing out on a lot. Sam Wakefield puts forward the importance of following the system in the sales process. He talks about the power that the sales system holds when you educate your clients first before providing solutions. Gathering his and his coaching clients’ experiences, Sam shows that presenting all the options without shortcuts can get you more.

First of all, I want to give a humongous round of applause, congratulations, virtual high–five to one of my coaching clients, Mark. Here’s a super quick backstory on him. He has been in business for several years now, has never sold anything above a single-stage piece of equipment. Less than a week of coaching, he sold his very first fully communicating variable speed unit now. Huge congrats to Mark, way to go. It totally proves that this system rocks and it works. I love it. I love to hear about the successes of all of you out there. How are you doing? I heard another story as well. Thanks, Allison, for meeting up with me. It was a lot of fun. I enjoyed our lunch. Also, she told me this cool story. She has a salesperson that she shared my podcast with and then the next five sales were high–end equipment. Way to go, Allison. Your team over there are awesome. That’s what we’re seeing.

The Power Of The Process

We’re starting to hear some super awesome testimonies of the system and how it works, the belief and motivation to do it. Do use new words and take the steps in the process to get new results, different results than you’ve ever gotten. Way to go, Allison. Way to go, Mark. I’m super proud of you. This is just the beginning. That totally feeds into exactly what I want to talk about is the power of the process. I left a project as well where I also sold a high–end communicating piece of the system, the whole shebang.

Here’s my setup, then I’ll get back to Mark here. I get to this house and it’s a turnover from a technician, which is awesome. Let me know if you like tech turnovers. Did you know that a referral or a tech turnover, the close rate should be right around 80%, which is awesome? It’s good. Anytime you walk into a tech turnover or you walk into a referral from a friend, from a past client, you should see about an 80% close rate, which is a great start. I walk into this house and the guy tells me instantly, “It’s running. Let’s see what we’re doing because I’m getting other bids.” Of course I’m following him up the stairs. As soon as he said that, I couldn’t help the grin because I was instantly recognized.

Here’s a smokescreen that’s like trying to push me off. I didn’t let it faze me at all. I just followed the system. I went through all of the process, went through the homeowner questionnaire, went through asking him what he’s trying to accomplish, then asked for permission, “Would you like to see how we can help you with these problems?” The answer is yes. It ended up we’re doing a brand–new system besides up right on the spot, closed it now in the house and of course does AS doing a new system. The point of that is, and I’m now I’m going to jump back to the story with Mark from what he was telling me. He said he showed that it’s super hot where it’s 100 degrees up in the Chicago land area. He goes to this point. Turns out it was a breaker issue, gets there and a compressor is down. The compressor is dead. What he hears from the homeowner is, “What’s the cheapest way I can get out of this? What’s my cheap solution?” When we hear that, what we typically go to is, “We can do a compressor replacement.” I’ll recommend that you have that whole conversation or split what he did. He said, “I was starting to go into that same old conversation but I remembered the system. Let’s go in and sit down for a minute, and go over some things, then I can show you the options.”

He goes in, sits down with the homeowner, casually and not being weird, and starts to draw out some of the differences in the equipment. The guy was intrigued by communicating equipment, “That sounds interesting. Tell me more about that.” Sure enough, he walks out of there with a fully variable-speed sale, which is awesome. He didn’t just go with what he was hearing from the homeowner. He went with what he knows is going to be the best solution, which is to educate them first and let them decide what’s going to be the best fit. The traditional technician would just say, “Ask for something cheap, let’s just go with something cheap.” Whereas when the key here is, “If you don’t mind, I’m going to take you through everything that’s available. Then you can decide what’s going to be the best fit for you. That way, you can see it all and make a great educated decision.” When you tell the homeowner that, when you go through the process, 50% of the time with my numbers, variable speed, high–end equipment because you educate people and they get to choose what they want.

Another great scene that people relate to is when you move into this house, this system is a builder-grade model. It’s what they did like a contractor grade with the house when it was built, so you’ve got handed something that you would never choose for yourself. Now you get the opportunity to pick what you would want in your own house. It’s like somebody else handing you a Hugo or handing you a basic little key or Ford Fiesta. Something you would never choose for yourself. Now you’re stuck with this until it dies. Now you get to choose what vehicle you’re going to drive. You get to choose your Lexus. You get to choose your Camaro. You get to choose your Ford F150. You don’t have to take a little Nissan Versa hatchback that somebody else gave you. Now you get to choose. It’s the same thing with this. You don’t have to take what somebody else chose for you, you get to decide. By showing you all the options, then you can pick whatever you want. That’s exactly the kind of conversation he had. That’s the conversation I had. That’s totally what happens.

You take people through the options and let them be the judge. Don’t shortcut it. That’s the importance here. That is exactly what I’m talking about is don’t because hot people are in a hurry. They’re urgent, don’t let that derail you from following the system. Go ahead and take the time to sit down, take a breath, take a breather. Take them through all of their options. Don’t shortcut anything with the system. You wouldn’t shortcut anything with the installation of the equipment. Why would you shortcut anything in the sales process to get to what you’re installing? That is part one of this podcast.

Don't Skip The Steps

Welcome back to part two. In this episode, we’re talking about not skipping the steps in the process. You have to communicate the right things in the right order for people to build on those items, to get to where you want them to land. To understand all of the concepts and the ideas before you make an offer. On the flip side of this, when you have a set system, when you have a plan, when you have the confidence that you have built, that you’ve done your preparation when you’ve got the confidence that you’re prepared for an appointment.

When you’ve got a set system that you don’t have to think about, you go through your list, you go through the steps in the right order. One that frees your mind to focus on how the homeowners are responding, what they’re thinking, to listen for what they’re really wanting. Remember, people write checks for what they want, not what they need. It’s our job to align what they want with the things that we know that they need what the house could use, what’s causing the problems that are making them want to make changes. The other side of having that system, and it’s not about necessarily being a robot, it has nothing to do with that. It just means having a set order that you do things.

When you go to the doctor, it would be so weird if you saw the doctor first. Then the nurse came in and asked you the questions about what you’re looking for. That’s out of order, it doesn’t make sense. You don’t go to the restaurant and have to walk through the meal backwards, have your last course first, and then move through that way it doesn’t make any sense. It’s the same thing with this. We’ve got to go through the process in the right order. When you have that set in stone, and you’ve got it down, you know the things you’re going to cover in the order that you’re going to cover them. That’s when the magic starts to happen. It gives you freedom and it frees your mind to focus on the things that are important. The energy of the room, how they’re responding there.

This is next levels sales here. This is what most courses don’t talk about. Most courses, they’ll teach you, “Here’s the words to say,” but they don’t necessarily teach you how to say it. They’ll teach you, “You’re going to ask these questions, and you’re going to look for these things.” They don’t teach you the psychology behind why that question was crafted to start with and how it was crafted. They don’t teach you to listen, watch for the energy, watch when people change emotion, to how to change your tonality and your voice, which we’re going to get too deeply at some point.

The Sales System: You have to communicate the right things in the right order for people to build on those items and get to where you want them to land.

This is next-level sales. This is what makes or breaks any great salesperson, every single top performer and it doesn’t even matter the industry. I guarantee you that they’re going to be teaching this there, even if they don’t know that they’re doing it. It might just be from intuition or just a natural rock talent, something they’ve developed over time. It’s definitely what’s happening. It’s what sends them to the next level. We’ve got a guy on our team, he was a retired police officer. That’s why people who come out of law enforcement and detectives make fantastic salespeople because they’re trained to read body language. They’re trained to read how the other people are responding, how to look for buying signals, how to look for signals of resistance, how to tell if people are telling the truth or if it’s maybe a fib.

When you start to develop these skills, this is how you’re able to cut through all of the smoke screens that the clients try to give you. Having a system is part of that because then you don’t have to think about what the next step is. It just becomes part of you, then you can respond. There’s another side of this too that is very powerful. A little story from my life and from my experience. There was a season in my life for about a year that I was basically mentally checked out. I had a bunch of tragedies happen in my life that left me in a horrible state in my personal life. We’ve we talked a lot about hanging, leaving that out of the appointment, leaving it out of the sales call. There are some things that you just can’t. It’s a black cloud on your brain. At that point, I was in real small market. I was doing amazing numbers.

I’ve always sold over $1 million every year, which is not bad in a town of 13,000 people. It’s what happened that year. Things are going along, my numbers are awesome. We’re doing great. The next year, all of this tragedy happens. My numbers didn’t go down, which was when looking back, it blows my mind. The reason that they didn’t is because I had a system. What I did was I leaned into the system and said, “I am not mentally here. I’m checked out.” I knew that but I had to do it anyway. That’s what top producers and top achievers do. You show up anyway. It doesn’t matter what the situation is, it doesn’t matter what’s going on in life. You show up when you don’t feel like it. Showing up is 90% of success. Showing up is what top achievers do. It doesn’t matter what the weather is that day. It doesn’t matter what’s going on. You show up. That’s what I did that year. I showed up, I leaned into the system. I said, “I’m going to trust the system. I know it works because I’ve proven it in the past. I’m going to trust the system is going to do it for me, even though I wasn’t completely mentally there.” My numbers didn’t go down. It was a testament to having a set path, a way to answer questions when they come up.

We all know that there’s only a handful of basic objections that anybody will ever give you. In future episodes, we’re going to break those apart one at a time. Covering that, I want to think about it and check with my spouse, and all those things. There are lots of ways to handle those. When you know what to say and how to respond to each one of those, a big part of it is showing up and just doing it. Could my numbers have been better that year? Absolutely. Had I been fully checked in? Thankfully, over time I got control of it. Obviously, life moves on. Jim Rohn, a mentor of mine, said one of his famous quotes that absolutely hit home with me at that point in time, “The winds of life blow the same on every single person, There are ups and downs. There are tragedies with everyone. If the winds of life are blowing on you, and we’re all ships on the sea, it’s how you set your sail that determines where your destination ends up, if you’re getting it slammed into the rocks or if you’re going to an adventure and find new lands and seek a new destination.”

That’s my paraphrased version. The winds of life blow the same on every person. It is how you set your sail that determines where you’re going. That’s it. You choose to overcome, you can choose joy, you can choose to be happy, you can choose to overcome things. In that moment, trusting the system and choosing to use the system, the way it was written is a beautiful, fantastic way to survive. It was great then and so that’s the other side of having something that works.

Having a system, developing a pattern for yourself of, “This is how I do it every single time. This is my method.” I’ve got the Close It Now system, in which I put a lot of that is what I’m training in these podcasts. Over time, you can piece them together or you can join one of the coaching programs at CloseItNow.com. You can read more about those. We can deep–dive into helping you develop your own system. The point is to have a system, have a set order of things that you do every appointment. That way when you’re mentally there, when you’re not mentally there, you can still lean into it and still have success, still see results, still see proactive moving forward achievement, because you’ve written a successful system.

That is the other side of having patterns. Don’t put things out of order. Don’t break the system just because situations change or you feel different. It’s wildly successful that everybody who are top performers have a way that they do things that if you were to follow up for 1,000 appointments, you’re going to find probably 995 of those appointments go almost exactly alike. Because they have something that works and they have a set system that makes sense. That is part two for this episode. Thank you for reading. I know there’s a little bit of a break in between, but we are back on track.

If you got some value from this, share it with someone. Sharing is caring. Share it with someone in the industry, out of the industry, it doesn’t matter. If anyone who touches sales at all, this is a powerful principle that’s going to make a big impact in their life. Thank you for reading. You can stay in contact with me at CloseItNow.com. That is the website where you can get all the details and information about what is going on. I’m launching group coaching and private coaching packages. Check them out at CloseItNow.com, find our Facebook group. It’s also called Close It Now because branding is important and consistency is important. I will talk to you again soon.