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Episode transcript from the Close It Now podcast with Sam Wakefield.
944) Aye, aye, aye. All right, same Wakefield here. Close it now. So hey, here's a question or a scenario. If you've ever had a homeowner act weird when you showed up, they're kind of standoffish, they're skeptical, they want to hover over you while you work.
I want you to know something. It's not about you. In fact, by the time you got there, they already said yes. And let me explain what I mean by that. So.
I'm Sam Wakefield. is Close It Now, and I am happy you are here today. So let's get into this. We've got a couple things going. I've got a quick what's in your cup.
We've got an announcement, and then we're going to jump right into this because this is a concept that I really, really was reinforced to me this last week. I was in Tingsboro, Massachusetts, training with a company up there called Fagundus and Fagundus Heating and Heating, Cooling and Plumbing. What's up, Al? Big shout out to you and Bobby and Dan and all the rest of the guys and Nick and everyone else. There's so many people that I met this last week in training.
And so big shout out to all of y'all. All y'all. Get my text in now that I'm back from Boston. But so what we're going to talk about today was really reinforced during that training, because, you know, a lot of times when I train. Concepts will jump out at me that maybe I haven't talked about or maybe we'll talk about differently because of the context because of the room because of the situation and this is one of them and So we're gonna start there, but before we get to that, but first what's in your cup today?
m Central Standard Time every Friday when I'm not travel training I do a what's in your cup? 15) while I'm recording. So if you're not a member of the Close It Now Facebook group, there is a link in the show notes for the episode. Go join or just search Close It Now on Facebook. The group will come right up.
So it's almost 3,000 members now and it's a fantastic group of positivity. There's no... If you're in some of the other groups where it's a bunch of trolls and that's not this group, you have to be positive or you get kicked out. And so, but I do go live every Friday. So this was some of what we talked about today.
So what's in my cup today, actually in my coffee this morning? If you don't know, well now you know, if you take cardamom, the actual seeds themselves dried and you put them on, so a full pot, I usually put about five. It doesn't necessarily change the flavor of the coffee, but it interestingly smooths it out a bit. So highly recommend, give that a shot. Get some cardamom.
drop it in your you know just in your basket when you're brewing just regular drip coffee and it will change your change your coffee a little bit it a nice level up there so that's what was in my cup today what's it yours currently it is water I'm staying hydrated so let's toast this episode everyone three two one All right, now that we have toasted together, we are on the same page. One quick announcement about coaching and what the Close It Now programs are currently. So this is Friday, March 6th, 2026. Officially, my one-on-one coaching and set program has ended. I'm no longer taking one-on-one clients for now.
What I am doing is I'm launching a group, small group of five. It's a six month program and the first round of this is going to start April or the first week of April. incentive is everyone who signs up in the month of March will coach. It's going to be a weekly session. So we'll coach weekly up until then at no extra charge.
So you get a week or two or three or however many you sign up whenever you enroll up until April. So. 064) If you want that to be you, but here's what it's going to look like. Six months, we're going to go weekly. We're going deep.
We're going to cover all of the things it takes to be a top performer. I'm going to cover the process. Yes, we're going to cover the skills. Absolutely. We're going to dive into some internal work that's going to break you through that glass ceiling because I will tell you, if you, wherever you are stuck in your sales ability, in your income, in the amount of volume that you're doing, Only scripting and working on your sales process itself will not get you past very far past that.
You will have some degree of success, but the true magic comes when we start to unlock those components that are mentally keeping you, limiting you to self-sabotage. And so that's a huge part of what we're going to be doing in this group. Also, as you know, if you've listened to many episodes, you've got to work on yourself harder than you do on your business. So we're going to do the work inside this group to become someone worth buying from. And we're going to watch those numbers just absolutely change throughout the process, because if you do the work, you get the results of the work.
If you change your habits, you get success leaves clues. You get to get reap the rewards of someone who's putting in the work. So six months program. It's it's less than half of what the cost was for my one on one. coaching program that I had for the last, well, six and a half years, almost seven years.
But my bandwidth has changed. So I'm doing this in a group now. It could be a small group of five. You're still going to get plenty of one-on-one. It's not pre-recorded or anything like that.
It's working with me directly. net. net and fill out the form on there or message me on Facebook. All of those ways are the ways to get a hold of me. One other quick announcement is I have made a bigger move into my, I love working with companies.
I love working with businesses. So what I've done is now one of the big focuses is it's not just sales training anymore. We're not in Kansas anymore, Toto. 744) almost every single time I would go into a company and do just sales training, we would break the company. And what I mean by that is all of a sudden when sales numbers go up 50, 70 percent double overnight, all of a sudden the company couldn't handle the volume.
So what I'm doing now, sales training is a component of it. In fact, here's my entry question. If I could show you how to get sales training with me at no cost for your company, would you want to know about it? So this is what we're talking about. This is a component of it.
But what I'm doing now is working with, and I'm going to actually have my business partner in this on the show. He's on my team now. We're going to do an episode on this, we're business growth optimization, revenue optimization. What I have found is every single company, bar none, I don't care how well you think you're running your company, I guarantee you. If we looked at your numbers, you've got 15 to 20 % or sometimes greater of your your revenue that's hidden in your company that's not being realized, that's just getting wasted every year.
And so we we look at that, we analyze it and we reclaim all of the cash that you should have had in your pocket. And then we put together a growth plan to optimize that moving forward. So one of the key components here, because I've been hearing these ridiculous stories, of training companies coming in. Here's a wild story I heard today. There was a training organization that's come into the heating and air industry.
They have renowned from real estate and car sales and all these kind of things. Y'all listen to how ridiculous this is. And I'm going to tell you the story because I want you to know that you don't have to do this. If you're an owner and you're considering one of these one of these partnerships or whatever with these platforms that want to take part of your company run because you don't have to do that. It's stealing.
It's literally raping companies in our industry. So here's what this looked like. This is a three million dollar a year company and they were sold a three hundred and ninety thousand dollar coaching package and had to give up 50 percent equity in their company at the same time. 606) That is absolutely absurd. It's taking such horrible advantage of you.
So I don't care if you're paying for that coaching package or on the flip side, if the company comes in and says, Hey, we will inject your company with revenue, but you have to give up 40, 45, 50, 30%, 52%, whatever percent equity of your company to do it. Run. I'm here to tell you run because they are taking advantage of you. You can accomplish the same thing without having to give up huge portions of your company. So this is what we do is we become growth partners with you, meaning I don't want any of your equity.
What we're going to do is we're going to find the money in your company that's already hidden that you get to reclaim as your capital. And we're going to help you grow. outside of that. what we've recognized, there's 21 revenue drivers for every company. We go through those and we show you, give you the clear roadmap.
So what I'm doing right now, normally it's $7,500 to do this diagnostic. Right now I'm doing a no charge strictly through the month of March. For everybody that reaches out to me in March, we're going to do a no charge diagnostic so you can start to see a clear roadmap of where your company is. and the places that you need to move the needle. that is, so reach out to me directly for that as well because I want to get you a clear picture.
There's an expression I heard several years ago that's always stuck with me is a problem that is well defined is half solved. So that is what we do is we help you clearly define where the problems are in your company that you can't see because you're in it. You can't see the forest for the trees. I promise you we will find you. Usually.
So here's a good example. We did this with a company that last year's revenue small company. They did seven hundred and seventy one thousand dollars. We found them two hundred just over two hundred thousand dollars of EBITDA that should have been there. That wasn't and those been wasted.
And in the first two weeks we were able to reclaim him over forty thousand dollars cash in his pocket that was just nonexistent to him because he couldn't see it. 402) If you don't know what I mean by reclaim the EBITDA, that's also a reason we should chat because we can show you what that means. So if you ever want to exit your company, it's massive to know this. So reach out. We're doing that diagnostic at no cost right now because I want you all to clearly see a picture and a snapshot of the health of your organization.
And we can provide you with that clarity so you'll know. exactly what to do when we leave that meeting. If you want help with it, then we can continue the conversation. If not, perfectly fine. It is something that I'm doing right now because I really, really, really, really want to help all of you avoid getting taken advantage of by all of these platforms that are asking you to give up huge portions of your company.
So let's get to the content today. OK, so what happened was I was when I was training last week, we were talking about the first five minutes of an appointment. You know, the walk up, the introduction, the initial interaction when you're in your appointments. So what happened is one of the techs said something like, yeah, sometimes homeowners are just difficult. They don't trust us right from the jump.
And so I stopped him. I was like, here's here's what most people in in our industry that we don't understand. We get so focused on the the problem. that that's all we see. Because when the phone rings, when someone calls you or books an appointment online, that means they've hit a tipping point, not a sales tipping point, they've hit an emotional tipping point.
Because something has gotten to the place where they are tired of dealing with it. And of course, yes, we know demand season, it's peak winter, peak summer. If something is broken, clearly that's an urgent call. It's a demand call. But we know those are what 20 or 30 percent of the actual appointments we go out on.
So what's happened here is something has gotten to the place where they're tired of dealing with it. The pain got big enough. The frustration reached a level where they finally said, I've got to do something about this. But here's the part we miss about that. To get to that point.
426) to get on that phone call, get to the appointment, they had to overcome something most of us don't even think about anymore, social anxiety. Now, I know this sounds dramatic, Hear me out. Raise your hand if you know somebody or maybe you're this person who you've got a hard time making phone calls. My wife, she has to work herself up to call anybody. Like literally, sometimes it's hours, sometimes it's a day or two.
She'll sit and go, Okay, I'm gonna do this. I'm gonna make this call. And it's not just her. We all do this now. I mean, how many times have your best friend in the world calls you and you watch your cell phone and wait till it stops ringing and then you text back and go, hey, what's up?
We all do it, right? And so we don't even like talking on the phone with people that we love. We don't even like, you know, And then take that a step further, people coming to the house, right? So imagine what it takes for a stranger, a homeowner who's never met you, to pick up the phone to call a contractor. That's step one.
But step two, they're inviting that stranger into their home, not just into the driveway, in their house, to walk through every room, to see their mess, to be there for an hour, maybe two, maybe more, and... We don't even like our friends coming over unannounced. Does this sound right? You know I'm right in this. So someone knocks on your door on a Saturday morning and you're like, who is that?
I wasn't expecting anyone. I'm not even dressed, right? So people call us and they invite us into their most personal space all the time. And we forget that. Why?
Because they hit the tipping point. their comfort became so uncomfortable that the pain was big enough to take action. They stepped outside of their comfort zone, overcame the social anxiety, and said, I need help. That's what the phone call means. So when you show up, they've already said yes to you being there, but that does not mean that they're comfortable yet.
And so... 69) Here's the mental model I need you to lock into when you're thinking about this. Your homeowners that you're working with has already made a hard decision. Your job is to honor that decision by making them feel safe. Think about what's going through their mind when you pull up.
Who's going to be in my house? Are they a felon? Are they a crackhead? Are they going to steal from me? Do they know what they're doing?
Are they going to break something? Are they going to step on my roses? They're going to track mud everywhere. They're going to leave cigarette butts in the driveway. Are they going to leave the place a mess?
These are real concerns. We forget this all the time because it's what we do on day in and day out. And we assume that people know that we're going to not do that or take care of it. But the truth is, we all know 80 % of the contractors in the world do exactly this. And that's why the concerns are what they are.
These are real concerns and they're not about you specifically. They're about contractors in general. Because we've all heard the horror stories. We've all seen the news articles about the plumber who robbed the house or the HVAC guy who left a gas leak and the house exploded. We've seen those news stories.
So when you show up, you're not just walking into a service call. You're walking into their fears, their anxieties, their last bit of trust that you're going to going to make their life worse. That's what we're walking into. And that's why the first five minutes of your appointment matter so much. The first five minutes will make or break it.
You can recover, but man, it's hard. But if you get it right from the start, everything flows. It just is like going downhill at that point. It's much easier to push a boulder down the hill than it is up. So.
What is your job in those first five minutes you ask? Well, I'm gonna answer. So what that is, is you have to make them feel safe, comfortable, trusted, lower the resistance. We have to show them that calling you was the right decision because the thing is they don't know you yet. I don't care how long, how many years they've used your company.
What that, all that means is it's a familiar name. That means for... 694) for most people and for the most part, they may have seen one of your personnel maybe, maybe twice a year for what, 15 to 45 minutes. And most of the time that's not interacting with them. It's typically just, hey, I'm gonna go do this thing and I'll let you know when I'm done.
So they do they truly don't know your company. They don't know you. They don't know anything about you or your company other than, we've used them and I guess we've got no case service or maybe great service, but they don't know you yet. So we have to lower their resistance. Show them that calling you was the right decision.
They don't know if you started last week or if you've been doing this for 20 years. They don't know. They don't know if you're good at your job or if you're just going through the motions. They don't know if you're going to rip them off or actually help them. All they know is that they're uncomfortable and they need help.
And they took a risk by letting you in the house. They took a risk by letting you in. So the question is, how are you going to honor that? So let's apply this real world. So here's a great real world example of what this looks like.
Here's on the phone. You've got 30 seconds. That's it. The way the call gets answered sets the tone for everything. So instead of, yeah, this is ABC heating.
What's the problem? What if it sounded like, hey, thanks so much for calling. You called the right place. We're so glad you reached out. What's going on?
Hear the difference? One sounds very transactional. The other sounds like relief. So I'm here to tell you there are no rules in this game. As long as you do things legally, morally, and ethically sound and full of integrity, Anything else that is a story that you're telling yourself of what you can and can't say and can and can't do is strictly a story, a narration that you're telling yourself that's more than likely wrong because there are no rules.
So simple, hey, thanks so much for calling. You called the right place. We're so glad you reached out. What's going on? How can we help today?
646) That's how we start to show relief. And that's when they need in the moment. That's exactly what they need is relief that they made the right call. So on the walk up, first impressions, it happens in seconds. When you walk to the door, you're not just showing up to fix equipment.
You're not just showing up to fix the thing. You're showing up as a professional who's there to help. And that mental shift will change everything. So that means, yes, clean uniform. If you're in an area where you, a time of year or part of the country where you sweat a lot, take another shirt, take a change of clothes, it's okay.
I give you permission. Keep it in your van. Keep it in your truck. If you need to, do it. It's perfectly fine.
Confident but kind energy. Smile. They can even feel it through the door. Your energy introduces yourself before you ever knock on the door. respecting their space.
All the things. We know the basics. Where are you parked? Did I park okay? Is anybody going to need to get out?
Would it be a bad idea if I put these floor savers on? Do it anyway. Even if say you don't, if you don't have to. When they open the door, the first thing out of your mouth should not be, so what's broken? It should be, hi, I'm Sam with Close It Now Heating and Air.
I'm my name with this company. Thanks for having me out. I know it's not fun when stuff breaks. When stuff breaks, I'm here to help. Is it okay if I come in?
Just take charge for right at the beginning and be the leader, but do it in a gracious, kind way. And that's what a professional does. You're asking permission. You're acknowledging their discomfort. You're positioning yourself as the guide, not an intruder.
So once you're in the home, Once you're inside, your job is to continue lowering resistance. That means telling them what you're going to do before you do it. The power of the agenda. Asking where they'd like you to set your tools. Using floor protection without being asked.
Not making them feel stupid for not knowing things. And here is the big one. Don't hover. If they're following you around, it's because they don't trust you yet. 58) It's okay.
So instead of getting annoyed, understand it and then create space. Hey, I'm going to take a look at the furnace. It'll probably take me about 15 minutes to run some tests. You're welcome to hang out, but you don't have to. I'll come grab you when I'm done and walk you through what I found.
Sound good? You just gave them permission to leave. You told them what to expect. You respected their time. That's how you honor the tipping point.
Because so there's a deeper level to this too. And this is the piece that, you know, when most salespeople and most reps and most techs treat the appointment like it starts when they walk in the door, but it doesn't. It started the moment they realized they had a problem. And then it kept going and it started and it kept going when they worked up the courage to make the call. And it started when they overcame their anxiety about letting a stranger in their home.
By the time you show up, they've already been through a serious emotional journey. And if you don't honor that journey, if you show up like it's just another job, you're going to lose them. Not because you're bad at your job, but because you didn't see them as a person first. So this is what I mean when I say my job is got to make this your mantra. My job is to focus on the human first, the problem second, and the solution third.
The person is always first. And when the person that called you, they're scared, they're uncomfortable, they have anxieties, they have fears, they're hoping they made the right decision. So when you show up with empathy, with professionalism, with respect, you're not just fixing their equipment, you're validating their courage. You did the right thing by calling, you're in great hands. Hey, we do this all the time, no problem.
You called the right place, we see this problem all the time, and there's almost always a solution. We'll go over what that is. I'll check it out. We'll go over what the solutions are. I'll tell you what.
We'll work together to come up with what the best fit for you and your home to, you and your family to get you going today. Sound good? Sounds good. Right? And so that's when trust starts to build.
You did the right thing. You're in good hands. Now what I'm not talking about is artificially creating magic moments throughout your process that sounds creepy and weird. 336) you've been given the opportunity to help. That's what makes the biggest difference.
And that's when trust starts to build. That's when they stop hovering. That's when they start listening. That's when the cell becomes possible because they already said yes to you being there. Now you just have to show them they were right to do it.
So let's bring this home. When the phone rings, the homeowner has hit an emotional tipping point. They've overcome social anxiety, invited a stranger into their home and taken a risk by calling you. Your job isn't to convince them. Your job is to honor the courage it took for them to call.
The first five minutes, whether on the phone or at the door, will make or break the appointment. So make them feel safe, make them feel comfortable, trusted, lower their resistance by acknowledging the concerns before they even have to say them. You know, show them that calling you was the right decision because they already said yes. Now it's on you to prove they were right. I know this is a little bit of a mental shift in this, but it's so important.
And the minute you grasp this, you're going to see some serious difference in the way they respond to you during your appointments. So if this shifted how you think about homeowners and if you are realizing that the appointment doesn't start when you walk in, but the moment they decided to call, I want to challenge you. Walk into your next appointment differently. See the person first, honor the tipping point, make them feel safe in the first five minutes, and watch what happens. Because when you stop treating homeowners like transactions and start seeing them as people who took a risk by trusting you, everything changes.
net slash coaching. Like I said, we've got the next round of group coaching starting a the first week of April. Five people, it's going to be for six months at half the cost of the one-to-one. So let's talk about how to multiply your numbers this year. And next week, we're going to be talking about something that solves the number one reason homeowners say, let me think about it.
It's called show your work. And just like in math class, if you don't show your work, you don't get credit. Even if the answer is right, it's still wrong. 756) So I'm Sam Wakefield. This is Close It Now.
Go sell something. If you've gotten value from this, I would love for you to leave me a five-star review on Google and Apple Podcasts. You can go do that. The link is in the show notes. Until next time, everybody, you go be someone worth buying from.