Transcript:
Welcome back everyone to episode number two of the Service Legend podcast. I am here a man I, I’ve got someone special for you guys. I listen to Bradlee’s podcast a lot and he always opens up and goes, Man, I’ve got a I’ve got a real treat for you guys today. And that’s how I feel like starting up with this one. It’s like I was telling Chuck here before we got going that I’ve just been inspired by Chuck, I’ve listened to Chuck, I’ve been following him for years and this is a selfish one for me, I will tell you. But yeah, I mean, Chuck is here. Chuck is it is it Toki or Toki? It’s Toki. The H is silent. Is it really good? I answered it both. I always had that as a kid. Well, Chuck. Chuck Dokie is here with top rep. Chuck is from Dayton, Ohio, and he is a sales and marketing coach, author, mentor, keynote speaker. Right now he helps small to large home improvement companies from roofing, concrete coating, painting, you name it, just really grow their sales by as much as 50 to 80%. And quite frankly, Chuck is an absolute sales legend, service legend. So welcome. Thank you, Ryan. Thank you. How are you doing? This is going to be fun. I really appreciate you having me on. And I been looking at your your group, your Facebook group, and you have a you have a great community behind you.
Thank you, man. Thank you. We actually started the Facebook group last Saturday and it’s been a long time coming to start the podcast, start the group we’ve been building. And, you know, for me, I’m not just, I guess the normal marketing company guy. I actually own a seven figure concrete coding company and we did 1.5 cash collected, not not sold, 1.5 cash collected, 1.5 or first year. And so I have a unique, I guess angle. And so but I’m glad to be out here, the pod with with the group, things like that. So just to give you some context, too, like here at Service Legend, it’s really short for Home Service Legend. And I was really inspired by guys like Tommy Melo, the Brandon Vaughns, the Jeff GEERS, guys like you, that, that, that it was, it was more than just the revenue is more than just, you know, having a seven or eight figure or nine figure company. It was it was also about the the servant leadership, the impact. The freedom is much more than just the revenue. You know, and I know that you share a lot of those same things, but before we get into kind of you add in those things just to get right into it like. Tell us about top rep. Like what is top rep? Who is it for? Is it for coding companies? Painting companies? Individuals, companies? Like what? What is top rep? So top rep is for all service companies.
We have roofers, we have window companies. We do have a lot of of the concrete coatings companies. I used to own a concrete coating company. And so I know the business very, very well. I coach a lot of concrete co coating companies as well as some of the larger franchise companies. So yeah, I know it very well. So when we can bring people like that into top rep, remember top rep is it’s a boot camp, so you’re not coming there to think, oh, we’re going to go have a ton of fun. I mean, I’m hoping that you have a lot of fun, but I mean, it can be pretty grueling. We’re going to teach you from A to Z the entire sales process. We’re not leaving anything out. So you’re going to you’re going to learn the entire sales process, but also you’re going to understand the the the experience that you’re supposed to have in the house. We’re putting together a platform that people can have online, but you cannot get the experience that you can get there at top rep. The other is that you have the camaraderie with other sales reps. You get to understand why some of these other sales reps are selling, you know, 2 million, $3 million on their own. And so, I mean, there is some people there that come to compete and you get the chance to get to know them.
These are some of the best of the best. And you get to understand why. Why are they so successful? They’re no different than you. And some of them started out a lot like me, where I was not good at sales. I was not good at sales. Come on. So you are a natural. I’m a huge introvert. Everybody knows I don’t talk a lot when I’m not in front of a camera, in front of a group of people. I don’t talk a lot. So I mean it’s and to find out that I’ve gone from where I struggled to every company I was with, I was I was the top rep. And now being a sales trainer, sales coach of some of the largest organizations in the country, I mean, it’s it can be taught. It’s not something that’s natural. Hmm. Yeah. For me, like. There’s so much there. Like, number one, like you own a coding company. There’s so many cool things. For me, I’ve always I wouldn’t say I’m a natural sales person. I’m just a more of a extrovert type of person. I’m a I’m a talker, unfortunately, you know. And my wife will will tell you that, too, in the mornings at 5 a.m. when we’re walking, that’s when all my ideas go to her. No, but I always felt like I was some sort of like a natural type of type of person, you know, when it comes to sales or things like that.
Now, what I did realize is I don’t think I would have made a great salesperson long term. So I’m glad I got into running the businesses and doing those things because although I’m good with some words, but like long term, I don’t think I would have been like if I was a sales person or sales professional for 20 years, I don’t think I would have done too well. And but I so I so my point in saying that, Chuck, is I believe in the training and I think there’s intentionality needed because like what you said, it’s like the natural thing is this it’s going to dwindle away, you know. And so the top rep boot camp the training so imperative. Could you just touch on before my next question? You owned a coding company. Can you just break that down just a little bit? So we I owned a coding company with and I I’m sure you’re aware of Corey Henson with easy concrete supply. Yeah. Love Corey, man. Shout out to Corey and easy over there. Yeah. I mean, him and I actually went into business the same time with a company called Re Deck and we nobody was there to teach us anything. We it was trial by fire. And there is a product that we were using at the time that they told us it was tested, but it wasn’t tested and it turned white.
And if you want to see a grown man cry when you put all this stuff down and we we just learned over over time. And one of the things that we realized was that we wanted to get deeper into the epoxy, we wanted to get into the flake and that kind of thing. And so I grew the company really big and an offer came in to buy me out. So we went ahead and took it and then got into the rest of the service industry and it was history from there. And that’s incredible, man. I love that. I love that. And we were just chatting before we got live here about mergers and acquisitions coming into the coding industry. You know, it’s been prevalent here in and roofing first it was kind of more prevalent. Now it’s kind of getting getting everywhere. I mean, you see service Titan. I love service Titan. Chapter service Titan. But I mean, they’re they’re they’re spreading their wings into different industries, which is nice. I’ve got some more announcements with Service Titan coming coming soon. But so that’s just amazing, man. I, I missed that one, actually. And now that you say you owned a coding company, it actually I remember that now. How long ago was that, Chuck, when you. Oh, gosh, that was 13 years ago. Wow, that’s incredible. That was before anybody was teaching anything, that’s for sure. Wow, that’s incredible, man. That’s incredible. I want to I want to get more on that maybe offline, but and then so top rep.
So it’s not so it’s a boot camp. Could you break down like so if I come to top rep, I think there’s an event coming up in August. Right. And Philadelphia, August 23rd and 24th. It’s going to be in Philly. Okay. So so if anyone’s interested, go to top rep. Well, actually, I have the link down here in the description. Go to that link, sign up, get your information. It’s in August. So if I go there like, you know, it’s a boot camp. Just elaborate on that a little bit. Like what can I expect? Just that. So we’re going to teach on mindset. We’re also going to teach. So we want you to have that frame of mind of understanding what a champion truly is when they’re out selling. Then from there we go through each phase of the sale. While we go through each phase we’re going to, everybody will go into their their groups. You’re going to have a group of guys you don’t know, guys and gals that you’ve never met. And you’re going to go through that first phase, the second phase, third phase of each part of the sale with them. And you’re going going to role play that phase with them. And so there’s there’s going to be leaders in the group, people that have already done it before. That’s going to help you through it.
But ultimately, that’s where we compete. That’s where everybody get jumps in and helps each other out and truly gets through that pitch. But what you’re going to find out is how we have engineered this pitch. We’ve made sales easy. We over the years, even when I came in, it was this long, long winded script on just how to get through a front door. And now we’ve made it so easy to understand right down. The rebuttals. We have this thing called a closing roadmap that I’ve engineered over the years, and now some of the largest home service companies in the country are now using it. They understand that they can bring in new sales reps and that doesn’t they don’t need to go through 3 to 4 weeks of training. So it’s it makes things very, very easy. Well, you might want to send them a top rep, send them to Philadelphia in August. You got any new reps from now to August? Cinnamon, top rep. You know, that’s really, really cool. So before we get any further along, like, could you just like before you got started, it was speaking on stages. I mean, you’re just everywhere, man. Like, literally, it’s like it’s it’s it’s incredible. But before all of that, before we get on the stages helping, you know, would it be thousands of companies now? Is it thousands and thousands of companies blow up sales training just.
Talk us through, like before that. How’d you get into sales? Like, why did you get into sales? How did you train? Like, just just all of that? I was actually an aerospace engineer until 911. And long story short, I got thrown into sales. That’s nobody was hiring engineers for for any type of aerospace. So long story short, I got thrown into sales, did very, very well in mortgage. And then this company called Bath Butter came out and it was very small at the time. They they wanted to go nationwide. They were coming out of Canada and Canada. It was called Bath Magic. And so while they came in to to the United States, I was brought into a couple of the the franchises and worked to really grow them to where you see it today, where they are literally 2 to 3 times their competitor, their biggest competitor, their massive bath water is. And so I get this phone call of a company that is in roofing and says, hey, we want you to do the same thing for us. We want to go nationwide. And as they they call it, they needed a hotshot. And so when I got into Bath better and they asked me how much I knew about bathrooms, my answer was, is that I got one. I didn’t know anything. I didn’t know anything about plumbing. I mean, I knew that I had one. That was it. And so that’s the same thing with roofing.
I went there. It was it was a larger company. They were already about $60 Million. And at that time at the time, they were already about $60. Oh, okay. So already so a $60 million a year company called you for help, right? Well, okay, let’s just say something. So if you’re doing 500 K a month or sorry, 500 K a year, you’re on track. You do a million this year. A $60 million a year company called for help. All right. So now we know who we’re talking to here. And so I went in and I said, so how much how much do you know about roofing? I says, I’ve got one. That’s about all I knew about roofing. And so they’d ask me, like, we’re already 60 million. We want to go nationwide. How how are you going to make us bigger? And I said, here’s the thing, is that you’re you know, that you’re a roofing company. The problem is, is you already you’re gonna step two, which is you’re a roofing company or a sales and marketing organization that just happens to sell roofing. We’ve all heard this, but I says, I’m going to take you to number three. And it’s it’s a a very, very large investor that now owned a roof. And Mr. Roof. And she looks at me, she goes, I’ve not heard of the third level. And I says, well, it’s it’s the fact that I’m going to take you to be a training organization, and I’m going to train your people and I’m going to train them again when they are so sick and tired of being trained, I’m going to train them one more time and all of my sales reps that that are still there.
And some of them have gone to start their own companies. But we we took it from there to now. I mean, they’re they’re heading up close to 200 million now and that’s Able Roof or Mr. Able and Mr. Roof, they’re mostly on the East Coast. Wow. They also own a large brand called contractor zinc that does their commercial work. So they’re able and Mr. Roof, that’s all residential for for close to 200 million. It’s incredible. It’s incredible, man. So you were you were an engineer. So so you know how to critically think and do things that are probably way over my head. Do you think that that, like, helped you? Kind of just kind of really framework and mind map and just really critically think about making sales simple because it seems like that’s what is one of the big things of top rep is you know a lot of coating companies are painting companies. You’re doing 50 grand a month, 80 grand a month, 100, whatever it is. But that thought of getting to the next level, building the sell team, building the training, I mean, it’s overwhelming.
But you’ve really simplified that. Do you kind of where do you find that ability to simplify those, those things like that? Well, it was out of a need that I have there. I actually have a severe learning disability. I have to write everything down. If I don’t write it down, I won’t remember it. My wife tells me ten second time. So it’s it’s just something with me. And so I for me, I had to simplify it. I when I got into sales, I went in and I memorized all the scripts as hard as it was for me. But I realized that you didn’t need all these scripts, you didn’t need all the fancy Tom Hopkins language and a lot of that stuff. You don’t really need all that. You just need to understand the philosophy. And once we broken down the philosophy behind it, when you say that, how did how to be an engineer add into this? For me, I’m very process oriented and the type of engineering that I did was always finding problems. I was a functional test engineer, so everything was always broke when I got a hold of it. And so it’s the same thing. I come in and there’s a system that’s broke and we ask ourselves Why five times? So why is this not working? And we’ll find out why it’s not working. Then I’ll ask Why does this happen? And I’ll ask myself why five times.
And you will dig so deep into the weeds that you will realize what’s going on truly going on inside your organization. I do the same thing when I come into broken organizations or organizations that just need some help is we’ll go through that those five whys. And again, it’s not it’s not rocket science it’s just asking the asking why five times. Yeah that’s incredible. Well, it is rocket science. But with the help of chalk and top rep, it’s not anymore because. Because he’s done the hard work for us. That’s incredible, man. You know, one of my good friends and mentors, Tommy, his company is on track to do about 200 million this year as well. And and I again, my my office is 5 minutes from his my house is right here. And so I have the honor and the privilege of just being able to kind of just listen and learn. And what I’ve realized that his business and he just built this amazing training facility, I mean, it’s it’s just world class. It’s all about training there, you know. I think he has seven or eight full time, really high professional trainers now there. And you know, from the scale standpoint when we’re talking about to 40 million, 50 million, up to 200 now this year. It’s all training, you know. And so I just I just love this. And I was telling you, I love this this whole methodology around training, always learning.
I don’t care if you’re the best. Learn how to be better because someone’s going to be catching up to you very soon. So I love this whole concept. So I’d love to break down the top rep cell system. I don’t want you to give away any secrets because, you know, I still want people to understand that there’s there’s there’s intention. Like, it’s it’s very there’s a lot of merit and benefit to to getting out of your business, out of your office, going to a different place, rubbing elbows with other high performers masterminding. So, like, if you could break it down just a little bit further, because I know on the site it’s increasing sales as much as or increase or growing the sales as much as 50 to 80%. So maybe we could break that down just a little bit more around increasing the like the closing rates, the sales mindset, anything that you think would be great for that. But just breaking down the top rep sales system a little bit further. Like what? Is it just in the home? Do you have some lead conversion stuff in there or is it follow up? Break it down a bit further. So there’s going to be all the above when like with with a lot of these concrete coding companies, they go in. They think that if I just work really hard, I’m going to get there, too. And that is not the case.
Yeah, you have to be smarter at working harder and so understanding that we need to make you different. Every coding company that’s ever come to me, I says, Look, let me ask you, what makes you different? And everybody says the exact same thing. They say, you know, you have great customer service. I’m like, great. Nobody cares about your customer service until after they’ve bought your product, you know? So we need to look at what truly makes your your company different. And so we want to to have anybody that comes to top rep or anybody that we work with in general is how can we make your material sound different? How can we make your pitch sound different? The the names that you put on your systems, how can we make that different so that when you go into a house and you’re the third coding company there and they’re like, oh my gosh, this this sounds like everybody else’s pitch. You know, all they want me to do is pick color. And it sounds so good. And they’re the best and they’re the greatest and nobody gives a damn, you know? So we need them to understand that we’re going to make you different. We’re going to make you look different, sound different so that when you do go in, they’re like, Wow, you know what? That’s something I’ve not heard before. And the moment that that comes out of their mouth, they might as well start signing checks.
Yeah, I love that. What I see a lot to in the coding industry and the paint industry is like kind of like what you touched on which is. There’s a lot of talk about, hey, I’m. We’re the best. Hey, we use the best product. Hey. And it’s like, same thing if I go try to meet, I guess, a girl when I, you know, before I was married, you know, as a, as a kid, you might go and say, Hey, man, I am so cool. I have I have a cool car. I have my own apartment now. I got. Right, right. And it’s like the girl’s like, I don’t care about those things that you like that you’re pat yourself on the back about. It’s like, do you see that a lot too, with these companies? And that’s where they go. That’s all it is. That’s all you see, because that’s all they know how to talk about. They think that every homeowner wants the best. They don’t want the best. What they want is somebody that they trust. It’s not even people say, Oh, they want somebody they like and trust. They don’t even need to like them as much as they need to trust that they’re going to do it right the first time. And that they also trust that if something were to happen, that they’re going to come back. They’re still going to be in business.
Yeah. Especially right now with the coding space to where it is. I mean, we were just chatting a little bit about Tzr and my good friend Jeff Gear, and he’s he’s been a mentor of mine, too. They just they’re just doing some crazy things with revamp and like there’s so many companies popping up. I mean, it is just insane. I mean, I’m here in Phoenix. We probably have 300 companies here and a lot of a lot of our clients and just future clients or whoever in the industry kind of look to cardinal as like like how are we selling a six, seven, $8 a square foot? Well. In roofing and kitchen remodeling and garage doors and HVAC. And in all these different things, there’s there’s companies doing that, too. I mean, there’s companies that are selling profitably, those companies that are doing well and those companies that are not. What do you think the biggest differentiator is there like between like here in Phoenix, Ohio, Columbus, over there you’ve got LA, all these big areas. There’s just hundreds of coating companies or painting companies in there. How do you how do you bridge that gap from the companies that are like owner operator, you know, charging the the least to the guy who’s charging the most? Like what’s that gap there, you think? Well, first of all, it’s you have companies that think that people still buy on price and then you have companies that realize that value is king.
And if they can show the value, bring the value and present that value, well, the price doesn’t truly matter as much. I wish I had a bomb like Bradley’s podcast where he has that bomb thing. I’m not sure if you saw your podcast, but his podcast is called the Dropping Bombs Podcast, and whenever someone drops bombs, he has this button, he goes, boom. How good time for that right there. Stop selling on price. Start selling on value. I love that. It’s a mindset. If your sales rep goes in with the mindset that I have to sell price, that’s what he’s going to sell. You know, he’s going to tell them how great he is and how low his price is. You know, it’s where the value fits in. You have to get the customer on your side. And so you get these these. I guess you can get you get these companies that when they do understand the value, they do understand how to translate that to a homeowner so that they understand that if you if you want somebody that’s still going to be in business when you need help. When you need help. Then you’re going to have to spend a little bit extra cash now if you just want to get by. Mr. and Mrs. Smith, have you just looking to sell this place and you could care less what happens to this place? You need to go look for price.
I’m not ill. I’m not those folks. And so when we relate that to folks and then their clothes rates start to double and triple. That’s where the success stories come in. That’s where the lights come on for these sales reps. One of my favorite sales reps inside of of the coatings business is a guy by the name of John Casella, and he’s right here in Dayton, Ohio. This guy sells coatings like I’ve never seen before. He is just an amazing individual. And he goes in with that mindset that price is nothing but a number. When I give him a price, that means nothing to me. If I’m going to drop a price of 20,000 for a garage for. It means nothing to him. He drops that price as if it’s $5. Love that. Just. Ultimate confidence and belief in the value. That’s freaking awesome. And I love that. I love that. So I’d love to transition Chuck a little bit into these objections. We’ve got a couple of different objections from people, and these are super common. I mean, we see them here at Cardinal. I’ve talked to many, many coaching companies, whether we’re coaching them, whether we’re doing their marketing, onboarding them, you name it. And some companies that are doing 6 million a year to companies are doing 200 million like these are. It seems like the objections there’s not a lot of new ones.
I mean, they’re just they’re they’re just they’re like when I was I was talking I was chatting with you. My first experience in sales. I sold cars, you know, and I tell you what, I was I was I was good at it. I loved it, you know, and and it was fun because it was a game, you know? And, you know, I think the same thing with life. A lot of things in life can be looked at as a game. And I’m here to win, you know? And that’s how I looked at the car sales. But I had these same things, whether it was car sales and home sales. Do you find similarities from whether it was the mortgage industry, whether it was whatever it is? Top ten objections are pretty much the same, right? It’s all the same. It’s from trade to trade. It’s always the same. Yeah. Okay. I want to make sure we are in agreement on that, that if you’re an owner operator, listen to this. You’re running your company, you’re also kind of running production or sales, whether you have a couple of million dollars in gross revenue and you maybe have a sales manager or whatever it may be, let’s just get on a level playing field here that there’s no unique objection that is unique to you or your company or your area. We hear that a lot worse. I hold on. Say I’m in Dallas, Texas.
People here are different. They’re like, no, no, no, I’m in north Wisconsin. These objections are different. No, no, hold on a second. I’m in I’m in Miami. I’m just like, look, so I’m glad we were in agreement there. So some of the top ones that we got in the group, too, were. Let me get with my wife and I’ll get back to you. Maybe we could role play a little bit if you if you don’t mind. So I could say, hey, well, I’ll ask you, Chuck, are you okay with that? Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. So let me get my wife, let me go with my husband. And you know what, Chuck? I’ll get back to you after I talk with her or him. No problem. Not a problem at all. You know, what I’m going to do today is I’m going to go ahead and do everything that I need as far as all my measurements, everything that you’re looking for, I need to take this stuff back. I want to put it in front of our production department. When’s a good time that we can both get back together? And it would be great to have Mary there, too. When’s a good time that we can all get back together again? Well, it’s 2 p.m. now. She gets home. I mean. I could probably get back. Maybe tonight. Tomorrow? I talked to her. Something like that. You say tonight would be good? Right around six.
Well, she gets on about six, so maybe a little bit after that. I can talk to her about 615. Would that be good? I’m not going to be right in there with dinner. I’m not disrupting anything. You’ve got to have about 20, 30 minutes to spend with me afterwards. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Now, can I just give you a call back then, or what’s what’s the deal there? What I’d like to do, because I’m going to be in this area anyways, I’d like to go ahead and get on your calendar for tonight so I can put it on my calendar. That way we’re both clear. We. We don’t have to worry about other things popping up. Locked in. So there is when you look at the fact that the husband or the wife isn’t there, and in this day and age, you’re going to find one léger’s. This is what we call in our industry called one liners. You’re going to find that more and more and more, and I’m going to take that. What’s that? Now it’s more prevalent. Now it’s a lot more prevalent. And the reason why it’s not because people are more busy, it’s because customers have all been to sales school, you know, they know they see Chuck everywhere and on YouTube and he’s freaking everywhere. It’s I’m telling you, man, it’s it’s the customers have seen it. Some of them have sold before. And they know the easiest way out is to not have one of them.
They’re they’re going to blame it on the other. Wow, man, that’s really to go through this. I really need to see what my wife has to say. I do it, too, and I’m going to shop somebody out. I send my wife to the store. Yeah. And what’s even worse is I have yet to have somebody try to to reschedule with me. And I’m like, man, if you guys only knew. And so let’s say that I’m going back and forth. We say, man, there’s there’s just no way, man, I got to have the estimate. Now, you’re not going to get me and my my wife together. We just never spent any time together. Yeah. Then your Hail Mary is going to be let me ask you, I mean, you know your wife better than I do. What do you think she’d say? Ooh. Och, och, I love that one, because, I mean, there’s not much you can do. She’s not here. And so let’s. I’m going to kind of spin this thing back around to say, what do you think she’d say? Again, there’s no rebuttal. That works 100% of the time, but there are rebuttals that work a majority of the time. So it seems like when I talk to people, it seems like because those are two bold things too, because it’s being bold as being confident and saying, hey, well, hold on a second.
There’s there’s something going on. He wants to he wants to transition. But I’m going to I’m going to I’m going to transition with him. And because I’m not letting him go, you know. And so it seems like there’s a boldness there of like, hey, you know what? Hold on a second. It’s okay to reschedule. It’s okay to say okay. No worries. Let’s reschedule. I’m going to get back on the calendar or I mean, it’s a bold question. Do you find it challenging, I guess, for salespeople? Like they’re not bold enough or not confident enough to say, hey, Chuck, completely understand. What do you think that your wife would say? I mean, if you chatted with her about this, like, do you find sales reps not confident enough to say that or not bold enough or what’s the challenge there? A little bit of both. Most people just don’t understand what their job truly is in the house. We save customers, we don’t sell them. So what you need to do is you need to look at all the other companies in town that would screw that homeowner over if they had the opportunity. And so if you knew this and the only way that you could save this customer from going with any of those other those other companies that would screw them over, they would they would back roll the material, try to put less material down, whatever the case may be.
The only way that you can save them is to sell them or to close them with with your company that you know, that you’re going to do the right thing. And so now we save them, we don’t sell them. And so with that being said, that’s why we do one call close. People think of one call and you’re like, Oh my gosh, this is hard closing. I have never done a hard close. I’ve taught it, I know it, but I’m not even comfortable doing it. And so looking at hard closing or looking at closing in general, it’s just a path you need to take. But you have 45 to 90 minutes to close them. And so you have to be very bold. In many cases, there’s times where you’re going to have to call that customer out. And we go and we go through a survey. And part of that survey is I’m going to ask them, so how long have you been thinking about getting this thing done, knowing that buyers are liars? Once I put the price on the table and they’re going to start saying, Oh, well, we need to think about this. Well, if I ask earlier, what made you how long have you been thinking about this or Oh, man, I’ve been wanting to do this for two years. I have to wait for it. I had to wait for her to get her kitchen. Did she get her kitchen? I mean, this is beautiful.
Yeah, all done. So it’s now it’s time for you to get your your garage floor. Yep. I’m going to stick that right in that back pocket, and I’m going to bring it out when I need to. Everything that you say and do is going to be held against you at the closing table. You know, so we look at at the entire process as a road to take that homeowner down to get that job done. That’s amazing, man. Save them, not sell them. And actually, it makes me think about you being an engineer and coming to a problem and solving it. And it kind of reminds me of like that. Whereas so when we get into the home, like, I’m here to solve problems, I’m, I’m here to save you from the detriment that you’re going to experience with going somewhere else like I. I believe it with you. So it’s awesome. So when you do that scheduling, put them on the calendar hard, right? Like, Hey, we’re on the calendar. This is. So I’m going to be back here at 615. I mean, you guys are going to answer the door, right? If anything were to happen, please let me know. I mean, you have to be very up front. You don’t want to come back when you should be with your own family. And that house is locked up tighter than the drum. I would I would I would break the window and I would go through and check out.
Interesting. I love that one because that’s a big one, right? You know, like you said, I do it, too. And even being in sales, I think our salespeople are the easiest to sell. I mean, because whenever we see a problem internally, we will go fix it, you know? But that’s that’s a very big one. With the one Lakers going on now, do you think it’s important to try to get as many to Lakers like like in the lead conversion process, like the setter? We should be asking, hey, can we have all decision makers there? Right. You you have to be somewhat careful how you word it. Same thing when you’re resetting. You have to be careful, especially if it’s a single if it’s a lady and the husband’s not there. You have to be very careful how you set this. You almost want to blame it on on the fact that you have to bring this back to the company, because if you say I’m sure you want your husband there, bad review. You know, she’s going to run it up the flagpole. So it’s no different than if he was there and she wasn’t. But she doesn’t see it that way. All of a sudden she sees it as, Oh, she sees the little lady and can’t make the decisions like, Ma’am, it has nothing to do with it.
Yeah, but they’re not going to. They’re not going to see it that way. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And there’s been a lot of appointments that I’ve been hearing as well with everyone being homes, I mean, even after the thing, right? I don’t like to say the word, but after the thing, the past couple of years, there’s still a lot of people work from home, you know, and I think there’s been times where you might have one of the, let’s say, the husband or the wife out there at the appointment, and that other spouse is there at the house. But since you didn’t ask for them to both be there, like and so like, you’ll be at an appointment and you’re doing the appointment with the wife or the husband and you’re wondering, Wow, I’m running like a one legged appointment. Well, you are. That spouse is in the home. And if you would have asked and properly set, you could have had them both there. I’ve I’ve seen that a lot, too. Interesting. Here’s an easy way to get both of them. They’re like, we have phone scripts that we hand out. But one of the easiest ways to get both people there is to let them know that we need all homeowners to be present during the initial visit and for all subsequent visits. When we have to come back, it’s totally up to you. Who’s there? Well, Ryan, this is a one call closed.
There is no subsequent visits. But for them, I want them to understand that, you know, that there’s going to be a lot of questions, there’s a lot of options. There’s a lot that’s going to go on in this initial visit so that we can do our fact finding. We want both homeowners to be there, all homeowners to be there. And now it’s not, oh, my gosh, I’ve got to send her to the store. It’s or maybe you get there and realize that, yeah, we’re both here and we’re ready to pick out some colors. I mean, it’s it’s amazing how easy it is if you understand that process, not just when the sales guy enters the door, but from the time that that lead is set. Yeah, that’s that’s awesome, man. What I’m hearing, too, is you’ve got to ask both questions, guys. Got to ask both questions. You got to be confident and don’t. I think a lot of companies, when they’re when they’re when they’re smaller, they almost feel like they could be disrespecting people when they when they say these things. And I think it’s actually the complete opposite. It’s it’s actually you’re so professional, you’re such the expert that you’re actually serving your your customers at a very high level. And but it’s interesting, a lot of the smaller companies, whether they’re starting out or they’re doing a million a year still, I see it even people that are doing 5 million a year still have that like like I almost think it’s like a lemony belief where they’re like, no, no, I’m not going to disrespect people, but it’s actually like you’re doing them a disservice from my opinion.
Do you feel the same or you really are? Because it’s like an anything that you do, whether you’re managing people or you’re you’re selling that. If you beat around the bush, that’s a there detriment, not yours. And so it’s like, look, get to the point. There’s a lot of these people that when we if we did a disc on every customer, a lot of them would be a very high D and they’re like, Get to the point, buddy. And so it’s if you only have that 45 to 90 minutes and you want to beat around the bush and using words of woulda, coulda, coulda, kind of that’s never going to sell anything. You have to be very confident. And so we did this, this mastery class and we had some of the top sales reps from around the country. And we’re going through this class. And while they’re talking, I says, I’m going to I’m going to walk around and I’m going to show you guys how to be even better at what you do. But I want you to pitch at you right now. You’re going to go ahead and do a role play. And I went up to this guy and I pushed on his stomach and he went from this to this.
And I says, that is a professional. You’re going to talk out of your gut. You’re going to speak as if you’re going to sing an opera. And and then when you pass that, that point of you put the price on the page and the customer has a stall excuse or objection. Now we need to be a little bit deeper. We need to go into that late FM DJ voice, as Chris Boss would say, You know, we want to make ourselves small. So your tonality is everything in the house. And if you understand when and why you do what you do, you’re unstoppable. Yeah, that’s amazing, man. Love. That one’s a big one. Another big one that we’re seeing is what they say is they go. I’ve got a list of projects, Chuck. You know. Hey, I’ll see where this kind of falls in and I’ll get back to you. But I appreciate it. So when when the homeowner has a list of projects, that one is a little tough. But you want to know where does this project set come into play? When you decided that you wanted us to come out and take a look at your project, you knew kind of where you would be on this. Do you mind if I ask kind of where this falls and you want to know? Again, it’s very bold. It’s like these people that say, I don’t know how I’m going to afford it.
B Yes, I mean, you don’t call me out to see if this is free, you know, like you didn’t like you didn’t do anything. You just call me and then you’re here, right? No. Yeah. So when people say, I don’t know how we’re going to afford it, say no. When you first call this out, you had it in mind of how you were going to pay for this. Do you mind if I ask how you had planned on paying? Was this something that you were going to pay cash or is it something that you had planned on using financing for? Yeah. So you’re kind of like leading down that path. And if you do the initial kind of questions in the beginning like this might come out, they might even say, Hey, yeah, well, I’ve got this going on in landscaping, I’ve got some turf going to be installed. And so, yeah, I’m just kind of getting a quote here for this. And so they’re kind of like they’re trying to sell you, I imagine, in the beginning, which is the buyers are liars because they’re selling us, you know, and sometimes as sales people, you can I mean, I know I can get sold, you know, I’m pretty, you know, I can get sold. And I found that to be prevalent where when I’m doing the initial questions or what have you, a good buyer is going to start selling right away.
I feel like, you know, or like even if they’re not intentionally being hard core, but like they’re just going to, they’re, they’re starting their narrative of like, okay, what’s happening? And I feel like, so if that comes up in the beginning, should I press like, should we press on that in the beginning, like and ask them that or wait. Going to wait. Yeah. Now, inside of our inside of our survey, we’re going to ask what made you decide to do this today? And I’m waiting for them to tell me because there’s a lot of people I don’t know. We’re not doing anything today. Oh, really? What makes you say that? And I don’t care what they say. Everything that you say will and it will be used against you at the closing table. So I’m just gathering the information. I’m not going to have an argument with them right there. If they say, look, we’re planning on doing this sometime next year, okay? Yeah, no problem. Because that’s not the time to discuss it, but it is the time to understand that this is going to be something that’s going to hold us up when I get to that closing table. Yeah. And it seems like it’s more experienced buyers, too, you know, they’re like planting those seeds. And I think that’s something like what this objection, it’s similar to the wife thing.
Like they’re all similar in the sense of their service level typically, and it’s getting down to the real thing. It’s like, okay, you’ve got a list of projects. Like it’s almost like when why am I here? Right? Like, and I see a lot of sales people get frustrated with that, like, like initially, you know, and they want to break it down right there. Okay. Well, hey, you know, is this something that is this is this priority over those or like and they want to get into it right there in the beginning of the first 10 minutes or whatever of the appointment. And I feel like it’s just a complete detriment to the appointment right there. So if if I get to the end and I’m going to find out throughout that process how excited they are, when you look at a lot of these concrete coatings, a lot of times it’s a real want. They really want it. There’s emotions with it. And so when I get to the end and they say, yeah, you know, we have a lot of other projects, you know, and it’s like, this didn’t sound like that was an issue before. So this is not what we call a stall, an excuse, that it’s not the case and it’s allowing them to get you out of the house. You have to call a homeowner out. Say Mr. and Mrs. Smith. Typically when I hear this, that that that this is not kind of a priority to you, that all of a sudden that now we have some other projects in place, that price is a factor.
Can we say that that’s kind of the case here, is that you guys weren’t expecting the price tag that goes with this new coding. Because what I’m doing now and you’ll see this on the closing roadmap if you come to top rep is we’re going to put everything down to money and they’re like, Yeah, this was a lot more than what I had really envisioned this would be in. I totally understand. I get it. I buy things too, you know. And so now before I came out, how much did you think that this thing would cost now? Like, man, I had no idea. I thought this. I saw it at Home Depot. I thought this thing couldn’t be more than maybe 5500 bucks. And those of you that are in coding, I’m sure that everybody is laughing because I have a question. Literally. The next one is I thought it would be closer to 5000 bucks. One dude, we’ve all got it in the coatings industry because they all see that little box at that Home Depot do it yourself. And so they’re thinking 1500 bucks should cover this. And it’s like now that you know what poly spark is and what it does and how long it’s going to last and why it’s going to last, you know, everything that we’re going to put into this and the warranty behind it.
Now, where are you? Yeah. That’s amazing. What’s that? Oh, go ahead. Go ahead. If they they say, well, I guess I can come up to about four. I guess. I mean, that just makes sense. All right. So it looks like we’re about 2000 hours away from each other, like. Yeah, how long will it take you to come up with the rest and. I love that, man. I’m telling you, man, this stuff is gold. I’ve been using it for 20 years. It’s not something that just came to my mind yesterday. And so I’ve worked with the coatings companies doing this and going into windows siding and roofing that is four times as as competitive as what coatings is. Coatings is very easy to sell. Yeah. And then when you get into roofing, siding and windows where there is a competitor on every single corner, if not five competitors on every corner, I mean, this is really where this is coming from. So when when we train a lot of the coatings companies, they’re like, Oh, this is gold. You mean I’m at 70, 80% closing now where they couldn’t they were trying to get past 10 to 15%. Yeah, I said a lot of, a lot of the clients that come in will come in at, I would say 20 to 30%, it seems like. And I mean, it seems kind of high, but like 20, 30%.
And I don’t think that’s in the home. That’s kind of like maybe in general for the month maybe. But I mean, like I think it just double that. I mean, the business would be astronomically different, you know, and it’s with all the private equity coming in and everything, I mean, it’s it’s so like the time is now to train your sales team, train yourself to develop an actual asset because it’s going to be hard to develop an asset business that without top line revenue, you know, and that increasing on a on a quarterly basis. And you’re not going to do that without sales without sales training. So yeah, I love this man now. I thought it would be closer to 500. That is a prevalent one. And I like that you that that you ask those questions. Do you have any just advice for? This is kind of like a rabbit trail here, but any advice for the companies that are feeling like. Like, like I can’t be that bold. Like, is it just a mindset thing? Chuck Like it is a mindset thing. It’s a stock thing as well because there are some people that that have taken this a little bit to extreme and they, they get to be aholes in the house and that’s not the case. It’s just you have to bring the this you can’t beat around the bush, you have to be nice and we say you have to stay.
Oc Yeah, but you still have to be able to call a homeowner out and you have to do it in a nice way. But don’t use that, that weak language, the ifs. And I mean, we really need to get right to the point and get the answers that we need to get, but also lock them down. We need to get our commitments while we’re doing this. Yeah. Have those tough conversations. It reminds me of maybe having a tough conversation with a friend or maybe even your child, or it’s like, okay, hey, Penelope, we’ve got to talk. And it’s that authoritative. And I found that when you can really get bold with those questions, I’ve, I’ve gone through a lot of self training. Jeremy Minor neurological stuff and just been in sales really kind of my whole life. And if you can ask these things with the right tonality and with the right training from, from a company like top rep like. You’re going to find success. You’re going to find progress. And you’re going to start closing more deals, making more money, which is really what service legend is all about, which is making more profit, more freedom and more impact. And that’s never going to happen without figuring out the sales thing first. And another one here. I’ve got I’ve got two more here. This one is a big one, too. So when they say we just need to think about it, it reminds me of let me talk with my wife.
I got a list of projects and it’s just a different it’s just different words, same intention from them. But we need we need some time to think about this, and I just need some time to discuss this. No problem. I understand. You know, my wife and I have to do the exact same thing. I got to go out and take some more pictures, so why don’t you guys take some time to discuss it? It should only take me about five, 10 minutes. And so if they, you know, I’m going to go out and take those pictures. I’ll be back in about 10 minutes and I’ll get my stuff and I’ll leave it on the table. But I’ll take my my phone and anything any notes that I need. And I’ll go out there and do whatever I have to check Facebook, whatever. And after about 10 minutes, I’ll come back and I promise you the check will be on the table. Now, if they don’t let you go, that means that you haven’t done your job yet, that they’re going to need more time to think about it. Because what’s happening right now is that one person’s bought into it and the other hasn’t yet. There’s many times when once we give that price, we’ll give that that 14 day or 30 day price and the one person will look at the other.
That means that person’s bought in looking for approval from the other. And so you’d better stop that immediately. Say, hey, you know, I don’t I don’t know how it works in your family, but how it works in mine is my wife and I have to talk about things like this and I’ve got to go out and get some other pictures in the garage there or whatever we’re coding at the time. And so let me go out, get those pictures. I’ll be back here in about five, 10 minutes. Does that give you guys enough time to to discuss this? You know, Ryan, there’s a lot of times when I’ll get a sales rep that will call me, say, man, I almost got that. I knew that I was right there. And I’ll ask us, so why are you calling me now? If you knew that you could get this job, why are you calling me right now? And they’ll say, Well, just they just needed the time to think about it. Well, it’s been about five, 6 minutes since you left the house. I think it’s about time you call them and say, hey, you know, I think I left something on your kitchen table or, hey, I want to come back and just I had a couple more things for you real quick that I forgot to mention. And by the time they get back, they start.
I am so glad that you came back. My wife and I had time to talk about it. And yeah, let’s just go ahead. Let’s get this thing done. And the the sales rep will call me like, can you believe that they they were ready to get to go. As soon as I got back to the house, I’m like, Yeah, I’ve been doing this 20 years. I know exactly what happened when you got back to the house. So it’s just sometimes like it’s almost they’re just not going to make a decision in front of you sometimes, you know? And I think other couples are easy, like my wife and I sometimes, I mean, I’m okay with like sales guys right there. I’m like, okay, hey. So I mean, I’m okay with, I don’t know, sometimes doing it there, I guess if the purchase price isn’t too big, I well, again, as a sales person myself, I’m easy to sell because I already know the problem and I’m going to, you know, and, and once I get there, I’m like, I’m at the end of the road. But other people that aren’t like that, you have to give them time to to talk. I really like that. I really like that. And that’s why follow up is so important, too, you know, because they have that kind of thought to talk, but they also have that time to go elsewhere. So give them that 10 minutes while you’re still kind of facilitating at some level is is obviously more ideal it sounds like, and then following up with in the next 3 hours or three days or something like that, it’s no different than if they actually look and say, look, we really need to think about this.
You’ve given us a lot to think about. So yeah, no problem. I get it. You know, that’s why we that’s why we give you 14 days or 30 days. You’d be able to make a decision within 30 days, right? And they’re like, Yeah, yeah. Okay. How long do you think it’ll take you to make that decision? I will know by Friday. Wow. You guys are really serious about this. This is great. No problem. You know what? I really got the sense that you fell in love with the new floor, that the new flakes that you guys picked out, the sneakers or whatever you guys want to call that smoke sneakers. Whatever color I really got since you guys fell in love with that. And then with everything that we’re going to do, we’re going to do the the rat walls, everything else and how great that’s going to look. Yeah. And are you comfortable with the system that I covered? And do you think that we’re the company that you would trust to have this thing done and and done right the first time? Well, yeah. So I’m guessing that that when that time comes, the only thing that’s going to stand between you and I, it’s going to be the money, right? Yeah.
And now we’re back to money. I promise you, if we can get this thing to money, I’m closing it. And anybody that’s seen me in the house knows that if I can get the homeowner talking money, I’m walking out with either a check financing or a bank turndown. If I can just get them. And it’s funny when people say, wow, you’re too expensive, like, man, you just done half my job for me. I didn’t even get to go through everything else. We’ve already done everything. Let’s do it, you know? I love that. It was like when I was selling cars. It was like if I could just get them talking about. What can you do? 550 a month. I was like, Oh, let go. I flip over the paper, I say, Let’s go, let’s talk about that. You know, take away everything. Interest rates are gone. Now we’re just talking about what you can afford on a monthly basis. Let’s talk about that. Sounds like the same thing. Exactly. I mean, so we looked at I need to think about it and then I never do business the night of I need to get three estimates. I need to talk to my mom, dad, sister, brother, cousin. You know, we, we look at those as stalls and excuses. They just want you out of the house.
And so then we looked at the actual rebuttals or not the rebuttals to the actual objections, which is the value they don’t see paying what you’re asking, affordability. They don’t know how they’re going to pay for this or it’s timing. They’re planning on using a tax return bonus, something that hasn’t happened yet. Yeah. And so we help the, the sales reps get through each and every one of those. Yeah. Because these like a lot of these and what I, what I felt like we got from, from our clients and people in the group was surface level stuff, you know, and it sounds like there’s a, there are strategies within top reps training that gets you through the surface and through the surface objections we’re going to or excuses rather we get to the objections, which is always going to be time value or what or price. Right. Right. And those are the real practical things now we can have a real conversation about because now they’re already sold at some level or they already believe in trust, but it’s real practical now, you know. So it sounds like if you can get to the practical, true objections, then we can really get get to talk in how to earn your business, because otherwise we’re talking surface service level where we’re not even being real with each other. So it sounds like it’s like you get through that to that service level.
Get real. I love that, man. Is that something that you guys really focus on is pushing through those service level objections? We drill through it. We want everybody to understand by the time they leave, they’re also going to get these they’re called pivot point cards. And it has every objection known to man in them how to deal with them hints as to the philosophy behind that so that you understand why it’s being asked or told. So, I mean, there’s when you leave that at the at the training truck, every company will get one set. So if you bring five people, you get one set. You can buy more if you want, but it’s totally up to you. Yeah, that’s incredible. I mean, just getting one of those for free. I mean, gosh, it’s probably a couple thousand dollars worth of value just in one stack of those. Yeah, we have. We had a guy that came to our first top rep. His name is Anson and young guy, he finished almost dead last in our first top rep. He comes up to me, he says, I’m going to I’m going to master this and I’m going to come back and I’m going to win top rep. And I’m looking at his standings. And I look at it, I’m like, okay, good. And just kind of dismissed him. So he comes back to San Diego later that year. This was only five months later, comes back to San Diego and he brings the rest of his team.
And these guys travel in packs. There’s a big company and he just he kills it. He does an amazing job. He goes through the cards better than I’ve ever seen before. And I’m like, Anson, this is crazy, man. This is fantastic. And one of his one of his senior managers comes up and says, Hey, by the way, he just started to sell, you know, when first top rep came in in the last five months, he’s done over $1.4 million. Wow. In five months and five months. And so now he’s actually training everybody on these cards. They do what we call power hour every morning, training the sales reps. So, I mean, it’s when you when you come to top rep, you’re going to learn a lot. And then if you just keep going with us, we’ll keep training you. And like I say, information is free. I mean, I could sit here and give you every rebuttal that we do, all the systems. I don’t care. It’s that implementation of how to put that into your company, that’s where the value truly sits. Yeah, I love that you mentioned that here. Just in conclusion, there’s so much information out there like and I think a lot of times when you’re doing less than $1,000,000 a year in top line revenue, a lot of the companies that I see, they want to try to figure it out all by themselves.
Right. They want to not spend the money on, hey, the travel, hey, the whatever the fee might be, whatever it is. And they want to be in everything. Right. And as an entrepreneur, when you start out, you kind of have to be. But if you want to scale the importance of seeing what’s working at top rep, the training, the implementation, the ongoing support, you name it, that’s where it’s at, you know, and and it’s not thinking that just because I know this much, like I don’t need to invest into my company like that and even for myself, like I’d say I’m decent at sales, you know, we can grow the. But I’m telling you right now, I am I am going to be signing up for top rep, signing up our team for top rep, because I want to take I want to do this this practice on my brain that I don’t care how good I am or how good I think I am or how well things might be going or what have you. I’m going to learn from the best. And then when I get there, I’m going to learn from the best of those people. And then when I get there, I want to learn from the best of those people. You know, I want to I want to know who’s training. Chuck And then, you know, I got to train, train, truck, where’s that guy? You know, and and I think a lot of times a lot of the service companies that we work with, they can’t get there mentally, you know, because they’re so drawn by whether it’s operations, whether it’s hiring people, you name it.
So. Just in conclusion, Chuck, like. Why should. Why should someone take out their credit card? Buy a plane ticket like. Why should they come to top rep in August? Well, the biggest piece that that you need to look at when you when you come to top rep is know that you can even trip over success when you come out. The testimonials that we’ve gotten is just it’s one right after another. We get them week after week after week of companies that have doubled and tripled in size just because of they now just the fact that they now understand how it works. We’re going to give you the the opportunity to see behind that curtain that companies just don’t get to see. You know, these are companies that we get to help on a daily basis that are absolutely massive. And we’re going to tell you why. You know, and when people say, oh, I want to be that 20 million or $40 Million Company, it’s let’s get you to five or let’s get you to ten first. And we can do that. We can do it in a year. But you have to understand how to get there.
We want you to understand the foundation in the operational piece of what it takes to get to that point so that we can keep walking you through it. But when you come to top rep, the owners and managers will go into what we call a boardroom when the sales reps go into what we call dogfights. And so when they go into the dogfights, the owners and managers go into a boardroom and we’re going through best practices. We’re helping them to understand how to forecast a lot of these companies, like American weather techs. I came into this company, American weather techs, and they were pacing about 6 million. And I came in in June. So right in the middle of the year, they were pacing a year of about $6 million. And he says, hey, I want to be about 12 million. Well, it took me six months to get him to 14 million. So when you look at it, well, it was it was a little bit less then. But, you know, we got them there and they’re like, wow. And the only reason the only reason why we were able to do it is because we know our numbers. I knew what their clothes rate was. I knew what we could do with the close rate, but ultimately I knew where the clothes rate was. I knew how many leads I needed to come in through the front door and then what we needed to do to get it into production.
So it’s all about numbers and we’re going to teach you that it’s all there. So whether you’re an owner, a manager, or you’re a sales rep, you’re going to learn so much. I mean, it’s going to be a fire hose of information. But you also get a book of everything that you’ve learned right there so that you can take it back with you. It’s not, hey, you’re probably going to lose half of it by the time you get home. We want to make sure that that you have everything you need so that we can continue these testimonials. We want to make sure that when someone spends thousands of dollars to get there, that they’re trading that for 20 to 30000 in just those few weeks. In just a few weeks. Not a few months. Yes. We’re coming to chop for up is not a bill. It’s not it’s not a fee. It’s an investment. Man Chuck, thank you so much. Man. I love I’d love to have have you back on maybe talk about cells, leadership or systems or different things at some point. But you guys have heard it here, Chuck talk from top rep literally guys go sign up. There’s a live event in August. What’s the date again? It’s August 23rd and 24th in Philadelphia. Fantastic. So go get signed up. And here at Service Legend, Chuck, we always talk about more profit, more freedom, more impact. And I love that you’re talking about a lot of that, too. So thank you so much, man.
