09 - Delivering a Great Sales Experience with Tim Musch

SPEAKER_04 0:23

Hello, everyone, and welcome back to another episode of Selling in the Dwelling, the go-to podcast for the in-home sales and remodeling world. I'm your host, Alan Langer, and I'm excited. We've actually got, you ready for this? We've got our title sponsor with us today, Paradigm Vendo. You've heard me mention them quite a few times in all the previous podcasts. Well, we've actually got Tim Mush with us today from Paradigm to chat not only about Paradigm, but really his experience in the world of sales and what's happening in the in-home selling world as we move along into 2026. But before we get to that, two quick housekeeping notes. The website is www.sellinginthwelling.com. I mentioned that because at the top right, there's a little button that says ask Alan. If you click on that button and you send me a question, and I end up reading the question in the next podcast, you will get a free selling in the dwelling t-shirt. And we've got a really, really interesting question coming up later for Tim and I. And our title sponsor is Paradigm Vendo, which is paradigmvendo.com forward slash dwelling. Literally, I'm not kidding, the best software you're going to find in the in-home selling industry. More on that later. So let's get going with Tim Mush. He's the director of business development over at Paradigm Vendo. He's been in the industry. How how long, Tim? Decades? 100 years? 200 years? How long?

SPEAKER_01 1:41

Oh no. Never quite made a hundred. But probably since uh I don't know, 1983. So you do the 83.

SPEAKER_04 1:48

Wow. So you've been doing it a little while. A little while. You bet. So we met actually, Tim and I met a few years ago at the Oakna dealership uh conference. Uh, he was a vendor there. I actually was a speaker, and that's how we first chatted, and we kept in touch, and now here here they are as my title sponsor. And I can't thank you guys enough for that. It's been awesome, and I've getting some great feedback from my listeners for it. So tell us a little about you've been in business now since the early 80s. What have you seen from then to now as far as what has happened with the world of sales? I know we we only have 45 minutes, so you can't take that long.

SPEAKER_01 2:26

All right. Yeah, definitely a few things. First off, let me say this. You're right, we met in Atlantic City, I believe.

SPEAKER_04 2:34

Yeah, it was Atlantic City, that's right.

SPEAKER_01 2:36

At an Oakna dealer meeting, and uh you made your presentation, and I thought to myself, you know what? Here's a guy I am totally in alignment with. You know, everything you presented, I thought, man, you know, with the way consumers have changed and all that, right on target with the way I was thinking. So we just kind of kept in communication, and then you had this brainstorm about uh selling in the dwelling podcast, and I thought, you know what? I I can't wait to be the title sponsor of that. So we're excited to be involved, Alan.

SPEAKER_04 3:08

Thank you for that.

SPEAKER_01 3:09

Uh let's start here. How did I get in this business? You know, um, it could be a long story, I'll try to make it short. Mentioned it started about 1983 or 84 uh in the window replacement business, and business was going great, having fun, making some money, just things were rolling along good. And in 1984 specifically, there was a football game on TV. We commonly know that as a Super Bowl. Ah, got that small little event. Yeah, Super Bowls are known for their commercials, and this particular one had an impact on me. So in the 1984 Super Bowl, there was a commercial that I experienced, and I went, Whoa, what is that? Wow. Specifically, what it was, Alan, it was the introduction of the Macintosh computer from Apple.

SPEAKER_04 4:00

Was that the famous commercial, uh, the Think Different commercial, or the uh the one with the kind of apocalyptic look to it? I'm trying that's the one, right? That's the one. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 4:10

And if your listeners haven't seen that, go ahead and Google that. It's probably one of the most impactful commercials ever put on TV. Ever made. You're 100% right about that. Yeah. And it impacted me. You know, because what happened then is I said to myself, I don't know what they just advertised, because that act that commercial didn't make it really clear what they were advertising specifically. Didn't talk much about a product, you know, just more or less the theme of of uh this 1984 thing. And I thought, I don't know what that is, but whatever it is, looks like who's ever in the back of this is out to change the world. And lo and behold, they did.

SPEAKER_04 4:48

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 4:49

You know, so what happened is kept going in the window business, me and myself and my brother. Took about three years after that, Alan, that that commercial kept in my mind, kept in my mind, kept in my mind. And about three years later, I said, I'm gonna get one of those things and try to figure out how to make it help us in our business.

SPEAKER_04 5:12

Wow.

SPEAKER_01 5:12

Down to the local Apple store I went, only place you could buy those things back then. You couldn't buy them at Best Buys or anything like that. Had to be an Apple store.

SPEAKER_03 5:21

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 5:22

Nine-inch black and white Macintosh computer cost $3,495.

SPEAKER_04 5:28

Wait, the screen was only nine inches back then? Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 5:30

Yeah, yeah. Oh wow, okay. And then I had to buy a laser printer, which was $6,795. And I bought this thing, having never turned on a computer, and I thought, you know what? This is gonna help me make newspaper ads, yellow page ads, and things like that. That's what we did back then.

SPEAKER_03 5:49

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 5:50

And it did. But it had a little programming language in it, you know, right off the shelf. And again, I knew nothing about computers, but I had a tutorial, and it said, okay, do this, try this. And it said, type the words on mouse up, then hit the return the word return, then it said type the word beep, then hit return, and then it said type the words and the mouse up. And I did that, and I looked at those three lines, and I said, I think I know what's gonna happen if I click this mouse. So I click the mouse and lo and behold, the computer beeped. And I went, Oh my gosh, is it this easy? So I joke with people and say, next thing I tried is on mouse up, generate leads, and mouse up. Click the mouse, yeah, not so much. Didn't really work real well. But I'll tell you what it did do. It kind of got me stimulated to go down that path and learn what this is all about. So I spent the next three years creating what we now know as a CRM. Those letters weren't even put together back then, yeah. Which turned into a product called Market Sharp that's used by thousands of companies throughout the country. That took me down that path. Because one day a window salesperson came into our office from Minneapolis, window manufacturer up there, said to me, What's that? And he was pointing to my computer. And I said, Well, that's a computer. He says, Well, what does it do? So I showed him what I created, and he says, I never see anything like that. You want to come up and show my boss this thing? So up to Minneapolis, I go, show his boss. He says, Hey, I got a dealer meeting coming up. Wow. This to them. And I go, All right. And there I was in a room full of a hundred dealers in a hotel that's now a parking lot for the Mall of America with this nine-inch black and white Macintosh computer. No projector. And I talked to the cover. You know, and I think most of them thought I was from Mars Allen. At the end, eight of them raised their hand and said, Can I have one of those?

SPEAKER_03 8:10

Wow.

SPEAKER_01 8:12

Well, I guess. So long story short, actually, long story, as I said, not so short. So sorry for the link to that one. But it turned into a business of its own. Again, turned into a CRM called Market Sharp. Spent decades with that, as many people know. Market Sharp was acquired by private equity in 2017. I stuck around to 2022. Then I decided to go to work for another company in Wisconsin in the software business called Paradigm. And later on, maybe we can chat about that relationship and what Paradigm is all about and why I got so excited about that. So that's how I got into business. It's how I ended up in the technology side of the business. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 8:54

And so you created this company kind of by accident. You know, you're just trying to help yourself and you created this thing called Market Sharp, which again, you had thousands of customers at the time it was purchased, right? You were you were national. So congratulations for that. So when you were working with companies and setting up, you know, their CRM and whatever Market Sharp did at that time, were you seeing anything? Were you seeing anything back then that is still a problem today? Or had things just evolved with this with the evolution of the consumer and how they purchase, you know, right now?

SPEAKER_01 9:27

That's a good question. Within the last couple of weeks, there are a couple of events that I was fortunate enough to be able to speak at, and they were technology-oriented panels. And I thought that very thing to myself. I said, What can I share with these people that might be able to relate back to those days compared to where we're at right now with technology? You know, back then with this computer and this thing, we didn't call a CRM, but that's what it was back then. You know, when I showed it to people, they went, Oh wow, okay. And then little by little adoption was slow, you know, and little by little they came around and decided they gotta use stuff like that. So comparing that to nowadays, it's tough. Because if we talk here today and talk about various technology things, which we will, and then talk one month from today, Alan, our conversation's gonna be different. Because this stuff is changing in lightning fast speed. You know, and people cannot wait to adopt the things that are going on now, or they're gonna get run over by their competition.

SPEAKER_04 10:41

Yeah. And what I've been seeing, and again, we we can spend so much time talking about technology and all the bells and whistles that are out there and all the things. What I see quite often, which is why I think what your product, Paradigm Vendo, is so good at, I see so many of the, especially the smaller contractor, the the five to ten million dollar contractor who sees the new CRM, who sees the new you know, lead management system, who sees this or sees that, and they jump into all these things because they're the new thing. And then all of a sudden, the reps have 17 things to do in the house and different screens to go to. And uh, someone called it tech freezing or like too much tech to navigate. Are you seeing that yourself in the world of like people coming to you saying, I got too much stuff, can you consolidate for me?

SPEAKER_01 11:30

I sure I certainly do see that. You know, a friend of yours and mine, Dean Curtis from Engage, he puts it this way he says, Everybody's starting to assemble a tech junk drawer.

SPEAKER_04 11:40

Yeah, yeah, that's a good value.

SPEAKER_01 11:42

Exactly what's going on. Yeah, it's a tough thing because a number of years ago I started following a company that what they do is create an image with all the logos of all the Martech solutions available to people in the business. Martech meaning marketing technology solutions. And back when I started following this just a few short years ago, that image had about 300 logos on it. And ours was one of them. I checked a couple months ago what that graphic looks like today, and that number is fifteen thousand three hundred and eighty-six Martex solutions that we all get to choose from.

SPEAKER_04 12:25

So this they're saying that there's fifteen hundred no, I'm I'm sorry, thousand. 15,000 different marketing slash technology companies specific to the in-home world, to remodeling world, or just in general?

SPEAKER_01 12:40

No, in general.

SPEAKER_04 12:41

Okay, in general.

SPEAKER_01 12:42

Plenty of them are in the remodeling world too. It's a tough thing. So what people have to do is they really have to think through before they jump, before they get sucked into a demo that sounds great and looks like it's gonna have ROI and all that kind of stuff. You've got to really analyze it from the perspective of what problem am I trying to solve here?

SPEAKER_04 13:05

Couldn't agree more. It's a great way to put it.

SPEAKER_01 13:07

Once you do that, then you need to you need to be honest with yourself with where you're at on that problem by by knowing your numbers. And sometimes people guess at this stuff with their gut feeling. So I would say before you make a jump into a technology that you think is gonna solve a problem, absolutely know your numbers so you can for sure say that particular tech solution is gonna help me solve this issue. And then have a tracking mechanism as you go forward, if you go for that solution to make sure it's doing the job.

SPEAKER_04 13:46

I'm a business owner myself. I have my own Seven Secret Sales Academy. I am definitely more compulsive than thoughtful. So, you know, I I will jump on a new shiny object. But I remember this a quick funny story. A couple months ago, I looked at my calendar coming up for the week and I had four appointments on my calendar, which were sales calls that I set up for me, people to sell me stuff. And I'm looking, I'm like, why do I have four? I probably scheduled them a couple weeks prior. I'm like, why don't I have four sales calls? And then I looked, two of them I could not even remember who they were or why I scheduled it. So is that a problem I need solved? Clearly it's not because I don't remember who they were. And the other two, once I thought about it for five minutes, I'm like, I don't need to meet with these people. This has looked great at the time, but this is not going to do what I don't have this problem. And you you hit the nail on the head. And I had four appointments scheduled because I jumped right into it. So it's crazy. And if who knows, if I was in a, you know, in a mood of being compulsive, then I probably would have signed up with one or two of them. So it's a great point to really look at what you're doing because we all look at our monthly statement at the end of the month and say, What do you what is that? What did I sign up for? What is this? What is this bill coming out? You're right. So anyway, let's get but let's get into the sales end of this now. So you made some regard remarks regarding the importance of clarity in the home. We talk about that, you and I talk quite a bit, and I talk about this a lot. You know, I'm a big proponent and disciple of the Donald Miller school of you know, clarity wins, you know, the the story brand. And you're you talk about that as well. Talk about you know, some examples of where confusion is often created in a typical sales presentation and where clarity will always, always be better.

SPEAKER_01 15:29

You know, Alan, this is something that is really it's frankly foremost on our my mind right now, okay, in terms of you know, trying to help people with their business. And it's something that I learned decades ago from a different individual, Zig Ziggler. He phrased it a little different way. He said this he said, a confused mind automatically says no. And I knew that decades ago, but frankly, I kind of forgot it. But for some reason, recently it came back. I don't think it was a TV commercial that jolted me out of that one. But for some reason it came back. And when I think about it, and I think through everything we do in our business with marketing, with sales, and everything, that that is probably the biggest reason people don't buy when they don't buy is something isn't clear. A couple examples. Let's start with uh let's start with this. You know, an individual told me here a while back, his name was Kyle Hunt. He has a podcast too called Reminders on the Rise. Great guy. He said, here's something that I found really works for me in a presentation, and I think it'll make sense why when I explain it. He says, I start all my presentations off after a little bit of chit-chat and all that kind of stuff with these five magic words, and here's what they are. This is how we work. Here's what that means. That means you start a presentation, and the people on the receiving end of the presentation haven't done this before. Frankly, they're probably anxious about what they're about to experience. Because they maybe heard some horror stories about a company coming into their home, staying three hours, almost having to kick them out and all that. So they're kind of anxious about what this looks like. So beginning with those five magic words, this is how we work, really, really sets the tone for the presentation. Because after you mention those words, you go ahead and tell them what's about to happen. You know, another thing I learned from my friend Zig Ziggler, he's he said, here's a formula to use in anything you do presentation-wise. First tell them what you're gonna tell them, then tell them, and then tell them what you told them. Yeah. My gosh, that is just a great formula for communication. So when we're talking about confusion in a presentation, this is where it can start to not be confusing for a homeowner. You tell them the first thing we're gonna do is get to know each other a little bit. You know, we call that assessing your needs. You learn a little bit about us. You know, we're gonna find out really what you're after, why I'm here. So you take them to a needs assessment at that point. And then we're gonna go around and inspect and measure various parts of your home that you're considering doing this project for. And uh, it's really important that you come around with me when we do this, because I want you to point out to me, you know, issues or things you like, you don't like. I'll point out some things so important. Once we do those two things, then and only then am I gonna give you some ideas of whether or not we can help you, and if so, what our solution looks like. And that's where the product demonstration is gonna come in. You're gonna learn a little bit about our company, maybe some of our past customers, and all that kind of stuff at that point. That's important not to do that first, because if I don't know what you're looking for and what you're most interested in, and we haven't taken that look at your house, how can I really prescribe a solution that makes good sense for you? And as a side note here, Alan, many people skip that first step. They get into a home within three minutes, they got a window sample or whatever they're selling on the table, telling that homeowner, this is what you need. Not good. So after we present the right solution and you feel good about it, then we're gonna go shopping. I'm gonna use a little tool we have, and we're gonna make it feel like you're buying something on Amazon. We're gonna design your solution together to come up with exactly what you're looking for. Things like colors, stuff like that. And after we do that, it's gonna wrap up where I'm gonna give you, you know, a final price with various ways that you can handle the investment. So that's what it's gonna look like as we go through these next few minutes together. So, anyway, Alan, that's that concept of this is how we work. And I think if people will do that and bake that into their presentation, you know, they're gonna reduce a lot of the confusion or anxiousness. In many cases, they overlap, that causes a presentation to die in the middle of somewhere.

SPEAKER_04 20:33

Yeah, and these are tremendous points, Tim, because and this is the whole premise of my book. Nobody wants to meet with salespeople to begin with. They don't want to meet with you, they have the problem, they don't want to meet with you at all. So they're expecting a bad experience. So now this is you get all the homeowners now doing their doing their research, you know, clicking on AI, looking at all these different things. And I saw a statistic recently where it said over 80% of consumers are 75% done with their buying journey before they even contact a company. So they're doing all this research and then finally saying, okay, you know what? I'm gonna, I'm gonna invite these three companies over my house, and we're gonna pick one of them because of all the research I did. So now you get in there and if you start giving them the experience they didn't want, guess what? They're not buying from you. But if you calm them down and say, listen, I used to go in and I would literally say, Hey, listen, just so you know, this is not gonna be a dog and pony sales show. I'm not gonna be here for four hours jumping on my windows, and they would laugh, but it would literally immediately calm them down. And then you give them the agenda or whatever it is that you, you know, this is how we work kind of thing. And it, you're right, it just alleviates the fear that they have, the anxiousness that they have, and it shows that, okay, this might not be the experience that they're that they're expecting.

SPEAKER_01 21:46

You know, that that's a great, that's a great point, Alan, because the homeowner we're getting in front of today is not the same one as a few short years ago. Way back when, typically, when we started a presentation with a prospect in the home, blank slate. They knew virtually nothing. So we started at the beginning there. Nowadays, you mentioned it. They've done a bunch of research. They come in with a full slate. And we have to know as salespeople where we sit in that buyer's path to purchase with our presentation. So we don't spend the first hour boring them to death with stuff that they already know. I joke with people and tell them with AI now AI nowadays, many prospects know more about the product than the salesperson. Yeah, you're right. I hate to say that, but so true. Now here's the other thing: Chat GPT, AI, and so forth. Here's a heads up on that. You know, it just doesn't make your prospects smarter, although in some cases it does. It often makes them confidently wrong. And you better repair the handle wrong. But I call that an AI-assisted prospect. I did a test on this because I was wondering about this last week. And I asked ChatGPT, hey, tell me about tax credits for Windows. And lo and behold, it told me about tax credits for Windows that are available. And the only problem with that is they're not. Yeah. That ended what, 10 years ago? No, actually, it started a little while ago, Alan. I think with some bill. And then a recent bill stopped them before it was supposed to. So that's the information ChatGPT is providing is the information that's not the latest and greatest. So you imagine going into an appointment with that prospect and them thinking that, and getting to that point, and they say, okay, what about tax credit we can get? And the salesperson says, Oh, you can get tax credits. What's what are you talking about? And the homeowner says, Well, yeah, I checked it out and we can't. And if the salesperson doesn't handle that elegantly, they're in trouble. They're not getting that sale, right? Because going back to a confused mind automatically says no, yeah, that person's now confused. Yep. They're getting two little bits of information. So here's a statistic I found recently. You mentioned the stat of what percent of people are actively using AI to help with purchase decisions, and it's off the charts now. But here's one interesting, similar to that tax credit deal. 40 to 55 percent of home services AI queries are returning wrong or misleading information. Be prepared for this. This tell you what, here's one thing, this kind of stuff that's starting to happen now is going to change out there. And I'm all about having a process to train salespeople on and things such as that. I'm all about scripting people properly and all about that as well. But I think we can see now where not every presentation is gonna end up being the same. Exactly. Yeah. So if you got to go in there and you think you're going to word for word script something from minute one all the way through the close, yeah. No, that's not how things are gonna evolve here as time goes on. So I find that stuff very interesting.

SPEAKER_04 25:24

It's wild that you brought that up because our guest who sent in a question talks just about that particular topic, but we'll get to that uh in a little bit because we got so much more to talk about. So, hey dwellers, quick break. Hey, did you know that the closing percentages for in-home sales has been dropping consistently over the last 10 years? It's really crazy, and there's a lot of reasons for it, but one of them is reps have so much to do in the house because there's so many different platforms that you're jumping back and forth all the time. Well, my title sponsor, Paradigm Vendo, takes care of that. In one digital platform, you can go from initial appointment right to final sale and signatures by visiting just their platform. It's amazing. You gotta check them out. It's paradigmvendo.com forward slash dwelling, P-A-R-A-D-I-G-M Vendo.com forward slash dwelling, because your reps need to give the homeowners a great experience in the house, and jumping around doesn't do that. Visit paradigmvendo.com forward slash dwelling and take care of the experience your reps are giving in the house. You mentioned two things that are that I talk about quite a bit that really help in a sales presentation. Uh you didn't say the word, but I do this thing when I'm in front of, let's say I'm in front of a company and uh many of the people in the company don't think they're in sales. And the owner is like, you got to convince my people that they're in sales, like the technicians are in sales, the customer service people. So I do a thing about look at all these different groups of people that would not be normally considered sales. So I put up a picture of parents. Parents are the greatest salespeople in the world because they're convincing their kids to do stuff all the time. But then I end with doctors. And then I ask the group, why do you think doctors are the greatest salespeople? And no one really knows. And I'm saying it's one word and it starts with a D, and then it dawns on them, they diagnose. Doctor can't give you medicine until he diagnoses the problem. Well, so many reps, like you said earlier, go into the house and they don't diagnose anything. They just they just try to they give them the medicine. Here's the medicine, take it. I don't even know what your problem is. So diagnosing is huge. Further on in the presentation, when you said let's go shopping, and the customer can be part of building the price instead of the rep building the price. Whoever's listening, if you can do that with your software, build the price and let the customer touch and feel and point, uh, you will have a much easier time selling because it becomes their becomes their price, not yours. Changes everything.

SPEAKER_01 27:53

It just changes the dynamic of everything. You're absolutely right. So there's plenty of other places in the presentation where clarity is important. My my challenge to everybody listen to this, just think about your marketing. And maybe we can talk about that in a second, Alan, and think about your sales presentation and ask yourself the question is anything with what we do potentially confusing people? And if it is, get it out of there. Because when people are confused, here's what happens, Alan, and you know this better than I because you've been in the home, you know, um teen times. When people are confused and it's time for decision, here's what they don't say to the salesperson. They say, No, I'm not really ready yet, because I'm confused about X. They don't say that. They don't say that ever.

SPEAKER_04 28:43

What they do say is, I'm gonna think about it. They say, Wow, Tim, you're a great salesperson. That was awesome. We're gonna think about it. Can you email that to me?

SPEAKER_01 28:53

That's correct. And that's not what it's all about. Now, many people have said over the years, and there's some truth to this, that when people say things like they're gonna think about it, it's always a price objection.

SPEAKER_04 29:06

Yep. You know, so you just gotta do that. I don't buy that. No, I don't you're right. It's quite often it is, but uh you may have messed something up somewhere along the line. Yeah. You may have said something that you or you you ignored a piece of body language that happened and you just kept talking and the trust level just fell, or the rapport stopped, all of that. You don't know until you you ask what's going on. You bet. Which most which most reps don't do. So really good stuff. So you mentioned let's talk a little bit about marketing and slash searching and AI and the SEO and everything now, because so many people are like SEO is dying and the AI searchability is increasing, and people are just literally going to AI now and saying, give me some recommendations for window companies, and it'll do it. And like you said, 30 to 40 percent could be inaccurate or could be wrong. The other thing I'm seeing out there is people are now searching how much are windows instead of you know windows around me. People want to know pricing. So, what's your overall thought about what's happening with that world and and the marketing that's needed to be done within it?

SPEAKER_01 30:07

Yeah, let me just first say this. I'm certainly not an expert in this area, but I think as a consumer, I get a feel for what's going on here. So, really, what we gotta all try to shoot for is when somebody asks the right question to AI that you come back as the right answer. That requires some help. My recommendation is you got your SEO experts and all that, and certainly there's battles back and forth about, you know, AI and SEO, and are they the same? Is SEO dead and so forth? I personally don't think SEO is dead per se. I do feel the way it's used has an effect on how AI answers certain questions, because the questions are gonna start being different. They're not gonna be just simple things like uh Windows near me. Right. Oh, yeah, you're right. They're gonna be more specific. Here's the whole idea, in my opinion, is make sure that the content you have online, your website, your reviews, and all this kind of stuff, answer the type of questions that people have. Great point. When you're wondering, okay, how do I know that? Well, have a have a meeting with your sales staff and ask them what are the top ten questions we get asked about our products.

SPEAKER_04 31:33

That's pretty simple research.

SPEAKER_01 31:34

It is. And then make sure that is embedded in your content. Now, here's where experts need to come in. Get a relationship with a company that first off knows our industry. Yes. And secondly, understands what's taking place right now so they can help you craft all this content and put it where it belongs, you know, on the web. Because if you do that and you get hooked up with the right company, and you know, I'm happy to recommend a couple. I don't know if you do that on your podcast, Alan, or not, but yeah, I love the people at True Valve, TRUVLV. Those guys know what's going on. I mean, they just got an awesome product. So that's one. There's others out there, but make sure you get some help with this stuff. And Alan, I know something you're you're also a big fan of and believer of, is your presentation actually starts before you get in home. Yep. And one example of that, what I'm talking about, that is when people are considering windows, new bath, whatever the case may be. Let me ask you, Alan, what's the first question in their mind, knowing that they probably never bought this product before? Where do they wonder? How much is it? Absolutely. How much is it? How much is it gonna cost me? Yeah. Now, with us knowing that, now let's think through to what our industry has taught us over the past few decades. And what that has been is oh no, I'm not gonna give anybody any idea what this costs on my website or on a telephone call until I have that three hours to build value. So when I do lay the price on them, they they go crazy and say, Oh my gosh, I've been waiting for you, and here's my checkbook. Let's go. No, that's not the way the world's working nowadays. So there's a big movement out there. I know you you would be been a big proponent of this, Alan. Gentlemen by name of Marcus Sheridan is a big proponent of this. And what that is, is let people know things like rough cost estimates on your web. If you don't, let's start there. They're coming to your website, and if that's primary on their mind and they can't find it anywhere, off they go. Off they go. You're not getting into their house. Nope. And the other thing is, there's proof that this is going to be a big thing. And what that is, is I've done some searches recently, and all of a sudden, what I'm seeing with results on the web are buttons that are primary and focused that says these companies offer online estimates.

SPEAKER_04 34:19

Yep. I've seen that.

SPEAKER_01 34:20

Google is prioritizing those. And I'll tell you what, that should knock us up all aside the head. And we should go, okay, let's get together with someone that can help us with this, and let's make sure we are getting this stuff in our content out there. So when AI is helping this prospect, you know, we're the answer. But here's where it's going to go next. It's going to go beyond that. Pretty soon it's not going to be human beings that are doing the search online. It's going to be an AI agent that you simply say, Hey, would you do me a favor? Go find me the best person to potentially do a window replacement job in my area. And AI is going to do all this stuff and it's going to search around and crawl around and find answers to all these things that are so important, including your reviews. And it's going to come back with that very specific answer for a homeowner. And if you're not showing up there, you know, those blue links that you paid so heavily for over the past few years are going to be meaningless.

SPEAKER_04 35:23

And you're you're so right about all this because the other thing that that does, when a customer or prospect finds that you actually are giving pricing on your website or price ranges, that transparency builds trust, immediate trust. So when they look at four different companies and two of them have pricing on their website and two of them don't, guess which two are going to their house? Absolutely. Yeah. And and, you know, I'll plug my own. I have a little side company myself called quoteboat.net. That's what we do. We put a little widget on your website, we put your catalog of windows, customer gets a price range, and then you can set the appointment from there. Because it's a different customer. It's the customer that's doing all the research, and they're not yet ready to have you come over. But now they see, oh, look at this. They're their windows are between 800 and 1800. All right, I can live with that. Now let's have the project manager come over and and give us a final price. So it is definitely not the wave of the future. The future's here. It's just a matter of it's just going to get more and more. And then if you're gonna we're gonna get to the point where if you don't show pricing on your website, you're not gonna get any appointments, you know.

SPEAKER_01 36:27

Yeah, and let's just be clear when you say show price to your website, we're not talking about exact pricing. No, you can in the business, but you can use ranges. And that's that always has been the excuse that companies would use of why they don't do it. Well, it's time to change that. Yeah, you know, you gotta put some sort of range there or some criteria of how your pricing is arrived at. And here's another here's another benefit of having it on your website. If people go there and they accept an appointment with you, your price conditioning is over. It's on, yeah.

SPEAKER_04 36:58

You don't have to worry. That whole piece that I used, I do a whole training on this. I don't have to do it anymore because if they you have pricing on your website, that's mute. It doesn't matter. You're right. So anyway, what a world then, huh? Speaking of pricing, this is a good segue because you and I are going to be doing a webinar together in a few weeks after this podcast comes out. Myself, Paradigm Vendo, and a gentleman from what's the company called? I forgot, Tim.

SPEAKER_01 37:23

From Moment. They're a financing company.

SPEAKER_04 37:25

Yeah, Moment, a financing company. So we're gonna talk about this very specific topic of pricing. So for those of you in the audience, keep an eye out for it. Uh, if you're on my on my email list, you'll get the actual date and time and and the registration link. But we're gonna talk about how to present price, what you should be doing prior to getting to the appointment, how financing and talking about financing is so important and all of those things. So that's coming up in a few weeks. So keep an eye out for that. Well, we are flying along here, Tim. So there's the little angel singing, and and here we get to the Ask Allen segment. And this one is one of the more unique questions I've gotten because the person writing it didn't want to give her name, and you'll see why in a second. So she writes, Heather, I'm I'm Heather from Syracuse, New York. But then in parentheses, she wrote, Not my real name, exclamation point. And then the next sentence is, My sales manager is terrible. So now we know why she didn't want to put her name down. But this is a great question, and it goes right into what we've been talking about today. My sales manager is terrible. All he wants us to do is follow an exact script word for word to every single person we see, no matter what. We are never allowed to deviate. I feel so fake in the home. Is there any advice you have to fix this, or should I just start looking elsewhere? I know I can be very good at this if I'm allowed to be myself. She is not the first salesperson I've ever heard say this, and but I'm glad she's bringing it up. So I have a I have a response, but you go first, Tim. How would you respond to to Heather from Syracuse?

SPEAKER_01 39:03

Yeah, well, that's a great question. Let me just say this. Are there companies out there that have that philosophy and train their salespeople that way who have been successful in the past? There has. Let's first admit that. But we just described a couple situations a little while ago that turned that upside down. And what that is, is not every prospect is the same as it used to be, coming out of a blank slate. Yep. So to put people on a script word for word like that, knowing that you maybe had a customer that went on AI and knows this and knows that and so forth, yeah, you're headed for disaster with that. Because your your salesperson will just fall apart if all of a sudden their script is no longer applicable. Right. So rather than a script, just get them on a process. Might seem like the same thing, little different. You know, and role-playing and things such as that, that can help people use their mind as a salesperson to adapt to certain things in their word. What a concept, use their mind. Yeah. Uh I think is is one way that this concept can be dealt with going forward. So, how about you, Alan? You've been doing this for ages.

SPEAKER_04 40:24

I've always thought about one of the major problems in sales is sales reps are trained to give a presentation. They're not trained to adapt. And it all comes back to emotional intelligence. And people who have higher emotional intelligence quotients sell better. It's been proven by a thousand different studies. But the misnomer is well, like IQ, EQ can't be trained, and that's not true. You can actually train and increase your EQ with some very simple techniques to do it. But so many reps and sales leaders think, well, this guy has a low EQ, so let's just have him follow the process and he's going to be a 23% closer. You have to be able to adapt in the house. You just have to today. You cannot, you when you said before, scripts used to work, the phrase you used was in the past. Yeah, they worked in the past because the consumer had no information in front of them. Their information was coming from the sales rep. Now the consumer's in charge, no longer the salesperson. So now all this information is out there. You have to have the script, just like a just like a great actor in a movie, has the entire script in their brain, but some of the best lines and the best acting in movies come from times where they had to adapt and add lib and create lines. My favorite movie of all time, Jaws, that line, we need a bigger boat, was not in the script. And it's the most famous line from that movie. So when you have the ability to adapt in the house, you know, you have your script, you have your process, but you have to adapt around it, that's where the real success comes in sales. And I will say to Heather, if this sales manager is that rigid, it sounds like he's he's recording, maybe they're using Ciro or Rilla or whatever those, you know, whatever software platform, and he's getting on you for not following the script, yeah, maybe you do need to find find a place that has more of a training process to help that really pulls out the emotional intelligence in their reps. Because if you got someone who says, nope, you have to follow this word for word. I don't care what the, you know, I don't care what the person looks like, what their personality is, what they're doing, you're not gonna be successful and you're not gonna, you're not gonna enjoy your job. And so, yeah, so see if he'll adapt to you going off script. Because if he starts selling more, then that's his ultimately what he wants anyway. So that's how I would answer that. Great answer. All right, Heather, I hope that's helpful. And before we start wrapping up, Tim, I've talked about Paradigm Vendo all the time. You guys are our title sponsor. We have a little ad in the middle, but in a quick minute or two, tell us what Paradigm Vendo can do for the companies that are listening and for the sales reps that are listening.

SPEAKER_01 42:58

You bet. Really, what it can do, it can help you take that confusion out of presentations. So kind of taking it back to our content here today, it certainly can do that. Because Paradigm Vendo is an in-home presentation tool people typically use on an iPad that just holds the salesperson's hand and the prospect's hand throughout the presentation and takes them through the five important steps assess needs, inspect and measure, present solutions, configure products, and quote. And you mentioned it a bit ago. We love to use the term Paradigm Vendo can help with what we call a guided shopping experience. Like it changes the dynamic. So it really involves that homeowner. They pick out the product as they're going, they build pricing as they're going. And at the end, it's their deal.

SPEAKER_03 43:48

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 43:49

You know, so why wouldn't they take it? So you really should get a a demo of Paradigm Vendo and see how cool it is. You know, Alan, I should have retired probably about eight years ago. And probably people, a lot of people probably agree with that. But the reason I'm not is I love what this product is and where it's headed. So it's a cool thing. You know, one thing I want to say about it before we wrap is the configure products part of Paradigm Vendor, where it does all the pricing and everything, is just awesome because we have connections with many of the building products manufacturers in the country, and all their product catalogs and pricing is in there. So you don't have to spend weeks or months trying to get your pricing in there for the stuff you sell. All we do is flip a switch and you got X-brand Windows ready to roll.

SPEAKER_04 44:47

It's a tremendous product. You know, when I was looking for a sponsor, obviously I had some offers from other companies, but I wanted to go with one that I could get behind myself that I was like, this stuff is amazing. And you said something, the part where they can where the customer can build the price with the with the rep. Look at it this way, because there's still so many people out there like, no, no, no, no, we can't show the price, we can't, we gotta flip it around at the end, and you know, which produces sticker shock every single time. How many kiosks now are available in almost every fast food restaurant? Even Panera now has kiosks. You go in, that's not by accident. The last study I saw is people spend 22% more when they're pressing a button on a screen rather than having someone tell them how much it is. That right there, the psychology of building your own price and building your project is proven. So why not do it in the house? Now it becomes their windows instead of the rep saying, here's how much it is. It's a completely different dynamic, and your software does that to a T. And anyone listening, how can they where they go, Tim? I know they go to paradigmvendo.com forward slash dwelling, but if they want to reach out to you, where do they go?

SPEAKER_01 45:57

That's gonna do it. To help people out, Alan. I'm gonna challenge you here. Paradigm's a tough word to spell, so go. Come on, come on, you can do it.

SPEAKER_04 46:06

P-A-R-A-D-I-G M. That's just taking it so long, so I gotta do paradigmvendo.com, P-A-R-A-D-I-G-M, V-E-N-D-O.com forward slash dwelling. How's that?

SPEAKER_01 46:21

That's great. So go ahead and let us know if you'd like a quick demo. And I think you'll I think you'll really enjoy the whole concept of a guided shopping experience. Something different, right? Something different before.

SPEAKER_04 46:35

You gotta be different in the house today. You can't be the same old salesperson because they're gonna kick you out or they're not gonna buy from you. So well, Tim, I want to thank you for being on today. This was awesome. We're already almost close to an hour, so this has been terrific. And I want to thank you and Paradigm for sponsoring the podcast. It's been a blast. So we know where to reach you, and you guys out there, you know where to reach me. It's sellinginthedwelling.com. Get in the Ask Allen segment. Get your questions in. Heather's getting a free nice t-shirt from me. I've been sending out a t-shirt every single week, and I'm loving it. So do that. And also visit Paradigm Vendo before the end of the day today. You'll be happy that you did. Thanks to everyone for joining, and we'll see you next time on Selling in the Dwelling. Take care.

unknown 47:16

Selling in the Dwelling.