20 - Stop Practicing Your Sales Process on Your Customers | Marcus Sheridan

SPEAKER_00 0:23

Hello, everyone. Welcome back to another exciting episode of Selling in the Dwelling, the Go-To podcast for the remodeling and in-home sales world. I'm your host, Alan Langer, of the Seven Secret Sales Academy. And you know, I've been I've been having one great guest after another, but I might have the goat today, or at least one of the goats coming up in Marcus Sheridan. I know most people in the audience who are listening know Marcus, and we're going to get to Marcus in a second, but I'm really excited to share the next episode with him because uh he's one of my favorites in the industry, and I've been following him for a long time. So I'm really glad that he's here. But before we get to Marcus, two quick housekeeping notes. The podcast website is www.sellinginthwelling.com. I bring that up because I'd love for you to go to the Ask Alan button at the top right and send me a question. Once you send the question, if I pick your question to read on an upcoming episode, you will get a free Selling in the Dwelling t shirt. And our title sponsor is Paradigm Vendo. It's Paradigm Vendo, P-A-R-D-Y-G-M, I think paradigmvendo.com forward slash dwelling. Check them out. They are a title sponsor for the best in-home software you can find. More on them later. Well, Marcus, thank you for being here, my friend. Welcome to Selling in the Dwelling. How are you?

SPEAKER_04 1:33

Alan, I'm happy to be here. I love this subject. I'm ready to get into it. See if we can uh challenge some people's thoughts here.

SPEAKER_00 1:41

Yes, that's that's what this is all about to kind of throw the little uh in-home selling world on its ear because it's been the same for the last you know 50 years and and uh with today's customers, things are changing. So we're gonna get into some sales stuff. But before I want people to recognize the quality and and and really who we've got on on the episode today with Marcus, because he's not only a New York Times best-selling author, uh, he started in the industry with a with a pool business. I think it was called River River Pools, and it became like one of the number one pool service companies in the entire country. And then he parlayed that into a best-selling author career, keynote speaking. He's actually been on over 750 stages, sold over 100,000 books, and uh, as to date, he's been uh to 20 plus countries doing his thing, teaching companies how to get better at what they do. And he also has two books that we're gonna chat about Endless Customers and the second book, which is which is a huge success, is They Ask You Answer. So, Marcus, tell us a little bit about you had your pool company, things were going great. What made you start wanting to do what you're doing now?

SPEAKER_04 2:49

Yeah, I started with a couple buddies uh in-ground swing pool company in 2001. So I was right out of uh college. I didn't grow up thinking I wanted to be a pool guy. I kind of fell into it. They asked me to be a partner. I was like, okay, let's try this. Things went okay up until the market crash in 2008. Mark crashes and it's really, really bad. It was a tough time for home improvement. It was a tough time for certainly pool companies. A lot of pool companies went out of business in 2008, 2009. People just couldn't get loans anymore because you know the bubble had burst. And it was really during this time that it looked like we were gonna lose the business and I was gonna lose my home, file bankruptcy, all that stuff. But the beauty of pain and suffering is it forces us to do things that otherwise we might not have done. So I really started to learn about the changing buyer. And I said, you know what? Let's just send it. And it became a YOLO, you know, moment for uh for the company and for me personally. And and I said, listen, where the world's going, I can see I'm I was starting to study this online marketing stuff. I'm like, people are asking questions online. Whoever is willing to answer the questions better than anyone else is probably gonna win the game. And so we're gonna become the most prolific answerers of questions online when it comes to, in our case, fiberglass swimming pools. And uh, so that's what we did. We became the most traffic swing pool website in the world. And the company took off. Um, eventually we started manufacturing fiberglass pools as well. So we became a manufacturer. We became uh first fiberglass pool franchise in the US. In 2020, I sold the uh manufacturing and the franchise. I still own the original river pools of Virginia. So I'm a franchisee to the franchise that I sold. And uh still still a good business, does about you know 150 pools a year. But I spent 10 years selling in the home. I'm really passionate about it. And today I spent a lot of time talking, teaching about it, coaching, and all the the whole nine. I'm you know, deeply, deeply passionate about the art of effective communication to connect and to win trust. Uh, you know, it's an odd obsession. I've been thinking about how to effectively communicate probably for like 35 years now, Alan, just differently than most people do. And so, you know, that's the context for our conversation today.

SPEAKER_00 5:09

And you know what's interesting? You and I uh definitely are cut from the same cloth because when I was in my selling career, I sold in the home for 23 years. And once I figured out that concept of communication, it's wild. Like sales training usually has nothing to do with communication. It's just like here's the product, this is how the order you show the product. And there was never any discussion on reading customers, emotional intelligence, things like that. And when I started studying that on my own, just figuring out, because it, you know, the the sales training produces 23% closers, basically, in most in most situations. All of a sudden I'm closing 40, 50, 60%. That's right. And it was simply because I decided to like listen to the customer. We're not talking rocket science here, but you know, have better communication. And it sounds like you've you figured out the same thing, but you you started it on your website first, and then you transferred that into selling in the home, right?

SPEAKER_04 6:02

Yeah. I mean, it's just, you know, look, effective communication is effective communication. Winning trust is winning trust. Sometimes we call it sales, sometimes we call it marketing, sometimes we call it leadership. But fundamentally, it is, you know, the same, it's the same thing. It's the same thing, yeah. Yeah. So, you know, it like I said, I think it is it's been the wonderful obsession of my life. And you know, for a long time, everybody just knew me as he's a pool guy, he wrote They Ask You Answer, and all those things are great. But like to be able to really teach people how to effectively communicate, whether it's with a homeowner or whether it could be like a kid, like one of their own kids. It could be a spouse partner level, whatever it is. Because so much of it is overlapping, as you know, Alan. You know, to your point too about this whole sales training thing, there's a lot of sales meetings that happen in the industry, but there's not a lot of sales training that happens. And we don't count it as sales training unless you're doing active role play, full stop. Unless you're doing role play, it's not sales training. To me, at that point, you can call it a sales meeting. Somebody asks you about your pipeline and you know where they are, yada, yada, yada. That's fine, but that's a sales meeting, and don't kid yourself otherwise. You know, and I I don't know what you found, but I have found in the home improvement space, less than 5% of all companies have at least one sales training once a week. Less than 5%. So it doesn't take a lot to become dramatically more effective of a communicator than your peers in the home improvement space. I mean, you know, it's pretty low. Sales trainings once a week. But again, you can't call it a sales training if what you're really doing is a pipeline review. And that's what most companies actually do.

SPEAKER_00 7:49

Right. And they and they and they say, and let's, you know, clap for you know Big Bill who who sold 30,000 last week, but then you know, all the guys who didn't sell anything either hate Big Bill or feel small. So it's like sales meetings, I think, have always been a terrible it's a it's a whole nother podcast about sales meetings, but you're you're 100% right. Yes. So, but let me ask you a question, though. You're gonna bring this up on and go off on a tangent. When you say role playing, if I say role play to any salesperson, usually 95% of them are gonna go, oh my God, I I hate role playing, I want to go near it. And and they're so adverse to it. How would you, as someone who trains this stuff, recommend doing role playing that reps either want to do or realize that it's gonna get them better? We have any any you know suggestions?

SPEAKER_04 8:33

I mean, I could go on for days about this one. Uh generally speaking, the attitude of a sales team about role playing uh is a direct byproduct of the attitude of the sales manager and the leadership of the company. And for a long time, uh role playing was actually um there was a positive, just general vibe towards it. And what happened is, and and a lot of this is societal, but uh we we we stopped essentially accepting feedback as a society and self-awareness has gone down uh significantly. And the biggest reason why you don't see most of these companies doing role-playing today is because the manager is afraid to fail in front of his or her team. And because of that, they've just elected to ask questions about pipeline instead of actually putting themselves in the line of fire. Because you can't do sales training without putting yourself in the line of fire. You got to be willing to fail in front of your team. And because most of them want to want to appear uh perfect, uh impervious, et cetera, they elect not to do that. And um it, you know, it's it's disastrous consequences uh that is happening, and we see it all the time in home improvement. We also say that we do not call it role playing, we call it real role plays, real role plays. We're always using that phrase. We're gonna do a real roleplay right now. And what we mean by that is once we start it, everyone involved treats it as real. We are literally in the home in that moment. The intensing level is nothing less. We're not smoking, we're not joking, we are serious about it. And it also means the partner is whatever the, you know, whatever the salesperson needs them to be in that moment. You know, sometimes they're tough, sometimes they're not as tough, but they are what the salesperson needs in that moment. I've seen so many people completely transform their entire lives because they learned to love real role plays. They learned to get excited about failing in front of their team. One of the things that I've done as a leader of multiple companies at this point, because you know, I'm I've got my hand in a lot of different businesses. I'm a shareholder in multiple companies. And I openly will send us like to the you know, company Slack or something like that. I'll send a video out that says, hey, everybody, let me let me tell you how I wet the bed in a sales conversation recently, or something I said wrong in a sales conversation, or a response that I said that really could have and should have gone much better, but you know, I I wasn't following my own fundamentals and you know this thing. It is very possible to create a culture that that loves failure, but almost no one does it. The only way you can create that culture, though, is you as a leader have to be willing to say, hey, I screwed this up. Let me tell you how I messed it up, let me tell you what I did wrong. And I would invite you going forward to also have that same self-awareness. But because we're so afraid of failure, what happens is, again, we don't do role plays. Sales manager asks the hard questions, but doesn't put themselves in the line of fire. Uh, so they're they're they haven't proven you know anything to their teams other than the fact that they can just ask them about their own prospects, which is a joke. And then, you know, we have this issue where because no one is used to seeing failure, when they do actually fail, and everybody does all the time with with the homeowner, they they don't want to talk about it, they don't mention it, or there's just not enough self-awareness in the room to realize, yeah, you really stunked that one up. And here's the reason why you stunked that one up. And the person should know that before anybody has to tell them, right? And this doesn't even include all the wonders of AI call recording software that we have today, which is a huge unlock in terms of showing people their good and bad habits and patterns and really what homeowners are asking and how you know your team is responding. If, you know, I think it's an indictment on any company that's not using uh AI recording at this point to really get a true gauge of what their sales team is and is not doing well, because um, most of the time, 99% of the time, they speculate on how they think their sales team is doing because they're doing one to two ride-alongs a year and they're calling that a true review, which is a total joke in my opinion. That doesn't count for squat.

SPEAKER_00 12:49

And and you bring up a great point. You brought up recording software. So Rilla, I I I you know, I've I've worked with Rilla. Yeah, there's Rilla, there's Zero, there's Zero, and there's so many of these that you can use.

SPEAKER_04 13:00

I mean, just so many. And you don't have to spend a lot of money to have an effective one. I mean, heck, you can use a dang phone to record the whole conversation and then put it in your claw, and then you've got the same, maybe not the same thing, but you've got a good result and you've spent no money. So it shouldn't be a budget problem. It's just at this point, it's a it's a laziness problem. Um, it's it's uh, you know, it's it's one of these. Anybody that's resisting this as a salesperson doesn't love high performance.

SPEAKER_00 13:25

Full stop. You you know, it at least three salespeople that I knew when I was selling who contacted me after their companies went and got Rilla or Ciro. And they're like, this is it. I'm leaving. Big brother's watching me. And I'm like, dude, you're looking at this the wrong way. I said, this is gonna help you. You should use this for your own. Like when the iPhone first came out in 2009, I looked at it and I'm like, hey, this has a record button on it. And I put it in my pocket and record my conversation. I did that on my own. And I joke with Sebastian Jimenez uh over at Rilla. I'm like, you stole my idea, but you know, he he he obviously took it to the next level with the AI. But you're so right that a sales rep that looks at this in a negative way just doesn't get it. Like, this is like huge.

SPEAKER_04 14:10

If I'm talking to a rep, I'm gonna ask him a few questions. A lot of reps did some type of sport back in the day, you know. So did you, you know, did you play sports back in the day? Person says yes. So one of my first questions is what percentage of the time were you at practice? What percentage of the time were you in the game? And typically 80% of their time to 90% of the time is spent at practice, and then 10 to 20% of the time is spent in the game. Why do we do that? Well, because we have to develop our skills and practice. Okay, today, what percentage of your time when it comes to selling is practice? What percentage of your time is in the game? Quickly they stop and they give you that look. And the reality is most people right now are practicing selling on their customers. Yes. Instead of practicing on themselves. So shame on you know for doing that, because at that point, you're not you're not providing the financial peace to your family that you should be providing because you've got some pride issue that's going on. And I'm I'm happy to say that because that's reality and I'm not never going to sugarcoat it to anybody. Now, the other side to that is again, the athlete. When you were an athlete, you did sport, did you record the games? Yes. Did you analyze and watch the game film afterwards? Yes. Why did you do that? Well, for this, this, and that. If an athletic team or an athlete could record and didn't record or never watch themselves, is that good or bad? Well, it's really bad. Why is that bad? Because they're never going to know this, this, and that. Okay. So why don't you record yourself in sales? Oh, it's an invasion of my prophecy. No, it has nothing to do with that. Once again, you've got a pride issue. And, you know, if look, I do all this because I'm driven by God and family. I want him to be happy with me. And I want to provide for my wife, my kids, our posterity well. So I'm going to do what it takes to get better. And the idea that I would just leave stuff on the table and not develop myself out of vanity or pride, or I don't want people seeing that I'm, you know, it's like I do trainings all the time, all day, every day. I have a whole company that does uh sales training. We specialize in home improvement. And 90% of our time with clients is doing role plays. 90% of the time is doing role play. Role play, role play, roleplay is what we do. And everybody eventually loves it. I shouldn't say everybody, 95%. The other 5% are those that are not going to be ultimately a good fit because they don't want to do what it takes to become a high performer.

SPEAKER_00 16:35

So you mentioned your own company. Is that the uh the question first group with the in-home selling? Is that is that that the concept? So I saw this and I love the whole concept. I'm going to ask you a two-layered question here. You have, I think it was under the question first group, the top eight sales deficiencies that you saw in 2026. How does the question first group, first of all, give me your top three of those eight, and then how does the question first group address those?

SPEAKER_04 17:00

No, you're asking me about a post right now that I that I put up, and I you're like that's a quick recall that I'm not going to have in my head. But what I do see is a lot of nefarious things that happen in home improvement that don't have to happen. You don't have to manipulate a homeowner to win incredible trust and to close deals. You don't have to manipulate and be nefarious to have very high closing rates. And in fact, you don't have to do any of those things if you want to have one call close. You can still have that and be very, very trust driven. Because look, the truth is, how many sales managers and owners would be okay with their own sales team going in and selling to their mother?

SPEAKER_00 17:45

I love that one.

SPEAKER_04 17:46

I remember you wrote that, yeah. There's a lot that would say, I would not want my own sales team selling to my 60, 70-year-old mom. Well, why not? Well, I'm afraid they would take advantage of her. There you go. I can't imagine I can't imagine selling like that, dude. Right. You know, tricking people. And look, I understand you have to build urgency, you have to build value, you gotta do all these things. But I believe there is a better way. And I think there's a lot of things that have been done in the industry that don't have to continue to be done in order to be incredibly effective and connect very, very quickly with the homeowner. The problem is if you look at a lot of uh sales just training in general, and sales books in general too, 80% of the content is on the close. I know about the close. You're so right, yeah. But what we've found is the inverse. Typical Preto's law, which is 80% of your results, especially in an in-home appointment, is based on the first 20% of the sale, which is the opening. The opening, i.e. discovery. And discovery as a whole, you know what's crazy to me? You talk to a lot of home improvement reps, you say, tell me about your discovery, like discovery, what do you mean by that? They don't even know what the word means. Like they don't even use the word discovery.

SPEAKER_02 19:04

They don't use the word, it blows my freaking mind.

SPEAKER_04 19:09

And so we, you know, we teach how to ask very deep questions that make people think. And we do that by elevating the authority of the individual. And this is the part that a lot of people say, yeah, well, it you know, we we have that too. But then when you watch them like, no, you really don't do that. Just like it let me give you an example. When it comes to swimming pools, for example, okay. If I was selling a swimming pool, and it's it doesn't matter, it's you there's questions like this for pretty much anything when it comes to home improvement. But I will say to somebody, before we really like talk about what you want with this pool, any of that stuff, I'm gonna go back in time for a second. I want you to tell me about your first memory that really stuck with you in a swimming pool. Who are you with? What were you doing? Tell me about that. I want to see what you saw, I want to feel what you felt. That's a different question, dude. But it's everything. And that question is like that question is it, right? That question is it. Then we'll ask a question like this. Because we always do uh past, present, future, but you know, it's like your first one is a past, like tell me about your first time, first memory, first whatever. Because that's where the seeds were planted, right? And there's a very good chance they didn't realize the reason why they're trying to make this purchase right now is because they want to replicate the thing that they felt at that point in time, that that moment, right? It's like you know, it's somebody's redoing a kitchen. Tell me about a dinner when you were like a f a holiday dinner that you remember that has stuck with you. Who was there? What were you doing? I want to see that scene just like you see it. Same question, right? Same question, right? Right. The reason why we do we we spend money on these things when it comes to the home is was you're trying to recreate something that we've probably already lived to some degree. And they've forgotten these things. Your job is to help them remember the why. Yeah. Now, if I if I asked, you know, a home improvement sales rep, how often are you really digging into that type of past-based question? They're gonna say, Oh, I guess I'm I guess I'm not. No, you're not.

SPEAKER_02 21:16

No, you're not.

SPEAKER_04 21:17

Most of them are not. Now, some of them do the future question. The future but the present question is why now? All right, there's different ways to ask it. You'd obviously you you've wanted a pool for five years, you wanted to remodel your home for 10 years. Tell me what changed why now. But then we've got the future question. The future question once again is you've heard of a vision board, I'm sure, Alan. And and occasionally you see people do this, but usually they don't do this on home improvement. Like five percent or less will do this. Which is let's say again, go back to a pool. It's easy, it's easy to use as an example. Okay, so let's assume this pool's done. We're a year from now, Alan. It's a perfect summer day. Right now, I want to go to the scene and I want to see it like you see it. Let's pretend we're out at your place. Pool, but I want you to tell me exactly who you see.

unknown 22:03

Okay.

SPEAKER_04 22:03

I want you to tell me what you hear.

unknown 22:05

Okay.

SPEAKER_04 22:06

I want you to tell me what you smell. Okay. I want you to give me as much detail as possible. And the more detail you give me right now, the more that's going to affect exactly how we build this pool. So I want you to give it as much detail as possible. Okay. Now, all these questions, of course, are are not effective unless you understand how to ask follow-up questions, which most people think they're good at follow-up questions, and they're not. And so you got to teach people how to go, you know, three levels deep almost always. But these are the types of things that folks don't train on. And if you want to create magic, once a salesperson goes through our system, they tell us a couple things happen all the time. Number one, they say, Yeah, keep having homeowners tell me nobody's ever asked me that before. Yeah. Which is a KPI. To me, that's actual KPI of a good sales rep. Is how often do you hear? And this is by the way, great leadership communication. This is great friend communication. How often does somebody say, gosh, man, wow, nobody's ever asked me that before? It's like the ultimate compliment to you as a communicator if somebody asks you that. Sure. The other ultimate compliment is when somebody says to you, I don't know why I'm telling you this, but I can feel I feel like I can trust you. Right. Yep. It's just magic. How often are you hearing that? If you're not hearing that, if your reps aren't hearing that, there's a problem. And if you're listening to your call recordings and you're feeding it to your AI, you know exactly how many times each rep is hearing that each week. And you're like, there's a problem here.

unknown 23:30

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 23:31

We're not creating breakthroughs because we're not asking questions that are causing that light bulb, the aha moment. You see, the great ones, the great communicators, always induce the light bulb, the aha moment. And the way the aha manifests is the person, and you know it, Alan, because you, you know, you've done this many times. You're very good at yourself. Person hears the question, it's like, oh, son of that, never really thought about that. You know what? Come to think of it, you know, now that you mention it, or wow, I actually I think the answer is all those light bulb, light bulb, light bulbs. That's what you're doing in those moments. That's your job. You want to be world-class at sales, you create light bulb moments.

SPEAKER_00 24:09

Hey, sellers, when your rep sits down with a homeowner and it's time to present the product and close the deal, the experience they have created from the moment they walked in the door until the time at that kitchen table is either winning the job or losing it. That's why I'm proud to have Paradigm Vendo as the title sponsor of Selling in the Dwelling. Paradigm Vendo, that's P-A-R-A-D-I-G-M Vendo with a V, is the industry's leading digital selling solution built specifically for in-home sales professionals, featuring real-time quoting direct from product manufacturers, dynamic presentations, e-signatures, and even CRM integration, all on not only any device, but it's all in one place. No more jumping around from one software platform to another. Streamline your entire sales process and create an amazing experience for the homeowner wanting to work with you. Check it out at paradigmvendo.com forward slash dwelling. Again, paradigm P-A-R-A-D-I-G-M Vendo with a V dot com forward slash dwelling. Paradigm Vendo, sell smarter, close more. Hey sales professionals, are you proud of your profession? Are you proud of being in sales? Well, you know what? You really should be, and it's time to start showing it. And that's why I created my new merchandise shop, the sevensecretshop.net. It's the the number sevensecretshop.net, and there you can find great hats, t-shirts, beanies, water bottles, phone covers, all kinds of really fun merchandise with great sayings like I love sales or sales rocks, or even for your kids, my dad is a sales rock star, my mom is a sales superstar. Visit the sevensecretshop.net with the number seven, and you can pick out anything you want to show your love of what you do for a living. The sevensecrets shop.net. Visit it today. I I love the past, present, future, and I I focused a lot when I when I learned how to do this, and again, it was completely by accident figuring this out. I love the past stuff though, because I'm not I I don't really talk about the past. I love I love what you said about bringing that up as far as at some point in their lives they've enjoyed what they want. Yeah. But I use the phrase for the future, and this was very very successful for me. I would just say, imagine if, and then I would fill in the blank. Like imagine sitting here at the at the kitchen table looking at your brand new awning window, looking at your bird feeder on a beautiful Sunday morning. And they put themselves in the position of what it's like to own the product.

SPEAKER_04 26:37

That's what you want them to do. You want them to have experienced ownership in their mind.

SPEAKER_00 26:41

Yeah. Let's take a roof for example. I used this in training just last week. Talk about different types of roofing people, you know, roofing salespeople who just sell the shingles. We got three different types, three tab, architectural, we got metal, we got 18 different colors, our company won all these awards, and blah, blah, blah, you sound like you're the salesperson. And then you find out you're you're actually there because it's leaking on something important in the house. But the imagine if is two scenarios. Marcus, I could put a beautiful new green roof on your house. That's true. Or, hey, Marcus, imagine pulling up every day after work into your driveway looking up at your brand new green roof. Just right there, put him in the position of owning it. So I love that future stuff. And for the for the reps that are listening to this, you need to incorporate that. The customer needs to know what it's like to own and live with the product.

SPEAKER_04 27:27

Now, to this though, if you're going to ask these types of questions, because a lot of people say, I don't know, that kind of sounds a little bit cheesy, or that sounds intrusive, or that sounds like an interrogation. Which, no, if you do it the right way, it does not. It doesn't, right. But what you have to learn is you you earn the right to ask deeper questions than your peers. And the way you earn the right is by telling them that you're going to ask questions that nobody's ever asked them before. And you get their permission to do that and their commitment to give you thorough answers. Yes. So before we ask any discovery questions, we always do what we call an honest agreement. Now, in the word of Sandler, Sandler might call this the um the upfront agreement. But I don't believe Sandler's is nearly as robust as it should be. I just don't think it's very good. Because the biggest reason why homeowners tell reps at the end of the call, hey, I need to think about it. We need to think about it, or, you know, we really like you guys. Uh, we'll get back to you. Nine out of ten times, they actually know exactly how they feel in that moment. But they're not telling you, not because they don't trust you, they may, they may not. But the reason why they're not telling you how they really feel is because they don't want to hurt your dang feelings.

SPEAKER_02 28:46

Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_04 28:47

People are really funny about hurting people's feelings. They get real scared. So at the beginning of any conversation, when you when you do an honest agreement with someone, you have to teach them that it's okay to hurt your feelings because they won't hurt your feelings. So if it's okay with you, let's just role-play this out real quick, Alan, because I think it's fun to do it. It manifests a million different ways. We call it the honest agreement. It's basically five steps to it. We want to raise the stakes of the conversation. I'm going to tell you that I'm going to be very honest with you and I'm going to get your okay on that. And then I'm going to let you know that I'm going to ask you some deep questions. We're going to get your okay on that. Then I'm going to tell you your commitment to me, which is to be honest. And then I'm going to get your verbal commitment at the end. Now, like I said, it's similar to the upfront agreement, but it's much more robust than anything that you see with any really system that I've seen out there. And this is one of the things that a lot of times people hear it at first, like, oh, there's no way you could do that, or it's not natural. Or I was like, we do this, we train it. Nobody says, oh, that's that's cheesy. That's not natural. Once they become great at it, homeowners love it. So it just sounds something like this. So let's say once again, it's pool, it's a rip, it doesn't matter what it is. We'll just call it a pool in this context, Alan. Alan, I I know you've been looking at a pool for a while. It's a really big decision. You told me already that you're probably gonna be here for the next couple decades. Bottom line is we don't want to mess this up. I don't want you to mess it up. And because it's such a big deal, here's my commitment to you. And this is not just today, as we're having this conversation, this is like forever in the future, because I think we're gonna be friends for a long time. And that is this I'm always gonna be very, very real with you, very candid. What I mean by that is if I think you're making a bad decision, I'm absolutely gonna let you know. Because I care about you too much to make mistakes. Is that fair? I like that. Okay. Now I'm gonna keep going. Keep going. Yeah. So after I say that, then I'm gonna say, along these same lines, because this is such a big deal, what you're gonna find is I'm gonna ask you questions that other reps that have been in your home they haven't asked you. And the reason is I really want to get to the core of what's driving this. I want to see this like you see it. But your ability to give me specific answers is gonna be key here. So as I ask you these questions, my ask to you is that you really give me your best. And in doing that, it's gonna prevent us from making any mistakes. And one last thing. Just as I'm going to be very, very candid and honest with you always, my ask is the same for you with me. Let me give you an example. So today we're gonna be talking about your siding. Today we're gonna be talking about your pool. Today we're gonna be talking about your roof. At any point today, if I show you something and you don't like it, what do you need to tell me? I need to tell you I don't like it, Marcus. Exactly. Why is it so important that you in that in that very moment you say, Marcus, I don't like that? Well, now we're not wasting time on stuff I don't like. Exactly. We're not wasting time and we're not gonna make mistakes. And I can assure you that you tell me exactly how you feel will not hurt my feelings ever. In fact, it's only gonna help. So, Alan, will you commit to being 100% candid and honest with me always? Now, you're gonna say yes, and now we're gonna move on to discovery. We call that the honest agreement. Now, what's sad about that is there's people listening to that right now, and they're saying, nah, can never do it, not cheesy, like I said. They have no idea what it's like to get that immediate, immediate, high-level commitment and trust with the homeowner. Sure, you might earn it over the course of 60, 90, 120 minutes. Could you get in five minutes where they're telling you things they've never told anybody in their life? Yes, you can. But it all has to do with the energy and the authority that you come into the home with. You've got to have all the right things. And of course, the reason why we always want to do initial upfront verbal agreements is because we're essentially training them for what is going to be a written agreement later on. And so it's a part, it's a building process. But I do want people to say that's ugly. I do want people to say to me, yeah, that's the dumbest idea I've ever heard. I I all of it, and when they say it, I'm gonna receive it well. I'm not gonna be butthurt. You see, you can't do what I just did, an honest agreement. And then somebody says, could you take 5,000 off? And you're like, what? 5,000? Are you serious right now? Because you didn't receive it well. You didn't receive it. So I know that's what Tom Hopkins told you to say in the 80s, but today in the 90s, not today in the 2020s, that's not what we're gonna do. What we're gonna do today is we're gonna say 5,000. All right, tell me about that. Yeah, that's all we're gonna do. We're gonna receive it well and we're gonna have them explain it. But the point, the point is so much of our success is energy and authority. They've got to see us at authority, and you've got to create the right energy. But you do that with the words that you use and the way you communicate. Of course, do these things take time to be natural? Yes. But you can absolutely absolutely do them.

SPEAKER_00 33:53

You're bringing up so many things that are flying around my head right now. But the the two things that just jumped out at me is first you're talking about the experience the rep is giving the homeowner in the house. That's not trained either. They they talk about, you know, you make you got to make sure you got to hit your eight or ten steps, but they never talk about what experience is the homeowner having with you as the sales rep? That's number one. And and by asking these deeper questions, you're just giving them a better experience over everyone else. That's the first one. But the other thing is you're talking about when reps say, oh, that sounds cheesy. Well, when you say you should do something, it comes across as a script, and that's another four-letter word for reps. I don't want to, you know, do a script. But here's how I respond to that. I said, you just did it yourself just on this podcast. You just talked to me. You have that outline, that guideline of what you're saying in this honesty agreement, but you're not doing the same exact words to every customer.

SPEAKER_04 34:44

We could do it 10 straight times, I would do 10 different ways, but I would hit to your point, I would hit those five core steps. Exactly. And that's the thing. It's like people are like, I don't want to memorize that. You memorize so that you can become unscripted.

SPEAKER_00 34:57

Yeah. Hello.

SPEAKER_04 34:58

So uh that's that's so great. That's the reason why we do it. You memorize it so you can make it your own. But if you skip that part, that part of it, then what happens is somebody says, Yeah, we do an honest agreement. I'm like, okay, yeah, tell me, how does it sound? Uh yeah, Mr. Matone, it'd be great. Like, I just want to be real with each other today. So if anything comes up, you know, you just make sure you let me know. Cool? All right, let's go ahead and get started. That's a joke. That is that is a crime against humanity that I just heard. Right? That is sad. There's no authority elevation at all. There's no connection that has occurred. Yet you're saying to yourself, I just checked the box and I did it my way? No. Heck no. That ain't that ain't that ain't okay. You're leaving money on the table and you're not providing for your family at the level you should at that point.

SPEAKER_00 35:47

A couple months ago, I did a training, and at the end of some one of these trainings that I do, I have this acronym. I always, you you said right, you said like all sales training is about closing, the majority of it. And I always say closing is not a place to arrive. Closing is just the extension of a great conversation. You don't have to arrive at closing. But anyway, so I have this ending story to tell that kind of asks for the order without saying, hey, do you want to move forward today? And I said this, and one rep raised his hand, he goes, That sounds way too scripted. I could never do that. So I simply said to him, I said, You ever watch a movie? Yeah. I said, you know, every actor in that movie is reading a script, right? But they memorize it so much and so well that it didn't come across as a script. And I said, the best lines ever in movies are the ones that are ad-lib by the actors anyway. They'd be made, they make the scene their own. And that's exactly what sales is like. So that's what you're talking about.

SPEAKER_04 36:35

That's right. There was a foundation that was provided. And you gotta have a foundation because you can't just make it up, generally speaking, a movie on the fly. No, you can't perform that well. The magic comes from the improv in the moment, but you still know where you're trying to go.

SPEAKER_00 36:53

Yes. We're moving along here. I want to ask you uh another question or two before we get to the Ask Allen segment. So, you know, this is all sales stuff, but give me like one or two points. I know you talk about, you know, these pillars of a trusted brand. Like, let's switch over to a company for a second. Give me one or two things that you think companies are getting wrong now when it comes to trust. And one of them I really want you to point out is transparency.

SPEAKER_04 37:19

I I've talked so much about this over the course of, you know, 15, 16 years now. Gosh, more than that, I guess. And like, gosh, it's actually, yeah, more like 17 years. I've been talking online about trust, transparency, things like that. Look, I was the first swimming pool company in the world, literally in the world, to talk about pricing for our for pools on our website. Yeah. And uh, I've got the date on it just for my company in Virginia. You know, I wrote an article in 2009, how much does a fiberglass pool cost? It was the first one ever written uh on the internet by a pool company. That one single article to this day has generated over $35 million in sales for the company. Okay. $35 million. And I still have uh contractors telling me, yeah, I don't, you know, there's no way we could do that. I'm like, you fool. Because if you look at, if you talk to anybody today and and you say, okay, let's assume for a second, you're the homeowner, you're the searcher here, you're you're the consumer, you're the buyer, and you're on a website and you look for cost and price information, can't find it, what's the emotion you experience? Frustration, distrust, okay? Do you call the company? No. What do you do? I keep looking till I find what I'm looking for. And generally speaking, whoever gives you what you're looking for, they're gonna get your business. Or not your business, they're gonna get first contact, first phone call. So yeah, really one of the biggest mistakes that that we're seeing, and this is gonna send shockwaves through the industry, what's coming, by the way, is most home improvement companies still aren't talking about cost and price uh on their website online. And it's costing them millions. They don't even know it. And the reason why they justify is they say it's gonna scare people away. No, it actually doesn't. Not when you teach them value. What scares people away online is when they can't find an answer. That's way, way more scary, actually. Um, that's how you lose a ton of business that you never know. Like you didn't even know you would have gotten it. You've just lost it. Like if the amount of people listening to this right now actually knew how much business they've lost because they didn't address pricing online, they would be so sick. They would just like, they would like for days be curled up in a ball. I'm not kidding you. Because I have the data on on this. I've I've I've I've helped thousands of companies learn how to talk about cost and price online. The thing about it is when you talk about cost and price online, and endless customers, the book, there's this section called the perfect pricing page. Every home improvement company should have it. And the there's like five fundamental sections of it. There's like 16 little parts, but there's five major parts to it, which is for that product, for that service that you sell, what drives the cost up in the industry, what drives the cost down? In other words, why are some jobs so expensive? Why are some jobs so cheap? And then the second half of that is why are some contractors or companies so expensive, why are some companies so cheap? Because they're they're different. We're really teaching value with those four first four things. Value when it comes to roofing, value when it comes to remodeling, whatever it is. And the fifth one is roughly, roughly where do your projects fall. All right. This doesn't mean that you give priceless, doesn't mean that you give exact answers. But what it means is you address a fundamental question that every dang homeowner wants to know as soon as they say, oops, looks like we need new siding. Oops, looks like we need a new roof, oops, looks like we want to get a pull. First question that comes out of their mouth is the same one every single time. So roughly, what do you think this is going to cost us? Not exactly what's it gonna cost us, roughly what's gonna cost us. Right. When they call you on the phone, they're always asking you, roughly what's it gonna cost you. There's still people that are calling the call centers. You got companies in this industry, the call center's been trained. Oh, I don't have an answer, and the homeowner's seeing right through it, and it just pisses them off. And I talk to these call center coordinators and they're telling me more and more and more people are getting really, really frustrated. Now, the other reason why this is getting so interesting, Alan, is because it's getting quickly to a point where ChatGPT and other LLMs are not gonna recommend your home improvement company unless you're addressing pricing online. And in fact, the big um shockwave that's coming through the industry is pricing estimators. It's gonna be standard. It's gonna be standard. Now, I I have quite like a purview to this because of the fact that I own a software called PriceGuide. And it was built for contractors to be able to quickly, easily, cost-effectively build pricing estimators for their website. And we've got data out the wazoo on this because we've got nearing 2,000 contractors that have pricing estimators right now that are using Price Guide. And I could tell you for certainty that the average contractor, when they put a pricing estimator on their website, increases leads by 3x. The second they put it up there, increases leads. 3x, 3x. And so a lot of these folks are saying, I just got to hide it. I don't want to scare them away. That's another, it's like, you know, I don't want my contractors to see it. Those are the big three reasons. And all the homeowner wants is to get a general sense for how much it is. Now you get the lead. Now you can reach out to them. Now many of them are gonna say, hey, let's have a conversation. You know, the amount of contractors right now that are spending money on Google Ads and sending them to some ridiculous landing page that's got like a sub-10% conversion rate. If you were just sending them instead to an estimator, you're gonna get a 40 to 60% conversion rate. And now you're gonna get three to five X more for your return on ad spend. Why the world would you continue to do it the way you're doing it? It doesn't make any sense. It blows my freaking mind. I know. You know, and what's crazy, it's it's cheap too. Alliance, you take a tool like Price Guide. I think our average customer spends like 30 something bucks a month. It's like that's the average. So for less than $500 a year, you're getting 3x the number of leads, and that's it. That's it. That's all you did. And you're now your appointments are dramatically better. There's no shocking on the home. The homeowner's not passing out when you say, well, here's how much it is. Oh my goodness, I thought a sweet pool was $20,000. What do you mean? That's $100,000. How do you not know that? Well, they don't know that because you allowed them to live in a state of total ignorance. But, but to this point, and I'm serious, ChatGPT is gonna force every contractor to do this. I have uh a software company that measures AI visibility. So I've run thousands of tests on this. I know what makes ChatGPT say recommended, you're in the top five remodelers for your town list, or you're not. Right. And pricing is becoming, like along with reviews, it is becoming one A and one B. And unless you're talking about it and unless you have that estimator, you're gonna get deemed. And when every homeowner is is going agentic and using agents to do their initial vetting of contractors, which is coming, whether we like it or not, whether you think it's dystopian or not, it's coming. Well, guess what? That agent is full stop gonna reject your company if you don't have some. Type of pricing estimator.

SPEAKER_00 44:02

And you know what? Um, price guide, you gave a plug to your software. I actually, about five years ago, I saw this coming down the pike too. And even when I brought it up to contractors, they thought I had six heads. Like, what do you mean put pricing on my on my website? You're nuts. So two years ago with a tech buddy of mine, I started a company called quoteboat.net. It's the same thing. It's a pricing widget. And and and we've got a company in New Jersey who uh who signed on, and they're probably getting, I think they're averaging about 45 to 50 leads just from this, and they're closing almost 70% of them. And they'll they think it's the greatest thing they've ever done. And it's just, but I'm I'm really good at sales, and I have a tough time still selling this, you know?

SPEAKER_04 44:42

It's like I could everything I just said, Alan, and literally five percent of the listeners will say, Yeah, I think I'm gonna give that a try. That's what blows my mind. And yet they're paying out the wazoo for Google Ads and Facebook ads. They're saying I've spending, I'm spending more this year than I've ever spent on Google Ads, and I'm seeing less results than I've ever gotten. Yet they are going to continue to do this. 95% are gonna do it exactly the way like they've been doing it, and they're gonna say, There's no way I can have an estimator. I'm just like, Son of a gun. What do you say?

SPEAKER_00 45:10

What do you say? You even have pricing as a speaker on your website, which is unheard of. I have it with myself, but I don't see you don't find any speakers.

SPEAKER_04 45:17

I have a pricing estimator as a speaker on my website. I'm the only speaker in the world that has a pricing estimator.

SPEAKER_00 45:22

I know, it's awesome. I think it's great. I think it's the greatest thing ever. So I think it's great too.

SPEAKER_04 45:26

And you know, and and the thing about it is I'm just I just continue to just generate more leads than other speakers. And it's I know who's checking me out, man. At least I know. Yeah, maybe they don't buy, maybe we're too expensive, but at least I know. And then I try to have a conversation.

SPEAKER_00 45:42

Right. Or you're not wasting time with someone who has fifteen hundred dollars in their budget for for a keynote in front of a thousand people. So that's correct. Hey, sellers, quick question. Your best rep walks into a home and closes the sale. Now picture everyone else on your team in that same home. Is it the same result? For most companies, the answer is no. And that's not a talent problem. That could very well be a readiness problem. See, that's why I want to tell you about our good friends over at Engage, I-N-G-A-G-E, the sponsor of the Ask Alan segment coming up next. Engage is the industry's leading interactive and dynamic sales presentation software built specifically for the in-home sales industry. And it works wonderfully with our title sponsor, Paradigm Vendo. And right now, Engage has a free sales readiness playbook that shows you exactly where your team is ready and where the gaps may be costing you sales. And it takes just minutes to complete. You need to check it out for free at salesplan.engage.io. That's salesplan one word.engage i-n-g-a-g-e.io. Because in this business, your presentation isn't just part of the sale. It could very well make or break the entire sale. That's salesplan.engage.io. Visit them today. Marcus, we're flying along here and we got to get to the ask Allen segment. You heard the angels sing on high, and that means we're into the ask Allen segment. And we've actually got a pretty simple question today, but it really targets, it's a bullseye on what we've been talking about. And it comes from a gentleman named Sean in Wisconsin. And he very simply asks, first of all, he says, Great show, guys. Should sales methodologies change for today's era of short attention spans? If yes, then how? So how would you answer Sean from Wisconsin's question?

SPEAKER_04 47:36

People, I wouldn't say that their attention spans are shorter. I would actually argue they're just a lot less patient. So if they don't feel if they don't feel engaged uh and satisfied, so the bar is the bar is higher. So so what is this what does this mean? Well, what it means on the front end of the sales process, i.e. your website and your online marketing and branding, etc., you better provide means whereby you reduce friction, you make it faster, and you remove fear. Three F's of innovation. Okay and in one example that we just discussed, having a pricing estimator is a major thing. Because like somebody comes to your website, they just want to get an answer, and like, oh my goodness, I can get a range? This is so awesome. It's like yeah, yeah. So, like, that's a perfect example of addressing the less patient homeowner. Now, in the actual home itself, we all know we've all heard a speed delete is a big deal. This is why, if there is any way for you to give the quote on site to present the solution plus the number on site, I'm always gonna say you should. Because we're trying to be faster. We want to call them within the first 30 seconds of the lead coming into the system. I don't even want you to wait five minutes anymore, right? Like so, speed to lead, speed to quote, speed to contract, like speed to everything, I think is affected. But I'm not gonna rush the conversation in the home. In fact, I'm gonna slow it down with some deeper questions that nobody else has ever asked them before.

SPEAKER_00 49:09

Right, right. And and you did that that point you just made of the low attention span is really not the problem. It's people want things faster. They don't have patience. The world we live in right now. You you your instant gratification on social media, on on searches and everything. And that's why it's so frustrating homeowners like, okay, I'm gonna be here for three hours before I give you the price. That does just doesn't work anymore. It's just like they're they're they're they're they want to kick you out after a half hour if they if they see that coming. So, Sean, I I I would not think of it as attention span. I would think of it as a patience thing and get them the information they want right away. I always say, you know, it's very simple. Ask them what they want to see. Like, don't just dance around and stuff and hope you're showing them something that they like. I always said, so what what do you like? What have you seen? What do you want to see today? And and they tell you, they'll tell you how to sell them. And that's how you that's how you keep their attention for sure.

SPEAKER_04 49:58

That's and that's customizing it to really what their hot buttons are versus all those things that you want to talk about that they really don't give a rip about, right? So I mean that's a that's a that's a major, major key to this. But yeah, Alan, this has been a lot of fun, buddy. I I I love you, I love the way you think, I love your podcast here, and uh those that work with you are very lucky to work with you.

SPEAKER_00 50:22

Well, well, I thank you, Marcus. And speaking of working with, how do people work with you? They want to contact you, where do they go?

SPEAKER_04 50:28

Yeah, you know, uh one of the easiest ways for people to find uh find me is is to go to questionfirstgroup.com, but we've got a book on there, The Four Pillars of Breakthrough Home Improvement Sales Communication. And uh you can download it for free uh right there on on site. You can buy it for very inexpensive, the uh paperback version, but it really teaches you those those things I was showing you earlier, like stuff like that. It's great. We're obsessed with effective communication in the home. So just type in question first group and uh you can find us there. You can find me on LinkedIn. I'm a pretty good follow. I put my best stuff on LinkedIn.

SPEAKER_00 51:04

And it's Marcus M-A-R-C-U-S Sheridan S-H-E-R-I-D-A-N. And you will even have marcusheridan.com for the folks that want to hire you for speaking, right?

SPEAKER_04 51:13

That's right. That's right. And I'm speaking, you know, I'll be a top 500 uh this year, and you know, I'm always doing events in the home improvement space. So you'll see me all over the place if you are part of that industry.

SPEAKER_00 51:24

Awesome. Well, Marcus, really, I can't thank you enough for being on this podcast. And uh I wish you success. And hopefully I'll see you down the road at some events. Uh, maybe we'll uh we'll we'll do some collaboration uh together uh in the future. So but thank you for being here, and I want to thank everyone out there for being here as well and listening to Selling in the Dwelling. Don't forget the paradigmvendo.com forward slash dwelling. That is our title sponsor, and visit the Ask Allen segment on the website. That's it for today, everyone. Take care and thanks for joining Selling in the Dwelling. We'll see you next time.

SPEAKER_01 51:56

Selling in the Dwelling.