21 - The Sales Conversation No One is Having | Adriane Brooks

SPEAKER_01 0:22

Hello, everyone, and welcome back to another episode of Selling in the Dwelling, the go-to podcast for the remodeling and in-home sales industry. I'm your host, Alan Langer of the Seven Secret Sales Academy, and I've got a great guest coming up in Adrian Brooks, who is one of the premier sales leaders and coaches in the in-home selling space. But before we get to Adrian, a couple of quick housekeeping notes. As always, the website is sellinginthedwelling.com. I bring that up because I'd love for you to go to the top right button where it says ask Alan, send me a question. We've got a great question coming up from Stacy in Fresno, California later. And if you get a question read on the air, you get a free Selling in the Dwelling t-shirt. So Stacey's getting one of those. And second, our title sponsor is our good friends at Paradigm Vendo. It's paradigmvendo.com forward slash dwelling. More on them later. Well, let's get right into this. I'm very excited. Adrian, welcome to the show. How are you?

SPEAKER_00 1:17

Thank you, Alan. I'm great. How are you?

SPEAKER_01 1:20

I'm awesome. And I'm very excited you're here because we actually, with all my guests, we do like a little pre-call before we start recording. And I was talking to Adrian about the lack of women in home sales. It's an industry that is dominated by men. And here are you are not only successful, but you have a VP role. You're the VP in Renewal by Anderson of Central Virginia. You've taken that from what it's like, a hundred million dollar sales organization, and you're the vice president there, and you're a female. Oh my God, how can that possibly be? But I want to talk about all the things that you've done in your career. You've been in home improvement for quite a while. You're with Renewal by Anderson, which is the largest home improvement organization. I think it's six billion, is what I've seen in uh windows and doors. So give me, give me a quick break. I don't want to spend, you know, the whole podcast on your bio, but how'd you get into where you are now and where you started?

SPEAKER_00 2:13

Well, so the joke in our household, because I moved to Virginia in 2020 from the West Coast. I used to live in Seattle and Portland, Oregon. And during 2020, I decided I would get back with my ex that I was on and off with for like five years. Uh so the joke in our household is I followed a boy out here. I met a man, thankfully, and my husband, um, who's somebody else.

SPEAKER_01 2:36

Oh, okay. So you didn't you didn't wind up with him?

SPEAKER_00 2:38

I did not.

SPEAKER_01 2:39

Oh, okay.

SPEAKER_00 2:40

But during that time, you know, I moved and I needed a job. And I was in sales and commercial insurance. And I used to run the territory of the state of Oregon for Chubb, which is Ace American. They're one of the largest insurers in the world. And a recruiter reached out to me and was like, hey, like, I have this opportunity. I was very hesitant to take an interview with Renewal because, you know, I thought I had a sexy corporate, you know, like wine and dine type sales role where I went and saw people and took them lunch and got to build relationships and had a little company car. And this was not that. When I heard Windows. Yeah. When I heard Windows Indoors and in-home sales, I was like, uh, but I'm a girl who loves money. And I saw the potential in the paychecks, and I was like, oh, okay, you could tell me more about that job. And then uh fast forward six years, and yeah, that's this where I'm at.

SPEAKER_01 3:43

Your role is coaching, right? Is your role training and coaching the sales team? Or, you know, you have obviously you probably have sales managers under you, but what's your main role?

SPEAKER_00 3:52

Yeah, yes and no. So at this point, I do a lot of strategy. You know, in our location, we focus on three things a lot. We talk about skill set, mindset, and will set. Will set being the interpersonal drive. And the area that I coach one-on-one the most is talking about money, because even though salespeople talk about money all the time, we all have an interpersonal relationship with it. And, you know, people would be shocked to find out that yes, salespeople who make really great money still live paycheck to paycheck. They still have fears about money. So I lead uh leadership, you know, and obviously our team, we have a team of 10 leaders, but in a one-on-one space, I spend a lot of time talking about money specifically and how to use it, how to spend it.

SPEAKER_01 4:41

That's such an overlooked area of sales. You're right, because you get a lot of these reps. I mean, let's face it, some of these reps are making three, four, five hundred thousand dollars a year. The good ones. And you're right. Many of them are terrible with money. Many of them are very good, but many of them are terrible with money. And give me those three again skill set, mindset, and what was the third one? Will set. Will set. What is will set with regard to this?

SPEAKER_00 5:05

I consider it like the interpersonal drive, right? So more deep than, you know, mindset, we talk a lot about, you know, how are you feeling? You know, are you having a good day or a bad day? Do you want to be in the house? Do you not? The will set piece, that internal drive is what have I been taught about success? What have I been taught about money? What do I believe? What's my internal narrative actually tell me about sales? Because even on the money topic, there's people who go into sales who inherently don't like salespeople.

SPEAKER_03 5:40

And then they become one.

SPEAKER_00 5:42

And so that's the whole dynamic and can be a struggle because people sometimes take sales jobs because it was like I hate to call it a last resort, but it was something they could get into that they thought they could provide for their family. But then, you know, we've all had a for the most part, we've all had a bad experience with a sales rep, right?

SPEAKER_01 6:03

Yep. You're you're talking about chapter one of my book.

unknown 6:06

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 6:07

Preconceived notions, right? And then there's a moment that I've seen time and time again within the team and other salespeople, and myself included, you hit kind of this temperature level of success or financial gain, where that next level or to continue to push past it might become uncomfortable because it's like the unknown. And so that's where you see the sales rep that makes a hundred grand a year and is very content. And you're like, why don't you push just a little bit? You'd you're so great, but like you could do more versus the sales rep who does make four or five hundred thousand dollars. There's an internal narrative like going on there. I can nerd out about that all day.

SPEAKER_01 6:53

So wow. Well, you you know, you and you said something, and I and I I said this on Sebastian Jimenez from Rilla, his podcast. We were talking about how people get into sales, and I said, you know, sales is really, for the most part, a fullback profession or a profession where there's no eight-year-old that raised their hand and says, I want to be a salesperson when I grow up. Just doesn't happen.

SPEAKER_03 7:13

Correct.

SPEAKER_01 7:14

Kind of, oh man, I can't find a job. Oh, this guy is knocking on doors. Like I had Tony Hody on my on my podcast a few episodes ago.

unknown 7:23

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 7:23

And he, you know, he's a multimillionaire now, but he started knocking on doors because it was like, I need a job in college. And that's how you kind of fall into sales. But you're right, it leads to these preconceived notions like, what am I doing in sales? I don't like to tell people I'm in sales because everybody hates salespeople. So I think that's a mindset that a lot of salespeople have to get over initially when they first get in.

SPEAKER_00 7:42

And it could be their family and friends. And that's that's what I've experienced a lot in leadership is your your family and friends are the toughest on you if you go into sales, especially selling a high-ticket product where you can buy something cheaper that is perceived similar quality, even though it may not be. And then, you know, it's there's a stereotype around windows from like there's some like British sitcom comedy show that like white gold, it was called. Yeah, yeah. It's like second to car salesmen and financial advisors. Like we have this weird stigma in the window industry. But yeah, so I mean, people really struggle with it, especially if their family and friends aren't supportive. Yeah, that's a whole thing.

SPEAKER_01 8:29

That's a whole new bag of worms right there. Wow. So that's right. In the years you've been training, coaching hundreds and hundreds of sales reps. Tell me about something you've learned besides what we've just mentioned. Is there anything that you're seeing with sales reps that you're training? Is there any trends that have been changing? Like obviously, we can go back to COVID where people, you know, you're walking in the door and the checkbook is on the table. To now you're back to, wow, I really have to sell here. What are you seeing in the industry, at least from the sales reps you're coming through through all your classes?

SPEAKER_00 8:59

I think something that has remained true is the objections you face are always they're you. They're you are the common denominator. I love the phrase, well, I need I just need to practice my closing, or I just need to practice handling objections. And and that's where I very quickly will be like, well, tell me what you believe about this. Because, you know, you just the last five objections you told me that you're experiencing in the home, they all have the same baseline, which means you're the common denominator. So tell me how you feel about this. And then, you know, very quickly I see that, oh God, like, okay, we have to talk about me. And I'm like, yeah, absolutely. So that's been the biggest thing I've learned is whatever you face in a home or with sales objections, sales is the hardest job, in my opinion, because it's a direct mirror of yourself. That is what I've seen to be true.

SPEAKER_01 9:59

That's amazing. And you know, when I am doing my thing with training, I the I'm sure every sales trainer gets this and every sales leader, how do I handle objections? Give me some closing techniques. Every salesperson out there thinks that there are silver bullets to sales. Yeah, and that doesn't really exist. When I when someone says, give me how do I handle objections, I say, Well, the best way to handle objections is to have a really good conversation, and you probably won't get the objection in the first place.

unknown 10:26

Right.

SPEAKER_01 10:26

The objections are not brought up by the customer, they're given to the customer from the sales rep. I've always said that. Like the sales rep literally will hand the customer the objection without knowing it, and then it comes right back at them. So what you're talking about is true. It's all about some self-awareness on how their conversation is going, right?

SPEAKER_00 10:43

Yeah. I can't say it any differently.

SPEAKER_01 10:46

No, that's that's that's totally fine. Let's go back to what you mentioned about money. And you have something that you call money EQ. Yeah. I love this. And then you have another, I guess, uh uh organization you founded called Rich Girl Revolution, which probably kind of goes hand in hand with the money EQ. But the money EQ, I'm assuming, is the reps' relationship with money. What do you do with that and how do you help reps with their relationship with money, especially the ones who overnight they're making $200,000 a year when two months previous they were making $30,000? So how how do you handle something like that?

SPEAKER_00 11:21

Yeah, so there's a little backstory here. You know, we all find a way to coach ourselves through certain things, and then we want to help other people with the same problem. So I learned a lot of this firsthand, and that's that's hard to face sometimes, but going from the West Coast to Virginia, changing jobs, I doubled my income within six months.

SPEAKER_03 11:45

Wow.

SPEAKER_00 11:46

And I was, yeah. So, and at the time I was about a hundred thousand a year and I doubled to two hundred thousand in six months for trajectory. I was still broke. I I still had 15 to 20 bucks in checking. I had tons of credit card debt, I had student debt, I didn't own any assets. I really, I always thought earning more was going to solve my problems. And when you double your income that quickly and you're still broke, you do have to start facing that mirror that I'm talking about, where it's like, okay, more money is not solving my issues. I had the fortunate, like, I had a mentor at the time who was willing to sit down with me and I call it my uncomfortable whiteboard moment. He had me pull up credit karma and we went through the app. He's like, show me the real numbers. And I was like, What? He's like, the real debt. Have you ever been honest with anyone, including yourself, about your situation? And I was like, no.

SPEAKER_01 12:56

Like, why would I want to do that?

SPEAKER_00 12:58

We don't want to talk about that. And so we did. We did like an hour on the whiteboard, every dollar, how much debt I was actually in. And then he took it back to sales goals and how I could get myself out of that situation. And then, anyway, so like it's not that simple, like it it goes on from there. But it was the first time I was honest with anyone outside of I wasn't even being honest with myself about it. So I was honest with him. It felt super scary and freeing all at the same time, as you can imagine. And then from there, I started learning about okay, what triggers me to spend money? Why do I do these things? There's a whole list of books I could go through. So I I started to really uncover like money. We think of it as a spreadsheet because we're taught about budgets and those types of things, but so emotionally ingrained in us as to why we do things and how we spend and why we spend it. So, what I have found works with sales reps, or anyone really, is you've got to kind of face the music and then you have to know what you want to do about it. So we do kind of a deep dive of like, one, are you willing to face your true picture? Will you look at your situation?

SPEAKER_01 14:23

And they have to be willing to do that, right? It's almost like knowing I have to go to therapy, you have to want to do it. So this is something that's like. Yeah, it's like being an approach is a problem.

SPEAKER_00 14:30

Like, are you ready? Like, let's go through the steps. So we do we do that first. Like, are you even willing? And so any coaching I do this has to be completely voluntary. And then we have a conversation. So we get the picture, then we talk about scarcity versus abundance, and there's a whole host of like words that I go through, and there's certain words that are attached to a scarcity mindset, and there's a there's a set that are attached to abundance. Then we go into so we kind of identify what did your family teach you? What have you taught yourself? What have you experienced? What have you learned from? Do you lean more scarcity or have you learned about abundance and money being infinite? What do you actually believe? Then it is we get real about the numbers and the emotional drivers and not real about like a budget. A lot of people underestimate their budget by like 20, 30 percent. Because they don't account for Grubhub, Instacart, going to the bar, buying a new pair of shoes. It's usually 20, 30% under, like massive almost every time.

SPEAKER_01 15:42

So, so the 15 to 20 I spend every day in a coffee shop, I should count that in my budget.

SPEAKER_00 15:48

I mean, technically, yes. Yeah. At least because I ignore it. Yeah. So there's three budgets I look at individually with them is their needs. So, what actually, like, if you lost your job tomorrow, what would you truly need to pay your bills based on what you've already committed to? Because if you committed to a $300,000 lifestyle and you're paying, you know, super high mortgage, and that's your need now because you've established those responsibilities. And if you can't meet them, it's really ugly. What's your actual lifestyle goal? Because keeping up with the Joneses and buying things to show off to our friends and doing all that, do you actually want those things for your lifestyle? Or have you just piled those things on? If your priority is travel, but every Friday night you go out drinking and spend a $200 tab, is your priority actually travel? Like, what do you really want? And then three to five years out, what does freedom look like? If you could do anything and you didn't have that job, what would you want to spend your time doing? And what are those three numbers? So we can recreate the emotional attachment, whether it's scarcity or abundance, to things we care about in our like future self, which most people talk about money, your future self is a stranger and you don't care about that person. But going through these buckets of budget and getting invested in like why you actually want those things, like what will actually bring you happiness, a sense of relief. Because like probably drinking on a Friday night or randomly spending, it probably doesn't actually like give you more happiness. It's just you haven't thought about you know, two weeks from now, let alone five years from now.

SPEAKER_03 17:46

Yeah, of course.

SPEAKER_00 17:47

So we redo that and then we build backwards a plan that takes into consideration the emotional caveats of you had a bad day and you went shopping and ordered a steak dinner, which is what I used to do.

SPEAKER_01 18:00

So or I had a really good day, so I'm gonna get a steak dinner.

SPEAKER_00 18:05

Or that too, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 18:06

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 18:06

And so you create awareness, you get to know yourself about how you really feel about money. You create some sort of accountability, whether it's your partner or me as your, you know, your boss slash mentor or a community of people. You have to find a safe place where like it's not embarrassing because we're taught not to talk about money. And yet it's a tool that makes everything, you know, makes the world go round a little bit.

SPEAKER_01 18:35

So hey dwellers. So your rep walks into a home and the homeowner is already sizing them up. Before a single word about product or price or anything, they're deciding, can I trust this person? And the tool your rep pulls out in that moment will have a lot to do with answering that question. That tool and our title sponsor for selling in the dwelling is Paradigm Vendo. That's P-A-R-A-D-I-G-M Vendo with a V, the in-home sales platform built exclusively for the remodeling industry, featuring real-time quoting direct from product manufacturers, dynamic presentations, e-signatures, even CRM integration. It's all on any device and it's all in one place. That's what makes this amazing. No more jumping around from one software platform to another. And no more messy paperwork, no outdated price seats, just a clean, professional experience that makes every rep look like the obvious choice. Visit paradigmbendo.com forward slash dwelling. That's P-A-R-A-D-I-G-M, Vendo with a V dot com forward slash dwelling to turbocharge the experience your reps are giving in the house. Paradigm Bendo, 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 sevensecrets shop.net. It's the the number seven secret shop.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 sevensecretshop.net. Visit it today. Yeah, no, that's tremendous stuff. And I remember a guy named Rocky Lalvani that I had on my very first podcast, Marketing and Sales Over Cocktails. He's a disciple of the Mike McAllowitz Profit First book. I don't know if you ever read that book. Yes. But he talked about how the majority of people grow up with money being a negative thing. Their parents always thought, oh, this is so expensive. This we can't afford that, we can't afford that. So you have this negative feel about money. And now you're in a sales job where you get a lot of money and you think, oh, now I can spend it. And I you know I think that's where some of that may be coming from.

SPEAKER_00 21:04

Yeah, and guilt and shame come up a lot around having money and spending it. And so that's why it's also in those buckets. If you talk about different levels of contribution, whether it be like, how can money fund your romance? How can money help your family? How can you give back to your community? How can you create fun and enjoyment and adventure? Are you spiritual? Do you want to give back in that sense? And then where do you get uncomfortable and like whatever number that is, and and that uncomfortable feeling, where does that come from? I'm a big fan of epigenetics and a big fan of what?

SPEAKER_01 21:43

I'm sorry, I didn't hear that.

SPEAKER_00 21:44

Epigenetics.

SPEAKER_01 21:45

Epigenetics, okay. Never heard that term before. Tell tell me, please.

SPEAKER_00 21:49

It's the nurture versus nature argument. So in this book, it's called It Didn't Start With You. It's actually like a trauma book, but besides that, it talks a lot about epigenetics.

unknown 21:59

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 22:00

And the theory is basically when your grandma is pregnant with your mom, you are also in that biology system right there because your mom's ovaries fully developed when she was in the womb. So everything genetically and emotionally, stress levels, hormones, all the things that happen to your grandma up to the point of your mother's birth, and then everything that happens to your mom up to the point of your birth, you now get to carry. And so yeah, so it's like, you know, if you have an irrational fear, but you learn that maybe your grandmother, like maybe you have a fear of heights. You find out that like when your grandma was 16, she fell out of a tree or whatever, and then was scared of heights the rest of her life. You might carry that, even though it's not yours to carry. And this can be this can go into money, this can go into a lot of things.

SPEAKER_03 22:57

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 22:57

And so there's like that book, there's there's just different levels. And then even when you look at different figureheads in money, like we'll talk about Dave Ramsey for a second, right?

SPEAKER_03 23:10

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 23:11

Very um the seven steps, right? And his snowball method. And he he has a very asserted opinion about how money should be handled. But then you have rich dad, poor dad. You have the Robert Kizaki crowd, you've got die with nothing. So you have not only like your genetic predisposition, everything your family teaches you, everything society teaches you, but then you also have these figureheads in money that teach these different ways that then people adopt. So it's like it's a tangled mess to really get to the center of what you believe and why. And when you start writing it down, you can start choosing, okay, I don't believe this anymore because it doesn't serve me, or it no longer aligns with who I want to be or who I am. So it's like, we're it's borderline money therapy, but you know, Adrian, you got a book in here.

SPEAKER_01 24:09

I'm telling you, because yeah, 30 years in in-home sales, I have never ever once heard a sales leader in this industry talk about money like that. No one ever talks about it. They're just like, make more money, make more sales. Oh, look at all the money you're making. And now you're actually talking about what's behind all that, behind the curtains and and the pitfalls and the and the speed bumps you can run into. So this is absolutely fascinating. You're the only one I've ever heard talk about it. So kudos to you for bringing this up and helping your entire team with this.

SPEAKER_00 24:39

And I I I won't take all the credit, right? Like I think I've been mentored by different people about money. And I I was very curious from a young age. I my parents lived pretty credit broke, even though they had they were upper middle class, but they lived paycheck to paycheck. But then I had grandparents who were incredibly frugal and lower middle class who are now retired multi-multi-millionaires who do whatever the heck they want. So that's a contrast.

SPEAKER_03 25:08

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 25:10

You know, that individual that sat down with me at the whiteboard, there was no judgment in that conversation. And that's that's what I try to really hold on to when I do talk to people in sales or anyone about money. It's like, who am I to judge?

SPEAKER_01 25:24

Yeah, absolutely.

SPEAKER_00 25:26

I dug myself into an incredible amount of credit card debt trying to present a lifestyle I couldn't afford. I would travel, buy clothes, go to dinners, buy drinks for like I was trying to give this facade in a world of social media that I had this certain life and I couldn't afford it.

SPEAKER_01 25:47

Right, exactly.

SPEAKER_00 25:48

We had a family incident that was really financially devastating. And I watched how people handled that or didn't handle that. The guy who wrote Psychology of Money and then the Art of Spending, I think is Morgan House. He talks about like, you don't talk about judging other people's spending and stuff because you have no idea what got them to where they are today and what they were taught about. So I try to take judgment completely out of the conversations of like, there's nothing you can really say to me that's gonna shock an army about your personal finances or how you view money. Even if you hear like it's inherently evil, I feel guilty about earning it, I spend every dollar I have so I don't have anything to lose because I've already lost it. And I, you know, my family resents me because I make more than them. None of that is gonna shock me, and I surely am not gonna judge it because that's what a lot of people are walking around with.

SPEAKER_01 26:47

Well, and and judgment is one of the vices of the human psyche. I mean, we just we love to judge. We're we're our brain automatically judges. I mean, even with sales reps, they judge every appointment they look at on their screen and every house they pull up to. They start with judgment. Yeah, it's not a great place to start. I always say default to curiosity and suspend judgment. That's that's that's a a good a good way to handle things.

SPEAKER_00 27:09

Yeah, and and I think this job helped teach me that too. I remember driving up to like a double wide and and thinking, oh, okay, here we go. You know, I'm selling a three times expensive product of what they could have bought, and they're gonna waste my time. Like, I I was that sales rep for sure. She wrote me a check, and it was a big check. And she had granite countertops, wood flooring, like beautiful inside, and it was on a property that her family had owned forever. And like, I think it was like 40 or 50 grand in cash in a check, where it's like, oh, okay, I couldn't do. I mean, I had 15 bucks in my bank account. Like, why was I judging her? And she's like, Oh yeah, I love the product. I want it. And then, and then you walk in, and again, like where some of these patterns started to develop. I remember being in a home that basically was a small mansion. I walked up thinking, oh yeah, slam down.

SPEAKER_03 28:06

There we go. Yep.

SPEAKER_00 28:07

I walk inside, there's no furniture. Oh the the windows are rotting, there's an ant farm growing in the door. And they were they had no credit. He was like, our credit is horrible. We can't like so they were house poor essentially, yeah, with nothing inside of it. But if you had only ever driven past their house, you would think, oh, those people have it made.

SPEAKER_01 28:31

Wow. It's crazy. It really is. Well, let me ask you, let me ask you a quick question on this. So I'm assuming you're a little bit involved when you bring in new reps during the hire the hiring process. Is there something, is there a personality trait, is there a personality test or anything that you look for to get reps in the door that are better with money? Is that something that you pre, I don't know, you you look at before they get on board? Is that part of it?

SPEAKER_00 28:58

I don't think there's any federal protection at this time for this, but so so yes, I ask a question about it's very open-ended. Tell me about your relationship with money.

SPEAKER_01 29:12

So you ask that question during the hiring process.

unknown 29:14

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 29:14

I I guarantee you're probably the only salesperson, sales leader that asks that question. It's true.

SPEAKER_00 29:21

I get I get quite the answer. And you know, the hesitation is real. And the way I take some, I deflate some of that is I go, look, I don't get to write your paycheck because this is a commission only job. And so one thing that would help me is to understand how much money you want to earn and why, but also how you feel about it. Like, are you in a good place with it? Are you and then people do open up and they they tell you things that give you hints, some of that vocabulary I alluded to about scarcity versus the vocabulary of abundance versus someone I can see is in that kind of, well, I've been doing this and I want to earn more for these reasons. And they've really good, their why is so clear, whether it's I want to pay off my student loans, I want to retire my wife so she can be a stay-at-home mom, I I want to fund my grandkids' college, whatever the things are, or I want to drive a Lamborghini. I don't, it doesn't matter what the what is, but if they're convicted in it, that's the biggest thing I look for is what's your conviction level about what you say you feel about it. And then red flags are, you know, like, well, you know, I'm not that money money motivated, which in a sales interview, I'd be like, huh.

SPEAKER_01 30:42

Um Yeah, probably not the best thing to say.

SPEAKER_00 30:47

No, I'm kidding. But so that's kind of like, yeah, I I do ask pretty directly and it makes people uncomfortable. So I just sit back and I wait and I sit in silence till they answer.

SPEAKER_01 30:59

So that's great. That's really that's really awesome. So let's get into this. Is actually gonna be a I think a segue into our ask Allen segment. You have a what you call the rich girl revolution, yeah. Which is helping women in sales master their relationship with money, as we're talking about now.

SPEAKER_03 31:17

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 31:18

Why rich girl revolution? Why not rich person? Or like what do you see do you see something that women need more help, or is it something that you just you feel that you need to to help women with?

SPEAKER_00 31:30

Um, okay, so selfishly, I'm in a male-dominated career field, right? Which will we we know that so I do I get to help guys all the time. Like I've seven, there's 70 guys roughly in our sales team. And in the network, they're 90% of the network. And so I wanted to create something that one didn't conflict with what I'm doing, you know, with renewal. And then two, something that, yes, was aimed at women who, you know, if you're earning over six figures as a woman, you're in a very small percentage of women as it is. And then on top of that, there is a big difference, at least I believe, in some social pressure and things that go into spending habits specific to women, that Ellen, if you were on the call, like we're just not gonna talk about.

SPEAKER_04 32:29

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 32:29

You know, like whether it be having to keep your nails manicured, or you know, the amount of money you spent on makeup and hair, or whatever the things are, or you know, you're trying to you can get into social dynamics of the relationship, whether you share your money with your spouse or you don't, or there's just things that I wanted to have conversations with women specifically who are already isolated, where they could kind of have more of a community and get a no-judgment zone on how and why they were spending money in what ways. And I heard this from um a money influencer. She said, Men are taught to invest and women are taught to coupon.

SPEAKER_03 33:16

Wow. That's fascinating. Yes, and it's true.

SPEAKER_00 33:21

True. And that's my own experience. Like I was raised in a family where it's like we go shopping when there was sales, and you spend every dollar you could versus like buying quality and thinking of I'll give it to you this way. If you choose to highlight your hair as a woman, you're not choosing to highlight your hair one time necessarily. You've just committed hundreds, if not thousands, of dollars a year to upkeeping now a certain look.

SPEAKER_03 33:53

Right.

SPEAKER_00 33:53

And so you could view that as an investment into the way you look and the way you feel, or you didn't even think about the commitment you were making, you decided one. So there's just different conversations that happen and the expectations are different. The questions can feel more insecure. And then equally, there's women who are more confident and you can lean into that with each other. And you have to take the competition out of the room. And if a man's in the room with a bunch of women talking about money, that competitive nature between women can come out. So love the guys, but it just wasn't the room I really wanted to create.

SPEAKER_01 34:35

Yeah. So and is this something, is it like a mastermind that you have, or like do people join? Do you help them? How how is it set up for for for women?

SPEAKER_00 34:43

Yeah. So I'm still technically developing exactly how it looks. I've done a lot of market research, a lot of interviews. I have firsthand experience within renewal, within some of I'm in a women's mastermind that's for like CEOs and executives and entrepreneurs. And so it's kind of a combination. I've developed a course that builds out some of those things that systematically I know work. And then some open monthly and bi-weekly live calls where people can come on and talk through problems or we talk about the mindset. We talk about what's abundance, what's scarcity, you know, helping work backwards on goals. So yeah.

SPEAKER_01 35:24

That's awesome. That really is awesome. Congratulations on that.

SPEAKER_00 35:28

Thank you.

SPEAKER_01 35:29

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 Allen 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 dot 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. It's a great takeaway, as you heard the choir singing before we got to this. The Ask Alan segment is now here. And I and I told uh Adrian I got this question about six weeks ago, and I was specifically waiting for her to be on the podcast to ask it. And it's from a woman named Stacy in Fresno, California, so the West Coast, back to your roots. And she writes a fascinating question. So Stacy asks, I am the only female sales rep at a replacement window company in California. There are 21 total reps, and I am the only woman, and I have been in the top three for the last two years. I'm wondering how I can get the sales leadership there to start thinking that women uh are pretty darn good at this and that they should hire more of us. Exclamation point. I've seen four new sales classes come through with no women at all. Would love your take on this, on this in-home sales blind spot. I want to let you answer this because we chatted a little bit about it, because it it may be a blind spot, it depends on the on the company, it may not be. So what's your what's your take on what Stacey has there?

SPEAKER_00 37:44

So uh it may not be a blind spot. It may be something they're very aware of. So uh in Renewal, for example, you know, I'm at a location where I think we have five or six women currently, and that's a pretty high concentration within, you know, renewal itself. It's my story. It's the recruiter presented the job, and I went, ew. On paper, this job may not be attractive to women. So the way we really got more women into our location was referrals, putting the reality to the guys, like, hey, that kind of like spicy gal that you know of that like is tough enough to handle the rejection, but also like empathetic enough to to do really well. Like, have you ever broached the topic of this job with her? And sometimes the answer is yes, but she just like me, you. So it doesn't read well. And so maybe the leadership's aware, maybe they would love to recruit more women. You do have to work heavily with your talent team to position the job in a way where it is enticing. Schedule can be difficult because of if somebody is in more traditional roles with family and kids, like the evening thing, that may not work. So there are hurdles. You also have to be in a culture of guys that you would want more women to walk into. So, like our culture in Central Virginia and in Roanoke, the guys are solid, like they are great people. You don't have to come into our sales or organization and be like, oh, I'm the only woman in the room. Like they'll treat you as fair as fair can be. And we don't allow like locker room talk and all that crap. It helps that I'm their boss, right?

SPEAKER_03 39:38

Like, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 39:40

They definitely got to know that I won't take any shit. But I'm also I'm not a victim. And I think women who take on these types of roles cannot have victim mentality. You have to have that, like, I can throw down with the boys any day. And yes, we do typically sell more.

SPEAKER_01 39:58

Oh, that's for sure. Then let's not sugarcoat it. Women sell more than men. I'm just that's it. It's it's it's a fact.

SPEAKER_00 40:03

Number one sales rep in the renewal network last year, a woman who had never done this gig before. So I think it starts with referrals. You bring some women in who people already know, and then that tends to catch fire. But I don't know if it's the leadership. I I can tell you from behind the scenes, it's just a hard job to recruit women for. So that might be a part of the a part of the conversation in question.

SPEAKER_01 40:31

Yeah, and I think you said what you you hit the nail on the head and it reminded me of a time, the job description, that's where everything starts. But if it's not a referral, yeah, you're looking at indeed or wherever the job posting is. And I have I have experience with this. I have a 23-year-old daughter who's not thrilled with her current job. So she was just looking and she found a renewal by Anderson ad. And she sent it to me. She goes, Oh my God, I would never apply for this. And I didn't think anything of it. Like, yeah, that's the job. You got to carry windows, you got to work Saturday. Blah, blah. She goes, but I I how did you like she was looking? She said, How did you do this? I would never apply for this. She wasn't even like thinking about it. But then it's the now I'm talking to you. I'm like, that job posting is actually repelling women rather than attracting them. And I think that's where it's gonna start.

SPEAKER_00 41:16

And the recruiter had to talk me into it. Like he was like, and I had a friend that even worked at the renewal location. I I knew somebody with inside the doors, and he's like, Well, why didn't so and so refer you to renewal? I'm like, it's a window company, man. Like, yeah, that's not gonna happen. Like, I provide lunch to drive my company car. I thought it was, you know, hot stuff. And he was like, But Adrian, you want to make this level of money, and they do. And I was like, I used to always say this, I still say it sometimes. If you told me I could shovel horse manure for X amount of money, I would do it.

SPEAKER_03 41:54

You would do it, right?

SPEAKER_00 41:55

That's how motivated I was. I was like, I'll do the worst job for the most amount of money. And I had said that to that recruiter. He's like, time to prove it. Like this might be that job. But the job, the way it reads versus the practicality, like, yes, you show up to home, you do an inspection, you do have to carry a, I think it's like 25-pound window, and I should know how much it weighs, but I don't. You carry it in, you do the demo, but really it's a one-on-one relational job. It requires high empathy, and it's such an advantage to be a female in this job because we get less of that sales stereotype thrown at us.

SPEAKER_03 42:40

Absolutely.

SPEAKER_00 42:41

Because they already expect, they expect you, they don't expect me.

SPEAKER_01 42:46

Right. They expect the use car male salesperson, right? Exactly.

SPEAKER_00 42:49

Yeah, and then the number of times, and this is where I mean, like, you can't fall victim to certain things. The number of times when the door opens and they go, Oh, you're a woman. And it's like, yeah, you have to be willing, like, who cares? And then their guard comes down substantially more than it does with guys. So I'm like, it's easier, it's great money, you have a ton of opportunity. Cause like, be the most underestimated person in the room. I'll I'll take that all day.

SPEAKER_01 43:18

All day long. And the final thing I'll add to this to Stacy's question is the culture is huge. Like you mentioned the locker room mentality and the bro network. And and you know, years ago, when I was sitting in sales meetings, the misogynistic, unbelievable uh stuff that I would hear just just like made me cringe. It's because there were no women in the room. And then I remember very vividly when I was at this particular job, they were all guys, and they brought in the first sales woman. These guys didn't know they didn't know how to talk in a sales meeting. They're like, Oh my, I I can't, I can't speak. And you know, I think that that culture is finally getting flushed out in the industry, but it's still there, and you got to check your culture as well before you start bringing women in, if you don't have any.

SPEAKER_00 44:01

And here's what's crazy about it to Stacey. I would say, hey, if a woman did come into the room, would she be comfortable with you? Because the person who was the most unkind to me when I started this job was the only other woman in the room.

SPEAKER_03 44:18

Really?

SPEAKER_00 44:19

Yeah. She called me window Barbie. She meant it as a diss. She basically was like, Oh, you're cute and pretty. Like, I'm sure it's easy for you. Um and instead of again, instead of that, like, oh, she I could have totally she called me window barb, whatever.

SPEAKER_03 44:40

Right.

SPEAKER_00 44:41

I used it as a tagline. So every time I sold, Window Barbie sells again in sales meetings. Like that became, I took it and I was like, yeah, it's my superpower. Like at the time I had a stupid Instagram that was like window Barbie, like home improvement or something like that. And every sale I would make, I would post it under that name. It took that out of the room where it's like, so what? You know, I'm not I'm girly and I'm in a construction sales job. That's a superpower. I don't have to be, that doesn't have to be a bad thing. So be kind to the other women that do show up to the room. That would be a big one.

SPEAKER_01 45:20

That would be a big one. Well, Adrian, this has been awesome. We are actually running out of time. So if you want to share anyway for people, I know you're working for renewal and stuff, but you do have the founder of Rich Girl Revolution. Is there anything you want to share if if people do want to get in touch with you for some help?

SPEAKER_00 45:34

Uh yeah, I think LinkedIn is the best place to start. You know, I do try to make sure I do things in a way that doesn't compete with what I'm doing in a W-2. So LinkedIn, Adrian Brooks, you can find me in a Google search pretty easy. And I would just start there.

SPEAKER_01 45:50

And it's Adrian's A-D-R-I-A-N-E, Brooks without an E, correct? Okay.

SPEAKER_03 45:55

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 45:56

So we got that. Yep. Well, Adrian Brooks, this has been tremendous. One of the better episodes I think we've had because it's just so unique what you're doing. And kudos to you. And I and I hope that you know you you produce more women that follow in your steps to do to do what you're doing in a leadership standpoint, because I think you're you're a really good asset, an amazing asset to this to the sales in home sales world. So thank you for being here today. And I want to thank everyone out there for being here on this episode of Selling in the Dwelling. Remember, the website is sellinginthedwelling.com. Send me a question because Stacy and Fresno is getting a free t-shirt. That could be you next. And also visit our title sponsor, our good friends, at paradigmvendo.com forward slash dwelling. That's it for today, everyone. Take care. We'll see you next time on Selling in the Dwelling.