12 - Why Your Top Sales Rep Might Be Killing Your Company with Al Levy

SPEAKER_00 0:23

Hello, everyone, and welcome back to another episode of Selling in the Dwelling, the go-to podcast for the in-home services and remodeling industry. I'm your host, Alan Langer, and we've got another great guest in the operational world. But if you're not in the operational world, don't click to another podcast because Al Levy is going to cover quite a few things today that's going to make your business, your selling, your marketing, whatever we're going to talk about today, better. So hang with me because I think this is going to be a podcast that everyone's really going to enjoy that's in the service industry. But before we get to Al, two quick things. The podcast website is sellinginthedwelling.com. And I bring that up because in the top right corner, there's the Ask Alan button. If you click that button, send me a question. If I read your question on an upcoming episode, you will get a free selling in the dwelling t-shirt. And the title sponsor for Selling in the Dwelling is Paradigm Vendo. It's paradigmvendo.com forward slash dwelling, the best software you can find for the in-home selling industry. So let's get going with my great guest, Al Levy, today. Al is the author of a book called The Seven Power Contractor Book. And he had many years as a contractor and finally retired, I believe it was at age 48. And then you had a lot of people asking you how you did it, how you were so successful. So first of all, Al, welcome to the podcast. Thanks for being here today.

SPEAKER_02 1:41

Oh, thank you very much.

SPEAKER_00 1:42

Really appreciate it. So tell us a little about you, it's a seven power contractor book, and that's the name of your company, Seven Power Contractor. And you're basically a consultant, but not for just one thing. You look at kind of everything together, right? And how to make a successful company. So tell us a little bit about what you look at and how you kind of got into what you're doing today.

SPEAKER_02 2:00

Yeah, I think the need to start with the backstory. And uh the way I usually tell it is uh I grew up in a family plumbing, heating, cooling, electric business. And it wasn't just residential. We did residential, commercial, and industrial because otherwise it would be too easy. And so we covered all the segments. And we were located, if the accent doesn't give it away, Long Island, New York City, we did Brooklyn, Queens. Yeah. I arrived into the business with I was the youngest of three brothers. My two older brothers were already there. So I arrived in the mid-late 70s. I was there and we worked together. My dad, we grew the company to one main hub and three spoke satellites, because Long Island is very long and it's also got tremendous traffic. So we knew how to hub and spoke. What I was really good at, because we were not a small company, at least in those days, we were 17 million in sales back in the 90s. So that was big. Today, of course, you know, the numbers have gotten much bigger. But I was really good at sales and marketing, and my team was really good at blowing them up. So that's how I became known as the planning, operations, staffing guy, hence the seven powers that I talk about. Nobody needs to ever be a guinea pig. I have done it all. I've been everywhere, anything. My father, who was a great guy and a great business mentor to all of us, you know, he uh basically said I should never ask anybody to do anything that I hadn't done myself. And I could tell you, Alan, when I was young, I didn't appreciate that. But I did see the wisdom pretty quickly that, you know, I could be in any other slots in the organization and do a pretty good job at it. And there were things that I liked more, and you know, selling and marketing really were my favorites. But I got to down to, you know, planning because it was just so much chaos. So the tagline when I went off to form this company back in officially in 2002, a job I was only going to do for 10 years, by the way. I'd already had a long, successful career. And then I basically said my tagline should be what I always felt when I was at work. I was wishing for less stress and more success. That pretty much is in a nutshell. Now we were making a ton of money. That's great. The problem was I was 50 pounds heavier than I am today. To say I was eating my stress. Now, New York has great food, but I overindulged to say the least, because I was really just felt stressed. You know, you try to go to sleep and uh the phone was near my head and just waiting for somebody to ring. And we had guys on shifts all through the night, you know, 7 to 4, 8 to 5, 10 to 7, 2 to 11 p.m. was not on call. That was a shift in the middle of the winter, 5 p.m. to 2 a.m. But we had never empowered them to be really good at what they need. And so the if you're a service tech, which in my definition is you go to the door, there's a service call, you ask good questions, you find out what it is, make good recommendations, communication, which is the foundations of great selling. And then you have to be neat and clean operationally, do the right things, including where you park your truck. Because you park it in the wrong place. I already hate you. You've gotten out of your truck. Yeah. Three steps, five steps, seven steps, ten steps. Anyone who has a sales system, much more than ten steps, I've been with enough guys to know that they can't repeat it consistently. My selling system was five-step. And I started with the system engineers, which is a fancy term for salespeople, the big ticket salespeople. And it worked so well, I edited it to fit the service tax because it was very close. And so that's what I did when I went off to work with companies for these last 20-something years. I would coach their team on sales. And I just explained to them that really the nickname for my sales program was ethical selling program. Because I was raised, my dad was probably one of the best salespeople I've ever seen. And he was anything but you would think as a salesperson, because our misconceptions about great salespeople, you know, like the I do this in the workshop is I go, okay, guys, I want you to close your eyes. Promise I won't take your wallet. I want you to think of something, and when I say it, I want you to open your eyes. Okay. Use car salesman, and they open it up, and it's like, you know, that's what they see as a salesperson.

SPEAKER_00 6:29

Yeah, absolutely.

SPEAKER_02 6:30

That's that's the misconception. All these years later, they see anybody who does sales because their conception is that I'm trying to sell somebody something that they don't really need or want. And ethical sales is anything but that. I'm gonna sell you anything and everything that I feel is appropriate because you answering my questions and what I'm observing is leading me to where we need to be.

SPEAKER_00 6:56

And it's what you actually need rather than what I want to sell you, which is a huge difference.

SPEAKER_02 7:00

Yes. And I do address needs and wants.

SPEAKER_00 7:02

Right.

SPEAKER_02 7:03

By all means, because somebody else has been to this place and goes, You can't you can't have that.

unknown 7:08

Right.

SPEAKER_02 7:08

Or it won't do the job and they're misinformed.

SPEAKER_00 7:11

And you mentioned service techs, and and really, I think a lot of the companies that have service type people like plumbing, like even glass repair people. And I did a training for a glass doctor company a few weeks ago, and she wanted me in to teach her techs how to actually sell because they're techs, they're like, I'm gonna go fix the problem, and I'm that's it. And you need to teach your technicians that they're also salespeople, right?

SPEAKER_02 7:38

Yeah, there's no question about it. In the old days when, and I've been talking about when I was doing tech work, because as I said, I did everything. But when I would go run a service call in the old, old days, we never even really had to talk much to the customer other than to find out what the problem was. Right. Somebody will send him a bill. Well, that ship is long sale. Exactly. I'm gonna ask you for money, and usually I'm gonna ask for your money up front. So I need to be able to present a price in the right way. I need to be able to build the trust all the way along the line. So skipping sales, and I really think the point of it is I talk about ethical communication. And then when I would tell them, why don't you call it that? Ethical communications as this program, I said, because I couldn't sell your boss on it unless I called him selling. But yes, exactly. Ethical communications is what leads to ethical sales, which leads to great sales. So I can sell anything to anybody once. Is that your goal? Absolutely not. My goal is to earn your trust over and over again. I want to turn you into a raving fan. And I even got really, really great asking for testimonials before I even sold a job. And there's a technique about how to do that, do the right way, because I had a great industry friend that said, you telling me how great you are is semi-interesting. What I really want to know is who lives somewhere around where I do, who looks like me, who's bragging on you. Testimonials became not just for marketing, they're so important for sales.

SPEAKER_00 9:13

Yeah. I mean, it's social proof right there. One of the biggest pillars of influence is social proof. And I train reps to do that all the time. It's amazing how many companies I go into and I ask them flat out, do you show customers in the area? You have a book or a map program that shows that. Al, it's unbelievable. Like eight out of 10. No, we don't have that. We don't do that. They they can go online and technology today, it's it's almost embarrassing. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 9:40

You can't take a video with your customer. It's right. Right. Yeah. It's the best thing that you can do. So yeah. But here's what I wanted to kind of bridge to this other thing. Once I came better at operations and and such, we always thought that the number one reason for a callback, and so let's just make sure we're defining the callback. Callback means I was at your home, business, whatever. And now within 30 days, you're calling me back for some reason. I have to run back, and it's money drain, and customers are not happy. And then nowadays they can go online and tell 7 billion people how much you messed up. The stakes are a lot higher. What it was really about was understanding as a service tech, there are three things that could cause a callback. Bad sales communication, operationally bad, technically bad. So the thing is, I sold you something, but I didn't know that you really needed, or your expectations of what you were going to get at the end were never clearly defined by you, you, the person buying it, speaking it to make sure that we've got this two-way communication locked in. We measured because we had a very what we call a high callback ratio many, many years ago. And that just means by based on how many calls, 100, how many are coming back for any reason within 30 days. So just as a ballpark, don't use it as a hard breath thing, but in service, typically 4% is where you usually start as a goal, a 4% callback ratio, which means for any reason, four of them are coming back. So I thought their technical knowledge was the reason that there would be a callback. Or, you know, they ran a call and they didn't want to put on the shoe covers, so they dragged mud across a white carpet, or they weren't careful with their you know, toolbox and they broke the screen door. Right.

SPEAKER_00 11:29

So a call a callback is there's a there's an issue, what you're talking about.

SPEAKER_02 11:33

There was something as long as the customer feels there's an issue, it's legit. The number one reason for callbacks, which was astounding to us, was bad sales. Really? Bad sales by not communicating, by not building trust, by not keeping the customer in the loop, all of that was really or not selling the appropriate thing because really are two diagnoses for a service tech. You need to diagnose the customer number one before you get busy diagnosing the problem. It's not one or the other, it's those two diagnoses.

SPEAKER_01 12:07

That's great.

SPEAKER_02 12:07

And guys are usually in such a big hurry, they just want to get down to the what's the problem? What can I sell them? How can we get on with this job? And they have not done the work to diagnose the customer. And that's really the big thing that does it. Now, as a big ticket salesperson, you still have that same burden is that you need to diagnose the customer and diagnose the problem. So, unbeknownst to me as a young person, I went to sell a heating job, and the person wanted a new heating system. And I said, Okay, well, here's what we can do, and put it all in. And uh they called up, I'm unhappy. I go, Well, I'll come by and check the whole system. And I go, it's working perfectly. They go, Yeah, well, the the room that's 450 feet away from here is not hot. And I thought when I bought the new heating system, it would automatically fix that. Oh. Because I never asked the key questions. Right. Are there any rooms too hot or too cold? Is there anything that you're desiring to get that you didn't have with the existing equipment? Trust me, that happened once.

SPEAKER_00 13:08

That's the value of learning. So let me ask you a question that that I get or I run into enough to ask this question. I have seen companies who have service techs who are asking them to sell, but they don't pay them any commission on the sale. They frame it like it's for the good of the company. They have a good salary, we have a bonus structure, but we don't really incentivize them to sell. Now, talk me out of it if I'm wrong, but I'm from the school of if you're gonna ask me to sell something, I want to be incentivized to sell it. Do you agree with service techs making commission on sales or no?

SPEAKER_02 13:42

I do, I do agree on it. Okay.

SPEAKER_00 13:44

I absolutely do agree.

SPEAKER_02 13:45

And I think they have to be prepared. The techs have to be prepared. Our company tremendously changed. We were New York City Union Shop. And when I walked in, Union didn't do any providing of staff to us. We just had to take what came along and put them in the union if they weren't. But they were horrible. They were all mismanaged. And, you know, this was what I inherited from a company that was started in 1936 out of my grandfather's gas station. So finally I just said, look, we're just going to the edge of the cliff and we're all going to go over unless the two of us come to a conclusion. And to my union's credit, the guys that were there said, no, we don't want to do that. How do we fix this? So we worked it out that the work chart, which goes in levels or ladder, to ascend up the ladder, you have to make a service tech would be sales operation technical performance that's being measured. The easiest way I can describe a sales coaching program would be is if I need you to bring me $360,000 for the year, I need $30,000 a month. If you bring me $30,000 a month, love you, keep coming to work.

unknown 14:50

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 14:51

Bring me $30,000 and $1, I will be very generous with the $1 because it's not built into my butt budget, it's found money. Okay. Bring me $29,999, I will coach you, but not forever. Gotcha. And that's the easiest way. So there's bonus for above salary or commission paper performance, which is another thing. I think the big thing to that is they need to know why they have to be selling. And if they are understanding that and they're being aware of that, we are watching, not because we distrust you, but we're out here to protect everybody. So what does that mean? I'm a firm believer in mystery shoppers, having mystery shoppers and letting them know that there are mystery shoppers. And our mystery shoppers are not just there to see you doing something bad, they also report to us when you're doing something good. You're following the system. So it isn't all punitive, it's also good and bad. And it's how it's setting you up to come to more training with us to move you up the ladder to make more money. The second way is that we will do ride-alongs with you consistently. And people go, well, they're going to be on their best behavior on ride-alongs. And my answer to that is for doing so many ride-alongs. Yeah, they'll be that way for maybe a couple of calls. But if I ride in your truck for month after month, you are going to show me exactly who you are.

SPEAKER_00 16:17

Exactly. Right. Right. I want to piggyback on what I said with that with my statement of I think service techs need to make commission. But I also don't want you to think or the audience to think that I'm a commission only guy, because I think commission only reps really hurt the industry because that's all they're focused on. I'm here to sell you and not get to the point of what's going to, you know, help you.

SPEAKER_02 16:39

I I totally agree. Totally agree. And some of the owners really don't even get it. They go, well, if we put them on commission and they don't sell the, they don't, it doesn't cost us anything. They go, Are your leads for free? Right. Your reputation not at risk. So yeah, get out and do this. If you want to go pay performance or commission-based pay, you better be really, really, really vigilant. You should be vigilant anyway. And the way I explained it is, you know, what was that show to catch a contractor? There used to be all these operations. Yeah. How do you know that's not going to happen to you? And all it takes is just one incident to sink a whole company. So that's why we do mystery shopping. That's why we have ride-alongs and things like that to minimize that from happening, because we want you to sell, I'm going to come back to the magic word, ethically.

SPEAKER_00 17:32

Yes. Exactly. And I think when you judge a sales rep or a service tech, you have to have an entire, I guess point system is a better way to put it. Like, okay, you're going to make commission, but how many reviews, good reviews did you get? How many referrals did you get? How many self-generated appointments?

SPEAKER_02 17:50

How many callbacks are you are you creating? Because the team knows that you're out selling and not fixing anything, and we have to clean up your mess.

SPEAKER_00 17:57

Yeah, then you're not a good salesperson. You're you're a liability to the company rather than an asset.

SPEAKER_02 18:03

I I learned this actually very I was already already knew it, but I was curious when I went off to really do the consulting. Didn't take long, was one of my first customers. They were all good at selling. The baseline was straight across, except for one guy who was way above that. And I talked to the owner privately and I go, your guys are really good. This other guy is like crazy off the charts. Now, maybe he's everything he is, but I would tell you to get somebody's butt in the truck to go find out what's going on or stop back at these jobs. Because, or let me talk to some of your other techs, because I'll get the truth here. What it ended up being, because once they did that, they found out he was doing unethical sales, wasn't good at any of the technical stuff. So they finally had the guts to fire him. And then I spoke to the guys and they go, you know what? We're going to pick up the ball. So they had their next best selling months, six months in a row, once they fired their top performer. Their top performer.

SPEAKER_00 19:02

That's amazing. Love that.

SPEAKER_02 19:04

Yeah, it's a very big fallacy. They believed the owner was turning a blind eye because he just wanted the money.

SPEAKER_00 19:11

Yeah. I see it a lot in organizations where you have that top guy or that top woman. Yeah, they're selling a lot, but they may not be the best for the company. And it takes a lot of guts for that owner to say, you know what, in the grand scheme of things, my long-term goal, you're not part of this plan because you're not doing things with the way we want them done. And eventually it's going to bring the company down.

SPEAKER_02 19:30

Yes, absolutely. Well, the other thing that as an owner, there was a time that I was afraid to fire people for different positions because I knew I would have to stop my day and get in the truck and, you know, do a pickup truck and do the whole thing. And not that I was, you know, adversed in doing it, but it's not something you want to be doing every day. So we finally, my older brothers, with my dad's blessing, we decided, because I had gone off to an organization where, you know, really opened my eyes to what I should be doing. And I came back and I spoke, closed the door, and I we had a very small office because my dad believed we don't make any money with you sitting here. Go out and do something. I closed the door, talked to my uh two older brothers of my dad. And I go, I woke up last night in a cold sweat. And I thought to myself, they could all quit tomorrow. What would we do then? And also, I feel like a hostage at my own company.

SPEAKER_01 20:24

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 20:24

I go, how do you guys feel? And they all looked around at me with a laugh. They go, Yeah, we feel like hostages. So what are you going to do about it? And I go, I don't know, but I'll figure it out. And the root of it was creating operating manuals, which is a fancy name for a playbook for everybody on the org chart to know what they're supposed to do 80% of the time. And then that led to creating a sales system that was repeatable. That led to us creating willing apprentices with no skills to willing techs with great skills. Before that, we used to pirate people away. And you can get lucky, catch lightning in a bottle, which means a willing tech with good skills, but it's very rare to be replicable. So once you learn how to create a pipeline, and why am I going to this? Because it applies to salespeople. If you're always going to be buying somebody else's salesperson, they're going to do it their own way. They're going to tell you what they will and won't do and how they will. We decided no more. We're all just going to get great at sales and we're going to follow this thing, and new people are going to arrive, and we're going to be able to get them up to the uh sales ladder as well.

SPEAKER_00 21:31

Hey, dwellers, quick break. Hey, did you know that the closing percentages for in-home sales has been dropping consistently over the last 10 years? It's really crazy, and there's a lot of reasons for it. But one of them is reps have so much to do in the house because there's so many different platforms that you're jumping back and forth all the time. Well, my title sponsor, Paradigm Bendo, takes care of that. In one digital platform, you can go from initial appointment right to final sale. and signatures by visiting just their platform. It's amazing. You gotta check them out. It's paradigmvendo.com forward slash dwelling, P-A-R-A-D-I-G-M Vendo.com forward slash dwelling, because your reps need to give the homeowners a great experience in the house, and jumping around doesn't do that. Visit paradigmvendo.com forward slash dwelling and take care of the experience your reps are giving in the house. Your book covers the seven powers, the levels in a in an organization for lack of a better term. I'll read them off here. It's planning and leadership, operations, financial, staffing. Then you have selling, marketing, and then sales coaching. Are those the seven pillars you you talk about in the book? Those are the seven seven pillars.

SPEAKER_02 22:48

And the reason the seven powers came to be is I was ruminating that I was in my office thinking during the stressful times, there must be like seven million things because I'm pretty smart and we've been around a long time. We should have figured this out already. And then when I realized we didn't have a foundation. So imagine a big house, because we were already big at that time on bad ground or no foundation or a crumbling foundation. Yeah. And that's when I stumbled onto this thought about the seven blocks. So it really applies to small companies who want to grow because they're going to run out of hours in a day, days in a week, weeks in a month I've lived that life you can't clone yourself, although you wish you could. Yeah. It's not going to happen. And then for bigger companies, you know how to make the phone ring and you can make some money. But is it replicable? Because could you go away for two months and never check back and see what would it be? That's really kind of the same thing. So scalability also relies on the same seven powers as your think of it as the foundation.

SPEAKER_00 23:55

Well we have you know as you said before we recorded Sympatico because I have the seven secret sales academy those are my seven foundations of selling and you have the seven you know power contractor book. And we're both named Al. So this is a can't get a lot it's it's meant to be for everyone listening. All right. So in all your consulting what do you think right now 2026 we just we just started uh midsummer what what are you seeing out there as the number top two problems that contracting companies are having if you if you if that's not too broad I would say it's it is more acutely and that would it was not one of the privileges of living this long and going through so long is uh this is new to you but it's not new to me.

SPEAKER_02 24:38

A roller coaster. Yeah you know when we just went through COVID at the beginning I thought wow it's going to be terrible and all of a sudden it ended up being great. What I knew from my own times was dot com is people would begin to interrupt me while I was presenting to them whatever they had asked for and they they would interrupt me and go, great how soon can you start? I knew where we were. And then there are other times as I said to my brothers if I told somebody I'd sell them a new heating system for a dollar they would argue with me. Right, exactly that's how the cycle here is so I believe right now it's not across the board slowing I think there are people with money especially like ourselves in the baby boomer era you know we're at the point where we've lost the fun of DUI to do it yourself. No, we want you to do it for us. And so that's still a live market and we do have money. Where younger people are struggling to get into houses there's not as much house turnover. We just went through an exhaustive buildup in housing coming in through the COVID things and you know these rates people perceive as high. Now my first mortgage was 12 and a half fixed and I was happy to have it.

SPEAKER_01 25:54

Right.

SPEAKER_02 25:55

It's all relative and whether or not you can buy the house. So I think being able to get enough calls but here's the problem most people are really poor at marketing because they've never reverse engineered it which is if I want to be 10 million in sales as an example how much is it service? How much is new install so the pie and then how what's your closing rate on these calls? And then you can work up as to how many calls and how many people need to go to be able to bring you that then figuring in the rep, how many what's their conversion rate so everything works backwards.

SPEAKER_00 26:31

It's great we I spoke about this in a previous podcast with Lauren Kingsley about reverse engineering and most companies don't do that. They say I want to do this but instead and they're like okay let's just do it and they don't figure out let's look at it backwards. Like I I did the same thing with this podcast. Like I always wanted to do this podcast and it was like I'm not just going to start a podcast. I'm like okay here's a podcast what do I need to do to get there let me go backward what do I need to do and it's very helpful and and so many people don't realize the power of reverse engineering almost every idea that you have you should really do that.

SPEAKER_02 27:01

Yeah yeah and for me it's it starts with a written goal. Yep if it's not written it's not real. And it's just a nice fairy tale you tell yourself to get the sleek. Whether you start at 12 million because the numbers are easy it's a million a month well okay a million a month how much is it going to be in sale? How many calls? What's their conversion? What's the average ticket? If I want my big ticket salespeople to bring me a million or two million or three million what's their closing rate? What's the average ticket? Okay, back up how many calls does that mean so for instance 200 calls they close at 50% we're going to get 100 calls. What do those average tickets need to be so reverse engineering all along the way is super important.

SPEAKER_00 27:41

And are you so are you saying that that the biggest problem or one of the biggest problems you're seeing is getting enough leads for these companies is that is that what right now that's what the complaint I'm hearing across the board from most companies.

SPEAKER_02 27:52

Okay. Now there are some really good marketers. They're paying more and more for the leads because the market getting more and more crowded the great person who I worked with all these years, a great friend as well Ellen Rohr, R O H R. She is the financial power person. So she was the one that was working with me to deliver financial power we swished together our sales coaching program because without knowing the numbers like she says how do you know how you're rewarding people is it money from your wallet or is it money they create? And the answer should be the money they create but without a budget and a financial scorecard you're just taking a wag, a wild anatomical guess. That's hard for a New Yorker to say that are you seeing anything else besides the leads the cost of leads the struggle to get leads because there's so much there's so much you know there's private equity money coming in things of that nature but I competed against utilities so I'm not unsympathetic but I'm kind of unsympathetic. I I went toe to toe with the best guys and you just have to be able to combine you know money buys you options is another thing that Ellen always talks about. So if you have money you can go television marketing radio one of the best ones of course is stand-up trucks that are really logoed well your brand is really sticks out like we rebranded back in 91 and all of a sudden it looked like I had five times as many trucks as I did. We already had a big fleet but it just was outstanding in the in the because we had somebody help engineer all that and it really made a world of difference because your trucks going up and down the road they're in the right service area they're next to your neighbors or whatever else in the neighborhood and if you don't think great looking stand up trucks are important, go to Las Vegas because they're running empty trucks up and down the boulevard.

SPEAKER_00 29:46

Yes they are yeah yeah I mean it again it goes back to social proof and and familiarity like people see that truck they must be good. They're always on the road they're doing something they must be good. Yeah they're in my neighborhood I see them all the time. I I have a good marketing friend and and we always send each other pictures of bad marketing or bad websites that we see. And the other day I'm not kidding it's probably two weeks ago on the road there was a van in front of me and in the back of the van it just said professional with a phone number. Just the word professional so I said well there's got to be something on the side of the van and I went to the side of the van and it just said professional with a phone number and that's it. And I'm like Are you kidding me? It's stuck in my head but like what are you a professional at?

SPEAKER_02 30:26

Like I know it's you know there's there's the balance of that my dad and my uncle who was the generation before me they thought that they should put everything on the truck so that's too much everything. So and this is back in the day when they used to letter, you know, hand letter before you had you know the poor painter really killed himself. The guy who really took me on over his lap in the marketing section is this guy Leo, who was a top marketing guy that my dad happened to know. It was just one of the most happy lucky accidents in my entire life. And he just said Sonny this is how we do marketing. So the example of the truck was a good one because it had to be green because of regulations. So I came with a sheet and I thought we were going to pick like forest green or a dark green he looks at it and he picks the most obnoxious green color you can and I go no Leo no and he goes listen to me Al. I'm not asking you to wear a suit this color. But they're going to say your truck five blocks away what marketing is about. And sure enough when I wasn't looking for that truck I could see it five blocks away because before that it was invisible. Yeah it was very funny because he just really explained to me about how everything else you put on it's all about real estate. Yes when you have a truck or any marketing the more you put on the worse you make it.

SPEAKER_00 31:50

Absolutely right but you need to put a little more on then professional and that's it. Maybe one or two more words at least yeah at least one or two.

SPEAKER_02 31:57

There's actually uh but QR codes to me are idiotic.

SPEAKER_00 32:01

I'm driving along am I going to get the phone out to do this I don't yeah I mean maybe when there's if they're parked or at a light you know what the color attracts my attention I know your name and it's a good name.

SPEAKER_02 32:14

Yeah and then I know what you do that's all I'll find you I'll find you yeah you better be really judicious.

SPEAKER_00 32:21

I'm in Rhode Island and there's a septic company. Now you can't get much more gross and dirty than a company that cleans septic tanks and this started probably about 10 years ago I started seeing the trucks and I looked into it. It's a woman owned business and what she did is brilliant. She painted every single giant septic tank truck you know you've all seen them they're giant bright pink yes I've seen it yeah yeah I forget the name of her company uh I but it's a bright pink if I if I google bright pink septic it's gonna come right up but she makes sure so she literally makes sure every truck is cleaned every day when they when they get off the road they wash every single one and now she's breaking she's breaking what people have in their head automatically like you started out oh dirty sloppy it's gonna be a hundred percent it's a pattern interrupt and if you're even the the wife of the house or the woman of the house or someone that's on one you know ordering this up I want the clean truck cleaning my septics tank not the not the gross guy coming here with shit all over his truck basically I I actually was myself Ellen one of my customers Jim Carnetti many many years ago we got back together the three of us to a zoom drain and sewer and went nationwide on franchise so I know that business really really well I didn't pick the name Zoom he did because he wanted it to be both focused and fast. What was the name Zoom Z-O-O-M Zoom drain and sewer okay fast focused that was really what our main thing was because he knew all of his competition well we'll get there when we can meanwhile sewerage is running everywhere yeah when he got there they weren't really trained where we had really got these guys trained beyond any other level and by the way speaking of and we're going to get to the ask Allen segment in just a minute but I have to bring this up because you're talking about so many things as far as the brand of your company and all the things that affect that the reputation of it about two years ago I had a leak in my basement my well tank started leaking pretty bad. It was 1130 at night when I heard it I went downstairs I've already got things leaking the it was the of course the house was designed where the for some reason the water turnoff was not in front of the well tank it was after it so I couldn't turn the water off. So I get on my phone and I'm not kidding Google 24 hour you know plumbing service the first eight that I called that said 24 hour emergency service went rice to voicemail. Leave a message we'll call you back did anybody call me back? No. Call number nine someone picked up the phone and then they showed up within about 40 minutes. But the first eight who told me they were 24 hours were not and that really like it got I did a whole post on it because I was actually mad I'm so happy to hear you say that because during the COVID when all of a sudden it was we were short on labor.

SPEAKER_01 35:07

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 35:08

Guys were stealing or what we used to call pirating because we didn't like to use the word stealing as if pirating was a better word. Yeah where you overpaid them and you just cut every deal under the sun and one of them was like oh we don't have to work on call or any of the other stuff which I think is abysmal and I made that clear to the quote unquote gurus out there who were pushing this. I said the reason you need to do this is because you haven't done the hard work like we have which is taking willing techs sorry willing apprentices with no skills and building them to willing techs to that have great skills and they knew from the beginning that we serve on their schedule for this reason. We ask ourselves would you be okay if your mother's house in a colonial the toilet explodes on the third floor on Saturday we'll tell her we'll be there Monday. Is he okay with that? Are you like that? Every one of them would ever again they were union they didn't have to buy into any of this stuff. Every one of them understood this completely and as I mentioned we had shifts but we would get these calls out and get them done. It wasn't just some online said 247 emergency.

SPEAKER_00 36:26

I think that's really such a huge break in trust that's how you're starting the date you know here's the date and you know and I'll be there at seven and you're they're not there. We're gonna do 24 hour service and they don't and so it's you're lying before we even I even meet you so all right let's get to the ask allen segment because this is this is one of my favorite parts of the uh podcast if you go to the sellinginthewell.com there's an ask allen button you click on it you send a question and you get a t-shirt if I read the question and this one came in literally a few days ago and it's perfect for Mr. Al Levy because it's about systems and we've got a gentleman here who runs a small contracting company I think a lot of what you've already said Al is going to help him but I want to see how you're gonna answer the specific question. So it's from Tony in Lakewood, New Jersey and I've actually grew up in New Jersey so nobody and I know where that is my wife is from uh Perth Amboy. Okay. So Tony writes I run a small contracting business he doesn't say what kind but a small contracting business we did four million last year and are on pace for a little over five million in 2026. To scale and grow I'd like to get to 10 or 20 million. What would you say I should focus on first to get there? Or is that too broad a question and then he writes L O L. I guess I just need some direction any help would be wonderful.

SPEAKER_02 37:50

Thanks so the senior goal here is to reach 10 million but you didn't put in the key element which allows you to slide off the hook. You didn't say by when what I always explain to that's my clients is the reason you don't say why and the reason you don't put it in writing is because if you don't make it there's no guilt. But really there's no goal police that's coming along to take your dog if you don't get there. If you get to eight million and it's profitable you did good yeah yeah so it yeah Tony start with literally writing a document 10 million in sales let's say I usually like a three to five year time horizon. You're welcome to beat it but three to five years is very fair. I think planning or writing down stuff for 10 years is just a little too far. So in within the next three years or five years you pick whichever you want and now you have to do what I was been blurting out before which is reverse engineering. So by now you should know if you do service like I described somebody goes there, they sell the job they do it. That's what it means 24 hours. Or else somebody goes there and sells it and somebody else comes to do it, that's what I call install work or new construction or whatever other work you want to do. So we separate out the pie and then we decide okay of of the 10 million how much do you want in each of these if you could choose again nobody's gonna argue with you if suppose you say I want 70% in service and 30% install or the other way 70% in install 30 you figure out the profitability and then work backward. You need to work out with well if each tech can bring me 5000 to make these the money easy that means automatically I need 20 techs. Right now I know okay it's not just calls it's how many techs do I need in their trucks producing that 5000 and by when so I've got this gold going now and now I'm starting to put in mile markers along the highway which is I'm gonna have so many techs or apprentices moving up the pipeline getting into each of these boxes so they can get in their own truck and that will continue to push us and if I have big ticket sales I'm gonna have so many big ticket salespeople that can bring me a million, two million whatever your target is within the year and then you need to work backwards. So example easy math was I need a million in sales the average sale is $10,000 that means you need to close a hundred calls in a year. This is just for easy math.

SPEAKER_01 40:28

Right.

SPEAKER_02 40:28

But if you have a 50% closing rate that means you need I need to give you 200 qualified calls. Right. And then I have to go one more step up which is if the CSR doesn't book it or successfully hand it over to the person who's going to do the job, I've got to find out what kind of leak I have there. Yeah. Now we are starting to set sail to where we want to go.

SPEAKER_00 40:51

And that's brilliant and you mentioned a good point because it's not just as simple as okay we have a 50% close and I need 200 appointments. So that means I need to that might mean you need to get 450 leads to come in to actually set 200 appointments. So then you take it the next step further and then it's a qualified lead. Is it a crappy lead in in some rental property or is it a a legitimate lead? So yeah that so you got to really look at all those things but the reverse engineering is huge for sure.

SPEAKER_02 41:17

Absolutely that's that would get I could confuse you with more talking this is this is really the first second and third biggest thing you need to get started on your journal.

SPEAKER_00 41:28

And what I would add to that and you you just you hit my wheelhouse which is is writing down goals. You know I'm a big goal guy the smart goals I you know I always say whole my whole life since probably when I was a you know teenager I always wanted to go to Africa. I wanted to go an African safari and I would write down my goals every year and I put them in a book I'd write down go to Africa. That's all I would write for 25 years I wrote go to Africa with nothing else no timeline no anything then I saw smart goals and I figured it out so the key what you said there is two things write it down keep it visible and give yourself a timeline. This is one I want to do it by because you will be shocked when you do those two things how you get them done.

SPEAKER_02 42:08

You really just you do it you get it done I I I am a living proof of it as well. Mine was different as I I was setting sail leaving my company and I knew I had I had already got all the systems in place. So we had all the org charts the manuals the training being able to do the staffing all the other things that we talked about and it was running well but came this point you know that I was 45 and I been at the company just counting full time years 20 years. But if you know a family business I was there by the time I was eight right exactly and when when I came home from college I had six months I was driving a truck you know there was no spring break. Right exactly yeah so I I was already fully in transport I knew I was going to be leaving and I had two things I wanted to be able to set up the programs to teach others but I also knew I was not leaving my brothers and my dad in lurch. So I was going to have to hire people and train them and really prove out the system. So I gave them three years notice. I hope you're listening three years notice. So next time you're somebody quits two weeks notice or one week or just leaves the keys on a desk yeah what kind of difference it was but I used that time to really prove out the theory get people in place and you know I've been gone I left in officially the end of September 2001. So I've been gone for 20 almost 25 years now and my nephew fourth generation is there. And he's clocking and rolling.

SPEAKER_00 43:37

Yeah and by the way I did go to Africa once I once I started putting the the goal in place and I gave myself a deadline so it was it was my bucket list trip realized. Well Al, we are out of time and I am going to ask you if people want to contact you I mean if I owned a company a contracted company you would be one of my first calls where do they go and where can they find your book?

SPEAKER_02 43:59

Yeah the the best thing to do is go to the website the number sevenpowercontractor.com okay number sevenpowercontractor.com there's a lot of free information I have tons of blogs that I've written they're easy to search there's video there's a bunch of other things all free there's a jump start guide that there's free if you're interested in product if you click on the product page you will see the book it's on through Amazon you can get the book. If you love this voice it's on audible so you also have a paperback it's very thin and it's very thin on purpose. I probably had 10 times as much content I would have filled this book up but I really believe that business books should be 150 pages or less to be really really impactful because my goal was for you to read it over and over again or listen to it over and over again to absorb the lessons. And so yeah those are there are two programs there the signature operating manual systems so that's the org chart the manuals which helps you take control of your company so it's scalable. And then the second program is signature staffing which you can only do after the first one but that will get you along the way anywhere you go you'll be in better shape.

SPEAKER_00 45:14

Awesome. Well this is terrific Al I really thank you for all of your insight and your golden nuggets and all your years in the industry and trying to make it better. That's what I appreciate about folks like you because we, you know, let's face it the the contracting bar is pretty low. It's bet it's been low. It's been on the ground for for many decades, but at least I think it's raising a little bit but it's still got a long way to go and I I think it's again from being around as long as that I can tell you that it is is raising.

SPEAKER_02 45:38

We've got tremendous access to knowledge which is a blessing and a curse because you don't know if you're talking listening or following a genius or an idiot. So you need good filters.

SPEAKER_00 45:50

Exactly all right now thanks for being here I really appreciate it and thank you in the audience for joining me on this edition of Selling in the dwelling don't forget to visit the website sellinginthedwelling.com check the ask Allen segment send me a question you might get a free t-shirt and also parandivemendo.com forward slash dwelling that is my title sponsor they are awesome check them out for the best in-home selling software you can find that's it for now folks we'll see you next time on selling in the dwelling take care of the body