Ask the Experts | Revenue Goal for Comfort Advisors

Question: What is the expected revenue goal per year for a dedicated comfort advisor?

Weldon Long; New York Times bestselling author:

You know, I had to chuckle when I read that question, because I was just having this conversation with a client I was working with. The expectations have changed so much.

Back in 2007, 2008, 2009, I gave bonuses to our people for hitting $1 million in sales. That was kind of the brass ring, the Holy Grail – a million-dollar producer. And today that’s eclipsed by countless people, and the expectations have risen. In part because prices are higher obviously, and there’s more high-efficiency solutions and options, obviously those are more expensive.

But I would say that an expectation – and it’s hard to put an exact number for everyone; every market’s different, different situations. There are guys in California, I was just with a company a few weeks ago, where one guy eclipsed $5 million. I’d never seen that before, one person. And if I hadn’t seen it myself I probably wouldn’t have believed it. In fact I was just teaching an EGIA class last week and I brought this guy up and one guy said, “I don’t believe you.” I said, “You think I’m making this up?” He said, “There’s not enough hours in the day for a person to sell $5 million.” That’s how unbelievable it is, people actually have a hard time understanding.

So to say all of that, I would say that if you have somebody that’s producing $1.5 million to $2 million, you’ve got a really good person on your hands. If you’ve got anybody over $2 million, that’s – we had a $2 million guy at our company back in ’07-’08, so obviously that’s doable. I would set that $2 milllion as kind of a benchmark. You think of it that’s $40,000 a week, at an average ticket these days of probably $15,000 – that’s really just three systems a week, would be over $2 million a year. So $2 million is completely attainable, and you’ll have some that are eclipsing $3 million.

And Gary I’m not sure about your opinion on that, but definitely it depends on the individual markets. But what we used to think was a big thing at $1 million, these days is almost like “what happened, what went wrong?” Because there’s just so many people producing $2 million and over.

Gary Elekes; Founder, EPC Training:

Wally I couldn’t agree more. By the way the $5 million man – that is impressive. “What the mind can conceive and believe it can achieve,” is the old cliché, right? From Napoleon Hill. So, it’s doable, it’s just a question of average tickets.

As we look at this, if the average ticket is, say, $8,000 — and each salesperson will vary on their average tickets based on how the company is positioning the pricing, the accessories, the warranties, the guarantees. So we have a guy that’s average ticketing $14,000 and we have a guy that’s average ticketing $8,000. It’s the same company with the same pricebook with the same philosophies and the same warranties and guarantees, but the talent level is different.

The $14,000 guy is better at creating trust, and he has a better charisma and a better likeability and he’s able to communicate. He just has the talent level that’s sort of the Michael Jordan vs. the average guy playing high school basketball. Doesn’t mean either one is good or bad, but you start looking at metrics like this and start thinking “What’s the average ticket?”

So if you took $8,000, that’s the low-end of the average ticket, and said he sold 200 jobs a year, that’s $1.6 million. That’s a pretty good benchmark for today’s numbers, if you just look at where the industry’s pricing is on equipment, where most contractors are creating the marketing presence in what you would consider the middle position. But if you’re selling a lot of high-efficiency and you superimpose that same $14,000 and you start selling 200 jobs, the math starts changing.

You’re always going to have a normal distribution curve inside of a business, where you have your peak performers, some average performers and you’re probably going to have some underperformers. So the secret is to not look at it as an average, but to look at it as a median. The median is statistics, and it’s the most common recurring number that occurs inside of a pattern.

So if we have five people selling, and our most common number is $2 million a year, but we have an average of $1.6 million a year, that just means that the underperformer is dragging everybody down, but you’ve got two people that are selling at a very high level. So you would look at your industry numbers, and look at your company numbers, and say not less than $1.6 million. But certainly greater than that is attainable.

Love to talk to you, Wally, when you get a chance about the $5 million man! Can’t wait.

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