How to Get Technicians to Sell

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It’s more than likely that your next customer has already had a bad experience with a salesperson. But with technicians, customers can feel safe, since they’re experts in their field and would only recommend a service upgrade if it was truly needed.

In this week’s episode of Cracking the Code, Contractor University faculty members Russ Horrocks and Weldon Long explain how to make technicians feel comfortable offering service upgrades to customers with a service mindset.

Audio Transcription (in beta)

On today’s show, we have an awesome snippet from Mr. Russ Horrocks and yours truly on building a selling technician. In this snippet, we’ll talk about the mindset it takes to be a top selling technician. Take it away, Russ and me.

Mindset to support the brand objective. We have to have a service mindset. That’s why I love working with service technicians. They already have this. I I’ve trained salesmen 90 percent of my career and technicians probably 10%. And I love strange technicians because they already have this down. I train salesmen to have the same mindset.

We don’t sell, we compel and we have to serve to be able to do that. Effectively technicians already have this. They’re already built with it and I love it. You’re already working from, I believe a better position. To be more successful. So we have to have a service mindset and you can talk about anything you want.

If you know, your objective is to inform people, not to sell people as Weldon said, if that guy had said to me, Russ, we’re perfectly fine with their filters, I would have said fantastic. I don’t care. My job is not to care what he does. My job is to let him know what he can do. It’s not personal. If he says I have no interest in that, I don’t care.

It doesn’t mean I’m going to deprive the next customer that information because I took it personal. It’s not personal. I never ever take their choices personal. We’re all different. We value things differently. One person might think that your maintenance agreement is the most important thing he has in his life, or the next person might absolutely hate the idea of it.

Who cares? That’s the incredible diversity of people that we meet in the human condition. Everyone thinks and values things differently. Why is there so much food available? Why are there so many different colors of vehicles available? Why is there so many different kinds of furniture? And I mean, there’s all that incredible diversity and choice because that’s how people are.

So don’t ever get caught into that, that trap of thinking that it’s personal. Yeah. Three times in a row, I brought up a UV light and that got shot down. And now you’re bummed out. That’s not how you do this. That’s the worst thing you can do. If you brought up a UV light three different times as a potential to learn about, and all those three people didn’t want to learn about it, so what?

The next person might. Don’t deny him the benefit of information because of your personal benefit. Uh, what you brought into it personally. So, you can talk about anything you want if you talk about to inform not to sell. The bigger change happens in you. It aligns you with your customer’s intent. It aligns you with their objective.

They’ll see it, they’ll appreciate it, and they’ll reward you for it. They’ll reward you by allowing them to trust you. So, I, I try to never deliver my opinion. I, I hate the word recommend. You’ll never hear it come out of my mouth. It’s, you have to agree with me or disagree. Um, it’s something we could consider.

It’s something we could explore if you want. If it’s important to you, let’s talk about it. I don’t know if you thought about this, but this is something that we could kind of unpack if, if you think it’s worth doing. I don’t know if you have any idea of, of playing your ducks in the future, but if you want, I’d be happy to give you some information so you’re prepared when the time does come.

Everything I say in the home is for consideration. It’s to create a conversation, and I don’t take it personal. They’ll either say yes, tell me more, or they’ll tell me no, I’m not interested. Either way is perfectly fine to me. And you’re going to find that the more that you talk, the more that you’re able to do.

A guy left my, I, I spent a week with a, a technician team up in the Northwest, um, last year, and a guy left that having never sold an iWave, and the first month out of the class sold 30 of them. And I say sold, he didn’t sell any of them, he just now felt safe enough to talk about them. And the fact that he talked about them, guess what?

People now had something they could purchase if it was important to them. And the only change was him. He just stopped thinking of it as, I’m selling it. He just started thinking of it as, I’m informing them it exists. It was pretty remarkable to see someone shy and introverted go from never having add on products to now being the top guy in a team of 10 or 12 different technicians.

Because he just simply talked about it. So your job as a professional is not to tell the customer what to do, to let them know what they can do. And never deny them the benefit of information. I never assume a five year old furnace is going to be repaired. It’s not my job to assume that. I ask them, do you want to repair it?

Or talk about replacement. How do you want to look at it? Which one do you want to talk about first? I never assume anything of any customer, ever. Because every time I ever did, it got me in trouble. And it limited the success of the outcome, and I’m too competitive for that. It drives me nuts. I’m never gonna limit my own success because I have a behavior that’s limiting, so that’s why I never make recommendations.

That’s a word that triggers people’s defenses. Ooh, here comes the recommendation. We’ve all had bad recommendations given to us. My, uh, my Jiffy Lube guy told me recommended flushing my antifreeze. It was done the week prior. That was a bad recommendation. He lost all credibility with me. I no longer trusted him.

A dealer with my wife’s car recommended new brake pads. They were a month old. Had a little bit of surface rest, but they were only a month old. Lost all trust in those people. I’ve gotten so many recommendations in my life that were dishonest, misleading, and bad, and not in my best interest. So, um, and, and so have your customers.

You don’t have to make recommendations, you can give good information. Something worth considering, something worth exploring, something they may want to learn about, something that might be important in the future. Be happy to talk about it now to get them ready and prepared for that time when it does happen.

Because nobody can make a decision to buy something until they value it. And they won’t value it until they understand it. And they won’t understand it until they learn about it. And they won’t learn about it if they don’t feel safe. And when you trigger their defenses, they no longer feel safe. And all that whole process to success crumbles.

You don’t even realize where it crumbled. I watch technicians blow it within the first five minutes. They have no idea why. We leave, I walk them through what happened, we go try again on the next call, and it’s remarkable. It’s, the funnest thing is to see their face and the big smile when they come out and go, Wow, that was cool.

That was so cool to see the customer react that way. It’s a reaction I’ve never seen before. I said, because you’ve always been doing what you’ve always done. Now you’re trying something different, you’re seeing something different. So, that’s exciting for me. That’s, that’s what makes this fun. So, anything you want to add to that, Willem?

No, I just think it’s, uh, it’s right on advice. Uh, You know, I, I was thinking as you were saying that making sure people understand, uh, one of the sayings that I always encourage my technicians, uh, to use and comfort advise anybody is, is the phrase, what that means to you. Uh, I think it’s really important as you’re having those discussions, sometimes as a technical people, we can get caught up in, in the feature of what the thing is and homeowners care about what it does for them.

So if you force yourself to say, well, here’s, here’s such and such product, and here’s what it does, what that means to you. It forces you to translate it into a benefit for them. And I was thinking that when Russ was talking about them, you know, feeling a tru they, they trust, you know, and they don’t feel pressured.

They don’t feel pushed. Always letting them know you’re not just talking about some thing, always translate it into what it means for them, what it will do for them. And that will put them more at ease because they’re seeing the direct impact on their life, not just some product you’re selling, but the impact on them.

I like that, yeah. Yeah, it’s not just a recommendation, it’s something they can actually value. Right. And that’s where value comes from, is the understanding. So I use the term, what it is, what it does, what it does for them, and the condition of it. Yeah. You know, and I think that’s a great way to do it. So I love that.

So I know this first hour has been a lot on the mindset, but there is nothing more important, promise you there’s nothing more important after 22 years of teaching this and in the industry, 27 years, this is always the most important part of everyone I work with. They have this or they don’t. And if they have this, they do phenomenal.

If they don’t have it, they struggle. You got to get this right. So if you’re looking to make a change, hopefully you’re here to be either reinforced concepts, you know, and trust to learn new concepts, but hopefully you’re looking to make a change. Um, there’s something that we, you know, we’ve probably all seen.

It’s called ERO event response and outcome. This has been around forever. A lot of times people see it in terms of life is 10 percent what happens, 90 percent how you handle it in a professional context. We use that life as te or, or professional, uh, context as, uh, the event’s 10%, the response is 90%, that determines what the outcome is gonna be.

The response is the sum of your knowledge, your skill, your experience, your attitude, and your mindset. And the cool thing about this simple equation is that we have 90 percent the ability to impact each and every outcome or situation we find ourself in. As we improve our knowledge, skill, attitude, mindset, and behavior, we can improve outcomes.

Earlier in my sales career, guess what? I didn’t like landlords. You know why? Landlords don’t appreciate quality. They don’t appreciate a company like me. You can’t sell them. I, the competitive side of me said, Russ, stop it. That’s stupid. Quit blaming the source for your failures. What can you do differently to appeal to a landlord?

And I changed. I looked at that 90 percent equation and said, what, what, what can I do different to get a better outcome with the landlord? And then I did it. And then I did the same thing with house flippers, and the same thing with an internet lead, and the same thing with every lead source. Um, you know, those guys have been through my sales train.

No, I don’t use closing ratio. I use connection ratio. Because that’s all it really is. You don’t close more because you’re a better closer. In fact, I don’t even teach closing techniques. If you have to close, you’ve done something wrong. It’s a connection ratio because you learn to connect with new and different types of buyers.

And I personally lived that very real in the 90s, closing 40, 50, 60, in the early 2000s, 70, 80, in the mid 80s, I didn’t become a better closer. I just learned how to connect with different types of buyers. I learned the different types of lead source required different effort. I learned what the non demand, the demand seasons look like and the effort for me that was so different.

So, it’s just learning how to change your response based on the event to get the outcome that we’re all looking for. And each homeowner, there’s a little bit different response required to get the best result from them. I had a guy ride with me on a, he was a new guy, so I ran all three calls for him one day.

At the end of the day, he looked at me and said, Russ, you know what, you said the same thing every single time, but completely differently. And I said, bingo, you got it. He looked really confused. So it took some time to kind of clarify that for him and train him. But, but that’s exactly what he saw. The same thing every time, but completely different.

And what made it completely different was, those were three completely different homeowners. That talked differently, that communicated differently, that valued differently, and that made decisions differently. So, I don’t ever care about a lead source. I don’t care about what the lead source says, what the lead sheet says, it doesn’t matter to me.

That’s the event. That’s 10 percent of my success. I just worry about what am I going to do with that opportunity, that lead source, to get the best possible outcome. And that’s going to keep me happy. It’s going to keep me healthy. When you ride the outcome, and that determines your success, your happiness, and now you feel about yourself, that’s a horrible rollercoaster ride.

Earlier in my career, I rode that rollercoaster and hated it. I said, I can’t do this if I have to let the outcome determine my happiness and success. And that’s when I learned to, to put my, my focus on my effort, my execution, my response, trust in the outcome was going to be what it should be. So that kept me healthy.

It kept me happy. It allowed me to love what I did and the way that I did it. So what, what did most people repeat? I don’t know. I’m sure you could probably back me up on this, Weldon. I would say that 95 percent of the people I have the pleasure of training, working with admit to me, they just do the same thing every day.

There’s no effort to change. There’s nothing they’re trying differently. There’s no effort made. What could I have done differently today? That’ll do differently tomorrow. Yeah, they just repeat day after day after day. I’ve got a a little metaphor I use always say life is a highway what I mean by that if you think about the highway system in your town Uh, and the cars that run down those highways You pretty much know where the traffic jams are going to be every day, because they’re habitual traffic patterns, right?

You know what exits there’s going to be a traffic jam on or not, right? So these are habitual traffic patterns, and they pretty much run the same way every single day. Well, in your brain, in your mind, you have these neural pathways, and they’re like the highways. But instead of cars running down your neural pathways, you have thoughts running down your neural pathways.

And isn’t it true they’re pretty much the same every single day? We think the same things every single day. We think the same things about money, about customers, about our spouse, about the weather, whatever it is. We think the same things pretty much habitually. And the reality is just like if you follow a particular highway, uh, if I go from Houston and follow the roads to Dallas, I get to Dallas every single time.

I never accidentally end up in San Antonio. Right? Well, my habitual thoughts are getting me to a very reliable, predictable destination, right where I am today. So if I keep having the same thoughts, which are gonna trigger emotions, behaviors, etc., that whole kind of neurological process, if I want to go somewhere new, I’m not gonna get there if I’m thinking the same habitual thoughts.

I got to have a new, you know, roadway system, a new highway system up here. And that’s about creating new neural pathways, new habitual thoughts. To take you in a different direction. And that’s why what Russ was talking about is that the mindset is so important because if I have certain results in my career and I don’t like those results.

Right? I can’t just change my behaviors, I gotta change my thoughts that trigger the behaviors. So, it’s a very important point here, and I love this, you know, it’s about the response, right? I mean, obviously we all have bad things happen to us, but your responses to those situations determine your outcomes, not necessarily the problems.

So, um, you know, we ended off talking about, you know, how important we are to the outcome. Um, just learning, uh, our craft. Attitude, it’s skill, it’s mindset, experience, it’s everything. It’s all the above. So, you know, I mentioned to WeldMine before we take a break that so many people I find don’t work at their craft.

They just repeat it day after day and I understand it’s a grind. You know, I, I get the benefit of working on my craft every day because I teach it. So I get to study it, that is my job. I know that you have to live in it and it can be a grind, it can be exhausting, I know. I’ve been out there with you guys, um, and one of the things I love about what I currently do Is while I do training and speaking, um, I have about 10 full time clients.

I get to run calls. I probably run 20 to 40 calls every month, uh, with technicians and salespeople. So yeah, I’ve been in homes with you guys. I’ve had 12, 14 hour days with you guys, um, running these calls and, um, I know it can be exhausting. I know it can be tiresome. Don’t deny yourself the chance to grow.

That personal growth is so rewarding and it’s so neat to see people change their lives. Just drastically changed their lives because they simply changed their behavior. They decided that they were going to take this opportunity to make something special of it. And that, to me, is a real exciting thing to witness.

And every one of you is capable of doing that. One thing I want to kind of point back to talking about trying to be the best at whatever we’re doing. To me, I think perhaps the most important part of that is that we are forming habits. Every day we’re forming habits. And if we don’t have the position necessary that we want, and we’re putting in a minimal effort.

thinking that when our, uh, condition changes, our position changes, we’ll put in a better effort. You’re fooling yourself. It doesn’t work that way. You’re building habits today that will carry you throughout your life. And those habits will be either failure based or success based. So you have to decide what are you doing for you, for the people that you love and why are you doing it?

So hopefully you can find motivation somewhere in there where you’ll be wanting to put a little bit of time in every day to work at your craft. It could be five, it could be 10 minutes. It doesn’t have to be a lot of time, but just put a little time in every day and you’re going to see some pretty exciting growth.

But why is change so hard? I think, you know, to talk about change, the need for change, to talk about new concepts or idea, we need to put a little time into why change is so difficult. Um, there’s a few reasons for that. Some of it is physiological. You know, our brain’s primary function is to protect. And quite often when we try to make a change in something, uh, we’re uncomfortable.

And the brain looks at that as, as a, you know, danger. The brain’s like, whoa, we’re, this is not comfortable. This doesn’t feel good. And the brain tries to shut that behavior down to try to get you to go back to what you’d always done where you were comfortable. So in some ways we have to kind of hack our brain, hack our physiology, hack our nature, and tell that brain just to quiet down.

It’s okay. It’s worth it. We’re going to be uncomfortable. We’re going to we’re going to work through this Awesome content right there from russ as always now Listen if you like this episode share it on your facebook And if you want to unlock more premium training content to take your business to the next level Click the link in the facebook post for a 30 day free trial.

Well, that’s it for this week folks We’ll see you next week on cracking the code until then. Bye. Bye for now