In this comprehensive guide, we’ll talk you through everything you need to know about how you can take a multichannel approach to enhance prospecting efficiency and boost sales.
An outside sales rep spends countless hours each week communicating with prospects and customers, but more often than not, these activities go unnoticed. This is due to the fact that in order to document these interactions, it requires an average of 10.7 hours – or 23% of their time – each week to plug this information into their CRM. Time that should be spent selling.
We’ve recognized that this is a big problem and have created a solution… Spotio is thrilled to announce the release of Multichannel Activity Management.
This new feature offers activity management capabilities to include visits, calls, texts, and email; providing a complete view and real-time digest of the activities happening in the field. Get the visibility you’ve been missing.
Spotio’s Multichannel Communication feature eases the administrative burden of activity tracking by auto-logging the interactions taking place through the Spotio app into your CRM.
Eliminate rep administrative burdens and reduce manual work that goes into recording face-to-face interactions.
Provide sales reps with a central hub of call activities – inbound, outbound, and missed – to easily track communication with prospects.
A single view for all the texts that have been sent and received between a rep and prospect or customer. The automatic transfer of SMS communication into the CRM makes it easy to track and measure all text communication that happens.
Integrated with your email provider, auto capture every customer email communication for full picture of engagement.
By utilizing a tool that automates this list of activities, your sales team greatly benefits. Management can track performance over time and discover whether or not the activities resulting from visits are working or not; while reps greatly reduce the manual burden of having to document sales activities taking place in the field.
• Eliminate the costly guesswork and provide your outside sales team with the visibility they’ve been missing.
• Instantly sync every activity into your CRM.
• Auto-log each customer interaction for a complete picture of engagement, while keeping sales reps focused on what matters most.
• Run performance and activity reports by rep, territory, or by team.
• A complete view and real-time digest of the activities happening in the field.
To learn more, schedule your demo here.
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Questions or comments? Contact Spotio at info@spotio.com or comment below.
Spotio is the #1 outside sales software that will increase revenue, maximize profitability, and boost sales productivity.
Successfully and strategically mapping out sales territories requires coordinating countless moving parts. Yes, you’ll need to manage the basic sales assignment process of connecting reps with their regions – but savvy business owners and sales managers recognize that a comprehensive field sales methodology requires far more than just outlining boundaries and choosing the right account executive.
Salesforce Maps (formerly MapAnything) has proven to be a popular choice for sales organizations looking to up their infield selling game. However, businesses across virtually every vertical often realize that the current SF Maps functionality doesn’t quite suit all of their needs.
To best optimize a sales territory campaign, executives must implement a full-scale, robust mapping solution that goes beyond program basics to include other factors such as gathering data sets, managing leads, and measuring performance.
Designed specifically for field sales strategies, Salesforce Maps does what all mapping software should do: help organizations add geographic context to the selling process. The system also automates standard selling situations, such as contact details, new account creation, lead gathering, and various customer service components.
Sure, SF Maps uses functional mapping and productivity optics. However, as B2B field sales team begin to experience the pressure of making sales in highly-competitive markets, they quickly realize that selecting the right territory mapping solution boils down to far more than cool visuals. Before you invest heavily in Salesforce Maps, it’s important to explore some key considerations that could shape your final decision
As a global leader in the CRM space, Salesforce platforms (including SF Maps) are typically reliable options for business owners. However, it’s important to note that just because Salesforce Maps is a good solution, it doesn’t mean that it’s the best solution for your outside sales team. While business owners may initially explore SF Maps when sourcing digital mapping strategies, many discerning entrepreneurs choose SPOTIO as their final solution.
Leveraging Field Sales To Grow Your Corporate Operations
Both Salesforce Maps and SPOTIO offer a diverse suite of sales automation and geographic technologies. However, Salesforce Maps’ configuration makes it uniquely designed for sales teams trying to sell (or farm) into already existing customers, establishing it as a potential option for businesses looking to sustain their current operations.
SPOTIO, on the other hand, goes head-to-head with SF Maps farming capabilities – and then takes things up a notch. In addition to providing system support when selling into established customers, SPOTIO’s functionality is positioned specifically to help companies prospect (or hunt) and find new business opportunities to grow their corporate reach and revenues.
The SPOTIO field sales solution, much like Salesforce Maps, provides the conventional mapping feature set, including:
SPOTIO’s map visualization technology uses a geographic interface to help users aggregate and analyze complex location data sets. The system offers big-picture intelligence that helps pinpoint new prospects, leads, and revenue-generating opportunities within a designated sales territory.
For reps, this means instant insight on where they have their best chance to maximize closed deals and overall ROI when spending time in the field.
For managers, SPOTIO’s map visualizations help pinpoint where reps are converting deals – and which region’s need a little more focused selling attention.
SPOTIO route mapping offers invaluable insight on how to get to your final destination as quickly and painlessly as possible. Reps and managers can develop and implement customized routes that minimize lost productivity. You’ll use real-time data to help your team lower windshield time and streamline output on every client visit.
Beyond these standard functions, SPOTIO stands out above other solutions like Salesforce Maps as a leading field sales acceleration platform by offering these seven essential hunter features:
Salesforce Maps captures and visualizes stored company data to help sellers understand their current state of affairs with any specific customer.
However, SPOTIO offers extended capabilities that allow users to develop ideal customer profiles. Your sales team can quickly sort live information by over 50 data points to help you pinpoint common traits amongst your very best customers to reference when developing prospect lists.
Salesforce Maps allows users to create territory boundaries. Unfortunately, establishing a sales territory based on sheer mileage alone is not enough to ensure success. It’s vital to develop territories that gives your reps access to a sufficient number of prospects within their district, without feeling overwhelmed, or capped.
SPOTIO goes beyond miles and square footage, allowing users to develop balanced territories based on the estimated number of homes in a region. In just a few minutes, managers can create selling regions that offer your team an equal opportunity for success while out hunting for new business.
SPOTIO’s platform integrates with Google Places to boost the benefits of mapping technology. Again, Salesforce Maps provides sufficient information on current sales customers and activities. However, with its native Google Places integration, sellers can use SPOTIO to designate the very best opportunities within their assigned regions.
For example, companies selling into healthcare organizations can use Google Places to identify other medical practices. From there, SPOTIO takes over, mapping out the best route to optimize efficiencies during the time in the field.
Like everything else in sales, the pipeline activity within your designated sales regions can be cyclical with upward swings and downturns. Salesforce Maps’ somewhat limited technology profile makes it challenging to accurately view pipeline activity within a district.
SPOTIO’s mobile functionality equips users with “notes as you go” field data entry that promotes accurate, thorough pipeline activity tracking that benefits virtually every level of a sales organization.
Busy sales reps appreciate having the ability to quickly zero in on their most urgent potential sales. Additionally, managers and group leaders value using pipeline activity data sets to pinpoint possible deals as well as marketplace momentum, trends, and dips.
Let’s face it: effectively selling often relies on an “if at first you don’t succeed” mentality.
Exceptional sales leaders understand that to truly optimize results within a territory, reps must continuously refine their strategies and increase their overall territory penetration. However, tracking the extensive volume of historical data through Salesforce and other (often more manual methods) can prove a major time waster. SPOTIO’s historical data functionality streamlines accessing past communication and transactions. Reps can quickly refresh on the details of the last appointment, while managers can use the stored insight to help the team better direct (and close) on the next engagement.
SPOTIO Routing technology quickly separates it from Salesforce Maps.
SPOTIO expedites route efficiencies, enabling account reps to best plan out their field days. The system utilizes current data sets to develop courses based on essential factors such as distance, appointment time, meeting length. The system even calculates time needed for both driving and walking. SPOTIO’s agile technology profile instantly calculates all relevant details to craft a map route that gives your account executives the best chance to lower time behind the wheel and increase time in front of your clients.
Unlike Salesforce Maps, SPOTIO prioritizes rep activity and performance. A simple push of a button allows users to determine the exact position of reps in the field, providing a live update every two minutes or whenever an app activity is logged. SPOTIO delivers the information managers need to help reps optimize their time in the field to close deals and grow the business without infringing on staff member’s privacy during off-hours.
SPOTIO integrates directly into your existing CRM. Bolt on the power of SPOTIO’s mapping and field sales acceleration platform to your Salesforce CRM. The system is designed to integrate seamlessly with Salesforce and deliver accelerated value and usability.
SPOTIO’s 2-way CRM integration instantly redefines mapping visualization within your sales organization. Once installed, SPOTIO simplifies data intelligence aggregation, allowing users to store, analyze, and sync field information automatically into your existing Salesforce configuration.
Maybe you need more information to determine if SPOTIO is the right field sales solution for your organization. Or, maybe you’re worried that the integration process will hinder efficacy and productivity.
No matter what your questions or concerns, we can help. Contact us today to speak with an onsite SPOTIO specialist to get the information you need. You can also click here for a no-risk product demo to see for yourself what SPOTIO offers to sales organizations pursuing growth, increased revenues, and extended market share.
Sales are at the heart of any business strategy.
Whether you’re a software entrepreneur, an executive, or a sales manager, one of the best things that you can do to set yourself up for success is to write a sales plan that supports your company and helps it to grow.
Unfortunately, a lot of business leaders struggle with developing a strategy that can enrich and empower their operations.
A sales plan is the easiest way to layout your objectives, strategies, and tactics for success, in a way that your whole team can understand. Your sales plan also helps you to identify potential obstacles and roadblocks so that you can come up with ways to overcome challenges.
A sales action plan highlights what you’re going to do to achieve your sales goals, focusing specifically on the transactions and relationships that you can cultivate with customers.
Sales plans contain information about who you want to sell to, what your revenue goals look like, and how you’re going to structure your teams for success.
An effective sales plan:
– Communicates your sales objectives and goals
– Outlines responsibilities and roles for both your staff and leadership
– Delivers strategic direction for your sales team
– Guides your decision-making strategy to help you progress towards organizational goals
While a sales action plan is excellent for month-to-month guidance, it can also help you conduct a more long-term analysis of your sales team. Over time, you can compare your action plans against your outcomes to see if you’re achieving your targets.
So, how do you start designing an action plan that delivers real, measurable results for your team?
An action plan needs to give your employees direction and purpose. It should ensure that your staff have everything they need to achieve their goals when it comes to things like quotas and prospecting. The more detailed your action plan is, the less likely it is that your team will end up confused and struggling to make decisions for themselves.
Here are just some of the crucial activities that should appear in your sales plan.
If you want to achieve success in any aspect of your sales strategy, you need to start by identifying the people that you want to target. Get together with your sales team and ask:
– Which clients deliver the most long-term value?
– What company size are you targeting?
– How did your clients find success with your solution?
– Where did your best customers come from (i.e. cold calls, canvassing, word of mouth)
– What is your target industry?
Once you know who you’re targeting, the next step is to consider how you’re going to interact with clients to encourage sales. What do your prospects need most from you, and how can you help them to achieve their goals? Where are the best places to engage with your clients? Do they respond best to telephone calls, emails, or face-to-face interactions?
Your sales action plan needs to include a complete overview of how to find and nurture your clients.
Unless you’re a brand-new business, you should have some room to learn from your past mistakes and successes. Look back over your previous wins and losses and ask yourself:
– Which strategies led to the most revenue for your company?
– What kind of customers were most likely to respond to your sales pitch?
– Were there certain months or seasons where you were more likely to reach your quota?
– Which of your team members were most successful, and why?
– Which areas delivered the most ROI for your team?
Examining your historical performance will help you to get a better idea of where your current customers and prospects come from.
Sales tracking software can give you a more complete history of this information. Make sure that you examine not just when and where inbound and outbound leads convert, but also how your teams prospected with these clients, and which tactics were most successful.
| Bonus resource: 8 Compelling Reasons to Invest in a Sales Activity Tracker |
Failing to plan is planning to fail.
Once you know what you’ve accomplished, you begin to determine what you need to do next. For instance, you might have achieved your sales quota 60% of the time in the last year, but by the end of this year, you want to achieve an 80% success rate.
Having a target or goal that you want to reach will help to guide your decision-making for your sales quota. Remember, before you get into the details, you need to be specific about what you want to achieve both long-term and short-term.
Ask yourself:
– What is the big picture destination for my team? (A 100% quota success rate)
– Annual sales goals? (Maybe a 20% increase per year)
– Quarterly objectives? (Something closer to 5%)
– What can sales teams do to improve monthly?
– What is my team going to aim for each day?
– What activity metrics will we measure in order to keep the entire team
Outline what you want to go and how you’re going to get there.
For instance, if your big picture goal is to generate more closed sales overall, then you might need to start by asking your reps to complete more outbound calls each day.
The more calls you make, the more chances you have of sales. On a monthly basis, your team can work on improving their success rate, and you can measure your overall growth quarterly, aiming for greater results each year.
Now you know where you’re going, what tools do you need to accelerate your opportunities and empower your teams?
The most essential resource you have is your salespeople, so ensure that you have the right number of people on board to reach your target. This includes building an enticing commission structure that motivates employees to succeed.
Next, invest in the tools and technologies that will power your success:
Gamification and Workforce optimization: How are you going to empower friendly competition between employees, do you have a budget for incentives?
CRM tools: How will your teams track their interactions with crucial clients and customers?
Prospecting tools: What kind of sales analytics and lead nurturing tools do your employees need? Should automations be put in place?
Once you know which tools your employees need, make sure that your team members are well-equipped to use them. This could mean implementing training sessions, assigning mentors to new team members, or holding one-on-one meetings.
Now it’s time to make sure that there’s limited overlap in your teams. It’s hard to reach your goals when everyone is focused on selling to the same area.
Assigning territories ensures that your sales team is targeting the right customers, in the right areas, and ultimately eliminates costly redundancies.
Make sure your most valuable and profitable reps are working on the biggest accounts. Remember, you can assign your territories by everything from geography, to customer type, sales potential, and industry.
Clearly defined territories help sales teams to work more strategically to address the needs and expectations of their clients. You can:
Assign to top-performers to the highest value accounts
Align salespeople to the segments or regions best-suited to their talents
Ensure all reps have an adequate number of lead to work and accounts to service
Open the door for stronger long-term relationships between your brand and customers.
| Bonus resource: 7 Step Guide to Building a Profitable Sales Territory Plan (with Examples) |
Now your sales team knows where it’s going to be focusing; it’s time to guide them in accelerating their chances of sales. For instance, you can build templates for phone calls, follow ups, emails, voicemails, and more.
To guide your scripts, remember to focus on addressing the pain points of your customers. Remember – people buy emotionally, and justify rationally.
The Sandler pain funnel can help with prospecting, qualifying and closing more deals:
Encourage your team members to find out about the pain points that your customers face and discover solutions to their problems in the scripts that you create. As a general rule, the conversation should have a 70:30 split on the side of the customer.
Think about how your sales team can use the scripts you give them to qualify the leads that you generate. Can you ask questions that will help with segmenting customers and improving your chances of bigger upsells and cross-sells?
With support and guidance, your sales teams should have everything they need to accomplish real, measurable goals within your sales strategy. This is when you can begin to put teams to work by setting minimum daily sales activities.
Remember, although it’s valuable to challenge employees, you still need to be realistic. Asking staff to accomplish more than they’re reasonably capable of could lead to disengagement.
Measure and track things like:
Leads: How many new leads should your employees be finding to contact every day? How will they qualify and nurture those leads? The Lead machine from Spotio can make it easier for agents to find new batches of leads every day.
Contacts: How many people will your sales teams contact each day? This can include contact such as in-person visits, emails, phone calls, or social media connections. It’s all about working leads across multiple channels to build a relationship.
Follow-ups: How will salespeople attempt to improve their chances of a sale to people who haven’t answered the phone or responded to an email? You can also look at “follow ups” in terms of upsells and cross-sells to existing customers.
Referral requests: How will your employees follow up with clients to ensure that they’re as satisfied as possible? What can you do to improve your chances of positive testimonials, and referrals to new clients?
| Bonus resource: 15 Key Sales Activity Metrics to Track in 2020 (According to the Experts) |
Once you have defined the kind of things that your employees should be accomplishing with their work each day, how are you going to make sure that they’re delivering? Do you have lead nurturing pipelines and software in place which shows you which team members are reaching their targets?
Tracking all of the sales activities that your employees engage in each day has a number of benefits. First, it means that managers can see if goals are being met, and which strategies should change if not. Additionally, a dashboard also allows individual employees to track their own performance.
Salespeople are often competitive, and like a chance to prove themselves against their peers. You could use a leaderboard in your workplace to celebrate and showcase your most successful salespeople.
Tip: once you have identified the top sales reps, consider pairing them up with new or lower performing reps for some cross-training.
Tracking performance is something that you need to do at a team level, individual rep level, and business level too. Are your reps hitting their activity targets? If they’re not, what’s causing them to fall short of the mark? What kind of opportunities are they missing out on?
Tracking your performance will help you to see the friction points in your sales pipeline. A lot of sales teams fail to track crucial data and KPIs, and this often means that they don’t know what they need to do to improve their chances of success.
By tracking the performance of your team at every level, you can uncover your top-performing reps, figure out which reps need more training, and even pinpoint which sales strategies aren’t impacting the bottom line.
Aside from looking at individual reps, ask yourself:
– Which territories are performing best?
– Which sales actions are driving the best results?
– Are there any bottlenecks in our pipeline?
– How can we rectify these issues?
Your Sales Action Plan is all about giving your sales team the guidance that they need to make smart business decisions. When you can support sales team members by addressing issues that are within your direct control, such as a lack of guidance and direction, you can improve results.
If you find a strategy that works for reps, and make sure that they have everything that they need to follow each step correctly, then reaching your targets should become a lot easier. You’ll find that the meetings, demos, and closed deals will follow naturally.
A successful sales action plan is all about focusing on the proactive actions that your business can invest in, and letting the process develop for everyone. Don’t be afraid to accept feedback from your employees, as well as examining the quantitative data in your sales activity tracker.
Your employees might be able to offer some insights into the steps that they need to take to improve their chances of closing deals and achieving better outcomes.
Ultimately, there’s no one-size-fits-all strategy to delivering excellent sales numbers and outcomes. The key to success is to figure out what works for your team by examining your processes, employees, and even your customers.
Designing a sales action plan will help to guide your employees towards more successful results, while making sure that they have the guidance that they need to thrive.
We sat down with Dale Dupree, the Copier Warrior and leader of the Sales Rebellion, to discuss how door-to-door sales reps can stay productive during this time of shelter-in-place and the closure of all non-essential businesses. Learn how to adapt to the time and sell in a new way.
Video Transcription:
[00:00:00] Trey: [00:00:00] I’m Trey Gibson, founder and CEO at Spotio. Our core purpose here is we’re transforming field sales to achieve more with the Corona virus coming in and basically wiping out the ability of field sales teams
[00:00:13] Dale: [00:00:13] to
[00:00:13] Trey: [00:00:13] interact face to face. Uh, this core purpose of ours is kind of taken on a whole new meaning.
[00:00:18] So we’ve come together as a company and we’re focused on helping field sales teams adapt to this new reality for the time being, by giving you resources. To do what we’re calling virtual field sales. We’re talking about tactical and practical strategies for how you and your company can thrive through these times.
[00:00:35] I’m super excited to have Dale Dupree with us today. He’s the leader of the sales rebellion, also known as the copy warrior. The dude has many, many years of face to face sales. He’s an expert at sales marketing. And so what I want to ask you, Dale, just to kick it off, is if you’re like one of our customers that.
[00:00:53] It’s primarily sold face to face. Let’s go back to your copy days. You go to businesses face to face at your primary mode. All of a sudden the rug is pulled out from underneath you a few weeks ago. What’s going to be your pivot? What? What do you suggest they do to remain productive during these times?
[00:01:10] Dale: [00:01:10] Yeah. I would start back in 2009 2010 with my answer. And, and honestly, you could even go back to 2007 and 2008 I was a young adult. I was 22 at the time. Uh, working for my dad, selling copiers just into the industry. Now, you know, a side note or really just like, so you understand a little bit more about me.
[00:01:28] I grew up in the copier world. My father owned a firm’s since I was born. Toner runs in my blood. Um, but the point being that. Even though I had the aptitude around what the machine was, I didn’t know Jack about sales and, and there was a recession happening. People were wondering if they were going to have a job tomorrow, essentially.
[00:01:46] And so nobody was buying, you know? So at that stage, yeah, I could walk in the front door, but nobody wanted to see me at all. So I spent, you know, a solid year to two years trying to overcome that, and then was immediately hit with a million people. Contracting the swine flu, and then all of a sudden there’s a national emergency.
[00:02:04] And I’m like, are we, is this it? Like, is this the first four years of my career basically sucking dirt and, and like enjoying the taste of it to some extent, because I’m so used to it by now, you know, and. And really, so instead of laying down and dying, which is one of my favorite quotes in the world, on the Plains of hesitation, bleached the bones of countless millions who are on the verge of victory, set down to rest of our resting.
[00:02:30] They’d died. Wow. We’re in that place right now. And we’ve been here before. A lot of us have. And so this is, this is where you define, you know, um, the innovators essentially from pessimists. And, and so at this point, if you’re a field sales rep. You’ve got to start thinking about, well, where do your consumers go?
[00:02:49] And right now, if your consumers are not essential business, they’re suffering just like you are in the first place. So you have to, you have to understand, and what I mean by suffering is, is that most people are still open, believe it or not, you know, they’re still open. They might not have a door. You can walk in, but they’re, they’ve pivoted to selling online.
[00:03:08] Their, their phones are forwarding to the house. Yeah. They’re working remotely. They’re there. Work from home. If you’re watching this, I don’t know if this is going to be video too, but you can see I’m work from home too, and my son has been running around for the last couple hours behind me in the midst of me doing sales trainings with, you know, remote students that I have all over the world.
[00:03:26] And, and that, and that’s okay. You know, we have to adapt to these things. You have to meet people where they are right now. It’s the big picture. And so let, let’s, let’s hang in 2010 for a minute, where I was so fed up with the fact that pulling on doors didn’t work anymore cause they were locked. I had to knock on them and someone would come to the window and say, do you have an appointment?
[00:03:44] And I mean, they would get mad, you know? No, there’s an affidavit, there’s a pandemic. And wow. You know what, I’m just trying to make a living and like, and, and furthermore, at that point in my life I was being nurtured and led. Into the idea of creating a cadence for myself and an understanding in my, in my roots and my foundation as a salesperson.
[00:04:05] That servant leadership was the most important thing for me as a salesperson. And so it was hard to, to hear those types of things and people keeping us in my heart. I’m thinking, I’m just here to try and help. I know what’s happening with our economy. I know what’s going on around us. I know that people are struggling.
[00:04:21] I’m trying to innovate and, and so I did. I went home. Uh, that night and I was making, gosh, I don’t want to say like $30,000 a year after taxes. Cause at this point in my life, everybody is well too, just to understand where I was at and, and I, I persevered. I sat down at the drawing board and said, what am I going to do?
[00:04:39] And I created the rebel letter campaign, which at the time was just the letter campaign. But now that we’ve found that the sales rep volume, we’ve rebranded it. Um, but what we did is we, we had a cadence of five letters, but at the time it was just one. And what I did with this one letter is I actually, I put it in a Ziploc bag.
[00:04:55] I put a note on it inside of the Ziploc bag as well, too, that said, you know, not touched by human hands. And then I had gloves on and we were going to these, to these businesses, and I had, you know, uh, gloves on, and I was walking up and knocking the door and holding this up and like, let him . And they wouldn’t open the door.
[00:05:13] And they would laugh a little bit. And I’d say, this is for Kevin, or, you know, whoever I was leaving it for. And I created an experience in the midst of people going through a pretty traumatic situation for most or a very. Uh, uncontrollable situation. So when we’re in a place where we don’t control anything, we’re typically, we’ve lost hope.
[00:05:30] And, and I brought hope back, you know, by, by kind of becoming this walking experience, you know, around the offices and, and the places that were open. I was walking in, you know, with the gloves on as well too. And sometimes I had a face mask. And, and I was joking with everyone, you know, I was, I was saying I’m not sick, but you might be.
[00:05:48] And so,
[00:05:49] Trey: [00:05:49] yeah, similar to what we’re dealing with now, like crazy
[00:05:54] Dale: [00:05:54] applicable. Yeah. So I have been telling people to check out the rebel letter campaign. We’re actually giving one of the letters away for free, you know, essentially an honor of. You know, what we created and where people are at, because we want to make sure that when we’re at least to some extent, and we got, I got a text message yesterday at six 30 at night and a phone call yesterday from two different students, one up in Pennsylvania, and we want to cross a river on the West coast.
[00:06:21] And both of them were saying, I can’t believe it, but you know, someone just called me and said, Hey, I got your letter. You know, and the thing is, is that right now, more than ever. And it was true back in 2010 as well too, because like Trey, you’re at the office right now and you’re, you’re a level executive.
[00:06:36] So the people that are at the office right now, which most of my pro or my clients are as well to the people that are at the office with the C level executives. So if you’re sending the mail, Patricia or Patrick are not opening it. It’s the C level is the owner or whoever it is in the eye. They’re opening the mail right now.
[00:06:54] Think about, um, but it, these are the types of things that we can be pivoting to, right? And, and, yeah, I mean, there’s a letter a little bit sketchy in the year 2020. I mean, sure. Like most, you know, but so is a Facebook ad, you know, quite frankly. And, and, and so are most of the crappy sales tactics that sales people rely on, you know?
[00:07:12] And, and so. Doing something that is experiential and that creates an atmosphere of breaking up the day a little bit, breaking up the moment completely and causing them to be so interrupted by what’s happening that they have to pay attention to. It will get you places. And let me give a quick example that we’ve got a rep that.
[00:07:31] Um, Hey, he sent that out to, it’s a $950 million firm is who he’s targeting and he doesn’t know if how their business is doing at this point. But, um, he’s been sending the letter up until sending the letters is, you know, like we said, we have a cadence of five, which after you download the free one, you can check out the rest.
[00:07:48] And by the way, it’s just crumpled letter.com if somebody wants to go check it out this listening. He’s been sending the cadence. He called last week, and the guy, the owner of the company, picked up the phone, said, I know who you are. You’ve been sending me all these letters. They’re awesome. And when we’re out of this thing, I want to talk to you.
[00:08:04] And then he said, well, what are you doing right now? And they spent 20 minutes on the phone and just chatted. And because it’s about meeting right now, more than anything, it’s about meeting people where they’re at, you know? And so even without the letter campaign, understand that people are still at work.
[00:08:19] They’re either at home and they’re struggling and they’re having a hard time getting used to it. So call them and be an ear and ask them like, Hey, can I help you? Can I provide some resources? Can I shoot you some? I’ve got some great articles I can, I can pop over to you to help you to understand you’ve got three kids and your wife is an essential business and you’re having to work at home and you’ve never been at home with the kids.
[00:08:38] You know. Hell, let us help you let you know. There’s plenty of resources. Don’t assume that people know how to do these things and don’t have an expectation either walk in, you know, just trying to help and you’re not, you’re going to change the game for yourself and for your prospects.
[00:08:52] Trey: [00:08:52] You know, it’s funny you mentioned that, that C level executives being at the office, and I just now realized this for the first time, is
[00:08:59] Dale: [00:08:59] up in my office.
[00:09:00] Every aisle,
[00:09:01] Trey: [00:09:01] all employees are working from home, but there’s probably 15 cars in the parking lot, and if you look at them. Range Rover, you know, uh, there’s, it’s all the, the owners of these companies are all the ones at the office and they’re the only one. So it’s funny you mentioned that. I hadn’t thought about that yet, but you’re right.
[00:09:17] Like the executives are the one dude that, cause he got the keys to the office, they kick everybody else. You know, everyone else is working from home and they’re coming up by themselves. So that, that’s
[00:09:25] Dale: [00:09:25] really interesting. You
[00:09:26] Trey: [00:09:26] said that. Uh, what’s, I know you and I talked before and you had some crazy like creative ideas on how to get in doors.
[00:09:32] Places are, I mean, one like involved a brick or something. Like what’s some of the other crazy stuff you did to get into like, you know, get people’s attention that might be applicable during these times.
[00:09:44] Dale: [00:09:44] Yeah. You know, I think the, the subject in general is applicable no matter what. And you know, because I think right now, like we’ve created something called the rebel resources and it’s free for anybody that wants it kind of thing.
[00:09:57] And we did a big zoom and shout it out to everybody on that. And you know, pretty much anybody that requests it gets it. And it’s just a Google doc that we’re working in and it’s, it’s got hundreds and hundreds of links though. It’s a good information that people aren’t getting right now. You know, whether it’s.
[00:10:12] You know, even a list of, of Ted talks that are applicable to the situations we’re going through. Pandemics, crisis. Um, you know, this relentless concept of behind. Um, self doubt and the things that you might be feeling right now. You know, you know, some of you might be overwhelmed with sadness in the midst of what’s going on with you.
[00:10:30] Some of you might’ve been laid off for this point. My heart goes out to you. The rebellion cares though. And, and, and from our perspective, you know, no matter what, and we’re thriving right now. And I hate saying that to be quite Frank with you. I’m proud of us, but I hate saying it because. You know, we want to be in the trenches with the rest of you.
[00:10:46] And so, so we’ve stayed in the trenches, you know, but, but I’m not complaining by any means about the fact that we’re doing well, but what we’re trying to continue to sacrifice as much as we can. So we’re staying up until midnight, waking up at four or 5:00 AM and, and being present with all of you during these times.
[00:11:03] You know, time zones, reps that are, that are just trying to get by reps that are trying to work deals, right? New emails, structures. You know, there’s a lot of help that needs to go out right now. And we’re committing the next 30 days of our lives to making sure that we serve others. And, and so I think that if you watching this right now, take that approach, the crazy stuff.
[00:11:22] You know, will, even though it will definitely get attention, um, all of it will seem crazy, right? When you’re, when you’re in that mindset, it’ll be like, why this person is completely different than anything I’ve ever talked to in the first year, guys. You know? But if we go to the tools and tricks and tips and tips that I would have on that as.
[00:11:39] Yeah, we have a ton of campaigns inside of the rebellion. We have hundreds, but you know, some of them that are fun that people use, even outside of what the copier warrior did are, you know, we have a box campaign and there’s, there’s multiple types of boxes that you can set, but my favorite is a pizza box.
[00:11:52] So you send a pizza box and inside it’s like a round slice of pizza essentially, but it’s, it’s, instead of it being pizza, it’s a printed piece of paper and it’s each slices. At correlates with a problem that you’re probably having inside of your office with something that I can help you with. Wow. And it’s just fun.
[00:12:09] And there’s a, uh, you know, a message on the top when you scan, uh, uh, up to the top, there was a couple of things you can go in, but one would be a QR code and you scan the QR code and it heads to a video and you introduce yourself to the person right after that. So you want to talk about. Surrounding the account or creating a differentiation between you and the 75 other reps that are calling on the account.
[00:12:29] Cause remember to everybody that it doesn’t matter if you only have one or two competitors, there are 50 to a hundred salespeople calling on that organization word in with everybody else no matter what your selling price point.
[00:12:41] Trey: [00:12:41] Absolutely. Yeah, exactly. We get, we get hit up from all industries all day long, so you have to stand out not only from your competition, but the 500 other people.
[00:12:51] Fantastic point.
[00:12:52] Dale: [00:12:52] Any
[00:12:53] Trey: [00:12:53] success stories that your clients are having? You’ve heard recently
[00:12:56] Dale: [00:12:56] about one of your clients.
[00:12:57] Trey: [00:12:57] Have, you mentioned one about the letter. Anything else come to mind that you’ve heard that’s like, man, this person just took it to the next level and so proud of them?
[00:13:07] Dale: [00:13:07] Yeah. I think one of my favorite stories right now, um, is a, is a wrap out in the West coast that.
[00:13:13] He found out that that one of his prospects was sick. Now, did she have a COBIT 19 I don’t think we’re really sure at this point, but he just found out she was sick a couple of weeks ago when this all started to go down and. Instead of doing what most sales reps would do and playing the sympathy game and Oh my gosh, I’m so sorry to hear.
[00:13:34] He just basically said, where can I send something that will get to her, to, that’s the reception, and, and figured out her her mailing address basically, or a way to get it to her. And several weeks later, which was only like a couple of days ago, actually, she wrote him an email. And what was awesome is that he put a care package together for her that, that it was kind of funny at the same time too, right?
[00:13:56] So it was, it was like, Hey, I heard you were sick and it had some stupid stuff in that like, you know, chewable vitamin C tablets, like, you know, because these things are hard to swallow and they’re much better with sugar, you know, with like little notes on it and you know, but just. Intricate things from that perspective of, of making somebody feel warm and welcome when you’re, when you’re in the midst of outreach, because they understand that you’re selling something.
[00:14:19] You don’t have to tell them that you’re not selling anything right or that you know, they already know that you are. So don’t try to lie your way through it, but do things to them that make them feel that you actually care about them as a human as well. And empathy is not a card that you play. Empathy is natural.
[00:14:36] And so if you’re, if you’re trying to use it as a, as a weapon or a tool in your tool belt, you will fail. But if you can some and deep down inside of yourself, you know, the good inherent person that you are from those depths, do something good for somebody else and, and you’ll, you’ll see results. But I’ll say also.
[00:14:54] Um, we have some people that are doing some pretty ridiculous things, bro, from the perspective of just how they’re serving the community. We have, we have one organization in the Midwest that’s, that we’re affiliated with. I have a friendship with, um, that is, they’re taking their service texts. And they are basically advertising on paying money to advertise on the radio right now, to tell people that, Hey, if you have a not for profit or you have a need, we have cars and delivery drivers, and in between our, our service that we’re performing for our customers, we will pick up food, we will pick up medicine, whatever you need, and we will deliver it.
[00:15:29] And our techs are, you know, healthy. They’re being safe gloves, masks, you know. Yeah. So they’re following the rules from that perspective, but they are giving and they are diving in and they’re not in a state that’s on any kind of lockdown or restrictions either. Right. So, so they can do that. Right. But also there’s a, there’s a company over here in Florida where the two owners have dropped their salaries.
[00:15:48] Um, in order to make sure that nobody has to get fired, you know, that’s the essential worker. You know, there’s a couple, there’s a couple of the part time people that are going to make more money being on unemployment probably. So I’m sure there’s strategy in it at the end of the day. And they’re there, but they’re taking care of their people.
[00:16:03] You know, no matter what the decision has been, and they’re doing it by making sure that they first sacrifice themselves. So if you want to be successful right now during this time, during this pandemic, and you need to remember that people. We’ll be watching. Yeah. People have a, they have a real keen sense of, of going back in their own memory banks and saying, what happened during this time?
[00:16:23] What did you, what were you doing during this time? Why should I talk to you? So,
[00:16:27] Trey: [00:16:27] yeah. That’s awesome. So a couple of quick fire questions before we wrap up. Number one, what type of mindset are you coaching your clients to have right now? Like what do they need to be approaching the day with?
[00:16:40] Dale: [00:16:40] Yeah. So where we take the mindset of, of, of legendary, that’s what we, we, we choose with all of our reps.
[00:16:48] um, and it’s, it’s a winning sales mindset from my perspective because it’s the idea of going from mediocre to warrior to legend and, and the idea of behind what a legendary sales rep is. It is somebody that’s remains disciplined, that is extremely understanding of what’s happening and accepting that we’re, this is not a good situation.
[00:17:06] Uh, but having hope in the midst of it, letting go of the things that they can’t control and, and doubling down on the things they can. And the mindset also of understanding that empathy, like we just said, it’s not a playbook, right? But it is a natural action that you can say can, it is, it’s compassionate.
[00:17:23] It’s compelling as well too, but it’s also fulfilling to you and the other person at the same time. And so this is about the human connection more than anything. And so people getting behind the mindset of that, Hey, look. This is not a time, it’s, it’s a too uncertain. People aren’t just out there like, yeah, let me buy something.
[00:17:40] Yeah, people aren’t. People are not feeling comfortable about buying things right now. If you can take that as truth, it is much easier to attack it and to overcome it. That’s
[00:17:51] Trey: [00:17:51] great. And so what do you see changing permanently in the business world after this is all over with,
[00:17:58] Dale: [00:17:58] we’re all going to work from home, bro.
[00:18:01] Yeah, I see a lot of things changing, but you know, honestly and I, I hear a lot of experts and a lot of people saying things will change. Yeah, guys, things will change. But listen, none of you know, I don’t know and no one else does. And so why don’t we just accept the things again, that we can’t control? Let them play out.
[00:18:21] And when we’re at the other end of this, we’ll see how it, how, how it looks, because I’ll tell you that at the end of 2007 and eight. You know, people said that the mortgage industry and the real estate industry will never be the same. Well, guess what guys? Yeah. Is it, is it pretty similar to what it used to be that things are changed, but it’s still pretty similar y’all?
[00:18:40] I mean, it doesn’t, it hasn’t changed to the point where people are living in different houses and talking differently and looking differently. I mean, they’re the same people, so yeah. Nay. No matter what happens with business around us, the minor changes that will come of this, that we as humans will still be the same people that we were before.
[00:18:57] And hopefully we’ll have a better perspective on life, on our families, on our friendships, on our business, relationships on ourselves. And we’ll come out of this as a, as a community, much stronger.
[00:19:08] Trey: [00:19:08] I think so, yeah. Absolutely. So you mentioned some great resources. I’m sure people that are listening are going to want to come find you.
[00:19:15] Find what you’re talking about, work in, they track you down
[00:19:17] Dale: [00:19:17] at. Yeah, they could just Google Dale Dupree if they really want to find me and they can’t remember any of the other names. Just Dale Dupree, just like it sounds to UPR. the first like seven pages or me. And then if you want to remember, go to the sales rebellion.com there’s an about page, has my cell phone, has my email address.
[00:19:35] You can hit me up any way you want. Email is fine. I can just shoot you the link. All you need to do this. Mention rebel resources so I know what you’re talking about and I’ll get you into him. That’s awesome.
[00:19:44] Trey: [00:19:44] Any final word message for the field sales reps leaders out there?
[00:19:48] Dale: [00:19:48] Yeah. You guys keep up the hope.
[00:19:50] Do not let it die. This will end. This too shall pass and when it does, we have to be prepared and ready to get back to, to normalcy to the way that that, that it was might not be anymore, but normalcy will still be a thing and we need to do it together as a unit. It’s awesome.
[00:20:07] Trey: [00:20:07] You don’t think so much for your time.
[00:20:09] It’s fantastically valuable. We’ll
[00:20:11] Dale: [00:20:11] talk to you later. Thanks Ryan. Yup.
Jim Johnson is the Head Coach of Contractor Coach PRO and has successfully coached over 350 contractors in the last 7 years. Contractor Coach PRO is a Business and Life Strategy coaching service that empowers people to believe. Watch this insightful sit down to learn all about how to pivot your field sales strategy to one that’s virtual.
Where to find Jim and access his resources:
– Website
– Contractor Evolve Program
– Facebook
– Instagram Handle – contractorcoachpro
– Twitter – @CCPWins
Video Transcription:
Face to Face vs. Virtual – It’s a Whole Different World
Trey: [00:00:00] Hey, it’s Trey Gibson. I’m the founder and CEO here at
[00:00:12] Spotio. Uh, our core purpose at Spotio is we’re transforming field sales to achieve more with the Corona virus coming in and basically wiping out the ability for field sales teams to interact face to face. This core purpose of ours is taken on a whole new meaning.
[00:00:28] And so we’ve come together as a company and are focused on helping field sales teams adapt to this new reality for the time being, by trying to give you resources to do what we’re calling virtual field sales. This is tactical and practical strategies, or are you and your company can thrive through these times.
Trey: [00:00:44] So yes. A company that sells a filled sells app is now trying to help you not sell by not using field sales. I know it’s crazy, but today with me, I have Jim Johnson, he’s the head coach of contractor coach pro, and has success successfully coached over 350 contractors in the last seven years. Contractor coach pro is a business and life strategy coaching service that empowers people to believe.
Trey: [00:01:10] I’m excited to have Jim here. I’ve known him for many, many years. The topic of today’s conversation is going to be face to face versus virtual. It’s a whole different world. Um, you know, Jim and I are similar in the sense that we both started in the home improvement space years ago, selling face to face and then got into selling virtual, you know, meet with Spotio and him with and many other things he’s doing now.
Trey: [00:01:34] So Jim, let’s jump right in here and talk about the differences cause it is stark and if you haven’t done it before, you can get slapped in the face. So let’s help some people, uh, you know, not stub their toe like, like many others are doing right now. Yeah. You know, it’s, it’s this question in this kind of, the underlying theme behind what we’re doing right now with contractors is not.
Jim: [00:01:57] If you can, like certainly we can have, the technology’s been there that I can, you know, I don’t have to knock on a door. I can run a digital ad and get somebody to respond to it. Um, I don’t have to come in contact with them when I do an inspection. I could literally just call them and say, Hey, I’m outside.
Jim:[00:02:12] I’m going to do your inspection. I mean, I can even connect them to, you know, some cool technology like company cam that they can see the pictures as I’m taking them. There’s. The fact that I can sign any document, there’s a fact that I can get on a zoom meeting. All of those things, they exist. And so to pivot that way isn’t so hard.
Jim: [00:02:34] The how you do it. Is completely changed and it’s the psychology and the tools and assets that you have to have that I think a lot of people are missing at this point. You and I were talking, I’ve been doing this now for 13 and a half years. I had to kind of calculate that up and, uh, I moved from the contract.
[00:02:53] I still remember the name of your contracting business, by the way. Uh, canopy construction. Am I right? Yeah, I can’t, I, that’s, that was long time ago, long time ago. And, uh, and so you and I both started field sales. You get this interaction. And one of the beauties of field sales is if I’m just a good dude and I can get somebody to trust me pretty quick.
[00:03:14] I’m going to make a lot of sales. It’s not hard. Now you put a bunch of sales technique and skill and stuff like that behind it, and you can really, really lay waste to it out there. Um, but now you get into this virtual world and things change. It changed dramatically. And so, uh, for the last 13 and a half years, I’ve studied it inside out and backwards and forwards and, and engagement.
[00:03:37] Was the key. Like there’s this key to engaging people and you have to be very consultative and value oriented. You can’t just be a good dude, just doesn’t get you very far, uh, on these types of calls. And so, yes, you can see each other, which is super important. But when you flip to screen-share, you’ve got like this little bitty picture, you know, sitting up in a corner.
[00:03:56] You can’t tell anything that’s going on with that person. And you also don’t have this advantage of like being onsite. When you’re on site, you get to see some things. You get to see the kids’ toys in the yard, a trampoline in the back batting cage, the ATVs, the fishing gear boat or whatever. And man, I’ve got something to talk about, landscaping, whatever it is, and I can go up and talk about that first and get that warm up and create that.
[00:04:20] We’re in a virtual world. How do you do that all you see? Like all I know about Trey right now, it’s, you just got a bunch of stuff on his desk behind him. If I look really close, I’m going to say that it was, somebody may be close to him in that picture behind him. Um, I don’t know. Maybe. Uh, and so I might ask you about that because it is something for me to get that.
[00:04:39] But a lot of times when you’re on these calls, I did one the other day, literally white wall behind the person. That was it. No, there’s nothing. I couldn’t see anything. And so at that point I’m like, what do I talk about right. So you’ve got to ask more engaging questions and you’ve got to be a little bit more of a investigator than you had before.
[00:04:57] And so that, that’s kind of thing one, right? Like thing going, like that whole interaction just changed dramatically. And then understanding people’s personalities. Much easier to do in person because I can see the whole you. And like right now, I couldn’t tell if your toes tapping or not tapping. Right?
[00:05:15] And the idea that if I’m face to face with you, I would know. And if your toe is tapping, that means you’re impatient. And so I need to speed things up. Don’t know that right now. So how do you get those things figured out? Um, you gotta you gotta ask a lot of really good questions, uh, questions like, um, for example, so.
[00:05:34] So now that you’re in this situation, whatever that situation is, what’s your timeframe look like? Are you looking at trying to get something done right away? Or are you looking longer term? Which is a normal standard type sales question if you’ve had sales training and skill training. But in most of what we do, we don’t, we don’t have to ask those things.
[00:05:51] We kind of know those things. Um, and so like, if, if I needed to know that somebody was impatient. Uh, and I can’t see, I would have to ask them how much time do we have today? And a lot of times you don’t have to do that when you’re in person. So there’s a lot of psychology that’s going on and there’s a lot of this idea that, um, if I’m engaging with you like I am right now, I can’t be just on whatever digital presentation you come up with and throw it up on a screen and go through it.
[00:06:23] Without taking a break. It’s a biggest problem that we see with most people when they try to do this. As they pull this presentation up and it’s like, uh, can I use it? Can I say diarrhea of the mouth? Can I say that? Diarrhea of the mouth. They throw up everything and every ounce of information, the person’s completely overwhelmed or they’re bored.
[00:06:42] And you don’t even know it. Like they may not even be on their camera. They may not, they may come on on a zoom meeting and not turn. The camera may not be checking their email while you’re doing the presentation and you’d never know it. Yeah. And so, you know, one of the little tricks for that, it’s just ask questions and sort of question every two to three minutes and make sure you ask a question.
[00:07:00] Um, now did you see that Mrs. Jones exactly what we’re talking about right there. And if you ask a couple of questions and you really asking a bunch of questions up front, they’re like, okay, this dude is going to give me a quiz, so I better pay attention and they’ll be more attentive. So that’s just some of the little things, you know, it is, it is a dramatically different world.
[00:07:21] And not just on the sales side of it, but on the business side of it too. You know, operating your business and, and really having. You know, this whole new marketing plan, you’ve got to think about marketing in a wholly different way than you did before. The guys, I feel really sorry for is like their whole entire business revolved around door knocking.
[00:07:38] It was the only thing they knew a lot of approached a lot of honestly. Yeah, like that’s, that’s their number one cha. They don’t even know marketing outside of knocking on a door and they really don’t even follow up with the ones that said yes or no, or at least the customers before they come to us. So yeah.
[00:07:53] It sounds like you’ve seen that too, is what the heck are they doing? What, what’s that shift like? They’re going from. How are they doing marketing right now? I mean, cold calling, I guess they’re doing it. They’re doing a couple of things. One thing they’re doing is just sitting there scared to death and shaking in their boots and not knowing what to do.
[00:08:10] Some are doing, you know what I call throwing stuff up against the wall and seeing what sticks. So next best option, like you mentioned, is telemarketing and, but you know, most telemarketing, you maybe get 50, 60% of the numbers. How do you get those other people? I didn’t get those other folks. Um, and so you have to have.
[00:08:27] A very well thought out strategy and plan to do that, and then the wherewithal as a leader to hold people accountable to it, right? If you’re leading one of those teams, a lot of times, you know, before all this. You kind of had this ability to just almost let people run Willy nilly, and if they sold something great, if they didn’t okay, that’s okay too.
[00:08:49] But now every single contact is so important. The follow up is so important. That’s another thing that’s different with this virtual world. You’re going to have more need for followup than you’ve ever had before. And if you don’t have a system for that and you don’t have a plan for that, and you don’t have a procedure for that, you’re going to miss about 35% of your sales.
[00:09:09] Just because you didn’t follow up. Not, not if you followed up, but you didn’t follow up the right way. Like that’s, that’s a key to this too. So, uh, yeah, man, it’s, uh, it’s like we’re doing this contractor evolve program and I’m not here to self promote. I’m just going to talk about what some of their experience has been.
[00:09:28] There was this thought of like, okay, I’m doing this. Like, boy, they just came up with something so you can make some money and stay in business. Uh, and that we’d been working on it for a couple of years and the game plan was, we’re going to roll it out in January and charge 20, 25 grand for it. And put people through it over about six months.
[00:09:47] Instead, what we’ve done is we’ve switched that into the next 30 days because I’ve got some time now and we’re every day. We meet with them every single day. We meet with them at two 30 right before I hopped on here with you, I was just finishing up. And they do. You usually run like it’s supposed to be an hour, but man, the questions are no end.
[00:10:06] And, uh. And so the thing that’s been coming back from everybody that’s in it has been, man, I did not understand the depth of this. I didn’t, I didn’t get that. I’m like, I knew I could kind of do these things, but man, there’s a lot of thought put behind this. And that’s been the rewarding part of it. Um, as an example, like we finished our first week last week.
[00:10:29] And, uh, so we got him a bunch of assets and stuff that they could use, and we got on this one flyer and we put it together and all it really is COBIT safe and some steps that they do to do right. Uh, one of our guys, he used it, he put it out to his whole intern list. He put an ad in the, on Facebook and, you know, put your name and email him and download this.
[00:10:51] And, uh, he made 25 sales on Saturday. His biggest sales day to date the Lord, and so I, sorry, that was on Sunday. Sorry. It wasn’t Saturday. It was Sunday. Even better. Yeah. Oh man. That was super cool. Texting me the whole time. He’s like, Holy cow, we’re still selling. We’re not going to slow him down. I’m like, dude, that’s awesome.
[00:11:12] I had no doubt. Like I knew the stuff worked because we’ve actually worked with. Some other contractors. Our stuff is very custom when we do our one on one coaching. And so they come in and they tell us, you know, how the dream, what they’re trying to accomplish and kind of their, what their vision is. And then we build it backwards from that.
[00:11:27] And so some of them have been, I want to go virtual, I want to be digital, and we help them get there. So it was not like our first rodeo going down this road. And, uh, those guys actually commented on some of my posts. And I glad we did that a long time ago. So it was a, was pretty funny. If you can compare the, the steps, old, old, old way.
[00:11:48] So the steps were, you know, knocked door set inspection or whatever. To the virtual way, like maybe give an idea on, on how the funnel breaks down so people really get the difference. When you think about when you knock on a door, right? You’re not going to door, you engage with them, have you? Do you ask normally what most people say, I’m working on one of your neighbor’s houses and I thought I’d stopped buying off via free inspection, which.
[00:12:09] Okay. That’s standard. It’s what everybody does. I’m kind of like, can’t you just add a little piece? Nailing something a little more valuable? And so we teach a lot of guys about, you know, developing a report and giving that person this thing. It’s showing it to him. Like, I will give you this when I get done today.
[00:12:25] And so that’s, that’s cool in the field. But now I’m, now, I’m not in the field anymore and I’m not knocking on doors. And a lot of times in our coaching, we talk about once I knock on the door and I get them to say yes to the inspection. I then give them kind of my elevator pitch, who we are. Let me tell you a little bit about my company and we build credibility for the company ourselves.
[00:12:48] We asked a bunch of objection, defeating questions and uh, we set expectations for this inspection of what they’re going to get. And so I spend five, 10 minutes with them that. Most people don’t, but I can’t do that anymore. That that thing isn’t a thing that I can do. So how do I take that and move it into a virtual world?
[00:13:07] Because the now that people engaging with me are not people I’ve knocked on their door and they’ve had this chance to talk with me and do that. I have to set them up on a call first. Before ever even go out. It’s an whole new step in this process. I think a lot of people are missing, and so we call it a discovery call.
[00:13:25] So discover a little bit about us is really kind of the thought process behind that. We’ve got some cool tools for all that. I’m going hop somebody online, 15 minutes, maybe 10 and I explain what we’re doing, how we’re keeping things safe. And, uh, and then book that appointment in a variety of different ways with a variety of different pieces of technology, whether that’s, you know, there’s texting tools.
[00:13:48] You could just set one on a Google calendar if you want. There’s things like Calendly, which is. It’s spelled weird, but like feel like you would spell calender with an L Y on the end.com and you can automate those. I bet you probably use something like that for your appointments. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. So do I.
[00:14:05] I’m, all my appointments are automated and all that stuff is like, Hey, here’s my link. Go find a time. Right. Because we run busy calendars in a virtual world. We’re on a computer all the time. Yeah. And so if you don’t know those things and don’t know where to put them in the process, you know, it starts to struggle.
[00:14:22] So now I do get them engaged. I say, yeah, I come in to spec my house. I can go do that, make a phone call and say, Hey, I’m here and and do my thing. But now when I get done with my thing, I can’t show them. Right. I can send them the pictures like I did before on my phone. Right? Like I got my phone. I could email them, I could send them to him by text.
[00:14:41] I could use company camera. There’s all kinds of ways to get that in front of them, but I don’t get to have that. Conversation. Right. I don’t get to put the pictures with the story and the animal share rapport. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. People, people buy on emotion based on logic. As long as everything is logical and you can get me emotionally interested and you’re probably going to sell me.
[00:15:02] And so that interaction is now changed. So instead of like giving them everything right, that now they can follow along with the pictures, which I think is cool to engage them, but I got to get them back in my world. How do I get them to schedule that next appointment so I can go through the rest of my presentation on exactly how we’re going to help them.
[00:15:19] And even just knowing that, like me talking to you and saying, Hey, boop, boop, boop. That’s the process. That’s the can, that’s not the how. Right. That’s going to take a lot more than this phone call today. Yeah. We’d be here for hours and hours. Yeah. The, the biggest. So like a couple things that stuck out to me that, that I know I’ve learned the hard way going from a, um, uh, a field world to the virtual world.
[00:15:42] As you mentioned, there’s, there’s multiple more steps now. For me, it was always about selling that next step. Sell the next step. Don’t sell the end. Like, you know, if I’m going to talk to you about spotty, Oh, but I need to set an appointment. I’m not going to tell you how spotty can solve all your problems when you get it installed and we run it with your field.
[00:16:02] I’m gonna say, Hey, let’s set up a discovery call so you can even determine if it’s a good fit or we need to move to the next step. So about like always just move to that next step versus. So, you know, pitching the whole end of the whole big picture right from the beginning. Yeah, that’s, that’s actually a key part of this, we were talking about it today and contractor evolve is, you know, no matter how far you go through your process, you always have to finish with what the next step is.
[00:16:27] You have to give them this expectation that, okay, we’re going to do something else. It’s not like we just end. Right. And amazingly, you know, sales guys will do that over and over again, and you’re like. Hey, there’s one, there it is. And the Homer goes, yeah, thanks. And off they go. And you just lost them. Like there was no like, okay, here’s what we’re going to do next.
[00:16:44] Part of it. Um, and even in field sales, I think a lot of the times we don’t give the rest of the story. Like we meet them, especially if you’re in the insurance where we are, you know, you meet them, you get your pictures and you get them all involved and you’re like, Hey, let’s get to work with your insurance company.
[00:16:58] Hopefully you signed some kind of agreement and that type of thing. Yeah. And you walk away from it. Uh, and, and people sell, you know, we’ve done some studies on it. You know, that interaction right there, they’re hitting about a 35% clip, which to me is awful. Like you’re trying to give them a free roof or a roof for very little amount of money like this, like trying to get somebody to buy a Mercedes for $3,000.
[00:17:22] If you can’t sell that, you should just stop selling. And what it is, is that person, that person you’re interacting with says, I need to think about it. It’s the hardest objection, I think, because you don’t know what it is they need to think about unless you ask them, which is what you should do. And uh, and ask them, well, you know, I’m trying to make sure you get all the information you need.
[00:17:43] What is it exactly you need to think about? You get into that objection handling way too much, and the reason you do is because what you’ve done is you’ve left out the rest of the story. They’re like, okay, cool. Like he’s going to help me with my insurance company and get all this stuff approved, and that was really cool.
[00:18:01] What happens after that? Like, I don’t have any idea. They don’t know what to say to you cause they don’t know what the rest of the process is. So they need to think about it. Where if you were to say, we’re going to pick out colors, we’re going to deliver an inventory, everything, then we’re going to set up and, uh, take care of your home and we’re going to do, this is how we’re gonna do our safety.
[00:18:21] This is how we’re going to install stuff. This is how we’re going to clean up when we get done this, the final inspection, and this is how payment works and this is, um, our, how we finalize our workmanship. Do you have any questions. There is nothing to think about. I just laid out the whole story. What else is there to the whole story either the only question at that point is either.
[00:18:40] They don’t like you, which is a possibility. Um, they don’t have the money. If they have a big deductible, which you should have probably addressed that in your finance, those things. Um, it, you know, you, you have these reasons that not everybody’s your customer, but in the insurance world, if you’re not closing at about a 75, 80% clip, um, you probably need to look at what you’re doing, your presentation and your process.
[00:19:05] Wow. Yeah, that’s. Any particular, um, part of this new process that your clients are getting stuck at more than others? Like anything stick out. They’re like, man, I’m really struggling with this one particular part. Are they still kind of figuring it out? Um, they’re, they’re struggling with the communication, right?
[00:19:28] Like, you think about it. Um, I’ve got Mrs. Jones, she lives over in so-and-so neighborhood. She’s 65, 70 years old. She don’t even know what zoom is like, and it sounds scary because it’s new. It’s change, it’s fear. This is the Jetsons, right? Like that’s what they’re thinking. Like how do you talk to people on TV?
[00:19:49] She may have. FaceTime though. Hmm. Could I interact with her on FaceTime? My mom uses FaceTime ride to talk to the grandkids, but she, you say zoom. She’s like, what the hell? No, I’m not going to do it. Yeah. What am I, one of my neighbors, he’s an elderly guy and he, when we first moved here, we’re thinking about moving here.
[00:20:09] He showed us around the neighborhood and we connected. We were, we’ve stayed in context. When this all hit on a, Hey, you know, Carl. And if you need anything, I got you brother, and I’ll go get food. Whatever you need, I’ll take care of it. And he’s like, no, we’re good for now. But I’ll keep that in mind. So how are you?
[00:20:25] Is everything okay? He goes, yeah, you know, my church group, we just got this new software. This new app came out and now we’re still able to meet. I’m like, that’s cool. That’s great. What, what is it? Cause I was like, Hey man, tell me this new thing I like. He’s like, yeah, it’s called zoom. Yeah. Brand new just came out.
[00:20:42] So, um, but that’s what I’m dealing with. Right. And so if I know what I’m dealing with. Did I have to think about the answers? So if zoom is a problem, well, let’s FaceTime and maybe I could show you how to do zoom. Skype, Hangouts, people communicate in all different kinds of way. WhatsApp, and there’s all, there’s a billion different ways to communicate.
[00:21:02] I better know the top seven, eight, nine, 10 Facebook messenger. I can call you on the phone on Facebook. I can do video with you on Facebook messenger. And so I’ve got to be good at all those things cause I don’t want to make them have to be good at one thing. Yeah, that makes sense. Yeah. Yeah. And so that would be the struggle I would think at this point is like that communication, understanding that that’s a thing.
[00:21:24] Um, it, it’s, it’s more, we tend to be more about us and instead of more about them, Hey, this is the way we do it. So just click the link already. Right? Like that kind of attitude. And you’re going to get people go. I don’t know what zoom is. Don’t wanna know what zoom is. The government’s going to get my house if I use them.
[00:21:42] Right.
[00:21:46] That’s the other thing, like I’m in the communication is understanding who you’re talking to. Because everybody during this situation is in a different place. We’ve kind of identified four of them. Um, these four places that people were at are scared to death. So, and I’m coming out of the room, like super quarantine.
[00:22:05] Don’t come on my house. I will shoot you if you come on my property. I got a buddy like that. Um, and then we have the, um, dismissive, like, Oh man, this is no big deal. It’s just the flu. Let’s all go get sick and that’ll be okay. And we’ll go. I’ll move on. Then you have the, um, conspiracy theorist. I love those guys.
[00:22:24] And there’s all kinds of reasons why everybody’s out to get us. And then you have the responsible people, but people are going, Hey, I’m gonna listen to the CDC. I’m gonna listen to who I’m trying to trust my leaders as best I can. I’m going to educate myself and get a bunch of that education, not on Fox TV or CNN.
[00:22:39] Please stay away from those places. Get it from good sources that you can trust. And, uh, and then once they educate themselves, and this is the key. Is the fear goes away. Like I now that I know what this, like people are scared of the dark because they don’t know what’s in the dark. People are scared of this covert 19 thing cause they don’t know like what?
[00:22:59] What is it like? Is it really bad? Is it, is it not really bad? Is it, is it just the flu? And once you go dust, start doing some studying, you start saying, Hey, do some math. Okay now and this thing is actually a a thing. It’s, it’s important that we are responsible. I need to be able to communicate that in a way that’s not offensive to other people.
[00:23:19] Because if you start talking like that to a conspiracy theorist person, you’re screwed. You just lost a whole segment of your business, and so you’ve got to find out where they are. You’ve got to find out which one of those four pieces they’re in because you’re going to have to communicate with them that way.
[00:23:34] I just saw him up at my office. I’m the only one here, but I saw one of my neighbors out there and he was telling me this as I was trying to make it to our call. He kept wanting to talk about how this is the government’s opportunity to convert us to cryptocurrency. So he’s like, you’re on the lookout, you know?
[00:23:49] And I was like, I’ll see you in six months and we’ll see what happens if I don’t, this is, they’re going to do it. All that cash I took out of my bank three weeks ago, it was not a good idea. Is that what you’re talking, my gold or whatever. Do you think this is going to slow down? Think about this. Does the close rate or the sales cycle extend quite a bit?
[00:24:10] Like should should. You’re, you know, the, the, the people out there doing this virtual cells. Now does it go from a, Hey, I said, do my inspection. We’re sitting down, we’re signing the agreement. Maybe within a one day or two day period. Does this now go to like a 14 day close sales cycle? Yeah. You know, I see guys.
[00:24:27] That they think faster is better. So that’s why they short circuit everything. And I can sign people in 15 minutes and it’s like, okay, that’s great, but what’s your closing percentage? And I, that’s a key equation. I’d rather spend an hour and make people very aware and close at 80% and spend 15 minutes and close it 30% absolutely.
[00:24:46] I make better use of my time. This is going to be longer. It is, but you know, you say, Hey, this is longer a process. So you know, you, you have that engagement meeting, then you go inspect and then you sit down and you have another call and boom, we have a signature. So that could be three to five days, which is kind of what we’re seeing right now.
[00:25:06] The process after that. Um, you know, as far as, you know, getting an approved with insurance companies, if you do that kind of work or picking out colors and doing those type of things, those are all meetings and they take some time. I don’t think you’re looking at anything more than five to seven days on that upfront thing.
[00:25:22] Um, but there’s also opportunity there. I sit there and I go, Hmm, all right. How much time do I waste driving? I’m driving all the time, all over the place, and, uh, and, and how much time it, now I’m much more efficient. I can meet more people instead of meeting, you know, three or four people a day where you engage with them.
[00:25:42] I can be 10. I mean, I can be 15 I can meet so many more people if I know how to get them into my world, and there’s a billion different. That’s been, that’s actually been the key to this whole evolve thing that we identified that three years ago it was like, great, we can do all this stuff, but how do we get people in the world, right?
[00:25:59] Like, Oh yes, I want you to talk to me. And that marketing part of it, and that’s not what this call is about, but a couple of little pointers just to sales guys that might be listening to this is. Get yourself out there and whether that’s on Facebook or LinkedIn or Instagram, get in as many groups as you can.
[00:26:19] Be a member of. Create your own Facebook group, but don’t create the, you know, game day construction, Facebook group. Nobody wants to be a part of that. Go create the, you know, happenings in Dallas, Facebook page. And so I got happenings in Dallas. I live in Dallas, I want to know what’s happening. I’ll join that group.
[00:26:37] It’s public and it just builds, builds, builds, and every single time when we coach guys who do this every single time, there’s always people on there that now that their community, they want to talk about other things instead of what’s happening. And like, Hey, does anybody know a roofer op hopper? I’m, yeah, I know a guy.
[00:26:54] And so, but that’s kind of a longer term play. And, uh, and that’s something he should have been doing. Like now you get here and you’re like, Oh crap, I didn’t do any of that stuff and I’m doing that Morgan. So now I got to learn that. Um, so I think it’s opened our eyes a little bit. They’ll, one other thing that I think is kind of a struggle for these guys is the lack of routine.
[00:27:16] Um, you know, you get up in the morning, drive to the office, do whatever paperwork you got, go out, knock doors, um, you know, finish up paperwork in the evening and, uh, that kind of routine. Right now you’re waking up hopefully at the same time, probably not. Um, you got kids around dog, around, wife, around whatever’s going on in your world.
[00:27:38] And there’s so many distractions, right? When I’m at work, I’m at work and there’s not as many distractions. They’re still there, but you know, I don’t have the kids tugging on me to like, Hey, do whatever. I don’t have that, uh, option to dope and I don’t need to make any calls today. I’m just going to go hang out with my kid and do some fun stuff, or hang out with my wife and do some fun stuff, which I highly encourage, but.
[00:28:00] There’s work time and then there’s me time. And so you’ve got to get on a schedule, you know, literally like get out of bed, get dressed, and number one, like get dressed, like you’re going to work. Like I’m, I’m here by myself. I’m dressed the same exact way I would be any other day. And it’s my work clothes and it was my work clothes, and if I wear my work clothes, I’m much more mentally and mindset for working.
[00:28:25] The other thing is separate yourself. If you’ve got to set up an office in your bedroom, I don’t care, man. Figure it out. Find a separate place. We have guys that have set their offices in their garages and their sheds and their bedrooms in a spare bedroom, taken over another room that was like a kid’s and put the two kids together and say, Hey, this is my office.
[00:28:46] Because you need that place where that’s where I work. Um, so I think that’s just super important is get this routine, get up, get to work, and pick a time, like whatever time that is for you. I’m not going to advise you on that. And it’s up to you how much you want to make, but to pick a time that you’re going to work, to pick your lunchtimes, pick your break times and get that schedule written out and then follow it.
[00:29:08] Make it habit. And there’s only one way to make a habit. Everybody talks about habit. I think it’s interesting, um, that, uh, that you hear all these things. Like if you do something for three weeks, then it’s been a habit six days or whatever, and that bull crap, that’s not true. Um, it just doesn’t work that way.
[00:29:26] Habits are built off of three things. Um, there’s a trigger. So something makes you do something. Okay, so my alarm goes off. That says, get up, right? So that’s a trigger. And then I go do something, like, I tend to go and have a cup of coffee and do a devotional in the morning, and when I get done, I feel good.
[00:29:46] And so I have the trigger of behavior and a reward. So each day. That you go and set your schedule up, make sure you reward yourself. Reward yourself with time, with your kids. Rewarder. So what time with your wife reward yourself with time for you, where you get to do what you want to do. And the more that you put that reward out there, you’ll have the behavior and you’ll listen to the trigger and get it up.
[00:30:11] Nice. Well, I’m gonna hit you with some quick fire questions. Just ask my fire a few at you and tell me what you think first thing off the top of your head. So, um. Thinking about mindset. What if, if you’re coaching one of your contractors, what do you, what are you teaching them? What are you telling them their mindset should be going through this?
[00:30:34] Um, absolutely on every aspect of everything. Find the opportunity. Um, I actually put that out as a, as a challenge for these next 30 days is on my Facebook page. I’m doing it. I’m doing the opportunity challenge for the next 30 days. I’m going to post where I see opportunity every single day and been a lot of people been giving feedback, but, um.
[00:30:56] It’s funny when bad things hit us. Uh, we’ve got two choices. We can either curl up like a baby and run away, or we can say, okay, time to put on my big boy pants and get after it. And, uh, I’m, uh, I’m going to run into the battle person not to run from it. And I would think that that would be a big thing for most people and their mindset is instead of focusing on the negative.
[00:31:19] Okay. Cause it’s easy to do right now. There’s so much to like take it and there’s information is amazing and what it can do to you. I’m setting aside those things that like, I’ve blocked so many people on Facebook in the last 30 days. Funny. I’m like, okay look, you got a 30 day pause man. Cause I know that in my world.
[00:31:38] Um, and do that and set those situations up and, and set that expectation with it. Everybody that’s around you. Um, that, Hey, I’m looking at opportunity in this. I’m not looking at this as a negative. If you’re going to do that, do not engage with you. And, uh, if you keep those people away from you, I your mindset.
[00:31:56] So be good. Yeah. Love it and not, you kind of answered my next question is how do you keep it that way? So I’ll jump to the third one is what permanent changes do you see happening in the business world because of this coronavirus situation? Some people are going to figure out that they not only can do it, but they know how to do it and do it just as effectively, if maybe not more effectively, and it’s going to save them money.
[00:32:22] Not going to have to have as big of an office. You’re going to be able to work remotely. You’re going to learn how to lead and manage people in that situation. That’s, that’s a challenge on the business. I don’t know those guys, but you, you have a team. I have a team and all my team works remote. Everybody.
[00:32:37] Nobody’s in an office with me. We’re all remote. And managing that and leading that as a whole different world than being able to put a finger on somebody and it is across the desk from somebody, and so I’m learning how to hold people accountable and all that stuff is going to be a different world. I think it’s going to.
[00:32:56] If I’m honest, I think it’s going to be a change for some people that they embrace, but I think it’s a pretty small percentage. I think it’s probably 10 or 20%. I think once it’s all over with, people will go back to what they knew before, uh, but they’re going to find some obstacles in their way that weren’t there before.
[00:33:15] Like, you know, I’m working with this contractor online and it’s really cool because I really didn’t want to meet you. I think about it the way we buy things today. We don’t want to meet people want to interact with you by text. I want to hop online and we ordered off Amazon. I don’t want somebody knocking on my door and sitting at my kitchen table when I can get that information anyway.
[00:33:37] Yup. And so I think that’s gonna change. I just don’t think many contractors are going to take it seriously until probably. Maybe five, six months down the road when they start going, man, these guys that did that virtual thing put some walls up for me. Yeah. Yeah. I see it being similar to you. Is it, there’ll be a blended approach.
[00:33:57] I, I don’t know if this will go on long enough to really force like a forever permanent change, but like you said, the smart ones will adapt and probably do a combination of both, you know? And that that’s, yeah. It’ll all be about what was your success during the experience? If he had great success during the experience, which I think is going to be a very small percentage because they’re just doing what they can, not knowing how, um.
[00:34:22] That means that a big percentage are gonna try to go back to doing what they were doing before, but any homeowners kind of getting trained right now, like, Hey, we can actually do this. Yeah. And uh, so it’ll be interesting to see any final message for field sales reps, managers, owners out there that you want to leave them with.
[00:34:42] The only person you can blame if you’re not selling enough is yourself. Can’t blame coronavirus. Can’t blame your boss. You can’t blame like none of that. Get rid of that thought process that everything has an excuse. Um, when you put yourself in the opportunity to make excuses, you will listen to them.
[00:35:03] Self-talk is one of the most important things right now. Going back to that mindset thing. But if I say, well, nobody’s gonna answer the phone cause they’re dealing with coronavirus or anybody that does answer the phone as scared. And if I start telling myself that stuff, I start believing it and you’ll give yourself every reason in the world.
[00:35:21] Uh, not to do it. Like if anybody’s led a good sales team before, I always tell him the hardest door to open is the one of your truck. Yeah. Right. Like that you can just get out of your truck and everything’s going to be okay. Um, cause once you get out the truck, but you might as well go knock a door or do whatever it is that you do.
[00:35:38] And this is, you know, um, pick up the phone. You get that marketing piece out or do that Facebook ad or you know, you’ve got so many different opportunities. That’s the thing, like we’ve been teaching all of those opportunities for seven years, and I did it even before we’ve talked about this, like being able to sell somebody without meeting them.
[00:35:59] Has it been around? Every sense of fax machine existed. I sold somebody, you know, on a fax machine in 1998 one single time they were in France. I mean, same deal. And so the technology’s been there. It’s just, do you have the process and systems to get people to believe in it? Cause that’s what it’s all about.
[00:36:21] If people don’t believe they don’t do, they don’t take action. If you can get them to believe they’ll take action. It’s that simple. Absolutely. So where can we find you? If people want to come and learn more about what you do, contact you, whatever, how can they track you down? Um, so if you’re looking for me personally, uh, Jim Johnson on Facebook is a little difficult to find, but if you type in the Jim Johnson, you’ll find me.
[00:36:44] I put that little V in front and, and it’s only visible to me, but if you type it in, you’ll actually see it and find me, and you can frame me. Uh, you can follow our Facebook page, contractor, coach pro, you can go to our website, contractor coach pro.com. You can go check out our evolve program where we’re doing our 30 day virtual contractor challenge, um, where anybody that joins, they can join at any point within 30 days.
[00:37:07] We’ll get them up to operating virtually. Um, and a lot of those guys are experiencing success right in the first week, which is super cool as it contract revolve.com. Um, on Instagram is contractor coach pro Twitter. It’s CCP wins. Uh, LinkedIn, Jim Johnson. You can find me like I’m out there. Well, that’s actually like a good lesson to the sales guys.
[00:37:32] I’m there. I’ll teach everybody a little equation here. Uh, I learned this. It’s not mine. I wish it was. I think it’s brilliant and simple at the same time. Yeah, this concept of brand, right? Most people associate that with a company. Um, and they’re associated with like things on my hat and you know, my shirt and stuff like that.
[00:37:49] That’s brand, right? You’re spotty. EEO logo, that’s brand, but it’s not really what your brand is, your reputation. And so you think that’s the end product. Okay. So reputation. There are two things that make up your reputation. There’s results. And there’s rich and a lot of these sales guys are pretty good.
[00:38:08] They’ve sold a lot of people. Homeowners are happy, and they got all these great results, but nobody knows who they are. They’ve got to increase their reach. Whether you do that in social media, you do it on YouTube, you do it through the mail. I don’t care how you do it. You gotta get yourself out there more.
[00:38:23] And, uh. Um, it’ll make a difference. It’ll make them pretty mad. That’s why you see me everywhere. Why my stuff is on everything. Like I don’t know how, I don’t know how you’re going to find me, but I know you’re going to find me. Yeah. And that’s all I really care about. Cause if we can engage and I can share with you what we do and hopefully you see that we kind of know maybe a thing or two about it.
[00:38:43] Great. Jim, thanks so much for your time today. It’s fantastic. I’m sure people will be reaching out to you, so thanks for giving value back to the marketplace when they need it the most. So we’ll talk to you later. No problem. I have one last final plug. I completely forgot. We do have a podcast too. It’s called contractor radio and it’s for the guys.
[00:39:02] And I like do what you do. And we’ve got, I don’t know, there’s like 20 episodes on announcement. We just started in December. We’ve had some really cool guests and like high powered, like professional, like well-known marketers and stuff like that. So, uh, we did one on Corona virus that we’d go watch that one.
[00:39:18] If people are listening to this or listen, cause we do it both video and. We call it a vodcast actually. So, um, you can go listen to it on any podcast. You’ll just look up contractor radio. You’ll find it. And, uh, and we’re just trying to help, man. We’ll serve this industry really truthfully. I took from it for a lot of years, so it’s time to give back.
[00:39:37] Yeah, absolutely. Thanks. And we’ll talk to you later. Thanks Trey. Appreciate it. All right. Bye.
High-performing sales teams don’t just happen – they know which activities drive the best outcomes and stop doing the ones that aren’t adding value.
To build a consistent pipeline that fuels ongoing results, sales reps and sales managers need to know that they’re executing the right activities every single day.
For an overwhelming number of sales teams, the majority of a reps time is spent on non-selling activities; a problem that boils down to not having a clearly defined process and necessary technology to execute.
“But, where do we start?”
There are so many different activities a rep and manager can be working on in a given day, week, month or year. Not all are created equal.
With the help of smart technology and data-driven insights, reps and managers can scale by uncovering where and how they can allocate their time, energy and resources for the highest return.
In this post, we’ll look at 10 data-backed sales activities reps and managers can adopt to build a pipeline that drives predictable sales results.
Let’s get crystal clear on what we mean by sales activities.
Sales activities are the day-to-day actions, tactics, or practices that reps and sales management take part in. Over time, these activities lead to results, like winning a big opportunity or exceeding a sales quota.
Sales activities can be divided into two categories: qualitative and quantitative
– Contacting new prospects or existing customers
– Presenting your product or service
– Nurturing strong client relationships
– Following up diligently
– Customer satisfaction
– Brand awareness
Although qualitative activities can’t be measured by data, they do provide insight into how your team is doing, offers a way to motivate, gives insight into customer satisfaction, and helps fill in the overall picture of sales performance.
Quantitative activities can be pulled as raw numbers, which is very useful when it comes to understanding the efficiency of your sales team. You’re able to see the number of new opportunities, new leads, amount of revenue last quarter, etc.
Quantitative insight allows you to assess the current state of your reps and team, coach those who need help in a certain area of the sales cycle, as well as model future growth based on past performance data.
Increased activity doesn’t necessarily lead to increased results, however; not all activities are created equal. By understanding which sales activities yield the strongest results, sales teams can make the most of their time.
Monitoring and tracking key sales activities lets you know where the sales team is at as a whole; allowing you to drill down to identify what’s working, what’s not working, who needs coaching, so on and so forth.
Having a grasp on the following 10 activities will set your organization up for success.
Lack of tracking is one of the most critical gaps faced by sales managers when trying to identify the most important sales activities. If sales teams don’t know what they’re doing, they have no way of knowing which activities are leading to results.
CRMs fill this gap by helping sales teams keep track of contacts, accounts, deals and activities.
In fact, SPOTIO’s Field Sales CRM gives sales leaders visibility into how top outside reps are making it happen and where leads are falling off in the sales process. With features like pipeline visibility, next best action to take, simplify and automate prospecting, sales material management, and document storage.
Sales territory management is the process of using data to segment customers and prospects to better track sales, streamline prospecting, map visits, and overall enhance how a reps time is spent in the field.
In addition to cutting out the noise of low-return accounts, thoughtful sales territory management aligns salespeople with the most appropriate customer base – whether that’s by geography, vertical, expertise, or past relationship. It allows sales teams to focus their attention on viable accounts and spend more time in the field making face-to-face contact.
SPOTIO’s territory management software is one great tool that enables managers to create custom maps of different territories for assignment to sales reps.
Sales reps have the potential to waste hours of valuable time wandering aimlessly without a strategic plan for where and when they will spend their time. Smart route planning is an essential activity to ensure sales teams spend their time in an optimal way.
Route planning software, such as SPOTIO Routing enables reps to see exactly where to go, what to do, and the most efficient way to get there. Users can set up meetings, update notes in real-time, and prospect new accounts in between meetings.
These days, there’s copious amounts of data available to sales teams for tracking the activities that lead to the best results. Most organizations have data at their fingertips, but only the best sales teams put deliberate motions in place to monitor and track data to augment activity and improve results.
Some useful activities to measure include the volume and timing of email, sales calls, meetings, marketing campaigns, and phone calls. By monitoring your data, you’ll be able to track the activities that lead up to a sale.
Some examples of tracking data:
– View Pipeline activity inside territories
– Historical prospect, contact, and opportunity data
– Real-time insights of rep activity and performance
– Performance tracking
– GPS verified location tracking
– Colorized data views
– Real-time rep visibility
Smart CRM solutions like SPOTIO field CRM goes beyond aiding the sales team by tracking and organizing data so it can be easily consumed and actioned by sales leadership.
Sales reps are almost always juggling tasks and priorities. Between prospecting, nurturing, working a deal, or closing there’s a lot to be done. To ensure the pipeline flows smoothly, sales reps need to schedule important tasks to make sure nothing falls off the radar.
92% of salespeople give up after no sales on the 4th call. 60% of customers say no four times before saying yes (source).
By scheduling follow-up tasks and committing to your schedule, you can avoid getting lost in the moment and getting consumed by a single activity. Time is your most important asset. Scheduling specific follow up activities by prioritizing the outcomes you’re looking to drive at a strategic level.
SPOTIO’s appointment setting functionality empowers users to create appointments right in the calendar tool for themselves and other team members. It gives users the ability to see busy and available times for anyone on the team and book appointments accordingly.
One way to optimize time in sales is to focus on the most qualified prospects in your pipeline. Specifically, you want to focus on those prospects who have shown interest in your product or solution – the ones who just need a little push. Those who haven’t engaged are not as worthy of your time.
When you’ve identified your best prospects, your role is to keep them engaged. One example of an activity you can perform is sending an email with a link to an article your prospect would find useful. Another thing you can do is stay active on social media where prospects can see the way you interact with happy customers.
One way to make your lead management activities more efficient is to segment your leads by where they are in the sales process.
For example, cold leads may need to be re-engaged, warm leads may need follow up or nurturing, and hot leads that are further down the funnel need to be pushed to the finish line.
By segmenting your leads and lead management activities, you can organize your time to focus on certain types of activities in bulk. You can use templates and repeatable behavior to be efficient and stay focused.
SPOTIO’s lead management software allows you to further identify prospects by assigning them a specific color based on where they are in the sales funnel. This creates a database of “lead intelligence” within the app (colorization).
Instead of monitoring every move a rep makes outside the office, you can use sales tracking technology like that offered by SPOTIO to track sales data instead. A sales activity tracker will help your team identify which activities are driving results, as well as which ones are not, so you can improve the sales process.
If performance is down, you can go straight to the source of the problem and correct it. Likewise, if you notice certain activities are driving a lot of sales, you can dedicate more resources to them and scale. Tracking and acting on sales activity data is one of the few ways sales teams can control their outcomes.
Sales management should be tracking both quantitative and qualitative data. Qualitative data helps you paint a bigger picture of how customers view your company. Quantitative data can be used for more concrete things.
For example, you can create clear sales goals like increasing your lead generation by a certain percentage over the next quarter. After the quarter is up, you’ll have some data on what part of your sales funnel is generating the most leads, and what parts need work.
The most successful sales teams are super focused on nurturing their customer relationships to fuel repeat and ongoing sales. In fact, a Bain study cites that repeat customers are known to spend more than 60% more than new customers.
The best way to nurture customer relationships is to learn their business, understand their biggest challenges and goals, and make your interactions about them and how you can help them reach their potential. You can do this by ensuring you celebrate their successes, either via social media or with an acknowledgement phone call.
You can also keep them engaged by ensuring they’re the first to know about any new product releases, services or company news.
All great relationships hinge on the quality and consistency of your communication habits. Great communication ensures that everyone involved is clear on expectations, marching toward the same outcome, and familiar with where they stand. Poor communication, on the other hand, often leads to mismatched anticipations and disappointment.
In a management scenario, clear communication is necessary to clarify desired outcomes, maximize productivity and minimize churn, and perhaps most importantly, prevent frustration and failure. For sales teams who spend the bulk of their time on the road, clear communication is critical.
To get the best results from their teams, effective sales managers use a mix of communications tools in-app chat, email, team meetings, dashboards, and one-to-one conversations to keep the lines of communication active. They concentrate on predictability and consistency.
Some sales enablement solutions like SPOTIO offer communication features like Team Chat that encourage sales rep engagement and create an open feedback loop with managers. With the ability to talk with individuals 1-on-1 or chat with a specific group, these tools keep the line of communication frequent and open.
Successful sales organizations know that the secret to success is to work smarter, not harder.
Nobody has more than 24 hours in a day, so the key is to find ways to make the most out of your time with a focus on the things that add value to your customers and accelerate sales.
With features that allow you to maximize your time, SPOTIO’s solutions are a great place to start. With CRM capabilities designed for reps in the field, territory management functionality, route planning, scheduling, sales tracking and more, SPOTIO is the perfect tool for capturing sales activities at the rep and manager levels.
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Questions or comments? Contact SPOTIO at info@spotio.com or comment below.
Spotio is the #1 field sales acceleration platform designed specifically for outside sales managers and reps to squeeze every drop out of their field sales efforts.
Want to see a product demonstration? Click here to see how SPOTIO can take your sales game to the next level.
We sat down with Adam Bensman to learn how he uses direct mail to get highly qualified and affordable leads.
Adam “The Roof Strategist” runs a 100% FREE Roofing Sales Training on YouTube. He focuses exclusively on self generating leads, marketing, and sales. He has personally sold, managed, or consulted on over $100MM in sales and has worked with companies across the US and Canada.
Where to find Adam and access his resources:
– Website
– YouTube
– Email: adam@roofstrategist.com
Video Transcription:
Trey (00:00):
Hey, it’s Trey Gibson, the founder and CEO at Spotio, our core purposes, we’re transforming field sales to achieve more with the coronavirus thing come in. As all y’all know, it’s basically wiping out the ability for field sales teams to even do their job. And our core purpose is kind of taken on a whole new meaning. So we’ve come together as a company and are focused on helping field sales teams to adapt to this new reality for the time being, by giving you resources to do what we’re calling virtual field sales, tactical and practical strategies on how you and your company can thrive through these times. So with me today, I have none other than Adam Benjamin from the roof strategist. I was really excited to have him on the show because I’ve known Adam for a long time. Not only has he done the job, but he’s a marketing expert and has brought some really cool tactics to getting leads.
Trey (00:52):
And our topic for today is how to use hyper-targeted direct mail to get cheap qualified leads. And maybe if we have time at the end, I can twist his arm to talking about his new cold call script. I don’t know. Adam, why don’t you introduce yourself, tell a little bit about your history and for those people that might not know about you.
Adam (01:11):
Yeah. Awesome. Trey Fe. First of all, thanks for reaching out. I’m super stoked to be on here with ya. So again, my name is Adam Murray strategist. I run 100% free roofing sales training channel on YouTube. I’m all my, I’m just doing things backwards. Every everyone charges for training. I do it free and a marketing and lead gen is my thing. So I do have options available for people who want to purchase my stuff. But the, the 32nd snapshot, I cut my teeth in door to door sales, getting into roofing sales.
Adam (01:38):
Quickly worked my way up to COO of about an $8 million a year company and ran ran sales teams. And then from there fell into the business management consulting and sales training side training teams across the U S and just this year surpassed 100 million in sales that I’ve personally either sold manager consultant on. So yeah, that’s my quick and dirty background. Nice. So the topic about hyper-targeted mailers, like how did you come up with that? So where did that, where did that come from? Cause I know you’ve probably done that before and you’re in your past, right? You know, I did, I learned it in the past through some very bright people in the marketing world, specifically for roofing. And after learning that I found out how important it is to have a very well crafted letter and the right strategy to make those letters effective.
Adam (02:34):
And the reason that we came to this targeted direct pieces, we used to use mass mailers and roofing, you know, where it’s like, here’s blasting a zip code. Well, one, the real expensive to mistakes are not cheap. You know, we somehow mailed, I forget how many tens of thousands of dollars worth of mailers out with the tracking phone number that was misprinted so didn’t even work. And you know, you get this thing in the mail [inaudible] it’s hyper glossy. It’s screams marketing material. Yeah. So step one of a letter is, is the right list getting in front the right people. So if it’s targeted, meaning you drive by, you know that that’s a home. And this applies if you’re doing solar, if you’re doing home security systems, if you’re doing roofing remodeling, it doesn’t matter. You know, what homes you want to hit. And it’s either driving by and pulling onesie, twosies or just blasting the whole street.
New Speaker (03:20):
But when you have the right data, that’s step one. Step two is getting that letter opened. So making it personal, right? Not putting it in an envelope, hand address, hand stamp, using blue ink, having crappy handwriting on purpose. And you know, people are curious like who is this? So that’s getting it open. And then two is getting the whole thing read. And, and I started to study some of the copywriter greats of our time Joseph Sugarman and, and him, specifically Dan Kennedy. And I’m looking at Michael Masterson, those guys figuring out what goes into a letter to get someone to read it, to get them to pick up the phone and call you right there. So played with the concept, tested it and have proven it to be super effective for roofers and now have just been modifying the approach with people that I work with to help them generate leads during the time when you can’t go knocking doors.
New Speaker (04:12):
So yeah. Yeah. So that’s right now we’re stuck inside you know, having to find new ways to generate leads for these guys that are used to banging on doors all day. Yeah. A letter might be a complete new concept. So let’s break it down, kind of, you know, the what, you know, give as much as you can on, on the, the nuts and bolts of what it’s going to say. And, and you know, maybe even like, okay, they called back, am I setting up a virtual appointment? Just your, your, your strategy behind that. Yeah. Awesome. Let’s do that. I’m actually pulling up on my end, just a letter so I can reference it. So the, the main thing with the strategy is first how to get the, get the data. And I, I’m looking over my whiteboard. I literally just filmed a live video on my YouTube channel.
New Speaker (04:56):
You want to start with past customers and working the areas around them. It is much easier if you think about the, these letters there, there’s cold, cold and then there’s warm and there’s hot. So cold cold is, no one’s ever heard of you. Warm as you’ve got a reason just to be reaching out. You can mention a neighbor by name, a street name, a recent project, something of a like and then that makes it not cold so they’re more curious to open it. Same things you have past customers and current customers, no matter where you’re at. And then specifically in progress. So any builds or installations, whatever it is that you’re doing, those are the ones to start with. Just to get your mind thinking about it. So element one is grabbing the addresses. There is no better time than to then during an install mailing, like just like you would go knocking doors around that the, the home you’re doing the install, if you can’t go knock the doors I highly recommend mailing around it and also layering in the cold calling, which we can talk about.
New Speaker (05:53):
So first, get your data, find which homes you want to do. I love what you’re doing with spotty so we can just literally be, you know, just cause you’re a stay at home owners. I mean you can’t like drive around, you know, don’t get out of your car, don’t break the rules, but you can drive through a neighborhood and say, Hey, that’s a, that’s an address, that’s an address. And the most efficient way to do it if you are in the field is just right down the street name and then just a bunch of numbers and get back to the office. You can reconcile it. Grab a standard envelope, you know, that’s going to print out regular old paper on your home printer and a hand address enhanced stamp it. And put the stamp on crooked. That’s totally fundamentally pod. Crooked dice. I haven’t heard that one.
New Speaker (06:32):
You’ll want to make it where no one will even think this was a mass mailing cause you don’t want it to go straight to the trash. Right. That’s the first decision tree when people sort mail garbage or not garbage. Yep. So we just want to get open. So I use either, if I can’t, worst case scenario, I hand write. By the way, this is information I got from my high school teacher that, and this was back when he used to write papers by hand. For those of you that might read was like that people who wrote essays in blue ink scored higher than those in black ink. I have no idea whether this is true. I have not found that study, but that still is with me. So I always use blue ink because it pops more contrast more so I always grab white envelope, blue ink and I’ll write dear homeowner on it or neighbor.
New Speaker (07:19):
Ideally now, you know with, with the app spotty or you can pop in and click it and be like, Oh, now I know their name so you’re not generic. So write their address and then my return address, I never ever use a company name. You can use whatever address you need, your home address or the business. But don’t put the company name because that again, someone’s like, why is this roofing company mailing me or solar company or whoever it is. So just leave that blank. The idea is to pique their curiosity enough to get it to open. So that’s step one. I’m opening that letter every single time. Every time. Yeah. Who wouldn’t? So fundamental in any questions on that before I breeze through, I have a tendency to talk a million miles. It makes complete sense. You know, it’s, it’s, I think the important thing that you said that the guys, it’s the list, right?
New Speaker (08:03):
And like every good marketer tells you that starts with the damn list. So for everybody that’s out there that’s used of knocking the 500 doors in an area, not caring, like you’re not going to hand a dress 500 envelopes maybe cause we do got a ton of time, but you know, pick, make sure your F your list is good, who you’re going to address this to counts because that’s when you get phone calls. You want it to be qualified. So I think just just reiterating that no, everything else is awesome. Makes complete sense. Awesome. And it’s the same way with any sales, right? So especially in door to door, you’re not, if you’re selling to homeowners, you’re not going to go to an apartment complex and knock on each door in the apartment. You’re wasting your time. Yeah. So it’s the same concept. Email, direct mail, whatever it is.
New Speaker (08:43):
So I’m hand address, hand stamped. Second. do not overproduce your letter. This is the one mistake that almost every company owner makes is they want to overproduce, sorry, let me explain what over-producing means. That means designing it, handing it off to your digital marketer, your graphic designer to spruce it up. Put it on letterhead, put your logo on it. All of that screams marketing. Okay. Lightning bolts. I do all the roofers like that. I know the light picture, a hail, you know, plain paper three. All of my stuff is rudimentary and simple and it works really well. I had a guy write me the other day, he says, Adam, one of your letters made me millions last year. And I was like, Oh cool. They work. And it was great. I know they work, they’ve done that. But one dude use these things and it works. So again, plain paper.
New Speaker (09:27):
So that’s the second thing. Third thing, big old, bold headline across the top. So first thing someone’s going to read, it needs to capture their attention. And I’ll read you the headline. I want just one of my, I have a, I have a five of these things that I use at different stages, at least for roofing. So this says, after leaving my [inaudible] quick adjustment, this is an edited one for the covert 19 specifically for use right now. So anyone that’s listening, this is to be used right now after leaving my customer’s house on and then type in the street name. Okay? And if, if that’s the street they live on or in proximity, that level of specificity is going to peak their curiosity and inside their mind are going to say, Hey, this is relevant to me. I live near that street. Okay? After leaving my customer’s house call it Lexington lane, I wanted to stop by comma, but I’m mailing you instead to practice social distancing dot, dot, dot.
New Speaker (10:18):
That’s it. So someone who reads that, they have no closure. They know that you’ve been in the neighborhood, you referenced the street and that you wanted to stop by, but didn’t. So what’s the natural thing that’s going through your head? Try just for fun. W w why were you going to stop by exactly. Great. Read my letter. Then it starts with dear homeowner. I want to stop buying the way back from visiting with my customer on the street, but realize how important it is for all of us. Practice social distancing. That’s why we have this brand new. No contact needed service, I’m writing to you about. And then you continue your pitch, whether it’s roofing, whether it’s solar, whether it’s window replacements, whatever industry you’re in, you can use that same kind of swipe, so to speak. Replay this, write a word for word, you know that is to get someone down the slope of every sentence is I want to know more what’s next, what’s next.
New Speaker (11:06):
And that’s the, what I love about the marketing piece is trying to get inside the customer’s head to figure out what are they thinking and how do I say one step ahead to just get them down all the way to the end where it says call me for your free whatever it is. That’s a, that’s gold. I love it. That’s great. So are you typing the letter or is this your handwriting? I typed the letter. So my letters that I provide, everything’s typed. And in formatting’s really important. Like you want to make it where people can quickly and easily read it. You know how if someone sends you an email and it’s like a giant block of text, the first thing I do is like read later. I don’t, I just don’t want to get into it cause it’s intimidating. If you take that same email and you break it up line by line, my spacing easy, not intimidating, you bold what needs to jump off the page.
New Speaker (11:56):
So I’ve typed them up in the beauty. So the beauty of having them typed is when you’re hitting a street, nothing changes. You literally type it up. You hit print 50 copies on your home computer, we’re computer, whatever, or excuse me, printer and a computer can sign them in blue ink at the bottom there where those space for the signature is slip your business carbon side. That’s it. And if you want to get real clever and don’t mind some postage, you can use some crafty tricks, which is like putting, don’t use confetti. Customers hate that stuff. Yeah. You know, you can, you can slip things in the envelope and call them 3d mailings. So it’s, it’s things that actually might be the name of a company. So, but I know that the concepts 3d stuff, male or when the color, it’s a surprise. You’re, you’re curious.
New Speaker (12:43):
It’s like a little thing in there. You know when people put in a trashcan or picture of one or sticker, your beer bottle cap, like it doesn’t matter what it is, gets people to open it. If you can tie into the story, you know, to be like a miniature shingle. I haven’t tried that one yet. I should maybe do that. But but any who, yeah, fill, fill them out, print them out. This is all rudimentary, low cost. I had our salesman doing it every night when they were sitting at home. You can be drinking a beer, watching TV, whatever it is you do to unwind at night. Like this mindless work. You can outsource it for stupid cheap and postage is, what is it, 55 cents a stamp now? Something like that. Yeah. Yeah. It’s cheap. It’s, it’s cheaper than going door to door. It’s cheaper than gas.
New Speaker (13:26):
If you think about your time, how many homes you can hit, the amount of time it would take to go knock 60 doors in between the dead time walking, like all that stuff. You can take those same exact concepts and apply them into two direct mail and just crush it, just crush it. How many loans are you sending that same letter multiple times or, or kind of, I know you said you have five, so I’m sure you have a sequence you send, but just concept wise, do we need to send multiple letters over a week period or two in the same week or do you kind of have a sequence in mind? That’s a very good question. As with anything, I always teach multi-touch marketing. So when you’re out canvassing, when things do return back to normal, which hopefully won’t be too long. I know it feels like eternity.
New Speaker (14:11):
Even if it’s two months, it’s two months. You know, this will be a blip on the radar. It’s frightening to think about, cause I know a lot of us have slowed down. But it’s literally going to be a blip on the radar. So when, if we take the concepts of what works in door to door canvasing, you don’t just go through a neighborhood and slam on doors one time and then be like, Oh, hit that one onto the next one. Right? I mean, I used to do that when I was a dummy, you know, but then you, what you, you knock on the door, you know who’s home and who’s not. You leave a letter. Again, same thing. I sell letters because if you hang a door hanger like everyone else, you’re just everyone else and it goes straight in the trash. So print it out, fold it up.
New Speaker (14:46):
People are curious, why is their piece of paper folded up? Yeah, that’s inside, right? Not on the outside, just piece of paper. Someone they’re going to want to know. So anyway, layer that on, then send a direct mail, then cold call. So there’s four touches on the same house and then go back again when you’re doing an install, right. Knock the neighborhood. So same concept applies. I have different letters for different scenarios. Personally, like I stopped by and you weren’t there. Are you sick of other people knocking on your door? That one’s not really relevant right now. We have a build in progress from a neighborhood notice and, and things like that. Let’s see. I also do them specific for the I just have a general one I use for cold if you’re doing larger lists, all the under the radar sales letter.
New Speaker (15:30):
So it’s just a general pitch that has less specifics in it. So yes, layer mine, but definitely call after, I mean, yeah, that way it’s not cold calling. You’re calling to say, Hey my name’s out on the roof strategist. I pop the letter in the mail the other day and just wanted to give you a friendly followup call and ask what your thoughts were after reading it. You know, and then you’re ending with that open ended question instead of did you get a no and then they hang up. So the main thing which I know we’ll, we’ll hopefully touch on in cold calling is 100% of the time have an open ended question. Never say, can I do this? That’s a yes or no. How are you doing? Good. Great. I’m not interested in how are you doing? Tic technically is an open ended question, but the way our society answers it is always the same.
New Speaker (16:16):
Yes. Right? Yup. Either good or something horrible happened. You say not so good. Yeah. Yeah. So but yeah, cold calling. Ha. I mean that open ended question. Did you get my letter? And I wanted to follow up to see what your thoughts were after reading it. You’re forcing them to think, who in the hell are you? What letter did you send? Did I read it right? And then if they don’t, they’re like, Oh, you know what? I didn’t read it. You’re like, who cares? You’re in a conversation. It just gave you a reply for you to start a conversation and talking. But the worst thing you can do is say, did you get my letter in the mail? And they’re like, no. Who are you? And then they hang up. Yeah. No, again, keep it simple. Just start a conversation. So I want to get into that.
New Speaker (16:56):
I have one last question before we get into cold call. It’s do you have an idea on response rates? I’m just curious like it’s hard to track this stuff. I know, but any idea on, I send out a hundred a thousand letters. How many calls should I get? That’s a really, really good question. So I have found a one to 5% response rate is typical and I have seen higher, I’ve seen people that have used this and gotten 50% callbacks. Wow. So I’m going to touch on a couple of things. One is what will dictate response rate is how well the letter is written and presented. Does it get open to is the list. So if you’re driving through a neighborhood and writing down all these homes, but they’re not the ideal market. If it’s roofing, let’s say the roof got done. If you’re working a hailstorm for any restoration contractors, if they’re already through the process like there, they’re already not qualified.
New Speaker (17:52):
So that’s going to impact your callback rate. The other is the intangibles is market recognition. If your Chuck in a truck roofing company who’s never been in a market before and no one’s ever heard of you and you drop this thing, could you get callbacks 100% absolutely, because you’re top of mind. But if your w let’s say have no presence online or have a horrible reviews on Google and someone wants to vet you first and they’re going to see who it’s signed by, may hop online and look for you, then they’re likely not going to call. Whereas if your website is set up to rank properly and they search for you by name and they see reviews and you look legit, you know there may be a vetting process and then there’s the obvious brand recognition. If you’ve done 10 homes in the neighborhood and someone’s like, Oh, I know this company, I know the neighbor, right?
New Speaker (18:39):
So that you’re top of mind. So there’s all these factors that that layer in, but typically on the low end, one to 5% so every hundred letters should get a lead. The leads that come off, these things are hot, highly qualified. And even at that, I’m, I suck at math, but let me get my calculator out. So if you send a hundred of these things on the fly math, let’s see, let’s see how it goes. Yeah, I’m watching my videos on YouTube. I do math. I have to like pause. I’d get my phone out. So my calculator going, so 50 that’s 55 bucks in postage for a hundred calculate. Even if it’s another $55 in envelopes in printer ink, that’s $100 for a high, high qualified lead on the worst end. On the best, that’s five. So that’s $25 for a lead for someone calling you specifically not off of a weird ad off of direct mail.
New Speaker (19:32):
I found the close rate on these things are through the roof. They’re exceptional. So qualifying. You know, the funny thing about, you know, me knowing the different home improvement type industries is that a storm restoration contractor values a lead at like, let’s say 25 or 50 bucks. But if you go to a solar company or a replacement, you know, a retail contractor, they’re paying 500 to seven 50. That’s why $100 to $780 for a qualified lead. So what you just said is like [inaudible] some change. Chump change. Yeah. Yeah. And, and you can even, if you wanted to factor in the time a hundred of these things, I would, I would, you can get done a hundred of them in less than an hour. Yeah. Well, if you’ve got a 15 year old like I do, that’s playing freaking Fortnite all day, I’d have him ride. I’d be, I’d have the whole damn town ribbon if these letters paying about 10 cents a one.
New Speaker (20:26):
So yeah, if y’all need your letters written, I’m sure I can farm out by my teenager. He, right. So, so it’s, it’s super cheap. It’s super cheap. It’s really effective in the folks that call from Amar are, you know, they’ve taken the time to read your pitch essentially. And again, you’re not asking for the sale. You’re doing nothing more than showing how you can help identify their purpose, your problem, and presenting a valuable free something inspection report. You know, free estimates aren’t sexy enough. You’ve got to spruce it up. What are you going to package in there, right? So when you, when you offer something, and I use intriguing stuff like for roofers in the hail side, just to give a an example, I say ask about my price lock guarantee. And that’s a a phrase I coined. That is designed to reposition the deductible as, Oh my price lock guarantee all means working through, through with, with me.
New Speaker (21:21):
You owe your deductible in the morning or less that there’s no surprises and it goes into positioning the contingency agreement, all that stuff. So again, ask about something, right? Ask about 0% financing or how you can have make no payments for three months. How you can win a free something or other, right? I’m trying to think of examples for all these types of industries, but leading with some value, making them feel like they’re going to get something out of it. So, and the other thing I wanted to touch on that I space is I had a guy who bought my stuff and he, he he sent me a message. He goes, Adam, your letters aren’t working. And I said, tell me how you’re using him. He says, why I don’t want to pay postage and I’m just leaving him on people’s doorsteps.
New Speaker (22:02):
And I said, dude, try him in the mail. Do this. So now I have a testimonial from them, unsolicited. This says, your letters are working now homie, and I got this question yesterday via email also. So these letters are designed to be mailed. Okay. There’s other things that I produce and there’s other times to leave things at the door, but when something is in a mailbox, it’s a very different story. And if it’s not, okay, well he’s always trying to cheat the system, you know, just it’s made of mail, just mail it, right. Everybody’s trying to get creative. So now we’re getting, let’s see, we got a few minutes left. I know people are gonna want to know about the cold call. You touch on a little bit. So they read the letter, super qualified lead, they call in and you’re saying, Oh good question. The idea here is to provide, right now we need to provide no context service.
New Speaker (22:53):
Everyone listening is in a different world, right? Security companies. I don’t know. Are security companies considered essential businesses right now? I think yeah. For insight with laces. They are, yeah, that would make sense to me. I know HVAC a lot of is a lot of them fall under the plumbing, you know the mechanical or plumbing. Gotcha. Yeah. So yeah, in in roofing is, so I’m going to share what I am teaching people to do for roofing and then we’ll, we’ll adapt to anyone that needs to get inside the home. Cause any contractors that are doing exterior remodeling, windows, roofing, siding, gutters, all that stuff. Restoration contractors. What you’ll want to do is say, Hey, we are offering a 100% no contact service plan and all that we’ll need to do is select a time for me to show up when I pull up. You don’t even need to answer the door.
New Speaker (23:41):
I’ll either call you or text you just as a real friendly reminder that I’m there and going to take photo and video of my inspection. I’m going to walk the perimeter of the home, set my ladder up and be on your roof so they know what to expect. Right? You don’t want to just like just show up and you’re tromping around on the roof while a kid’s trying to nap or something or because we’re all at home working like that has been their wife is on a video conference. It’s important. And the doctor. So courtesy call, I’m going to take photo video and then I’m going to share my findings with you over text or email, which do you prefer? Once they say it, collect it and say, great. Once I’m done we’re going to set up a phone call or video conference. And if it were me, I would push the video conference 100% of the time with sure and use the call as a fallback.
New Speaker (24:22):
But not everyone’s set up to be tech savvy customers specifically here. So once you do that, go through your presentation as you would if you were there. Honestly, do it from your truck sitting in the driveway. Who cares? Okay. So that’s how to handle the process. And then you have two options on paperwork. If you can get set up on some sort of electronic document signing, we’re in a great age. There’s plenty of options. If it’s too much for you guys to handle right now, then drop off your paperwork with a pre postage paid and addressed envelope. Make it easy. You’re right there, you get a little plastic baggy or a nice reusable grocery bag. That’s what would be my preference that we’d all hang onto your swag, hang it on the door. Say, listen, I’m going to put everything you need in an envelope for you.
New Speaker (25:11):
It’ll be on the door once I leave. You can grab it and just execute where you need on the dotted line. Pop it in the mail to us, your deposit checks, everything. But we got to keep cashflow coming in right now. So getting deposits in the queue, making sure customers know that as all this returned back to normal production is going to get backlogged. So we’re getting people into queue in priority. So to do that requires a deposit. So that’s another way just to keep cash coming in right now is to secure the right spot. We can go on on that, but I know, yeah. Let’s, so real quick the, the cold calls. So how, what’s your thoughts on that? So you send a letter and you’re following up with a cold call and then, and maybe just your framework on, on, on how that would go.
New Speaker (25:56):
Yeah, great question. So framework typically you want to reference something specific. So first if it were me, this is how I do it, I’d say, Hey, my name’s Adam. I just left Peggy’s house on Lexington and I wanted to stop by, but I’m calling you instead to practice social distancing and keep everyone safe. Okay. So there’s, there’s relevancy to their home. You’re written naming a name in a street. The reason I’m calling is I just help Peggy do whatever it is. Plug in your trade. You do this self series, this and blah blah blah. While I was there I I wanted to stop by and ask how was this going for you? Okay. Open ended question for roofing in storm restoration and say I wanted to stop by and ask how is the claims process going for you? Okay, that’s it. I want to start a conversation.
New Speaker (26:45):
It’s not, Hey, while I’m in the neighborhood I want to offer you an inspection. Can I give you an estimate like way too soon, just ask how it’s going adapt to your industry, right? Whatever it is needs to be an open ended question that makes them think because whatever they tell you will cater how you’re going to present the next round of information and the roofing side on the hail claim side, if they haven’t filed a claim yet, if they have filed a claim, if they’ve been denied or if there is a check that they already have, well we’ll dictate how I’m going to proceed if they have a check in hand. And I’m offering an inspection that’s useless and be like, why don’t I need that? Right? Yeah. So again, first is relevancy. Some name familiarity. Get them to say, Hey, that’s near me.
New Speaker (27:26):
Second, let them know you going to stop by, but you’re calling instead to respect the current situation. Call it coven. 19 coronavirus social distancing, whatever, right? Respect the stay at home orders and just acknowledgement to keep everybody safe. Okay? So that’s the second part of the formula. Third part is give the reason for your call. I’m calling because I helped so-and-so do this. Okay? And while I’m in the neighborhood, there’s your reason. And the fourth is that is to open or set the hook for conversation by using an open ended question. Whatever your industry is, ask a question that requires thought, not a yes or no answer. This is the hardest thing for salespeople to start doing because it’s so easy without writing it down to say, Hey can I stop by and offer you a free estimate? That’s yes or no. Nope. Click right?
New Speaker (28:13):
Yeah. Yeah. So even if it’s solar, you know, talk about the credits. Hey, I just want to stop by and ask, you know have you been curious about what these have you been curious as a yes or no? Anyway, talk about the incentives. I’m having a hard time coming to the solar, but I didn’t prepare for that one because they did it right. Like, you know, ask them an open end question about their energy, current credits, federal regulations, opportunities, deductions, anything like that that might pique their curiosity to say yes or no. Yeah, that’s awesome. Yeah, that’s a man. We covered a ton right there. I have my quick fire questions for you. Just wrap up with a few. Sure. Ready for that. I’ll hit you with it. So if you, what, and maybe we’ll put you in the, in the frame, in the mindset of one of your clients, but w what’s, what should their mindset be going through this?
New Speaker (29:08):
I’m a, I’m a business owner. I own a company, you know, what should my mindset be as I’m battling through these crazy times? That’s a super good question. To customers first is the first thing. Right now it is crystal clear what companies are going to survive and who’s going to increase brand loyalty. This whole pandemic is helping us all connect on a human level in a way that we never have right hashtag in this together in this together, the companies that are stepping up to to provide service. I just went and got dog food the other day. I called up getting my credit card. They ran it outside. My veterinarian would pick up pills from a dog. Same thing. They literally ran it outside. People are, you know, they’ll pick the dogs up from your car. So people are adapting to keep everyone safe and to keep businesses going.
New Speaker (29:58):
So number one, customers first. Number two, rise to the occasion. I’m, I’m personally doing a live every single day, Monday through Friday as a way to give back. I’ve also updated all of my material for people who’ve already purchased for which you could very easily say, well, they bought my stuff. Like, that’s cool, but I’ve updated it for specific to be specific to the Kovac 19 pandemic and I’m giving it out for free to help people keep momentum up and it’s included if for anyone that does purchase, you know, moving forward. So just rise to the occasion and and, and know that we will get through this and keep your foot on the gas cause the minute you stop, you go out of mind and we’re all going to have a shorter selling season because of this, which means shorter install, which means busier. And if you’re not prepared to, to ramp it up, you’re going to be screwed.
New Speaker (30:48):
What permanent changes do you see happening in the business world because of the coronavirus situation? Good question. To spits to come to mind right out of the gate, remote work and the use of so remote work and video stuff. And just the, the human element of connecting with people. I th I think that it’s interesting. I agree. I agree with both of those and I’ve talked about with other people about the human now it’s like, I dunno, it just feels like it’s, we got so wrapped up in our devices and even though we’re separated, we’re somehow more together now. I don’t know. It’s hard to describe. Yeah. Weird. I like it. Yeah. It’s gonna people, people have always wanted to buy from people and not faceless corporations, but that and that trend was already on the rise. And I think that spiking to be, people want to buy from people that they know, like, and trust in a deeper way through all this.
New Speaker (31:44):
Yeah. And now this is normal. There are companies that never used to do remote stuff or video conferencing with clients or vendors and now it’s standard. So the human side is going to be going to be a big shift in my opinion. So where can people find you? I mean, God, we went through so much. People are going to have questions work in, they track you down to, to hit you up. Yeah. Good question. So I always welcome personal emails. That’s adam@roofstrategists.com. I’m adamant roof strategies that come and then you can find me on YouTube. If you just search the roof strategist or if you just search roof strategists, either one, they’ll both pop up but you’ll find my channel there. And I’m doing a bunch of lives in every single YouTube video I have. There’s links to all this stuff that I have available from my marketing battle pack, which is everything I described to some one-on-one work, hiring ads, things like that.
New Speaker (32:36):
Oh cool. I’m specific to roofing and I am, I do have a number of people just in general door to door sales that watch my videos on cold calling a senior pitch up the door and all that stuff cause the concepts still apply. So yeah, I welcome it all and I do respond to all my emails personally. May take me a bit, I’ve been a little busy, a lot of people reaching out, but I will always get back to you personally and I do take the time to respond with some thought. That’s awesome. Any, any final message to the field sales rep, the owners, managers out there, you want to leave them with? Yeah. One positive thing. Focus on what we can control and don’t lose sight of that. If you’re thinking that you’re stumped cause you can’t do this and you can’t do that, it’s gonna kill you.
New Speaker (33:18):
There’s a lot you can do and you put your time and the energy into adapting and being agile, shifting from going door to door to cold calling and using direct mail and working customers and building referral networks and relationships. Stay on the gas and you’re going to be in a really good spot once things start returning back to some semblance of normalcy. That’s great. Thanks so much for your time, Adam. I had a hell of a time. Perfect, amazing information in here. And you know, we’ll, we’ll get through this together. We’re, we’re, as you can tell, both Adam and I are focused on providing value to the marketplace at no cost. We’re here with y’all side by side pushing through. So good luck to everybody out there. Adam, we’ll talk later. Yeah. Thanks again for everything. We’ll see you soon. Tray.
Let’s be honest. There is a stigma around door-to-door sales and that it’s an antiquated way of selling. As the next generation of outside sales reps hit the workforce, the majority are unaware just how powerful door to door selling can be.
We know the reason why D2D prospecting is still relevant: it works. Today, 65% of outside sales reps attain quota, which is 10% higher than inside sales reps.
But, it isn’t for everybody or for every type of business. It takes a certain kind of person and process to make the door-to-door sales engine turn.
So what kind of person an business fit the door to door sales mold? We’ll tell you.
In this article, we’ll go deep into the D2D sales world and answer the following questions:
1. What is door to door sales?
2. How do you become a successful door to door salesman?
3. What is the best process for selling door to door?
4. What tools do reps need to crush their field sales quota?
Door-to-door sales can be a rewarding sales career for the right individuals, and drive the bottom line for businesses in many different industries.
Let’s get started.
Key Pillars of the D2D Sales Process
Traits of a Successful Door-to-Door Sales Professional
11 Door-to-Door Sales Tips & Techniques to Crush Sales Quota
Canvassing Techniques
How to Recruit a High-Performing Door to Door Sales Team
3 Door-to-Door Sales Compensation Models
The Ultimate Door-to-Door Sales Toolset
Door-to-door sales (D2D sales) means that the sales rep is participating in door-to-door prospecting, which indicates a system of direct contact with individuals. Rather than relying on marketing to bring in new customers, the sales rep walks from one place to another, doorway to doorway in the literal sense, engaging prospects in conversation about the features and benefits of their product or service.
D2D canvassing techniques are also used to market, advertise or campaign. In all cases, a door-to-door salesman or saleswoman is attempting to get a person interested or ready to buy their product, service or idea. They are generating demand.
Prospecting: The search for new customers is called prospecting. Prospects are essential to your sales funnel because you have to have new customers coming in to grow. Finding them is a crucial part of your sales process.
Qualifying: Qualifying means you have identified a need your prospect has that matches one of the features or benefits you offer. Qualifying prospects is to establish Pain (enough pain to buy), Budget (money to buy) and Decision (authority to buy). It requires a door-to-door salesman (or woman) to ask lot of open-ended questions and listen and respond to their answers.
Pitching: When you make an offer and describe the benefits to your qualified prospect, it is called pitching. Knowing the lead’s needs is essential to your success. You provide a solution to their pain points and explain how your product makes their lives or jobs easier.
Closing: Closing is when you ask the potential customer to buy your product or service. There are numerous ways to ask for business, and finding the one that works best for you and each qualified prospect is a vital skill for successful door-to-door sales.
Follow-up: After the sale, the door-to-door salesperson should establish contact to ensure the customer received what they ordered, felt satisfied, and received answers to any questions they might have. This is called follow-up. It is essential to establishing a relationship with your new customer, and the gateway to future opportunities with the customer, should their needs change.
There are two types of leads in any organization:
1. Inbound leads: Any potential customers that you have as a result of marketing efforts (leads that find you through marketing material).
2. Outbound leads: Any potential customer that you have as a result of you contacting them (lead that you find).
How a sales rep handles an inbound lead is different than how he or she would handle an outbound lead. Whether a lead is inbound or outbound indicates where the lead is in the selling cycle.
Inbound leads are likely past information seeking. They are now determining who has the highest quality product or service for the best value. A sales rep would want to concentrate on building a relationship with an inbound lead.
Outbound leads are likely not information seeking. They were not planning on purchasing your product or service and might not have even been aware that your product or service existed. A sales rep would want to have a comprehensive and systematic follow-up process with outbound leads that establishes need and then follows up with solutions to the need that have benefits for the prospect.
If you handle all leads the same way, you miss the opportunity to help the lead from wherever they are in their buying process. This system leads to lost sales, which in turn drives up your cost per lead.
Many lead management software systems allow you to create a custom field to indicate which type of lead the sales rep has so they can prepare appropriately.
Like all sales professions, specific traits will help a door-to-door sales person achieve success. We have identified a few core skills and personality traits that most successful professionals share:
1. They know their product inside and out. To share the appropriate features and benefits, or even to establish need, the sales rep must have mastered product knowledge.
2. They provide value to the customer with their expertise. Customers are more educated than ever before with the resources available to them online. If the sales rep only tells them what they already know, they are not providing any value. HubSpot recommends that D2D sales professionals educate the prospect on what they can’t discover on their own, and thereby add value to the future customer’s experience in the sales process.
3. They build rapport with people they just met. The most successful sales professional in D2D sales (and otherwise) are people that have excellent emotional intelligence and are skillful in the art of finding connections with other people. Some people have these skills naturally and don’t have to think about it; others have to research a prospect to find common ground. However they do it, the ability to build rapport is a critical skillset in the D2D profession.
4. They understand how to ask questions that qualify prospects. The best ask questions that reveal pain points the prospect feels. By using open-ended questions to gather information and using close-ended probes to establish needs, they uncover how their product or service can help solve the prospect’s problems or answer their needs.
5. They are expert listeners. Once they ask questions, they let the prospect answer and actively listen. If you’re always talking, you are not hearing what the potential customer is saying that will get you closer to yes.
6. They are excellent at WIFM. Communicating the benefits a prospect will enjoy after their purchase is essential to getting to a yes. WIFM stands for, “What’s In It For Me?” The ability to provide the appropriate benefit of your product or service to answer the needs uncovered in the questioning and listening phase is crucial.
7. They know how to establish expectations for the call. It’s vital for the sales rep to help the prospect feel comfortable with the interaction. The most successful salespeople explain to the prospect what will happen next. InsightSquared.com suggest creating a Buyer-Seller Agreement, which is a verbal agreement that outlines what will happen next in the call. This makes the lead more comfortable.
8. They outline the purchasing process well. Honesty is key to building trust. Sales reps that explain what the prospect will experience before, during, and after the sale will be successful at establishing that trust—if they tell prospects the truth. HubSpot warns sales professionals not to play fast and loose with the features and benefits, or the possibility of adding a feature or benefit unless they know for a fact they can. If they are unable or unwilling to follow through, it damages the trust and ruins the relationship (and potential for future sales) with the customer.
9. They are strategic about prospecting and manage their time well. Smart prospecting can help establish a better lead stockpile. Whether that means calling on current customers and looking for referrals or reviving lost opportunities, InsightSquared.com suggests the most successful D2D sales reps are strategic in their efforts. Also, the most successful in D2D sales manage their time well, meaning they focus their efforts on the most likely candidates and recognize when a deal isn’t going anywhere.
10. They have a few ways to close. Knowing how and when to close is a critical skill for all sales reps, especially in the D2D sales environment. Not all customers are the same, and neither are your prospects. When you are presenting and handling objections, you should also be thinking of how you will ask for the order. For a few different options for closes, please click here.
Why is this important?
Excellent product knowledge is paramount to your success. After all, you can’t sell what you don’t understand.
Actionable Tip:
Focus in your training on how to explain the features and benefits to someone who knows nothing about your product. Ask a friend or family member to listen to a demonstration. Then ask what questions they have or if they have feedback on your presentation.
Why is this important?
Qualified prospects are the best prospects that will lead to more revenue for your company’s (and your) bottom line. By finding the fastest ways to identify qualified prospects, you shorten the selling cycle and close more sales. Additionally, by having a solid lead qualification process in place, you can sell with confidence knowing you’re not wasting valuable time pitching to an opportunity that’s a poor fit.
Actionable Tip:
Asking your satisfied customers for referrals is a fantastic way to get qualified prospects. Not only will a satisfied customer want to help you, but they are also likely to refer you to someone they know needs your product or service because they don’t want to irritate their contacts with a pointless sales call. This tactic might also work with people you are working with currently or recently interacted with, even if the outcome is still uncertain or was not a sale.
Why is this important?
When the pain of change is less than the pain of the status quo, prospects will invest in solutions. Sometimes a prospect might have become accustomed to a pain point in their current situation; bringing it to the fore and reigniting its effects can help move a prospect forward in the sales cycle.
Actionable Tip:
Asking questions about common issues your product or service solves (and you know are prevalent in your prospect’s experience) is a way to uncover the pain. Asking how those challenges affect something that is important to the prospect, like their productivity, their time resources, or their profits, will get them to think about the importance of resolving the issue.
Employing the Sandler Selling method here would be ideal because this technique is built around selling to a prospects pain points.
Why is this important?
People communicate with far more than their words. Recognizing and understanding the visual cues that people give you can tell you a lot about what they think of your product or service—even if their words say something else.
Actionable Tip:
Entrepreneur.com recommends knowing your pitch so well that you can give it while simultaneously assessing the signals your prospect is giving you. Reading facial expression, body position, and even breathing patterns can give you information about whether you cold-call is giving you the cold shoulder or warming up to your suggestions.
93% of people’s judgment of others are based on non-verbal inputs like sales body language.
For the 5 body language mistakes that may cost you the sale, click here.
Why is this important?
People form impressions of you fast. Some experts estimate that you make an impression that lasts in only 10 seconds. So, you need to communicate what you are selling and your best information, quickly.
Actionable Tip:
The perfect pitch is comprised of four parts: introduction, questions, present, and close. In other words, you should have mastered the four parts of the pitch before you even stepped out of your car. First, introduce yourself and your product while making eye contact and smiling. Then, ask questions to qualify the prospect, preferably with open-ended probes that get the prospect to do the talking. Present your product with the pertinent information first and keeping it short. Finally, ask for the business.
Why is this important?
D2D sales is a numbers game, which makes time a vital resource for you. There is a lot of rejection involved. Some people are upfront about it, but many people are too polite. Polite people will let you pitch even when they have no intention of buying, which only takes up time you could be spending with someone who is interested. It’s better to get the no over with than to waste their time (and yours) being nice.
Actionable Tip:
Entrepreneur.com. says that you should make people comfortable saying no. In other words, give them an out if they are just being polite.
Example: “If at any point you feel the product I’m selling is of no value to you, please don’t hesitate to tell me so. You won’t hurt my feelings and I don’t want to waste anyone’s time.”
If you have a product with you, you could show it, presenting it to them as a solution to their problem. Then you could ask them if they think your product is something that might help them or not. Not only will it allow them to politely decline earlier in the sales call, but it might also encourage them to look more closely at what you are offering rather than secretly plotting their escape from your pitch (politely, of course).
Why is this important?
Knowing what you are going to say and what you need to find out will help a lot when you are making cold calls. In addition, it will help you seem eloquent and knowledgeable, which are important traits in a d2d sales success. Furthermore, it will help you stay on track and calm in a sales call that you are trying to move forward.
Actionable Tip:
Ensure that you take notes about your calls as you work. Over time, you can learn what qualified leads had in common. The script should include basic details, like the introduction and the pitch, but it should also have questions you use to qualify leads. By putting together a script you use as a road map, you can navigate the sales call and quickly eliminate those calls that are not going to buy while finding the best possibilities for a sale.
Why is this important?
Objections are the reasons prospects have for not buying your product. In a D2D sales situation, these reasons might also be a way to put off a yes. It is your job to determine if the objection is really a no or just an obstacle to your next yes.
Actionable Tip:
Use the LAER model. LAER is an objection-handling concept created by Carew International (a leading provider of sales training, leadership development and customer service programs). LAER stands for Listen, Acknowledge, Explore and Respond. In other words, pay attention to their objection, accept that you understand it can be a problem, ask them why they feel they way they do, then reply to their feelings with empathy and an explanation that might convince them otherwise.
Why is this important?
Sales is all about results. However, if you only focus on getting results, you are setting yourself up for a difficult journey. Many things about d2d sales success are not in your control. Your best bet to be successful anyway is to maximize the benefits of working on the things you can control. Things like your attitude and your responses are within your control. Promotions and territories you work are not. Keep working through the process rather than the getting the sale will bring you the results you need.
Actionable Tip:
Influencive.com suggests that focusing on what you can control is the best way to work your process. Concentrate on working efficiently, introducing yourself clearly, delivering effective presentations, and handling objections well will help you get the results you want.
Why is this important?
Just like your process is crucial to your success, understanding your areas of opportunity are also. It is essential to record your activity and results, so you can identify these areas. The sooner you address a problem in your sales process, the quicker you will get the results you need. However, if you don’t know what’s wrong, it will likely just get worse.
Actionable Tip:
Influencive.com says that keeping a record of daily activity that includes how many calls you had, people you talked to, demos you performed, and units you sold. Then analyze your results. For example, if you didn’t talk to enough decision makers, you probably called on them at the wrong time. If you didn’t sell a lot, maybe your demo needs work. Once you identify what the trouble is, you can fix it.
Why is this important?
In D2D sales, you just met the person. They likely need time to make a decision. You should follow-up later now that they know you, so you can establish a relationship and move the sales process forward to a win-win conclusion.
Actionable Tip:
Marketingwit.com advises door-to-door sales professionals to set aside time to canvass and then time to return for call backs. Keep an appointment app or book available so you can organize and optimize your call back schedule by neighborhood or business type. Also, whenever possible gather information like an email address so you can send a note and add them to any automatic follow-up software you might employ as well.
Within SPOTIO’s suite of sales enablement tools, our appointment setting feature is a great way to organize and manage the follow-up process. From the field, capture lead notes, input prospect’s contact details, view, set, and manage appointments. The best part? All this information will automatically sync back into SPOTIO, eliminating the task of having to re-enter field notes at the end of the day.
Canvassing is a skill as much as it is an activity. There are many things that the best door-to-door salesmen and women can do to improve their results.
First, sales reps should see canvassing as a time to meet potential customers, uncover needs, present products and make sales. However, they can also collect lead data for their follow-up process.
The follow-up process is key because many prospects might be highly qualified for your product or service, but not ready to buy right now. If you have their contact information, you can stay in touch in case things change later.
Most people are do not want to give you their email address for fear of getting spammed. However, if you offer them something for free that they can use, they might be more willing to give you the information. A free eBook for example that has industry insight or helpful advice for homeowners might be worth it to a prospect to surrender their email to you.
With that email, you can systemize and automate an email campaign that stays in contact with the prospect. If the potential customer’s circumstances change and he or she wants your products and service, your prospect will have an easy way to get in touch with you.
During the initial conversation, the sales rep should have a feel for where the prospect is in the buying process. If they sense that more time is needed, they should switch gears to set an appointment rather than making a sale.
Selling an appointment is important to increase the likelihood that the appointment is kept. Polite prospects might make an appointment just to give the D2D sales professional a win at the moment only to cancel it later.
When the rep explains the benefits to the prospect for attending the appointment, the prospect will be more likely to keep the appointment. This technique will allow your sales reps to do more presentations, which has potential for more sales.
There are three critical steps to scheduling an appointment that will stick:
1. Present at least three benefits to the prospect for attending the meeting.
2. Ask for the appointment at a specific time and confirm the date and time with the prospect.
3. Give the prospect an appointment reminder card and ask them to write down the date and time.
Whether the answer is yes or no, you need to be prepared for what you want next. Bungle this moment and you could lose the whole prospect.
If the answer is yes, then you should be ready with the sales agreement or appointment scheduler, depending on the type of yes you are handling.
If the answer is no, then you should have a fall back request. For example, Citrus-Connect.co recommends leaving collateral with a request to forward it to another contact that might be in need of your product or service.
The important thing here is to have a positive interaction with the prospect to keep the door open for follow-up later. You might not have a yes today, but that does not mean you could not have one in the future.
It is a significant advantage to your success if you have planned ahead and optimized your canvassing efforts. Software programs can help you plot a route and map out a territory you are targeting with your canvassing efforts.
SPOTIO has a Route Planning function to help you create the path for your canvassing route. When you have an efficient route, you get more out of your day and more chances for results.
Leaving behind a brochure, card, or door hanger is an excellent way to build awareness about your presence and brand. They not only alert the prospect that you were there, but it might get them thinking about your product or service.
Always leave the collateral before you knock on the door. That way if the prospect answers the door, they will have a reminder of your visit after you are gone. If the prospect isn’t home, then he or she will know you were there.
When you follow up, the collateral might help introduce you and your product. It creates a great opener for you when you meet a prospect for the first time or come back for a call back appointment.
Recruiting the right people for the job is a significant concern when you rely on canvassing for lead generation for your organization. If you hire the right people, it’s smooth sailing. If you do not, it can mean rough waters are ahead for your canvassing efforts.
One of the first things you should do when hiring a D2D sales team is to know who your ideal candidate is. What traits are you looking for and what kind of skill sets do you require?
You should also decide early if you want experienced D2D sales professionals or candidates that are new it. Experienced canvassers can get right to work and start delivering leads, but they might have a style of some bad habits that you do not want. New canvassers might be slower to start and get results, but you have the opportunity to train them exactly how you want them to do it.
We recommend at least three and as many as five ideal candidate profiles for your recruiting. While it will require a time commitment on the front end of a couple of hours, it will save you even more time in pointless screenings and interviews later.
You can find canvassing candidates online. Craigslist is a great resource for finding able-bodied candidates that fit one of your profiles. Another option is SearchTempest, a site that is a classified ad search engine. Other sites could be Indeed, Jobs.com, and social media sites such as LinkedIn or Facebook.
One employer used to recruit sports teams for canvassing. He would post signs around schools that offered to train high-school aged kids how to participate in door-to-door sales to raise money for travel. More options could be to recruit at community colleges or using yard signs.
Your job description should reach out to the right candidates with the right benefits for the candidates. A generic job description will only yield generic candidates. An example could be:
Another example could be:
We have a great sales organization that will teach you everything you need to know about sales. We seek two new candidates for our team. We want to invest in you, so you can produce for us.
We have sales reps that consistently make over $750 per week.
But some make even more. Could you be one them?
If you want to bring an open mind and a positive attitude to us, we will give you all the tools you need to join and thrive on our experienced and successful team. Best of all, you don’t have to know what to do because we will show you.
If you want a job, then don’t call us. But if you want a career in sales with room to advance, give us a call today.
Once you have the proper candidates responding to your ads, it is time for you to screen for the best of the bunch. Asking proper questions will qualify your candidates, much like they will do with their prospects. The crucial bit to remember is that you are trying to suss out those candidates that fit your profile of the ideal d2d salesman or woman.
Some examples of great questions could be:
– What do you do for fun?
– What motivates you and why?
– Where have you worked before and what did you like best and least about it?
– What programs do you like to watch on TV and why?
– Would you please describe for me a typical day for you on your last job?
– Can you please share an example of when you convinced someone to do something they were not interested in doing at the time?
– How do you set goals and hold yourself accountable to them?
– What do you want to be doing a year from now? Three? Five?
– Who was your best boss so far and what did you learn from him or her?
– What is the best thing you ever learned in a work training session that you still use today?
– How do you deal with rejection?
– How do you celebrate success?
Many commission structure options exist for door-to-door to sales reps. All of them share the idea that when you hit your targets, you make more money.
From Commission-only to gross margin to tiered commission, how you earn is a vital part of the job you should understand.
Here are a few of the most common compensation models with pros and cons for each:
What it is: This compensation model does not have a salary. The earnings of the D2D sales professional are variable and dependent upon their ability to close. It is typically a 1099 arrangement, meaning that the sales reps are independent contractors.
Pros: This payment system is best for people that are self-motivated and eager to sell; these people can see sales as a career rather than just a job.
Cons: It can be tougher for people without as much experience as it can take some time to earn enough salary in the beginning; it can lead to high turnover and a negative company culture.
What it is: While it may or may not have a base salary, a gross margin commission structure pays the D2D sales rep on the amount of profit a sale generates. For example, if the deal is for $1,000, but the cost associated with the sale are $300, then the rep earns commission on $1,000 minus $300, or $700 gross margin. Many organizations that employ this structure believe that all sales should be profitable for the company, and therefore pay less on those sales that have lower margin associated with them.
Pros: The sales rep earns more on sales with higher margins, so they concentrate on higher sales amounts, which will result in more commission.
Cons: Since the sales rep cannot control the costs associated with the order, they can get frustrated by lower commissions than they were expecting, which can result in more turnover.
What it is: When a company uses the tiered-commission style of compensation, they pay more commission on sales that occur after a certain level. For example, the sales rep might earn 5% commission on all sales up to $10,000 in a given period, but then earn an additional 3% on any sales over that amount for a total of 8% commission.
Pros: This commission structure benefits those sales reps who have already met their quotas to never stop closing. (In other systems, sales reps might sandbag orders to the following month once they hit their goal, which isn’t best for the company.)
Cons: Sales reps who aren’t going to get much higher than their goal one month might hold orders to the following month to maximize the commission amount they earn by blowing out the next quota (which also isn’t the best thing for the company).
We developed a dedicated resource to dive deeper into the subject.
Many industries employ a door-to-door sales force. The breadth of the door-to-door sales industry spans a number of niches. Some of the most prominent include the following:
The residential rooftop solar sales are part of the Solar Energy industry where homeowners agree to have solar panels installed to harness the energy of the sun.
Door-to-door sales works well in the industry because it is a consultative sales process for a complicated product that works best in a one-on-one, in-home consultation.
Roofing is a traditional industry for door-to-door sales where the sales rep is presenting the features and benefits of a new roof to homeowners.
Door-to-door sales works well in the industry because the sales rep has access to the homeowner, the decision-maker and roofs need replacing from time to time.
Home improvement D2D sales professionals demonstrate how homeowners can upgrade or maintain their homes.
Door-to-door sales works well in the industry because the sales rep is talking to the people who will make the decision with nearly every contact; they know which leads are viable within minutes.
Alarms and security systems that protect a homeowners property are another industry with a history of D2D canvassing efforts.
Alarms and security systems are a homeowner-focused target, so contacting homeowners is key to its success.
Telecommunications services has been successful in canvassing efforts because it is a product always in demand, and can be switched from a current provider, no matter what door opens.
Like the other industries mentioned, the homeowners are the decision makers and are easy to qualify quickly and accurately.
The door-to-door sales reps’ sales stack you use is a crucial part of success in this type of sales. Both sales reps and managers need the right set of tools to succeed in d2d sales.
Tool #1 Route Planner
Route planner gives you route efficiency, so you are in the best possible area to talk to people about your product or service. Also, the mileage tracking feature helps you stay on top of your expenses.
Having a strategic approach to canvassing will boost your productivity, allowing you to concentrate on areas that are more likely to have a need that fits with your product or service’s features and benefits.
Tool #2 Lead Machine
Tool #3 Appointment Setting
You need technology that makes it easy to schedule appointments as canvassing efforts are all about scheduling demonstration opportunities. Our Appointment Setting features make it easy to see your schedule, as well as any other team members.
Having a calendar feature built-in to your technology allows you to lock the appointment down in the moment.
Tool #1 Territory Management
Territory management software allows you to determine strategic territories for your sales reps to cover.
A strategic territory maximizes your team’s contact rate and allows the sales reps to spend more time talking with potential customers.
Tool #2 Sales Leaderboards
Sales Leaderboard tools track the success for your reps on a variety of metrics that measure performance against their peers.
Sales leaderboards encourage healthy competition between reps and boost engagement in contests and other metrics you use to motivate team members.
Tool #3 Rep Tracking
Rep tracking tools allow you to ensure that your reps are where they say they are in real-time. While it can help verify reports, it also can help pinpoint data about the area and its potential for your company.
When managers can track their rep’s activities, they can improve efficiency and ensure that the activities their sales reps engage in are the types that lead to more success.
Canvassing has things that work and things that don’t. Learn from other people’s experiences and help yourself by avoiding these 7 common mistakes made by canvassing programs that have come before yours:
Not having a lead management software in place: If you don’t track every attempt to measure your success rate, the cost of canvassing won’t make sense with today’s competitive landscape.
Not having processes in place to track follow ups: Not following up costs you. You lose all the investment in your canvassing efforts when qualified leads slip through the cracks.
Not having training and on-boarding processes in place: You must invest in your sales reps, so they can produce new opportunities for you as quickly as possible. Having an efficiency when you bring in a new D2D sales professional helps you get to productivity faster.
Not training sales reps to work inbound vs outbound leads: The leads have different motivations. Ignoring that could mean mishandling a potential sale—and losing them to the competition.
Not having a process to follow up by phone and email: There are a number of reasons why a prospect might not be interested on the first attempt. By following up later, you miss out on opportunities whose circumstances have changed.
Not having email drip and lead nurturing campaigns: When you neglect to implement an automated lead development campaign, you miss out on collecting data and reduce the numbers of potential buyers you could contact.
Not collecting homeowner information at the door: It is crucial to get the information for any potential follow-up. It is never a complete no when you have an email address.
And there you have it. Everything you need to know about door-to-door sales to be successful at doing it, managing it, and implementing it.
Door-to-door sales is an excellent way to develop new leads and it’s vital for you to approach it with talent, strategy, and the right tools.
Door-to-door sales isn’t for everybody or for every type of business. But if you have the right combination of opportunity and talent, you can use it to take your business development efforts to a new level, with opportunities knocking on your door for a change.
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