Financing: 3-Steps to Close Retail Roof Sales w/ Chuck Thokey

Chuck, welcome to Strategist YouTube channel and podcast. I am super excited to have you here today as we cover three steps to close using financing the F word that we are not going to use with our customers. Right?

That's right. That's right, Chuck. Thanks for having me. Adam.

Yeah, I really appreciate you being here. It was great to meet finally face to face at Roofcon. And then we ended up connecting. Full disclosure, we ended up connecting because you had some critique on one of my interviews with Jim Alleen, and I love it. Matt Danskin had some of mine too, and he called me like, dude, just come on the channel. We'll air it out. But we ended up deciding to go a different direction, so. Hey, Chuck, before we jump in, those folks who may not be familiar with you yet, which I'm sure they are, but anyone who's brand new, you have an absolutely impressive history. I would love for you to share your accolades in this whole sales and roofing world, because I'm sure once people hear this, they're going to say, oh, crap, I really need to listen to what this guy has to say. So lay it on us, Chuck.

Well, thank you. I was actually an aerospace engineer, believe it or not, and kind of thrown into sales. So long story short, I got into mortgage, did extremely well. I had some really good mentors. And so from mortgage, I went right into home improvement, and I helped a company called Bath Fitter grow. And if you can see how big Basfitter is, I mean, we. We really did did a great job there. And then from there, jumped right into able roof and Mr. Roof, and we really changed the model with able roof and Mr. Roof, as is, when you're looking at a sales and marketing organization, we really took that to a whole new level, which is a training organization where we continue to train and train and train those reps. And most of them are still there. Some of them have started their own company now, and some of them are even trainers now, which is great. I absolutely, when it comes to my sales reps, that is. That's family to me. So, I mean, my. My sales reps, my past sales reps, they all know that I love the heck out of them. And anytime they ask me for content, I just shovel it over to them. Say, here, man, I don't even care what you do with it, just be successful with it. And then, of course, got into coaching myself and never looked back. I love every piece of what you can do with, whether it's just a sales rep, all the way up to a business Owner and transforming their business to something that they never thought it could be. And all through just systems. And so, I mean, this has been absolutely fun.

Awesome. Dig it. I think you and I both share a very fundamentally similar philosophy and approach on systematic growth. And please correct me if I'm wrong, but growth starting from what I call the bottom up, that the reps succeeding the field is what you can have all the crazy systems and the best systems in the world, but if your team isn't using it following and succeeding, they're useless.

Right.

So awesome. All right, well, today your background heavily. I know you do both storm and retail, but your real bread and butter is on the retail front, correct?

It really is, yeah.

So one thing I've been getting asked for a lot about, which is why I really appreciate you being receptive to this whole curveball, is focusing on financing. As we see, cash is not most. Most homeowners aren't flush with cash and don't want to spend $20,000 on a roof when they could do something way more fun with it. So financing is a great option, but for many companies or. Or many sales reps who are tuning in, this is either new, it's unfamiliar, it's the money talk. How do we bring it up? So we're going to dive in and talk today the three steps, the three key touch points when dealing with financing and how to walk people to signing the deal before you leave the house. So let's start on step number one, which is when do we bring up financing? This is the big question I get asked. So if you see me taking notes over my shoulder as the zoom switches screens, I'll have it up here. So lay it on me, Chuck. When do we ask for financing? Or, excuse me, when do we bring financing up in the sales process?

You know, we were taught as sales reps that you bring it up early and often. And for me, it's not so much often as it is early. You want to bring it up early. And here's the reason why we bring it up early is because we have to put their nerves at ease. When you're in, when you first get to the house, they are wondering how they're going to even pay for this. They know it's expensive. You know, they know it's not $10. So it's expensive. And you have to let them know that there are several different ways of paying. So that's how we. That's. That's when they. When you say, when do we bring it up? We want to bring it up early. Sometimes people will bring it up in a third party story. I've had many times where we, quite simply, you know, we will explain that there are many different ways of paying for the roof. Whether you use us or anybody else, you know, there's many different ways of paying. Again, I say that because I don't want to come off as I'm going to, I'm going to bulldoze you into using us. I use that term of whether it's us or anybody else so that I can keep them calm.

You and I teach a very similar thing. I say whether you choose us or someone else, whether you choose me or someone else, it's a huge trust builder. Love that. So one thing, and I do, I am open for debate. By way, if you don't agree with any, I say, please voice it. I think there's, there's power in open discussion. Right. But for me, when I hear this, I know that when people have an objection, because price is one of the biggest objections. Right? Price, value. We see this all the time. You could go through Facebook groups and it's thread how to sell value, how to sell value. It's like every other thread. So homeowners are clearly thinking in their mind, what's this going to cost? And the more they're mentally preoccupied with this fear that's consuming them, the less attention they're paying to you. So when we put them at ease out of the gate and you mentioned, hey, there's various ways to handle your roof and paying for your roof, how. Before we go too far, I'd love to touch back on kind of some key language you may use, but philosophically, this basically says, hey, calm. That part of your worries. Pay attention. You don't have to be mentally preoccupied with this because we want you fully present right here. Is that, would you agree with that or would you disagree with that?

Yes, and you got to bring it up because you know that's on their mind. Whether it's, when do they, when do they have to buy? You know what? You have to put their, their mind at ease on two things. How they're going to pay for it and when do they have to buy it. Because if they feel like, oh my gosh, I have a sales guy in here, he's gonna, he's gonna push me up against the wall and beat me until I buy. They're not gonna be receptive, they're not going to respond favorably. And you can see it in their body language while they just kind of calm down.

Yeah, it's huge. I trained a law firm on their intake team. I'd audited all their sales calls and for them, one of the biggest price objections was the cost. And they were a contingency based law firm. So what we ended up doing is just changing their front end of their script to an opener that was, this is a free consultation. If we take your case and win, there's no fees unless we win. And all of a sudden that close rate, we skyrocke, skyrocketed about 15%. Because at the end of the call was always, so what's this going to cost me? And we just put that, just boom. Calm their nerves. So totally love it. So tip number one and I often summarize things for our listeners who are driving on a truck or people who are tuning in. The first step is when to bring up financing. And we do it early by putting their mind at ease and expressing that they have options. Chuck and I use very similar language, whether you work with us or someone else. The illusion of control and building trust. So how do we go ahead and bring up financing? And speaking of the F word, financing, let's talk about that. How do we bring this up?

So you can bring it up in several different ways. You can bring it up in your presentation and how I would bring it up in a presentation. And typically when I bring up that they have several different ways of paying for it, they'll even ask you like, oh, so do you guys have financing? It's like, well, I'm glad that you brought this up. We do. And is that something that you would need to complete the project is financing? And when they say yes, my next question is going to be, I mean, since you brought it up on a scale of 1 to 10, how would you rate your credit? Because now I need to figure out, I'm not going to talk about an A lender. I'm not going to talk about someone that only deals in a paper if they have sketchy credit.

I love that. So, and this is a really soft way, how would you rate it without saying, this is such a lovely beat around the bush without saying, so by the way, what's your credit score?

Yeah, exactly.

Very respectful way to bring this up. Awesome. So continue. I didn't mean to cut you off, but I think that's a key takeaway for everyone listening. If there's one thing you leave here, how would you rate your credit? 1 to 10. You can start using that on your next sales appointment in an hour.

So I'll also tell you that doesn't matter what they say. Okay, great, no problem. I don't care if they say it's a one. You're probably just practicing right now because they probably can't buy, but who knows? But when we get into this, the other thing is letting them know that there are several different types of our clients that finance. The first are what we call cash buyers. People that could pay cash, but they want to use someone else's money. And they typically do a same as cash, whether it be 12, you know, six or 12 months, and they just want to use someone else's cash. The next buyer is someone that has been saving up for this project for a while, but when they find out the cost of the job, they just need that little bit of help. And then of course, you got people and you got to kind of bring them to yourself so that, you know, even though maybe I'm a cash buyer, I'm going to say, or people like myself that, I mean, I'm going to need help, you know, from the, from the word go on this thing, that I'm going to need some financing. And so they're going to need help on the entire project. Which one do you think is, you know, what category do you think you're in? And so you've laid it out, it really doesn't matter. But again, I'm just getting them, you know, into that point of where they're okay with financing, okay with doing the job. The other piece of this is understanding. When we look at financing, when I'm teaching financing, there's a phrase that I use. If you just make it easy enough, people will buy anything.

It's so true.

So even when you're laying out your price, when you're talking about how do you use financing, if you just make it easy enough, people will buy anything. So when I lay out my price, and I love the better and best, and so I'm going to put down the pricing, I'm not hiding anything. They're going to see my price, but I'm not going to bring it up. It's there. But I am going to mention that this is only going to cost you, you know, or this is your, your monthly investment of 325. But if you want the upgraded system, it's a monthly investment of 524.

One thing I want to highlight for folks who didn't catch that, we didn't say your monthly payment. You said your monthly installment. Right?

Monthly investment, yeah, investment.

I'm sorry.

No, that's fine.

Do you ever use the word Installment on payments.

I haven't. But I mean, it's splitting hairs whether you want to use investment. I use the word investment just because I want them to feel like it's an investment. But it's just a play on words.

Absolutely. No. And there, hey, this is sales. There's a lot to play on words. It's a big meeting. I go back and forth between installments, investments. I never use payments. Right. People don't like adding payments. But let's air, because I would agree, investments is you're investing in the value of your home. So, key thing when we said the F word, financing. Don't use it with customers unless they use it first. Right. Match their language. All right, so is there anything else that we should touch on when we talk about how to bring financing up?

So here is a huge key to financing is understanding timing. What I mean by timing is right now, everybody's going to hear. Anybody that's selling retail is hearing, I'm just getting prices right now until I get my tax return. If you get into the summer, then I'm just getting prices right now until I get my bonus. And I don't really care when they get it. But you have to walk them around the block, per se. You can't go straight and just, oh, great. You know, we're. I have this great financing program because they're clamming up all of a sudden. And so, you know, you have to say, I totally understand. Okay, so when exactly do you think that you'll have your. Your tax return? I think we're going to have it by May. Okay. And so you're going to use that tax return to pay for your roof? Yeah, we're going to use it to pay for the roof and maybe a couple other things. Wow. Your tax return is going to be that big. That's. Congratulations. You know, again, I'm bringing in that euphoric state right before I go into. Well, let me ask you. You know, we. We have this a lot. We have a scenario here that I want to share with you. If I were able to go ahead and get that roof put on now, and I don't need anything from you, I don't need anything from you until you get that money, whenever that might be. Is that something that would be interesting to you and like. Well, yeah. Well, how would you do that? Well, I'm glad that you brought that up, because all we would need to do right now is as long as you qualify, I really don't need anything right now but a signature and I really don't need anything because I want to make this as comfortable of an investment as possible. So I don't really even need it. When you get the money in May, I just need, you know, from 12 months from now, you'll have a whole 12 months to figure out how you're going to pay for this. And so at that point, I mean, they're in. I haven't said anything about financing. And they kind of get it. They understand that it's a 12 month, no payment, no interest. And so I've already built that into the deal. You know, any company that understands retail should understand that you add a certain percentage for a 12 month, we're even doing 24 months. So when you tell somebody and say, hey, look, and if they start to sweat the deal, say, hey, look, we have an opportunity that you can go ahead and get this thing done right now and you have two years to figure out how you're going to pay for it. Well, I didn't mention anything about financing. Our close rate went up 20%.

Love it.

And you know, again, I mean, they understand. I mean, I'm gonna, we're gonna go down through that, go down that road. But with the financing the way it is, it is so easy to say. And when they're like, wow, really? Yeah. Do you have your driver's license on you? That's me asking for the order. You got your driver's license on you? Yeah, they're throwing their driver's license across the table. I take a picture of it. So what's the household income? And I mean everybody that makes money in the house. How much do you guys make? And so, and they're just asking the questions. And I say, okay, I just need a signature here, here and here. But it's again, if you make it easy enough, you can sell anything and they'll buy anything.

Yeah, that's fantastic. For anyone who might be wondering, what financing partners would you recommend the roofing companies look into to be able to offer options like this?

So my favorite right now is a, it's a new company, but the people that work in it are from an old company. But it's called Moment and that's. I think it's called Moment Financial. And then Green sky is good. I really like service finance.

I've heard a lot of folks like service finance. Green Sky. Different animal, isn't it?

It is. They're changing just because they're seeing a lot of people move away from them. So they're changing a lot. Like this whole credit card thing that you have to do where not only do you have their fee, but then you have 3% on top of it that they had to change that because they were losing a lot of folks. But moment is they're newer, they're using some of the same investors, I believe, I don't know for sure. But since they're newer, they're a little loose. So they're more apt to get things approved.

Yeah, that's, that's great. Thanks for letting me kind of go on a side tangent there. So for anyone tuning in, listening, Moment Financial Service Finance and Green sky will be three options to look into. No, I'm not affiliated. I don't get any kickbacks for this. Just wanted to share for folks offering financing quite yet and neither does Chuck, so.

Good, good, good.

The one thing did we, did we jump ahead in terms of the language to use at the close? Did we kind of get there a little bit?

We did a little bit. But again, when you go deeper, I'm sure you have to practice this to the point where it is a conversation. If, if you're really choppy in your clothes and you're, then you start talking about monthly investments, the, you're going to get the, you're going to trigger something and the homeowner to start asking, well, what's the term on that? And so what you're telling me is that you're going to add some to the price? If I want to. I mean, so. But if it's a conversation, they don't even think about it until after you've gotten their information, you've gotten them approved. And then they start asking this. That's when you know you're really good. Is they don't start asking questions until they've asked, actually signed everything they like. Now what did I just sign for?

You know, and the after the fact question. Love it.

Right, right. And now there is a power in this that you, you cannot abuse because you should not be putting people into a loan that is, you know, 20%, you know, or 17% without telling them. Now, most of the loans that we do are less than what they can get through their own credit union anyway, which is great. And it cost us quite a bit to do it. Whether it's 3%, 9%. And I'm sure that anybody that's been through finance training that has heard that there is the most used term is 9.99. You know why that is?

Because it's less than 10.

It's less than 10.

Which by the way, works I mean, this concept has been heavily researched and even though someone rounds it up, it's not 10.

That's right.

Yeah. Chuck, I want to recap a couple things and fill in the gap. The language we use, number one, you and I also share, I think, and I haven't seen any of your sales training. We're going to talk about where folks can go to find you at top rep, which I've heard amazing things about as well. But it's a conversational sale where you're fact gathering and these two last bullet points. I think I should have been in reverse order. But you asked when this is our discovery or our, as I put it in my closing formula, assessing where they're at in the process. When are they likely to be taking action on this? When we get our timing down to when relates to timing. And then you use the classic if, then close. If we can get this done for you and you don't have to make a payment till that comes in, then would you be comfortable moving forward? And we're using very soft language. And then the last thing is again, I'm just going to just put a big. We have to highlight this one in red. No F word. The F word here is financing, unless they bring it up. So we're going to avoid words like payment. We're going to avoid words like amount. We're going to use soft language like investment or installment and break that emotional connection to money. Money is emotional. We want to disconnect ourselves from the money side as much as possible. The other thing that I love that you did was you used for anyone who hasn't geeked out on elicitation. Are you familiar with elicitation?

Not. No.

Well, you used it. So I only learned about this recently, so I can't claim to be an expert, but I learned about this from an FBI agent named Jack Schaefer. And it's a classic interrogation technique where you use assumptive statements. So your assumptive statement was hey, so your tax return is a sizable amount. And when someone, when you use these assumptive statements, people will. They have a natural tendency to want to correct you. This is why keyboard commandos exist on Facebook. Everyone. Can't help myself. I got tell you that I know the answer right or correct you because you're a butthead. People have this need to correct or to validate and poof up. There you go. Yeah, it is a lot to big. It's a big amount. And then you can again, you said you play their ego. So using elicitation conversation. We can make assumptive statements and we're going to draw out more information from that prospect because they're going to guide you through it. And even doing like, oh, so you've got, you know, how are the other. You know, the. You have three estimates, I assume, and be like, no, no, no, not yet. And you're like, okay, great. So I'm number one now, right? Not. Not the third one. But no, I love that. And clearly you do it without. It might be a new word, but you're using it whether it's conscious or not. So anything else that you want to add to the language to use to close financing deals?

No, no, it's like you said, it has to be that conversation and it has to be smooth. If anybody that has really worked in the finance industry at all understands that people get fidgety when they find out that they're about to sign on the dotted line for a lot of money that they're now on the hook for. And you have to make it so easy to understand and feeling that, hey, you're going to. All I need is your signature. And you don't have to worry about this for a certain period of time. And again, I'm just putting them at ease. Yeah.

Love it. Classic risk reversal in sales, right? You got nothing to worry about. You don't have to worry about this till later. This is excellent, Chuck. Thank you for sharing with us these three key steps to closing with financing. I'm going to summarize them here. Number one is when to ask, and the answer is early. Number two is how to bring this up. Share with me. How, again, as a recap, how do we bring this up the most polite way?

Well, bringing it up quite simply is even in whether it's in your presentation, letting them know that you have different forms of payment that they can can choose from, or you simply bring it up through your price presentation in the form of a payment.

Excellent. Doing our discovery. Given the three categories, what type of person we've got our cash. Same as cash. We've got our folks that might need a little help, and we got folks like myself that might need financing with those the three categories, if my memory's working all right. And then we have our language to use again, which is conversational. One of the key things that I just want to highlight as well is, and you've seen this probably, you know, you, You've run larger teams than I have. How many sales reps want to go from here A to Z too fast? Like you need to go through A, B, C. You got to get all the steps. So when we say conversation, think of it like you're dating someone who's way out of your league. And, and don't try to go too far too fast or you're going to get rejected. That's the way I can think about it.

I love it. Yes.

Awesome, Chuck. Thank you. So for those folks who've tuned in and said, chuck, you blew my mind, I want more. You offer more. Where can folks find you and get in touch with you should they be interested in some additional training or working with you on a deeper level?

So the easiest way is going to one of the top rep events and they can go to www.topreptraining. we've got Atlanta on March 7th and 8th. We've got Dallas the or, sorry, yeah, we have Dallas 28th and 29th and then April 11th and 12th in Denver. So if they go to toprep training.com they can get all that information.

Excellent. And then what about social media? Is there a good way to follow you on social?

All they have to do is look up my name, Chuck Toky T H O K E Y and they should be able to friend me right there.

Awesome. So find Chuck on Facebook or go to ww.topreptraining.com for more. By the way, I have some clients who've gone to top rep training. I've heard great stuff about the event and I love that you guys are doing the, from what I've seen, interactive role play and really a hands on model, which is, which is awesome. So Chuck, thank you again so much for being here.

Thanks, Adam.