Ben Wright argues trade businesses that adopt a structured sales process see revenue growth of two to ten times. He breaks down five steps: rapid response to leads, building warmth and trust in meetings, aligning quotes to perceived value, transparent closing conversations, and post-sale focus on customer happiness for repeat business.
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As a trade industry or construction leader, it's easy to think that a sales process doesn't apply to you. But in so many cases, that's just not true.
Welcome to Sales Process Made simple. The show helping seven to eight figure industry, construction and trade sales and business leaders. Finally, end the stress of inconsistent sales by simplifying your sales systems so your team can close more deals and grow faster. I'm your host, Ben Wright, a leader who has been building businesses and sales teams just like you for the last time 20 years.
In this episode we are going to focus on why having a sales process is just as important for trade industry or construction leaders as it is for any more traditional or longer sales cycle business out there. By the end of this episode, you should have one key outcome that you want to implement for for your business. For each of the five steps of the sales process, we see successful businesses rolling out to market. As a trade industry construction business leader. So those type of businesses that spend lots of time in the B2B and the B2C markets promoting, selling, installing, trade or building related products, I see so many of our businesses not following sales processes. So I think today I'd like to start off with a question for you that says as a leader of one of those businesses, or regardless if you're not in that industry, as a leader of the business you're in, do you ever feel like that a good robust sales process doesn't apply to you? Look, if you do, you are definitely not alone. We have a huge amount of brands and businesses that we work with who either believe they have a sales process or don't think it necessarily applies to them because they're in a slightly different industry. Well, I can tell you from having worked with hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of leaders and salespeople over the last few years that those who do have a sales process, even in a very primitive form, outperform those who don't by multiples in revenue numbers. And I'm not talking about 10 or 20%. I'm talking about doubling, tripling, quadrupling, and even up to 10 times more revenue growth because they have a consistent process that they follow. So way back in episode 143, we profiled what a great compact sales process looks like for a business team. And essentially it went along the lines of step one being lead generation, step two being meet and greet, step three being the quoting process, step four being the closing element of any deal, and step five being what happens when you win that business. So today, what I want to Run through is how great trade, industry, construction style businesses take a sales process, tailor it to themselves, or personalize it to themselves, and roll out a really compact version of those five steps to make sure they're succeeding and growing their business. And the way I want to do that is to simply put myself into your shoes and find one thing for each of those five steps that I would be prioritizing my team or my business or simply my own activities around to make sure I'm closing more deals. So let's get through this. Step one is all around lead generation. If I am a plumber right now, who has inbound leads coming in, what I am focusing on is speed. So speed of response, how quickly I can either answer that phone. Now, that doesn't mean if you answered on the first ring or the second ring, but that's making sure that the calls are answered. And if you can't do that, if you can't be answering calls live, it's then making sure that you have a really rapid, super fast response time to be able to get back to those customers. And that's all about pairing your excitement with their excitement. And what I mean by that is often when you get a lead that comes in, that's the time of most excitement or most engagement. And that's when we want to be talking to customers, so we want to be engaging with customers as quickly as we can. Step one, lead generation is all about speed.
Step two, when it comes down to.
Meeting and greeting, whether it's on site, whether it's over video, whether it's over the phone, for me, what I'd be focusing on here, if I'm a landscaping business, is all about warmth. So building a great relationship with our customer as quickly as possible, or beginning to build a great relationship with our customer as quickly as possible. Because at the end of the day, warmth will breed a level of likeability, not necessarily friendship, but with likeability will often come trust. So as a landscape gardener right now, when I'm out on site doing that first quote, I would be focusing on warmth and making sure that we can generate a form of relationship as quickly as we can. The third step, when it comes down to quoting, if I am an electrical contractor and I'm presenting my quote through to a homeowner or a business, what I am focusing on is value. And that all comes down to making sure that I've aligned our value with what's valuable to our customer. And to do that, we obviously need to understand what's valuable to them. And by the way we can of course drill down into this so heavily, but I'm trying to put myself in your shoes right now and say what's the one thing that, that I would be focusing on to get right? So when I'm quoting, it's all about making sure that whatever we're putting forward is articulated or spelled out or written to our customer in a manner that's creating value for them. So align our value with what's valuable for them. Step four, when we're looking at the close, I'm really focusing here. If I am a business that's providing products to the building industry, I am really focusing on transparency. So understanding when the customer needs a product buy and how their decision making process is going to run before I get that quote out and then follow up with the close. So transparency is all about when do you need it, how long is it going to take to make a decision, what type of lead times are you looking at to make sure we can get this onto site? So it's all about being really transparent so you're on the same page when it comes to speed of close, rather than one party wanting to move quickly and one party wanting to move slowly or anything anywhere in between. And last but not least, when it comes down to the post sale, it's all about happiness. Making sure that our customer is happy with what we've done. Because from one sale often opens up another or if another sale doesn't open up, it can often open up referrals. And some of the great businesses in the trade and construction industries that I see know how to win a deal and then make that deal turn into two, three, four and five deals down the track. It's cheaper because you're not investing in lead generation. It's faster because they trust you and at the end of the day it's more profitable because you are able to deliver at those higher margins. So to recap those key elements from today, sales process is just as important for a trade construction industry type of business as it is any other business in this world. However, what I see work really effectively for these style of businesses is a simplification of that process. So if I'm looking across those five areas of a great sales process, I'm focusing on speed at the lead generation stage, creating warmth and beginning that relationship building at the meet and greet stage, quoting around the value that the customer sees in what we do and not just us closing with transparency. So each party's moving at the same pace and once we're delivering that sale really being focused around delivering happiness to your customer. So right now what I'm hoping that you're thinking is, okay, there's something in there, or these five simple steps. There's something in here that I can do and apply to my business. If it's lead generation, start there. If you've got more than one, write them down and put them into your diary to roll out over the coming weeks. Because each of those five steps, I guarantee, will move the dial and will grow your business if you can get them rolling out with your customers. So I'm grateful. Thank you for listening. Today we're rolling out episodes every Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Nice and early in the mornings if you're in Australia, a little bit later if you're in the rest of the world. That's it for today. Please keep the focus as we talk about every week on being 1% better each and every day because it will make a differ. We'll see you soon. Bye for now.
Are you struggling to grow your monthly sales numbers? Feel like you've reached a sales ceiling, are involved in every deal, or have no real sales system in place to help you grow? And is that causing a level of worry or stress about how you can get more sales in the future? If that's you, that's exactly why we created the Sold Out Sales Teams program to help you get month on month sales growth with less stress. In just the first week, we will lock down your quoting process to grow sales by 25 to 30%. And that's just week one. And for the first three podcast listeners that we speak to this week, we'll offer you a bonus one on one strategy session with me to make sure you can pay off your investment even faster. Which by the way, for most businesses is only one or two extra sales. To book in, click the link in our show notes. It's a direct calendar link so you can instantly confirm your meeting time.
