E198: 3 Times you Should ALWAYS ask for Referrals to Reduce Sales Reliance on New Leads

In this episode, we're going to unpack why sales in the trade industry feel harder than they should and one simple way for you to fix it. Welcome to Sales Growth Made Simple, the show helping 7 to 8 figure trade, construction and industry 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 20 years. In this episode, we're going to have a look at why trade sales do feel harder than they should, and then I'm going to deep dive into a way that you can fix that today, because I think it's well within our power to not only recognize that sales feel harder, but also to roll in ways that we can fix them to really take control of it. As I grow older, one thing that is really clearly landing with me is that time is well and truly my most precious commodity. It doesn't matter whether that's personal time, whether that's a balance between personal and work time, or whether that's just simply the time that I'm allocating tasks or to tasks in work. It is becoming more and more important for me. I'd also say that with the digital world and the connected world that we now live in, it is so hard to turn off. And the amount of emails, subscriptions, podcasts, you know, Instagram, social media feeds, there are to scroll is just so significant that I feel like I am more compelled to be always on than I certainly was at any other time in my life. I think phones or emails on phones weren't really even a thing when I first started in my working career. It wasn't until 2 or 3 years in that that began. So when your day finished, it literally finished. That was it. But now it is so hard to remain disconnected. That for me, time and what I spend my time on is the most important goal or the most important task in my business that I really need to get right. So today we are actually gonna focus on why that can make trade sales feel harder than they should and one simple way to fix it. So for me, having worked with that many trade sales businesses, hundreds and thousands now of salespeople, one thing that's become really clear to me in leaders, particularly in the trade industry, is that we are servants to so many parts of our businesses, right? The wider business, not just our sales function, needs our time. It's all around operational delivery, customer inquiries, past customer sales, compliance, accounting, legal, doing the basic books that our accounting team can't do, being able to set up processes, systems, deal with fires, right? The list goes on and on and on, particularly as a trade sales leader. To what we have to attend and what we have to put our focus onto. And having worked with so many trade sales leaders, particularly over the last few years, I actually think that in this industry it is pronounced. In fact, it's a little bit larger than it is in other industries because often our industries are dealing with quite high levels of urgency, particularly when we talk about electrical, particularly when we talk about plumbing, building, construction, these type of projects that when things go wrong, they need immediate attention. So our ability as leaders to say, hang on, I'm just going to leave that for now and come back to it in a couple of hours. Doesn't always work. Sometimes we literally do need to drop everything, right? And get into whatever the most urgent task is. However, what I've also learned over that journey is that as leaders, there are some structures that I've seen implemented quite consistently across the trade industry that helps trade salespeople and trade sales leaders actually take control of their sales funnels, but also allow themselves to deal with urgent issues and all the other things that they need to focus in around their business. And what I call it is a power hour. And a power hour for me, it's generally about an hour. All right, makes sense. It's generally every day. If not every day, it's certainly 4 days of the week. And it always has a focus, not generally, it always has a focus on what needs to be done in that time. So normally how this rolls out for a trade sales leader, and I'm sharing it today because whilst it's a very simple process, I've seen it make significant differences to so many sales leaders in these industries. I wanted to make sure that for those of you who haven't heard it, right, it was worth hearing, or perhaps hearing a different angle as to how you can make this happen. So how the power hour normally works is that it's every day. It's normally in the morning, but not first up. So it normally happens immediately after all the urgent tasks are done. So after toolbox meetings happened, after you get out to site and set the team up, after you respond to anything urgent, any code reds that have come in over the last 12 hours overnight, right? But certainly it's set up that once you've handled what's really urgent, what's really important, you then roll straight into your sales power hour. At least normally, practically, ends up being somewhere between about 8:30 and 9:30 for most of the trade businesses that I work with. So first hour or a couple of hours dealing with any urgent issues, then once they're solved, it's right, okay, I'm getting straight into my sales tasks for the day, right? I turn everything off, or the phone gets diverted or it's on silent and I jump into that hour. So let's say we had a sales power hour from 9:00 AM till 10:00 AM. And it's also important to note we can't do these too early 'cause often our customers won't take calls that early. So we need to be able to balance the time we're doing this with a time that obviously works for our customers. So that power hour is set up, it's rolled out straight away once all the urgent tasks are done. And it normally follows a process of simply going through 4 areas. Number 1 is new leads. Straight away onto new leads, anything that came through overnight, they are called, They are texted, they are responded to, and we qualify to make sure they're worthwhile, right? We obviously at the same time are booking in our site inspections or doing what we need to do to move them to the next step. So the first part of that power hour is new leads, anywhere from 5 to 15 minutes. The second part of that power hour rolls into quotes. So quotes from the prior day that we couldn't get to, or quite simply some trade leaders actually leave their quotes to be done during this power hour. And for those people, we might see the power hours end up being an hour and a half or something a little bit longer. So quotes are the second area that gets done anywhere from kind of 10 to 45 minutes depending on the business and depending on how many quotes you need to get out, right? So if you're running a 1-hour power hour, first 15, 10 to 15 minutes new leads, next 15 to 20 minutes is on quotes. From there, roll into sent quotes. So recently sent quotes where we need to be following up on, right? One's done yesterday in particular. They're the first priority. Make sure they were received, call them, ask them what they like, what they didn't like. Plenty of information across our podcast on what to do there, but certainly roll straight into following up prior quotes. And then from there, the fourth task is setting yourself up for tomorrow. So in this power hour, what I see works really well is that new leads are attended to, new quotes are done, sent quotes are also attended to, and then tasks for the next day are set up. And the reason I find this really impactful is that when leaders, or in particular sales and trade leaders, walk in to start that power hour, it's nice to have something to pivot off, to have as an anchor to build your momentum from immediately. So the next day comes around, you've got 3 or 4 tasks that are already sitting there ready to go. For a lot of sales leaders, they may have covered these tasks off during the day, during the afternoon prior, right? When they get a little bit of spare time, but having tomorrow's task set up so you can roll straight into your next power hour works really well. So that's the power hour in a broad sentiment explained. So just to recap really clearly on, I don't think why it's needed. I think if you're a sales or trade sales leader, you'll really clearly resonate with being a servant to just so many parts of your business. But how the power hour looks to be able to recap that is that first of all, it's done straight after urgent tasks on, you know, every day, ideally every morning. It's done at a time when you can call customers, but you've completed all those nagging things that need to happen. So hopefully the pace of your phone ringing has slowed down. It then focuses on 4 areas. Number 1, new leads. Number 2 is quotes, new quotes to be done. Number 3 is sent quotes that need to be followed up. And then number 4 is tomorrow's tasks. Now, the only other thing I'd like to add here is that to make this happen, we often need to have a blackout period in our calendar where we don't start customer meetings until a little bit later in the day. I'm completely fine with that, right? Of course, there'll be times when you just cannot meet a customer at any other time than during that power hour, and, and okay, so be it. Occasionally that needs to happen. But I'm certainly okay with the calendar starting a little later to get out to site visits with customers, because if you've handled all of that admin work and all that sales admin work early, then it takes the pressure off the back end of your day. So sales visits can run a little bit later, knowing that you don't have a stack of admin that you need to do. And look, to be frank, most leaders I work with are better at admin earlier in the day. They're sharper. Not everyone. Some people do work better at nights, but for the most part, where they can get that done in the day, they're certainly more impactful and happier to get it done. So they're the main takeaways from today. What I'm hopeful that you're going to leave thinking is, okay, How do I set myself up so that I can buy myself time to do my sales and quoting effectively? And I will say that if you're a bit frustrated that you're spending lots of time or wasted time on sales quotes or on your sales activities and you're not getting the results from them, I will say that if you don't change something now, you're going to continue to get these same, I guess, stressful results over and over again. So what I've done for podcast listeners is I've got a free quote audit that will pinpoint exactly where and why you're not winning more jobs and what you need to do to increase your close rates quickly. So that, that's probably a really good link into today's episode. There's a free quote audit link in the show notes. It's near the top. You can click on that to jump in and book some time with me. I'd really like to help you. But other than that, I'm grateful you're listening in today. We are on 3 times a week. Look forward to catching you on the next episode. Bye for now.