E221: 3 Crucial Errors that Make Tradies LOSE Sales, and How to Fix it for Faster Growth in Your Business: Sales, Leadership, Trade

Today we're going to focus on 3 crucial errors that make trade sales businesses lose sales, but more importantly, how you can fix it for faster growth in your business. 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, and over the last 15 years, I've helped hundreds of trade and sales leaders grow their businesses and generate over $200 million in additional revenue by simplifying their sales processes. Let's get started. Today we're gonna take a deep dive into some of the really common reasons that we see trade sales businesses lose sales. And most importantly, some things you can do about it to help you ramp your growth rates by not only increasing close rates, but also increasing the revenue you get for each and every deal. I want you to think about how your business runs quotes. And what I mean by this is whether or not you know exactly for every quote that you win or lose why you lost it or why you won it, but more importantly, what your average quote-to-close ratio is. Are you winning 1 in 10? Are you winning 1 in 5? Hopefully neither of those. Are you winning 1 in 4, getting better? 1 in 3, starting to look pretty good. One in two getting really strong, right? And whether or not you really understand exactly what your close rates are and why you win or lose deals. My experience with plenty of sales, or particularly trade sales businesses over the journey, and in particular brings to mind one of our customers I'm working with at the moment, is that he's actually not sure around why he wins or lose deals. And this is where the topic for today has come from. Not only does he not know why he wins or loses deals, but he's actually not sure around how many deals he closes. So when we're trying to work out how many leads he needs to grow his business, i.e., how many leads do you need to close at a certain close rate to hit your revenue targets, the exercise is really tricky because we simply don't have the data to know how many leads it should be. But also we then can't work out, all right, what do we need to do differently to increase your close rates? So I've been working with him around 3 areas that are really common around where tradies lose sales. And in his instance, actually 2 of those 3, or 2.5 of those 3, right, one he's okay at, they actually line up perfectly within his business. And now this business is in your residential home trade service business, right? So very much aligned to what plenty of our listeners are. So the first issue that he has is that he's not able to match the customer's excitement. Now this isn't just about being too slow, right? Certainly speed to lead is critical. Episode 213 was a good one for this. However, what we find is that not being able to match a customer's excitement as a sales leader, as a business leader, as a trade leader in particular, Contributes quite heavily to deals being lost. So what we mean here is that when a customer calls you and they're looking for information, they're wanting to know more, right? And we need to remember that particularly in trade businesses, but this is common in very many industries, is that we are far more, we are far more educated around our topics than our customers are, right? And where we don't match our energy, i.e., when a customer has a question, when they want to know more, when they want to know how you're going to roll out your product or service. I see many, particularly trade sales leaders, not match that excitement. And what I mean by there is they're short in their responses. They've got so much going on that they just don't have the time to say, hey, you're important, let me understand exactly what you need to know and work through it. Because trade leaders who do the inverse, and that is focus on what the customer's asking and how they can help them, but that mentality of I'm here to serve, trade leaders that do that absolutely close more deals. And for me at a personal level, I have been on the end of suppliers, right? Potential people who I want to work with. I want to have do something at my home or in my business who have been really short with me or at a more moderate level, certainly not engaged with me when I've had questions and wanted to understand them. And it's made me almost feel, and perhaps you've been in this situation too, it's made me almost feel like It's a privilege to talk to them. Now, I don't like how that makes me feel, and in so many businesses we've worked with, it's common across their customers, right? We want to feel not necessarily special, but we want to feel like for this moment you're engaged in talking to us. So the first area, a crucial area that I see trades lose lots of sales, is not engaging with their customers at the right excitement level. It doesn't mean you need to jump up and down, but it certainly means that when a customer wants to know something, if they're a customer that you want to work with, right, that you talk and engage with them. So that's number one, super easy to fix because all that needs to change is your mindset around when a customer calls, that you acknowledge you're there to serve, you're there to help, right? And that is how you will make sales for your business. The second one, now it's very similar from an attitudinal point of view, and it's a focus on tick and flick quotes. You go to site, you take your iPad, you put the data into your system, you flick out a quote. You go to site, you collect the data yourself, you write it down, you go back, and it doesn't matter what you're using, you can You can be using ServiceM8, you can be using Xero, you can be using, you know, a scorer, and they can quote through a scorer, whatever it may be, whatever job system you're using. But you go back and you do a tick and flick quote. Throw in the data, number goes out. Customer at the other end, you know, often in many instances, plenty of times when it's worse than this, but they get simply a system data dump. Here's your quote, it's one page, that's what it's going to cost. Occasionally they get a little bit more flavour with it, but they are getting not much more than here's your price. Now when we talk about matching excitement and making people feel engaged, if not a little bit special, right, that doesn't do a lot to help that unless your customer is looking to buy on price. Because when you do a tick and flick quote, what you set yourself up to be compared on is price. Because all the customer has is their engagement with you and the price that you prepare. Now the good news, the way through this is to have a more expanded quotation template. They are very easy to do, particularly with a lot of the digital software that's out there now, but also a process around how you talk through the quote, around how you present the quote, around how you get the key people involved, right? And that all comes from a lot of what we've spoken about previously around understanding what that customer wants. But when we are looking in a real binary lens here around areas that I see really critically costing trade businesses sales, it's when number one, they're not matching that customer's excitement. So not only are they too slow, but they're not prepared to invest the time, right? And number two is when they do tick and flick quotes. Now I certainly get asked the question, hey Ben, both of them take time. If I do that, I'm not going to be able to get to as many quotes or as many other areas of my business. And my response is always fantastic, because I would far rather you quote less but win more. I would far prefer that you, instead of quoting 100 deals and win 20%, you quote 70 deals or 75 deals and win 30%. Now you do your numbers, there's a moderate uptake there. But the reality is I normally see businesses start to double close rates when they do these basics right. So number 1, matching excitement. Number 2, tick and flick quotes. And number 3 is simply not following up. I don't know many salespeople that when I ask that question, are you ever guilty of not following up, that say no. I'm smiling because I'm in that camp and I can think of some customers right now I haven't followed up on. But we are perfectly human, which means we all make mistakes. However, having a process that doesn't allow you to follow up, i.e., a lack of process, is one of the most crucial areas that I see make trade businesses lose sales. And fortunately, this one's easy to fix because it's not just about setting up a system to have you follow up, having someone in administration in your business remind you to follow up, having tasks in your CRM reminding you to follow up, having set hours in the day reminding you to follow up. I don't mind what type of business you are, one of those three you can implement. It's also about speaking with a customer when you're on site around how you're going to follow up. Because when you get that right, when the customer is expecting what you want to do, for me, I'm amazed at how often I'll actually see customers call us back. Hey, you're going to do this by this date, right? We maybe miss our deadline and they're calling us to check in. So certainly one of the key and crucial areas that I see business leaders, sales leaders, trade leaders make is not following up quotes. I would say to all of these, in fact I do say to all these customers, if you can't be bothered following up, don't bother quoting. Go and do some of the other great things that we spoke about last week in episode 217 to grow your business. Right, there are lots of ways to grow your business without new leads, but if you're not prepared to follow up, don't bother quoting. I do occasionally have salespeople that will come to me and say, hey, I'm not gonna follow you up after this quote. And look, congratulations for the confidence, but I have never worked with a business who doesn't close more deals by following up. Certainly there are guardrails you wanna set as to how often you do it, but this is one I'd go so far You know, on a recorded live podcast that plenty of people, you know, hundreds of people are listening to on a live podcast that says, if you follow up, you will close more sales. Put me on record, hold me to account. So if we had to sum up there, the 3 areas that make tradies lose sales, you know, the crucial areas. Number 1, not matching excitement, being too slow or not giving the customer your time. Number 2, tick and flick quotes that don't do anything other than provide a price, which then means you're compared on price. And number 3 is not following up quotes. So that's not bothering, not making the time to actually see through with your customers exactly what they thought and what they'd like to do next. So if you're a business that feels like you are making some of these crucial mistakes, right, even be it at small levels, and you're getting frustrated because you're spending hours of wasted time quoting but not getting the jobs, well, I think the key message I have for you is that without changing something now, you'll continue to get these same really frustrating results over and over again. So For us, for any podcast listener, we offer a free quote audit. It will pinpoint exactly why you're not winning more jobs and what you need to do to increase your close rates quickly. So please click on the free quote audit link in the show notes. You can get started now. It's super simple. Um, and we look forward to talking to you if you're ready. If not, that's it for today. Really look forward to catching up with you again this week. Bye for now.