Navigating Through Uncertainty Ep. 6 with Joe Talmon

This is the Wealthy Contractor Podcast brought to you by G4 Marketing. Interviews with today's top home improvement entrepreneurs about marketing, sales, money, mindset, and lifestyle. Now here's your host, Brian Kaskavalciyan.

Hello and welcome to the Wealthy Contractor Podcast. This is Brian Kaskavalciyan. Kaskavalciyan with G4 Marketing Group. If you're one of our regular listeners, you know, I typically interview home improvement entrepreneurs and ask them about specific strategies they've used to become a wealthy contractor. In fact, we have quite a few killer episodes we've recently recorded with amazing strategies to implement in your business, but I've decided to put those aside right now because of the unique environment we find ourselves in. Instead, what I'll be doing over the next couple of weeks is sharing conversations I'm having with some of these same people to find what they're thinking, feeling, and doing right now. My hope is that by sharing these conversations, you'll hear how others are overcoming some of the challenges you might be facing right now. I also sincerely hope to inspire you and build your confidence. One thing you will notice in all of these conversations is the underlying expectation that what we are experiencing right now is a temporary setback. It will pass, and there will be even greater opportunity on the other side. So enjoy these conversations. We're all in this together. Stay the course. Do not give up. Keep moving forward. And always believe in yourself.

All right, everybody, I have got, I've got here Joe Tallman. I said earlier when I first started doing this that I'm reaching out to people I trust. And this is a guy that I trust more than most when it comes to this business, this industry. He's a good friend to many. A lot of you probably already know, or some of you might already know him through Dave Yoho Associates. Today is March 25th. Joe, this is not something I usually do and tell them what day it is, but it is March 25th. It is quarter to 1 in the afternoon, and Joe and I have just had a meeting about his company, Window Works and Comfort Bath, and I asked him if he would be kind enough to have one of these quick conversations, as I've been calling them, about, hey, what are you thinking, what are you feeling, and what are you doing right now? So, Joe, thank you, appreciate you. So I'll hit you with that question: what are you thinking, what are you feeling, and what are you doing?

Well, first, Brian, it's a real pleasure to be with you, and thank you for, uh, for inviting me. So I think, uh, first of all, what I'm thinking and feeling is that anytime that we as business people and as human beings in general are faced with a great challenge and a sense of pressure, you know, we have to be careful that we don't go to that darkest place in our mind that takes us to, if this happens, then this, if this happens, then that, if that happens, oh my goodness, it's over. You know, the brain does that. It's part of our survival instinct. However, We gotta catch ourselves in the middle of some of those thoughts and say, wait a second, one day I wasn't in this business and I had an idea and I had a dream and I had a thought and I went out and knocked some doors or I ran a little ad or I got on the phone or got some people and then started making some sales. The next thing I know, I got a real company, you know? And we gotta remember, we've been through some crap. So if anybody just stops and thinks back of what their startup was like, very few people remember or think about those first weeks in that first year. And if you did, you could find inspiration. You got through a startup and survived. Most people don't make it through the startup. We can definitely make it through this. I think, and somewhat like you've spoken, that we've really got to focus on getting through the month of April and coming out the other side. I really do. And I've got great hope that if we're intelligent about what we're doing and how we're doing it, the impressions we're making on both our employees and the impressions we're making in public, that we can be well positioned to thrive when it's over. Now, thriving when it's over may not look like thriving 6 or 9 months ago. Thriving when it's over, in my opinion, means that we are very, very efficient, and we're going to look harder at who's doing the selling every day and what is their efficiency. What is their NSLI? And making sure that we're putting the leads with the people that are getting us the fastest, best return. I think that's going to be critical. We're going to have to be critical with our skill level of our sales staff and our people who communicate with customers more than ever. We've got to remain empathetic. We can't come out of this with this hyper-aggressive, we're here for your business, we need your money, we want your money. That's probably not going to be well received. We've got to talk in empathetic terms that we are here to help people solve problems with their home, share great ideas, and help them get a price so when they're ready to make a decision, they'll have all the information they need to make a really good decision. And that's what our goal is, Mr. and Mrs. Smith. Now, we can schedule for this time or that time. To me, that's a more empathetic approach. It's a simple approach. The other aspect I think to capitalize is that our salespeople really, really need to be retrained on presenting price and asking for the order. Over the years, many people have done training and then assumed the salespeople got it. And I'm a believer we never got it, we're just working on getting it. But that's me.

It's a good assumption. Yeah, what's made you very successful in this business.

Yeah, so I have heard some of the craziest examples of how people transition into making a special offer for today. Most are horrific. And I will tell you, in my consulting days with Dave Yoho Associates, was coast to coast with small, medium, and mega-sized companies in the hundreds of millions. When we were training these revisit, or what we used to call rehash calls, If you could believe that an overwhelming percent of the people would say very common things, whether it was California, Minnesota, DC, or Texas. They would say, when followed up with after a demo no sale, they would say on the phone, I don't understand why you guys do business that way. I don't understand why we had to make a decision. This doesn't make sense to me. That didn't make sense to me. And what they're saying really is, after all these years and all this training— or supposed training in some cases, maybe— we still tell a lousy story, right, about how we move into an incentive environment to incent the customer to make a decision sooner rather than later. I mean, guys got— hasn't a particular company doesn't have a guy newer than 5 years, yet 80% of the people when they got called after a demo no-sale who were willing to talk all said the same thing: I don't understand why you do it. They also say, I don't understand why I had to make a decision right there. So in other words, they said, your story made no sense to me. How do I spend thousands upon thousands of dollars after a story that makes no sense? And let me tell you the one that makes the least amount of sense: if you buy today, you could save a bunch of money. People say, why? That's stupid. There's got to be a better reason. So I think we're going to have to think Think about, and this is what I call the easiest place to lose the sale. And when we come out of this, we don't want to be losing sales, brother. We want our people, everybody in the industry to be at peak performance. Here's the easiest place to lose the sale. When you go in, I call it the transition story from a regular price to an incentivized price. Now also tell you language is important. I don't believe in the word discount. I believe in the word incentives. To me, a discount's for a product that isn't worth the money, that can't be sold, that nobody wants, so we discount it down until somebody buys it, right? That's the dollar store. But an incentive, based on this simple principle: you love my product, you are confident we will meet your expectations, and you would love to do business with us. But at the same time, you would love to get just a little more value for your hard-earned dollar. And then I'll ask somebody, does it sound like I'm describing you when I say that? And they'll say, well, yeah, yeah, I love the product, it's going to meet all our needs, you guys are a home run, no doubt you'll meet our expectations, yeah, we would just like to get a little more value. Well, then we transition into an explanation for an incentive. Now the incentive is not designed to get them to buy, The incentive is to get them by at a particular point in time. Most people reverse it and they make what they call their discount or their drop, which I call an incentive, but they make it as the primary reason to buy. That's why cancellation rates go up. It should not— it should be nothing more than the company's nudge, the nudge to do the thing the client wants to do because of a high-quality presentation. Where it all goes wrong, sales drop Now keep this— I got to jump in and say this. If this was the perfect system, this, you know, give them a price, give them a big discount, and tell them if you buy today you get it— if that's a great system, why aren't everybody closing 50, 60, 70%? Think about it. Many companies struggle to close 30% in our country in direct selling. You've got all kinds of training, CDs and DVDs and podcasts and you name it, and they think— they're like, if I could get my guys to close 32%, I'd be great. Well, think about that. How good is the system if we're barely getting to 30, 32% close? So I believe in a nudge to do the thing they want to do. So what we should do is take them to what I call the tipping point. They want to do it, they want to do it, they just need a nudge. I don't believe you can take people who don't want to do it and give them a big discount and close them and then think that a bunch aren't going to cancel. So that is the place, that transition story from price A to incentivized savings, not to buy, but to buy at a particular point in time. So think of it this way. If Honda's got an incentive for their Odyssey vans, their minivans that people love, they're really not trying to convince someone who loves the Toyota van not to buy a Toyota and buy a Honda. What they're doing. If they say, look, we got $2,000 off this expensive van, but it's a Honda, got all these features, they're speaking to people who love Honda vans. And they're saying this little window of time is the time to buy the van you know you want to buy. It's not to say you don't like Honda minivans, but you don't like them, I'll give you $2,000 off to get you to buy one. See, that's not their message. And it shouldn't be ours. Think of it as a nudge, a nudge to do that thing. Call it your company. For me, it would be called the Window Works nudge. Mr. Mrs. Jones, it's just a little more incentive to help you get a little more value for your money if this is really what you want to do. We need to work on the place the sale gets lost, the transition story to an incentivized price or number to move up that timeline. And if we'll do that and we'll study that, we'll practice that and role play that in this slow time, if we'll get on Zoom meetings with our salespeople in this slow time, if we'll talk to our guys every 3 days and we role play back and forth with the Zoom meetings, man, we'd be ready to roll when we get through April. And when we do, if we do these things, we come out strong. And I'm a believer in the people in this business. I've got so many friends and so many colleagues I've met that I admire so much. And I just know that we keep our attitude strong and we keep our people strong, so that when we come back and hand them an appointment, then we're in a position to win, then we're definitely going to win. And that's, that's what I'm thinking and feeling, brother.

Wow. So wow, you guys just got a huge sales lesson. And that was part of what we were talking about earlier is what's going to be different? What does the future look like when we get past this? And hopefully we're going to be past this through April. What is it going to look like on the other side?

And I—

and that this is what Joe was saying was that selling, we're gonna have to get better. And the, the old ways that were working, maybe working marginally, working 3 weeks ago, they ain't gonna be working a month from now. And so what great advice. So some of the things that you're doing, this is, by the way, guys, or all of you that are listening, sorry, I meant guys in a very general sense. This is, you're hearing confidence and excitement from somebody whose business is basically shut down. Joe's business is in Illinois. They're on lockdown for another week or two, right? But listen to the confidence that's in his voice and the excitement of when this passes, the confidence that this is, and this will pass. Joe, I think one of the things, and you kind of alluded to it earlier, I think one of the most important things that, and we'll do a special episode on this or webinar or something in the coming weeks, but I think one of the most critical things every business owner in this business can do right now is understand every number of their business. Like, go into every piece of their business, starting from number of leads that came in, how many of them converted, how many of them actually demoed, what did they— the entire thing. Lead cost. You brought up NSLI, which is a critical number in this business.

Absolutely.

Can you explain what NSLI is and what are the things that you look for in NSLI? Because people can go back now and look at the data that they have from this year. They can go back to last year and look at that number. So can you explain that number?

Absolutely. So NSLI or RPA, two interchangeable terms, revenue per appointment or net sales for each lead issued. Net sales lead issued. So basically, that's telling you if you were to give out 100 appointments to 4 people, if one guy had an NSLI or one lady had an NSLI of $3,000, one had one of $2,000, one had one at $1,500, that every time an appointment goes out to the first rep, he's going to bring you, whether he sells it or not, at the end of 100, you're going to average $4,000 in revenue every time you give that person an appointment. Now it's your job as owners and leaders to make sure that's profitable, but it's $4,000. Now your next person on that list, every time they get 100, the average is $3,000. So that means you can just project your business. You can know on the first day of the month, if you know this math, what your volume is going to be. Because you say, if I give Larry 40 appointments at $3,000 NSLI, multiply 40 times $3,000 That's your revenue with Larry. And if MaryAnn's gonna, at 2,000 and you give her 40, then you know that's $80,000. And you know it's going to be there. Now the question is, when you stack your people from high to low, is this question. Am I constantly ensuring and motivating my top NSLI producers and keeping them the busiest? See, there's no fairness in this world and no equality. Just of opportunity. And so when people sharpen their skills, their NSLI goes up, they get more opportunity. But the other thing you want to look at is your sales efficiency by close rate. And you also, if you get into your data, which most people don't like to do because you got to sit there and look at spreadsheets, but I found some remarkable things recently, really got into it for the first time, and that was sales efficiency by day of the week. And what I discovered was that there are days of the week that we have much higher conversion rates on than others. There are days of the week that we have much higher holdup rates for appointments than others. And there are days of the week for sales conversion where I have individual salespeople who have extraordinarily high and extraordinarily low conversion. For example, I found a few people that on Friday have a historic low demo rate. And on Friday, there's some people with a high demo rate with a low close rate. So I'm wondering if these people really don't want to work on Friday. And so when they go on their Friday appointments, they just pretty much mail it in because on Tuesday through Thursday, they're killing it. Now listen to this. I found some salespeople on Monday that never sell a deal, but Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, they might write $50 grand every single week. So now I'm wondering, maybe I should give Charlie just Mondays off. He could never sell on Monday. I got weeks and weeks. We were able to sort it by day of the week per rep. And I got some guys, if they're not going to work on Friday, I might as well stop giving them appointments on Friday, right? Because telling them what they have to do, tell them what they should do, is irrelevant because human beings are going to do whatever they're going to do. That's one thing I've learned in this business. So knowing your numbers is going to position you to leverage every selling opportunity. Now the hope is this, that through some use and experimentation during this slow times and downtimes for some, where we play with and just experiment with virtual presentations, with online visualizers, with some web applications or with Zoom meetings, that we start to find ways to follow up into the future, to chat with people, to revisit with people, continue the conversation. You, you have always talked about marketing's job is to start a conversation. And most in this business think marketing is just to make a sale. But if we start more conversations and then we learn how to extend those conversations with people we didn't sell, we, we can build our businesses bigger and bigger. That's— these are the things I'm thinking. These is— this is what I'm feeling. Yeah.

All right. So Joe, I know you are—

you're—

even though you are on lockdown, you are a busy man. I appreciate you.

I appreciate your time. Time.

I'm probably going to tap back in, you know, maybe in a week or two and we'll have another conversation and see what's going on. But, um, like I shared with you earlier, and, and I, and I think we both agree, stay active through April. That's a mantra that you'll start to see a lot through everything The Wealthy Contractor does. You'll see it in the podcast. #SATA is what we're calling it. Stay active through April. Um, and, uh, so that you'll come out of this the other side strong and in a good position to Restart your business, restart your life, you know, do right by your team, do right by your customers, and, um, do right by, um, you know, everybody. We're all in this together. We got to help everybody. We got to help each other.

One last thing I got to throw in. I know we're running out of time, but we have adopted this, uh, a food program. Yeah. And we're going to put it in our marketing, and we're going to continue on. You know, we're working. We had some people do some investigation about food banks and donating food and how to do that and what's the best way to do that. And the easiest way to find out actually was just to call someone, ask them. So what we're going to be doing in all of our marketing and with our customers is we're going to tell them, obviously a lot of folks are going to be affected in different ways. So with every order, regardless of the size of the order, we're going to donate 100 meals to the local food bank. And you'll be surprised because these food banks know how to leverage dollars into $10 and $10 into 50s.

Yeah.

And leverage a few dollars into a lot of meals. It's very affordable. Any business could do it. It's right for the community. And it's a— it will be a great thing for your team when they see we do these types of things in our communities. So we're excited to launch that. I can tell you one last thing. While we've been doing this, we just yesterday launched on our website something for a virtual meeting. And if you go to mywindowworks.com, you probably take a look at it. Um, I haven't even seen it yet, but while we were doing this, 2 messages came across that people had been on the website and asked for a virtual meeting while you and I've been chatting. That's exciting. That is where that'll go in the future, right?

Right.

So, well, listen, man, I've got to jump.

Um, thank you.

It's great to be with you. So good to be with you, Brian, always.

Appreciate it, Joe. Thank you.

Bye-bye.

Thank you for listening to this special edition of the Wealthy Contractor Podcast. I hope it gave you the confidence to know that there are other successful contractors out there just like you who are not letting circumstances get in the way of providing excellent service to their customers, serving their communities, and achieving their goals. This will pass, and your attitude and the messages you take in right now will determine your mindset and where you end up. I'd encourage you to listen to the other podcasts in this series that we're releasing regularly, as well as going back to prior episodes of the Wealthy Contractor Podcast to hear from like-minded contractors in the industry so you can pick up on strategies, tactics, and tools that will help you overcome the circumstances around you. We'll be back to regularly scheduled podcasts soon. So until next time, this is Brian Kaskavalciyan with G4 Marketing Group and The Wealthy Contractor.