These Small Mistakes Are Killing Your Close Rate

Most roofing salespeople lose a sale before they even touch these shingles. Now, that's not because the prospect's mean or tough or something. They're causing the prospect's guard to go up, and they get rejected quickly. Now, when a prospect opens the door and they get rid of you, it's not because they're rejecting you. They're just rejecting the category that they believe you're in. What's that category? Salesperson trying to sell them something. You got to learn how to disarm that prospect. Immediately, they start to view you different, maybe like the expert or the authority who can actually help them what they want. This is going to be a banger training. You don't want to miss it. All right, let's bring. Let's bring the vibe board in, man. Let's bring that vibe board in. We got to train these guys. They are committed to mastery. Here we go. Here we go. Oh, this is going to be fun. So you're losing that sale within that first 10 seconds. It can happen very, very rapidly. Now, why do I say that? This is so important for you, okay? So realize this. Within that first 5, 6, 7, even 10, 12, 15 seconds, your prospects, they are picking up on social cues from you, okay? That triggers their brain to respond in one of two ways. Okay? So if I come across too excited, okay, Like, I'm too needy, like, I'm attached and I'm pushy, that typically triggers what's called fight or flight mode. So when you get on the door or you answer the phone or you get in person and they throw out objections real quick, like, hey, I'm not interested, or, you know, we're good, or we don't need that. Okay? That is a triggered response based off of what you're saying and asking and not understanding how to ask that yet. Okay? And I'm going to show you the differences with this very important for you. Now, the second way can happen here. You're going to come across more middle. Like, you're the expert, okay? You're the authority figure. You're collective. You're unbiased. You're calm. You're detached. Okay? Like I said, the authority. So what that does is it causes the prospect to let their guard down. They're more at ease. All right? Now I'm going to show you some techniques around how to do that. So instead of fight or flight mode, this is where we're disarming the prospect. And when I say disarming the prospect, all that really means in psychology is that you're calming their nervous system. Now why is that so critical for you to master? So when you knock on the door, or maybe you're on a phone with a prospect, or you're in person or virtual, whatever it is, okay? There's three things I'm doing here that I have to do in that first 5, 10, 15, 30 seconds that, like I said, will make or break you. So the first thing, these are called nepq, connection questions. Now if you're not familiar with me, NEPQ stands for Neuro Emotional persuasion question. Okay. I went to school to become a psychologist, just specialize in neuropsychology, the study of the brain. Why is that so critical for you to master? If I can get their guard down in the beginning, it's so much easier to sell. So the first thing I'm going to do is I want to take the focus immediately. Let me change this here. We're going to take the focus immediately off of you and we want to put it onto them. Now most salespeople know how to do this. This is like sales 101, 2 and 3 is where most salespeople lose a deal. So number two is how do I disarm them? Where that prospect lets their guard down. You know what I'm talking about? So when you knock on the door or you hear the tone shift on the door, you maybe kind of see their body language change or if you're on the phone, you kind of hear them relax a little bit. That's because their guard goes down, the nervous system is calmed. Okay? Now why do you want to do that? Because how many times do you ask what you feel are good questions and then that prospects give you a bunch of vague generalized surface level answers. That means their guards up, I want it down right, just like you do. And then number three, how do I take them from this price or cost based thinking, right, and get them immediately into results based thinking. Now why is this really critical? You start to ask yourself what how much is this going to cost? So if you're maybe asking that question to yourself, are your prospects asking that same question when you talk to them? And do you want them to think this the whole way through? Are you with me? All right, so I'm going to show you some mistakes that most reps do so you can eliminate those. Then I'm going to show you what to do instead. You want to pay attention to this. Like I literally could make or break a deal for you today or tomorrow. So what not to do. So if you go Door to door here. Do not wear the ID badge right here. You know what I'm talking about. Okay? You might as well put salesperson on your forehead because that's what that means. Now why does that mean that? Because look at everybody that's selling them solar or roofing or alarms or pest control or anything. Door to door always wears an ID badge. So you automatically smell like a salesperson. Now take the badge, put it in your pocket. If they ask to see it, you just bring it out. Easy fix, okay? So do that. Now, second thing, a lot of reps don't understand this, and I don't know why. My first job was selling alarm systems door to door. I think my best Summer had 413 installs in four months. Summer, not year round. They didn't count them year round then. That was a lot of fun. So first of all, you don't want to stand square, like right in front of the prospects grill. It causes them to get defensive. Especially if you're a guy, let's say it's a woman there, maybe you're like towering over. You don't want to do that. You always want to angle about six to eight feet back. I think most of you know that. Now. My friend and I, Mark Bowden, body language expert, we talk about this quite a bit in my last podcast. Most people are right handed, okay? So I typically am going to stand on their left side. So if they're left hand, like here's their left hand, okay, I'm going to stand angled to the left side. We have defensive mechanisms still wired in our brains from our ancestors. If most people were right handed back in the day as well, what hand did they carry their weapon in? The right hand. So if I'm angled over here, I'm almost a threat to that other person. Especially if they're a male, okay? Still buried in their survival part of the brain, okay? And so that causes them to lose trust in you. Like there's something wrong with you, like you might try to get them. Okay? So you want to stand over here. 9 out of 10 times they're right handed. Maybe one in the house or something. I find out they're left handed, I kind of switch to the side. All right? That is a hack that you probably didn't know. All right, now, couple things here. I want to not look like a salesperson, okay? So on the doors, I never really wore a polo. I never wore a nice watch. I never really wore like all the fancy jewelry because I want to look as disarming as Possible. Now, if I'm selling roofing, and this could be really for anything, if I sold anything door to door, okay. Especially roofing, I can have a tape measure. Okay. Even when I sold alarms, I put a tape measure here. Most sales people don't really have a tape measure on them. Okay. I had leather work gloves, like hanging off like a little like a clip there with leather work gloves. Doesn't look like a salesperson. Right. I also had a construction vest that I wore. I wore like a neon orange one or like a neon lime green one. Okay. I would just switch back and forth depending on which week I did better. I wore typically a T shirt that had the company logo on it just to look a little bit differently. Okay. And then I wore those boring new balance grandpa, you know, talking about the grandpa old white shoes. You just want to look as boring and low key as possible because it's more disarming. Now if you sell more high end things, okay. If you're selling to executives in corporate America, you're not going to wear that. Obviously we're talking about door, door here. So the point is, I want to look non threatening. I want to almost look like a construction worker knocking on the door. Construction worker knocks on the door. You don't really feel threatened. Okay. This is important right here, very important. You don't want to sound like everyone else. Now what do I mean by that? What do most salespeople sound like when they first start knocking on the door? Okay, think about that for a second. That could be selling anything. I want to sound differently. I want to interrupt their pattern. So I want you to write that down or comment in the chats right now. Comment, pattern, interrupt, and I'm going to show you a pattern erupt. I don't want you to play the numbers game because that's what I had to do when I first got into sales. You know, my first two months, I didn't know what I was doing. Nobody. They gave me a script, some books by the sales gurus, and I had to kind of figure all this out from where I was learning from going to school for human psychology to become a psychologist. I don't want to show you the numbers game approach. I want to show you the skills game approach. That's what I did the next 18 years and apparently it worked out as a salesperson, or at least grandma told me it did. Good job. I'm going to show you different pattern ups for door approaches. If you sell door to door, if you sell outbound, you want to stick around. I might show you one for that. If you. And if you sell inbound, if you have an inbound appointment, there's going to be a little bit of a difference there as well. Now, let's talk about the door approach. Now, there are nuances based on the company you work with, but typically it's something like this. Prospect answers the door. Okay. And you say, hey, are you the homeowner? And then a lot of salespeople do, what? How are you doing today? Now, I want you to think about that for a second. Your mom taught you you need to be polite to strangers. But when you say that automatically, do you feel the prospect really believes that you care how their day's going? Not at all. Because how many times does a salesperson come up to you and say, hey, how you doing today? And you're like, yeah, I'm good. What's this all about? And that's what happens. Typically, the prospect says, I'm good. What's this all about? Or, yeah, just get to the point. And immediately the salesperson does. Yeah, My name is Rob, and the reason why I've stopped by is we're out here helping your neighbors on Walnut Lane with XYZ or whatever you sell. Could be roofing everything. That is typically what most salespeople say. My name is the reason why I stopped by. Now, I understand a lot of you have learned, hey, I've got to tell them the reason why I stopped by. The problem is, is that everybody that sells anything door to door says the same thing. And if our brains recognize patterns, would that be a pattern that your prospect also starts to recognize? Especially if you're in an area that gets a lot of door knockers? Okay, think about that for a second. Okay. So immediately, sometimes they're like, oh, we're good. Not interested. We don't need it. You know, if you're in roofing, we don't need a roof. Or we already had somebody give us an estimate. We're good. Okay. And immediately the guard goes up again. I want to trigger curiosity, so I want you to write this down. This is called a pattern interrupt. When I started knocking the doors, it was the year 2001, so we didn't have iPad, so they had a metal clipboard, and I had, like, a pin. I sold alarms, so I would be, like, kind of looking at the windows or something like that. If you sell pest control, maybe you're looking at the ant mounds or something, or spiderwebs, depending on where you're at. If you're selling roofing or solar. You might be kind of taking notes, like, looking at the roof up here. When the prospect comes to the door, it causes them to like, oh, what's going on? It kind of triggers curiosity. They're like, yeah, how can I help you? Yeah, are you guys the. Are you the property owners here now? What am I doing right there? That's an example of a panorup. Now, why is that a panorup? How did my tone sound? I kind of like, I was confused. And why did I want to have a confused tone there? Because it draws them in. Do you see how I leaned in? I said, yeah. Are you guys the property owners here? Now, what I found was that's called mirroring. Instead of you mirroring what the prospect does, I'd rather teach you how to get the prospect to mirror you. That's way more persuasive. Okay. We're going to get into that in some other training. So when I lean in and I act like I'm a little bit confused and a little bit concerned, that typically causes the prospect to lean in a little bit. Like something's going on that they might not know about. So instantly I'm triggering curiosity. I get the guard down and they start to like, what's going on? Yeah. Are you guys the. Are you the property owners here? Yeah, yeah, we're the property owners. What's going on? Yeah, my name is Jeremy and I. I apologize. I've only got a few minutes before my next appointment. I stopped by and see what I did there. I've only got a few minutes before my next appointment. What am I doing there? That is called selling the exit. Just write that down. Selling the exit. Now, why do I want to sell the exit? The prospect feels like I'm not going to be there that long. There's no pressure to sell them anything. So I'm selling the exit. Now, do I know that I'm going to be there probably longer than two minutes? Yes. Now, some of you might be saying, well, 10 minutes in, the prospect's going to say, didn't you have an appointment? Literally 1 out of 200 times, they just get caught up into it because they emotionally get involved. I stopped by because I just came from Sally Henderson's home a block over. She's the lady. She has the big, like, red door. She always walks that poodle down the road. You know, Sally, why am I asking that? Why am I saying the big red door? She always walks a poodle or something. That would stick out about Sally. Because I'm just continually Interrupting their patterns. Now, right after you do that, okay, you're immediately going to keep going. And I'm not quite sure if you. You seen all the signs or if you got like, those. The non renewal letter in the mail. My tone sounds confused. I'm not quite sure if you've got the non renewal letter, but it also sounds. What, concerned? Like, I'm concerned for you. That's a concerned tone. A tone that shows empathy. Yeah. Sally just got hers. Like, it's right here. When we teach roping companies how to do this, we'll actually have them take a non renewal letter from the last prospect that they sold to and they'll actually show the non renewal letter. I would suggest doing that because it just makes it more real. Like, oh, gosh, what is that? Okay, now have you guys thought about what you'd have to do if, like, when you got the non renewal letter yourself? Notice I said that in a concerned tone. Now why do I want to use a concern tone there? Because I want to see doubt. Now, why would I want to see doubt? Because that causes them to open up a little bit. Okay. Think they might have a problem. I'm also saying you don't know what's wrong with your roof. But if I said, hey, you don't know what's wrong with your roof, they'd be like, dude, nothing's wrong with my roof. So I'm using a neighbor telling me, which then starts to tell the prospect what in the prospect's mind, they start to think, is something wrong with my roof? You see how I'm seeding that from the neighbor? Oh, you're getting it. I know you got that? Okay. Yeah. She didn't even see, like, any, like, visible, like, water damage or like, you know, the yellow stain. She didn't see any yellow stains on this. On the ceiling yet. And they automatically visualize what yellow stains on the ceiling. See how I'm implanting? I'm literally transferring emotion there. I guess it was just being absorbed in the framing. So now I'm seeding from Sally that this could be happening to this homer I'm talking to, but I'm not saying it directly to them. This is called write this down. An indirect frame. Write down indirect frame. I wasn't going to tell you about that, but I'm going to give you one. That's an indirect frame. They were basically saying she had two weeks to get the new roof replaced or they were just going to drop her anyways. How. How old is your roof up there? Just by the way. And I go right into the first question. See how I'm just transitioning right there. I don't just stop now. What a lot of salespeople do. A minute into the conversation, Can I hop up on your roof and give you, like, a free estimate? 70% of the prospects say, what? No, thank you. I might go now. Hey, would you. And like I said, I've only got a few minutes because I do have to go. I'm a little bit behind schedule. Would you be angry at me if I offered to hop up on your roof for a quick estimate, maybe take a few videos and maybe show you what I found? Would. Would you be angry at me if I did that for you? And what do you think most homeowners are going to do? Why does this work? Would you be angry at me? Okay, if I offered, don't say an inspection, because you might say, well, how long is it going to take? Quick inspection, I'll take a few videos and show you what I found. Would you be angry if I did that for you? Now it is really, really hard for the prospect to say yes, I'd be angry at you. What is an unsafe word that no prospect wants to say to you before they trust you? Unsafe is saying yes. What is the safest word for a prospect to say to you? No. That no eventually leads to a yes. Okay. See what I'm doing? It's really hard to say yes, I'd be angry at you. You know, it's interesting. I had Chris Voss, FBI negotiator, on my show a few months back, and we helped him hire a new sales manager for his firm and everything. We were talking about using these ideas. Crazy idea, completely opposed, totally ridiculous idea. And we just kind of came up with some. A new ones for you guys there. Like I said, hard for them to say yes to that, easy for them to say no. Okay, that helped you. Okay. Now, what if I sold Outbound? What if I called Outbound? It could look something like this. Okay. The prospect answers the phone. I'm immediately going to say their name. I'm not going to say, is this John or is this Mary? Because is this implies what? That you're a stranger? So automatically the guard goes up. You ever get a call from somebody, like somebody from high school, and they're like, hey, it's Amy, Amy's Smith. How are you? You don't know who that person is, but what does your brain do? Yeah, I'm good. How are you? And your brain starts doing what? Who's Amy Smith? Who's Amy Smith. How do I know Amy Smith? Did I meet her somewhere? You wouldn't dare say. Who's this? That's a disarming technique. Okay, looks at. Yeah, he called, responded to an ad about looking at maybe some different roofing options to I guess stop the water damage in your house. Right, Right. Okay. See how I'm doing that? Okay, now let me show you an inbound example. Looks like you. You booked about I guess looking at some possible roofing options to hey, crazy idea. Maybe prevent some water damage from happening. Right. I can be a little bit playful there. I'm doing is going into results based thinking, taking them away from price based thinking. Hey, hope that helped you today. Team was kind of crazy. Made me get up here. What are we gonna do? Vibe board on a crane. Hit the subscribe button if you want more videos like this. And if you're the type of person person who knows you want to get better. Right? You, you're smart. Okay. That's why I love working with high level salespeople. There's going to be a link in the description for our new university. It's called seventh Level U. Okay. We're going to put a link in there. So check it out. 30 days for free just for you. I think I'm going to climb over the edge here. You know, I got this harness on. Little MacGyver action. Anyways, stay safe out there. Shake and bake until the next time. We'll see you soon.