A Personalized Company Story Closes Deals

Talked about a few of the, the like what I would call skills and they're soft skills really. There's soft skills of a salesperson who usually has some experience or some really good coaching that through that experience or good coaching he's learned when to ask questions, when not to. He's learned how much he should talk and how much he shouldn't. If he asks open ended questions, he's automatically going to talk less than the other person.

Yes.

What, what have you seen about order of operation?

Yeah. That's interesting.

So you, you, you hear these Things like this 10 step sales process or even us with our like our flight plan and that type of thing that we teach.

Yes.

Has there been, has there been proof that that stuff works? Number one and secondly, has there been anything that was like that actually happens before this and that kind of surprised us.

Yeah, so totally. So we did find evidence that these, these critical things that you know, in the ten step process they do work and some have like really clear evidence more than others. So one of the things we found is that the top performers in overall from our analysis, they talk about company story, qualifying sequence and financing terms. Two, three, even seven times more on average than.

But I hear it's not important to talk about the company story. Nobody cares.

No, no, that is important.

Because I've had a million sales coaches tell me they don't care anything about your company at all. They just want you to get to the point. And how do you.

No, no, no, no, no. I mean, no, no, no. I mean that we can get into the whole thing of like what, what kind of personality of customer you're talking to. You know, if they're like, you know like whole personality test with the blue and the red and the yellow and like. But even. No, no, no. Even for people that like oh, get to the point. Talking about your company three times more likely to make a sale. If you're talking about the company story versus not.

Oh, that's a big stat.

Yeah. Three times. It's like if you obviously like in the long run. Right. If you just like let it play for multiple like you are going to make more money. Absolutely. If you use a company story, that's one of the biggest differentiators that we saw in the top performers versus others that the average reps don't use it as much and the top performers use it almost all the time. So they do they. Absolutely.

So company story was one.

What was the second thing qualify Qualification sequence. So asking those really important open ended questions at the beginning about what made you call it here today? How long have you been living in your home? Have you ever worked with a contractor? Like, they do it and they spent a lot of time on it. And then the other one was financing terms.

You know, are we going to pay for it?

How we're going to pay for it and having some sort of payment plans and offering some different payment plans, spending, you know, a good amount of time on that and talking about it, not just like giving a price. And it's not just financing terms is not just talking about price, it's like talking about the payment itself. Like, how are you going to pay for it? Is there an interest involved? Is there a loan? Is there, you know, is it cash? Like, like going into the details about how that customer is actually going to pay for that project, not just what the price is.

So if I understand what you tell me, Craig, I want to be clear here. If, if I spend more time on company story qualification sequence and financing terms, my, my, my success rate will go up.

Yes. And if you use it more, if.

You just use it more from all that, there's something, like, really interesting missing from all that.

Wait, what was that? What was that?

You didn't mention anything about the demo, the products or any of that. Like, I know it's important, but it's not as important as those three.

That's not as important as those three? Absolutely. Yes, yes.

Why do you think that is?

Well, I mean, my hypothesis again, and this is just me interpreting the data, when you're selling a product that, you know, five other contractors are selling the product usually undifferentiated, so, and so you're.

A hero with her dancing around a fine line here. I can hear that in your conversation. So what you're saying is a shingle's a shingle, a bathtub's a bathtub, you know.

Yeah, you said. I didn't say.

Well, I think there's some unique identifying factors that help a salesperson separate themselves from the commodity that most people believe it to be.

So. Yeah, so, so, like, like, but, but think about it like, you know. Yeah, so I think it's that. I honestly think it's that. And then when, when a homeowner's deciding what, how to, like, who to trust with their home, they mostly think it's like, who do I want to work with. Like, I don't, you know, that there's so many bad contractors out there. I don't want to be, you know, in one of those situations where my home, like, I, you know, What? I mean, like they don't want to put their home at risk. Right. It's their home usually. And so it's like they, they think it's like, okay, this product sounds good. It sounds great. Most of them don't have any idea. Most homeowners don't know anything about roofing shingles. They don't know anything about windows. They just want to solve a problem that they have.

And they, and manufacturers, Please don't shoot me. They don't care. They, they want to trust you that you're going to help them find the right one.

Yes.

And so that leads me to another question, because you hear this all the time. This is one of those things you hear all the time. People don't buy from companies, they buy from people.

Yes.

Are you finding anything in the data that's leading you to that?

Yeah, I mean the company story, I mean it depends how you. But usually the company story, it's a story about the people behind the company. Right. And you hear them. I've heard so many company stories that have like a broken record of company stories in my head already. My company was, that was back in 1776. George Washington declared independence, whereas like we, number one, American roofing. And so, so no, so, so totally the data proofs that people want to do business with. They want to understand who they're, who they're doing business with. If it's, you know, reputable people, people that they can trust. Because that's what the company story is about. Right. So, so that data point of like the top performers use a company story three times more on average than everybody else.

That kind of, it's actually what we teach. Like my belief is, and this is just from. I don't have data necessarily to prove it. Like I would if I had a real voice type situation. Yeah. But I found that my reps, when I did go on those one on one calls and do what we do, that they had more success telling company story and personal story than they had just telling company story.

Yes, yes, yes.

So they would talk about the company and how awesome it was and how, how many neighbors they had put the roofs on for whatever it was they had done all their certifications and all that stuff. But then they would add this little piece. It was like, yeah, I've worked with them for three years. I went to school over here. I've gotten these certifications through the company. And it's because I really want to do this. And this is my family and these are my kids and this is what they do. Like, they would bring in that personal side of it in their story, and those guys were way more successful.

Just probably need to crunch the numbers on that because that's actually something that I saw by looking at some of these examples. Examples where like, the, the top performer would say, like, you know, I've been, you know, it's family business. It's like, oh, that's actually my dad who owns the business and I've grown up in this industry and I started working and they show pictures like it's. Yeah, actually I'm gonna crunch the numbers on that.

Yeah, I would love to. I would love to know the data on that. The ones that say things like personal. I grew up here. Yeah, Like, I grew up here and I went to school over there and I am a part of this community and live and hit my mic there. So that's.

Well, no, you can actually divide it and you can tell now that the AI is so powerful. That's why I was saying, like, it's like it's better. It's even better than if you set a human being to take notes out there because you can actually just say, like, hey, you know, GPT4. Can you just tell me from this data set which ones of these, you know, from the ones we looked at, which ones of these are the, the person's actually using a personal story versus a company story or both. And so it'll tell you. It'd be like, oh, there's one.

Now that I gave you the idea, I want to know the results.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So has there been anything that surprised you, like, in order of operation?

Yes.

So.

Usually when you learn about these ten step processes, you typically, you do something like, okay, you do an intro at the door, you sit at the kitchen table, or you do an inspection first and then. Or you sit at the kitchen table, you do the agenda or you do the inspection first, and then you do the inspection. You ask a bunch of qualifying questions. So you do a survey and then you sit down and then the first thing you do before you start your demo is you do the company story. Right. The company story is like one of the first things that happens when you sit down and you like, and you're in your. And you, you begin your presentation.

Top performers have already done that, haven't they?

Right, so. So they. So what we saw was one of the things that we can see with real is not only which topics are being talked about and for how long, but when. When are they being talked about? Average reps, when they Mentioned the company story. They usually do it about minute, minute, 30 minute, 40 minute, 40, like 30 to 45. Right. Top performers mention the company story like an hour and 45. An hour and 55 minutes into the conversation.

Oh, wow. So later they're, they're, they're locking in that trust later.

Well, so what we saw was that they actually talked about the company story after they've talked about finance in terms. Which is weird, right?

Yeah, that's kind of backwards.

And, and it's on average, right? It's on average. So that we're looking at the average numbers. So what we. And the reason, you know, we saw. And then what's weird is that they're doing everything else, right? So, like they're going through like, you know, like the slides that talk about like the perils of the home improvement industry. Like, you need to be careful of who you're working with because you, you can't be working with just any kind of contractor because contractors, like, some of them are not insured, some of them are not. You know what I mean? Like, you're, you're, you're putting your home at risk. And they're, they're going into those pain points. They're still doing that, right? And they're talking about the product demo and here's a window and blah, blah, blah. Sometimes they're talking about the warranties and the insurance and stuff like that. But then they talk about financing terms. When you're talking about financing terms, that's usually when the sale begins, right? Because everything you've done before, it's like, you know, the preamble to like, set it up in such a way that you're going to be able to like, actually get a deal done. When you give that price, talking about how to pay it and you're talking about, that's when you start dealing with the objections and that's when the boxing match begins and you have to, you have to bob your head and weave, right? Homeowner says the price is too high. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So the price is too high. I need to think about it, talk to mine, talk to my family members, you know, the rest of it. I need to blah, blah, blah all the objections, right? And so then that's when the top performers, that's when they, that's when they, they bring their magic bullet, which is their company story.

So is that where they start talking about maybe some of the pledges they use? You know, this like, hey, you can shop us. That's cool. We have this pledge that if you beat us with anybody else, we'll give you $100. Like that's part of that company story.

Yes, like everything. Exactly. So that's why. That's when they stop, they take a step back, they validate objections just like usual. Because they're asking qualifying questions at the end, even, and they qualify with objections. It's like, what is it about this price? It doesn't work for you? Oh, you're looking at other estimates. Interesting. You have a cheaper estimate. Interesting. Okay, and what about, you know, that company makes you, like, if they were.

The same price, which one would you choose?

Yeah, exactly. And then you go and you say, oh, well, I really like that. You know, I mean, that company, I don't know, they have good reviews and stuff like that. I was like, well, let me tell you a little bit about Michael. Yeah, yeah.

They start giving you the objection of why they're thinking about the other one, and you're able to go, oh, well, that's on me. I should have told you sooner. Right, exactly.

So now. And now it's like. It's like it has so much gravitas. Like, you know, you're. You're telling them, why is it that they should go with you? And they're. And they're like, oh, wow, like, you're not working with just any contractor here, Mr. Homeowner. You know, we're a local, you know, family business. We've been around for 60 years, 20 years, five years. We have all these reviews. Look at all these customer testimonials. We really never go out back. So, yes, maybe, maybe your. Maybe your price is going to be maybe 20, 30% more expensive with us. But, you know, here's what you're paying for, right? You're paying for, you know, making sure that your project is going to be done with the greatest quality and care. You know, you're going to call me and. Or my dad or whoever it is, we're going to be on the phone and you're not going to be put on through some line. And that's when they really go into it. Like, that's. That's when it becomes important.