How to Break Through $5 Million in Revenue with Chuck Thokey

Hey, everybody, it is Jim Johnson here, your host with Contractor Radio, and welcome back to another episode. And I have somebody on here today that is an amazing special guest. He's super popular in our industry. We're going to be talking about sales. We're also going to be talking a little bit about business and how those two things relate to each other. Because he made a post out there that provoked me, and I instantly messaged him. I said, hey, I want to get on a podcast with you. I want to talk about this. And his response back to me was, I can talk for hours on this. Unfortunately, we only have about 30, 40 minutes, so hang tight. We're going to have an amazing show. Now, I am also the head coach of Contractor Coach Pro, and if you are a contractor out there and you're trying to figure out where am I at in my contracting business, how do I get out from behind the hammer or in the field and actually start to run my business instead of it running, running me? If you feel like you're an employee of your business instead of the owner of your business, you might want to check us out. We have programs for various sizes of contractors. Whether you're a startup or you're trying to get to your first million or so, or you're trying to get to 20, 30, 40, 50 million. We have different programs for different contractors. Best way to start with us, go to our website, contractorcoachpro.com, click on the assessment button. Take that assessment. It'll take you about 15 to 20 minutes, but it's going to give us some real insight into your company. If you do that, our promise to you is you're going to get a calendar invite to schedule a time for a free coaching call. And I mean a coaching call, not a sales pitch. We're going to point out the two or three things that you could work on in your business to help you get control of it so you can grow it, so you can find that personal financial freedom that you're chasing. So if that sounds like a good idea to you, go ahead and go to contractorcoachpro.com and fill out the assessment. If you decide to be a client, that's great, but if not, at least we served you well that day. So it's time. It's time to reveal our special guest today. I am super pumped up. He is the guru of sales. He is the industry honcho. He is the guy that everybody is talking about right now. That is the guy that teaches us how to close in the home, how to do it in a way that feels comfortable and how to lead teams that do that very well. So without further ado, this guy needs no introduction. Chuck Toki. Welcome aboard, brother. Yeah, yeah, you got your fight introduction there, right?

That's right. Let's go.

Yeah, exactly. So some people don't know. Chuck is actually a sales coach here at Contractor Coach Pro. He has been a guest on contract radio a couple of times and I think this is the third time. So it's good to have you on board again. It's always great to. To have you in here. And he is also the co founder and owner of Top Rep Sales. So tell us a little bit about Top Rep Chuck.

Well, first of all, I mean, being the co creator, it's funny. It's like co creator right here, you know, the. The two masterminds behind this amazing event. And if you remember, this was just something that you and I were going to try once just to see how it went. And it has exploded. And so now we've worked with thousands of contractors just within side of Top Rep. Changed lives, truly, you know, not only on the sales side, but on the sales leadership side. So it really encompasses everything. Sales.

Yeah. It's been a blast to do this with you. Just to sit down and share notes, take from each other what works great, test it, make sure everything's working smoothly and then bringing it to the world. The results have been off the charts. It's always awesome whenever we get done with one of those events to hear the feedback, like, hey, I just sold a job I never would have sold before. Hey, I tripled my sales this month. Like, those are really, really fulfilling messages and we love to hear them from the guys that are out there. I think Ryan Bell might be our top guy. Like, he's just all the time all about. It's been a bl. So you made a post the other day and it's been a. It's been a couple of weeks because it's hard to get you on a, on a show. So we had to wait a couple of weeks. But there was a post. I'm going to read it so everybody knows what we're talking about. And maybe I'll pass along to Paul. He can actually like throw it into the, into the. Into the podcast here. So it says, question, why can't we grow our revenue higher? It seems like we're stuck at whatever number. The number you used was 5 million, but it could be a million, it could be five, it could even be 10. And beyond that, with this idea of getting stuck. And then your answer was in the next sales meeting. Pick two of your sales reps to give you the price presentation. You'll find your answer in the middle of those role plays. You're welcome. So I was like, oh, hold on a second here. Yeah, I get that. Like, that's. That is important. Like, if, if we see our guys and what they're actually saying out there versus what they've been trained to say and what we're wanting them to do, we're going to probably gain some insight. We're probably going to be able to get some action items. We're probably going to be able to do some more training, and we'll raise their closing percentages. So tell me a little bit more. Like, dig into that a little bit. What do you mean by in between the two? You'll find what it is that you're looking for.

So when. When I go out and meet with organizations that say they're struggling, they can't seem to get past a certain number or just quite simply that their sales team is struggling. I want to come in during a sales meeting and I ask, hey, can I have a couple of your sales reps do their price presentation? And they, they. They're like, yeah, absolutely. They'll have the. Do the price presentation right in the middle of it. I'm looking at the sales leader. Everybody's looking at them. I don't really care what's going on in front of me there. I'm looking at the sales leader because the sales leader is getting frustrated. They're getting a little angry. Maybe they're getting embarrassed. And so afterwards, I'm going to let the sales leader and say, hey, how do you think it went? And he's like, I didn't teach you guys how to do it like that. Hey, don't get upset. I knew what I was going to see. I just wanted you to see. And so what they typically see when there's a struggling team is that everybody does something different. Now, we can do any part of the presentation. We can say, hey, do your. Your. Your company presentation. It'll be different. We can do the entry and warm up. It'll be different. But the price presentation, it's the screaming obvious one where the sales leader, that's where they really understand, like, wow, that's not what I expected to see. And so when we say, hey, we're stuck. How can we get further. And a very general question or very general statement is, have your two guys do their price presentation, and you'll see the issue in the middle of that role play somewhere.

So explain for the audience because this is I think important to understand because you mentioned it just slightly there. I want to try to drive it home. You said the price presentation, how is that different from the rest of the presentation? Is there like multiple presentations inside of one big presentation? Like how does that look for you?

So how you present the price to the homeowner and when you present a price to a homeowner, if you do it right, that and you and I have said this many, many times, if you make it easy enough, they'll buy anything.

Right.

So we just want to make it so easy for the homeowner to make the decision and to see how affordable it is. And, and it's all inside of that, how you present the price to the homeowner.

And so that's just one piece of the presentation, like this part where you've answered all the questions, you've problem solved with them. They've picked materials, they've picked the items that they want, they may have even picked the system that they want, those type of things. And now it's down to Mr. Jones. Other than price and affordability, is there any reason why we can't get you on the production schedule today? Your transition question and. Or your pre trial close question. Right, because you want to clear away all the other objections. Like it just needs to be about price at this point.

Correct.

And so that's where you start to show them your price. And there's a variety of different ways to do that, none being more right or wrong than the other necessarily. There's definitely some wrong ones out there, but there's two or three out there that are pretty solid on just how simple can we make this for the homeowner and then positioning that homeowner to this understanding of hey, there's a price way up here and there's a price way down here and there's this one right here that's a little closer to that but. Or I'm sorry, a little closer to this but not so close to that one that this is the one that you're really after.

Right?

Is that what it looks like for you?

It really does. And it's what we say price engineering. There's a lot that goes into it. But we want the base price or the good price to be really close to your better. We want that to be a no brainer. However, we're also trying to price condition here or price anchor. So we want that best, we want it much higher so they See that like oh my gosh. And then they see how that, that the, the better product that you're trying to sell, that it has some of the qualities of the best, but man, it's so much less. So we want it to be so.

Much more affordable, so much closer to the builder grade or standard or whatever. Right. And like it's an. It becomes a very simple decision. Like that's absolutely the one.

The way to think about this is I'm only presenting one price. However, I am presenting three. I'm presenting one price that I intend on showing them. The other two are supportive pricing.

Explain that a little bit.

They support the price. So the good supports the price. Being that it's just a no brainer. Why would I choose the good? You know, it's only $500 from the better. And then the price difference between the good or the better and the best. Man, that has a lot of the great qualities of the best. But man, that's like thousands of dollars less.

2,000 more.

Right. And so it's engineered to look like the one. That just makes sense.

Yeah, it's such a brilliant way. It really is. It's a brilliant way of positioning the thing that you want to sell more often than not. So you can be really consistent also with your install what you provide, you create a great customer experience. And yeah, it's neat to sell that best one. That's always nice. Like, hey, I made a lot more commission. But we're after this thing that we can repeat over and over and over again. That's fantastic. And I kind of knew that's where you were on it. Now, breaking through that $5 million, you changed that thing, right? Because that was the number you used. Whatever number it is for you as a contractor out there, how much of a shift can it make?

So when we look at the team and how you manage the team, that is what enables you to go above wherever you're at. Whether that number is a million, 5 million, 10 million, 20 million, it's how you manage the team is determined on where you're going to go next. Now if everybody sings a different song, you can't even have a sales meeting because you're only speaking to one or two people because they're the only people that do it like you do it. But everybody else does it a different way. So it's going to be a very odd sales meeting. So we want everybody to do it the exact same way. And I know that some people listening to this, they're like, oh, but we're not building robots, Jim. If I could build robots, I would, you know.

Yeah. If I could build robots that go and do what they're supposed to do out there, we would certainly put them out there. That's right. You guys have too much drama and chaos and all the other stuff that come with it as a salesperson.

But every organization that I go into that is a well oiled machine. Everybody pretty much does the exact same thing that they can name exactly where they want to go. Like, like Watkins with Michael Deer. His team is well oiled. They know exactly what they're doing. Ryan knows how to manage these guys. They all sing the same song and so that's it. It's very easy for them to get to 60 million where. Yeah, go ahead.

No, go you, you go ahead. Very easy for them.

There's other people in the exact same area and they're just your, just a typical contractor. Everybody comes in, they all have different ways of doing things and they're going to struggle to get past 5 or 10 million.

Yeah. So that's, that's where you poked me. That's where you provoked me a little bit. Like I get it. Like if we can all do the same thing, it makes it repeatable so we can grow. But we also have to look at like that's the sales portion of our business and we want to get that well oiled. Perfect, repeatable processes. So the nice thing about having a process is that you can improve that process over time. It's continued. But if you have people going in different directions all over the place, you, you have no process. So what do you improve? And it's funny because you mentioned the word sales team and I would think that most contractors that have two or more salespeople call their salespeople the sales team. Would you agree with that?

Absolutely.

How many do you think, like what percentage do you think are actually sales teams? Like if you took the whole there's 100% of contractors out there, what percentage of them actually have real sales teams?

You'd be shocked. But I bet it's under 5% of them.

I would agree that would, that would have been my number. Like 5%. Because a team does what teams do and they role play, practice, do the same thing over and over and over again until they perfect it. And when they perfect it, they run and they go in the super bowl, they win the World Series, whatever it is. But when they're all running all over the place, running their own plays all the time, you're not going to win. You're just not going to. And so I could see the, the, the thought process behind your post, but there's so much other stuff that relates to it. You use Watkins as a great example of that. But there's other areas of his business that he really focused on too, that has allowed him to, at the right time, really get focused on that sales team and that sales process and what they do.

Yes.

Because he's a great leader. I have met Michael. He's awesome guy. He provides all kinds of resources to his team. He's been really focused on creating a very particular culture in his company. The job process, not just the sales process, but from beginning to end, is tight. Like, they know exactly what's going to happen. So they create a good customer experience. They've got job descriptions and the HR stuff. They know their finances and. And so the thing is, if we go over here and we fix this sales team, let's say we did that, like, hey, go in and fix the sales team. They know what to do on the price presentation. It's perfected, we're rolling with it, and they start to produce what it is they're supposed to produce. If we haven't paid attention, this is the part that provoked me. If we haven't paid attention to the other stuff, like our whole job process, the culture of our business, accountability and how to hold people accountable to expectations, the finances of our company, how we, how we generate leads. Like, you could be the best salesperson and sales team on the planet, but if you don't have opportunities, you're not selling anything. So there's all that. That was what poked me. I'm like, you want to break through 5 million? Yeah. Refine that sales team and have it be awesome. But you better pay attention to that stuff that comes before it. So when I break through 5 million, you better figure out how to generate more leads and have a strategy to that. You better understand technology and how to communicate with everybody so that you can be more efficient and effective in the field. But first and foremost, you better be a rock star leader. Like, you gotta get that skill down. So do you see it the same way, like, those all play a part in breaking through that 5 million, or is it just the same?

I absolutely do.

Okay.

There is so much that actually goes into moving a company forward no matter where you want to go. But when we look at it, it's like, hey, how can I hone this in to make it so easy on you? So that's one of those things that we know that is going to happen if you're struggling. I know what I'm going to see here. The other stuff I would have to dig in a little bit to see. Do you need help here, do you need help there? Where are your other gaps? And there is no other coaching firm out there than CCP to find those gaps. I'm not just throwing a shameless plug here. I'm serious when I say that CCP is one of the only coaching organizations that can take an entire organization and see where those holes are.

Well, thanks. We worked hard at it. It's been a thing from the beginning.

Because it's been impressive watching.

Well, I made the mistakes so many other contractors made because you and I are a lot alike. And we know this sales game inside and out. We know how to create a process that wins and we know how to recruit people. And so with that, with that little magic mix right there, we can bring a lot of people in, we can teach them what they need to know, we can lead them well and have them held accountable to this system. And we generate sales like crazy. And we did. And I know you have as well, but if you didn't have that structure behind you that could handle it, that's where it blows up. And you see all these companies, there's so many companies out there that have somebody like you or I, charismatic, knows the game, able to build a sales process and is attractive enough to recruit people in. And they blow up. They just become these big huge, awesome companies for like two or three years and then all of a sudden they just vanish off into the wind like what happened to them? And that's the timing thing that I'm, I've been harping on so much since we got into this coaching thing. Doing the right thing at the right time is just paramount to having this long standing, sustainable, scalable grow to whatever size business that you want. Because there's so many sales gurus out there that they're like, oh man, all you gotta do is fix your sales thing and we'll get that fixed and you're gonna sell a bunch of stuff. And they do. Like, the guy's actually pretty good at whoever's teaching and he can actually teach them what to do. It's probably how he got to where he is at this point. But he doesn't ask the person that they're working with. Well, if we sell all that, what's going to happen to it? How are you going to produce it? Do you have the crews, do you have the people to do that? And if we actually build this thing. Do you have a training program that you're going to install to handle it? What's your recruiting process look like? Those are all things after you build a sales process. But before that, well, what are your expectations going to be for your sales team? Have you thought about that? And then also, like, how are we going to create opportunities for these guys? What does your marketing system look like? What does that strategy going to be? Because you're telling me you got a great sales process, you know, recruit a bunch of people, I better be able to provide opportunities to them. And so you see a lot of these guys, well, we'll go knock doors, right? That's kind of two different skill sets. In a lot of cases, this ability, like, I want closers to be closing. Are you the same way?

That's exactly right. I mean, you play to the strengths of your team. You don't take an admin and have him sell. You don't take a sales guy and have him produce. People do things like my son, I want him to sell so bad, but he loves to work with his hands. So he's in production and people are like, chuck, how did you let him do that? It's like, that's what he likes to do and that's who he is. So he's just.

So you and I have the same problem with our kid. Like, I was expecting my kid to be like, uber sales guy, and he's Mr. Process and Operations and stuff like that.

That's right. Yeah.

It's so disappointing. I still like, oh, man, what happened? Too much of his mom in him, I guess. Now my daughters, on the other hand, man, they got that side down for me.

That's right.

It's pretty cool. I think your. Your oldest daughter kind of strikes me that way too. Yeah, I don't know what that is. Why. Why did that happen to us? Jack, I really hate interrupting these videos, but I've got some important information for you. If you haven't tried out Atlas Shingles, you should, because they put you first as a contractor. They want to give you a competitive advantage out in the field so that you can win more sales and be more profitable. Check out Atlas in your local area, find your local rep, get hooked up with them today, and start making more money tomorrow. So in order to like, I'm going to re. I'm going to re. Ask the question, why can't we grow our revenue higher? It seems like we're stuck at 5 million. We want to think timing first, right? Like, if we were to fix these things. Like, we can fix them immediately. On a sales team like this team that we have today, I could fix them and go from 5 to 6, maybe even 7 million like that. But what's holding me back from going to 10 or 15 or 20? It's all that other stuff. It's all that other stuff of having your processes tight, having good leadership, having a great culture, your HR stuff, your finance stuff, expectations you set for people, technology used, lead generation. Now boom. Now it's time to really like, okay, let's bring some guys in, train them to this thing. Would you agree with that?

I do agree with that. And so here's when we. And I'm going to throw a couple of different things because I've had just over the last couple of weeks, some people that have commented on some of my posts that kind of go into this when you're like, hey, how can I grow more than, than a million or 5 million or 10 million, whatever. And I think that, that some of this came from you. When it, When I, when I share this.

Do you hear that?

Yeah. I don't know what that was.

I know there's somebody going in the attic, what's going on.

But when we look at the growth, many people just don't charge enough. That's a, that's one of the big problems. They're like, well, Chuck, I can't afford to do this, I can't afford to do that. I'm like, when you tell me you can't afford to grow, what do you need to do? You know, you gotta learn how to sell, but you also have to raise your pricing a little bit, Bring your margins. There's so many.

Oh, yeah, that's a good point. Like, you could, you could drive additional revenue by lowering your cost and raising your prices. That's the only way to generate more profit. That's how simple that is. Lower cost, raise your prices. And I think it's interesting, and you tell me if you're seeing this, do people have an aversion to raising their prices? Because they consider the competition always. Why do you think that? Like, things have gotten more expensive. Right. I think most anybody that isn't living in a cave somewhere realizes things. My gallon of milk right now doesn't cost $1.25 anymore. It's four bucks a gallon. A thing of eggs is not 99 cents anymore. It's some crazy number, like three or four bucks. I think people know that things are more expensive.

Right?

So why don't you let all those other Guys have that tiny little margin. Let's go get ourselves the bigger margin because we're the best.

They need to stop looking at what can the market bear and start looking at what can my salespeople sell it at.

Oh, man, we need to make that a quote right there. That should be. There's another post for Chuck. See that later today. I bet we'll be on the back.

Of my shirt later.

Why do you think salespeople that are well trained can justify a higher price?

I love this question. I love this question. Here goes. Let's just. You know, if you look at your sales team, there are certain people on your sales team that can demand a higher price than other people on your sales team. So let's just say that you have Billy, and he's a really good sales professional. He knows what he's doing. He can demand a higher price than, say, Tommy over here. And Tommy's new. He's still trying to figure out how to sell. And hopefully Tommy's not in the room over there with you.

Oh, I'm like, I can't wait for Tommy to hear this.

He's new. But Billy can demand a higher price because he knows how to sell. And it's on the same team. That really brings into perspective many of these. When people are like, well, how much should I be selling it at? Well, you need the other part of your team selling at the same level as the higher, higher end sales reps, whoever that might be. But understanding that there are some people on your team that can and will demand a higher price.

So with understanding that, what do you think holds salespeople back from achieving those bigger numbers and those higher profit margins and things like what holds them back from that?

The first is training. Second is accountability. So you train them and then hold them accountable. Bring the discipline as you and I talk about over and over and over again. And it's in your wheel. I mean, I love how your wheel just goes right in line with my. Even my thinking and the way that I've been taught over the years is you have to manage the activity, not the result. So you and I know your wheel so well. You know, you have to manage that activity. You got to bring the discipline. Once you bring the discipline, the results come. Once the results come, the belief happens, and that's where the buy in comes in.

I love it. I love it. So Chuck's talking about our leadership wheel. Any of you listening to this podcast? You can actually go back to one of our podcasts, I think, that has a leadership wheel, and if I don't have one, I'll go do one. I think I probably need to do that pretty soon. If I haven't. But reach out to me directly. Like, just email me, head coachontractorcoachpro.com, say, I want the leadership wheel, and I'll send it to you. It's something that we've developed over the years that gets some traction with your team. And once you get traction with something, you start to get a little momentum. And once you get momentum behind you, it's hard to stop you. But when you lose momentum, you're dead stop and hard to get it restarted. So it's this thing we've got to do consistently as leaders. Thanks for mentioning that, Chuck, because it's right. Like you do if you manage the activity and you don't because you made another post. It was here just recently about the excuses sales guys make. Tell us a little bit about that. Do sales guys make excuses?

So the sales guys come in and they start making excuses, and the sales managers or sales leaders that are such good friends with their sales reps, they don't want to push back, and they start to agree, oh, my gosh.

Our.

The price is. I couldn't sell it because the. The homeowner said that our price was so high. And so the sales leaders start to buy into that. And when the sales leader buys into that, the sales rep understands, like, well, you know what, Our price is too high. Even my sales leader thinks so. And so there's always stuff being sold, whether the homeowner's selling, the rep, the rep selling the homeowner, the rep selling the sales leader. I mean, there's always selling in our organizations. And unfortunately, there's things you buy and things you should not buy.

Yeah, you better be cautious of who's training your sales leader. Is it your sales team or is it you? That's right, because sales teams are really good at training sales leaders and sucking them into their excuses. And there's all kinds of them. Are prices too high? I can't work today for whatever reason. It's too cold. It's too hot. Like, there's a million different reasons we got bad leads. That's one of my favorite ones. And I have this thing, like, I try to teach this because I think a lot of sales leaders genuinely are pretty good people. Right. They really do want to see their team do well. And so they. They want to commiserate with them a little bit and go, yeah, okay, man, I get it. Yeah, we are Pretty high. And they start saying things like that. They start spe negative thoughts into their team. It's just saying, hey, you know what? We got Billy over there. We mentioned Billy earlier. He's able to sell things at this price. So it means that it's doable and he believes in it. So while I understand where you're at, I'm not going to allow you to use that as an excuse. So what's really going on? Is it that I've provided a lack of training? Is it a lack of mindset and belief in what we are? Why don't we go out there and actually watch us put a job on? Why don't you see what goes into that? Once you see the effort that the crews do, once you see the smile on the homeowner's face whenever we're done, and maybe, just maybe that'll start to get you to believe in what it is that you're actually selling. Now you run the risk that if you do a crappy job on that other stuff, he's still not going to have any belief. But that's a big thing. And I'll ask you, have you ever sold anything that you haven't believed in? No.

Well, I have insurance. I, I've had, I've sold stuff I didn't know much about. I sold insurance to self employed people. I really.

How long, how long did you do it?

I did it for about a year before I realized what I was selling. And.

Okay, so yeah, that's the term life insurance and that kind of stuff. Whole life and that type of thing.

It was, it was health insurance for sick people that I was selling to a bunch of healthy people. I just didn't know it. It's indemnity plans. I had no idea what I was selling.

So. Kind of the aflac type thing, right?

Yeah, yeah. I mean I did a great job at it, unfortunately.

But once you, once you re okay, so this is key. Once you realized what it was, your lack of belief, boom. Out the door. You were out the door.

I had to stop immediately.

And so I sold long distance service for a while. Not very long. It was about six months. And I'm like, that mine is no different than anybody else's. There's nothing I can put into this that makes it more valuable than anybody else's. So it's like, can I save you a penny? Is what it came down to. And it's like maybe, maybe not. And probably three quarters of them we couldn't. I was like, why am I selling? I Don't believe in this at all, in any way. I can't do this. And so when I lose that lack of belief, I can't sell anymore. So that, like, I would challenge sales. Guys, if you don't have this mindset that you believe in the price that you're charging for what it is that you do, you need to go find it or you need to go find someplace else. One of the two. And the best way to find it is actually go out there and spend time on the job itself and spend time with your homeowners after the job. Like, see the result of it. Like, if you see the happiness and joy that, hey, we got this amazing thing from you guys. It was an awesome experience. I've never had a contractor like this before. You start to believe, you know what? I'm actually doing some things that are a good thing for people. The other thing is the problem solving side of things. Do you think that's part of our job as salespeople?

Absolutely. That's one of the biggest pro. Biggest things that we do is solve problems.

Do you think we're supposed to close everybody we talk to one call, close?

No.

Oh, come on. Like, that's the deal, right? Like, one call, close. The home service industry, like, go out there, everybody's closable.

And that's. That's the thing is you have to believe that everybody's closeable, but you know that you're not going to close every one of them.

Yeah, I saw this stat, and there was a study done on this, so I don't even remember the product that was being sold, and it doesn't really matter. But they would go in with the product, pitch it, and they'd miss. Right. Like, whatever the number was. I think the closing ratio was 30%. But then this survey company would come in behind and ask the buyer, like, was the product the right product for you? Would it have served what you needed it to serve? And 40% more said, yes, it was, but 30% said, no, it was not the right fit. So what that tells me is that 70% of the people we get in front of need what it is that we're giving. 30%, it could go either way, right? Like, it's just there may or may not be our ideal client for a variety of reasons. It might not be a good fit for product or service or what you do. It could be just not a good fit with, like, how we do the process and they do process, like, what we charge and where they're at. So that 30% is gone. How do we pick up that other 40%? Any ideas?

I do. And this is what we like to call the lazy gap. You know, this is where. So anything above that 70%, those are the reasons why the homeowner can't buy or just won't buy. But anything that is inside that, that between the 30% and the 70%, that 40% there, that's the reason why they didn't buy. And so when we look at this, then that's where the. The sales rep got lazy. You know, whether it's. It's roofing, they didn't get in the attic, it's. I know people think it's funny if you really. If you're a roofer and you really want to be different, just get on a roof.

But, you know, you're supposed to actually.

Get on the roof, but, you know, it's. It's being lazy. Is that that gap? The homeowner or the sales rep didn't do something they were supposed to do, didn't say something. Maybe their laziness was inside their. The tonality and the pauses and every. And how they presented that information.

Yeah, I hearkened back to this thing that I learned a long time ago. I had a really good sales trainer whenever I first got started in sales. And we talked about this gap like, we're closing this number. This number of people actually needed it and didn't buy. Then this number of people just weren't the right people. How do we pick that gap up? And his answer to me was, you develop the skill to become a master. You practice, you role play. You put yourself in all of those positions of that 40% that didn't buy. Practice those, and you'll start to pick them up because it's unreasonable to believe that you'll get all 70%, but, boy, you sure can get way up there. And more often than not, I got over that 50% number, which I think is pretty good in what we do, last I checked. And really depending on what you sell to. So if you're selling retail stuff out there, I think the industry average is something like 22 or 23%, something like that. It's not very good. A good company is 35%. The exceptional companies, 50 plus. Yes. And that's what we're here to do. Like, you and I both are like, hey, how do we help people achieve those kinds of numbers? Chuck, it's been awesome. Any final, like, hey, if there's a salesperson or a sales leader today, any final, like, words of wisdom Hey, I need to make something happen right now. It's this time of year. I need to make something happen right now. What would you give them as words.

Of wisdom right now is they need to do the gut check. They need to understand to look at themselves and hold themselves accountable, both as a sales leader and a sales rep. And there are things and everybody, you and me included, there are things that maybe you and I should be held accountable to, that maybe we're. We're lazy on. So we need to look at that. Whether it's sales rep, sales manager, what are we being lazy at? Those things need to be fixed. I try to do that on a daily basis, and sometimes I'm embarrassed when I find out, you know, I. I have an assistant that will call me out. So, I mean, it happens. And so my wife. But, you know, we.

My wife. They sound like the same people.

We all have to do our inner audit, and right now's a good time going into the colder months to do that inner audit and figure out what we need to do to be better on our game going into 2024.

So we had this thing that we did. We called Knockout November. That was our whole entire deal for November. We wanted November to, like, finish absolutely strong because, you know, winter's coming, and we're already getting weather and stuff like that. And so at the beginning of the year, I told every one of my salespeople, and this is old days, right? Like, track all of the people that you had contact with, mark off who you sold, and then keep all the rest. And so literally, like, on a piece of paper back in the day, but Today you got CRMs and all the other good stuff that can tell you this information. And so November became the time where we called everybody back and said, hey, were you able to get your project done? And funny enough, it was two or three extra sales for every single person that did it for that month. And we'd always have, like, just a killer November. I don't think many people do that. What do you think?

I don't think many people do that, but that is good. I even like the name Knockout November. I like that a lot.

Yeah. Like, this. This idea of, all right, we've pitched all year long to all these people. We know that we missed them. We know that a certain percentage of them haven't gotten anything done. And it's more today than it's ever been because we get busy. We're busy with whatever. It's not pressing us right at that second, for whatever reason, we've done some kind of stopgap or somebody did a repair. I walked up there myself and put some caulk on it, whatever it was. But, man, winter's coming. And I'm. Then that's the call. The call is, hey, Mr. And Mrs. Jones, this is Jim Johnson. I know you didn't choose us as a company, and I'm fine with that, but winter's coming. I'm concerned about you. I just wanted to make sure that your project got done so you don't have problems as the snow and weather and rain all come into our equation. Because if you haven't, I can certainly take care of you. Just let them tell you, and you'll be surprised how many people are like, oh, God, thank you for calling me. I got busy. I got this. Yeah, can you get out here? I'm like, yeah, I'm on my way out the door. Right. And just absolutely kill it with that process. So there's a freebie for all you guys out there. Go do some knockout November right now and call everybody back that you missed. You'd be surprised how many you got. And it's just making a few phone calls.

Perfect.

All right, brother. Hey, once again, always awesome having you on. Always awesome interacting with you. One of the things that people probably don't know about us is if we get on a phone call together, we, like, schedule it for an hour. It's like two or three hours later, we're still talking.

You and I are struggling to stop right now. That's.

Yeah, yeah. I like. I want to keep talking to you, but we are on a time limit. I've got some other appointments today. I know you do as well. Thank you for making some time today. And let's go help some people get better at what they do.

All right?

All right, brother. Thanks a lot. All right, everybody. That was Chuck Toki that I just cut off in the middle of his. Thank you, and I apologize for that. I love that guy with all my heart and soul. He is passionate about helping salespeople change their lives. I mean, seriously, like, change your life through getting the skills that you need, the practice you need, the system that you need to go and close deals. If you haven't seen Top rep, you need to go check it out. Go to topreptraining.com. it'll be in the show notes down below on this. Go check out Top Rep training. Get registered for it. It's coming up in February in Wilmington, North Carolina. You don't want to miss this. First off, it's In Wilmington. Absolutely awesome place if you've never been there before. But secondly, you're going to come in and you're going to not only be trained by Chuck and myself on what we call the top rep flight plan, the system that achieves 50% and better close rates in retail, 85% and better in insurance. And on top of that, not only are we going to teach it to you, we're going to role play it a little bit between the two of us and then we're going to send you with five other people to role play in our dogfights. You're going to compete to see who does the best role play on each phase of that system. You're going to get scored on that. Those scores are cumulative to the end of the event and somebody is going to be our top rep and they're going to walk away with a huge, awesome, amazing wrestling type sales belt and be proud that they became the top rep at that event. The top 10 guys are going to get black shirts. Everybody else is going to get a pin that says, hey, I've been through top replacement. And I guarantee you it's going to change your entire year. Because that's been the nice part about this. This is the thing that I think is the underlying thing that most people don't understand about how top rep is different from all the other sales stuff. The other sales stuff you go to. Yeah, you're going to get a spike for a week or two, maybe a month, a spike in your sales, but then it kind of dwindles back down. This event is transformational. It literally changes the way you approach things. The follow up. There's a plan for after you leave and how. Stay accountable to it and you'll see it maintain and sustain itself far beyond any event that you ever been to before. Worth every penny. I don't think we even charge enough to be honest with you, but go check it out topreptraining.com and I'll see if I can get a coupon code from Chuck for anybody that listens to this podcast and we'll put that in the show notes as well. Once again, thanks a lot for hanging out with us here on Contractor Radio. We love you guys. We hope we help you make sure you give us some feedback, make some comments on these posts as you see them out there. Let us know how we're doing, let us know about things you'd like us to talk about as well. We would love to do that. And then last but not least, if you want to get in charge of your business and have this vehicle that can help you get to your personal and financial freedom that you're looking for working for you instead of for it. Check us out@contractorcoachpro.com we help contractors achieve their dreams. We'll see you on our next episode.