#245 4 Sales Team Training Secrets Top Businesses Use Daily

Because you can build a big business with not much sales process. We have to know where each call messed up so that we can fix that step so that on the next call we'll be better.

Don't try to rebuild the entire thing from scratch. Yeah, people have done it before.

You need to know the steps because there's an order of operations. And when you go to diagnose the problem, you need to know where to look.

Yeah. So how is your sales training kind of a basic—

Yeah, for like metrics, you set targets and you measure against those targets. So this is not something that you wait until you're big to do. This is how you get big. Welcome back to Owned and Operated. I am your host, John Wilson. I run a $30 million plumbing, HVAC, and electric business in Ohio. And here on Owned and Operated, we talk about how to build your home service business. Today I'm joined by Jack Carr, the host of Jackquisitions, and Jack runs Rapid Response Plumbing, Heating, and Cooling in Nashville. Today we're talking about the 4 steps on how to train your sales team so that you can raise revenue fast. Let's dive in. When we first added sales as a function, our revenue just started absolutely blowing through the roof. The first year that we did it was a 50% revenue growth year. So nailing these 4 steps, super important. And I know that you've had a similar story with your sales.

Yeah, we brought on a salesperson as our 3rd hire.

So it was me in the field.

Yeah, another person in the field. And I was answering phones and then a salesperson.

Yeah. Amazing.

And that was the driver that has pushed us to over 100% year over year for the last 3 years in growth.

Awesome. All right. So today we're talking about the 4 steps. We're talking— yeah, we're talking about the 4 steps on how to build and train a sales team so that we can raise revenue fast. So step number 1, have a process.

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I think, yeah, yeah, have a process, have some SOPs, start working on scripts because there's so much There, and there's so many things that you can sell or avenues to go through that actually locking down some scripts that work for not only the industry, right? It's not only a sales script, but it's also script that matches your business. Like, who are you as a business and how does your story and how does your salesperson or people—

Yeah.

How are they able to push revenue with those items? Right. Because a big part of sales is do, do Do they trust you? Who are you and why you? Well, you trust us. This is our story. Now let's push the sale.

Yeah.

Do you agree with all that?

The way that I think about a process is I'm not a very good rah-rah, let's go do the thing guy. I'm a good, let's make this a discipline. And when I think about a sales process, I think about it as the scientific method. How do we test, analyze, repeat? How do we reduce the number of variables on each and every test to the least amount of changes so that we can tweak different parts of it? So that's how I think of sales process.

Yeah.

So if I'm running a sales process, and we're big proponents of Nextdoor, We run their sales process. When we were like coming up in the industry, we used CertainPath and they've got a great process. I think the biggest lesson is use a process. It like we're happy with NextStar. CertainPath's good, but like use a process. You know, how are you asking questions? How are you thinking about closing objections? How are you like bringing up price early in the call? Like yeah, usually you know this system calls X, and the idea again we we want to reduce the overall amount of variables because if every single call is unique. Then how can we get better? We have to know where each call messed up so that we can fix that step so that on the next call we'll be better. This is scientific method.

And even more so than that, people have done it before. You saying NextStar has the book, CertainPaths has the book, so don't try to rebuild the entire thing from scratch. Go out there, Scrape a process from that's already been built, that already is out there. The scripts are already out there for the most part. Even if you're stealing from other industries, there's hugely valuable—

I mean, we've interviewed valuable roofers. We've, you know, we're plumbing, HVAC, and electric. And it's, it's almost comical because you can build a big business with not much sales process. Now, you can't build any business in a bathroom model company without a sales process. You need to be locked in on a process because nobody needs a bathroom model. They want it. People need a furnace, so you don't need to be that good at selling. It's like it's literally selling what hot chocolate to Eskimos. Like it's not that complicated. Someone needs your thing, and you're the guy offering it. Not not complicated. If you want your business to grow and explode. You need a process because you need to be able to run 100 appointments roughly all the same.

It's interesting because you focus on the process of like from when the call comes in all the way through, which I think is the very, you know, 32,000-foot level of like, well, how do you reduce the variables? Watching? Yeah. Where are they?

How can we get better if we don't know each of the 10 steps to work on those? Fully agree.

I think that there's a distinction what I'm trying to get at between 1 and 2.

And what—

because it's interesting where you start. You start on like, hey, this is the process of what the technician should be doing. He gets there.

Yeah.

He puts his bag down here. He has the conversation here. He parks his car here. And you're right, like, that is the sales process. At the same time, where I focus— and it's, it's really interesting to see like the difference in mindset— yeah, is our focus is like, what is the type of conversation? Like, how is that technician having the script.

Yeah.

I, I mean, I do think that— I think that you're better at the entire process. We are, uh, focused on like, okay, so you had this, you had the discussion at the, the same thermostat, but like, what did you talk about? How did you say these? What are your— what were your conversations? So we focus heavily on the actual sales script itself.

Yeah.

Like, well, how did you offer that? Did you say— I didn't know Rich Jordan, um, who's at Top of Mind right now, has a great, uh, posting that he's talked about a lot, which he was saying, if I were to find anything, do you want to know about it on my full evaluation?

Yeah.

Or something along those lines. It's like we use those same kind of scripts to make sure that we are planting those seeds from that first phone call all the way through to the end. And I think our growth is actually in what we're not doing, which is, hey, like, let's actually lock down these other parts.

What steps? So the way I'm gonna, you know, scientific method is one way to describe it. I'm going to now describe it in a way that's relevant to our industry. Order of operations. If I'm an HVAC service tech and there is a furnace broken, I was trained from day one on the order of operations.

There are steps. There is an order of operation.

Yeah. When the thermostat calls for heat, there are then 6 or 7 steps after for that furnace to fire and create heat. And if I'm diagnosing a broken furnace, What I'm going to do is I'm going to follow the order of operations. Okay. I adjusted the thermostat and nothing happened. Okay. Problems at the thermostat, problems at step 1. So I think that's the beauty of like a step-by-step process is because when we're diagnosing low sales, when we're diagnosing the problem, we can identify which part of the problem do we need to be focusing on.

Yeah.

So, hey, my conversion rate sucks. All right, awesome. So we're probably on the explore step. We're probably on like open-ended questions. We're probably talking about like, did you give enough options? Did you ask at lifestyle? Did you explore the home? If the objection is priced too high, okay, well, again, did you give options? Did you talk about financing? Like, we can diagnose the sale the same way we can diagnose a water leak.

I think that makes sense because that's when you would— you'd find out where the issue is and then you would work on the issue.

Yeah, the fix would be go get a new gas If you can go replace the batteries in thermostat.

If you start on scripting, you're actually a step ahead for a potential problem that's not even where the actual issue's at.

Right.

That's a good point.

Yep. So you, you need to know the steps cuz there's an order of operations and when you go to diagnose the problem, you need to know where to look. Are you tired of chasing reviews and watching competitors outrank you on Google? Well, Big Reputation has your back. They're an AI-powered review and SEO platform built just for home service businesses with automated review generation, AI keyword-rich responses, and heat map local search tracking, you'll finally get the visibility and reputation you deserve. Plus, they integrate with all major CRMs you already use. And the best part? Setup is free and your first month is on the house. Book your demo in the description below. Bigreputation.ai. All right. Number 2, be consistent in your sales training. So how— Yes. Yeah.

Oh my gosh. We especially specifically from a technician point of view, not, not so much from our Comfort Advisor. But from a technician point of view, we used to be terrible at this. And because once you have 4 techs, right, it is extremely difficult to pull all 4 techs in on a Friday afternoon or Friday morning when the schedule's full.

Yeah.

Like, how do you make sure that that continues to happen? But at some point along the way, the, the misses just got too big.

Yeah.

And it was because— and they're missing on silly things that we've trained prior, but a year ago, 6 months ago, 3 months ago, and now we're dealing with it again. And I remember the day when that happened. I said, we are not missing the 3 calls that we miss in the morning that we do this training are worth less than them running for 2 weeks without a training.

Yeah, 100%.

So 100%, definitely making sure that consistent, you're consistent.

Same day, same time. On top of that, what do you do inside there? So I would, you know, I'll give some examples of what we do, but people can take this wherever they want.

Oh.

So we do skills practice, and skills practice is role play. So someone's a salesperson, someone's a customer. The customer tries to, you know, throw up every objection in the world.

Yeah.

Prices, blah. 'Cause it's practice. Like, we want to practice before we're live. Doctors aren't doing their first ever, like, cut On a human, right? A live human that needs their help. So you have to do skills practice so that when you are live and in the field and like this counts, you don't trip up. You remember the steps because you've tried it. So do skills practice. It's uncomfortable at first. It's weird for everybody. Just do it.

Push through.

Yeah, just push through. Literally, after the first, you do it twice and nobody gives a shit anymore. Yeah. And it's great. Review former quotes. So pull up yesterday's jobs. Hey, here's one that went really great. Like, what did you do? What did you do great? Hey everyone, let's give him feedback. Like, how could he have done better? Maybe he did 90. Well, 90 is awesome, but like, could we have gotten 95? Where did, where did we miss?

Yeah.

Let's do a quote that was bad. Hey, we didn't close this one. Why do you think that was? Let's talk about it. How do we think we could have done better? What was the dynamics? What step? Is the, you know, where did we lose the customer? What step? Uh, how do we help diagnose so we can do skills practice?

There's some cool stuff too now that, that's out there that will actually, you can run their, uh, you can run stuff through AI and it'll actually give you some really nice bullet points on where it believes that, uh, it, you, you're either your call center could do better because call center is part of sales.

Yeah.

Um, it's the whole sales, the whole stack.

Yeah.

Uh, and then I know that we don't utilize it, but like the, the Rillas and the, the listening, uh, services of the world will give you some really, really good feedback on what they did well and what they didn't do well.

Yeah.

But yeah, I agree, is making sure that you are doing those trainings consistently. It's been huge for us. Like, I cannot stress that enough, is as that small operator, I know.

Yeah.

Like, it was hard and it still hurts today because we run now 2 to 3 a week in plumbing because plumbing was our problem child for a while. It's doing way better now. We are still at 2.

Yep.

And we run in the offseason, we run 2 in HVAC. In the on-season, we run one.

Yeah.

Because we cut, we condense a little bit.

Yeah. That makes sense.

Still though, full sales training.

Be consistent.

Yeah.

Same day, same time. Ideally, you're doing some skills practice, you're opening up invoices, you're reviewing actual performance, and you're allowing for peer mentorship.

Yep.

All those things usually help. Number 3, install metrics and measure them frequently or make them Very available. So one of the first things that usually happens when people come into our shop, other companies, technicians, whatever, there are scorecards all over the wall. There's like 10. So you walk in and it's like plumbing sales, this guy like number one, and it just continues to go at HVAC, drains, whatever. We have the install side, we have the company-wide scorecard. How are we doing for the month? How are we doing for the year? Are we pacing? People need to know the score.

Yeah.

And they need to know what victory looks like. If you as an owner can't tell them, hey, your goal is X, then that's not good enough. Like, you can't just tell someone— if someone says, hey, like, what's my target? Like, what's my win for the day? And you're like, more. Well, that's not a very, like, helpful or productive conversation. There needs to be a target. There needs to be a win. People need to chase something. So for each position, we have metrics. Hey, here's the average closing rate that we expect for your position. Here's the average ticket we expect for your position. Here's the number of calls we expect. Here's the overall performance in a month that we expect. Here's the average number of options.

Let me ask you a question. How has that changed? Because I've seen change within your business in the last 3 years. How do you view that change from a—

Yeah, it's definitely changed in the last 3 years.

From a smaller shop.

Yeah.

As you're growing to being able to provide those metrics. So like we do it though, to, to give the very basic.

Yeah.

And what anybody out there can do is during those sales training meetings, like we have everybody's numbers up and we go over numbers. And then once those meetings are over, that same dashboard sits up on the screen all day for the next 6 days until the next sales training comes along.

Yeah.

And so we all know each other's numbers at all points in time. Super basic, right? And then they all individually, because we're a much smaller group, are able to know those things.

Yeah.

So how is your sales training from kind of a basic—

Yeah, for like metrics. I'll say like first off, having measurements and understanding our numbers here, like setting the metrics and measuring them frequently, that is how we went from small to big.

Yeah.

So this is not something that you wait until you're big to do. This is how you get big.

Yeah.

You set targets and you measure against those targets hourly, daily, by minute, whatever it is. But when I say measure them frequently, it's not once a month. No, I can look at my phone. I probably will in the next few minutes look at my phone and see where we're at for the day. It's a compulsion. So we're going to measure them frequently. Depending on the team, we have been broadcasting scores We've been on Slack, we'll send it across the board. We go over it in sales trainings. It's on every TV. The guys will just sit there and wait for their team to come up. What place am I in? We just brought on a new software to help gamify it. So now there's contests, there's badges, there's who sold the most water heaters, who sold the most furnaces. So we have all of that. So we're working on a game version of the same thing.

Because, I mean, The technician—

it's a game. This is a game. Yeah, this is just a game. And this is, you know, we just did a video on like hiring A-players and hiring the best, and like the best think that this is a game. And if they don't think it's a game, then that means they're not— like, they're probably the lowest on the scoreboard, and you probably need to be thinking about coaching out.

So number 3 is making sure that metrics are—

Installing metrics, monitoring them frequently. Yeah. And making them very available. Like they should be able to open up their phone any minute, midnight, 6:00 AM, whatever, and know what their score is right now. And they should also know pretty easily where they rank in the team. Are they the top? Top guy should know he's the top guy.

Yeah.

Last guy should know he's the last guy and everyone in between should know exactly where they stand.

What do you say to people who claim, oh, because we've gotten the feedback before. Oh, and I've actually heard you get the feedback before in person. Well, Doesn't that drive some people to be sad because they're at the bottom? And your response always makes me very happy.

Good.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I think the last time I asked you this question, you said, well, it should.

Yeah.

It should make them sad. That's a them problem.

Yeah, that is a them problem. We've given them the— well, we've done the other steps. We have a process. We've invested in that process. We're consistent with our sales training. We deliver skills practice. We work on objections, we're reviewing former quotes, they're getting peer feedback. Like, we've done all that. Now, if we didn't do that and I was just being a turd, sure, but we are giving them all of the tools to succeed.

Yeah.

And if they still are not succeeding, that is no longer John.

Yeah.

That is that individual that is choosing to not succeed. Anyone can succeed in a business that is selling things that someone literally needs. You know, I don't know.

Yeah.

We're not selling Lamborghinis. We're selling toilets. Yeah.

Yeah. You're replacing broken toilets.

Yeah. We're replacing. Yeah.

Like you need it, my guy. Yeah.

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Number 4. Number 4, inspect what you expect. We've done all this stuff. We've run a process. We've been consistent in our sales training. We've installed metrics. Now we need to monitor performance. Here's how we're going to do it. We're going to measure weekly against their KPIs. Like, we set the KPIs. But are we measuring it and are we talking about it? Are we talking with their manager? Are we talking directly with them? Here's how we can help. Are we doing ride-alongs? Are we— is someone riding along with them once a month and like, hey, I saw this, you sort of like, you know, you could have tightened up this part of the process. You skipped too fast to here. Are we doing that?

Yeah.

Are we using a tool like Craft where it can listen to the, like, the call along Along with, it can listen to the call live and then a manager can later review the call and identify like, hey, this is where the call went well, this is where the call went bad. Like, this is where you lost the customer. So are, are we monitoring the performance and are we inspecting what we expect?

That's a great— inspect what you expect.

Yeah.

No, I love that. Yeah. Follow-up accountability.

Mm-hmm.

That's, it's that simple.

Yeah. And then we've built the tools.

Yep.

We've trained them on those tools often. We've given them a scorecard to show them how well they're using those tools. And now we as leaders need to be watching them as they use those tools. Are they using them correctly? Are they using them at all? Are they running the process the way we intended?

I think there's a 4.5 here too. I think if, if there is recoverability in this individual, whatever position they may be, I think there's a coaching step after, right? If you are trying to build a great sales team, not everybody is going to do good at all points. So after you inspect what you expect, you do those ride-alongs.

Well, you're just back to step 1. So like, hey, we're doing these ride-alongs, we're inspecting it, and like, your process kind of sucks. So like, let's run the process. Let's put you back into consistent sales training. Maybe we up your sales training by 1 day. Maybe we do 1-on-1 sales training.

So I think that is the 4.5 though. It's like that is a piece. Yeah. The repeat is a valuable piece to be able to like, hey, let's get you back. Because I don't want people to feel like we're coming out of this like you run this and then you're out if you don't get it. It's like, hey, this is a process in itself to coach these people up because we really do have high expectations. At least I have high expectations on my team. And so to get better and to do better, it is a coaching process.

Yeah. And I think what this does, It allows us to— it's the system of order of operations. It allows us to diagnose. So we know we have a baseline of we should be roughly doing the same thing. We should be turning on the thermostat, the next step happens, right? Because we have a sales process, it's 6 whatevers. We've been consistent on talking about that process, on training on that process. They understand how many and what they're to be held accountable for. So it helps us identify which part is messed up.

Yeah. And ironically, it helps you internally figure out which part of your training process is messed up. 100%. Like, this is like, yeah, hey, order of operations. Everyone is—

if— well, this—

everyone is bad. My training is bad. Step 2 needs to evaluate how we're doing that.

An example, like an acute example for us is our plumbing department. We're getting a ton of that job's too expensive pushback, and we know that because we're training. We have metrics and we're monitoring via ride-alongs. So it looks like, hey, we had 30, that price is a little too high for me last week. What do we do? Like, where is that? Okay, well, how many of them brought up financing? Turns out not a lot.

Yeah.

How many of them, what was their average number of options, which is part of the process? 2. Okay, well, we kind of expect 3 to 4. So there alone, like, If I give less people options and the only options I give are expensive, sure, we're expensive. They have a right to have that objection.

Yeah.

And if I don't offer them easy ways to affordably pay for a service, they are right to think that we're too expensive.

Yeah.

But we do do those 2 things. We do have options. We do have financing. So where did our sales process break? So yeah, this is the— that's how you multiply sales effort across a greater swath of people. If it's just one person, great. But if it's 50, how do we think of this as a process where we can— hey, this is weird. We have a bunch of people struggling with this sales objection for price too high. Where are we messing up in our training? Which step do we need to work on as a group? Because we're clearly not getting it to help everybody improve.

I think that also guides the training itself, like what are we focusing on? Well, let's focus on objections. Let's focus on— Or specifically financing.

Yeah, specifically that objection. Like, hey, if that's most of our objections last week.

Role play.

That's what we're— we're skills practicing that. Yeah. So it really does— the inspect what you expect helps drive the first couple steps. Yeah.

Last question, which is sort of off topic, but like, do you focus a lot of your trainings if you don't have specific items or failures in your systems? Do you focus those trainings to be, I guess, I'm thinking in HVACs particularly, but do you focus them to be seasonal specific? Like, do you have a winter training and then a summer training or a spring or a fall training for—

Yeah, we have mechanical, like technical training, and we have like sales or operations training.

Yeah.

So we do both.

Okay, sweet.

Yep.

Awesome. Love it. Yeah.

So that is how you train your sales team and you raise revenue fast. Great.

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