Kenny Chapman argues that frontline technicians should be experts at their level, confident enough to educate customers on all options without pushing them toward a sale. Expertise means mastering your job-specific skills and knowing where to find answers, not knowing everything. Stop under-positioning your services or letting technicians compete on price like handymen.
Hey, everybody, Kenny Chapman here, the blue collar coach, coming to you with this week's blog video version of Freedom Friday Focus. This week, as you'll read, I'm talking about being the expert and I'm talking about being the expert at every level, all throughout your company. Pushing forward to your frontline team. Get your technicians to realize, I want you to ingrain in them these two words, professional responsibility. Because when they understand how important that their profession is and that they're responsible for pointing things out, you know, a lot of frontline team members don't want to be this high. I don't want to be a high pressure salesperson. Guess what? I don't either. I'm not a high pressure salesperson. But we move a lot of products, goods and services based on the connection, the communication and the education that, that we do as experts at every level with our customers. Your customer calls because they need an expert. They don't know who they are. And oftentimes we position ourselves as thinking that we're our own customer and there's nothing further from the truth. Don't make buying decisions for your customer. Allow them all the information, all the education, all the options that they might have and allow that to resonate. Our team needs to realize that it's incredibly important that they leverage their expert skill. The customer wants an expert in their home, but the technician is so concerned about coming across as pushy or being cocky or arrogant instead of being confident. Now understand, being an expert doesn't mean that you know it all. It doesn't mean that you have it all figured out. It means that you're an expert about certain things regarding your job and you know who to go to, where to go to, and how to find the information that you might need for your customer. Be the expert. That's what they're asking for. That's what they'll invest in. Sometimes we get a pushback on a price concern or something and we go, oh, wow, that's, you know, I knew our prices were too high. I knew we couldn't collect these rates or whatever. And yet we never position ourselves any different than all the handymen that can come around and do things that don't take the skill that we've invested in at our level. Be the expert at every level and educate your clients on all the options they have regarding enhancements, upgrades, or simple repair and replacement opportunity. I'm Kenny Chapman, the blue collar coach. Until we talk again, have a better than fantastic week and I'll see you next.
