How to Close 65% Sales For Home Services? Chuck Thokey | Top Rep Contractors

Welcome back to the show. I'm your host, Phil Risher. And on today's episode, we're going to be discussing how to go from a 20% close rate to a 65% close rate with Chuck Toki. Chuck, thanks so much for joining us today, man.

And thanks so much, Phil. I'm glad to be here.

Yeah, for sure. So Chuck is the founder and CEO of Top Rep. They got this awesome boot camp sales program to literally be the top rep. He was the head of sales at Able Roofing. He took them from 28% to over 45% close rate. He was also the VP of Sales and marketing for Bath Fitter. And I would say from a sales perspective, he's probably one of the go to coaches in the. I would say the world, even North America. So he's got a wealth of knowledge. He's going to help us out tremendously today. So I guess Chuck, can you share with us you started at basfitters. Did you start as a salesperson or were you running the sales team or how did that come about?

I was actually brought in as the sales and marketing vp.

Okay, and how did you like, were they not performing and you came in and you built it to a decent level or what was the progression like?

They were simply needing that position. So, you know, we were able to fill that position. I came out of a. Out of mortgage where I was a national manager there.

Okay.

They just wanted me to do what and I did for mortgage and that's what we did.

Wow. So at best, fitters, how many sales.

Reps did you have here in the Ohio?

So the.

My main territory was Ohio, Indiana, Kentucky. And then we, I consulted down the east coast and out west, but for the most part we had 12 or 13. Okay. Or inside of our areas.

Yeah, very good. And so then you went into roofing from there. And tell me a little bit about the roofing side. Is it different from the bath space? I could imagine it's a lot more details.

No, it's different, but it's not. I mean it's. Obviously it's a different trade, but there's a different way of managing roofing because roofing is really more of a. It's a quicker sale. Even though both of them are one call. Close Roofing is a much easier sale. There's. There's no doubt because there's really not a lot of moving parts. And when, when, when you mentioned that they went from 28 to 45, actually within six months we took them from 28 to over 60% wow. Six months.

Six months.

Yeah.

That's crazy. So what would you say are some of the things that helped with that? Was there like low hanging fruit when you came in?

No, they had a very mature, very good sales team. The problem was is that everybody was doing their own thing. They weren't really being managed very well. And so for me to come in, it was, it was a little bit. It was easier than going into to bathfitter, I can tell you that. Going into bath fitter everybody was, was much older. I was, you know, in my mid-20s. I mean that was tough.

Yeah.

But going into to able, I had a good track record. I got the, I really got the camaraderie of the team early on, which doesn't happen a lot. But also the biggest thing that I did was bring in a lot of training. The training that we did was on point for roofing. It was right down their alley because a lot of them came from Champion windows when champion was bought out. But again, they were all doing something different and we just took them and brought the discipline and the accountability to the point of we're all going to sing one song. You know, I do not. When I go into a team, I typically do not allow this. You go out and sell the way you want to sell. That's the thing with sales reps is it's like they, they all own their own business inside of a business and that, that stuff's got to stop. That is for very small organizations, to tell you the truth. And when you see these, these companies that are growing really fast or the companies that are already very big, they teach and train one style of selling, one pitch, if you will, and then they master that and then that's all you do. You know, you can, you can press record in one house and go push, push play in the other.

Yeah. Is this kind of like the sales roadmap that you talk about, like having a structure to your.

Yeah, yeah.

Can you explain a little bit about what that looks like and what is, what is a good, you know, sales structure?

So the closing roadmap is simply understanding that you should never lose technique in a house. They should never say something that leaves you speechless.

Yeah.

Here's the thing that I just really gets me when I go out with a sales team is that Homer says, well, we need to think about it and the, and the sales rep loses it. Like we, we, we learned that 10 years ago.

Yeah.

You know, catch up and, but, and if there was this, this thing that you could use on your computer to just figure out what to say. Well, it is. It's called Google. You know, they want to, they're so lazy. A lot of sales reps are so lazy, they won't even go to something like Google and find the answer. They just want to complain about it.

Yeah, I agree. So some things that I, that I heard about when I was researching was like having a trial close and then having a good structure to present the pricing, having some good stalls and excuses to overcome. Can you talk through some of like the trial and close? Like, what does that look like in the sales process?

So the trial close is very old. It's one of those things that we, we keep inside of our, our sales training mainly because it works so well. And again, most sales reps are too lazy to do it. And it's as easy as just asking the homeowner, you know, Phil, other than the money, is there any reason why we couldn't go ahead and get you on the schedule while I'm here? You know, we have, we have modernized it because it used to have the word today which will send a homeowner through the roof. Just mentioning the word.

Yeah. Why are you pressuring me? I'm not ready to make a decision. Yeah.

And, and it's always no problem anytime someone says, I, I don't like to be pressured. No problem. That's not what I'm here for. Please don't, don't mistaken my passion for pushiness. That's not who I am. And so again, that roadmap itself gives you the ability to answer any and all questions and stalls, excuses, objections that are coming at you. It gives you that ability within the organization.

Yeah. So having some trial closes as you're talking about this, then it gets them into the buying mode of things. And then is there a specific way? When you present the pricing, is there a good way to do that, a bad way to do that? How does that look? What do you.

You know, they're really. The only bad way to do it is to send an email. The only bad way to present a price is to present it through email. And this is for residential. I always get the commercial guys all round up. But, you know, this is residential and you should do it right there in person. Why not? You know, unless you're going to do a virtual sale. Now, virtual sale is different than a sales rep not doing their job, waiting till they get back to the office and emailing it out. Virtual sale means you never see it other than through zoom. And there are a lot of sales that are going that way. A lot of organizations are going to the virtual sale. But other than that, I mean there's, there's. If you're presenting price and you're doing it confidently. Yeah, yeah, it's, it's not a hard thing. And we, you don't see the gimmicks much anymore. All the drops, you don't see that much in the house. We only allow one to two drops in the house, depending on whether you have a retail price. Meaning you have a TV commercial says, hey, call, call today, get 10 off or you're gonna go ahead and offer your, your 30 day price or whatever it is right there at the time of service. So you know, there's, you know, the, the way that you give price is very important. How it comes out of your mouth is very important because if you just make it easy enough, they'll buy anything.

Yeah.

And that's why a lot of our clients when they come to us and I had a guy that, you know, this was several months ago, but he says, hey man, I would love to have those scripts. I'm like, what's your email? I'll send them to you. That's not the magic. The scripts is not the magic. And, and he's like, well, what is it? I says it's that way that you present those scripts. That's the magic. That's where the implementation comes in. When these, when these organizations come to us, we spend more time on how to give these, these presentations in these scripts than we do the script itself.

Yeah. So are you using the Engage Engage presentation and that kind of stuff to present things or.

Yeah. So Engage is and has been for quite a while the premier way of doing a presentation. I have seen some others. I don't like any of them yet. Yeah, you know, I have seen a lot of people try to compete with Engage and they just aren't there yet.

Yeah, I think people have like a pamphlet or something. They're fumbling through their booklet and trying to tie everything together. Yeah, I definitely think having a very. And then, and then to your point, it's very repetitive. Each salesperson is kind of doing the same thing. Yeah. So that makes sense. So as far as when you present the price to them and hopefully it's a one call close, you basically want to get to the stalls and excuses at that point. You, that's when you're the selling starts right at the objections kind of thing. So what are, what are some of the common stalls and excuses? How do you coach people through overcoming those Obviously, it's not just script. Right. You have to have the conviction. But what have you been seeing?

So the stalls and excuses, these are what we hear just to get us out of the house. The homeowners. Homeowners don't like to make a decision. It's just how it works. And we also know through research that it only takes right around two to two and a half minutes for a homeowner to make a decision. So when they say, all right, well, you're just going to have to give us some time, what they're telling you is that you need to give them a couple of minutes. And so the old. And this is old. Which is the old. What is it? The porch light. Close. It is still one of the strongest closes in the industry. And how does that go?

What is that like?

So it used to be where we actually use the porch. Like, now we just don't know what else to call it. So we call it the porch light, but we don't use a porch light anymore. But when you're. The husband looks over at the wife or the wife looks at the husband, what that means, Phil, is the person that looks over at the other one is bought in. They're ready to sign a check. They're just looking to the other one for approval. And what you do not want is that to happen in front of you. You need to jump in and say, hey, I don't know how it works in your family, but how it works in mine is my wife and I need to talk about things like this, and I need to run out and take a couple more pictures. Or if you're selling a bath, I need to run back and take some more measurements. Do you think you can do that here in maybe next five, 10 minutes? And it's funny, they look at you like you do that. Like, no, I want to sit here and watch you argue. No. Yes. But that's the porch, like, close. And so you just let them know that you're going to come back here in about five, ten minutes.

Yeah.

And, you know, typically you come back to a check waiting on the table or them wanting to learn more about your financing.

Yeah, I really like that. I think you save a lot of guys from the. You can't read my mind. You know, I can already hear my wife. So.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And when you're. The other way, when you're looking at these. The stalls and excuses. I need to think about it. I never do business the night of. I need to talk to my dad. I need to talk to My son got to get three other estimates. And I want everybody that is watching this, when they find out that they've got that the homeowner's like, well, you're just gonna have to give us some time. We've got two other people coming out. And you'll be shocked. Some of you might be shocked to find out they don't have anybody coming out. They just want you to leave the house so that they have the opportunity. But if they are going to give that excuse, you have to know how to deal with it.

Yeah, so what? How do you deal with that?

So when you get somebody that tells you and we shut down the shoppers with a thing called our pledge, or our price and value guaranteed, however you want to call this. So this is going to be inside of your presentation. And in the very last page of our presentation, it's going to be a page, and we let them know that before we jump into the, you know, the. The elephant in the room, which is your investment, I want to share with you one of the reasons why I work for this company, why I love this company so much, Phil. And it's our price and value guarantee. And Price and value guarantee. All this is, is a few years ago, our owner wanted to change the way that people bought improvement, and he wanted to bring peace of mind back into the home improvement buying process. And the way that he's going to do this is he's allowing you to go ahead and take advantage of all the discounts and incentives that we have available while I'm here, and he's going to let you continue to shop us out until the day of the install. Phil, have you heard anybody that offers that? And it's funny, they look at you like, no. So what it says is that if you find somebody, Phil, that does exactly what we do, you got to notice where I'm putting my pauses. You know exactly what we do and exactly how we do it. And they can do all that for less than what I'm about to show you that I need you to bring that back to me in writing, and we'll refund you the difference. Plus, I'm going to give you a hundred dollars for the fact that, Phil, you found somebody that I haven't talked to yet or even learned about. And so is that the peace of mind you were looking for when you first called Top rep exteriors? And they're looking at like, well, yeah. That's fantastic.

Yeah.

So knowing that I'm gearing up for this right now, and when they say well, you're just gonna have to give us some time. We got a couple more people coming out. Hey, I get it. No problem. I'll give you as much time as you need, Phil. And so you mentioned that you have a couple other people coming out. When, when are they coming out? You know what most people do. Who do you got coming out? I don't give a damn who's coming out. Yeah, it doesn't matter to me.

Exactly.

I mean, it could be our biggest competitor and I really don't care. But I'm going to ask. So when are these other people coming out? And this is when we find out, well, they'll probably be here by, by the end of next week, which means they have nobody coming out. But if they say, well, we've got one coming next week and one coming the week after, all right, so if within the next, I don't know, 14 to 20 days, you know, Phil, you've got your, your estimates and you put them all out on the table. I mean, what, what criteria are you going to use to pick which contractor you're going to go with? Yeah, typically they'll say, well, it might be coming down to price. Every now and again they'll say it's going to come down to who's got the best value, which makes things a little bit easier. But when they say it comes down to price, I, I get it. I'm. Look, I'm sure we can find a couple of guys standing outside of Home Depot. We can find some second hand materials to put it. I'm thinking we can get this thing done here pretty cheap, Phil. And they're like, no, no, we want it with good quality. So I'm guessing what you're telling me is that you want value, you want the best value. Yeah. So you want the best products and service for the lowest price you can find, Is that right? Yeah, like, yeah, awesome. Phil, I just, like I told you not long ago that you're always going to be able to find somebody that can do it cheaper. However, you're going to be really hard pressed to find somebody can do it cheaper and still be able to do it right the first time. Does that make sense? And they're going to say, yeah, yeah. Remember me talking about our price and value guarantee just a minute ago? And you really seem to like that. Yeah. Do you think that we'd put our money where our mouth is if we hadn't already done our homework, Phil? And they're looking like, well, yeah, I guess not. So if the investment itself Is fair and flexible. What does another contractor have to tell you that I haven't already mentioned today? Yeah, nothing, I guess.

Nothing.

Yeah, go ahead. Let's check off that to do box. Let's get this thing done. And if you find somebody, I expect that phone call. Okay. They're like, yeah, you got your driver's license on you? Let's see if we can't get this trade partner going. So again, you know, we have something to say about everything. You know, I've got a coach myself. Everybody's got a coach. And my coach is a guy by the name of Chris Voss. I don't know if you've heard of the book. He's been coaching me for a while. He doesn't coach me as much as he was. Was about last year when we went through a whole six month stint with him. But we do a lot of mirroring and labeling. And we teach mirroring and labeling to people that get tongue tied if they get into something and their mind goes blank. Just go straight to a mirror. You know, the price is too much, you know. Yeah, man, I got a daughter that's getting married. I got a son that's graduating high school, going to college. I just don't, man, this is just not a good time. Oh, so it sounds like it's not that it's too much, it's just too much right now. Is that right, Phil? And they're like, yeah, so what I just did is I mirrored because, you know, I lost my mind when the homeowner told me I was way too much. And then they justified it by telling me that they had all these other bills coming up and it's just not a good time. Well, what I'm going to do is I'm going to go from the, the value. They. They just don't see paying. What I'm asking down here to timing, But I have to move them to that. So that's why I say, well, it sounds like it's not that it's too much, it's just that it's too much right now. And they're like, yeah, so when the fact that, that you had us out, you. You had to know how you were going to try and pay for this. Do you mind if I ask what that is? Oh, man. You know, I'm gonna be getting a bonus. I'm gonna pay for this with the bone. Wow. So when are you guys gonna get this bonus? It's gonna be here the next couple of months. When you say the next couple of months, is that Is that September? October. It's gonna be at the end of October. Oh, wow. So Phil, what you're telling me is that if I was sitting in front of you in November right now we'd be doing business and they look at you like, yeah, I really look forward to that. Let me ask you if there was a way that I could go ahead and get this all done now and I don't need anything from you until you get that money. Is that possibly something you might be interested in?

Yep.

So again, you always have something to say. And everything that we teach inside of top rep, none of it's hard. It's not like all the sales gimmicks that we learned back in the day, all the neuro linguistic programming BS from way back in the day. Because if you were to try and try to pull that stuff today, homeowners will call you on the carpet so fast. It is, it's crazy how that that old stuff has been played out and we do the same concept. What we've done is, is modernized it and then back it up with data because we've partnered with a company called Rilla and now we have over a million and a half recordings through Rilla that we know. We know who the top performers are, we know who the average folks are, we know who the poor performers are. And we take this data and we can by category categorizing these people, these sales reps. We know that what category somebody's going to be in based on the way that they talk, by the way that they present. We can see that.

That's right.

Not just looking at disc and, and Myers Briggs and all that. We already know that, that you know that what the top sales reps in the company do. And that's what we're looking for.

Yeah, that's right. So we had Sebastian on our show. I'll put this show down below in the show notes if anyone's check it out. It's an amazing tool that. But even more importantly for you, Chuck, and anyone that's a coach is it basically gets rid of ride alongs so you don't have to actually go out and sit there. You can just get all of the ride along data and then it also like your words per minute, all that kind of stuff. I think, I think it's great. One of the things that I heard you mention on one of the episode podcasts I was listening to that you were on was that selling finance is an art. And I think a lot of times in the trades it can be there can be a stigma of, like, you know, you're beneath me. So you need financing, and it can be hard for people to offer that. So can you talk through. Because you had a really good structure of talking through selling financing. Can you explain what that sounds like?

We try not to mention the F word if we can. But if you have to, if they bring it up and they ask about financing or you bring up some sort of finance language and they're like, oh, no, no, no, we don't finance. I get it. I totally understand. We have three different types of people that finance through, that use financing or use other people's money. And the first person and you. Because you know who you're talking to. The first type of customer that uses a lot of financing are cash buyers. They don't want to tie up their money. They'd rather use the financing. And they just. We just use same as cash. That way you're not actually paying for the financing at all. And then the second type of client that uses financing, these are people that they've saved up for the project and they find out that they just didn't save up enough. They found out it's a little bit more than what they thought. So they just need a little bit of help. And then of course, there's that third. And you always put yourself in that so that they don't feel bad if that's them, say. And then there's the. The third. And this, this is my kind of people, you know. You know, if it's a roof or something, that it just popped up, I don't have the money for it. And I'm going to need all the money I'm going to need to finance every bit of this. And so which is it for you? Is this something where you're looking for a lower payment? Is it more so that you can use other people's money and then you can, you can pay that off however you want to.

Yeah. And this goes to that example with the guy that's waiting for the bonus check in September. It's like, hey, you could, you could use this and get 0% financing. And you could kind of pitch it that way. That's right.

Yeah.

Yeah. And. And so then when they say, hey, yeah, I'm this type of person, then it's pretty easy, like, give me your driver's license and get the process going.

Yeah. And we started quite a while ago, we started calling financing trade partners.

Yeah, I heard you mention that. And I was like, okay, hey, we.

Have a trade partner that allows you to do just that. And we stay away from payments, we stay away from the financing. You know, language. And when people are like, man, I just didn't think it would be that much. I'm like, it sounds like you just need a little bit of help. You know, we have a lot of people that are in this position and we have a trade partner that allows them because of situations like this, just a simple, quick and easy bridge loan just to get you over the hump. Let's go ahead. Let's. I'm not going to ask them. I'm telling them that's the way we're going to go.

Yeah, that's going to be the best thing for you. My recommendation is this. Okay, that makes sense. So another thing that I wanted to touch on. So obviously you do one on one coaching. You coach sales teams, but you also have a really cool boot camp that you run. Can you tell us a little bit about that? Because I think that's pretty unique to sales coaching of any sort.

Yeah. So the boot camp that we have, we do one in August, which the one in August coming UP is the 19th and 20th, it's in Columbus, Ohio and then the next one. So it's always in February and August. We have two boot camps a year. They do fill up. We limit it to 300, 300 contractors, but we do sell it out every single time. And the reason why is because of the experience that the contractors get. So they bring their sales team and they bring their leadership team because it's two different ways of us training you. We're going to train your sales staff on the steps of the sale. But then we're also going to take the leaders when. When we're in what we call the dog fights, which is where the sales reps are actually going to use what they've learned six times throughout those two days. And so we're going to take the sales leaders and owners, we're going to take them into a different room and we're going to train them on how to lead their team. You know, it was, it was no accident the way that I came in and I led my teams, whether it was Bath, fitter, Abel and Mr. Roof. Same thing at American Weathertech when we shot up, you know, 12, 12 million in six months. You know, it's, it's all based on how you lead your team. And not to go down a rabbit hole, but when I say lead your team, most people think I'm just talking about my sales team. No, my team is the phone team. The Marketing team because without them, I don't have leads unless I have a door knocking organization. So. But we'll stay. We'll not go down that rabbit hole.

No. Very cool. So as far as coaching, because a lot of business owners listen to this show and they're looking at, okay, you know, I got salespeople, what are some of like obviously like close rate and that kind of stuff. But what are some of the numbers that you're coaching people to look at? Or yeah, holding the people accountable, training, what is some of those things?

So we look at the KPIs that I like to look at. I first look at my nsli, that's net sale per lead issued. So your nsli, some people call it their slugging average, their Nestle, but that has your, your close rate, your average sale and your profitability all wrapped up in one big number. And if it's off, then we start to drill down. But what I'm looking at, like on close rate, I have my close rate and my adjusted close rate. I very seldomly let sales reps know that I'm actually looking at an adjusted close rate because they're going to play games. Sales reps or sales reps, what's it adjusted?

How is it adjusted?

So my close rate is. If they ran it, it's, it's, it's on the books. And then I look at they, what, what they issued versus what they sold. That's an actual close rate. My adjusted close rate takes out finance turndowns. It might take out if they got porched at the door. The fact is the, the fact that it was a rental, we couldn't do the work, those types of things take that out because now I really want to do a deep dive on my team. Sometimes that close rate can be a little skewed. And the reason why is because maybe somebody had just a bad batch of, of appointments. And that adjusted close rate will show that also their sit or demo rate is very, very important. So you want to know, did they give a price in the house and a sales rep that is giving pricing underneath of 75%. Either it's the sales rep, they don't know how to get through an appointment, or it's the phone room, they're sending us out on calls we shouldn't be on. But we, again, we don't start casting blame, we start doing, doing research.

Yeah, I think that's really important. A lot of times we get the data. But in one of the listener questions I asked a bunch of listeners and they said how long should you give a sales rep, you know, a shot? And it's like, okay, well, you have the data, but you can't just go blaming people. But you have to, like, uncover the issue and work together as a team.

I would imagine, right now, when you say give them a shot, give them a shot for rehash or what?

Give them a shot, like, as your sales rep, like, you give them six months, and if you can't figure out how to get over 75%, buddy, you're out of here.

You know, so we get them, we give them 60 days up front, and we can extend it to 90 days to make a decision on a rep.

Okay, and are you. What is it really come down to, like, that NSPLI number or is it. Is there. What are you looking at as far as gating them?

Yeah, it's all, you know. So your numbers are going to tell a story.

Yeah.

What I mean by this is, you know, I had a sales rep that when I came into one of the organization, I'm not going to say which one. They said, man, this guy is one of our top guys. You know, we give him a lot of leads, and he just, he just closes them. And I started looking at the numbers, I'm like, all right, I see it. And I mean, he was selling consistently anywhere between 140 and $300,000 a month. I'm like, wow, that's really good. And went to the close rate. And his close rate was pretty good. He was. He fluctuated between 45 and 60%. I'm like, that's not bad. I like that. And. And while we're going through these numbers, something was just odd. And I pulled my own numbers because the number they didn't pull was. Was profit profitable? We sold a lot.

Yeah.

And he was underneath. I. I'll tell you, anything under 30, gross margin is unprofitable. And that should always go to. I'm not going to say. I never like to say always. That should typically be a house deal. Anything under 30% should be a house deal. Your sales reps don't know how to sell, and they're discounting everything. I mean, that's you. You built that beast.

That's right. That's right. Okay, so that makes sense. You had a guy, he's closing everything but not profitable, which is why you want to track your profitability on all the jobs.

Tells a story. You got to know what you're. So the. To answer their question, what we're actually looking at is more on the close Rate side, when we're looking at that first 60 to 90 days, we are really focused in on the close rate, the profitability. One thing that we have stopped is sales reps that can, can run amok with pricing. Everything is standard pricing now. We, I mean, there's Leap and, and Sumo Quote and there's all these other. I think most CRMs will even do it now. And so your sales rep should not have say on what that price is in that house. They pull up the pricing and they're to sell it at that pricing. Now, if you have a drop that they're allowed to do because you have some sort of marketing discount or whatever, then that's fine. But again, it should be a very calculated drop and that drop should be your actual pricing. So, you know, your profitability should not be hurting if it is. Again, you built that beast.

Yeah. And this goes back to kind of standardizing the process. One guy can't be, oh, I get that for 10%, another 20%, you know, silliness. This kind of goes to the next question, actually. So what's the best way that you've seen or would recommend structuring salespeople like base plus commission, 60 days straight commission draws. I mean, there's a million ways to slice it, but what have you seen to be the best?

I, I'm always a fan of commission. Only now when they first start, I like to give them anywhere between five hundred and a thousand dollars a week. And that should not be more than four weeks. If your training is more than four weeks, you need to go find a different trainer. Yeah. You know, there is nothing in home improvement that should take over four weeks. I know some people will disagree with me, and again, they need a different trainer or different system. But, you know, after that, I would recommend that you go full commission. What the trend is right now because of some of the legislation that's coming down, guys, and I hope everybody that's listening to this, 1099 is a thing of the past. They are coming after you, and they don't care how big or how small you are, they are coming after you. And so you know what, what we're hearing a lot of right now is that if you're sales reps and get more than 60% or more of their income.