Using AI + CSRs to book more jobs with Brigham Dickinson and Power Selling Pros
Brigham Dickinson scaled Power Selling Pros to over 1,200 CSRs by training them on eight interpersonal principles that convert calls into booked jobs. He argues AI handles simple overflow calls but fails on nuanced scheduling and emotional scenarios, so human agents should stay on complex work while AI monitors for training gaps.
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Welcome back to the show. I'm your host, Phil Risher. And on today's episode, we're going to be discussing how to use AI to book more jobs with Brigham Dickinson and Power Selling Pros. Thanks so much for joining us today, Brigham.
I appreciate it. Thanks for having me back on.
Yeah, for sure. So, Brigham, round two coming up, which is exciting. He's the founder of Power Selling Pros, a company that has transformed customer service training in the home service industry by coaching over a thousand customer service representatives to convert more calls into appointments. He's also the author of Something to Give A Journey to Become a Leader Worth Following. This helps home service companies grow by mastering the art of customer communication. And his unique approach combines practical, practical call handling techniques with leadership development, enabling business owners to build customer service teams that consistently make their companies the first choice for consumers. All that to be said, I can attest to this because we've had several clients go to Power Selling Pros and their booking rates have increased significantly, which is why I love having you on, because that's what I'm passionate about. So we talked about this before. Can you give someone like a quick, high level overview how you got into this, into helping business owners?
Yeah. So love, love this industry. Got into it by accident. I was brokering some pay per click deals and one of my clients, Troy Nearings, Nearings Plumbing Heating, brought me in and simply said, hey, your leads are no good. And I said, what do you mean? And he said, well, I just, they just call in and they say, hey, I just want a ballpark price or I just want to know what you're charged about or I just want to talk to a technician. Calls we never get, right? Yeah, except for all the time. And I said, look, those are bookable calls. And he says, yeah, but we don't know how to book them, so we need to put things on hold for now. I said, cool, where are you going to get your leads? Nowhere. Okay, cool. So let's leave this on and let's train your team on how to book those calls because chances are they have the same issues that all your other customers have. You just got to handle it. You just got to know how to handle that, those types of calls. And he said, well, okay, what do you have in mind? I said, just let me train him. Let me train him. I know what to do. I used to answer phones at a company called Articare and I know how to handle it. I know how to book those calls. And so one of his buddies referred me, was Referred to me after that by Troy, and I started working with him. I wanted to do his advertising. He said, hey, train my team. And I said, well, I have to do your advertising. And he's like, no, I've got that covered, but I'll. I'll pay you to train my team. And then, of course, the light bulb came on and, yeah, the rest is history. Started out with six CSRs, and now it's, it's, it's well over a thousand. We're. We're up over 1200 now.
Wow.
Yeah.
And so traditionally, your company would go into companies and coach our CSRs, whether that's in person, maybe on Zoom or something like this, listening to calls, call handling. Is that still what you're currently doing now or have things changed with delivery of services?
We do most of our coaching via Zoom.
Okay.
All right. So we coach one on one twice a month using your own calls. And we do that, generally speaking, via Zoom. Sometimes it's over the phone still, but it's twice a month coaching. So over 1200 trainees in our program that are coached by us twice a month. We've got over 25 coaches.
Okay, so before working with you, if someone's not listening to their calls and analyzing them, is there a basic, like, hey, listen to these calls and look for these couple things in these calls, like a basic framework that people should be listening to or what. What does that look like?
Yeah, let's. Let's talk about this real quick. So this is the pattern for excellence.
Okay.
This is the foundation tool that we use for not just booking calls, but in our interpersonal interactions inside the office as well as outside the office. What are they? Well, it's eight. It's. It's a. It's eight principles. Positivity, confidence, through preparation and practice, Listening, caring, reassuring, asking the right questions, creating value, and being grateful. Those eight principles will help create a wow experience for the customer. So let me demonstrate how you would use this on a call with. Similar to what we were just talking about. Hey, I'm just looking for a ballpark price. Now, every customer, in fact, everyone that calls in, needs to feel understood. They need to feel cared about, and they need to feel reassured. They've. That they've called the right place. So those three things are paramount at the beginning of every phone call. Show them that you're listening. Show them that you care. Reassuring that they've called the right place. Right. And you'll see here you've got four principles. On the bottom, right, you're going to Listen, you're going to care, you're going to reassure. You're going to ask. When did I do that? Right. It's over here. Listen, care. Okay, Right here. All right. So I'm going to show you a way to listen, care, Reassure. So a customer gets on the phone. Hey, I'm looking for a ballpark price.
Great.
Tell me more about your situation. What's going on? This is me wanting to listen. I'm showing them that I want to.
Listen and not falling into the trap of price, price, price.
Yeah, I just. I just want to get an idea as to what's happening. Okay, cool. What's happening to your system? Well, I've got this air conditioner. It's blowing hot air. Well, that's not good. How long have you been doing that? Oh, last couple days. So wait a minute, you've been doing this for the last couple days? Wow. Well, look, you've called the right place. We can help. When would you like us out? Oh, this afternoon will be good. And we're rolling now. This isn't a put off. Hey, what do you charge to come out? It really depends. Does it not if, if we're giving them an estimate on a new system. There's no charge there. If, if it's something that we're coming out to fix, there might be a diagnostic that's charged. Either way, I need more information before I could properly answer that question. It's not a put off. Hey, I want to. I want to talk to a technician. Great. We have a ton of those. Tell me more about your situation. Let me make sure I'm sending out the right one. Okay. Again, it's not a put off. I want to make sure I'm. I send the right technician to the right job. It's the truth. It's not a put off. Yeah, so it's, it's about listening, caring, reassuring. You do those things in the beginning, you'll. You'll recognize that it's not logical. It's actually emotional. Okay. And your goal is to create an emotional connection so that by the time you get to. When would you like to come out? It's really natural. They say this afternoon. Be good. Why? Because I like you. I like you. You understood me. You took the time to care about my situation and you reassured me that I've called the right place. I don't know that I've called the right place. That's right. Hopefully you do. Right, and that's important at the beginning of the phone call. Listening, hearing, reassuring. You take that you should book 70% of your calls.
Yeah. And something that you said last time that I find so much value in is that it's not about scripted selling because people try to script things out. It's about the emotional selling piece of building that relationship, like what you're saying, which so many people miss that, oh, I got a call script. Well, it's not just the call script. You have to know it in your bones and have that conviction of your emotion side, which I think is.
Yeah, yeah. It's interesting. I had a conversation with a rep from American Express last night, and the reason why it stood out is because she's from India and she was funny. She was not just funny. She had sarcasm. Sarcasm was always risky over the phone. Right. Customer service. But I love that she took the risk. She had genuine laughter. It was. It was remarkable. It made it very easy for me to do whatever she. Whatever it is she wanted to do. I mean, I'm. I'm now paying 650 a year for American Express card. I'll show you.
Yeah, I'm.
I'm not kidding. I just got this thing, Delta American Express card. Okay. Now I know how Zig Ziglar feels when he never leaves home without it. You know what I'm saying?
Yeah, yeah.
This is. This is what I'm talking about. I have this card because I liked her.
That's right. And this is the level of great customer service. People are going to talk about what just happened to their experience, and they're going to pass it along.
There's an absolute stigma with. With groups of call handlers in India. It doesn't matter where you're from. If you have the right training and. And the right oversight, man, you're gonna go far. You're gonna go far.
That's right. Now, I wanna. I have on my agenda. I want to kind of bring up a little bit of elephant in the room with, okay, Brigham, great. Well, AI answers my phones and they book 90 of my calls. What. How is this changing from an AI perspective of AI call handlers versus traditional CSRs? Because I'm sure it's impacted your business or you've come across this before.
So the first thing that comes to mind is liar, liar, pants on fire.
Okay, I agree. I agree. I agree. Glad you said that.
So AI can book easy calls. Calls where they're going to book anyway, and there's a place for AI. However, the types of calls that I'm talking about, I want to know if you charge to come out. I want to talk to a technician just looking for a ballpark price that consists of about 40% of our phone calls. And my friends, that's what you're missing. That's when AI cannot book, and they won't book. All right, we have our own call center. We have 60 CSRs. We've had six companies over the last 90 days leave for AI answering services and come back.
Wow.
Why? Because it's a nightmare. It's a nightmare. Okay. It's not there yet. Will it get there? Probably. But when it gets there, it's going to do some things. It's going to have some stipulations. Stipulation number one, whenever somebody calls in and says, I'm looking for a ballpark price, you want to program the AI to simply say, awesome. Let me get you in touch with a live agent and transfer it to a trained and certified live agent that can handle that call. Book that call while that customer. I would always have humans taking a look at all of it. All right, so let's say that a human is on the call and they can't get to that call that's ringing. Fine. Have AI answer that. Have AI answer it. But as soon as. As you are off that call, you take a look at what AI did. All right? Make sure that it's scheduled in the right spot. Because our goal is to keep the dispatch board full. It's not just to book calls. We want to keep the dispatch board full. And if that AI books that appointment for two weeks from now, That's a mistake.
Yes.
Okay. They're going to do it. The next available. Well, we hit the summertime, and AI is booking two, three weeks out. Trust me, all those customers are calling somebody else and finding if they can get somebody sooner. Now, even if we're booked solid, we might have customers that call in to reschedule. We might have customers call in to. We might have technicians call in and say, hey, they're done early in a specific area. Those situations require oversight. They require human oversight to be able to play a little bit of Tetris and push some customers around, Move them around in a very delicate and refined.
That's right.
Pattern for excellence centric way. Right where they feel like they're being. Wow. Even though they're being moved around. So AI has a place. It has a place, and you want to use it for that place. Quite frankly, I. With my call center of 60 CSRs, guess what? We use AI but we're all on the phone and we're calling them right after to make sure that everything's taken care of. So look, it has a place. Use it to the point that it makes sense and make sure that your humans are incredibly trained to handle whatever the AI cannot handle.
Okay, so if I'm hearing you right, you can have AI answer the phone and then if someone asks some of these trigger questions, you can say, hey, let me get a live person on the phone and then kick it over.
Yeah.
And then on the.
Go ahead, I would have humans answer phones if they're on the phone, have a answer. Have AI be the backup plan, the overflow.
Yeah, yeah, okay, exactly. And then. And then obviously have some oversight. If. If it's straight AI, then probably maybe have a CSR or someone pick up the phone just to make sure everything was handled correctly and taken care of, is what you're saying.
Yeah, if you have to, that is absolutely. Plan B. Yeah. Okay. A well trained human that connects with the customer, takes care of their specific needs, is always best. Yeah, that's what's best right now. It's interesting. We. I was at an event, a summit in Las Vegas, and I won't name the AI. It's a very reputable AI. Okay. It's one many people use. And somebody in the audience made. Made the representative do a live demonstration of the AI. It was a mistake. At one point, the. The AI just said, well, thanks for calling. As soon as basically the customer asked a question and the AI said, thanks for calling, click, it was over. And of course, it's funny, the representative was dumbfounded and he said, oh, it's not supposed to do that. And the whole crowd was like, okay, yeah.
Interviewed some AI people on my show, and in the comments of our videos, people are like, I called this company and it hung up on me in 10 seconds or 5 seconds, like, here's the phone number. Y' all can try it out. And I'm like, oh, gosh. Okay.
Like, yeah, it's not. It's not there yet. Yeah, it's not there yet.
So we talked a little bit. But, like, there is ways to use AI to help you with your phone handling. One way, I would imagine is like, you have all this data of, of calls, right? Words per second and listening to phone calls. Do you all use any of that data to help? You know, like transcripts and that kind of stuff?
Oh, absolutely. In fact, this. I don't want to let the cat out of the bag. I know we're. Lace is on our list. Okay.
No, no, I'm kind of going into that. I don't know too much about it. I just know that you partnered with this AI company. What does that look like?
So here's the cool thing about Lace. So. So Lace, they're more into listening to the specific call that comes in determining the. The performance of. They basically classify the performance of each csr. The cool thing about Lace is they're creating a lot of awareness for the need for call handling training. So they're getting clients onboarded, and then the client recognizes where their CSRs are falling short, and they don't have an aunt. Lace doesn't have an answer. And so. So Boris, the owner of Lace, basically came to us during an event and said, hey, we need your help. We. We need. We. We're identifying the problem with each CSR through our AI, But. But we're not able to provide a solution. Now. They don't currently have a solution like other AI companies that have their own bot. And the reason why they don't is because they know it's not there yet either.
Yeah, right.
They've accepted the fact that the AI won't get there for a while. And. And so instead, what they've done is they are. They monitor and they. They monitor calls, and they determine whether or not a call should have been booked.
So it sounds like this is kind of like a realification of your CSR calls. Right?
You got it.
Okay.
And it's. It's heightened the awareness of a contractor that they. They have to take care of this. Most contractors are very good at training their technicians. You know, whenever I ask a business owner, how often do you train your techs? They say, oh, man, every day. Every day. It's like badge of honor every day. Okay, cool. And how often do you train your CSRs? Crickets. Right. They spend very little time. And so the cool thing about Lace is that it's bringing to light. It's putting a spotlight on the call handling department and. And giving us a ton of opportunity. And besides that, the platform is really cool. It's very dynamic. It makes it easy for our coaches as well as our monitors to. Instead of having to listen to every call, we just work through. I mean, it's. It's made our lives a whole lot easier. So, hey, definitely, Lace is great. Use it. Yeah, It'll help us do our job.
Yeah, Very cool. My sales calls, you know, we use Fathom and we record our calls, and I take the calls from our team, also plug it into ChatGPT and say, hey, where did our team get tripped up here? Where did they, you know, fail to build confidence with customers. And then it gives me the whole thing. This sounds like it can do this on a mass scale of all your calls to kind of give you a synopsis of everything very quickly.
Yeah. Before, it was easy for a contractor in that they knew that we'd be monitoring the calls.
Exactly.
Now it's now that they're starting to use Lace. They have the ability to not just pull up whether or not the call was booked, but whether or not the CSR was positive, whether or not they sound prepared over the phone, whether or not they showed the customer that they were listening, whether or not they showed the customer that they cared or reassured them. See, all these principles that we're looking for, it's made it a whole lot easier for all of us to take a look at patterns in the CSR's behavior.
Yeah.
And determine the next step. Now, what's really cool about this is that I just. I just dropped my daughter off at Element Heating and Cooling. She's a CSR there, and she. She uses. She uses Lace. She's able to. She sent me her a screenshot. She was the only one answering phones yesterday. A couple of gals were out. She was the only one answering phones, and she showed me her booking rate, and it was 100% booking rate. And I was like, cool, send me the rest of the report from Lace. She's like, come on, dad. Yeah, throw me a freaking bone here.
Yeah, yeah. You know, something cool. I follow you on LinkedIn as well, and I love that y' all do Spartan races and stuff together. Are you guys into that kind of stuff?
Yeah. So we've. I appreciate you bringing that up. Faye is a fighter.
Yeah.
Okay. She's a fighter. I don't know how much I should share here, but, you know, now that she's in the industry, I need to be careful. So. Yeah, you know what? I'm sure she'll be fine. She graduated from high school, started going to college, and she ended up having a kid. And, you know, it's amazing how children make you grow up very, very quickly. Right. And it's funny, too, because when you first find out, you're like, what the heck's going on? But as soon as that grandkid comes into your life and you're holding that grandkid, you're like, this is great. This is wonderful, and it's going to be okay. Yes. You know?
Yeah.
And I found out the reason why. The reason why I had kids. I love my kids. I really do. But grandkids are Next level of. I don't. I don't know how to explain it. Like, this grandkid, her name is Dream. She is something else in our lives. And the cool thing about it is, is it's kind of given Faye and I a reason to kind of reconnect. Reconnect and hang out together and. And. And give me the opportunity to mentor her a little bit. And she was in a completely different industry before, and. And I said, sweetheart, you need to get into my industry. It's an awesome industry. And. And I think you'll love it. And I. When I dropped her off at work this morning, she's like, dad, I love my job. I love it. And I'm just like, yeah, I. I knew you would. I knew you would. I knew you would love it. And she's a champ, so one of the things I'm. I'm working with her on just to help her build up her confidence. Right, Is. Is, hey, sweetheart, let's get you. Let's get you into some Spartan races. Let's get things going. And so I scheduled the first Spartan race in Phoenix. We're going to talk longer about this than you anticipated. And so. And so we schedule it. The one in Phoenix, we race together, and she finishes in three hours. And it was a run walk type of thing, and I assumed it would be. And so my thought was, okay, so for the next race, the next race we do, I'll do my own race, because I have this thing where I'm on a race. You know what I mean? Yeah, yeah, I'll do my own race. Six miles, 25 obstacles, and then I'll. I'll. I'll just be with you, with you and your race. I'll just kind of make sure you get through it, and everything's great. Well, the thing is that she's. She's been doing CrossFit ever since she did Phoenix. She started working, you know, working out CrossFit. And so when we went to Las Vegas, I finished my race. I was kind of upset because I. I missed the spear throw, had to do burpees. See, every time you miss an obstacle, you. You have to do burpees. And so I had to do 30 burpees, and it ruined my time. So I took eighth.
Yeah.
Which was fine. Whatever. I'll get over it. And I. I start with her race, and she's booking it. Okay. At one point, I was like, sweetheart, just keep going. Don't wait for me. It was so frustrating.
Yeah.
But she ended up finishing in two hours instead of three. Wow. She took an hour off her time. It was incredible. And so then. Then she just had the bug. She's been hitting CrossFit like crazy. So we are literally flying out tonight. She's gonna get done with work at 6. I'm gonna pick her up, we're gonna drive to Las Vegas, and we're going to San Diego. We'll hit there probably 10, 1030 ish. And we'll hit. We'll hit the course tomorrow morning, Saturday morning. So it'll be her third race. And I'm telling you right now, Phil, she looks. She's. She's starting to look really jacked.
Yeah.
She. Mandeep happened to be in her office the other day, and he took a picture with her. And. And I looked at the picture. I was like, oh, man. She's. She's looking. She's looking. She's looking. She's looking tough. Yeah, she's looking really tough.
Yeah. I think there's a big. There's a big part to this that a lot of people miss is that if you. For business owners, your CSRs, anyone on your team is like, they have to have something outside of work to get them fired up. And I think exercise, whatever it is that gets people going when they come into work, they can execute as well and give them some type of regimen and structure. And I think a lot of people miss that with anything in their business.
You will increase your income if you're in shape.
Yeah.
I don't know how else to say it. You'll have more energy, you'll have more focus. If you work out at least four to five times a week, you. It will change your income. It will change your life. The most important thing when it comes to fitness is sleep and nutrition. Okay. You want to get fit, you want to get that whatever six pack. I mean, in the industry's kind of talking about ever since Tommy Mello got down to 10% body fat, everybody's talking about, he's such a trendsetter, right?
Yes.
But it's. It's the truth. When you work out, you will have more energy. It will positively affect your income. So it just really. It releases chemicals in your body that lay dormant if you don't work out. So definitely work out. Have a nutrition plan, if nothing else. And I've talked to some people about this where they, like, I just don't like working out. That's fine. Walk every day. Just walk. Walk around your block and then maybe walk a mile before you go to work, and then maybe Walk more than that. I saw an article the other day with a. Basically it was a truck driver, and he gave a comparison between truck drivers who actually pull over to the side of the road and walk for a little bit every day, and how it changes their alertness while they're driving, keeps them more awake, keeps them in better shape, and all the benefits of just taking a walk every day. So just take a walk, make sure your nutrition's on point, make sure you get enough sleep. And if, and at very least, walk. Walk every day.
Yeah. All right, I got another question on here when it comes to CSRs versus rehashing, because I know a lot of businesses, they want their CSRs to also be the rehashers. Following up on estimates, working, you know, opportunities, that kind of stuff. Is that a good idea? Or is it better to keep CSR separate for booking and rehashing and like more of an inside sales rep type of thing?
Okay. So if they learn this pattern, okay, if they've embodied this, they can rehash like nobody's business. Okay. Because it's, it's all. Anything that's customer facing. I don't agree with collections, Okay. I wouldn't have them do collections. That's not customer service. You're collecting money there, right? Do you still want to do it in a very positive and upbeat way? Sure. I mean, as long as it stays there. But you got to put your foot down. Right? It's a. It's a different mindset. It's a different mindset. Have somebody else do that. But when it comes to rehashing, when it comes to inside cells, they should be able to do all those things. Okay, here's how you get them started. You have them, you have your csrs self service agreements over the phone, okay. And it's very simple. All right? I'm not going to do this with a new csr. In fact, Faye and I were having this conversation the other day. She's. She's been doing. She's been working with element heating and cooling for a couple weeks now. And I said, sweetheart, just give it a couple more weeks. Get used to service titan. Get used to following the script that they want you to follow. Just get used to the processes and the procedures, how to maneuver appointments around, how to interact with the technicians. Just, just focus on that for now. But in the future, when you're comfortable, when everything else is muscle memory, I want you to focus in on every call that comes in. Follow the process. You're going to listen, you're going to care you're going to reassure, going to ask the right questions. You're going to book the appointment. You're going to create value before you present the dispatch, if there is one. But at the very end of that call, you say, Mr. Jones, I'm looking at your notes. I notice we've been out to your home a couple of times over the last three years and you still have a membership with us. I'm wondering why. Not now, Phil. How long did that take me?
Yeah. Five seconds, six seconds.
Seconds.
Yeah.
I'm going to say it again for everybody listening. I'm looking at your notes. I noticed you don't have a membership with us. I'm wondering why not. You see, it prevents things like this, the thing that we're dealing with right now, from happening. You see the best time to sell service over the phone because that's when the customer's feeling the most emotional angst. Okay. What are they feeling when they call in? They're frustrated. They're concerned about how much it's going to cost. They were caught by surprise. They were caught off guard.
Scheduling times, all that stuff, all of that.
They're trying to figure all that out. They're on edge. Okay. And they would much rather this just never happened.
Yeah.
Best time to sell preventative maintenance.
Yeah.
Right. Yes. Jones, I'm looking at your notes. I noticed you don't have a membership with us. I'm wondering why not. We come out the spring, we come out in the fall. We make sure it's running a peak efficiency. The best part about it is it prevents things like this, the thing you're dealing with right now, from happening. Do that on every call. If you do that on every call and you incentivize them. Okay. In other words, once you. Once you've done the training, okay, either you do it or have somebody else do it. Have the training done. Begin to monitor their calls when they. When they sell a service agreement, compensate them. Okay. And. And I've seen people do $10, $15, $20. The one thing I don't want you to do, don't do a percentage. You see, CSRs can't calculate a percentage.
Yeah.
They don't know what their check's going to look like at the end. It's always a surprise. That's not good. You want them looking at their. Their pay every day. You want them counting, like on their own notebook, right?
That's right.
You know, you want them to know what they're getting paid.
That's right.
Okay. So, yeah, pay them. Pay Them. So let's. Let's do some math real quick. Let's say that you. You pay them $15 a service agreement, okay? You get 30 calls that come in a day per CSR. Sometimes it's more, sometimes it's less. And at $15, now, let's say. Let's say that 20 out of the 30 calls decide. They just say, no, that's, I'm good, I'm good. Which could totally happen, right? Of course, of course. And all we would say, there's no big deal. If you change your mind, talk to your. Talk to your technician while he's out there. Done. What that means, though, is there's 10. There are 10 customers per day that say, well, what is it? Well, it's awesome. We come out in the spring, we come out in the fall. We make sure it's running at peak efficiency. The best part about it is it prevents things like this, I think you're dealing with right now from happening. If you want it, I can get you going on it. Right now, it's just $25 a month. Done. Okay, easy. Let's say that two out of the ten decide to move forward every day. Now, every listener on this. On this podcast right now is probably thinking, wow, if I can get my CSR selling to a day, that would be incredible. It's not just incredible, it's 100% doable. They just need to ask that question on every call. Okay, so let's say they get two. That means they get $30 a day, $150 a week, and $7,500 a year. If you were. If we had a CSR on this podcast with us and we were to ask him or her, what would you do with an extra 7, $500 a year? They'd be pretty darn excited about that. They're talking car payments. They're talking pay off their car. They're talking going to Disneyland. They're talking about any other trip they want to go. Go. That's right. So on and so forth. This will change their lives. Now, if you do this, what it is, is it's a gateway drug to what? Rehashing?
Yep, yep.
Okay. If calls aren't coming in, we're going to have. We're going to have them call out, okay? They're going to stay busy. They're going to stay busy because one way or the other, they're going to be on the phone call. Okay? So rehashing, renewing service agreements, turning service calls into replacement calls, and why not?
That's Right.
Tech set leads are our best leads. Why wouldn't we have the CSRs do the same thing? Hey, Mr. Jones. I'm looking at your notes. I noticed that we've been working on that system of yours for over. For over 12 years now. You've gotten some great life out of it. Have you ever considered replacing it? That's right. Now, if they say no, that's fine. But you don't know unless you ask.
That's right.
Hey, I'm looking at your notes. I noticed that we've been working on that same system there for 15 years. You know, sometimes your technicians don't have the guts to say this. Great. Let the CSR say it. Yeah. And let's say that that customer says, you know what? I would consider replacing it. And then she schedules a different. A separate appointment, a replacement call, and a service call. Would you not pay her for that?
That's right.
Of course you would.
Of course you would pay Google for it.
Exactly. Exactly. So, look, it was the coolest thing to have Faye call me three days into her job and tell me she sold two service agreements. Wow, Dad, I told. So I sold two service. That's amazing, sweetheart. Let's do some math. And she's like, oh, okay. And I said, now you're. You're getting. I don't know if she wants me. $18 an hour. Okay. She's gonna have to get over it. That's fine, sweetheart. This is what I do for a living. I love you. Okay.
Yeah.
So. So. So $18 an hour. Okay, so let's do some math. If you're getting paid $15. $15. I know. I think it's worth it. They pay. They pay a crazy amount. They pay $30 per service agreement.
Wow.
Okay, so that's an extra 60 bucks. We did the math. We found out now you're getting 22. $20 an hour. Not just 18. She's like, oh, so I could totally. And then she started thinking about, well, what if I sold four next time? And what if I sold five? Do you see.
Yes.
What I'm getting at here?
Yes. Yeah.
People, the goal is to create self reliance. Every One of those CSRs out there is just like my kid. And all I'm trying to do is give her a leg up in life. Imagine for a moment, every one of your CSRs, chances are 40, 50% of them have a kid. Chances are. And they're looking. They don't just need a job where they're clicking. They're clicking and, you know, working by the Hour or whatever. This isn't to. My goal with Faye is to help her realize that this is a career.
Exactly.
And that she can make as much money as she wants sitting in that seat for the rest of her career.
That's right. I like it.
And yeah, I guess what I'm getting at, man, just. Just imagine every one of those CSRs that has a dad that just wants them to have to be successful in life.
Yeah.
And if you set it up this way and you give them the attention that they deserve, they'll have that success and it'll benefit you because they're going to stay in that seat for longer.
Yeah, man. I completely agree. I think so many business owners miss out on that opportunity right there that you just explained. That's doubling their business. Tripling their business if they, if they were to capture that. So I think that's huge. And I like that. Csrs, the game plan that you gave, get the CSR up and running, have them sell service contracts, then turn them into rehash, and you basically build this gateway of them being able to scale their revenue, their money.
Yes. They feel more fulfilled, they feel happy.
Exactly.
They're more self reliant. They're feeling more autonomous. They're taking ownership of their job.
Yeah.
If you don't have time to do this, get somebody to do it for you.
Yeah, that's right. All right, I got another elephant in the room. One for you. So nowadays, you know, everyone is setting up these forms on their website, online scheduling, people are filling out forms, they're doing texts and emails, and they're just defaulting to texting customers back or emailing customers and not picking up the phone and talking to them. What do you recommend? Like, how should people be handling? You know, someone chatted in, someone filled out a form, and then they. They text me. What does that look like?
So we assume that when people chat in that we should chat back. Okay.
Same.
Same is true with email. I would do one of two things. If it's me, I don't give a crap. I'm gonna call them.
Yeah.
Why? Because I have charisma. I carry charisma over the phone. Right. I'm gonna use the pattern for excellence. I'm gonna give them an opportunity to, to hear my voice, to hear the tone, to hear the intent. Right. The minute they start talking to me, they might be perturbed for a split second. They might.
Okay.
If you're a little. If you want to be a more cautious, great. Say, hey, this is a great question. Via email. Right. Hey, this is a good question. Do you mind if we continue over the phone? It's a little bit easier to explain over the phone. Yeah, okay. If they say, oh, sorry, I'm at work, great, fine, fine. The same thing's true via text. But look, the best. The fastest, easiest way to make a sell is if we're face to face. This is why we get technicians and comfort advisors in homes.
That's right.
Okay? We get them in homes because we can make sales easier that way. The second fastest, easiest way to make more sales is over the phone. Why? Because they can hear tone, they can hear intent. They can create a connection, an emotional connection. Okay? I hate text. I hate it when I'm interacting with my employees and I try to be sarcastic via text. It never goes well. No, they get offended, they get hurt, they don't understand. And I end up calling anyway to explain what I meant.
Yeah, yeah, I've.
I've had to apologize so many times because of a text where I tried to be sarcastic. I was trying to be funny, and it blows up in my face. And so, look, it's not just. It's not the best way to communicate. So, look, I appreciate you bringing this up, because once again, I'm going to give another example with my daughter, Faye. Okay? I like the girl. Okay, so look, she's. Yesterday, she was using Chirp. Familiar Chirp. Yeah.
Yeah.
Freeson freaking awesome technology. Everybody should be using it. And. And funny thing, Phil, it seems like everybody does tend to use Chirp, Right? To stay in contact with their customers. They send email, they send texts. They're constantly getting your existing customers call back and buy more often. Because guess what? If they don't come back and buy, then they're not your customers anymore. That's why you use Chirp. Okay. The problem, the hole in the process, though, is that as soon as Chirp sends the lead via text or via email, the CSR never gets around to it.
Yep.
And by the time they do get around to it, they've already got their problem taken care of.
Yeah.
You're not utilizing this amazing tool. What's wrong with you? Well, the cool thing about element heating cooling is that they're actually incentivizing Faye and all the other CSRs when they call back and they book an appointment off a chirp, they pay their CSRs for that.
Wow.
How smart. How smart. Now you've motivated me to make sure I keep my eye on Chirp. Because when I book a Chirp appointment, you're going to pay me for that. She did too, yesterday.
That's right. That's right. And, and the cool thing is that the rehash thing that you're saying, instead of your daughter going in, trying to find these opportunities, blah, blah, chirp is creating the opportunities, all she has to do is then act on it. And so it speeds up the process a lot faster.
Yeah. And she said, dad, should I text back or call back? Call back.
Yeah, call back.
You got a better chance of selling it.
That's right. No, I like it. So if someone is, you know, they don't have oversight into their CSRs, they have no idea what they're doing, how should they go about getting contact? You what is, I know you have this FAM program, group coaching. What does all this look like for someone who's trying to help?
Yeah. So in addition to one on one coaching twice a month, we've, we've begun the FAM program. It's called Fractional Accountability Management. The cool thing with Fractional Accountability Management is that we can provide group oversight. It's, it's for an hour, once a week with the entire group of CSRs, dispatchers and lead coordinators. And with this oversight, we set up KPIs. Now the KPIs are going to vary, dependent on a lot of things, but primarily whether or not you're booked up solid. If you're at 90% tomorrow, 80% the next day and 70% the LA the third day. Right. The day after that. Well, we're going to focus in on booking every call that comes in, especially the very hard calls to book with with the coaching. Right. The one on one coaching. However, if we're at 50 tomorrow, 40 the next day, 30 the following day, we're going to focus in on outbound training. Okay. So the KPIs will be different depending on what the schedule looks like. And so in that group training, we're, we're motivating, we're, we're helping the CSR manager. We work hand in hand with the CSR manager. If you don't have a CSR manager, the FAM program is fantastic because you've got in essence a fractional accountability manager that can help with these things and keep your team motivated and rolling with the KPIs they should be going after dependent on what the schedule looks like. So it's really cool.
Yeah, I really like that a lot. So if someone wants to learn more about that, where should they go? What should they do?
Come to powersellingpros.com just powersellingpros.com and it's P O W E R S E L L I N G P R O S dot com. Once you get to that website, right on the front page, there's a place where you can click to schedule a consultation. And let's just talk about what your needs are. And we can custom build a training program for your CSRs, your dispatchers, lead coordinators that give them the oversight as well as one on one training they need to perform an extremely high level.
Okay, cool. And do you mostly just work with Service Titan or other CRMs as well?
We, we work with other CRM. Service Titan is our main one.
Yeah, of course.
It really doesn't matter. Whatever you're using. We, chances are we can, we can use it.
Okay, cool. Well, Brigham, this has been great, man. I appreciate, first, I appreciate that you break things down and you educate through this with stories as well as real things that people can implement. It's not just fluff stuff. So I really appreciate that about you. And also just this part and Ray stuff, you know, you're a real dude. You know, you share real stuff. You do cold plunges at people's offices. Right. Like you're out there. You're a man of the people. And I really appreciate that about you. So thanks so much for sharing all that.
Absolutely. And I, I appreciate you saying that. I love, I love what I do. I love what I do. I love this industry. I love to see. Let me give you one example. Okay. So Lawrence, Lawrence at DeHart in Kansas. You, you probably saw the cold plunge pictures from his office.
Yeah.
Okay. When he first started his fitness journey, it was well over seven months ago. Well, today he's lost over £100. Wow. I think I've shared the before and after on LinkedIn.
I think so too.
Yeah. And it was absolutely incredible. I would say that today more than ever, a team, a business owner's team follows what he or she does more. Much more so than what he or she says. And if you want to see success inside your business, one way to do it is to, to decide. Just look in the mirror. Just look, look in the mirror and you'll know. You'll know that. You know what, this isn't great. And it's amazing that the trends you can set by changing your behavior that way physically. So I appreciate, I appreciate you bringing that up. I love the industry. I love what I'm doing. I love being able to help guys like Lawrence. It's those individuals.
Yeah.
That, that, that do it for me. I'm very excited and grateful for the opportunity to work with him and many, many others in our industry. So thank you.
Yeah, for sure. All right, well, round three. We'll get it. We'll get it on the schedule as well. So thanks, brother.
Sounds good.
See you, man.
Thanks, Phil. Bye. All right.
