Your Sales Process Is Costing You Jobs. Here’s How to Fix It

Welcome back to the show. I'm your host, Phil Risher, and on today's episode, we're talking about how to close more jobs, improve your sales process, and create a buying experience that sets you apart from the competition with Dean Curtis. Dean, thanks so much for joining us today.

Thanks, Phil. Appreciate you having me on.

Yeah, for sure. So, uh, Dean, could you tell us a little bit about you? How did you, uh, you're the CEO of Engage, but can you tell us a little about like how you even got into this space and what Engage is?

Uh, I think like any accidental CEO, right? And, um, So I'll go all the way back. I know you mentioned earlier you live in Frederick. My first job was a teacher in Baltimore County Public Schools. I actually had a job offer in Frederick as well. Took the one in Baltimore, a little bit of a bigger city.

Yeah.

And then about 3 or 4 years in, I was like, you know what? I think I like tech because I was at a magnet school and I was like, I think I want to try my hand at tech. So I left teaching and got into the technology field, worked at all kinds of companies, big Fortune 500 companies, Oracle, Palm, Apple. And about almost 10 years ago, I was like, I think I wanna try my hand at a startup. I was doing a partner program at Apple and we were working with a bunch of startups and building apps for iPhone and iPad.

Wow.

And I was like, I wanna get into this world. I never thought I'd be the CEO of a company. I came over to help with like go-to-market and stuff like that. But it was a much better commute. I was commuting to California and I ended up commuting to New York from Philadelphia, which is way easier.

Yes.

And I wanted to just try my hand at the startup world. It was one of those, like, I could always go back to Apple, or I had, you know, some good history. I was like, I'll find another job. And here I am 10 years later.

Wow.

And we are a completely different company than we were 10 years ago. And we found product market fit for a product we were making that actually was inspired by some people at Apple to help contractors sell better in the home. That's really what we do. So we're interactive presentation software. We have all the tools someone needs to create an amazing interactive experience that'll help you sell wherever, whether it's at the kitchen table, in the garage, in the, in the water closet, wherever you happen to be selling. Because I think it's pretty crazy in the contractor world, you're literally selling everywhere.

Yes.

Um, then we give you the tools to make sure your whole team has what they need. And then a sales leader gets what they need to understand how that content's being used to close more deals. Wow. So we're really about enabling the readiness of salespeople to be amazing at the point of sale. Love it.

Okay. So I used to work at a $3 million home service business. I was director of business development and Our sales guy would go out and he'd walk around the property and then he'd take his notepad and say, okay, you got 10 of these. Okay, here's your price. I'll send you an email tomorrow. You might get it. And then maybe I'll follow up with you once.

Yeah.

That is a pretty normal process for larger ticket things, I would say. How does it— obviously you found this product market fit, but What does Engage look like for people that do it that way? And then how do they make it simple so that they can do it with Engage?

Yeah. So I think one of the things that people don't really realize, maybe you do because you work with people in this industry, but it's a massive education process.

Yeah.

So if I'm walking into someone's home and I'm going to sell them a $30,000 roof, well, one, it's one of the biggest purchases they're going to make. probably that year, if not in the next 5 years. Most of the time they have a problem with the roof or the siding or the windows or the paint or whatever they're— what the HVAC unit, that there's a problem.

Yeah.

So they have a real problem. It's expensive and they've never done it before. They don't know that the underlayment of the roof and the soffits and the ridge vents are, are important and they have no idea why. So the, in the education part of the sales process, it's more education than it is selling. Like, you're not selling someone. Maybe you're selling an upgrade or something like that, but you're really educating. And what, what we believe as a company is if we're gonna help our clients win, and our clients are the contractors, they need to help their client win.

Yeah.

And we do that through great interactive content that gives them consistency. So if I'm gonna pitch on how to improve your roof or how to, what the value of new windows are, or the value of a new HVAC unit. You need to sell, but educate on all the things that will make them feel comfortable and build confidence that you are the person to solve the problem that they have. And—

Love it.

We have a firm belief that content helps that because it's, I mean, think of all the content that's out there in the world today. It's always driving trust, number one. And only once someone trusts you will they actually listen to what you have to say. So if you show up and you're literally like fumbling with some little paper brochure, or you're literally only scratching something on that notepad and saying, here's the price, like, are they going to build the trust? So trust and confidence, we believe, comes through really consistent sales process, and that can be baked into what we do.

Okay, so let's say someone's listening to this and they're like, okay, makes complete sense, I need to be educating, and I kind of do that when I talk to them, um, or like I have a sales process and that's how it's supposed to go. A couple things come top of mind. How much Based off of what you found data-wise, like how much should I be educating them? And then should I be showing them like good, better, best options? Or like, when do I make that change? Or like, is it got to show them these 10 pictures? Like, you know, how does that— how have you seen to be the best way to do it?

All right. So I need you to think about that first time you went to bingo. Have you ever been to bingo?

Yes.

Like at every good bingo, there's, there's a board, right? With all the numbers on it. And think of those numbers as all the things that the sales rep has to know in order to convert a client. Now, the key, though, is just like bingo, you don't need all the lights on the board to light up. You need the right ones that match your card.

Yes.

So, to me, what you need is you need a salesperson who understands the lights to light up on that bingo board to get them to trust you. To understand how you solve their problem, and only then will they, you know, sign on the contract. So to me, the education is, it's really up to the sales rep to determine as they're doing discovery with that client, when they're examining and doing a diagnosis of what the problem is, is to understand the path they have to take on that bingo board in order to get them bingo, which is a contract, which is a problem solved. So like, hopefully that visual helps.

Yes.

Because We don't need— yes, we need to know everything, but we don't need to teach them everything. We need to teach them the right things so that they see you as a solution to their problem. Think about the sales rep as a guide in the story, not the hero. The hero of the story is— Odyssey is out right now, so it's a big, you know, everyone's going to see these epic movies. You don't need to be the hero. You actually need to be the guide to make sure they are the hero of the story of fixing whatever problem that they have.

Yeah, love it. StoryBrand, shout out.

Oh, you have it on the shelf? I love that. I actually—

yeah, Don Miller.

I love Donald Miller.

Yeah, great guy. Um, all right, so it sounds like you have to use your discovery to uncover and then educate through that, but more importantly, you have to understand the 2 or 3 hot buttons for them. And that could be like maybe price, time, decision-making. Are there any other like big hot buttons that's like common that you I think are important.

Affordability.

Yeah.

Right. That's a big one, right? We talk with our clients all the time is how do you— it's not good, better, best. Like, sure, that is a way to get someone to buy your thing, but it's really about helping them understand affordability, especially in today's day and age. Free cash is maybe not what they have, but if you can offer financing, so getting them through that affordability conference or conversation is super important. And, and laying the, the seeds along the path to understand when you get to the price presentation, okay, I bet you, you know, I think a good salesperson will know whether that person is going to be a financing customer or a cash person, 90-day savings cash, whatever the offers are that you have, they will know which one they're probably going to fit in by the time they get there. And to me, like, that's, that's a big one. So affordability. Yeah, for sure. The other education is options, right? You're affiliated typically as a contractor with one or more different brands. So am I a GAF shingle installer? Am I an Owens Corning? MAB Paints, does they even exist anymore? Or a Sherwin-Williams painter?

I guarantee you.

I don't even know. But there's a whole bunch of different, and can you associate your brand, which maybe they don't know, with a major brand, which they do know? So that affiliation can also help because those options are really important. My cousin just got a new roof And they got a GAF and it's black and it does this and it, you know.

Yes.

All those things really matter. So those are 2 big ones, financing options. And then they trust you because they, they, they feel heard.

Of course.

I understand you wanted a black roof with these ridge vents and you wanted this aesthetic or you wanted this type of grid in your window. And then you can show them the things that really matter to them because And they trust you because they know you listened.

Yes. Okay. So let's take the affordability one. I worked at a home service business and we ended up getting service tightened. And what we used to do was like, hey, good, better, best. And here's your price, your monthly price. Here you go. That way is one way to do it. But what would engage or how would you recommend if I know that this person is going to be a finance person, how do I tee up my presentation to best suit them and then present it in a way that makes the most sense for them?

Yeah, I think first and foremost, we'll go back to that education topic, right? Some people don't understand the financing options that are available to them. So they think that they have to go to the bank and do something. So there's so many different ways that a contractor can present financing. They could have relationships with specific banks or specific financing programs. They could have a one-look, you know, first-look product where it does a waterfall across a whole bunch of different ones. So it's helping that client first understand the value you can bring to the table Around financing, right? They don't— you don't want to lose their attention in that sale. So educating them on the financing options that you bring to the table. And I think a good contractor nowadays has to have that. Because if you don't have— and I'm not selling financing here.

No, I get it.

But like, if you don't have that, you're going to do all this work to get them to yes. And then they're going to say, but, you know, I can't afford $30,000, but I can afford $240 a month. And you're like, Well, okay, well go check with your bank. Like, you don't want to be in that situation.

Yeah, for sure. Okay, so inside of an Engage presentation, what is it different than someone that has paper stuff that they kind of fumble through? Like, are there pillar things that's like, hey, this is something that's very unique about using a software to present a proposal to someone?

Yeah, I— the one of the big differentiators that we, we like to talk about is how dynamic that conversation is, right? If you go back, so every really successful home improvement company, right? The Qualified Remodeler Top 500 just came out. You know, there's companies out there doing billions of dollars in home improvements. I would bet they train on a very dedicated sales process that they want people to do it over and over and over and over again. That's one thing. So can we ensure that the pages don't get all messed up? There's no editing, there's no rearranging, there's no hiding. Everything is available to the salesperson. That's number one. Number 2, you need to be able to move dynamically around as the conversation moves. As much as we want every sales conversation to start here and go here, we all know it doesn't.

Yes.

Because they're going to think of the objection that Aunt Sally told them to make sure to ask, and they're going to ask it early in the conversation when you're like, no, I really am going to get to that later. You want to be able to move, answer the objection, and then move back into your process. And we have a dynamic navigation. This is like a technical thing, but a way to very easily move throughout the, the content. The third is you want it to be condensed. So no one wants to sit there and go through 90 pages of content.

Yeah.

So how can we make it super dense so that I have depth? We call it depth in the presentation. So if I bring up a page and it's all of the color options for the roofing tiles. Well, I don't have to go to 7 pages in to get to the red.

Yeah.

I can have one and then tap on it and bring up interactive elements. Could be video, could be images, could be text, could be another gallery of all different examples. So the idea of condensing content into a really manageable set that one, the sales rep has extreme confidence in because they know that it's a finite set. It's not 90 or 100 pages. I mean, literally companies come to us with 100+ page PowerPoints.

Yeah.

Help us make sense of this. So dynamic navigation, density of information and depth of information. Very, very important. Very key to what we do at Engage.

Yeah. Okay. That makes sense. I'm very curious about this because one of my first clients, they were like a $7 million HVAC business and they were going from an old CRM to a new CRM and they had never built a price book before. And so it was basically like in their brains, in some spreadsheets, you know, trying to update manufacturer pricing, everything. How does it, how does Engage integrate with manufacturer pricing and then update automatically? Is it on the business to update pricing and like make it all make sense? I'm sure you get this a lot, but I'm very curious.

Yeah. Yeah. So we are not a pricing tool. However, we have the ability to ingest pricing from other systems. We're actually working on a ServiceTitan integration right now, so it'll be seamless. There are ways to get your pricing into our tool to present it. So what we find is like that whole concept of pricing, very complex. There's tons of solutions out there to help build your price book, build price quotes and all that. We don't do that. But what we can do is integrate with those solutions so that if you want a great way to present the 3 affordability options and add financing, we have a tool called Price Kit that is integrated that you can integrate those types of things. What we find the most simple thing is, it's really, it's really brain dead simple. You create the quote in whatever tool you're creating it in. Some people still use spreadsheets or paper or whatever it is.

Yeah.

You bring the number over to our tool, into Price Kit, and you put it in. And then there's 4 ways or 3 ways that you typically present affordability. You present 90-day same as cash. You present the financing rate that you can get or whatever, whatever those things are. And we give them an interface to do that through what A feature, what we call Price Kit.

Okay. Yeah. Makes complete sense. So this, this is not a pricing tool. This is a tool to get the sales process to the point of having the conversation and they feel a lot more trustworthy. Uh, you feel a lot more trustworthy to work with you. Um, I'm curious. So you mentioned exterior remodeling is kind of like where you got started and you found good product fit.

Yeah.

How has that transitioned into like these other businesses, you know, like HVAC, plumbing, electrical, or these other tools? I'm sure that they've been interested in using this tool, so How? Yeah, but I also know it's like you don't just like click here and go to shingles, right? You got to click here and go to their, uh, you know, boiler room or whatever it is. So, uh, how does that work?

Well, the, the core of our business, we've been selling to companies who sell at the kitchen table, which is a, which is a longer process. And to keep a client engaged throughout— and I know it's a pun on play on words, right? But to keep them engaged in the conversation over the long haul, because, you know, roofing sale could take 60, 90, 120, 240. I mean, people are in the home for a long time.

Yeah.

Versus an HVAC, they're not typically sitting at the kitchen table. They're literally standing in the utility closet saying, this thing needs to be replaced. Here's your 3 options. Which one do you want? It's a very different thing. It's also a difference, what we've found, and I'd love feedback from you and the, and the people out there to tell me more about this, but the, the tech is the salesperson. Versus, yeah, I don't say professional because I don't want to, you know, disrespect the techs, but like that's not their primary job. Their primary job is to go and replace, and their, their secondary job is to sell more things.

Yes.

So the question is, can we help them be amazing at positioning the good, better, best of the HVAC replacement or the add-on features? Hey, here's how, here's why you need a service contract. Here's the, I call it the bug scrubber. Like the big thing in COVID was add this, you know, UV thing on your, so it kills all the germs.

Yeah.

Or the air circulator, whatever those things are that go on your HVAC system. How can I help them be better at selling upgrades? Because all those things are what make a modern HVAC company more profitable, right?

Yes.

It's not the initial sale. It's a service contract and coming out to your house twice a year to service and all that filter subscription, whatever those things are that generate more revenue. How do we enable that tech to be a better salesperson because They have the content that helps them convert that person standing in the utility closet, in the basement, or wherever that happens to be.

Yeah. Yeah. This is the hardest part of having technicians is that now they have to be salespeople as well. And it's not that you're forcing them to do that. It's just why postpone the sale process and have a salesperson come in when you can have a tech incentivized sales process right there? And if you can make it easy for them to be able to sell so that they don't have to do the selling on their behalf, but you have a tool maybe that can get them across the finish line. It might be better for you than hiring a salesperson and doing all those things. So it makes complete sense what you're saying.

Yeah. And in, in the Engage platform, we can, so not only is it content, right? So it's, yes, it's the, the brochure and the good, better, best, and all of those things can be presented. But it's also, we have a training module that we're just about to launch where you can train them in the actual presentation as well. So you open it up and you pop the sidebar and it's the script of what to say when you're about to. So you're in the home and you're trying to refresh and you go out to the, you go out to the truck to get your tablet because you forgot it or you want to just, you know, give yourself a minute. You refresh on how to sell that, you close the sidebar and then you bring it up and you talk to them about things that you can sell.

Right. Yeah.

And it's also very visual. Like you can't underestimate the value of really visual content. I mean, I think most of the people listening here have an Instagram account or TikTok account. Right. And they're used to doom scrolling on things because those things Help us stay engaged. You know, again, play on words, but that's what we do.

Okay, cool. What is like the most common objection that you get from people about why they wouldn't use this tool?

Yeah, I, I think it's, it's funny because we call it Engage Presentations and most people would say, I don't have a presentation problem. And I would agree with them because they don't think of it as a presentation problem. But I believe they have a trust problem. I believe they have a readiness problem that their sales reps aren't prepared to answer all the lights on the bingo board. And how can a piece of content give them the confidence they need in order to have that supporting material so that they can be better in the home, whether they're in the closet or the kitchen table or wherever they're selling? They— it gives them confidence. And when they're confident, what does that exude to the client?

Yes.

Trust, confidence, right? So to me, it's about really building readiness with their sales team to handle whatever comes at them. Objections, product questions, questions about the company, building trust, all of that can be enhanced with something like what we do.

Yeah. It, it's like, to me it sounds like you're, you know, putting a quarterback out on the field and if they don't have their, um, play, you know, stuff on their arm, it's like, yeah, you could figure it out and like maybe you know the playbook, but like if you actually had this armband, you might be able to do it a lot better and know the things.

Yeah. Yeah. So, so I love that. I'm gonna, I'm gonna steal that metaphor.

Very good. Yeah. It's like a good tool to keep in your back pocket and pull out and use and feel more confident across the board. So it makes complete sense.

Well, some people ask me, they're like, how, what's the right amount of time that I should use an Engage presentation? And I'm like, well, depends, right? We have some companies who they don't require it for every part of the sales process, but it's an amazing resource for the sales rep to have when the complex question comes up about What vapor barriers for roofing, they're like, I know there's a video in my presentation on page 4 that I can very easily get to and show them, you know, the video on vapor barriers or whatever it happens to be. And so it's a supporting material, or some people in their sales process, it is absolutely important that they have to show the company story. They show the production process. They show like, they show very specific things and then they use it as, as a resource. And some, You go soup to nuts or you're not gonna work here.

Yeah.

So like it all varies depending on the sales process of each, of each company.

Yeah. So, uh, our target audience is $1 million to $10 million business owners and usually like $1 to $3 million, they're the number one salesperson and they're trying to build a sales process. That's right. I could see how this would be very helpful for someone to document their sales process and give a repeatable system to that next person without them having to try to like figure out what's in their brain.

That's correct. And I, I think our most successful, highest renewing customers, well, I know this for a fact.

Yeah.

Have 6, 5, 5 or more salespeople. Why? Because as soon as you have more than a couple, everyone's doing something different.

Exactly.

And the more you can rein in what everyone's doing, the more predictable your sales process can be, the more predictable your revenue can be. And when you have predictable revenue, we all know that's a much better business. And also you can learn from each other. So if I use the analytics of our platform and Phil, you and I go out and we present and all of a sudden You're closing at 48% and I'm closing at 28%. I'm going to stack those analytics against each other and be like, what is Phil doing that Dean is not doing? Hey Dean, maybe you should go and present financing once in a while. Because when Phil does it, he closes at 48%. You never get to the financing pages. You, and maybe I'm talking about it, but I'm never showing the supporting content around it. So it's not solidifying the idea. I don't know if that's exactly right.

Yeah.

But that's the point, right? That you can see. Why one rep is performing over another. You can also learn if we taught a certain way and then all of a sudden Phil's out there going rogue and doing it a different way, but closing at a higher rate. Hey, Phil, let me look at your analytics. What are you doing when you get to this part of the presentation? Well, I'm skipping that page because it was actually confusing people. Maybe if we revised it in this way, it would be more converting. Or I know you told me to only spend about 30 seconds here, but I spend 2 and a half minutes because Whatever the reason is, right?

Yeah.

So we give that level of detail on how people are using the content.

Very cool. So you could see like time on page.

That's right.

Per presentation or something like that, which—

Per session.

Per session. Yeah. Yeah. I love that.

You can compare people. You can— yeah, it's, it's pretty robust.

Yeah. Awesome. Um, we talked a little bit about this pre-show. Is this Engage Pro? But I told you, don't share too much with me. What it— what exactly is it?

Or what? Yeah. So You know, when you build a product, we built Engage Suite and that was what we sold for a long time. We had an enterprise version, which was, you know, more advanced features, single sign-on, all this kind of integration stuff. And what we found was this, so I said earlier, you know, 5 or more is our sweet spot. Well, what about that 1 to 2 or 3 person shop? How can they get the same experience as a bigger, you know, a $5 to $10 million You know, contracting company. And what— because what we found is there's been a lot of people who are 1 or 2 person shops that buy the Engage suite and have success, but the learning curve is pretty steep. So we're like, all right, what can we do to reduce the learning curve, improve time to value? And we've done so many of these presentations for home improvement companies, we know what works.

Yeah.

So what we've done is we've codified a very small set of really robust templates and manufacturer brand content so that somebody can now come in and very quickly get up and running by simply picking something that's particular to their vertical industry, a roofing deck or something like that, the manufacturers they support, GAF, Owens Corning, CertainTeed, and have a very small set of content that they can customize to their brand. They're not creating things from scratch. They're literally taking the templates out of our marketplace, Using some AI technology to customize them for their brand. They can then add in some pictures or change some text, et cetera, add their logo, add their branding, and then literally by the next day be out there selling with these materials. Before, it would take your marketing team to brand things and build things, and now we're really shortcutting that through what we call web customize. You just quickly customize templates that are proven in the market for the last 8 years.

Okay. That's awesome. So that's like, hey, if you're a solo guy or you're trying to build out a system and you don't want to just be printing out PowerPoints and giving it to your guys, this is a much cleaner way to do that and get up and running quickly. What about like success for this? Have you seen, I'm sure you've seen like some metrics like, hey, we started using this tool and now we are closing this, or average ticket went up like this or something.

Yeah. I'll tell you that what's, it's amazing what people can get out of very simple content. So we had one guy come in and he, you get 10 pieces of content in the Engage Pro. So, and that's a lot. Like you, if you have your company story and you're going to do, maybe you do 2 products and then 3 manufacturers, like that's a lot of content to get to your sales team. So 10's a great number. He downloaded one thing. He downloaded one manufacturer presentation for a window manufacturer. And that weekend, Went out and closed $100,000 in window sales. And he comes back to us on Monday. He's like, this is amazing. I couldn't tell the story about how these windows work and the grid options and all of the things. Like it never solidified in the, in the person's brain because it was not interactive, because it was not dynamic, because I couldn't get to the point. He's like, literally just that was value enough for him to say it was worth it. And he went on, he's like, had record, a record year because he's, he's got better content. It's like so simple, but it makes a big difference.

Yeah. I think when you have the, it's like when you can order, you know, at a restaurant, you kind of click the buttons and you kind of do your own thing. It feels, it sounds like it feels kind of like that where the customer's almost like a little bit in control of like what you're seeing next and how it's working and you can kind of click around. Oh, I'm glad you asked that. Let me show you this.

Exactly.

It just feels a lot more professional.

Um, you know, professional on-brand presentations. That's what we've always sold on.

Oh, okay.

Right. It's a key marketing message for us. I hate to say it like that because it, but it's true, right?

Yeah.

I mean, think about it. In this industry, people show up, they have beautiful polos, they've outfitted their trucks. Brand is so important. And then you roll up with a coffee-stained spiral book. Like, it just doesn't make any sense. So having professional content that supports your brand, meets the homeowner where they need to be met and educate them, like, it's such an obvious thing, but not everyone realizes it's something that they can do.

Yeah, for sure. Well, this has definitely been enlightening for me. I've heard about Engage a lot and I was very excited to have you on to really dig in on this. And I know we even have clients that ask about Engage or like other tools, and there's not many tools out here like this. So thank you so much for sharing this. Um, if people are interested in Engage Pro or maybe, uh, Engage, uh, the suite, where should they go to learn more about that?

Yeah, for Engage Pro, go to pro.engage.io, not en. We are interactive engagement. That's how Engage came about. So pro.engage.io. Um, and then I love to talk to people. So let's say you go there and you're like, I don't really see the thing I do, reach out to me. So on Instagram, I know it's like, really? The CEO of companies on Instagram? That's, that's where I hang out. Yeah. Dean Curtis 23 on Instagram. I would love to connect with you and learn more about your business. Um, and also if you give it a shot, hit me up as well because I always love talking to customers.

Yeah. What I can tell you is pre-show Dean was like, I would, I would love feedback. I would love this. I would love this. So like, he's, he's serious about this. It's not some bot that responds to his IG messages. Like it comes to him.

And I'll tell you what, I'll give you a real example. I was out in Salt Lake City attending an event and I went and knocked doors with somebody to learn about canvassing for an hour. I was like, I need to learn more about this to see if there's a content play for canvassing. So I went door to door. So I'm— hold me to my word. I definitely want that feedback.

I love it. Well, thanks, Dean. Really great to get to know the product a little bit more and appreciate you coming on and sharing.

You bet. Thanks, Phil. I appreciate you.

You got it.