Sales reps are on the “front line” for every builder and remodeler. This makes them one of the most important parts of any company. However, many builders neglect to train their sales reps on what tasks they should be doing on a day-to-day basis. The following video will highlight the top three of six tasks that every Builder Sales Rep should start doing in order to increase sales and improve customer satisfaction levels for their company.
- Automate: Use this technology to automate Follow-up
- Delegate: Anything and everything to do with production
- Eliminate: Watch/Listen to the episode for a list of items every sales rep should eliminate from their day
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Transcript:
Welcome to Conversations That Convert. Every week, we’ll spend about 10 to 15 minutes tackling relevant lead generation, marketing, and sales topics for remodelers, home improvement companies, and home builders. Conversations That Convert is brought to you by Builder Lead Converter, your perfect sales assistant. And now here’s Rick and Daiana.
Rick: Good morning. Good afternoon, everyone. It’s Rick and Daiana again, and thank you for joining us. Please let us know that you’re here and if you can, what business you’re in. If you have a question or thought, go ahead and leave it in that comment section and we’d like to hear from you. Go ahead and say hi, if you wouldn’t mind. And whether you’re watching on YouTube or Facebook, and if you’re watching this as a recording, make sure you leave a comment, and if we use your comment or question in a future episode, we will make sure that you get the credit. All right, Daiana, what’s our topic for today?
Daiana: Hi and welcome. Today we will speak about things you should start doing when you are considering sales. And this is part one, and the next time we will have part two. So I’m curious what’s on your mind, Rick today?
Rick: Well, I was thinking last two weeks we talked about your stop-doing list and, so I don’t wanna be a negative Nelly. I wanna make sure we talk about some positive things here. So we’re gonna, we’re gonna focus on your, your start doing list and sort of build off that, that theme. So, one of the things that we did discuss is what is your, your time worth. And I think this is a good exercise for everyone to go through. I’m gonna show you just a quick example here of how I calculate that. So what we start with is your average sales price. We look at how much you make either on a commission rate percentage or on a profit percentage and then we look at how many hours it takes of direct work with that lead in order to get a purchase agreement or, or a contract. So let’s just use an example of you having an average sales price of 50,000. And let’s just say your commission rate or what you’re going to make from that job, let’s say is 10% and it takes approximately 10 hours of work to direct work with the client. So your time is worth $500 per hour. So the thing I want to get across to salespeople and, and to business owners is that it’s so, so important for you to really be disciplined on what you’re focusing your time on. And then, and then more importantly, what you need to stop doing and what you shouldn’t be focusing your time on. So the last couple of weeks we talked about that Stop doing list. But this week, we’re gonna start talking about what should you start doing. So we’re assuming you’ve already cut on all the bad habits, right, Daiana? They’re all gone just like that. We just snap our fingers and we got rid of all our bad habits. We know it’s, we know it’s a progression. Right?
Daiana: Right. And that’s the best assumption to do, and yeah,
Rick: That’s right.
Daiana: I’m curious, what’s your start doing number one?
Rick: Well, I’ll start doing number one we’re gonna look at automating. So I put on here automating follow-up. So technology today has lent itself so that you do not have to do a manual follow-up. So, quick question, I’ll maybe you know the answer to this.
Daiana: Yeah.
Rick: If you are a lead and you put in your information for a company, regardless if it’s in the housing industry, but just any company you put your information in. What is the normal expectation of when you expect to hear back from that company? What’s the amount of time that you expect to hear back from them?
Daiana: Well, I will be impressed if they answer immediately. I will be shocked. And then I expect the 24 hours. That’s, that’s ideal. But, I’m okay with 48. And probably I will still work with them if they answer after 72 hours.
Rick: Okay, so, so seven. So you’d say, Hey, I would love it if they would answer me immediately. I would, you know, expect 24 hours, but even if they go 48 or 72 hours, I’ll work with that. So let me ask you a question. If you put three different inquiries into three different companies in the same industry. So let’s say again, you wanted to remodel your home and you’re in a check with three different remodelers. If one of ’em answered, let’s say immediately and one of them took three days to get back to you, who would you more likely work with?
Daiana: Well, if they are good, probably I will just close the deal for the next week.
Rick: Yeah, that’s right. you like, you like to buy. Yeah, that’s exactly right. So here’s what we find is that, if you’re in the housing industry, you’re compared to every other industry out there. So the best industry is doing that response. We’re gonna call it immediately. We’re gonna say within five minutes. So you can now automate your follow-up so that you can get back to a new lead within five minutes. And if your competitors are taking 48 to 72 hours to get back to them, you’ve got, you might already have a site visit scheduled, you know, before the comp, your competitors ever get back with them. So you’re the first one out of the gate and that sets the tone for everything you do going forward as it relates to a customer service standpoint. So you are setting the bar. You’re busy though as a salesperson and so we understand sometimes you’re behind the wheel, sometimes you are in a meeting, and sometimes you’re just taking the day off. And you may be not able to get back to people within five minutes. So you can not only automate now email responses, but you can automate phone messages, you can automate text responses and all of this can be done so that you don’t have to worry about being Johnny on the spot but you can focus on what you do best, which is getting in front of, of clients and selling them. And then let the automation take over all of the other follow-up tasks. So let’s just say, let’s just be honest. Sometimes you can get away with waiting 72 hours, but we know that if you can get, get back to ’em immediately, you have a much higher chance of getting the job.
Daiana: That’s awesome news. Awesome news. I’m curious what’s start doing number two? Now that we have everything in place and we respond immediately.
Rick: Yeah, so we respond immediately. So start doing number two is a big one, and there’s always this, I’m gonna call it a gray area in, in housing, if you’re in sales. Where do your responsibilities start and stop as it relates to production? So I see a lot of companies where salespeople are deeply involved in, in production, and that starts off with the design, pricing, a lot of times, you know, doing pre-construction meetings, getting even into the production fulfillment phase where they might be in charge of change orders, neither gathering information for, for closing or for completing the job. What we wanna do is we want to delegate production responsibilities to somebody else. Going back to our initial, what is your time worth questioning? So, if a salesperson, when they’re working one on one directly with a customer and they’re making $500 an hour, so the question I have for you. Can you hire somebody else to do production responsibilities for less than $500 an hour? The answer, of course, is of course I can, sure, I can hire somebody for probably 25, 30, 35 an hour, and somebody who’s quite competent, maybe even better than my salesperson. So we wanna delegate all production responsibilities away from salespeople so that they are always doing income-related activities. And I know you’re gonna talk about, some of that, here coming up, but we, we need to make sure that when that job is going and that client comes back to the salesperson and says, Hey, I need this or I want to change this, or, How much does this cost? We need to make sure that that salesperson does not feel obligated, and they can simply just say, Oh, that is so and so’s responsibility. Let me get you over to them so they can keep selling.
Daiana: I like to say that everything is in exact order and, Okay, so the fir the, the third thing, it’s important to start doing is to eliminate everything unnecessary to making a sale. And that’s, email interruptions, notifications, and who knows, maybe social media or everything that can interrupt you to lose your focus from what’s really income-producing activities. So,
Rick: So give us an example of something that you would recommend, like to avoid that interruption.
Daiana: Well, for example, emails. I have plenty of emails, so I have two hours in the day when I check emails. That’s, that’s an option sometimes. So, I heard, some specialists are focusing on answering only one time at the beginning of the day or at the end of the day, they have specific hours when they answer emails. Another thing is to push notifications away, especially when you work on your laptop or on your phone, and close them. I only have 10 minutes for notification just to be aware of them, and that’s at the end of my working program so that, I’m not distracted by the others’ agenda and then focusing on completing my agenda during the day.
Rick: Notifications are the big one too.
Daiana: Yeah.
Rick: Because we buy these phones and they come programmed with Facebook, so that every single thing that happens on Facebook, you get a notification and that takes you right down that rabbit hole, doesn’t it?
Daiana: Exactly, and it’s, it’s a never, and it’s a never-ending story.
Rick: Yeah. So I love that. So eliminate interruptions, email, social media, and notifications from your phone. And if you automate your lead follow-up, you don’t have to get notified every single time there’s a new lead because you know, it’s automatically gonna get followed up with, from a voicemail, a text message, and an email. And, ultimately booking that appointment for you, so then you just stay focused on getting that deal closed that’s in front of you.
Absolutely. And you can just simply focus on, your intentional working time frame. So you can spend 25 minutes and focus on a specific task, and then you can take a break for five minutes, and then you can move to another slot of intense work. It’s called Pomodoro Technique. You can find it if you Google it. It’s very well known and it’s very efficient if you if you choose to apply it and,
Rick: Sure. So you work, you work in 25-minute increments.
Daiana: Yes. And then.
Rick: And then uninterrupted 25-minute increments.
Daiana: Uninterrupted.
Rick: Yeah.
Daiana: And then you take a short break and then you continue.
Rick: Yep. Okay. So here’s the thing I wanna add to this conversation, is that every company has sacred cows. Well, why do you do it like that, Mr. Builder, you know, Miss, Mrs. Remodeler, well, because we’ve always done it that way. So there are so many sacred cows out there that really get in the way of making more sales and be, and being efficient with your sales. I look at this as unnecessary meetings. I see, and I see a lot of salespeople too, you know, like product research. They feel like they’ve gotta know about every product and they’ve gotta research it in depth. It’s like, you know, that’s not, you don’t need to do that. What you need to focus on again, is making that next sale. And the big one, and I was guilty of this, okay, so guilty is charged with chasing bad leads. And there would be certain times of the year and I, I would, I would always focus on, it was around the holidays where my leads would go get lower. And I was using just-in-time leads, as we talked about in the video, I think it was, last week. And, you know, I would chase these bad leads and I would waste so much time where on, on leads that I knew were not gonna convert, but I’m thinking like, well, I have nothing else better to do. So that is a sacred cow, is it? it’s very freeing to be able to say to somebody appreciate, you know, your interest in our, in our services, however, I feel that so and so might be a better fit for you. And to be able to say no to that business and focus on those leads that are going to convert. So,
Daiana: Yeah, we have free things to start doing and you may want to choose to start doing them until next time when we continue with part two. And, yeah, we’ll see what’s, what wants to happen with things that we should start doing.
Rick: Automate your follow-up. Right? Number one, delegate your production responsibilities. If your sales, get yourself out of production. Eliminate everything unnecessary to making a sale. And you know where you can start right now is you can try our lead connector tool. You know, that eliminates your interruption and wasted time chasing bad leads, you know, by letting themself qualifying book appointments. And you can try all of this for free. we’ll set it up. Test it. Kick the tires for 30 days. See how many leads you capture, how many of ’em book appointments. And if you, if you like it, great, you know, you can, you can subscribe to it on a monthly basis, but that’s where you can start just by automating that part.
Daiana: Great. And all you have to do is just leave a comment in the chat box and we’ll come back to you.
Rick: Yep. And there’s a link right below this video here to go ahead and, and start on that. And, so next week we’re gonna be doing part two, right? So, to start doing lists for four, five, and six.
Daiana: Great. Until next time, take excellent care and, enjoy selling.
Rick: Absolutely. And for my brothers and sisters in Christ, may the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit, be with you all. See you next time.
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