This podcast episode elucidates the paramount importance of adapting to the evolving landscape of the HVAC industry, particularly through the lens of effective sales strategies and customer engagement. We delve into the significance of understanding customer needs and the necessity of establishing trust and transparency in pricing to facilitate successful transactions. Our esteemed guest, Travis Smith, who has demonstrated exceptional growth in his business endeavors, shares invaluable insights on the use of online sales tools and their efficacy in enhancing close rates. Moreover, we explore the critical notion that raising prices, when justified by quality service and employee welfare, ultimately benefits both the customer and the business. Through this discourse, we aim to equip HVAC professionals with the knowledge and strategies required to thrive in an increasingly competitive market. The Close It Now podcast provides an erudite exploration of the HVAC sales landscape, deftly elucidating the nuances of establishing oneself as a preeminent authority within the residential HVAC market. In this episode, the host, Sam Wakefield, and guest, Travis Smith, delve into the intricate interplay between understanding customer needs and operational efficiency. The conversation underscores that the quintessence of sales transcends mere transactional exchanges; rather, it is an exercise in relationship-building, wherein the salesperson must embody the role of a trusted advisor. Smith shares insights gleaned from decades of experience, emphasizing the imperative of not only enhancing sales figures but also cultivating a sustainable business model that prioritizes the well-being of both employees and customers. Furthermore, he articulates the significance of adapting to market demands, particularly in light of the evolving consumer landscape, which increasingly favors transparency and trust in pricing models. Thus, the episode serves as both a guide and a clarion call for HVAC professionals to elevate their practices, ensuring they remain relevant and competitive in a rapidly changing industry.

Welcome to Close it now, an H Vac sales training podcast with Sam Wakefield.

Here we'll build your reputation in residential H Vac sales to be the expert influencer in your market.

You'll get insight into the top minds in the industry as they share their skills and hacks to help you on your journey.

This podcast isn't just about selling more.

It'S about understanding your customers needs and building efficiencies behind the scenes so you can sell more but work less while being top of mind when people think H Vac.

Now let's get started with your host of the Close it now podcast.

This is Sam Wakefield.

Well welcome everybody to the Close it now podcast.

Sam Wakefield here.

So excited to have you here today.

I hope you're loving the new format.

We've got interviews on Fridays, got my solo podcast on Monday.

So two hitting you two times a week with your drive time university.

And I know that you are using your, your drive time to better yourself.

You know, a full time out the door, remote in the field, person, technician, salesperson, you know, 15 year career.

Charlie Greer always said that 15 years is the equivalent of three PhDs if you use your drive time wisely.

So I know that you're doing that.

So today we have a really exciting guest.

It's a gentleman that has just his company that he has built up in the Pacific Northwest has just made such a big splash.

But you know, talking to him before this podcast and I'm going to introduce him here in a second, you know, it's something that's really fun.

I didn't realize that he is multi generation business that you know and the fun part about this, when he was, we're talking about how do I introduce you?

He said officially in his baby book his first day on the job.

And I don't think anyone else any other of you out there can claim starting so early in life.

It says in his baby book is a stamp that says six months and five days, first day on a job, doing a trim out with his dad at a, at a project.

So that is pretty fun.

So everyone, welcome to the show today, Mr. Travis Smith.

He is of course owns multiple companies.

Oregon Ductless Heroes is actually going to be kind of a little topic we're going to talk about today.

But tell us about all your businesses.

I know you've got a couple of things going on up there.

Yeah, so my father started sky heating and air conditioning.

I almost said the name wrong because our name has changed since when he started when we were just sky heating and Air conditioning.

We're now sky heating, air conditioning, plumbing, electrical.

It's kind of a mouthful.

I probably need to put.

And drains, because we're not doing so on the drain side.

And I think it's just because people don't know that or we've had somebody recently.

We got tagged in a Facebook post, and somebody tags Sky Heating.

They said, no, I'm looking for an electrician.

We're like.

And electrical and electrical service.

Electrical.

I didn't know you did that.

Well, we didn't as of May 28, but as of June 1, we did.

So, yeah, we're.

We're doing electrical.

We've got, you know, four electricians on our team now.

We've just been growing at a crazy rate and adding everything.

So sky heating and air conditioning is the main company.

When my father started the company, he got laid off from his job and realized he needed to go out on his own and started as WG Smith Handyman and transformed into Sky Heating because he did heating and air conditioning before, but did general handyman work until he could, you know, be more precise in the heating and air conditioning.

And we've grown from a new construction company to peer retrofit, replacement and service.

I bought a company called Oregon Ductless, and we rebranded them to the Oregon Ductless Heroes because ductless is such a huge portion of what we do here in Oregon in the Pacific Northwest.

I think there's a lot of Asian influence on our.

Even our heating and air conditioning system.

So they're very popular.

A couple of the utilities here are always providing great rebates for them.

And for many of the homes, they're a good fit because it's something like 40 to 60% of homes in Washington don't have air conditioning.

Now, I'm not in Washington.

I don't serve Washington.

But in Oregon, that number is probably like 30 to 40% don't have air conditioning.

And people are always amazed when they move up here from, like, Texas or California because we get a lot of people moving from those states and they buy a new house and then they call us up and say, yeah, my air conditioner is not working.

We show up and we go, what's not working?

Well, my air conditioner.

Set it to cool.

Your house doesn't have an air conditioner?

Why would my house not have an air conditioner?

Who would build this with a house up here?

Why would your house have an air conditioner?

Have you added one yet?

This is outrageous.

I'm going to sue the builder.

I'm going to do this.

Good luck with that.

They don't come with air conditioners here.

Even, even a 20 year old home doesn't have air conditioning here.

How funny.

What did people do for 20 years?

And I'm like, I don't know, I bought air conditioning.

You should probably do the same.

Love it, love it.

So a lot of ductless because those homes will add just a single wall head or something to, you know, take the heat off.

I also own commercial real estate apartment complexes and have diversified from heating and air conditioning to have those as more of a passive income and a long term kind of multi generational wealth and net worth goals to accomplish some of those.

Plus we, we operate out of buildings that we own, so those are all individually owned by myself and LLCs.

And the building you see behind me is part of that.

That way we can just control the cost for the company and ensure that we have a nice place for our company to operate out of.

Because that can be a business killer if you lose a lease or don't have a place to operate.

Even with the advanced softwares like Service Titan and such that we have today.

Oh, 100%.

And you're speaking my language.

You know, for years, my very first, I'm super, super into personal growth.

That's one of the topics I talk about a lot on the podcast is work to become someone worth buying from.

And when you uplevel yourself through personal growth, through learning about the difference in passive income versus active income and all those different types of things.

So what you're just talking about just reminded me my very first personal growth book.

I was 19 years old.

my birthday, somebody handed me a copy of Rich Dad, Poor dad by Robert Kiyosaki.

So understanding that from, you know, from a young age.

But I love that and there's a lesson there for everybody.

If you can lower your overhead, you can actually charge less than ever than everybody else and make a whole lot more money.

Not that you would.

The second part, I was going to say the second part.

The second part is not to do.

That, but you shouldn't be, you shouldn't be lowering your overhead.

Bs.

You should still be making each company its own company individually so that each one stands on its own.

My real estate stands on its own and charges fair market back to Sky Heating, which then has a guaranteed lease.

So it's not about the charging less, it's about each company charging appropriately.

So both companies make money so that this has that Continuation.

So I never want to be the low price leader.

I never want to be cheap.

So I just want to get that out of there.

Absolutely.

Funny that you brought up Rich Dad, Poor dad because we've done that same thing where we've gifted that book to people for their, like their high school graduation.

We gave it to one of my wife's friend's sons.

And what I typically do is I, if anybody receives a copy of Rich Dad, Poor dad for me, there's probably $100 bill sitting inside there.

But it's going to be on like the, you know, quite a ways back, 3/4 of the way through the book.

And on the bill is a note.

And I'm always curious to see how many people call me versus don't call me after giving them the book with a hundred dollar bill because they're 18 and they're like, everybody's giving me cash.

And then, you know, the guy that shows up in a McLaren gives me a book and they're always like, what the hell?

I was hoping for some big money from him.

And these are, you know, family friends, not actual family people.

So it's not people that we know that well, but we give them a book with a hundred dollars in it and I want them to read it because the value isn't the hundred dollars.

The value is the knowledge in that book of what to do.

I think one of them to this day that I'm thinking of never called, which means he saw $100 bill sitting in that book.

And if it goes to somebody else and my wife is like, well, what if he never gets it?

And I said, good.

If he doesn't get it, then it shows that he has no motivation.

And I'm sorry, I'm that kind of an asshole that he doesn't get the a hundred bucks.

If he gives that away and somebody buys it at a garage sale is interesting, all of a sudden they're like, oh my God, there's $100 in here.

And they have earned it and we've paid it forward to that person because that person is now going to be somebody that's going to become successful.

So I love that book and I find that kind of interesting.

You got it at 19.

Because I now give it away to people that are 18 and 19.

I love it.

I love it.

Yeah, it changed everything in my life.

There's a whole, whole story about a passive income that I.

My lesson of not taking action from something I was going to do there.

I'm going to do a whole podcast on it at some point.

But yeah.

Oh it started everything for me.

It was.

Yeah.

Well actually super quick nutshell.

We've got a little bit of time here.

I read the book and I dove into probably about six other books in a row from that same Robert Kiyosaki, the same collection, other people's money and all the different ones.

And I decided that I wanted to open a self serve car wash. And so I found the location.

I talked to two to three different people that were going to be potential investors.

I contacted the there's a companies that'll come in and they'll build for you and just basically turn over the keys to your new self serve car wash and all the plans and like 19 year old long haired guitar player and heavy metal bands.

I got distracted with life.

And about three months later I'm driving down the road and I look over and in my lot was a new sign for a self serve car wash. And it hit, I had to pull over and I think I literally just cried for probably 15 minutes that day.

And it was one of the biggest lessons in my life about the difference in an idea and take actually taking action on the idea.

And just from that day forward it's.

I would much rather have to course correct because I acted too fast than not take action and miss out on an opportunity altogether.

Yeah, decisions always need to be made like this.

And I think that's what people often forget is that like my goal is to make decisions as fast as possible and you have the reticular activating system in your brain that helps you make those decisions.

It's the same thing that says like, you know, you bought a new Toyota Tundra and you're like holy shit, there are Toyota Tundras everywhere.

Like this thing has got to have gone up in value because everybody else bought one the same day I did.

So there's huge demand for Toyota Tundras when the reality is your brain goes every time I go to a parking lot I need to find a Toyota Tundra.

So it just automatically looks for them on the road reading books.

Getting that base knowledge allows your brain to subconsciously, at least I believe, make those decisions as fast as possible.

So when somebody comes to you, they go, here's the decision.

Most people sit there and go, well, let's weigh the options.

I'm just like, yeah, yes or no?

I don't go, fuck, we just need to figure this out right now.

And sometimes we'd make the wrong decision, but if 8 out of 10 times I make the right decision the amount of time saved to make that is, is huge.

And I read studies about like Mark Zuckerberg, how he wears the same thing and drives the same car because it's 20 seconds of less decision making and you're making billions of dollars a day or hour or whatever he makes, all of a sudden those 20 seconds are worth massive amounts of money.

And to have to decide, well, which clothing am I going to wear, which car am I going to have to drive?

Now that's a good challenge.

I would love to have way more cars that I have to figure out which one.

Agreed.

Agreed.

But I'm also a car nut and like anything with a motor.

So getting through those decisions, so many people dilly, dally, delay.

And then like in your case you were 19, you were going, well, maybe I'll wait on this decision, maybe it's not right.

Well, somebody else went ahead and did it.

Like there is no waiting in this virtual world, in this economy that we're in, you've got to jump on it.

And people today are on the forums and I know we're going to get to inventory.

Well, my supplier no longer has inventory.

Okay.

I'm working on my forklift plans because my inventory is no longer coming in on a truck with a lift gate.

It's coming on a 40 foot semi truck that needs a forklift.

That's the stuff I'm working on today for inventory because this isn't going away.

Agreed.

Agreed.

It's one of those.

The situation in fact I was talking to obviously in the group, that's what we see all over the place is just the biggest.

What's your biggest struggle right now?

And it's always I can't have equipment itself.

And I had a territory manager for.

It was actually for Jim Air Reach out to me.

He was like, man, has nobody thought about some of the alternative equipments that are available?

We've got stocks of them, you know.

And so it just reminded me that in a lot of cases it's not lack of resources, it's lack of resourcefulness that is our problem.

Yes.

And my team is looking all over.

We make multiple calls.

It isn't just like, well, it's out of, you know, shit out of luck.

We've got layer upon layer upon layer.

And that's what I Told my sales team is like, look, we've got four layers.

But even with four layers, stuff's going to fall through the cracks.

Stuff's not going to be available.

Or one distributor is going to say, we've got one and that one doesn't show up because they went, well, we miscounted, sorry.

Or yeah, the forklift goes to get that one.

It goes right through the coil.

They deliver going, well, the coil's all damaged and screwed up.

But hey, it's your one.

But that's the only one.

I said, look, that's all there is.

Yeah, These customers at the same time, it sucks because I understand they're getting frustrated, but you can't blame the companies when we have, I have a 10,000 square foot warehouse filled with inventory.

I have people that are just taking care of inventory.

Things that we've never had to do in the past and yet costs more.

That's also why our prices have had to go up recently.

Because now all of a sudden that warehouse space that could have been used for offices or other things is now used for invent.

And if I'm spending, let's just use round numbers, 10,000amonth on a warehouse for once Again, round numbers, 200,000 in inventory.

Well, each dollar of inventory is costing me X amount to hold it per month.

And that needs to be factored into the pricing and my salespeople.

Why is the price going up?

Well, not only has our manufacturer brought up the price three times, but now we also have to factor inventory.

Well, we're this much higher than other people.

I get that.

It doesn't matter how much higher we are.

It matters that we're priced right for the longevity of our clients, the longevity of our team and the longevity of all of our employees families.

Because I've now already had multiple people come to me this year that look like they're doing well, seem like they're doing well, and they're like, travis, I need to talk to you about buying my company because I have no options.

I'm going under because I can't keep up with this stuff.

Other people stating I have no inventory.

I've got 100,000, a million, 10 million sold.

And I have nothing to put in.

There are two things, only two things that will ever kill a business.

Lack of profits and lack of cash.

If you don't have enough cash coming in, you're going to have issues because you're probably going to have a lack of profits or you can't pay your vendors.

If you're not Sitting on cash, and you're running on equity lines and don't have those property capital reserves that you need.

A lot of businesses have been running on small business loans, on EIDLs, on payroll protection program grants, and you better make sure you get that grant forgiven.

But they're running on these things where it's like, hey, the government gave me free money.

No, no, no, that's.

That's not free money.

Yeah.

Just because it's a grant doesn't mean it's free money.

It will come back whether it's in the form of taxes, whether it's in the form of something else, or maybe not getting forgiven.

And I've seen these companies where they have SBA loans because, like, oh, I took the loan just because.

Well, now they have less.

Less cash in the bank than they have in loans.

And they're going, oh, shit.

And then they've got vehicle loans and then they've got multiple employees and they've got no equipment in cycle.

How are you going to pay for that?

Is service going to cover all of those loans and items?

And if so, do you have enough compressors and capacitors to do service?

Because you can't get the equipment right.

And then when it comes to get.

Real good at selling ductwork real fast.

Yeah.

And chances are they're probably priced wrong on the ductwork.

So they're marking up the ductwork for super cheap, which I don't know about most other areas, but our area in the northwest, like we.

I kid you not, we got six boxes of flexin.

We don't do new construction, so we don't go through a whole lot.

My team was like, where did we get the ductwork from, Travis?

And I was like, I don't know.

My ops manager got it.

But we got six boxes.

That's what we had.

And it was sitting in a corner because we walked our.

Our supply house.

So I don't want to give away too many secrets, but you should walk down to your supply house because they have somebody there that's making 18, 20 bucks an hour, counting.

They count off one or two, they don't really care.

And if they're off one or two, the owner of the supply house doesn't know.

But you may have the piece of equipment that you need sitting in their warehouse.

And there's been multiple times where I sent my people down and they just walked to the warehouse and said, all right, I want that one, that one, and that one.

They're like, we didn't know we had these in Inventory.

Oh my gosh.

I've done that because yeah, we literally just walked in their warehouse and said we want to see what you have.

And we're going to just put little post it notes.

We get like a 3M post note.

We just put it on top saying sky heating, this is to us next week and you've got to get creative.

Love it.

Oh my gosh.

Yeah.

So this is really.

I hope you guys are.

And ladies are paying attention.

This is, we love to talk about next level thinking and upper level thinking.

You cannot solve the same problem with the same level of thinking.

So as we think about bigger ideas, bigger thoughts, it just, it zooms us out to be able to take in and get extra creative.

You know, it's being that, being resourceful like we just talked about.

And so, yeah, thank you for that.

I've done the same thing over the years.

You know, I'll call it sell a piece of, you know, maybe a modulating piece of equipment that's not as common.

And they tell me that there's not any in stock.

I'm like, wait a minute, bullshit.

I saw one last week.

And so I'll drive my happy butt over to the supply house.

Like I'm going to walk through your warehouse real quick.

And nine times out of 10 it's like, this is the one, I want this one.

Put it in the truck.

I'll take it right now.

That way it doesn't get lost 100%.

So Alex, so here's a question then.

Obviously everybody knows and it's clear you've got the resources in the warehouse space to be able to do what you're talking about.

If you were, well, moderately, at least have more resources than.

Yes, resources, not so much.

We're out of that.

Okay.

Relative to say, a five year old company who has, you know, the owner operator with, you know, maybe a dozen people, doesn't have the same, you know, maybe didn't have the same foresight if you were in that situation.

Yes.

What would you be doing to try to solve that?

As you know.

Okay.

We found ourselves scrambling.

You know, what are some ways to.

Kind of approach it now, number one, I'm going to say this again for everybody listening.

Raise your fucking prices because.

Say it again for the background.

Yeah, raise your fucking prices because you were at a point where you were selling things you don't have for a price that's too low to somebody that's charging more because they're spending more to have what you don't have.

So it's easy oh, man, I'm selling so much.

I know.

If only I had the inventory.

You're either selling it because you have the inventory or your price is so cheap and you don't.

Which one would you rather be?

The guy that's selling magic potion because you don't have shit, or the guy that's selling it for the right price and has it?

You got to raise the prices.

And I'm seeing people out there selling it for thousands less than us.

And the customer calls back and, like, I got to cancel.

And he said, okay, I've done this multiple times.

I trained my sales team.

I said, all right, tell the customer this.

Have the company take a picture of the serial number.

Or the very least, just send you what serial number they're installing.

Customer calls back an hour later and said, well, they don't have a serial number.

It's not available till October.

And I was like, I have it in my warehouse.

Do you want installed next week or not?

It's 90 degrees outside.

You decide.

But that cost me thousands of dollars to have sitting there.

I'd have a warehouse guy pick it up.

I had to have foresight to figure it out.

I had to spend the money that's not giving me return.

I had to pay for the warehouse space.

I have to figure out shrinkage, damage, all those other things, but I have it.

So you need to raise your prices.

Second, if you said somebody doesn't have the resources or doesn't have those, it's because your prices weren't raised when they should have been and your pricing is too low.

I just had this discussion with somebody online where they said, oh, you know, I can't believe these big companies are charging so much.

They're gouging somebody.

No, no, no.

Nobody's gouging anybody there.

Apple makes a 22% net profit.

And if you think as an H Vac company, you're making 22% net first and foremost, you're probably wrong.

Because I have only once ever, and I've looked at 30 to 50 companies one time ever, have I seen a company make a true net profit over 22%, which is what Apple makes, right?

And I use an Apple iPhone.

I have people with Apple watches, Apple computers.

I have an Apple iPad for all my techs.

They do a good product at a good price.

That's what they deserve.

And you as a heating company, plumbing company, electrical company, air conditioning company, drain cleaning, whatever you are, you need to be priced appropriate.

And it's not gouging to make 10% when most companies in our industry make 3%.

And everybody's gonna say, well, I'm not that one.

Well, you probably didn't put depreciation on your books for your vehicles.

You're probably working out of your home.

You're not realizing your cost, or you're sitting there going, look at me.

I get to write off all these cool things that my family does.

That's not your true cost of business.

And the guy mentioned me said, well, bigger companies have bigger overhead.

And oddly enough, in my service tech meeting this morning, the same thing came up.

One of my texts said, well, our price is higher because we have more overhead.

And I said, how?

And they all sat there and stared at me.

I said, what does a small company have we done?

They said, well, they might work out of their home.

I'm like, so you're saying that they do have an office?

Yeah, home office.

I said, so the reality is it's not that they don't have an office.

They're just not paying for their office.

How can they ever grow?

Yeah, well, the other companies, they have less benefits.

Okay, so there we go.

There's less overhead because you wouldn't be as well taken care of.

Oh, yeah.

That's why you don't work there.

Their benefits suck.

They don't have any that costs more.

Are you happier?

Oh, of course I'm happier.

Okay.

Does that mean you provide a better service to the client?

Well, of course I do.

If I didn't have health insurance, I wouldn't be able to give a good service.

Okay, so can we agree then that if they have less overhead, they're providing a shittier service?

And they're like, yeah, well, hands down.

Okay, so then how's our overhead different?

And they couldn't come up with anything.

I said, they all advertise.

They all need cell phones.

They all need vehicles.

Our vehicles just happen to be new.

And we choose to spend our money on a new vehicle that costs more versus spending money on breakdowns and loss of gross profit.

Either way, both things cost money.

If I have to buy a new engine at $5,000 for a vehicle, plus the lost time on that, well, even if I blow an engine every five years, it's still $100 a month and blowing engines.

Or I could have $100 a month in a better vehicle.

Which would you rather have?

And I said, all right, let me ask the females in the room, if you go to Walmart, Fred Meyer, wherever, how many of you would park next to a white van?

And one of them said, I'd have my cell phone on my left hand, my gun on my right, and I was like, wow, that's only if I had to park next to the white vehicle.

Mike.

So you're telling me you carry a gun and you still would not park next to a white unwrapped vehicle?

She's like, absolutely not.

So now you can't tell a customer that you're paying for the vehicle wrap, but what they are paying for is the peace of mind knowing that when our technicians arrive, that's our technician is we get that phone call all the time.

How will I know it's really your technician?

And unless you've answered the phones of your company, if you're in sales, which I know a lot of people in sales are listening to this podcast.

Sit with your CSRs for day, hear what they go through.

Know that they are asked day in and day out.

How will I know this is really your employee?

And if you're going to tell me, a $3.50 name badge with your picture on it.

Yeah, I can get that printed online.

I'm sure a few of you bought fake IDs and bought beer in high school.

If you can buy beer in high school, I assure you you can fake a name badge for a company.

McLovin.

Exactly.

But you know what you can't fake?

You can't make a $45,000 brand new Mercedes Sprinter wrapped with sky heating and air conditioning logo with a $5,000 wrap with a uniform with a face mask with a hat.

Does that cost more?

Sure, it does cost more than a white man.

But a white van means a gun and a cell phone is what the females are telling me.

Which company would you rather be?

Turn back around and get back in the van.

Yeah, absolutely.

So after you've priced yourself right, and I know that was a lot to say, figure out your pricing.

But most people are priced too low and don't know it.

They think they're making money and they're really not.

And so many times they say, well, I'm making, you know, 150,000 a year.

Great.

How much could you make?

Well, I could go sell for somebody or be a service tech and make 100 grand a year.

Okay, there's the difference.

So as an owner, 100.

Your company is making 50.

If you're a million dollar company, your company is making 5% net, not 15.

You're making 5.

Now your company's made a third of what you think it's making.

That means you're priced, once again, way too Low.

So you need to have the money to be able to buy the inventory.

When my distributor comes to me and says, hey, we've got this many units coming and I say, here's your P.O.

and here's your check.

Other people have to figure out their payment terms and what they're doing.

Well, who's going to get the units, you or me?

If you have bad payment terms, do you think they're going to come to you first or me first?

So you got to get on good payment terms, pay your vendors off, have the cash in the bank, have the money, be ready to go.

Second, space.

Space is tough.

We've got a 14,000 square foot warehouse.

I own a 20,000 square foot warehouse, a 4,000 square foot warehouse.

I do lease out space to other people in each one of those warehouses.

But we've still got, I don't know, 14 or 15,000 square feet of space.

We are out of space.

We have rented storage units.

We have leased additional spaces from people.

Storage units are the best way to go.

Now.

You can have little inventory depots, right?

Let's put some low moving items.

Or if we have one of a, let's say a two and a half ton air conditioner, 13 seer.

And yes, in Oregon, we still sell those.

You have a 13 seer, two and a half ton, which is your most popular air conditioner?

Let's say you've got 10 in stock.

Okay, two go to your warehouse, eight go to a storage unit for later.

You at least have them.

And when your vendor walks in, they don't think you're hoarding them because they see two.

Nobody needs to know about that.

I hope my vendors aren't listening, but at this point, everything we have has been sold in the next month.

So we are all set on that.

But you know, storage unit is a great way.

Another way, if you have property, which in Oregon an acre of commercial property goes for half a million to a million dollars.

I know there's places where you can buy like 20 acres in a 10,000 square foot shop.

Buy semi trucks if you can.

Semi trucks.

Set them on your property because then they are not considered inventory.

They're considered in transit.

In transit, inventory has different tax implications than actual physical inventory counts.

So talk to your cpa.

I'm not a cpa.

I don't claim to be one.

I'm not giving tax advice, whatever.

No tax advice from this podcast.

But if you do have it in vehicles, it's considered in transit.

You can buy shipping containers, although I've heard that Shipping containers have gone up in price recently because I'm sure people are doing all of that.

So those are just a few ways to help with inventory.

If you're too late to the punch the other ways.

If actually you need a stimulus, reach out to me.

I have five for sale right now.

There you go.

The other ways that I'm managing this, I'm not going to tell you because I have not exhausted my honey pots yet.

Honey pots get exhausted, then I'll talk about them.

And until then, that's mine.

Well, we appreciate all of these nuggets.

Serious.

I hope everyone is paying attention.

Rewind, record, write these down.

And most importantly, don't just listen and say, well, he can do that and I can't implement.

Success happens at the speed of implementation.

So, yeah, you mentioned implement.

So Grant Cardone, he wrote a book called the 10x Rule.

I actually brought this in for one of my salespeople because he was giving me excuses.

He miss sold something.

And I said, all right, figure out what to do.

We start, our salespeople is there.

We bring them in brand new, they have no H VAC experience.

We bring them on a salary plus commission, plus Spiffs, high margin items.

They get Spiffs.

Everything else, they get commission.

And then they get a base salary while they learn they have the opportunity to go full commission.

But when they go full commission, it also means that you've told me you know everything you need to know and you will take care of your training from here on out.

Meaning you will come to me and say, travis, this is what I need.

It's no longer me going to you saying, this is what you need.

And you, miss sold the system.

Well, I didn't.

I didn't know this.

I didn't know that.

I said, bullshit.

You went full commission.

This is now your responsibility.

The furnace that you sold cost me $700 more.

You miss sold it.

How would you like to handle it?

Well, you know, I think I deserve at least $200.

And I said, I don't really give a shit what you deserve.

I'm the one that gave you the lead.

I'm the one that's doing it.

So I'm all about me right now.

This may sound harsh, but this is a valuable learning lesson.

It's all about me right now because I didn't fuck up.

You did.

You promised the customer something.

It cost me $700 more.

He used his full discount that he was allowed to.

And I said, you have nothing left in your discount for a commission split.

Your Commission split is gone because you used it all in this customer instead of doing it in increments.

Why'd you use it all?

Well, I don't know.

I just went to the full commission discount to get the job because that's what it seemed like it needed.

So you gave them X off when you should have started at Y.

Then you would have had some room to work with me.

Well, I guess I never thought of that.

I said, well, that's the nice thing about full commission is that it's all on you.

If you want full commission, you take full responsibility.

And he gave me excuse after excuse after excuse.

And somewhere in this book is $100 bill.

Yeah.

Assume control for everything.

No, there's not.

He can create his own hundred dollar bills.

Page 39, chapter 6, assume control for everything.

I'm going to read out for just a second.

Absolutely.

I was going to call this chapter Don't Be a Little Bitch, but decided to back off as to not offend anyone.

I've been trying to work this title in since I published my last book, if youf're not first yout Last.

I still love the title.

Been dying to work on it somewhere.

I thought it would be perfect for this chapter since the purpose is to discuss the idea that crybabies, whiners and victims just don't do well at attracting or creating success.

It's not even that they aren't capable, it's just that people who typically succeed are required to take big actions.

And it is impossible to take big actions if you don't take responsibility.

It is equally impossible to do something positive when you're spending your time making excuses.

He gave me excuse after excuse on why he hadn't been trained, why he didn't understand the price book.

And I was like, look, the item is here.

You left this category, went to this category, over to this category, down to this category to find it.

These aren't the same categories.

So how you think you can go from here to here?

You can't.

And he somehow did.

I said you had to trick the system to even make this sale possible.

That's why it's underpriced.

And he kept it what he should make, what he should get.

And I was like, I don't give a flying fuck what you should get right now because what I should get is mine.

I had this price appropriately.

You screwed it up.

I gave you a commission split.

That was fair.

You used it.

It's not on me.

Our contract says anything beyond that's yours.

We literally went back and forth, 30 minutes and he's, I could.

I knew I was going to spend an hour on it.

I want to be a big hard ass.

I could.

I said, here's the deal.

You need to figure this out, not me.

You made this mistake.

You need to take responsibility and you'll see that this goes a lot faster.

I'm going to forget we had this conversation.

You're going to call me at 7:30 tomorrow and we're going to figure this out.

And by the way, taking responsibility is the only way to be successful.

He calls me at 7:30 and he goes, hey, I fucked up.

I put the wrong system in.

It costs $700 more.

I use my whole commission split, so go ahead and take the 700 permit commission on this job.

And I said, hey, thanks for owning it up.

No, I'm not going to deduct because you went ahead and came up front with me.

He's just stalled.

He was like.

Huh?

And I said, I hope you understand this lesson of taking responsibility is more valuable than the money.

Because I could still go ahead and take this money from you, but I'm not going to because I want to make sure you understand this lesson and know that if you take responsibility, things will go better.

So you can't make excuses about why you're not in my shoes, why you're not doing this, why I can't.

Because excuses are like assholes.

Everybody has one.

So just figure out a way get rid of the excuses and only come to people with solutions.

When your team comes to you, they better come with solutions.

My team is never allowed to come to me with problems.

They're only allowed to come with solutions.

And then I make the decisions.

A or B, A or B.

If they come to me with a solution and it sucks, then maybe I'll help them.

But my team is so empowered, so good that it gives me the freedom to be able to spend an hour here.

And I have no phone calls, no text messages, nothing that is even coming in.

Because they do such a good job of handling it all day long.

Because they now are empowered to make the decisions.

And because they've seen the decision process, they can now make those.

But they've removed the excuses, I've removed the excuse excuses from them.

And if you're listening, you should remove the excuses from yourself because you are holding yourself back.

Nobody else.

You're holding yourself back.

I love it.

Oh my gosh, this is so powerful that when you take radical responsibility for everything in your life, so much changes.

I literally had Lunch with a guy earlier, and that was.

This was our topic at our lunch was, you know, there's a stream of text messages throughout one of our teams.

And all the time, the people in the new text messages are the moderately new.

Even some older folks in the, in the team are asking these questions that we know there.

There's three different places for resources easily find the information.

So I was training him on how to be a better leader.

I said, the very first thing is you're training your people to be.

To just not be resourceful and to not do the work, not look at it for themselves, because you're just answering their questions every time they ask them.

I said, your first question back should be, have you looked for it yourself?

Have you looked in these resources?

And until they can say, I've looked everywhere, I cannot find it.

And I've asked my peers, that's when they should be coming to you as a leader.

But they should be doing the work themselves.

And so, yeah, just kind of resonating with me because I just had that conversation with the guy today about as he's, you know, bringing people into his team and teaching them how you, as a leader, you're training them how to be, you know, how to follow and at the same time lead others, by the way that you communicate with them.

So super powerful there.

Exactly.

Yeah.

We do the.

The same thing in that aspect that if, you know, if it's coming to me, it better be a big decision.

That's like a. Wow.

That's a gray area that we hadn't thought of before because otherwise they know the answer.

And it's amazing when somebody comes to me and says, well, Travis, how do we handle this?

And I give them the easy answer.

I'm like, okay, why are they asking me?

And they're like, well, here's why that doesn't work.

And I'm like, oh, okay, I see why you brought this to me now.

Because it doesn't fit here.

It doesn't fit here.

We have these two lines, and you found something in the gray area that we have not discussed before and that doesn't have a policy, that doesn't have a procedure, that doesn't have an answer?

Sure.

The anomaly.

Yeah.

We go back to the mission vision value.

Does it meet these guidelines?

Does it meet these things of taking care of a customer, taking care of our team, providing the best training?

If so, then we can move forward with the solution on it.

If not, let's find a solution that meets the mission vision value that we drive our Company by and.

And then go from there, right?

Oh, I love it.

And then you could create a new policy around it and it's one more problem solved.

And that problem is what drives the value of your company.

Because there's companies out there that do $10 million and they're complete shit shows because they just happen to do that much, but they have no process, no procedure, and they could be doing 15 or 20 million.

There's other companies doing 10 million that do it very, very smoothly.

And when the work comes in and as they grow, they're easily going to grow to 15 to 20 because it's ready and it's set up.

They just don't have the work.

Other companies have the work and don't have the process.

Which company is more valuable long term for your family and for your future and for your team?

The one that has everything set up and the work has been put in versus the running by the seat of its pants.

But doing the same revenue company.

Yeah, absolutely.

Because that company, one person is gone for a day, half the company shuts down.

And that's no way to run any kind of a machine that, that works, works for you 100%.

I love it.

I love it.

So let's turn the corner a little bit.

There's a couple.

One thing specifically that I was so curious about, for those of you listening that don't know.

Travis had the went to Rhino X, which was a really cool event put on by Cristiano and Paul Redman over at Rhino.

They do marketing, they're really amazing, build websites, a ton of different stuff for trades, but they put on an event and their guest, their keynote was Gary V. Gary Vaynerchuk.

So Travis had the opportunity to sit with him and ask some questions, have dinner.

So I'm just curious, tell us a little bit about that experience.

What was it like to hang out with the great Gary Vee?

So this is what's kind of funny about this whole ordeal.

So Chris called me up and we were talking after I signed up for the event, and he was like, what do you think about Gary Vee?

And I was like, oh, yeah, Seems interesting.

And he's like, you paid a lot of money to see him.

And I'm like, chris, I don't want you to take this the wrong way, but that's not why I'm going.

And he's like, what do you mean?

Where are you going?

Upset.

I'm going because people like Ishmael, Tommy Mello, Ken Haynes, Ken Goodrich, Leland Smith.

Proximity, right?

Titans are going to be there.

Like, this is purely a proximity thing.

Like, Gary V. Doesn't have shit to do with my proximity.

And he's like, oh, I guess I never really thought of it that way.

And I'm like, so I'm going to be around these people because I want them to know who I am.

I know who they are, but they don't know who I am.

So I need to be known because I want to be able to have that access to be able to say, hey, you know, one of you guys, here's what I need.

I've known Ishmael for a while, I've known Tommy for a while.

But I'd still like to get closer to all of them, just get that proximity built up and especially the other up and comers, because somebody's not speaking, spending $5,000 plus on a ticket to show up in Dilly Dally.

These are people that are movers and shakers and the movers and shakers who I want to be with, and they want to be with me because we're all focused on this.

And I think there was some exclusivity to that that said.

Yeah, so Gary Vee was not my main draw.

I really didn't even care.

I'd seen him before.

I'd read a book or two of his, but it wasn't like that big of a deal to me.

So we get there, having an amazing time with everybody, you know, getting the chance to meet all of those people, to say hi to Leland and the Kens.

And we go to the event and Gary's there, and Gary's talking, and I'm like, this is really good, powerful stuff.

Like, there's a lot of little things that I can implement.

And I sat down and Gary moved from table to table, and we had quite a bit of time.

And I was one of the last people at the table.

So I found a spot where there are two seats and sat at one, knowing that the open one would be for, you know, as these people come by.

Perfect.

And Gary comes to our table and everybody's like, excited to ask a question.

I'm like, I like wine.

I like red wine.

I know Gary has a wine company, started out in wine.

So everybody's asking these business questions.

He's like, what about you, Travis?

And I'm like, yeah, what's your favorite wine, Gary?

And they're like, you have this profound person next to you, and that's what you want to ask.

And I'm like, it's not about knowing the answer.

It's about.

I want to see his thought process in something different.

I want to see how does he process through his thoughts of a standard daily decision.

Sure.

And I thought you asked him something important to him, too.

Yeah.

Plus, I wanted to make an impression on him.

I wanted him to be like, who's this H vac guy asking about wine when everybody else is asking about Facebook advertising?

Like, I came here.

Why is he.

That's memorable.

So I asked him, you know, what's your favorite wine?

And I really liked his answer.

Even though it didn't tell me what I wanted to know.

It gave me more information than I needed.

Because he goes, you know, when it comes to it, I could tell you what that is, but it changes every day because it's not just about the wine that's the best.

It's the wine that gives me the best experience at the time.

And last year, maybe I liked Cabernets, and this year maybe it's Pinot's, and next year might be, you know, Grenaches or something different.

But the fact is, my tastes are always changing, so I couldn't put a finger on what's my favorite, because I don't have a favorite, because I enjoy the experience, and the experience is what's my favorite?

The ability to try different things is my favorite.

And I liked what he said because that really comes down to what we do every day in business, in life, it's not about achieving one thing of perfection.

It's not about having your favorite wine and being like, hey, I finally had a bottle like my favorite wines, the 100 Acre Wraith.

I've only had it one time.

Maybe it's not my favorite.

I mean, I just had it once and it was amazing, but I haven't tried it next to some other amazing wine.

So is it really my favorite, or was that experience my favorite?

Because that experience was amazing.

My leadership team was at dinner.

We were on the 30th story in Portland City Grill.

Uncle Joe Chrisaro was there, my sales team was there, and there was, like 10 of us just hanging out, having.

We had two amazing bottles of wine, and it was just a wonderful experience.

So did that change the taste and change the flavor?

And that goes back to how we run our business.

Do we sometimes think things are working better than they are because of the experience and because we're having fun doing them?

Or maybe is there something better that isn't seen because it wasn't part of the experience?

And this little tiny minuscule thing over here that isn't very fun to do, can make a huge impact.

Now, the 100 acre Wraith was an expensive bottle, but could I have had the same enjoyment of a bottle that's a fifth the price?

I don't know because I didn't try it.

And until I tried and get an actual chance to open up my breath of trying these different things, you can't fully say.

And I think when it comes to your business, you need to try things.

You need to try different sales process, you need to try different procedures, need to step outside your comfort zone.

And even if something's been tried and true, you need to break those processes every once in a while and push forward with something new.

Because you never know what you might like that's better.

And just like wine, your tastes are going to change our business climate change.

Like, I know places like Florida and Texas were open.

Oregon was shut down.

Service titan ran surveys where they showed businesses and states.

And I remember everybody talking about California, New York, and they're like, california, New York are 30% down in business.

And I was like, has anybody checked Oregon?

Because it says 50% and it's not.

Nobody had mentioned Oregon because we're too small, right?

And Oregon had a 50% drop in business.

It was the largest drop in business of any state according to service time user data.

But nobody cared about Oregon.

So at that time, inventory wasn't an issue.

People weren't an issue.

Leads were the issue.

Marketing was the issue.

How are we getting into somebody's home?

Right?

Then you move forward and you go, okay, now people are letting us back in their home.

Now the weather's picking up.

Now we need the people.

We definitely have the leads.

A year ago, leads were the issue.

Now leads are not the issue.

It's like, shut down the advertising.

Look at how much it's changed in 12 to 15 months.

What worked for you then, and I think you said this earlier too, isn't working today.

And you need to be changing your tastes.

If you knew marketing and you went, wow, now all of a sudden my market's been taken off.

Okay, it's time to learn inventory.

Frankly, I don't know anything about inventory.

I don't own a forklift.

I had high docks.

I covered them in, so I had more parking for my installers.

And now I'm going, shit, I need Hideox to bring in more inventory and I need a forklift.

Now, a forklift means I have to either have.

I'm still learning this.

I'm probably wrong.

Like electric, which means I need to run electric across my building.

Thankfully, I have electricians.

The downside is they're so fucking busy, I can't run them on my own projects.

I bought Halo 5 water filtration my house last October when we started our plumbing division.

I still don't have a Halo.

Right.

Otherwise, I need a gas one or a propane one.

Okay, well, if there's a gas one, then how do I fill it up with gas?

Because I have to now store gas on the property, which could become this fire hazard when the fire marshal comes in.

If it's propane.

It's like all this.

So I can have semi trucks to bring me inventory, and then I've got to figure out how to keep the inventory.

And I just asked in one of the forums, what inventory software do I use?

Because service time, inventory, I don't think it's going to tie into the way our sales process works and store it for jobs because of the way they do their model numbers versus the way that I do mine.

And it's these tiny little minuscule differences.

We're mostly a downflow market.

So I put a furnace in with an X in it, and it's either a downflow or an upflow.

Now, on my sales side, it doesn't matter.

My manager then orders the right one.

But for inventory, I need to know if it's a downfall or not.

Flow.

Absolutely.

My software needs to know that.

I know I have to have two of everything.

One downflow, one upflow.

Well, if I have five package of six different sizes, I have to create 30 new items just to have inventory and then redo it all.

So all these things become this massive change that I have to learn simply because the industry has changed and the market has changed.

And 12 months ago or 15 months ago, the podcast would be a completely different topic.

So going back to what I learned from Gary Vee, there is in asking him about wine, it's that your tastes are always going to change.

And as your business grows, you're going to constantly need to reach new levels and figure out new things and always be learning or you're going to be going backwards and going behind 100%.

I love it.

I heard an expression one time, every new level has its own new devils.

So this is what we have to and A lot of times it's so many things that we don't expect.

That's most of the time what it is.

It's like you never thought you would have to deal with this type of issue.

From the underside, you can't see it, but as soon as you hit that new level, all of a sudden it's as clear.

It's so apparent that, okay, this is the next challenge, this is the next challenge.

But that's how we grow and overcome.

One thing I've said over and over in this podcast and you know, everybody knows that, you know, I have, I train and teach a very specific value first sales system.

You know, the way we've done it for 50 years in a track, you know, in home sales.

Build the value, show the price, build value, show price, don't show price before value or, you know, there's no value in the price.

Right.

We can build value, we can't build a price.

So what I've been saying over and over this last couple years is anything that's been done the Same way for 50 years is ripe for revolution.

And so that's something we've seen, you know, as an industry, shame on us when we let outside industries come in and own part of our real estate.

With the biggest example, of course we know is thermostats.

You know, we let Nest and then Google come in and own part of our own part of our space that we should never have let go, but we did.

So that's the less.

That's a big lesson, right?

That's the bigger version of the, you know, self serve car wash.

But now that we're in that moment, how can we not let that happen moving forward?

So, last topic I want to cover because I know we're running short on time here, but you know, you have been kind of playing with some experimentation with your ductless heroes business with using, showing pricing on the websites.

And I know, you know, when, when Tal Paul was on the episode, we talked about this in pretty good, in depth and actually a couple other people, it just keeps coming up with all the leaders I'm talking to in the industry.

So I would, you will be the first person on the podcast that actually has real world boots on the ground experience of using this.

So I'd love to hear a little bit about how it came about and, you know, why you chose to kind of implement it and what it's been like.

So sometimes you have to do things you don't like and sometimes like when it comes to wine, you have to do Things you don't like.

I'm not a fan of rose, don't care for it.

I like my.

My reds, my pinot, my cabs, and occasionally a Chardonnay.

If it's a summer day or something, my kids are out playing in the pool.

Sure, I'll have a white wine.

This is kind of selling online.

2020 was a shitty year for wine in Oregon.

We had massive fires and the skins of the grapes absorbed a lot of that smoke, meaning a lot of our pinots went to shit.

And a lot of those farmers didn't have insurance, so they did what they could and made lemons into lemonade or took the skin off the grapes and made rose.

Now, I'm not a big fan of.

I'm probably going to give away most of it to people that like it better.

Even if it is something I don't like, I'm sure I'll find a use.

For it, even if it's just that memory of that year.

I know there's a lot of salespeople on this podcast.

I have not been in the field selling for three years now.

Don't look at this as a person coming in to take your job.

That's why I first and foremost told my sales team, look at this as an aid to your job.

There are companies out there that are using things like this, and their salespeople are routinely selling 400 to 700 to almost a million dollars a month using the online sales tool as their gatekeeper.

In a world where we now have more marketing than we have equipment, that also means that we can't ramp up our sales teams as fast.

So we have to be able to kind of cut through some of the BS for those people out there saying, I'm about ready to charge for estimates.

I'm getting so many tire kickers.

This is the easier way.

We don't utilize it all year.

When I put it together, I said, I'm going to learn it, I'm going to play with it.

And if somebody accidentally stumbles upon it, since it's only on My ductless website@oregonDucklist.com if they stumble upon it, great.

If not, I'm not going to publicly publicize it.

My sales team doesn't even know it's there because I'm sure they'll shitter brick if they heard about it.

And they came to me as we were hitting record breaking month after record breaking month, way earlier than expected.

I mean, usually we have record months in June and July and then we grow and then record month in June and July and we had a record month from March forward.

And I said, we don't have enough sales team right now.

We're bringing on sales team, but we cannot bring them on fast enough because we don't bring in experienced people.

We're bringing new people and create the best salespeople.

I don't want people that don't care about the ductwork.

I don't want people that don't understand low temperature ductless.

I don't want people that never have done a load calc because they come to me and they're not going to do those things.

I want to check static pressure on every job.

I want to do a load calculation on every job.

And those people aren't the types of people that are already in this industry because I know that 90% of my competitors don't do that.

So I want to bring somebody from the ground up and say, this is what you're doing or you're not working here.

It's very simple.

You need to do right by the customer.

First, that's how you're going to sell things.

Second, that's a major liability for our company.

We've been around for almost 42 years now.

There's a reason we've been there.

It's because we have liability protection because we're doing it right.

Because we are sizing the system, because we're checking the airflow, because we're looking at the ductwork.

So I put this together and said, guys, what's your biggest problem?

Oh, stupid ductless.

Oh, man, they're.

They're so cheap.

They're five grand, six grand.

And people think they're going to cost two grand or less.

They see them for a thousand bucks online, think it's $200 installed, and forget about the electrical, the permits, the line set, the line height, the control wiring, you know, you name it.

And I said, okay, what if we could just, I don't know, sell those over the phone or sell them online?

And they're like, yeah, that'd be easy.

I'm like, great, let me show you what I have.

And they're like, are we all getting fired?

Are we getting replaced?

And I was like, absolutely not.

But now guess what?

This is a win for everybody, because during the busy season, I can turn this on.

And for the low hanging fruit, those systems less than five grand or six grand or seven grand.

Our CSR say, if you're looking at a ductless, please go here and confirm your interest.

And once you've selected the system for your home, we'll send somebody out to size it up and see if it's the right one.

Now, that means your close rate is going to skyrocket because you're going out to somebody that knows the price, that's ready to buy.

And in some cases, we've actually had people buy online.

The downside is they've usually been the wrong customers.

Like we had commercial customers with a three story building buying a ductless.

And it's like, A, we don't do commercial, B, it's a different permit, C, it's different electrical, and D, it's three stories on a roof.

Of course.

No, you're not getting this ductless for $6,000.

Not gonna happen.

We don't do commercials.

So call somebody else.

Yeah, but they literally put in their credit card information to buy a system online.

Now, my sales team is either A, going out on a $6,000 sale.

That's a probably 80 or 90% close rate, or B, they're going out on a standard $10,000 sale at a 50% close rate.

$10,000 times 50% close rate means your average revenue is $5,000 per.

$6,000 at an 80% close rate.

Does that come up to $5,200 now?

It's the equivalent lead to a full system sale.

Marketed lead.

So now we've brought up the playing field.

Instead of taking a $6,000 sale with a 40% close rate, that now has a $2,400 value, $3,200 value.

I didn't.

I can't do my math fast enough on that.

But yeah, 2,400.

You just took a lead and doubled the value of it because you used an online gatekeeper for some of your low hanging fruit.

Right now, if it's worst month of the year for us, it's February.

If that's the slowest month of the year, my salespeople don't have much to do.

Yeah, we're not sending anybody to that system.

You're going to the house because at the very least, you're going to bring back $2,400 on average.

But during the busy season, I'm going to have you bring back five to $8,000 on average.

In the slow season, then we'll accept those $2,400.

Yeah, let's get rid of all of the tire kickers, get rid of all of the wasted time leads.

When it's the opportunity lost too, when they could be at those, you know, the higher dollar items.

And guess who makes more money?

The salesperson.

So this is good for salespeople.

It also means that you can show your value more.

Hey, if the online system only is bringing in these and I'm bringing in this, that means you're more valuable to the company, you're more valuable to the installers, more valuable to the distributors.

So I see people getting scared of this.

Change your mindset.

Just look at this differently.

Know that this is an aid in your selling tool.

And it's another quiver in your, I don't know, the quiver in your arrow holder, whatever that's called.

Feather in your hat, right?

There you go.

Much better.

The one thing I see also is, and like you mentioned it, you know, even if somebody puts in their credit card number and buys a system online, they've gone in and they've selected two heads or whatever it is, but it still has to be measured up.

So that's your opportunity to go and to go out and upsell the client.

I mean, just through obviously asking questions.

Oh, this is going to be so great.

Have you ever thought about this?

Or this?

Oh, no, man.

That would be cool too.

Or how about the rest of your house?

You guys suffer from?

I mean, the same questions we've always asked.

You suffer from?

You know, asthma, allergies, all the smoke, has that been getting to you guys from the fires?

You know, would it be nice to clean that up while we're here?

And so it's the same conversation over and over.

So it's, you know, it's not different, it's just how we get there is.

A little bit different.

What's crazy is that when we implemented that, our close rate on market leads, and I don't have the exact data, I have to look back and there's so many little things to pull through.

But it went from like 40% to, I kid you not, we were like 60% on marketed leads.

And I always tell people online, if you're closing too many market leads, your price is probably too low.

That was after raising our price 30%.

Wow.

And we still skyrocketed our Close rate because we were pre qualifying some of those right leads but we weren't charging for leads and getting rid of the customer.

We were just taking on more customers and then being able to quickly determine instead of sending a live person their house for a no, I'm only spending 2,200 or no, my neighbors are going to do this.

And it got rid of those people.

Sometimes people call you up and hey, I just need you to come out here.

And all they're doing is trying to get you to size it for them and tell them what they need so they can go buy it or their friend can do it.

They can't do that with you now those people are out of the way and you just spent 300 to $400 on that lead to get somebody to not do it.

Well, that helps your advertising and it's just overall win.

And I'm sure that someday we will, I don't want to say slowly adapt it because it's probably coming quicker than we all think.

I know there's companies like if you haven't checked out Dandelion, Dandelion is a geothermal energy company in New York that I think is funded by Google and they're doing online pricing for geothermal systems which I, I'm not there yet.

I know if you've sold geothermal, that's putting ground loop and everything and then they're leasing it to you.

Wow.

Wow, that's wild.

I know of, you know, ppw, you know, pay per watt leasing in solar, but I haven't heard of that in geothermal.

That is amazing.

That's wild.

And that's in America, not in Canada because I know there's a lot more of that for, for the, you know, the paper, Watt leasing, the leasing of water heaters in Canadian utilities.

Right.

That's coming to America and this is not a utility provider.

And you think like man, I don't want to compete against the utility because they're huge.

Try this is Google.

Google, they don't give a fuck about your utility company.

Okay?

They are ready to destroy you.

Uh huh, Absolutely.

Another interesting observation I've made that I've really been taking note when we're talking about online selling and putting the price book online, raising the prices 30% and still upping the close rate tells me that the as we've always known, but this proves it very, very specifically is the biggest obstacle homeowners have.

It's not the, it's never the price.

We know it's never been the price.

It's the trust factor and the transparency forever.

You've had to call who knows how many people to come to your house and go through this process and if they show up in the white van then they, you know, they're, they honey, get the gun right or you know, a nice wrapped van.

And there's instantly trust.

Because branding will outsell marketing every day of the week.

We know that.

Branding, branding, branding.

But there's still a level of trust and that trust and transparency factor, that, that's a big part, I'm sure why your sales training is so thorough because partly teach, I mean I've always said it's selling is 10% skill and 90% psychology.

It's learning how to communicate is most of the, you know, most of the training.

Right.

And so if we can by being able to see it instantly, see pricing so there's no longer smoke and mirrors of, you know, we called four people, we got four different prices, they could see it and they reputation branding is there.

That's why I really feel that's a big part of why we're seeing such amazing numbers using this type of model.

Because it's just, it's on the website, I can trust it, it's transparent.

They're not trying to hide anything.

So I'll pay a little bit more to know that I've got peace of mind that they're not going to try to pull one over on me.

And I know that like in Travis and Tyler Ringy's case at Pro Skill in Arizona where they do that, their competitors will sometimes say, oh, if you want to see our pricing, you should, you should go check out Pro Skills and you can see it online.

And they will lose the business to the higher priced guy because the other guy hasn't published online.

And they're like, well maybe I should call them and see what they're doing differently.

And this company's like, wouldn't look how much higher their price is.

Forgetting that they're losing those jobs.

Yeah, you want to see price and go look at, go send them to the other company.

That's so funny.

Now, on top of trust and price, Louis Bruno, who helped me a ton with getting pricing right, getting our systems together, he brings up three things.

Need, trust and price.

What we're also doing with this is we're talking about building the trust, building the transparency.

To get the right price, you need to have need trust and price in alignment or need and trust exceeding price before buying decision can be made.

Trust can be up here, prices here.

But if they have no need for it.

You've lost something on that with the selling online.

It gets those people that are the tire kickers that don't have a need.

Well, I'd like to have a ductless.

I'd like to have some cooling.

I'd like to.

Okay, you don't have a need yet.

You have a, like, you have a want.

As that value goes up, if they're like, well, I kind of like to.

But not for 5,000.

They're not a sale.

They're kicked off to the side.

Yeah.

The salesperson's job is to help build some of that up and build that need up.

You know, hey, do you like having your windows open or how does your family feel about this?

Who found the problem?

What's that like?

Going through those can help build the need, but those are still the lowest hanging fruit.

When you have somebody that has a need that exceeds the price and you just need to bring the trust level up.

As soon as that trust goes whoop, you got the sale.

Yep.

But if you can get rid of some of those low hanging needs, it allows you to focus on the people that, that have the needs to close that.

So I really love that need, trust, price.

And as you mentioned, the trust in the price, I just like to add that additional need piece to it because Lewis talked about how much that changes things when you show them the need of their ductwork.

And most people don't understand how important their ductwork is.

They've got 40 year old ductwork and they're like, I need a new system.

Well, if you're leaking 20% of your air, but you're more than happy to go from an 80 to 95%, but you won't save 20% in your ductwork because it's a, you know, snake oil.

No, no.

The ductwork is the biggest need that we have here.

The system is secondary to that.

Right, Right.

Absolutely.

Oh, I love this man.

We could jam on all day, you think?

I'm so glad we connected.

That we think very, very similar in a lot of ways.

I can tell.

That's why I was wanting to have you on the podcast.

I knew that you're.

I'd heard a little snippet in another podcast kind of talking about your Gary Vee story.

I was wanting to hear that.

You know, I've always been the person that is going to ask the.

One of my things is ask the obvious question.

As an industry, especially sales training, in our industry for 20 years, they've trained us to dance around topics and not Ask the obvious questions.

And people are so tired of that.

That's why they hate interaction for the most part with in home salespeople.

Because they're tired of just getting the dog and pony show, tired of getting the song and dance.

I mean, how many times we walk in the house, we're like, listen, I don't want the big hoopla, the big show.

Just give me, just tell me straight, you know, cut the bullshit, just tell me what's, you know, what I need to hear.

Be honest with me.

I mean, I don't know how many times you hear be honest with me, which tells me that too many people haven't.

And that's the problem.

And so it's so great.

Something that this train box won't.

That this Goodman box won't, that this Linux box will.

It's like, geez, it's a box that's not going to fix your issue.

Or the salespeople used to come in and tell me, this new variable speed furnace, you know, you got to sell more variable speed because it fixes bad ductwork.

No, the only thing that fixes bad.

Ductwork is sealing it and putting in better duct work.

Exactly.

Oh my gosh, I love it.

Oh, this is so good.

This is, this is a good day.

So I knew that we would probably jam from for a while.

So thanks so much for being on the podcast today.

This was definitely good to get to know you.

Good, good to, to go over this stuff.

I hope everyone listening was taking notes because so much valuable information.

We're super grateful that, you know, Travis gave up his, his valuable time to be with us today and to help raise the standard of our industry.

You know, we have an industry that's notorious for having, you know, the bad apples give the rest of us black eyes.

And the standard has been so too low for too long.

And so people just like Travis with what they're doing in Oregon are just changing the game.

And the things that we can learn to implement in your own businesses across the country and around the world.

We're listening to in 25 countries.

So all around the world, use some of these techniques, the ideas, the thoughts, and raise the standard in your area.

And to reiterate, raise your fucking prices.

So thank you for that today.

Any last, any last thoughts?

You want to leave with everybody before we do a little bit of a sign off here?

Nope.

I think that that's it.

It's not raise your prices to be unethical or just because it's to provide a better value and you need to give that back to the customer and give that back to your employees.

And I always want to make sure that's, you know, that's the caveat there is that your employees should be the best taken care of.

They should have full benefits.

They should have nice new vehicles.

We pay for 100% of their tools, something that's unheard of.

Like if you break a screwdriver.

We pay for your screwdriver, your tape measure.

Imagine anybody else telling them to bring their own computer to work.

Our employees are better taken care of.

They're driving.

I've got brand new Mercedes Sprinters.

I just ordered four more today.

These are nice vehicles.

They're not cheap because they're the best taken care of.

Which means we can then in turn provide the most trust back to our customers so that they feel the most comfortable and we have the most training.

We train every single day.

And that's what that money goes back into.

It goes back into having the inventory so that people can have life saving devices like heating and air conditioning in their home.

So know that when I say raise your prices, it goes back to, not in your pocket, but back to the customer and back to your team because that's what's important.

Absolutely.

I love it.

It's customer, customer first or your, your, your first customer is your employee.

Yes.

That, that's actually even says we tell people our customer, our employees are worth more than our customers.

Our customers do not come first because our employees do.

When our employees come first, then our customers can be the best taken care of.

Absolutely.

I love it.

That's.

I actually sat on a, not too long ago, a couple years back, Sir Richard Branson, I got the privilege to hear him speak for about an hour and a half.

And it was, every single thing he said was just of course mind blowing to hear somebody at that level give value.

And the theme for the entire talk was exactly this.

When you take care of your people to a degree that nobody else will, they will in turn take care of the company's clients.

And it's just power.

It's amazing what happens that way.

So it's good times.

Well, awesome.

So a quick sign off here everybody, a couple quick announcements.

One is the high performance coaching program.

It's a one on one session with me.

It's a six month program.

It is the way to take your, take your numbers to the next level.

We have literally have testimony after testimony of double, triple numbers, you know, close rates doubling, average tickets doubling.

All of that.

Reach out to me through if you hear this through the end of August, which probably won't.

But there's a scholarship program going on that's going to be an annual thing.

So scholarship being part of that program.

But reach out to me.

It's worth the investment to invest in yourself.

The other thing that's happening everybody is as you know, the new format is two podcasts a week.

I am actively who would you let me know who you would like me to interview and any specific questions you would like me to ask them.

I'm building the interview list so it's been fun so far.

We've got the episode that's coming out.

We've got Gene Slate on the that's going to be coming out.

Of course, Travis Smith here.

Lots of people that are on the list of big surprises coming.

So message me and let me know who you would like me to interview and we will get that done.

So everybody, we're going to sign off.

Thank you again Travis for hanging out with us.

We're going to sign off the way we do with every single episode.

Go save the world one heat stroke at a time.

Thanks for listening to Close it now with Sam Wakefield.

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