In this episode we talk about one of the biggest problems outgoing personalities have in sales. Talking too much. There is a basic exercise to overcome this and you will learn what it is. Then we move into the real focus of the Close It Now movement.

Calling all HVAC salespeople from around the globe, this is a community to join together for support, cheer each other on, and celebrate your wins. Go check out www.closeitnow.net to get connected to the community, coaching programs, and the Close it Now sales system.

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.

Hello, welcome again to the Close It Now H Vac sales training podcast.

My name is Sam Wakefield.

I am your host.

This is your source for all things H Vac sales related.

This is where we get together.

We have this ongoing conversation to dominate your market, to literally crush it in the industry and in your area.

Because we all know that bad salespeople have skinny kids.

Thank you Zig Ziglar.

It was one of his famous quotes.

Bad salespeople have skinny kids.

I don't want skinny kids.

And I know you want skinny kids.

That also means I don't want a small mba.

Raise your hand if you would like to have an mba.

Do you know what an MBA is?

And no, it's not a master of business.

I'm talking about a massive bank account.

Massive bank account is what we are after.

So thank you for listening to this and yeah, I'm just loving the community that is building in our Close It Now Facebook group.

So you can find me@closeitnow.net go there.

That will get you connected to everything you need to know about the Close it now sales training.

And yeah, this is just such a great community that's building.

We are starting to hit some serious momentum with members joining, conversations, happening and just it's just a cool place.

It's a good place where you can drop in your any objections you're coming across that you're maybe having an issue handling them.

Because I guarantee you somebody in the group with all of the varied experiences and just you know, the seasoned people in there, the new people in there, somebody has handled, has a fantastic way to handle that objection very easily.

So if you're having problems, jump in the group and drop the question in there.

What is it?

You can also email me.

Well@samwakefield.com that's s a m w a k dash e f I e l d dot com shoot me a message.

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We've got listeners.

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We've got listeners all over the world now, of course, the United States, absolutely.

We've got listeners in Canada, we've got listeners in Morocco, listeners in India, listeners in the United Kingdom and listeners in Colombia so far.

So share this podcast with anyone you know in the H Vac industry that has anything to do with sales because this is focused on residential in home.

Close it now.

Stop creating follow up for yourself.

So the topic of today, today's broadcast is about something that's really important.

It's just basically talk less and sell more.

Have you ever heard that?

In fact, there's a book called Shut up and Sell.

I've literally read hundreds of books on sells, on psychology, on influence, on NLP techniques, and I've really put them all together into how to interact with people, studying different types of personalities and that kind of thing.

But there is a book that's called Shut up and Sell.

It's a really good book, but it's about basically so many problems and just nod your head, raise your hand if you know that if you're in the sales in the cells, that's like the Facebook or if you're in sales, a lot of times you have been vaccinated with the Victrola needle.

As my dad would say, you just talk, you like to talk.

You're great at communicating with people.

And for a lot of us, that can actually be a detriment to, to our results, a detriment to our success in our career.

So the lesson, and every time that I find myself slipping into those habits.

So this episode today is specific really for those personalities that are big personalities that love to talk.

We're going to have a lot of different topics, actually.

You don't have to be a big, boisterous, naturally outgoing personality to crush it in sales.

But that's today's issue for today's topic, that it's for that personality type.

So there is a really great visual that I learned years ago.

If you're like me, there's a good chance you probably have had some theater in your past, some sort of acting type of thing.

So there's a.

If you've ever been on stage, ever done music or anything, you know what it feels like when you get on stage.

And the stage is dark and you're hit with a spotlight.

You can start to feel the heat from the spotlight on your skin.

And if you're not used to it, if you haven't made yourself used to it, if you haven't grown accustomed to it, it starts to get really uncomfortable.

And the longer it goes, the more uncomfortable it gets.

Do you know what I'm talking about?

Have you ever experienced that feeling of being in the spotlight on a dark stage and.

Or just.

It didn't even have to be necessarily like that.

It could be in any kind of room.

If you've never.

That moment you step up into public speaking, you step in front of people and the room goes quiet, and you're standing there and all of a sudden your skin gets hot.

You feel the heat start to rise into your face.

What that is is of course, that uncomfortableness of the spotlight.

We call that the spotlight effect.

So when you are talking to the homeowners, could be a homeowner, could be a couple homeowners, whatever decision makers, it could be partners, you know, whatever your situation.

Imagine this is especially important in the first half of the home visit, especially important in the introduction.

And really when you get into your inquiry, questions about what their concerns are, what they're experiencing in their home.

As you get into those, imagine it's just you and them sitting in a chair on a completely dark stage and there's one spotlight and it's only shining on the person who is talking.

So if you just close your eyes and if you're driving, be safe, but close your eyes and visualize this.

You're on that stage, you're in that chair, and spotlight is only shining on the person that's talking.

It is your job.

It's like a game.

Do everything in your power to keep the spotlight on them as long as possible, as often as possible, because that's going to do a couple things for you.

One, you're going to be leading by questions.

So you're controlling the conversation.

But what it's going to do as they start to answer the questions, you can then ask clarifying questions.

How so?

How does that make you feel?

Tell me more about that.

Those types of questions to get them to open up, to tell you more about their concerns and you and your focus is, I like to call it listening between the lines.

Listen between the lines to what they're saying.

So you can really get the vibe of what they're trying to tell you or the vibe of what they're holding back from telling you.

Because we all know that customers don't always give you all the facts, they don't always give you all the details.

They might intentionally or unintentionally be holding things back that you can uncover, kind of like peeling an onion and in the visit.

So with that, what that does is allows you to really focus on the responses.

You get to see their facial expressions, you really get to focus on their body language.

And every chance they get, play that game with yourself, focus that spotlight on them so they.

Then you can go through that process and do this for as much as you can through your entire process.

The start to finish.

The less words you can say, the better.

I literally for years have taken a.

My sales appointment used to be two hours in a home, just about every time.

And it's gotten shorter and shorter and shorter over time because I realized one, I was talking way too much.

People got.

I realized a long time ago that I can talk about this stuff way longer than most people ever want to listen.

And for most of you, there's a good chance it's probably the same thing.

So I'm constantly fighting that battle of reeling myself in, especially if someone is even a little bit technical minded because I like to nerd out on this stuff.

Man.

I love the technology, I love the systems, I love the.

Just everything that's going on in the heating and air industry.

I mean, if I'm talking to someone who's into politics, there's a good chance that, oh, you know, lobbying about the air conditioning industry might come up.

It's just ridiculous how much knowledge that I have about the industry and the equipment and all the brands, all the different stuff, the history of air conditioning, but no one wants to hear it all.

And whatever your passion is, whatever you're into, it's great to talk about it here and there, but no one wants to hear it all.

That's really the point of this, is use less words.

There's a really good friend of mine, and I know you.

If you're listening, buddy, I know you know I'm going to be talking about you for a half second, but I'm not going to mention your name.

But I'm always talking to him.

And it's like, less details.

Those are just details.

Leave them out because he'll ask questions, kind of like, okay, well, if this situation and this scenario and this scenario and this scenario arises, how do you say this or how do you present this?

And it's like, you know what?

Every bit of that is details.

And no one really cares or wants to know.

Because at the end of the day, I mean, there's what, a half a million half inch drill bits sold in the United States alone every year.

And that's not because people want drill bit.

Nobody goes to the store and says, oh, I really want a drill bit for my collection.

No, they want a half inch hole.

They don't care how they arrive there.

They just know they're gonna go get something that's gonna do the job.

And at the end of the day, with what we do, people really don't care necessarily about the product.

They really don't.

Unless, you know, you come across that one in a hundred or one in 200, you know, mechanical engineer that just is really nerding out on the equipment like you do.

If you're like me and you might not even nerd out on it either, then they really don't care how they arrive there.

What they care about is being cool when they want to be cool, being warm when they want to be warm and cheap to do it.

And if you can accomplish that and communicate it into that many words that this is going to be the most comfortable, this is going to be the cheapest to operate this one.

You know how you were telling me about you have those allergy problems?

Well, this is the solution for that.

And you're going to wake up the next day not experiencing that.

They raise their hand and say, sign me up.

I don't care what it costs.

Because at that point, it's not about the dollars, it's about the value.

And when you can express that in the terms of benefits.

And we're actually, I'm going to do a whole podcast on how to talk in terms of benefits.

And not the details, not the features, but when you can start to express that things in those, that kind of terminology, that's when the door, the whole.

You're going to be able to turn the corner in your sales career.

It's going to just.

And it's a constant, constant thing to just be focused on and be thinking about, not using, you know, industry jargon that nobody has a clue.

And so take a step back, put yourself in their shoes.

You've never heard of any of this before.

Would any of it make sense the way that you present it?

Just ask yourself that question.

Debrief yourself before and after every single visit and keep a journal, keep notes.

What did you learn?

What can you change each time?

That's why I love that I'm out there every single day crushing it alongside you guys.

Because every bit of this is a case study for me while we're working on growing together.

Because when techniques and verbiage comes around, you've got to get it in your mouth, you got to practice it, you've got to use different things in order to get different results.

You have to use different words and use different techniques.

And so that's what we're focused on here.

So was this valuable today?

If this was valuable, share it with somebody.

This is my passion is to help help you work less and sell more.

Would you like to double your ticket size and double your close rate?

I mean what's the industry average is 30% close rate in the heating and air industry.

That's horrible.

That's awful.

If you're doing that, there's no shame in where you're at.

But I can tell you there's a better way and there's a better.

So it's easy to double your income if you just sell more of the jobs you go to.

You don't even have to get more leads, just sell more of them for a higher ticket price, get some add ons, system enhancements.

We're going to go through all of this stuff I'm so excited about.

I've got this massive list of topics for podcasts coming up.

But she'll share.

If you got some value from this, share it with someone.

Also go to closeitnow.net that's going to get you connected to us.

There's a huge, huge, huge upgrade and website being built right now.

So right now we are.

What is this?

So if you're listening to this in the future, and I know many of you will be, go to CloseItNow.net, you're going to find our website.

It's in process and I'm super stoked to get it rolling.

And yeah, just get this, this plane is leaving the station, man.

So climb on board.

We're creating a community that hasn't existed before now.

A community for all of the H vac sales professionals around the world to come together to support each other, to share their successes, share your losses so we can support each other, help you get through that too.

Because it's more than just learning how to sell stuff.

It's a community of support.

And so I'm so glad you've joined and attracting those people who want to not only better their sales career, but better themselves, better their life, better their family life, have the time to not only go out and sell a million, you know, earn a million dollars in sales in a year, but also have time for your family.

You can do both.

You don't have to be that person who disappears for two or three months in the peak of your busy season, where your partner is just like, okay, I'll see you here in several months.

For years, my wife said, okay, it's May, I guess I'll see you again in October.

I'm the air conditioning widow for the summer again.

And it doesn't have to be like that.

You can craft a way to have both to have the life you want by design and accomplish some massive, massive goals at the same time.

So that's the point.

That was one of the main points of this entire this entire focus, this movement of the Close it now movement.

So thanks for listening again.

My name is Sam Wakefield.

I will talk to you guys again soon.

Thanks for listening to Close it now with Sam Wakefield.

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