The primary focus of this podcast episode revolves around the critical importance of discerning potential clients who are genuinely interested in the services we offer in the HVAC sector. I emphasize that our time is a precious commodity; thus, it is imperative to disqualify leads that do not align with our professional capabilities or those seeking minimal investment for significant improvements. Through a detailed anecdote, I illustrate how to navigate client interactions, particularly when they exhibit reluctance to engage in necessary expenditures for home enhancements. I advocate for a sales approach that prioritizes integrity and the establishment of genuine client relationships, wherein we only proceed with projects that promise mutual benefit and satisfaction. Ultimately, we reaffirm our commitment to quality service, encouraging listeners to recognize their right to decline unsuitable projects, thereby fostering a more efficient and respectful business environment.

Can you fire customers? You definitely can! Sam Wakefield shows us how to do this by sorting, figuring out their interest level, and identifying if they want to buy what you are selling. Disqualifying a client and moving on can be done when you have successfully judged your customer’s level of interest. By asking the right questions, you will know if you are not wasting your time. Through some examples, learn some tips on how to identify if a customer is worth firing and whether to let go or not.

The podcast episode delves into the nuanced dynamics of sales within the HVAC industry, emphasizing the critical importance of discerning client interest and readiness. The host, Sam Wakefield, articulates the necessity for sales professionals to judiciously evaluate potential customers, determining whether they are genuinely inclined to invest in HVAC solutions. By sharing a personal anecdote from a recent appointment, Wakefield illustrates the pitfalls of engaging with clients who are not prepared to make substantial financial commitments. He underscores the principle that time is an invaluable asset in sales, advocating for the strategic disqualification of prospects who do not align with the company’s service offerings. This approach not only enhances efficiency but also safeguards the integrity and reputation of the sales professional.

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 by 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.

Welcome back to drivetime University.

Sam Wakefield here.

This is Close it now today one it's been a while since I've actually recorded podcast during my Drive Time University.

So it's raining here in Austin, Texas.

You might hear the windshield wipers, you might hear a little traffic noise, but that's okay because we are all out in here in the field saving the world one heat stroke at a time.

Saving the world one frostbite at a time.

So I know you are with me as well because I get comments in the Facebook group.

If you haven't joined the Facebook group, make sure you find it.

Go to closeitnow.net and then it'll link you directly to join our Facebook group.

But yeah, so we get comments all the time about Drive Time University and how much fun it is that we're all out here doing the same thing.

So today I've got a special topic.

It's a little bit about how to sort people, how to figure out if somebody is open, interested, want to buy what you're selling?

Do they want to buy what you're selling?

Are they even interested in in what you are selling?

Are they open to even hearing about it?

Because if they're not, don't waste your time.

It is so important.

Your time is valuable because here's the thing, when you're doing sales for heating and air or electrical or plumbing or anything else for that matter, your time is valuable.

We don't charge for estimates.

Generally speaking, I know some of you do and that's great, that's fantastic if that's your model.

But for the most part, and even if you do charge, it's not much.

So it's not enough to pay your bills.

So we're basically working for free until somebody signs their name on the dotted line.

And that is the nature of the sales industry.

It's what we do.

So with that context, do not be Scared to disqualify a client and move on.

So raise your hand and I raise mine.

And I solemnly swear that I give you permission to disqualify a client if the project is not something that is a good fit for your company.

Now, what do I mean by that?

I'm going to talk you through a scenario that actually happened to me this morning, but then we're going to go through another way to handle it as well.

And so here's what happened.

I was at an appointment.

The notes for the appointment were the guy wanted to replace his ductwork and look at adding insulation to his house.

So I get there and he found us through our local energy supplier has a.

An assistance, not necessarily an assistance program, but a rebate program for, you know, energy improvements on your home.

So he found us from their website.

So, of course, mentally, I'm envisioning that type of an appointment.

Well, turns out, of course, that the guy was a.

Well, one, he was an engineer.

So he thinks that he's done all the math on what his ROI is going to be for different levels of investment.

So we sit down to go over my intro and agenda, and he just says, one, I don't want any type of a sales pitch.

And so I asked him, I said, well, this is a sales appointment and I am a salesperson, so there's definitely going to be some degree of that.

By the nature of this visit, are you okay with continuing this conversation?

And so, of course, he said, well, well, of course I expect some of that.

I said, okay, well, great.

I said, well, the questions I have for you are.

So I know what I'm looking at.

If we don't cover some of the problems that you're experiencing and why you're wanting to have someone out, I can't offer you anything, any improvements to fix it.

Does that make sense?

He's like, oh, yeah, I guess so.

Okay.

And so right off the bat, it was kind of an odd start to the appointment and something I didn't expect, but I was able to save it pretty well by just letting him know to say, listen, if I don't.

If you don't answer my questions, I don't know what I'm even looking at to offer you.

And so then of course, we got into temperatures in the house and allergens and that kind of thing.

So what happened is we go up.

One initially tells me instantly, right off the bat, he says, well, I'm.

I'm not here and no intention to spend five or ten thousand dollars on this project.

And so I look at him, I said, so you aren't really wanting to make a lot of improvements on your house, then?

You're not wanting to make major changes?

I was like, no, no, not really.

I was like, okay.

So I said, you're an engineer.

You get houses use and lose energy.

I said, you do understand that if you don't make a lot of changes, you're not going to get a lot of improvement, right?

It's like, yeah, I get that.

I said, okay, well, with that context, let's talk about the issues you're having.

So turns out the house is almost 40 years old.

Original ductwork to the house.

Now in our part of the world, it's not hard metal pipe.

It is flexible.

And the ductwork from the era that this house was built, and I know a huge portion of you around the world are going to know what I'm talking about.

It was the gray plastic lined flex duct.

Horrible quality material.

And over time, in the attic, as you all know, if you've dealt with it, it gets horribly brittle, will just start to fall apart.

So he follows me into the attic.

We're standing in the attic and we look at this ductwork, and I'm going through that kind of history of this type of ductwork with him.

I reach down and just barely touch it and my finger goes right through the plastic liner and instantly starts to break, which was very.

I'm so glad that happened because I said, oh, wow.

And so, of course, instantly pulled my hand back as a. Wow.

You saw how easy that broke apart, right?

So that was.

I just barely touched it.

So you, of course, went on to explain to him that anytime we come across this type of ductwork, we always recommend replacement because it is an awful, awful shape.

There's almost no insulation factor.

You lose a massive amount of efficiency, you know, through the heat rise and heat loss in the attic, all that kind of stuff.

So we get down, back down to the kitchen table, and we're sitting down, and he says, you know what?

I don't want to spend the money to replace the ductwork.

I was like, oh, okay, well, why am I here?

So he says, well, there was just a couple spots that we that need sealed up.

He's like, I would like to get a.

To look at a complete whole house, duct work, ceiling going through and sealing up all the connections.

And I was like, well, I'll tell you, you saw how brittle that was, right?

Yeah.

I said, that is something as a company, we won't do for you.

And so he Starts to get angry.

And I was like, now listen.

I said, what would happen?

I can predict what would happen.

My guys would get up there trying to paint new sealant onto the ductwork.

Everywhere they touch it, it's just going to keep falling apart.

So the beginning of a losing battle where your ductwork's coming apart, and then you would be angry at us for tearing up your ductwork when we were supposed to be sealing it up to start with.

I said, it's just not something that is doable.

The ductwork at this point is in such bad shape, we will replace it, but we won't do anything else for it.

And, you know, it took him a minute.

He started, he finally got his okay, well, you know, what can we do?

You don't want to spend anywhere near that kind of money anyway.

I was like, well, there's not much we can do.

I mean, you know, some insulation maybe, but that there's hard to know what you're wanting to do.

You're wanting.

You've got the champagne ideas with a dollar store budget.

So there's not much of a fit for us here.

And so we thanked each other.

He thanked me for coming out, and that's basically kind of washing my hands of that.

So at the end of the day, he didn't really want to do any kind of improvements.

I mean, he wanted to do the kind of improvements that, you know, you can buy for pocket change at Home Depot.

Not hiring a professional coming out to come out and improve his home.

Moral of the story, why did I tell that story?

I'm giving you permission.

It's okay.

In cases like this, in those kind of circumstances, when they're just dead set on, they do not want to spend money on the project, then it's okay to say, you know what, we're not a good fit for each other.

You are not a good fit for our company, we're not a good fit for you.

Because what we do professional work, we do quality work.

And of course, if you want something done right, it's not going to be cheap.

It's not going to be the cheap fix.

So until you're ready for something like that, that is when you need to call us back.

Of course, we shook hands and parted ways as friends and agreed that, you know, that when he's ready to look at a bigger project, he'd give us a call back.

Now, another way to handle this is through a couple different types of questions.

One of the ways that I like to handle it the best, and I know just for context, not everybody has attics that has ductwork in them.

You know, a lot of you around the world, you have crawl spaces where everything is under the house.

A lot of times it's, you know, you've got a flat roof and everything is on top of the building to start with.

Or there's.

I know a lot of the world that listens to this podcast, there's no ductwork at all.

You do.

You deal in a lot of mini splits and wall mount systems, ductless systems.

And that's awesome, too.

The point is, when you're asking questions in your initial process, when you're asking questions like, who in the house has allergies or asthma?

Or you're asking questions like, when some rooms in the house are cooler, are there others that are too hot?

And when some rooms in the house are warm, are there rooms that are too cold?

When you ask those type of questions and people give you an answer, you have to qualify what they're answering to know if it's something they're even interested in.

So how do we do that?

One easy way to do it is, you know, following that question up with, so, for example, we're going to use a room temperature.

So, okay, so in the summer, when some rooms are cool, are there other rooms that are too hot or warm?

And they, if they come back with an answer like, well, you know, that bedroom in the corner has always been a little warmer.

But it doesn't sound like, you know, they're just crazy excited about, you know, making a change there.

Follow that question.

Or even if it does, follow the question up with, so if we could do something about fixing that, is that something you would like to take a look at?

Or another great question is, is that merely an observation or is it a concern that you would like to take a look at fixing?

Would you like to take a look at solutions?

Or just making an observation here.

And a lot of times they'll say, well, you know what, it's just an observation.

Nobody even lives in that room and we really don't care.

Maybe people staying at once a year.

It's a guest room.

Okay, great, no big deal, we'll move on.

That way you don't waste time in your conversation driving down the road of and then waste your time in your evaluation process trying to figure out all of the issues that are causing this room to be too hot or too cold or whatever it is that's a waste anyway.

Something they weren't concerned about to start with.

So you've got to judge their Level of concern.

Another great way to do this.

And we'll use this example with maybe allergens and asthma allergies, indoor air quality issues.

You know, you ask them, okay, who in the house has, you know, asthma, allergies, things like that, and it doesn't really matter.

You know what they say if.

Unless they just go off and say, oh, my gosh, so and so's got such horrible allergies.

And it's, you know, they give you just a laundry list, but the rest of the time they mention it or don't mention it.

You can always follow the indoor air quality question up with, okay, so it's called the three thermometer clothes or just the thermometer.

Okay, great.

On, you know, on the one scale of 1 to 10, 1 being the worst, 10 being the best, how important is indoor air quality to you?

And let them answer.

If they're like, oh, it's fine, you know, maybe a five.

We're basically neutral on it.

And then don't waste your time.

Don't waste your time.

That's the whole point of this podcast.

If somebody is in no way interested in spending money to improve their house for a certain thing, don't waste your time going through the presentation for it.

This is how you can be efficient in your visits.

You know, obviously, new equipment, that's awesome.

That's why we're there.

The other stuff, you know, people buy what they want, not what they need.

Even if somebody needs something, we know it's not the solution to what their concerns are, what their issues are.

Even if they need it, we know they need it.

They, in the back of their mind, they probably know they need it.

But if they don't want it, if you haven't been able to take them through enough conversation so they see that it's something that they want to buy to fix their problems.

Don't waste your time with it.

It's so important.

You know, one of the classic examples is the whole sell me the pin thing.

You know, if you've ever seen the Wolf of Wall street or, you know, the Jordan Belfort story or read the book, there's a funny, funny, funny story in there about, you know, he's got a new sales guy and he says, here, sell me this pin.

Well, the guy grabs the pin and starts looking at it, and it's like, oh, my gosh.

You know, this is an amazing pen.

It writes upside down.

It writes on a wall.

It does this, it does that.

It's the best thing you've ever seen.

You know, it's only $15.

And it hands it back to him, and it's like, you know, here, try it out for yourself.

Take it for a test drive.

Of course he looks at it.

He's like, looks like a dumb, stupid pin to me.

Just every basic pin.

Why?

Why in the world should I buy it from you?

And so right about that time, this top salesperson comes in and he says, here, sell me this pen.

So he grabs the pen and looks at it for a second, instantly goes, well, Mr. Belfort, how long have you been in the market for a pin?

And he says, I'm not in the market for a pin.

He said, okay, well, fine, keep your pen.

I don't need to sell it to you anyway.

He looks at the.

The new guy says, I don't sell things to people if they don't want to buy them.

I sell things to people who are people who want to buy.

I sell things, things to people who are willing and able and ready to make a purchase, not somebody who is not interested.

We don't try to force a close.

We don't try to force a sell.

And that totally applies to us.

We're not out there to convince.

We're out there to let people buy what is best for them.

Now, that doesn't mean that through proper education and explanation that we can't increase our ticket price, we can't increase our close rate.

We can increase and influence the, maybe the level of equipment that somebody purchases through education, through talking to their emotions, through that type of a conversation.

But in no way will we ever convince somebody what never exists.

Going to, you know, lie, cheat, steal, anything like that.

We have to be in utmost integrity and honesty.

If you are out there just to make a sale and you're only worried about your commission, you've got commission breath.

People can smell it from a mile away.

They can smell commission breath.

Before you ever knock on the door, just like your energy introduces you before you knock on the door, if you're having a bad day, drive around the block and sit in your car or your truck and find your happy place before you ever knock on the door or it's going to be a waste of time for the client, for you and for the company.

You've got to be in the right energy.

We've got to be happy.

That's why they say the best time to make a sale is right after you make a sale, because you're already in that vibration.

You're in those vibes, man, and you've got the right energy.

Going.

And so you just expect the next sell and the next sell.

But you've got to make sure that you're in the right place.

And that is not through manipulating and taking advantage of people.

But at the same time, we only.

And that's why we don't convince, we sell things to people who want to buy.

We don't, don't try to convince the rest of the world to.

If they don't do it now, their whole house is going to fall down.

That's silly.

Stop it.

Stop it now.

But.

So that's my message today is it is okay if something is not the right fit for you for your project, for your company.

It's okay to tell the client that people would much more respect your honesty than trying to.

One, either selling them something they don't need or, or two, trying to do a project that maybe your company is not suited for something you know that is not going to turn out good.

That's like lawyers.

They only take on cases they know they're going to win.

Right?

So it's the same thing here.

Take on projects you know that are going to be successful.

If you know that this project could turn to disaster, don't take, take it on.

Don't take on a disaster project waiting to happen.

Raise your hand.

I know you've done it in the past.

I have too.

Taken on that project.

That in the back of your mind you're thinking, oh man, this could go south really easy.

This could go bad.

And then it does, and then it's even worse than you thought it was going to be.

We've all done it.

But let me if, if you just listen to that intuition that says, you know what, I'm gonna have to pass on this one.

There's function from an abundance mindset.

You don't need every single job that walks through the door.

You need to focus on finding the best jobs.

Because if we can work, work less, sell more and earn more by doing higher, higher margin jobs and higher dollar jobs, that's what this is all about.

It's not doing every job that walks through the door, especially those ones that, you know, it's so lowballed or there's so many issues, it's only going to be a bad situation.

So that's my message today.

It's a little bit different than what, you know, what I normally talk about, but it's important.

You've got to understand that, you know, you have the right to say no.

You have the right to refuse service if you want to.

It's up to you.

You don't have to do all the projects.

So yeah, that's it for today.

Sam Wakefield here with Close It Now.

If you haven't already, go join.

Go to go to the website CloseItNow.net join our Facebook group.

It's a massively growing community of people just like you who are out there.

Got our drive time university going.

We're working on improving ourselves in order for, you know, that's the thing, you have to become somebody worth buying from to sell to a higher level of person.

You have to become a higher level of person to sell to them.

It's just the way society works.

Call it good or bad, it is what it is.

So for things to get better, we have to get better.

For things to improve, we have to improve.

And I know you're doing that because you're listening to this podcast.

So if you are so also on the website, check out the spaces that talk about coaching.

We've got a really awesome group coaching program that is, that's going nuts right now.

These guys are crushing it.

We've got some private coaching as well which is a ton of fun, fun and changes.

It's a game changer.

It'll change everything for you.

So there is that group coaching, private coaching.

Reach out to me about that and otherwise everyone stay safe out there.

Drop me a line samoseitnow.net Let me know what part of the world you're in.

Let me know what your favorite part of the podcast that you've learned today or any of the podcasts and be on the lookout.

The YouTube channel is just about to get rolling so I'm going to be doing lots of live video demonstrations, things like that.

I also do that in the Facebook group with some Facebook lives.

So make sure to check it out.

And everyone stay safe out there.

Go save the world one heat stroke at a time.

Go save the world one frostbite at a time.

I'll talk to you soon.

Thanks for listening to Close it now with Sam Wakefield.

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