Stop Fighting Objections: Build a System That Eliminates Them Before They Start

If objections keep showing up at the end of your appointments, this episode will change the way you look at your entire sales process. Sam sits down with Josh Thomas, serial entrepreneur and founder of VA IQ, for a conversation that cuts straight to the root of why salespeople lose deals they should be winning.

Josh makes a simple but powerful case: objections at the end of a call are not a closing problem. They are a process problem. Something was missed earlier, and the buyer is telling you exactly what it was. Once you understand that, you stop trying to out-talk objections and start building a system that handles them before the customer ever walks in the door. Josh walks through his Spider Method, the eight beliefs every buyer has to resolve before they can say yes, and the three-phase market feedback cycle that shows you precisely what your buyers need to hear before they will commit.

The conversation also takes a sharp turn into efficiency and time leverage. Josh breaks down the math on how much money business owners are losing by doing low-level administrative work themselves, what it actually looks like to delegate that work to a high-performing virtual assistant, and why the fear of training and managing a VA is exactly the objection his own market gave him and exactly how he solved it.

In This Episode:

1. Why systems beat raw talent every time, and the college football story that proves it
2. Josh's Spider Method and the eight beliefs every buyer must resolve before deciding
3. The three-phase cycle for dialing in your sales message using real market feedback
4. How to pre-handle objections with content and messaging before the appointment starts
5. The math on how much you are paying yourself to do work a VA could handle for a fraction of the cost
6. How VA IQ onboards and manages virtual assistants so you never have to become a trainer or HR department
7. The one thing Josh says to start doing today to immediately tighten your close rate

Resources and Mentions:

VA IQ: vaiq.net VA IQ ROI Calculator: vaiq.net/calculator Podcast: Leverage Everything with Josh Thomas (Spotify, Apple, YouTube) Book: They Ask You Answer by Marcus Sheridan

Leave a review on Apple Podcasts or Google and help this show reach the people who need it most:https://g.page/r/CbfnnDqTCwQdEAE/review

Welcome to Close it now, the podcast that's revolutionizing the H Vac and home improvement trades industries.

Get ready to dive deep into the world of heating, ventilation and air conditioning.

We're turning up the heat on industry standards and cooling down misconceptions.

And we're not just talking about fixing vents and adjusting thermostats.

It's about the transformative movement that's reshaping the very foundation of H Vac and home improvement.

We're the driving force, inspiring top performers who crave excellence not only in their professional endeavors, but also in fitness, nutrition, relationships, and personal growth, proving that we can indeed have it all.

This is Close it now, where excellence meets excitement.

Let's get to work now.

Your host, Sam Wakefield.

Well, all right.

Welcome back to Close It Now, Sam Wakefield.

Here it is, another interview episode.

So I'm excited about my guest today.

This is a gentleman I've met a few months ago.

He was a speaker at an event that I spoke at.

For those of you that remember announcing the Services Summit in Austin, Texas.

That's when I first met this gentleman and his presentation knocked my socks off.

And so we had to connect.

And he is incredible person.

He also is a serial entrepreneur, is own and exited, definitely multiple companies at this point.

And what I'm super excited about is his.

So the value that you're going to get today, we're going to talk about building and some of the skills it takes and some of the pitfalls of building sales teams and how to grow them and lead them and all of the stuff.

And so this is Josh Thomas and his company is Vaiq Virtual Assistant Intelligence Quotient.

Vaiq.net is his company.

So we're going to talk about that a little bit as well.

So welcome to the show, Josh.

Happy to have you.

Today, I need to add a disclaimer for the audience that Sam doesn't actually wear socks, so I couldn't have knocked them off.

They were already off.

They were already off.

Already off.

Just when, you know, I was barefoot.

You didn't even.

I didn't even tell that part.

No.

Yeah, no, but good stuff, man.

So I.

And it's cool.

So for everybody that doesn't know I'm in Central Texas, near the Austin area, and it just so happens that he is as well.

So we had the chance to sit down and have some lunch together and get to know each other, et cetera, which was awesome.

So for everybody around the country, if you are anywhere near the Austin area and you want to take me to lunch, let's do it.

So come to town, let's go.

Chop it up.

We'll catch lunch or dinner.

That's in my area.

So when you come to visit, reach out and we'll make it happen.

That's the perks of proximity.

But man, welcome to the show.

Thanks for joining me today.

Yeah, we were having a chat about building great sales teams because we were doing a swap.

You were on my show earlier, now I'm on your show and I know

that's something we'll spot that too.

For everybody listening, make sure to check out Josh's podcast I was a guest on earlier today.

I don't know when it'll release, but give everybody the info for that.

So since you mentioned it, because I know that a lot of people are going to want to check out that episode as well.

Yep.

So I have a podcast called Leverage Everything.

We have a little over 375 episodes published at this point and it is about maximizing your output with limited resources as an entrepreneur.

And so we bring on great people like Sam to talk about how to get things, how to get more done with less.

Love it, love it.

So that Leverage everything.

This is great.

So it's a really cool.

The other piece that I like for everybody listening is it's short and sweet.

So it's episodes that are bite sized chunks when you'll be able to listen to in your drive time, university, in between appointments, those kind of things.

So you should be able to knock out a bunch of them and get a lot of great content from Josh from his podcast.

So everybody go make sure to subscribe to that channel as well.

Absolutely.

So continue on.

Yeah, we were talking about building great sales teams and you shared with me that one of the things that a lot of people that might be listening to the show resonate with is, hey, you know what?

I'm just like not the best sales guy.

Okay.

And I'm not either.

And that's the reason that we brought that up.

I'm not the best sales guy either.

And so when you're not the best at something, you got a couple of options.

You can go and do what it takes to become the best or a shorter, more secure route is actually to reinforce what you're doing so that your talent becomes less relevant.

Right.

Because if you do both at the same time.

Right?

Yeah.

Right.

Do this while you're working on the rest.

A let's take a recent example of whenever you're listening to this.

And there was this team, Indiana University, that came out of nowhere.

They hadn't won more than like six games in the last century.

And then all of a sudden they just demolish everybody throughout the entire season.

They get undefeated to the championship game and they win that too.

And they didn't suddenly start winning games because their players were just raw talent and amazing.

They suddenly started winning games because they got a new coach who brought in a system and a routine and an expectation of excellence.

And when those regular, you know, no superstar players operated inside of that system, they were able to do amazing things.

Yes.

Whereas there's other teams that had those superstars and they were not operating in a system and they didn't get the championship.

And so that's where it's like if you build the right system, if you know how to build a system that just like basically blocking and tackling, just using a football cliche, but doing the right things, turning the right cranks, that will supersede any level of talent or objection rebuttals or any of that other stuff that you can handle because everything else is nailed down.

I love it.

This is a really, really cool way to reinforce a couple things and then takes us a step further.

You know, one of the things that I say very often is objections come up because of something we're doing in our process.

Well executed sales system should handle all of the objections before we get there.

For the most part, there's some obvious ones that always that come up at the end.

But if somebody, anybody that's having a say, the same objection keeps coming up for them.

It's not the market, it's not the price, it's not anything other than we're planting that seed somewhere in the process that's making them think of it.

So if we have the right system in place, it solves that, which is really great.

But it takes it a step further because then we have predictable results.

Right.

Which is very different than having a team of superstars and hoping everybody shows up on their A game that day.

There's a guy named John Whiting.

We were briefly in the same mastermind together and I'm getting bombarded by his ads right now.

And he's selling this thing called the propaganda machine.

And it's basically the reason that he's selling this is he had this huge sales team and all these setters and closers and stuff and he would get on and listen to their calls and he's like, man, I am setting money on fire.

I am tired of this, this is stupid.

Because they would go in and they would just say these ridiculous things.

They wouldn't follow the process or the system.

And he's like, look, I pay so much money to get these guys on the call and you can't close them.

And so what he did instead was he went back and just built a system that basically pre closes them to where they're able to buy and make a decision without even getting on a phone call at all.

Nice.

That's the ultimate system.

That's great.

Yeah.

And it doesn't work for everybody, but it's just another kind of feather in the cap of people have to go through if they're going to make a buying decision.

They have to go through their own psychological process and they have to overcome all of their childhood traumas.

They have to overcome all of the other situations where they took a bet on themselves and they lost and they have these self limiting beliefs and they have ego protecting them.

And that's all a lot for a person to overcome in a 45 minute conversation.

No doubt.

Yeah.

So what we need to do is we need to understand that they're going through that process.

And the person who shows up on my call has a different process than the person who shows up on your call and whoever is listening depending on what your product is or what problem you solve.

But we need to understand what their process is and then we need to echo that process and meet them where they are and say, hey, I get you, you're not alone.

I understand that.

Let me show you another way to look at it.

And we need to do that over and over and over again until they're like, you know what, you're my guy.

You have been professional.

You obviously understand me, you obviously care about getting the right solution.

Let's move forward and do business together.

And that's what's gonna happen.

Whether you pressure them on a 45 minute call or you build your system before the call and after the call.

One way or another, that's what has to happen for a transaction to take place.

You're just increasing your chances that it'll take place if you build the right system on either side of that call.

Oh, this is really, really, really good for everybody listening.

And so most of the community listening is in some form of home improvement or home services, typically in home sales.

Of course there's, you know, and not to leave anybody out.

There's plenty of people or that do auto sales, car sales, that type of thing, and some other industries, but for the most part we're doing in home.

Typically in home sales or B2C sales, which is such a powerful conversation for that because, you know, we're always working.

How do we.

As a sales trainer, the questions are the same, right?

I get this over and over and over.

How do it help me with my objections?

I have objections.

How do I handle objections?

How do I handle objections?

And so this answers it in such a better way than just, well, here's your one liner.

There's no magic bullet.

And actually it's fun because it makes me think of a book I read recently, they Ask youk Answer by Marcus Sheridan, which is kind of a similar concept here of like, just make a list of all the questions that anybody ever has and just create content around that.

Answer those questions because those are the questions they have.

Don't come from the place of them, not the place of you.

And run with that.

Because I feel like there's a lot there.

You know, here's the thing that I will admit.

I've always.

Honestly, I've just.

I've never really.

We were talking about identity on my show.

I have always identified myself as somebody that's, you know, not great at sales.

And maybe that's true and maybe it's not, but that's like I. I claim I wear that badge, you know, and because of that, whenever I get into a situation where somebody gives me an objection, and probably like the super sales gurus that might be listening to this are just going to cringe.

But if somebody throws up some kind of basic objection, nine times out of ten, my immediate reaction in my head is, crap, I failed.

I missed something.

Because my goal, the ultimate sale, is I identify and uncover whatever those concerns or fears or doubts or whatever it is, I uncover those and I neutralize them before we get into a situation where they feel like they need to use an objection.

And if I miss something, that's when the objection comes up.

I was in Cole Gordon's Master Ryan for a little while, and he has this thing called the seven Decision Making Beliefs.

And I adapted that and I kind of turned it into my own system called the Spider Method.

The Spider Method has four internal legs and four external legs.

And here's how it works.

Pain, doubt, cost, desire, trust, support, money, timing.

We have to address all eight of those for a decision to even be possible.

And every time I've gotten to the end of a call and somebody throws up some objection, that objection is one of those beliefs that I failed to address.

One of Those legs, yeah.

100% of the time.

And as soon as it comes up, I'm like, damn it.

Because I, I know, I know.

You know, it's like, oh, yeah, you know, let me get back to this.

Let me get back to you in about, you know, a couple of months.

Crap.

How did I miss asking the timing question?

Timing question, sure.

You know, like, it does not fail.

And so whenever I'm having a conversation, I don't typically follow a specific script, but I do follow a system.

And that system has everything to do with why are we even talking?

What do you actually even want?

And if you want it, let me make sure that you're in a place to where you can decide and execute on some sort of action.

And only then when you've checked off all of my boxes, because I know if I miss one, that's where you're going to burn me.

Then in about two minutes, I can describe what we do and how it works and how it might fit for you, and you can make your decision.

And if you want to talk about it at that point, then at least we've covered all of this ground.

And the only thing left is your own insecurity about making a decision, which is a totally human situation.

It's like, hey, look, I get it, man.

Now, now we're dealing with all of the things that you're paid all this money to deal with instead of like some BS objection you could have sniffed out in the first 5 minutes of the call.

I love this so much because, you know, and I would say you're, you are handling objections, you're just doing them sooner.

And that's the point of a well executed.

When you have a good system and somebody when you follow pre handles the objections.

So that.

And so for everybody listening, if you're getting objections at the end, this is why when people train with me and when I, when I do coaching and stuff, we always start at the beginning and we spend so much time going through the process.

Going through the process, going through the process, because that's how we're handling the objections.

If you're getting objections at the end, often what that means is just like Josh saying you're missing something, you're missing something in the process which is super powerful.

So let's scale this out a little bit because.

And in this conversation, actually I'd love for you to take a couple minutes here and just give everybody a little bit of a highlight reel of your life and your experience around how'd you end up in the seed, Right?

So take us through some of Your journey, there's a.

And then.

And then land with especially building out the.

Some of the sales teams that you're able to do.

Because like we were talking about earlier, you said you're not the best at it, but what makes you the superstars of the system?

This all begins when, about 10 years ago, when I lost a bet.

Isn't that how we always get in business?

Right.

It's something odd like that every other

story I have to tell Sam starts with, so there was this girl, but this particular story, I lost a bet, okay?

And the bet that I lost was I actually was pitching a guy on this ridiculous hundred thousand dollar marketing package or whatever it was.

I was way overshooting, but I was like, I need the money.

And the guy said he wanted to start a podcast.

And he said, well, I'd love to bring on investor.

He was an investor.

I'd love to bring on some investors and have them kind of talk about their investments, and I'd love for them to share some things they're struggling with so I can help them.

And then boom, Sparked an idea in my head immediately.

And the guy's name is Paul Moore, dear friend to this day.

I said, paul, you need to start a podcast called how to Lose Money and then bring him on to just talk about the failures.

And in fact, if you do that, I'll be your co host.

And he's like, oh, let me think about that.

And so he called me up.

That sounds like a killer idea.

Yeah, he called me up a couple weeks later.

He's like, were you serious about that?

I'm like, I mean, I guess.

And so we end up launching this podcast called how to Lose Money.

You can still listen to it on Spotify to this day.

We did 238 episodes and.

And I, I was just like this awkward.

Like, I had no business being a podcast host.

You know, it's like there's not like a school for this.

You just get on and you.

And you just kind of like fumble around until it's you like, you figure it out, right?

Yeah.

Go back and listen to the first 50 of mine.

Geez.

And so within the first 20 episodes, I meet this guy named Michael.

And Michael and I, you know, we had a nice conversation, we hit it off, and he's like, well, I got a problem.

All right, what's your problem?

Well, I feel like I have the best real estate training out there for this particular niche, but, you know, I can't make very many sales.

And he had like his investor relations guy Doing the sales, you know, and I'm like, all right.

So I worked with him for a little bit, and he got too busy, and he couldn't do the calls anymore.

So I'm like, all right, well, I'll do the calls.

And so I start doing the calls.

And that's when I started realizing, like, oh, okay, everybody's saying these things.

Everybody's not buying because of these reasons.

What can I do before they even get to the call so that I can make my job easier?

What can I say when I'm in the conversation so that I can make my job easier?

And then we started selling more and more and more.

And we started.

When I came on, he was doing, like, 30k a month, and within 90 days, he was doing 150k a month.

Just from me figuring out what these guys needed me to say and what kind of confidence and reassurance they needed.

I already knew Michael's product was the best, but they didn't.

All I had to do is say the right words, figure it out.

And then when we hit 150k a month, we basically broke it.

And we had to shut it down because the delivery on the back end was breaking.

And all of the coaches and mentors, all the company.

Sure, yeah.

All the coaches and mentors were coming to me at the event and were like, josh, can you, like, stop selling for a little while?

I'm like, no.

What, coach Faster?

Yeah, you know, and so we did end up shutting it down for about six weeks, and we retooled it.

And you know what else makes my job easier?

Raising the price.

Because we were selling it.

It was criminally cheap.

And so we.

We 2 1/2 x the price.

And then that.

And then we reopened it.

And that first it was, like, within three or four calls, I got somebody to pay that higher price.

And then I was like, oh, boy, now my job's gonna get real easy, because I could basically sell one, like, four of these, and it would be the equivalent of selling 10.

And so I'm always just looking for ways to make my job as easy as possible.

Sitting there and fighting with somebody and convincing them.

That's not easy.

That's not fun.

It's just a lot of stress.

I want you to show up knowing that we are the best choice, period.

And you just need to talk to somebody that is sane and calm and professional and knows how to guide you to the next decision, because I'm not gonna have that, you know, the.

The tonality and, you know, like, the Jeremy Minor Stuff like, oh, are you sure about that, Bob?

Like, I don't know any of that stuff.

All I know is I want somebody to show up to the call already knowing who I am, already knowing we're the best.

And then I want to ask them questions that have them identify themselves as ready to go before I ever put myself in a position to pitch them so that they can say, oh, let me go think about it.

This is gold.

So let's dive into this a little bit because there's.

I'm hearing several things from you.

One is the, well, I love the self serving portion of this because that's one of my philosophies is there's no reason we have to go out and just absolutely destroy ourselves, work our faces off and have zero time to.

So what if we make a million dollars a year if we have zero time to do anything with it, if we don't see our family?

If the reason I started this company was I get so tired of going to conferences and having the just overhearing owners of big companies saying, it's like a scorecard going.

And talk about wearing like a badge of honor, the scorecard going, how many heart attacks have you had and how many wives have you had?

And hearing all these stories about people with their children, they don't know who they are because they're never there in their lives.

And so I'm a massive advocate of we can work less and still make more if we close with better close rates, higher average tickets, all of these things.

And of course, and I love this because traditionally in sales, the struggle and the journey, it takes so long to get.

I was just talking to my friend Scott Silvandale.

He's one incredible trainer.

We're doing some stuff together and both of us agreed.

It takes about three years of weekly intense, dedicated, very intentional work to take somebody from average to superstar level.

About three years.

There are no shortcuts.

Rome wasn't built in a day and neither was a top performer.

So at the same time, so few people are willing to go through the effort and the work it takes to get there that now you've got this huge limiter in especially home service industries and home improvement industries.

And so I love this concept so much because it's almost like a cheat code for companies that they can use if they will do the work.

So let's dive into some of the things that you were doing ahead of time before, before they get on the call.

So what are some of the ways to pre screen people check on their all of the reasons, because there's two sides to this.

The old school philosophy is get me in front of every single person as possible, as many as you can, and we're going to close business because we're going to make it happen.

Or there's this method which is in alignment with the.

They ask you answers like, no, let's, let's just be more efficient here and only talk to em if they're a best fit buyer.

So I would say that there are three, at least three phases to this and you cannot skip them.

Phase one is where we a hypothesis.

Basically, I want to start a plumbing company, Bob's Plumbing.

And I think that the thing that people need is, you know, they need their toilets cleaned and they need their, you know, pipes tightened or whatever.

Obviously I'm not a plumber, but whatever plumbers do, I think they need that.

And I think their biggest concern is they want somebody that has integrity and I need somebody I can trust.

And that's your hypothesis.

And you go out to market with that hypothesis.

Now you're entering phase two.

That would be the faux part of fafo, if you will.

So now you're entering phase two, which is testing market feedback.

My message is, I'm Bob the plumber and I operate with integrity.

And then you go out there and you talk to people and you talk to people and you talk to people and they're like, yeah, that's great, Bob, I'm glad you have integrity, but can you be here in like the next 45 minutes?

Because I got like poo water running through my house.

Exactly.

Apparently they don't care about integrity.

They care about speed.

And we take that market feedback and ignore it.

And we say, well, I'm Bob the plumber, I got integrity.

Well, you're going to be marginally struggling because you're not overcoming the biggest problem that they have, which is they need you there fast.

They don't really care if you're a nice guy or not.

They care that you get the poo water out of their house.

And so what you need to do is now we enter phase three, which is adjustment and retesting.

And so now it's like, hey, this is Bob's Plumbing.

We will, we answer every call.

And we.

And from Monday, Monday through Friday, 9 to 5, we guarantee that we will be at your house within one hour.

And now it's like, great.

I don't.

Because I don't really give a crap if you have integrity as long as you show up and get this poo water out of my house.

Boom.

Now, you have taken the market feedback that told you speed matters, get to the house.

Now, I, I, this may not be at all true in your market or for your business, but it's just an example.

And the hypothesis is wrong.

But we get data.

The market tells you what it wants, and then you go back and just give it what it wants.

And now on top of the fact that you will be there in an hour, you can add in your part.

If it's important to you that you have integrity, not only will we be there in an hour, but we will show up professional.

We're going to be wearing tucked in collared shirts, and we're not going to smell like poop.

Great.

You know, and that's like an additional thing.

It makes it even easier.

And then you start talking to people and you start realizing, you know, all these other plumbers, they charge me like a hundred bucks just to come out and look at something, and then they don't even do any work and I have to pay them anyway.

You know what?

I'm going to waive the trip charges just in exchange for that.

You know, we'll give you an honest rate.

And if you want to go with us, go with us.

Okay, great.

Can you be here in an hour?

Of course we can.

You know, and it's like whatever the market is telling you that it needs, find a way to get that.

Now, I'm not trying to take money out of your pocket.

If the trip charge is, if, if the trip charge is what, you know, makes or breaks, you just take the trip charge and turn it into something else and charge more for your service.

You know, it's like if you need to charge that money, charge that money.

But the way that that money is positioned can be changed.

If that's creating resistance for your customers and clients, just move it somewhere else to where you can still feed your family and then give them the service that they actually want in the image that they wanted.

But all of this is only possible when you talk to enough people and you get enough market feedback to say, well, this is what people are willing to pay for.

We'll just give them that.

Yeah, stop trying to give them something they don't want.

Give them what they want, not ignoring the feedback along the way, because that happens.

So I would say that happens way more often than not.

It's like people are literally screaming at you of market feedback.

And then what do most company owners do?

Oh, I don't want to be on social media because I'm scared I'll get the bad reviews.

Well, it's your market feedback.

Yeah, I'd rather be a ghost.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And home services is like, you know, the, the plumber example is easy, but I've dealt with, haven't dealt with a ton of plumbers.

You know, a lot of.

I can, I can turn a wrench, you know, and have fortunate to have very minor, you know, plumbing issues and knock on wood, knock on toilets.

But I have dealt with H Vac many times as a homeowner.

And I can tell you right now, for me, the message that would get me is I'm happy to pay a trip charge or whatever, but, like, if somebody were to say to me, nine times out of 10, you don't actually need a completely new, you know, unit and compressor, it's probably just a minor problem.

We'll come out and do a hundred dollar diagnostic and we'll give you a quote for the repair.

And if you want a new machine, we'll give you a.

We'll give you a deal or something.

Because I can't tell you how many times I brought some H Vac guy to my house and literally did nothing but try to pitch me on some $20,000 machine that I didn't need.

You know, and it was like, all right, cool.

And if enough people in your market say that, then you start leading with that.

You start sounding different from these other guys and you no longer have to compete with them.

You still get in the door, you still get the business, you still earn the trust.

And then at that point, the positioning, you have to say, look, you could probably get away with this unit for another year or so, but it's going to bust down.

And we're in Texas and it gets to be 108 degrees in August, and you don't want to be fixing it then because that's when everybody's busy.

I'll cut you a deal if you do it now.

But you have the positioning to be able to close that deal because I let you in the door because you gave me what I wanted.

Yeah, you built the trust along the way, too.

I love this so much.

And for everybody listening, this is very candid because Josh is not from the home improvement space.

And I didn't even prep him and say, hey, most of my community is H Vac.

So everything he knows about my community basically heard in the introduction.

So this is perfect because the H Vac industry specifically has gotten such a black eye for exactly what you were just saying.

Josh, from.

For the last 10, 15, 20 years is it became such a sell, sell, sell.

But it's gotta be new equipment.

Let's take advantage of people to a degree.

And so it's given a black eye to the industry so bad.

So I 100% agree is functioning in that integrity in that piece of.

Okay, what, What's.

What are we really?

What are we listening for here?

What are we?

What is truly needed.

And then the rest is your choice.

But I'm here to show you your options.

And then let's discuss in a.

In a much healthier way than, oh, you just.

Can you just need a new one.

Let's just replace it.

Well, I'm the expert.

I'm telling you, you should replace it.

Well, the thing's only four years old.

Why should I do that?

Right?

And.

And it all comes from.

And, and whatever.

Like if, if you're an H VAC guy and like, nothing that I said makes sense.

Don't worry about the actual strategy itself, but the thought process, right?

So you guys are experts, you're pros, whatever that is.

Take.

Take my words and translate them into something that makes more sense to you.

But the one thing that I want to stress here that can't be skipped is you have to be willing to enter that market feedback cycle and pay attention.

Be willing to just, like, I'm not walking away with this sale, but I want to find out why.

No pressure, like, hey, no problem, I understand that's not what you need.

Do you mind just sharing with me what you do need?

Or what I could have said that would have been more effective.

Like, be willing to just open up the kimono and be vulnerable and say, okay, great.

Because now the next conversation you have, you've got that foresight of like, okay, last five times I've pitched this, here's what they've said.

Now how do I get them to not say that the next time?

Oh, this is gorgeous.

Incredible, incredible value here.

And so they.

This, this is.

I'm sitting here grinning because this is what I trained so often.

And it's cool to have somebody come in completely blind to all of my content and kind of say the same thing because at the end of the day, you know, it doesn't matter what product or service is being promoted.

This piece of the conversation is everything.

And, you know, the, and the.

You said the key word, the operative word is setting the ego aside, right?

Because so many times we think we know what our clients want, but it's.

We're.

All we see is the lens from us.

And we are not Our clients, in fact, most of the time in, especially in this space, Home improvement, we're technicians, and that's 3% of the population.

And people do not think like us or they would be technicians, too.

And so we're trying to.

That's why I hire you guys.

Exactly.

We're trying to see everything through the.

Through our own lens.

But our own lens is what 97% of population does not see through.

And like you just said, so let's play a fun game here, because I think this will help a ton of people, because you're not that.

Why do you hire someone instead of going through the effort to try to figure it out on your own?

Well, at some point, everybody, every human being is faced with a crossroads.

What is the pain of my current position versus the pain of this other position?

What is the reward of my current position?

What is the reward of this other position?

Is there an imbalance on either side, and am I okay with that imbalance taking away any industry, any sales relationship, decision, whatever it is?

We're always weighing the pros and cons of status quo versus the other thing.

Right.

I'm just going to keep doing what I'm doing because it doesn't hurt enough for me to change.

It hurts.

It's.

It's like 95 degrees in here because my AC is broken.

But it doesn't hurt enough for me to change because I think you're ripping me off.

So we're always weighing, is the unknown of this new position worth the risk versus the amount of pain that I'm currently dealing with.

And your only job is to help them decide which one is the best decision for them, even if it's not going with you.

And if you approach every situation with that, you may make like 5% less money, but you will be 10 times more efficient because maybe you could talk that, you know, old Betty into buying that new unit.

But you're going to lose, like, three years off your life because you're going to lose a little bit of sleep about that.

Unless you're just a horrible person.

Right, but.

Exactly.

But the I.

But the idea here is if you can help somebody see that the pain of going over here and making this decision is actually manageable, and it's better than staying where you are and let them believe that, then they're going to make the decision in your favor.

But you have to strip away all of the other things and really understand people only make decisions on that kind of binary plane.

They're either like, I'm.

Nah, man, I Just, I'll just.

I'll just.

I'm good.

Versus.

Yeah, let's do it.

That seems like a way.

I would way rather be over there than right here.

And I'll do anything to get from here to there.

Yeah, this is good.

This is so good.

Let's.

Let's talk a little bit about efficiency.

Because I know that in my journey along the way, both as being a rep in the field and as a business owner now for quite a few years, both doing the coaching and training business that I have now, and also when I owned a company, when we did home improvement and a track and all this stuff, efficiency is everything.

Because like I was saying, it's one thing to go out and work your face off, but if you can do it a lot more efficient and have the time.

And then like we were talking about leverage, right?

This is the name of your freaking podcast.

Leverage Everything.

How do we leverage our time?

Because time is the only commodity we can't get more, only thing we can't get more of.

So how do we leverage that?

Because that's the only way to truly get to truly grow something, to truly scale it.

So I'd love to talk about that a little bit because I've discovered some things in my own personality, the way I'm wired, that has forced me to.1 so especially in sales and in ownership, business ownership, all these things, the things that we know we need to do to grow the business, to make more sales, et cetera, are easy to do and they're easy not to do.

And because of that, so many times we'll opt to not do them.

So I've personally, I've created some systems in my life that force me to do the things because I have to if I want to achieve the goals that I want.

And one of those actually is.

So let's talk about efficiencies for a minute and how to leverage some of this concept and this process.

Instead of being very manual like we're talking about, let's start with how can we leverage some of those different things that you've talked about so far?

And then we'll take it a step further into.

It's a little bit of actually the benefits of even having assistance and those types of things and how they end up basically paying for themselves in no time.

The highest and best use of your time is being intimately involved in those three phases that I laid out.

Hypothesis, market feedback, adjustment.

And retesting.

Your job as the executive, as the business owner, as the visionary is to determine the identity of your company.

And then your job as the visionary is to go and take that identity and put it in out in the market and see what it says.

And then based on what it says, it's your job as the business owner and the visionary to morph your message and your mission and your company or whatever into whatever it needs to be so that it can be successful.

Those tasks, those responsibilities, those are thousand dollar an hour tasks.

When you sit down for one hour and look at 10 different home visits to see the trends of why people didn't buy from you, one hour doing that could be worth a hundred thousand dollars to you over the next quarter.

It is supremely high value work for you to be doing that discernment and sifting and sorting and iterating and testing and trying all of that stuff you need to be doing.

You know what you don't need to be doing, Sam?

No.

Well, yes, sort of the other stuff, right?

The don't need to be checking your email.

You don't need to be calling somebody back that oh, I missed the call.

You don't need to be negotiating or ordering parts from vendors.

You don't need to be making sure that your team has been dispatched correctly.

You don't need to be doing that stuff because the more time you spend doing that stuff, the less time you have to do the thousand dollar an hour task or the ten thousand dollars an hour task of getting clear on your company vision and mission.

It is that valuable without exaggeration.

And so anything that you could hire somebody else to do that costs you $10 an hour, even 20, 30, $50 an hour, it is well worth it because it frees up your time to go and run your business and get it to the next level.

Right?

And so as far as leverage, everything that you don't physically have to do, you should get it off your plate immediately through delegation.

One of the things that I do that I really focus on heavily is we place high performing virtual assistants, remote team members.

They're usually international, which means that you can save 50 to 70% versus hiring locally.

They're still 100% competent.

They can still do the job just as well, sometimes better than any American.

Usually they're 100% fluent in English.

We recruit from Latin America, so they're also 100% fluent in Spanish.

And they can take that work off of your plate.

All that $10 an hour work, they can take it immediately off your plate and save you hours per day so that you can focus your time and your energy on this higher Level stuff that's going to actually move your business forward instead of the busy work that just keeps you spinning your wheels.

Love this.

So I've got some pushback for you because like we were talking about earlier with going into the market and saying, okay, this is who we are.

This is what I think the market wants.

And then hearing market feedback and it's something different or figuring especially we were talking about figuring out those objections along the way so we know how to better prepare for them ahead of time to handle them before they ever show up.

Because I was in the same when I'm thinking about assistance and those kind of things for years.

I was stuck in that cycle of, well, I don't have, and I know this is a lot of people I've talked to, I don't have everything organized well enough to be able to hire an assistant, to be able to just plug them in.

So my concern, my fear, my anxiety was always around, well, crap.

Just like training anybody else, it's going to take twice as much time and take away from the things that I have to do.

I don't even have the time to train an assistant.

So I'd love to love for you to speak to that a little bit because I feel like that now that I'm on the other side of that and have an assistant, that was a massive misconception.

But I didn't even, I didn't realize it until I experienced the difference.

So.

So I'd love for you to cover that a little bit.

And, and here's here's the three step process that I just shared in action.

When we launched, we run ads.

And when we launched, we launched with a broad general message that says, hey, we'll give you a dedicated virtual assistant that'll save you time, buyback time, so that you can stay focused on blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

And we got a bunch of calls booked with a bunch of basket cases that were just like all over the place.

And the one thing they all said, every single one of them, Sam said, I don't have time to like train these guys or babysit them and manage them.

I just don't have time for that.

And we have a process for how to handle that because we actually manage them on a daily basis.

We train them, we get them up to KPI because I knew that that was the only way that it was going to be successful.

But I didn't put that in my messaging.

And so my market gave me that feedback and they said, well, I don't know, man.

And they Were they were making their decision on the fact that they were afraid they were gonna have to manage and train them and they're worried they were gonna fail.

Even though I'm like, yeah, but no, we take care of it, blah, blah, blah.

It was too late.

They already planted the seed and it was.

I couldn't, I couldn't yank it out.

Yeah.

And so now what we do is before I ever talk to them, before they get on the phone, I have a video where I'm addressing that concern.

I have a document that addresses every single question that people typically ask on those calls, one of which, meaning I don't have time to manage people.

It's literally written just like they say it.

Great.

You don't have to become a manager or HR department.

We actually take that off your plate.

So you can become a stay A visionary will be the guardrails to protect your investment and make sure you get everything that you need.

They get all of this information before I ever talk to them because the market told me that was their concern.

Like, great, no problem.

Let me hammer that into the ground so that by the time we talk, that is not the problem we're talking about.

Let's talk about a higher level problem.

And, and so you're perfectly right.

And everybody's gonna have that same concern.

That's why we deal with it way, way, way early.

And like, you know, video, email, PDF, I'll send them like a singing telegram about it, you know, whatever it is that they need to get it into their head, like, okay, I don't have to be a professional trainer.

Great.

And then at that point there's, you know, some people have other problems or whatever, and we deal with those, but for the most part, that's the biggest one.

Yeah, and I hear you.

And for everybody listening, I want you to listen to this through two different lenses.

One is the lens of if you've ever considered.

And actually I'm going to give a couple reasons why I'm a huge fan of virtual assistants here in a second.

But if you've ever considered that one, listen through this lens also here.

And if you need to run this back, listen to what was what this conversation, what Josh was just saying.

Because also view that through the lens of when you're working with your clients, when your potential clients, what are we have to know, what are those fears, concerns that they have working with your company?

If it's H vac, if it's plumbing, if it's garage doors, if it's electrical, whatever it is, it doesn't matter what are their concerns, fears, thoughts, ideas ahead of time.

And the.

So sending a video, sending an informational, sending a questionnaire ahead of time.

How can we short.

Without adding too many barriers of entry or too many steps to the process as far as their effort.

But how can we educate the actual components?

Not just.

And don't think in terms of educate about.

Well, this is, this is who we are and here's what we do.

Because that's.

You just heard, that's the wrong message.

The message is speak to the fears and concerns and how we handle that.

And those are.

And so for home services, it's what, what are the big ones?

Who's going to be in my house?

Are they a felon?

Are they going to steal from me?

Right?

Are you going to rip me off?

Is your price too high?

All of the common things, right?

This is not a mystery.

Just use your freaking brain sometimes.

But answer those questions in the content and then see what happens when you show up at the door because this will be a very different experience.

And of course, this is what I do when I train companies and when I work on a company's sales process is fix all these things.

So let's come back to this, Josh, because this is huge and it applies to both what you're doing and what everyone does.

It doesn't matter what they do.

This is such an integral piece of the process that most people miss.

And we have to know in going through that process and the market feedback and that's what's going to inform you on what's really important to your customers.

And depending on where you're located or what kind of service you want to provide, those concerns and issues are going to be different.

What I learned when we were started kind of doing this in mass is well, yeah, I mean, do they speak good English?

Okay, I gotta address that.

Well, yeah, but I mean, I don't want to be a full time trainer.

Okay, I gotta address that.

Well, can I trust them?

You know, like, do they actually know how to do these higher level things?

Okay, I gotta address that.

And I started with my hypothesis.

I think busy executives need a little bit of extra help with a virtual assistant.

And I was sort of right.

And then the market told me how to be exactly right.

And, and so I just listened to what they said.

I'm like, yeah, you know, most of it I was already doing because I've been working with them myself and with my clients for over a decade.

I already knew how to do it, but I didn't Realize what was important for them to hear and know and feel until they told me.

And then once they told me, I'm like, oh, okay, I gotta make sure and address this or no sale is gonna happen.

Yeah, exactly.

You know, even if I know I'm gonna provide the service, even if I'm already gonna give them the thing, if I don't say it, something in their head is gonna keep them from saying

yes, that's exactly it.

And I think so many times we make assumptions about, we falsely think that everyone else because we know what we do and what our industry is and we mentally are able to connect the dots instantly.

And we falsely think that everyone else can connect those same dots for these types of things.

And just like I said, if we don't tell them, we might as well not be doing it.

And so we have to show them how they can connect those dots from what they want, from where they are to what they want.

And what they want is not necessarily having an assistant or whatever it is.

What they want is the outcome.

So what's the outcome?

The outcome, right.

And then we, it's our job to show them this is your vehicle to get there in the most efficient way possible.

So I'd love for you to take a second and also talk about like how this increases efficiency and how, you know, in, I'm sure in probably every case, if not almost every case, they pay for themselves so fast.

But we don't real so many times we don't realize it on the front end until we get to experience it.

So the cost is always a concern too.

It's like, I don't know if I can afford one.

So you can go to vaiq.net calculator and kind of do a little calculator thing.

But I'll give you the short version here.

If you pay yourself, don't not like how much money you make, not like your revenue of your company or you know, the top line before cogs or whatever.

Like however much money you pay yourself in a salary.

If you pay yourself $15,000 a month, then your hourly rate, assuming a 40 hour workweek, your hourly rate is around a hundred bucks an hour, give or take.

And According to Forbes, 6% of executives spend or executives spend up to 36% of their productive time on low level administrative tasks.

Checking email, setting appointments, following up with vendors, sending invoices, that kind of thing.

36% of their time, if you do the math that, that's three hours per day, that's 15 hours per week, 60 plus.

Hours per month.

Geez.

Now again, if you pay yourself $15,000 a month, your hourly rate is a hundred dollars, 60 hours a month, $6,000 a month, you are paying yourself to be a secretary.

Yeah.

Now be your own whatever it is, right?

Yeah.

Now maybe you have a secretary that's worth $6,000 a month, but you can get one for way less than that, by the way.

And you can get, you can get a VA in Central America for like 60 to 70% less than that.

And they will do a kick ass job and you'll never have to worry about that again.

And you just freed up three hours of your day to go and do whatever you want.

You can almost get a whole round of golf in, in three hours.

At least the back nine something, right?

Or you can sit down or you

can spin it on a high value activity that actually moves the business forward.

Yeah.

You can sit down and think.

You can take a breath and say, all right, revenue is not where it needs to be.

We've been slipping lately.

I got to find a solution.

Let me look at some of these past calls.

Let me look at some of the notes from the text.

Let me see if something pops up.

And you can do that because you have the time to sit down and do it.

That,000 to $10,000 an hour work, that's just taking the admin off of your plate.

The other thing that you can do is, I call it the abcds Admin, Business Development, Client Support and Delivery of Services.

Any of those you can delegate to a remote team member located anywhere in the world and they can take care of that job for you.

So you can get a dispatcher and they handle all of the routes, all of the trucks, all of the visits, all of the appointments.

You can get somebody to handle all of the follow ups.

You can get somebody to handle all of the back end paperwork and send over the contracts and get them signed and chase them down if that's something.

If you're chasing somebody down, that's very, very low level work.

You can get someone else to do that.

Yeah.

And then as far as delivery of services, obviously you can't have somebody in like El Salvador like turn a wrench for you, but you can have them provide all of the blueprints and you can have them pull public records and all of the other things that you can do remotely.

It's all of the ted, all of

that stuff can be delegated anywhere in the world as long as it doesn't require you to like physically manipulate an object in front of you.

And you can do that for super cheap.

And you can basically take your entire team and nearshore it, we call it, because we don't, we don't like outsource to the Philippines or anything like that.

It's just like straight down, they're in the same time zone as Texas.

It's central time.

And they're, they already are familiar with U.S. businesses and U.S. consumers.

They've been working with them for years.

And so it's not like, it's not like some random, you know, villager living in a mud hut or something.

Like they live in established cities with high speed Internet, you know, and all that stuff.

And you can easily delegate all of that stuff so that you can be more efficient at your job and you can focus as much time possible on those higher value tasks to push your business forward.

I love this so much, you know, and looking back across my career, I see so many places this could, could have been valuable, you know, even when I was.

So for everybody listening, this isn't just for the business owners because had I met you, Josh, when I was still in the field in sales, I.

100%.

Yeah, we'll just pause.

We can clip this out.

I was like, he disappeared.

No, I'm here, man.

It's just my camera just cut off.

That nice fancy camera you were talking about.

Yeah, that fancy camera.

It cut off.

Let me see if I can.

You can turn off camera while recording, but you can't switch cameras.

Hang on.

Sorry, dude.

No, you're good.

I know you were on a roll.

I remember.

Been on all day.

So it might have just.

I might have just heated up or something.

Let me see if we can finish this out here.

All right, we're good.

Sweet.

Probably want to wrap it up quick though.

Yep, I'm getting there.

We'll land this plane.

So I remember when I was in the field, I would have absolutely loved, especially at the race that you're talking about, even just myself, to have somebody that I could have quickly trained up to.

Or you train, if that's the case, hearing from you instead of having to stay up until midnight, you know, four nights a week, bump, you know, blasting out quotes and follow ups and checking my emails and all these things to close the business.

Man, if I could have like handed a ton of that stuff, it would have easily paid for itself in the more appointments I could have seen or the, you know, just, just think of a million different ways that could apply.

And then of course now what I do with, you know, with my business and Then all the companies that I consult with.

Holy cow.

It's one of the biggest struggles I see several entry points for.

Just like you were talking about, was it ABCD or the four different areas I see so many different entry points for and opportunities for like a virtual assistant.

Somebody's the one man shop that is ready to.

That is just drowning.

You don't need to be answering your own dang phone call while you're under a house or in an attic or something.

Something.

It's like all of the business that you're missing can be outsourced and it just pays for itself instantly in every single one of these situations.

And so, man, I love it.

I love this conversation because bringing leverage and bringing ways to the market of how do we grow, how do we scale.

We've got technology now.

I mean we have a freaking supercomputer in our pocket all the time.

Most people don't lack resources.

Most people don't lack resources, they lack resourcefulness.

And this is one of those things that's available.

We just have to tap into it.

So give everybody your contact info again because how do they get ahold of you?

And for everybody listening, I highly recommend set up a conversation with Josh.

They absolutely.

You can just completely change the way that your business operates in all of the best ways and take another little second and talk something we were talking about before when it talks about dive in just a little bit into the you trained them part.

Because I think that's still a missing piece that most people are like, oh, but our industry is specific, our industry specialized.

We use these like certain programs that surely they can't, they don't know those kind of things.

So talk about that for a second and then give everybody your contact info how you can reach out for anybody

that wants to connect directly.

You can learn more about our service by going to vaiq.net that's vaiq.net and to answer your question about the training, just did an onboarding today with a new client.

Typically we have a 30 minute conversation.

We call it the download call.

That's where you just kind of rattle off your stream of consciousness like these are the things I need done.

And we record that call, we transcribe it, we work on the back end and we turn that into a set of action items and we build out the SOPs if you don't have them.

And we work directly with the employee to make sure that they get up to speed.

We onboard them, we ramp them up to where they're performing at KPI and Then we meet with them every single day to check in, see how they're doing, make sure they're not lost or lonely or confused or anything like that.

And then they fill out an end of day report that says, here's what I did, here's how much time I spent, here's where I may need help.

And we repeat that feedback loop every single day.

And that maximizes the performance, minimizes the issues and downtime for the talent.

And then as far as specialized skills, if you have some kind of very specific thing that you need to recruit for you, just tell us what that is.

And 100% of the time we can find somebody that already has experience in that software or that process or whatever it is.

Because at this point, the world is global, the workforce is global.

We can definitely find exactly who you're looking for.

I love it.

Love it.

Good stuff.

I definitely see this being a fit for a lot of reasons with a lot of people.

So I'm so glad that you came on the show today and thanks for all of the nuggets earlier because this has been such a valuable episode.

And yeah, man, this is cool.

So last thing, one thing this show is known for is what is one thing that somebody can go out and implement today immediately to start seeing traction in their business and then we'll land this plane here for us.

Pay attention to what your customer actually says when they say no.

Don't listen to the objection.

Listen to the reason behind the objection.

Put yourself into that feedback phase.

Start collecting data.

Don't resist it.

Don't fight it.

Start paying attention.

Take notes.

When you gather enough, do that.

Do that today and do it tomorrow and do it the next day.

And then collect all of your notes and take a look at what the data tells you to do.

Make adjustment accordingly.

Love it.

That's super powerful.

So everybody, you heard it here first.

Thank you.

Josh Thomas with VAIQ.net that will be in the episode Show Notes.

So if you're in your drive time university, you don't have to worry about remembering and writing it down.

Just remember to go to the Show Notes and click the link and that'll take you directly to his site so you can learn more.

And for everybody else, that's, that's for everyone that's listening.

Thanks for being here.

This has been closed at now and this is one more step that will help you be efficient, help you maximize your business, maximize your sales without working your face off.

And that way you can go be someone worth buying from.

You've been listening to the Close it now podcast.

Our passion is to dive headfirst into the transformative movement that's reshaping the very foundation of AT H Vac and home improvement, and at the same time covering fitness, nutrition, relationships and personal growth, proving that we can indeed have it all.

We hope you've enjoyed the show.

If you did, make sure to, like, rate and review.

We'll be back soon, but in the meantime, find the website@closeitnow.net find us on Instagram @therealcloseitnow and on Facebook closeitnow.

See you next time.