The One-Sit Close Myth: Why High-Pressure Selling Is Destroying HVAC Sales

The HVAC industry has been pushed to believe that if you don't close the deal in the home, you’ve failed. But that mindset is outdated, unhealthy, and costing salespeople millions in cancellations, burnout, and missed opportunities. In this episode, Sam Wakefield exposes the truth behind the one-sit close philosophy, why it's misaligned with real buyer psychology, and how mastery-level salespeople close more — without relying on pressure, discounts, or manipulative tactics.

What You’ll Learn in This Episode

• Why the one-sit close myth actually hurts your sales
• How buyer emotions, timing, and trust determine the real close
• Why next-day closes are NOT failures (they’re wins!)
• The skill progression from amateur → intermediate → mastery
• How to read the room and know when to push vs. when to pause
• Why high-pressure closers have massive cancellation rates
• How to keep homeowners focused and present during holiday season appointments
• Why discounting is a drug — and how to close without it

Resources & Links

📘 Get your free Guerrilla Marketing Guide: www.door2doorinstitute.com

🌐 Coaching & Training: https://www.closeitnow.net/coaching

👥 Join the Close It Now Facebook Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/closeitnow

▶️ Subscribe on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@Closeitnowsales

Let’s Connect

Website: https://www.closeitnow.net

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/therealcloseitnow

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/closeitnow/

Final Thought

A sale is a sale — whether it happens today, tomorrow, or next week. Master closers don’t obsess over one-sit outcomes… they obsess over serving, communicating, and guiding homeowners into confident decisions. Pressure creates cancellations. Presence creates trust. And trust creates long-term, high-value customers.

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.

Hey everybody, Free Training Friday is back.

How are you today?

I am stoked to be back on here.

So no, I guess because it's been done for so long, nobody dropped a comment or topic that you would like me to cover, so I'm just going to cover what's on the top of my head right now and a couple of those things.

This is really fun to be back in.

So first of all, drop a number one in the comments if you're watching Live Up a number two, drop a deuce in the comments.

In fact, if you want to drop a deuce emoji in the comments, that would be fun too.

It's good to see you everybody, all of my friends in this community, I have missed you dramatically.

Like I was saying earlier on that short video I did, there has been a just a lot of bandwidth that I was sucked up in for a while and I want to make sure to get back to the regular rhythm and routine of things because you are awesome.

And there's a lot of things that we need to talk about.

We have since I stopped doing these, I've covered a lot of things in the podcast that are pretty high value.

First thing I want to let y' all know, I am planning a.

Scott Sylvan Bell and I are going to be doing a live free free training coming up on December 16th at 6pm and so we're going to be covering hot takes from the industry.

There's a couple things that him and I have both been thinking about that are absolutely destroying the H Vac and home services industries.

That if it keeps going the direction it is, it's not going to be pretty.

There's some trainers entering the space that are pretty well known that are.

It's just pretty gross.

And so I totally want to.

It's Going to be fun, so be watching for it.

It's going to be webinar Scott Sylvan Bell and myself.

If you don't know who that is, he spoke at my event.

He is in my opinion the best trainer in all of H vac.

Outside of myself.

But actually he's a bit of my men.

He's my mentor as well.

And so I'm honored to have him as a co host in this webinar that we're doing with that.

I also want you to know him and I have decided to do some on site training together.

So for the companies that have both service technicians and comfort advisors, we are going to be doing some joint on site trainings.

So what that will look like is he's going to train the service techs, I'm going to train the sales people and the comfort advisors.

And I'm sure there will be plenty of times where we're doing things together, times where we're doing things separately, including ride alongs, all of the fun stuff.

And so yes, it is going to be fan freakin tastic.

So I'm super excited about that.

So drop an emoji if you're here with me right now.

Let's see what else.

So let's, let's get into some content.

I'm on my computer to make sure that this is going through as well.

But yeah, if you're here with me, this is.

What is the date today?

December 5th.

So we are well into the winter season.

How's it going in your market?

I'm hearing mixed reports from across the country.

So one of the things that's really interesting, I wanted to cover this little short ninja tip nugget for you all is this time of year, what happens when so many people's minds.

So this is a great reminder for everybody.

When you're working with those homeowners, you show up to your appointments because it's holiday season, their brain is only half with you.

So what that means is one of the best things you can do to both disarm and psychologically to disarm that and to also remind them, to bring them back into focus with you is to basically, if you, you know, if you've read, never split.

The difference with Chris Voss is to label it.

We're going to call it out right from the beginning.

So the way that we do that is to start the conversation with, you know, really just, I mean, there's no magic word track here or anything like that, but just start the conversation with, hey, you know, I know it's the holiday season.

First of all, I just want to commend you for having us out to, you know, to take a look right now because I know there's a lot of other things that you could be thinking about.

We're going through it too.

So I commit to you to be fully present here with you for the duration of this visit.

Now two things are going to happen.

A lot of people would say, can I expect the same from you?

I don't think that we have to actually do that.

So what we'll say is I commit to be fully present with you for the duration of our visit while I'm here, I'm 100% yours.

And so what that does and say fair enough, fair enough.

Or however you want to end that.

What we say and what they hear are this is a stacked type of a statement.

There's a lot going on in that statement because what that's doing, it's reminding them because you're using yourself as the example and you included them in it.

You didn't say, hey, you know, there's a lot of things, you know, it's the holiday season, you know, there could be a lot of things you could be doing, you know, are my attention split?

Can I ask you to be present with me?

Well then what is it?

That's about you, right?

That's not serving them, that's.

And that's this you walking in the door and you're demanding.

It's ridiculous.

If we don't do it, their attention's just going to be split.

But when you use yourself as the example and you say I know this is holiday season, you know, there's a lot of things that are going on, you know, but while we're here, you know, instead of attention being I know there's a lot of things we could be thinking about probably are while we're here, I commit to be fully present with you.

They're hearing that and so they appreciate your commitment to that.

They're also hearing as a reminder, oh yeah, I need to be present with you as well.

So this is a really smooth way to keep them engaged and locked in to or at least to start that way to be locked into your appointment and your presentation.

And then of course with a well executed system, especially if you're following the close it now system we've got all of the, you know, the way that we build our system with the permission stack, it keeps the engagement, it keeps the locked in interaction with them throughout the process.

If you don't know What I mean by that, you can, of course, feel free to ask questions, message me, we can talk about it.

I've got entire podcasts on that, so go back and listen to the permission stack episode.

But this is the power of when you start to truly understand the way the brain works and how language patterns change the way that people receive things, you can communicate a lot of things without saying them.

And so this is understanding the meaning behind the words.

That's why so many times I'll talk about we're not selling to a script.

We learn the scripts to sell past the script.

If we only ever sell to a script, we're only ever selling to the highest level of the written word.

But we forget the most important part, which is we're communicating with a human being.

There's so many different complex layers going on in their brain.

It's never just the presentation and the thing.

It's always.

There's so many things happening.

You don't know unless you ask better questions what the hell's going on in their life.

How many layers are stacked into this conversation?

How many influences are on their mind and in their lives for this decision?

And are they even in a place to make the decision?

Are they to the place in their buying journey, should they even be having this conversation yet?

Right.

This is where so many people get locked up on people.

It's my job to educate.

It's my job to educate.

It's my job to educate to a degree.

Right?

But for the most part, not so much.

It's the homeowner's job to educate themselves.

Now, you could be the vehicle for that.

But what happens is we get so focused on the education piece again that we, for.

What that means is we're thinking about us and what we're saying, which is very first level communication.

And so people do not buy when they're more educated.

They buy when they feel safe enough to make a buying decision.

So that's why it's crucial to understand the psychology of it and language patterns around it.

That way we can disarm the, the.

All of the.

And really reel them in to the conversation and keep them focused and on track.

That way we can truly have an impactful conversation.

Yes, we're going to educate along the way, but we don't need to educate until we find out if we're even going to be a fit.

We need to find out if we're truly the company that they're looking for.

Now in the.

For the most part, yes.

However, there's certain situations when it's not.

But more importantly, we've got to figure out where they are in their buying journey.

So we know where to start with our level of education.

We need to know where to start with the way that we communicate.

Because you want to treat the sales conversation very similar to like a marketing funnel.

You can think of it that way.

If any of you know very much about marketing, in order to be great at sales, you have to be, you have to think like a marketer.

So what that means is in a marketing funnel, there's basically three different sections of that funnel and they all have to do with the very top of the funnel.

That's where everybody enters.

You don't get the same number out of the bottom than actually purchase that enter the top of the funnel.

You're going to have people that take the exit ramp along the way.

So that's part.

So sales to a degree and marketing to a degree, and this is how they're similar is a sorting process.

So can we capture more and more people with the better skills that we develop?

Absolutely.

The more we learn about communication, the more we learn about frame stacking, the more we learn about painting, you know, painting using better word pictures, the more we learn about all of the different things along the way, we're able to, you know, capture more of those people to the bottom of the funnel that come out the other side in what results in a cel.

Now at the same time, there's going to be some people that take the exit ramp.

No one closes at a hundred percent and you shouldn't.

That's.

It's just not going to happen.

It's unrealistic.

You know, people that say they close that 90%, all these things, that's fake news, I'll tell you not in a real world sales scenario.

That only happens in very specific, unique situations where the, they, they're stacking the deck to get those numbers.

So don't believe everything you hear on social media.

They're not selling.

Closing at 90%.

No one does.

I don't care who you are, the best salesperson in the world is not going to close at 90%.

And I can also guarantee you if someone is in home closing at a high percentage like that, that also means I could, I would put $100 bill right down here right now.

They have a high degree of cancels or buyer remorse and that's not good.

That means they're forcing it too much.

It's just not.

Does not happen.

Now when that does happen, are there scenarios where that's the case with the numbers?

Yes.

Either they're giving fake numbers and they're, they're doing things like maybe removing all of the, you know, failed credit score, you know, all the declines.

Maybe they're pulling out some things or maybe that person only sits in front of, you know, equipment or projects that are 100.

So let's take H Vac for example.

Maybe they're only sitting in front of, you know, a certain age or higher, older equipment that's completely broken, that's down and the people ahead of them have verified and confirmed their decision and they screened them two or three times that if they get on the phone with them, they've already confirmed that they are ready to make a decision on the spot.

Those are the only times people actually close at that high rate because of all of those reasons.

So what that means is a realistic number is your best self, you're not in competition about it against everybody else, you know.

Is the industry average 30% close rate?

Yes, because a lot of people are mediocre.

80% of salespeople in the world don't even ask for the sell one time.

So the more often we ask, the better we get at it.

Of course your numbers are going to go up, but they're never gonna hit 100%.

So don't beat yourself up.

Now one other topic I wanna talk about real quick because this is starting to really needle on me as be a spur under my saddle.

Is this concept of the one sit close, is it possible?

Absolutely.

As your skills get better, will you close more?

One sit Absolutely.

One, it's industry specific.

It changes across the industries.

And the second time, even industries that are supposedly very dependent on the ones that close, for example, like windows or roofing or siding or those types of things.

I'm here to say here to tell you that that's only the case from that perspective.

But those companies also have a great follow up and rehash program.

If that wasn't, if that was the case, they wouldn't even need that because they would just close them.

Now I know that there also there's trainers in the industries, in our industry, probably one of the most famous ones that you know say if you don't sell it while you're in the house, you're never going to get it.

That is completely wrong.

So just because somebody has a lot of notoriety doesn't mean they're correct on everything.

So.

You know, Abs, there's, there's a journey.

In fact, an entire matrix I've built out around how and when A one sit close happens and, and you know how often it is.

There's a lot of variables there.

So the reason I bring this up had a coaching client the other day that he was telling.

We were talking about wins for the week and he was telling me that he had this big sell.

But then he said, but I didn't close it in the house.

They called me back the next day and they signed.

And we're talking about 35, 45 somewhere in there, thousand dollar project.

But when he told me about that, you see, he was like almost ashamed that he didn't close it in the house, that it closed the next day.

So I asked him, I said, hey, if a baseball team told every single player, we're only counting the home runs, home runs, that's it.

That's all we're after is home runs, are they going to win the game?

Absolutely not.

Because everything counts.

You need everything from the bunt to the single to the double to the triple, the walk, it all counts.

So when we only focus on the one set close, it causes a handful of things.

One, we create this unnecessary shame around it closing the next day.

Because I asked him, well, was the sell any less valuable?

Well, no.

Is the homeowner any less excited about the project?

No.

In fact, they might even be more excited because they slept on it and still called you back right there.

So as you go.

So with cells with the sales journey, you've got your inner, you've got your beginner, you've got your intermediate, and then you get mastery level in your skills.

What I've observed across time, and it's one of the things we're going to be talking about in the training in the webinar that Scott and I do.

One of the things I've observed across time is the.

From the bottom, when you're amateur, you're gonna have a lot, way less one sit closes and you're gonna have a lot more follow up closes.

Because we don't have the skills yet and understand the process well enough to take someone through the emotional.

It's not just a education journey.

It's an emotional journey in the conversation to arrive at the place where they're safe, comfortable, and trust you enough to make a buying decision on the spot.

And that's okay because now that we understand the rules of the game, we know how to play the game.

If you don't understand the rules of the game, it's like stabbing in the dark, right?

And so that's okay.

And as you progress from amateur into more Intermediate, what happens is that pendulum starts to swing the other way.

So what's going to happen is yes, you're going to start shifting into more once it closes because of all of everything I just talked about.

Then what happens, interestingly enough, is as you move past intermediate into the mastery level of cell skills, of your presentation, of understanding psychology, understanding how to intuitively read third level listening in an appointment and let's see what observe what's going on in the room other than just that person.

Observe the energies, all those types of things.

As that starts to happen.

The number of one sit closes, doesn't diminish.

But then we're also going to start catching more self after the appointment also.

So this is where you know, we're, we're 30, 45% in beginner, 45, 50, 55% close rate at intermediate level, 55, 60, 60 plus percent close rate at mastery expert level, catching more people after the fact.

Because what happens here's the big thing, here's the crux of where I'm headed with this.

We start to understand when somebody just needs that little extra nudge over the line.

So we go harder in the close.

We also understand when someone needs the space for us to back off.

But we have the intuition and the experience to know they're ready to buy.

But if I push them right now, it's gonna push em away.

Now this does not mean give us a crutch or an excuse to not push for the close.

It doesn't give you a crutch or an excuse to go to cut pieces out of your presentation or out of your closing process.

But what it does mean is you're now gonna pick up more people that you were turning off at your intermediate level because you push too hard.

Now this is a really important aspect here because every, every mastery level closer that I know this has happened to if they're doing it the right way.

Now let's look at the flip side of that same coin.

There are people that close at a very high rate that stay in that push, push, push, always be closing mindset.

But here's what happens in the same coaching client I'm talking about and you can actually look at this at all of the trainers across the industry that push hard like that.

I can guarantee you because I've trained behind them and I've seen their numbers, I know what happens.

And not just that, not them specifically, but that style of sales and that style of training.

Here's what happens.

So let's go back to my coaching client for A second.

And.

And once you.

I'm not crapping on any other trainers.

I'm just talking about the philosophy and the process.

So what happens is he was number.

He's out of 10 people.

He's number three on the list as far as sell on the leaderboard for sales, which is awesome because when we started coaching at the beginning of the year, he was right at the bottom.

And so now he's a couple hundred thousand behind the top people.

Here's the interesting thing that the.

And he was.

He was bummed out about this.

He was upset.

He was like, man, I want to make it to the top.

But a sales manager told him something really interesting that I want to communicate to all of you.

He said, you're not.

This number alone doesn't give the full picture because in that company, they're very siloed against each other.

They don't see what happens after the fact.

It's a larger company.

So they don't really get full privy into other people's projects and how it happens.

They're constantly for looking forward and looking at the.

Looking at the projects moving ahead.

So the sales manager is telling him, you don't see the big picture here because what happens is, yes, those two guys above you, their close rates are higher and yes, they have more sales, more volume.

He said, but what you're not seeing is the cancellation rate.

He said both of them have a lot higher rate of cancels and he has almost none because he's developed the emotional intelligence to be able to understand when we need to go hard in closing and when it's appropriate to bump back just a little.

Because I would much rather have somebody call me back the next day and use me because they want to and they chose us than somebody we forced into it.

So they signed just to get us out of the house.

And then they have buyer's remorse and they cancel.

I don't know about you, but that creates a massive amount of fires to put out.

And then we have to talk them off the ledge.

We got to try to save it.

All of that goes away when you serve at the highest level and you start to understand the mastery level of when this is appropriate.

So that is that.

That's really the whole point of this is.

So when you've got these guys that are coming into the industry that are.

What do we need to do to get you into a system today?

How can we get you into this project today?

And taking a very used car approach.

Well, let me call the manager, see if we can Get a discount if we do that.

If I.

Will you?

If I could.

Are you ready to move forward?

Yes.

There's an appropriate time and place to use that as well in the right situation, in the right context.

However, if that and a discount is your closing mechanism, then you're an amateur and you've got to get better at your skills.

You've got to get better at creating value and communicating why the choice is clear in using you without a discount.

Discounting is a drug.

So if you're relying on discounts to close deals, there's actually a guy recently that left this Facebook group because that's how he closes.

So he's got all these crazy numbers, but that's what it takes for him to close the business and then he's training other people to do the same thing.

And I don't, I don't agree with that.

I don't think it's appropriate.

Do you have to discount to close?

Is there a time and a place for discounts?

Yes.

I'm not saying offers aren't valid.

I'm not saying discounts aren't valid because it works.

People do it all across the board in all kinds of industries.

There's a reason companies have sales, There's a reason entire industries have sales.

There's a time and a place for it.

However, using a negotiation tactic of discounting strictly to close the deal every time, that is not sales.

That's the cheater's way to lessen.

It lessens your value every single time you do that.

And so when, if you instantly go to that or you're using that as the closing tool, get better.

There's so such a better way to do it.

When you serve at the highest level, people will choose you no matter what.

It doesn't matter that little bit of difference.

So that's my message to you today.

Hope this training was valuable.

Two things.

One is if you want to have more free training Fridays, absolutely.

Comment in this video.

What was your takeaway?

And let me know what topics that you want me to cover next week and let me know what you're seeing in the field, what you're experiencing and at the same time, if you've ever gotten value from close it now from the podcast, go leave me a review.

Apple Podcast Spotify app is a place to leave comments and stuff now and then.

Of course, I'd love Google review from you.

Two different ways.

One is I had some bandwidth open up Recently.

So if you would like to discuss what it might look like to have a one on one coaching with me, I've got a few spots that opened up as my bandwidth opened up.

So reach out to me about that comment below or just message me directly or you can email me samoseitnow.net and also I am booking companies to do on site trainings for this next year.

So if you'd like a nice casual conversation around, hey, would that be a good fit for us?

Also reach out to me and let's get your team performing at a higher level because if you're relying on closing, if your net as a company is not 15% minimum pushing 20% or better.

If your close rates are below 45%, if you're, I mean you might be awesome already if.

But if you want to get better, it's always a good time to.

There's a, a culture of training.

You don't just train periodically.

When you develop a culture of training you're constantly sharpening axe and constantly getting better.

That's the only way we're going to especially moving into this next year that you're going to succeed as a company.

Otherwise you're going to move backwards.

And if you don't embrace change and see change embrace it, you better get used to extinction.

Because there is no plateau if you have this.

If your company is doing the same numbers this year as it was last year or next year as it is this year, you are not moving forward, you're moving backwards.

And how do I know?

Inflation and price increases, if those two things go up and your revenue stayed the same, that means you're doing worse than you were before because you should at least be keeping up with that if you're staying the same.

And so that's for all of those reasons, there's no reason you shouldn't be growing at a really great rate.

Minimum 25, 35% growth year over year or more.

So if you want to know more about that, yes, I have been doing a lot more business level coaching bringing on some clients for I do the longer term programs.

I want you to know it's not just a one time thing.

I definitely do longer term programs.

So I've got a couple clients right now bringing on where I'm going to be working with them for 12 months.

And so that's something that's really, really valuable to a lot of companies because we can work it out where let's be in this together.

I do not want your equity.

I'm not the guy that's going to say, hey, give me this much equity.

It's not what I want.

That's not what I'm talking about.

I'm talking about building a relationship and partnering over time to get your people to the next level.

Because no matter how good your salespeople are and your technicians are, they cannot learn it all in a week or two weeks or a couple months.

These skills are developed over time.

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

So I can help you put the systems in place to cultivate those unicorns.

People find unicorns or you can grow them.

And when you create a farm where all you plant are unicorn seeds and unicorns grow up, then you have a team of top performing sharpshooters.

And that, that, my friends, is what I want for you.

I want you to be able to create a team of experts that completely take your market and dominate your market and take your community by storm.

So you're five mile famous.

You are the local hometown hero.

For example, in the first half of my career when I was in the small town, tiny town, Texas, the town was 13,000 people.

And then we serviced a town that was about 45 minutes away that added another 7,000 people or so.

So in total we were 20,000 people.

Roughly total.

We did a million and a half dollars in that town, in that area and growing.

Not because of anything really.

I mean there was company, reputation, all those things, but there was plenty of competition, but we had market domination.

And that's what I want for you.

When you take, when you run those percentages, that's owning a huge portion of the market.

I actually just did two different market studies today for companies.

One that I'm going to be working with and one that, well, maybe probably two that I'm going to be working with.

And what most people don't understand is the available market share in your area is so much bigger than you actually think it is.

We get so siloed looking at the size of companies.

It has nothing to do with available opportunity of market share and available opportunity for work that is out there.

So when you truly understand the metrics and you can run the numbers for yourself now, your mind expands because now you see where the possibility actually is and then you arise to the standard to meet that and to get there.

Message me if you want to have that conversation too, because I'm really excited about.

I only have those, those programs.

I only do a couple a year, three or four a year, because they're long term and they're a lot more relationship, a lot more time involved.

So if you want to be one of those, let me know.

We have a conversation and we can create a plan for you to see.

It's wherever your.

Appetite for growth is, wherever you think is possible.

We can put a plan in place and get you there.

Because I know what's possible and it's usually more than anybody else ever thinks because I've done it multiple times and I want to see you do it too.

So message me and let's have a conversation and see what that might look like.

And otherwise everybody have a great Friday, Have a good weekend and I will talk to you all soon.

Go be somebody worth buying from Today.

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

Our passion is to dive head forward first into the transformative movement that's reshaping the very foundation of 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.

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See you next time.