The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – Door-to-Door Millionaire: Secrets of Making the Sale (Door-to-Door Millionaire Series) by Lenny Gray

Episode Date: February 14, 2024

Door-to-Door Millionaire: Secrets of Making the Sale (Door-to-Door Millionaire Series) by Lenny Gray Lennygray.com Amzn.to/49cP21n Door-to-Door Millionaire: Secrets of Making the Sale is THE book to help you improve your communication and door-to-door sales skills. This is a MUST read for new and experienced sales reps. Lenny's proven techniques will advance any sales rep's skills from Fortune 500 sales professionals to strip mall shoes salesmen. This guide teaches readers how to recognize vital nonverbal clues, how to resolve the five most common customer concerns during the sales process, and even includes a homeowner’s guide on how to effectively get rid of door-to-door salespeople. These strategies and methods shed light on how door-to-door sales reps generate hundreds of millions of dollars annually. Filled with real-life examples of how these cutting edge strategies can lead to success, this guide will teach readers everywhere the principles needed to be most effective in sales and everyday life. Door-to-Door Millionaire instills invaluable and extraordinarily effective sales principles to readers everywhere. Not just for door-to-door sales reps, this informational resource can be used by anyone looking to improve their sales or communication skills with others. The first book of its kind to specifically list door-to-door sales techniques, this resource utilizes established techniques that can work even in the most hostile sales environments and can benefit readers in any industry. Exceptionally useful and applicable toward a diverse range of scenarios, this enlightening resource will help readers everywhere maximize their potential. Author Lenny Gray has had a long and successful career in the door-to-door sales industry. Along with running his own companies, Lenny has consulted for a variety of other businesses, and has taught his sales techniques and methods to a multitude of audiences. With thousands of accounts sold for various industries throughout the United States, he has used his successes to personally provide on-the-door training to hundreds of sales reps, many of whom have continued on to become very successful in their careers as accountants, attorneys, engineers, physicians, teachers, business owners, and sales professionals.

You wanted the best. You've got the best podcast. The hottest podcast in the world. The Chris Voss Show. The preeminent podcast with guests so smart you may experience serious brain bleed. The CEOs, authors, thought leaders, visionaries, and motivators. Get ready. Get ready. Strap yourself in. Keep your hands, arms, and legs inside the vehicle at all times, because you're about to go on a monster education rollercoaster with your brain. Now, here's your host, Chris Voss. Hi, folks. It's Voss here from thechrisvossshow.com. There you go, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to the big show. God, I'm so glad I have to sing that thing after 14 years of doing it. Now the lady does it, the Iron Lady.

When she sings it, that makes it official. Welcome to the big show, my family and friends. As always, we invite you to refer the show to your family, friends, and relatives. Go to Goodreads.com, 4Chest, Chris Foss, LinkedIn.com, 4Chest, Chris Foss. Subscribe to the big LinkedIn newsletter, the 130,000 LinkedIn group over there. Chris Foss 1 on the TikTokity and Chris Voss Facebook.com. You can see all the groups over there. We just hit our four-year mark of changing the format of the show, and we're up over 1,405%.

So we're bragging about it because you know how hard it is just to get to 100% growth on a podcast or 200% growth? 1,405%, which is no small feat, people, and I'm tired and I need a nap, but I'll do it after the show. We always have the most amazing people on this show. The CEOs, the billionaires, the White House presidential advisors, the astronauts, the Pulitzer Prize winners, all the smartest people on this show, damn it, and I am none of them. That's why we have guests, folks. He is the author of the amazing book, two books we'll be talking about today, and his work called Door-to-Door Millionaire, Secrets of Making the Sale in his Door-to-Door Millionaire series, book one and two. Lenny Gray joins us on the show today. We'll be talking to him about his amazing insights. Now he can help you be better at business and building your business success. And if you don't know it, door-to-door is some hard-ass selling.

Man, that's some, I think that's the scientific term, hard-ass selling. It's a challenging thing to do, not only physically, it's challenging to be walking around neighboring. Lenny Gray is a legend in the door-to-door sales industry. He started selling door-to-door during summer of college. He's written the two books we aforementioned, and he's the CEO of Rove Pest Control and D2D Millionaire, which helps business owners build successful door-to-door programs

and improve sales training. He's a worker at startups and companies valued in the billions. He is a partner in a vacation rental and land development company, and him and his wife, Teresa, have been married for 26 years the billions. He is a partner in a vacation rental and land development company. Him and his wife, Teresa, have been married for 26 years and have five children. This guy should help people on dating and marriage advice. Some interesting facts about him. He's an only child.

That explains a lot, actually. First children are the best. He never missed a day of school from kindergarten through college. What? He served a two-year church mission in Washington, D.C., and he's a Tres Leches. Is it Tres Leches? Tres Leches. I never have ordered that dessert. A fanatic and loves almost anything with coconut in it. There's some comedy jokes there, but I won't write them. Welcome to the show. How are you, Lenny?

Man, I'm doing fantastic. Thank you so much for having me. I'm so excited to be here. I haven't been to the moon. I'm not an astronaut. I've never been to the White House, even though I lived in Washington, D.C., but hey, you got the door-to-door, guys. You've been door-to-door, so that's the thing. I've tested some door-to-door stuff when there's a, I think, story we've told a million times. I think I told it in the book, but yeah, it's tough work. I did it for two days as a field test for our R&D department. So welcome to the show. Give us your dot coms. Where can people find you on the interwebs? Yeah. So LennyGray.com is the best place to find me. And the D2DMillionaire.com site is more of a

resource for those that are willing and able to go knock doors. So more for the door-to-door side. The business side and just things that I offer are more found on my website, plentyofgrey.com. There you go. We'll get into some of the offerings over there. Let's talk a little bit about door-to-door and millionaire secrets of making the sale. You have book one and two. Now, are these books that are going to help people in owning and running their company, even though they may be not doing door-to-door? So the interesting thing about door-to-door sales, and I agree, to me, I've always said that

door-to-door is the armpit of all sales jobs, and really in general, right? You're going to somebody's location, they've maybe never thought about purchasing what you're pushing, and all of a sudden, in a matter of 10 to 15 minutes, maybe they're signing an agreement, giving you their credit card number. And it's magical, really, this idea of door-to-door sales. So I feel like if somebody can be good at that, they can do anything. And a lot of business owners that I work with, they'll be very hesitant to do that themselves. But if we can help them put together the program and then get bought into the idea of having a door-to-door program, it's amazing what door-to-door can do for a company in terms of, you know, creating some route density, awareness of your company. And, you know, these door-to-door reps are literally walking billboards for a company that are out representing

the company to a large faction of people that maybe have never heard of you or your business. There you go, and that's true. Once you learn sales, like I taught this to my nephew. I'm like, if you can learn sales, he didn't go to college and neither did I. I'm like, if you can learn sales, that skill is transferable in so many different ways. And if you can learn hard sales, like I think my first big sales stint was selling for my first business at 18. But the second hardest one was doing the car business. And that's a challenging business.

And I'm like, if you can learn that business. And I used to say, I wish I could take all my salespeople and give them a three-month tour through the used car sales business. And as they're training, they'd be some killer salespeople. So give us a 30,000 overview of the book. What are people going to find inside the two books? Yeah, so the first book is really just a foundational piece of door-to-door. When I first started, I sold for Orkin Pest Control doing door-to-door, like you mentioned, while I was in college, just in the summers. And I remember my first day out in the field, or maybe a few weeks prior, we were doing some

preseason training and I was given a manual that was like 10 pages long. And I had that thing memorized in a week and I went, that's it. This is all the training that I'm going to get. And so for me, as I got some experience in this and was successful in doing door to door, set some records, started my own company, just did a lot in that industry. I thought, the main reason I felt like there wasn't a lot of transparency out there is, and I think this is something about door-to-door that people probably think, you've got to lie, cheat, and steal your way to success. And I think there's that connotation there about

door-to-door. The way I was doing it, I was doing it all above board. It was ethical. I slept well at night and everything was there. And so I thought there needs to be some type of book or manual that says, here's how to do it the right way and keep everything, again, above board. So that was my idea for writing the book. The first book I wrote in 2012. And really it was to kind of put my stamp on the industry and say, okay, I'm going to go sell used cars. I'm not going to do that now, but I'm going to go do something else because I was like, I've kind of done what I've done in door to door and I'm going to hang it up. Strangely enough, you write a book and it gets some traction and people go, wow, this is actually really something special. It really

threw me back into the industry more so than I could have ever imagined. And so now I'm looked at as some kind of guru or expert because of the experience I've had. And quite frankly, when you've been out knocking doors now for 25, 26 years now, as far as my experience has gone, there's not a lot you haven't seen or experienced. So there is definitely some expertise that I can credit to myself for what I've done in the industry. Most definitely. I mean, I did door-to-door for research for our company's executive, and I went out in a suit and very nice shoes, and within two days, I'd worn a hole in them. Fortunately, we found the research and development. My CEOs, if there's anybody who could have made this work, Chris, it would have, you could have, it would have been you, but yes, it still doesn't work.

And I was like, what? You tested this before? And he's like, yeah, a few years ago. I'm like, I hate you. So give us a little bit more on your background. How did you grow up? What gave you the entrepreneurial bug? What made you want to become an entrepreneur?

How did you get into door to door, et cetera, et cetera? Yeah. So, you know, only child, you know, like I mentioned, my parents both worked. So, you know, I had a lot of imaginary friends, so maybe I was role-playing back in the day. I don't know. But yeah, my dad was a police officer. My mom owned a small house cleaning business. So she was kind of in the home service industry. And on the weekends, a lot of times I'd go, you know, help her clean houses and some of the condos that they, you know, ski condos and that, that they'd have a contract with. I remember endorsing her checks, you know, ski condos and that, that they'd have a contract with. I remember endorsing her checks, you know, with the stamp. She put me to work, gave me some little tasks, which was pretty great. And so, I mean, for me, that was kind of my upbringing. We didn't

have a lot. We couldn't afford a pest control if we knew that even existed. So when my buddy from high school asked me to go out and sell pest control door to door. I didn't even believe him that, you know, that was even a thing. And they can make, you know, 20, 30 grand in a summer. That just wasn't very believable to me. So I told him, you know, when I got, so we both, my buddy and I both served these two-year church missions. He went to Brazil. I went to Washington, DC. He went out right after he got home from his mission and went out to sell door to door. And I believe it was Albuquerque. And I just said, Hey man, I don't even buy it. So if it's actually legit, why don't you hit me up next year? And I'll think about doing that.

And literally that fall, as soon as he got home, he called me and says, you need to come out and do this. I made 20 grand this summer. I'm managing a team in Birmingham, Alabama. You and Tess got to come with me to Alabama with me and my wife and we'll go sell some pest control. And so that's, you know, that next summer we packed up everything we own virtually in our Nissan Altima and we drove from Salt Lake City to Birmingham. And, you know, four months later, I was the top rookie in the company in Oregon pest control. then the rest is history as they say there you go are you still based in salic city i am yep yeah there you go i'm visiting pleasant grow right now we're kind of neighbors a little bit oh there you go technically we're

in vegas but so so do you think your mom's influence of being an entrepreneur kind of enlightened you down that path and and seeing you know, how that whole operation runs as an entrepreneur? Sure. Yeah. No, I mean, she's, you know, one of the main cogs in my life, you know, my dad, her and my dad, my biological dad, you know, they divorced when I was younger and, and she remarried, you know, the cop who is my dad essentially, who basically raised me. And, and so, yeah, you know, she, she's kind of been there for, one for me and always had my back in terms of just supporting me and what all the crazy things that I've done. And she definitely, definitely inspired me, especially in the home service industry, right? Because the thing about door to door is it's not just for pest control or solar companies or alarm companies. Like the

clients that I have are all across the board in home services. And in fact, not just even in home services, I've got insurance companies, fintech companies, but yeah, your landscapers, lawn care, plumbing, painting, gutters, garage doors, you name it. We've got clients in pretty much any type of category of home services. They all could benefit and utilize a door-to-door program for sure. It's kind of, I don't know, I deal in such an online world for the last 15 years or so since I've been in social media. I didn't really know that door-to-door was like a thing anymore. And then my nephew, a year or two ago, he joined a solar company and was selling door-to-door solar sales in like Florida and stuff.

And I guess it's like really huge to go door-to-door down there. Cause it's, you know, nice weather, but yeah, I mean, he was, he was having a ball doing it and,

and I guess for it did fairly well. And I think he's done some of it in Salt Lake city and down in the South too. But yeah, I was like, wow, that's still a thing. Door-to-door sales.

I didn't even know. Yeah. No, most people know it's, it's the same thing, Chris. Most people go, go, that's still a thing, door-to-door sales. I didn't even know. Yeah, no, most people know. It's the same thing, Chris. Most people go, that's, you know, I thought door-to-door people sold encyclopedias or something, right? Yeah, yeah, that's what I remember. That or car washing.

Or ice cream, you know, type of a thing. But, yeah, it's come a long ways. I mean, there's not a lot of companies that are growing super fast and that are having a lot of success that don't have some kind of direct sales, you know, program. I'm going to go door-to-door with a podcast. I'm don't have some kind of direct sales you know program i'm gonna go door to door with a podcast i'm just gonna take the mic i'm just gonna be like hi you're on the chris voss show what do you have to say you got anything interesting here buddy what do you got going on plus it might be a way to meet some lonely wives if you don't know uh i'll dress up as the milkman or the postman. Don't do that, people. That's probably illegal in some states. So let's get into some of the offerings that you have on your website. And it sounds like you have some training that you help so that can drop in, that can help people put these systems together if they want to have a better door-to-door sales system or if they

want to establish one. Yeah. I mean, you look at it and you go, most people think that if you don't have a connection in Utah, that you can't put together a door-to-door program. Like you need a bunch of these guys that have done missions and that, and that's just not true. I mean, in my pest control companies, we have hired people locally in Michigan. We've hired them in Minnesota. We've hired them in Massachusetts, all over the Midwest, Nebraska, Arkansas, and anywhere where we've been, we haven't necessarily needed to network from our people in Utah and Idaho. So some of our best door-to-door groups have actually come from colleges that are out of Western Michigan and some of the other local universities near Boston. I mean, you don't need necessarily people that have had door-to-door experience.

What you need is the right training. And that's where, as I've worked with so many business owners across the spectrum of home services and otherwise, most of them just do not have good sales training. And you think of all the time and effort that, I mean, studies show that 74% of salespeople fail. And I believe that the reason they fall short and they fail is because they just don't have good training, not good onboarding. So you think of all the time, money and effort put into recruiting and hiring somebody. And then you just stick them out there in the field and go, good luck, you know, go make it happen. Here's your 10 page, you know,

manual. And, and then inevitably what happens is then you get this business owner, when you have these reps that aren't succeeding in the business owner, their first thing always is what go work harder. You're just not working hard enough. Yeah. That's always the first go-to and it's that could be true partially, but really you've got just bad training and so i provide some training that i've used in my own companies you know over the last 20 years that you know i started a pest control company in 2003 and so here we are you know two decades later and i'm still using the same material that's helped us i mean in five years we're the largest residential pest control company in the state of utah You know, 2003, we were acquired in 2007. Service master came in and

said, listen, we don't like other people to be the biggest in a market. So we're buying you out. We've done another big acquisition in 2005 or 2015, where we sold six different branches. We're up to five now. And so we're constantly using the same model. And most people just don't know where to find it or where to get it. So if you have a system in place, just like an SOP that you'd have for your tech technical staff or how they answer the phones. Like I just created an SOP for business owners to have for the sales training process. So there's actually a step by step process that if reps learn how to do that, now we don't just say go work harder. We say, hey, this is where you're getting stuck on this process and we need to fix this. You don't have a great

initial approach. You don't know how to overcome this certain concern. You're really bad at closing. We can flush all those things out with a proper system. There you go. I saw that with my nephew going to work for the solar company. They didn't do any training. He didn't have any sales training. He was right out of high school basically and and i was like really they're just gonna feed you the wolves they're just gonna throw you in front of people he's yeah he's good with people and he's he's he's he's good at being working angles and stuff he's got a good brain for sales and but yeah he i don't know if he did well or struggled i i never got his numbers but but i know i was just really surprised i was like seriously can you give him like some training

that's the story too chris i mean that's not at all is is everybody thinks they're willing we'll just let him go out and and almost that they they baked in an attrition rate you know a very high attrition rate with a lot of especially in solar with the setters and closer models. But they bake that into where they're like, hey, yeah, we'll hire a hundred reps. And if we have 10 by the end of the third week, we're doing okay. And I just think that's ridiculous because everybody who's willing, that's what I always say to my clients is my training will make them able. You hire the willing, we'll make them able. They have a system and they have a way to do it. And it's really, I always call it the three R's. Everybody looks at this backwards and they think, how can I recruit

more people? And it's like, you recruit more people when the reps that you do have, have results, because if they have results, they're going to be retained. They're going to stick around. And if they're retained and having results, they're going to help you with recruiting because they're going to tell their buddies, this is what you need to be doing. This is the opportunity here. And so it's just this whole cycle that I think most business owners just want to put people out there on the street, kind of like your nephew and say, just go, go hit it. And every now and again, you swing enough balls, you're going to have a home run, right? Eventually. And then they're just kind of banking on that happening. And it's almost like the hunger games of 2004, right? Where it's, yeah, the people that are tough enough will survive.

The ones that don't, they'll quit. We'll just go hire somebody else. I don't necessarily subscribe to that philosophy. There you go. Yeah, it's dumb to just not train your people, man. I mean, you know, at least give them something. I, you know, I was saved in sales when I went in, when I got thrown in the car business because I didn't have a good sales background.

You know, my first company that I started at 18, I knew the business really well of subcontracting and doing stucco from doing it with my father all the years. And so I could sell the quality of the work that he was really good at because I'd been trained in it. So I had a trade to sell. But in the car business and other sales, I didn't have, you know, the pickable things on knowing how to close, objections. The only thing I was selling was me and I didn't know how to sell if I didn't have that skill. In my early business, I could tell contractors, I could say, hey, look, if you don't like the work, you don't have to pay me for it. Of course, that's big for and my, our work was high quality. So, you know, that, that was, that was the way I could get in, but in the car business, I was lost. And so I was saved and this

is in the stories and what I wrote about in my book was, you know, one of my sales people, one of my sales managers came to me and he goes, you suck at this. We're about ready to fire your ass because you suck. And, and he goes chris just work harder and thank god he didn't tell me that which is why i'm telling the story he he he had to be five bucks i think it was five or ten bucks and he said look you need to go buy a zigzag book secrets closing the sale i think it was and he goes i'm gonna he goes i know you're broke i know you're living on top rom and you're 20 years old he goes i'm to give you the money for this. But if you go spend this money on something other than buying this book tonight,

you're probably not going to be here in a couple of days. He goes, but I want you to go buy this book by Zig Ziglar on closing the sale. And here's the money to do it because I know you're broke. And he goes, but you have to go buy this book tonight. And you got to read this thing in the next couple of days or you're out of here. And I was like, okay. And that man changed my life. Like in that moment and instant, he changed my whole life. Like everything that I've ever sold comes out of that moment, which is pretty amazing. But yeah, sales training is everything. It's stupid. So let's not train

people. So let's talk about some of the offerings you have on here. I see you've got some different sales training offerings. People can actually get a hold of for samples and different things. Talk to us about some of these offerings on your website. Yeah. So what I do on my website, again, LennyGray.com, you can go there and schedule a 15-minute call with me. If you're just curious and go, is Door-to-Door even going to work for my company? Or here's an idea that I had, or here's why it didn't work before. What do you think? I'll set up a free 15-minute call with me. If you're just curious and go, is door-to-door even going to work for my company? Or here's an idea that I had, or here's why it didn't work before. What do you think?

I'll set up a free 15 minute call with anybody and we can just shoot the breeze and at least give you some of my experience and share that with you to hopefully help you to determine what you want to do. I also hold free webinars regularly. So I'm always having webinars, whether they're for business owners or even for sales reps, where I do some one-off trainings and that just to help the industry in general. I just feel like it's a little bit philanthropic for me, but I love to help people. I love to help them learn the process that I wish I had when I started out. I mean, you see some of the things happening in the door-to-door industry and the amount of money that's being generated. And I hope I played a small part in that because of the material that I know, that I put out there. And in fact, that was the reason I

wrote a second book. I mean, I wrote the first book and again, was looking to kind of get out of the industry, got thrown back in. Then COVID happened and I'm a little bored and need things to do. So I'm like, let me just write this second book. I've always wanted to write the second book about kind of more upper level, right? Like next level training is, you know, more door-to-door millionaire, next level training is the name of the book. And the idea behind that was, okay, now you've got the foundation set. Now you're a good rep.

Let's make you great. And so that's the book series. That's the trip I take everybody on is, okay, let's figure out how to do door-to-door. Now let's figure out how to do it really, really well. And so yeah, webinars, you set up a free call with me. I mean, I'm very accessible. I'm kind of all over the place because again, I just, I want to do good for the industry that's done so good for me, you know, over the years. There you go. Or just sales

training in general. I mean, sales training, sales, you know, once you learn sales, man, you have a skill that you can sell anything. You know, people don't realize too, people that are out there that turn them, they're like, oh, I don't like sales. There's rejection. And, you know, I feel like I'm pushing people. You know, people don't realize we're all salespeople. I mean, if you're selling some girl on going to date with you or that, you know, you like her and you want to take her out, if she's selling you that, you know, she's the, she's the woman for you, you know, we're all selling each other all day long. I mean, every guy buys something to attract a woman.

You're selling yourself as a brand in the car you buy, the clothes you wear. You know, you're branding yourself. You're selling yourself. You're like, hey, this is me. Do you want to hang out? You know, when you go to a job interview, you're selling yourself. You're like, hey, can you give me a job and pay me some money and give me a career? If you're a company hiring for HR on the other side of the table, you're selling your company. You're like, hey, do you want to work for us? We're a really cool

company. We're better than those other companies you're interviewing with. Everything is sales. We're constantly selling. As a CEO, I'm constantly selling ideas to vendors, partners, investors, employees, you name it. I mean, people always ask me, how did you become a big mouth, partners, investors, employees, you name it. I mean, people always ask me, how did you become a big mouth, Chris? And never shut up. And I'm like, I became a CEO because you just, you're selling everybody constantly vision. And so learning sales, man, you can, you can do so many great things in life. And, and you, you learn human nature, you learn how people operate.

And order of sales is tougher because, you know, there's a barrier between you and you, you learn human nature, you learn how people operate and door to door sales is tougher because, you know, there's a barrier between you and them, you know, and you, you're standing out there and the weather and, and there's a mentality to it. You're, you're doing that walking, that walking gets really old too, between places. And so you've got to, you know, mindset is probably a big deal when it comes to door to door sales, wouldn't you say? Yeah. And, and, you know, in door-door, it's kind of like I write about, you already have two strikes against you, right? They don't know who you are and they didn't invite you over. So you've got to make this just fantastic first impression, right? Where you have to have, I call it the initial approach, but you have to have a dialed in initial approach that's 20 to 45

seconds that is going to capture their attention and kind of wow them a little bit so that you can actually start a conversation with somebody. I think that's one of the biggest mistakes. We're going to talk about the biggest mistakes of door-to-door sales reps make is they have a really shallow initial approach that doesn't bring some energy. They don't control the conversation. In fact, I'll tell you this, Chris, here's a little secret for all of you thinking about door to door. I guarantee I know what you're going to do your first door. So you're going to not, number one, your heart's going to pound out of your chest. I understand that. But that person's going to open the door and you're going to default to, hey, how's it going today? And I guarantee you, you're going to do that. And then you're going

to remember, oh yeah, Lenny told me that's the worst mistake that a door to door rep can make in those first five seconds. Because now you've turned control of the conversation right over to that person that's opened the door. And you need control of the conversation to get those first 20 to 45 seconds out, right? So you've got to kind of jump right in. So I have a five-step initial approach that I teach that's very simple. It's easy to learn. And then, like you said, Chris, you take them through that process right you have the initial approach the point of the

initial process to start a conversation to figure out if you can qualify somebody who's worth your time to talk to and who's not who you know when you know to go to the next door and once you qualify somebody then you got to learn how to put together an award-winning value build so that you're building up your product and service to make it seamless though it's something that that that person can't live without. After you value built, then you understand the concepts of closing. And inevitably people are going to have objections. So how do you overcome objections? And then how do you solidify the sale to make sure what you sell is actually received the product or get the service? I mean, like I said, it's a map to success for me. There's

just different points on the road that you go down that make it very easy for somebody who's bought into this idea to go, this is the path I need to take somebody on versus just going. Like you said, some people are just born sales reps. I wasn't. I had to learn a process. But if like most people like me have to have a process, now there's a process that I can teach that I can go, hey, this is what you say and this is when you say it and how you say it. Definitely. It simplifies the whole process. You got to have a process.

You know, I've seen door-to-door salespeople, especially usually through my ring. That makes it easier to blow them off that ring thing. So that's even more important why you need to be trained in this stuff and be good at it because the the ring makes it really the ring doorbell makes it really easy to dismiss people and energy sells i mean here on the show we we you know we know we send out instructions to to our people hey bring energy to the show energy sells people love energy but if you're like if you have zero energy or you're falling flat as hey do you want to buy something you know it's it's not going to go anywhere and so people listen to something that's interesting and people listen to somebody who has energy and charisma and different things but yeah also having a process is really hard

because if you if you don't have a plan what's that old saying if you if you don't have a plan basically yeah so you do the trainings on the website, the free webinars. People can reach out to you. There's a, I see the big button for the free consultation that people can do. What other sort of things do you do or what have we touched on maybe

that we want to flush out and tease out to the audience? Yeah, let me circle back to that energy thing. I think that's important too, Chris, is I call it, you've got to be a seven, right? To me, that's the magic number. You don't want to be a 10, a nine, a eight. That's a little overbearing. That can turn people off. My sweet spot is a seven. So if you talk to me naturally, so like my family all gets together, my wife has a fairly large family. I'm probably the quietest guy in the room. I just like to watch and observe. I don't say a lot. I'm probably a two or a three

if people do start a conversation with me if I start talking to somebody. I cannot be like that on the doors. I can't be like that on a podcast, right? Because it's not interesting. Nobody wants to hang out with a two or a three or four. So to me, the seven is that sweet spot where you bring enough energy,

as I tell people, especially when you're talking about, maybe you're giving a discount to somebody or you're talking about your service and your value build. If you're not excited about what you're selling or the discount you're offering it for, why in the world would somebody that hasn't been thinking about what you're offering be excited about it? They're not going to be. So we actually did an experiment one year on this where we have groups of our sales reps that were offering our services at different discounted price points. So we had some saying it's half off. We had some saying it's a big discount. Some were a hundred dollars off. Some were $50 off. Some were 75%

off. We just kind of threw a bunch of things out there. And what we found that the people that were interested in the price had nothing to do with the actual offer, but how much energy that rep brought to getting that offer. So I could say, Hey, this is going to be like a hundred dollars off. Or I could say this, we're actually offering this for $10 off. I'm going to get more traction with the $10 off pitch because of the energy I bring versus the a hundred dollars off because it didn't seem like I was that excited about it. Wow. It makes that much of a difference. Yep. So that energy level is huge in door-to-door. And a lot of us, like me, I have to come out of my comfort zone. It's almost like a role we play, right? If you were

in a movie or in a play, you have to have this role of, I am a seven and I'm going to knock on this door and I'm going to bring good energy. And it doesn't matter if maybe I sell one in a hundred people I talk to, that person that's standing in front of me, this is the only time I have a chance to make an impression on them. And so I've got to give everything I have. In fact, that's one of my main goals outside of sales goals when I'm on the doors and when I'm teaching reps how to be successful on the doors is the goal is take that person in front of you further along in that sales. I call it my sales flow process, kind of that start to finish. Take them through the sales flow further than anybody else could

take them. So if somebody comes knocking behind you, knocks on that door, there is no chance that person's going to be sold because you took them as far as they could possibly go. And that's a win to me in that you've actually taken somebody from zero interest to some level of interest. And that's a good thing about door-to-door is you can learn from every opportunity. You can grow and develop even if you're not making sales, which obviously we all want to do that. But even if you're not making sales, you start to see your confidence change, your belief change in yourself and what you're selling. That's where the magic starts happening.

That's really a cool thing to see. There you go. Anybody can learn to sell, I think, really. I mean, I was an introvert as a kid. I was quiet as hell. I was a people watcher. I was, you know, the only thing that broke me is I had to adapt to, you know,

running companies and, and, and selling and it's just necessary trade, but everybody sells in life. It's funny how I'll meet people and I don't like to sell. And I'm like, how did you convince someone to meet with you? You get married, like somebody. Yeah. In fact, this is funny. So I did the, I did a training for a group at a company not too long ago. And I taught you as a bunch of college kids, right? And I said, you know, let's pretend. And there was some females in the room too. And so I brought two of them up and I said, okay, I want you to ask this gal out on a date, this guy.

And, of course, the guy says, hey, do you want to go out this weekend? You know, the classic yes, no question, which in sales is a big no-no. I will say there's exceptions to any rule. These are in my book, so I don't want to reveal all truths here today. But for the most part, we just avoid yes, no questions. And so I said, okay, well, what if you asked more of a find out question? What if you're trying to find some information out? So instead of do you want to go out this weekend, you could say, Hey, what are you doing this weekend? Right. That would be good. That'd be better. You might start a conversation, but I said, let me, let me blow your minds here. What if, what if you asked an assumptive close? What,

what if it was assumptively just assuming you're already going on the date? So the question went something like this, Hey, we're going to go out this Friday or Saturday, whatever's best for you. Do you want to do dinner or movie first? Now, all of a sudden, you're getting what you want one way or the other, but they're seemingly in control because they get to pick the day or the event or the order of the events, right? And that's just learning those communication skills on how to craft these sentences. I taught a group of high school kids. There was a job fair at one of my kids' high schools, and we did the same thing. And I kid you not, Chris, there's this girl when I did this whole dating thing, there's this girl in the right language verbal nonverbal communication skills all those things that tie into making you just a better communicator overall and this is so true which is

funny because your guys married 26 years this is still true in dating game I mean this is something I learned in dating game when I was 20s is when you ask your girl you give her two dates of options you know sometimes people have one thing on one day but you don't get her more than that. Technically, if she wants to go out with you, she'll climb a mountain and figure it out. You can just ask her, what day are you washing your hair?

Let's ask a good find-out question so we get that out of the way. She might take offense to that and be like, do I need to wash my hair? These two candidates are kind of interesting. You have to be careful. I'm not sure that would work, though. I think to wash my hair? These chicks nowadays are kind of interesting. So you have to be careful. I'm not sure that would work though. I think you have been married 26 years after all.

I'm kidding. But no, it's learning to sell is so important and this can be vitally used. And I know solar. I have friends that run a solar company in California that sell solar across the nation and I'm in the wrong business evidently. It's really a burgeoning in industry

and i think it's i think it's not going to change i mean a bunch of my friends that run solar and power units i think they have the backup tesla power units they actually make money off of solar they get they get paid because their override feeds in the grid and this recent rainstorm that they had that was like a hundred year event in california everybody went down and those guys were still humming along probably made some money off of off their solar because most of the state went down i think pretty much a lot of it but yeah it's it's a hell of a burgeoning business and you know just about anything else you you can sell door-to-door and all that good stuff so any final thoughts as we go out or tell people how to onboard

with you give them the final pitch out yeah yeah. Yeah. No, I, you know, again, to me, I wanted to bring transparency. That's what I'm doing. I'm bringing transparency to an industry that does have a lot of negativity surrounding it. And really, if you're a business owner out there and you're thinking, I don't know, door to door, it seems really difficult. I don't know how to hire the people or recruit the people. I don't, I don't know, door to door, it seems really difficult. I don't know how to hire the people or recruit the people. I don't know how to train the people. Jump into one of my free webinars. Really easy. You go to my website, it says free webinar. You click on it, you have your information. We'll chat and I'll give you an idea of what it takes. And then you can decide, you know what? I was right. This is not going to work for my business

or hey, we actually might have something here. The other thing is if you're a sales rep and you're like, I just don't know where to get all the training. Again, my, my books are great. They're foundational. The D2D millionaire YouTube channel has hundreds of videos. Just there's a lot of free resources out there that I offer. I have a blog on, on the d2dmillionaire.com website, even on my website. There's just so much information if you look that you don't have to be that sales rep like I was my first year where I went 10 pages. I've memorized them in the first week.

Now what? That is not the case anymore. There's too much information out there. And quite frankly, all of my processes we teach at my company, we teach it to our commercial team, our CSRs, like our technicians, like everybody knows the sales flow process at my company because everybody's selling in one regard or another, like you said. So even if you're not into direct sales or door to door, but you're like, hey, you know what, our sales team, we could actually close more accounts. Our closing ratios aren't great. You know, we're not doing super well on on, know, call-ins and everything else coming in-house.

If you learn the system, it works. And if you learn the system, you're going to get people that are going to be better at sales and close more deals and, you know, make life better for everybody. There you go. There you go. Sales are everything. Yeah, I saw some offerings you have on Instagram and your YouTube channel. I was going to mention that you do that freemium model where you share out the data and all that good stuff.

So thank you very much for coming to the show. We really appreciate it, man. Yeah, Chris, it's been a pleasure. Love it. So give us a.com one more time as we go out.

Yep. Lenny gray. That's L E N N Y G R a Y.com. There you go. Ordered up folks are fine. Books are sold door to door millionaire secrets of Millionaire Secrets of Making the Sale. And reach out to Lenny on his website and all that good stuff. Thanks for

tuning in to my audience. Go to Goodreads.com, Fortress, Chris Voss, LinkedIn.com, Fortress, Chris Voss, Chris Voss 1 on the tickety tockety, and Chris Voss Facebook dot com. Thanks for tuning in. Be good to each other. Stay safe. We'll see you next time.