The Home Service Expert Podcast - Applying D2D Tactics to Break Through Customer Objections and Win In Sales

Episode Date: September 18, 2020

Lenny Gray is the CEO of D2D Millionaire and Rove Pest Control, and the author of Door-to-Door Millionaire: Secrets of Making the Sale. Since 1998, he has been in the pest control & door-to-door industries. From selling door-to-door in college to earn money for tuition, he is now the president of a multi-million-dollar company, training door-to-door sales reps with effective and profitable D2D techniques. In this episode, we talked about door-to-door sales, team building, sales operations, marketing, entrepreneurship...

you know, let's say a family had lived there for 20 years. So for 20 years, they'd had door-to-door guys come knocking on their door. And for 20 years, it's like, I visualize like the bones of the dead door-to-door salesman on the side of this person's porch of just them just getting rid of them because they were so horrible. It's because they all sounded the same. And so to me, one of the reasons I wrote the book is to prove that, hey, number one, you can be an ethical door-to-door salesman. You can be different. And one of those differences, those key differences is just being a messenger. Let people know what you're doing without like, hey, I'm here and I'm going to sell you something and this is how we're going to do it. It's really just kind of sharing, hey,

this is what's going on in the neighborhood. These are your neighbors that I know, or these are the neighbors that we do service for. I'm just going to let you know what we're going to do here because we're going to have some trucks in your area. So I just want to kind of get you up to speed on what's happening in your neighborhood. Then all of a sudden, you were just sharing a message with people. Like you're trying to be this messenger and you're not trying to be a salesman right out the gate.

So for me, that's a huge key for anybody doing door-to-door is if you come across as sales ears, the stereotypical sales rep that they've been seeing for 20 years, man, it's a tough business to consistently produce sales if you're coming across as a salesman. Welcome to the Home Service Expert, where each week, Tommy chats with world-class entrepreneurs and experts in various fields like marketing, sales, hiring, and leadership to find out what's really behind their success in business. Now, your host,

the home service millionaire, Tommy Mello. Let me introduce you. Lenny's become a good friend of mine. We got introduced through Paul, right? Yeah. Paul Giannamore. So Lenny is a, he's the man when it comes to door to door.door. He is one of the guys, started in the 90s, thousands and thousands of doors you've knocked on. You're an expert in sales, first and foremost, team building, operations, marketing, and entrepreneurship. You're the door-to-door millionaire. You're the CEO from 2010 to now. You live in Druper, Utah. You've also worked at Springshore's Lodge, part owner from 2014 to now. You live in Druper, Utah. You've also worked at Springshores Lodge, part owner from 2014

to now. Rove Pest Control, 2003 to present. I know a couple of your business partners. Snap Finance, which is now over a billion dollar company. You helped get that rolling from 2012 to 2014. Orkin Pest Control from 98 to 2003. And KBYU News Anchor from 1999 to 2000. Lenny's the CEO of D2D Millionaire and Rope Pest Control and the author of Door-to-Door Millionaire Secrets of Making the Sale. He has been in the pest control door-to-door industry since 1998, selling door-to-door in college to earn money for tuition. Today, as the president of a multimillion-dollar company, he helps train door-to-door sales reps how to absolutely crush it indoors and how to make a good profit.

Lenny and I got to meet each other, and he's expanded here to Phoenix and just murdering it out there. I didn't know how much money was in door-to-door sales until I met Lenny and read his book. So if you guys get the chance, you got to pick up Door-to-Door Millionaire. Not to be confused with the Home Service Millionaire. Read them together. They're a good duo read right there. Well, hey, where are you at right now?

What are you up to? So I'm just dad. Like that's probably my number one priority. So right now I'm literally like sitting in a parking lot waiting for one of my kids to get done with basketball. So that's what I do. Hey, this is awesome, man. So you've been in this door-to-door industry.

I mean, the book's full of tips, learning the names, getting the neighbor's names. It's how much money, especially in the pest control, is just built from door-to-door. I mean, how many companies, especially in the pest control, is just built from door to door? I mean, how many companies? It's amazing. I didn't know this till I met you, but it's amazing how much thousands and thousands and tens of thousands of people do this. Yeah. So back in the late 90s, when I first got started in this game, there was maybe two or three major players in door to door. There

were some guys doing pest control, guys doing alarms, and maybe a few little one-off, two-off type of operations, even in the home service industry, I imagine. Or you have the guys selling encyclopedias for crying out loud back when they were carrying those around or whatever. Nowadays, literally, I can just speak for myself at my own house. Like I get dozens of guys knocking on my door, pest control companies, whatever. And there's just new ones popping up all the time and new services, new ideas people have for door to door. I mean, I'm convinced you can sell just about anything door to door, whether it's the home service industry or any industry for that matter. There's a niche there for you to start knocking on doors. And even if you're a walking billboard for crying out loud, you know, sometimes these door-to-door guys,

we get paid on a hundred percent commission and that's kind of what we're used to in large part. My goodness, you're just promoting that company. You're advertising that company just with the logo on your shirt, going out and knocking doors. So I think door-to-door is just exponentially grown over the last couple decades, but I think it's just going to continue. Yeah, it's nuts. I always looked at it like a super high-end sale. I've had everything from the little girls selling the sports cups to people selling solar to selling Anderson's Renewal. You got window companies. It's a crazy element. And what I love about it

is you create your own demand. The demand didn't exist. It defies market cap. It's just a really cool process. So I want to just hear a little bit, first of all, about where have you been from your point of view, where you are now and what the future of door-to-door looks like, because I don't know what Google is going to do in a month. I don't know what things are going to happen on Facebook, but I do know that there's a lot of cool things that could happen from door-to-door. So why don't you give us your story? So interestingly enough, back in about the time the bubble was bursting, you know, early 2000s, we were pretty nervous about how we'd be received in the door-to-door world. Well, 2007, 8, and 9 were probably three of the best years that our company has ever had in company history as far as knocking

doors and success on the doors. And then you fast forward even to today and you look at, okay, it's 2020. We've got this pandemic. There's a lot of challenges there. We are having an absolute banner year this year in the middle of a pandemic. And I don't of challenges there. We are having an absolute banner year this year in the middle of a pandemic. And I don't think that's any coincidence that some of our best years are bookended around some of the most tumultuous times that this country's had. And so it's interesting is one thing's for sure, people will live in homes. People will have a door to knock on. And as long as people have a door to knock on, there's a job for people that are going out knocking doors and promoting their different

services. So I look at where we've been, you know, because I own a pest control company, I'll speak specifically about that. It used to be back in the day. I mean, I've knocked in 30 some odd states. I used to test market for a company, just'd fly me around all over the place and just knock doors in Portland, knock doors in Chicago, knock doors in DC, knock doors in Florida, just see if this is going to work or to what extent. So I've been all over the place knocking doors. And the interesting thing about it is back in the early 2000s, it was like you were kind of explaining to people what pest control was, for instance. People didn't really grasp that, especially in a non-traditional market, somewhere up north, let's say in Minnesota or Michigan, somewhere like that.

Now, all of a sudden, it doesn't matter where you go knocking. People know what pest control is. And as well as solar, right? Like solar, I consult for some solar companies. And people didn't know really what solar power was about. Now, all of a sudden, fast forward five or six years, everybody knows what solar is. And everybody kind of has an idea of the price. Everybody has an idea of what the commitment is.

There's a few nuances that different companies will apply. But for the most part, people are very well educated on what's coming to them via the door-to-door sales rep. So that's been the biggest change for me from late 90s to now. So there's a guy named Sam Taggart out there. I've spoken with him dozens of times. Maybe not dozens, but I've spoken with him several times. And he puts on a really big door-to-door show that you've been to. You know him. I got introduced to him through my buddy who has an energy audit company. His name is Sean for energy. He came on the podcast, smart dude, but it's just a different concept to be able to go out there where no demand

exists. I just love the concept of BATB. It's literally creating my own destiny. I know if I hire more guys, but I know that it's a very expensive way to grow. I've got my good buddy, Austin and Moxie who came on the podcast a few weeks ago. I've got my good buddy, Austin and Moxie, who came on the podcast a few weeks ago. I think we did a live. My question for you is, how do you look at it as far as the calculations? Do you say, this is going to cost me a boatload for the first four summers? Explain to everybody how it's organized, how you make money, and really what's your calculations, what you're doing when you enter in a market with this concept. Yeah, I think the space has become very competitive.

And it used to be what I'd say was a, you know, owner's world. You know, the business owners would go out and they'd have all these door-to-door guys and they were out grinding and out pounding. And if they made 20 to 30, 40 grand in the summer, you know, if you're talking summer sales guys, it was pretty amazing. It was like, holy cow. But it was kind of more of the owner's world. It has shifted right now where this is, this is a sales reps world, especially in the door to door game where these guys can come in because it's so competitive. They can command signing bonuses if they've never knocked a door,

you know, maybe they're a return missionary for their church or whatever. And now all of a sudden, it's like, okay, yeah, we'll pay a $10,000 signing bonus to come sign with us. They never sold anything door to door. In fact, just on the phone yesterday with one of my reps who wants to introduce me to a guy that's been working for another company in one of our markets, he's kind of ran into him and he said, man, I got totally hoodwinked with this company. It's a newer company. They promised me the world. They made me some ridiculous signing bonus offer. He'd never knocked a door before selling anything. And the next thing you know, it's like he gets out there, he starts and it's like, yeah, you can only do this many a day because we don't have the capacity

to service everything. So each rep has a limited number of people that they can sell. We can't necessarily service everything same day or next day, but we'll get around to doing it. And this guy is like, are you kidding me? I got this huge signing bonus and these guys can't even do their part on the backend of providing a good quality service. And so it's really interesting right now that there's companies out there that will promise the world. But the problem with this guy in particular is he's probably not going to get paid his back end because this company was so front loaded in all the expense to recruit the team that, you know, it's kind of like I told my guy yesterday, I'm like, I think sometimes companies forget about the math, the simple addition, subtraction, division math, where it's

like, if you put X number of dollars into a program and you've got to pay X number of dollars out based on production, if those are different and those don't add up or you're in the hole, that's not a very good business plan. I mean, that's business 101, simply. And so what's happened is there's this sales reps world where they can go out and demand what they want. They can go out and be made all the promises in the world. There's really good recruiters nowadays. But when push comes to shove, if they don't have the experience they want to have, well, then all of a sudden, everybody in the door-to-door industry is at fault or it's all bad and nothing good comes of it. And it's a joke and it's a scam and it's a multi-level marketing. It's a pyramid scheme. It's all these

things, which really, if you get with the right company and if it's done the right way, again, I mean, we've been in business since 2003. I mean, we've been cranking this thing for going on a couple of decades now, and we've still got guys coming back and we've still got guys that are making great money in the summer. Whereas you used to make 20, 30, 40 grand. We've got guys making six figures in four months, literally that are out knocking doors. So the opportunity is there. You just have to make sure it's with a company

that has some kind of longevity, that has a customer base, that has something that's built to last. So yeah, that makes a lot of that has something that's built to last. So, yeah, that makes a lot of sense to explain to me. We've gone through a lot of stuff together. We've had a lot of discussions. So there's companies out there that really, they kind of poop the bed when it comes to door to door and going to sell. And we've talked about a big one that went through some stuff that kind of gave

door to door a bad name. But ultimately, explain to me your, without going into too many detail, I don't expect a lot of pest control. There are some that are listening, but let's just say that, what is your plan to enter a market? Explain to me, how do you take advantage of door-to-door?

How do you get Google involved? What is your main way of building the business over time? Is it acquisitions? Is it a potion of a little bit of everything? Explain to me. So let's just pretend here. You're going into Vancouver, Washington. Explain to me the process of how you enter market.

How do you build enterprise value with door-to-door? That's a great question. And there's a lot there. Our methodology at our company, even though the backbone of our company has been built on the backs of door-to-door sales reps. For instance, when we started year one, it was in Salt Lake City, Utah, 2003. I was the guy knocking doors. That's it. And I got paid this much in commissions, nothing. But the idea was we're going to have something here. We're going to have an existing customer base. We're going to have some revenue being generated. So by the time we get, you know, next year we'll go hire two or three guys. Then we'll kind of see where we're at. Well,

by the time we hit year three, we had like 20, 30 guys knocking for us and we paid them all. And it was all a great experience. Had a lot of people make a lot of money that summer, but that was because we built it on the back of one of the owners. And we already had, you know, we didn't go out to a private equity group or a VC group or anything like that. We just, we did it ourselves. And that, that was the benefit for us that we started and we built it the right way from the beginning. But that being said, now that we've been established and we've built this process, now we kind of adhere to that philosophy of the legs on a chair, the legs on a stool. Like the sweet spot for door-to-door sales companies is when you can say, you know what, we're going to grow and we don't have to knock a single door and our company will grow.

And that's where we're at. That's the golden goose to me for a company that starts door to door is when do you get to the point because of traditional marketing, SEO, all those other things that Tommy, you're the genius in and you specialize in all that stuff. When you get to that point where you can just grow without door toto-door, that's the magic formula because door-to-door is expensive. I wouldn't do door-to-door if you're starting out in the home service industry. If you've got a great idea for an electrical company, a plumbing company, a window company, I wouldn't start with door-to-door. I'd make sure you had everything else in line with your direct marketing so that you could afford a door-to-door sales team. And then to

me, that door-to-door sales team is like putting gas on the fire because then it's just going to go crazy because now you've got that presence, that daily presence where you're just hour after hour, you're getting your name, your logo, you're getting some services just on a consistent basis with could be tens of guys, hundreds of guys, thousands of guys, however many guys that you're hiring to go out there and pound the pavement. So what's the formula? You got a guy that can make six figures. From my understanding, the first six months of the money you're making in the pest control, get eaten up by that sales rep to make that sale, to be the commission only. I know you don't pest control the best, but we're talking roofing, gutters, solar, cable, a lot of industries. How do you generally come up with a pay structure for

these guys to make it worth them going door to door? Because quite honestly, I think the problem I'd have with door to door is it's a lot of rejection. Well, just like Michael Jordan used to say, I missed more shots, game winning shots than anybody. Man, I've been rejected more than anybody on the doors. I guarantee it. I've experienced more failure than I think anybody has. But that just goes with the territory, right? That's what it is. Companies are getting creative, whether it's a residual type of a service industry, say like pest control or say it's an alarm company that has monthly monitoring. Some are now having you sign multi-year agreements. So whereas in some industries, it's like a one-year service plan, maybe it's a two-year now. And so that's how they can afford to bump up the commissions on sales reps because they're figuring, I've seen creative ways that it's done, but maybe first year that sales rep's making a really high percentage of contract value. That second year, that sales rep may be making a little bit of commissions, just not as high as that first year.

And so what that company's trying to do is recoup the actual revenue stream from that customer in year two, maybe versus year one. Because honestly, in some industries, you're saying six months, in some it's 13, 14, 15 months till you actually see a profit off that because of the cost of goods, because of your technicians, because of your product costs, all of those things go into it. And so sometimes companies can start in that hole pretty quickly if they're overpaying for that sales rep. So there's some creative ways to do it. I would just be very careful if it's just kind of a one-off type of service where there's not really an agreement where you're coming back every month, every two months, every three months, whatever it is. You got to be really careful to get those costs at the right price so that you're not overshooting

yourself and paying sales reps too much and then finding yourself in the hole on your customer base. So I know that Rob is a pretty good guy when it comes to Excel, one of your partners. Do you guys build out like the breakeven cost analysis of like, okay, you got iPads, you got shirts, you got hats, you got lunches, you've got the recruiting side, you've got the management side, you've got this, you've got that. I think a lot of times when people make pay grades, they don't calculate everything. They leave other stuff out. And I think, so the guys are like, yeah, I make my money back after five months. It's actually like a year. They literally shoot it so bad when they're doing these costs. So you got to figure out the lifetime value too. So how long does the average client stay on that you guys have for your pest control

company over a row? Yeah. So we're trying at about that three to five year mark. That's kind of where we feel like, you know, we'd love to keep a customer forever as would anybody, right? We'd all love to do that. But if we can keep a customer in the three to five year range, then we're actually seeing the return on that customer. And that's when obviously we're clean and clear of any kind of initial cost, acquisition costs for the customer, especially when we're talking about door to door. Then you get into, well, is the door to door acquisition cost, is it worth it? Because now you're talking about what's the retention on a door to door. Then you get into, well, is the door to door acquisition cost, is it worth it? Because now you're talking about what's the retention on a door to door account versus an account that comes in with an SEO. Somebody that's actually looking for pest control has a need for it.

They call you up, you go out there, you're paying five to 10% for your in-house sales guy versus 50% plus or whatever for your door to door guy retrieving that account. That's why, as we talked earlier about these legs on the stool, legs on the chair, that's why it's so important to have a blended marketing campaign and not just put all your eggs in that basket of door-to-door sales, because that's when you can get turned upside down pretty quickly. Because trying to guess on customer residual, sometimes it's as complicated as sales rep to sales rep. You can't just blanket statement it door-to-door sales. They're going to get this much return. I could have a guy that

they have 90 plus percent of a return after that one year, people just continue with the service on a month-to-month basis. I could have another guy that's 25%. And so a lot of times it depends on the individual sales rep. And there's an element of not just the training piece, you know, how well they're trained, but also is how good the service is. If you don't provide a good quality service, that to me, at the end of the day, that wins out on everything. If you have a great service, great processes, great systems in place, customers are happy with you, even if they're paying a little more, even if they're paying, you know, a little bit more than the competitors or they're paying the most, the top dollar for the type of service, if you provide a good service,

we all know in the home industry world, in the pest control world, any type of home service world, if you're not doing a good service, there are plenty other options for people to go elsewhere. So have the right systems in place. And those door-to-door guys, even though people might be stretching a little bit to jump on a service, maybe they never thought of doing, maybe they never thought of replacing their windows or retiling their roof. Maybe they never thought of that. We have a good sales rep who sells them on that. Once you get that customer locked in and you provide a great service, they're going to keep coming back. And that's the most important thing is making sure you have the service to back the salespeople.

So there's a lot of companies that have approached you. I mean, you've told me it's just national companies. What do you do to pre-qualify? So you got to know you're going to build a door to door team and you're going to know they got a good service to back it up to keep that LTV, the lifetime value as long as possible. So tell me a little bit about how you pre-qualify. Yeah. This would be good for door to door versus what's not good for door to door. Yeah. So as far as what I'd like to get involved with, I mean, I look for home runs. I mean, I I've got things online, my website, Lenny gray.com slash training. I got stuff that the guys can just go by for for really pennies on the dollar for

the return of that kind of stuff. Like guys can go in and just buy some preseason training packages for me where it's like, okay, I got these door to door guys. What do I train them on before they start knocking doors? I've developed all that. But really for me to partner with somebody, I'm looking for home runs. I mean, I know I've told you this, Tommy, I partnered with a company called Snap Finance back in 2012. And this company is, they're valued at over a billion dollars today. And I'm looking for companies like that, that I know just have the talent at the top level, have the vision, have something that's a little bit unique and different than what's out there. And those are the companies I want to get involved in their day-to-day with,

because I feel like we can make a huge impact for those companies. That being said, I still consult for companies, I have weekly calls with some clients that, you know, are in some different kind of industries that I'm happy to help out where I can, it's just how much does somebody want to need help? And really, how committed are they to the craft of door to door sales? Some people say they're committed to it, they want to do it, then they see kind of what the cost is, what the expenses are. Like you said, the iPads, the housing, like all these things. And they go, oh, wait a minute. I don't think I'm ready for that.

And that's totally fine. My suggestion, if you're starting in door-to-door, is, yeah, do some testing. Do some beta testing. Do some sample sizes. Pick a couple markets. If you're a national company or you're a regional company, try it out. See how it works. Dial in all the numbers, all the figures to make sure it makes the most sense. And then again, if it does, then it's game over because once that hits, it hits and it can go

like gangbusters if you have the right people and the right processes and the right service and all those things we talked about. So you mentioned housing there. There's, I think I want the listeners to understand the model of the summer crew versus maybe an all year knocking crew. So talk to me about the four month blitz that goes in and you're bringing people. That's expensive. You're paying for travel, housing, food, go into some of the expenses and how that concept works. Why this

summer? How does it work? Is it just high schoolers kind of go through that whole process for us? Yeah. So, and that's how I got started, right? I got started in the summer sales industry and, you know, when I was at college and doing my undergrad, it was like, I need to make money. And I'm working at a, you know a lock and supply warehouse for probably eight bucks an hour or whatever it was back in the day. And it was like, man, I can't believe I'm making as much as this dude next to me that takes a smoke break every 10 minutes. Like what's going on here? And so I had a buddy introduced door-to-door sales to me. And so I go out and it's like, this is actually an industry where you can make what you're worth. You actually make the kind of money based on the effort that you put in there. Now, that being said, the summer sales

piece is super expensive right now. It didn't used to be back in the late 90s, early 2000s. It was very manageable. But now you're talking somewhere in the 60 to 80 percent, even sometimes upwards of 90 percent, depending on where you're capping out your commissions and how successful your sales reps are, that that's going to cost you for four months to put on a million bucks or a couple million bucks. You know, you might have to put 800,000 out there just to cover the million bucks of revenue that you're going to generate. And you haven't even generated it, you know, in the pest control world anyway, you haven't even generated it until those customers reach that 12 month mark. So you're paying for it before it actually is realized. So it's, it's an expensive proposition, especially I kind of get a kick out of these companies every year that come in to make a

big splash. And it's like, Oh, we're going to pay reps $10,000 signing bonuses. They're going to make 70% commissions for new reps. And it's like, you just know, you're just counting the minutes until again, that, that multiplication and that addition sinks in and they go, oh crap, we can't pay anybody anything else. Like this, this just isn't going to work. And it happens every single year because people don't figure out the numbers and they don't have a process dialed into where it's like, oh my gosh, this is actually going to be pretty expensive.

So summer sales versus year round sales, totally different beasts. And that's another thing we do. I've got a two day management conference that me and my business partners go through. We go through the pros and cons of what does the summer sales program look like? And what are those challenges? What are the strengths of those versus what is a year long program look like? Or even a hybrid program. There's different ways to look at it.

Maybe you're using your service staff to do some of the sales. There's a lot of ways to look at it. I'd say on the very high end, top dollar end, summer sales, man, that's expensive. You've got to be ready for that. You better be a company that's got some revenue generated and ready to pay out the big bucks. But you can look at more of a year-round program. You can look at a hybrid program that are way more economical. And you can look at more of a year round program. You can look at a hybrid program that are way more economical and you can still get as much value in it. You may not just

see the explosion of growth like you would say in a summer sales program. Because the summer sales program, you're recruiting college aged guys or high school guys, like you said. These guys have boundless energy. These guys are bouncing off the wall six days a week, seven to 10 hours a day. And they're just out grinding, knocking doors, running around, riding on their one wheels or whatever they're riding on nowadays. And, and it's just crazy. It's like a circus. Like seriously, I think my office staff, when our summer sales team comes in, it's like the freaking circus is in town guys get ready. Cause the clowns are over here. The lion's jumping through the fire hoop over here. And it's, it's just nuts. But

if you're talking about some kind of a consistent presence of somebody who comes in and does year round, it's much more manageable. It's a lot more affordable and it's not the circus that is door to door summer sales. So tell me the, the pros and cons of-to-door. I guess if someone's listening out there, thousands and thousands of listeners. Millions. Millions of listeners. There will be millions. Millions. Millions.

Thousands soon. Tell me the pros and cons. So I think a big pro to door-to-door sales is just you get your branding set in stone. Now, that can be for good or bad. That's why these door-to-door guys, you've got to go through and have your processes as far as background checks and if you do drug testing and all those things

because you don't want the wrong guy. You don't want the pedophile that you just hired going knocking on doors, talking to teenagers. You don't want that. That's not a good look for your company. So as long as you have the right hiring processes in place, I think you can brand the crazy out of your company. Think about it. If one guy, just the impact that one guy has, let's say one guy approaches 50 people a day. That's a very doable number in the door-to-door industry. If one guy's

approaching 50 people a day and he goes and knocks doors for 100 days, that's approximately how many days are in a four-month summer in between, you know, college semesters. So he's 5,000 shaking hands talking, right? He has talked to 5,000 people where your name's been on the front of their mind because if he's smart, he's got the logo in three different spots. He's got it on his hat, he's got it on his shirt, and he's got it on his iPad or on an ID badge. Maybe it's four spots. And so all of a sudden, then they hear Tommy's commercial on the radio come and they're like, oh my gosh, yeah, I just talked to a dude that was with A1. And so when they think about garage door, who are they going to call? Well, they're going to call A1 because they remember that interaction with that person as long as it was positive, of course. And that's a big deal.

Go ahead. Look, that's one of the scariest things that I hear is you're bothering somebody in their dinner. Their 13-year-old answers. The dad walks up and says, what's the name of your company? And now it's a BBB. It's Nextdoor. It's Yelp. It's Google. Is there any way to kind of not piss people off? Because it's inevitable. There's 1% of the people and it's a lot when you got 5,000 people, that 1% adds up to be a lot of negativity. How do you protect that? I think in any service industry, I think we'd all be kidding ourselves to think that there's such thing as a five out of five star company. As much as we'd like to say we are, and even if our rankings, if we drowned out the one stars with like 25 stars,

because we're paying our customers, whatever crap, out the one stars with like 25 stars, cause we're paying our customers, whatever crap, you know, the people decided they're going to do to, to get all these reviews. Like there's literally companies that have been around for one year that have 5,000 customers and they got like 4,000 reviews. It's like, come on, like there's some interesting things going on there, but that's beside the point. The point is there's really no way to stop the negative review

in the service industry. Your technician's going to go out there and for crying out loud, he's going to have gas one day and he's going to let one loose in somebody's garage. And guess what? You get a one-star. Like your technician stunk up my place. I'm pissed. He could have done the best service in the world. Somebody's going to get upset somewhere at something when you're dealing with customer interaction, face-to-face service type of companies. That's inevitable. I think we all have to come to the grips that that's going to happen if I have a bunch of guys out knocking doors, or quite frankly, if I have a bunch of technicians that are out performing some kind of a service, there's going to be negative reviews, no question about it. The point is though,

is if you have a quality service, if you have the right type of people that don't have pride that are apologetic, hey, why are you here? I'm in the middle of dinner. Oh, sir, I'm so sorry. My bad. Maybe we can catch another time. And there's not this pride thing. Well, actually, the solar system that I'm going to be selling you is so important to you. It's going to save you $10,000 over the next four years. And you're going to be helping the environment. Like this is way more important than dinner. If you have that guy, you don't want that guy. Cause that guy's just going to create that negativity, not just in the reviews, but just that branding of your business. People are going to see that and go, that was that jerk that came to my house that, you know,

he wouldn't leave, even though we were in the middle of dinner. You don't want to create that kind of atmosphere on somebody's doorstep. So I'm just curious, I'm bouncing around here a little bit, but what's a big company that you know of that has started with door-to-door and that's the primary source? They've done some SEO, but for the most part, their trucks are the advertising. They do some yard signs here and there, but they're not a full-blown TV, radio, billboard, Google company. They're more of we're door to door. That's how we grow. We keep our accounts. What have you seen these companies that do this sell for that are the big

players? Can you talk to me a little bit about that? Yeah. So what I know, and you know, I'll go back to my lessons I've learned with Paul Giannamore, the guy that introduced us. I've been a friend of Paul's for several years now. Great guy. He basically is on the sell side of pest control acquisitions. Probably, I don't know, 90-something percent of any pest control company that's being sold, Paul's in the middle of it as a sell side representative. But the thing that I've learned from Paul over the years is the value of door-to-door sales companies in the eyes of acquirers is lessening, especially

in the pest control world, because there's probably some poor acquisitions, obviously, right, over the years. And so all of a sudden, these big name acquirers, these multi-billion dollar companies, the Service Masters, Terminex, Orkins, all these companies out there with billions of dollars that have employed door-to-door sales strategies or have used acquiring door-to-door sales companies as part of their strategy, their growth strategy. All of a sudden, they're saying, holy cow, these door-to-door accounts don't hold as much value as accounts that are being realized with other avenues, SEO, traditional marketing, you know, all these things that most of these other companies are doing.

So now all of a sudden you get to this point where some guy, let me tell you the sad tale. I'll call it the sad tale of the door-to-door business owner. And the sad tale of the door-to-door business owner goes like this. Timmy's getting ready to graduate from college. And he's always said, I'm going to be an attorney. And that's my life's goal is I'm going to be an attorney. I'm going to make a lot of money. I'm going to have this great life. And I've watched all the Netflix shows, suits and all that. And that's going to be me. I'm going to be that guy. I'm going to be the

attorney. Then all of a sudden, Timmy hears about this great door to door job where he can go make six figures. And so Timmy says, you know what? I'm going to go out and sell door-to-door. I'm going to go sell alarms. And sure enough, man, Timmy's a home run hitter. He goes and makes six figures. He decides he's going to do that during graduate school, during law school. He's going to do all of this door-to-door stuff. And he's just making a killing out of it. He's bought himself a house, this, that, and the other. And then Timmy decides, you know what, I'm going to put this law stuff on hold. I'm going to start my own alarm company because for crying out loud, I've been working for this company for six, seven years. I'm making them millions of dollars. I'm going to get them for myself. Now, the only problem is Timmy's got this wife

whose dad, so this guy's father-in-law is like, dude, my son-in-law is going to be an attorney and now he's going to be a business owner in alarms. Like, what is this? And so Tim, he's got to come to this realization that, well, it's great money and I can provide a great life for my family and this. So he does that. But then he realizes that, man, this is really tough. And door-to-door isn't really it, quite frankly. And I don't know enough about other marketing techniques or strategies really to do much, but door to door, well, door to door, super expensive. My exit strategy was always, I'm going to go back to law. Once I sell this company for $10 million, but quite frankly, my company isn't valued worth crap because it's really just built on door to

door. And that's all I got to show. So now the sudden Timmy stuck in this hard place of, do I sell this company that I've, you know, blood, sweat, and tears for the last decade? Do I sell it for half of what I wanted to do to get out and then go pursue my law career after that? And so that's the sad tale of this guy who gets in, whether it's alarms or pest control, whatever. think that just doing door-to-door is what's going to help them to realize thousands, millions of dollars that they're going to have in five years because they can sell their company for two, three, four times revenue. When acquirers are looking at it and going, that's worth about 75 cents on the dollar, bud, because you don't have any longevity in your program. You're not a pest control guy. You're not an alarm guy. You're a door-to-door marketer. That's it.

You know, it's crazy. I don't know who's given valuations out there, but I can tell you their valuations are so, these are like crack pipe companies. I'm like, wait a minute, you make this much money a year after you pay yourself. How did you come up with that number? And I said this on one of the podcasts in the last few months. Like I said, a lot of the people come from real estate. They just decide that they're going to go into this business and try to sell you on how much your business is worth and try to get the listing. Once they got the listing, these listings sit for years sometimes. And I definitely think there's a lot to be said about the getting the business. It's kind of putting

fuel on the fire, but it's not a way to build a business only. I think, and that's where I heard it's an expensive way, but it's a fast way and you got to have the money. So, so those are the really, really good things. You could grow a business fast. Talk to me about acting like a messenger of good news and not a salesperson. So to me, that's from my book, obviously, Door-to-Door Millionaire. Just a quick story. So when I started knocking doors for a company that was marketing through Orkin Pest Control, again, one of the largest companies in the world, great company, by the way.

I loved working with Orkin at this marketing firm. I was told that I would get awesome training by my recruiter. And there really wasn't much there. There was this little manual. It was 10 pages or something. I was like, okay, whatever. But I was told that, hey, the division, the sales DVP, division vice president of sales, he was going to come out and knock doors with me at some point during the summer. So excited about it. I was like, all right, I got this guy coming out, going to knock with me. He's going to take me to the next level. So I ended up being the top first year rep, the top rookie rep in the, in the country that, that summer, my first year. And about mid June, I finally get this DVP to come out

and he does a training meeting with us. Then we're in the parking lot of the Orkin branch. And he comes up to me and he says, Hey, I got to catch a flight. I can't knock doors with you, but can I get some video of you knocking doors? Cause I'd, I'd really like to see how this is done. Like how you're so successful. And I was like, what? Like, I've just been doing this for like a month and a half and you're, what do I got to do? So anyway, long story short, when I graduated from college and I started working with this company, I developed all their training manuals. We had a video training and we also had just the paper training manual. And on that, what I realized, because I'd knocked doors with hundreds of reps every summer,

every summer, I'd just go out with hundreds of guys and I'd see the same mistakes being made over and over. And what it was, everybody was acting like a salesperson. Everybody was saying the same thing that everybody else that had knocked on that person's door. You know, let's say a family had lived there for 20 years. So for 20 years, they had door-to-door guys come knocking on their door. And for 20 years, it's like I visualized like the bones of the dead door-to-door salesman on the side of this person's porch of just them just getting rid of them because they were so horrible.

It's because they all sounded the same. And so to me, one of the reasons I wrote the book is to prove that, hey, number one, you can be an ethical door-to-door salesman. You can be different. And one of those differences, those key differences is just being a messenger. Let people know what you're doing without like, hey, I'm here and I'm going to sell you something and this is how we're going to do it. It's really just kind of sharing, hey, this is what's going on in the neighborhood. These are your neighbors that I know, or these are the neighbors that we do service for. I'm just going to let you know what we're going to do here because we're going to have some trucks in your area. So I just want to kind of get you up to speed on what's happening in your neighborhood.

Then all of a sudden you were just sharing a message with people, like you're trying to be this messenger and you're not trying to be a salesman right out the gate. So for me, that's a huge key for anybody doing door to door is if you come across as sales ears, the stereotypical sales rep that they've been seeing for 20 years, man, it's a tough business to consistently produce sales if you're coming across as a salesman. You know, one of the main things I teach my guys, it's very simple. It's three letters. It's A-S-K's ask you got to ask and the one thing i say is is you got to improve your average ticket to my technicians it's just ask for it and i remember knocking door to door to invite somebody to a uh a housewarming party 2012 i just moved in this

house in scottsdale and everybody answered the door like, not cool. They were like, they popped their head out like, can I help you? Like really defensive. And I'm like, no, I'm just your neighbor. I live right down the street over here on 82nd place. Not here to say anything. Just wanted to see if you wanted to come to a housewarming party. I'm new to the neighborhood. But I knocked on probably 30 to 40 doors. And I'm just like, this is a tough job, man. This is like, people are like, they don't like me knocking on their door. You know, it's just weird. It's one of those things where you're like, oh man, who is it? And you guys have gotten really, really good at it. But that whole concept of asking, I'd imagine that if someone had had door-to-door experience, like if I was going to sell a 17

year old parent, which how old your kids are right around? I have an 18 year old. Yeah. That's my oldest. So if I was about to sell a 17, 18 year old parents, what are you going to get from this four months? Who are these people going to be when they get through this program of four months, whether they're uber successful or not? Let's talk about the ancillaries here, right? Because money is just a part of it. We all know that, right? There's enough books out there that talk about money's not the only thing and this, that, or the other. And there's some different philosophies of that, but we won't get into that. But I look at it and I go, you know what? If you've got, especially in today's day and age, right.

And we've got people out there that their human interaction is limited to this, like on the screen or texting or they're gaming together and they're communicating on their little headsets. And, you know, it's like, I tell my reps all the time, it's like, you're a, and my kids, it's like your age group, you don't even need to express how you feel anymore. Cause there's an emoji that, that will show people how you feel. You don't, you don't have to explain yourself. Like if you're sad or you're feeling down or whatever, it's like, there's an emoji for that. I don't even have to tell people that or explain what that feels like. Right. It's really weird. But the point is to me, the value of our reps that

have gone on to be successful at other things, right? Whether they're doctors, whether they're lawyers, whether they're business people or sales people or business owners, whatever they are. If you ask any of them to a man and you say, why are you so successful at what you're doing now? They can learn back or lead back to what they learned as a door-to-door sales rep. I learned how to communicate with people. I learned how to look people in the eye. I learned how to use persuasive

language. I used questioning techniques that still work, whether I'm in the courthouse or whether I'm, you know, in front of potential clients, like, you know, huge multimillion dollar clients. I use the same questioning you taught me that we used to do on the doors, right? You avoid the yes, no questions and you use more find out and assumptive questions. Just these basic things that I think if I'm the parent of a 17, 18 year old and I go, oh my gosh, I can get my kid out of the house.

He or she can go knock on doors and they can look people in the eye. They can try to sell them something. They can learn how to be persuasive. They can learn some valuable skill sets as far as just being a contributor to society and being able to talk to people, negotiation skills. I mean, we can go on and on. There are so many ancillary things besides money that door-to-door sales reps can learn. Even if they suck, even if they are horrible, even if they can't make five grand in the summer, the experience alone is going to take them leaps and bounds over what they would have done working at the McDonald's or getting the job at the local ice cream place.

There's so many more lessons to be learned when you're interacting with people, especially people, like you said, Tommy, that don't want to see you. You haven't been invited. You're an uninvited guest. You've got two or three strikes already against you the minute you knock on that door and they open that door and look at you. And so just being able to work in that kind of an environment, kind of a little high pressure cooker environment, I think is just a huge platform and a foundational piece for darn near anybody going to go get into anything. Yeah, it's massive. If I had an older teenager, I'd want them involved in this tonality, eye contact, body language, questioning,

getting to get over objections. This is like a tool to get you set up correct to go own the world, basically. There's always a lot of objections, I'm sure, that you're used to dealing with. What are the most common sales objections and what's your tried and tested approach to overcoming them? Yeah. Let's take a couple of those on. I've got, I think in my book, I list out five of them. There's five common objections that we hear. Maybe I'll just take a couple of those. I don't want to, I don't want to blow the whole book here. We'll let people read the other three, but let's talk about like, just give me your business card. You know, let's talk about that one.

And maybe we'll talk about it. I need to talk about it. Give me some information. Yeah. Yeah. You know what? I'll call you when I'm ready. Right.

Exactly. So that, we did a survey once with our reps and we actually had them label the most common objections they heard. We had reps in like four or five different states for like two or three days and we measured them all out. We said, okay, let's see the most common ones down. You know, we created in our industry, we called it the like four or five different states for like two or three days. And we measured them all out. We said, okay, let's see the most common ones down. You know, we, we created in our industry, we called it the great eight. So there's eight concerns in the pest control industry. There's five in my

books that I think span any industry. So if you're in the home service industry, these five, you're going to hear anyway, but the one was leave me your business card, or do you have, you have some information and we'll give you a call back later. And so to me with any objection, really one of the main things that I try to teach my salespeople is if you can get in front of an objection before it becomes an objection, you already win.

Because if you can say to somebody, oh yeah, like I mentioned before, if you can use that transitional phrase because you've already addressed their concern, that kind of puts them a little bit lower than you and it kind of builds your credibility when you're talking to people. So for me is I want to express urgency. I want to express that Black Friday element that I write about in my book of limited supply for a limited time at a discounted price. And I want people to know, like, listen, you can go ahead and call me anytime, or I can leave you my number, no problem at all. But what I can guarantee you is while I've got a technician in the area tomorrow, and I'm going to be taking care of the Johnsons and the Joneses, that I can

do it for this price. I know I can do it for that price tomorrow, because I'm already going to be here. So if I can create a more urgent approach, then that's going to help with the whole, well, just leave me your business card. Because then at that point, to help with the whole, well, just leave me your business card. Because then at that point, it's like, well, yeah, I can leave you a card. And like I said, you can call anytime for a regular service price. That's not a big deal. But while I'm here tomorrow, I can definitely get you in on that big, huge discount that we're running. And then hopefully that generates a qualifier, which I write about in the book, but a qualifier would be somebody who asks, well, how much is it? What's the discount? Then you've got somebody

that's actually thinking about buying, you know, if they qualify on asking how much. So that's the first one. The second one, the spouse one. The spouse one to me is such an interesting thing because everybody's relationship's a little bit different. And so I found some really good questions. Let's say you bump into the housewife and, you know, it's three o'clock in the afternoon.

Husband's not going to be home till seven o'clock at night or whatever. I'm going to ask some pretty key questions to see if I can still make a sale with that and it's three o'clock in the afternoon, husband's not gonna be home till seven o'clock at night or whatever. I'm gonna ask some pretty key questions to see if I can still make a sale with that housewife. And some of it, keep in mind, is dependent on what you're selling. If you're selling a $5,000 HVAC, whatever job, I'm probably not just gonna convince the housewife and she's gonna be like, honey, guess what?

I'm replacing HVAC tomorrow and it's five grand. Like that's not gonna go over well. Or honey, I just signed up for solar. It's $30,000. We're going to get a solar roof and this, that, and the other. But if it's something like on a lower scale, maybe it's a hundred bucks, a couple hundred bucks, you could probably confidently go through that sales process with that one spouse. No problem. If it's something in the pest control world, that might be five, six, $700. That's kind of that tipping point where, you know, probably most husband and wives are going to talk about that decision. So I'm going to start asking questions to find out if I'm talking to the decision maker, if it's something that's worth my time coming back to. So I might say something

like, so if you and your husband talked about getting pest control in the past, what kind of bugs are you guys seeing right now? Have you used a company before? And if so, what kind of experience did you have with that company? So I'm going to ask questions and depending on every answer that I get, I know if it's going to be safe to proceed to just go ahead and sell that person, or maybe it's better to make a return appointment, a comeback appointment, as I'd say, to go talk to that spouse later, or maybe it's just better just not to come back. Quite frankly, maybe it is better just to get my business card and say, you know what, if you guys are interested, go ahead and give me a call. If they don't have any kind of buying sign or key indicators of buying, it's okay to leave a card or leave a number at that point.

You know, have you ever heard of this book by Robert Cialdini? I haven't heard it. I haven't read it. I have a feeling you're going to give it to me. One of the major ones that Robert Cialdini is probably one of the best psychologists in the world that wrote about influence. And one of the laws are called reciprocation. So you do something for somebody and get them to reciprocate. One of them is commitment and consistency. One of them is defense. One of them is social proof.

One of them is liking. And one of them is authority.. One of them is liking. And one of them is authority. And the last one is scarcity. So he teaches these ways. And I think anybody who hasn't read this book, Influence, it's the number one book that when you learn what's in this book, you've got more power than you could ever imagine. And you've got to be careful with how you use it because some people use it for the negative. But when you said that you're creating scarcity, that's a big piece of influence is by putting deadlines and creating, get it while it's hot. So, you know, I'm working on some stuff, as you know, that creates the hot buttons of now. There's a lot of cool things that

we're working on as far as that goes. But, you know, I think a lot of it has to do with getting the right people. And tell me how, what you look for to find a door-to-door person, because those are probably the same type of people that we want to find as technicians and installers. Yeah. I mean, the interesting thing for me and my experience is, man, good sales reps have come in all shapes and sizes over the year. The one thing, just like I write about in the book about not prejudging. I used to have a sales rep that before he'd knock a door, he'd say, yeah, this isn't going to be a sale. I'm like, what are you talking about?

How would you even know that? I think sometimes a certain person walks in a certain size or shape or whatever, and you're probably like, or even sex, right? Like some people think that females like, I don't think they're cut out for door to door. Oh my gosh, some of the best sales reps around are female sales reps. And so I'm looking at things like, can you problem solve? If I give you, you know, a scenario, hey, sell me this. What is is that person doing? Some of the things that you've talked about in some of your podcasts, Tommy, I'm a big fan, by the way. But some of the things you talk about is, can they smile? Do they have a good smile? Do they have all their teeth for crying out loud? I mean, there's just things that when, again, as I said before, when you have two strikes going against you, when you knock on that door, you've got to present some kind of aura of confidence and niceness or whatever you want to call it that is going to attract somebody to wanting to open their ears just a little bit longer, maybe to hear your initial approach out, which, you know, is 30 to 45 seconds. You want them to hear that. And so

your presence has to be such that it gives that vibe of somebody wanting to listen. And confidence is a big key, right? If somebody answers the door and your head's kind of down and your shoulders are shrugged a little bit and you're a little mopey and you can't really make eye contact much, or you're kind of doing this number, like forget it. Like you've lost, third strike, you're out. So you have to have people that are just genuinely happy people, I think, or at least can fake it. They can fake that they're happy. They can smile. And then they're just quick-witted.

I call it the bounce house theory. Like, some of the best comedians, right? Like, if you think about the best comedians, like, they start the show and they're telling a few jokes. And then somehow, like, in the middle of the show and the end of the show, they reinsert a joke. They told the first of the show and it just has everybody dying. Like they're just, they're on the floor laughing. Cause he just tied in something that he used at the beginning to the middle. And maybe it's somebody in the audience or something. And you just go, Oh, yeah. How does he do it? And it's like, and to me, it's, I call it the bounce house theory. Cause you're just kind of bouncing around and you don't know which direction you're going to go.

And on the doors, the really successful door-to-door sales reps, they can do that too, where they can maybe make a joke about maybe a t-shirt. Somebody's wearing a Guns N' Roses t-shirt. And then all of a sudden, somehow, some way later in the conversation, they bring up November rain or the importance of patience like Guns N' Roses songs. And they just have a way to tie these things in. And it's humorous. It's entertaining. That's why people lock into these comedians because they're so entertaining and they're just making these weird connections. So for me, if sales reps can do that, that's like more high level stuff. But if sales reps learn how to do that, oh my gosh, they're just like one big show. They're like a comic that somebody is going to see. And it's

just like, man, this dude's freaking hilarious. I just want to buy it from him because I like him. Yeah. I was thinking of that skit. He's like, hot pocket. I'm usually way higher energy. Lenny, you know me, we've talked a lot. I do what's happening right now. This is a candle and I'm kind of burning on both ends this week because I had a wedding. So I feel bad. You know, the audience knows I'm just super like amped up all the time. And today I'm just kind of like, didn't get a ton of wedding, I feel bad. You know, the audience knows I'm just super like amped up all the time. And today I'm just kind of like didn't get a ton of sleep. I remember at about 1050, I'm going through emails and there was like 50 of them. And I'm just putting notes for my assistant.

And it's just like, oh, it's one of those days. But I'm not complaining because quite honestly, the stuff I'm getting done this week, it's pretty much a triple load. It's a four-day weekend, or it was a three-day weekend, I mean. So we got a four-day work week. So we're compiling it all, and I'll have more done this week. So just an apology that my attention is there, but a little bit of the energy level. You know what I love is ZipFizz. ZipFizz will get me going.

I'm going to have a ZipFizz after this and I'll be right back in the game. But there's a lot of stuff when it comes to recruiting, getting the right guys, but I love this channel. I love this channel so much. And I think people need to go check out Lenny's book. It's Door-to-Door Millionaire. And if nothing else, it really helps to develop who salespeople are. It's great ideas to name drop. And it's a great idea to use a heat map and to say, here's the stuff we've done in your neighborhood. Your neighbors love us. You should love us too. So I want to ask you some more questions here to wrap us up. But door to door, you could build millions and millions and millions and millions of dollars. And it's the right thing

for a lot of things. I think for the most part, traditional experiences tell us you either got to have a reoccurring service or you got to have a bigger ticket. Isn't that true for the most part? Yep. Absolutely. Absolutely. So those are the people that should be really thinking. And you know what I like to do? We used to do this a lot and it's really too hot in Arizona, but you go to the door next to us, the other side of it, and the three across. So you do a little pattern. Clover leafing, what they call it in the pest control world, it's called clover leafing.

Clover leafing, that's it. So any industry this works for, hey, my truck's outside, especially for my technicians. Listen, I'm in the neighborhood. This is going to happen to you. And have something that creates demand, like whether it technicians, listen, I'm in the neighborhood. This is going to happen to you and have something that creates demand, like whether it's, you know, the bottom rubber to keep the bugs out or whatever, but Hey, your air conditionings were installed at the same time, or Hey, the roof is the same roof from the manufacturer, the builder, but it just creates

so much more, especially if you get a yard site on there that now there are five houses. There's a good chance. You're probably going to hit one and they're going to say, OK, yeah, might as well do it today because there's enough demand there. I called my cousin after I met you and somebody pulled up in a Segway and he said, listen, a barbecue. And I literally got the meat on the barbecue. Can you come back in 45 minutes? He came back. He signed up for the pest control for the year. He's like, Mike said, I was looking for this anyway. But you happened to show up at the right time because we have been seeing some bugs. And I just did.

It's so cool. I was like, that's so awesome. But what I love to know, number one, is how do we get your book? What's the best way to do it? You know, it's on Amazon. That's probably the best way you can get to it on my website, lennygray.com slash book. There's some links there. You know, I would highly recommend the audio book as well. I know most people are readers, but I interviewed several professional voiceovers for this audio

book just because I wanted to hit it right. But the problem is so few people with great voices, I guess, know the door-to-door sales industry. There's just different ways that you enunciate and pronounce certain things. So I actually did my own audio book. It was probably just as hard as writing the book, to be quite frank. It was just like brutal, like two days in the studio, just trying to hit everything right. But the audio book's great, especially if you're in your car a lot, like going between jobs or, you know, in between knocking doors, you know, in houses, that kind of thing. But yeah, the audio book, it's an audible version. You can find it on audible. And by the way, Tommy, just so we're all clear here, I know you're going to ask me like what books I'm reading because I've listened to enough of your podcasts to know that. And I want

to give a couple of books, but I have to be honest right now, I am in writing mode and I am about halfway done with book number two. So door-to-door millionaire number two, probably look for that in the next six to 12 months. We'll, we'll kind of see how editing goes and all those fun things that, you know, cause you've wrote a book to how those things work, but I'm about halfway done. And this is, this is going to be next level, like door-to-door millionaire secrets of making the sale is very, I mean, it's, it's a good foundational piece for any company. If you're looking to do door-to-door, quite frankly, if you don't ever want to do door-to-door, but you just want your technicians to be better at sales, get door-to-door millionaire. If door-to-door millionaire one is like one-on-one level stuff,

door-to-door millionaire two is going to be like 201, 301, 401 graduate level type courses. It's going to be something else. So I'm not really in reading mode right now. Any extra time that I have, I'm in writing mode. So I'm in a little bit different place. But because I know you're going to ask anyway, a couple books that I'd recommend. The Power of the Subconscious Mind. I'm just looking at the author here because I knew you're going to ask.

Joseph Murphy's a good one. I'm a huge fan of the fearless mind by Craig Manning. I actually spoke with him at a solar company event before, and he is just, he's awesome. I think he was the sports psychologist for the Milwaukee Bucks at one point. Anyway, he's, he's the man. And then just some basic ones that probably my third time through The Laws of Power by Robert Greene and those types of things. I like Malcolm Gladwell. I'm just kind of a fan of a bunch of different genres of books. But right now, I did read The

Home Service Millionaire. And I thought that was awesome. I'll give a plug for that one too. But like I said, any extra minute that I have, I'm in writing mode. In fact, before you call and I'm waiting for my son for his basketball practice to end and I'm writing, I just wrote a section on working on Saturdays and the pros cons and how to maximize Saturdays. So yeah, it's going to be awesome. It's going to be a great book. You know, I should probably start writing the home. I told you my second version is going to be the home service billionaire. Yes. Yes. It's going to be that next level of acquisitions, nights and weekends, creating demand where

there was no demand. We're going to do this again in a couple of years. There's going to be some cool stuff we're going to talk about because we're going to make some history. But ultimately, you name some books. I've got Power of the Subconscious Mind, Fearless Mind and the Laws of Power. The book, by the way, if you get Lenny's book, it's amazing.

It really talks a lot about mindset. It talks about just a lot of great things and little tips and name dropping and just getting over the no and training and recruiting. So it's a book that I think everybody should get because it's like you said, it teaches you a lot about the sales and hiring, even if you're not going to do door to door. But what I like to do at the end is I'm going to give you a few minutes to kind of just talk to people about is door to door right for them? Should they think about it?

I think it's a secret weapon. I think when I've heard about it and found out about it and heard of you, I think there's something special here that most people don't know. They don't understand. And when they could think outside of the box, you know, what I really love is Jay Abraham. He really thinks about taking something from other industries and pulling it into Europe. It's just do something different than no one's ever done before. And this is great for some, some industries because they're not just not used to it. So ultimately what I'd love to do is give you a few minutes of chat to the

audience and get them motivated to, to do something in their business today and motivate them to make differences and change the future. Thank you. And I, I really appreciate you being on. I know we, you're scheduled out. You're booked out so flipping long. I think when we met first, it was like, yeah, I need to get you on the podcast. I look at your availability and it's like, who wants a way? So I've been looking forward in great anticipation to be on the Tommy Mello Home Service Millionaire Podcast here. So I would

say I am a fan of people not necessarily doing what everybody else is doing. And I like what you said there. There are some home industries that I may have consulted for an HVAC company or roof company, garage door company, those types of companies, but there are still some opportunities there that aren't being realized. And if you are first to the table and you can prove a concept that incorporates door-to-door sales, that's going to put you so much further ahead of your competitors, so much more quickly than the race that your competitors are running. It's kind of like if you're in a car race, like Fast and Furious, you got that little nitro oxide, whatever. I don't know. I'm not a car guy, but you have that

little button. Whatever Vin Diesel uses when he pushes that button. That's it. You use that button. Like that's to me, that's what door-to-door sale is, wherever you're kind of cruising along, you're looking at the car next to you, you're waving, you're kind of in the same boat. Then all of a sudden you kind of turn, you kind of get that little smile. Like, look, I got the button, boom, and you're gone. That's what I think door-to-door sales can do for a company. If it's channeled in the right direction, if you have the right sales training program as well. That's a huge part of this, that so many people just think, well, I was successful on the doors or I've been successful at sales, so we can do door-to-door.

Not the case. One of the things I offer on my website is just a little playbook. It's not a sample playbook. It's, I can't remember, 20,000, 30,000 words, something like that. It's a good foundational piece that somebody can get for like 60 bucks, 70 bucks, I don't know, whatever it is. But it's got to be a program that you're committed to and that you're committed to growing around and growing with, but it doesn't need to start off like everybody else is starting it. You don't need to have 20 guys that are out there just pounding the doors. Maybe it's two, maybe it's one, you know,

maybe it's just a handful of guys that you've hand selected and said, you know what, we're going to figure this out. So be patient with me and we're going to figure out compensation to start. Maybe you're just starting at an okay hourly, you know, until you figure out a commission percentage that makes sense. And then you start to go through your numbers and go, you know what, I can actually afford this for these guys too. And so there's not an industry in the home service world that I can think of that I'd say, man, that's not going to be good for door to door. Because like you said earlier, Tommy, you got these Girl Scouts going around, you know, selling boxes of cookies or cups or whatever it is. It's like, you probably get those for,

you know, five, 10 bucks. Then you got people knocking doors, selling solar that I got a bid for over $50,000 on my house for solar. And so it's like, and then there's everything in between that. Right. And so I think there's an opportunity regardless of what your ticket price is to incorporate door-to-door sales. You just have to be smart about how you do it and grow with the right people and make sure you understand the process before you just jump into it and think

you can do it. Yeah. Yeah. I've failed at door to door actually about seven, eight years ago. I don't know if it was that long. It was two buildings ago and Hey, it's not for everybody. I mean, ultimately I think it could be if you team up with a guy like you, but you've got a lot of opportunities coming every angle. I mean, I think someone's got to start with the book, but I think you're right. I think one thing I got out of today for sure is it's your catalyst, right? It's something that's going to make you go faster, but also don't forget about SEO. Don't forget about the other things. And the one thing is don't just count on this. Take it from Lenny. He's made the mistakes,

probably are seeing the mistakes for sure of companies that are built only on one source. Look, if I had my whole company built off of Google and Google changed their algorithm, and it was just SEO, we'd be SOL. So I got a lot out of that. And I think this is absolutely right. It's your nitrous oxide that's going to make sure you run faster than you did before. Once you've got the system seat for me, I think I could give better service. And I do think we're in the neighborhoods. Like if you look at a heat map, the service Titan made, it's like crazy how many times we could be pulling up. We've done these neighbors and doing that Clover, but the Clover is not for everybody, but it's, it's, it's still

door knocking. And it's still, you's still door knocking and it's still you can take your lessons and say i was just at steve's house he said you probably for sure want this because of this so this has been awesome man i really love just talking to you i get so much out of it and i like i said is in a couple years we'll come back on here and talk about some of the cool things that i think is going to transpire over the next couple of years. But I appreciate you coming on and everybody could learn. If you're bored and you can't make Google work and you can't make ValPak work and you can't get social media to work and you don't have anything going on today, go knock on your neighbor's door and tell them what you're doing.

Tell them you want to go look at it. Give it a shot. I'd love to hear from you guys. I'd love to hear on this podcast, say, Tommy, I had a slow day. I'd love to hear some comments and feedback to say, dude, it was tough. I got rejected 10 times,

but I got let in a house and looked at the HVAC unit and I ended up selling a service agreement, whatever that looks like. But I'd love to hear more on different industries and this working for them. I don't care what it is. It could be chimney sweeping, but this has been awesome, Lenny. I really, really appreciate

you coming on. And like I said, you know me, I'm normally pacing. I'm just crazy. It's just been two days of very little sleep and very extensive schedule, but I'm not complaining because like I said, I'm getting more done than I've ever done in one week. If you see my schedule, it's ridiculously awesome. Hey, I just feel fortunate that I've ever done in one week. If you see my schedule, it's ridiculously awesome. Hey, I just feel fortunate that I've been on here and I got to help, you know, hopefully educate some people, get some good advice and really maybe just work with the mellow Tommy instead of the Tommy mellow today. Hey, you did. I'm very mellow today. It's very rare. So listen, Lenny, I'll be in touch with you. I'll give you a buzz later tonight. And once again, thank you so much. This means the world to me.

I think that we know now, think about this. If anything, create your own demand where it never existed. This is the one way you could do this through social media somewhat, but you can't create near as much as you could exist. This is amazing. This is truly something that's unlike anything I've ever seen. And billions of dollars have been made through door-to-door sales. It's crazy. So thanks again, Lenny. Awesome. Thanks, Tommy. All right. See you later. Hey guys, I just wanted to thank you real quick for listening to the podcast. From the bottom of my heart, it means a lot to me. And I hope you're getting as much as I am out of this podcast. Our goal is to enrich your lives and enrich your businesses and

your internal customers which is your staff and if you get a chance please please please subscribe you're gonna find out all the new podcasts gonna be able to ask me questions to ask the next guest coming on and and do me a quick favor leave a quick review. It really helps us out when you like the podcast and you leave a review, make it four or five sentences, tell us how we're doing. And I just wanted to mention real quick, we started a membership. It's homeservicemillionaire.com forward slash club. You get a ton of inside look at what we're going to do to become a billion dollar company. And we're telling everybody our secrets,

basically. And people say, why do you give your secrets away all the time? And we're just, we're telling everybody our secrets basically. And people say, why do you give your secrets away all the time? And I'm like, you know, the hardest part about giving away my secrets is actually trying to get people to do them. So we also create a lot of accountability within this program. So check it out. It's homeservicemillionaire.com forward slash club. It's cheap. It's a monthly payment. I'm not making any money on it to be completely frank with you guys. But I think it will enrich your life season further. So thank you once again for listening to the podcast.

I really appreciate it.