The Home Service Expert Podcast - Closing More Calls with Personalized Customer Service

Episode Date: November 11, 2022

Zac Garside is the CEO of Power Selling Pros, a company that gives personalized CSR & dispatch training to create a thriving culture of “WOW” experiences. He was previously Head of Marketing for the company, wherein he has personally coached more CSRs than he or anyone else at Power Selling Pros can count. He also hosts his own podcast called This Call May Be Recorded where he listens to recorded calls of CSRs and shares tips for improvement. In this episode, we talked about CSR training, communication, coaching, dispatcher training, employee retention...

that is the first problem that our CSRs face too, is they see themselves as, I just answer the phones. I'm just on support. I just handle customer complaints. And if your people see themselves that way, of course, the customer experience is going to be awful. Because if I see myself as just answering phones, or as just the lowest person in the company, then why would I create a wow experience for the customer? Now, there are, of course, exceptions, right? There are some people who feel a sense of duty. But for the most part, the first thing you have to do is change how they see themselves. 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. Hey guys, welcome back to the Home Service Expert. I'm your host, Tommy Mello, and today I have Zach Garside. Zach is an expert at CSR training, marketing, coaching, leadership, and communication. Zach is the CEO of Power Selling Pros, a company that gives personalized CSR and dispatch training to create a thriving culture of wow experiences. He was previously the head of marketing with the company a couple of years ago, wherein he personally coached more CSR than anyone else at power selling pros can count you may know him for this call may be recorded the live show he does every friday

where he listens to recorded csr phone calls and coaches them i use power selling pros we've used it for years we've gone on an office we're hiring more, we get back on. But I'll tell you what, at the last event, Vertical Track, we had Bring Him the Founder. I mean, you guys are doing some cool stuff, man. I got to tell you, I believe in you guys. I believe in your program. I think you guys do a fantastic job of training. Thanks, man. That's super nice of you to say. It's fun. It's fun. Thanks for having me on. Tell us a little bit about PowerStyling Pros, how you got started, what your goals are in the future at PowerStyling Pros. Yeah. Well, the company itself got started because Brigham was doing ads for contractors and he got the usual, your ads are no good. These guys just want a ballpark price. They just want to know how much we charge. They want to talk to tech. So Brigham pivoted from advertising to CSR coaching because he knew, look, if that customer has a problem, it's probably not a lead issue. You can help that person. If they want a price, you can help them. You can book that call. We've been doing it for

15 years almost. 1,100 CSRs in coaching today. We coach them all one-on-one, listen to their phone calls, give them personalized feedback. The future really is about the fact that customers no longer compare you to your direct competition. They compare you to every brand in their life. So you've got to create an amazing experience if you want them to give you their loyalty. And that's really what everything we're doing is all about, giving contractors the tools to be able to create the best customer experience in your market, period. You know what's interesting, Zach? I was on the phone earlier with a gal that's going to be running the call center. She's starting on the 15th of August.

And she's one sector of it because we're going Spanish. So we're going bilingual. She's very good at that. And so we're building our whole website out in Spanish. We're going CSRs, dispatchers, technicians, fully bilingual. But she goes, what would you say your goal is for the CSR, the whole department? And I said, that's a great question. Her name's Nadia. I said, my mom used to answer our phones in 2010 and her voice when she started she'd get up on the phone and she'd be like thank you for calling a1 garage for a service my name's sheena how may i help you today

and she'd start talking to them and she'd smile on the phone and she'd go you're gonna love tommy she never told him she was my mom she goes this, he's the hardest worker we'll ever meet. He's just determined. He's a goal setter. When I show up to these houses, the people gave me hugs. It was crazy. So I told her this story and I said, you know, I want somebody that wants more out of life to work with me. I want somebody that wants to own a house. You know, Simon Sinek walked through the four seasons and he said, the weird thing about the four seasons is the people, I believe them. They actually want to know how I'm doing. They don't have to act. They want this. And I said, so if I had to tell you, I said, I want them to have the best experience possible. I want them, my technicians to show up and because we show up, we offer coffee,

Gatorade, soda on the way, you know, service tight and tells you exactly where you are. But I said, I want them to enjoy the full experience and I want them to care. I guess to add into that, she loved it. And I was genuine, but how do you take a shitty person that doesn't give a crap? Is it it just you put on your acting suit and just say hey act like you're a good person or what how do you do that or you just got to restart you ever say you got to can somebody to companies that's a great question the first problem have you ever seen hell's kitchen or like uh hotel hell with gordon ramsey i browsed it so yeah he basically goes into hotels that are in shambles. And first of all, he tears them down, tells them all what awful people they are.

And then he builds them back up and changes their business forever. I have seen one of those. Yeah. Yeah. It's an awesome show. So there's this episode where Gordon Ramsay goes into this hotel, orders some food from the kitchen, and he's disgusted with it. What is this pile of crap? Marches down to the kitchen,

like he's out for blood. And he goes to the chef. He's like, who's in charge here? Who's responsible for the meal I just ate? And everybody's kind of pointing fingers at each other. Nobody will own up to it. So finally, the head chef kind of fesses up and he walks out crying. But he's not crying because Gordon Ramsay got mad at him. He's crying because he has little kids at home and his little kids think he's Superman. He's their hero, but he doesn't see himself that way. He sees himself as a dispensable cog in a machine. He sees himself as some guy who's just forced to cook leftovers and stuff out of a can. And that is the first problem that our CSRs face too, is they see themselves as, I just answer the phones. I'm just on support. I just handle

customer complaints. And if your people see themselves that way, of course, the customer experience is going to be awful. Because if I see myself as just answering phones, or as just the lowest person in the company, then why would I create a wow experience for the customer? Now, there are, of course, exceptions, right? There are some people who feel a sense of duty. But for the most part, the first thing you have to do is change how they see themselves. And you sit down with those CSRs and you say, I need you guys to know that you're the first impression of the company. And if I haven't treated you right, if I haven't treated you that way in the past,

I apologize because I've been listening to your calls and I realize now how crucial you are. What can I do to support you? Yeah, empower them and make them feel special. Yeah, change that perception. That's the first thing. That's pretty powerful. What I tend to do is I've got this,

I call it the beer test. Would I go have a beer with this person? Could they tell a good story? Do I appreciate their eye contact? You know, I've seen people on the phone and I do it myself. I got a different phone voice and it's kind of weird, but I'm like, I can't even do it. I'm like, absolutely, sir. We could definitely handle that. And the weird thing is when people meet me, I don't have anything on my shirt that says owner ever i never tell anybody i'm the owner i don't know my car that doesn't even say owner but they always ask me even on the phone are you the owner it's because of how i i guess there's a certain way we handle

ourselves and when you get employees that get called the owner and a couple of my guys they ask the same questions i know those are top people. And it's funny because they used to ask my mom, are you the owner? Oh, nice. And it's because she took responsibility. She really listened. Active listening is probably the biggest thing missing in most call centers. So I don't think people understand this. If you go from 60% to 90% booking at a $500 ticket average, and the CSR takes 20 calls a day, and they work 200, 250, 300 days out of the year.

I always tell people, I've done the math. You make an extra million dollars for that company. Yeah. A million dollars. But yet, everybody goes, there's just a CSR. I pay them $14 an hour. My best CSR has made 27 bucks an hour. They earn it.

It's a performance pay. So why is it important to invest in your CSRs and dispatchers? Well, you just said one reason. It's a math problem. You know, like once you do the math, and I think that's why most people are afraid of it is because they haven't done the math, you know, and they kind of think, well, I have to pay them the least amount. That's just the way it is. I went to a call center earlier this year, actually, with more than 50 CSRs. And I was talking about the high turnover, they can't get anybody to stay in the job, their booking rates aren't that great. And one of the

key leaders of the company, C-suite guy said, well, that's just how it is, right? That's the customer service position. That's what we deal with. I said, that is just how it is if that's what you choose to accept. This position is so important because number one, it's the first impression of the company. If the CSR doesn't book the call, no one else gets an opportunity. Number two, even if they do book the call, if it's not a great experience, to your story earlier, the technician's at a disadvantage now. Now the tech not only has to sell what he's going to sell, but he's got to make up for the bad first impression. That customer's skeptical when you get there. They

might even be calling somebody else. So it's all about that first impression. It's all about the math, right? On booking more calls, how much more money can you make if you increase your booking rate by 10, 20%. And then finally, it's just a better way to do business. Do you really want employees in your company to go home every day believing that they are less than? Is that really how you want to operate? I think most people would say, no, of course not. So treat them that way, right? Invest in them. Do something, anything to show them they're important. You know, I was just talking to somebody earlier, and I'm the CEO of this company called A1 Garage Door Service.

And my role is changing dramatically this year and next year. My job is really becoming how to find acquisition partners and how to make people feel special. How do I reward people? How do I compliment more? I mean, I'm going to build a whole freaking CRM, literally HubSpot or Salesforce. It just is relationships within the company. So I can get their kids' names right.

So I can talk to them about their goals and their dreams. We've got a dream manager here. But I'm not in business anymore to make money. I'm in business to change lives. So without appreciation, I realized one day Zach, I'm the biggest problem in the company. If someone gets in a car accident, it's on me. If the culture is not good, it's on me. Also, I get to accept the awards at the end of the year or whatever too. I mean, we just won the best places to work. So that it's an honor honor but you got to take the good with the bad and i think a lot of owners they blame everybody else the economy's bad oh we're going into a recession oh my god covid killed us look if you got a movie theater you got shut down yes okay there's real things to cry about

but how many business owners do you know that make every excuse in the world why they suck of course i mean do you hear that a lot about people like, I can't find anybody, I tried, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Yeah, all the time. All the time. I can't find people, they don't stay in the job, COVID this, e-commerce that. What if I train them and they leave? My answer to that is, what if I train them and they stay? Yeah, I was like, everybody knows I'm going to stay to that, right? what if I train them and they stay? Yeah, I was like, everybody knows what I'm going to say to that, right? What if you don't and they stay? What the heck?

Let's say they leave. Let's say they leave. Honestly, they're going to leave at some point, right? Like, oh no, you invested in a human being and you helped them develop their skills and they left. Like, what a shame. One of the things I say, I give everybody a graduation form and i say this isn't just a piece of paper you can go work for my technician when they graduate you could go work at any company in the world with this piece of paper we've got the best training program in

the world at garage door training and this will get you the door get you in the door anywhere but here's the deal when you're with client, here's what I want you to say. Mr. Zach, I've got the option to work at any garage or company in the world. The reason I choose A1 and I need you to build the company up because they're buying from the company. Then is when we go into looking at the Harley Davidson and we say, that's a cool Harley. You ever go to Sturgis? Sturgis is this week. You headed up there? You ever been to Mount Rushmore? So they got to believe the company's great because that's who they're buying from. And then we connect personally. This is tough skills. This is stuff that people need to focus on. And then what's the best way to monitor calls? That's a personal question because we were just

talking about this. Do you just listen to one out of five? Do you get call caps to listen to all of them? They've got their call assurance or whatever. What's the best way to monitor CSRs? That's a great question. That's funny you ask that because we're literally talking about a new service we're rolling out that is call monitoring only. It depends on your call volume, first of all. If you're doing 10,000 calls over the course of a week or a course of a month and you listen to 100, I don't know, not the best. I think you should listen to at least 10% of your calls, like beginning to end full phone calls, and then judge on two things. Number one is you have a checklist of things they have to cover. Yeah, you got your scorecard. But number two, you got to have some type of subjective customer service, customer experience score as well that you give them.

We're looking for positive energy. We're looking for confidence, empathy, listening skills, that they focus on what they can do, take responsibility, ask for the business. And then you average it out, right? You give them a score based on both things. And if you cover your scorecard and a customer experience measure of some kind on at least 10% of your calls, I think you can feel pretty confident that you have a good picture of what's going on. That's good. That's fair. I like that number. I went out to dinner last night

with a few of the people here and I happen to know the P firm that bought Dutch Brothers. And he explained to us what they do at Dutch Brothers is they have one person working there. Just their job is not to make coffee, not to turn it off. The person that's collecting the money, they've got a whole formula of what they talk about. They got to look at something in the car. They got to talk about something in their car. I'm like, I don't know. You know, it's kind of weird, but I'm like thinking, what are they going to talk they going to talk about a bottle of smart water? But they got this thing down to a science.

They got to ask about how their day's going. They got to ask this, this, this. And I think it's really hard sometimes to train somebody. There's IQ and EQ. How important is EQ? Oh, do you want the customer to like you? Here's the thing. You know what my favorite question to teach CSRs to ask on the phone is? Because no one asks this. You should see if your call center is asking this question. I love to ask the customer, how's this affecting your schedule today? Nobody asks that.

But what instantly happens when you ask that question? Even if you don't have super high EQ or emotional intelligence, what you've done is you've shown the customer, I'm going to be the only company you talk to today that shows an interest in how this is affecting your schedule, that shows an interest in the soccer practice you're missing later today, or the work time that you're taking off to get this addressed. There's four types of ROI. There's money ROI. Yes. If I give you $100, I want at least $200 of value back. But there's also time ROI. Yes. If I give you a hundred dollars, I want at least $200 of value back, but there's also time ROI. All the time I'm taking away from work and hobbies and kids to get this done. There's emotional ROI, the energy I'm putting into this call, the stress I feel from the problem. And then of course there's mental ROI, the time I spend comparing you to other companies, reading your reviews, doing the math on your

pricing, looking at your options. I need an ROI on all those things. And if you can give me that, you will develop emotional intelligence over time because you don't develop emotional intelligence until you have a reason to care about it. But you don't have a reason to care about it until you start forcing yourself to practice it. Do something that you're uncomfortable with. Ask them how it's affecting their schedule. Tell them this is really frustrating. I hate to hear you're dealing with this. And as you do it and see the results, see how customers just flat out like you better, they put your name in the review, you will develop the emotional intelligence just as

a simple byproduct of the fact that you practiced the skills. You're not buff when you go to the gym, but you become buff if you go to the gym, right? Well, yeah, that's the thing that Simon Sinek said too. He goes, you can't brush your teeth for 10 hours a day and expect to have perfect teeth. You know, it's consistency. There's a great book called The Consistency Chain that you should check out. So I was going to tell you about the ideal team player. They say you got to be hungry, humble, and smart. But the thing that they talk about is it's not IQ, it's EQ smart. It's like, how do you make other people feel? And I think a lot of us forget about that. I love when they

can't book a phone call and I jump on the line and I'm like, hey there, how are you? One of the favorite questions I have is, listen, what is it going to take to earn your business today? Because I want to be your garage or company because I know you're going to tell all your friends, your neighbors, and your family when we do an amazing job for you. And they'll tell me, listen, I want a free estimate or whatever. And usually I'll just go through that. And I'm like, listen, if you're worried about the trip charge, if you're happy with what my technician has to say, are you going to do business with us? Yes or no? And they'll be like, of course. And I'm like, then I'm just going to get my technician

out there, but it's going to be on our schedule because we're just going to stop by when we're in the neighborhood. Does that sound fair? Because I don't like to just get rid of a fee or just go lower. I'll say, listen, if you want the price lower, you got to do something for me. And you just said one of the four things that we invested. I need you to take your time to go do a few reviews for us if you think we did a great job.

Does that sound fair? So that's what I do when I discount stuff. I love that. What's beautiful about that is you really can't script that, Tommy. Like you really can't script those kinds of conversations, right? Everybody wants a script.

Everybody wants a perfect process. But at the end of the day, you have to realize that success with the customer has more to do with who you are than what you say. When you use that phrase, what do we got to do with who you are than what you say. When you use that phrase, what do we got to do to be your garage door company today? If I just put that on paper, people are going to read that and be like, this is used car settlement crap. But when you hear the way it comes up in the conversation

and how it's just a result of a good relationship, you realize I can say pretty much anything. If the customer likes me, I can make a mistake. I can use pretty much anything if the customer likes me. I can make a mistake. I can use these hard closing tactics, as people call them, because I have a relationship and the customer trusts I'm doing what's best for them. It's way more about who you are and less about what's on your script that determines if that customer is going to give you their loyalty, long-term relationship. That's absolutely true. And that's why the hiring is so important because

I just had a gal on the podcast. Her name is Barbara and she's an expert like 1982. She's been recruiting since. And she's like, the one thing that most companies don't do is put them through a stress test, teach them how to answer calls for an hour. And maybe you don't want to lose clients. So maybe you just do outbound calls to book maintenance. But she goes, we teach them for an hour, then make them do it for three. One-third make it through that, the three people I would have hired. One-third make it through this test. So think about that. These two people would have quit within a year because they hated the job. They said, how long do I have to do this for? So I think that stress test is absolutely a game changer. talked to me a

little bit about i think a lot of people are confused because service titan really was built for a csr versus a dispatcher and a lot of people can't fathom like they're like i can do both and i'm like can you really optimize a full schedule for your best performers or the best jobs with minimum windshield time and reschedule things and ask the right questions. Can you get out of your garage drawer? Because then you can reschedule that. Do you know what to reschedule? Can you give certain discounts in advance if you've got to reschedule? There's so much stuff to dispatching. And CSR's job is to book the call, but how do you explain it? The difference between CSR and a dispatcher? Yeah.

Well, you should separate them if you can, right? Obviously, every company is going to start with somebody doing both jobs. But a CSR, what is the job for? A CSR has three jobs. Book the call, create a wow experience, and uncover additional revenue opportunities. This is the only time the customer is giving you their undivided attention. Make sure you offer your additional services. Those are the three jobs of a CSR. If you do those three things on every call, you're top 1% CSR. A dispatcher's job

is to maximize revenue and maintain the quality of the customer experience that the CSR created. Those are the two things. And so the dispatcher, their job is not just to fill the board of appointments. It is, as you said, okay, let's front load the day, right? With our immediate jobs, we need to get done. Let's leave the rest of the day open for our high value jobs. The dispatcher needs to be really good at determining windshield time, drive time, family emergency kind of stuff. How old is the equipment that we're working on? So there's a lot more that you need to consider as a dispatcher in terms of when to schedule jobs. As a CSR though, your job is to book it, create a

while experience, uncover additional revenue opportunity. Dispatcher, maximize revenue, maintain the quality of the customer experience. Once you break those two things up, you realize they kind of have to be separate as you grow. It's not a great idea to do both ways because the more responsibilities you give them, the more you harm your ability to maximize revenue. There's no way that they're going to maximize revenue if they're doing both jobs and invoicing and payroll and permits and on and on and on it goes, right? You got to separate them if you can. Well, not only that, but I find the people, they're usually smaller companies, but they're also the bookkeeper, the greeter at the front desk. Henry Ford was a genius to create an assembly line and create specialists. And I

think that's the key is create somebody. And you can even split up a call center. You could have outbound callers, you could have inbound. i remember the first thing that i brigham played this i'll tell you a funny story this is five or six years ago brigham came down to train us himself nice and he's in the training and um i don't know how this happened but he walks in like tommy can you save this call and And I'm like, go ahead, bring him. Oh, yeah, there we go. He looks at me like, I don't know anything about the industry. And so he gets on the phone and he's like, whatever, I'll handle it. So he gets on the phone and the guy's like, I need to know how much you charge for a jack shaft, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And I'm like, you better let me take this but it was just kind of

funny because the one thing he plays all the time is when somebody called him they're like oh i think you got the wrong number and the girl's like oh my gosh are you sure you don't need any plumbing you know that call probably yeah and someone calls the wrong number and she books the call anyway like that is a true passionate really great csr and i hate the word csr by the way they're like customer experience specialists or something better how much should we be paying i do performance pay how much should we be paying this position well you should have a performance pay structure of some kind. So the first thing I tell every company is, okay, number one, go onto Indeed or Glassdoor, some basic site, find what the average pay for the position in your area is and beat it by 10%. So start there.

That's the baseline. And then number one is set up a performance pay structure based on booking percentage, additional services offered. If you sell a maintenance plan, give them a $10 bonus every time they sell a maintenance plan. If they renew a maintenance plan, give them $5 every time they renew it. Reviews, if the CSR gets their name in a review, give them a bonus.

There's all kinds of ways to bonus and spiff them. But the baseline for me is always, what's the market average for us by 10%? And then let's have a really compelling bonus structure on top of it for booking percentage, additional services, maintenance plans, and customer experience. You know what? One of the things you can do, it's pretty easy math, is to analyze your booking rate.

One of the things I look at when I help consult companies is I look at one of the bigger things, their booking rate. It's the first thing you can fix. A lot of times they're closed weekends, they're closed nights, whatever. I fix that right away. And one of the things you could do is just say, if I was to get 10% more volume, I like people to make a lot of money. I want my CSRs. I want everybody to make a lot of money. I mean, I want them to buy a house.

I want to do all these great things in their life. They've got the opportunity to move up. Dispatchers is a different function. I think it's a different personality. Dispatchers are good problem solvers. They can handle puzzles. They're puzzles. That's good. CSRs are just really great on the phone. It's tough for me because just the same thing over and over. There's not enough change. What do you see the average

expectancy, the timeline of a CSR stand of the company? I think it depends on the culture, but is there an average? Yeah, I could give you the it depends answer. But truthfully, this is subjectively from my experience and opinion, it's like 18 months. And I say that because the average person who joins our program is in it for like 18 months. And the number one people leave our coaching program is because they're CSRs. Quit, they go to a different department of the company, get fired, some other reason. It's like a year to 18 months. A big part of it, obviously, is, yeah, it can feel monotonous. A big way to help with that, though,

get the management team in there to answer phones for a day. Get a technician to answer phones for a day. Because then the manager or the technician cannot help themselves, but at the end of the day say, holy crap, this is an intense job. I never realized how much you do. And that alone gets a lot of CSRs to say, all right, I can do this. At least if I feel respected, if I feel recognized, I can do this. I can deal with a lot of the difficulties here. But the longer you go without anybody recognizing the difficulty, like they feel like they're on an island, the greater the likelihood they quit sooner. You know, this is Barbara gal the other day. She also said the number one thing I see for people not to quit. And the stat is alarming. 82% of the people are willing to take another offer if it's better. But she said the one thing that keeps it like glue is when they have very good friends that they work with.

And it might be a manager, might be a co-worker, whatever it is. So I started thinking long and hard about this. Where do you make friends? I don't make friends on the phone. I'm in there next to somebody. I make friends after work. We go for a beer, we go play volleyball, we shoot pool, whatever it is.

I'm doubling down on my outing. Look, if you say you can't afford it, then go play frisbee. Go get a volleyball. Get the kids to know each other. Get the wives or husbands to know each other. The more you could do these things, and listen, it's also great for culture. It sounds bad because some of the stuff I do, I want two birds with one stone. Of course, I want to keep my employees longer. You know, who wouldn't? But at the same time, I really dig it when they're like, I love this place. I love Mondays. I like Saturdays better than Mondays.

I'll be honest. I enjoy my extracurricular time. But I don't mind Mondays. I don't mind. During COVID, I came in every day. And you seem like the type of guy that loves your job you seem like you change lives you help people you grow businesses the power selling pros there's not a person i've met from that company that doesn't

care i think that's pretty special yeah that's for saying that we try how the heck do you guys self-service agreements over the phone like i want to prove my value and then say listen one of my favorite things is and i'm sorry to take your thunder here but i give you 151 point tune up and say do you want to take care of this yourself next year you want me to come back and do it for you it's a killer it works every time but tell me how you're doing it over the phone okay reference is going to blow your mind, we have a client, Morrison Plumbing, Heating, and Air. They sell 90% of their maintenance plans on the phone. Overwhelming majority over the phone. Their technicians don't even like to sell them anymore because the CSR just sets it up, right? So number one, if it's an inbound call where I'm just

scheduling a basic service appointment, somebody's got an issue. At the end of the call, there's a couple of ways you can approach it. One is to simply say, hey, quick question. Will you be paying full price today or will you be paying the PowerSling Pros family discount price today? And the customer can't help themselves but say, well, tell me more about that. I say, oh, it's really awesome, actually, because what we do is we prevent things like this from happening in the first place. We come out twice a year to do maintenance, put you on our urgency list.

Every time we get you on the schedule, you get to bypass call-out fees, emergency dispatch fees. It's only $19 a month. I can get you signed up for that right now if you want to. Do you want to pay less or do you want to pay more? That is really good. And again, this depends on the relationship, right? I think people get so caught up on the language sometimes because they're like, I don't want to be pushy. I say, that's why the experience is first. That's why the relationship is first. Because if you have that

understanding, that empathy, that great experience, then when you get to that point, you're not going to have a problem asking them, hey, will you be paying full price today or will you be paying the family price? Another way is if it's a repeat customer, they've done business with you before, you see it in your system, you simply say, hey, John, I noticed that we've worked with you before, but you're not a member of our family plan. I'm wondering why. And then he says, oh, I've never heard of it. Not interested. I say, that's all right. Most of our customers who do it do so because it gives them discounted service.

They get to bypass the waitlist. All our call-out fees are waived. It's only $19 a month. Can I get you signed up? Yeah. Prevent things like this from happening? That's crazy, man. I think that's so good.

My buddy, Jody, that I work with, he's the guy that does a lot of the hiring for us for the techs and CSRs. Rapid Hire Pro. He and I were talking earlier, and he just texted me a bit ago. Deidre, his top gal, her mom died, so it's pretty sad. But this happened a few days ago. But they had to cancel their air conditioning meeting. So they had an air conditioning company coming out, and he texted me a picture of the flowers from the air conditioning company saying, we're sorry for your loss with a card.

And I mean, that's some next level shit. Like you got to have somebody that cares. I haven't empowered my CSRs to send flowers yet. Yeah. But would you be mad if they did, if they came to you and said, I don't want them sending flowers to every one of their roommates but you know i think they have some tracking but i'm not afraid to spend money on anything in fact i'm trying to spend as much money as i could for i think it's so important to build the right team because an a player will bring you new places you never thought you could be a b player will keep you where you're at a c player they get fired you know a guy said this

once i wouldn't even go who it is, but most people know this. He said, the worst thing in the world is a good employee because great employees take you straight up. Bad employees get fired. Good employees, they just stay there. They're okay. They don't get written up. They keep the past. So what I would inspire each person to do that's listening, and there's going to be 10,000 more here when this podcast comes out, I would implore you to make a list of all your people. And if we do go through a little downturn, they're not a number. But if they're not giving 100% and you've talked to them, no one should get fired.

Everybody should be discussed and then spoken to. But if it's an attitude problem, but it's a will, or if they got a will, I'll find a way. I'll work with you. But if you just are just kind of burnt out or just not loving it, you got to get rid of it. You got to slice and dice and get rid of the crap. I mean, have you ever, I'm sure you've recommended firing somebody. How often does that happen? Not often. I mean, as you can imagine, it's never our first response. And to be fair, we do try to avoid that at all costs.

Our philosophy is really to give information, let our clients make the decision for themselves. We just want to give facts, right? So like they're booking 50% of their calls. It's been that way for four months. They are not improving. They push back on coaching sessions. They don't show up to some coaching sessions. Here's the information. Do with it what you will. And I think people can make a good decision with the right information, right? Good information leads to good decision making. But the thing that really shocks me the most is

how scared so many leaders are to just be honest with their people who are C players. I sympathize with a lot of C and B players because they've just never been told that they are that. Well, they never been told they're an A player, I guess what you're saying. Yeah. I mean, they've never been told like you are this, you are a B player. This is how we perceive you. They've never been given that direct feedback. I think you've got to be honest with your people. There's a really great tool I love. It's called contrasting. It's where you sit down with somebody who you got to have a difficult conversation with and you start with what you don't intend to do. So you start by saying, hey, John, let me just start by saying my intention is not to hurt your feelings, to make you feel belittled, or even to make you feel like your

job's unsafe. That's not what I'm here to do today. And so you're immediately getting rid of all the negative allegations, right? Just get it out there because he's going to be thinking at the whole conversation if you don't say it up front. And then after you've said what you do not intend to do with the conversation, tell them what you do intend. What I am here to do, John, is give you some honest feedback that's going to help you get better. Can I give you that? It's a really powerful way to give that feedback when you do have somebody who's on the fringes like that. Be brutally honest. Let them know, right now we kind of see you as a good employee, a good member of our team here, but you're not raising the level of play of everyone else around you. Here's what we'd like to see change. And then ask them, get them involved in the process

as well and ask, what are you seeing that you could do to raise the level of play here? What have we failed to communicate to you that you feel is led this way? What does success look like for you? But contrasting is a really powerful way to start those conversations with people. You know, I was going to ask you,

we all get our handful of rude rude kind of assholey customers. It's just kind of like they're having a bad day. What's the best way to handle that? And don't take things personally if you're a CSR, but how do you stay, say, without getting rude to the client back? What's your best approach? Well, if they're mad at you because of something your company did, the magic words that you should start that conversation with are, John, you've done the right thing by calling to let us know our service is not perfect. That doesn't mean that John is right. That doesn't mean you made a mistake.

That just means you're telling John, you have done the right thing by calling to let us know our service has not been perfect. I'm going to make my top priority to take care of you. That's if they're mad with you. If they're just mad in general, I like to call it be a mind reader. A lot of CSRs say, anybody in general, what should I say? They're upset. They're pissed. They got a bad...

I say, what do you think is happening in their minds right now? What words are they using to describe the situation? And that's easy to guess. Oh, this sucks. This is frustrating. I hate this. So say those words exactly. Just mirror it.

Say to the customer, Mr. Jones, this is not a fun situation you're in right now. And he's going to go, yes, thank you. Thank you. That's exactly what I'm thinking. And by simply doing that, you build a connection. Even if they continue to be mean, they're going to trust you a little bit more. Because if you say what they're thinking in their head, then again, they know that you understand them. Customers do not do business with the best companies.

They do business with the companies that understand them the best. And that should be your goal when someone's upset or in a bad mood with you. The number one rule I've learned is 1% of people. That was fantastic, by the way. 1% of people are going to be unhappy. And the way that I do it is I say, Zach, if you don't mind, I'm calling you back because I want to get on top of the situation. And first of all, I want to express my sympathy and concern for your situation. And this is not okay. I'm so sorry we wasted your time. Your time is so very important. And I realized that. And I want to tell you something about this company is when I started this company, I was the technician. I was the CSR, the dispatcher,

and I care more than anybody because it's clients like you that I know help grow the company. And you're going to tell people about us. So I want to know exactly to the T what happened. And literally, this is a 20-minute conversation I'm telling you. And all I do is they start and I put it on mute and speakerphone. And usually there's someone else. I don't do this as much as I used to. And I go, that is ridiculous.

I'm embarrassed. I'm going to work on this right now. I am so sorry. Can I call you back in about an hour? I'm going to get some results for you. And they're like, yeah, like this guy was a jerk. And I'm like, you know what, sir? He was a jerk to every manager. They were insulted. Like people were going to quit because of this guy. And I go, sir, why don't I just come out to your house and meet you? I go in this gated community. He's got his own little ski lake there. I mean, it's literally a ski jump lake. And this is in Arizona. And I go, sir, I'm just here to make sure we do the right thing. And he shakes my hand. He's like, we jammed for four hours. Had a cup of wine with him. Wow, dude, that's awesome.

You know, it's crazy because all you got to do is give a shit. But how do you make somebody, so you said empower them, let them know they can make decisions, continue to invest in them. What other tips do you have to just really get somebody to care? Have you ever heard of this book right here, Turn the Ship Around? No, I have not. This is ridiculous because I've had it on every book. You've got to read it. So I'm going through this one right now. I've had it for a long time. I gone through it once david marquet he was a nuclear

submarine captain in the navy lives are literally at stake and in the navy when you become a captain you are a technical expert like you have to know inside and out but at the last minute before his tour he gets switched to a ship that he doesn't know anything about. So his team, they're looking to their leader thinking, you're supposed to be the expert. You're supposed to have all the answers for us. And he's like, I literally don't have them. You guys, every single person on this ship knows more than I do right now. So he implemented what he calls intent-based leadership. And that is, he works people up levels from being told what to do. Everybody's got to start there. It's inevitable. You just have to accept

when people are new, they have to be told what to do. Give them a script, give them something to get them familiar with things. But then you got to work them up these levels from, I need to be told what to do, to giving them permission to come to you and say, Hey boss, here's what I intend to do. It's intent-based, right? And so when you got your people, right, would you rather your CSRs and your dispatchers come to you and say, boss, I need a script and a process, or would you rather they come to you and say, Hey boss, I just made a new script that I intend to use on the phone. Can I get your seal of approval? Oh, man, I'll tell you what.

If you empower them, they're the best. They do this every day. You're absolutely right. Yeah. And it's just about asking questions, right? Like your job is to ask them two questions. That's it. Hey, you've got a cool idea.

Is it safe? Is it the right thing to do? You know, here's the thing. The reason why I respect each one of my coworkers so much is because I try to hire people better than me. I don't go into this and go, I'm smarter than you. You're hired. I go, you're a genius. You do such a great job. Why not get people that you love? And then the problem is people are going, well, I can't because I can't get anybody to show up on an interview, right? Well, I'm having an event on Sunday here in Phoenix. We've already got 150 people signed up for an interview.

We're out there canvassing today, tomorrow, and Saturday. And I'm telling you, I'm probably going to hire 50 people. But the deal is, we're not having a tough time at all. I got to tell you, hiring is not the issue. But building a place where people want to come to work is. And it's easier said than done, because I'll tell you what, this culture word was a four letter word around me 10 years ago. My culture is smulcher.

You don't know the crap I'm going through. There's nightmares over here. I'm putting out fires. I'm a fireman. And then I realized, once again, I'm the issue. I treat people like crap. I see them smoking outside. I get mad.

You know what the deal is? I should have created a smoke section and really timed it better because I had some people that smoked a lot, but that's one thing I would say is try not to hire smokers because their voices, their coughing. I'm sorry if any smokers out there, but yeah, that's disgusting. What are some dispatching software tools you can recommend for service companies oh boy you want me to start picking favorites now you're gonna you're gonna go into crm is there yeah i mean get it all together in one if you can right service titan house call pro depending on you too on your I mean, those are the two I recommend.

Get it all together. Be efficient. One of the things we're doing, and this is kind of, I don't know why I'm telling everybody this, but I'm working on a tool to rate the customer. And we can take analytics. We can know how when they moved in the home, we can know what their credit score is.

We can know how they sounded on the phone. There's all these tools with AI. One of the things that Marcus shared and talks about is how we could use HubSpot, give them a buyer's guide, use a certain script to ensure that they look at it, and then know where they went on the buyer's guide to help know who to send out to that call to sell them and make sure they're prepared. Because if somebody, let's put it, for example, if I had a landscape company and I sent you a buyer's guide and you looked all on the palm trees was the main page you looked at. I want to know somebody that knows a lot about palm trees, trimming, how to make it healthy. So you're sending the right person.

That's the note. trees trimming, how to make it healthy. You're sending the right person. If you visited and you looked at wood garage doors, I want to bring out a lot of wood samples and I want to get one of my closures because that's an expensive big profit door. I think there's some tools out there that literally help you understand.

I put my best technician against anybody and he'll still get more money than anything. But how do I get my best technician at the best opportunities? Not just the number one correlation we found is how many garage doors do they have? That's the highest. If they have more than one, if they have two, if they have three, and all this stuff is a Google Street View away. Typically, they got bigger houses if they have multiple garage doors. Typically, they make more money.

But yeah, I think service sites come a long way since they were inception. houses that they have multiple garage doors typically they make more money you know but yeah you know i think service times come a long way since they were inception and house call pros really they've got a lot of developers over there they're doing some big things as well yeah what are the pros and cons i mean just a quick synopsis of each one is there obviously the money is quite a bit different from service time house call pro is there anything else that you could kind of throw out there i love love Phones Pro, what ServiceTitan is doing with their sentiment tracking on precisely what you're talking about, understanding the talent and intent of the customer.

ServiceTitan is just getting so advanced with it, with the ability to track call metrics, track call quality. It really makes coaching super easy. My philosophy on it is the faster I can get feedback. And this kind of to your point just a second ago, right? You brought a software to mind. I cannot remember the name of it for the life of me that does what you're describing. Like when a customer record comes in, you get their email address. It then pulls in all this data from everywhere. So think of it.

Yeah. I cannot remember for the life of me what it is though like i've seen it i can even picture the dashboard in my brain i got the picture of the customer from their gmail here their credit score income estimate i'm gonna remember this i'm gonna figure this out well yeah you know there's a lot of ways to buy the data pull it into one spot find out there's certain things and if you could grab a few pictures with schedule engine and you can know that's really helpful. I mean, you heard the service saying about schedule engine. Yeah. You heard that pretty astounding. Yeah.

You know, dispatching is really like it's so weird because you and I can be sitting dispatching completely different and both be right. I haven't figured out an exact system to say this guy goes to this based on this, because if you get another call at 8 p.m. and it's an and restaurant industry is you've got two people waiting on food, three people waiting to be sat. And you also have someone that needs silverware or something. There was no wrong answer. Just we wanted to see that you had common sense on. Hey, guys, I just wanted to communicate with you.

Whatever person that does the seating. I'm thinking of the hostess. Give them enough ownership. It communicate properly. Just got to be able to communicate with you. Whatever person that does the seating, I'm thinking of the hostess. Give them an update, take ownership. Communicate properly. You just got to be able to walk through it. So when you're training dispatchers, what kind of things are you training them on? Okay. That's a beautiful question.

You know, Josh Kelly, right? You guys did a thing last week, right? Yeah, we just did a thing last week. So he and I talked about this several months ago because I was asking about the system for getting the best technician out to the best job. What's the best way to do that? He made a really great point, which is hard for a lot of people to accept, but it's true. You truly don't know how valuable any given job is going to be. You have to act like every one of them could be your most valuable job you've ever done. That's assumption number one, because the fact is the technology to be able to

perfectly pair your technicians with the right job is kind of limited still. Number one, that's why the customer experience is so important. You got to treat every single job like they're going to be your biggest job of the day. Number two, though, don't underestimate the power of asking great questions on the phone. That's what we teach our dispatchers and CSRs more than anything, because everybody we coach

uses a different kind of software, right? But everybody can ask the same types of questions. And there are some really easy, high leverage ones. You know, if you're an AC, there's like three or four different questions you can ask to determine, okay, is this going to be a high value job? Same thing with garage door. If you can notice things on a buyer's guide, if you can notice behavior patterns,

you can also formulate questions to understand those patterns before you even send the buyer's guide. You can really quickly tell the customer, hey, we've got these four different types of garage doors, wood, et cetera, et cetera. Which of those is more in your alley? Something like that, right? And just asking those really simple questions, it only takes 30 to 45 seconds. We'll give you an idea of, all right, we're going to treat every customer

like they could be our biggest one yet. But based on the information we have, we feel like this guy is going to be the biggest one. So let's put our closers out there, right? Let's send John out there. A service I did a study of $20 to $100 on the biggest one. So let's put our closers out there, right? Let's send John out there. Service, I did a study of $20 to $100 on the service call. What is your thought on service calls?

How much should we be charging? Do we not weigh the service fee? The reason I'm going here is some people have too many calls coming in and not enough technicians. So they need to kind of figure out how do I pre-qualify a little bit? So what is your theory on service fees and how do i pre-qualify a little bit so what is your theory on service fees and how do you handle that great question so you should have a service fee i think the easy reason why is because don't flatter yourself all right you're not the only person

they're calling like they're calling for other companies right most likely and they all have a service fee you should have a service fee, right? Respect your guy's time, respect your ability to go out and do a good inspection. So have a service fee from $89 to $150, whatever your market calls for. I do $40 because a lot of people apply the service fee to the work we don't. Okay. Yeah. So that makes total sense, right?

And then when you're booking the call, so again, this is why your dispatcher needs to be really good because your CSR is going to book an appointment for the customer. And then the dispatcher has to determine, is that the right appointment? If you are struggling with more calls than you can handle, I wouldn't use the dispatch fee as a way to filter out bad leads. I actually don't think that's a very good way to do it because of course, customers are skeptical. They don't know anything about you. They don't know anything about your service. All they know is I'm trying to go to Disneyland next month.

It's going to cost me three grand. Every dollar counts. So I just encourage people from filtering by the dispatch fee. It's hard to filter on something your customers know nothing about. If you can educate them, you'll realize, oh, that guy I disqualified actually would have been a great customer. So instead, use the urgency list. You've probably heard us use the urgency list before if you've had us on podcasts. But Mr. Jones, what I'm going to do is get you on my urgency list. This gives you faster service. If a technician finishes early in your area or another customer reschedules, I move you into the next available slot. I have an available appointment next Monday, though. Can I book that appointment in order to get you on the urgency list? We'll call you as soon as something opens up. If he says yes, you call him every day that

you can't get out there. You just give him a brief update saying we're trying to serve as many families as possible. We still got you on my urgency list for tomorrow. If they say no, offer to be their backup plan. Appeal to the customer's sense of logic and say to them, hey, I want to book this appointment for you because I'd hate to see you lose this spot and have to wait longer for somebody else. This way, you know somebody from our company is going to be there no later than Monday. Can I book this? Will be your backup plan. If something comes up, just give us a a call but I really don't like filtering by the dispatch fee I don't think it well I think there's a few things here I mean I can tell if someone's saying hey I went online these springs are like 200 bucks

can you beat that like right there I'm like okay like there's certain things you can I'm not paying more than 300 dollars you know blah blah blah blah so there's certain things where it's like you got to listen to the phone call and of course they say i saw this on amazon i saw this on home depot and i'm like i mean i made a really cool video that explains like we paid dispatchers csrs warehouse guys we've got a marketing team they're the ones that made this video possible i kind of stole it from my buddy Keegan and I redid it as A1. Ultimately, pizza doesn't cost much money. It's under $2. But they still have it for $30.

No one calls Pizza Hut and says, I'm taking you guys down. You charge too much. I could have made a pizza for cheaper than that. No, they didn't want to make their own pizza, so they bought a pizza. They understand that takes work and labor and everything else. I don't know why so many homeowners, you think I own a home. I'm pretty intelligent. They're like, they don't know what it's like to run a business. The thing that kills me is most business owners don't know.

They don't own a business. If they go out of town, their business folds in two weeks. They got to get on the phone every day when they're out of town. They're answering the phone on Sundays and they think that's a business. I just walked through the office with my physical trainer that we work out. I just was walking back and I said, those two people, I've never met them. I feel bad, but I've been out of town a lot. I said, this is a good thing. I said, it's a machine. I said, I love this. And we were laughing about it but but you know as much as i get mad of consumers don't understanding i think a lot of the business owners out there they're like yeah i own a business i'm like really so it runs when you're

not there because otherwise it's just a really expensive job it's a lot of work you know people call me up they've been in business 40 years and they say, I want to sell my business. And I'm like, great. Let's look at it. How many employees? They're like, I'm it. They've got all these relations, but what they charge because they were the worker, they could charge way less. And I'm like, your relationship, I'm going to have to double these prices because literally you are out there making a living. I need to run a business.

And I think it's very interesting because they got to deal with all the BS, the insurance, the gas, everything else. And they literally work with two or three people. It's just a tough, I was that guy. So, you know, for those of you listening that might be smaller, you got to start somewhere, but if you're on year 20 and it's still you, let me help you or come work with me. First of all, you're right. But on that situation where the customer's kind of dogging you on a price, right? I found it on Amazon. It's only 30 bucks. Why not have a system where you kind of notate that might be the wrong customer. And then you have some automation in your HubSpot go that sends them a text with a video with all the pricing info, right? I pay my dispatchers. I pay my warehouse guys. I pay for equipment, I pay for this. Why not put them out a little bit further on the schedule

than most other customers? And have that automation that kind of preframes them. And then if they call you back and say, hey, just wondering what the schedule looks like, then you know, maybe we converted them from a price shopper to a value shopper with that little campaign there, you know? That way you're not saying no, but you're educating, right?

No, you're absolutely right. The more I'm thinking about what you're talking about, it's to absolutely continue to invest in your people with training. So you look at what Ken Goodrich went to the Wizard of Ads, Roy Williams, and they started just flooding the market with marketing, right?

So the Wizard of Ads, and he flooded the market. And what he found was there's two types of leads, branded and non-branded. Garage Door Repair Phoenix, A1 Garage Door Service. Have you ever analyzed when people are doing branded searches, how much they're just like, they'll wait a week because they want you that bad. And think about that. Your job as a CSR trainer should be training the owner a little bit on how to get branded searches. Now, it takes a great company.

You've got to have a great logo. Dan Antonelli did a fantastic job with A1s with KickCharge. But what do you see with these companies? You mentioned a company. I think they're from North Carolina that you guys work with. They're massive. Morrison, yeah. Yeah. So they're getting branded. Is it easier to book the phone calls totally 100 yeah i mean i think you talked about in there pre-framing the customer right

if i am on a website and i see an ad that says a1 garage door worst garage door company ever then when i see you i'm going to be pre-framed to think i'm not calling those guys but. But if I see positive branding everywhere, then I'm pre-framed, right? It's way easier to close that job. You mentioned with the CSR, if a CSR wows a customer, it's way easier to get a high value job when you're the technician. This pre-framing is, yeah, absolutely. The call's a lot easier if you're doing that branding for sure. We have a company here in Utah, dude, these guys, Any Hour. Any Hour, yeah. Dude, these guys advertise in our movie theaters here.

I kid you not. I'm sitting there in the theater with like the ads before the ads, right? I got Any Hour ads, like movie produced ads. These guys have a great brand, man. And when you see them, yeah, you're like, I know they're legit. It's just a matter of,

can they get out here soon enough right i've heard crazy awesome things i had um one of the guys or one of i think the gm hit me up that they want to come vip to the uh vertical track that's right it's gonna be awesome but what's super cool is i don't need to make money on events i don't line up this event to say oh i made a lot of money i make money on events. I don't line up this event to say, ooh, I made a lot of money. I make money on garage doors. So when we get people together, it's freaking awesome because we're trying to deliver life-changing value.

And, you know, Brigham's like, dude, he's like, I don't really listen to other speakers. I've gotten to all these things. He's like, I've taken a lot from this. And I said, thank God these people came into my lives, including you, Brigham, because you're willing to come out here and pour your heart and soul into this auditorium and you care.

And he goes, I've never seen just the people. I've taken so much from each speaker. And I just love this stuff because we try to just deliver value, but it's not about ticket sales or any bullshit. It's really about changing and taking action. Howard Partridge was at the last one, and he talked about failure to implement. A lot of these people, they go to every single show, and they're like, dude, hell yeah, I'm going to be rich.

Oh, yeah, my life's about to change. They go see Tony Robbins. And then they go home, and now they're sucked in. Every single Tony Robbins. I got to go back. I'm like, oh, my gosh, just implement one thing. But I'll tell you what, man. You guys are getting really involved with this.

You guys are coming in almost like a partner in this. Tell me, we're working through the details, but what are your expectations? What do you think is going to happen? Are you guys going to have a bunch of your people out there? I know you sent out an email. Yeah. So here's my thoughts. There is a void in the event space.

I have been thinking about it for four years since I went to a particular conference. And I remember there was a big name keynote speaker, all these vendors, right? Tons of money pumped to this thing. And I go, I stand in the back to watch the keynote. And I was like, you're kidding, right? That's what we're working with here. I remember going to all the sneaking in breakout sessions, going to booths. And I was just like, this is so underwhelming. And then when we all come back from the pandemic, you'd think that people would be like, let's go big. It's been two years and people just don't.

We got the status quo and events. There's a couple of things that just don't seem to change. Education and conferences. They all pretty much just stay this way. We all sit in our chairs and we do our thing. The thing that really excited us about Vert track was that energy, right? That like, I heard you were wrestling guys out there, you know? But I did have a wrestling match with a couple of them. Like there's all this energy. And I think what we were talking to you about, we just realized,

I think there's an opportunity here to do something unique for people, to make it an experience. Here's my rule with events. If I can get it from a book, it's not worth the price of admission. Don't you dare get up on that stage and tell me something I could have gotten from a book or a memo. Make it an experience. Make it something I cannot possibly get anywhere else. Most vendors, organizers, people in all, they're afraid to do this. I think we saw with you, dude, there's an energy here. There's a chance to really help people have an absolutely sensational experience, not just learning and going and implementing stuff. But man, you get something to remember. Holy crap crap what was the highlight of your year i went to vertical track and dude funnest three days i felt like i was breaking the rules right i'm not

supposed to have that much fun when i'm working and i think we just really align with you on that kind of thing you know the bringing that energy and that excitement to it i think the lineup and literally i don't really prepare a lot i don't prepare ever for my thing i want to just talk natural and come from the head. I probably should prepare more. But there's not one person there that I wasn't like. Like, I love Lance's story because Lance, he wasn't supposed to succeed. The environment that he was in, he had to figure out a way.

And I love those come up stories. And then there was a lot of value to, like, take this and use this. And you guys absolutely murdered it. I mean, bring them as a G man. He is like a hustler, man. We talk on the phone. We're like 10 minute phone call. We're like an hour and a half later sometimes. And I'm like, dude, I'm sorry. I got to go. Cause we'll just jam man. So much fun. I got one more question that will close us out. So what are some tips you can give for some business leaders who are aspiring to be great communicators? Listen first. That's it. Just be the best listener you can possibly be.

I'm studying this book right now. It's called Personal Socrates. This somehow became my book ad this whole episode. Dude, people don't understand the power of questions. Think about what's the most important skill a salesman can have. Ask great questions. Uncover those pain points. Get people commitment. What's the best skill a leader can have?

Tell a story. Ask a question. Yet, salespeople, leaders of all kind, odds-on favorites to have never read a book or taken a course on asking questions in their lives. Big proponent of asking questions. Oh, really? What makes you say that? I'm just kidding.

I've got this thing called Power Questions. It's a book on my shelf. These questions are just impressive. But whenever we play this game in the training center, go ahead and ask me a question. What's your biggest goal right now? What are you working on that you're most excited about right now? That's a great question, Zach.

I'm really curious. What exactly goal are you trying to pinpoint into? Oh, okay. So you got to ask a question back. Then you're in control. So your goal got to ask a question back. Then you're in control. So your goal is to repeat a question. So ask me, how much is it? How much is it?

How much does it cost? You know, Zach, that's a great question. I'm just curious, what kind of warranty are you looking for? I want to understand exactly where you're coming from. How long do you want the garage door to last before you want us out again anytime a question is asked you can return it with a question and therefore you are in power i'm glad you brought that up it's like you're drilling deep i like that so if i want to get a hold of you zach the ceo of power selling pros congratulations my man how do we get a hold of you? Just go to powersellingpros.com slash free.

That's where I send everybody who listens to us on a podcast. I send daily emails that are like a sitcom. Like every new one's an episode of our crazy, crazy world. That's the best way to get in contact with me. Big on email and LinkedIn. Yeah. If you want to get ahold of me don't do email don't do linkedin so so next thing i want to ask and you said a couple great books you've got turn the ship

around by david and then personal socrates but are there another few books that help shape you i like one book that i love is raving Fans. It literally just talks about making the extra effort to be different. We had Michael Michalowicz in the last one, Get Different. This is a book, but what are three books other than the couple you mentioned that really moved you? Kind of cliche, but Seven Habits of Highly Effective People. Game changer. Game changer. That book summarized all cliche but uh seven habits of highly effective people game changer game changes that book like summarized all self-help into one book it seems like that well then they got the eighth habit

yeah that one was really dense though that was hard to get through yeah another one man under The Almanac of Naval Ravikant. Almanac of what? Of Naval, N-A-V-L, Ravikant. R-A-V-I-K-A-N-T. Naval is a big time Silicon Valley investor turned philosopher. The book is the blurb. You could highlight every line. It's like just solid gold, man. Almanac of Naval Ravikant. I love Never Split the Difference too. Chris Voss, the FBI negotiator. Yeah, yeah. I just was talking about him earlier today.

That's an awesome book. You know, there was a time when you could come in this office and most of these books were read. But I gotta be honest, I'm a big reader, but I can't keep up because now you just gave me a few new books and i i mean they show up and i i try i'm pretty bad because you throw all these ideas and i'm an implementer like dude i'm delegating implementing just firing out right

away almost to a fault people got to get used to my style because they're like, dude, don't give them any ideas. You know, so just gave me a lot of ideas. So the last thing I do here, Zach, is we talked about a lot of cool things, man. I really appreciate you doing this podcast. The way I like to end is having you give you a free moment. Maybe we didn't touch upon something. Maybe there's a take action. Maybe there's just something you want to discuss with the audience that they need to know. But I'll give you the last few minutes to close this out. I appreciate that. Wow. I mentioned earlier that customers, employees,

everyone, you are no longer compared to your direct competition. It's just not that way anymore. You're now compared to all the best friends in people's lives. Customers determine whether they give you their loyalty or not based on how they feel when they engage with you, the experiences you create for them, your customers, your employees, everybody. The experience is the product now. And so I would just say, make sure that everything's an experience for your people. Nobody wants to go to their grave or go to their retirement party having just checked boxes and bought products, sold products. We want to be part of experiences. We want to have connections.

We want to have great conversations. Figure out how to prioritize that, even if the short-term ROI isn't quite what you want. Because in the long term, it's pretty much the only way to be remembered and make the kind of difference you want to make. Steve Jobs or Zuckerberg are one of the big guys. They said, it might've been Bill Gates, you know, they're all kind of blended, but one of them said, it's amazing what people overestimate they could do in a year, but underestimate what they could get done in five years or 10 years. And I think it's interesting because it's not really playing the long game. You blink and it's five years. I mean, I remember I still tell people I'm 22. I'm 39, about to be 40.

But I think I'm 22. I still wrestle like I'm 22. But I think you make a great point. And I'll tell you what, if you put the people first, leaders eat last. Another great book. Focus on the people. And I'm telling you what, I am doing a piss poor job. I try so hard, but I can't keep up. It's so hard that nobody get down on themselves. Just make an effort. Just try. Just put it on your calendar to do these little things. And simple, hello, how have you been lately? A simple handwritten letter, just a simple text message that I think you're killing it, dude. And I'm really working on a lot more recognition. So thank you for reminding me of that.

Zach, if nobody's on Power Selling Pros, if anybody's not, they're crazy. They don't want to invest in themselves. They don't want to invest in their company. I believe in you guys and I appreciate you very much. Yeah, thanks, Tommy. You're the man. It was fun.

Thanks everybody for listening. I really appreciate it. And I hope you learned a lot. This was an excellent podcast. I learned a lot. You guys have a fantastic day and weekend. 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 going to find out all the new podcasts. You're going to be able to ask me questions to ask the next guest coming on. 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 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. 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.