The Home Service Expert Podcast - He Grew A Company To $220M | His Warning To Every Home Service Owner

Episode Date: June 19, 2026

🚀 FREEDOM 2026 Get your Tickets Today! https://homeservicefreedom.com/ Chuck Thokey built sales teams that generated $220 million in  revenue — and his first coaching client went from under $1 million  to a $6 million net profit before being acquired by private equity.  In this episode, Tommy sits down with the co-founder of Top Rep  Sales Training to break down exactly why most sales teams are either  your biggest asset or your most expensive liability — and why most  owners can't tell the difference. Chuck covers the four buyer personality types (the Platinum Rule),  why best-better-good pricing closes 90% of customers at the middle  tier, how to give a price without flinching, and the daily Power  Hour training system that keeps reps sharp. He also unpacks the  uncomfortable truth: 80% of sales leaders are either struggling or  need to be replaced — not because they're bad people, but because  they were never trained for the role. If your sales team isn't performing, this is the starting point. 🕐 TIMESTAMPS 00:00 Episode Open 01:21 Aerospace Origin Story 08:30 Four Buyer Types 13:30 Tier Pricing Tactics 20:27 Power Hour Training 30:00 Rep Performance Standard 37:14 Hiring and Simulation 44:23 Leadership Failure Rate 49:13 Six Million Case Study 57:00 Growth Mindset Scaling 1:02:18 KPI Dashboard Mastery 1:07:41 Final Thoughts 🚀 FREEDOM 2026 Get your Tickets Today! https://homeservicefreedom.com/ Check Out My Social Media: Tiktok ⟶ https://www.tiktok.com/@officialtommymello Instagram ⟶ https://www.instagram.com/officialtommymello/ Facebook ⟶ https://www.facebook.com/thomasmello/

Give the price like it's $5, and the homeowner is going to do the worst thing that they can do, which is buy. And they're only as good as their worst tech. Put yourself back in business by the time you put your head back on the building. Welcome back to the home service sector. Today I got Chuck Thelke with me. He's a sales expert. He's a sales trainer, sales leadership, closing strategy, buyer psychology,

pricing strategy, team building, sales culture, KPI framework, and forecasting. Based on a Dayton, Ohio, co-founder of the top rep sales training, Chuck also was the author of Complete Field Guide to Successful Sales Leadership, known for helping companies grow sales from 50% to 80% of moving close rates from 20% to 65%. Also the contributor of Roofing Contractor Magazine. Today's episode thesis is your sales rep team is either your biggest asset or your most expensive liability. And most owners can't tell the difference.

Chuck went from testing jets at Learjet to training 3,000 plus sales leaders over 20 years in home services. He breaks down exactly why most sales training doesn't stick and how to read a homeowner within the first two minutes, why 80% of sales leaders are failing and the specific KPIs that separate a team doing $2 million from won't do and $6 million. This is a tactical master class in building a sales organization that actually performs. Chuck, it's a pleasure to have you on. Yeah, thank you. Thanks so much, Tommy. So let's start from the beginning.

I mean, you were testing out jets. And then 9-11 happened. You want to just tell us how you got into the sales training? Yeah. So I was actually an aerospace engineer for Learjet and Bombardier. I designed a lot of the functional tests as well as a lot of the systems that go into the RJs that everybody flies in, the RJ 200, the 700 and 900. They were actually called the Continental before Delta and American got a hold of them.

But and then, you know, 9-11 happened. And we all kind of got displaced. Nobody's buying jets. And so a lot of the engineers had to leave. And, you know, then I decided, you know, I went to Raytheon, Cessna. Everybody just kept laying off. And finally, I decided it's just time to go back home to Ohio. because that was, you know, I was all over the United States and Canada and came back home.

It's just got, I just decided to get into sales just as a kind of a time wasteer. And then, of course, from there, you know, decided, hey, this is, I can make more money in sales than I can as aerospace engineer. Yeah. Yeah, that's really interesting. So how did the skill sets translate? late. It was a little difficult. Now, you know, for me, when, when, when I was at Learjet, I was the one that went and did all the test rides with the sales team because the sales guys couldn't do check rides with buyers unless an engineer is with them. And the engineers hated doing it. I loved it. And so I kind of got a love for sales during my time as an engineer. And I used a lot of what I learned from that. going into sales. So how long were you in your career with the aviation?

And how did it feel to have to reinvent yourself? So I was an engineer. It was a little over four and a half years. Okay. Because I mean, I was young. I was pretty young. And then getting into, you know, once 9-11 happened, you know, we all knew that we are.

our careers were over, at least for a period of time. But those four and a half years, I was a functional test engineer, which was, it's like playing video games with the real thing. Yeah. You know, I was able to taxi a, a $30 million jet. We could do everything, but take off. You know, so we would, we would take it over to the blast pad, turn up the engine. I mean, we could just play with the thing. And it was just, it's probably the funnest and most impactful. actful thing that an engineer can do. And that's, I mean, that's what we got the opportunity to do. And then where did you head to? So you went from mortgage sales into bath fitter and then able roofing and then American weather techs. Let's just talk about the progression of your career

where you cut your teeth. So when I came back, I jumped into insurance. That was the, the ad that I saw got into insurance. I was in the top five to 10% of Blue Cross and Blue Shield. You know, I jumped into selling some insurance to sick people that, because when I was that young, I had no idea what insurance was other than going through getting the certification and starting to sell it and I hated it. It's like one step above selling grave plots. I mean, selling insurance, it's horrible. Yeah. But even though I was good at it, I was bored.

So then got into mortgage, loved mortgage. Man, if mortgage was still like it was back then, I'd still be a part of it. I mean, it was just that much fun. And it was that easy. I could, you know, Tommy, I could finance your doghouse back then. It was so easy. Yeah. That's right before the crash.

Yeah. The bubble was about to burst. and I got into this organization called Bathfitter. And we grew Batheter pretty big. As you can see, where Bathfitter's at. And then from that, I got the opportunity to join a large organization in Columbus, Ohio, called Abel and Mr. Roof. And left Abel and Mr. Roof after we got it to $220 million.

Wow. And what is Abel Roof? did they trade to private equity? No, I would say that, you know, they were one of the first when it came to private equity. They, because, you know, what Crane did was they bought ABLE and they realized that they couldn't go around the United States with ABLE because everything's Able This and Able That. So then they bought Mr. Roof for the name. And then they just started building locations all over the East Coast.

They were going to do it all over the nation, but then they realized building organic locations was a lot harder than they thought. You know, they built about eight locations, and we did very well with them, but they would spend just millions of dollars trying to start a location. And again, you know, we were able to build that to about 220 million. and then I left that to just go into, get into coaching. You know, as a company gets bigger and bigger, you, it just, the fund just kind of leaves. You know, you get to be just so many employees. I mean, we had 300 employees in one building. And, I mean, it gets, it gets so much more fun when you can take a smaller organization and

build it rather than maintaining a $200 million location or, or, organization, even though we were at 60 million when I started, you know, to build that to 220 million based on the sales teams and the sales structure. And, and, you know, but it's, when you get it to that 220, it's like, where else can I do this? You know, how many people can I, can I help build this? And so, I mean, since that time when I started getting into coaching, you know, we've done this to hundreds and hundreds of organizations all across the United States and Canada. Yeah. What year was that when you started?

2017 is when I left Able and started my coaching career. Let's dive in a little bit to what you call the Platinum Rule. Sell the way they want to buy, not the way you like to sell. Most sales reps do the opposite. walk us through the four buyer personality types? So this all started with a friend of mine, Dr. Tony Alessandra, and what he did was he took disc and gave you the ability to break somebody down into those four quadrants, whether you're a director, socialize, a relator, a thinker.

And you can do that within the first two minutes of meeting somebody. I do that whether whether I'm networking, whether I'm going into a house to sell somebody. You know, I can easily find out just based on how fast you talk, how open or closed you are, you know, to figure out. I mean, are you a director? You know, is this somebody you really got to get down to business? Is it a socializer, you know, or, you know, they're very fast talking. They're very open. These people love to talk about themselves.

Or maybe you're a relator. You're a little slower to speak. a little slower to move and you love talking about everybody else usually these are some older individuals and you can really get into their grandkids i mean you'll you'll never actually get into business talking about their grandkids and then you get into the thinkers these are the engineers these are the accountants these are the people that can be tough to sell depending on who you are you know if you don't like the engineers and accountants these are going to be very tough to sell but they can be very easy to sell if you just understand how to deal with them.

But breaking them down using the platinum rule is, you know, we have done this with so many of our organizations, even in the boot camp. We now teach it because we've never have, but recently we've started teaching it at the boot camps. What are homeowners probably fit into like high D.I. I'm sure there's a lot of C as well. S is the most prevalent personality test. Where do you find the most big ticket sales personality types that are buying? Because obviously you've got to be successful to spend money. Right.

So you're bigger, you're going to be in your director and socializers. And you're more, your larger ticket items. So it's going to be your like your D's and I's. You know, these are typically your business owners, your salespeople. so they'll be in the DNI. You know, you get into the S where they're very submissive, your people pleasers, you know, they're the easiest to sell. If you can't sell an S, you know, you need to,

sales is probably not for you. You know, I love to tell people, it's like, you've got to watch what you do with an S because all you really have to do is just tell them to buy and they'll do it. Yeah, I remember going into high seas where they'd, they've done all their research. I'd get them on the ladder. And I'd ask them for advice.

And as long as they felt like they were in control of the decision, they tell you about their engineers. They have a flannel shirt with a ballpoint pen up front. And they've, they know what IPBT is of a garage store. And you just ask them questions and make them feel like they're in control. And I just remember getting them on a ladder all the time and saying, what do you think?

Here's a new one. Here's an old one. Show them the parts. And just make sure they're in control. These I was just like, let's get down to, down to business. You're probably on a call. Yeah. When you're talking about the engineers, here's the really cool thing with engineers is that they just, we first of all, we pet them. We let them know, hey, you seem like somebody

that really needs the information and they start nod in their head. Say, so when I get back to the office, what information can I send in? What information can I email you? Tommy, I'm not emailing them anything. But if I said, hey, what information do you need before you get started, they clam up really quick. So I'm going to ask them, you know, so when I get back to the office, what information can I email you? Oh, well, man, I would love to get information on it. And they just start laying it out. And what I'm doing right now is, oh, so you need some more information on the warranty. And I'll pull out the warranty and just start going through it and say, you know, what part of this warranty are you needing more information on? What they, what they're

starting to realize is I'm giving it all too. them right there. You know, and everything they want me to email them, I'm actually giving to them right there at the table. And I say, okay, what else can I send over to you? By the time I'm done, I'm going to ask what other information is like, no, you've really answered everything. So what are next steps for you? And that's usually their key to go ahead and say, well, why don't we just get this thing taken care of? I love it. I love it. So you also teach, good, better, best pricing, and a lot of contractors offer one price and hope for the best. Why does tier pricing work?

So there's two ways of looking at this. There's, it's best, better, good is how we do it. Good, better, best, you know, it's like starting bad and getting worse. So we're going to start with the best better good. And what we do with the best, because we know that the homeowner has been wanting to, they've been waiting to tell me that I'm too expensive. every homeowner does it. They're just waiting to see if there's any money left on the table.

So we give them that opportunity with the best. We have that package that's probably way over what they really need. And we show that two of them first, waiting for them to talk about how expensive that is. And then we bring in the other two packages. And depending on the company, we'll go straight down to the good, whatever you guys want to call that and say this is typically how we compete with all the the contractors in town and then we let them know that but most people they really want the best that they can usually only afford the good you know and so what what we have come up with is what we call the pro or the better

and that's where we sell about 90, 95 percent of and that's the one you probably want to be And there's a lot that goes into pricing. I don't think a lot of people understand what an FP&A team is and where if you're going to land in that better, you should probably bury that with a lot of gross profit. Yes. Yeah, it's your most profitable plan as well. But it's there. You know, I had a marketing company.

It was the same marketing company from Geico when they came out to work with us at And they said, so how do you know what your, your buyer or your, your customers buy? And I said, this is going to sound very morbid, but it's very true. And to the point, people buy what we tell them to buy. And he looked at me and he started to lab, he goes, that's a great answer, because it's really is true. You know, and I go around anytime I speak, when people kind of look at me funny, I says, well, let me ask you, what's, what's your favorite shingle color? Oh, it's onyx. what's the the shingle color that you sell the most of? Onyx.

Like you're doing it and you don't even know it. You know, you're telling the homeowner what to buy. And most salespeople, they have no idea that that's actually what they're doing. So we really lead them. We give that that homeowner the opportunity to make a choice because that's why we do, you know, best better good or good better best. We give them that opportunity to feel like they make a choice. But we really do lead them to a certain.

a certain package. 100%. I couldn't agree more. You've also said that confident pricing is not arrogance. It's clarity. And if you flinch, they fill it. How do you train a sales rep to stop flinching when they present a $15,000 number? So when we tell any of our clients, because we do have this, when we are,

listening to Ceros and RILAs for our clients, we see this all the time, where when they get to the price, it's like they're scared of the price or it's such a big price that they're nervous of even giving it to the homeowner. So we let them know, like, look, you need to give this very confidently and do it as if it's $5. I don't, it's nothing but a number that you're going to hand over to the homeowner. Yeah. And but if you're not confident or you don't like the price, they're not going to like it either. But even some of these large organizations, we have a very large, very popular organization.

And the thing that they really pulled from a keynote that I gave, they like, it feels stupid even saying this. But when you said to give the price like it's $5, that's the thing that they had over a thousand reps there. And they said, that's the thing that our reps took away from this. And I'm like, that's what, I mean, with everything else that I said, that's the thing that they took away as the thing that's going to make them more money. But you never know. You know, it's interesting about that.

As I say, never say the words hundreds or thousands. So an example would be, you know, 43, 767. That's 43,7. Round up on the pennies and just no expression. And if you can write it down and show them or have an iPad. and just treat it like, like you exactly like you said, it's not a lot. But the problem is, I think a lot of sales reps, they probably wouldn't buy the products so they don't live in a house.

They live in an apartment. And they're just, they don't even really know what these things cost. I was at dinner the other day, and it was about two grand for Mother's Day. There were six of us. It was a beautiful restaurant. And I didn't really, I didn't mind because it was a great experience. But I think that very few people, you know, I'm very familiar with what it costs to have nice things at a house.

And I find myself today never negotiating. I just get the best because I know the best is the best warranty. The best are going to come back the next day if something goes wrong. The best that are trustworthy around my family. The best is like they're going to show up with a new truck. And that means a lot to me. And it used to not. And I think homeowners start to become wiser.

on if they only buy by price. You know, what good is a good price if it doesn't get down on time? What good is a good price if it breaks down all the time? What good is a good price if you can't trust the people at your home? And I can go on and on, and there's a great book by Janie Smith called Relevant Selling. And in 2017, I heard about the book,

and she goes into like 100 things that a good price doesn't do anything if it doesn't fulfill certain brand promises. Right. You know, sales training is tough, though. It's not like something, it's not like, bam, you got trained and now you're good to go. It's kind of one of those things where the more the merrier, like I talked to a company yesterday, and when their sales reps get out of their school, for the first 45 days, they work with them for two hours every morning. And not only do people stick more, but the conversion rates up about 12%, their average tickets up about 400.

and there's way less turnover that way. I mean, how much is enough? Well, man, I love that you're bringing this up because we train that it's not like riding a bike. You know, most sales organizations, they send their sales reps through training, and they're done. And then all of a sudden,

it's the homeowner that starts training the sales rep, which means they're going to skip something. They're not going to do a presentation, and the homeowner is going to do the worst thing that they can do, which is buy. And all of a sudden, that sales are like, I don't have to do that anymore. And before you know it, they're no different than anybody else. So we do, just like you were talking about with the other organization, we do a thing called

Power Hour. And it's every morning. Now, there's other things that happen during Power Hour, but it gives us that opportunity to continue the training. The other thing that we do is we'll always bring in new and underperforming reps every single morning into the actual office. You know, whether it's going to be giving them their leads for the day, I want to see them. You know, I want to see what's going on with.

I want to see, you know, how they're, how they're dressed, how they look, what their attitude is. Now, if they're performing over a certain level, everything's emailed to them and they can go. And then their training, people that are operating, say, over 55, 60 percent clothes or a higher NSLI or NSLP, you know, they get everything emailed to them. they just come in for their weekly sales meeting. And our sales meetings are two hours. An hour and a half of that is training and verification.

But, you know, with everybody else, they're coming in for training every single morning. So I love the fact that you mentioned that this other company is doing that for the 45 days. You know, one of the things I was interviewing Leland Smith the other week, actually it was eight days, nine days ago. and one of the things I really liked is he brought in a top rep. But not every single day, but the top rep would say, yeah, I did this numbers yesterday and kind of lead. And now you're hearing it from your coworker rather than the same manager every time. And I think that that's super powerful to think about, hey, there's how much money I made. One of the things we're doing is a master certified tech where they'll ride with you.

you'll make the sales, he'll kind of commandeer the situation, but you'll make the money that day. I think part of it is you're weekly, you did ride-alongs and you got paid a ton of money and you kind of get used to the money. I think one of the mistakes a lot of sales companies make is they take the top guy makes all the money on the ride-along and that new guy never feels what it feels like to get a check like that.

What are your thoughts on that? I think that's really good. I've not, I've not seen where the, the new guy gets the, the pay. Usually it's the, the guy because he's like, I got to take this guy out all day long. You know, he wants to be paid for that. Yeah, you got to pay them an extra thousand for the week for one day. I mean, that, you have to pay them still. And it's expensive to do it that way.

But no, I think that is really good because it does give them, it gives us the new rep, the opportunity to feel what it's like to be that top rep, that, that new. that not only are you out with them, seeing them close, but you get a chance to feel that the reward as well. I've not seen it before, and I really like it. You know, the elephant in the room here is that most sales training doesn't stick. I mean, there's all kinds of courses. I could go on and on.

There's not, I've been to every seminar. I've been to Sandler training. I've been to Andy Elliott, Jeremy Minor, Joe Cress. You name in home service or anything that relates to it. Unfortunately, the first two weeks are great, and then it kind of falls off. And a lot of these people are like, well, look at what we've done in the first month. And then it's just like the same thing when I go do sales training.

It's great. But I don't have the time, at least now as the founder and CEO. So I sent messages. I just sent the bottom 10% of the OJA, which is the ad. average ticket. I said, I feel like I'm failing you guys. I did this 30 minutes ago. I said, I feel like I'm letting you guys down. I got all my managers on here. I go, you know, this is just not good. Like, I feel like I failed you guys. Maybe you need more training, but you need to reply. And we need to get you on a plan. And I don't like the old PIP, you know, performance improvement

plan. I just, I want to figure out what it's going to take for you to dream bigger and buy your house and go on the dream vacations because maybe I'm letting you down. And that's the way I try to talk to texts that are underperforming. It's say it's probably me and it might, it probably is. I'm not giving them something. I just need to know what. And not every single sales guy or technician needs the same prescription. So they got to speak up and they got to ask. That's my favorite three letters is ASK. What are we missing here? What are your thoughts on that? Yeah. So I'm right there with you. I hate Pips. The moment somebody starts talking about, you know, these, you know, someone the other day mentioned, Chuck, I bring my sales reps in on one-on-ones every week. And I says, so you bring them into your office and you have a one-on-one with a sales rep. You're like, yeah. And you don't feel like that's like going to the principal's office sitting down with him. And he starts thinking. He says, I never thought of that. I says, no, I think of it. because I've been there.

You know, and I had to go in and do a one-on-one with my manager in their office weekly. That's like going to the principal's office, and I don't care how good a job I did. You know, that sucks. And so, you know, you have to, to, if you're going to bring them in or spend some time with them, go do a ride along with them, take them to lunch,

you know, sit down, have a conversation. I do like lunch and coffee. I will say this, Chuck, my job, I met a billionaire 20 years ago, and he said, I never had to fire anybody. He goes, I micromanaged the shit out of them. And they're either going to get good fast or they're going to quit because that's what accountability does. And I hate to feel like the principal's office, but I do like the idea of like, we're going to feed into you.

You're going to be doing a lot of training. And we're going to get you good or you're going to opt out. And this isn't going to be fun. This is going to be, we're going to have to change your mindset. And the goal is that they get good quick because. Now, I mean, advertising, I mean, just from last month, we're up 30% cost on PPC and it's 30 times less effective. Obviously, the LLMs, we're getting a lot of credit there. And I've got a whole contingency plan.

But, you know, it costs just as much now for a garage release as it does a plumbing lead, even though our average tickets, one-fourth of, you know, depending on what you're selling. Because it's just super competitive. And by the way, I don't mind. I mean, everyone's getting into home service and home improvement. Now, look at the multiples. Yeah, they are. And not to mention the AI, we're somewhat AI proof. I mean, we're working on a lot of AI stuff internally, but it doesn't include coming out to fix your garage.

I mean, we're not working on robots yet. Right. How do you, how do you, our great technicians do so great that we still do really, really well. But when you're training, we got 68 guys here, 68 guys this month. And another 60-some odd guys coming in next month. And, you know, those first 90 days are just, they're trying to find their wings. They're trying to figure stuff out. And we call it polishing.

They go out there. And they might take too long on a job. We need to help them out technically. They might have had a hard time with service tight and that's operational. And then we talk a lot about sales and just the right mindset. But it kills, it kills the numbers when you're bringing on this many people. It does. it does and it kills your numbers when you're bringing on that number because you're you got to give

everybody at least some sort of shot yeah but also as you're bringing these these sales reps on you have to keep on keep them on a very tight leash you know you can't throw them three appointments a day as they're coming out they get one appointment and they have to bring back that appointment to run down how they did and then they work their way to to that next level of rep or technician, whatever they are. Because the last thing you want to do is, you know, let them practice on your customers. So, you know, you don't want to find out that,

hey, I'm going to give you a week and then we're going to sit down. Now I'm going to give you a day we're going to sit down. Then we're going to give you the next day. We're going to sit down. That's also the reason why when you're looking at sales leadership, that you live and die by your sales leadership. You really do. And how many reps are under each sales leader?

You know, there's many sales leaders that can't handle more than eight or nine technicians or reps. And how do they deal with them? What is expected of them? And we look at their team as their success rate. Yeah. You know, when I look at a sales rep that they have to perform at this level, well, when I'm looking at a sales leader, they have to perform at this level. and they're only as good as their worst tech or their worst sales rep. That's really good information.

Only as good as your worst tech. The reason why I say this is because they wear their heart on their sleeve. I do it. I mean, I love some of these sales reps, and they're so nice. They really work hard. It's just they suck in front of a homeowner for whatever reason. It's like they're really good shadow boxing, but you put a contender in front of them, and they just lose everything, you know.

And so if you let them know that they're only good as their worst, then all of a sudden they start re-looking at this person, like, have they hit their ceiling or can I elevate where they're at? If I think they've hit their ceiling, then I've got to let them go. So here's the question for you, and you'll probably appreciate this, because me and my CFO completely have two different mindsets when it comes to this one. So it costs us $22,000 to train a brand new guy.

And I have a manager. He's amazing, but he tends to turn over a lot more people than anybody. And that screws with capacity planning, but I'm pretty good with that because I just lower the marketing spend, and now we can almost do it in real time. So we're working on a P&L per market and potentially to buy next year per van. And you might think, well, why don't you have that at a company your size?

But it's a lot harder. We're in 40 markets. Yeah. And then we're sharing a lot of technicians. We're flying them across. They're here. Then they're here. They go where capacities out.

We've got a lot of traveling tech. So it really makes it tough. And I want to make sure that guys are willing to share their top techs because that's what makes a market great. But there's a lot of bonuses and stuff tied to that. But here's the question. So he'd rather have a lot less turnover knowing that we're spending that much money.

And my philosophy is if you're getting one-star reviews, you've got a low-conversion rate, low-average ticket, how much work is it going to take to get you better? And it will probably be pouring another $70,000 into this person versus chopping it off early. And look, if you got a will, I'll find a way. I'm a big fan of Rudy, the old football movie.

Like, look, if you got, You come in every day, you're smiling and you're like, I'm going to get there. I don't care what it takes. Pay me minimum wage, but keep giving me opportunities to do ride-alongs. That's way different than somebody that's just like, I'm not getting it. And by the way, they can move into a different role, maybe an installer role. There's a lot of other options here, they won. But what's your philosophy?

I mean, when's enough enough? Or do you just say, look, we're going to give this guy six months rain or shine no matter what? No, so we start out with 60 days. Now, if we know within 30 days, it's not right for you. We'll cut it off. But usually we'll give them the, as a sales rep anyway, you'll give you the 60 days, which usually you're in training for 30. You're starting to get out in the field after that 30.

So you'll have 30 days in the field. So that's the first time that we're going to sit down and decide if this is right for you. And then we continue until you get to a certain level of tech or your certain level of sales rep. And it's based on your performance. You know, it's based on your, your close rate, your profitability. And I love how you're taught, even going into the reviews. I mean, everything when it's based on whether it's based on a van, based on the tech. But they're for at least their first 90 days to, like you mentioned, six months, I mean, everything is always coming back and how.

How can we elevate you to that next step? Do you guys have different levels of techs? I mean, obviously you have someone that's just starting. They have to get to us a level at some point. Apprentice Junior Tech, Tech, Senior Tech, and then we're going to have this new role next month called the Master Certified Tech. I think it's beautiful.

And it changes the way they get paid. Yeah. The way that they perform, the way that they give. I mean, I think that's, And as they're still trying to get to that next level, they have to know that they're under a microscope, you know, that they have to hit these KPIs and these are expectations. Now, that's another thing that when we bring a sales rep on, one of the first things that they're introduced to are there what's expected of them, what's their performance expectations, their administrative expectations, and their self-development. The other thing on this is that there's not many of them. Remember, these are techs and sales records.

It's not they're not dumb. I mean, they're just, they have a lot going on. And the last thing they need is a job description sitting in front of them. These are things that they're expected to do and they're non-negotiables. And they don't need a pat on the back. If they look at their expectations and their KPIs as it's coming in, they can pat themselves on the back if they're over top of those numbers. Now it's very smart. Set out the expectations from the get-go.

We've got to do a better job of that. One of the things I'm working on is also letting them understand why it costs what it cost. I mean, we pay $8 million a year in insurance. Our truck payments are $7 million. The gas bills double. I mean, and I don't mind. I'm not bitching. I'm just telling you, like these workers comp, trainers, recruiters, air conditioning bill in the summer in Arizona,

these things are all, you know, the goal of a business is to charge more what it costs, but be able to pay people great money in the process and have nice things and go on trips and have lunches. And that's the culture. And clients want that because they want you to be around in 10 years. They want a good company. I mean, you know, the same people that say I would never spend that much on that are they buy the Rolex and they're renting a BMW.

It's just interesting to me how small moms. versus like getting a high sear really good A tract unit that's efficient, that's going to be cold, that's going to work every single time and have air quality. And people don't understand, like, I would never spend that. I could get that for half the price. Yeah, I mean, maybe you could shop around like crazy by a brand that just came out of China with very little warranty. Personally, I like to sell apples to apples.

I sell oranges. I try to differentiate ourselves a lot. And it's tough when you got a mindset that's just like, let me ask you this. What do you look for? Because we spend a lot of time recruiting. We only hire one out of 50 people we do an interview with. And we still don't have a huge success rate the first 90 days.

And we're still losing 35% of the people. I love talking about this because it's, you can't even trim it down with assessments. If you kept giving assessments to your people, you'd never hire anybody. You know, you do what you can with assessments, and it'll shed some light,

but most assessments can be manipulated. And then when you sit down and you're interviewing them, you know, these are just professional interviewers. But when you get them to start training them, that's for the third interview is during training. Yeah. You need to test your people throughout their training to decide, you know, will this person work out?

What is the behavior? Because you can't look at their behavior and their work ethic inside of an interview. You can't do that inside of an assessment. But when you get them into training, that's where you start to really test to decide, am I going to spend, you know, so much per appointment on this person? or can I cut this off early? You know, you know Brian Gottliebiz? Very close with Brian, yeah.

He says, look, I'm going to make people, I'm going to make them learn a script. And it's not a complicated script, but that's kind of what you're talking about is go ahead and learn this. Try to get a word for word, but it doesn't need to be perfect. And if you're not even willing to do that, you know, and he says we're all actors and actors get a script. Yeah. And then the addition. And if they can do it, why can't we?

Yeah. And I, so because of Brian, we have a two sentence. And we tell our clients, I don't care if it's a nursery rhyme. Just make sure it's two sentences. And that's all they need to do. First of all, can they follow instructions and actually bring it with them? Second of all, before their ass hits the seat, I'm asking, hey, do you have that the scripting and can you give it to me? And if they can't, we're done. You know, because it's, again, if they can't follow that simple instruction, and we don't make it hard. I mean, I don't give them the full narration and say, I need you to memorize this. I just need two sentences. Can you memorize these two sentences? Yeah. And I'll think most will come in with it. The others will come in with an excuse.

Oh, man, I just totally forgot, man. I don't need you. No, it's a very powerful step. You've got an AI-CL simulator app. or the reps practice pitches and handle objections with AI. How does that compare to traditional role playing? So you can't, there is no substitute for traditional role playing, and I'm sure you've seen this where a number of your sales reps or techs,

they hate role play. So now this gives them the ability to do it in their own car. They can screw up. They don't have five or 20 other sales reps staring at them trying to role play at this table. you know, it gives them that opportunity to get a little bit better, a little bit easier with it. And the other thing that we have that's different than a lot of other role play simulators out there is you can roleplay the entire appointment. So you show up and there's a knock at the door, you work your way into the house. And so as you're going through our training, it's every step of the training process.

It's not just some quiz to make sure that you actually watch the video. You have to go through the role play and it videotapes you. It reads your body language. It'll even tell you you look bored. So it actually reads your body language and it will read the tone. It'll tell you how fast you're talking. You know, because we want our sales reps depending on whether they're in the close or during the appointment, whether they're going to speak at 200 words per minute or 150 to 170 words per minute inside the clothes.

and because if I were to tell you that, most people are like, well, I don't even know what that sounds like. Well, now you do, because it tells you how fast you are talking, and it'll tell you,

I need you to slow down just a little bit. You're going way too fast. So there's a lot that, as we have brought this out, because we've had this simulator now for four years. And, you know, it was okay at first.

And now it's really, it's spot on. It's very inspired. by Rilla because that's who, you know, we started with Rilla. They, when Rilla started, they spent their last $10,000 at Top Rep to figure out, is this thing going to work? Are we going to go back to our jobs? So they were very gracious in helping us to build something like this out.

And so now we have our, the engineers that we've got working on this thing, that they continue to build and build and build to make it as realistic as possible. Yep. So that it actually waits for you. to finish your sentence. I'm sure that, because you guys have a simulator too. And it's that one of the hardest things to do is not only the AI,

but to get it to not cut you off when you're still talking. Yeah, you know, at the end of the day, I wanted something just, I wanted something that I could really make for my industry. And, you know,

I look at what CRO and Rilla do and just the price point. And it's more expensive than service Titan. And although I do think sales is more important than a CRM, I also find most people using those tools are, there's no one actually doing anything with it. It might, if you've got a really motivated technician, they're going to be listening and they're going to be opting in, and they're going to be listening to themselves,

and they're going to be, but very few have a management team built around the recordings. I mean, in fact, even the ones that do it exceptionally well, still aren't talking to the top guys much. They're not helping them much at all. And I think it's a great tool to get the bottom up. But I think you need to build accountability throughout the company. And it's expensive to do it.

And I do think it should be a specialist, not just an area manager, or not just someone in the market. It should be people that just, it's their full-time job to go through and do this. And they got to enjoy doing it. It's not an easy job. And Tommy, another reason why these simulators are so, good is they're they're meant to buy from you at some point that simulator is going to buy right and so inside of sales sales is a very momentum game when you're selling everybody's buying it seems like and so

every morning if your your team has to go through three simulations before they start their day they just sold three products they didn't get paid for those three products that they sold but they went they sold three jobs they go in their first appointment, they've already sold three, they just need to sell the fourth and just keep going. So it keeps that momentum going as they start their day. This is one of my favorite questions I could ask you. Your book says 80% of sales leaders are either struggling or need to be replaced. That's a bold claim.

What separates the top 20% from the 80% who are failing? So the biggest is the fact that most, sales leaders have never been trained. They were given the position and they think that their job is just to manage the herd. And that's about 10% of what's actually what a sales manager needs to do. I was very, very fortunate to be coached by the godfather of coaching, which is Keith Rosen. I've been coached many years by him. you know, I had the opportunity to be underneath some of these very high-end CEOs such as Jim Zeminski. You know, Jim is very calm and quiet, but he's also very effective. And, you know, he lets you know that every day it's like an audition for your job, it seems like.

So you're always, you know, you don't think that you can perform at a certain level. You just don't think you can do any more than what you're doing. and he just pushes you that much further. You know, inside of Bathord, I got the chance to work with Frank Chicky Chop, one of the best when it comes to sales management. But he's not easy to work for. Again, you know, they push you so hard that you realize just what you can do. And so these sales, when we teach and train sales managers and sales leaders,

we start to help them to understand why they're in that position. and the true benefit of them being there. I mean, their team should feel like, or they should feel like they work for their team, that their team doesn't work for them. If you have, let's kind of an example, you know, I was shadowing a sales manager during their sales training,

and he brought the new sales rep in, and for the first 20 minutes, it's like excuses as to why he wasn't ready for the sales rep. We'll have your iPad to you, by maybe the second or third week. What do you mean by the second or third week? I mean, now the sales reps already wondering, when can I quit? You know, the first day they come in for training is the first day they think of quitting

because they start to realize that, man, these people don't know what they're doing. They're not ready for me. You know, they, when it comes to bringing the expectation of what these sales reps job is, they don't understand the power of pressure. They think that pressure is just beating on the sales reps yelling at them during the sales meetings. It's like, no, pressure is helping people understand what they're capable of because it's like if I asked you, can you raise your hand as high as you can?

And you're going to raise your hand. So can you raise it a little bit more. And you're like, yeah. So the best that you can is just your top end of your comfort level. We're going to push you out of your comfort level to keep making you better and better and better. You know, so we help them to understand what they are, what a sales leader is truly capable of, the impact that they're capable of making inside of their team. You know, if I look at my top sales guys, I feel like they're pretty good at confrontation. They kind of assume the sale.

They're the experts. And they don't mind know that it's like a speed bump for them. And they still are super, super successful. but they walk in and if they ask all the right questions like a doctor does and gets all the information out front, then they use that information to get the prescription. And they still give options instead of ultimatums, but they do that in a way that the client's like, wow, you know more than I do. Maybe we should just get this done.

And I feel like a lot of people when they first start out, they don't have that. They're not as comfortable in the garage or whatever, the kitchen. I think there's got to be a certain comfort level. And that's the first 90 days is getting comfortable. in the home, in the garage, on the roof, whatever that looks like, and then having that conversation and being able to assume the sale.

Yeah, it's, you know, you were just talking about, you were just talking about a, the, your top sales reps are okay with confrontation, how they're going to deliver the price in the house, how they're going to give them options, make recommendations. But they, they're the best at making, and the homeowner feel comfortable making a decision.

You know, and that's hard to teach. It really is. And that's where we start to realize your best sales reps from your average sales reps. Yeah, 100%. Let's just dive into the numbers. You helped a husband and wife roofing operation to become $6 million profit.

What numbers were you looking at? And what was the framework? So they were actually my very first client when I jumped into coaching. And I just gotten out of a $220 million organization. And they were selling less than a million dollars, maybe just a little over a million dollars on their good year. And he swore up and down that I wouldn't be able to hire people to sell for him, that we couldn't get more than a certain amount in their area, that this is just a very cheap area. And as we continued to build their confidence and build their team,

you know, he wanted me to get him out of roofing in five years. I was able to get him out in six years. And even with him, it's a guy by the name of John O'Leary. You know, he says, look, I don't want to be the biggest. I want to be the most profitable. And by the time he was ready to sell, even, vertex when they when they purchased him it took him a while because they're like we've not seen a roofing company this profitable yeah his net was over 30 percent uh so you know it was um and

you typically they wait for you to be 10 million so that you can have a million dollars in ebita well he was quite a bit less than that and still hitting his ebita goals uh again that was you know it was a a great thing to be able to build an organization organization, get them up to, you know, six, seven sales reps, you know, get them into not just us as top rep, but getting them into other coaching, you know, mindset coaching and the actual business coaching. I mean, it was, it was a lot of fun working with them. And it really taught me when it came to coaching what the direction I wanted to go. And so since them, hundreds of organizations, since them.

It was kind of a good launch for us. But a lot of people just want to scale to sell. And when we do get them that opportunity to get them to scale, usually they get to that point, we're like, well, now my cash flow is so big. I don't want to sell. You know, they realize once they do so, that cash flow is gone.

Yeah. You know, so. Well, I've always said, I'm glad you brought this up, Chuck. It's so important to build a profitable company. and I hear the same things every day. I talk to a lot of companies. Well, it was a growth year, or it's my market,

or it's competitive out there, or I have a lead problem. And almost everybody kind of, it sounds to blend together. Like, it was a growth year. I need to borrow money to grow. I'm like, no, the profitability is what you should be growing with. Because if you borrow money,

you're going to make a lot of mistakes. And you're not ready for this influx of cash because you'll blow it on the, the wrong marketing sources on the wrong hires. So until you got a working framework, don't borrow money. My kind of rule is get to 15% or more to the bottom. And at that point, you could grow. If you're not at 15%, you might want to shrink.

What are your thoughts? I think, you know, I have been watching and listening to you for a while. I got the opportunity to watch you speak at Rilla Masters was a year or two ago. Yep. And you, and I'm not just doing this just to fluff your feathers, but you have some of the best real-life information when it comes to understanding the trades. You know, when you talk about how to manage your team or how to manage your cash flow, you know, we hear a lot of the locker room talk where other speakers come in and say,

is what you got to do. But yet when you come in and start speaking, the best advice I can give people is shut up and listen because he's speaking real stuff. He's speaking stuff right out of his own organization. And it's just neat to watch and listen to you talk about your own organization. Because what you just mentioned, a lot of the stuff that you mentioned even on here, I don't get to hear in a lot of these organizations. And some of these are very large organizations. And they don't speak the way that you speak. It's just you're very real and raw the way that you bring it across. Listening, when I got a chance to hear you at Rilla Masters, I got a chance to talk to you at the Genius Network and watching a lot of your content that, you know, it's not locker room

talk like we usually get to hear you know how we're the best we're the greatest come at us and you have real talk you really do and you know even listening to a lot of the stuff that you're sharing just right here i don't get a chance to hear that a lot with a lot of the clients or the people that we get a chance to talk to sometimes it feels like locker room talk the entire time yeah it's they they don't want to open up themselves and it's just completely different sitting here talking to you or hearing your experience, hearing how you started and your mom was your, your CSR to begin with. I mean, yeah, your call center. I mean, it's just great to have that opportunity to discuss that back and forth and hear how, you know,

you're looking at doing a P&L per truck. I we work with a lot of I mean huge organizations and nobody talks like that I mean I've heard the P&L per location but a lot of the stuff that you've mentioned on this the stuff that that you've said over the past I mean we just encourage anybody to just watch watch you and just shut up and listen because it's it's raw it's good and it's real time I appreciate it I'll tell you this, if I were in your shoes, as much as I am open and love small companies, the mindset is super tough. Like, I'd rather go to a $5 million. My buddy, Darius Livers, goes, when we buy a company, if they're not $5 million of EBITO, we've got to get rid of the owner. It's because the mindset,

and it's because you're going into this thing going, you've got to trust us, you've got to trust the process, you've got to stay committed. And small owners don't put the blinders on, especially if they've been in the business 10, 15 years. They're stuck because, quite frankly, they chose to be stuck. And they're content. I saw Brandon Dawson talk in the other day. And he goes, yeah, how many times he goes, no, we're good. We're good at 18 million.

We're fine at 18 million. He goes, what do you mean you're fine at 18 million? You think everybody on your team that wants to have their bonuses and grow and actually as equity is fine? You're going to lose all your best players. And you're going to sit in this mundane vehicle and wonder why you lost all your good people because you're not hungry anymore because you're okay you're content i think that's a huge mistake yeah no i you know i think the old adage if you're not growing you're dying yeah i

think it it speaks volume uh you know when you're talking about mindset so we i've done a lot of research on mindset it's one thing to have the positive mindset and all that but that's great but we have really broken loose on this fixed versus growth mindset and what we have found is more people are in that fixed mindset than they think. You know, they're like, oh, man, I'm a student. It's like, but are you, you know, are you willing to shut up and listen? Are you willing to take the criticism? You know, there's times when, look, there's times when I don't like to take criticism,

but I realize that if I don't, I'm not growing. I'm not going to find my way to that next level. Well, I feel like, look, my main job now is to be the talent recruiter. and the lead generator. And it's difficult because where there's LLMs, we haven't made door-to-door work great. The world's changing, and I'm like, my number one job is to make sure we're focused on Reddit and YouTube shorts.

We get the door-to-door program working. When no one else can do it, we've got to figure it out. And I feel a lot of pressure to get that stuff done. And I think you could be the best operator in the world, but without leads and without great talent coming in, there's nothing to operate. And that's where marketing, I think, is more important than sales because you can be decent as sales and even not so decent and still make a lot of money if you're getting the leads pouring in.

Now, try to be great at sales with no leads. I think the leads are just as important if not more important than sales. I mean, I know companies that, like, for example, my buddy Tom Howard bought an older company had a lot of service agreements and a lot in the database. They were able to use sales to call those past customers, go out and do tuneups, and then convert those to big ticket HVAC sales. So he was able to take pure sales and get a company that he sold for north of 70 million.

But I applaud him for that. It's absolutely phenomenal because he got a couple great guys and plugged them in. And I think that you get those anomalies put in the right place. It's just if I'm a buyer, I'm like, wait a minute, there's two guys bringing in almost all the revenue. This is kind of, I can't give those same multiple for a company like that. Now, people ask all the time,

How do I scale? And I'd like to get your take on this, but the easy answer is you scale through people. If you want to grow, if you want to scale, you scale with people. You grow your people. I'm not saying go flood the floor like a car lot, but you have to build through your team. If you have this mindset of lean and mean, I get it. But lean and mean is also going to keep you lean and mean. You know, so, you know, as you're growing your people, that's, and I'd like to get your take on when you're looking at scaling, what is one of the easiest ways or best ways to scale?

Well, I think the Keepers test that PayPal came out with is everybody should take out a piece of paper and take out their org chart. And the question is that you should ask every single direct report for you and their direct reports is if you had an opportunity of this person walked into your office, again, would you do whatever it take it? They said they were going to move. If they said, I got a raise, what would you, if you don't find yourself in a position that you would fight for them, you know, you got to make a 60-day plan to get them up or out. And so that's the first thing is when you stack up A players like Steve Jobs talks about, that's how you win. And the next thing is predictable outcomes. I mean, we take 40 pictures of every garage. We weigh the door.

We do certain things to make sure we're covering our tracks and we've created systems to get a predictable outcome. come. And I think a lot of people, they don't have, this is what Al Levy taught me in 2017 is, what's the manual, what's the standard operating procedure, what KPI's and who's responsible for those? How are we communicating across from marketing to sales to finance, to the rest, to the greenfield, to the recruiting? And yeah, I think growing the team is important, but I also think there could be growth by subtraction. I think too many companies are like, yeah, we're going to do wholesale, we're going to do commercial, we're going to do residential, we're going to do new construction. and they don't realize that they're only making money in one of those.

And they're just taking, but their revenue looks good. And they're addicted to the revenue and the bigger number when it doesn't pay the bills. That's just you're losing money. So I think subtraction of everybody that's not worth it or even the industries, you might be doing, you might be doing AHAC plumbing electrical, but you're losing your ass on electrical. I'm not saying it's not worth it for the shoulder season. I'm saying, but you've got to really get a good plan to make money in each division.

And this is where I think most people, they don't know their numbers. I think it's a mathematical equation that most people don't even want to look at. It's kind of like your blood pressure and everything else. We don't want to go to the doctor, but when the doctor finds something and we get better and we feel better, it's great. Most people are very, very nervous to go to the doctor to say, what's this, what's wrong with this? Let's get the prostate exam. Let's go through all these things to make sure I'm okay. That's probably one of the most important things I do now each year.

And most people don't want to do that. And that's when a good CFO, a good controller, and then getting your financials audited. So audited financials are a big deal. But most people are just like, I don't want to know the answer. And it's sad. It is true. It is true. Yeah.

If a contractor is listening right now has a sales team that's underperforming, what's the first thing they should look at this week? So the first thing that I feel that they need to look at this week. You just mentioned it is that they got to know their name. numbers, what are their numbers, where are their KPIs? They need to know where they stand. And KPIs, if you understand how to line up your dashboard, it tells a story. You know, do you have sales reps that they have high close rates, but low profitability? It simply means that they just don't believe in the product. You know, they're good salespeople. They just don't believe in the product.

They're just undercutting. They're undermeasuring because a lot of these people, they're like, oh, man, I got, we have a standardized pricing, which means that they're just mismeasuring to bring low pricing. You know, there's so much that your numbers tell you that most of these owners, most of these leaders, again, they don't know how to read their dashboards. They have it, but it's like driving down the road. The only thing they know how to read is their odometer, you know, or a speedometer. They don't know how to read everything else on the dashboard. So, you know, if they understood it, then they can understand what's, you know, what's today, what's this week. That's the other thing is that they need to start looking at their daily numbers.

Stop looking at your weekly and monthly numbers. You've got to win today. You've got broke in your jobs to put yourself back in business by the time you put your head back on the pillow. I agree. In your book, The Complete Field Guide of Successful Sales Leadership, who should have been? read it and what what are they going to walk away with so any of the owners or sales leaders should read that book that you know it's just like anything else we do we don't hold anything back it's not here's half of it and then you know jump onto our our website for the other half we're going

to give it away you know get on our website get on our website get on our our YouTube you know I had a guy the other day says I can't believe you just push everything out you don't hide anything it's not like we're trying to sell anything on these things. You know, when I gave the whole thing on how to deal with, how to, when people want to get multiple bids, you know, it's, we gave it the entire understanding of why they do it, how to walk through it. So it's the same thing with the book is it is line by line exactly how a sales leader

needs to lead their team. So yeah, it's for the only. owners and sales leaders. We had a lot of sales reps that have also went ahead, bought the book. And when we train, we also train in leadership. And for one main reason is I need the sales reps to understand what their leader's job is, how hard their job. Because most sales reps think that the sales leader just sits at the office with their feet up on the desk, looking at numbers complaining about why their sales reps aren't selling, which I will say a majority of those sales leaders are doing that. It's just not what they're.

they're supposed to be doing. But we also, we encourage sales reps to read, whether it's read the book or understand leadership. So they understand the fact that they're the sales reps making more money than the sales leader. It's a huge sacrifice to be a sales leader. It really is. It's true.

It is true. That is the case most of the time. And by the way, the top sales reps make more than the CEO. I mean, most of the time. I mean, that's okay. I think the goal of a CEO and a founder should be to build enterprise value. That's built to sell by John Worlow is a great book. Too many people get addicted to the cash flow.

And I say get addicted to EBITA and figure out what your multiple is going to be. I mean, Jet Baso's zones less than 8% of Amazon. When you really understand that, you could take, Paul Kelly had five turns, five bites of the apple. And, you know, your quality of life goes up every. bite and then you get to help out a lot of people in the process. So the easiest way to find us is on social media, whether it's, you know, through my name, Chuck Toki or Top Rep Training. The other way that most people find us is through our website, which is Top Rep Training.com. Is there any books that have changed your life that's like if I was going to, if you were going to

hand yourself one book, you know, 20 years ago, this would be the book. So the book that I will say actually changed my life, which is my, my mentor's book or my coach's book. It's coaching salespeople into sales champions by Keith Rosen. He literally, that was my coaching Bible for the longest time. He really is the godfather of coaching. He created the sales coaching. And now he is like he's Google's coach and, you know, discovered card. Back then he had started a, he started a, he's started his career in home improvement. And now he works with some of the largest companies in the country of the world right now. I love it.

I'm going to buy it. I don't have that book. And then close us out, Chuck, anything that we didn't talk about or anything on your mind, I'll give you the last few minutes to her final thought. I guess my final thought is when it comes to, you mentioned, you know, sales training and how often you should be sales training. It's every day, whether it's the sales. RELES REPs are, they should have some sort of task that they need to complete for self-development.

Sometimes it's nothing more than teaching them leadership so that they can lead in their own communities. Or it's understanding of going back to the basics. What are the basics and how are we going to get our sales reps or our techs to go back to the basics? But every day should be a learning step, keeping your sales reps off the pedestal. You know, the pedestal of the sales rep talking about how great they are, how lucky you are to have them. You know, you got to keep your sales reps and your techs off that pedestal and keep them learning, keep them in that growth mindset.