The Home Service Expert Podcast - How To Sell Your Services Without Compromising on Price

Episode Date: May 15, 2020

Mark Hunter is the bestselling author of High Profit Prospecting and A Mind for Sales. Well-versed in the various areas of sales—from prospecting to maximizing price—Mark utilizes over three decades’ worth of sales leadership experience to help salespeople get into the right mindset and sell more effectively. As a true expert in the field, Mark has been recognized as one of the "Top 50 Most Influential Sales and Marketing Leaders in the World." In this episode, we talked about sales process strategy, sales management, prospecting, maximizing price...

Well, here's the whole thing. There's two parts to this house and we see an old beat-up truck or a minivan or something. Oh, well, I can't afford that. And automatically, we begin assuming what the customer can pay, what the customers will pay. That is so stupid. The customer will give us the indications as to what they are looking for and what they're willing to pay based on the questions we create, the value we create, and the confidence in our own mindset. 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. Welcome back to the Home Service Expert. Tommy Mello here, and today I have a special guest. I met him at a very, very large event, and he was one of the keynote speakers. His name is Mark Hunter. You guys probably heard of his book, High Profit Prospecting, and he just came out with a new book, A Mind for Sales. He's an expert in sales process, strategy, sales management, prospecting, maximizing price, which is huge, sales leadership and sales motivation. He's a keynote speaker. He's a Global Partners and Hope member, board of directors. He's ConAgra director of sales operations from 92 to 98 and Kraft Foods district sales manager a long time ago. 30 years of sales leadership expertise, and he also sold high

profit selling. So prospecting, selling, and then a mind for sales. And he's recognized as the top 50 most influential sales and marketing leaders in the world. Mark, it's an honor to have you on the podcast. Hey, it's an honor to be here. We know, we've been trying to get together for ages. It just tells us how busy both of our schedules are. So I'm glad to be on your show. You literally are captivating on stage. You're a pro. You come dressed right.

You smile the whole time. You know, a lot of people train on sales because they were a bestseller one time. I had a guy come in the other day and he said, I worked for Marcus Limon and I was one of his top stores. But you look at them and their mindset and you know what's funny is we talked about this before the podcast, but to me, he was a victim. He said, I used to make $400,000 and now he wants a job at the my garage or a company, which they make good money, but most guys don't make 400,000 for me. So I wonder what happened in the shift to make him think that.

But it's a real honor to have you on here. I love the way you speak. I love your books. Tell me a little bit about how you got started in sales and what caused you to be this world renowned leader now of what you're doing. Well, how I got started in sales is I really stumbled into it, literally. I don't think there's too many of us who grew up as a kid said, a kid said, oh, I want to be a salesperson. You know, you want to be a fireman, a baseball player, something of that nature. I only got into sales because I messed up my driving when I was in college. I got too many speeding tickets and I couldn't afford car insurance. So I had to get a job that supplied me with a car. That is how I wound up in sales. You talk about backdooring your way

into it. And you know what's funny? That first sales job, I got fired from. Oh, it's okay. I got a second sales job. I got fired from that one too. I got a third sales job. I thought I was going to get fired from that one until finally I figured out what the secret to the success in sales is. It's not commissions. Hey, commissions are great, but it's about the customer. You got to put the customer first. And when you put the customer first, it's amazing what happens. That really turned my career around 30 some years ago. And man, it's been a great ride. It's been a great ride. Yeah, it sounds like it. So you're a consultant as well, correct?

Yep. I do a lot, you know, because my whole belief is my objective is to help people sell more. However you want, however I can do that for you, that's what we'll do. So I do consulting, I do training, I do keynote speaking, I write books, but the same outcome, how do I help you sell? How do you close more deals at full price? That's what the message is all about. Okay. So I want to dive into something here because there's a lot here in sales. There's marketing. There's finding the right customer. There's pricing, which I love the fact that we have on here that you're maximizing price. But what I find is a lot of people don't know how to come up with the right prices.

They don't have a price book. They drive up to a house that's 5,000 square feet with a Mercedes. It's a different price. Tell me how to find the right prices, first of all. Well, here's the whole thing. There's two parts to the pricing equation. And the biggest one is not the customer. Biggest one is your own headset.

What's your mind saying? Because I'll tell you what, I believe that more discounts are given because of the mindset of the salesperson than are given based off the demands of the customer. Here's the whole thing, right? We pull up to a driveway, we pull up to a house and we see this Mercedes and we go, oh, wow, wow, but we pull up to this house, we see an old beat up truck or a minivan or something. Oh, well, I can't afford that. And automatically, we begin assuming what the customer can pay, what the customers will pay. That is so stupid. The customer will give us the indications as to what they are looking for and what they're willing to pay based on the questions we create, the value we create, and the confidence in our own mindset. And if we don't get those three things right,

you are just throwing a number at a dartboard. And let me tell you something. Here's the big challenge. Wow, man, I haven't closed a deal all week. I haven't gotten one job all week. So what happens? You automatically start cutting your price because I got to get this deal. And it's totally stupid because you think the person who owns that house, do you think they know you're having a bad week? Oh, guess what? They will because it's going to drip out of your personality. It's going to drip out of your body language. It's going to drip out of your personality. It's going to drip out of your body language. It's going to drip out of your language that you are desperate. You see, great salespeople focus on the customer and they listen.

What are their needs? What are they looking for? You know, you have a great line. The garage door is to smile to the house. See, the whole thing is it's not the product we sell. It's the outcome we create. That's what we got to keep our focus on. It's the outcome we create. So, focus there. The customer will guide us. And then, I'm going to fast forward this thing. When I ultimately put the price out there in front of you,

I have to do it with extreme confidence. Now, not arrogance. I'm not talking arrogance. I'm just talking confidence. And what does confidence look like? It looks like solid body language, a strong voice, and eye contact. Because how many times do we see, and I know, Tommy, you've seen this, you've been out working with people, I'll be out working with people, and they almost like

apologetically put a price out in front of the customer. And then they go, so what do you think? Well, what do you think when you say, what do you think? Your price is too high. Man, that is so stupid. Salespeople are notorious for giving away money because they are not confident themselves. Okay, I'm sorry. I'll shut up. I'm getting on a rant. Okay, I'll back off.

No, you're preaching. You know what's funny is this is what I tell people on the podcast. There's three things I look for. Body language, eye contact, and tonality. I'm going to teach you. There you go. You don't have to tell.

The problem is some people think, oh, I need to teach you how to sell. No, no, no, no, no, no, no. Be assured of yourself. I'm not going to teach you how to sell. Here's what I'm going to teach you. You ever heard of Tom Hopkins? Oh, yes. Oh, yes.

I love how I hear people. Make it your own style. No, you don't. You repeat after me because the words you choose, this is what the cost is. I tell you to use investment. Thank you. There's so many things out there. I tell you to use investment. Thank you. There's so many things out there that I say you don't have to guess anymore. Don't make this your own. Well, here's what I do need you to make your own. It's connecting with the customer. If

you hate babies and they have three babies, don't talk about babies. But I have the ability and you have the ability and most salespeople have the ability to actually enjoy finding commonalities with people. We could have a great conversation and befriend them first. There's this quick story, Mark, that I tell. And it's, this guy walks in and I've told this a million times on the podcast, but he walks into Best Buy and he goes, I'm looking, I'm a programmer and I'm also designer, graphics designer. I need something, fast processor, tons of gigabyte, you know, if not terabytes of space i'm looking for more memory. I need this thing to load I'm looking for something advanced the guy goes. I got just what you need come over here He shows them the guy goes i'll take it

Let me ask you one question Does it come with windows 10 and the salesman looks at him and he goes you're damn right It does this is the best the best he goes i'm out of here. I hate windows 10 That's the worst program ever. I can't believe you guys carry that. So the process is you're asking questions because we think as salespeople, we know what people want. If it was my house, this is what I would do. And that's why a lot of people don't sell financing because they say, I wouldn't buy financing or they don't sell memberships because they don't believe in it. So how do you get the buy-in from your team to forget about yourself and start selling for what's best for the customer and asking the right questions? Well, what you do is you start with what are the outcomes you achieve?

What are the outcomes? What are all the outcomes that you've helped customers achieve? And when I tell salespeople to do, I tell anytime you feel like you're in a funk, you stop, you write down customers on the left hand side of a piece of paper, and on the right hand side, you write down the outcome. Now, the outcome is not what you sold. How did they feel? What did it do for them? What did they gain? What was the benefit that they took away? That's what you write down. And then you say, you know what? I'm pretty good. I'm pretty good. And then what you do is you begin to say, hmm, you know what? I'm pretty good. I'm pretty good. And then what you do is you begin to say, okay, what are the questions that I need to get? I need to be asking to line up

to be able to get the next prospect I talk to, to be thinking about one of these outcomes. You see, here's what I find. We train, and this is going to sound weird, we train our customers to behave the way we want them to. Now, I don't say that negatively, but I say that positively because here's the whole thing. I want to train you. I want to, first of all, have a conversation with you. I want to create, just like you said, hey, if somebody has three babies, I want to create that personal connection. Now, especially right now, we're doing this in the middle of COVID-19 and everybody's got a backstory. Everybody's got a backstory. And the backstory is both personal and professional because there's something going on in their job and there's something going on at home. But here's what I found.

You know what's interesting? If we can master this skill set now, it's going to stick with us for life. Because if we can find a way to connect with you, if I can find a way to create this level of trust and openness with you, it is amazing what you will share with me. And now this is no longer a transaction, but this is a conversation. When I have a conversation with you, it is amazing how the dialogue changes. And suddenly what happens is the customer begins to open up and they begin to open up more and more. Because remember, customers, they don't say, well, man, I hope a salesperson comes and tries to jam something down my throat today. No, no. But you know what's interesting? They have preconceived notions.

So they have this natural, this guarded, this guardedness up in front of them. Our job is to help them realize that that's not the case. They don't need to be guarded. They can share with me. Because at the end, what I want to do is I want to provide you with the best outcome you can possibly have. And when I put you in a position to have the best outcome you can possibly have, you know what? I'm going to maximize my price. It really becomes a lot easier

than we realize. But you've got to listen to the customer and go back to that Best Buy example. See, do you have this? And what did the salesperson do? They suddenly answered the question. Just because the customer asks a question doesn't mean you should answer it. Every question must be clarified. Uh-oh, we're going to go down Pandora's box here. Well, I am, and here's why. You see, that customer says, oh, do you have Windows 10? And the response should have been, so why do you ask? And the whole idea is not to put them on a spot, but to make them actually feel bigger because now you're saying, customer, I'm valuing your opinion. You're asking me a question. I want to value your opinion even more, so share with me a little more

insight. That was how that mythical best buy salesperson should have answered the question. But this comes back to this whole thing when people say, what's your price? What's your price? Never put a price out on the table until you have first qualified them. Understand what the outcome is that they're looking for, understand the timeline that they're looking to get this taken care of, and who is the decision maker? Because many times the person you're speaking to is not the decision maker. Oh, well, I got to speak to my wife. I got to speak to my husband. I got to speak to somebody else. Because then all you do is you throw out a price and what do they do? Oh, we'll get back to you.

That is code for, thank you very much. We're not going to buy from you. Bad move. There's a lot here because I believe that first of all, the best companies in the world make sure they're setting the appointment for a one-time close to make sure the decision makers are- Thank you. Thank you. That is one of the biggest mistakes that people make because they said- So tell me how to do that. Let's use home service because that's- Right, right. That's your niche. That's your core. Right, right. When I'm setting the appointment, I'm going to say, hey, how have you made decisions like this in the past? And I love asking this on an appointment setting call. I'm on the phone. Oh, well, my wife and I, we normally talk about.

Great. So good. You're both going to be there for the appointment? In other words, you ask them that in that manner because I don't want to show up at your place. I don't want to send anybody out if this is going to be a two, three, four call. I want to be able to close this one call now. I got to have you both there. But if I say, are you the decision maker? Well, what do you think they're going to say? Well, of course they are. Nobody wants to be put down. So I say, hey, last time you made a decision like this, how'd you do that? And I love

kind of asking that and kind of that casual, non-threatening voice. And I get a truth answer. 95% of the time, I get a good, solid truth answer. And that's great. I love it. Now I can set the appointment when both of them are going to be there. So that's a huge step. So the way the appointment's booked, I always talk about how my mom used to book phone calls back in the day, 2010. And when my mom would book the call, it was like the customer was gravy. It was like, oh my God, I've heard so much about you. My mom would laugh.

She'd be so sweet. And I knew when I showed up there, the people would smile. Sometimes they'd give me a hug. And it was like, my mom did the best job ever. It was in my hands. It was already, she got me 80% of the finish line. All I had to do was follow through.

So booking the phone call is so important. And how they found us. Are they a coupon shopper? Are they from the internet? What do they care about? And a lot of it is, are you marketing to the correct avatar? Because people say, if you were to ask me this, Mark, five years ago, you would have said, who's your perfect client? I would have said anybody with a garage door. Now I say, it's a female. I say the age, I say the average income, I say the average

credit score I've analyzed. Now, can I make money anywhere? Absolutely. But I want to send the right message out there to the right person that's going to make the phone call that I'm going to book it with. And yeah, absolutely. And you know, there's a good book, ultimate sales machine talks about your top, top 20 or top hundred list. And that if I pick up one client, I have a guy Mark that spent $800,000 with me last year and I made good margins with him and he's happy and I fulfilled everything he wanted. Can you imagine if I had just a hundred clients like that, I could be doing 80 million

and that just my managing 80 people. I mean, a hundred good customers. That'd be awesome. And see what you just described is know the lane you play in and stay right there. Too many times what happens is people throw, well, hey, I can get a bunch of leads here. I can do a bunch of leads here. No. Know where your best leads come and only stick to that lane. And when you stick to that lane, it's amazing how much more confident you become. Because like what you just described, okay, That perfect, you know, what I call the ideal customer profile. When you have your ICP, it is amazing how much more confident you become with them, how you begin to understand them. You express a level of confidence. So now when you're calling this type of person and your mother, gold, because this is the other piece. The selling process does not begin when you show

up for the appointment. The selling process begins the moment the appointment setter gets you on the phone. And even before that, really in the marketing, everything else, but we have to understand that each step contributes to the next step. And you can't think that, well, I'm going to blow off the appointment setters. I'm not going to worry. No, those are gold. Those people are gold because what do they do? Like your mom, she set the table for you. She set the table because she knew who to look for. 100%. And that's huge. And what I want to say about sales is I have my best sales guy he's by far the best

he's very very good and I've studied him and the thing is he's not from the United States he doesn't have a fear factor of money he almost feels like you rich Americans I don't mind asking if you say no he goes is there a problem with me

or is there a problem with the price and he's so blunt he's so blunt I love that and he's very you know I don't want to say confrontational but when he walks in that garage door he asks the right question he plays with the dog but he's he doesn't play with the dog he loves dogs I mean he's obsessed with his dog and he literally says ma'am everything you've told me, this is why I've offered you this. He always starts at the top, no coupons, unless he sees a coupon on the table. And then what he says is he's done his research, man. This guy does his research and he walks in and he talks most of the time with a conversation, asking a lot of questions. How long have you lived here? What's going on with the garage door? When's the last time you had it looked at?

And then he always has the same plan. It's not like every time it's different. He goes, here's where we're going to start. And it's an education process, but there's no fear. And he could always go lower. It's anchoring. He anchors it right. Because he knows he can't go up from there. If you get good medium, one day I heard this, Mark, and I don't know what your thoughts are on this. I'd love to hear your take, but there's good, better, best, right? One day I met this guy and he goes, never do good, better, best. Do best, better, good, and start with the best and shut up. You always start with the best. I firmly believe that. I always say, put the best out there and make it really the best. And if they don't like it, let them puke

all over it. Because then when you come out with the one down, now suddenly that looks really good because it's contrast. But if you start out low and try to go up, I'm not a fan of that. I am not a fan of that at all. I love that. Tell me a little bit about your clientele because it probably, probably a little bit of everything, right? What do you... Oh, man. My clientele is all over the place from beer companies. In fact, today I was doing a webinar with a beer company. I work with software companies.

I work with roofing. I work with a lot of roofing supply companies around the country. It is a wide range. But you know what I find is the commonality in the whole thing is that salespeople are hung up. And they go, ah, ah, what do I do? What do I do? And please, it's not that difficult. That top-rated person you've got, what makes him good?

He believes in how he can help the customer. And as a result, that's created a level of confidence. And he is not hesitant to ask the critical question. And that is gold. But it's what 95, 98% of all salespeople are afraid to do. And they're only afraid to do it because of their own mind. In fact, that's why I wrote the book, A Mind for Sales, because it's amazing. The mind tells us what we can get away with. The mind tells us, and you're a top-rated person. His mind is telling him,

hey, I can do this. I'm not afraid of being told no. I'm not afraid of being this. And that's gold. But see, we live in a society, we live in a world where, oh, oh, what if they say no? It's going to upset me. It's going to be, who cares? If somebody says no to me, and I hear no's all time, there's two things that I do. One, I want to validate. Why? Just like your top person said, is it me or the price? I'm going to validate. Why are you saying no? And the majority of time why it is, is because I just haven't demonstrated enough value. Now, if I can't overcome that, I'm going to leave that. I'm going to leave that situation saying, you know what? No is only a moment in time. I will get you. I will get you. Yeah. Because again, create value.

So when it comes to that, you know, you get the no. Obviously, you're not going to one-close everybody. There's three things people buy on. My dad always told me this. And two out of the threes every time. They buy on price, which is the worst, or their timetable. I can get out there right away. And then they want something great quality, whether that be warranty or the way you clean up

or your background checks or the trucks you drive or the fact that you've got a great establishment that's been around a long time. So a lot of companies make it about the price. And I know there's a lot of people out there and I don't care what industry, they hate the guys at the top because we charge more and they say, you guys are ripping people off. And literally I can tell you this, if I was making 80% margins or even 25% margins, I'd believe that. But there's two people you're taking advantage of. Typically, if you're making great margins and you're giving customers everything great, you're taking

advantage of your internal customers. You're not paying them right. You don't have a good infrastructure. That's what I believe. But there's a lot of haters out there and they hate the fact that you could charge a lot. And one day, Mark, this guy told me, he said, who's the most expensive HVAC company in town? And I ratted off two names. And he goes, who's the biggest? And I said, both of them. And why is there this misconception? You know, there's a difference between price gouging

and completely taking advantage of people and charging a really great price for a great quality. That's timeliness, that has the infrastructure to last a long time and be around and take good care of your internal customers. Well, wow, you said a lot there. And let's talk about this low price person. Anybody who wants to sell on price is going to lose on price because there'll always be somebody who comes along and winds up selling it a little bit cheaper. And guess what? The price-oriented customer is going to leave you

in a heartbeat because all they are is focused on price. And let me tell you something. The price-oriented customer does not understand price and they are the most high maintenance customers you'll ever have. They will nag you and bug you to death because they're buying you on price and all they want to do is screw you over and get everything they possibly can. Let's go back to that high end. You know what I find very interesting? Who's going to be the one that's going to get the most referrals over time? Who's going to be the one who long-term winds up generating more business because of repeat business, referral business, and business just falls in their lap is going to be the high-end HI company. That's who's going to

do it. It's not going to be the price kit because those customers don't care. So let me tell you something. They're jealous. You know why they're jealous? Because the high end has a business model versus just going out and just throwing junk out there. And that's what the low price kid is doing. And you also hit on something. If I'm gouging and I'm taking all this margin in the bank and I'm not taking care of my team, believe me, it's going to come back to bite you real quick. Because to any organization, I don't care what the company is, your people is what makes your business work. Your people. Culture starts at the top in any organization. Culture starts at the top. And let me tell you something, as you treat your employees is how your employees will treat the customers. Pretty simple, pretty amazing, but it's amazing how that concept gets lost.

Yeah. I, you know, before when we were talking, you said, I talked to a company yesterday, who's absolutely murdering it. You were just smiles. And then you said, I talked to one today, you know, lack of leadership and you didn't go into details on who they are. So I could say that. Talk to me a little bit about that because I believe in people, but I believe in the process in which you find those people too. Well, there is a whole process, man. What do we have about six or eight hours here for this? Yeah. I mean, seriously, cause there's a lot here. This is the whole thing. Your employees take your cues from you.

Your employees. I'll share with you a very quick story. I was working with a CEO of a very major company. When I say major, this CEO had not only a security detail, but had private jets and a helicopter. Okay, this is the CEO of a major corporation. And you would think this guy was a jerk. He was the nicest guy in the world. Unbelievable nice. And it was amazing to watch how he treated people. I had a chance to spend

several days with him. He treated everybody with incredible respect. I asked him, I said, hey, you're really nice to people. He says, well, I do want everybody to succeed. I do want everybody to do well. But here's what I found. When I'm nice to people, I make better decisions. Think about that for a moment. He said when he's nice to people, he makes better decisions. Now, here's what's very interesting.

Because I had some other people in the company say, wow, isn't he really different? He says, oh yeah. He says he has changed the culture in the company dramatically. This is CEO of a major Fortune 100 company. And it was amazing how everybody in the company became incredibly nice. Culture starts at the top and it runs down through. And you know what's interesting? That company, boy, they went through some issues. They had some real issues and the board of directors held with them. But here's what I found very interesting. Their profit margins over the years that he was CEO increased significantly because you know what? The people, the people in the company became far more productive and far more understanding of what was happening out there. And it was amazing how efficient that

company became. And I truly say it was because the CEO, when he came in and he changed the culture of that company. So it really is. Anybody can be a jerk. That's not hard. That's not hard. I'm a recovering jerk. I've been in recovering jerkaholic for a number of years. But here's the whole thing. When you take the time to reach out to your people and be nice to them, they're going to quickly begin reaching out to their customers. And what does it do? It is amazing. Now, think about this for a moment. You go out on a job site and you develop a warm relationship with the homeowner. And that homeowner is going to, in turn, take care of you. Conversely, if you go out and you wind up messing up the job site, your project gets done for the day and you're curbside, you're popping back beers and everything and all that sort of stuff. And they're going, well, who are these people? So guess what? When it comes time to wrap up the project, who's going to be more in your face? It's going to be the latter person. Because look, you treated me like a jerk on the job site. I'm going to treat you like a jerk as you get done.

You see, it's amazing. Our customers will treat us in their homes the exact same way we treat them. It's not hard. It's just being respectful. Yeah, that's interesting. I definitely could tell when you meet somebody and I've done, I've been wrong a lot. You meet people that have the gift of gab and I don't think there's a lot of personality profiling out there. I'm actually getting heavily involved in one right now because it pegged me in about

20 people on the nose, like so detailed. What do you look for? Because you tell me when you're recruiting and I'm a big fan of not hiring, but recruiting. It's not finding someone in Craigslist or Indeed. It's literally going out, finding who you want and giving them an opportunity to come and make the decision to move to you. So talk to me a little bit about getting the right people on your team. Well, I very much respect and I like what you just said, because you're right. You hire off a Craigslist and you get Craigslist quality people. I want to go out and find the people. Here's what I want to look for. Anybody can interview well. I mean, come on. Let's not, you know, oh, you're in it for a job interview. And it's basically, now, first of all, here's the other problem. Most people don't know how to interview. So, we're looking for really qualified

people. Are you qualified? We're looking for people who are really nice. Do you think you're a nice person? I mean, we tell the person how to answer the question by the question we ask. Okay, that's just totally lame. One of the techniques that I love to do is I want to interview you, but then let's go grab a cup of coffee. Let's go into Starbucks. Let's go someplace. I want to see how you treat Joe Average. I want to see when we walk up to a door. Are you just walking to the door? Are you holding the door open for somebody else walking out? When you order from the barista, are you treating that barista with respect or just telling he or she what you want. And it's amazing those little dynamics

begin to reveal a lot about people's personalities. Because again, this is a people business. We just happen to be in home improvement. We just happen to do garage doors. We just happen to do services for your home, but we're a people business. We're people. And if you hire people who like people and are passionate about people, it's amazing what they'll do because they'll create better. You know, those are the people, you've got them, you've got them in your team. They go out, they go out and they come back and you hear the compliments. You hear the comments. And guess who gets the referrals? Guess who gets the additional business? I remember when I met you back in August. I mean, you have an infectious personality, unbelievably positive way. And so what does that do? That draws other people into you who are infectious and have a positive view. And again, see, we attract who we are like. Ooh, that's really scary. That's really scary for some people out there. Yeah. Well, I think, sir, you know,

in my opinion, especially in home service, too many people decided to be the owner. Maybe you shouldn't have taken that step because the why wasn't there. And the why was I don't want to work for someone else. Well, hey, can I run with that for a second? I remember I was working with a group of landscapers and the majority of these guys got in the business just for that reason, the why, because they didn't want to work for anybody else. Because really what they were, were deep seated jerks. They didn't want to work for anybody else. And well, by the way, nobody wanted to work for them, but suddenly they thought that they could be a better landscape with anybody else. And you talk about disaster. Yeah. There's something really seriously wrong with that. Because I'll tell you what,

the people you want to surround yourself are the people who want to play on a team, who want to embrace the customer, who are engaged with the customer. Now, I'm not talking about giving away the farm because somebody says, oh, can you take care of this? I'm not talking about that. What I'm talking about is respecting them for who they are. And it's amazing how you will maximize because you know what you're going to have? I'll never forget. I was working with a hardscape company in Florida.

This goes back about four or five years ago. And one of the install groups teams had just put in a massive hardscape project around a pool. It was beautiful. It was beautiful. It really looked good. The homeowner was totally up in arms, totally up in arms. And the gentleman I was working with, the supervisor, and I had to go out and look at him. And this homeowner was just ripping us apart that the bricks, the blocks weren't laid, everything didn't look right. And see how the sun hits these just right. And I didn't really understand what, well, you know what was happening? The homeowner had gotten a big argument

with one of the crew members who'd come out to do the job site and just was intent on sticking it to him. And guess what? The company had to come back out, tear up all that hardscape, redo the whole thing just to make the homeowner happy. All because there was one jerk on this three-man crew that found a way to tick off the homeowner. And I'm sorry, but how many times do we get into these situations? And what that was was this was probably a very skilled craftsman. I never met that gentleman, probably a very skilled craftsman. But unfortunately, he had a personality like a two- four. And man, toxic, toxic. Now that opens up a whole separate issue.

Do we hire for skill? Do we hire for personality? And a lot of arguments on that one. You know, it's one of those things that I got really good at it about holding my tongue with customers that were angry and I let them vent. And I said, wow, I can't believe that. That's not okay. And I literally write most guys up for the situation because most of the time, the customer's right. Whether it's an attitude thing, because it's very hard for somebody to

criticize your employees or your kids or your family, but you just kind of got to hold your tongue and say, wow, that just rubbed them off the wrong way. And the ability to do that is, it's very hard when you know you're in the right. A lot of times you're in the right because you know, this guy's never got a complaint before he's an angel. And why is it that owners, especially in some management tend to just, so you know what, screw off. Nobody talks to my employees that way when you're just like, look, we're done with you. It's not like we have in home service. Typically we're not coming unless

you've got a pool service or a landscape business. A lot of it's like one and done type. We're trying to create a relationship, get a service agreement. And then we get a one-star, then we get the BBB, then we get Angie's list. Then we get Google, Yelp, you know, you name it. Why is it so hard to just look the other way for people? Well, see, this is one thing. I mean, we're in the era where you have to look the other way because every sale, I don't care if you say, hey, I'm never coming back. Every sale leads to the next sale. Every sale. I always say the only good sale is one that leads to the next sale. Let me tell you something. Every sale does because you're right. They'll slam us on Angie's list. They'll slam us on a Yelp review.

They will throw it out on their Facebook neighborhood page. And then you wonder why you're not getting any more work from that subdivision. You're not getting any more work from that end of town. Yeah. So I'll tell you what, you've got to bend over backwards and help the, even at the, now, when somebody rips on one of my employees, I take it with a grain of salt. I understand it. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. But I don't go back and rip on the employee. I'm going to process it. Is this something that needs to be talked about or is this just a bad homeowner situation? And because again, what I don't want to do is I don't want to throw people under the bus that don't need to be thrown. Now, if there's a personality issue, I'm going to very

respectfully address it with them, very respectfully and professionally. But I'm not going to sit there and condemn them for it. Now, same thing happens time and time again. Then I have to say, whoa, I've done a poor job training. I've done a poor job. The old joke, this supervisor says, man, I can't believe it. There are no decent employees. I've hired the last five employees and I've had to fire them all or they've all quit. And I go, well, huh, maybe it's not the employee. Maybe it's the supervisor. It's you. It's a little bit of work.

Right. Bingo. Bingo. You win the grand prize of the evening. You're right. It is. Right. Because culture starts at the top.

Yeah. You know, I have a guy. Because culture starts at the top. Yeah. You know, I have a guy that works for me and another business, and he's actually one of my best friends and he's got an issue with everybody. And the other night we're talking and I go through seven employees. I go, who do you like? Are you starting to understand that this is a problem with you? If you got a bad mindset and everything's everybody else's fault, it's that victim mentality. There's a lot of victim mentality going on right now with this whole coronavirus. And it's, you know, we haven't talked about that. I want to ask you a couple of quick ones.

We've got some time here. But first of all, a lot of us forget to stage things. I stage everything. So right when I walk up, I tell the customer, and we do this on the phone. You know, Mr. Hunter, I just want you to know that I take my job very seriously. And I want to give you five out of five service today. If any time during our whole time together that you feel that I'm falling short of that, please let me know, because I want you to tell your friends, neighbors, and family about us. But I'm setting you up to leave a five-star review because Google, Yelp, Facebook,

all of these have five stars, right? That's how they're rated. So the staging helps, number one. So what is your take on that? I love that. I love that approach because what you're doing is you're actually elevating the customer because you're setting the expectation. You are like the maitre d' at the finest restaurant that you walk into. And the maitre d' says, Mr. Mello, we have your table right over here. We've already poured your whatever it might be. And what does it do? It raises your expectations as to the type of evening you're going to have. And that's what you're doing. Because see, what you're doing is you also are understanding that the selling process and getting everything set up to do the job is part of the job. Years ago, I was doing work with a Blue Man Group. Well, we've all seen Blue

Man Group. And it's very interesting. The Blue Man Group, and this is one of the things that I told the sales force, we really worked on hard, was the Blue Man Group experience begins with the ticketing process. Begins with the salesperson on the telephone. That's where it begins. See? And what you're doing, you're starting to process. I love that. I love what you said. It's good. You know, I have a whole pretty defined sales process, but one of the ones I picked up, it's called finishing the job correctly. And that's after I take your money, I get the signatures. I spent a lot of time with you. I clean up in front of you. I ask you questions. I show you how to register your opener. And then I say this, I say, Mr. Hunter, I got to tell you,

this has been an amazing experience. I wanted to know before I leave, is there anything I can help you with? You know, I'm a pretty big guy. I know sometimes it's hard to reach those hard to reach items or is there a door, anything you need at all? And very rarely, sometimes people are like, could you help me get the Christmas tree down or whatever that is, but that goes a mile. And then I wanted to ask you, when do you ask for that referral? What's the perfect time to get that referral? I'm going to ask for the referral right then. Hey, you know, I said, when I came here, that my objective was to deliver for you that five-star service. I hope I've delivered. How would you rate me right there, right now? And you ask them and you say,

great. Would you mind doing me two favors? Would you mind going out onto Google or Yelp, whatever it is, and leave me that five-star. And then, oh, by the way, who else do you know that you feel would benefit from how I've been able to help you? I can ask for a referral anytime I have demonstrated value to you. Don't leave a site. Don't leave a home until you've asked for a referral and have also requested a five-star review. Because again, every sale has to lead to the next sale. There's a lot to that there because if I were to ask for a garage door referral, I go, yeah, I might know. The fact is at the top of your mind, Mark, I don't think you know any of your neighbors that might need a garage door. I don't think you're going to be like, oh, there's a certain way to say, listen, all the houses in this neighborhood, because I've been

here plenty of times, Mr. Hunter, are the same age, you're going to have the same problems. But here's what I would say, you know, the whole speech I gave is what's in it for me, what's in it for you? Because I can ask, yeah, do you know anybody? Well, you're going to say, you know, Tom, I'll tell you what, you did a hell of a job. I'm going to keep your number, and I will tell anybody, if I talk to my neighbors, I'll let them know where I got it. But I don't think that I could just, there's got to be something more. You know what I mean? Well, again, it's, and I'm not a specialist in the business, you know, so I'm a little bit naive standing here trying to give you something, but here's the line picking up on what you said. Hey, all these homes were probably built, what, about 15 years ago? Yeah. So I would imagine, and I would begin getting them in a little bit of a conversation about what else is happening in the neighborhood. Because again, hey, what else is happening? And that's going to lead you to a discussion. Oh, yeah, you know what? They did. Oh, great, great. So I'm going to not backdoor my way

in, but I'm going to converse my way in. So again, I'd love to hear your very specific piece. Well, first of all, I'll go into it briefly here is I tell my technicians, the boss loves it. We have a contest going right now. And when you leave me a review, my name's Tommy Mello. It really, really makes me look good. If you think I did a good job, which I already know, because you've already said that. And if you wouldn't mind before I leave, you go take care of that. And here's what I'm going to do. I'm going to go ahead and lubricate, adjust, tighten. I'm going to go through the last phase, clean everything up while you're doing that. But the difference is customers have a tendency to leave reviews for that individual, not the company. Number one. Number two

is I incentivize people. Listen, you obviously understand that this is happening throughout the whole neighborhood. It's a smile of your home. It's a great investment. If you're willing to let some neighbors know, here's what we're willing to do for you. You like the magnetic hardware. I'm going to do that for you. If you want a gift card, we can do that for you.

But we know that you're just not going to go out there and be a salesman for our company. But if you think we did a great job, if you could let some neighbors, some family members know, if you know anybody at the top of your head, that'd be great. I had these little girls walk up to my house years ago and they said, Hey, I'm selling these cups four at a time for sports. I said, you wouldn't happen to have the Detroit Red Wings. They said, yes, we do. I said, here's the deal. These girls were probably 11 years old. I said, I want eight cups, have the Detroit Red Wings. They said, yes, we do. I said, here's the deal. These girls were probably 11 years old. I said, I want eight cups, two sets. Now here's my name.

Here's the form. I want you to walk up to every neighbor here. This guy's name is Tim. That's George. That's Ron. I said, I want you to, because it's a call to sack. I said, tell them Tommy Mello bought from us. He bought two orders and he told us you would be good for at least two orders.

They came back to my door and said, we just sold all four neighbors two sets. I just felt like I tapped these little girls a lesson. They were so happy because they didn't sell every house, but the fact is they answered and I thought it was super cool. I love that stuff. And those girls did not forget that lesson for years. So Mark, I want to ask you a few more questions. So obviously you've got these new books, you've got a mind for sales, high profit prospecting and high profit selling.

Let me ask you this. What are three books you'd recommend just off the top of your head for people looking to get higher, better sales? There's a book that I really love, New Sales Simplified by Mike Weinberg. That is an excellent book. Larry Levine's book, I really like. Heart. Selling from the Heart. Selling from the Heart. Thank you. Thank you. Man, wow. I need more coffee or something.

That's a second book. And I'll tell you what, a book that goes way back years and years ago, but Dale Carnegie, Think and Grow Rich. I'll tell you what, for any business person out there, that is a book you got to get into every year. Dale Carnegie's How to Win Friends and Influence People. Excuse me, How to Win Friends and Influence. Man, I'll tell you what, I'm sitting here in this remote office and like, oh, you're good. Listen, I wish you could have jumped into some other things. I am going to get you for a part two and it's going to be soon. Listen, I want to give you the chance to kind of speak to the audience. One last final thought, just whatever you want to talk about. And then also real quick, how do we get ahold of you, Mark? If it's the time to reach out. Sure. Best way is the saleshunter.com. I am with the last name

Hunter got to run with it. So it's the saleshunter.com. That's the website. Got a ton of videos, ton of download stuff. You can get the book right now is a mind for sales as spot on gold right now for this era we're in. But here's the piece I want to leave you with. Your goal each day is to influence and impact each person that you come in contact with. And when you do that, you will have earned the right, the privilege, honor, and respect to be able to meet with that person again. You know what? That trips my trigger because sales is all about being passionate in helping people. I love it, Mark. Well, you are the man. I really appreciate this. This is phase one. Remember, we're getting a second one in there. I think real quick, what I'm going to do

is order the book. We'll talk about the book, jump a little bit more into this, what's going on right now and the best thing to do during this crisis. But appreciate you very, very much. Hey, thank you much. I'm glad we finally got a chance to get this thing to work. I love it. Awesome. All right. Hey, listen, you're working from home now, probably. So we can do this again soon. So thank you. We will do it. You got it, man. Take care. Hey, I just wanted to take a quick minute and thank you for listening to the podcast. You know, most people don't understand this, but the way that the podcast has grown is when people subscribe and they leave a review. So if you would please, please, please, why it's top of mind, take a quick minute to subscribe and leave a quick review. It'll help me out so much. If you

just took a little bit of time right now, I can't tell you enough how much I appreciate the listeners and the feedback. And also when you subscribe, what I'm going to do is let you know the next guest coming on the podcast. And I'll let you email me anything you want me to ask that next person coming on. All the pros I have on here. I want your feedback. I want you to subscribe so you can start giving me the questions you want me to ask and help us grow together. Also, I'm giving away my book for free now. All you got to do is go to homeservicemillionaire.com forward slash podcast. You got to cover the shipping and handling, but I'm giving the material out for free. It's 200 pages. It's a hardcover book, homeservicemillionaire.com forward slash podcast. I appreciate each and every one of the

listeners and thank you for making this Home Service Expert podcast a success. I hope you're having a great day and thanks again.