The Home Service Expert Podcast - How To Use The Phone To Build Lasting Customer Relationships

Episode Date: April 25, 2019

Art Sobczak is regarded by many as the master of cold calling and inside sales telemarketing. A sales trainer for cold calling, inside sales, and account management since 1983, he is the founder of Business by Phone, Inc., banking on 35 years of industry experience. He is the author of Smart Calling, and was the recipient of the Lifetime Achievement Award from the American Association of Inside Sales Professionals in 2012. In this episode, we talked about cold calling, telemarketing, artificial intelligence...

Before we get the podcast going, I wanted to let you guys know that the Home Service Millionaire book is available now at homeservicemillionaire.com forward slash success. And it's for free. All you got to do is pay for shipping. It's homeservicemillionaire.com forward slash success. And it's a hardcover copy. And I put a lot of extra things in this book. So please be sure to order your book. And I also made it available on audio. Go to homeservicemillionaire.com forward slash audio and download your own audio book. Thanks. This is the Home Service Expert podcast with Tommy Mello. Let's talk about bringing in some more money for your home service business.

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. My name is Tommy Mello. Today I have Art Subcheck. And the cool thing about Art is I've known him for a long time.

We've been golfing. We've been out several times together. I ran into him the other day. And this guy has a bestselling book. He's the master of cold calling, inside sales, telemarketing. He's a sales trainer for inside sales. He was doing cold calling inside sales and account management. He's been doing this since 1983. That's when I was born. He's the founder of Business by Phone Incorporated, 35 years of experience. He's the author of Smart Calling. You guys are going to want to get this book.

We're going to talk about it at the end of this podcast. And he's the recipient of the Lifetime Achievement Award from the American Association of Inside Sales Professionals in 2012. So Art, you're local here in Scottsdale. I'm super excited to have you on. How have you been doing lately? Doing great, Tommy. And thank you so much for inviting me. This is awesome. I am really pumped to share some great tips with your audience. You know, I always talk about how important the call center is. And I think that it's the one thing that everybody says I book 90% of the calls. I've heard that now so many times. I book all the calls and I have a buddy that's only outbound and he's got an amazing

solar company. So I'm so excited because out of all the podcasts I've done, I've had a lot of important big authors, $100 million plus companies. But this one I feel like is something that the audience is going to get so much value out of. So you've done this for 35 years. Tell me a little bit about what brought you into telemarketing and sales and the phone service business. Well, let's go all the way back. Actually, everybody is a born salesperson. I mean, think about it. Kids are the greatest salespeople in the world. And what happens is some people just choose to not make it their profession. I actually did choose to make it my profession because it seems like most of my jobs as I was growing up involved sales in some way. Now, granted, I probably had

50 different jobs going through high school and college. Some of them were manual labor, but it seems like I always gravitated more towards the job where I was selling something, either face-to-face or over the phone. And over the phone was great because I lived in Omaha, Nebraska, where it gets really hot and humid in the summer and really cold in the winter. And while my other buddies were out working outside somewhere, I was sitting inside in the warm or the cool temperature, just talking and making a lot more money than they were. I realized I was pretty good at it. And as luck would have it, not luck, I mean, I chose it. I decided to take a job in sales right out of college with the old AT&T.

And again, that was before you were born. So that was 1982. And I was working in what they called the Bell System Telemarketing Center. And that was back in the day when telemarketing wasn't a bad word. And what we were doing is selling Bell System services through, of course, using the phone, but we're also consulting with people how they could do it themselves. So after about a year of that, I knew that I was always going to have my own business. And as an aside, I actually was going to go into the bathtub refinishing business. So I almost got into the home services business. And I actually had done a

business plan for that my senior year in college, and then got an A plus on it and decided I'd probably need to go out and maybe make some money in corporate life before I did that. And then decided to start a business in sales and consulting as opposed to the bathtub refinishing, which by the way, I sold that business plan to a friend of mine who actually did start the business and did pretty well at it and sold the company. So there's kind of the long answer to a short question. You know, when I think about Outbound Calling, someone asked me yesterday, what's your favorite movie?

And right out of my mouth said Wolf of Wall Street. And it's like the newest claim to fame movie. And it's a pretty cool movie, but you can make so much money. I looked at this pyramid art the other day and it said 3% of people are actually looking for your service. But the next pyramid down was 7% and then 20%. And then there was other ones that aren't interested. But when you're outbound calling, you're not necessarily looking for somebody ready for your service, but you could sell it on them. And I think that we missed the bus when we're not doing outbound calls. And I'm just so excited to hear that we're able to bring... 27 is 9 times more than 3%.

We're doing 9 times more to get those customers coming in. It's a bigger pool of people. And that's why I'm so excited to hear about this. So tell me a little bit about right? We're doing nine times more to get those customers coming in. It's a bigger pool of people. And that's why I'm so excited to hear about this. So tell me a little bit about what works with you with sales and why or why not? What did you want to work with in sales? And how did you just, how did you get into this business? I mean, I know you started at AT&T, but just, it seems like 35 years, you developed so much and helped so many companies out with it, with smart calling and everything. Yeah, Well, the way it started is that I made a lot of mistakes to begin with, like a lot of people do when they're young and naive and they're going to start a company. And my partner and I decided that we could go out and do what we were doing for AT&T and do

it on our own. What we didn't realize is we didn't have the huge budget that AT&T did to go out and generate leads and get people to contact us for consulting services. And again, went out and made every mistake in the book, including renting office space, buying office furniture, and taking on a ton of overhead without any revenue coming in. So there's a business 101. I don't know how I missed that in college. So I made that mistake. But then through hard work and persistence and cold calling at the time, we did. We brought in some clients and started bringing in some revenue. And my partner decided that he wanted to go and be a lawyer, which he did. But I stayed with the business and decided that I was just going to make it work. It was

kind of tough the first couple of years and decided that I needed to have some forms of recurring revenue in addition to consulting and training where essentially you're just, you're selling your time and people in the home services business, you know this because when you can sell your service contracts and get that recurring revenue in, it's a lot better than just going out and getting paid by the job.

So we created products, we created membership programs. When I say we, it was me. A newsletter and all kinds of things to have a real business as opposed to just being a highly paid speaker, which I am. And those are great. I love to do that. But it's also good to have the recurring business come in as well. So actually, today, I know you want to talk about outbound, but I'd like to talk about inbound, outbound, and really everything to do with sales because there's so much for home service people out there, professionals to do that can help you really skim the cream and take advantage of the business that is presented to you each and every day. So where should we start? Well, I think most of us have the number one problem, and there's twofold, is the technology to actually know the score. And actually, you know,

I always say monitor KPIs and know where the score is because you can't win the game if you don't know the score. And then how to recruit, train, maintain, and continue to develop people. So I want to talk, and this isn't inbound or outbound. It's setting up yourself for success and then getting the right people. So let's talk about how you do that first. Yeah, and I got to tell you, I'm not an expert in recruiting and hiring and all that.

There are people who are. My expertise is the what to say, how to say it, and all those things that surround that. So that's where I'm going to be of the greatest value to your audience here. But one thing I will suggest to anybody that's hiring anybody is that don't go cheap because the people who are representing you on the phone, as well as the people out there doing the job, but think about this. People who are representing you on the phone, these folks can either make you a million dollars or they can cost you a million dollars. And the cost part is something that a lot of people don't think about.

Because every time that phone rings, number one, you've already invested a lot of money to get that phone to ring. And again, I mean, you well know because you're all over the numbers, but some people aren't. I mean, what is the average cost of a lead to just get that phone to ring, Tommy? I mean, it's over a hundred bucks. It really costs a hundred dollars to get a real customer to call with an inquiry. And that doesn't surprise me, but that might surprise some people who don't even realize it. I mean, they spend the money on advertising and it hurts. And in some cases, they look at it as an expense as opposed to an investment. But then they're going to scrimp when they're hiring somebody who's going to be handling, who knows, anywhere from $100 to maybe a couple thousand dollars worth

of leads per day. And in my mind, why wouldn't you invest the time and the effort and the money in the people who are going to be handling that asset? Now, in addition to that, what you want to make sure you do is that you've got the process in place and the training for those folks to execute your plan. And I truly mean a process. And again, I'm so impressed with what you do. And actually, full disclosure and transparency here, I picked up a copy of your book to skim it before I came on. I mean, I know you, but I just picked up a copy of the book because I wanted to be a little bit conversant in what you're doing there. And I sat down, I actually laid down about nine o'clock the other night and I was going to skim it.

And then I found myself at about midnight having gone through the whole thing. So I, I mean, I am really impressed with, with what you're doing there. And I think if people out there just did a fraction of what you suggest, they'd be probably a hundred percent more, more successful. But, but the thing is here with having a process, I mean a step-by-step process. If you have guys going out there doing whatever type of service that you do, if they're going to be fixing something or installing something, you probably have a process. I would assume most of you do. But why in the world wouldn't you have a process for handling that incoming phone call

so that you're going to maximize whatever the potential and the objective for that call. And I would say the objective for every single call is to book the appointment or the sale depending on what you're selling and what your service is. And there should be a very defined process from the greeting and the attitude with the greeting, the questioning, how you attitude with the greeting, the questioning, how you're collecting the information, the ask for the next step, whether it be, again,

the sale itself or the appointment, and then what happens afterward as far as the follow-up, what goes into the CRM system, how it's communicated to your people out in the field. That needs to be defined step by step by step because otherwise people might be doing their own thing. Again, be like sending somebody out to a job saying, yeah, yeah, just go do whatever you think, whatever you feel like today. Yeah, that's exactly what I say.

I mean, I've talked about a lot of things in the past about like lead generation. And sometimes when we do lead generation, we give a company a lead. The predictable answer from them is these leads aren't very good. But I feel like a lot of people don't know how to work leads. They say, oh, yeah, Craigslist doesn't work. And why would you use Groupon or LivingSocial? And I don't believe in this or that because I get enough work. But the fact is, my goal is to get somebody out in the garage with the phone call. That's it. Your job is not to sell it over the phone. We're not a phone sales company that's selling widgets over the phone. Our job is selling the company and

getting the technician in the home. And I think that's where we go wrong is when you get a salesperson that's too salesy on the phone, the likelihood of selling over the phone is dramatically reduced than when the technician shows up and he's actually in there. And I think that's a big mistake. But I know you've got a lot of tips. I mean, you identify yourself in the company, you ask for help, you get the names if you don't have them of the person, the key to success, the justification statement. So let's go through exactly some good phone tips that home service professionals could apply right away, right off the bat when they hear this.

Okay. Well, let's start with the incoming call, first of all, because again, a hundred bucks a lead or whatever it is that you're paying for this, this is absolutely a goldmine. And I think when I said, if you have the wrong person and they're not doing the right thing, it can cost you a million bucks because, I mean, you don't know. If you give somebody a quote, they just go somewhere else. A lot of people don't even realize what that is costing them. probably just a kid. You remember those huge satellite dishes that were as big as a house? So that used to be a deal. So I was speaking to their association. And the guy that was speaking in front of me was actually from Domino's. And he was one of their directors of marketing. And of course, I was familiar with the concept of lifetime value of a customer. But these guys took it a step further. He said, when we have people answering the phone, they are trained that they're just not taking a $7 or $8 pizza order. They're talking to a $6,000

customer because we've determined that a customer is going to be worth $6,000 to us over their lifetime. So we ingrain that in their mind. We put that up in front of them. And I would suggest that everybody listening to this do the same thing with your people. So the mindset is absolutely critical. Also, something else regarding mindset. I mean, train your people to service people, not process them. What I mean by processing is, and I only like to use the term call center because what comes to mind when you think of call center? Somebody overseas that is handling multiple calls and they're judged based on how quickly they can get somebody off the phone. I mean, come on. I mean, let's get serious here.

Again, think about this. $100 lead, what's your lifetime value of a customer? These are all things that people need to keep in mind when you're putting your whole process in place. So every single call needs to be serviced, not processed. Now, the little things here, some of these are just so obvious and they make so much sense. But think about the first three seconds of any human interaction. People are forming impressions of us within a couple seconds. Now, of course, in your business, people have probably already formed some impression. That's why it's so important to do all the things that you talk about in your book. I mean, everything contributes to

the experience. And everybody listening to this, you guys aren't in the home contracting or sprinkler or garage door repair business. you're all in the experience business. People are going to choose to do business with you and continue to do business with you based on the experiences that they have all throughout the process. And again, there are certain things that you can control prior to somebody contacting you. But one thing we don't know is what kind of frame of mind is somebody in when they call? Regardless of what that is, we got to make sure that our goal is to put them in this positive, receptive state of mind. And you know, anytime you've called somewhere, that's not always the

case, right? I called, I can't remember what it was the other day. I mean, I think it was the cable company. Everybody's got their own cable company story, right? So it sounded like I just woke this person up and they were a little pissed off that they had to answer the phone. And I mean, you think about it. And of course, I had no choice because I had to deal with them. But in the case of everybody listening right now, there are tons of choices and you want to make sure that you are the one that they're going to choose. So the greeting absolutely has to put somebody in this positive, receptive state of mind. And then, and of course, their tone of voice has everything to do with that. And I would suggest as part of your training, you just simply drill that.

I mean, you practice that. Then you go into the next step in your process, whatever that might be. And I know your goal is not to sell. I just use that in general. So let's take, for example, our goal is to get the appointment here. So I would have a process for that. And I know you have a process. Your goal is to get somebody out there, not to quote over the phone. If you absolutely have to, you know that you have to get their information. I'd want to get their information anyway right at the beginning. So a little tip here is after they call, you answer, you have a great greeting.

They're going to say why they called. And then right there and then you let them know, glad you called. I will be able to help you with that. I will certainly be able to help you with that. I will certainly be able to help you with that, whatever the form of that is. I'm giving them some satisfaction. You're in the right place. Thank you. I'm glad you called. So now it's kind of like, oh, okay. Here's another exercise I do with companies that handle incoming calls in any business. And that is this. Let's think about all the various frames of mind somebody is in when they call. Because, I mean,

think about it. Depending on the type of business that you're in, it might be an emergency, right? Maybe somebody's hot water heater just broke up to their ankles in water. Maybe somebody just needs their house painted and it got to the point where the spouse finally said, well, you get off your ass and find somebody to get the house painted. Okay. Maybe somebody has a leaky roof and it finally got to the point where now they're seeing water stains on the ceiling. So all these various frames of mind, we, again, we can't control, but we want to find out what frame of mind are they in because we're going to be able to have an effect on that. All right. So the next step will be after you let them know I'm going to help you is I like to identify myself again, say, by the way, again, my name is Art. Your name is,

okay, get their name and say, great. And if you have caller ID, I like to verify their phone number just in case we're disconnected. I want to make sure I got the number. Is it okay? Or if you don't have caller ID, if it doesn't show up, just get their number. And what we've done there is I've justified why I'm asking. Just in case we disconnected, I want to make sure I get your number. And here's another thing too. And I would just slide this in. Oh, and after they give you the number, oh, and your email is... Now, of course, why do we want that? Because if you're a savvy marketer like you are, you know that now we have their email address. Once they have their email address, now I'm able to stay in contact with them. So now what I want to do, and this is huge, we want to get them talking about why they called.

What's their why? So it could be as simple as, so tell me about your roof. So tell me a little bit more about that. And then here's the big one. Shut the hell up. Let them go. And this is where the sale is made. Now, everybody has built-in sales resistance.

I mean, even I do. It's the greatest profession in the world, but I have sales resistance because human nature says nobody wants to be sold. And if we ever even get the feeling that somebody is close to trying to pitch us or sell us something, we're defensive. And matter of fact, many people who call might already have those defense barriers up. So we've got to do whatever we can to get them to lower those. And again, we're doing that right from the beginning with the greeting, putting them at ease, putting them in this friendly frame. And by the way, use friend voice, not monotone voice or not pitch voice or corporate voice

or I'm handling my 20th call of the day voice, okay? Pretend like you're talking to a friend. And again, so let's get back to the questioning. I don't care what anybody sells. People will sell themselves if you ask the right questions and you get out of the way and let them answer. Okay. And I don't care what their situation is, if it's an emergency or if they're just looking,

let them talk. But then you want to ask questions based on what they just said to go a little bit deeper. I always tell people in sales, we are in the state of mind business. When I can move somebody more into a state of mind where they're thinking about their need or their pain or their problem or their desire, what they actually want, they're going to be in a much better situation and frame of mind to accept my recommendation. And in this case, it's the appointment and not the appointment per se, because an appointment people can resist. It's somebody to come out there to take a look, to help identify the situation, to make the best recommendation for what they want. That's really what they're looking for, right? So again, I would train your people to be great listeners

and questioners. And now here's the great thing about this, Tommy. We do this every day in normal social conversation. So here's an example. If you and I are just having a beer and I said, oh man, we're really excited about going on our weekend trip next week, what would you say? Where are you going? Yeah, of course. Wait a minute. As a sales professional, you tell me you wouldn't say, oh really? Weekend trip? Well, let me give you a number of recommendations and a price quote. Yeah, you know, it's super empathetic. And that's the one thing like if somebody, a true friend calls you up and says, man, my roof started leaking, you wouldn't say, okay, that sounds horrible. I could probably get someone out. You say, wow,

really? What room was a leak in? And that's what I found is a lot of times we do jump to that conclusion. But if you let people elaborate and they go down what I call a pain funnel, and that's when they go, I need your help. And if you're listening, people like to do business with people they like. And when you ask a lot of questions like win friends and influence people, they like you all of a sudden. I love what you're saying right now. This is absolutely gold, right? Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. What you said about Carnegie, absolutely.

Because people, I mean, what's people's favorite subject, right? Themselves. So if you just get out of the way and don't think about what you want, I mean, crawl inside their mind and think about their world at this point. Empathize with them a little bit. Pretend like you're talking to a friend. Because if you were, if somebody said, oh man, my my roof's been leaking and, geez, it's causing some water spots, you probably wouldn't say, oh, really? Well, let me tell you about my roof.

Well, actually, maybe some guys would. But we want to embellish the pain as bad as that might seem to some people. And some people might say, well, that's being manipulative. No, it's not. It's just getting them talking about what they want to talk about. So in my workshops and seminars, I actually kind of joke about this, but I tell people, I say, okay, now what we're going to do is we're going to go into the advanced level of questioning, all right?

This is pretty ninja stuff. This is high level. It actually should require a permit, okay? Are you ready for this? Here's how it goes. You ask a question, all right? You get your first answer. Okay, here's the ninja this? Here's how it goes. You ask a question. All right. You get your first answer. Okay. Here's the ninja stuff. Here's what you do next. After they answer, you ask the next question. You hear that? I can hear it out there. Minds blowing. Yeah. Oh, wait a minute.

Let me add onto that. You ask the next question in direct response to their answer, not the next question on your list of 10 questions on the call center evaluation form. It's like, yeah, I've got some problems here with my roof, and it's gotten to the point where we need to do something. Oh, really? Tell me about that. Now what's going to happen? They're going to tell you about it. Now, here's the benefit of asking these next level questions. Two things. One is you're getting better information. And by the way, you need to train your people to be writing down these emotional trigger words. Anytime somebody says, need to do something about, concerned about, it's causing us some problems, It's costing us. Everything they say after that, you need to be writing down. Why? Because you're going to be able to use that when you make your

recommendation. Because when I'm making my recommendation, I can say, well, I hate the fact that it's costing you an extra $200 on your water bill because your sprinkler's leaking. Here's what we're going to suggest. So. So now, you know, people aren't going to, people aren't going to argue with what they just said. I mean, people can object to what you say, but they're not going to object to what they say. So here's, here's a high level questioning technique. It's two letters. Oh yeah. We've, we've really got a problem here with our plumbing. Oh? Oh, really?

Yeah. Wow, that's some tough stuff, isn't it? Well, I mean, it's pretty simple when we're thinking about it. So that's why I go back to the mindset. It's like just getting people to be themselves and be curious. And picture an iceberg out in the water. I mean, we might've had some here in Arizona last week, but they're gone now. But if you picture an iceberg out in the water, what you see is just the tip, right?

What we don't see is what this huge mass of ice below the water level. When somebody gives you their first piece of information, when somebody calls you and they say, yeah, I'd like to get a quote on or looking for this or I like information on whatever, they've just given you the tip of the iceberg. What we don't have is what's below the water level. And I call that the reasons why they just said what they did. They're going to buy because of the reasons, not because of the first thing they tell you when they call. And too often, service people will take that first call and they'll say, oh, okay, well, yeah, we can get somebody out there or we can give you a quote and we're going to charge you a service fee. And now somebody's thinking, okay, yeah, pretty much what I expected, right?

So let's get them involved. Let's get them emotional. And by the way, when you're doing this, you're actually preventing objections from coming up in advance. People, I get this question once a week. What's the best way to overcome objections? Well, you don't want to overcome objections. How about if you prevent them from coming up in the first place? And how do we do that?

By not pitching something they're not interested in or not pitching before we've established what they really want and what they're going to value. This is powerful. Yeah. I think that that's the biggest mistake. What I do at my office is I've got priority one through five. Priority one is if you can't get out of the garage. But too often, we jump into that. And basically, if you ask these questions, and I like to leave vague questions because if I say, is the door blinking at the top? What they do is they say, yeah, what does that mean then? And now we're diagnosing it and now it turns into a sales where we're evaluating and how they could call around. And the biggest thing that I do to close, and this is why I like level one and level two, because level one for me, they're not allowed to give prices, but I assume the sale. And by doing

that, and you can tell me what you think because you're the expert. I've done well with it, but I don't know if this is the right way. But I say something like this, Art, you're asking me a lot of great questions. Let me ask you one. What are your cross streets? And you'll say, you know, Shea and 94th Street, whatever. And I'll say, okay, listen, Art, you're in luck because I've got a guy. You told me you couldn't get out out I've got a guy out there

he can get there today between 10 and 12 I can have him come by he's one of my lead technicians come take a look tell you what's going on if you like what he has to say he'll have the stuff on the truck if not I'll tell you what's going on and send him on his way how does that sound and that way I just I just made

the fear go away of what's going to happen how's this going to work? He's already in my area. He can be here soon. Okay. You know, have him stop by. We'll see.

But it's a noncommittal appointment. Is that right? Cause that's something I train my people on. And I don't know, I don't have all the, Oh, and the things that you're doing, like that I've looked at your book and you know,

the social engineering and stuff. Well, no, I mean, for what you're doing, I think that is freaking brilliant. And what you did there, and actually, let me just break that down from my perspective. What you did there is you got somebody's mind off the technical part of it because maybe or maybe not they know something about their garage door

opener and the mechanics behind it. Right. And the worst part is if somebody thinks they know, but they really don't know. Right. So you want to get them out of that frame of mind as quickly as possible, because really the main thing they want is they want to get out of their garage. Right. And what you've just done is a pattern interrupt, which is they're thinking one way, and you said, man, I'll tell you what, you're in luck. I've got a guy. And then you're going into solving the problem of what he really wants. And then you're closing at the same time, and you're not making it sound salesy. And you're just going down that path.

So I think that that is absolutely brilliant. And the thing is, is if you've asked the questions prior to that, where you got them talking about the pain, they can't get out. And man, I've got an appointment, you know, tonight and da da da da. And you've got them all worked up. And now you're given the solution. Yeah, why wouldn't they do it? Right? What do you think they're going to say?

Oh, really? Well, let me make three more calls to, more calls to what I found here on Yelp. No. I mean, you just solved their problem right now. Yeah, and it's noncommittal. And I got to say, my mom used to answer the phones. This is five, six years ago. And my mom used to laugh.

She'd laugh and she'd say, I'm from Michigan and the weather. And she'd BS with the people. And when I showed up to the job, when I used to run these calls, the people would laugh at me when I'd walk up and they'd smile and they'd go, whoever that gal was represents your company so well. I didn't tell them it was my mom, but the job was so much easier for me. It was like if the CSR loves the company and they and I hate to use CSR as well because that's such an acronym and that just degrades the people and puts them as a number. But that's just the terms we use.

And I want to learn what else to call it than a call center. But when there was a couple of gals that used to work here, when when I knew I was running a call that they booked, I felt like I was more set up for success. The customer already had a great taste in their mouth of who we are. And it was so much easier for me to do my job, get the conversion, get my average ticket where it needed to be, and make the customer satisfaction a five out of five. And I think that's something that goes so undervalued. You know, a lot of people that I talked to are like, we have a 90% booking rate that I listened to the call and I'm like, they're very good at booking calls, but they, they're not good at setting the technician up for success. Does that, does that resonate at all with the people that you've heard in the past? Oh yeah, absolutely. I mean, it's, the whole thing is a process from the very first moment that the phone, that the call is picked up all the way to the

point that you're, you're the technician arrives. I mean, it's all one. I mean, it's, it's not like, okay, we got the call, then we set it up and technician arrives. I would say the, the absolute worst thing that could happen is if a technician just simply gets a name, address, and phone number on their phone and they show up. And I know you do tons of stuff, which is awesome. And actually, as a customer as well, I experienced it and it just blew me away. I mean, I'm getting a text, I'm getting a picture of the guy on my phone. I'm like, who the hell does this? This is awesome.

And then the follow-up as well. So it's, I mean, it's not just one event. So getting back to your question about setting up for success, again, go back to what I said about the state of mind and the experience. So you're telling somebody what to look for and what's going to happen. And there's a psychological term for this. I forget what it's called, but people will look for what they expect. Like if I told everybody here, let's say if you're in an office complex, go outside and look for red cars. Well, you go outside and you look in the parking lot, all of a sudden you're going to start counting

the red cars. But let's say instead I said, go out in the parking lot and just see what you see and then come back in. And everybody would have a different answer because you're just going out there and you're leaving it to your own devices. So if we just say, okay, a guy's going to show up between 10 and two, they don't know what's going to happen. Melvin might show up, right? Yeah.

But if you say, here's what's going to happen next, like you suggested, so we're pre-framing it, setting them up for success. I love that. So we're pre-framing it, setting them up for success. I love that. So it's a team effort. And again, this should all be part of a process, which I know you do as well. So again, I mean, brilliant. Yeah. You know, what do you do? Okay. So certain people want technical. Certain people, they're called the C-type personality, right? Like I've done my homework. I've done everything I need to do. And they call you up and they say, Art,

I pretty much know what this is. And I don't believe in overtraining your call center. I don't know what to call them now. Your people on the phones, I don't know if you want to teach them so much technical to where they're kind of evaluating out over the phone. So do you believe in like a level two or, and you know, I'm asking you questions here and I don't know, you know, you've worked in the home service space, but also insurance and car sales and everything. So, but you know, whether it's a transmission, you're calling up and you're saying, listen, I think my transmission going is slipping out of gear. What's the right solution to not give too much information when they're asking technical questions? That's a great question. And actually, I had something similar

last week. I was working with a company that sells high-level database software, and they compete with Oracle. And they have people on the phone. They call them customer success representatives. And occasionally, they're talking to a tech person who wants to get into the weeds about the code and JavaScript and all this. And what we were talking about is, and again, their goal is similar to yours. They just wanted to get somebody on a demo call with somebody who is a little bit more technical and get that commitment. And again, I've worked with a number of companies, similar situation. So here's the process. Number one, let that person talk because here's the thing. What's going on psychologically with them? In many cases, they want to show you how smart they are, right?

Oh, great. Sounds like you know a lot about this. And then here's the key. The person becomes the person and they admit, they say, actually, you know what? I'm not the technician here. Matter of fact, I'm the person who's in charge of making you happy and smile. Let the personality come through. But here's what I'm going to do for you. Using really what you had just said earlier, you're in luck because what we're going to do is this. We're going to send out one of our best technicians and he's really good. You'll play him up a little bit. And what you guys can do is talk a little bit about your problem. And actually, it'll probably save time because it sounds like you've already got a pretty good idea what it is. So you won't have to go through the whole process.

And then what he'll do is either confirm or actually make some other suggestions that he might see as well. So let's do this. I've got between 10 and 2 today. Yeah, I'm in. Yeah, it's that simple. And it's assuming the sale. And this is such a huge deal, $100 a phone call. And you're right, we don't pay enough.

We skimp out. One of the things I always talk about, Art, is we'll spend, for me, over $300,000 a month in marketing. But then you look at it and you'll say you spent, what, you did three Craigslist ads? You spent $35 three times. So you spent $115 or $105 to get a new call center person. So often we don't market to get the right people in. And when you get the great person that actually enjoys it and has fun with it and enjoys talking to people, then there's that happy medium of how long they're going to take on the call. But if you really figure out there's an opportunity cost, yeah, it cost me

$100 to get the call. But let's look at this. My average call is $450. So if I miss 10 calls, I lost $4,500 that day. Not to mention, I've got technicians calling me going, dude, I've got a house payment, a vehicle payment. I've got two kids at home. And because you guys aren't answering the phones properly and setting me up for success, it's making me fail. And not to mention, that's the first person. That's the first thing they hear when they call. The first thing they see is the advertising and that's how they got your information.

And then the first thing they hear is, thank you for calling, how can I help you? And it's like, holy cow. It's so bad when that happened. And I just think there's nobody listening right now. I don't care who you are that can't gain a lot from being better on the phones. And if you're using a coach, if you have somebody you're already using, if you don't measure it and you don't look at it and you don't make sure they're asking the right questions and listening, active listening versus hearing the customer. And I just think these tips are amazing because shutting up is half the battle, right?

Like being quiet, listening and saying, oh my gosh, art. That's happened to me. I remember two years ago that happened to me and it was a nightmare. I'm so sorry to hear that. And another thing is never to say no to a customer because that's a bad word. Yeah, I'm glad you brought that up because there's always a way to tell somebody what you can't do, but do it in a positive way. It's kind of like, do you guys do this? Well, let's say you can't do whatever it was they asked for.

But instead, it's pretty simple to simply say, well, here's what we can do or here's what we do offer. And now you got them not thinking about what you can't do instead of what they will get. And by the way, that's a great sales meeting activity as well. You know, just throw out a bunch of things where normally somebody says no to and tell them they can't say no. Tell them what that they have to answer in a more positive way with what will happen, what you can do, what you do offer instead. You know, what we used to do, Art,

is let's play this for a second. Ask me a question and I'll tell you the game. Hey, Tommy, can you get a guy here within the hour? You know, that's a great question, Art. What's going on out there that you would need someone out in the next hour? Oh man, you know, I've got a leaky faucet here and you know, I'm thirsty and I need a drink of water.

What kind of faucet do you have? Let me just tell you this. What we always try to do here, we used to play this game. We don't play it as much, but whatever anybody asks, we bet a buck. So we'd walk up to somebody if we knew we were playing it and we'd say, you got to answer a question with a question. And when you learn to do that, you're always winning. Because he who asks the right questions and you can mold it into whatever way you want, it's so powerful and it's hard to do for a lot of people. But if you can answer a question with a question, I find that you can

control a conversation and move it wherever you want. And it's tough to do sometimes. But it's fun. Well, it is. Yeah, but I mean, think about it. Most people are conditioned to communicate in a certain way, and this goes back to our childhood. So it is a matter of breaking old habits and getting people to do things in the right way. But, I mean, everybody can be trained if they understand why and you give them what to say, how to say it, and then you practice it. And I mean, it works. Some people say, oh, that person's a born salesperson. Well, nobody's a born salesperson any more than somebody's a born airline pilot. Granted,

somebody might have a personality that is more conditioned to having them be successful in sales. But anybody can learn the words if they have the right attitude. And the attitude is really important. So anybody listening to this, when you're hiring, make sure that you're hiring the right attitude. People who care, people who have demonstrated in the past that they care, somebody that can really take ownership. Because you can teach them the mechanics. The mechanics are the words, but the attitude, the mindset has got to be there. You know, I was at Quick Trip, which those of you that are not from Arizona, Quick Trip is a gas station slash store. You can pretty much get anything there. They got pizza, they got all this good stuff. And they always work two sides. So you're left and right. They got one

POS system to run everybody up, but they're super, super great. And I walked in there yesterday and they start out at $11 an hour. And I asked the guy, his name was Nathan. I said, Nathan, I want to tell you, I'm so absolutely impressed by every single person that works here.

I'm just curious. Do you guys have like some type of system you got to, because I see somebody cleaning while somebody's on the register, while somebody's cooking. And he said, the one thing I can tell you is we do a lot of secret shoppers. We always get a lot of secret shoppers through here, number one. Number two is the interview process was very vigorous. We had to take some math questions. They asked us a lot of personal details, which you could only ask certain things. But they said,

tell me a little bit about your past boss. So I asked them for about five minutes. I got to talk to him. And what was crazy is he said, they really only hire on personality. We all drive to be number one. We're always focused on impressing the customer. And I said, listen, I'm not a secret shopper, but you absolutely impressed the crap out of me with that answer. And I said, if you're ever looking for a job, I'm right next door and I'll give you a career. And there's a lot of opportunity. But the point is not about recruiting him, but what he said about the interview process. And I came back into my office going, we need to have a more vigorous process.

And I think that a lot of times we hire out of desperateness. We say, OK, we need somebody. We got to fill the void. And then we go down this rabbit hole of just last minute hires rather than always looking for somebody good. I can make a spot for anybody right now if they're absolutely amazing. And I think that's where we make mistakes in the call center. And it adds up, Art. I mean, I've done the math and I'm going,

I was talking to my call center manager earlier, or my customer success manager is what I'm going to start saying. Then I said, I don't care what has to happen, but we need to get above 80% every day. And I think that that's realistic. What do you think when a customer calls in for your service is a realistic expectation, Art. I mean, really realistic of opportunities, not of just solicitors and stuff. What's a fair booking rate on an inbound call? Well, I'm going to bail out on that question because I'm always leery when I see percentages of anything that aren't educated and tailored specifically to the business. I mean, I see them all the time. Like maybe you've seen this before.

It takes an average of seven attempts or somebody has to say no seven times before you're going to get a yes. I mean, that's all crap unless it relates specifically to your business. But here's a number I will give you. Every single call that comes in, I would have the expectation of closing 100% of them. Here's why. If they called you, they called you for a reason, right? I mean, that's the big bonus of handling incoming calls. And that's why they should be treated like gold with people. And I love what you said about people who are looking at this as a career, not a call center job. If you're going out and you're hiring call center people,

what are you going to get? People who have worked in call centers before. And what's their experience? Handling a thousand calls and reading a script and all that. No, I'm looking for the person like you saw on the quick trip who's taken ownership here. So again, I wish I could give you a number, but I would start at 100% and then we go down. And then whatever the number is, I would want to diagnose what's happening to the ones that we're not getting. And here's a problem I see in, and I work mostly business to business, and here's a big problem I see in the business-to-business arena with sales and incoming or upcoming calls in general. And that is managers just manage by the numbers when it comes to sales.

And sales is not just a numbers game. It's a quality game. We use numbers. We have to have numbers. We have to have the KPIs. But basically, that measures the performance. But to get better performance, I'm not going to say you need to make more calls, place more calls, receive more calls, handle them faster. I want to figure out what's going on on that call that's causing us to not hit 80%. And that means listening to the calls, talking to the rep, coaching them. And managers who don't do this, it would be like a baseball manager never watching the game or tape of the game, but instead reading the box score and saying, you know, you guys got to go score more runs. We need more runs here.

We need more runs per game. I feel like a lot of times we get in the weeds and we start taking calls as managers. We're busy. And rather than working, you've heard this cliche, working on the business and coaching. We say, if I'm not here helping out, we're going to miss five calls. But then you realize one thing, and this is the biggest mistake I see managers make is if you took the time and realized you could miss those calls, but you need to hire more people. And you know what? This is the biggest thing I see, Art, and this is huge, is interdepartment communication. If you're not able to book

calls at a certain time, talk to the marketing company, the marketing business, or that unit of the business to say, this time we get swamped. Maybe we should stop doing Val, so many zones of ValPak because we get swamped the first week, maybe a little bit less zones. Maybe we get turned on our pay-per-click a little bit. And then you talk to the dispatch team and you say, listen, what openings do we have? Well, we never have openings here. So one of the things you do is you work with what I call my service manager. And I say, dude, we need more guys on the weekends because we're not booking calls. And it's not our customer success representative's fault. It's because we don't have any openings here. And a lot of the times the call center gets

blamed for everything, but we don't realize advertising is affecting it. The dispatchers are affecting it. The service technicians aren't. There's no availability on maybe a Sunday. And the communication with the interdepartments is a failed entity in a whole. And I find that it's so easy to point to familiar with. But as you're describing it, I mean, it makes perfect sense. It sounds to me like you're putting together the pieces of the puzzle and you're just simply making sure that you've got the resources in all the different areas. And, you know, everything is working in a nice cadence. And if you're blaming the call center on this, it's like, boy, that's pretty short-sighted. Well, it happens so easily to point the blame. And another thing I find is that, and you could probably attest to this one, Art, is we need more people. We need more people in here. And it's all the time. It's like people, if we add enough people, that's going to solve the problem. And I just don't think that that's a real solution all the time. Yeah. If we're

really understaffed, that's, of course, a problem. But what I find is people are like, we need to add more people. But I'm like, you only took seven calls today. You don't need more people. You need to get your people to stop taking breaks to make sure they're not on their phones. And you need to manage. I walked in a call center one time and this guy was standing up the whole time. There was only nine call center representatives.

And he walked around and he was listening to every call actively. I didn't see him sit one time and I was there for two hours. I was looking through him through a conference window. He didn't even know I was watching, but I was like, holy cow. And then everybody thinks money motivates everybody, but that's not the number one motivator. And acknowledgement, saying great job, pat him on the back. Tell him if you get all this right, we'll have a pizza party on Friday and feeling actually appreciated. Have you ever read the book art, the five love languages? Oh yeah. I mean, do you think that that stuff applies at work? Well, you can get in trouble.

Affection just means art. You know, I was listening to that call and I got to tell you, you handled that call so professionally. I want to play that call in front of everybody later today because it's guys like you that make this company a better place to work for. And you're the troops on the ground, man. And I didn't tell you, and I don't probably tell you this enough, but I really appreciate you and I'm so glad you work for. And you're the troops on the ground, man. And I didn't tell you, and I don't probably tell you this enough, but I really appreciate you. And I'm so glad you work for this company. And without a guy like you and more guys like you in this, we'd be a failure.

So really appreciate that. And by the way, I know your year anniversary is coming up. I'm going to buy you some movie tickets and let me know if you need anything else. Do you know how far that goes? Oh, absolutely. And here's the thing too. I mean, I love all that stuff and that is certainly important. And going back to the whole love language, that whole thing is based on understanding the other person

and how do they want to be communicated with and what do they appreciate the most. And again, I'm not an expert in hiring. I actually work with a company that does all this and they do what's called values testing, not personality testing, because people are going to produce based on what they value, not what their personality is. So anyway, if I'm a hiring manager, I absolutely want to make sure that whenever I hire somebody,

I understand what really do they value and what motivates them. Certainly, money, everybody wants money, and it's going to go a long way and that should be a part of it. But yeah, is somebody a person that really needs the adulation and being part of a team and all those things? And if so, I'm going to give that person more of that because that's what's going to make them tick. That's their reason for showing up every day. Yeah, absolutely. And there's so much that goes into this. And again, I hope if people get just one thing out of this, hopefully you got a lot out of it.

But I mean, your people are gold. I mean, they're handling your bank account and they're going to be the difference between whether you're making a ton of money or you're losing a ton of money that you may not even realize. You're pretty passionate about that, but I mean, it's absolutely key. Let me ask you a few more. I know we're running out of time here. You talk a lot. I think scripts are important. I think people need to know what to ask and when, but when's a good time that you shouldn't stick to the script?

When's a good time to teach people to kind of go with the flow? Well, here's the thing. I mean, I got a whole rant on this thing called script. And the problem is, is most people, when they hear the word script as it relates to sales, they're thinking about the telemarketer who is reading from a script in a monotone, in a boiler shop with a thousand other people in the background. There's no emotion.

And if you throw something at them that apparently isn't on the script, they don't know how to handle it. That's not what a script actually is meant to be. The last time you went to a movie, you probably didn't sit there and elbow the person next to you that came with you. And you probably didn't look up there with disgust and say, God, I can't believe it.

They're working from a script again. I love that. What is a script? A script is the proper combination of words to use in a given situation that's going to elicit the audience response that we're looking for. Now, in many cases, what we're going to say is not dependent on what they say. It should be totally scripted, such as the greeting. You pick up the phone, you're going to say pretty much the same thing based on what you know works. And then at certain points in the call, I'm going to have some word for word things that I say.

Now that is scripted, but here's the thing. It should never sound like you have something prepared in front of you or that you've got it memorized. It should sound like the first time you ever said it. So in other words, you're delivering the lines just like the actor would. And for a lot of people, if we've been doing this for a long time, our script is internalized. Not to say that we may not, you know, tweak it here or there. But the thing is, in what everybody listening to this is doing, is that for the most part, everything that we're going to say is going to be dependent on what the customer or the prospect says. Now, with that said, it should still follow the process. So, again, my sales process, you've got the opening, you've got the discovery, the questions.

I've got the recommendation. I've got the commitment phase. So in each one of those, I'm going to have a series of words and phrases and questions that people can be using, best practices. But I mean, you obviously can't script out the entire call. Not to say it shouldn't be totally prepared and drilled. And I mean, here's the key to being smooth, Tommy. And you know this because you're smooth and you get on a call with somebody and, you know, when you have an employee around you, they're going, oh my God, I wish I was that good. Well, the thing is, the reason you were good is that you were unsmooth first, right? We were not always this smooth. We practiced and it comes

through a lot of experience and drilling. And also, every call is a learning experience. I would suggest two things for everybody, whoever handles a phone call, inbound or outbound. After the call, you sit down, you ask yourself two questions. What do I like about that call? Because what gets rewarded gets repeated, even if we're rewarding ourselves.

And then the second question is, what will I do differently next time that I get the same situation? So, I mean, think about that. You can get a graduate degree in handling calls or placing calls just by asking yourself that question. It doesn't need to take a lot of time. It can take, you know, 30 seconds. It's so true. to you, if I threw you at a 911 clinic, if I threw you answering transmission calls, a pizza shop,

or air conditioning or water damage, we would both be able to handle all those situations now. And it's about listening and actual listening. And it's just about talking to people and saying, oh my gosh, empathy. Empathy is the one thing I feel like is missing a lot in my call center. My guys do a great job, and I don't mean to belittle them, but really just going, wow. Somebody says, you know, I've been a veteran. I'm 90 years old. You say, wow. You know, thank you so much for what you do for our country.

And I genuinely mean that. And it's hard to find people that genuinely care about other people. So building that, and I keep going back to the people art, but I love what you said about the script. What do you think is the perfect opening phrase? Because I've heard people say, it's a wonderful day at A1 Garage Doors, or it does sound a little bit scripted. For me, I'm like, hi, my name is Tommy. Welcome to A1 Garage Door Service. What can I do for you today?

And it's genuine, but I don't think that's perfect, but it is a little bit my own. But tell me, from the success that you have seen with all the hundreds or thousands of companies you've worked with, what is a good opening line that really resonates with people and is different? Well, I'm not sure it's going to be different because it doesn't have to be different to be great. And I'm not just saying this to build you up, but what you just said is a version of what I always teach for anybody handling an incoming call. And it goes to the effect of,

thanks for calling A1 Garage Door. This is Art. How can I help you today? Yeah, and it's genuine though. I do agree with that. And i think that another mistake you make is uh some people are named this off the wall crap it's like uh hi this is uh chivalry shocker how can i help you today and they're like well is this a concrete company because i think it is but i'm not sure because they named their company like bob's asphalt and they're they're like, oh, no, we don't handle pavers. I think that's a big mistake. So if you're not garage door service and installation, you should probably mention what you do,

like America's Best Carpet Cleaning Company, because maybe you can put a slogan in there, right? Something that identifies what we do. Yeah, that could probably be a whole nother show there. I mean, you got all the information. I didn't even get to outbound, but I agree with you that the inbound is probably where most of us lose the most money.

And I don't think very much, probably like only 10% of the companies out there are doing a ton of outbound. And there's nothing wrong with that because if you do a great job, inbound should be where you grow the fastest through referrals and just knowing friends, family, and neighbors.

I think that's a big part of it. I want to just kind of taper it off here. I know you got to get going, but I wanted to ask, you've seen a lot of stuff happen in the last 35 years and technology is starting to really become this large influence in what we do. Where do you think, with Google's automatic voices and AI and everything, over the next five years, what should we be thinking about? Where should we be going with all this in our minds and then preparing?

Well, I think technology is awesome. It's amazing. And if you look at my office here, I've got every single toy there is as it relates to technology. But the fact is that AI sucks when it comes to the customer outreach process. And I'm primarily there talking about business to business where somebody is actually reaching out to a prospect or customer the first time and or servicing a customer. I mean, how many people say, oh man, it was just awesome. I called up to get service today and I got a bot. I'm really cool. I'm so happy. It's like, no, here's the thing. Technology is amazing. And supposedly, it helps us to become your customers with human beings and do the things that we're talking about and have the human touch, you are the ones that are going to be far and away

blowing away your competition. And again, the reason being is that people now are, sadly, we're so conditioned to not talking to a human and reaching a bot and reaching a recording and an email and hoping that we're actually going to get our problem solved. A quick thing here. Obviously, we probably have enough material here for three more shows, which you'll be happy to do it again. Yeah. But here's just one other point. You mentioned outbound. Here's a tip on outbound.

If for some reason you're not able to handle a lead, if it's coming in through Angie's List or wherever through the web, treat that lead like a burning match. I mean, you've got seconds before that interest might go away before they go to somebody else. And I'll give you a true story on this because it happened to me. During the storms we had last spring, I had a huge Pellaverde tree that had just simply uprooted and fell over. And I mean, I needed it taken away quick. So first thing I did was I went on Angie's List and I'm looking for companies. And I find the one that far and away had the best reviews. Everybody loved them, this and that. So I reached out to them. And then I think I reached out to two others. One guy contacted me within 60 seconds. I got a phone

call within 60 seconds. That guy got the job. Okay. Was he the number one guy? No. He was the guy that could get there and do it like within the next day. The other guy, he called within 30 minutes, didn't get the job. Now, he probably had a pretty good plan in place. But I mean, here's the thing. People's interest is going to wane pretty quickly. So there's the thing with technology. There's a way technology can really help you. So if you've got that in place, you get that lead, man, treat it like that burning match. Yeah. And I would suggest on top of that is put someone in charge of that and bonus them

adequately. So like I got a girl named Ana here and she's got the app for HomeAdvisor. And every time that buzzes before we get the text or the email. It's got a force notification on there that her phone lights up. She hits the button. She's connected and she gets five bucks. And trust me, I don't care what she's doing. If she's going to pee, whatever she's doing, she's running out there trying to get that five bucks because she gets five of those a day. That's 25 extra bucks.

And I got to tell you something else, Art, that most people don't take advantage of with technology is their systems with a VoIP situation, voice over internet protocol, where you could have it ring 15 seconds and then you could force it to all of your managers or your field supervisors to where it rings every one of them at the same time. So if you're understaffed, you could just simply go on the back end of the system and let it ring to everybody and say, guys, it's monitored and it's easy. And what I feel like this is important because it's exactly what you're talking about. People don't have patience. They want to get handled now and they don't really care as much about the people that want it now aren't looking for the people that want

to choose your company are going to keep calling you. They're going to wait. And they're very unlikely to do that. And if they're, if they had a Palo Verde fall on their house, you know, I want to tell you, the book is called smart calling, how to eliminate the fear, failure, and rejection from cold calling. It's on Amazon. Let me ask you this, Art, what type of ways would I get ahold of you? If I wanted to get some of your training and the guys out there listening, and they wanted just go through some of these drills and other stuff that you talked about. Yeah. And that book itself is certainly awesome for people that are doing prospecting. That's primarily written for the business to business prospector. And that's the alternative to cold calling. But for people who are just

handling calls, I'll tell you what, I've got a ton of stuff just on normal phone selling and sales in general. So I would recommend you go to my blog, which is simply smartcalling.com, smartcalling.com. And I've got a free ebook of 501 telephone sales tips that is a good place to start. So I mean, I would actually get that and give it to all your people out there who are on the phone. And then if you're looking for more, I've got all kinds of stuff. And if you have any questions, feel free to contact me. All my contact information is there on the site. And I've got a podcast as well, which actually I want to get you on because you're an amazing sales guy and offer a different perspective than what I normally do. So my podcast is The Art of Sales, theartofsales.com.

I love that. His name is Art and it's The Art of Sales. That's the only time in my life where having the name Art was actually of value. Is there any few books that you recommend? I usually ask the people that come on the show if there's a few great books that they've read that changed their lives or just a good read that maybe you'd recommend to someone

other than smart calling. Oh my gosh, Tommy, if you would look at my office here, I've probably got 2000 books and I get a couple delivered every day by Amazon and not counting the Kindle. So one, I actually noticed in your resource section, I think you had 10 books that you recommend. And one that I actually try to reread every year is Robert Cialdini's book, which is just simply called Influence. And the reason that that is amazing is because it gets into the psychology of why people do what they do. And there's so much that's going on every day that we don't even realize as it relates to our behavior and the choices we make and how we get influenced. And I guarantee, even if you're not a salesperson or a marketer, which you should be,

you'll read this and go, oh, wow, I see how that happens. And I see how I can use it in my own business. Yeah, I really think that understanding, I'll tell you real quickly, we always run over, but one of the things I like about the book is he's walking through ASU's campus and a kid walks up to him and says, hey, I'm selling these tickets, the $10 a piece for raffle tickets. And Robert Cialdini looks down at him and he says, you know, sorry, I'm just not really interested. And he goes, well, look, sir, if you're not really interested, would you at least buy a couple of candy bars for two bucks a piece?

And he pulls out four bucks, takes the candy bar, sits down at his desk at ASU. And he goes, why in the hell did I just buy two candy bars? And he came to the realization that it's hard for people to say no twice. And I think that's super clever.

And the kid started out at 10 bucks and moved it down. So the point about that is if you want your kid to clean his room, say, listen, little Tommy, I want you to clean the whole house, mop the floors, clean the windows, make sure the garage is cleaned up before you go out and play today. And he says, dad, you know, come on, I'm not going to do that. And he says, I'll tell you what, if you go clean your room, make your bed, make sure everything's put away, I'll let you go play. All of a sudden, that sounds really good. You see what I'm saying? So I absolutely admire that book because it's taught me a lot of life on situations, relationships, and how to deal with customers.

But if there's any final thoughts that you'd like to leave with the audience here, we'll close up and I'll let you have the last word. Well, again, thank you so much for having me on. And I would assume, or I shouldn't assume, that everybody listening to this has a copy of your book. And again, I am actually going to buy some copies for some of my friends who are in the home service business. I mean, it is absolutely awesome. Everything we talked about here today really is congruent with what you teach and what you do. And I would encourage you all that have the mindset of you are an experienced business. You are a sales business. Every single moment of truth that you have is something that can either make you money or cost you money. And do not scrimp on the moments of truth where you actually have a human interacting with a prospect or a customer. Because it's pretty likely that they are going to buy from someone. And why shouldn't

it be from you? And also, by the way, not everybody buys just on price. People buy on what they feel is the best value, and they determine what the value is. You don't, and it's not always the lowest price. Oh, preacher, brother. That's all I say. I want to tell you guys something. One last thought on my end,

and even though I said that, I always do this, but Art is an amazing guy. I bumped into this guy a year ago at the spring training game, and he goes, Tommy, big smile. He's laughing. He goes, I used your company. The best experience. I already left you a review.

Everything was perfect. And then we bumped into him and his son. And his son's a comedian. And he's always smiling. He's always happy. And if you get the chance to work with him or talk to him or just associate yourself with him, read his book, get his tips, go to that website. Art, I can't tell you enough. You mean a lot to me and I appreciate every minute I get to spend with you. So thank you so much. Tommy, thank you. I mean, the pleasure and the honor is

mine and let's do it again. And I'm going to have you on my podcast as well. I appreciate it, my friend. Well, say hi to everybody. I love your family as well. So thank you again, man. All right. Well, say hi to everybody. I love your family as well. So thank you again, man. All right. Thanks, brother. Hey, guys, I really appreciate you tuning into the podcast. I wanted to let you know that my book is available right now on Amazon. It's called The Home Service Millionaire. That's homeservicemillionaire.com. Just go to the website. It'll show you exactly where and how to buy the book. I poured two years of knowledge into this book and I had 12 contributors.

Everybody from the COO at HomeAdvisor to the CEO of Valpak and of course, Ara, the CEO of ServiceTitan. It tells you how to have the right mindset and become a millionaire and think like a millionaire. It goes into exactly how to turn on lead generation. Have those phones ringing off the hook for the customers that you want to be calling where you can make money and get great reviews. It also goes into simple things like how to attract A players. Listen, if you want a great apple pie,

you need to buy good apples and you need to know where to buy those apples. And it also talks about simple things like knowing how to keep the score. You should have your financial check every week. You should know exactly what's coming in and out of your account. You should know when to cut advertising that's not working. And more than anything, you should know how to cut employees that aren't making it for you. Listen, you might have a big heart, but this book is going to show you how to make decisions built on numbers. I hope you pick

up the book and I really appreciate everything. I hope you're having a great day. Tune in next week. Thank you.