High-Ticket Sales in Home Services: What Actually Works

Summary

Owned and Operated Podcast Episode: High-Ticket Sales in Home Services: What Actually Works
Hosts: John Wilson and Jack Carr
Date: May 12, 2026

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Episode Overview

In this episode, John Wilson and Jack Carr delve deep into the realities of high-ticket sales in the home services sector, specifically for HVAC, plumbing, and electrical business owners. The conversation centers on building a strong sales culture, overcoming objections, the importance of options-based selling, and effective training and incentive strategies. With direct experience as owners and operators, John and Jack draw on real-world examples to debunk common myths and provide actionable frameworks to increase ticket size without sacrificing customer trust or ethics.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Changing the Sales Mindset in Home Services

• Main insight: Many technicians and business owners view “sales” as a dirty word, associating it with aggression or manipulation. John and Jack emphasize the importance of re-framing sales as a customer-centric process built around transparency and education.

  • “Just like it’s wrong to be incredibly pushy, it’s also wrong to not present and only do expensive repairs that don’t benefit the customer at all.” – John [00:00]
  • "Home service is a marketing and sales business. Like, we're not just plumbers, we're not just electricians, we're not just HVAC. We are in sales." – John [02:14]

• Cultural Shift:

  • Leadership needs to explicitly communicate that offering options isn’t manipulative; it’s responsible.
  • “That’s one of the keys to starting a good sales program—is actually the culture surrounding your sales program and getting your team and everyone on board with this idea that sales is...giving the customer options for the best possible outcome.” – Jack [03:45]

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2. Why Sales is Good for the Customer

• Ethics and Transparency:

  • Repeatedly repairing an old system or not discussing replacement options is not serving the customer ethically.
  • "Our job is to educate, and we don’t get to make these decisions for them." – John [06:24]
  • “We educate. We sell through education, not fear.” – John [08:09]

• Legal Protection:

  • Documenting and presenting all options is not just good business, it avoids legal liabilities.
  • “We have to have good notes, we have to have good photos, we have to have good options. So that's most of it—it's like, we are educating. We're protecting the health, we're protecting the house and we're offering real options.” – John [11:24]

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3. The Three Pillars of a High-Performing Sales Program

a. Culture Shift

• Begin by destroying internal misconceptions that sales is negative.
• Empower technicians to see themselves as advisors, not “salespeople.”

b. Training: Systematic, Not One-Off

• "Don’t do big one-time things..." – John [13:09]

• Ongoing weekly or bi-weekly training is essential: objection handling, financing, quote-building, and role-playing.

  • “We at least have one training a week, sometimes two depending on the team. Once a week we're diving into all of those things.” – John [15:05]
  • "Role playing. As much as they'll gripe about role playing, huge key." – Jack [22:31]

• Training Topics:

  • Value-based objection handling (e.g., “I need to talk to my spouse,” “I’m getting other quotes,” “It’s too expensive”).
  • Discovery and rapport-building to surface “real” objections before they become stumbling blocks.
  • “Sales is a hallway…and your job is to close the doors as you go through the sales.” – John [15:32]

c. Incentivizing Sales Excellence

• Use bonuses, commissions, and contests.

  • “That's commissions, that's bonus programs, that's contests. A lot of different ways to do it.” – John [24:06]
  • Not just money—recognition, competition, and status (ex: company leaderboards) are powerful motivators.
  • “They need something to chase and that's an incentive…bragging rights. Huge.” – Jack [32:27]

• Metric-Driven:

  • Track the number of options presented per job.
  • “One of our key metrics is…number of options per job. And we want to see it at 3 or above.” – John [24:06]
  • "Almost every sales problem in plumbing, HVAC and electric can be boiled down to number of options, quality of options, and packaging." – John [25:26]

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4. The Fundamental Sales Questions

• Build systems and training around addressing these three questions for every sale:

  • “Why you?”

  • “Why now?”

  • “How can I afford you?”

  • “Sales is a system—and the system is solving those three questions and then training it into your team.” – John [19:55]

  • “Why you? Well, that's the three quote thing. Why now? Let's create some urgency and get the sale today. And how can I afford you? Is all of the value stuff.” – John [19:55]

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5. Practical Implementation: Framework Recap

• Start with WHY: Why is this approach good for the customer? What are the consequences of not offering options?

• Train HOW: Systematic, repeated practice—don’t rely solely on outside sales trainers or infrequent workshops.

• Incentivize WHAT: Motivate the right outcomes with clear metrics and both monetary and non-monetary rewards.

  • “If you can solve for those three things and create a sales program on the ‘why this company’, ‘why now’, and ‘how can they afford you’, that is going to be...that’s going to solve most of your problems.” – John [26:38]

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6. Leveraging Peer Learning & Community

• “The bigger the company gets, the more they look externally to see, hey, how are all these other companies doing? And how can I take those lessons into my business?” – John [29:07]
• Peer groups, internal competitions, and KPI sharing drive performance.
  • “King of the Hill”—an internal leaderboard/external peer group app for daily score tracking—fosters motivation.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments (with Timestamps)

• On differentiating between good and bad sales:

  • “It’s not a bad thing to give the customer options for the best possible outcome. And the only way you can do that is by giving them those options.” – Jack, [04:00]

• On technician’s discomfort with presenting replacements:

  • "I've also had people who have done like $4,000 repair tickets on an air conditioner that was installed in the 90s, which also feels wrong to me. Like, they don't want to have, they're uncomfortable talking about new equipment because they don't want to seem like they're being pushy. But that literally would have paid for a new air conditioner." – John [06:24]

• On the real risk of not discussing replacements:

  • “We've had people that have attempted to create insurance claims against us because the boiler went out… and they're like, hey, you didn't tell me you didn't replace the system. Like, that's the actual line that they give us.” – John [10:26]

• On the pitfalls of one-time sales training:

  • "One time trainings are really expensive and they don't drive long-term results... If I send my entire company to a training tomorrow but I don't have a system for them to come back to and continue to drive improvement, waste of time, waste of money.” – John [13:09]

• On technician sales excuses:

  • “Don’t just take ‘Oh, the competitor was cheaper.’ Like that’s not an objection. That’s a lazy salesperson.” – John [16:54]

• Value over price:

  • “He sold it for $2,000 more dollars, but he walked through value, spent more time on it, and presented financing. And those were things the first guy didn't do.” – John [17:25]

• On creating urgency in sales:

  • "I think sometimes we get spoiled in this industry... my plumbing isn't working, my toilets aren't flushing today, I can't use the restroom in my house. So we do get spoiled." – Jack [20:29]

• On the crucial role of peer accountability:

  • “We share average ticket, number of jobs, conversion rate, total sales, total revenue. And it's pretty interesting... the first breaking five where I saw your numbers, your average ticket on plumbing sent me down a rabbit hole for like two months on, oh, this is possible.” – John [29:07, 30:07]

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Key Timestamps

• [00:00] – Framing the ethics of high-ticket sales in home services
• [02:14] – Why home services is fundamentally a sales and marketing business
• [03:45] – Culture shift: Overcoming negative perceptions of sales
• [08:09] – Selling through education and transparency
• [11:24] – Legal and operational importance of presenting options
• [13:09] – Why one-off sales trainings fail
• [15:05] – Weekly sales training structure (topics, role play, repetition)
• [19:44] – The “three whys”: Why you? Why now? How can I afford you?
• [24:06] – Data-driven sales incentives and tracking options per job
• [29:07] – Role of community, external benchmarks, and peer learning
• [32:27] – Incentives beyond money: motivation through recognition and competition

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Takeaways for Home Service Business Owners

• Build a positive, education-focused sales culture.
• Systematize training and make it a regular, ongoing practice.
• Objection handling and option presentation are learned, practiced skills.
• Track key metrics beyond sales $—focus on behaviors that drive outcomes, like options per job.
• Use both monetary and non-monetary incentives to motivate your team.
• Leverage peer groups, industry resources, and internal leaderboards for continual improvement.

“Sales is a system—and the system is solving those three questions and then training it into your team.” – John Wilson [19:55]

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For more resources and to join the community, visit Owned and Operated or connect with John and Jack on social media. If you have specific sales questions, drop them to be addressed in future episodes!

Transcript

[A]

And today we are talking about high ticket sales, how to get them big juicy tickets. Just like it's wrong to be incredibly pushy, it's also wrong to not present and only do expensive repairs that don't benefit the customer at all.

[B]

Fixing it is not necessarily the end goal because sometimes there's better options. And that's how you also get to higher ticket sales.

[A]

Why you? Why now? How can I afford you? I mean, sales is a system and the system is solving those three questions and then training it into your team.

[B]

Like, how do you change the culture around sales?

[A]

I would highly recommend avoiding. Welcome back to Owned and operated, a top 200 business and entrepreneurship podcast. I am your host, John Wilson, and on this show we talk about growing your home service business. Today I'm joined by my good friend and co host, Jack Carr.

[B]

What's going on?

[A]

Frequent co host. And today we are talking about high ticket sales, how to get them big juicy tickets.

[B]

I've told this story before. It took me a long time to get here. Longer than I'd like to admit to Big juicy tickets. Well, I mean, just honestly. So my background, right, And I was telling my GM about this yesterday because he hired a facilities maintenance guy. So we hired a technician who is a facilities maintenance guy. And I said, hey, be careful.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Because it's the opposite business and it's the business I came from.

[A]

Opposite business, opposite business.

[B]

How to reduce as much spend as possible on these, on whatever you're fixing. And when I realized that, click, like, oh, home services is a revenue generation game. It's not a band Aid, Mickey Mouse. As long as you can game like you do in facilities maintenance, like, fixing it is not necessarily the end goal because sometimes there's better options. And that's how you also get to higher ticket sales, is through options. It took me about a year. I unfortunately didn't realize that's not that bad for a whole year. It's like, why there's. Why am I not growing?

[A]

For some people, it takes their entire career because they just misunderstand the business that they're in there. There's that, like, Ray Croc thing where, like, hey, we're not in the burger business, we're in the real estate business. And I think that's where people get tripped up. Here is home service is a marketing and sales business. Like, it's a consumer business. And like, we happen to do plumbing, H vac or electric. It's a marketing sales business. And like, we bought, we bought a lot of companies over the years and We've, I've seen this a lot just in the trades is people not understanding. Maybe they don't like it. Like, there's people that are grumpy about the fact that it's a sales business, but like, it's a sales business. Like them being grumpy doesn't change what it is. But yeah, like we, we bought a business that was a drain cleaning business and they'd been around forever and they didn't replace drains. All they did was clean it. And it's exactly that mentality of like, oh, well, just start offering the replacement. You don't have to force anything down anybody's throat, but just start being like, hey, do you want to pay me twice a year to clean this drain or do you just want to get a new one and be done with on your floor? And it wasn't like that complicated of a problem, but like they just could not. Yeah, get over it. They just couldn't get over it. They're like, well, that's salesy. And I'm like, dad, you're a business.

[B]

Like, that's exactly what this is.

[A]

That line is called sales.

[B]

Sales in, in home services and with. With home service technicians. Is. Is almost a bad word. And it's, it's really discouraging because people have this mentality that sales is a bad thing. But that's one of the keys to starting a good sales program is actually the culture surrounding your sales program and getting your team and everyone on board with this idea that sales is. I mean, there's obviously a version of like manipulation and like bad sales tactics that have ruined a lot of industries. But sales in itself isn't a bad thing. It's not a bad thing to give the customer options for the best possible outcome. And the only way you can do that is by giving them those options. If you are going to take over and say, hey, no, I'm telling you, you're going to fix. Fix f. Yeah, like you said, clean the drain twice a year. You're not giving them the option to repair. You're not actually allowing the sale and you're not allowing the best outcome for the customer. So yeah, I think that's the first big step is like, how do you change the culture around sales? John, What, What's. I think this. I'm going to open this up as a question. It's like, what, where. How are you focusing culturally on, on putting sales as a driver in your business?

[A]

Your Google business profiles are either printing money or they're losing it. And that's where Big Reputation comes in. Big Reputation turns your GBP into a true lead machine without adding more work to your plate. It runs in the background with automated posting, review generation and fast responses so that your reputation compounds over time. And this is huge. If you're multi location, they make it dead simple to manage and scale your reputation across every branch so every location shows up and wins in the map pack. I'm actually using Big Reputation right now as I grow and scale my newest acquisitions. Plus you get real insight into what's actually happening. You get to spot gaps with location, health monitoring, track reviews and sentiment and see which zip codes you're winning and which ones you're losing. Better insights, stronger trust, more calls from an asset you already own. Go check it out at Big Reputation AI slash oao. So yeah, we usually attack it from a couple different ways. The first one is from the customer side. Like what's, what is the benefit to the customer? And you just said it like we've bought companies that it was honestly kind of manipulative. So that drain company, what they said is like why would we want to replace it? We get two to $500 a year from them. And it's like because it's. The customer's basement has sewage in it twice a year. Like why would you. Like that feels wrong to me that we're not talking about that option. I've also had people who have done like four thousand dollar repair tickets on an air conditioner that was installed in the 90s, which also feels wrong to me. Like they don't want to have, they're uncomfortable talking about new equipment because they don't want to seem like they're being pushy. But that literally would have paid for a new air conditioner. So usually it's like, hey, this is why this is good for the customer is because this is a customer's home. It's not your home. Like they have the right to choose the right thing for them, but they do need to know. Like our job is to educate and we don't get to make these decisions for them. And we're not here to be deceptive and like just try to steal money from them once a year fixing a 30 year old air conditioner. And to me that's like, that's theft. Like that's, that's just like wrong. But people think that it's right which is like kind of silly. So we have to like educate them on like hey, that's wrong. Like it, if, if they switched it would probably be better and even if they don't switch, you do need to talk to them about it because you just like, not presenting an option is pretty deceptive.

[B]

Isn't that part of your pillars actually as well?

[A]

Yeah. Yeah. So one of our. One of our core values is trans. Transparency.

[B]

Actually, it's our core values, buddy. Ironically, we stole that from you when I went up to the first breaking five. So it was actually one of our core values.

[A]

Yeah, it's good. So it's. We educate, we sell through education. Not fear.

[B]

Not fear.

[A]

So for us, we're like, we're going to come in, we're going to educate, we're going to explain your options. You can pick whatever you want. But just like it's wrong to be incredibly pushy and present the wrong stuff, it's also wrong to not present and only do expensive repairs that don't benefit the customer at all. So a lot of technicians, they think they're, like, doing the right thing, but honestly, like, they're stealing from the customer. So we present it that way because that. That's what I believe.

[B]

I think that's a great point, though. Is. Is you from a cultural standpoint, is where all this starts. So I'm trying to, like, look at this how to. How to generate sales as a framework. And the first thing is to destroy this idea internally that sales is bad.

[A]

Yes.

[B]

And to offer. Right. You can't just say that. You have to actually offer the. The following solution. And the following solution is, hey, we don't want you to do the manipulative thing either. We want you to come right in the middle of giving options and educating customers on exactly what is out there in the market. Right. I always try to give the. The example to new employees, especially, like, right out of school is if somebody's looking at my car and they're doing an oil change and they notice, hey, your fluid's low, or, hey, your brakes have 1 millimeter left on them.

[A]

On them.

[B]

I would actually like to know that. And then you can present the option like, hey, we could fix this for you, or you can go do this somewhere else. We don't. Like, we love. We're here right now. Like, it'll be cheaper for you, better for you. But it's that education of like, dude, you're at 1 millimeter left on your brakes, or you have this much fluid left. Like, you should definitely change, get some steering fluid in here, and you probably have a leak somewhere. And if they didn't and I left and then my brakes failed, ride home like, that, that's like the key example in H vac is you, you don't educate the customer on a new unit and you walk out of there after a maintenance or after like some small repair, and then the whole system blows up and they're going, oh, it's you guys. You guys sabotage my system. And, and, and I have to explain them. Like, we don't have time delay, few sabotage tools on our truck. Sorry, buddy. Like, it's just an old system. But if you didn't do your due diligence, like, it hurts the company.

[A]

Not only that, you're actually, you're actually legally.

[B]

We're the last one we touched.

[A]

So. So the biggest we've had people that have attempted to create insurance claims against us because the boiler went out, the furnace went out, there was property damage, and they're like, hey, you didn't tell me you didn't replace the system. Like, that's the actual line that they give us. As if I could force them at gunpoint to replace their system. So we've gotten letters from attorneys saying that. And we're, we're always like, very diligent about not only do we present the option, but we record that we presented the option because this has happened enough times where someone didn't replace their boiler and then the house froze because they were in Florida and there's half a million dollar claim and they were like, you were there last? And it's like, absolutely. And we told them the boiler needed to be replaced.

[B]

We, we.

[A]

I mean, honestly, it happens four or five times a year.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And now, thankfully, the biggest one I'm concerned about, we've trained our team around this. But hey, like, CO2 is like, you don't around with that. Like, that can kill a whole family real quick. So if you're not talking about it, like, you have to condemn it, you have to talk about it. So again, like, it's not pushy. Like, this is real. Like, this is real. And so that's a part of our education process too, is we pull up the times that, hey, we didn't talk about this unit. This is what happened in this case. We did talk about this unit. This is what happened. But often, like the technicians get pulled in to talk to the attorneys on the other side to discuss what the findings were. So, like, we have to have good notes, we have to have good photos, we have to have good options. So. So that's most of it's like, we are educating. We're protecting the health, we're protecting the house and we're offering real options and honestly we don't even use the word sales.

[B]

Yeah. So. So once you get past that point. Right. I think that's the. And if you disagree, I'm, I'd be open to it. But I think that's the first big step in driving a sales program in your business. What's the next step that you, you generally see or you generally recommend training

[A]

them how to do it.

[B]

Okay, and what does that look like? Are you doing any specific programs or you know, we've talked about, you know, nextstar and, and what's the other one? It's certain path. Certain path. Thank you. But there's a punch out there, right? Joe, Krishna, Chris, thank you. My mind is over caffeinated and tongue is not working today. But there's a series of programs out there that all work different sales techniques. Like where do you recommend people start? Or like what, what's the next step?

[A]

I guess yeah, I'll give some quick stuff to avoid. So I would, I would highly recommend avoiding one time trainings. I think it's really flashy and it's easy and you, you build a business by like building a system and building a process. So sales and training, you know the way some influencers on the Internet talk about it, it's very rah rah, it's very all that stuff which like that is a part of it. Like you have to keep up motivation, you have to do all that. But it's also pretty systematic. Like hey, we have to have training, we have to have ride alongs, we have to have measurements and one time trainings are really expensive and they don't drive long term results. So because what happens is if I send my entire company to a training tomorrow but I don't have a system for them to come back to and continue to drive improvement from that training. Waste of time, waste of money. But I see a lot of people saying like yeah, we just sent five people to this training and it's like awesome. Like how are you going to help support them when they get back? Well, I don't know, they're just going to do better. And it's like dog, you were just sold a bag of goods man. Like I get it. Some people are really like passionate or whatever and you know they can take advantage of people not thinking. But you should be thoughtful about how you're gonna do it. So don't do big one time things and try not to make it overly complex. So the way we do it is like hey, for I'm I think we're like year 10 of this. We at least have one training a week, sometimes two depending on the team. Where we're just, we're talking about whatever's going on, like how to price. Objection. Handling. Financing updates, option building, quote, building. So once a week we're diving into

[B]

all of those things in that sense though, right? You say these things and, and I think this is an example of where you start on step two is you're saying, hey, yeah, you just train objection handling. But for a lot of people, what I've noticed is they don't even actually know where to start with objection handling. So like, where did you start being like, okay, objection handling is this. And this is where we're getting data from and trying out different things. Like where does that like each of those individual kind of items start to.

[A]

So there's a few places to start. Some of it's just asking your guys, like what are you running into in the field? The other is just going out and doing ride alongs. But an example of an objection is like, I need to talk to my spouse. That's an objection. Anything that like if sales is a hallway and like there's open doors, which is a chance for the prospect to run out the door, you have to just be able to close doors as you go through the sales. So if you go on a ride along and you get a sense of like, hey, where are the areas that we don't make a sale today? Like what happens? Maybe it's a financing rejection. Maybe it's need to talk to my spouse. Maybe it's this is too expensive. Maybe it's I'm getting other quotes. Like whatever. The objection is how to handle that objection is a really important part of the process because otherwise it stops there completely. So if you're not able to handle the why have to get other quotes? Well, yeah, walk me through why. I mean I felt like we had a good conversation. I think we're presenting what you want. The price seems to be within your budget. We have awesome financing options. Like, is there a reason that you want to find other quotes? So how to handle each objection is helpful. So the best way to get that feedback is asking your guys like, hey, what are you running into out there? And don't just take oh, the competitor was cheaper. Like that's not an objection. That's a lazy salesperson.

[B]

Yeah, because I mean, right. Sales is if you don't. You usually run into objections. I like the hallway. Hallway metaphor because yeah, your job is

[A]

to close the doors, your job.

[B]

And that's where you need to be able to drive. The training is what doors didn't you close and why. And usually it's a value. The door is a value door, whether that's internal value or actually cost. But it's generally almost never cost. I shouldn't say almost never. I should say it's a much lower percentage of the time than your technicians would like you to believe it is.

[A]

Yeah, they love to think that we, we actually have an argument today about that because one tech lost a sale to another tech inside the business. And that guy came in hot as hell. You know, he's like, ah, this guy stole my sale. He. You let him sell it for cheaper. And turns out that was actually not at all what happened. He sold it for 2,000 more dollars, but he walked through value, spent more time on it, and presented financing. And those were things the first guy didn't do. And it's like, okay, well, here you go, buddy. What do you want to do? How about you just get better?

[B]

Yeah. And. And so it ends up being value, and there's a few pathways for value. It ends up being trust. They don't trust you. They don't trust the company, which is a great one. That, that's the, The. The typical, hey, I need to talk to somebody else or we need to go get more quotes. It's because you didn't spend enough time building rapport and building trust in who you were personally and the company as a. As a whole. And then there's a series of pathways to go down there. And so these trainings. I think there's one more too. I'm. I'm missing something.

[A]

Well, it's. It's why you?

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Why now? The three whys can I afford you? Like, why you? Why now? How can I pay you? So those are the, like, hey, why Wilson? Why would you work with Wilson? Well, our installers are the best. Are we installed the best equipment, whatever. Why now? We have this special promo. You want to get your AC in before whatever. You want to do this before property damage? Can you. Can I afford you? Absolutely. Here's our awesome price. Here's the guarantees that make this super protected. Here's the 20 different ways to finance this. So why you? Why now? How can I afford you? Most home service companies don't stall because of demand. They stall because they run out of good people. Finding solid help fast is hard, especially in this industry. And that's where quick staffers comes in. They help home service companies build reliable Virtual teams that actually understand how the trades work. Quick staffers provides vetted remote staffed who are already trained on service titan and use proven SOPs, same as ones that I use at Wilson. These are VAs you can plug in from day one to handle customer service, lead follow up, scheduling support and a ton more. They've been a huge help in scaling my team without the usual hiring headaches. Check them out at the link below.

[B]

Yeah, I think that's a huge one that a lot of people miss is, is they. They take everything at face value rather than trying to step back and frame it from a psychological and sales perspective

[A]

is hey, yeah, I mean sales is a system like. And the system is solving those three questions and then training it into your team. Because those three questions is every objection. Why you. Well that's the three quote thing. That's the you're too expensive. That's the whatever. Why now? That's the let's create some urgency and get the sale today. And how can I afford you? Is all of the value stuff, you know, like, hey, do you have financing? Is your install stuff the best? But like if you answer those three questions, that's how you design a sales program and sales training.

[B]

And I think sometimes we get spoiled in this industry by the way, because like those questions are a lot harder for like an E commerce product. But for H Vac it's like, why now? Because it's 100 degrees out and my AC does work sometimes.

[A]

I mean right now we're in April, so like why now? Is like a real question. It's going to be 30 degrees this week.

[B]

I agree. I'm just saying like the people that see like massive swings in their on and off season, a lot of it is due to a lack of a sales program because obviously there's a lead difference and there's a call difference. But at the end of the day, right, like part of the reason that we get so spoiled is like my plumbing isn't working, my toilets aren't flushing today, I can't use the restroom in my house. So we do get spoiled. But that's, that's a great point. So we do two trainings a week as well, or on and off depending on the number of individuals we have. Training one is numbers. Why are your numbers this way? Let's go over metrics, let's go over data and then we are training. Two is role play. It's hey, this is how we handle these objections. We've seen a lot of price objections recently. That means we're not doing X, Y and Z properly. What, what does your trainings look like? Yeah, what does your training look like? Is it kind of similar?

[A]

When we started to build our first sales training program, we thought every single lesson had to be like totally custom and bespoke and all that. And, and we found out it really didn't. We're, you're basically handling like the same five or six things over and over again at a slightly different angle. But you have to repeat it a lot. Maybe there's new hires, maybe a financing program changed, maybe they just forgot. So you just have to repeat it a lot. And that's why this is so systematic. If you send your whole team to a one time sales training, you expect that to be your ticket to success. Like that ain't it. They're not going to remember that in six to nine months. You need to have a consistent program of driving improvement in order to like really drive a sales program. And it helps get them more comfortable to sell the big jobs.

[B]

That's, that's one of the huge keys. It's like it gets you comfortable. Role playing. As much as they'll gripe about role playing, huge key.

[A]

We role play like crazy huge key.

[B]

But also I think a big important part of this too is as you start these trainings, one of the mistakes we made is products don't generate sales. So what you'll hear a lot from your team members is hey Jack, if you buy this new Jetter, I'll be able to sell jetters or hey, if you buy this laundry pro, we'll be able to sell laundry pros or AC Renew, we'll be able to sell AC Renew and then you'll do a training on and here's the product. How do you talk about it? But it ends up being in this one time training category. It's unless you are going to take a product and really forefront it with training over and over and over again. People don't generally sell new things outside of their box. And so it takes a lot of work to actually understand how to sell something and the value proposition behind it. And so one of the big mistakes is we, we give very little effort past that first initial thing and then we'd sit there and go why aren't they selling this product that we bought 10,000 of that we need to move. And it's, it's because we just, we didn't do the training properly. And so training is a huge portion. Don't especially when bringing on new products or skus that you think that Will will really drive the business. A lot of times it's like iq, water quality, big ones.

[A]

The third, so we've talked about two so far. So the first one was like, the question was, how do you do this? So the first is you explain to your team why, like, why do we do this and why is it good for the customer? And like, what are the, like, what's the real implications of not just presenting people with the honest truth about what they can do? The second is training your team. So like, hey, here's how you do this, here's how you talk about it, here's how you handle some of these objections, here's how you bring up options. And the third one is incentivizing them to do it. So that's commissions, that's bonus programs, that's contests. However you want to think about that. A lot of different ways to do it. But that would be like the third step where, hey, you come up with a program where your team gets incentivized to be excellent at their job. So like one of our key metrics is how. What number of options did we give per job? And we want to see it at 3 or above. Usually we're like 2.8 to 3.1. But it is a. That's honestly more important than the sales number because that's going to tell you what sales are going to be. So that's our biggest indicator of like we have to be working with this team member is their options are too low because they're just not presenting what the customer could do.

[B]

Yeah, because.

[A]

Yeah. So you.

[B]

Options and packaging. Right.

[A]

Rolls into closure rate, average ticket, closing

[B]

rolls into average ticket and then which rolls into. Obviously if your average ticket goes up.

[A]

Almost every sales problem is in plumbing, H vac and electric can be boiled down to number of options, number of

[B]

options, quality of options and packaging. Packaging has been a big starts with number. Yeah.

[A]

Number is the easiest to identify. What's your number of options? Are those options good? But it starts with number.

[B]

I mean, so you say it starts with number. But again, I think that's for a lot of people. That's a step that's a starting on two. Because well, you don't just throw options. I mean, I guess that's not. Because if you throw options at the end, like, yeah, you might hit. Your team member might hit occasionally. It will obviously if you don't do options like you'll never get the option to actually sell more. But up front. Right. It actually starts at how your discovery phase, when you talk with a customer. Because if you jam in a bunch of options at the end that they never asked for and were never interested in, like yeah, you're not going to see any improvements. It's building rapport early on, asking questions, doing discovery, the thermostat discussion.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

The whole nine. So you know, sales is such a big broad topic. It's really hard to. To do this framework in 30 minutes because like there's so many like oh, but you. We're supposed to do this first. And you have to also make sure this is.

[A]

Well, I think as you're thinking about spinning it off, like I, I think we gave a good framework which is why is it important to the customer? How can the tech do it? And then why is it important to the tech? What's the incentive structure? And if you can solve for those three things and create a sales program on the why this company, why now and how can they afford you? That is going to be. That's going to solve most of your problems. And you can just create a sales program honestly with stuff off of YouTube like hey, this video gave you the framework for how to create that program. But then objection handling is a. Like you can search objection handling and you can find how to handle the. I need to talk to someone. I need more bids like easy things to find on the Internet.

[B]

You know who surprisingly does it well too. I will admittedly say I've watched my share of these videos. Is like the door to door knockers, whatever the case may be, they're monsters at Objection handling.

[A]

Dude, we. We just moved. We actually just moved a canvasser to H vac Sales.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And his first week he did 40 grand.

[B]

Yeah, I believe it. Man.

[A]

That was last week.

[B]

Hard business to be in.

[A]

Yeah. It's crazy. We're, we're. That was really cool. So we're thinking about like more because I think they're. They're just good. Like they're good. So yeah, his, his first week he, he killed it.

[B]

Sweet. So, okay, so we have the big three questions. We. We've changed the culture in our business.

[A]

Yeah. Drive consistency through your training, explain why it's good.

[B]

Incentivize and then you incentivize property. I think that's pretty straightforward. Maybe it's not.

[A]

Yeah. And there's a lot of programs out there. Certain Path, nextar, Joker. Sarah's got a great program. You can also like just look on YouTube if you're budget strapped. And I know with Nextar, I think certain paths this way too. Like you can join those Programs pretty small.

[B]

Yeah. And then, and then I think a big one that's overlooked is community. Right. I'm not next are. I'm not certain paths. I'm not anything. I'm a product of Twitter and asking people, friends that I know see companies like, hey, how did you. How do you handle this? Like, we get a lot of this. Is this an actual issue or is it just me? And yeah, a lot of times it's just me and that. You know, let's work out how to solve it.

[A]

So now we have, we have this thing. I have a group that shares KPIs from our sales teams. And it's kind of funny. And what are we called now? It's gone through like a few name iterations. I think it's called like the Thunderdome, but. But yeah, it's like 10 contractors. I think the smallest one's like 15 or 20 million and the biggest is like 70 or something. And we, we share average ticket, number of jobs, conversion rate, like total sales, total revenue. And it's, it's pretty interesting. So like, yeah, talking to peers and like, understanding, hey, what is another company doing and how can we drive to their performance is a very helpful part of the process. The bigger the company gets, what I found, the more they look externally to see, hey, how are all these other companies doing? And how can I take those lessons into my business?

[B]

Yeah, no, that, that. I mean, so the first breaking five, where I saw your numbers, your average ticket on plumbing, sent me down a rabbit hole for like two months on, oh, this is possible. Like, people are driving average tickets and plumbing at 2,000, $3,000 at average ticket. Like, how do you do that? What do you sell? What's the sales process look like? I think that that's a big portion of it is what is possible and how do you get there?

[A]

We're about to turn that group into like an app, which I think would be kind of fun. And because I. What I. What I want to happen, I think this will be exciting. So right now it's just the owners looking at it. So what we're going to do is we're going to. And we're doing this for like our own business. Like, you're, you're my business, Jack. Because, you know, we have that spreadsheet called King of the Hill where we compare like branch sales, branch revenue, highest sales, highest conversion rate, all that stuff. We're going to, we're going to turn that into an app. And then what we're going to do is we're going to blast each person in the company every, every morning through like text, their score and like how they ranked, like who was ahead of them, who is behind them. And, and then we're going to take that and we're going to take it to this group which I think is going to be hilarious. So soon it'll be like a thousand, a thousand people in the program like getting a text every day on like their performance. Most marketing agencies will show you clicks, impressions and maybe even traffic. But none of that really matters if the phone's not ringing. And that's why we partner with service killers. They are built specifically for home service companies and they focus on one thing which is driving real high quality calls and book jobs. This is a no brainer. They're offering a 60 day money back guarantee on LSA management, Google business profile optimization and website builds. If you don't get more visibility, more calls and better leads, then you don't pay. If you want more book jobs without the marketing headache, click the link below and book a free strategy call with service scalers.

[B]

And like you mentioned incentive, right? We talked about incentive. Incentive isn't always necessarily monetarily driven either. Like yes, most incentive is monetarily driven but there's also an incentive which I've noticed, including myself of like high end type A personalities who are really focused at being the best in whatever business that they're trying to achieve.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Like they need something to chase and that's an incentive is I won king of the hill today. Bragging rights.

[A]

Like hell yeah.

[B]

Huge.

[A]

Hell yeah.

[B]

Huge.

[A]

Oh yeah.

[B]

So I just wanted to be clear, like it's not. You don't need to go out and spend an extra, you know, 10% of yeah, X, Y or Z to necessarily build a sales program for incentive. You just need to be creative and see where the value is actually at.

[A]

Awesome. Well, hopefully this was helpful to people. If you like what you heard, make sure you like and sub if you want to join that group. I think we're probably going to open it up soon because we're trying to get more people to compare to. So let me know.

[B]

Yeah. Also if you have any sales questions, drop them in the chat because that'll be fun. Yeah. That drives our, our next conversations.

[A]

Thanks.

[B]

Peace.