Kenny Chapman Part 2 | Your Guide to Building a Better Home Service Industry Sales Process

Josh Smith (00:03):

Hello, and welcome back to the sharpest tool. My name is Josh, and this is the place where we take the sting out of marketing with everything that we bring to the table. So great to have Kenny Chapman back in the booth owner and founder of the blue collar success group. Kenny, welcome back.

Kenny Chapman (00:18):

Thanks Josh. Super pumped to be back again. This is part

Josh Smith (00:21):

Two of our conversation with Kenny. We had part one where we talked about, uh, sales and a little bit about the blue collar success group. If you haven't checked that out, go ahead and look back for last week's episode to get a headstart on what we're talking about here, but really what we want to focus on is how do we get organizations to have a better sales process? So sales can increase and businesses can grow. And I think this is a good jumping off point for us to dive into the relationship between sales and marketing. What's your take on that? Kenny?

Kenny Chapman (00:48):

So sales and marketing is like a union of marriage. And the challenge is if marriages don't communicate well, if they don't help each other through blind spots, if they don't grow in the same capacity, it might be yin and yang. So one spouse might be growing faster than the other personally, professionally relationship, whatever finance, and then the other one kind. And you, as long as you're growing together within a certain space, you're going to remain healthy. The other thing, what happens in a good marriage, really good communication, really open communication, very objective communication. And so the sales team and the marketing team can have a really good marriage where everything's communicating and really well. And reporting's going back and forth or sales and marketing can end up like over 50%, 60% now of the United States that ends up in a divorce or a turmoil based relationship because sales is going, marketing has given us BS leads.

Kenny Chapman (01:45):

We need better leads. We're not getting the right target avatar. We're not getting this. We're not getting that. And marketing's going, what are you talking about? I got I over fed your lead budget last month, this and that. You're not qualified to get the sales that Lee you're not closing. And they can go back and forth, head to head rather than going, what does a good marriage do? Hey, I got a little troubled kid here. We got to talk about Johnny's behavior. They pull together and they go, Hey, cool. How, what can you bring the value to Johnny? And what can you bring to value? If we have lead flow or sales flow, sales and marketing can solve that to get

Josh Smith (02:17):

Absolutely. What, what should you be doing before the sales process even starts? What would you say?

Kenny Chapman (02:22):

I would say 90% of contractors in the United States, Canada and Australia are incorrectly priced to go to market. Meaning that nobody hands you exactly what it's supposed to be. We're not selling razors in a convenience store. You come up with your own pricing, meaning that you've got to figure out cost of goods and labor as supplements and all these things. And if you don't do it effectively, which most don't, then you go to market under priced and under priced, selling kills everything. So don't, don't make a sale until and what we all do. And I did it myself. I started as a dead-broke drain cleaner in April, April 1st, April fool's day in 1994. And I called two competitors. And one was, I think one was a $52 an hour. One was $48 an hour. And I said, cool. I'm not quite as good as them.

Kenny Chapman (03:08):

I'm a little better than them. I'll be 50 bucks an hour. And it was the worst pricing strategy anywhere on the planet. And it still exists today. And it might work in certain verticals and industries that does not work in the home service space period. So the prospect decides they want to work with you. What should you be doing during that part of the process? We teach a 12 step ultimate client experience with that begins with the relationship. So first you've got to begin helping the client understand that you're their hero, right? Everybody wants a hero. So as a home service company, when you get in the home, if you're listening to this, train your team to uncover the relationship, first people we talk about know like, and trust the old ad is, oh, why do people buy? I know I can trust. That's not true.

Kenny Chapman (03:50):

You can buy from people that you don't like. You do it from your cable provider every month. So let's get that one off the table, right? So it can happen. Now in the home service face to face, it definitely comes on. So if, if, if I need to be liked, if so, I need to be known in order to be trusted. There's no sale that ever happens anywhere without a certain level of trust. When it guys still trust that my cable provider will provide the service. So if I need to get to trust, then I better have in my sales process, Josh, a way to open up and get known. Cause you can't like me. If you don't know me, I need to know something about you. You need to know something about me and we slowly build this relationship. As I uncover your needs.

Kenny Chapman (04:29):

I give you options that you asked for, even though you might not have asked straight away for it. I understand it. I'm going to give you, because you asked for me this, I'm going to give you that. And we're going to tie back to the trust factor and really good things are going to happen because you're offering everything and letting them make an empowered decision. Most sales are killed because they're never offered in home service. I love that. And now you've create, you've created the job for the customer. You've done it. You've completed the work. Yep. Now what, well, what do you do after that entire process has taken place? So you, you better have like, I mean, a massive, massive focus of your, of your closing process had better be around online reviews. So the first part is number one, online reviews. So, so there's three units, right?

Kenny Chapman (05:17):

And we, we, we call it well, let's call it marketing before, during and after units of marketing and we mark it originally, scorpion crushes it at the before unit marketing, right? So we get, get the lead. Now we're during the really the sales process is during unit. So now that goes on now, most contractors drop the ball with after unit. Meaning what's the review. What's the follow-up, what's the happy call. What's the touch. See the thing is 90% of happy calls never get answered, but it's still makes an impact. It still makes a touch. There's a reason that Facebook checks on or, or, uh, reports, statistics of engagement and an interactions and things like that. Guess what if that matters then as contractors, you better be engaging in what happens is you leave the home and you have a handshake. Yo, thanks, John. Oh, by the way, if I did good, that'd be great.

Kenny Chapman (06:07):

If you went on Google, oh, go on Google. I'm going to do that. Sure. Of course. See you next time. And I drive away in my truck and you forgot by the time I get to the corner, what the name of my company was all that different type of stuff. So now in two years, when you might need me, I've got to start the process all over again, rather than monthly, staying in touch with you, doing some after unit marketing, thanking you for your sale, reminding you that that water heater was eight years old when we were there. And it's been another two years, just wanted to keep it on. We don't budget for the just communicate, communicate, communicate in a safe and valuable way in the after unit of marketing. Then when that client comes back around, we have to have repeat clients in order to survive.

Josh Smith (06:48):

Yeah. There's no, no question. I'm reputation is so powerful. I'm so glad you touched on that because that is a major differentiator. You want to talk about value. People love working with people, their friends have worked with, right? And there's a referral basis that comes out of that. It's just, it's insanely powerful. So I'm so happy. You touched on that. How do you determine where you're starting? When it comes to making more sales, to determine how you, if you're on track in terms of your improvement, how do you create those baselines?

Kenny Chapman (07:15):

So the first thing that you want to do is, is get a beginning kind of slate. So what are, what are my current revenue numbers? What are my current, how many calls have I run? We used to do this on a, you can do it on a note page. How many calls, how many have you run? How many of you closed get some, some key performance indicators regarding how your conversion rate, how often you go in a home and how many of those do you close out of those that you close? What's the average dollar amount. And then on average, how many of those do you run? And you start looking at that. And now I start as, as my data gets better, as my software gets better, I start segregate, segmenting that data and going, okay, cool. Now, from that average on my go, I've got a $800 average overall.

Kenny Chapman (07:58):

Now I start chunking that down by offer by line item and start going, okay. Here's where I'm at. So I know that next month, if my average sale was 600 cool, I'm up? I know what's going down. Now. The other thing is with tracking data. Now what happened? I got a $600 average sale, but my conversion rate went from 85% to 78%. So now I need to think about that Josh and go, okay, I lost more opportunities, but I made more money on the opportunities that I ran. So now we find that balance and algorithm, and that's why it's so important to engage with a coach or find that clarity. So you know what you're doing and why no different, here's the funny thing, whatever the millennials want to know, why they're doing some time back to them, your clients want to know why you're offering what you're offering and why it's priced the way it is. And guess what you want to know why millennials asked for certain, all of us want to know why? Just answer the question.

Josh Smith (08:50):

Yeah. Let's talk about belief in confidence and the importance of those. When it comes to selling deals, instilling trust and using the relationships aspect when it comes to sales, what's your, what's your take on that?

Kenny Chapman (09:04):

Belief in confidence is it's massive. My first book, the six dimensions of change was not written about any industry. It's about changing your mind. So in sales, confidence and belief is, is pivotal and paramount because many people in home services grew up a lot. Like I did. I grew up wearing secondhand clothes and different things. And you know, we were the people that went to taco bell for a retreat. We were it's us and them mentality. They drove nice cars. We didn't all those types of things and I'm not whining. I'm just stating a fact. And that fact carried with me when I got into sales and offering things that I'm offering. I, we, we sell think about this. We sell products. Now that costs twice as much as I made my first month as a United States, military soldier. Wow. I mean, so, so there's a mindset that you go, okay, this air conditioner costs twice as what it did for me to go to war for a year.

Kenny Chapman (10:02):

But, and so you start going price and value. So most sales are killed in, in, in salespeople's heads because I start thinking, I am placing my buying decisions are habits that I've had to work through as an educated adult. I start going, wait a minute, maybe this person doesn't need this product or this service. Let me ask everybody on the question on, on the line of question, how many of you listening right now? Just nod your head for us in space that have, have a smartphone of some store. You think you need it now, but there was a time you did. They didn't even exist. And so here's the reality is now if you lost your iPhone, I saw a comedian say that once he's like, I don't have kids, but I lost my iPhone once. And I swear, that's like losing a kid in the supermarket. So, so point is now it, we, it was a want that has become a need and it didn't become a need until we got to experience. And we understood all the value it can add to our life salespeople's job is to make that experience and to show and what's going on. That's the reality.

Josh Smith (11:01):

And you know, there's more people that have a cell phone than they have a toothbrush. It's an interesting stat just to put it, put it in perspective. You know, it takes, it takes the average person who loses a cell phone, 60 minutes to actually start looking for them, report it loss versus the average person who loses a wallet. It takes 24 hours for them to report that loss. It's insane. We are so connected to it. And I'm glad you brought that up. That is so powerful when it comes to selling, having confidence in the value that you're providing with the products and services that you're providing a customer helps close deals. It just does. And if you have technicians or salespeople who are lacking that confidence case in point first thing that you need to work on with them, drill that. So they really see, really see the value and really buy into the value. If they're not bought into it themselves, how are they going to make someone else buy into it? And that's,

Kenny Chapman (11:49):

And, and for my coach has had, I can't not say this, that them buying into it doesn't mean that they would buy the product or service. The deal is I don't have to drive a Lamborghini to be able to be a good Lamborghini salesperson and be now it would help to ride in it. It would help to know all the horsepower and all the cool, crazy things it'll do, but I don't have to own one of those or be in an income category to buy one in order to offer somebody that is in that place. The value of that vehicle. I learned this

Josh Smith (12:19):

Long ago, I asked the question, uh, of a, an associate of mine for, uh, one of the side hustles I've run in the past. And, um, and I asked, uh, you know, I pose the question and it was around the pricing thing. And it was just dawned on me at 1.5 years ago, where it was, why do I have such a problem charging something that I wouldn't personally pay, just because I wouldn't personally pay for that or pay the price that I'm asking for. It doesn't mean someone else doesn't value that more than I value it in terms of the price game. So we can't automatically disqualify and discredit people in terms of their ability to buy into something. Just because we don't personally value. We have to take our personal bias out of the equation and really focus on the value. It has a potential to bring a customer who does need it, and does have the value there already to pay for it.

Kenny Chapman (13:08):

You are not your own customer period here yet that through your head.

Josh Smith (13:13):

I love that. I know a lot of home service providers listening. It'd probably really, really overwhelmed. We got a lot, a lot of data here. Where's the most valuable place you think a business owner should be spending their time

Kenny Chapman (13:23):

Business owners need to think more. I agree. The reality is what you know, in, in the home service space, we're not geared toward having boards of directors and people that really hold us accountable. That's one of the reasons we run mastermind groups. We have board groups where we act as your board of this, these companies. Why? Because it helps what, uh, Keith Cunningham calls the dumb tax. It helps us avoid the dumb tax as owners. When we take a moment, step back. Yes, I'm a fan of yoga and meditation, all those things. And everybody went, oh, I'm not doing that, right. Here's the deal. You don't have to do that, but you do have to carve out some time to think because we, what we just said, why do you find that cell phone so quick? Because you're glued to it, go out of the country, turn it, you know, you start realizing.

Kenny Chapman (14:06):

So the fact is you can always be doing things successful business owners, create the gap in order to truly think about what's going on. All of, when you think about it, you know, Josh, all of your biggest problems today in business came from your greatest thinking at the time. And so everybody think about that right now. Now what, if you could go back and challenge that thinking at the time and maybe have avoided one of those challenging things. And I don't call them mistakes. I believe we learned from them, but I know that there's some that I, if I can avoid that lesson or learn prior to, or learn it from somebody else or somebody that's been there, I would definitely do that. Just do yourself a favor and take a step back and think really quickly Edison one time, uh, or, uh, Henry Ford had had Thomas Edison in and touring the Ford plant way back in the day.

Kenny Chapman (15:01):

Right? And, and they're walking around doing a tour. I, I get to do a tour, a scorpion. I haven't been here since, uh, since we opened here, you guys opened here. And so I'm going to cruise around and they were doing that. So Henry Ford showing Edison around and they get back and they go, what do you, what do you, what'd you think of the day today? And, and Edison's like, it was great, except I would fire that guy. And he points at one guy just sitting in a chair and Ford's like, what, what do you mean? He's like, oh, I'd fire that guy. He's like, why? He said, all he's done is just sit in that chair all day today. And Ford said, oh yeah, that's so-and-so. I pay him to think. And so we look at people like companies like Ford and all the, you know, cutting companies that were created greatly. And yet we want to model them until it comes to some of the stuff that really gets hard and your business, isn't hard finding people isn't hard thinking differently and taking action. That's, what's hard. Absolutely.

Josh Smith (15:53):

What to do's. Um, from your perspective, yield, the most bang for your buck. When it comes to investing in your sales process,

Kenny Chapman (16:00):

Getting clarity of being margin correctly, get your margins, correct with your pricing first and foremost, then get clarity of what you truly want to accomplish in that sales process and build the system for the person, having the communication, get them involved. If it's a new process, if you're not adopting our process or anybody that already has something built, you want to build your own. That's great. I think it's important that you have a step-by-step here's the deal. You know, we think actors, you know, actors and actresses, um, scripting is like, oh, Hey, cool. You know, you think about the highest paid actor in Hollywood last year. I don't know who it is off the top of my head, but what I will tell you this, they are not paid near as much as they are for their acting as they are for their ability to run with a script.

Kenny Chapman (16:56):

What do I mean by that? Great salespeople all have scripts. Josh. We just don't know it because they make it a part of their fabric. So when you're building a sales process of any kind, you have got to have scripting in it, and then you've got to train it effectively. People don't want to be robots. Millennials certainly want to have their freedom and capacity. However, they will follow that guided map, that roadmap, if you will, and allow them to be themselves, you cannot create repeatable success in a process without some form of scripting and, and reporting involved. I love that

Josh Smith (17:32):

Very actionable, very specific, very direct. I think that's great advice for everybody listening. I want to close this with a little bit of a plug for just personal development and learning, because I think it's so powerful. We can never stop that aspect, especially as business owners. So true. Why are podcasts like the sharpest tool and other podcasts really important for home service business owners to, to digest and take in what value can they get from a podcast that's focused on home service, business success.

Kenny Chapman (17:58):

We have chosen an industry that at least on most direct calls people aren't looking for a want. They don't have, it's not the new iPhone. I might have to part with a grand for it, but I'm still excited for the new iPhone. So the challenge is our frontline is, is kicked in the teeth all day. We're a question. How can you charge that much? Why were you late? What was traffic here? We have, we have challenged day after day call after call upset client after upset client in challenge, all of those things. So Josh has owners and leaders of these organizations. We have got to get some good information. We have got to listen to other people that are going through the same thing that are finding ways to keep your sanity. I recently heard from a, from a Navy seal that said all stress is self-induced now listening to information like what we're doing today. Getting that information helps us take a step back and go I'm stressed. But is that the market or is that me allowing the market to self-induced my stress

Josh Smith (18:59):

A hundred percent. We have to own your success a lot more and lack of ownership. I've seen it time and time again. I know you have to, you do you're in a business. You're diving into figure out how we're going to move the needle with a business. And then you look into it and it's, self-sabotage from a personal level all around. And the business starts to go under, and it's such a sad thing because it's so controllable. You can control how you're allowing outside influences to affect you, how you're allowing outside influences to affect your team. And you have the ability to control that. And so investing in yourself, pulling ideas from different sources is just, it's powerful. It's powerful. Well, this has been awesome, Kenny, thank you so much for taking the time. I know we, we have two episodes here of just beefy value for our listeners, and I really, really appreciate you coming to the booth to share your knowledge with us. Where can people find more about yourself and the blue collar success group? You bet

Kenny Chapman (19:52):

Now, to the blue collar success group.com hit up our website and see a little bit about what we do most importantly, reach out to us. We'd love to have one of our coaches have a chat with you, see where you're at and see if we can help you get to that next level.

Josh Smith (20:04):

Awesome. Well for everybody listening definitely hit that subscribe button wherever you might be listening at. So you can get more of this awesome content here at the sharpest tool and from all of us, we'll catch you next time.