Mastering Sales in 2025 - Winning Strategies with Sam Wakefield
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We sharpen our axe every single day. It's like we've forgotten that or never even learned

that in order to be that expert, we have to constantly be sharpening the axe. It's something you have to do daily. You can't do it on Sunday and expect it to last all week. - 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.

Before we get started, I wanted to share two important things with you. First, I want you to implement what you learned today. To do that, you'll have to take a lot of notes, but I also want you to fully concentrate on the interview. So I asked the team to take notes for you. Just text NOTES to 888-526-1299. That's 888-526-1299. And you'll receive a link to download the notes from today's episode.

Also, if you haven't got your copy of my newest book, Elevate, please go check it out. I'll share with you how I attracted and developed a winning team that helped me build a $200 million company in 22 states. Just go to elevateandwin.com forward slash podcast to get your copy. Now let's go back into the interview. All right, guys, today's going to be fun. I got Sam Wakefield here. He's based out of

Round Rock, Texas. He's a sales and business expert. He's the founder of Close It Now Sales Training and Close It Now Podcast. The dynamic founder of Close It Now stands at the forefront of HX sales training, known for his high-octane approach and deep industry expertise.

a master in transforming the sales landscape. Sam's career is a testament to his innovative strategies and motivational prowess. His popular podcast, Closed It Now, mirrors his passion, blending actionable advice to real-world examples that resonate with HVAC professionals. And by the way, HVAC...

is the godfather of all sales. I believe that. I learned everything I know from HX Plumbing and Electrical. If you think back in the day, HX spells wealth around Ron Smith, paved the way for guys like George Brazil and Frank Blau in the late 80s. And who else? Jim. What's another one? Jim. I'm trying to think of Jim. I never met him, but...

I'm brain farting his name, but I'll tell you, HVAC is like, if you know HVAC sales, you know how to do chimneys and roofing and landscaping. And I do believe you get good at HVAC sales, you can do anything in life. So, Sam, it's a pleasure to have you on.

Thank you, man. It's such an awesome pleasure to be here. I love that you mentioned HVAC Spells Wealth. That was one of my very first books that I ever read in the industry. And it was just incredibly powerful to read through that book and learn that our goal is not to just get customers to keep them as well. I feel like that's something a lot of people have forgotten nowadays.

Yeah, that's the thing he said is that, you know, I got that in my bathrooms here, get customers and keep customers. And I put that when I read that book, I get more customers. And the guy I was thinking of was Jim Abraham. Oh, yeah. Yeah, absolutely. So tell me a little bit about yourself, man. Where'd you start? What are you working on? What's new? What's good? What's your passions?

Yeah. So, you know, I've been doing this in the in the trades almost 20 years now. So April is actually the sixth year anniversary for the Close It Now as a, you know, as a sales training company in the podcast.

And, you know, one of the big things I've been working on, especially this last few months, is really deep diving into the internal workings of really just people. You know, one of the ways that we close the show is, you know, work to become someone worth buying from.

And as we go internal, we, you know, really get to up level ourselves first. And as you know, we put on our own oxygen mask, then we can help everybody else around us. In fact, a podcast I just recorded earlier today for my show was the kind of the sales bearer. You know, what we've really been talking about on our show lately is, you know, what it seems like those objections kind of follow us around.

The common denominator could be us. We attract who we are. So if I want to think about it a lot or I need three bids, it's time for us to examine our own buying habits and realize, oh, wait a minute, maybe I'm attracting this. Do I have these things in my life that's causing that to mirror our clients when we go into our appointments? So that's what I've been working on lately. It's been a thought journey that's a lot of fun.

Dan Martell sat right next to me in this very room and said, when I started buying how I want to be bought from, everything changed. When I was indecisive and I had to make a deal with everybody and make sure I got the deepest discounted price, I was actually saying I'm not worth the full experience. I want you to give me discounted service.

And when that all changes, the perspective of your self-worth goes up. And I tell my people all the time during orientation, I just told them today, I'm like, you're going to really understand very soon. Like, here's the thing that people, we've always heard they need to know, like, and trust you, right? People need to know, like, and trust you. The other thing is they need to know, like, and trust the company. And the third thing that everybody fails at is they need to feel loved, right?

So how does a client feel loved? I asked them, well, how do you guys think a client feels loved? If you actively listen and you bring up things that they mentioned, oh, you said you're a kid named Tommy that's five years old and he sleeps upstairs, right? You actually care and you're actively listening. You're going, uh-huh. Wow, that's interesting. Tell me more. When did you know that she was going to be your wife? That's crazy. And I miss being in the garage. And for those in HVAC,

you know, on the roofs or whatever. I miss the experience of just the client, the intimacy and just talking to them, learning about them. I was with a World War II vet. He told me his whole story. I canceled my next two jobs. This was years and years back, but enjoying to getting to know the clients. If you don't do that, then you shouldn't be in sales.

A hundred percent. Absolutely agree with that. You know, when I'm coaching, I actually had somebody earlier, we were coaching on his, you know, service appointment and I was like, well, how many people live in the house? Well, how many pets do they have? Do you know the pet's names? Do you know the kid's names? Do you remember the wife's name? Nope, nope, nope. I was like, do you see before we even get into the sales appointment, can you see where we might have a problem? Because

No wonder they didn't want to buy from you. They gave you the thing about it because they didn't even know who you were. You didn't know who they were. Yeah, 100%. And that's the most important thing is you should know exactly what the wife does for a living, the husband does for a living. You should know exactly where the kids go to school, the pet's names. Another thing I think you should do, and you'll like this one, is really, really, really spend a lot of time building your profile. If you're using software like ServiceTitan, it's great.

Send a great picture. Send your pets. Send your motorcycle and your wife and your kids. And talk about how, like, you made it through an obstacle. Like, training was tough. And when you got trained and how you fell in love with the industry. And spend time for let the client get to know you. And then offer something on the way. If you just do these little things, you're like, I told my team, I said, you ever go to those classes? Sam, you probably had a class like this. Where the teacher says, I'm giving everybody an A.

You just sat down. Your first grade is an A. All you got to do is keep it. Well, when you set the right profile and you offer the right stuff on the way and you knock the door and you're smiling, you've already got an A. And you're very considerate and you say, yes, sir, absolutely, sir. I appreciate that, sir. Would you like a glass of water? Absolutely, sir. Thank you so much, sir. And you just show this like you're winning already. Mm-hmm. Go ahead.

Because I love this so much, too. That's funny. I saw a post earlier on social media. It was just asking. It was Everett over at his sales tales group. He was asking, have you ever received or said yes to anybody offering you something to drink in a home?

And of course, my comment was like, man, I couldn't count the number of meals and drinks that I've had with people in their homes. You know, the number of dinners and lunches that they've served when you build a relationship with people over time. It's incredible what happens. And it's not for obviously the free food, but just to be able to break bread with somebody builds a relationship like just, you know, you really can't otherwise. So it's such a powerful thing when that, you know, when that really starts to happen, that's how you know that you're

effectively authentically making relationship instead of just trying to fake it. Yeah. I mean, I remember people would always ask me to go to church with them, invite me over for Thanksgiving dinner. I mean, very rarely it's usually the Latter-day Saints invited me to their church.

You know, I'm in Arizona here, especially in the East Valley. But, yeah, no, I miss those days. I really do. I miss getting to know people and hearing their stories and whether they were talking about George Clooney or, you know, politics or religion or their family or their profession, you know, or their favorite, you know, things to do on the weekend. It didn't matter to me. I just loved listening and learning. Some people had kegerators in their garage, and I'd be like, show me how that works. And it was just cool, man. And I really do miss it.

Yeah, I love it. Yeah, you get to meet the craziest, coolest people. And, you know, truly at the end of the day, we're changing lives too. And that's the important part. You know, we literally can change the way somebody exists in their home with any type of home services, whatever we do. It's like they have a struggle. We're able to make their lives easier and better. And it's just so fulfilling. It is. You know, I'm curious what caused you to

start, close it now and start this HX sales training? Yeah, that's a good question. Tommy, thanks for that. Actually, so I had a, I was sales manager and sales trainer for a company here in Austin, Texas. And we, this was six years ago, 2019. I sent a couple of people off to a sales training

brought a couple of new people onto the team, sent them off to a training and they came back after a week and, you know, several thousand dollars a piece with the exact same slide deck from a training that I had taken 10 years before that. And I was like, oh my gosh, throw that. They hadn't changed a single slide. I was like, throw that in the trash. Nobody buys like that anymore. And so I, that's what I started. I said, well, if we looked around, I couldn't find a training that was the right fit. So I decided to start it.

And then the podcast started organically because back in, for everybody that listens, drive time university, the first probably 30 of my podcasts, I'm literally driving between appointments, recording my podcast in a voice memo because I just had this message to get out. I knew if my team needed to hear it that, you know, other people did too. And so that's what was the impetus that started the company because I was like, the way people buying has changed so much, especially the second that the pandemic hit.

And everything is so much more feeling and emotion driven. And everybody was stuck in the old days of, you know, the ABC model, always be closing and the hard sell and everything's logic, logic, logic. And we've forgotten that people buy based on emotion. They justify it with logic, but they're going to justify that logic decision with another emotion.

And there at the time, I didn't find anybody that was was training like that. And so I said, well, you know, somebody has to lead the charge. So let's go. I do see a lot of people teaching the hard clothes. I do like the idea of like options when selling and, you know, whether it's magic moments and that stuff. I still think all that exists. But like, you know, I'm not I'm not I never was really a hard clothes. I just am like, you know, I just want to do what's right for you and.

Based on what you told me, I really feel like this is the decision I'd be doing for this for my mom's house. You know, I love my mom a lot. And just slowing down and listening and just being human with them and not telling them, look, I want to be your garage tour guide for life. If you're not keeping this house, I want you to call me in the next house. Like, look, let's just do what's right for you because my plan is when you leave here that you tell everybody, your friends, your neighbors, your family, this is the best home service experience you've ever had. Mm-hmm.

100%. Make eye contact the whole time. And don't stutter. And don't be afraid of no. Just treat them like a human being. And so many people are just afraid. And I think they're afraid because they don't have any self-esteem. I think a lot of people in the home service industry, they're not happy with their smile. They're not happy with their bodies. They're not happy with their education. And they know how to make great money in the home service space, but they have to kind of fake it until they make it. They don't get to be in their true skin.

Oh, that speaks to me so much. One of the things that I love to really emphasize that we talk about very, very often on the show is, and then every time I do, you know, coachings and trainings is,

you know, with that whole idea of work to be someone worth buying from, we cover, you know, so many different elements of life. You know, if you're not in integrity with yourself, with your own personal growth, with your own spiritual journey, you know, whatever that is, are you in alignment with doing what you know you should be doing? Your relationships at home, your nutrition, your fitness, all of these micro agreements that we keep with ourselves,

determine how we show up with our confidence, with our posture, with our certainty. And, you know, proof that actually the sales skills is the least important of that. You know, you can take anybody from any industry that's a top performer and pick them up out of that industry and drop them in another one and then ask them, how long is it going to be until you're on top? And they're like, no, not very long. And they're on top of the leaderboard again.

Even though knowing nothing about the new industry, but there's someone that people want to do business with because they've just worked to become that level of person. And that's that man, that's that's the heart cry of my of my company and my passion is helping people up level. You know, I got tired of going to the conferences and, you know, the guys hanging out in the bar after the conference being like almost like a scorecard, like how many heart attacks you've had and how many wives have you had?

And it just was gross. And I was like, there's got to be a better way. It's time to up-level all of the home service industries. I agree. It's not an easy. Well, I think the industry is getting better now. I think COVID was the best thing that happened to us. And I think with AI and everything going on, people are like, man, go learn a trade. That's kind of like no AI, no machines, no robots. Learn a trade.

It used to be when I was a kid, if you didn't go to college, you were shunned. It was like, oh, you're an paycheck guy? Are you a garbage guy? You fix garage doors for a living? Now it's like, what do you do? You got $300,000 worth of debt and you're still with your mom and you can't hold a job down when look at us guys in the service space, you know?

Yeah, we got paid to learn what we're doing. And now we're continuing. We didn't have this crazy debt from school and all these things. Yeah, it's so much better and different than how it used to be. I agree. I was at that same kind of era where, you know, for so long, I was like, man, my wife has a master's degree.

And for so long, I was like, I just have my associates and I feel gross telling people what I did until that started to happen, until I realized that, wait a minute, I make more than the optometrist down the road. And, you know, this guy down the road that has another college degree is like, oh, my gosh, wow. Wait a minute. This is let's right size the right frame of mind around this. What do you think is a good wage to make if you're in a track industry?

It depends on the position, of course. But I mean, if somebody is not making six figures, they're asleep. You know, they're just not in the right position at all. A six figure take home is kind of the minimum threshold, I would say, for most positions. Unless you work at a company that pays hourly and really hasn't figured out to pay people what they're worth.

Correct. Correct. Absolutely. You know, obviously the startups and things, but, you know, any good company that charges the right prices, you know, yeah, it should easily be six figures. What is the right price for a five ton unit? Well, before I answer that, Tommy, do you mind if I ask you a few more questions to make sure it's the right fit for your home? I'm going to tell you, I'd say the minimum is 12 to 20,000.

And absolutely, there's a range there. It depends on where you live and the complications and the insulation and a lot of different things are going to go into that. What kind of unit you want and what kind of warranty you want with it. But, you know, I think some people think that's highway robbery. And I'm like, you know, I sat down with a bunch of garage owners, Sam. This is five, six, seven years ago now. I don't remember exactly. And they said, how could I sleep at night for what I was charging? And I said, how many of you guys have more than 20 billboards on the road?

When all the plumbers and HVAC guys do. I said, how many of you guys have PTO for at least a month of PTO? How many of you guys, you know, a normal pay rate for your technician installers is six figures? No hands, no hands, no hands. Wait a minute. How many of you guys get brand new vehicles out to every one of your techs and installers? How many of you guys pay for the tools, $6,000 for tools? How many of you guys get minimum of 10 weeks training before they actually practice on a client's house?

Wait a minute. There's not been any hands up for this. So wait a minute. You give your clients a really, really good deal so you can F over your employees? So you hold them down to making nothing but $50,000 a year?

and make sure they live in an apartment, could drive an old truck and could barely support their family so you could give your clients a great deal. I said, I want to be innovative. I want to have trademarks. I want to be able to market. I want to be able to keep the air conditioning cold in the summer in our training center. I want to have new vehicles and I want to take them on vacations and buy them lunch and dinners. Like, you don't, do you guys do that stuff? And they're like, Sam, when I left there and this was at this facility next door upstairs, every single owner said they're going to raise their prices.

I love it. So I needed to change, and I didn't do this. There was a lot of us that did, a lot of people before me. But we needed to change the garage door industry in order to build what we built today. Because everybody's like, why do you share all your secrets, Tommy? Why do you invite other garage door companies in and show them what you're doing? I'm like, because our industry has to change. It needs to have, like I said, Frank Blau and Jim Abrams and Braun Smith, the guys that paved the way there. They

They met up and they actually didn't hate each other and despise one another. They worked together and they said, hey, listen, you want to start charging fair prices? I'll start charging fair price. It wasn't like a monopoly that they just decided like collusion. It's just like, let's make sure we can pay our people more and give them better trucks. Yeah, let's raise the standard. Yeah. And I think that there's a lot of people listening right now

that maybe, just maybe, if you're the elite, but everybody's complaining to you that you're that too high a price, invite them in and show them why. And hopefully you don't have a Bentley and live in a mega mansion. Because, look, if you had an exit and you did great, look, I never really took a whole lot of draws. I put it all back in. And 25 people...

had an equity stake in the company that I actually earned it, but it was given. So, you know, I think it's okay for people to have an exit and make a lot of money. I think that should be the goal for every company. But in the process, your people make a lot of money, right? Absolutely. I actually had the privilege a few years back of seeing Sir Richard Branson at an event.

And it was incredible to listen to him. Of course, I mean, it's Sir Richard Branson for one. But his every answer in a 30 minute spot in every single question, it didn't matter what the question was to some degree. He always turned it back around to how well you take care of your people is how well they're going to take care of the client for you. And it was the coolest thing to really hear someone at that level say,

Just really talk about how we pour. And it was story after story of how he's poured into his into his own people for that very reason. He's like, if you take care of the internal customers first, they will always take care of the rest. And it is definitely a privilege to to hear that. But it just carries through.

That is like first you got to get the people like what I'm realizing, if you get the right competitive people that love to win and actually are a little humble, hungry and smart. Right. And then you constantly remind them about their goals or wiser commitment. And they discuss it with their family, the important people, whether that's their mom, their wife or their kids. And they're constantly brought up instead of brought down. And I'm going to call people up instead of calling them out. If that's done properly, they're going to go to war for you.

You know how many people, and I'm just going to tell you this because we just got back from our pinnacle trip, the top 5% of the company is either their wife or they came up to me and said, if you ever go anywhere other than A1, I mean, I'm the founder of this company, but we're going with you. Like, we're going to follow you to the pits of hell, basically. And I'm like, well, you're stuck with me here for a long time. I got a question. So you chose to be a coach, right?

And I got to tell you something. I've always wondered. I still am involved in my business. I love doing podcasting. I use this to learn. I've got some coaching we do. I've got garage door freedom and home service freedom. But I don't take any money from that. I think I've seen the people that try to make it as a coach. And, man, it is like...

It is so hard, man. I can only imagine you got to have events and podcasts and email blasts. And then there's people that just don't take the training seriously. And if you don't charge them enough, but then they won't sign up. And it's all, and it takes a decade. And I worked with Al Levy and I've paid more coaches than I know what to do with. And I love the coaches I've hired. But, you know, then you look at it and you can start a small business and

And it's fairly easy if you understand the marketing side and you're good at sales. So what made you – because it's going to get hard. It's not going to be easy. I think you're starting to realize. I don't know how long you've been doing this, but it's not – everybody's like – they come up to me and some of my top guys are like, what do you think if I start my podcast and become a coach? And I'm like, I'd love that. Listen, but why not become an internal coach and I'll pay you a ton of money? Like –

And they're like, what if I just – they kind of want to get the fame or something. And I'm like, man, I've been doing podcasting for eight years. And I've been doing a lot of different programs for different people, and I still haven't taken a paycheck out of that stuff. So be prepared to put 10 years in before there's real money. You know what I mean? Absolutely. It's funny. Every single one of the things that you mentioned happened to me today because

So I made a podcast. I was a guest on a podcast. I had that client that's not doing anything. I mean, every single thing it's like literally happened today. So I 100% know what you're talking about. But yeah, what you know, what the what drives me forward is really that the ability to change lives on a grander scale.

you know, I could step out in the field and, you know, just be a top performer somewhere. And that's good. But the leverage point of being able to really dramatically impact lives really can only get that way through leverage through, you know, had a, this, a book this last year hit some, hit some cool bestseller list. I've got actually one that I coauthored. I've got one coming out this next year. I'm going to be speaking at a few events and, and,

The number of people that come up to me that truly have had that magical experience of like, holy cow, either through a podcast, it changed the way that I sell and everything's changed. Or you said something in your talk that just hit me to my core and I'm going to go back and immediately implement that.

That's the reason that I do it. Now, you're right. It is not the most lucrative, especially at the beginning. But it's okay. Because when you're in flow and you're doing what you're absolutely called to do, they say that when you find what you love to do, you'll never work a day in your life. I actually think that's wrong. I think you work harder than you ever have because now you're internally inspired instead of just being externally motivated.

And when that inspiration wakes you up before your alarm goes off, just because you can't wait to get to the day. I mean, that's the big difference there. And yeah, it's the game changer that the intention that keeps things moving forward is what it's all about.

Well, you found a passion, and it seems like you're motivated by the passion. And I agree that once you find a passion, although I used to tell people I love golfing, but I'm like, Tiger Woods still has to hit 1,000 balls a day, even though I know for a fact he doesn't want to. And Kobe used to practice, and Jordan, and it goes on and on. But when you find out what you love, like I did my orientation today. I just said, guys, don't take this the wrong way, but I could retire 10 times over again.

I'm here because I choose to be here. And they said, well, what's the point? And I said, to change your lives. And I said, when you find out my true legacy and legacy is a pretty common word these days, but my legacy is going to be that, you know, I hopefully if you guys stay on board for a couple of years, that your life's changed in a positive direction. And I got a lot of work to do and I'm a work in progress and I can't promise you I would make all your dreams come true, but I'm going to try.

As a sales coach, what are some of the common pitfalls that you see HVAC and other sales professionals fall into? Oh, geez. You know, one of the big ones is everything's out of order in a lot of their process. You know, the company itself...

usually builds out of order. So what I mean by that is they'll put, you know, they'll buy their phone system and they'll buy their, you know, service tightener, home service, you know, whatever their operating system is. They'll put all of these things in place. Yeah, they got their CRM. They got all the different stuff.

Right. They've got their marketing and and all the rest. And then they come to me and they're like, man, all right. Sales is the last piece. We've got to get the sales piece plugged in. And I'm like, I should build you go backwards because now you're at a place where you have all of this overhead. You know, but you have all these leads coming in because you invested in all this other stuff. But nobody knows how to convert anything.

And you're about to go broke. So now you're sending up this Hail Mary to me to come in and save the day and turn everything around. It's like, let's build, let's build sales in a lot earlier in the process, because then you can have better conversion, you can have better margins, and you'll have the funds to be able to invest in the growth of the organization.

So that's one of the things that I typically see is they're waiting way too late in the steps to, and of course the perfect time to do it. If you didn't build, plant a tree 20 years ago, the, you know, the next second best time is now, but starting earlier in the process to learn how to sell stuff,

is paramount, but classic Brian Tracy, you know, nothing happens till something gets sold. And that's very true. So we have to have and be priced right from the beginning. And that's the other side of it is everybody starts and think, well, if I just am a little bit less than I can, you know, I'll win all these deals from stealing from everybody else. But then there's nothing left to be able to reinvest in.

And so it's like getting priced from the beginning. You can pay better people, better people will stick around. All of the things starts to happen when we can sell better and higher from the beginning. No one believes in the price. They don't spend any money. You have an event. I guarantee you, you give out a thousand free tickets. You'll have 80 show up.

You make sure they pay $5,000 a ticket. You'll get, if you sell 199, I'll show up one person. They'll have, you know, a kid gets sick. Something really will happen to somebody, but there's actually money behind why they there's intent behind it. I mean, Alex, he talks about it a hundred million offers. I talk about this all the time, but like charge a higher price as you could. Alan Rohr talks about it too. It's like, let's fricking charge as much as we possibly can. And people think that's,

like immoral. And I'm like, wait a minute. The same people that say it's immoral are

are wearing Gucci's and wearing $400 shoes and $300 belt. And they bought a 200 bottle clone and they're wearing a necklace that costs a thousand bucks. I'm like, look at, you see these, I got three plastic bracelets, rubber bracelets on my, like, look, I'm wearing like this shirt. Like I, it's so funny how the people that talk about prices have the nicest like clothes. They drive the nicest car, but they still live in an apartment.

You know, I never want to hear anybody. What's that? They're just fronting it. They're not authentic in what they're doing. And you can instantly tell. I have a price for everybody because I have options. And if I take, for instance, there's a 10,000 cycle price. The door goes up and down. That's one cycle.

We carry a 25,000 cycle price. We carry an 80,000 cycle spring. So 80,000 cycle, let's just say the normal guy charges 350 for a spring. No, 400 for even numbers. Mine is eight times that. So that means I should probably charge 3,200. I'm charging a third of that for 8X the life. So you're getting a bargain. And I don't think people understand this. All I want...

I tell my clients, listen, you remember those Maytags from the 80s and the 70s, the washers and dryers? They're usually yellow or white, and they're still going today. Like, those Maytags last forever. They'll keep going. They'll run forever. And when I started this business, I decided, why don't parts come like that anymore? So we engineered Max Life Springs. We've got our own trademark. We've got rollers. We've got a lot of the parts. And people are like, oh, that's overkill. I'm like, but I've never seen one break.

Right. You know what I mean? It's like, and people are buying peace of mind with it. And I say, here's the deal guys. I told all my team today, do not join any garage door groups. It's only losers that hang out there. They like to fix everything. They don't like to ever offer anything new. They'd rather fix it all for nothing. And I'll fix stuff.

But at the end of the day, if I got to fix it three times and kick the can down the road, you know your garage door is 40% of your crib appeal, the smile of your home. Like designers and architects, they request certain garage doors. It's not just a plain Jane. It dresses up your home. So did you want this non-insulated? Did you want me to fix this? Or have you ever thought about like putting something on here that's going to actually, it's 194% return on investment. Meaning you put a buck in, you take a buck 94 out. Like that's a no brainer.

Right. This is not insulated. No, you factor no R value. It's just it's oxidized. The bottom rubber shot. It's dented. You want me to fix this or did you ever think maybe maybe we replace it? I think that to me, that is the the best version of service to give them the option to improve their life. It's not up to us to spend their money for them.

Our price is our price. It's something that I talk about often is we completely divorce ourself from the number. When we're in the house, we're there to serve. We're there to care with compassion, with empathy and integrity and ethics. And the price is the price. Two things determine the price. One is the size and condition of the home. And they decided that when they bought the house. And the second is what they want to include in the project. If the price is too high, then we'll pick something else. We don't need to discount it.

But at the end of the day, you know, the price happens to just come along with the things that they choose to serve them the best way possible. Yeah. Well, I agree with that. And, you know, you made an investment into your home and most people have a mortgage. Why wouldn't you want to protect your mortgage in this home by investing in it with the nicest, best things? And, and,

I just think most people's best investment is usually their home. At least you want to protect your investment. 100%. Love it. Hey, guys. Real quick. I realized something the other day. We've mentioned it here and there, but a lot of people still don't know this. Kevin O'Leary from Shark Tank, a.k.a. Mr. Wonderful, is going to be with us this fall at Freedom 2025.

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So if you haven't grabbed your ticket yet, go to freedom event.com. Now early bird bonuses are still available over $5,240 in tools, trainings, and resources you can use today. That's freedom event.com. All right. Now back to the episode. What's one piece of advice you wish someone would have told you when you first started out?

Ooh, that's a good one. I think that the biggest one that I could, especially for all, especially all the new people in sales or even technicians, it doesn't matter your role. And if you're in home services, I think the biggest piece of advice I could, there are two pieces that kind of tie together. One is ask more questions. Nobody asks enough questions. And then the second piece, which goes with that is, um,

Take more time than you've ever taken before in an appointment. So slow the heck down, ask more questions and slow down. Those are the two things I think that everyone can immediately apply and totally change that, totally change the outcome. I really, I agree with both of those wholeheartedly. I'd add a third one is practice smiling more. And when you talk, look into their pupils, but the more you smile, the

And you mean to smile and you're having fun. Like one day, my lead trainer at the time, she goes, we had a guy in there from Albuquerque getting a kind of a retraining. And she goes, you're not having any fun. You look like you got a stick in your ass, like smile more and have fun. Like, dude, this job's fun. Like talk to customers, get to know them. And he came back a month later and his sales had quadrupled because he started smiling.

And he's just sitting there. People love when you smile. Like if you took, you looked at a baby, you know, six months old and you had somebody just constantly stare at them, no smile, no frown. And then everyone else, you know, the other person smiling, the baby's going to love the smile. They're going to laugh. They're going to giggle. They're going to appreciate it. They're going to be excited to see them. And obviously tonality matters. And when you smile, your tone changes. So yes, slow down. I mean, I tell my guys, the top guys in the company like to run one to two jobs a day. That's all they need. Yeah.

And they do very, very well. They don't need to run four or five jobs. Yeah, no doubt. And they're spending enough time to ask the questions and truly listen to what those people like need and want offer things that could improve their life. Yeah. So I always say, you know,

Some people say they only sell things people need. I'm like, I never sell things people need. I don't need a new phone. I'm buying a new phone later today because I want one. I didn't need a second car or a DeLorean or a house as big as my size. I didn't need, you know, anything. I didn't need the tankless hot water heater. I'm glad they offered it to me. You know what I mean? I didn't need anything. Like, all I need is water. I don't...

When losers say this, like, I only sell things people need. Like, what do you mean? I'm glad you don't work at Nordstrom's because people, what do you mean you only sell things people need? I always give options and say, look, I'm going to give you the options. You pick what you'd like, but I want to give you everything you might ever want. Anything of your heart's desire. You know, I found that a long time ago, people will pay more for what they want than what they need.

If everybody just had what they need, everybody would drive a Prius and live in a tiny, small house. But they don't and never will for this very same reason.

It's 100%. I mean, we got to take this idea of sales that we're salesmen to out of, because most people feel like sales are a bad thing. It's a used car smells. It's a dirty tactic. Well, sales is a good thing. You know, the priest and your pastor are in sales. Like when you're in sales, when you talk to your kids about going to bed on time and making their bed. So sales, well, a lot of people, why do you think people think sales is so evil?

Yeah, I think a lot of it's historical. And at the same, so it depends on the historical part of it. Except for, you know, go back 30, 40 years and the most trusted person in town was the trades guy.

you know, Hey, my heater's out. All right, put on another pot of coffee. I'll be right over. But the last probably, especially, you know, two, three decades, so many bad apples have ruined sales for, for a lot of people. All the, you look at all the exposés on TV about, you know, these different companies taking advantage of homeowners and all these things. And it's just put such a bad taste in people's mouths that, um,

I mean, that's a huge part of it. And then, of course, we're working so diligently, you know, people like yourself and the rest of us that are working to bring trust back to the trades. Be that person of integrity. Have the code of ethics. The things that we refuse to compromise on for, you know, just for profit. It doesn't mean we can't charge what we, you know, what we earn, but we're not going to compromise morals and ethics for it.

And I think that's a big part of what has caused the bad sentiment about, you know, about sales and salespeople. You know, I'll tell you something that I've not told, you know, and this was recent. I've never said this story yet. My mom asked me, she said, I need my HVAC coils and heater cleaned. And she asked me a company and I told her the most expensive company I know. I said, don't let them sell you a new unit though. But I said, no.

I know some guys that'll go out there for 50 bucks, literally. Like, I know them, and I know people that I could call that'll do it for free because it's my mom. And I didn't even call this company and ask for a deal or anything. Like, I just said, here, call this guy. And I just forwarded the number. And I want to explain something very interesting about this because I know they'll be there when they say. I know they're drug testing a background check. I know they'll fix it right if something goes wrong.

I know that my mom does not need that air conditioning going out in the middle of a 122-degree day. So therefore, these other guys, sometimes a week out before they can get there, they'll stop by, they'll band-aid it, it'll break again. So once again, we go back to buying like we want to be bought from. And I think most of the people that don't understand this, they're selling out of their own pocket and they don't own a house yet.

And they might not even care that much because they're like, you know what? Who cares if we got to sit a day without a garage? Cause I just want it cheap. And then they get the cheap stuff and then they complain when it breaks in a year.

It's just amazing how that works. You know why I'm so proud is because so many people listen to this podcast. They call us up. They never contact me. They don't ask for a discount. They get it done right, and I don't hear from them for a decade. I mean, of course, I see them at shows and stuff, and they're like, oh, by the way, I wanted to show you this picture of your guy. He's amazing. I had him at my house six months ago. And I'm like, that's freaking awesome because we take care of you. And 99.9% of the time, they're like, it was the best experience I've ever had.

I think that's important. It's crucial. You know, it's so interesting in the trades, especially the standard is because it's so easy for people to start a company in the in home services and in the trades. That also means that the standard is really low. So it's not incredibly hard to be exceptional.

But it is difficult to stay there consistently day after day. And that's the big differentiator, I think, is the consistency of training our people. And to your point, I've heard you say this before, of course, Red Elevate.

And, you know, the train, one of the biggest missing pieces in home services and in the trades is training, the internal training of our people. Yeah. You know, because we'll bring them in and just, okay, fly little birds. Here's your, you know, two hour session. And we're not inspecting what we expect for them to provide that, you know, Chick-fil-A A1 garage door level service every single time.

Well, it's every day. And one person that I continue to learn from every time I talk to him is Leland Smith out of Southern California with the service champions. As he's like every day, we train for two hours a morning. Our guys would role play before they'd go out. That was just, that was a must. Like we'd,

like intentionally not schedule our first job till nine so they could come in from seven to nine and role play with each other. We'd have a top couple guys with a couple not so top guys. And they'd get better and better and better and better and better.

Yeah, I'll say this is interesting that we're talking about this. I was talking to Doug Wyatt. I don't know if you know who that is the other day with Synergy Learning Systems. And we were having this conversation. We were talking about other industries outside the trades.

industries that are sales driven industries, literally any other industry that sells us first. When we're, you know, we're, cause him and I, we've both done some, done some trainings outside of our, our home services. And you, the second you step into an, any other industry that is sales driven, we were like, okay, well, you know, when y'all have your weekly meeting and they're like, what do you mean weekly meeting? Like, well, yeah, your weekly sales meeting. They're like, we do sales every day. What are you talking about?

It's just the standard is we sharpen our ax every single day when you're a sales-driven organization. And then we step into the trades and it's a really unusual thing to train every day. And it's like, wait a minute, where's the disconnect? It's like we've forgotten that or never even learned.

that the in order to be that expert a home service expert just like the show's name in order to be that expert we have to constantly be sharpening the axe it's like zig ziglar used to say about personal growth you you have to it's something you have to do daily you can't do it on sunday and expect it to last all week i love this you reminded me of some stuff right now i think it's

I used to be a busboy and a server and a bartender. And when I was a server, they'd have the a.m. and p.m., right? Chips? Mm-hmm. We'd have a 15-minute meeting just to make sure we knew the specials and offer this wine with the certain entrees. And we knew the soup du jour, you know, soup, whatever, soup du—

Like, that's with serving tables at a freaking restaurant, but yet in home service where, oh, no, no one of the guys want to meet up every day. I don't care what they want. Their paychecks and their wives want them to get better at their profession. And it's not only about sales, but some people –

Some of it's operational. Some of it's technical. It's training to be well-rounded. Some of it's safety training and making sure you're wearing the right uniforms and making sure you got still-toed boots and you're wearing gloves to protect your phalangias. I don't want to make this only about sales because it's all of the above, but sales is the one thing that's the hardest, that's continuous improvement.

Right. And I'll agree with you 100% too. I mean, we've got to be constantly working on all of the things to make that well-rounded person.

You know, I have the similar background in, you know, restaurants. You know, every time we'd start to shift, they'd had the kitchen make up the specials for that. So I could even try them to be able to describe them more accurately. It's like, how, when's the last time we did that with our, you know, with what we do? Everybody says, well, do you have one of these in your own home? Well, no wonder you're not selling it. You didn't even put it in your own house. Oh my gosh. I just talked about this.

Put one in your own house. I said, you know, everybody that made our pinnacle trip, every single one of them have a door from us. And it's a really nice door and they show pictures. Here's what I got. Yeah, this is what I believe in. And I'm getting ready to replace my mom's door. And we're tape, we're video. You know, it's going to become a commercial. We'll say, look, my mom's door, five years old. Still not good enough for me. It's a builder's grade.

I am going to make this stuff happen. These are good notes. So tell me a little bit about NLP and why it works so well for sales. You know, it's funny. If anybody wants to learn about NLP, that's a great place to start. But the, you know, NLP is the fancy way of saying brain science. I like to break it down like that. But it's one of the, there's several different things involved with it. Mainly it's understanding how brains work, the psychology of how people make decisions, right?

And then understanding if we can get the keys in the right order to unlock those. It's like almost like a padlock or something that has several places in their brain. If as long as we get them in the right order and we understand that those dynamics, then people will. In fact, it's it's really cool what happens. They start asking for the business versus us feeling like we're always pushing it on them.

So some of the keys, of course, are, especially in our current society, is, you know, the power of the permission question. You know, asking permission for everything is crucial in the process. And so after that, some of the other things are just word substitutions that make the biggest difference. The biggest, the most famous one that I talk about is the difference in interested versus open.

Right. So, in fact, you want to role play with me real quick, Tom? Yeah, let's do it. And give an example for everybody? Absolutely. So for everybody listening, this is the one this is one thing I did this on on the Waste No Day podcast on Wiser Wednesday when I was on there. Shout out to Brian and Nate. So interested versus open. This is really interesting. It's very interesting. And the reason it's interesting is no one wants to be perceived as closed minded.

The other side of that is everyone wants to be perceived as open-minded. The other part of this, when it comes to interested, no one can be interested for anything that they don't know anything about. So until there's a level of education, no one will answer, yes, I'm interested. So what we're going to do is we're going to take something super easy, super basic, and let's say garage doors, because that's what you do.

And so I'll, you be my homeowner and we're going to take the super quick, two super quick passes through this. One is ask me, Hey, my, you know, garage door is kind of just basic question. My garage door is kind of broken. Do you guys have any options to upgrade the door?

So I'll answer how a lot of people traditionally answer a direct question like that. And then we'll time out. We'll go through it again. And we'll talk about the difference with using interested versus open. OK. And so permission question with that. So. So go ahead. The garage seems like it's having a few issues. It's shaky. It's noisy. Was wondering if you guys have any options to replace this thing.

Oh, yeah, man. We've got some options. We've got the basic door, which is just your single. It's not insulated. The single ply there. We've got the upgraded door from that, which is going to be insulated. Then we've got... And so I'm going to time out already because what happened? Nothing. Nothing really happened there. You stayed frozen.

And you're just kind of staring at me like, what the heck is this guy talking about? So let's do it again real quick. And I'm going to use open and also the permission question. And so you'll see how that works. And I want you to feel the difference. Yeah. So I got this noisy garage door. It's giving me a lot of issues. It has problems going up and down. Do you guys have any options for a replacement? Oh, absolutely, man. We've got some great options. Would you like to hear what they are? Yeah, I would.

Okay, gotcha. Awesome. So before we get into that, one, do you mind if I ask you a couple questions? And then, you know, if I can show you a way where, you know, it could improve the value of your home and basically show you how it would cost zero to actually do this door in the long run, would you be open to some more information? Yeah, I would. Okay, great. So feel the difference. So for everybody that's not watching, what you didn't see is the first time through,

Tommy didn't even flinch. No move, no nothing. The second time through, you couldn't even help it. And this is role play. Physiology changed. You leaned in a little bit. You started smiling. You started nodding strictly with the permission question. And now we're open to the information. And so it makes a massive shift in how people receive information. And that's just kind of a tiny example of how NLP works in or brain science works in cells.

What do you think your favorite part of the sales process is? Is it the initial contact, the follow-up, or maybe the sweet moment of closing the deal? Personally, I'm going to answer that different. My favorite part of that is the follow-up. Most people hate follow-up, but it's so fun and it's so easy because we already did the work. And I know that nobody else ever follows up hardly.

And when I follow up, I get business because nobody else is calling them back. And so my, and it's conversations. They, every single time you get on the phone with somebody already did a project with, or already did an appointment with, they're like, oh yeah. Hey, how's it going? I remember. And so my favorite is follow up. I love the follow up brother. You know, we use chirp so effectively and everybody's asking me, can I see your campaigns? Can I see your campaigns? I'm like, look,

Because I know the guys so well at Chirp. Everybody thinks the secret is, I do have great campaigns and I make great videos and there's selfies. And I'm like, hey, Tommy here, the founder of Day One Garage Service, just want to let you know, you got some options here. If you wanted to do something a little bit different, I got these doors that are sitting here that kind of fit what you're looking for. And I get them at a better value if you want to discuss those options. But

You know, I make videos and I test different things, but the real deal is we respond in real time. So if we send you a message via text, we need to respond when you say, hey, yeah, I'd like to follow up with you. And like half the battle of studying what the best of the best at Chirp do is it's just they follow up with every client and then they make sure they get back to them right away.

On their time, not my time. You see, it's the client's time that I care about. It didn't break when it was convenient for them, and it's never going to be convenient in home service. So if they say, yeah, can you get back to me tonight around 8 p.m.? I don't think anybody's wife would matter to close a $10,000 door sale if they said, hey, I'll give you 15 minutes. And the best of the best in my company, they're so good. They're relentless at the follow-up.

Yeah, I 100% see the same thing. You know, of course, I train a lot of different language. And, you know, there's all the different trainers have language around follow up. And everybody wonders, well, what do I say? Well, the reason that we treat teach language around follow up is not for the client necessarily. It's for the person, the salesperson to get them to actually do it. If we give them empowering language that feels so it makes them feel more confident to do follow up, instead of begging, like, I'm just touching base, circling back all those things.

Well, they feel more empowered to actually do it. But at the end of the day, statistically, the customer does not care. They expect five to seven follow-ups every single appointment, and they expect two to three of those to be a legitimate phone call, not just an email or text.

And that's statistics. Every single time follow-up is studied in our society. And so the fact that we do it and stay in touch, doesn't matter what you say, just pick up the phone and call the people, text them. And if they don't answer, double dial, double tap.

Then text, then email all at the same time, but just reach out and get in touch with people. You will close business. I had one of my guy that listens to my podcast. He's a big, big time fan. Every single January, he spends the first week of January, literally calling every single unclosed per every single unclosed appointment from the previous year. This year, first week of January, he closed $200,000 in business strictly by calling back through last year's no new appointments, just,

talking to people. Hey, how's it going? Where are you in your decision process? That's it. That's all they had to do is just call back. Yeah. Like, look, look, listen, I want to be your garage door provider for life and I want to figure out what this is going to take. And I want to make sure you feel good about us. And we feel like we give you a good shake. If it's the money, we've got different options. If it's the timing, let me know.

But we want to be your company. And I got to say, I'm asking you for your business. I really am. I really want to know. And look, if you need me to bring your wife flowers and give you tickets to the Lions game, I'll do it because that's how much we want your business. Like, just show that you want it. So many people are like, oh, I was just calling to see if you made a decision yet. It's like, oh, my gosh, dude. And this is not even hard training. This is just common sense.

Right? Yeah. It's really funny because it seems to us, because we're so experienced with it, it's like, man, this is entry level. But so many people don't do it, and I don't understand why, because they're literally sitting on millions of dollars of business, and they're just not picking up the phone and calling them. So for everybody listening, pick up the phone. It's a goldmine. And if you don't,

We will. We'll follow up behind you and we'll close your business because that's what happens. You've educated them. Somebody else comes in and then has the intentional conversation and closes it. You could have closed it, but you didn't. So you set it up for somebody else. And that's what happens so many times.

You know how many times I hear, you're the only one that got back to me, so we're definitely going to be doing business with you? And I don't know. Like, you hear some people say, I got to talk to three people. That's not real. I've had so many people say, before you get started, I want to talk with three people. When I get done, and we're laughing, and I blow their mind, and I educate them on the H.S. and the Home Service Expert page on Facebook.

I copied this, and this guy said, it was a conversation I just started reading through. There's so many posts in there. And this guy said, I got three different window quotes. And on the third one, the guy brought in all the samples. He educated me about this and the rebates and the energy efficiency and just showed me everything to feel like I actually understood windows now.

And that's why I chose that company because they educated me. And if you spend the time to educate clients and give them options and just tell them what you would do based on their situation and say, there's no wrong answer here. Listen, I'm going to do what's good for you. You're going to win the business a lot of the time, but they need to like you feel liked and they need to like the company. That's it. Absolutely. So powerful. What do you think, what do you think you could do to spot the buying signals in a sale? Cause I think some people talk about,

past the buying signals of like they burn the sale you know absolutely oh my gosh this is this is a big one this is you're touching on one of my hot buttons right now especially um in fact i'm i'm working on some things that is about to uh completely change the way that a lot of things are done when it comes to this topic but the buying signals are smaller than most people think

In fact, the things that you truly are looking for, they come earlier in the conversation. So both buying signals and signals that something went sideways. So a lot of times they happen way earlier than we expect the big, oh, hey, that's exciting. We're not looking for the, you know, we don't want it to look like they just got dealt a pair of pocket aces and they're playing poker, you know, and can't hide a bluff.

If that's the first place that we recognize a buying signal, we haven't been paying attention. So it's further than that. It's a lot more subtle than that. So usually buying signals happen early in the appointment. My system, the way I train it, by the time we're done with our introductions, company intro, personal intro, and setting the agenda, they're sold. The buying signals start happening there. And then as we go through, it just reinforces it.

In fact, I would be willing to wager that if we set it up right, not just the bio and the, you know, the picture that we send ahead of time with Service Titan, there's something else that I train is actually sending an on-the-way video, which is, hey, I'm, you know, excited for our appointment. Be there, you know, right at our scheduled time. If you would take a minute, clear out anything that might be in the way where we're going to be working. Appreciate that. That way we can focus on what's important to you.

The fact that we now have a video there also ahead of time, that warms that client up because something called the living room effect. And then once we step foot on that on the premises, now they're already warmed up that intros and agenda, man, they're ready to buy if you've made a great first impression. So just like it really reinforces like what you're saying, we start off with the A, right?

If we've made that great first impression and then people will talk themselves out of it because they think they need to over explain things or need to dive in technical way more than people need or want. And so that's where the confused mind says no, but they start off with the yes. I love this. I can talk to you all day about sales, man. I'm sure we're going to get up here eventually. So yeah,

If people want to reach out to you, Sam, what's the best way to do that? Yes. So where you can get in touch with me is, of course, closeitnow.net. That's the website. Email me directly, sam at closeitnow.net. Of course, the big Facebook group you can join as well. And yeah, that's the big thing. And then this end of last year, I co-authored a book that hit international bestseller list.

And so that was really exciting. So be on the lookout for at least one or two books coming out this year. I've got a coauthor book that's under the radar I'm working on. I actually have a patent I'm working on for the sales process. And then also we've got my book will be coming out this next year as well. So lots going on. Cool. I'm writing a new book.

I'm actually, I bought a lot of books this week to help me with my book. I've got the core of it, but it's called pay them what they're worth. And it talks a lot about just ways to reward employees and get them on page and make sure they're getting, you know, they got a stake in the outcome. So we talked about a lot of stuff, Sam, I want to give you just a few minutes to close us out on anything that you feel like the audience needs to hear.

Yeah. Thank you for that. And first, I appreciate you having me on the show. This has been a lot of fun. I always enjoy chopping it up with every chance we get. Our episodes, I feel like, never end up kind of the same as a lot of other people because we're all over the map. But yeah, you know, the one thing I could really emphasize to everybody is...

When we're working with homeowners, when we're working with the sales, not to forget that whatever line of home services we're in, we're there to serve. It is home services for a reason. So show up with heart. Show up truly in your best version of yourself. What I say is I'm not asking anybody to be somebody they're not, but I'm asking you to show up and be the very best version of yourself as possible.

And then along with that, the kind of technical thing to remember is remember what the homeowner's problem is. Too many people try to sell to the house. The house doesn't write the check. Just because you found all of these code faults and all of these things that are quote unquote wrong with the install or wrong with the house, it doesn't mean anything unless the people in the house see a problem with it. And what is their problem?

So figure out what their problem is first. What are your concerns? All of these things. How can we improve your life? And then it's our job as professionals to connect the dots between what their problem is and the things that we do and show them how this will solve their problem. And the second that we get those things clear and understand that the fault we found is not the problem, it's causing their problem.

that's where the magic starts to happen because then we start to speak in their terms of, hey, this is the benefit to you. Can you see how this will change in your life? And that's really where so much of that conversation moves forward because now we're there to serve and they feel it because we truly care about

making their life better with no attachment to the dollars on the back end. Because knowing that, you know, just like Zig Ziglar always said, if we take care of enough people, then if we help other people get anything they want, then we can have anything we want. And so it'll, the money will come, but it's not what it's about. It's about helping people truly with the heart and compassion from the beginning.

I love it, Sam. This was a great podcast. And you know, when you said we go all over the place, if you listen to Joe Rogan talk for three hours and his podcast, I was like about all over the place. So I just like to like sit back and like have fun. And I don't like to do too much formatting and question, like perfect. And you're going to know, I don't care if people know exactly what they're going to get, but it's going to be fun. It's going to be informative and it's going to be hopefully useful. Something they can get started with today. So yeah,

I appreciate you being on here, Sam, and look forward to seeing you here soon.

Absolutely, man. I appreciate it. Thanks for the honor. Great work. All right, my brother. Hey there, thanks for tuning into the podcast today. Before I let you go, I want to let everybody know that Elevate is out and ready to buy. I can share with you how I attracted a winning team of over 700 employees in over 20 states. The insights in this book are powerful and can be applied to any business or organization. It's a real game changer for anyone looking to build and develop a high-performing team like over here at A1 Garage Door Service.

So if you want to learn the secrets that helped me transfer my team from stealing the toilet paper to a group of 700 plus employees rowing in the same direction, head over to elevateandwin.com forward slash podcast and grab a copy of the book. Thanks again for listening and we'll catch up with you next time on the podcast.