Increasing Sales Urgency

There are two things that drive people to buy. There’s the logical side of the brain and the emotional side of the brain. Logic is only the steering wheel, but the emotion is the gas pedal. So what do we do to make people take their foot off of the brake and put their foot on the gas to take action with those buying decisions? How do we increase the urgency of that sale not only in the peak season but in the offseason as well? In this episode, Sam Wakefield shares some strategies on how you can tie in all of the buyer’s emotions and capitalize on that to make those sales in those off times.

I wanted to discuss an important topic, especially in the spring and fall, when we’re in between peak seasons. It’s not crazy hot. It’s not crazy cold. In fact, the weather is just about near-perfect outside. What do we do to increase that urgency? What do we do when the leads that are coming in or things that are like, “I want to see what it’s going to be like. The ones we traditionally call tire kickers?” How do we get those tire kickers to buy when they think they’re like, “I’m getting prices for the fact of getting prices?” We’re probably not going to do anything until next summer or next winter. What do we do with that?

In our team, we’re having a rash at those appointments. At the same time, there is a way to do that. First of all, what you have to understand is there are two things that drive people to buy. There’s the logical side of the brain and the emotional side of the brain. The best analogy for this that I love to use and that makes the most sense when we are talking about sales, especially in heating and air. Imagine you’re in a car, the logic side of the brain is the steering wheel. That logic will point the wheels in the right direction. Logic is people are understanding that you are the person that they want to buy from. Your company is the company they want to buy from. Your product is the product that they want to buy. Everything you’re recommending in the project is the right project that’s going to be the solution for the problems that you’ve uncovered through your investigation process. That’s the logical side of things. That’s the understanding and realizing, “All of these things are lining up.”

However, logic is only the steering wheel. It’s only going to turn the wheels, but the emotion is the gas pedal. What do we do to help them take their foot off of the brake and put their foot on the gas to take action with those decisions? Take action with the things that all of the solutions that you’re recommending as the steering wheel, what do we do to get them to put on the gas to take action immediately? That way you can start making those sales in the offseason instead of, “When’s a good time to follow up?” They’ll tell you, “Maybe five months from now.” You will be like, “Why am I even here right now?” How do we do that? It is best if we start with a good investigation process. I’m putting in a file into the files of the Facebook group, the homeowner questionnaire that I have for you as a gift. Your homeowner questionnaire is the first place to start. Sitting down with people and here’s a simple way to do it, especially for all you service techs out there. A lot of service tech reaches out to me like, “All of this sounds great in a sales appointment, but how do I apply it to a service visit?”

A lot of you guys I know are maybe in smaller shops, you do the service, you do the sales, you do it all. The best way to roll into that is, “Mr. and Mrs. Jones, I understand that maybe your heats are not working right now. Before I get started, would you mind if I asked you a few questions that way, I can serve you best?” They’ll always say yes. With those questions, that’s when you start asking, “When some rooms warm, are there others that are cold? When some rooms are cool, are there other rooms that are warmer or too hot? Who in the house is experiencing asthma or allergies?” Don’t ask, does anyone ask who does? Somebody always does. They’ll tell you they don’t. Ask,” Who is experiencing those problems? Are your electric bill and your gas bill higher than you’d like it to be?” The answer is yes.

It starts with this investigation process. Once you’ve got the investigation process and this is the time of year that you’ve got to peel that onion. When they tell you, “My daughter’s room is a little colder in the winter. “That’s when you have to follow it up with, “How so? Tell me more about that. Can we go take a look?” Start to ask more questions to uncover how bad the problem is. Is that a concern? A great example is a guy that I’m working with. He was in a house with someone. The homeowner was a tire kicker person but raises this interesting problem. He’s like, “This whole area where the dining table is, is always hot. What can you guys do about it? These two bedrooms are always hot. Is there a problem? What can be done? That’s why I called you.”

It’s very important to understand. In the initial call, what it said on the lead log, the first part of the conversation that they were having was, “I’m getting some prices to find out how much it’s going to be when I decide to replace my heating and air system.” What was uncovered that he mentioned was, “I’ve got these problem temperature areas, is there anything that can be done with that?” There are two different ways you can go about it. You can start asking yourself, “Why am I here? You’re not planning on doing anything for a few months.” That’s the lazy way out of this situation. That is the way to say, “Write it up to another tire-kicker estimate.” The way to go about handling that and the way to capitalize on those moments would be to ask them more about it. Take the time to figure out what the problem is and find out what the solution is.

The lead came in as a tire kicker lead. However, if he’s bringing up problems that he’s having. That means he’s raising his hand and saying, “I want to fix this. When I sit down at the dinner table, it’s always hot in the dining room,” capitalize on those moments. This is how to grab ahold of the emotion of the sale. You figure out what the solution is because there’s always a solution for most things. In our case, it went from talking about equipment to about $2,500 to $3,000 worth of ductwork changes, modifications, air balance, and all of this stuff. The person I was working with, the homeowner had mentioned, “Maybe we could add a vent in here because there is no vents in the dining area. We don’t want it to blow right down on the table.”

The way to turn this conversation, instead of saying, “When do you want to do the system? When it’s time for that, we can fix all these problems.” To increase the urgency, increase the emotion, and crank that knob up is to turn the conversation into, “That’s no problem. We fixed this every single day. I’m glad you called us because we’re the right company.” Once you figure it out, you can say, “No problem. Here’s what we’re going to do. We are going to add the vent over here. We’re going to get rid of those silly triangle cheese boxes in your attic. We’re going to run everything consistently together into home runs. We’re going to put in dampers. We’re going to do a complete air balance. We’ve got to do new plenums.” All this was the solution for this specific situation.

Here’s the turning point, you’ve already gone through the emotional stuff. Mentally, put them back in that place and be like, “Mr. and Mrs. Jones, remember when you were sitting there in the middle of the summer and it is always hot in here. You couldn’t even eat in the dining room on the hottest days because it was so hot. Imagine what it’s going to be like once we’ve done this. It’s the 4th of July. You’ve got people over this and you’re sitting here. It’s as cool as the rest of the house. That’s going to be awesome. Let’s go ahead and get you on the books. Let’s go ahead and get that taken care of while we’re in the fall specials that are happening when we have some killer rebates going on. That way, you can stay warm during the winter. It’s going to even out the temperatures in the house. Every single time you sit down here, it’s going to be the same as the rest of the house. Does it sound good? Why don’t we go ahead and get you on the calendar?”

That is tapping into the emotional side of the project. The logic side was, “We’re going to do this with the ductwork or we’re going to do this.” They don’t care about that. You only have to explain that enough until they understand and check in with them. “Does that make sense? Do you see how this is going to fix your problem?” They said, “Yes.” You’ve steered the steering wheel with the logic. You put them in the right place the fact that they understand what is going to fix it, and then you do the emotional side. That’s where like, “Remember when it was uncomfortable here? We were talking about how bad it was and how bad you hated this part of the house. Imagine what it’s going to be like when you can sit here and it’s the same temperature. It’s exactly where you have it set. It’s as comfortable here as it is in any other part of the house. That’s going to be awesome.” Nod and raise your eyebrows. Do what you have to do to get that emotional connection. You can even do some of this too, this is not manipulation. What happens is people’s brains, their subconscious connect to different things that are going to trigger their subconscious to remember what it’s like.