In the remodeling industry, success in sales requires deliberate practice, much like professional golfers on the driving range. Industry advisor Mark Richardson offers 10 tips, themes, and techniques to improve remodeling sales skills, including focusing on one aspect of the business at a time and adjusting strategies to suit the current environment.
Richardson emphasizes the importance of adjusting your mindset regarding training, prioritizing training time, and making it a priority.
"So this is especially important now because this environment that we're in is tougher," says Richardson. "Your client continues to be your greatest competitor. It's their fears, it's their ignorance, and it's their overwhelm. And if you don't know how to compete against those kinds of conditions, you're not going to get the number of sales."
To start, Richardson says to reshape your thinking about training. It's an investment, not an expense.
Listen to the full episode below
Timestamps
0:05:04 Adjusting mindset about training
0:06:11 Making time for training
0:07:11 Deputizing others to lead trainings
0:08:43 Training length
0:09:04 Relevant training topics
0:10:11 Leveraging technology
0:11:22 Outside help for training
0:12:33 Accountability elements
0:13:44 Changing training name
0:14:55 Making training fun
Transcript
Mark Richardson: Remodeling mastery is a podcast series that's really designed to help you take your business to the next level. I try to take topics that are especially relevant to you and certainly to your team over the last year or so. Most of the topics have been wrapped around sales and marketing you know,
I think getting the phone to ring and closing deals in this environment is especially important. This podcast series is supported by my friends in the professional media as well as the industry associations.
Today I want to talk about a topic that I was thinking about yesterday I was watching golf on television, and it was one of the players talked about that they never make a golf shot in a tournament that they haven't practiced on the draw in the driving range and as I was thinking about that, you know, how does that compare to you?
You know, in the remodeling business, we have a tendency to do a lot of our practicing on the clients and not necessarily on the driving range. And I want to talk today about you know, the whole notion of, you know, practicing and more effective ways to practice and take not only your game, but certainly take your sales team to the next level.
Years ago, I did a 10 city tour with professional remodeler. Magazine. And the title of the talk that I gave in this tour was, Are you a pro or are you an amateur? And I think this notion of practice really does tie into the notion of are you a pro or are you an amateur, you know? Watching for example, a tennis tournament, you'll see the professional tennis player, not out not only out there playing extremely well but up in the stands. You'll find the strategy coach, you'll find the conditioning coach and oftentimes even a psychological kind of coach to help them kind of think through the psychology of what they're doing. So they have multiple coaches for different kinds of crafts.
Now, if I asked you or ask audiences raise your hand if you think you're a pro, I think most people's hand would go up but they oftentimes think of themselves as a pro in the craft in the work not necessarily in the business of remodeling and certainly in the business of sales. So this is especially important now because this environment that we're in is tougher your client continues to be your greatest competitor. It's their fears, it's their ignorance, and it's their overwhelm. And if you don't know how to compete against those kinds of conditions, you're not going to get I think the number of sales is I've worked with many many companies. And many individual salespeople, if you can just focus on getting one more out of 10.
One more out of 10 You will probably increase your business by about 50%. And if that's not worth for the motivation to increase your business, look at it from the opposite side. If you can get one more out of 10 and you really don't want to necessarily grow your business. It's going to save you a lot of time and energy that you can devote to doing a lot of other things.
So, with all that being said, I do believe pivoting and adjusting what you're doing is probably more of the appropriate term that necessarily hold chick wholesale change. Have you as you've heard me say in the past, if you could just adjust that one or two degrees. It's oftentimes the difference between flying from Washington DC down to Miami, one two degrees, you're and you end up in Cuba. So it's important that you adjust today to the environment we're in. Okay, so with all that being said, let's dive into some real meat on this particular topic.
So I'm going to do give you 10 tips, themes and techniques for you to be thinking about and you can kind of look at this a little bit more of a checklist, and how do I measure up on these 10 techniques? And then so you don't really have to think about things too much after this podcast.
I'm going to also give you some training topics or training subjects that you can weave in. But whether you're one on one training for yourself, or whether you bring in your team into this as well. So hopefully, this podcast episode will give you a really a good depth to things.
Okay, on my tips, themes and techniques. My number one is you have got to adjust your mindset about training. You know, that whole notion it's not just the training you've heard, practice makes perfect. It's perfect practice makes perfect. You have to have the right level of training.
years ago I was in a on a panel. And one of the other panelists said something I'll never forget he said training is an investment, not an expense and like any other investment you expect to return on investment. So as you think about just going through the exercise of your trainings that you're doing now, if you're doing it at all now, you know what kind of return on investment, but you've got to adjust the mindset about training first, just like getting in better shape you know, it could be not just about the vanity, but it also could be about your fundamental health. You know, you've got to adjust the mindset about training, if in fact you're going to be more successful...