SPEAKER_02 0:02

Most integrators believe deal they never should have been facing in the first place. Many assume that being effective in sales is a matter of raw talent and personality. In reality, it's all about the systems. And when your system is built around the wrong buyer, no amount of hustle is going to fix it. In this episode of Insight, I'm joined by Patrick Martinez, founder of a leaf sales academy, and one of the most effective sales minds I've ever had the pleasure of working with. Patrick has spent 30 years helping luxury contractors, including custom integrators, build his systems, habits, and mindset that drives real durable growth. We dig into his qualified fire blueprint, a practical framework for identifying your ideal clients before you waste time and money on the wrong ones. We also get into what it actually takes to shorten your sales cycle, including why prepaid design services aren't a fulfilling preference during entire mindset. Patrick walks through the ticket sales metrics that actually matter, why leading indicators deep revenue tracking every time, and how to build a referral network that's tended to do the right work statistics. As always, this conversation was recorded live with an audience. For a link to the video, check out the episode description. If you've ever felt like you're working hard at closing the wrong deals or simply not getting enough of the right ones, this episode is for you. Let's dive in. All right. Hello, everybody. Welcome to the June edition of Insight Sessions. I am Jason Griffin. I'm the host, uh, your host today and director of product at OneVision. And I am really excited for today's session. We are joined by Patrick Martinez, and Patrick is somebody I've known personally for over a decade in my travels in the industry. Patrick and I have had the opportunity to work together and we've stayed close and collaborative over the years. Patrick is the uh founder of Elite Sales Academy. It's a sales coaching and training program for luxury contractors. He's got more than 30 years of experience as an entrepreneur, sales leader, and business coach, helping contractors increase revenue, improve closing ratios, and build scalable sales systems. So he's got a really practical, results-driven approach to help companies grow sales, improve profitability, and create exceptional client experiences in the luxury home services industry. Patrick, thanks for being here.

SPEAKER_00 2:18

Thanks for having me. Super excited. Super excited.

SPEAKER_02 2:20

Yeah, yeah. This is gonna be great.

SPEAKER_00 2:22

I had to update that bio, right? Because it's now over 30 years, which is crazy. In June of 96, I started my first audio video integration company.

SPEAKER_02 2:35

Makes you feel old, right?

SPEAKER_00 2:36

Yes, very old, very old.

SPEAKER_02 2:39

Yeah, it's it's crazy how time flies. And um, we're lucky to have uh all of those years of experience uh here today to help share with us a lot of what you've learned uh along the way. I will share with you that you're, you know, uh when I worked, so I worked with Patrick as a project manager. Patrick was selling projects, and I was I was a project manager on a lot of them. So I will share with the audience Patrick's one of the most effective salespeople that I've ever been around. I learned a lot just watching him do his thing, and I learned a lot. I always learn a lot when I'm with Patrick. So um we had some really strong uh interest in today's session. Lots of folks here with us today. We appreciate everyone joining us. Take a minute, if you would, to jump into the chat. Make sure you switch that little blue drop down there to everybody. Uh, say hello, let us know where you're joining the call from. And uh with that, we're gonna jump into uh the agenda. Also, one quick thing I want to mention if you have any questions, uh, comments, feedback at all, and any of the things that we're sharing on today's webinar, please do feel free to drop those into the chat and we will uh do our best to field those as they come in. Uh, our main focuses today are gonna be on uh number one, how to identify and qualify uh high value prospects before they drain your time. So get getting the tire kickers uh out of the sales process as quickly as you can so you can focus your limited time and energy on the right clients, uh building a repeatable framework for closing proposals and handling hesitation without um pressuring clients or appearing desperate. Um the six sales metrics that actually predict results. So really important to be able to measure. Uh they say you can't manage what you don't measure. And so make sure you're measuring the right things. And then why most sales problems are process problems, not personality problems. So um one of the things I've heard Patrick talk about before that I really like is that you know, sales is a system. And sometimes I feel like there's this misconception that you have to be a certain type of person to be effective at sales. But in reality, lots of different approaches and personalities can be successful in sales, provided that you have the right systems uh and processes in place. So I know Patrick, you're very process-oriented, and I look forward to jumping in and learning more about that today. So I was thinking about ways that we could start uh, and I think let's jump right into this qualified buyer uh blueprint that you guys have, talk a little bit about the framework here and start with like the problem. You know, it might sound obvious, but I think it's worth being explicit about like what is the real cost of a bad prospect to an integrator in terms of time, morale, money. How do you think about that?

SPEAKER_00 5:14

Yeah, that's I was gonna say looking at your looking at our agenda, I was like, man, this is gonna be a lot. So I envision a um version 2.0 of this conversation for sure. For sure. Lots of cover. Uh qualified buyer blueprint is how we get our members and our clients dialed in on the right buyers. How does this show up as a negative? Is it it results in lost deals? You know, if whenever I talk to specialty contractors or any sort of contractor dealing in the luxury space, and they're like not closing the stuff that they think they should be closing, we're always coming down at this. So it's like, oh, the the symptom is like I'm losing all these deals. And the reality is a lot of times they shouldn't be deals that you're trying to get. So um, so we combat lost deals with a consistent closing model, and a part of that consistent closing model is qualified buyer blueprint. So qualified buyer blueprint is how we work with them to develop their ideal buyer, and it's based on past wins and losses. So we we actually walk you through our framework and we look at deals and people that were really great and people that were really terrible, and what do they have in common and create, you know, um like qualifying criteria really and kind of get that dialed in. Now, what does it cost you? Obviously, it costs you time chasing bad deals. Um you know, when you combine that with the fact that so many um really smart people are giving away all of their intellectual property and all of their smarts for free, then it starts to cost you a lot of money. So it costs you money if you're your own time, it's costing you money if you're paying system designers to develop systems for the wrong people. Um, it's costing you opportunity loss because you could be spending more time with better people. So it's like all over the place. It's a pretty fundamental shift. It's a pretty pretty big shift for a lot of a lot of automatics.

SPEAKER_02 7:07

Absolutely. Yeah, um T up another question here for you, but I just I'm getting a little bit of um, I don't know if you have like a lapel mic or something that's maybe rubbing against uh a microphone. It sounded a there was a bit of um a bit of feedback coming through. So I don't know if you want to just make sure.

SPEAKER_00 7:22

Yeah, no, it should be. How about now? Is that better?

SPEAKER_02 7:25

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 7:26

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 7:27

I think so. Yeah, maybe maybe it's a little air blowing on the mic or something like that.

SPEAKER_00 7:31

It was like a little bit of air. Yeah, some of the some of the systems like the regular Zoom meetings is really good about killing background noises, but sometimes on these I've had issues where it doesn't look good. Yeah, sorry about that.

SPEAKER_02 7:40

Cool. Uh no, that sounds much better. So um, so yeah, one one question I did have is like, you know, you and I have both been in the business a long time. And like the reality is for a lot of integrators, is like there's this constant pressure, right? To you, you have to keep selling projects. And there's this kind of balance that I think you have to find in terms of like you can live in this um theoretical world where it's like, hey, we only focus on our ideal customer, and that's it. And that's great if you can get there, and that's a great thing to strive for. Um, how do you balance, though, that with the need to sometimes maybe be pragmatic and compromise, like in the real messy reality of like running an integration business and needing to drive sales? Like, where do you put the importance of this having this theoretical perfect customer? And how does that play out? Like, again, in the really pragmatic real world sense?

SPEAKER_00 8:33

Super great question. There's a lot to that. So, first of all, I would, you know, we go high level and go, don't be dependent on project work, have recurring revenue, right? Which you guys are very familiar with. So that's the first underlying fix in most businesses. If you're only doing project work, your company is only as good as your last project and the pile of junk you have in your warehouse. That's the value of your company. So we've got to watch out for that one. Um, secondarily, the um I'm okay, you know, just like I liken a lot to what we do to health. We put a big health component in our elite sales academy. And so a lot of stuff I'll pull back to health, right? So I'm okay if you make the occasional bad choice in your diet, as long as you know what you're doing. You know, so many people like they just go after bad job after bad job with without self-awareness. So I want you to have some self-awareness and go, yeah, I'm gonna sit down and blow through a row of Oreos tonight. Fine, but you know what you're doing, you know.

SPEAKER_02 9:30

Yeah, you're not doing it mindlessly.

SPEAKER_00 9:31

Yeah, yeah, you're not doing mindlessly, you're not doing it every single night. So uh that's kind of the adjustment there. And then it's eyes wide open with your team. If you're selling a job and you have a project management team, you have system designers, everybody knows going in, hey, this project doesn't meet our qualifying criteria. This client is not our ideal buyer, but here's why we're doing it, and here's what we are aware of. And you just go in eyes wide open, and that's a way different mindset than just taking every job you can because you got to make payroll. So yeah.

SPEAKER_02 10:01

Yeah, I think that's a great, that's a great answer. What what are some like practical tips that somebody on today's webinar could take away in terms of like maybe relatively simple or quick ways to start to filter out like who some of these tire kickers are early in the process? Like, are there certain types of questions you recommend asking? What kind of maybe unspoken hints are you looking for? Like, talk a little bit about some of the tells or ways that you might clue into that early, that this is somebody you shouldn't invest a lot of time in.

SPEAKER_00 10:33

Yeah. So our qualified bear blueprint is about seven steps or so. But I start with the first step. That's the first step that people on this call could do today, which is sit down with a pen and paper and like write down your absolute favorite clients. We all have them, right? Like the absolute favorite clients that we love and that love us and refer us and all that, and just make a list of them by name. And you get down to about, you know, between six and ten names on the list. And then the work begins. You get your team together that's worked with them, so it can't just be in your brain, but like who was a project manager, technician, designer, whoever was in an interaction with them, and write down the traits that they all had in common. So you want to get down to between four and seven traits that they all had in common. And it could be things like they love life or they love travel or they care about your team or they're whatever, you know, they're invested in your success, you know, all that stuff. Whatever it is, what do they have in common? And that's where we start with our qualifying criteria on those four to seven traits. And that's a good framework to get started where you can start looking at people around town and go, okay, does this person meet this? Does this person meet that? And then once you get that four to seven, you take the next step if you have a little bit of energy left, is make your list of all your terrorist customers and measure up like how many of those traits did they have, right? So if you landed on seven of our like golden traits, seven's a really good number, our seven golden traits, and then these people um are you know difficult. How many of the seven did they have? And usually you'll see it's like two to three. So and that's a good idea, just get your mind like shifted in terms of who you're pursuing.

SPEAKER_02 12:13

Yeah, yeah. What do you what do you recommend an integrator does if they get what you know? Like, I've I've done a little bit of sales in my career, and like there there are times where you get on a call or a meeting, and like some sometimes it happens very quickly, like five minutes into the meeting, you're like, uh, this is not good. But but let's take a less extreme example. Like, like maybe you're a couple meetings in and you're just like just starting to feel that like this is not the right buyer, and maybe you are in a position as a company to say no to work. Are there ways that you recommend integrators handle that so that because that can be hard? You know, a lot of us are like leaders and business owners tend to be like people, people, people, right? Like they want to like please other people, make other people happy. And that can be an uncomfortable thing to approach. Are there ways that you that you recommend uh integrators handle that?

SPEAKER_00 13:10

Yeah, even worse than people pleasing is we're problem solvers, right? We're technicians at heart and we're always trying to solve problems. And the more challenging the problem, the more we dig in and it's counterintuitive. So, first things first, we're in a relationship business. So if you get in a situation where you have a bad prospect, um the first thing is to take a step back and look at the relationship. Where did they come from? Who do they know? Who are they connected to? And sometimes I'll get, you know, I'll get you know, questions like, oh, well, this was referred by a really great contractor that I want to keep happy, but these people are terrorists, what do I do? And then I recommend just open communication. Chances are the contractor knows they're terrorists. Like they know. So give them a call and just say, Hey, Mr. You know, Bob the Builder, your relationship with me is like super duper important. I'm not sure I'm gonna be able to keep the Smith family happy. What do you what do you want me to do? Is it okay if I refer them out? Do you have another name or somebody you could send them to? You know, something like that. And um, so just having that communication open, you know, you you mentioned not not to pick your words part, but you mentioned like two or three meetings in. I don't want you going two or three meetings in with a terrorist. That's a good challenge, yeah.

unknown 14:18

Right away.

SPEAKER_02 14:19

Yeah, because usually I feel like you do actually know it sooner than that.

SPEAKER_00 14:22

You know, pretty quickly. Yeah, you know pretty quickly. One of my members is he was telling me a story, you know, a few weeks ago that he like the first call, he was just like, Yeah, no. And he's like, Thank you for this. He's like, I would have gone out there and I would have wanted to solve their problem and I would have had my designer put something together. And it's like, I just was able to say no. Now, again, it's like you said, there's gonna be people on this call where they're like, you know, especially in this current weird market we're in, right? This is never a dull moment around here. Um, we're like, I can't afford to give up any work. I'm starving here, and it's fine, I get it. I've been there. I've I went through uh, you know, the tech bubble, I went through 9-11, I went through COVID, I went, I've been through it all. And uh, and you know, obviously 08. And I made plenty of bad choices in my diet during those times. But I just want I just want you guys to be aware of what you're doing, that's all.

SPEAKER_02 15:13

Yeah. I I think that metaphor to like eating is a really good one, right? Like, you know, if you're trying to watch your diet, one of the best things you can do is like they'll they'll talk about like keeping a food journal. And uh, you know, the re why is that? Well, the reason is because by writing down what you're eating, you're forced to think about what you're eating and be more aware of it. And so uh it's not necessarily you have to like go keep a journal for this, but like that idea still applies of like, look, just be mindful about what you're doing and uh have an ideal customer profile in mind. Be pragmatic. But like as your business continues to grow and uh you get more healthy or the the market turns around, you know, having that ideal customer profile in mind um just helps like propel your momentum forward um in the right times and like attract those right clients to you.

SPEAKER_00 16:01

And well, a lot of what we do is remove emotion from the sales process, like that's what we do around here. We're always pulling, we're pulling sucking emotion out. If you have a measurement scale where, okay, uh when the market is really great, we're not gonna take anybody with less than five of our seven traits. That's totally fine. And then when the market's a little weird, uh, we maybe go down to four traits. But you have a measurement scale and you're not making emotional decisions. Emotional decisions and sales is real bad.

SPEAKER_02 16:26

So I like that. All right. Well, let's uh let's shift gears and talk about um closing the deal. So you guys have this confident close formula. Um, as we jump into this, I'm gonna launch a poll, and I'd love if everybody could uh take just a second to uh lean in and take a look at this poll and just answer. So when a prospect goes quiet after an initial meeting or a site visit, or you've sent them a proposal, you know, what is your typical assumption in terms of why is that client uh going quiet? And Patrick, while we're waiting um for people to uh bring their answers in here, I'd love if you you could just riff on like the importance of closing and uh you know, why is it in your in your opinion that that clients actually go quiet?

SPEAKER_00 17:14

Yeah. I where how do I do I get to see the poll?

SPEAKER_02 17:18

Let me I'll end the poll now. We got a bunch of results in already. So so yeah, I'm just sharing the results here. So it looks like about 60% of folks are assuming they're still just deciding, so comparing quotes. Um, another second place was 20%. My follow-up process broke somewhere. Um I'm not sure. I don't have visibility. And then uh they weren't a serious buyer to begin with. So those were those were the options there. And yeah, I'd love to hear you just riff, like because I know I've heard you talk about this before, and it's you know, not to lead people too much, but it's it's often not what people think it is.

SPEAKER_00 17:54

Yeah, most people think it's price. I was too expensive, you know. And that's a bigger psychological challenge around all my technical salespeople. You know, what we do a lot of work with specialty contractors about us five stone as a company, about half of our revenue comes from um specialty contractors, other contractors, all that kinds of stuff. And about half our revenue comes from the manufacturing side, but the manufacturing side is all subject matter expert nerds, also. Like I'm a nerd. We you know, I've been turning nerds into salespeople for 30 years, like starting with myself. So we often, as a group, us nerds, we shop with our own wallet. And we think that things are expensive when they are to us, but that doesn't really matter to other people. So a lot of times people think that people go dark because of price. And so I liked your poll question there that was a little more structured around steering people away from that. Um yeah, still deciding is a big one, and most of the time that's what it is. My wife used to always remind me that this stuff is way more important to me than it is to them because I would be like fixated on stuff and like, why aren't they calling me back? Why aren't they getting back to me? And these people have exceptional lives, they're busy, they're doing all kinds of stuff. And if they're the right kind of buyers for you, you're not the most important thing they're doing right this second. They're doing other stuff. They have businesses, they travel, this you know, disappear for the summer with their teenagers, like all kinds of stuff. Yeah, and so a lot of times I think that's a big part of it. They get busy. Um, another one we really, really focus on a lot is this concept of a confused mind says no. So many of you have created buying processes that are so complicated that people get confused. And so we spend a lot of time streamlining the buying process. We do a lot of budget selling, we get away from line item pricing. We just we really beat that into our members pretty hardcore. So we want to make the decision-making process really simple. So those are usually the two biggies. One, they're busy, and two, they're confused.

SPEAKER_02 19:57

Yeah, yeah, I got it. Um, Augustine, I saw you put your hand up. If you wouldn't mind, maybe just throw your question in the chat and uh we'd love to field it that way. Uh, if that works for you, Patrick, while we're waiting for that, I um so so like what's the takeaway from this? If you if you're looking at it, you're going, okay, maybe I am guilty of making this assumption that a client went quiet because my price was too high. And so that leads me down one path, and maybe I'm afraid to reach out. Um, but if I reframe it and say, well, likely they're just busy, maybe confused, maybe overwhelmed. So they're just really they're they're not necessarily looking at it and saying the price is too high, they're just like deferring this decision because decisions are cognitively expensive, and they they just like don't want to make the decision right now. So, like, okay, now what? Like, what does that tell me as a salesperson? What can I do with that insight?

SPEAKER_00 20:52

Yeah. Well, chances are the symptom is they're gonna go dark. And so what we have developed, we call it the ghost protocol. And what we do is for your movie bust, you're like that, but what we do is we're trying to shift gears. So many people go dark, and the salespeople continue to try to sell them when they're dark. Now they're dark for a reason. So we want to try to do is coax them out with this ghost protocol, which is kind of like coaxing the groundhog out. We don't want to scare it away. We don't want to make a sale, you're not gonna make a sale via email, you're not gonna make a sale based on a text message follow-up. You just want to restart the conversation. So we're just trying to like coax them out to then slowly find out what's going on. Are they getting other prices? Did their contractor not stand up for you because you weren't memorable enough? Did they um get uh you know stuck somewhere else? Did they have a w water pipe break in the basement and like you're just you've been moved down to the bottom of the pile? Whatever it is, we just want to coax them out. And that's so we have like it's like a four step lead in process to coax them out of the got it.

SPEAKER_02 21:53

And I I would imagine like part of that is, and correct me if I'm wrong, but I would imagine it's it's partially like. It short and sweet. Like you're you don't don't like your your follow-up email to a client who's already kind of overwhelmed shouldn't be three paragraphs long.

SPEAKER_00 22:08

It should probably I wouldn't be needy, shouldn't be full of emotion, it shouldn't be not just like, Hey, are you still alive? You know, that kind of stuff. So we do an escalation where we start one way and we end with our you know, coup d'etat, which is you know, basically subject line, have you given up on this project?

SPEAKER_02 22:24

Yeah. I've heard that one before, and I don't know if it was from you or someone else, but um, when I've done sales, I've I've found that also to be effective. It kind of start that follow-up with lower pressure, and then you kind of gradually build up. Everything is short and sweet, but by the end, it's like, hey, did you give up on this? Yeah, and there's something like psychologically about that question that will seem to elicit a response from even the most quiet uh clients. So I think that's a good uh simple tip. Um, Cindy, there's a question in the chat here. I'm gonna read it. I'm not a hundred percent sure I follow. Maybe you can clarify it. It says the buy out process for our type of systems is key. We could be pricing something out in the design phase. Um, but our our products, I think is what you meant to say, are not bought until we're further down the line, sometimes a year into the build. So what's your take on this? Okay, so I think this kind of an operational, maybe cash flow question. I don't know if you have perspectives on this, Patrick. Um, you're primarily focused on sales, obviously, but Cindy's bringing up a valid point. Like you're pricing things out, and then a lot on these bigger projects, maybe you're not purchasing the equipment until like a year or more later. Maybe the client's needs have changed, maybe SKUs have changed. Like, are there ways in the sales process that you can help set the stage uh for this sort of thing?

SPEAKER_00 23:41

Yeah, I think love um the this concept because what it does is it cracks the door for budget allowances. And so I like using budget align allowances um in the proposals phase. And the great thing about budget allowances is you can always um you can always cheat them a little lower than the next guy, right? Like I learned that trick from uh from someone you and I used to work with who remained nameless for this session, but you know, the old the ye old TV budget allowance, right? Like uh, you know, you know that these people are like, you know, 8k OLED buyers and the TV is probably gonna be five grand. You know that in your heart of hearts, but they don't know that. And so like TV allowance is 1900 bucks, you know, and then you you know kind of helps you manage that, manage those costs early on until we have to deal with them. And then, well, but then what if I can't get a T you can certainly get a nice TV for 1900 bucks if they want to do something really bitching, right? Let them do it, right? Um, because I'm assuming that we're talking about not being able to fully design the system because it's so far in advance. There's that's one model. The other model is we go ahead and fully design in today's numbers, and you just have conversations with the client about this is today's numbers. Some things are gonna go up, some things are gonna go down, you're gonna change your mind on some things, and that's what it is. But we're really locking them in. The biggest thing you want to do is get them, you just want them off the market. You want them as your customer, and so whatever model is gonna work for your business and your design department and how you guys do things and all that stuff, is really just about getting them off the market.

SPEAKER_02 25:10

Yeah, yeah. Our our um director of business development here, Brad Camp, who another very effective sales. Super effective, yeah. Yeah, um, he talks a lot about first who, then what, right? And so, like in the sales process, really a lot of times what we are doing when we're the buyer, even though we may not realize it, is like we're we're kind of deciding who we like, who we want to work with, who we trust before we decide, like, okay, I'm gonna go with this product or that product. And so like that insight can really help you like focus your efforts on totally building that rapport, securing that relationship, and um things like allowances. I can see how that would play into it because you know, you're you're you're letting the buyer know, like, hey, you're gonna have some optionality here. We can figure that out, those are just details that we can figure out later. Here's this placeholder. Um, so it gives you flexibility.

SPEAKER_00 25:58

100%. And this leads right into another tool that we do, which I think would help Cindy and her questions is the value line method. So, and this, you know, this is a whole presentation we do in our sessions, but I'll keep it really short. So, Jason, here's the deal: there's two things that drive costs on these deals there's scope of work and there's quality of product. We can move levers on either one of those. We try to keep you above the value line method, which is a nice balance between the scope of work and the product, scope being like how many different rooms we're gonna work in, how many different things we're gonna do, and product being like the level of performance of speakers or TVs or whatever. We can adjust all that stuff and we can hit any number you want to hit. Do you want to work with us? Yeah, and that's the decision. So, do you like us? Do you like you know our service model? Do you like our follow-up? Do you like our project management? Do you like all that? That's what really matters. The system price does not really matter. Yeah, you have to decide if you want to work with us. So I think that that goes in line with Brad's thing. And we take our members through this whole model that they can do for clients, and it's very effective. It's um, it's what I call like a little bit of a next level swagger move. You know, you you gotta have some confidence and some swagger to pull it off, but it's very effective. I did it real time with a client last year and closed a $650,000 job that was getting all these other quotes, and we just laid it out in a Loom meeting, a Loom video, just recorded in Loom, draw it up, send it off. Five minutes later, they said, Okay, you got the job.

SPEAKER_02 27:27

Yeah. Well, I think it I think it goes to that, you know, what that makes me think of is what you said earlier, which is like a a confused mind says no. And uh, this is kind of the opposite of that, because you're like you're you're putting this really simple framework around it that anybody can look at, busy, professional, tons of stuff going on. They look at that, they go, I get it. I get it. I get it.

SPEAKER_00 27:48

Do I want to spend yeah, do I want to spend $100,000 on a pair of speakers? Or do I want to do this? But you got to have open communication, you got to be really this was actually through a contractor, too. So the contractor was the one kind of meddling. I think we've all been in that situation. They're bringing in other people and do stuff. We just put it out to the contractors. Look, dude, like we've been doing this for a while now. It's a third revision. What do you want from us? You know, we're re you know, rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic over yeah, thousand dollars here, two thousand dollars there. And the other bid was like 40 grand less on a it was less than five percent or something, and so we're just do you want to work with us or not? This is why we work with us, and it was it was very effective. And we've had a lot of members that have been pulling that off, and then we use a a verbal version of that for just objection management. On you know, you we talk a little bit of objections, but like, oh, this is so expensive. Totally understand. We always deploy empathy, right? Agree with them every time. Yeah, I get it. Holy cow, is this expensive? There's two things that drive cost, Jason scope of work and quality of product. Which one do you want to cut? Yeah, and then you gotta be you gotta shut your mouth and yeah, not want to cut anything.

SPEAKER_02 28:59

That can be one of the hardest things to do, right?

SPEAKER_00 29:01

It is, yeah, yeah, especially especially for those of us at the uh technical persuasion.

SPEAKER_02 29:05

So yeah. Uh follow-up question in the chat here. I um, you know, is there a way to speed up the sale closing process? So this overall cycle from proposal to closing the deal, like there's a lot packed in there, right? But like if you had to look at that and you had to say, okay, there's maybe one, two, maybe three things that you really want to focus on to like shorten your sales cycle and get to a yes or a no, frankly. Like, even getting to a no faster can be valuable because you're not wasting as much time and energy chasing. So, like, how do you get from what are the biggest levers that that you can pull on, in your opinion, to get from proposal sent to decision made faster?

SPEAKER_00 29:48

Qualifying first, right? Make sure we're pursuing the right people. Lots of good questions. So lots of discovery questions, uncovering needs, technical questions. We have all these different question buckets we work out of. Um, and then the other one that's a huge lever is just and and I I'm gonna say this, which I'm sure it's gonna have elicit some response. Pre-paid design services. Stop engaging with people for months at a time and doing a bunch of free work for nothing. You're training them to abuse you. So get paid up front, get the people off the market, make them your customer right now, and then you're having a different conversation around what's going in the house, not whether or not you're gonna be doing the work in the house.

SPEAKER_02 30:32

Yeah.

unknown 30:33

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 30:33

Let let's let's stay on this pre prepaid design services. And I I understand that this this can be a uh a hot button uh for you. This this could this this could be like a whole work workshop unto itself, probably. Uh, we did have a question from the audience come in uh ahead of time, which is from James Riley. He said, you know, how do I proceed with a design fee on on any level of project? Um he said we want to be brought in earlier, like interior designers, and we want to get paid for our design work, but other companies in in his market don't charge for that. And he says they'll usually get passed over if they hold firm to that line. So how would you address James?

SPEAKER_00 31:12

Yeah, it's a good question. It's a lot to it's a lot to unpack. We actually are going to be doing a like a paid workshop on this topic where we're gonna do several hours of like showing you how to build this out and actually get it done in your in your own in your company. It's also a mindset adjustment. The the biggest actually I'd say but the biggest thing is it's a mindset adjustment. So many of us are so used to doing things for free and getting abused that we're like used to it, and that we think that's just the way it works. Similar, like I went, I think it was this is gonna date me a bit. I was at a CEDIA in 1998 and had uh I went and did a class, and the class was basically like stop doing free service calls uh in a nutshell, right? And you're familiar with this, obviously. Yeah, and for us it was a huge mindset, like it was like, oh no, if I don't do the free service calls, they're not gonna like us anymore and they're gonna go away. You know, you've heard these things now, you 30 years later, you're still having those conversations.

SPEAKER_01 32:06

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 32:06

So um the uh so a lot of it is like mindset and how you do it. And there's a couple different ways to do prepaid design services, there's you know, different models that we we coach and train on. Um, but the first thing is mindset. The second thing is like you gotta, if you're gonna do it, you gotta go all in and not care what other people are doing. So many people get hung up on what their competitors are doing. If you're really unique in your market and you're really special and you're messaging it, it doesn't matter what other people do. And the third thing I would add is it takes time. I have a client who had a contractor that was like, we're never doing this, we get all the free bids we want, blah, blah, blah. And now it's taken that particular contractor, GC uh builder contractor, it's taken three years, but now that builder contractor refers everybody to this integrator and tells them up front this is how they work, they do create design services. So it took a long time because and it was a mindset adjustment and education for the builder, also. So it's not a you get some quick wins right away, um, but it is gonna take some time on some of your really entrenched builders, and they'll be burned enough, they'll work with knuckleheads enough, and they'll come back. But yeah, it's gotta be it's gotta be early.

SPEAKER_02 33:19

They gotta go touch, they gotta go touch the hot stove once.

SPEAKER_00 33:22

Yeah, they have to suffer, just suffer a little more. Uh but uh yeah, so that there was something else that was oh, early, just early. Like you have to also introduce it really, really early. I'm coaching a sales guy uh right now who has a deal where he kind of he's trying to put the genie back in the bottle, like he started talking pricing and budgets and quotes and stuff, and then tried to introduce design services, and it's gotten messy. So I told him that he's he can't put the genie back in the bottle. It's got to be like, hi, my name is Jason. This is how we work.

SPEAKER_02 33:53

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 33:55

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 33:55

Right. I wonder how much of this, Jad, I'd love to get your perspective on this. Like, how much of this comes down to helping the market understand what the downside is to not planning this kind of stuff early? Because, like, as an integrator, I saw it all the time where there was like so many problems that were created on projects that impacted the builder and the designer and the architect and the homeowner, probably more than anyone, that could have been prevented had the technology been considered earlier in the process. So I wonder how much of this is about like posit, like your positioning and thinking about like the way that you present this and aiming squarely at like pain, helping kind of educate your local market about the benefits to doing this early, or conversely, the pain points associated with you know, waiting too long.

SPEAKER_00 34:44

Yeah, a lot of it is it is that mindset, it's education, it's messaging, you know, how how are you going to message it? And then how much time do you get? Because a lot of times you don't we don't get the time that we should get with buyers, right? Sometimes we're selling through multiple decision makers and trying to get to we don't even see the buyer for a little bit until they made a selection on who they're using, right? Then we might get called in for scope discussions and stuff. So you're kind of educating the whole thing. I will say visuals are really powerful. So uh so I'm inside baseball. Jason and I worked in Los Angeles at an extremely high level. And at one point we were working on a theater that was not designed properly, and um, none of the sight lines were going to be right, and they like had to kind of stop and demo what they'd done already. And so there was a bobcat that you ride around on in the theater, digging out the floor in a finished house because they had not planned it well. That image made us a lot of money. Like, here's a picture of a bobcat in your finished house basement because you didn't plan well.

SPEAKER_02 35:49

So well, I didn't realize you guys captured that. That's funny. I remember that.

SPEAKER_00 35:54

I remember that project, but visuals are very powerful thing, you know, before and afters. Also, just you know, getting good photos of your projects. A lot of people don't do that, you know, discussions about people, quotes from designers and architects and builders about your your planning process, whatever you want to call it. Everybody's got a different name, but your planning process quotes are really important, but it's an education process. And we've been in the education business for a long time, guys. We we had to educate people on networks, we had to educate people on HDMI, we had to educate people now on lighting. Like we're in the education business, part of your education job, networks, part of your education job is now um planning, so design, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 36:35

Yeah, yeah, I love that. All right, let's let's shift gears. Let's talk uh about another big bucket here is metrics. So I said it earlier, you know, you can't manage what you don't measure. What are the common failure modes that you see uh from integrators when it comes to uh tracking metrics? What are the things that maybe they're overlooking that they should be paying more attention to, or maybe, maybe conversely, they're looking at things that don't deserve a lot of attention. Um how do how do you help integrators think about tracking the metrics that actually matter?

SPEAKER_00 37:05

That's a good question. I usually see two ends of the spectrum. I got uh guys don't track anything, and those are usually, you know, more um visionary types, high sales people, high expressives, low detail folks, and then I got people that overtrack everything, and they got like 50 metrics, and none of it really matters. So that's the truth. So we try to find a nice, happy medium. So we look at you know, like five or six metrics that we want to track all the time. Um, the other thing, so that's one mistake is is tracking too much or too little. Second mistake is um uh tracking revenue, and like nobody cares. I know it's important later, but from a sales standpoint, it doesn't matter. So we want to be looking at um front-end touches, leading indicators, not lagging indicator like a revenue number. Leading indicators is we want to be doing non-sales touches. Our members are required to do five non-sales touches a day. What's a non-sales touch? What the hell is he talking about? That is uh, you know, a outreach to somebody in your network that likes you, and it's not trying to sell them anything, it's just like, hey, bro, thought about this. How you doing? Hey, Jason, you guys got any plans for the summer? I was thinking about you today. Just a nice soft touch could be text, email, social media, all that kind of stuff. And it's just a soft touch to get out there and see what's going on with their lives and keep making those connections and keeping top of mind.

SPEAKER_02 38:30

So in five years, kind of like pop pop up on the radar, yeah, totally. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 38:34

So um COI meetings. A COI is a center of influence. So if you're an AV integrator, that's a uh inter designer, architect, contractor, um, real estate agent, or any number of a hundred other influencers. We want you doing new COI meetings. We try to get our members to do two a week. So that's like a coffee date, a lunch date. Um, you could meet them at an event, although it's a little on the edge because they're usually distracted with a lot of other stuff. But we want to try to get a new COI meeting every week, one or two a week. Um, and then you know, how many proposals are you shipping? How much dollar are you shipping? Um, how many proposals are you closing, you know, getting an approval on? So with a closed deal is a signature and some money. That's how we count it. I got a signature, great, bring me the money. Or I got some money, great, bring me a signature. So signature and money. Um, and then our total network of COIs is another big number we track. So we want you to have 50. So that's um 10 builders, 10 architects, 10 designers, 10 real estate agents, and 10 randos. And uh, if you have 50 coys in your little repertoire and your harem, if you will, uh, you don't have to work for you don't have to work for jerks anymore. You just yeah for people that you like to work for. So that's what we're trying to get you to is that stuff.

SPEAKER_02 39:55

I love that. Yeah, the the focus there on like leading indicators of like if you're doing all these things, it's and and then backing it up with quality work. Yeah, it's probably gonna be harder to not be successful than it will be to be successful.

SPEAKER_00 40:12

You've heard the term clientele, right? Like if clients and have clientele. Clientele is those influencers that are gonna send you business, and they're yeah, they're fighting for you in that they're gonna be like, Oh, you have this, you know, they have a project. Oh, you gotta call Jason, he's my guy.

SPEAKER_01 40:26

Like critical basic.

SPEAKER_00 40:27

You're an idiot if you don't call Jason. Yeah, that's a good referring part.

SPEAKER_02 40:31

So yeah. And and how do you recommend, like, for somebody out there who's listening, who's like, you know, Patrick's right, and I need to do more of this COI type of work. Yeah, but I'm starting from a low level. Like I have a few, but I need more. Like, what are some like ways that you can go about building that network?

SPEAKER_00 40:49

Totally. Um, I if you would you let me put some can I put some on the screen real quick?

SPEAKER_02 40:54

Yeah, absolutely.

SPEAKER_00 40:55

Okay, cool, cool. So let me let me do this. Just because this is, I think it will be helpful to a lot of a lot of members. So all of y'all have what we call job one. You say, like, I'm starting from zero. There's your job, job one. On that job, you're gonna break, break out your set of plans, and there's a builder on that job, there's an architect on that job, there's a designer on that job, maybe there's some lighting, some landscape, whatever it is. I could keep going, right? If you bought that house from someone, right? So there's a realtor on that job, and so you already have this job that already is like the the um you know the center of all the action. Now, all of these folks they got other jobs, right? This builder has probably got job two, has probably got job three, and then on that job, there's probably another architect, and there's probably another designer on this job. Now, there's gonna be some crossover for sure, because that's how the world works, but that's how this kind of starts. If you want to start somewhere, that's where it starts. This architect definitely got job four and five, and you just gotta get out there and make some friends because there's gonna be another builder on that one. I'm running out of paper here, but you get the idea. Yeah, so um, and that's what we're trying to do is get people to realize that it's in their like all you all sitting at your desk, turn over here, and there's a pile of plans on the floor. Pick up one of those plans, roll it out, and go through and find all the people that worked on that project.

SPEAKER_02 42:42

Yeah, I love that. Yeah, start start small, start with your immediate circle, and then just build out from there. Don't don't get like paralyzed by thinking that you have to go boil the ocean. Um just start small and and get that flywheel moving. I think that's great advice.

SPEAKER_00 42:57

For sure.

SPEAKER_02 42:58

Um, we're kind of coming down the home stretch here. I had one other question come in from the audience that I wanted to make sure we touch on. This came in ahead of time from Angie Hartman. And she said she'd really like to hear about overcoming objections and upselling. Uh, she described a situation where they had a client who was on a paid service membership, but it was kind of like the mid-tier membership, but the client was sort of always demanding service that was more in line with the high-tier membership. So basically wanting more than they're paying for. And even though they were presenting the value and benefits, the client was just kind of pushing back on the dollar signs and they eventually upgraded, but she described it as like pulling teeth. So I know every objection is a little bit different, and we don't have time to go through like a laundry list of them. But are there generalizable kind of principles that you could give people advice when it comes to like clients are pushing back? How do I deal with it?

SPEAKER_00 43:52

Yeah, that's a good question. There's a lot to unpack there. So I'll I'll do my best. The first things first not all objections are objections. Some of them are complaints. Wow, this TV is really expensive. Yeah, totally. Hear you. Uh do you want it tomorrow or do you want it next month? Like, don't care.

SPEAKER_01 44:12

You know, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 44:13

Something else. So, um, or your, you know, your labor costs are really high. Most of us will want to jump in and justify, justify, justify, justify, justify. And so we want to do is deploy some empathy. I hear you the labor is really high. You can ask a follow-up question, hi, compared to what? Like what you were expecting, or some other pricing you got. Like, help me understand what you mean by my labor is high. Oh, well, whatever. And then whatever answer they have. Or um, you can just deploy empathy and go, yeah, I hear you. It's it's a lot of work. I hear you. It's a lot of work, it's a lot of money. Um, am I contracting with you directly, or should I send my contract over to the contractor and just move along? So many of us, as technical people, technical salespeople, we always get we get sucked into everything. This is especially true of my manufacturing clients. They'll get sucked into money objections all the time because one, we're we're predisposed to shop with our own wallets because we're knuckleheads. Two, we're we're predisposed to fix every problem. It's a bad combination for technical salespeople. We think things are expensive already, and then we want to solve the problem, and we get sucked in every single time. So we have what we call a model called don't take the bait, which is just don't take the bait, it's pretty simple. It's most of them are complaints. Now, if it's an objection, legit objection that you have some control over and you want to do something about, then that's where we start to lean in. Um, about, you know, are we do we need to reinforce our value proposition? Do we need to take another look at are these the right people for us? Do we want to have business? Do we want to do business with them? Is there a substitution we can make? Can we work on some terms with them that make more sense? Like we'll do this first and we'll do that later. You know, really try to like get in and solve the problem. And those are all fine. Um, you know, like John, John Bates is one of our members who put that in the chat. Like, talk solutions, talk value proposition, reinforce what we're trying to do. That comes later, after you really decide if this is something you even want to get involved with as far as this object. Is this objection even worth your time, or is it just people complaining that it's raining? Like it's raining, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 46:18

So what yeah.

SPEAKER_00 46:19

Um, the other thing, you know, in this particular instance, um, when she's talking about one like one plan versus another plan, um, so many engineer brains, we we get a little bit stuck on our ego and our need to be right. And what I mean by that in this case is our ego and our need to be right says that they're on this plan and this is what they're getting, and they don't want to, you know, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And so what I like to lead with is sure. And what that looks like is oh, sure, I hear you. Let's go ahead and move you to the next plan. And Brad is really good at this. Brad at One Vision is really good at that, it's just like agreeing with them. Oh, I hear you. Let's get you moved over here. It's gonna cost this, it's gonna cost that. And you're always leading with sure and what you can do, be an American, not an American, and then just like lead in with that. So yeah, again, more swagger than yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 47:15

Well, that that that speaks to that, you know, the confidence and right, like just practice and reps and like practice and through all of this. So um, we're we're running out of time here. This is super fun, and I agree with what you said at the beginning. We'll have to set up a time to do this again. Um, in the meantime, I'd love, Patrick, if you could share, you know, if anyone's listening out there and wants to learn more. Maybe you you alluded to your Elite Sales Academy a couple of times, and it sounds like there's a few folks on here that that would really benefit from something like that. What what's what what do you have to offer and kind of what's the best way for people to learn more?

SPEAKER_00 47:48

Yeah, for sure. So I'm looking through, I'm just blessing through this list to see if there's people I recognize. Obviously, John Bates, he's super fun and amazing, always makes our days bright. Um, also Arthur is in one of our members in the in the member list. I feel like I'm Mr. Rogers neighborhood looking through the thing. Uh so a couple members here that can you can contact. Um, I'll put this up on the screen here. So um this is us. That's an email address. If you have questions, you can reach out to us. The left side QR code takes you to our main website, just all the stuff that we do. We do job profiling for salespeople. If you need to find your next sales superstar, we do sales playbooks, we do sales process, we do one-on-one engagements that are super deep and involved. Um, and then on the right side is Elite Sales Academy, which is our Friday morning. So tomorrow, if you sign up today, you will be with us tomorrow in the group. And we're talking about being memorable. That's our series right now. We're like a six-part series on being more memorable. And so um, that's how you can sign up for Elite Sales Academy, is on the right hand side. Um, and uh it's a great program. We we have hundreds of hours of content. Every session we've ever done is recorded in HD, and you can go back and get it. We do we build custom GPTs for our members, we do custom tools for our members and checklists and all kinds of fun stuff. So um, and it's good community because we always have um open coaching at the end where we just have open QA challenges people are having and all that. And then if you're an owner manager, we do a monthly owner manager meetup, uh, which is my favorite. I they think I'm joking, but um, it's my favorite meeting of the month. Like all the meetings I do all month, that's my favorite one because we just get into owner stuff and challenges like it.

SPEAKER_02 49:36

Yeah, well, I have had the privilege of attending uh ESA as a guest before, and I will say that you do a great job with it. Uh and the the one of above all, uh the thing that I came away from it was just feeling like you've got a great community there. Everybody seemed really engaged and connected, and I think there's so much value in that addition, in addition, of course, to the content that I know you put a lot of work into and everything. So um, really great uh offering there. And I would encourage anybody who's looking to elevate their sales game uh to go take a look at that. So uh with that, we're gonna uh go ahead and wrap up today's webinar. Patrick, thanks again for being here. This was a ton of fun.

SPEAKER_00 50:15

Super fun. We'll definitely have to do it again for sure.

SPEAKER_02 50:17

Yeah, absolutely. Um, and everybody who attended uh with us live today, we appreciate you taking some time out of your day to be here with us. With that, we'll go ahead and conclude. I hope you all have a great rest of your day and rest of your week, and we will look forward to seeing you on the next one. Take care.