Hi, my name is Steve and I’m here to teach you a little about sales – specifically sales as it relates to the service industry. This is my first attempt at blogging, but I have taught sales for a number of years at the company that I work for and have trained some very successful salesman. Hopefully this experience will teach us all something.
First a little about me: I am a service plumber. It is my job to go into people’s homes and businesses and fix broken plumbing. Since I am a plumber, I will use plumbing a lot as an example, but these articles are meant for anyone who provides a service to a customer. In fact, anyone who talks to people with any regularity can learn some pretty useful information from these articles.
It doesn’t seem that there would be much sales involved with being a service plumber, right? Many of you reading this know differently. Let me be a little more specific for the rest of you…
When a prospective customer has a plumbing problem, they call a plumbing company (or two or three…) for help. Most often when they call, they are thinking first about how much money it is going to cost them to get their problem fixed. Usually they try to gain that information from talking to the dispatcher over the phone. Some companies give the prospect an idea of what it may cost by quoting them an hourly rate or by a “usually” or an “as little as” (“We can usually clear your drain for as little as $85.00.”). When a prospect calls the company I work for, they get no information over the phone other than, “I can have a qualified plumbing technician to your home within 60 minutes to take a look at your problem and give you a free, no obligation estimate”. If the person taking the call can get the prospect to agree to those terms, it is all up to the plumber (salesman) from there. When you consider that most people will gather at least two to three estimates for all but the most urgent of jobs, you can see where being at least a decent salesman has its advantages. This is, of course, only the beginning of how being a salesman can help you. You are not going to buy a house clearing drains for $85 a pop, and even if you work for the type of company that quotes prices over the phone, there is still hope. You need only read on...
So, back to me. I am a service plumber. I work on commission. I have been a service plumber working on a straight commission for just under 15 years. I have been at the company for which I currently work for 11 of those years. Before being a service plumber I did a few other things, like medical supply delivery, a few years in the restaurant industry and new construction/remodel plumbing when I was younger.
When I was in my teens, I used to work for a general contractor, doing remodels and new construction. I was pretty good at it, but didn’t really like framing and sheetrock work. I actually wanted to be a bartender. Bartending seemed like a glorious and fun occupation, so I went to Bartending School. I gave it my very best effort and finished in the top of my class. I was ready to be a bartender! Off I went, looking for a bartending job. Turns out that finding a job as a bartender at a nightclub where I could flirt with the ladies while juggling bottles and making tons of tips was a little harder than I expected. My standards for the places where I would apply for work got lower and lower, until I accepted a job as a waiter in a San Francisco coffee shop with an attached bar in the hopes that if a bar tending position opened up, I would be in a good position to nab it. Well, none opened up. I worked as a waiter in a couple other places for a short time until I finally found a position as a bartender. I went from that job to a few others before I finally realized that being a bartender just wasn’t for me. I left bartending to go to work in construction for about 6 months. One day, I saw a help wanted ad for service plumbers. I heard somewhere that plumbers make good money and I enjoyed the plumbing I did as part of the construction experience when I was younger, so I applied for a position. I was hired, and I haven’t stopped since.
Now, I kind of got lucky. My family comes from a background in the restaurant industry. My grandfather would take me to restaurants a lot and he would point out to me all of the things the servers did correctly and incorrectly. He would actually quiz me on how our current waiter/waitress was performing and how I should tip the server according to their score. This got me to relate how service people get paid directly to how they made their customers feel. When I was working as a waiter and a bartender, I used this knowledge to help make sure that I was able to extract the maximum tip from each customer. What I did not like about the restaurant business was that when the place got busy, my service to each customer had to be compromised to be able to facilitate the increased number of customers. I kept up with the number of customers, and rarely left a customer waiting for a meal or a drink or (god forbid) their check. I could not, however, give each customer the full attention I needed to in order to get the larger tips I would usually get when the restaurant was less busy. If you think that high volume wins over maximum extraction per ticket, keep reading. You may be surprised.
My main concern when going to plumbing was not that I did not feel I knew enough about plumbing (they offered free training). It was that the pay was commission only. There was no base salary, or guaranteed hourly wage, or anything like that. It was 100% commission. I swallowed my fear (after all, I did okay working basically for tips before, right?) and took the job. It turns out the training was laughable. When they sent me out on my first service call, I knew little more than I did when they hired me. I did, however, see the similarities between this job and what I did as a waiter and bartender. I applied what I had learned in the restaurant business and it worked! I was actually earning pretty good money as a service plumber. I earned $52,000 my first year and boy was I excited!
So, I was learning how to be a service plumber and making a living doing it. I decided that I wanted to make a career out of this, so I had better learn all I can about plumbing and about sales. The truth of it is that if you don’t know plumbing, you cannot effectively sell plumbing. If you cannot sell plumbing, you don’t get the chance to do plumbing.
Now let me stop here and say this: If you do not want to learn everything you can about your profession, STOP what you are doing and find a new line of work! You are in the wrong profession! This goes for any profession you are in.
Learning plumbing was not that hard. I knew a lot of it from my earlier construction job. The Universal Plumbing Code Book is chock full of information and other plumbers LOVE to show off their knowledge. Sales was a little different. It turns out that people are not as willing to share their sales techniques with others as they are their plumbing knowledge. They will brag about their big wins, but when you ask them how they closed the deal, they will usually give you some story that does not even somewhat resemble the truth. I took three very specific actions when I decided that I wanted to learn to be a better salesman. I recommend everybody do these same three things: They are:
1. Find what works for others and adapt those strategies to your style.
2. Learn techniques from books, seminars, etc.
3. Practice.
I will discuss each of these again at some point in these articles, but those are the three essential actions that I recommend everyone use. I did run into a bit of a problem in my research. It seems that all of the sales “gurus” are either in car sales or real estate. Now, don’t get me wrong, I learned a lot from Tommy Hopkins, Brian Tracy, Joe Girard and others, but they sell tangible goods. How do you apply those techniques when you are selling a Service? Well, in a lot of ways, it is the exact same. In other ways, it is completely different – in some ways easier, and in others more difficult. I was lucky in that I had help. I was surrounded by people that also knew how important the art of sales was to our industry. I learned from them, bounced ideas off them, taught them, learned some more from them, bounced more ideas, etc. To this day, I am still learning and being reminded of the things I learned and forgot. It is a wonderful thing. It is my hope that you will learn techniques, strategies and methodologies that will make you a wildly successful salesman (plumber, electrician, contractor, waiter, bell hop…) and share your knowledge with others, so that they can become wildly successful salesmen (auto-mechanics, painters, bartenders, customer service reps…). Why would I want that? Simple, the more true salesmen we have in the service industry, the higher the bar gets raised for everyone. That means that the best get far more appreciation and with that comes more money. Besides, wouldn’t it be great if after having a nice meal out, waiting for the check was the exception, rather than the norm? That is what happens when the bar gets raised. Can these articles do all of that? Probably not, but it never hurts to try.
Are you ready? Let’s go!
First a little about me: I am a service plumber. It is my job to go into people’s homes and businesses and fix broken plumbing. Since I am a plumber, I will use plumbing a lot as an example, but these articles are meant for anyone who provides a service to a customer. In fact, anyone who talks to people with any regularity can learn some pretty useful information from these articles.
It doesn’t seem that there would be much sales involved with being a service plumber, right? Many of you reading this know differently. Let me be a little more specific for the rest of you…
When a prospective customer has a plumbing problem, they call a plumbing company (or two or three…) for help. Most often when they call, they are thinking first about how much money it is going to cost them to get their problem fixed. Usually they try to gain that information from talking to the dispatcher over the phone. Some companies give the prospect an idea of what it may cost by quoting them an hourly rate or by a “usually” or an “as little as” (“We can usually clear your drain for as little as $85.00.”). When a prospect calls the company I work for, they get no information over the phone other than, “I can have a qualified plumbing technician to your home within 60 minutes to take a look at your problem and give you a free, no obligation estimate”. If the person taking the call can get the prospect to agree to those terms, it is all up to the plumber (salesman) from there. When you consider that most people will gather at least two to three estimates for all but the most urgent of jobs, you can see where being at least a decent salesman has its advantages. This is, of course, only the beginning of how being a salesman can help you. You are not going to buy a house clearing drains for $85 a pop, and even if you work for the type of company that quotes prices over the phone, there is still hope. You need only read on...
So, back to me. I am a service plumber. I work on commission. I have been a service plumber working on a straight commission for just under 15 years. I have been at the company for which I currently work for 11 of those years. Before being a service plumber I did a few other things, like medical supply delivery, a few years in the restaurant industry and new construction/remodel plumbing when I was younger.
When I was in my teens, I used to work for a general contractor, doing remodels and new construction. I was pretty good at it, but didn’t really like framing and sheetrock work. I actually wanted to be a bartender. Bartending seemed like a glorious and fun occupation, so I went to Bartending School. I gave it my very best effort and finished in the top of my class. I was ready to be a bartender! Off I went, looking for a bartending job. Turns out that finding a job as a bartender at a nightclub where I could flirt with the ladies while juggling bottles and making tons of tips was a little harder than I expected. My standards for the places where I would apply for work got lower and lower, until I accepted a job as a waiter in a San Francisco coffee shop with an attached bar in the hopes that if a bar tending position opened up, I would be in a good position to nab it. Well, none opened up. I worked as a waiter in a couple other places for a short time until I finally found a position as a bartender. I went from that job to a few others before I finally realized that being a bartender just wasn’t for me. I left bartending to go to work in construction for about 6 months. One day, I saw a help wanted ad for service plumbers. I heard somewhere that plumbers make good money and I enjoyed the plumbing I did as part of the construction experience when I was younger, so I applied for a position. I was hired, and I haven’t stopped since.
Now, I kind of got lucky. My family comes from a background in the restaurant industry. My grandfather would take me to restaurants a lot and he would point out to me all of the things the servers did correctly and incorrectly. He would actually quiz me on how our current waiter/waitress was performing and how I should tip the server according to their score. This got me to relate how service people get paid directly to how they made their customers feel. When I was working as a waiter and a bartender, I used this knowledge to help make sure that I was able to extract the maximum tip from each customer. What I did not like about the restaurant business was that when the place got busy, my service to each customer had to be compromised to be able to facilitate the increased number of customers. I kept up with the number of customers, and rarely left a customer waiting for a meal or a drink or (god forbid) their check. I could not, however, give each customer the full attention I needed to in order to get the larger tips I would usually get when the restaurant was less busy. If you think that high volume wins over maximum extraction per ticket, keep reading. You may be surprised.
My main concern when going to plumbing was not that I did not feel I knew enough about plumbing (they offered free training). It was that the pay was commission only. There was no base salary, or guaranteed hourly wage, or anything like that. It was 100% commission. I swallowed my fear (after all, I did okay working basically for tips before, right?) and took the job. It turns out the training was laughable. When they sent me out on my first service call, I knew little more than I did when they hired me. I did, however, see the similarities between this job and what I did as a waiter and bartender. I applied what I had learned in the restaurant business and it worked! I was actually earning pretty good money as a service plumber. I earned $52,000 my first year and boy was I excited!
So, I was learning how to be a service plumber and making a living doing it. I decided that I wanted to make a career out of this, so I had better learn all I can about plumbing and about sales. The truth of it is that if you don’t know plumbing, you cannot effectively sell plumbing. If you cannot sell plumbing, you don’t get the chance to do plumbing.
Now let me stop here and say this: If you do not want to learn everything you can about your profession, STOP what you are doing and find a new line of work! You are in the wrong profession! This goes for any profession you are in.
Learning plumbing was not that hard. I knew a lot of it from my earlier construction job. The Universal Plumbing Code Book is chock full of information and other plumbers LOVE to show off their knowledge. Sales was a little different. It turns out that people are not as willing to share their sales techniques with others as they are their plumbing knowledge. They will brag about their big wins, but when you ask them how they closed the deal, they will usually give you some story that does not even somewhat resemble the truth. I took three very specific actions when I decided that I wanted to learn to be a better salesman. I recommend everybody do these same three things: They are:
1. Find what works for others and adapt those strategies to your style.
2. Learn techniques from books, seminars, etc.
3. Practice.
I will discuss each of these again at some point in these articles, but those are the three essential actions that I recommend everyone use. I did run into a bit of a problem in my research. It seems that all of the sales “gurus” are either in car sales or real estate. Now, don’t get me wrong, I learned a lot from Tommy Hopkins, Brian Tracy, Joe Girard and others, but they sell tangible goods. How do you apply those techniques when you are selling a Service? Well, in a lot of ways, it is the exact same. In other ways, it is completely different – in some ways easier, and in others more difficult. I was lucky in that I had help. I was surrounded by people that also knew how important the art of sales was to our industry. I learned from them, bounced ideas off them, taught them, learned some more from them, bounced more ideas, etc. To this day, I am still learning and being reminded of the things I learned and forgot. It is a wonderful thing. It is my hope that you will learn techniques, strategies and methodologies that will make you a wildly successful salesman (plumber, electrician, contractor, waiter, bell hop…) and share your knowledge with others, so that they can become wildly successful salesmen (auto-mechanics, painters, bartenders, customer service reps…). Why would I want that? Simple, the more true salesmen we have in the service industry, the higher the bar gets raised for everyone. That means that the best get far more appreciation and with that comes more money. Besides, wouldn’t it be great if after having a nice meal out, waiting for the check was the exception, rather than the norm? That is what happens when the bar gets raised. Can these articles do all of that? Probably not, but it never hurts to try.
Are you ready? Let’s go!
Just wondering. What kind of sales "techniques" are you going to be covering? Also, I happen to be a waiter and I am wondering how any of this could apply to me? I get the whole tip thing, but "Sales"?
ReplyDeleteHello. Thank you for your interest!
ReplyDeleteI have quite a few techniques that I will be covering over the course of this blog, many of which people may have heard of (SPIN selling, the power of yes, bracketting up, etc...). I will also be covering methodologies that few people have ever heard of (CPR, The World Sucks Chart, intention, commitment and context, etc). I have been given some very powerful tools throughout the years - tools that I have taught others to use to improve sales and their lives.
I actually plan on doing a chapter specifically for waiters where I will be sharing what I learned that works really well. Also, a lot of the methodologies work really well for waiters, bartenders and everyone else that talks to people. I hope to have the first of these articles ready in a couple of days, so please stay tuned!
- Steve