Speaker 0What's the password?
Speaker 2Don't talk about it. Be about it.
Speaker 0Welcome in to the two of the point home services VIP room. Where we invite you, the listeners in to hang alongside some of the biggest, baddest and most successful VIPs of the home services industries. You never know, it surprised guests will show up next. So let's get this party started.
Speaker 5It will stop home service VIPs. It's your boy Chris back. I am back after the chemo and radiation treatment. I have officially rang the bell. So it is done. So AG and Chad, boys, it's our first episode recording post-treatment hallelujah.
Speaker 4Hallelujah, Navy.
Speaker 5I'm free, man. Yeah, my favorite to the shirt for today was very appropriate. Actually, I got a bunch. I got so many gifts and like cool stuff from people. And I got cards and letters literally every single day of treatment, 33 days of treatment, plus the two weeks post. I've gotten at least two cards and letters every morning to Anna and my wife has given me to read from just people. Like people just talking about the influence that we've had or just, you know, praying for me and all those other things like talking about like, and there's trust me and you guys know there's plenty of days where I was like, how am I going to get to tomorrow like I feel like I'm in fucking groundhogs day. And I still feel like that from time to time because just because I'm past the ring in the bell, the two weeks post that is even worse. Like because now I'm having to retrain my throat, you know, and so my throat yesterday I was like, I don't know how to hell them to this podcast tomorrow because like I could barely even swallow. But this morning I feel okay, and that's kind of been the journey like these last week and a half as it's like up and down and up and down. So I'm supposed to go to Cabo on Friday. It sounds really ambitious. You think, God, but it's kind of a, so no, but here we have because I'm in Phoenix, it's like a easy hour to have flight and it's I could do the same thing there that I could do at the house is what I keep telling myself. So it's just a different change of scenery. It's our anyway of a house down there. So it's like, I'm gonna go down and we'll see it.
Speaker 1But you ain't catching Bill Fish in Arizona, brother. It's good. Gotta go to Cabo to do that.
Speaker 5That's true, man. That's true. But I do think that a change of scenery is good, but I'm just happy to be out of this whole thing. And AJ, I appreciate you coming out here for ring and the bell do that was really special. And I know that, uh, Um, there's a ton of people in there, which was really cool, you know, and uh, so anyway, Marcus, you are the first episode post treatment and uh, to help with a guest to have on and we're excited to have you on and we got Marcus shared it on, uh, I would say absolutely fits in our VIP room. Um, heard you speak, you know, I've heard you speak quite a bit actually listen to some different podcasts, if you're as I kind of get what you're all about. I know you know, AG pretty well, um, you know, and, and if it, he's implemented some of your trainings and things like that and uh, what I love about having guests like you on Marcus is that especially because my throat hurts is I'll bet you I only have to talk about 10 to 15 percent of the time on this podcast because you're going to share by the bit is that fair yeah this dog will hunt let's put it like that well Marcus walking to the podcast brother happy to have you on here I didn't want to butcher some intro and like read because Tommy always like reads as scripted intro and I think he does it and I get why he does it but you actually do a better job of kind of explaining a little bit of the come up you know and and the story so much better. And then Aaron and Chad, I'll just kind of start to ask questions along the way. I do have some questions. I want to ask you to, I'm just selfishly, I selfishly want to ask your opinion on just and regards to current day sales in the market and also even some marketing lead sources in today's market. You know, and then I want to just talk a little bit about your endless customers. Book that came out a little bit ago, but just some of the pillars from that as well if we can tap into that. But man, happy to have you on the show
Speaker 1Yeah, man, I happen to be here and just for those that don't know me that you know the quick story is this in 2001 I was right out of college started a swimming pool company called river pools with a couple buddies and you know we're fighting to grow the business just struggling along but then 2008 2009 hits looks like we're going to file bankruptcy I mean it's really really bad by that point for us and a lot of swimming pool companies at the time file bankruptcy. And the good thing about paying and suffering is it forces us to really say, what do I have to lose, right? And, you know, I think a lot of times businesses, unfortunately, are forced by market conditions to get like a creative, right, Chris? And so instead of that, what we need to do as businesses is we got to get in front of this stuff. But in our case, That period of time was a beautiful period for me, because even though we were suffering, even though I thought I was going to lose my house, I thought I was going to have to let go of my employees. It did create this incredible focus in learning and I started to learn about the buyer and became obsessed with the buyer. And then essentially, as I was reading everything about internet marketing, I went to my business partners and I said, listen guys, here's what I think we should do. If we just become really obsessed with the way customers think we're willing to address their questions online for years, worries, concerns, all of it, if we do that through text and video, we could save our business. And they said, okay, and so within about two years, We became the most traffic swing pull upside in the world, but it happened because we were rolling through a dress, nobody else was willing to address you're staying and showing when nobody else was saying and showing and just a fast forward we became so successful that we begin the fastest growing 2020, I sold the franchise, I sold the manufacturing, but I still today own river pools of Virginia. So essentially, I'm a franchisee to the franchise that I sold. That's about 150 pools a year. And so my context is one where I've had within this scope, I spent 10 years selling in the home. crazy passionate about in-home selling and how to do it at a very high level. I'm crazy passionate about how to sell and market so as to continue to generate leads and trust especially in the AI era. So let's talk a lot about that. And of course I'm passionate about leadership leadership communication, how to be an effective leader too, because You know, being a CEO now of multiple, you know, companies and being a shareholder and like, you know, multiple companies, all of it, you know, forces you to refine your capabilities as a communicator, which I think is the ultimate ultimate skill and that's what sales, that's what marketing is, that's what leadership is. So that's my backstory and I'm happy to go in any direction.
Speaker 4Yeah. So let me jump in here and say, I've got a chance to work with Marcus. Marcus came out onto our into our building and met with my team. I think we had about 25 people there. Marcus, the day you came out personally met with us had a group session. I think it was one of the most. passionate conversations we've had in a long time with our team and Marcus did a fantastic job and bringing the knowledge so Marcus I think just that support that you know from the industry going through some of the hardships that many of us have had in this industry and home service especially during that time and there's other hardships that have happened over last you know 20 something years since then right for people but I think you've really taken this to a whole night of the level and become a real thought leader I think in the industry for this and What happened to you to grow in the business to why? Why take it to everybody else and then you wrote a couple books I don't know many people are available. We know about we major one right now has been endless customer But they ask you answer is a is a very big one too So maybe you can just give us a little bit like why why why did you do this? What motivated you and you know? What are you hoping to accomplish from this as you know?
Speaker 1Well, it was in 2009 during this crash period where it was March of 2009 and I wrote my first what we call a blog article, right? And we got so much traction so quickly that by November of 2009, I said, I need to start writing about this. And I actually started a personal blog and at the time I called it the sales line, funny name I know, but I think lines are cool and sales are even better. So I was like, let's let's call it that and so I started writing about the things that we were doing at river pools within a couple years. I started to get a lot of traction there and I eventually said, you know what? You know, I started getting, you know, because I was starting to speak a ton, people were asking me to speak and teach them how to do the thing we did with remote pulse. I said, I need to turn this into a book. So in 2017 that became the ask you answer, second edition came out in 2020, third edition, which is known as endless customers came out in 2025 and it really talked a lot about the AI side of it. You know, AI visibility where Google's headed, things like that, you know, because because there is a lot of change of foot and I want to people to be aware of it and I've always been the type that said, listen, if I'm doing something and I know it's working, I want everybody else to have like the same knowledge. I just don't come from a scarcity mindset at all. I don't think that way I never have. come from a very high, you know, abundance mindset, you know, it's funny like Chris you were talking about Tommy mello, you know, when we when we started in Tommy's perfect example of this, you know, he puts on big shows where he's literally teaching his competitors. how to do more effectively the thing that he does. Like who does that? It takes a special person to do that. And he's got a very abundant mindset with the way he sees the world. And that's how that's how it's been for me. And I think, you know, back to your question, though, is you know, like if you look at the ask you answer, It is so simple on the surface, which is really become obsessed with how buyers think what they want, what they're asking, what they're searching, what they're fearing, and be willing to address it online. Because if you're not willing to address it, they're going to get the answer from someone. The issue is it's not going to be from you. And they're not going to love you because of it. And they're not going to trust you unless you're willing to give them things others aren't willing to give. And so I'm very just rooted in that and I don't sit there and come from like a lot of legacy thinking, I don't allow that. It's just it's not where it is. It's not how it was like, well, it's not how it's been done in the industries like no. It doesn't matter how it was done for the last 25 years. It's like, where's the buyer going? Where are they today, where are they going? And if we're really rooted in the buyer obsessed with them, then it pretty much shows us exactly what we need to do from a sales and marketing perspective consistently.
Speaker 3Yeah. Marcus, one of the things that I was reading through the notes and this is something that Aaron and I have talked about a couple of times, probably here more recently, and I think it goes to exactly which you kind of preach and read your books and different things like that. You know, for ever and a day, legacy thinking and the contracting business is you at no point in time ever give a customer a price over the phone. Like, never. Like, if you did, like, that was like, you, you violated commandment number one, you're terrible. Why would you ever do that? Um, but I think what we're seeing from, at least from our data is that more and more and more calls that we're getting are people wanting pricing over the phone, even for, like, complex projects that are like, well, uh, maybe I'm not sure, but like, tell us your philosophy on that because I think that, There's a ton of people out there that are stuck in that legacy thinking where I know at least some like, well, like, they're already called. Like if that's what they want, just give it to.
Speaker 1Yeah, yeah, it's funny to me. I love to ask businesses. Do you believe in the golden rule? And everybody's like, yeah, of course we believe. I would always want to treat our customers as we ourselves would want to be treated. Like, okay, and then we talk about the pricing conversation. So it's it's it's quite fascinating. And I've been talking about this subject for oh gosh, you know, uh, for about 15 years teaching about it. I've helped thousands of companies learn how to effectively discuss pricing online to win more trust and ultimately win more sales. What we know is this, when somebody goes on, when somebody knows they have a problem, okay? They just had a, you know, a plumbing leak. They've got their HVAC one out. I mean, doesn't really matter what it is.
Speaker 3You know, the new roof, the literally first question, first freaking question.
Speaker 1They have is roughly what's this going to cost us. Roughly what's this going to set us back? Oh, gosh, what are we looking at here? It's the same question every single time. But you know what's interesting about it is they're not saying exactly what is this going to cost me? They're saying roughly what's this going to cost me? And they're just begging for someone that is willing to give them a sense for the numbers. Now, what's interesting too, if I asked anybody's listen to this, if you go on a website and you feel looking for cross and price information, you can't find it. What's the emotion you experience? You say, well, I get really frustrated. Well, why do you get frustrated? You say, well, I'm the buyer, and I'm trying to make a buying decision, but you're making it really hard. So if I said to you, so in that moment, do you as the buyer, do you say to yourself, oh, I'm sure it's on this website, I'm just going to keep on looking. You know, I can't not don't do that. What do you do? Well, you just keep searching. You search until you find what you're looking for. If I said to you, in that moment of frustration, when you can't find what you're looking for on that website, do you say to yourself, oh, of course they can't talk about cost and price. They're very customized service. I mean, I'm sure every job is different. I'm just going to call them on the phone instead. Once again, that's not what you say as a buyer. Is this a noise the crap out of me? I wish they would just give me a sense a sense for how much this is going to cost And, you know, I was the first Swimple company in the world that was willing to address this. The first one in the world that's willing to address this. Now, every company says, well, we can't address it for three reasons. First reason they say is, well, every job is different. Well, that's the easiest to address because what you want to do is you want to explain all the factors that drive the cost of that service up or down, why some companies are expensive, why some companies are cheap, and roughly, roughly, where do your projects fall? So you're not giving exact numbers, but what you are doing is you're answering that fundamental question roughly how much does it cost. So a lot of people get caught up and I'm going to back myself in a corner, right? Another reason they say they can't do it is like, well, we tend to be more expensive. We're going to scare them away. Uh, uh, what we keep finding scares people away during the, during the buyers journey. is when they can't find anything. Ignorance is what people hate online. Just drives them mad. Now, of course, Chatchee, BT and AI are really going to change the game on this, and the whole thing that we need to address on that side here and stuff.
Speaker 3Third reason they say we can't talk about cost and price as well.
Speaker 1I want my competitors to see it, which is completely ass-in-one because anybody is listening to this right now that's worth their salt. If I ask them, do you have a pretty decent sense of what your competitor's charge? You'd say, of course, we do. And so if you have a decent sense of what your competitor's charge, therefore means they have a decent sense of what you charge, this is the big secret non-secret everybody acts like nobody knows what everybody's charging and reality everybody's got a pretty decent sense. That's to what everybody else is charging. Besides that, your competitors have never paid your bills. So why in the world would you base your decisions of trust on what they are or are not doing? I mean, ultimately, the guiding light should always be the customer of the buyer. That's the guiding light, right? And we've got a lean into them. So like I said, I was the first swing pool company in the world that addressed this subject. And from that one article that I wrote in 2009, how much is the fiberglass pool cost? Just for my Virginia company alone, because we can track the numbers on this. We know that that one single article is generated over $35 million in sales, $35 million in sales. Now, I was also the first manufacturer of fools that put a pricing estimator online, which allowed people to build and price their pull. Now, everybody's told me, you can't do that as a manufacturer because you got it in dealer. They're going to set the in price and there's no way you can do it. I'm like, of course, I can do it. That's why it's called an estimator ding dong. It's not a quote tool. It's an estimator. And so, that revolutionized the business. I mean, you want to talk about taking off. massive explosion. And in fact, to this day, you know, because of the success I had there and because I saw where things were going, that's when I started price guide, which is a software that helps contractors build these estimators very quickly and easily and cost effectively, because we know the results and when the result is this, when somebody has an estimator on their website, assuming they show it the right way, you three to five extra leads. When you add it, just full stop, you three or five actually needs when you add an estimator to your site. If you have a Google Ads Facebook Ads campaign, if you want a three or fivex, once again, you have an estimator instead of a stupid landing page. You can take him to a stupid landing page and get a nine percent nine percentage conversion rate, or you can take them to an estimator and you're going to get a 40 to 60% conversion rate. Why would you not want a 40 to 60% conversion rate? It blows my freaking mind. Now, the other side to this though is where it gets most interesting. For the longest time, I thought the homeowner would force contractors, eventually to do this, and they're doing that to a degree, but do you know it's forcing it? It's AI. AI, which is taking over our world, whether we like it or not. By the way, when I talk about things, especially futuristic things, doesn't mean that I'm pumped about them. It means I accept them for what they are, and I don't allow my personal opinions to screw up smart business decisions. My job as a CEO is to understand where the market is and where the market's going. So I'm not going to complain about it. I'm going to make sure I stay in front of it. So that's why I'm all in on AI. All the time, especially AI visibility. because blue links and legacy Google are going to die. Whether anybody wants to admit that or not, I've told Google to their face, they're going to die and they know it's going to die. Because everybody at some point is going to realize, oh my gosh, there's a dramatically better way to find answers online and to get stuff done online than the stupid blue links whereby I don't even know if they actually have the answer. And so, how does AI judge who to recommend? Well, it's done through what we call trust signals and a trust signal is a specific and there's many specific elements where signals that I use is to measure whether or not you should be included in that best of list and a lot of people listening this right now I've searched for best contractor their town and the problem with that though is if you're doing that. On your own account, you're going to get skewed results. You can't use your own account people when you're doing that. But you need to be on that list of one of the best. Now also the problem is you're going to get varying results depending on what type of chat you'd be using, or using the advance, the not as advanced, or using the, you know, what type of clutter you're using. And it just doesn't matter. It's all, it's tougher now, it's tougher. But. But one thing that we're definitively seeing, which is becoming a core signal, as to whether or not AI recommends a company, is if they're willing to discuss pricing online. And the other side to this is an almost shut up. The other side to this is this, we're quickly entering the era where every homeowner is going to have an agent. And this sounds dystopian to a lot of people, but again, our opinions on whether or not it's dystopian doesn't matter. What matters is humans the way that I keep predicting the future so accurately when it comes to sales and marketing. is based on what I call the three F's of innovation. You always know something's going to stick or not based on the three F's. Here's the three F's. Number one, does the thing eliminate fear on behalf of the customer with the homeowner in this case? Does eliminate fear? If it does, it's probably going to stick. Number two, doesn't make it faster. If it makes it faster, it's probably going to stick. And number three, does it eliminate friction? If it makes it faster, if it eliminates friction and it reduces fear, it's a banger and it's going to stick. And so everything is always moving in that direction. And this is how you know legacy Google's gonna die. And AI Bay search is gonna be everyone's future and agents are gonna be their future because eventually you're gonna trust your agents. To go vet that, you know, who are the best roofing contractors near me and that agent's going to come back and here's the thing is the agent is on the roofing contractors website and can't find an estimator tool, they're not going to recommend that that roofing contractor they're just not going to do it mark my words mark my words and it's going to happen for pretty much everyone now where it's not as big of a deal the estimator if it's like. Service calls for HVAC units. That's an example of harder. Yes, I mean, it's like, there's something like you got a dog knows that. But if somebody needs a new HVAC system, you should have an estimator for that. Do you see the difference right full stop. You should have an estimator for that. Somebody needs a new roof. You should have an estimator for that, right. So these are the things you should no matter what though for all these, you should have a pricing page. We call it the perfect pricing page and AI is going to judge you. like in favor or against if you have a clear pricing page for each one of your product services that you offer, a pricing video for the same things that explains those factors I was talking about earlier, which drives it up, what drives it down, why shouldn't somebody's expensive, why are some companies achieve, and an estimator? Those are the majors that you need. I'll shut up now.
Speaker 4No, this is great. So I think when I, we met, it was about a year ago. Now, about a year ago now, Mark, is when I officially met you, got on a phone call, Chatted Tommy connected us. I know you and Tommy had some stuff, Tommy and our close. And this was the conversation we had, similar conversation, right? It was very much about this. I listened to podcast talk to you. We were starting to go down the path a little bit ourselves. And then it was like, all right, I like an awakening when I talked to you and felt this way. So I think I kind of felt this direction, but went this way with you is that when you hear this, people make the fear of like, well, Google is going to go away. Everything is going to go away. I believe that the idea is similar is that if you're not in the front of this, you're going to get erased. Right, so when people ask me about AI, I go, my bigger fear, and I think Chadie for me said this to you guys another couple of times, like people like, I want this for AI to do my dispatch. I'm like, you need to figure out how to make AI deliver leads for you in the future because you will disappear if you don't build the engine, right? So I urge you to say estimator tool, a couple other things, so maybe just reinforce like, what are the things you think will make sure that I don't get erased? And how do you feel about that statement? Is that feel pretty accurate to you?
Speaker 1Yeah, I think it's very accurate and a lot of people say, well, it's like, again, if you're going to be successful, as a business owner in 2026 and beyond, you've got to be able to change your opinions quickly. You got to be able to pivot quickly. You got to be involved quickly. You got to be able to let go of legacy ideas, stuff that was working for you before isn't necessarily going to work for you in the future. from the idea that Google Ads is going to be a thing in a couple years to me is just silly. Like, first of all, there's people are going to stop using legacy Google. So if they stop using legacy Google within a couple of years, All right, and everybody moves over to LLMs. Well, okay, are they going to have ads? Maybe, maybe not. We don't know. I mean, somebody might say, well, chat to BTS ads right now. They have ads on people that don't pay a subscription. I don't ever see an ad. If you're saying, and so it's like, if you as a contractor are completely dependent on Google ads right now to drive 25% of your business, You know, start planning for 25% of your business, we release your lead generation to not exist in a couple of years and plant accordingly. Like, what do we have to do? Now, one thing we have to do is we've got to be recommended by AI. And so there's certain things that you can do. By the way, I've got a tool that measures this. It's real powerful. I just came out with my version two of it. You can find it at AITrustignals.com AITrustignals.com. It's a banger of a tool in the V2 is awesome. We just made a lot of improvements to it. And so what you can, what you can do there is you can measure how likely AI is to recommend you, and it shows you what your flaws are and what you need to improve. And those are the trust signals I was talking about earlier. So an example of this, you should have a perfect pricing page. You should have an estimator. Another one that you should have as a contractor, very powerful, is we just call it the method of all review pages, or a review hub, if you will. Now, what is a review hub? Well, if you take a tool like chat should be T right now, A lot of contractors have obsessed about Google reviews over the last five to 10 years, right? I'm sure you guys have, you know, Chris and Chad, Erin, you have, well, there's just one problem. Chad, she beat to you, doesn't read any Google reviews. Because it can't, why? Because it doesn't have access to the Google reviews API. Now, is that always gonna be the case? probably not but that's the case today. That's why we see it constantly referencing stupid sites like Yelp, which drives us crazy as contractors because Yelp is where people go to dump on contractors. But hey, that's life and you better start living it. So now you say, okay, I've got to adjust accordingly. All right, so here's what you want to do. You want to create a review page of your site that shows how you're doing for a multiplicity of platforms. So you might on that page have a show your number of Facebook and average Facebook star reviews, same thing for Google, same thing for BBB, same thing for Angie, same thing for Yale, same thing for trust advisor, whatever it is. Then you want to show at least a handful of those reviews written in clear HTML that any like search engine can read, not in some funky widget that you got on a plugin on WordPress. I'm talking about an actual HTML that is readable. And so you want to make sure you have a handful of each. So you want, you know, six to 10 of your Google reviews, six to 10 of your Facebook reviews, all on one page. all on one page. You even want to talk about on that page some of the most common themes that your reviews have. You can break it down by area. So you might say we've got 55 reviews in this town. We've got, you know, 65 reviews in this town. All of it matters to the AI. because what AI loves to do is parse information quickly from one primary source. So if you can give AI everything that it wanted on that one page of your site in terms of reviews, you just saved a time, it's happy everybody wins. you've got to show it the right way. So that's the mother of all review pages. It's a banger. We've done a bunch now for different contractors, highly highly recommended. It works. And what happens is when you do this, you're going to quickly start to see that it will start to reference those reviews that it wasn't referencing before. Okay. So that's one page everybody on listen is got to have. Another page, everybody's listening, has Scott Hav, is an awards and recognition page. This is huge in-home improvement. You may have noticed that, Chachi Bitei, it loves to say, you know, they won the Better Homes in Garden, not out of, or, you know, 2025, and they won the Prado Homes for 2026, and all that, all that junk. So what you want to do is you want to create one mother of all awards page, and you want to talk about all the awards and recognition that you're company and visually collectively that you've received over the course of time. Now some of you and I say, I got no rewards. Awards. Okay, if not, it's no big deal. You can also potentially apply for some in your industry and I actually would now because AI is something that is really, I didn't care about it before. I care about it today so that's something that I'm doing playing the game today. So that's something that you want to create that page, Okay, so there's two pages now that I've given you outside of what would be considered a perfect pricing page. So that's three total that we want to do. By the way, you want a perfect pricing page for each major service that you offer, okay? So you have a multiplicity of services that are major to you. You're like four or five majors. You want to have four or five major perfect pricing pages. You don't just want to lump them all in one thing, separate them out, okay? And then a final page and there's others, of course, that you can create, but another one is this. Now when you create content online, you want that content to have a buy line. That buy line means where the article starts, there's a link that shows the author of that piece of content. And that link goes to the author's page. And on that author's page, you should have all their, essentially it's their bio, but it's their certifications, it's their industry experience, et cetera. And here's the reason why. Because when AI is looking at content, is looking at, let's say, 2, 10, 20 pieces. Let's say they are all the same piece of content, but one of them had a buy line from a true expert and we could see that the person was an expert based on the credentials on their expert page, their buy line page. Well, that one is going to get cited over the other articles that weren't cited because they weren't produced by a proven expert. So now every article on your site should have a byline to that subject matter expert that help produce that page. You know, you might like in the case of A.G., he might just everything might link back to his bio page, totally fine. If he is the primary subject matter expert for the company, that's really fine. But everybody should be doing that now. Those are three hacks. I can tell you your competitor haven't done it. I've done this a bunch. I know what works in terms of AI visibility. Those are all bangers and they work really, really well.
Speaker 3I got a question for you. So unbelievable information. I paused while I was writing so much. I was like, I think this is being recorded. I can probably just go back and listen to the things that I didn't write down. But you know, hey, we're all learning. I guess my question is this. So like I'm sitting here. I'm like, yes, 100% do this, do this, do this, do this, do this. So we have this perfect buying page. We have the pricing guide. You've got all of that laid out. The customer goes to it. They find you on AI. They find you wherever they click. Yep. Sounds good to me. Tell me a little bit about the transition to like, eventually you're going to probably have to talk to somebody. Someone's going to have to go out to the house. We've experimented a bunch with sending it to like a virtual sales rep who then kind of goes through all the details. Tell me what you want. So on and so forth. I can build this for you, which has worked pretty well. Do I send somebody out? Like tell me about if I'm a contractor? Like what? What's the next step? Like I've build all this stuff. How do I actually sell it?
Speaker 1Yeah, this is great. I'm obsessed with this. I've got a sales and leadership training company. I wrote a book that's it's very easy to read. It's it's based on a system that I came up with of effective communication called the Pathfinder's Way. And this particular one is the four pillars
Speaker 3home improvement sales communication.
Speaker 1And I'm a huge believer in the power of effective questions to create really, really deep trust and connection with the homeowner. You know, it's interesting, I talk to a lot of sales reps and I say the word discovery and what's wild in home improvement, most sales reps don't use the word discovery when it comes to their sales process, which blows my mind, by the way, blows my mind, because most go straight to pitch. Now, a couple things, And I know most people know this, but speed to lead has never been more important. Remember, faster friction, friction free, remove the fear. Well, part of that is speed to lead. And I used to tell people that, you know, we want to always file the five-minute rule with any lead, which was basically, we know that if you reach out, if you get contacted by a lead, we need to reach out within five minutes, because if you do, there's a 900% they've done the studies, 900% increase in your likelihood of having a conversation with that lead. And of course, the first contractor that has a conversation, not an email conversation, an actual conversation with the lead wins the deal roughly 65 to 70% of the time. So, speed to lead is a big deal. Five minutes is not fast enough anymore. Now it needs to be immediate now needs to be about 30 seconds right and I'm sure you know you all are all doing this this is why so many are using call centers and the like because we got to be fast now do I think there's a really strong future with AI and AI voice absolutely. The one thing where I say AI voice is very strong right now like right now is when it's a clear cut hey I want to set an appointment people will normally choose AI for that over talking with a human but if the person the homeowner has questions they're going to choose talk to a human over talk to AI right so there is the difference. So we've seen this split tested in different markets stuff. It's really interesting. I do think eventually we're going to get to a place where homeowner just doesn't care. Homeowner is just going to want their questions answered. And they're going to want to do it fast. Sometimes, in a lot of them are going to choose AI for it. And the better your AI gets, I would not hesitate to use it. As long as it's trained really, really well. And it's certainly getting to that place where voice AI is just getting fricking extraordinary. Now, the industry, though, I think very much effects what comes next. And what do I mean by that? Well, let me give you an example. If I'm selling swimming pools, could I be in a race to get out to the home? Yes, yes, I could. And I want to be that everyone to the home. Unless, unless, like in my case, I have a showroom. Still, to this day, We know that showroom sales blowaway in home sales. If, if they're compared against each other from a closing rate perspective, but you can't always do showroom selling for the roof, like for the roof, you can't do a showroom sell. It's like we're not gonna do it. But for the remodel, we're gonna do a showroom sale. And here's the reason why. It all comes back to sunk cost fallacy. Sun cost faulty basically means the more time somebody spends invested in you, your stuff, the more likely they are to try to find a way to do business with you. In other words, they're going to try to justify doing business with you. So for example, if somebody does a pricing estimator on your website, they're interacting with you because they've interacted with you. Sun cost goes up because Sun cost goes up. They're actually now going to try to psychologically justify why they should use you. They're in more invested. You've gone on more dates. Well, if somebody comes out to your showroom, the sunk costs go through the roof versus versus you going out to the house. But I've written a book on how to sell in the home. I'm a huge proponent of it. But on certain types of sales, the showroom sale is magical because the sunk costs factor is like, you know, when somebody comes to our pool park, when somebody comes to our pool park, closing rates are about 80%. So in other words, we've got a park with five swimming pools in the ground. It's just really great experience. I mean, it's a wet dream. It's beautiful. They love it. Right? 80% closing rate. If we go out to the house knowing all the things that we like all of our skills and all that stuff and they don't go to the show room, best bet for most sales reps, summer dream 40 to 50%. That's best. That's our best guys. You see what I'm saying? Now, sometimes though, if it's going to take them forever to get out to the, you know, if, if, if that's going to kill the deal, we're not going to, we're not going to try to do that. So in some industries, I've pushed at some industries, I don't push that. Now, I will say that I am really, really obsessed once you do before you get, let me say one more thing before you get to know. I think every homeowner has the right to know who's walking up their driveway before they walk up their driveway. And I think if they don't know who's walking up their driveway shame on you as a company. Especially now, you know, you see these crazy stories of people dressing up as contractors and robbing homes and this is nuts man. What's out there. So, at this point, I believe When a salesperson is assigned that the homeowner should get a video, welcome video from the rep. Now, the thing about this is the rep could make this video one time and then the call center or the marketing team sends this out before hands is, hey, you've got to, you know, you've got to call with Aaron today at five o'clock. I know you want to know who's going to be walking up your driveway when he looks like here's an introductory video. This is going to give you a sense a chance to get to know and very quickly 90 seconds. You're going to love it. Okay, so boom, we got that. Now, all the sudden now, I here in Knoxland, or you look just like you did in the video, hey, you're the guy, they already recognized you, kids are, you know, hey, mom, dad, you know, the guy on the videos here, that's what we want, right? We want to do that. We want them to feel like they know us, they know our voice, they know our face before we walk up the drive. I think that should be table stakes. Now, when we get in the home, and this is where I think we have a major problem in the industry. And this is one of the biggest reasons I started my sales in the leadership training company because I think we're horrendous at asking questions And I also think much of the selling process, listen, I'm just going to say something that some might find offensive. I'm okay offending because I believe it's more important to tell the truth with with with with with candor and love and that is that many people in the home improvement space wouldn't want their own sales reps going into the home and selling to their 70 year old mother. They wouldn't want it. And that's a problem if you wouldn't want your own sales reps selling to your 70 year old mother. And so do you have a sales methodology that you're proud of that you can watch and look at and say, man, I'm so proud of this. That doesn't mean that you don't use urgency and it doesn't mean you don't have one call close. It just means that you don't have to do it with manipulation or nefariousness in order to be incredibly effective. And we have found, if a salesperson learns how to be extraordinary with discovery in the way they ask questions, the way they connect, they can then be really, really world-class and have a much higher closing rate. Typically, 10 to 20 percent higher than they were having previously. I have talked to people that have made exits in the industry before, like big players, that's said, you know, on hindsight, Mark, I'm pretty embarrassed about the way we sold. I know a lot of contractors, the only negative reviews they get is when somebody has a bad experience with sales team, because they name a buy anything from them, but they had a really bad experience with the sales team. So I believe there's a happy medium in there that we can do a better a better job of in the industry. And one last thing I'll say about selling in the home. It's interesting because if you look at a lot of sales books, and if you look at a lot of the training that happens in the industry, But what we have found is 80% of the time should be spent on how to open. Because how to open, even though that's only 20% of the sales process, that's going to dictate 80% of the sales process, 80% of the actual sale. And so if you become extraordinary with your opening, your clothes becomes very, very natural. Most sales people think, I got to focus on how to close, how to close. But if you focus on how to open magic happens, I know that was a big riff. I'm sorry about that, but these are just deeply passionate.
Speaker 4This is what we want. We love this. The people have heard enough from us. We want to hear from you. So when you say, I want to follow up on the very last statement, 80% on the opening. What does that actually mean? What do you mean by that state?
Speaker 1That means if you don't take a pie chart and say, what influence is your ability to close a deal? 80% of your thought should be on, it's 80% of like the influence is the discovery, the questions we ask in the conversation we have with the homeowner, not on the close itself. But so many think, oh, I've got these awesome closing techniques. You know, it was so, it's funny to me. I met with a really advanced sales team just the other day. And they were, they were good. They were very, very good. It came from the world of roofing. And I asked a simple question is what's your response when someone says, you know, I appreciate the quote, but I feel like you guys are more expensive. And his response match, what I see from almost everybody that's been trained a lot of these legacy systems. His response was basically a response that makes the homeowner feel almost stupid for asking the question, okay? Whereas the right response to when somebody says, You know, why are you guys so expensive? The right response, the lyric is only one response. Is when you say this. Expensive. Tell me about that. That's the response. Because you don't know what they mean by expensive until they explain what they mean by expensive. We make all these ass options that we understand what they're saying when we don't know. So your competitors was a lot less. Yeah, but no, no, no, no. A lot less, please tell me more about that. That's it. That's the response. And I'm worried that you guys might not have the ability to pull this off. The ability to pull it off, please. I'm all ears. Tell me more about that. It's all the same response. But most salespeople do not know how to do that. They defend, defend, defend. Or they know how to ask this perfectly manipulative question that makes you feel lower than because you just got like, ha ha, gotcha, you know? It's like, and I hate those. And these are the types of things you see highlighted on social media like, well, someone says this, then you answer with this. that hurts energy, it hurts connection. And that's what prevents someone from really opening up to you and being fully honest with you. You know, I wish we had a ton of time to talk about this very thing, but it's like, I'm just so deeply passionate about helping people realize that you can sell in a way that has very high closurates. High, one call close, and you can be proud of. And that you're, you're gonna, you could watch from afar and say, in that a beautiful thing, but I'm looking out right there, that anybody, even a homeowner could watch and say, wow, I loved the way you sell.
Speaker 4Yeah, I think that's conversation we've had over last couple of years. There's been a lot of the traditional trainings of coaching. And there's good foundations to that, but this is true. Everybody's already had this training and every time they talk to somebody, a customer now, it just feels like it's the same person showing up to how same the same things, right? And I'm very much, on board with us to like stop it, stop all this nonsense, stop all the objection stuff, let's just have the just be authentic, be a great person, go out there and help a customer, and just do what you said, tell me more about what, why, why do you think we're more expensive? What is it that you we could do?
Speaker 1Yeah, yeah, it is a conversation. Assuming you know what they are freaking intending with their words. That's the problem with our marriages, that's the problem with our relationship with our kids, and that's certainly the problem with our relationship with the prospects out there. And one of the biggest reasons if I'm, if I may, by may. And by the way, I hope everybody reads this book. If you get a chance, you can find it at pathfindersway.com, against pathfindersway.com, and it really gives you these four pillars where you can build extraordinary trust and connection with the homeowner. But one of the things that is very clear, we've watched well over a thousand sales calls, we know why homeowner say we need to think about it. Listen, 90% of the time when homeowner says we need to think about it. They actually already know how they feel. You'll know that, right? We all know that. The problem is, they're just, they don't want to be honest. Well, why don't they want to be honest? Well, the immediate answer is, well, they're not a trust a salesperson enough to agree that's true, but do you know the biggest reason why homeowners aren't honest with salespeople, anyway, want to make a guess why they're not honest? Biggest number one reason.
Speaker 5Oh, like conflict.
Speaker 1Yes. Yeah. They don't like conflict and they don't want to hurt the salesperson's feelings. So in order to overcome this, you actually have to teach homeowners that it's okay to call your baby ugly. And this is the thing that almost nobody does well in the industry. Now, to a very small degree, the sandwich system teaches this because they say, you know, you should have an up front contract, but they do it terribly and it's not very effective in my opinion to what it could be. It's a very half-hearted effort. Because when we are talking to reps about how to create that powerful relationship with the homeowner, let's say I was talking to Aaron, it might sound something like this. And by the way, somebody's gonna hear this and say, oh, that's not, I couldn't say that naturally. That's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's road to there's no way my team could do that. It's like, I'm gonna call you BS on that because it just means you're not willing to train. And that's not okay. Right? It's like all things that are worth it, require work and require training to the point where they become natural. So you learn something from the script so that you can make it your own. That's the whole idea. The script first, you make it your own and become natural while hitting the main points. So if I'm going to do, we call the honest agreement at the beginning of the conversation with the homeowner. You can do it in any, it doesn't matter the industry, right? But if I like Aaron, if I was meeting with you, I'd say something like, you know, listen, getting a new roof is a big deal. I mean, we're going to spend the rest of our lives underneath that structure that's above us. And I know we want this debate to be a great experience. And I want it to be a great experience for you. I know you do too. Now here's my commitment to you. And that is this. As long as we know each other and honestly, I hope that's a long time. I'm going to be very candid with you always. I'm always going to be honest with you. In other words, you know, as we're talking today, Aaron, if there's at any point, I feel like there's there's something that you're suggesting that I think is a bad idea. I am going to let you know because I know that's what you would want me to say.
Speaker 3And that's my commitment to you. Is that fair? You say,
Speaker 1Now, then I'm going to say, now, at the same time, Aaron, you're going to notice I'm not like a lot of the sales reps you've talked to. In the example of this, I'm going to ask you questions that you haven't been asked by other people. I'm going to get you to really think about stuff because the more detail and the more thought you can put in those questions with me. The better the answers, the better the result. So I really want you to push through those questions with me and along those same lines. Here's my big ask for you. Is that just like I'm going to be candid with you that you are incredibly candid with me. Now let me give you an example of this. Today, if I show you some, let's say examples of shingles and you don't like them and you think they're butt ugly, what do you need to tell me?
Speaker 4that they're butt ugly.
Speaker 1Exactly, that's exactly right. Now, the moment you tell me they're butt ugly, I'm gonna smile. Because now we know exactly what you don't like. And that is good. See, you're never gonna hurt my feelings by being very, very honest. And it's only gonna help us prevent making aim mistakes. So Erin, for this conversation today and any other in the future, can you always be 100% candid with me?
Speaker 2Absolutely.
Speaker 1And now we've got a true verbal agreement, but you notice I almost did a role play there with you teaching you how to call my baby ugly. Do you know what percentage of sales reps do that? None. Do you know how many? How many, though, say, yes, we establish honesty and candidate on the front end. All of them say we do that. You don't do it unless you teach them how to call the baby ugly. And that's part of that 80% you're talking about that's right that's part of the 80% that's exactly exactly right Chris it's that beginning where you create a nor with them where they I've had people go through our openings with the homeowner and the homeowner mainly says you're not like anybody I've ever talked to you. You should oftentimes hear from the homeowner you should there's magical phrases that homeowners will say here's some magical phrases nobody's ever told me that before nobody's ever asked me that. Huh, I can't believe I'm telling you this. I've only known you for 10 minutes, but I feel like I've known you for a lifetime. It's like this is the stuff that you should often hear. If a homeowner doesn't cry to you occasionally, you probably not at the level you should be, homeowner should cry to you often.
Speaker 4You've got a couple of guys that call me up, they talk to customer, they're trying. They'll face time you with the customers, one of the good things they love is face time and me with customers, all the time having conversations with them.
Speaker 1Totally an old number of poor. So I agree. That means you've made that really special connection. So, you know, these are examples, and obviously we could go on and on with this, but I think there's such a beautiful bar that we can raise. I don't think we have to manipulate to be extraordinary. Instead, I think it comes down to creating extraordinary candor and caring in the home. And once we do that, man, it's just they instead of saying we need to think about it. They say things like, all right, all right.
Speaker 0You know what really what we said?
Speaker 1Just to tell you the thing, well, I just gotta be honest, I hate your design to tell me about that. So you know what I mean, they see nobody wants to tell the sales person the rep, the designer. I hate your design because they know they spent time on it and there's pride in it. And so to your point, Chris, they avoid the conflict.
Speaker 4Alright, this is going to different direction with sales and I think people need to hear this. more than ever because of just understanding that the legacy way is not the future, right? It's not, it's just not the way people want to be interacted with and I want to be manipulated and I want to be all these other things and you might say between manipulation and persuasion, I get the two, there's a difference, you can do another thing.
Speaker 1I get it, there's a fine line, a fine line, but but again, I really believe that we can be proud, truly proud of the way we sell and we can do it with honesty and we can do it with integrity and we can do it with high closing rates and to your point in the future like the days are coming to a quick close where somebody will talk to your call center. And the call center says, I'm sorry, we just can't give you any pricing at all. And they're like, what do you mean you can't, you can't give me any to feel the call center. Like, no, no, I'm sorry, we just can't do that. We don't even know. We have no clue actually in fact. And then the homeowners just like, I hate you. I want you to die, right? That's what they're thinking. They're just so frustrated. Those days are coming to a close. I'm telling you, an AI is going to force it, which is why on the front end, on your marketing side, you got to be more transparent. You're going to need an estimator, use a tool like priceguide.ai, obviously I'm biased, but I think that's the best one out there. Check your trust signals. That's a big deal. Fix those things. Get that re, mother of all review pages that review hub. Get that awards and recognition hub. You know, get that byline page where you talk about your credentials and your expertise as the author right speed to lead more than ever 30 seconds right make sure the homeowner feels like they know their face their voice before they walk up the driveway that's our responsibility to make them feel safe right and then create extraordinary connection when we get in the home learn the art of deep discovery.
Speaker 4I love it. This is great. I know we're coming towards a little bit and we'll be respectful of your time, Marcus, I know you're scheduled to, but the day the day that I called you schedule, you guys sent me something in the mail, a little book and then I got this, it sits on my desk every day I look over at it to remind me of this cool. So I have this here that the whole part of a disruptive right being disruptive and a lot of what you're doing the endless customers around that model and I I think what we'll do Curse if we can is in the links are in the in the but in the pocket will put your website the books all the things I have have access to those things so
Speaker 5Oh, yeah, for sure. And I just want to say a couple of things before he closed out because we got four months as far as I'm concerned. And I want to make sure I leverage it. By the way, Marcus like done so many of these podcasts. I know I'm wearing well into the deep into the hundreds. I literally just felt like I took a little class. I shouldn't hear that guy got me energized to go into things. So thank you for that because I genuinely just sat here and took more notes. questions I got to follow up with a roofing team on what are we doing where we've been and some you chat took some of those as well for both Peter and Brothers and for a roofing company, but just in general, you know, from your, the way that you're thinking from a sales process, our things I thought about like years ago and I used to, and then these guys have heard me present on these six peas of marking out, I always say, you know, price placement promotion. Yeah, I had price in there and I'm like, oh, it's always the most, you know, And that live one is everybody's don't mind what's put price on there. I'll be talking about it for a fucking decade at least at least and I've been a fan of it because I used to listen to the phone calls, you know, from our agency and here that the clients at the customer would lose because it wouldn't even give a ballpark. And so, so there's refreshing to hear you say that, but even with the adoption of AI and all the I mean you can you can get a ballpark. So it's just how you who you're going to let dictate what the ballpark is, but I love I really would just did almost like I wish I could just keep going because there's such a marketing piece of this that we didn't even really hit.
Speaker 1So I do want I'm gay for part two whenever y'all want I ain't like whenever you want we can roll out part two. I'm not like that because this is a lot of fun you guys are are fun and I got to say Chris Hell yeah for ringing the bell bro and for you like being you know fresh out of that and being here with passion and I just man I just so like deeply respect that and I can't wait for the day is so coming where AI is going to solve this cancer problem And you know, and it's going to make sure that, you know, we are going to eradicate cancer. We are going to eradicate it and AI is a catalyst to that. And people need to remember that when you're, you know, when when you're really frustrated and you're here all these myths about AI, man, I'll tell you the curious for these diseases are coming. They're around the corner. If those that are informed know it, it's already happening. It's already happening. And I'm so excited about our future for the world,
Speaker 5I agree. Thank you. And you don't want to know the shitty part of all this Marcus is how how tough is it to get throat cancer when you're a bodgaster.
Speaker 1That's that's the irony right there.
Speaker 5and the good news is high success rate, great ring the bell cancer free, how will you thank God? Worst case is it's the most narrowliest treatment. And now I'm, you know, I'm paying the price for it. But listen, like this was such a great, great welcome back episode. And I thank you for that, like genuinely interested and so much you shared. You shared so much stuff on your two that you just kind of gave Like, easily five simple things, I might be able to say simple sounds simple to me because I understand the website side of it or the website of it in the LM side of it. But you gave five easy things I think can, if somebody just takes and tries to figure out those five things, they can progress themselves so far, regardless of whether they're HVAC plumbing, electrical roofing, no matter. So thank you for that. I appreciate your passion for it man. I'm like, you got like just a way that you the way you do, I can see why you've had so much success because even though you teach it is like inspirational. So thank you for that.
Speaker 4Yeah, I just want to follow that up and say, look, tell the listeners doing stuff like when I'm not Marcus over a year ago, I've just started implementing all the things. You know, I'm not overthinking it, you know, we perfectly all the way there know we work with some of this training programs. That's up to you if you want to mention those Marcus, but up. We work with some of the programs there. We work with this team. I've reached out to Marcus recently and said, hey, Marcus, you know, just beat me up here. Give me some set feedback. I don't, you know, I like that stuff. I like this is a cold truth. We got some work to do, but I believe in all of this and we're working really hard. Love is a enthusiasm and his vision for where this is going. And I think, I believe in it. I think many people should have been preaching that a little bit around and Marcus, I really appreciate taking the time to get on here today and look forward to spending some more time with you on a repeat. We will make sure we're supporting all the books and all the stuff you got coming up, man. And I just think people got here and that's the reason why I got them on here. I knew you were legit from when we met and did stuff and then we've got to work with your team and spend time on some of the areas and implement things that And you have to commit to the endless customer is a endless process too, right? It's not a, I'll put this thing on and we're done, right? This is a commitment. You got to get the team. You got to invest in the people. You got to be okay working through some of the bugs. If you want to self-implement, that's fine. Totally get that. You want to get some coaching, Marcus has programs that you can do that with. So I'll let him share if he wants to on that. But again, this we've been doing it for a year and we even had Marcus the man himself come here with us in the shade a little bit, right? And it's a process, right? Marcus, I mean, I think people understand this is, this is you're thinking into the future the next three years, what's happening? Are you going to be prepared? Are you investing in this? Are you ready for the change? You can't be waiting to the last minute to do this, right? This is those things you've got to start building that muscle now.
Speaker 1Yeah, it's a fusion. It's not going to future. It's not going to wait. It's, I feel so much urgency for every listen is this and I hope you feel it too. It's real urgency. It's not fake urgency game. This is like time is changing so fast. But yeah, listen guys, you can check out the stuff I've talked to you about today. Just go to marketsharedend.com. It's my website for, you know, anything to do with speaking, but pathfinders way.com is you can get that that free book on the four pillars of breakthrough home improvement sales communication. price guy dot AI if you want to get an estimator and triple your leads really quickly. But this was great gang. Appreciate you guys. God bless. Let's keep going. All right. I am Marcus. Let's talk to you soon. Thank you.
Speaker 5Yep. And I'll say this. We'll make sure to include all our stuff in the show notes for you two, Marcus, and on YouTube, and all of our fun stuff. Because obviously, I would want people to have access to all these stuff, right? Like that's kind of a point of doing this in the first place. But I'm actually going to close this thing out and chat unless you
Speaker 3Yeah, thank you so much. I remember when Chris texted us and I was like, Holy shit, like the guy that's who's good. I'm here. That'd be awesome. So love all your stuff and thanks so much. Cool.
Speaker 5Thanks. Yeah, until our listeners, I'm actually going to close us out in the old way. You know why? Because I feel like I kind of read, you know, this is my mantra over these last, you know, few months. I'm going to say Marcus gave you a lot of ideas. The last things that you can do. But you got to do everything, but you got to do something, no zero days.
Speaker 0What's the password?
Speaker 2Don't talk about it, me about it!
