Tradie Sales Hacks with Ryan Tuckwood - Ep 265

Are you a busy trade business owner and the phone's ringing off the hook? The phone is your primary lead source. And in today's episode of the podcast, we're joined by Ryan Tuckwood from Swish Sales Coaching that will give you a framework to answer the call better and convert way more inbound leads. Welcome to the Upscale Business Podcast where we help trade these build better businesses. My name's Kirk Neal. And today we have wonderful special guest, Ryan Tuckwood, and I also joined by Mitch. G'day, Mitch. Ryan, how are you? Now I'm fantastic. Thank you. Byron, so I'm happy. Yeah, come down to the studio. Thank you so much for your time. Ryan, how would you describe what you do in the market? Well, that's a hell of a hell of an open question. What do we do? I got asked this recently about what our mission was. So I'll just rephrase your question slightly. And historically our mission was to change the perception of sales people around the globe. And then the secondary question was, do you genuinely believe you're going to be able to do that? And my instinct was no. I don't actually think we're going to change the perception of sales people around the globe. I believe we can change the perception of sales for the people that we interact with. I don't think we're going to be able to get everybody to change the perception of a thing. But as I really sat in that question, I realized what we're doing is giving a voice to people that for some reason have inadvertently lost their voice. They've got a talent. They've got a gift. They've got a good business. They're doing right by people. But they don't know how to articulate their value. And I think that's what we help people do. That's amazing. Obviously, we work with a lot of trades. And there are a lot of stereotypes and perceptions that the market have of trades people as well. So I think there's a lot of synergy between your mission and inadvertently what we help people do as well. We're changing that perception of how they turn up as people in society. So yeah, it's really powerful. Do you think that as you change someone's own belief and perception of themselves, that essentially will ripple out and then that could lead to the external doing them in a different way? I think it's the only way. Yeah, I think without that internal identity shift, there's no way you're going to be able to convey it to the market. It's interesting. So we've been going for 11 years, as you guys know. When we first started, we were training coal collars for one of a bit of phrase. That was my background's engineering in the UK. And then I came over here, fell into a call center. So disproportionately, initially, we were coaching coal collars. And now 11 years in, 42% of our members are not in a direct transactional role. They're in-- they are in trades. They're in HR. They're in admin. They're in government, whatever. But the common denominator is they don't feel like they're a salesperson. And they don't want to be seen as a salesperson. And then by default, what they do is project that energy on the market. Why do you think people don't want to be seen as a salesperson? Because-- and I asked the question-- because we talk about, I personally believe that one of the most fundamental skills that business owners need to learn is the ability to sell. I think that's a really important skill set. And yet, it's like, we resist that space so heavily. I don't want to be a salesperson. I don't want to do that. Why do you think? So you guys come to the big conference in October. Do you see Jess Cameron? Remember, Jess, when she said, everything that we don't do is to avoid emotion that we don't want to experience. Everything we don't do is to avoid an emotion we don't want to experience. So I don't think it's we don't want to be seen as a salesperson. We don't want the emotional response to being seen as a per salesperson. So I don't want people to think that I'm a scumbag. I don't want people to think that I'm manipulative, that I'm a con artist, and then I dress like this, and don't help myself. So I think you have to really know who you are as a human being to remove that fear in the first place. Because if you don't, there's a weird paradox where the less trained you are, the more sales you sound. So traits people in particular that we train, they're great on the tools, they know their stuff, but then they're saying the obvious sales lines, such as watch your budget. I'm just following up, just touching base, just circling back around. So they're saying words that actually go, "Hey, yes, I'm a trader, but I'm also selling you." And they don't know they're saying that. So the less trained they are, the more salesy they sound, and then they feel like they're in a sales conversation, the resistance keeps compounding, and then people fall out of the industry for whatever else, other reasons. And society's tuned into those salesy triggers, because they don't know they are though. Okay, yep. Do you feel like you're doing all the things, but still not seeing real growth? Is your competition thriving while you're stuck? Then, do you fucking lead Jen? Here's the truth, lead Jen is king. If you don't have a solid strategy, you're leaving money on the table. At upscale business coaching, we help service-based businesses build powerful lead generation systems with proven strategies, personalized coaching, and the exact steps to turn prospects into paying customers. Book a free strategy call today, and let's create a lead Jen system that actually works. Because if you're not bringing in any leads, are you even doing lead Jen? Go to the show notes, find a link, and book in a session. Let's make this happen. And that's what's interesting is that it's a pattern. It's something that we've been conditioned as a market for decades and centuries, and to be fair, like most salespeople that I've met in the last 11 years are good people. But there's a lot of salespeople that I've met in the last 11 years that are the scumbags. So it is merited in part. There's a lot of people out there just trying to take advantage of people. So when you get that good person, let's say they are, like the person I was thinking about as I was driving here is a guy called Rodney Frampton. He owns Frampton Builders. Fantastic Chippy. Been with me for five years in our programs. Such a good human. To his core is, I don't know if you would have seen him on the other side. Such a beautiful human. But didn't know how to articulate his value to the market. And when he first came to us, he's doing car ports and small renters for 10 grand. And this week he's quoting up for a $1.7 million job. Just because he believed that, hold on, it's OK. I don't need to become someone I'm not. I just need to learn how to articulate my words a little bit better and how to articulate my value. So yeah, the market is conditioned. They recognize patterns. And we do it by accident because we're not trained. Yeah, I think the market is conditioned. There's stereotypes for a reason. And that exists really strongly in the trade. It's like there's cliche stereotypes with trades. Messy, they don't turn up. They're unreliable. You don't accidentally end up with that. Like there has to be a pattern that has existed for a period of time to condition a societal norm that is like, OK, that's how expectation of trade is. And so I see that as a way we coach guys. I see that as a great opportunity to stand out. It's like if you know what people are expecting. You know the negatives that they're expecting. So there's a great opportunity to go hard the other way. Yes. And create a well moment for someone. I think it must be the same in sales. There's a way that you can go hard the other way away from the cliches and create a really well moment for your customer that they feel really connected and really supported. I think what's interesting. And I'll try and keep it to your particular audience is there's knowing what the market is thinking. And then there's dealing with it proactively or reactively. And what I find is a lot of these good people, they deal with it reactively. So people go, oh, well, you know what, you trade is light. You're always late. And then you go, well, I won't be late. It's too late because that person has already verbalized their concern, which means their sales defences are high, which reduces your chance of making a sale or getting the job. So we need to learn how to bring in their concerns, which are often valid. Their fears, their intentions before they get to verbalize it. Because when we verbalize it, they disown it. When they verbalize it, they own it. So that's the skill is bringing to the table the fears before they get to bring it to the table. And those fears manifest as objections and hesitations in sales, yeah? Yeah, delays, time stalls, partner objections, whatever it may be, going out and getting multiple other quotes. And all of a sudden, you've just got to race to the bottom from a price point, which is never the game you want to be playing. So what is some, let's talk action points. Like things that they could actually do to do that. What are the simple, let's call it three. So give me, give me one of the most common objections you'd find with your, your guys. In the actual sales space, to my partner. Or just, yeah, in the sales space, or just as a stereotype in the industry. They're ripping me off. OK, so I might say, if I know 90% of people are thinking that, right, they're just like, I don't know why my head went towards a mechanic. And we got some mechanic, because you don't know how-- There we go. There's no vetting. Or real estate, right? I assume 90% of them are going to rip me off before I even have a conversation. What I would say as the, as the tradee on the other end is, hey, look, if you're not thinking this, you should be. And then I would mention whatever the, whatever the stereotype is. If you're not concerned about getting ripped off when engaging somebody of services like mine, you should me, right? You need to make sure that you go and vet. You need to make sure you go and do your research. I'm telling them what to do. What that does inadvertently is build trust credits by showing that I'm so confident that you're not going to find anything. You know what I mean? I don't need to say, trust me. The fastest way to stop somebody trusting you is to say, trust me. It's like telling your partner to calm down. So the things in you-- Or can I be honest with you? Yeah, which is metatalk in itself. They can I be honest with you? It was up in line for the last eight minutes. So it's like peel back the curtain. Like the thing that you're trying to avoid actually go there. Yes, it's interesting. So I did this. This happens to me. I reckon 2012, this would have been this guy on the phone. I used to get 10% if I opened a deal and 10% if I closed the deal. So I would open and close because I wanted 20% of the deal. And this was a $25,000 sale I was making over the phone. And the guy said to me, well done, before I pay, what do you get out of this? And without even thinking, I said, well, I'll get 20%. And he goes, I don't think you'd say that. Well, thanks for being honest with me. So how do I pay? And I was like, oh, OK, all right. So then I started just tell people what commission I get. I just started to bring it to the table. And then a few years later, one of my other sales coaches, which is a loose term for him, it said to me, why are you bringing objections to the table? I said, I'm not bringing the objection to the table. It's already there, it's just silent. It's like the stereo type. They're already thinking it, but if I bring it to the table, I'm comfortable with it. If they don't bring it to the table, they'll take it to somebody else outside. They'll talk to their partner, their uncle, somebody down the pub, who knows nothing about your business or your trades background or your quality. And they'll go, now they're just ripping you off. Don't use them. Use my mate toning. And then you lose deals to people that are probably going to then provide a substandard service. Yeah, so just because it's not being said, doesn't mean it's not there. And you know it. Yeah. So this is where we're going to use data, right? So if we're not collecting data on a day-to-day basis, so for as I know that if we get a corporate client, their biggest concern disproportionately is how do I get my whole team engaged? Right, I know that's going to come up because we've been doing it for 11 years. So it's going to come up at some stage. So during our discovery phase, we'll say, hey, if you're not thinking this, you should be. How are your team-- we're going to get all of your team engaged. And then we do an intentional negative. We go, firstly, you won't get all the team engaged. And then we go, how many people do you go on your team? So we get some qualification information. And you go 10. We go, OK, well, there's probably 20, 30% of them. Two or three of them already that you know won't bother engaging in this. And then you'll smirk and laugh and I'll go, and now you're thinking about them. But of the other seven, and now I can focus on the positive. And you've also built relatability. It's exercise professional credibility in a really passive way, where it's like, oh, I feel comfortable. This guy knows the industry knows exactly what my team's going to be like, without me guessing. And you haven't made the show about you either. It's not like, well, I know this because of this. It's like, that was really silky and quite delicate in the way that it was presented so that it felt really normal. And it's truth, right? It's not-- and that's what I say, sales always is. It's telling your truth better. And a lot of tradespeople-- I was on the tools. I was an engineer for eight years. I know what it's like to go through trade school to learn on the job and work. I was welding. I was a tool maker. Like, it's hard work. You do all this work to them because somebody that's going to rip you off. Like, it's demoralizing. So we've got to learn to tell our truth better, because it give ourselves the best chance of winning the job for the right reasons. I think it's so powerful to sit in that space. If I think of the traditional space that I'd heard that in, it was the obstacle verse objection. So don't allow it to get to the point where it becomes an objection. Just bring the elephant to the front. And just it's a part of the pitch. It's a part of the conversation so that they're not throwing it out you. Because then you're just playing tennis back and forth for two people just, I don't think any sales work in that space. No, it doesn't. As they verbalize it, it just reaffirms to them that it's a concern. As you bring it to the table, you're almost saying that you should be concerned about this and then they'll go, internally, they'll go, well, don't tell me what to be concerned about. So they almost kind of dismiss it themselves. So when I say, look, if you're not worried about this, you should be. And now what? I'm not overly. I don't actually adopt it then, because I didn't bring it there. Now they say, they've removed it. It doesn't become this thing that they're sitting there thinking about while you're talking. No, that's done. It's faster. We were just talking about making a compilation of videos a second ago. I could probably get a compilation of my sales calls. And when I transition towards my clothes, and I would say, is there anything else that you want to share with me before we even think about taking the next steps forward? And I would say 90% of the time, probably even 95% of the time, I would get, no, you've kind of answered all my questions. But they didn't have any questions, because I answered their questions with my questions. And also, you know that response is coming. You've done it so many times. You're like, I know they're not going to have any questions, but you don't miss that part, because it shows a level of like deliberate nature. I've got to go through this gate to get them to qualify that. I've done a really good job of answering all their questions. And it's a micro acknowledgement on their part. When they say, no, I've got no other questions. It's a micro acknowledgement they've done internally for them as well. I need, what I got taught was back in the day, boiler room environment was to assume the sale. So, right, what we're going to do from here is this and just lead the way. And then you'd get questions. So, it's almost like, I've opened the gate. I've stepped through it and they're still on the other side. Now I have to come back again. So, it causes like an unconscious friction, whereas when I ask you, is there anything else that I should have asked you or you want to share with me before we even think about? I didn't say we're going to do it. I said before we even think about the next steps forward. I'm like, no, I think you answered everything all the way throughout. All right, they've just said we're done. Now we just walk through the gate together. It's a good analogy. I like the gate. Process is so important in the sales space. I find with our client base a lot of them are trying to go from A to Z as opposed to moving through and then actually getting to the point of when it is time for selling. Yes. I understand the whole thing is selling, but actually the end component of now we're going to have a conversation about whether this is a yes or a no. I think part of that is they feel so uncomfortable with selling that they want it to be over really fast. They'll do all this other stuff and then just go, but this is why for me, like traits people are one of my favorite clients to work with because they understand the importance of process, like building the foundation, doing the planning. Like if you take the metaphor, I'm a builder, I'm a tradesperson, whatever, whatever. What's the right word? Medium, is that the right word? Whatever medium they're in. Is that the right word? Industry, yeah, they're a chippy, they're a plumber, it doesn't matter. There's an order of which they have to do things to get something right. And if the order is wrong or something is rushed, something goes wrong, sales is exactly the same. So it's just like, how do we, and that's why my engineering brain I think works so much in sales even though I didn't think it would initially, is if I skip, like that final question that you said, if I skip that, I lose control, and all I say is, I give myself the best chance of making a sale, should a sale need to be made, I don't always make sales, I'm going to 100% close right, nobody should. But if there's a sale there, I won't miss it. And that's important. Can't put the roof on until the water up. Exactly right. So, when you look at especially trades, you work a lot with trades and there's an element of like, there's a mechanical aspect to preparing a scope of works and a price for someone. And then there's the, the sales skills in how we deliver all of that. I feel like, you know, a lot of guys work really hard on the skill set of the mechanical side of estimating and getting all the pieces right. And then they, they put all this time into building out the proposal and getting all the details right and making sure that they've, the maths works out. And then they, they spent so little time in the, how do we deliver this with the right impact? So, I guess the question would probably go to, what is the difference for you between just like quoting and coming up with a price for someone and then actually selling that and converting that? I'll be direct, quite direct initially. So quoting, you're not, you're not needed to do that. I don't need you to do that anymore. All right. There's AI, there's software out there, like you, you could be removed from the whole process if you're just an order taker and just somebody quoting. And so quoting is just sending something out and using what we call "hopium" and just hoping I quote the best. Go on, hope. And selling is getting somebody in the right state to buy. So we do know that all behaviors are state dependent. So what are you doing before you send that proposal? Like how much value do they have across you, the company and the product or service that you're about to put on the table for them? So we believe in something called a 300% rule of value is based across MCP, myself, company, product. If I can build value across those three sectors before they even get their proposal, the way they receive that information is different, we call it pre-swasion. So we need to set that up and then I'm a big fan of presenting, not proposing. So instead of just emailing somebody a proposal and letting them go through in their own time of which we know because we use heatmaps and different software to go, they just went straight to page four, which was the price, all that, like you said, they spent so much time lying by a line, like working out their margins and then, well, the only thing people looking at them is the bottom line, which forces them back into the market to play the money game. So what I do when I finish a call, if I'm doing it on a high level, not for a low-ticket item, like Rodney's $1.7 million, he's not just emailing that proposal, he would give me a heart like if he was doing that, he's sitting in their house, he's going through it line-by-line so that he can articulate the value of it. So as I come off the, what do we call it, consultation, discovery, meeting, whatever it is. As I come out of there, I'm setting up the next call of which I'm going to then go through the proposal with them. So I'm going to present it, not propose it, that makes sense. So I love that in the space of a $1.7 million project, but let's say we're sitting there service maintenance and we're doing $250, $300, $400 quotes. How do we go through that process and transfer our value, company's value and so on in that space? We're like new clients that don't really know you, yeah. In that situation, we get the guys on my team to just correct simple bios on ourself, so it could be a 3.5 bio. It could be, my name's Mitch, I've been in this industry for X amount of years, I've worked with X number of tradespeople. Most importantly, I've been on the tools myself, right? So it's a, how long you've been in the industry, how many people have you helped and the most importantly start? So 3.5 bio with a photo. If you want to get pushed off, I felt like I'm going to make a video, you could do that. That goes out to the person after or even before the initial meeting, because it's all about kind of elevating those trust credits. So a trigger might be lead form request on a website, and then that goes out as an automated email, builds a bit of trust, credibility, and then the phone calls may. 100%. Yeah, so we did, we just finished our two-day sales process intensive last week. That's literally what we're building out is that lead comes in. And we always say like all leads need to go to a certain place for us, it's a triage. So we want to get them onto what we call a triage call, which is the initial call just to kind of gauge where they're at. The trigger as soon as the lead comes in from text, from socials, from emails, from whatever it is, is a welcome email. Kirk's going to call you Thursday at three o'clock, his little bit about Kirk for context. So already you come in as like a seven or eight out of 10, not just a someone's going to call you on Thursday, which is what normally happens. Yeah, that's good. Like with him, they're sitting there looking at that wall, this mustache rocking up on Thursday. Yeah, they probably went out to the phone, but yeah, they're thinking about it, Chuck Norris possibly going at like wall. It humanizes it, right? Through COVID, we saw this on mass with like Uber drivers, dominoes, there was the rise of customer aggression and frustration through COVID, just because of the way people were having to live their lives, like bus drivers were getting attacked because people, they had to wear a mask, they didn't wear it when I wear a mask. If your food was late from a delivery driver, people were getting annoyed at them. So dominoes added the photo of the delivery driver on the app. They said, this is Kirk, he's 27 years old, he's from Mullin Bimby and he supports the Raiders. Do you know what I mean? And all of a sudden say anything, and now I remember he said green, and I was like, which one's green? But in that moment then, they reduced the customer aggression, they reduced the complaints. Why? Because they humanized the interaction. And that's really important for me. Sorry. Can you overhumanize? So like if we talk about this space. So I've got a client, Blake Hoyle. And so one of the most, I guess one of the campaigns that he's done that's yielded the best results has been what we call a dinner, an initiative where he sends out a letter, bottom signature, a photo of him, and it's an A4 page where it talks a lot about his personal line to a degree, where his kids go to school, where he enjoys eating, the gym, he trains out and all those kind of things. And it is, it can be very personal. And I don't mean it talks about, you know, not a bullet as a kid, it doesn't go to that degree. But can we be over personal in certain spaces? Yes. In short, yes. It depends on the person receiving it, as I always say, read the person not script. So you kind of a one size fits all approach. So for somebody like, what was his name? Blake Hoyle. Blake. Good little plug. So for Blake, I would have four versions of that story for each different personality type. I mean, that's a rabbit hole that we can open up if you want. But we know that in any industry, in any sector, we have dominant people that are fast and direct and results orientated. We have what we call influences that are a bit more social and talkative, which might receive that letter extremely well. We have the S personality types, the studies that are quite slow and reserved and also very people orientated equally would receive that letter well. And then you'd have your C personality types like me, who are conscientious and compliant that it would be like, why the hell he's sending me this letter? Yeah. Okay. So it works. I'd like a timeline. I'd like specifications. I'd like your ISO number. I would like all of that stuff, but I don't need the hot, I don't need the depth of story. So you guys have seen me speak from stage, you've seen me speak at events like I tell my story every single time, but depending on the audience will depend the depth of which I go into my story. So it's not just, oh, he always tells his story, it's, oh, he missed that bit this time. Like I'm speaking at the APB Builders Summit next year. I dare say I won't be going into the depths of how I felt when I was sleeping on a bathroom floor. But I'll still talk about it. Yeah. They just want to know what tiles are on the floor. Yeah. Yeah. That's how I'll add that in, actually. Yeah. That's good. Yeah. If you look at, like, say, doing proposals and quotes in the trade space, it's one of the things that I identify as a, as a massive opportunity because it has a weakness to net you zero. So a quote that doesn't convert, it's you zero. So there's a lot of time, effort and money, now if I could go back in time and find the guy who decided to do free quotes out there, I'd have a story to talk about his own business. But it's driven a market trend now, it's very rare that we, that we can get away with charging for quotes and proposals. Some people can, but the industry expectation is that quotes are free. And the reality is it takes time, effort and resources to be able to deliver quotes. And so if you're quoting and your conversion, and you get, and you don't convert, you get a net zero for that. So one of the biggest black holes in a business is a lower conversion rate because you spend the same amount of time, effort and energy out there, quoting, quoting, quoting without getting the return from, and just growing this big black hole. And I often guide people into, you know, how do we, how do we improve our, our space there? Your thoughts here Ron, I'm like, if you would have, if you would have encouraged someone to add five to ten minutes to their quoting and sales process to dramatically increase the conversion rate, where, what would you guide them into, into doing with, with a small amount of time? And I want to, I wanted to try the first bit that you said there, you said some people get away with quote, they're charging for the quotes. What is it about those people that enables them to do that? Well, there's, there's a few different things, frame is one, so that is to certainly don't call it a quote, they call it an onsite consultation and therefore it increases the perception of value in that space. And so there are spaces and client types that will, that will respond and you'll be able to, to charge for your time and expertise, which is brilliant. But a lot of the, especially in the service of maintenance space, a lot of the consumer expectation is that, you know, they're expecting that the quote is done for frame. Yeah, it's not, it's not the norm. And I think that's a decision that we've got to make as an individual business owner or a tradesperson, like which room do I want to play in? Because if it's being done by somebody, it can be done. We just need to learn that frame, we need to learn how to, to position that, position that value. I would do the two things that we've already spoken about. I would, I would have that three point bio to, to connect with them, myself company and the product hall service and I would make sure that I'm presenting it and I'm not just shooting it over and just hoping, hoping for the best. All you can do is do the right things in the right order at the right time to give yourself the best chance of getting the right outcome. But also they've got it, the sale is one or lost in your discovery and your consultation in the, in the conversation that you have. So when people say to me, I'm losing it quote, they're not, I could almost end up at you guys know this. They're not losing it quote. Just it in the discovery and people are saying, yeah, just flick a quote over, why would you not ask for a quote? They don't know. It takes me 15 hours to put a quote together. Yeah, flick that over to me and they're just sitting there. They've already made the decision, they're not using you. Whatever comes through. So making sure that discovery is right on the first place, making sure that they're building value and credibility across those three verticals in their questioning as well. That, that's the first place I would look at would be that is their discovery questions and what they're asking. Well, one of the things that I guide people into is I see it a lot like, trade is a busy and we're racing around and then you get us to do a quote and it's a, we're not charging for it. We're in that free, free quote model. And so it seems like an inconvenience on our David and like an essential evil. Well, okay, I've got to get this quote done. And so a lot of guys will squeeze quotes into the schedule and punch in and punch out. It's very transactional. What did you like? Okay, yep. Cool. Awesome. Here's my card. I'll email you. Yeah, I did it for years. There was no connection. There was. And so one of the, one of the best pieces of advice I can give to, to, you know, our audience is slow down on your quote visits, on your site visits. Like the person who invests the most amount of time in that into that customer is probably going to be the most successful. What reframed your mind to do that part? So you said that in your advice is to slow down and do that and you said, I did this for a long time, but what actually reframed your mindset to change the way you did it? The pain of following up because like what I realized was I was punching out a heap of quote and hope strategies. And I had a list of people that I was trying to get answers from and I just spent hours and hours on the phone and people weren't, weren't picking up and all. And I was just like, I can't do this anymore. Like I have a mountain of things I've got to follow up. I'm not converting well. And I was like, everything has to be done there. So I changed my proposal style to, I just do it on site. Did you work out how much you were losing? I would have, it would have been crazy. So I was going to say, is it the, was it the pain of following up or the pain of missed opportunity? Cause that's, that's what we would have to get people to sit in and go, right? So you're making like what would be a normal amount of quotes people punching out a week? I mean, I, I imagine it's a huge range, right? Yeah, it would be, it would be a vast range. But like by the time you get, say off the tools and you've got a team, you'd be punching you know, 40 quits a week. Yeah. Wow. You're just service of maintenance and your big team fire, it could be, it's so much. Hundreds. Yeah. Well, you get this point where you've got a team of five admin, just punching quotes. So, so like it, it's not always realistic. Cause like, I mean, if I was to sit here and say, you got to slow down, they're like, fuck you mate. Like, you're not on the tools. You don't always like on a day-to-day basis. And they're right. I don't. I've been out and I have shadowed people and I've got an idea, but I haven't done it for years on end. So in that sort of situation where it is, I hate saying it, a numbers game, you've got to plug in all those automations, those triggers, those value points, the bits that can just add that 1% extra trust along the way that gives yourself a bit more chance than like what's, cause they're not, they're not alone. Their competitors are probably punching out doing the same thing as well. That's exactly right. And that's what I found. I found if I could invest more time into the client, even though I thought I didn't have the time when I was under a lot of pressure, what I realized was even under pressure, I was putting 30 minutes into a quote, for example, just arbitrary number. I was putting 30 minutes into a quote and converting it 30%. If I put 40 minutes into a quote, I convert it 70. Yeah. So instead of wasting 30, I give 10 more to double my conversion rate. Yeah. And so it's like, do you take the 30 as a loss or do you add 10 in the face of adversity and pressure and go, this is actually way better because it's going to improve the conversions. But I think the notion of slowing down or even stopping in general, and I've been going for 11 years. And I worked for the first two years, Jack, the co-founder who's now left. We worked 14 our days, seven days a week for two years, wore it as a badge of honor. And now I know, in hindsight, and having worked with some very successful people, like even just taking one day off a quarter to sit in the business and go, where can I refine that? Where can I find that extra 10 minutes a day? It will be there, but most people don't stop to give themselves a chance of finding it. I do it very intentionally now. I have every Tuesday off with my young boy before he starts prep. And I built that five years ago, like when we first had kids, I'm like, I don't want to be work. I don't want to not be able to do school drop-offs and school runs and all that stuff. But now, every Tuesday, ideas just come to me because I'm forced to stop. And all of a sudden, I'm like, okay, well, what the hell was I doing for the last 10 years? Just same with holidays, like holidays. So sometimes the holidays, the thing you kick down the road, because you're too busy and you're like, oh, I'll never get to that. I'll get through this month. And then another month's coming out here and people kick those holidays down the road. And then when you get a chance to take a break, you typically come back with the most creative ideas to solve problems, isn't it? Well, you either take a break or you're forced to take a break. I've shared my story about my dad getting sick and all that stuff, like he was 43 years old when he got cancer. I'm 43 and four weeks. You can either, you can watch what's going on or you can just keep grinding until the universe or whatever you believe and all tell you to stop eventually. We'll wake you up. Yeah, we'll wake you up. Yeah. Which is another version of the pain, right? That's it. Yeah. Yeah. I'd love to talk about training in the sales space. So when we start out, it's essentially us and we have to develop a skill set. As we grow our business, in our space, we traditionally go to the admin starting to do some of the sales. Yeah. Then we move into also, hey, we've got billables out there, you know, other people on the tools, upselling and delivering the quotes and so on. And then sometimes we get to a point we've gotten so big that we have BDMs or other sales people come in and that's their genius zone. As an owner, what do you think it's like having to train those different people? Do we train them the same? How do we get them to understand the importance of not only doing the day-to-day quoting, but also, I want to help transfer a skill set here so that we can get better at this. Yeah. Firstly, I have to say it's hard. It's the way I have to acknowledge that it's bloody hard because you've got humans to deal with and there's variables. And you've also then got potentially people that are in a role that they're not brought into do sales. They're brought into administration so they can do skillset. It's a secondary skill set and it's the last one they want to learn. So it has to be part of the on board. It's not, if you get a chance, can you do this following up? It's literally part of their role description, I think, is anybody listening to this right now that is a sole trader that's just about to hire and you've got a job description for an administrator or whoever it may be, part of their role needs to be that you're going to liaise with with our clients, you're going to pick up the phone, you're going to make X amount of calls every single week. We can train the skill and the conversation and what they say on those calls, but if you blindside them and they're three months in, six months in and you're like now trying to add scope of work to that, you've now got change management and you've got to go through. So it should essentially be a part of interview process. Making them aware of what the role will look like and then seeing how they sit with that because it could be a new thing for them. They might be a weapon admin at the company they're in currently, but they don't deal with that. Yeah. So just being honest and transparent. Yeah. Yeah. And I think it's fair. It's fair, fair on them. If you look at my team, I get asked all the time, like everybody's such a good communicator. Everyone, I'm like, no, shit, like, of course, because it sounds as a culture, it's not a team. It's not a department. Every single person I come in here this morning, like peer, peer greets me, what's peer as official role, social media and marketing, okay. She was a great, that immediately she was the best sales representative in this company as soon as I walk in, right? Because the way she greets me, like the energy of which she greets me, she checked that I parked up. Okay. She asked me if I want to drink. All of those things impact my experience when I come in here and they give a subrepresentation of this brand. So then when I leave here, like, I'm going to catch up with somebody else after for lunch, who knows if that person's going to go, so what will I saw you at upscale and what will those guys like? What's my initial response to that? Is it like, yeah, I mean, it's loud in there. I don't know if everyone's enjoying it or there's a good energy in there. They're all servicing their clients. You could see that they were looking after people. We can see that they actually care. That started with peer. So sales needs to be a culture. Everyone helps create the experience for the end user. If you think about, if I went back to engineering now, I've been here 15 years. So I haven't been on the tools for 15 years. I'd be pretty shit. I'm sure it would come back to me at some stage, but you rest your rest, right? You've got tradespeople, they train for so long, they go to trade school, they get paid crap whilst they're apprentice. And then they get on the tools and there'll be certain things they do every single day and they'll be masterful of it. There'll be other things that they do once a week or once a fortnight, not so good at. The communication aspect, it's not something that we did once, it's something that we do every single day, they should be practicing that skill because that's what keeps their business open is the ability to have a conversation with a human being that might pay you more money to get the next job on. And that includes your subbies on site and everybody else that is then representing you as well. They all need to be told, if you're going to come in and be a subbie for me, what we do is learn how to speak. If you've got, I know this pain very acutely because we hire technicians, so we hire technicians for a trade role in the field and sales is a very distant secondary skill set. And sometimes, like you said, there's a lot of hesitation. Imagine I've got a new starter coming in. How would you guide me in getting them on the bus for embracing the, even just the idea that sales could be a positive thing for them? And so we have our house rules, do you have house rules here, if you have me talk about this before? There's something that Anna Samios, who's our scaling up coach, she asked me once, when I'm hiring, like what my interview process was like, like to a tea, like what, where do you sit them in the boardroom? What do you offer them to drink? Can't wait to tell you what our process looks like. It's real fun. Is it a stone of wood? No, it's not. We actually sit them in the middle of the room upstairs with everyone watching them. Oh, that's mad. That's pressure. I like it. Yeah. Okay. But there's, there's elements of this. I want a chair that rotates, like a spinning chair and I just spin around, spin around and if they can handle that interview, they probably get the film. Okay. So what you're trying to do is understand under character, under some sort of wits, wacky, is on a wacky Wednesday. It happens any day. Yeah. But it's got one in the afternoon, if you want to watch. We'll help, we'll go live. And she says, yeah, have you got house rules? So we printed out these 10 house rules about the way we conduct ourselves, the standards, the ethics and the sales as part of who we are in every single one of us, videographers, HR, admin are all expected to learn how to communicate better. And then you just put it in front of them. I walk out. I said, we're back in five minutes. Don't say anything else. Come back in if you read that. Are you happy with everything? Okay. Cool. Right. And it's almost like a micro acknowledgement that that's the acknowledgement that's that's on the bus. That doesn't mean they're on the bus. That means they've just seen the bus. Yeah. Yeah. So we do that on their first day. So in our first day, so a two little story about we recently had Mark start, this was last week. A couple of weeks ago. These have been escalating. These have been. So we have, it's escalates and we do something on the first day to every staff member to see if they're going to stay with the culture and the way in which we do things here. And so Mark's one was that he came in and we're all, we're going to bought fake tattoos of the upscale load goes. We had also gone and bought a tattoo gun off team and so now in our morning huddle. So we have them on every single morning. First day, he's come in and we've all got our tattoos on in different places like price out a necktart. We've all got them on our arm and we're just kind of making it so we can see them and not saying anything about them. And while the huddle is going on in the morning, what rolls in his, he comes back around, but he is moving into a coaching space for us. And so while we're going through the morning huddle, Lou is setting up the tattoo gun very professionally like gloves on putting down glad wrap everything like that. And then as the huddle ends, she's like, all right, it's time for your tattoo. And he's like, what? She's like, yeah, your tattoo, everyone gets a tattoo. And we're all like, yeah, what are you, what are you talking about? Everyone gets a tattoo. And he's like, oh, like, I don't even, I don't actually, I don't have any tattoos. He's like, well, man, it was any contract. Did you not read it? He's like, oh, well, I mean, if it's in the contract, it starts rolling. No. What a legend. And goes to sit down and then we all told him that it was fake. But that's a part of our space and do different things. We have a, do you watch the Hunger Games? Yes. We have a salute to the upscale logo. Have you seen the other thing that's going around that companies are doing? Oh, yeah. I've seen that. Yeah, that's good. But it's like that. There's all these different things. We've done that for years. For the last couple of years. It's just like this bit where it really establishes if someone can handle our space. That's a bit. Maybe we should do your way back. Sounds great. Yeah. We've just got house rules. You guys are chatting people. I love that though, because what you're doing is going, this is our culture. And your team will spit people out pretty quickly. We had one that the fastest somebody's coming on is they didn't even make one, say, one pay cycle. They were in on a Monday. They were going on the Friday. And that was quite simply because I heard her say to one of our, one of our senior, senior guys. She just said, yeah, I won't be doing it that way. And I wasn't with an air shot. I'm like, you're on day five. I won't be doing it that way. It was just the way she said it. And she kept, she was doing this all the time because hear it across the floor. And I'm like, that's, that's not swish. It's not who we are. So there's that, that first component of conditioning for one of a better, better word or managing expectations and standards. And then regular meetings, TCMs, we call them training coaching, mentoring meetings, like realigning people, like all the time, it's not, it's not one and done. We do a lot of goal setting, a lot of stuff on what they want to achieve. I'm under no illusion that nobody works for me because they want me to get rich. Nobody's doing it because they want my business to grow. I'm sure they don't want it not to grow, but we as a, as a human, we do things for ourselves innately. And there's nothing wrong with that. So happy on that way. We're born, right? That is where they put babies next to each other is, you know, they're going through it. And we're born as primal selfish creatures that I want that to survive. Yeah. You know, we learn to share. We learn. It's me we want to. Yeah. But that's the thing, isn't it? It's how can you get that balance of right? I've got a vehicle that's genuinely having impact in the world like you guys do. Like you're doing so much good stuff for, for, for tradespeople. You got people that can come in and help you with that. But how can you get them to get theirs in your vehicle? And they might say for three years, they might say five years, they might say for six months, but can I get the best out of you for the greater good of our business? And then we all grow at the same time. I mean, I'm not taking advantage of anybody. So like having those open conversations. I had, Jess Cameron's a good example. She, um, she was friends with my ex wife, um, I knew what she did in the, in the mindset and performance space. And I said, we don't really have that component in our business and I love what you do. Can you help us build out that sort of arm and that sort of curriculum, um, come and work with me for a while. And she's like, well, I'm thinking about starting my own business. I'm going to go out and be a consultant. I said, come and work for me for one year, right? You get training coaching and mentoring with me. You're going to get one hour, uh, uh, no, you're half an hour, every single fortnight with me personally. In those half hour sessions, I'll help you build your business, but I need one year out of you. She stayed pretty much to the day, stayed for one year, built out what we needed. She built her business and now she's flying, um, so like just having that upfront conversation, not expecting people to give their life or tattoo themselves for you. We still wonder what somebody will, yeah, you should have sent, you should have gone through it. It's also like, we, we're like, what will happen if that person's like, nah, no way, see you. And they just walk out. And you've lost talent. I know. They're right. I was going to go anyway because they, they, I know that's an extreme example, but it, it instantly gets them laughing literally a sacrificial laminar one day out here going to your turn. Yeah. We drink the blood. Well, we did do a baptism, actually, at our last, um, quarterly strategy day. That's the hook. Haha. Yeah. I can't see. I'd see the graphic. Yeah. It's, um, it's, it's a really interesting one. So like then you, you're just nurturing someone into that, taking them from being, um, resistant to embracing sales and then slowly holding their hand. Yeah. I like leading. Caitlin is a really good example. Caitlin came to our interview, um, and she saw sales training. She actually wasn't going to go. And then another interview, she wasn't going to come to us. Another interview on the way canceled on her. So she was like, whatever. I'm in surfers now. I'll just go and see these guys. She thought it was going to be like, wolf of all street. Um, and now she's an exceptional salesperson who started an administration. But I told her in that interview, I says, I know you, you don't want to be in sales, but this is a sales company and everybody's expected to know how to communicate. And she's phenomenal on the phones. But I don't know if this is the right phrase because you use the bus, bus analogy. I also acknowledge that people are always, I've always got one for off the bus always. Right. So yeah, they kept beyond the bus, but they're hanging off and it's my job to keep them on. So otherwise you won't do the reset. She won't do the house, everything going conversations. You won't do the training, coaching, mentoring, it's, it's like anything. You have to keep nudging the whole business back into line, it never stops. Yeah. And this is why I find it interesting when business owners say to me, I just don't get it. I told them that. I'm like, yeah, but you're a different breed. You're a business owner. You're a weird person. Yeah. We're the strange people that decided we wanted all, we wanted to be therapists and counselors and to have all these HR issues every single day. Um, or maybe we didn't sign up for that, but, but, but it comes with it, the employees mindset is very, very different, right. They're looking for inspiration. That's why they sometimes work for people. Um, so it's our job to, to do that and to do it all the time. And I'm talking like daily, I think that's one of the best qualities of great leadership is to be able to detach the frustration from having to repeat yourself. Mm. And I think that echoes like into so many other spaces, especially being a parent, you know, like being, being a nice, being a scented parent is about detaching the frustration from the repetition because kids don't normally act on the first, first instruction. And it's the same with team, like when you're building a team, it's like, you're constantly nudging and reminding and, you know, I've seen people use the CEO framework as chief reminding officer. Yeah. All I'm doing is just keep nudging people back. Oh, this is why we do it. Yeah. And that's just understanding humans, isn't it? It's not, I don't take it personal. I don't, if I've got a team member that says, Hey, how do I do this again? I don't, I don't get annoyed. That's just human nature. It's not their job to remember everything, but we also live in a very fortunate age where we can create SOPs and videos and for anything that does keep getting repeated. I remember my old boss said to me, like, if you get an objection once, that's okay. You get it twice. If you keep getting the same objection, that's now your fault. And it's the same with team members, right? If you keep getting the same question over and over and you keep hiring a new person into that role and answering the same question, that's now your fault. Your training's not right. Your onboard is not right. Your onboard should be designed to answer as many questions as possible so that you can just be present for them during a time that is, it's nerve-wracking, like, for res, I know that they come in. The standards are high and I make no, what's the right word? No, excuse for that. I want the standards to be high, but people are nervous coming to swish. They're like, Ryan, it's watching. You've got to get everything perfect. So I'd rather be there for them for that than to be showing them how to use a CRM, like this video you can do all that stuff. That's good. That nerve is an excitement. Generally, that's where you perform your best, provided you're in the right environment that you'd get well-nurtured and that's probably why you turn people into superstars for your team as well. Yeah, I think, and it might not, this might not translate for everybody listening. For me, I tried to hire from within, so I tried to hire people that have experienced the service that they're about to represent. Bar Catelyn, who came off the street. I found her on a Brits on the Gold Coast Facebook group, which there was a good sign if you're on that page, and everybody else came through the process, so they're fully bought into the model. They've probably experienced results themselves. When they're talking about it, they can do it with full conviction. Even in the trades world, I always say to Rodney that I mentioned earlier on, how does he hire? Is there anybody you've worked with in the past that you've already got a good relationship with? You know they've got good ethics. You know they'll represent your brand in the right way, and that's how we carry picks the right people. I suppose you're just putting a random hat out there. With our trades, the phone is the number one lead source. So we get inbound calls and we have our bound calls. The phone is a big part of sales, and there's telemarketers, there's all different sorts of things. And the phone is a really important tool in that. What would you, is there something selling in person would be different and you've got a few more cues to go off? What do you think is important when we get an inbound lead on the phone? How do we turn up as the best version of ourselves in a sales sense on an inbound phone lead? In the world that they're in, it's firstly acknowledging that if I just answer it without thinking, I'm 100% not going to be the best version of me right now, that they could be on a site. There's noisy, there's people shouting shit from from all over the place. They've got a delivery that's late, whatever. So I think initially it's to have the anchor point of I need to take a breath. Right. I need to take a breath. Remember that I only have one point, sorry, 4.5 over the phone, 4.5 to 7 seconds to make that winning first impression. When I pick up this phone, somebody might ring up and say, hey, I'm looking for a quote on XYZ, right? Is that common tonara? Yep. That's it, right? So I could be knee deep in concrete, banging away. And somebody say, mate, I want to quote on this. And if you haven't taken that breath, if you haven't at least acknowledged that you only have four and a half to seven seconds to make that first impression, you could lose the sale before, again, there's nowhere near quote stage. They've really lost it because you got, well, mate, I mean, what are you looking for exactly? You've lost it. You can be the cheapest on the market and it's too late. So we use what we call an a not frame. The first thing we do is just to show a bit of courtesy where we use a, which is acknowledge and appreciate them reaching out. So firstly, I really appreciate you taking time to give me a quick call naturally. And after being a chippy for the last 14 years, do appreciate that everybody's situation is different. Oh, obviously, I need to ask you a couple of quick questions just to see whether I can help you or not, which is a play down statement. And then tea, typically, what I'll do then is jump off once I finish on site. If applicable, I'll send you through some information and if not, I'll let you know right now on this call. Is that all good? That's brilliant. That's it. That's brilliant. But so all they've got to do is learn a 30 second frame. Appreciate our acknowledge of time, naturally, time operation, which builds value in M and C. Oh, let them know I'm going to ask some questions for context, tea, which two ways might this go. And then ask them, mate, what are you looking for? How long are you looking for it for? Give me some context. That 30 second frame at the beginning will make the rest of the conversation a lot easier and it makes it easier for the other person to give you intel as well, which then helps you tailor your proposal on the back end. Brilliant. And I think most people don't have a deliberate plan. I call a lot of tradies. Most, I would say, yeah, 99% don't have a deliberate, they're aloe. Yeah. Even the helloe is terrible. Yeah. Doesn't that tell me your name when you pick a phone? Yeah. What's the worst one that gets me is that they pick the phone like, hey, and you're like, is this? Yeah. And they're like, yeah. And you're like, whoa, already, oh, hey, oh, they go, yeah, yeah, then you go, oh, sorry, mate. Are you XYZ tree loppers? Yeah. And they go, oh, yeah. Sorry, mate. I thought it was Tony. I'm like, well, it's not. And now I know how you speak to your, your, your, your like partners. Yeah. Like, do you know what I mean? So always answer the phone and just live your life in general that the, like, the person next to you is the one that could change your life, treat everybody the same. So pick a phone. Your default should be good morning XYZ business, Ryan speaking. How can I help? All right. That's why you got to take that breath. And that frame that you just went through that 30 second frame, that's not going to come naturally listening to this podcast once. That's something that you have to sit down. You have to craft. You have to practice. You have to practice repetition. After repetition. Just doing a mitre joint. Yeah. That doesn't come naturally. But I think that's the issue is that if we're talking about our target market, the people listening, is that they've spent four years or however long it is crafting this technical ability to do a great job on the tools. But a lot of the time they don't want to spend the same amount of time crafting. Correct. Or maybe it's not even that they don't want to. It's that they didn't realize they had to. Yeah, that's fair. They don't realize they have to down, now sit down and spend the same amount of time going through repetition and building a new skill set of answering a phone. Yeah. Because you know what? They've answered a phone for their whole life. It's a big of a phone. Yeah. But I actually can't, when I'm trying to get a sale or I can't, when I'm trying to elicit a certain response from a staff member or I can't, whatever it might be. Yeah. Well, this is an extra tool in your toolbox, all right? It's the one tool that you carry around with you 24, 7, 3, 6, 5. And you never know when that sales opportunity is going to come along and if you miss it, you miss it. And there's thousands of other tradespeople that can pick up the phone and go, yeah. So the only thing you compete with is price, which coming back to what you were stating is it is actually so easy to stand out in this space, so easy because the average is traditionally so low. A lot of other industries and spaces. Yeah. I could sit on site for, what I mean on site, I could sit remotely and answer a phone call. Like even there's AI, the software is better than them answering the phone actually, ironically. And that's, that's the painful thing. And it doesn't need to be like you can, you can be even better by just knowing how to do a three-minute phone call. And by yourself time to then call that person back when you're off site, so that then you can be dedicated and present. I think that the 32nd frame, if you use that on every inbound call, for every lead that you get from now until the end of your career, the value that that will generate for you in sitting down and actually thinking about this and practicing it a little bit again, just to get ahead of the pack. So, you don't even have to, it doesn't have to be silky and crisp every single time. Just the fact that it's there is way better than the pack. Yeah, yeah. We'll, we'll return so much in value for you for your time and effort in, in working out crafting that. Yeah. And it's, again, it just has to be something that you do, something that you practice. It's, you, you practice that every morning for like 30 seconds. I know it sounds shit. You know it does. But if it puts an extra six figures on your bottom line, is it worth feeling shit for 30 seconds every morning until it just becomes second nature, which it probably would, it would do with the amount of up to, I mean, there's no coincidence. Now, I use Rodney again, because he's become a really good friend of mine. You don't go from doing $10,000 carports to $1.7 million jobs by accident. Yeah. It's, it's very intentional. It starts with a mindset shift, starts with a belief that it's even possible. And then the, the skill was like, you, you can't just be confident. You can't say, all right, okay, cool. I believe that I can do it. That'll get you going, but it's the competence through skills and training that, that keeps you there. Brilliant. Love that. Some great value. Great hacks. And great, like just frameworks and techniques that are deployable. And that's what I love about the stuff that you do, Ryan, is it that it's very complex and sales is, you know, there's not one book on sales, is that, yeah, there's all these different ways and methods and, and things that work for different person, personality types. What I love about it is it's, you, you distill it down into something so simple and easy to remember that it is repeatable. And once you start repeating it, you start to develop the skill set behind it and it becomes, you improve that. And then that's where you get the result. I think that this is quite a lot recently, like what's, because you're right, there's thousands of sales books out there because I'm writing a book and it's like, oh, there's another one. It's, what is the difference? It's that we look at things through the lens of the customer, not the lens of the sales person. So I'm not, I'm not, I'm not care, I don't care what about what you're selling. I care about how the words you're using will be received on the other end to the person. So that when they pick up the phone, you go, yeah, what happens internally to that person when they hear that, yeah, or I can help you as opposed to that a not frame, it changes the way they receive the next bit of information. And it's, it's quite frustrating then because you hear people say, like these really credible trades people, they'll go, well, well, but doing this for 25 years, I'm like, that, they shouldn't, they don't need to know that. Or they, it's not that it's not their job to know that, sorry, it's, it's same as listening to this. I dare say most people listen to this, I have absolutely no idea who I am. It's not their job to know who I am. It's my job to earn the right to be able to give any sort of a device or, or tips. So I have to come in neutral. I have to come in the same way every single time. And through words, through language, for a process, I earn the right to give them advice. I can't just do it off the cuff and just tell people how good I am. That's not how the world works. Unfortunately. It would be easy if it was. It would be. On the world's greatest fucking. Yeah. This is how it's going to be. Which is what everybody else says. And then they go, we've got great customer service, which is what everybody else says. So you're not, you're not actually separating yourself from the masses. And then you want to be more expensive than the masses. It doesn't make sense. Yeah. Study people, not sales. I like that. Should we pull in a port, land it there? Land it there. So good. Any final, final thoughts or things you'd like to leave as a final and a final memory for people, right? Um, trying to tailor it for you guys. Um, I just think for me, it's that acknowledgement that sales is, is not Iki, it's not dirty. It's actually one of the most noble skills you'll ever acquire. I don't think anybody got into any trade or any industry, any business, um, to have a crap life, to not reach their potential, like they, they're, they're, they're probably good people that are doing right by their family, their loved ones, their kids and they're, they're just hard working individuals. And if they could just really tune into the fact that communication is one of those extra tools that they need to add to their, to their toolbox, um, and even when they're doing their toolbox, my meeting and the start of the day, if they just added a little bit of practice around the words they're using to become a bit more intentional, it could dramatically change that the lives that they have. Love that. Love that. Thank you so much for giving a time and, uh, coming and sharing your wisdom with, uh, with us and, and our audience. So thank you so much for, uh, for that. How do you want to close it, Mitch? Same as yours. Do. Satos. Satos. Satos. That's how we started. Thanks guys. Appreciate that. That was good.