Making the leap
Michael Strong, of Brothers Strong in Houston, says he’s on the lookout for a system as a way to triple revenues. “I want a system that is going to maintain the essence of who we are and improve who we are based on our expertise,” he says. “I don’t want to throw away everything.”
Strong wants to hire a consultant to meet with him and his sales staff, drive around on calls, and examine the company’s sales materials. Although he receives Rea’s newsletter, he feels Rea’s system is one he doesn’t want to adopt wholesale, but rather as part of an amalgamated system.
From what remodelers and the sales pros say, whatever system Strong picks, it will only work if he tailors it to his own style. By examining how he sells now (everyone, the gurus say, has a system), he’ll find ways to improve. And from what remodelers who have succeeded through training say, that path leads to greater, more predictable, revenues.
When a Sales System Doesn’t Work Terry Kozuch thought he had developed his own sales system while working with customers as a finish carpenter. And after switching to sales, his numbers seemed to bear him out: In just his third year, he landed $1.3 million worth of work.
But the owner of his $14 million-a-year company, Adam Helfman of Fairway Construction in Southfield, Mich., thought Kozuch could improve. He suggested that Kozuch enroll in Sandler sales training. The company paid about $8,000, and for five months, Kozuch attended three-hour classes each week. But when he applied the new techniques to his sales calls, his sales plummeted to about $300,000 over nine months.
Kozuch says the system grated against everything he did, particularly when it came to showing clients what they wanted through rough drawings and allowing them to contract only when they were ready.
“It totally confused me on how I should approach people,” he says. Whether it was the instructor’s style or his own fault for not applying techniques correctly, Kozuch says the system made him uncomfortable.
“Say you were doing a certain project and the customer had an objection,” he says. “They wanted you to make up some story to meet the objection. I always answered objections up front.
“You were really kind of degrading customers. It’s pretty easy to find their pain. Most people will give it to you up front.”
Undeterred by Kozuch’s experience, however, Helfman invested $80,000 for in-house Sandler training for his 10-person sales force. Again, the results were disappointing. Although Helfman says Sandler Systems guaranteed an immediate sales increase (he expected volume to rise 30%), sales tanked. During 1998’s strong economy, his $1 million monthly sales revenues dropped to $600,000.
“I cut ties with them before doing an autopsy,” Helfman says. “I didn’t want to pursue a refund because I had to worry about what the company was doing today instead of chasing them down to figure out what’s going on. I didn’t get it all in writing properly. I chalked it up to a learning experience.”
Helfman says he was told the reason it didn’t work was because he, as the owner, wasn’t committed to the system.
Dave Mattson, Sandler Systems vice president, says subtleties of techniques can get lost in teaching. “It’s that personal interaction that’s sometimes missing from theory to implementation,” he says. “Sometimes, quite frankly, we need to put people with a different trainer because maybe that’s not their personality. My personality is very laid back, but that doesn’t mean the 165 trainers we have are. We have people who take more of an aggressive approach but use the same theories.”