TESTING NOT FOOL PROOF While quantum leaps in productivity might be unrealistic, most contractors say that incremental improvements are possible. The first step is figuring out where a salesperson should be versus where he or she is right now. Home Town Restyling requires that reps do a wants-and-needs survey with prospects at the beginning of the presentation. If reps fail to close, sales manager Casey spends 15 minutes going over the call the next day, discussing objections and ways in which the presentation could have been more pointed. Reps feel comfortable asking for the sale, he says, knowing their product and the company story is a match for that customer. Casey says he’s learned that “some guys are fine once they get past the first 15 minutes [of a house call], which means they need to be more engaging.”
What bothers company owners is when salespeople run hot and cold from year to year. When interviewed last spring, Kent, of Archadeck of Charlotte, said that he had a salesman who had been a good earner in the past but had since stumbled because he had lost confidence. “He’s pressing, and he’s not timing his calls appropriately” because he’s trying to cram too many into a day.
In an effort to envision what their sellers might become, contractors are relying more on personality profiles when hiring salespeople and molding their training around what those profiles tell them. But sales consultant Phil Rea warns that personality profiles aren’t always a reliable barometer of how productive a salesperson will be. He points to a recent hire he made at his own company. “This guy had the best profile I have ever seen. But nothing could have been further from the truth. He sluffed off a lot of work and was beyond criticism,” says Rea, who let the sales rep go after 30 days. “In our business, it’s show and tell, and if you’re still talking about a person’s ‘potential’ after 90 days, that’s all that person will ever have.”
Once a salesperson’s anticipated level of productivity is realistically established, contractors say it’s much easier to devise a training regimen to get them there. Indeed, Total Remodeling recently started training some new hires to be single-product salespeople. That, Edwards says, should make the selling process more straightforward.
GET WITH THE PROGRAM But many home improvement companies still struggle to get their salespeople to follow selling systems, especially when those sellers have had some success improvising. “It’s like a golfer who bends his arm, sways his hips, and still hits the ball perfectly,” Carpenter says. “He’s screwed until he gets back to basics.”
Role-playing offers an opportunity for managers to see how salespeople are presenting to customers and to make corrections and adjustments to the presentation. Siding-1 Windows-1 Exteriors offers classroom training three times per week, and its Wednesday sessions are mandatory for all 10 salespeople. Conforti says that his company emphasizes practice as the surest path to productivity. “How do you think Michael Jordan or Tiger Woods got so good,” he points out.
Newpro breaks down its 25-person sales team on revenue per lead issued. Those who are hitting or surpassing their marks are in the green zone, those in the yellow zone are average, and those in the red zone “are in a world of hurt,” Normandin says. The last group is required to attend “back-to-basics” classroom sessions that Newpro’s sales training manager conducts every Tuesday and Thursday. Sales managers run calls with these sellers in the afternoon. “Our goal is for none of our guys to be in the red for two consecutive months,” Normandin says.
Other contractors send their sales managers to do windshield time with salespeople, too. Through such exercises, Mid-Atlantic Water-proofing discovered that its salespeople sometimes forget to inspect basements by turning off the light and using a flashlight so that water damage is more apparent to the homeowner, Levine says.
Wiley at ImproveIt Home Remodeling says that he is spending more “one-on-one time” with his company’s 25 salespeople and trying to accentuate the positive by playing up what they did right during sales calls they’ve closed. He also leaves a daily voicemail for his salespeople about how they did that day, who sold, and what the jobs sold for.
In fact, top salespeople might be neediest when it comes to craving attention and recognition. “They like the praise,” confirms Wiley, who says that one of his top sellers, who has been with the company for two years and in the business for 40, “goes insane for a week” when he is not at the top of the sales board. “The thrill of the hunt,” says Priest, is central to a top salesperson’s productivity.
But don’t dismiss money as a motivator. Recently Newpro had a “Deal or No Deal” contest for its top five salespeople, who each got three envelopes out of a total of 25, with chances to win such gifts as a 50-inch flat-screen television or a trip to Hawaii. “They drive themselves to be at the top of the board,” Normandin says.
—John Caulfield is a freelance writer and editor based in New Jersey.