High-Tech Risks No innovation comes without its downside. First, creating high-quality graphics and video isn’t cheap or easy. Training salespeople to use the high-tech presentation takes time and is by no means foolproof. A big problem, home improvement contractors report, can be sales team resistance to high-tech selling, even in situations when it clearly helps land contracts.
A good example is the case of a $10 million window replacement company, whose sales manager would discuss the company’s experience only with the assurance of anonymity.
“When we rolled it out we had moderate-quality sales-people go out and make five, six, and seven sales in a row without a miss,” he says. “One guy made eight in a row without a miss in the first couple of weeks.”
However, when one homeowner objected to viewing the laptop presentation, the salesmen began to talk among themselves, and resistance “snowballed,” so that, “when they didn’t close — even though in the rollout, closings went through the roof — it was because of the computer program,” he adds.
Very quickly, he says, “the fear of loss sets in. Your experienced salespeople who are making good money say, ‘Why do I want to change my sales system? What happens if I change my deal and go from making $125,000 to $80,000?’ It’s human nature,” he adds. “The fear of substantive change hits them as soon as the enthusiasm wears off.”
Now, two years later and after the company spent some $100,000 on the CD presentation, none of the salespeople are using it, this sales manager reports. He’s looking into a better way to get the results he fleetingly achieved in the original rollout.
Seeing Eye to Eye Home improvement company owners and sales managers who have used tech presentations agree on two points: laptops can’t replace the salesperson and salespeople can’t be allowed to coast behind it. Any presentation, whether it’s a DVD or the old-fashioned pitch book, remains a prop. The salesperson will continue having to do the hard work of building rapport, earning trust, and closing that sale.
“Sunrooms are a very visual product, so a laptop presentation in the home is a good thing,” says John Esler, CEO of Better Living Sunrooms, Northborough, Mass., and Renewal by Andersen in the same location. A sunroom laptop presentation has been available to his salespeople for about three years. “But I don’t think it’s vital, and if you don’t use it correctly, it takes away from that eye-to-eye connection. People can get too focused on the laptop and less focused on what they’re there to do, which is to help someone design a sunroom,” Esler says.
“We’ve always contended that you use the CD-ROM to take the place of the pitch book, not of the salesman,” says Ron Sherman of Ron Sherman Teleproductions, Little Rock, Ark., who produces presentations and TV commercials for a number of home improvement contractors and manufacturers. “I use the analogy that it’s just like Jay Leno hosting The Tonight Show. He would probably be effective two or three nights a week by himself. But he is much stronger and more consistent because he has the band, an announcer, guests, and the audience.” Giving that kind of support to the salesman is, “just what the CD-ROM is designed to do,” he explains.
The sales presentation, electronic or otherwise, “has to work with the clients. It has to be fun,” says Mike Kuplicki, sales manager, general manager, and part-owner of Alure Basements, East Meadow, N.Y. “The process is always going to be about listening and talking —in that order. I listen to you and you listen to me. We integrate everything we have within that process,” he explains.