How to Improve Your Sales Skills and Close More Technical Sales

Show Transcript:

Eric Stromquist 0:00

 Hi, and welcome to control talk now, this is episode 404 for the weekend in March 5 2023. My name is Eric Stromquist. And if you’re looking for cutting edge control news you can use, including sales and marketing, and you’re in the right place. The name of this episode is nothing happens until the sale is made. And we’re going to do a deep dive into this topic with an industry expert just going to teach us how to be successful in today’s competitive HVAC and smart building controls market. Before we get into our guests, let’s follow up on a couple of things. From last week show he saw the show, I was concerned about the fact that we as an industry have one of the greatest indices for anyone who wants to reduce the carbon footprint of buildings and make the planet more sustainable, that we pay well, we train Well, we offer great opportunities for advancement sounds like a younger person’s dream job to me, right? We’re not attracting the younger generation the way other industries do. So my call to action last week was to create a mastermind group of industry professionals, see if we could understand how to up our cool game, if you will, it compete with Silicon Valley, and other industries. For this younger talent. I had a couple of the younger people spotted right away. And I’m looking forward to getting more people that would like to be involved. I’m kind of thinking of maybe every couple of months a mastermind group via zoom. If you’d like to be part of this, email me at ControlTrends hotline@gmail.com. And as part of to understand what kind of what kind of social media works for this group of tech savvy younger people I mentioned, last week, I will be opening a tick tock account, which I did. And as a teacher mine used to say anything worth doing is worth doing poorly, at least at first. So I got the poorly part down. But I learned a couple of things. I found out that there are tons of Tiktok videos on how to do things like for example program, a Honeywell thermostat, there are a bunch of them. And most of them had over 300,000 views were tons of how to videos on all kinds of mechanical stuff, and technical things. And there were even some on smart buildings, not from our vendors. But just from concerned citizens. These all had 234 100,000 views. So these are not done by companies, like I said, but they’re but they’re done by people that are interested in the products, which I found really fascinating. So one of the ideas might be to find someone with a huge tick tock following and pay them to be your brand ambassador, my guess is it would be cheaper and more effective than doing it yourself. And speaking of do it yourself, I don’t think I see my wife Anna, who is younger and has a podcast and does a lot on tick tock laugh so hard is when she saw my first tick tock video. But it remember right off the bat the part about doing it orally, at least at first. So pick up my pride and asked her what I needed to do better. And and, and it gave me some pretty good advice. The first piece being that you have to get their attention right off the bat. She said my intro was way too long. In other words, in the first three to four seconds, if you don’t capture their attention right off the bat, you’re gonna go to the next the next video, you pretty much have to say, Hey, if you have this problem, here’s how you fix it. And I think that’s really good advice for all kinds of marketing, communication, getting their attention off the bat. We’ll talk a lot more about that later. But here’s a big one, always hold your phone above or above your face to get more flattering angle. Otherwise your wife will look at you like mine didn’t go, my gosh, I didn’t realize you were so old. The final thing was you gotta get your tags, right, you have to tag your videos in a way they can be found, find other videos that are doing well see what tags are using the titles and use those. And his final suggestion was watch a lot of videos study what works made a lot of sense. So it got me thinking a lot about sales this week. And to begin with, we’re all in sales, whether we realize it or not. Sales is nothing but a process in which we ask for something we want. Everything is sales. And when you look at sales as a process, then like all process processes, it can be improved on and if you can improve your process, you can change and learn and adapt. If you don’t, you’ll get the same things. My guest this week is going to give us some great tips on how to improve our sales processes. To me when it comes to salespeople, there are basically two types. There’s hunters and farmers and occasionally gets one that does both. But for the most part, they’re one or the other. 100 goes out they love finding business. They love the hunt, as the name implies, they’re great cold callers. They’re relentless. They’re aggressive. Farmers, on the other hand, would rather get hit in the head with a two by four then have to go out and make cold calls. Farmers are great at growing a business once the relationship has been established. I think most of our sales rep in our industry be more technical or like farmers, get them in an account. If they’re good. They’ll grow your accounts social media has taken on the role of hunters. So if you do the social media, right, it’s a lot less expensive than hiring a salesperson and you can get huge bang for the buck if you got the right strategy the price Mmm Is that very few people get it right. So whether you hire a hunter to go out and grow your business or spend money on social media, both strategies have the same big hurdle, which is access, people don’t have time anywhere they don’t have time to see you don’t have time to look at your content. So now no matter how good your Hunter is, if they can’t get in to see a potential customer, they’re locked out. Just like you can create the greatest videos, podcasts and content on the planet. But if no one sees it or knows where to find it, you’re locked out. And that’s where control trends can help. ControlTrends has been posting content for over 15 years, we’ve got a large, I say large compared to other sites in our industry and loyal farm following is global being seen or heard on control trends gives you access. So think about it. Control trends is open for business, among other services, the site will be at the open for advertisement and sponsorships. I’m in the process of redesigning our website working with some really good designers and I want to optimize it for reputable companies that want to advertise be a manufacturers, distributors, contracts or consulting engineers, the new design should be about ready in about seven or eight weeks and I’m really pumped up about I think it’s gonna look really good. But in the meantime, as I mentioned last week show ControlTrends is offering an immediate opportunity to get access and that’s to run a commercial on this show are first first sponsor is a leader and an innovator want to tell you it is you gotta get make sense he would do that. So before I bring my guest on, let’s have a quick word from our first sponsor, Cochran supply. Cochran supply has been serving customers since 1965. In fact, I believe they might have been the first Honeywell distributor in the country. But I was just getting in the business I had the pleasure meeting Don Cochran, senior of is quite a gentleman and rate individual very knowledgeable. And since then I’ve gotten to know and work with both Scott and Don, Jr. And someone I think a conference apply. I think a really good people who work hard, they’re aggressive. They innovate. Cocker provide great products and services, and train they got a great training site. And Cochran hosting this 2023 controls chronic and Detroit, Michigan, April 27, and 28th have been done in the past when we did this year show two. And I can tell you if you’re building automation controls, and we’ll see what is next gotta be there. So if you’d like to sponsor our show, just click on the link in the show notes to get the details. And now for our guests. Okay, I don’t care how good a product you have, I don’t care how great your customer support is, until the sale is made. Nothing happens. I gotta tell you, I’ve been in sales my entire life. When I spot somebody isn’t good in sales. I’m going to bring them on the show and sharing with the ControlTrends community because I think sales is maybe a dying art at least the way people like my next guest do it who to me is one of the consummate salespeople out there. My guest this week is Joe Chandler. I asked her what his title was, he looked at me goes, That’s a stupid question. I’m in sales. Joe’s with Brody precision, Joe, thanks for coming to the show. And taking a few minutes to speak with us.

Unknown Speaker 8:08
Thank you really appreciate you having me on.

Eric Stromquist 8:11
was great to have you brother. Walk me through your

Joe Chandler 8:13
journey funny, I got in trouble growing up for selling candy at school with buy it at the convenience store and then come back in and sell it to the kids. At my school. I graduated high school and I went right into electronic sales two weeks after I was graduated high school, from that point outside of a stint at a deli. That was what I was doing. When I started at Brody though I actually started in the warehouse, worked my way through from warehouse to delivery counter and UPS and eventually just was able to get out on

Eric Stromquist 8:45
the road. Probably you and I have that in common I’d same same sort of route for me working in the warehouse in the summers and then working to counter and then getting out I couldn’t wait to get out on the road. And I think that’s one of the things that probably was true for you, too. When you when you first got on the road. What was that like for you?

Joe Chandler 9:00
So that actually was because I didn’t know HVAC and I didn’t know controls. My thing was is to kind of show up, you know, really in the cold calling world. I actually started with guys at the counter and it would be you know, just engaging them before I was actually an official outside sales guy, but pay commission, it was just engaging people. And you know, the big thing was sales, I think in that you can’t teach that part of it is like the curiosity, right? You can’t teach enthusiasm. You can’t teach curiosity. But people show up with a calendar and you help them out. Find out what else they do, and let them know you do stuff too. And that’s that’s where it goes. So you know who will who gets to make that decision at your company. And that, you know, if you’re if you’re doing that naturally before you’re compensated it’s not a hard transition once you do get compensated to go well this isn’t bad either. You know, I would look for you know, reasons a guy would order a part And then I’d go deliver it instead of shipping it. And that gave me a reason to be in front of them. And those hustle points get you somewhere. I think people appreciate that. It’s the touch that has kind of got lost in in the sales over the last bunch of years.

Eric Stromquist 10:17
I know when I got started, and then probably when you did, too, you could drop me in any town in America, and within 15 minutes, I would know where the hospital was the local school board, the local university and the manufacturing plants were. And back in those days, I mean, I can walk in any hospital around you know, I just go through the back door, I’d see a maintenance guy and I look, firstly, I just looked at the thermostats on the wall, they had a Johnson thermostat. So I said, What do you guys want? You know, I’m here to talk about the Johnson stuff. Oh, you need to see. And there. But but but if you did that now, they probably shoot you. So getting access is really, really tough these days. But how do you get around that? I mean, right now you’ve got a lot of access, because you know, a lot of people you’ve been doing it for a while. But if you were just starting out now, how would you be getting access to clients,

Joe Chandler 11:03
we as a, as a distributor, we are no no end users at all. So it’s all contractors. The fortunate part, I guess what Brody at this point in 2023, is where we’re certainly a known entity within our marketplace, you know, if you’re doing specifically building automation, you, you know, us or you, you deal with us. But more of that, especially when you’re young is how do you get more out of the guys that are, you know, using you only for that one piece where you can grow past that. And those value touch points are where I think sales guys can really, really show what they’re worth. But I’ve got an inside sales guy, and everybody abroad, every outside guy has their own inside guy. So when I’m on the road, which is a lot or just in the, in the you know, in these conversations with people, there’s a guy back there that my customers, they can reach out to they can get their quotes, get their licensing, do all those things. But he’s a guy that I’m trying to mentor into getting into the outside role, set up some meetings, and let me go with you, you have been with me, I brought him in as the inside guy. And this isn’t my customer, kind of it’s our customer, right? They rely on you as much as they rely on me maybe more, because it’s a day to day thing. You have seen me in front of people. I want you to take that lead role. And let me hang back and just watch you do what you do. But you’re not alone. You’re not on an island where you’re you’re worried what happens if I don’t know what happens if they ask me something that is beyond my ability to reconcile having a mentor within the industry is I think there are ways to set guys up for success. And that would be one that I would say if you could do it, you’re a young guy. Don’t think like you’re on your own. And I tell my contractors that young salespeople that they hire, and I’ll call them and say, Bring me in, you don’t have to do this by yourself, you know, how do you structure the conversation in such a way that your customers sees? What you’re trying to get to and the value that you might bring? The lien sales? I have done zero PowerPoints in Oh, seven, never done, right? Never done one for you. Like how do you do that? I said, because the cop, if you’re having conversations with people who want you to help them solve a problem, they don’t want you to present to them. They want you to get to know them. When I leave HR, as just happened. And you know, obviously you were there. And you come back and you know, when the customers say Well, what did you learn because I didn’t get to go? If it’s great. That’s why I’m walking around. I’m their advocate, I see this and I see that I go, I know you well enough, I know your business. I know how you go to market. And when I come to you with an idea, you know that I know that. So that idea must be worth something to you if I’m gonna present.

Eric Stromquist 13:55
Joe, I want to repeat what you just said, you know, I am your advocate. And I think if more sales reps adopted that philosophy, so I think when you can develop that sort of a relationship with a customer like you obviously do, it’s a huge difference. And I think what I’m hearing in that to Joe is that’s really the probably the most important part of your job, right is to become that advocate. So they think of you as part of their team, not just some guy trying to sell them stuff.

Joe Chandler 14:20
I got a lot of Joe Chandler isms that I pushed out, I want to hear him, tell him, first of all, your job is a sale. How do I help you win more work? Right. And that’s something that you now hear the Brony people talk about. Our job is to help you with work. Our job is to not sell you parts. Every interaction does not need to lead to a transaction. So many salespeople get caught up in this idea that we had a conversation, hey, I helped you with that thing. Now where’s my purchase order interactions will lead to transactions just not every one of them needs to. So you you’ve got to have that mindset of I don’t need to monetize every time I talk to somebody because it’s happened to me right there. cuz happened to you, when you get a call from whatever vendor is trying to make their quarterly numbers and they start calling you and it’s every week and then it’s every other day. And then it’s every you know, and every day, at some point, if you know that that’s the only reason why they’re calling, you don’t want to take the call, right? Why aren’t you calling me when nothing is going on? And you just want to talk and you want to figure out how my business is doing? How do I get? How do I do things better. So those little things, if you can figure out how to to not monetize it, and realize that your hard work will pay off, it just doesn’t have to pay off today,

Eric Stromquist 15:35
where it gets difficult starting out, or they say, Hey, Joe, go, when did you go find 10 new customers? How would you do that? How would you go about approaching let’s just say, all of a sudden, one of the vendors calls up and says, Hey, Joe, this company over here is using your competitor, we want you to go in and win that account. The good part

Joe Chandler 15:55
is is that we’re building automation, right? So widgets a widget, if my widget probably does what you were just does, or vice versa. So where where we try to you know, in the Brody world, we differentiate ourselves is showing that, you know, once again, we’re not there just for this transaction, right? We’re not there just to win this thing. But it’s also showing differences of why you might want to look in a different direction, right? And I said, you know, it has to work for both of us. If you’re going to come to me as a vendor and say, you know, what I have I have a MSTP vav controller? Well, I don’t need that. I’ve got those, and I got enough of them. So do you differentiate yourself on the hardware side? Do you differentiate yourself with the way you go to market? Do you solve a problem for me that I can’t currently solve? That’s what I want to know. And if that’s the case, I want to be that same for my customers, it’s okay, you’ve got a place where you can buy stuff. So you had taught me this years ago, Eric, and I’ll never forget, when we sat at one of those conferences and sitting at a table and you explained to me you’re like, when you go into a new customer and you say, Who are you currently using? And they’ll mention it doesn’t matter who and you’ll say, I’ve heard great things about them. Tell me what you like. Okay, and what the customer does at that point is tell you everything that matters to them. Whether or not you’re trying to sell them something you think should matter, you listen for what does matter, because whatever, there’s going to come out of their mouth, in their compliment of their, you know, of their current supplier is something that for whatever reason matters to them. And you check a box, right? That’s what I started doing them. And mentally I say, Alright, can I do this? Can I do this? Can I do this? Anything they could do better than you know, you think is, you know, should be kind of what part of your business needs. And then we’re going to name things that basically the other guy can’t do.

Eric Stromquist 17:50
I love it. Dude, I just want to recap a little bit. So you know what Joe’s basically talking about? If somebody is using another brand, rookie rookie mistake, you see veterans make it all the time, right? So they go we use Brand X, you go well, Brand X, we’re better than Brand X because of Bom, bom BA. So you immediately put them in a defensive mode. I mean, think about it, if your wife or spouse or a friend starts criticizing you go, that was a stupid thing to do human nature, we’re going to defend it. So by saying, Hey, I’ve heard great things about them. Tell me about Tell me, tell me what you like about them. First of all, you’re rewarding them, they’re gonna feel more comfortable with you, right? And then you know, they’re gonna start liking you because you know, Joe, first thing was sales. So you got to establish a rapport. But this is a report about something that has to do with them. And what I would tell the youngsters out there is is don’t be afraid to the guy says we absolutely love and you just go hey, look, here’s the second part. Who’s your who’s your backup? Who’s your number two? Could I could could I pay for your number two? Can I be your backup vendor? They go back a vendor? Why don’t we need a backup vendor? This is where you go? Well, look, I mean, I know this is a great company, but even great companies, sometimes people go on strike, or they have problems or whatever, where you can’t get something in the middle of the night. And I can tell you one things about our company is if you have a problem, I don’t handle that brand, but my brand, you know, we can get it for you. We can we can knock it out. And then they’ll go well, that makes sense. Yeah, you can be my number two vendor and then you say this is this is this is the Joe Chandler special. I think you said Well, cool. Well, listen, if we’re gonna be your backup Variable Frequency Drive, then let’s get one and let’s get one order one. I’ll come and do the training for the guys and so on and so forth. Well, wait a minute. I told you we love ABB their greatness. No, I understand that. But if you all of a sudden can’t get a drive and you have a catastrophe, do you really want your guys you know, trying to figure out a new drive in the middle of the night. Let’s let’s do that. And then here’s your worst case scenario, right? I’m just using a BB and Honeywell for example, because I’ve done this before your worst case example you bring your ABB rep in and he sees your Honeywell drive sitting in your storage room, and maybe you’re gonna get better pricing. I maybe want to take you so much for granted so you can’t lose here. Right?

Joe Chandler 19:57
That’s actually good. I will use that But, you know, it’s funny, I always tell people what my thing is, is I want give me a chance. Yeah, if you give me a chance to service you, and it doesn’t work out, that’s not your problem. That’s my problem. I didn’t do enough for you. When I’m given that opportunity, more times than not, somebody’s gonna say, we see a difference here. There is something that you guys do as a company you do as my sales guy your inside guy does. That really separates you from what I’ve been used to. Because you don’t know what you don’t know. Right? You don’t know what you don’t have, because you think everybody’s the same. Until

Eric Stromquist 20:38
people love to buy. But they do not. They do not like to be sold anything. Nobody goes, Oh, man, I went and this guy or girl sold me something, right? We don’t brag about that. We like to brag about buying. So when I would go in, for example, to try and cold call somebody to go he doesn’t talk to salespeople, neither do I help people buy stuff, but I’m not a salesperson. I don’t blame him. So I mean, but it is a subtle distinction. It sounds like do you do it naturally? It really is about how can I be of service? Let me earn your business. It seems like you just naturally do that.

Joe Chandler 21:12
Yeah, I don’t think I mean, some of that obviously comes over time, right? You get comfortable being in your own skin. And in those environments where you’ve seen different ways people approach it, you’ve had those very hard people who won’t buy into anything, and they’re, they’re, you know, they, they’re combating you. And you’re like, you know, this is going to be a long day. But in general, people don’t like to change, right? So they’re very uncomfortable with something new, which there’s a book over my shoulder called the Challenger sale. And that’s one of the very few sales books that I ever recommend reading. So many people default to what my relationship guy, that’s how you build sales, sales is all about relationships. And, and one of my isms, it’s not about relationships, it’s it’s about the value you bring to a relationship, right? I mean, like, you and I have a good relationship. But if I wanted to come sell you something, right, there’ll be a better value behind it. Otherwise, you’re gonna go, Joe, this is cool. But I already do that, right? I don’t need your stuff. I got my own stuff. So Right. You know, the challenger sale talks about that idea of your best sales guys are going to be the guys that will actually push the customers, even when it’s uncomfortable for both. It’s not just taking that transaction and going, I’m satisfied with what you gave me last year, this year. In the last few years, I’ve had all these LED lighting, sales, LED lighting, what am I literally fixtures, light bulbs. Yeah, in the millions of dollars. And while I’m already in the building, and you’re staring at something else, it’s on offered modulates, which is what a valve does, or an actuator does, right. Yeah. Right, offer modulate. So what’s the difference in the lightbulb? But you’re there and they trust you. So it has to question Hey, what’s going on with these lights? I’m gonna control them anyway.

Eric Stromquist 23:05
Yeah. What do I say? You got people that would build relationship, like you mentioned, you know, the challenger sale, they’re different sort of role models, I say that a sale doesn’t really happen until somebody says, No, I’m not interested. Okay. That’s when you guys like you may go to work. It’s not that we push them or whatever. But we do ask that next question. The three most powerful words that I’ve ever used there more than three actually now is when somebody says, you know, not really interested or whatever, we’re really happy with somebody else. I’m just curious, what would have to happen for you to make a change and feel good about it? Because if you think about what we really do, you’ve done it all through this interview. It’s about the questions you ask people like warp speed Google machines, you ask somebody not to think of a blue elephant, they had to think of a blue elephant, to not think of a blue elephant. But I would say that, and I’ll throw this out to you try it, see what you think. But next time, you’re ready to address what would have to happen for you to try one of these and feel good about it, you got to add the good part about it. So that’s one but you know, if you think about what we really do when people ask, Well, what do you do, I help people make good decisions. That’s my job. My reputation is more important than any sale that I could make 10. But I’m not here to sell you great. I’m here to help you buy if it makes sense for you. But to do that, we have to be honest with each other, right? And I’m going to ask you questions, so we can discover whether it makes sense or not. And if it’s not gonna be a good decision for you, hey, let’s shake hands and I’ll go down the road. But at the end of this presentation, if I’m going to ask if it makes sense, it makes sense. I’m going to ask you to do something about I want to yes or no to me a yes and no or equal. Because if they say no, it absolutely doesn’t work for me, then that’s cool. I can go look someplace else. What I don’t want to have happen is will send me you know, if you’re not interested, I don’t want to be wasting your time and my time. Do you feel that way? Or do you have a different point? Yeah,

Joe Chandler 24:50
some of that. I mean, you know, it’s funny by my thing with sales I always say is, for me, especially the way that we operate because building automation is not we’re shouldn’t be transactional, right? Don’t don’t treat that as transactional. It’s not I got to sell you a car. And I may never see you again, that’s a transaction that happens once. So I tell people the sale happens at the time in which the customer decides I will give you a chance to start using it. My biggest customers, Brody’s biggest customers date back 10 or 12 years, but it was the moment in which they decided they were buying from somebody, right? They’re not a brand new company never existed. We just weren’t their primary. But the moment that they said, I’ll give you a chance, that’s when the sale started. Yes, transactions have happened all that time since. And the ability to introduce the next technology, way to go to market. Those things are the additional selling that goes along the way. But look, if somebody’s doing Schneider building automation, right, which we have, you know, and they’re buying directly from Schneider, well, the chances of you switching that over is slim. But that’s not the only thing they buy. Right. They still need these other things

Eric Stromquist 26:04
true or false salespeople are born not made.

Joe Chandler 26:08
I think that there are I think that they are made. But you can. But there is some natural talent to that ceiling. I think that that there is a difference between the level at which somebody can achieve and that that requires making somebody they have a natural ceiling that somebody has to or themselves have to try to figure out where that is,

Eric Stromquist 26:32
I my guess is you probably read every sales book and get your hands on. You talk to people that are good at sales, you study people that are good at sales. I mean, to me, it’s a craft, right? I mean, it’s an absolute craft. And as you know, it can get down to the words you use. And and I think to be successful in the sales game, you have to be a lifelong student of sales and of human nature and of your products. And you have to have tremendous integrity. Because, you know, I’ve studied with hypnosis and stuff like this, and you know, they could get you to do anything. But if you don’t have integrity, people sense that and you might get a sale once, but that’s all you’re gonna get. So yeah, we’re playing the long game, right?

Joe Chandler 27:10
Like I said, it’s it’s not about transactions, transactional sales get you so far. But

Eric Stromquist 27:16
I would say that persistence is the number one thing and having integrity, one to help people. I think if you are persistent, you have integrity, you’re trying to help them, you will eventually win. I think if you understand some basic sales techniques and how to frame things like you know you’re talking about, it just speeds the process up. But if you don’t have that other thing about I’m genuinely trying to help you and people consent can’t sense that you might get in the door, but you’re not staying very long. So outside of the Challenger sales, other sales books you might recommend for our audience. Good to

Joe Chandler 27:47
Great is another very good book. And my favorite right now is the three minute rule, which I have literally handed that book to people recommended it. And the three minute rule is basically how do you sell the best parts of it, whatever it is, so you can keep an audience engaged.

Eric Stromquist 28:06
Listen, how do people find you, Brody? precision.com As per the godfather of sales

Joe Chandler 28:12
you know the way that we’re broken down with you know, if somebody wants to talk sales, and in the owner of our company doesn’t mind me spending time doing that day or night that then that you can reach out to Brody? I got you know, obviously I’ve email which is J chamber at Brody precision.com. Okay, we

Eric Stromquist 28:28
do this again, I would have like I said, I’ve made a commitment to my audience not to go too long on these interviews. But can we do another interview maybe in a month or so? Sure. That’s Joe Chandler from Brody precision. Definitely check him out. Joe, thank you so much.

Unknown Speaker 28:40
I appreciate it. Thank you. All right. There

Eric Stromquist 28:42
you have it. That’s another week on control. Talk Now the smart buildings video pass and podcasts. A very, very special thanks to Joe Chandler from Brody, precision. Great job, Joe. So we’ll see you next week. Until then, remember, be bold, stay in control, stay relevant. And as Hunter Thompson used to say, buy the ticket. Take the ride