Profit & Grit with Tyler
Profit and Grit is the no-BS weekly podcast for home service business owners and blue collar entrepreneurs. Each episode features real strategies from successful contractors and industry experts in HVAC, plumbing, electrical, roofing, and other trades. Hosted by Tyler Martin, a fractional CFO for home service businesses and the trades, Profit & Grit dives into growth, cash flow, hiring, pricing, and leadership. If you own or want to grow a business in the trades, this home service podcast will help you build a stronger, more profitable company.
Profit & Grit with Tyler
Building an Ethical Sales System for the Trades – Lenny Gray
Door-to-door sales expert Lenny Gray shares his proven six-step sales system for home service businesses that works for even shy reps and maintains ethical standards. He breaks down why most sales teams fail before they start and how owners can build systems that produce consistent results without sacrificing margins or reputation.
• Most businesses fail at door-to-door by outsourcing to third parties or focusing on hiring before creating training systems
• Door-to-door sales should be viewed as a math equation - with consistent conversion rates if you follow a system
• The "three R's" approach: Results lead to Retention which enables Recruitment
• Developing an integrity-based sales approach is crucial for maintaining company reputation and customer retention
• Good door-to-door reps typically share traits like competitiveness, mental toughness, and commitment
• Training should include at least 8-12 hours before a rep knocks their first door
• Compensation models vary by industry but typically range around 50% for first-year contracts if managed in-house
• The six-step sales flow includes: initial approach, qualification, value building, closing, objection handling, and solidifying
• Getting ahead of common objections before customers voice them helps maintain control of the conversation
• For first-time programs, start small with 3-4 reps rather than attempting to scale too quickly
Visit LennyGray.com or D2DMillionaire.com to learn more about Lenny's books, training programs, and free consultation opportunities.
🎙️ Profit & Grit by Tyler Martin
Real stories. Real strategy. Real results for service-based business owners.
🔗 Website: ProfitAndGrit.com
📍 LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/thinktyler
📸 Instagram & TikTok: @profitandgrit
Tyler Martin, a fractional CFO for home services and the trades
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It doesn't have to be door-to-door, but I think when you foundationally, if you can get in front of these common objections like I said, in door-to-door there's like seven of them but if you can get in front of it before it is vocalized by the customer, I think it keeps you in position of control.
Speaker 2:Welcome to Profit and Grit with Tyler, where blue-collar owners and insiders spill the real story behind their hustle, building businesses that thrive through sweat and smarts. We'll dig into their journeys, from scaling chaos to growing the bottom line, with lessons and grit that pay off big. Here's your host, the blue collar CFO, tyler Martin.
Speaker 3:Most home service business owners hate sales or at very least, they hate hiring for it. But what if you could build a sales team that actually performs and doesn't drain your time or tank your reputation? My guest today is Lenny Gray, a door-to-door sales expert who's trained thousands of reps and built multi-state pest control companies using a repeatable ethical sales system. In this episode, lenny breaks down why most sales teams fail before they even start, his six-step sales flow that even shy reps can follow, and how to structure pay so your margins don't disappear. Whether you're hiring your first rep or you're trying to scale a sales team that sticks, this one's packed with stuff you can actually use. Let's get into it with Lenny. Hey, lenny, welcome to the Profiting Grit Show. How are you doing?
Speaker 1:I'm doing fantastic. Thanks, Tyler.
Speaker 3:Thanks for being here. I'm so excited to talk with you. Let's first talk about what you do for a living. That's where I'd love to start.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so I own several pest control companies kind of throughout the nation and then I also do a lot of sales training and sales consulting for companies not just interested in door-to-door that's certainly my background is in door-to-door sales but just helping companies get better in all aspects of sales within their organization.
Speaker 3:Very cool. And then I'd love to have a little tip about you, a personal tip. Is there anything that you can share, maybe even that people might not commonly know about you?
Speaker 1:I mean there's a few little things, so I'm an only child. So if there's any other weird only children out there, I guess I mean we don't know what we don't know. That's what everybody asked me is like, how was it being an only child? I don't know. I wasn't having brothers and sisters, it's just kind of what you know, let's see. So also, I never missed a day of school in my life. So from kindergarten through college I never missed a day of class. I never missed a day of school. So I had 100% attendance in my entire school career, which is kind of insane. And probably a more recent one. My wife and I we've been married going on 28 years. We have four adult slash teenage children and we had a surprise baby three years ago, so almost four years ago now. So we're starting raising a child all over again. So those are kind of three interesting facts about me.
Speaker 3:Wow, that's pretty cool. I still can't get over never missing one day of school. Like talk about having a perfect record, yeah no, it's real.
Speaker 1:I was on the local television news twice, Once after I got perfect attendance through high school, and then after college they had me on again and kind of did a feature on me.
Speaker 3:So yeah, kind of crazy but that is, that is very cool. Okay, so I want to start. I believe you started your career as a summer sales rep at Orkin and then you've gone to building a multi-state pest control company. So kind of take me through that. I want to start there, talk a little bit about the Orkin experience and then at what point do you kind of realize, man, there's more to this than just being a summer sales rep.
Speaker 1:Yeah, my high school buddy that I played football with, he actually tried to talk me into doing summer sales. And I mean I was from Utah. We didn't have a lot growing up, so the thought of pest control number one like even needing it, was always kind of curious to me. Maybe there's not a lot of bugs in Utah, maybe comparatively speaking to other states. But then, second, I didn't know people would actually pay for that kind of a service. Even if we had bugs, we probably couldn't have afforded to pay for it. So I didn't really believe him that I could go make 20, 30 grand in a summer or whatever. And so but I trusted him and I said hey, if you go out and it is real and it's, it's legit, it's ethical, why don't you let me know? And then maybe I'll consider it the next summer? And so sure enough, he you know he he did well and called me up and said I'm going to be leading a team in Birmingham, alabama, next year, so you need to come out with me and be one of my team members.
Speaker 1:So I got married that previous summer. So my wife and I we packed up our Nissan Altima and drove across country to Birmingham and ended up being the top rookie of the year for Orkin Pest Control our first year and made about $50,000, which to me was unheard of in the late 90s, considering the amount of time that I put into doing it. I mean, it was about four months, it was a solid four months of knocking and then, yeah, so I did that for a few years and then met somebody who actually knew how to kill bugs and run a pest control operation and I thought, man, that's the perfect combination for me and him to team up and do our own thing. So we started our own pest control companies in 2003.
Speaker 3:Wow. So I don't want to gloss over this. Door-to-door sales is just outright scary and you just make it sound like it's oh, no big deal. I just went and did it. I made $50,000. Take me through that. Was it scary at first, or do you get over that? Or is it always scary? Is your adrenaline always pumped up, or how is that?
Speaker 1:Yeah, no, that's a great question. It's always scary and honestly, it's not something that everybody can do. So if some people are listening to this like I'm just gonna turn this episode off because I never do door to door Like it's worth the listen just because you don't have to love door to door or even know how to do door-to-door to kind of implement some strategies. I'm sure we'll get into and just kind of talk through that, even if it's not door-to-door. Maybe your program has CSRs, call center people, maybe they go business-to-business the same rules apply. I feel like if you can do door-to-door, you can sell anything, because it truly is. I think I write about this in one of my books, but it's the armpit of all sales. Like you literally walk up to a door. Somebody may have never thought about buying what you're selling. They didn't invite you, they don't know you. Like you have all these strikes against you, and so I really do believe if you can do door to door, you can do anything.
Speaker 3:So, taking that one step further, 10 years ago, door-door sales, in my humble opinion, is a lot different than today. Like we're, very you know, we're scared of everything. We don't know. Is the person knocking on the door going to you know? Are they scouting out our house and to rob it for the future? Are they? Is this legit? Is it going to be someone overly aggressive that isn't going to take no for an answer? So I would. Is it even harder? I mean, is there still door to door as a viable way to make make a living, or what's your thoughts around that in terms of the changing of it?
Speaker 1:Yeah, no, it's. It's insane, Having been in the industry now almost three decades, right, I started in 1998. It's a big change.
Speaker 1:At first I felt like when I was first doing door to door, there was a lot more skepticism. Because, you know, because the thought of somebody knocking on your door and selling you, especially a pest control service and I've consulted now for over 30 home service verticals, so I've put together programs for you name it We've done it. So the same type of thing, though, where there was this little hesitation maybe 20, 25 years ago, because it was like I don't really buy anything from people door to door. But as door to door has gained in popularity and more and more home service companies and industries are doing this, I really feel like it's less about people having hesitation to buy something from somebody knocking on their door because they've done that. Now it's more or less trying to figure out which company is the best, which company is making the best offer? Which company do I trust? Do they have the best Google reviews? Do they have some kind of a history in my area, or are they servicing some of my neighbors? Is there legitimacy to what their company is offering?
Speaker 3:Yeah, so I think what I'm hearing is you actually feel like it's matured, if you will, in terms of there's actually more opportunity from a door to door? Is that? I don't want to put words in your mouth Is that how you view it?
Speaker 1:Oh, absolutely yeah. Like I said before, it was hey, we need to think about this or, you know, we'll do some research. No-transcript. I really feel like door-to-door has picked up a lot of steam. It's something that a lot of people I bet. If you interviewed homeowners, I bet more than half the people out there owning a home probably bought something from somebody knocking on their door, and so I just think there's more familiarity with it, which wasn't the case when I first started.
Speaker 3:Got it. What made you? At what point did you realize you were a great door-to-door sales rep? Was that when you made the $50,000 and did you know instantly you were going to be good at it? Or is it something that kind of evolved?
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's a great question. So my mindset was going in not having really much. I mean, I did a two-year mission, so I knocked doors for two years selling religion, which, if you want to think pest control is hard, try Jesus right. But I did this mission and I don't know how. You don't really measure if you're good or not, you're just. You know, you're trying to spread the good word and you're just talking to people.
Speaker 1:But when I went out to actually sell something, I felt like I could outwork anybody, I was in control of that, I could knock more doors, I could talk to more people, I could work longer hours, and so I really was dedicated to that. Like I feel like with anything, when you first start something, there's just some trepidation as far as just the learning curve right, like I don't know what to say or how to react to this and the other. And the company I worked for gave me a 10-page training manual that I memorized in a week. It wasn't much context for me to really go, other than I just got to learn by cutting my teeth and going out and knocking a bunch of doors. So after my first month I decided I was in a little town called Homewood Alabama and I did really well there. But I was about done with that area and there was a city right next to Homewood and it was kind of more of a rich, wealthier type of city. Houses were bigger.
Speaker 1:And I just decided one night I was like to close my day.
Speaker 1:I was like I'm going to go knock over here I think it was called Mountain Home and I'm going to go knock in this city and these big houses and I was like I'll just see if I'm, if I'm really any good at this. And so I knock on this door and a lady answers and kind of go through a little bit of a pitch with her and she says, yeah, let me grab my husband, and this was the kind of neighborhood it was. It was she said, but when my husband comes, you have to refer to him as doctor because he's earned that title. And I was like, wow, this is not Homewood Alabama anymore, but OK, I'll refer to him as doctor. And I ended up selling the doctor and his wife that night and I kind of was walking back to my car and that to me, tyler is when I went I'm actually really good at this. Like this is the first time I've kind of stepped outside of Homewood and it doesn't matter. I just kind of felt like at that point I could sell anybody anywhere.
Speaker 3:Wow. So you're not bringing it up, but I'm just wondering. A lot of times people that are doing door-to-door sales, they just get fired up about that sale, so cause you get so many no's and then you finally get that sale and that's. They're looking for that adrenaline rush every time that happens. Is that what kept you going, or is it just? Was it just the money overall of man I can make $50,000 or whatever the number is you were thinking? I mean, what was the drive for you that really kind of pushed you to? You know, because once again, knocking on doors to me seems it's pretty tough.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah. No, it's very tough and we don't sugarcoat it Like it is one of the more difficult things that you can do. But again, I do really believe that if somebody can learn how to do door-to-door, any other type of sales job they have is going to be easy For me. The first thing I did is I had a goal and I wrote it down. It was a number of sales I wanted to make my first year and I had a goal to sell 442 accounts. That was the goal and 42 came because that was my favorite number. And the 400 number came because I knew I'd make around that $50,000 mark. That was kind of my goal. So I had written that down.
Speaker 1:In fact, the company I worked for they had a do or die goal training and we'd go in and we had to write it down. We gave the piece of paper with our do or die goal to our manager and it was kind of a big deal and I just remember the manager. I handed him my paper and he kind of looked at it and he's like, is this your first year? And I was like, yeah, this is my first year. And he's like you know, nobody's done that before, sold this many in their first year in our company and I was like, okay so, and I said, well, here's how. And he says, well, how are you going to do this? I said, well, here's how I'm going to do it. And I kind of threw him off a little bit, but he was like, well, good luck.
Speaker 3:You know, he kind of that was kind of my motivation, probably more than down. You didn't even, I doubt you really knew like how many doors do I have to knock before a sale converts? You probably, you know, fell into that. Did those numbers actually work out? Did you have a reasonable estimate of you know how many hours you had to work to how many it would convert into a sale type thing?
Speaker 1:No, I had no idea to begin with but, like you said, as I got some experience and some repetition, I kind of had an idea of what it would be, and that actually made it easier for me when I had a formula. To me, door-to-door is a math equation. At this point, I know how many people I need to talk to per hour, per day, per week, and that's what kind of revenue will be generated by it. So I actually did a little better. You know which was great? I sold I think it was 474 accounts is what it ended up being. So I did a little better than my goal. But yeah, just with anything in life, if you have a goal and you write it down and you have some accountability partners, you tell people about your goal. I just think you're you're more likely to achieve it anyway, and that was a big help to me.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and to your point, in my other podcast I've had, I think, about 210 shows now and of those business owners that I've interviewed, many I don't remember a number off the top of my head, but let's say 10% have probably done door-to-door sales and most of them have gone on to be wildly successful because, like they can, almost, they almost get this edge to them that they can write their own ticket once they've done door-to-door sales. Yes, it is a crazy skill. If you can do it, it does set you up for a lot of success.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I have reps that have come and worked for my company and they're now professionals, whether they're in their own companies. We have an SEO company a guy that's been super successful that started with us. We have doctors and lawyers that will credit their door-to-door experience and learning how to communicate with people to helping them to take care of their clients better, whether in the medical field or the law profession. It is amazing you do have this, especially in today's world where there's less and less verbal communication. It gets to the point now, if I feel a certain way, tyler, I don't even have to explain how I feel. I can just send you an emoji, right, I don't even have to express myself. So in door-to-door, you actually are learning such a valuable skill of face-to-face interaction and communication with people that I think in some ways is a lost art and it just separates people.
Speaker 1:I've referred people or recommended people if they needed letters of recommendation, or maybe they're interviewing for a job and they're doing an application and, most things being equal, if somebody has some kind of significant door-to-door experience versus a candidate who doesn't even as an employer or employers that I network with, you're picking he or she who have done door-to-door right. You're him or her that have done door-to-door, you're him or her that have done door to door. You're picking the person that's done the really hard thing. So I think door to door is for some people, you know, it's a great living and people are doing it for decades, like me. But for other people it's a nice springboard, I guess, to other opportunities.
Speaker 3:Yeah, for sure. Okay, I want to dig into something here.
Speaker 1:no-transcript is they try to hire a company out of Utah to do it for them. That's the biggest mistake because it's going to cost them an arm and a leg and they're not going to have a relationship with the people. They're being hired by somebody else, which really makes the account quality suffer, right? So you have kind of the three strikes. It's going to cost you a lot, you're not going to have a relationship with the sales team members, which is huge, and then the quality of your accounts is going to be poor or less than average. And so that's the first thing.
Speaker 1:The second thing is and I'll go back to my experience when we started our own pest control company, my partner and I it was I was selling and he was spraying, it was just two of us and we wanted to prove it in our market 2003, which the equivalent today is closing in on a million dollars, which again that's pretty impressive for one person to do that in four and a half five months.
Speaker 1:So we knew everything there was to know before we brought in reps, that next year we brought in a handful of reps the next year and then like 30 or 40 the year after that, and it just kept getting bigger and better reps the next year and then like 30 or 40 the year after that and it just kept getting bigger and better. But I just think, if you're putting together a door-to-door program, kind of have somebody whether it's you as the business owner or maybe it's somebody in your organization have them be all in on putting it together the right way, not trying to do it too fast, too much, too quick. It's just do it in a reasonable way. Higher, three or four reps to start with, put a program together and a compensation model together that makes a lot of sense, that keeps the margins where you need them to be. You don't have to spend an arm and a leg or go into debt. You shouldn't with with any type of sales program, for that matter.
Speaker 3:So kind of take me through that. Like, how do you so? I'm San Jose, California. I want to build my sales team. I've got, let's say, pest control to make it easy. I'm running a business. I say, okay, I want to build a. You're suggesting don't outsource it first. Don't, don't call up a company that's another state and outsource it. So what am I going to do? I'm going to bring in some person locally that. Am I going to train them? Or do I put them through a training program? How do I spot, like, what are some one or two key trades that you're looking for? That would be the right profile for a person in this role.
Speaker 1:Yeah, great, great thoughts to unpack there. First and foremost, I look at it and I go. Most business owners that I consult with kind of have a backwards way of thinking. What I mean by that is what they're trying to do first is they're trying to put all their resources and time and effort into recruiting and hiring, but they don't have a system of training or a processes of training, and so they get these people in finally. You know, I finally got all these people hired and they're anxious to go knock doors. We don't know what's going to happen, so we're just going to let them go at it and see what comes of it.
Speaker 1:Normally, what comes of it is you get a lot of people quitting because door to door is super hard, right, like we've talked about.
Speaker 1:So if you don't have the right sales training program in place, then you're setting up your program for failure or right up front. So to me, I like the idea of I teach business owners, my clients, I have the material for them and I teach them how to do that. I teach them how to recruit and hire as well, but let's have the sales training in place first, that way, when we do start bringing people in, that they can have success early. I call it the three R's. It's like if you get somebody in, if they get results early, they're going to be retained and if they're retained they're actually going to help you recruit because they're going to bring in their like-minded buddies that are going to come in and want to do it as well. So I do feel like a lot of times people do have it backwards where they need to, before they go crazy on recruiting and networking and that to try to get the people in, let's have the sales training dialed in to make sure they're successful.
Speaker 3:Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. So if you do get that person in, you're not burning. You're not either burning them out or burning the process out without even knowing if they're good or not, because people that don't have results or don't have a clear path, they usually bail after a while, Absolutely.
Speaker 1:No, they will. So and there's things you can look for right, like I feel like the business owners I consult with it's let's use your own network. We don't have to go out and do a bunch of online ads and you know all these resources and spend money on it. Let's just look at your network. Do you have late teens to late 20s? Do you have that demographic? Are people in school, in college or even some high school? You know some mature high school kids? Do you have people that are competitive? Do they play sports? Do they have some kind of background, whether it's in even theater?
Speaker 1:We've had people that are in theater and getting a position. You've got to be competitive if you want to get the role in a certain play or whatnot. So, as long as people are competitive and I just look at it like this, I really dumb this. Try to dumb this down as much as I can, tyler, but I say, if someone's willing to knock doors and I don't think that's a huge percent of the population right, most people aren't willing to do it Like no way I wouldn't do it. If you just find people who are willing to do it, like, my process is make them able Like I've got a system and a process that have been proven. Almost like I said, if they're just willing, we can get people up to speed and start having success on the doors, as long as they're willing to go out and do it.
Speaker 3:So I heard you say like one trait might be competitive. So that's obviously a good trait. Willing is obviously, you could argue, is one trait. But is there something else? Because the thing I think about is trust, like when I think like what gets me once in every great while I buy something from someone knocking on the door, and it's usually something they've done. That doesn't come off, because a lot of times you know, people knock on the door and they're good with people and they can speak very easily, but I get this little bit of vibe that they're trying too hard and then my trust factor drops way down and I'm like you know what? You're just saying what I want to hear to get me to buy something. But occasionally I'll get someone and it's just, they just really win me over. They're like you know, I just connect. So what is it like? Do you look for some element of trust in terms of that other trait, or is that something that can be developed?
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's huge. I mean, that's the reason that I write books. I mean I've written books about door-to-door sales and I've been doing it for a long time. To me it's got to be an integrity-based system and program Because if it's not and I have a unique perspective as well I started out as just a door-to-door sales rep. Well, for the last 20-plus years I've not just been in door-to-door sales but I've owned a pest control company and I'm bringing in these reps and there has to be that trust developed and the integrity-based program and process that reps are using to go out and make sales.
Speaker 1:If you really want your business to thrive and you want to retain these accounts long-term. That's one of the biggest knocks on door-to-door is they have horrible retention and it's true If the company and the business owners don't have the right kind of training program in place. That is integrity based, because you can ruin your reputation so quickly nowadays with just neighborhood groups and text groups and different places that people congregate in neighborhoods, cities, states that you have to be really careful to you. You do want to set it up the right way and I'd add to that, besides the trust factor, things like commitment. You need somebody that's committed to go do it. You know, even if it's the commitment's a month or two months, they're going to get their face smashed in a little bit. You know that's going to happen in this to start.
Speaker 1:But once they get over the learning curve and they start to rep this out and really start to put into play what they're learning day to day, door to door, it does rep's favor. The better they get, the longer they endure. And then, of course, I think another huge skill is just mental toughness. It's hard to be told no over and over. I mean most things you sell door to door. Your conversion is going to be under 3%, just speaking in spanning of many different industries and many different verticals in home service. But for every 97 no's there are three yeses there. Maybe there's one or two yeses in those 100. So you have to have that attitude where, no matter what happened to me before, I can learn from it, but I'm not gonna carry that weight to the next door. You just kind of have to brush it off and move on.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and honestly I think that's where most of us we just honestly can't handle that Like the. You know it's it's a hundred slams or 97 slams of the door to your face or you know, sometimes people can even be probably more rude than that and you've got to have that thick skin. And when I talk with people that are successful, it's the three. They're living for that three like they're fired up when they get the three. You almost have to be crazy a little bit to some degree.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I would say that, I would say there's probably an element of craziness, or or you know. Like I said, just a short memory.
Speaker 1:I mean, I've had people say everything under the sun you can imagine to me and and you just don't take it personal. You realize you are encroaching on somebody else's property and they might be having the worst day of their lives and you just take it with a grain of salt and you move on to the next door. If you take things personal, this is going to be a horrible, horrible spot for you to be in to try to do door to door.
Speaker 3:Now it's time for one of my favorite parts of this episode, and that's our marketing that scales tip. In this episode, Lenny shares a hard truth. Home service business owners often rush into hiring reps without a repeatable sales system. Then they blame the process when those reps fail. But here's the other side. No matter how many leads you deliver with Google Ads, PPC or SEO none of it matters if your sales process is shaky, Before you optimize your ad spend or double down on leads, build your sales onboarding, Write your pitch scripts, Map your objection handling, Train reps before you hire them. A great marketing campaign won't fix a broken door-to-door flow. Build the system first, then let your marketing amplify proven momentum. This tip is brought to you by Service Scalers, the marketing agency helping home service businesses generate high-quality leads through reliable PPC, SEO and local search authority. Be sure to tell them Tyler sent you and they will roll out the red carpet for you.
Speaker 1:Thanks. If you take things personal, this is going to be a horrible, horrible spot for you to be in to try to do door-to-door.
Speaker 3:So take me through that first week of what an onboarding process would look like, just some. You know it doesn't have to be real detailed, but I'd love to know what should a first week of training look like and onboarding for a new rep look like?
Speaker 1:I like the idea of doing a lot of pre-season or, you know, pre-knocking training and there's companies that do it differently depending on maybe they're a summer sales program and they're hiring people in November and December, so it's like they kind of have to trickle out the training for several months to keep people interested and, you know, before they actually start knocking. But regardless, even if you're hiring people today and you'd like them to start tomorrow, I like the idea we call like a super Saturday training idea. We call it like a super Saturday training and I like the idea of at least it's a day or two where you're actually in a training environment with people that have done it, that know the system, that know the program and that you're role-playing a lot, you're doing a lot of practice. I always tell people like you know, if you're, if you're sensitive to four letter words, role and play are not going to be your, your favorite words.
Speaker 1:You know if, if you don't like that idea of practicing, you just have to, because one of the worst mistakes you can make on the doors is acting surprised or caught off guard. If somebody says something to you, you kind of have to just roll with it and have responses for common objections and those types of things. So I think that super Saturday training I mean our reps probably put in about 8 to 12 hours before they knock a single door eight to 12 hours before they knock a single door and I think if they have the right training program set up and they can just adhere to that practice, rep it out. I think within a couple of days most people, if they're trained properly, can go out and start to see success pretty early on.
Speaker 3:Let's say a rep is successful, moderately successful. What's the typical? How long should they be sticking with you, because this is an obviously a long-term career? And so what? What is it a year, or what's that timeframe where you go? Yeah, that's a good. That's a good run of what I'm trying to achieve with a typical rep.
Speaker 1:It's interesting Nowadays reps that are really good at this are are making a career of it. So it doesn't have a timeline on it to where it's like, yeah, once you're 30 years old or once you're whatever, you know you should move on to something else. Like, people love the idea of going out and working really hard for four months and doing whatever they want for the other eight, and so you find people making a career. That's more and more common, where it's not just strange, only children like me that have been in this for almost three decades. But and I don't knock doors just for my own company I'm more training and setting things up. I still shadow my reps. I mean that's an important part of training as well. I'm going out this week with a handful of my reps and I'll watch them and give them feedback and be there for them. I mean that's an important part of it. But I don't know. I don't think there's really, you know.
Speaker 1:So I would say more on the other side of things, tyler, where it's like people could do it forever if they get really good at it, but on the other side of it you at least want to do it for, I'd say, six to eight weeks.
Speaker 1:If you're going to do it, don't give up. We always say you need to talk to 600 people on the doors before we can start to decide if you're going to be good at this or not. So if you're talking to 50 people a day, you know six days a week, that's a couple of weeks at least that you're putting in that time and effort to get over the learning curve. And then maybe that next three to four weeks you're actually putting in the time so you can kind of decide okay, this, I can actually make this much money, or this much effort's going to equate to this much, you know, this much gain for me over time. So I feel like somebody should at least put six weeks into it if they're going to do it, and then after that maybe at that point you can decide hey, is this something I want to do long-term, or maybe it's just a one and done thing? It's, it could be all over the board.
Speaker 3:But do you kind of have like an average where, even if it's a decent wrap, where they kind of burn out? You know, maybe it's eight months, 12 months, three years? I realize there's going to be some that maybe they make it as a career. But I'm sure a lot of people use this as a stepping stone, whether consciously or unconsciously, and decide you know, okay, I've been doing this for 18 months, I'm making good, good money, now I want to move into this or move into that. I mean, is there a certain timeline where you know, if the home services person came to you an owner and said, hey, you know, I typically lose people after 16 months, would you say to them, oh, you got a problem. Or you'd say, well, that's actually a pretty good run. That's about what I normally see.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it does depend on if you are doing it seasonally or if you're doing it year-round. There's companies that will do door-to-door programs year-round. I programs year round. Certainly, if you're doing a year round, there is going to be the burnout a lot quicker. Maybe the expectations are lower, where maybe instead of 50 people a day, you're talking to 25 or 30, just so you have that longevity built in to where you don't burn out too quickly.
Speaker 1:So, but it's like any job, right, At some point you get used to being in that cubicle and writing emails all day or doing whatever you do all day, or maybe you're more on the creative side and you're like you kind of just kind of settle in to to the position, regardless of of what it is that you do. So I would say, though, if it's a year round program, you're yeah, you're not going to have the longevity that you're going to have if it's summer, because then it's summer sales and and you're making like a lot of guys that are really good at this, guys and gals that do this more career oriented, I mean they'll they'll make six figures in four months you know four or five months.
Speaker 3:And in fairness in fairness, lenny, I'm probably not thinking across the United States. I'm in Northern California, so the weather's pretty much good year round, so you do get pretty much door to door sales year round. I'm not sure if a typical business commits to it year round, but I do get them all year. I wonder. So what do you normally see? Do you see normally is a business saying, hey, I'm just going to do it during the summer, and what does that look like? Do they have to start over every summer? Then I'm assuming with their staff if they're bringing people in for four or five months and then saying, okay, well, I've done my seasonal door-to-door, I won't bring it back until next year. What does that look like?
Speaker 1:Yeah, normally it looks. I mean, a successful program is gonna retain reps for future years, right, and I think as a sales rep that's important as well. If you do well enough and maybe you're in between school semesters or you're on summer break or maybe you're in between jobs and you're like well, hey, I you know, and you're right, industry specific, if I'm in Southern Cal or Northern Cal, I could probably do, you know, whatever door to door most of the year. If I'm in Minnesota, I'm probably not going to be knocking selling pest control when there's four feet of snow in my front yard, right, that doesn't, that doesn't make a lot of sense.
Speaker 1:But I think reps that come back in additional years do themselves a favor, because the learning curve it's like riding a bike, as they say, right, you don't just start over from zero again. It's like no, it takes you a few doors, maybe a couple of days, to really kind of get your rhythm back and then you're off and going. You've learned this skill and I always kind of teach that. It's like why would you terminate a skill that is so valuable that most people don't have to earn money? Why would you kill that after one summer and again, scenarios are different. If I have somebody that's going to law school and they're set up and they've got their career in place, then yeah, do it one summer and make a little bit of money to pay off some schooling and get out and be done. But if it's a good option, it doesn't have to go away necessarily. Got it.
Speaker 3:Okay, I want to dig into your six-step sales flow. I tried to rename it to five and you very kindly set me straight on making sure I got all six steps. Can we talk about that? What is that? Why is it important?
Speaker 1:Yeah, I'm a very systems-oriented guy. I don't feel like I was born to be some great sales guy and I just could talk to anybody. You see some of these people and they have a joke for everything and they can come back and they're just super sharp and you're like, oh man, like I, I'm not that guy, I'm a normal guy. But what I did, over these hundreds of thousands of doors that I've knocked and rejections all over the place, I developed a system that I feel like, if somebody is willing to just kind of learn it and adopt it, that even somebody who has no business because we've had this in my company plenty of times, somebody has no business making money selling anything door to door they actually can start to do it. It's because they're following this proven system that they're not just guessing or they don't have to be just super creative or impulsive or you know, they can improv with anybody. It's like, no, you just follow this system. So just kind of in short, I break it down in my books and different webinars and that that I do, but just in short. So the six steps, or the first thing is your initial approach. Obviously, when somebody answers the door, what are those first 20 to 30 seconds sound like I've got a five-step process that's proven to get attention right away to really just help to facilitate a conversation. That's all you're trying to do in the initial approach. You're not trying to sell anything, you're just starting a conversation. The next thing I'm gonna determine is step two is who qualifies for my time. Kind of reverse engineered, every sale I've ever made, there's five things. At least one of them happen every time I make a sale, if not multiple ones. And if somebody actually qualifies on one of those five things, then it's worth continuing the conversation Once somebody's qualified.
Speaker 1:Step three is value building. So I'm going to build value in my service that I'm offering. I'm going to customize it to their specific needs and situation. That's going to make my value build better. I'm going to be concise with my value build. Once I value build, I'm going to close. Right, I'm going to ask for the sale. We got to do that. That's obvious.
Speaker 1:Typically, what happens when I close is the prospect will bring up objections, concerns that they have right. Oh, my wife's not here, can you leave me a car? They'll have things. So we go through the seven most common objections that somebody is going to hear if they're knocking doors and we have a solution for all of those, a really high probability of success solution to overcome any of those objections. After we overcome a concern, we typically go back to a closed right. That's kind of a cyclical. Those, those steps four and five we close, we overcome a concern, we close again. We overcome another concern, we close again. And then the sixth step is solidifying the sale. When somebody does agree, we want to make sure we get paid for what we sell. We sell solid accounts that are going to help the company out, they're going to help us out. So I have a 13 step solidifying the sale process. That that makes sure the sales that you sell do stick and that you're paid for them. They bring in good business for the company.
Speaker 3:So one of those steps you talked about objections and being ready for them how do you make it sound? How do you train or coach sales reps so it doesn't sound robotic? Because so many times when you give someone something you sound like the sales rep comes back to you and it just kind of sounds like it's the candle response and they're just kind of glossing over it. How do you get around that? So there's a better connection.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think there's a couple techniques that we try to train to help reps. And this could be for somebody answering phones in your business. You know that is going business to business. It doesn't matter, it doesn't have to be door to door.
Speaker 1:But I think when you foundationally, if you can get in front of these, these common objections like I said, in door to door there's like seven of them but if you can get in front of it before it is vocalized by the customer, I think it keeps you in position of control. It's a. It's very different if I say, oh, wow, that's a great concern and I go after it, versus saying, yeah, like I mentioned earlier, you know this, this and this. So I think, foundationally number one, we try to get in front of concerns, so we address things that might become a concern. We address them right away. That's huge.
Speaker 1:The second thing is is even just something simple like giving positive reinforcement to a concern. So if somebody says, hey, can you leave me a business card, you know most reps will say, if they don't carry business card most door-to-door reps don't they might say, oh, I don't have any cards on me. This isn't really a call-in discount. Why negatively reinforce a concern, right, so I might address that by saying something like oh, of course, I can leave you my contact information. Let me tell you, though, why we're trying to get people set up today to make sure they take advantage of whatever discount or deal or whatever promotion that we're running at that point. So I want to be agreeable with people, I want to positively reinforce concerns right off, but, most importantly, if I can get in front of a concern early, that's even a better way to keep control of the conversation.
Speaker 3:How do you train people to hook people, like right up front? Because I know, you know, just using myself as a consumer people knock on the door. How are they? You know? What are you training them so they hook you? So you don't you know, cause you're always thinking, when you answer the door, I'm already having dinner, I'm in the middle of a phone call, I'm you know. There's a list of about five things that just get rotated for reasons why you can't talk to someone.
Speaker 1:Yeah, the key to that is understanding what the goal is of those first 20 to 25 seconds or 20 to 30 seconds. I actually one of the chapters in my first book, door-to-door Millionaire I talk about it being 45 seconds. Well, this was back in 2012, when people had longer attention spans. We know that people have shorter attention spans now, so if I can rewrite that chapter, it'd be called 20 to 30 seconds. Right, we've knocked off part of that.
Speaker 1:But really this five-step approach is designed to start a conversation with somebody, because I feel like the ultimate compliment door-to-door sales reps get is when you sell somebody and they say, boy, I'm sure glad you weren't one of those door-to-door salespeople.
Speaker 1:It's like that's perfect.
Speaker 1:That's what I want to hear the ultimate compliment in door-to-door.
Speaker 1:I don't want to come across as a stereotypical door-to-door salesperson who is loud, who is pushy, who seems to just want to dominate the conversation. Like my five-step initial approach is very casual and again, the idea is to justify why I'm on the doorstep, to let somebody know we're running some kind of a promotion to get in front of maybe a common concern that I typically hear in that specific neighborhood, and then just ask them a conversational question you know how long have you guys lived in the area? You know, are you guys from out of state, are you guys locals here and where'd you move from? I like we're just starting a little bit of a conversation so I can determine again if that person gets to step two, which is if they qualify for my time. So that's again, it's very casual. It's a very different way to talk to people. It sounds different to people that are used to people just trying to sell them right out the gate and this, that and the other. It's not anything to do with that.
Speaker 3:Using your methodology, what would you say are the best home services, obviously, pest control being one. What are the best services that you think fit for like door-to-door sales, and what maybe home services would maybe not fit great for door-to-door sales?
Speaker 1:If I just use. So. I offer a free call to people that go to my website like business owners that are like I want to just kind of see if door-to-door makes sense for my company. I offer a free call. I'll talk to a business owner for 15 minutes and kind of tell them. I'll give you an idea of maybe the last three or four calls that I've had.
Speaker 1:One of those was definitely a no to me and again, I'm not saying that I'm the all-knowing, but I know enough to go. You know, a guy came to me and said what if we knocked on doors and started selling rock chip repair and window replacement? And I was like, well, how do you know people that they have garages? Number one, they're going to be in the garage. You can't really tell, you know, from the parking or from the sidewalk if. If the car needs that like that just seems like not something that would would generate a lot of of yeses, right, like less than 3%. It's like how in the world are you going to know if somebody needs their you know, window windshield replaced or a rock chip repaired? So that was kind of a no.
Speaker 1:Obviously, things like roofing are proven to do it. Pest control solar alarms. Those are kind of long-term ones. I had a company that does roof rejuvenation in the last little while. That I thought was a great idea. We actually put a pilot program together for this business to kind of get some statistics and some expectations as far as what that might look like. I thought that was a great idea. We've done gutters I'm trying to think of the last one I did somebody that does power spraying and window washing. That's got a lot of potential as well In an HVAC.
Speaker 1:I've consulted with several HVAC companies plumbers, electricians, you name it. I mean there's a lot more yeses than there are nos. Holiday lighting, you know, christmas lights, that kind of thing. A lot of people are going door to door Shoot. I had somebody knock on my door a year or so ago and they were just centers, right, they weren't trying to close the deal, but they were talking about an outdoor pergola, right, putting together like a pergola. And lo and behold, my wife and I had been talking about getting a pergola in our backyard. So what did we do? Sure, we'll have the guy come over and give us an estimate right. A month later we've got this nice pergola in our backyard and it's like if people are selling. You know outdoor pergolas, door to door. I can imagine that there's a lot of things that can generate business.
Speaker 3:You know one that I think you'd probably make a killing. I think the fees would be enough where it would make sense. This is going to sound weird, but pooping, scooping or pooper scooper type stuff, I mean that would be. It's an easy sale relatively speaking, and I just don't know, does the price point of the products have to be at a certain level where it kind of makes sense for return on the spend?
Speaker 1:Yep, now there's a lot of companies door-to-door poop scoopers, just so you know that's a thing that is real and that is definitely happening. So the interesting thing about this is a great question and something to dive into about your ACV, your average contract value, because your program will be set up differently depending on what that average contract value is Like. If it's anything under about a thousand dollars, well there's an interesting dynamic happening between contract value and closing ratio because you have to kind of look at and say can I compete with the companies that are that are, you know, having pest control and alarms, those guys in solar sales guys? Can I compete with them? Or if I can't, I can still find other ways to do this. I've got a garage door company that we do door-to-door marketing for we don't sell anything, but the guys can make a decent amount of money. They can close 42% of the people just to get a sticker in the garage, just so that we know that sticker is gonna pay off later.
Speaker 1:So door-to-door sales doesn't just have to be sales. Door-to-door can be marketing as well. But I do have to look at that because a higher ticket, something like solar, like I don't want the same guys closing deals, as I want setting up appointments right, so they have a setter-closer model for really high ticket HVAC is another one. Roofing is another one. Most people that go out to knock on the doors are just setting appointments for the people that know how to close, and so that's a kind of a softer way to get into door-to-door is to have a bunch of setters, so to speak, to go out and set appointments for people in your business. You might be thinking, well, my business is super complicated, we've got all these pricing structures and all these different options. Well, yeah, you don't want to try to teach door-to-door guys that in 12 hours they're probably not going to know, but maybe they're setting appointments for your closers to come in later. That's another way to utilize door-to-door.
Speaker 3:Right. So going back to that $1,000, could you explain that a little bit, so like just using, I don't know pest control? $100 a quarter, we'll say, or I don't know what they charge nowadays $150 a quarter they're charging. Do you mean a thousand dollars over the course of a year or do you mean in that one sale?
Speaker 1:It can be both.
Speaker 1:It depends on if it's a recurring service or if it is like a one-time, like, like if somebody's, you know, replacing their gutters.
Speaker 1:We're probably not going to have some kind of recurring service on top of that, right, but. But yeah, if somebody's getting their house cleaned or their windows washed, hopefully we can get them, or their lawn cut or fertilized or whatever, hopefully we can get that up on some kind of recurring. So what we look at that as is we look at what's the ACV, but in that timetable, what are we willing to pay the reps? Do we want to pay reps into perpetuity or do we want to pay them just for the first year? Maybe they're just signing a one-year agreement or a two-year agreement. We just pay reps at a certain time. So that's a fun for business owners is we can look at a lot of different ways to compensate reps, to either make them comparable to what others are making in other industries, or we can kind of do our own thing and look for just a different demographic of rep, depending on what the industry is and how much money is realistic to be made.
Speaker 3:Is there some general rule of thumb of what that cost relative to your service should be as a percentage?
Speaker 1:It does vary from industry to industry, I will say that. But here's a general rule of thumb. I think if you go out and hire we'll just use Pest as an example If you go out and hire a marketing team to do your door-to-door program and your reps are selling a one-year service agreement, you're going to pay a hundred percent. This is going to sound ridiculous and yes, everybody heard me right. Let's say my contract is a thousand dollars. I'm going to pay a thousand dollars for the first year of that person's under an agreement. It's ridiculous.
Speaker 1:I mean, that's, that's kind of what the this is number one why you don't sub this out while you learn how to do it in-house. Cause I think if you learn to do it in-house, you can be around that 50%, at least for the first year if you're signing some kind of an agreement or doing some kind of a recurring service and then after that, if you do a good service, if you're vetting the accounts right, then it's all yours after that. If you set it up that way, if it's a one-time service, again, I think you just have to be super sensitive to what the closing ratio is and what your margins are. You do not want to go in the red to utilize a door-to-door program, especially if you don't have a recurring service. I mean, these are these are obvious things for for business owners to know. But but I've seen a lot of people make make those mistakes to try and either sub it out or or they're overpaying for their sales team.
Speaker 3:Sure, okay. Okay, before we wrap up, I have a couple more questions. I want to get a little bit of a tidbit you got to. Let's say we've got a home service business. They're doing about one to $5 million a year. They're thinking about adding outside sales. What would you say to them, like, what are some barriers that you're seeing, some challenges that they're having? What are some groundwork that they want to lay to be able to do that?
Speaker 1:I like the idea of in that one to five range one to 5 million Because you've got some margin to play with. Right, like you can put some resources into getting a good program run up for training reps. Right, a good sales training program. You can put some resources into recruiting and, whether that looks like signing bonuses or paid training, you can do some things to make your offer attractive. So I really like that.
Speaker 1:I think the biggest mistakes are number one they don't have anybody in the organization that wants to run it or that wants to be over it, and again you just lose a connection with it. That way I don't think that works very well. Or number two is they try to go too fast, and what I mean by that is like, okay, we're going to do door to door, we want to hire 40 people and they're going to start, you know, next April. It's like, no, don't do that. That'd be one of the worst mistakes. You could make it. Door to door, there should be like TV reality series on door to door people and door to door teams. Like it's, it's a cluster and it's crazy and it's insane. It's great, they bring in lots of revenue, but they're high maintenance and there's just all these pros and cons you have to weigh. So I'm like just make it digestible, hire a handful of people year one, learn what works, what doesn't, how you want to dial in the program and then just to continue to scale from there.
Speaker 3:Awesome, that's great. Okay, I want to spend a little time talking about your services, your two websites. There's more than two websites, but two that I'll talk about right now, and the rest I'll put in the show notes. There's LennyGraycom. Gray is G-R-A-Ycom. That's your main website, and then you have D2DMillionairecom, so D2D stands for door to door and it's a two Millionairecom. Tell us a little bit about what you do. I want to talk about your books first. Maybe share about your books. I'm sure they're all on Amazon. I think you have another new book coming out, in fact, and so let's go through that first. What books do you have out there?
Speaker 1:Yeah, so I've got four books out right now. We've got or I would say I'm combining my two newest books into one book, so there'll be options for people to buy them separately or just buy the one with both of them. But my first book, door-to-door Millionaire Secrets of Making the Sale that's kind of what started all of this. I wrote more Door-to-Door Millionaire Next Level Training kind of, for more advanced sales skills for experienced door-to-door reps. That one was released in 2021. And then, yeah, my two new books are just for the pest control industry. So it's door-to-door pest control sales. Basically, it's teaching people exactly what to do, what to say, all the scripts, all the techniques I've used in under three hours. It's kind of learning the whole game in under three hours, and so that's kind of the newest books that are specific to the pest control industry.
Speaker 1:I also have an app out. It's free. It's called Ask Lenny. It's really designed to alleviate team leads and business owners from having to answer the same questions from their reps over and over again. So I put the app together. It's great. It's got hundreds of downloads. It just released not too long ago. I've had a lot of good feedback on it. I do a free webinar for business owners every month. I do a free webinar for sales reps every month. I try to put out as much free as I can, tyler, because I don't think there's a whole lot of transparency in the door-to-door industry. So I feel like the more I put out, the more real it is and, again, most importantly to me, the more integrity backed it is. I'm putting out stuff that I say on the doors, that I do specifically, that have helped me build my own company. It certainly will do the same for for you know, your listeners that are also interested in adopting some kind of door to door strategy.
Speaker 3:Very cool. And then from there, if people want more engagement from you, is it like a coaching service or is it a course or what's the next step? That, if you know, if people wanted to go down the funnel in terms of learning more about you.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I do personal private coaching. I do coaching sessions. I have clients that will purchase my online training material. So it's all kind of plug and play for them. They don't have to plan a sales training meeting ever again. It's just, it's all done for you. Those clients have a monthly webinar with me where we have Q&A sessions.
Speaker 1:So there's yeah, there's a lot of ways, and to me the best thing, like I alluded to earlier, is if you're interested, or kind of door-to-door, you're thinking, oh, this might work, might not. Like you, go to lennygraycom. I got a button that says free consultation. You book a 15-minute call with me. We kind of chat about what your idea is, budget, what it looks like, and then we can go from there. We can have a plan or we can have no plan. I'd rather talk to somebody for 15 minutes and have them tell me this is not a good idea for you and we go our separate ways. Nothing's lost by either party versus trying to go all in on something and spend a lot of money on something you don't need to or doesn't have a lot of traction.
Speaker 3:Awesome. Hey, Lenny, you're a blast to talk to. A lot of great information you gave us. Can't thank you enough for being on the show.
Speaker 1:Yeah, thanks, tyler, appreciate it.
Speaker 3:Thank you, man. That was a fun conversation with Lenny, very educational. My takeaway from talking with him was building a sales team isn't just about finding closers. Building a sales team isn't just about finding closers, it's about creating a system and that word system comes up. A lot people can succeed in the business owners who burn out reps or they blame bad hires. Usually skip the part.
Speaker 3:Lenny hammered home Training first, hiring second. I also like how he framed sales as math. Now, no surprises there. Know your numbers, know your pay structure, keep the system simple and you don't need to be a natural born talker to win. If you've been putting off building a sales team because you don't know where to start or you've had your fingers burned, rewind this one, listen to it again and also visit Lenny's website. I'll put it in the show notes. And if you want help building the financial side of that system, well, that's exactly what I do every day. Head on over to cfomadeeasycom that's cfomadeeasycom and book a no-pressure, free intro meeting and let's chat as always. Thanks for listening to Profit and Grit.
