Should I poach my techs to move to sales?

Should I Be Talking to My Techs About Moving Into Sales?

Turning technicians into salespeople sounds like a quick solution—but it’s rarely that simple.

In today’s Question of the Day, I break this down from both perspectives: the company and the technician.

In this episode, we cover:

•  Why poaching your own techs can hurt both service and sales if not done intentionally 
•  The importance of having career conversations to understand what your team actually wants 
•  What it takes for a technician to successfully transition into sales 
•  Why strong planning beats knee-jerk decisions when you’re trying to grow 

This isn’t about filling a role. It’s about building a plan.

If you’re considering moving techs into sales—or you’re a tech thinking about making the jump—this episode will help you approach it the right way.

Have a Question? - Submit your questions to chrish@nexstarnetwork.com

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:10

Welcome to the question of the day. Today's question is from Curtis in Florida, and Curtis asks, We run a flipping model, and I need salespeople. Should I be approaching my techs to become salespeople? Great question. Maybe. So I I want to approach this because the answer is maybe. It depends on a lot of different factors. So I'd like to approach this first by talking from like a sales leader standpoint and a company standpoint. But then I would also like to approach it from like a tech that is considering sales, right? Because I think there's two different angles to look at this. So let's start with the sales leader. As a sales leader, or looking at this from the company lens, I want to back up for just a second. Techs are very hard to find. And I know that's not like new information. Techs are very hard to find, though. And so what most companies are transitioning towards is growing their own technicians, right? Because there's all kinds of studies out there of in the trades, you have a workforce that is aging and will be retiring and exiting the workforce. And we don't have that backfill coming in of plumbers, electricians, technicians. And so the few techs they that we have, they're really cycling between companies, right? They just jump from one signing bonus to another. And so to combat that, what companies have started doing is they're growing their own. And so you see a lot of programs where we're growing our own technicians. And so I bring that up to be aware of before I just go in and start poaching my technicians to be salespeople, it's hard to find technicians. So I don't know that that's exactly what I want to do. I don't want to go nuts poaching my technicians because then I'm struggling on the service side of the business. So I want to pause, I want to back up. Because if I'm struggling on the service side of the business, yes, I'll be struggling with service, but I'll also be starving sales. Because those technicians are the ones that flip leads. And that's that's an art as well, is being able to build value with the customer and flip those leads to the sales team. And so I'll be hurting service, but I'll also be starving sales because I won't be getting leads and sales won't have leads to close then. And so I want to be very aware of that before I jump in and start poaching my technicians. But here's some questions, I guess I would ask, that help me figure this out. So the big question is gonna be do we have consistent one-on-ones with our technicians? Do and do we have career conversations as part of that? I'm not saying every week needs to be a career conversation, but but do we have career conversations? Are we aware of where our employees want to be in their careers and where they want to go in their careers and and how that changes as well? And so, for example, do I have technicians that want to get to sales? Sometimes there's technicians, their whole goal is to get to sales. And if if they're not getting a shot at it, it means they could go somewhere else, right? I've seen examples where technicians have very clearly said to their companies, I want to get to sales, and they keep getting passed over because we never want to pull them out of being a technician, because it is hard to find technicians. But by never giving them a shot, and we knew they wanted to get there, by never giving them a shot, they just end up quitting and we lose a good employee to somebody else who will give them a shot at sales. So, so through those career conversations, through those one-on-ones, I would find out is that part of their journey? Do they want to get to sales? Because if they do, I want to take that into consideration. We might also find out they're not interested in it at all. I rode along with a team actually in Florida where uh they had two selling techs. And one, he did want to get to sales. That's where he wanted to get to. The other, like sheepishly whispered to me, he said, I hate the sales part of this. I wish I had nothing to do with sales. Like, and and so we we took action on that because we were making the guy miserable. He hated that part of the job. He wanted to be a technician, he did not want to sell replacement systems for HVAC. And so you might find out they might they're not even interested in it. But have those one-on-ones, have those career conversations because that's gonna affect this decision of should I talk to my techs about being salespeople. Also, I wanna keep in tune with this because career aspirations change. I've met a lot of technicians that were very happy being technicians, and then something happened, like they got married, they had a baby, something happened, and now they wanted to do something different in their career, maybe earn more money in sales or something like that. And and so I want to be very aware of life changes and career aspiration changes through those conversations. I'll know about that. Because I've also seen where we never have those conversations, and maybe when they were hired, they just wanted to do one job, but then as the years went on, we never touched on it again, and their feelings changed and they felt like they weren't heard, and then they quit and go somewhere else where that opportunity is. They could have had that opportunity here had we known about it. And so we need to instigate those conversations and know what's changing in our employees as well. Now, another question I should be asking is would they be good at it? Like being a tech and selling are two very different skill sets, and that's why you do see a selling tech model, and it works very well for a select few unicorns, but it's really tough to scale the selling tech model because they have to be so good at so many different skills. They have to be a really good technician, but they also have to be a really good salesperson. And so, would they even be good at it? I should be asking that question. Do they have those those skills? And if they are gonna try out sales, you know, I have to be very clear about setting expectations of trying it out, right? Like they should be held to the same standards as a salesperson. If I have an expectation at my company that sales is gonna close at this rate and average sale at this rate, like this is our minimum standard, I would hold that tech to the same standards because it doesn't make sense to move a technician into sales if they're gonna underperform of what I could get from a salesperson perspective somewhere else. And so I also want to create that opportunity where if it doesn't work out, they can go back to being a tech. Because I don't want to lose a good employee over this. If I have a good employee, a good technician, again, they're hard to find. So I don't want to make this switch, and then the only off-ramp is they leave the company if it doesn't work out. I want to make sure there's always that path back that they can be a technician. And also the question I should be asking is do I have the capacity to support them in this journey? So if I'm not doing ride-alongs, if I'm not training them, if I'm not giving them one-on-ones, if I'm not doing debriefs after their sales calls, if I'm not establishing a win the day, if we don't have goals at our company, if I'm not giving them support to be successful in this transition, they're gonna go somewhere else. So do I, do I have the capacity to support them in this transition? These are all questions I should be asking myself from a company or a sales leader standpoint to answer the question of should I be should I be talking to my technicians to be salespeople, right? And the other thing you could do is I don't I don't want you to pigeonhole yourself to go the technician route because the the selling tech, it is harder to find people that can do both skills to scale up a business. There is lots of great candidates in other fields and in other trades, and I just don't want to pigeonhole myself that I'm only looking at technicians because that's a really small pool to be pulling from. I don't want to eliminate it either, because there's some great candidates that come via that route. I just don't want to pigeonhole myself that that's the only pool I'm looking at. Because I want to hire for attitude. I want to hire somebody that's gonna be good at the role, even if even if they don't know anything about the trade they're in, HVAC or plumbing or electrical, do they have the capacity to learn it? Because they don't have to know it as good as a technician knows it, they just have to know it good enough to be able to sell it and you know not sell a bunch of wonky jobs, right? Um, so HVAC does this a lot, right? Like you see this a lot where you have HVAC technicians and then you have HVAC salespeople and you have that flipping model. That's how most businesses scale up their HVAC side. Plumbing and electrical, you don't see it as much, but you do see it. There's a company in Seattle, a great company, that that on their electrical side, they have their electricians, but when it's a a repanel or a whole home rewire, they flip it over to their salesperson. They flip it just like an HVAC lead. And and that person that comes out, that salesperson, he's not an electrician, but he knows enough that he can sell those repanels, he can sell those um whole home rewires. Same thing on the plumbing side. You do see companies that um they flip some of those bigger opportunities, like a repipe or water treatment or water heaters or tank lists, like they flip those to a salesperson that's not a plumber, not a certified plumber, but but knows enough to sell those replacement jobs, right? And a plumber is doing those jobs, but um they have a salesperson. So you do see this in other industries as well. I guess one one last thought I have from the company standpoint is also could is there an opportunity where we could try it? Try it for a season, don't make the full-blown commitment of like we gotta move them over there and it's permanent, and then they don't have a path back. But but would there be an opportunity to just try it for a season? Like maybe as we come into a busy season, they could be the overflow. So if this was HVAC, as we ramp up into heating season, maybe we kind of have them tag to be the overflow. And I got a lot of sales leads, maybe that's their chance to go out there and cut their teeth on it because they they might not even like it. They may try it and be like, yeah, this ain't for me. I hate this. I just want to go back to doing what I'm doing. Great, then we didn't make a permanent jump, or they might not be good at it. It may be very clear early on they're not good at it, and then we can we can easily make that shift back because we didn't commit to anything. So, and I guess I said final thought, but actually I got one more thing from the the company side. I'd also wonder from a company standpoint are is this a knee-jerk reaction or is this part of our plan? Because we should have a budget. That budget should create a sales plan from the sales side. We have a sales plan of what we're executing, and headcount should be part of that plan. So when I build a sales plan with a company, we're looking at this, and so we'll know ahead of time, based on that sales plan, that I need one more person in June. And so that helps me figure out when I should be taking these actions because I'll probably be training them April, May, which means I should be hiring them February, March. So I should probably be posting that job in like February so that I have the opportunity to hire a salesperson. I don't have to knee-jerk reaction, go poach my technicians to to fill that spot, right? So these are all things that I gotta be thinking about before I just go jump in and poach my technicians because I I don't want to poach the service side of my business because it's gonna hurt the entire business unless they want to. And then let's have that conversation. Now, let's talk about this from the the tech standpoint, right? So if you're thinking about making this transition or it's interested you, here's a couple things to think about. You know a lot. You know a great deal, and that's fantastic. You are an expert in your industry, but transitioning to sales that can also be a curse. It can be a curse because we know too much, and we forget how little people actually know about the thing that we're an expert in. And this is true of all careers, so it's not just the trades, but but we forget as you get really good at something, you forget how hard it is for somebody just starting out, right? And so a technician, they know a lot about their field, HVAC or plumbing or electrical, and we gotta remember customers don't know that stuff, and so we really have to boil this down to the most basic level to explain it to a customer. So these are some things that we gotta be good at if we're making that transition from a tech to a salesperson. I need the ability to break complex items into simple thoughts. Too techy, no checky. I believe it was Einstein that said if you can't simply explain the complex, you don't know it well enough, right? So we have to we have to know it so well that we can break down complex ideas into simple ideas. We also need the ability to make a friend, to build relationships. I got a brother-in-law that we joke all the time. Like everywhere he goes, he makes a friend. Like it's like, oh, of course he did, right? I moved into my house and he met my neighbor before I did and made friends with him before I did. He's just he's that kind of guy. He can just make friends and build relationships. So you need to have that ability because when you go out and meet your customers, right, you gotta make a friend, you gotta build a relationship. You need the ability to confidently present big ticket items, right? If if we've been a technician and we've been presenting smaller ticket items, and now these ticket items are gonna be a lot bigger, we've got to have the confidence to do that, right? I've seen a lot of techs that shy away when they move into sales then, because they they think it's a lot of money. If they think it's a lot of money, of course our company customer is gonna think it's a lot of money. So we got to be confident in presenting those big tickets. You need to be able to take yourself out of it. You're unique as a technician, right? Like when you go look at this, if this was your home, you would just fix it because you have the knowledge to do that. But you got to remember the customer's not you. And so you got to take yourself out of this. What would be the best thing to help that customer? Not fix it, not sell them, but but help them. What take yourself out of it? What would be the best thing to help that customer? You need to be able to handle rejection. You get rejected, customers are gonna say no, and you need to be able to handle that rejection, but also have a plan of what do I do? When a customer says no, what do I do next? How do I keep this moving forward without hard closing them and being super salesy? So I need to be able to handle that rejection. And you also need to be able to think, how do I see myself? Some people struggle with that self-image piece of sales, especially in other sales industries like car sales. There's there's there's that stigma if you sell cars of the crusty used car salesmen. And honestly, most salespeople I know in the the automotive industry, they're good people, they're really good people, and they're honest people, but they have that stigma, right? As soon as somebody hears you sell cars, there's that stigma. But that's also all sales, okay? Car sales is probably the worst, but all sales, any kind of sales, there is that stigma. And so do you see yourself as a salesperson that's helping the customers? Entitle it whatever you want, but sales, right? So at the very beginning of this, at the very beginning, the question was I need salespeople. Do I poach my technicians to be salespeople? It wasn't worded that way, but and I said maybe. So now I'm gonna be a little more detailed, more direct. Yes, if you explore it intentionally, no, don't rely on this as your primary growth strategy. So that's today's question of the day. If you're enjoying question day, follow, share, and give a reading. Question of the days on major streaming platforms. If you have a question, reach out to me either on social media or email. Both are going to be listed below in the show description. Let's get your question answered. And if you're a next star member, schedule a call with me. Let's get this addressed one-on-one, and we can get very specific to your situation. I'm Coach Chris. We'll see you tomorrow.