Sales Systems Pros and Cons

Between 1994 and 1996, Donna Bade Shirey and her husband, Riley, grew their business from $543,000 to $1.8 million. Encouraged by their success, the owners of Shirey Contracting decided on a more formidable objective: taking the Issaquah, Wash., company to $5 million.

Shirey knew she needed to ignite sales to reach her revenue goals. She had read books by Tom Hopkins and Phil Rea (a contributor to this magazine) and had incorporated some sales techniques, but she sought formal training. On the recommendation of a fellow remodeler, Shirey spent $8,000 on weekly sales training through Sandler Systems, based in Stevenson, Md. She's happy with the results.

When she wanted a formalized sales method, Donna Bade Shirey (right) turned to Sandler Systems. She credits the training for helping boost her company's sales to $3 million. Using her training and Sandler cassette tapes, she's now schooling her new sales consultant, Carolyn Thomas (rear), in the techniques of the popular system.

Photo Credit: Brian Smale

"There's a consistency now," Shirey says. "Sandler has affected our business. The system gives you a way to get to either yes or no, vs. 'I want to think it over.'"

This year, she expects the company to bring in $3 million, more than halfway to its three-year goal of $5 million.

Unlike Shirey, most contractors use their own "system" to sell, though they may not call it a system. According to a Remodeling Reader Panel survey, 38% of remodelers don't use formal sales systems. About 23% use Sandler techniques, 15% use Phil Rea's systems, and 7% rely on Dale Carnegie sales training. About 5% use systems promoted by Dave Yoho, who, like Rea, is a former remodeler. Other systems used include those promoted by Brian Tracy or Max Sax.

Remodeling interviewed users of popular systems and those who sell them to see how, and if, the systems work.

Gaining control

Many remodelers look at sales as the dirty part of their business, with its huckster roots and "Tin Man" associations. They tend to think that sales systems, which train in technique and behavior modification to alter a salesperson's approach to customers, are canned, formulaic, aggressive, or push too hard for contracts. Remodeling, they argue, is sold on relationships, and sales techniques tend to be soft and customer-friendly.

Indeed, some remodelers are successful without systems (see "Selling Without a Formal System"). Others tried to advance with a sales system but moved backward instead (see "When a Sales System Doesn't Work"). But to hear testimonials like Shirey's, or of the success of Howard Walker -- a St. Simons, Ga., remodeler who improved close ratios to 1 in 3 using Rea's techniques -- sales systems have turned many businesses around. Three factors are responsible:

Sales systems are systematic. Owners know what works sale-to-sale because they, or their sales staff, use the same approach every time. "Tragically, most people who aren't organized stay unorganized in the sales end," says Dave Yoho of Dave Yoho Associates of Fairfax, Va.

Systems promote discipline. "I don't have to rely on how I feel today," says Rea, of Phil Rea Associates in Newport News, Va. "If I went on an appointment now, I'd fall into my system and forget I've got a sinus headache."

A system puts you in charge. By having your own system, you don't resort to one that is proven -- the customer's. As Sandler materials argue, prospects lie, want free expertise, and are bound to mislead you about intentions. Notes one Sandler handout, "You will default to the prospect's system and find yourself at Wimp Junction."

"In remodeling," says Phil Rea, "people just show up. They let homeowners control the situation."

"A system overpowers imagination,"adds Yoho. "If you don't know what to say next, you're going to use your imagination, and that's going to get you in trouble."

Many people are afraid of selling because they don't understand the process, and a system provides confidence through methodology, says Dave Mattson, Sandler Systems vice president. "They've had bad salespeople call on them," he says of those who fear selling. "They don't want to do to others what they've found distasteful done to them."

"Having a system makes the sales process flow a lot easier," says Walker, of Helping Hands Construction. "I would stumble around a lot, talk about a project, then come back and talk about the company. I try not to make it sound like a canned routine. Part of that process is to make it personable."

Common ground

Although promoters of systems point out differences -- which seem to rest in how to approach the customer -- the systems have a lot in common. Much of what systems teach has to do with choosing what to say and how and when to say it.

Yoho has a six-step system: Sell the appointment, sell your way in, sell yourself, sell your company, sell your product/service, sell your price. Rea's "Magic Card" sketches a similar step-by-step "Full Routine": Approach (show how professional we are); Warm-up (get them to like and trust me); Qualify (find out how much they want to invest); Present (show why they should buy products from me); and Close (ask for their business, and have a ready answer for objections).

Sandler takes a "submarine" approach. As you advance, you seal compartments representing sales process segments so prospects can't return or run ahead, as they can in what Sandler calls "more traditional" systems. Sandler's steps include bonding/rapport, making up-front contracts, finding the prospect's "pain," determining budget, making a decision, fulfilling the promise, and post selling.

Sandler Systems training is among the more expensive (see "Three Popular Sales Systems: A Side-by-Side Comparison," below), particularly if participants sign up for the ongoing training Sandler recommends to make its system work. Sandler's President's Club ranges from $6,000 to $9,000 per person, depending on the franchise, although a $2,500 preview allows a test run. About 14% of participants drop out after the preview, Mattson says. "There are a number of reasons they don't continue," he says. "Sometimes it's philosophical. A lot of times, salespeople, unless they have a financial commitment, don't want to make the commitment because it involves change." Mattson says that while most salespeople adapt easily to changes in technique, they sometimes resist the changes in attitude and behavior that Sandler training demands.

Making sales systems work

Although the term "system" suggests uniformity, success with sales training varies considerably. And the results aren't always immediate.

Sandler. Tom Duncan of E.H. Duncan, The Bath and Kitchen Center in Poland, Ohio, says he disliked the Sandler system at first. "If you use Sandler to the T, you can turn off a lot of people," he says. He admits, however, that if he had known about Sandler 10 years ago, selling would have been much easier.

Richard Busic (front) became a salesman for Schafer Builders in Crystal Lake, Ill., after 25 years as a carpenter. Phil Rea's system was the first training owner Bill Schafer (rear) used to indoctrinate him in sales. In one high period, Busic closed 40% of his sales calls, not quite as high as the 60% closers using Rea's system in the $4 million company. “It's like a poker game,” Busic says of Rea's take on sales. “You always ante up. You pay for the lead. You should at least go out and talk to the people. The trick is to qualify, not to disqualify.”

Photo Credit: Andy Goodwin

The key to the system for Duncan was learning about bonding with homeowners ("If they don't like you, they're not going to do business with you") and getting homeowners to agree to do something before moving ahead -- the up-front contracts. Of the five people in his company who enrolled in a $1,500-a-head, 10-week course, only he and two others stuck with it. "They felt it wasn't in their personality to do that type of selling," he says of the two who dropped out. "They felt it was too much pressure. And I tried to explain to them they didn't have to use all of it, just parts we felt comfortable using." What he didn't like, he says, was negative reverse selling. "You know, 'I get the feeling that no matter what I offer, you're close-minded -- is that a fair statement?' You try that on some clients and they'll smack you."

Duncan says with many prospects, he doesn't use Sandler techniques. "The ones you need to qualify -- that's when you need to use a system," he says. "If you don't know exactly what they want and they don't know what they want, you're never going to sell them. You almost have to tell them what they want. If you tell them and they agree, there's your up-front contract."

Shirey says that is one of Sandler's best techniques. "My goal is to find out about them, and to find the pain, as Sandler calls it, get to the heart."

Shirey struggled with Sandler in the beginning. She found it difficult, for example, to follow Sandler's suggestion to go into a first appointment as the expert without presentation materials. Eventually, she made the system her own, putting training material into her own words.

Jeff Hurst of Hurst Total Home in Kettering, Ohio, another Sandler devotee, says the system offers many tools. "It's very different from the common sales approach people are accustomed to," he says. "Because you try to get 'No's' for an answer. If you're getting rejected, that gives you something to work with."

Rea. Phil Rea's system, on the other hand, looks for 'Yes's.' "I believe you always look at ways you can say 'Yes' to a customer," Rea says.

"I don't do a lot of disqualifying over the phone," Rea says. "I think every call is worth one appointment."

He dismisses claims that sales systems offer a canned pitch. "Every business has a pitch," he says. "Being phony is another thing. They have to put it into their own words."

Most remodelers do well until it comes to the close, he says. "Some people don't want to be put in the position to hear 'No,' so they don't ask. It takes guts to be a salesperson. You can't be scared of 'No.'

"It's proven that people don't buy because they're not asked to buy," Rea says. His system includes 17 ways to close. "My system can get aggressive, but it depends on the person selling. You can get aggressive with any system."

Adam Helfman of Fairway Construction in Southfield, Mich., says Rea visits his company quarterly to pump up his sales staff and to team up on leads. "He's a true mentor," Helfman says. "In one day his fee is paid for by additional sales, made when he was here."

Yoho. Typically, customers of the Yoho system are single-line remodelers trying to sell the right product in the right place at the right time at the right price. "The customer is a key ingredient in sales methodology," Yoho says. "How the prospect thinks or how the prospect feels is the major consideration in the development of our sales systems. It has little to do with the way we feel."

Like Sandler's Mattson, Yoho preaches the value of reinforcement, be it through training or tapes. Because the system addresses all aspects of the business, Yoho considers his sales system a soup-to-nuts marketing and sales plan.

Standardization of the sales process is good for building a legacy remodeling company, Yoho says. Retiring owners can then say, "If you follow what I've been doing, the same system, get your salespeople to sell the same way, you're going to build the same organization I have."

Making the leap

Michael Strong, of Brothers Strong in Houston, says he's on the lookout for a system as a way to triple revenues. "I want a system that is going to maintain the essence of who we are and improve who we are based on our expertise," he says. "I don't want to throw away everything."

Strong wants to hire a consultant to meet with him and his sales staff, drive around on calls, and examine the company's sales materials. Although he receives Rea's newsletter, he feels Rea's system is one he doesn't want to adopt wholesale, but rather as part of an amalgamated system.

From what remodelers and the sales pros say, whatever system Strong picks, it will only work if he tailors it to his own style. By examining how he sells now (everyone, the gurus say, has a system), he'll find ways to improve. And from what remodelers who have succeeded through training say, that path leads to greater, more predictable, revenues.

Terry Kozuch thought he had developed his own sales system while working with customers as a finish carpenter. And after switching to sales, his numbers seemed to bear him out: In just his third year, he landed $1.3 million worth of work.

But the owner of his $14 million-a-year company, Adam Helfman of Fairway Construction in Southfield, Mich., thought Kozuch could improve. He suggested that Kozuch enroll in Sandler sales training. The company paid about $8,000, and for five months, Kozuch attended three-hour classes each week. But when he applied the new techniques to his sales calls, his sales plummeted to about $300,000 over nine months.

Kozuch says the system grated against everything he did, particularly when it came to showing clients what they wanted through rough drawings and allowing them to contract only when they were ready.

"It totally confused me on how I should approach people," he says. Whether it was the instructor's style or his own fault for not applying techniques correctly, Kozuch says the system made him uncomfortable.

"Say you were doing a certain project and the customer had an objection," he says. "They wanted you to make up some story to meet the objection. I always answered objections up front.

"You were really kind of degrading customers. It's pretty easy to find their pain. Most people will give it to you up front."

Undeterred by Kozuch's experience, however, Helfman invested $80,000 for in-house Sandler training for his 10-person sales force. Again, the results were disappointing. Although Helfman says Sandler Systems guaranteed an immediate sales increase (he expected volume to rise 30%), sales tanked. During 1998's strong economy, his $1 million monthly sales revenues dropped to $600,000.

"I cut ties with them before doing an autopsy," Helfman says. "I didn't want to pursue a refund because I had to worry about what the company was doing today instead of chasing them down to figure out what's going on. I didn't get it all in writing properly. I chalked it up to a learning experience."

Helfman says he was told the reason it didn't work was because he, as the owner, wasn't committed to the system.

Dave Mattson, Sandler Systems vice president, says subtleties of techniques can get lost in teaching. "It's that personal interaction that's sometimes missing from theory to implementation," he says. "Sometimes, quite frankly, we need to put people with a different trainer because maybe that's not their personality. My personality is very laid back, but that doesn't mean the 165 trainers we have are. We have people who take more of an aggressive approach but use the same theories."

He adds that, in switching from his own system to the Sandler System, Kozuch violated Sandler's No. 1 rule: If something works, don't stop using it. "For a salesperson who's doing $1 million one way and throws that whole process out the window and thinks they're using Sandler -- which I would even question -- is very difficult to understand."

Helfman says he still sees value in the system. What he likes about Sandler is that when you leave a customer, both parties know what happens next. But coming from a philosophic base of relationship-building, and being the most expensive, most experienced remodeler in town, Helfman says, his sales staff found it difficult to "leave their ammo in the car," as Sandler teaches. They didn't feel they could compete while other remodelers showed pictures of jobs in progress or generated excitement by sketching possibilities on napkins.

During Sandler training, Fairway's overall closing ratios fell to 1 in 10. After dropping the system, Helfman says ratios zoomed to 1 in 6.

Kozuch's sales are back at $1.2 million, and he's happy he's on straight commission -- although that wasn't true when his sales nose-dived. He says he's done with sales systems. "I'll listen to tapes and hear what people will say, but I'm not going to spend money on them."

Max Isley sells $1.2 million in remodeling annually, mostly from his North Carolina showroom. His Hampton Kitchens of Raleigh closes 6 out of every 10 qualified customers.

In business for 27 years, Isley took a Dale Carnegie sales course early on, and has listened to Dave Yoho's tapes, but he calls his sales system his own.

He used to sell by building excitement for features and benefits of products. He ditched that approach 12 years ago.

Now, he quickly establishes rapport with prospects and determines if they have money to spend after using a quick estimating system and sharing average kitchen remodel costs. If they have a realistic idea of budget and are ready to move ahead, he then seeks a 10% design retainer.

The retainer nearly always closes the sale, but after the design has been drafted and presented to the client, Isley uses a technique -- the trial close -- asking, "What do you think?" If the client's ready, the construction contract is signed then.

Isley says the influx of home centers a decade ago made him realize he held the most expertise in his region. The certified kitchen designer began selling himself as an expert. He insists that prospects come to his showroom; otherwise he charges a $275 consulting fee for a 90-minute visit. Isley admits that the first time he told a customer to visit or opt for a consultation, it "scared him to death." Since then, he's followed his disciplined sales process, a key factor in his success -- along with his exuberant, amiable personality.

"Your personality is what's going to make these things work," he says of formal sales systems. "If it's false, the client's going to be able to tell." He suggests extracting the best from systems and having the guts to follow your amalgamated method -- every time. "The thing is, it's not a system, it's an attitude. And that's the problem in trying to teach sales systems. It's really an attitude."